This is the first in a series of sessions that's meant to introduce visitors to our church, to the main teachings and beliefs of a Reformed church. We're going to be following the pattern of the Belgic Confession of Faith, which was written around 1560, 1561, during the time of the Reformation, and it was meant to be a public testimony that Reformed Christians are Bible-believing Christians, that we are those who believe in the God of the Scriptures, and that seek to honor him above all, that trust in his Son, Jesus Christ, for salvation. And that confession, the Belgic Confession, we believe is a time-tested confession, almost 500 years old, and we believe that that is a good thing, that we may use this and have this in our churches as a document, that we use as sort of a statement of faith. And today we're going to be summarizing articles one and two of that confession that really begin by answering who God is. That's an important question to consider even again and again in our lives and in the history of the church. Who is God? Have we thought about that enough? Do we really know who he is? Many people talk about God. They use the term God. They even use his name very lightly as a curse word or even as a filler word, which is very sad. And that's clear that people are getting his identity all wrong. They don't even know what they are doing. And then there's even the reality that people in churches, we ourselves, can so easily begin to drift into having either a reduced view of God on one hand or exaggerating on the other and getting a misshapen view of who he is. The pattern of all of church history that we're going to be looking at today, even way back to the time of Israel in the Old Testament, even to now, is that the church needs times of reformation and revival and returning. humbly to an understanding of who the holy God is. The Lord God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and full of kind compassion, yet who is holy, perfect, righteous and just. And today we are going to focus on the need to know God as he is revealed in his word. So we're going to be looking at this really with the main theme, who is God? Who is God? First we're going to look at the danger of what we will call idolatry. Now we can know a lot about God from creation. Article 2 of the Belgic Confession actually covers that. That we know him first actually by his creation. We can look at the sun and the moon and the stars. The beauty of this creation that we live in, we can see something of God's wisdom and his power and something of who he is. Romans 1 verse 20 actually says that every person on earth has a certain natural understanding of God's power. of his wisdom. And we should look at creation and we can think about and contemplate the wonderful works of God even as the seasons change and as we see things growing in the order of creation. But as Romans 1 goes on to describe, it's incredibly easy to twist and to lose touch of that basic knowledge, and to go in the wrong direction, in the wrong track, and to slip into idolatry, into turning God into like a created thing, or reducing Him into a God that we would prefer. It says in Romans 1 that they began to think of God as being like a creature, being like we are. And that's an easy thing to do. You can think as an example, actually, of the Israelites in the Old Testament. There's the stories of the book of Exodus, where the Israelites were taken out of Egypt. There were the 10 plagues. God led them across the Red Sea using Moses as a great leader. There were miracles. There was bread from heaven, manna. They learned more than a few lessons about who God is. They even On the mountain at Mount Sinai, they received the Ten Commandments, and there they were to have no other gods before God, and they weren't to make for themselves idols. They were to stick with the Lord God as he had revealed himself to them, to worship him in holiness. But do you remember what happened? Well, even right at the foot of that mountain, while Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments, The people wanted to make an idol for themselves. They made a golden calf and they began to worship that statue of a golden calf as if it were even the gods or the god who had delivered them from Egypt. The idea of actually having a golden calf as an idol was very likely an idea that they had had when they were slaves in Egypt, or that they would have seen. And so they were taking the Egyptian idea of God, very likely, or the ideas of gods that were influenced by the nations around them, and they were trying to make up their own god. They wanted the kind of god that they wanted. And Romans 1 verse 21 through 23 warns us about this process of idolatry. Although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God. nor were thankful, but they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing they became wise, they became fools. They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man." And we should never think that we or even an Orthodox church would be immune to a similar process. We might not go out and make for ourselves a golden statue and bow down to it. But if you think about it, at that time, it was Aaron, the high priest, who was supposed to be the leader of God's people. He even gave in to that temptation. And there's a tendency in sinful hearts And in all of us, the Apostle John had to warn even the Christian church, little children, keep yourself from idols. Watch out that we have this tendency as sinful people and people who still wrestle with sin to want to make God more like we want him to be. And the problem with idolatry is not just bowing down to statues. That might be how the ancient people were tempted to do this. The challenge that we might have is that we want to make a God that fits our own desires, that we could be at risk of falling in love with an idea of a God that's reduced, that's chipped away, that's cut away, that we ignore certain parts of the characteristics of God, or we could even make the things of this world our God. Colossians 3 verse 5 warns about covetousness, which is idolatry, that we would fall in love with the things of this world and maybe start even praying for the wrong things, thereby making our God the stuff that we want. And we need to be aware and awake to this danger. Am I reshaping God? Are you making things of this world into your idols? Are we even perhaps stretching or distorting who God is by overemphasizing, especially the last hundred years, the church? Indeed, it's true. God is love. That is biblical. But by emphasizing one set of doctrines, losing touch with the truth of who God is, and then there may be others who make the Lord God into an idol who's cruel. I mean, nasty in a sense. Caricatures, they call them, distorted in subtle ways. And we have to watch out because there are books that are called Christian, there are websites, there are different ideas of who God is that can be so twisted. And some religions have twisted God into being a life force or being mixed in with creation like the Eastern religions. And we need to be aware that some of those ideas are coming in to Christian churches. And we need to be aware that it's very easy to be captured by those ideas. And so when we think of being reformed, let's think of it this way to start. Either humans reform God, So reform, reshape God in the way that they would prefer him to be, or God is reforming us through his word and by his spirit. And the great danger is, is that we end up, as John Kelvin actually put it, we end up being Like those whose hearts are idol factories that we make idol after idol in our hearts. And so let's be careful that it's the Word of God, the Bible, that shapes our idea of who God is. And that's where the confession of faith, the Belgic Confession, starts. That there is only one God. Belgic Confession, Article 1. We all believe with the heart and we confess with the mouth that there is only one simple and spiritual being which we call God that is that he is eternal incomprehensible invisible immutable infinite almighty perfectly wise just good in the overflowing fountain of all good now when it says that he is simple and spiritual that's simple is an old way of saying he's he's undividable He is truly all God. All of those attributes we just read, eternal, incomprehensible, that we need to look to the Scriptures to learn who God is, perfect in all things, and that He is who He says He is. And so, will we be reforming our thoughts? That's going to be what we look at now. The challenge of reforming our thoughts so that we think of God according to his word. So how can we know about who God truly is? Well we can hardly begin to grasp that if we're honest about it. God is so much greater than we are. His thoughts are beyond our thoughts. His ways are beyond our ways. He's beyond comprehension, as he taught Job in that Old Testament book, beyond what we can understand. And yet God has revealed himself through his creation. We looked at that. We can learn much about God from his creation, but then also through his word. And we can see some of what are called his attributes. You've probably heard of the attributes of God. When we say a person has attributes, we can be talking about that they're tall, or maybe if you're going to meet somebody at an airport, you might say, might be told, well, He's very tall and he has dark hair and a mustache or something like that. You describe their height and their appearance, the way they walk. Then we might go a little further. We're describing a friend to somebody and we say, oh, he's a very happy person. He's always smiling. And if we're discussing somebody, we might talk about what we would call their attributes. Well, when we talk about God, We know that we're not describing a person who is like us in an outward, visible way, but we can talk about his attributes, his characteristics. And nature reveals many of those to us. His almighty power. It's like a book that's open to us, showing us a lot of things about him. But to really know who God is, we can't grasp all of who he is in any way. But to know more about God, we need to know the Word of God, the Bible. And it's in the Bible that it's progressively revealed, we call it. As you work through the scriptures, we learn progressively more and more and more about God. We learn about his creative power in Genesis 1 and 2. But then we learn about also his holiness, that he wants Adam and Eve to obey him, his righteousness, wants them to do what is good and right. Then after the fall, we learn about actually God's patience, that he's very patient with his people, that though they rebelled against him, he still gave them a second chance as it were. Then we learn about God's holiness in the flood. And as you work through the scriptures, especially through stories at first, you're learning more and more about God as he works through and with Adam and Eve and then later Noah, Abraham and others, Joseph. We learn through stories about who God is. And then later through his laws, his commandments. Then later through psalms and wisdom books about wisdom like Proverbs. We learn much about who God is. And through those stories, and then later through the scriptures, as you come to the New Testament teachings, which are the epistles, the letter of the apostles, and the gospels of the Lord Jesus Christ, there's many texts that we can put together that teach us about the attributes or the identity of God. We learn from the Bible that God is eternal. He's eternal. He's even beyond time. He is from everlasting. He's uncreated. Psalm 90 verse two, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. He is eternal. He's also incomprehensible. He's beyond the finding out the scriptures say. He's infinite. Psalm 145 verse three, great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. His greatness is unsearchable. beyond figuring out how great God is. And also God is merciful. He's merciful. Nehemiah 9 verse 17, you are a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abundant in kindness. And we could go through the list of God's attributes in article one of the confession and we could learn many texts about God's holiness and his wisdom and his sovereignty. And the Bible teaches us about the character of God. And one of the advantages we have as Reformed churches is that a lot of the work of putting those texts together has been passed down to us through confessions like the Belgic Confession. We also use another confession called the Heidelberg Catechism. And they teach us these different characteristics, putting together various scripture verses, teaching us about God. See, one of the great dangers is that somebody who even appreciates the Bible might have their favorite parts. And they might study one part or learn one part and forget another part. The Bible is a long book. And they could take some parts and emphasize them more than others. And they could end up with a partial or a twisted idea of who God is. That's very easy to do humanly. It can relate to our preferences, to our personality. that some of us would emphasize or maybe even overemphasize the justice of God and the wrath of God. And others of us might overemphasize the love of God and prefer to read certain passages over others and leave out truths about one side, mercy and grace, and the other side, justice and holiness of God. So there are two kinds of people often in churches. Or there is really, ultimately. There are those who are forming their own God and those who are being then reformed by God. Now we don't want to say that reformed Christians or our denomination are the only ones that are being shaped by God. Certainly there are others in other traditions. There are other Christians in the world from different backgrounds who are being fundamentally shaped by God. And yet this is where we want to start. that we Christians, Ephesians 2 verse 10, are God's workmanship. He is not a product of our imagination. We are created, guide, and shaped by him. And we'll look at this more down the road in future sessions, but we really see that going to the Bible is the source of this. And we need to recognize that there's this ongoing battle, even in the church, even in church history, even in our own churches, where the old man craves idols and different versions of God. And so the New Testament still reminds believers again and again, keep yourselves from idols. You read about the seven churches in Revelation, the danger that they've gone back to idols. And so we need to go to the Word. We need to know the Word. And in order to know God, we need to know the Bible. But then even more, we need to know Jesus Christ, who in John 1 verse 1 is spoken of as the Word of God, and really to know God. It's more clearly shown through His divine Word and through His Son. That's in John 1, verse 1, that the Son of God, the Word of God, has revealed God to us. But then also in Hebrews 1, verse 1, God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son. And then later it says that the Son of God is the express image of His person, that He upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had by Himself purged our sins, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. To really know who God is, we must know Jesus Christ. He has spoken to us by His Son. Son, by the way, in Hebrews chapter one, the beginning part, is even the creator of the world. All things were created through him. He's the express image. He's the exact imprint of who God is. Think of this. Until the coming of Jesus Christ, humans made thousands upon thousands, probably even millions of idols. You can dig them up. They've been dug up all over the world to the tips of South America and into Africa and into Asia that people tried to represent their gods with images and statues. And that goes way, way back. And it's interesting to note that even those false religions still integrated little tiny bits of truth here and there. They have stories even of a great flood and stories of creation that are twisted and broken versions of biblical truth. But here, in Hebrews 1, we learn that the Son of God is the express image of his person. That means he's the exact imprint. That means we know God and we can learn about who God is by looking to Jesus Christ. He doesn't lack in any of the characteristics of God. Power over the wind and the waves and the demons. Power over creation. grace and mercy and kindness in His healing, or truth in His teaching, or justice in His work on the cross. Every attribute of God is perfectly revealed in Jesus Christ. And as He walked on this earth and as He ascended into heaven, even now He's the exact, precise, perfect imprint of God. To know Him is to know God. He is Emmanuel. As Matthew 1 verse 23 calls one of his names, Emmanuel means God with us. And so when we come to know Jesus Christ, that's when we begin to come to know who God really is. We see at the cross of Jesus Christ, that perfect justice of God poured out. God's anger against sin. And yet we see the mercy and the grace in laying down His own life and becoming the sacrifice for our sin. In His resurrection and His conquering of sin and death, we see His almighty power and His victory over sin and death. It's in Jesus Christ that we see a perfectly balanced image of God. And so we must come to know Jesus. John 14, verse 6, Jesus makes the claim, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Nobody comes to the Father but by me. And so to know God, you must know Jesus Christ. And then we go a step further. To truly know who God is, Knowing the Bible is wonderful, and knowing about Jesus Christ is wonderful. Reading and hearing about the life and death of Jesus Christ is important, but more is needed. In John chapter three, you read of a man called Nicodemus, and he came to Jesus that night. He was a very educated man, a man who knew the Bible inside out. He was a Pharisee, actually. He would have memorized large parts of the Bible. He knew a lot of things about God. And he came to Jesus making a profound confession. John 3 verse 2, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. And so Nicodemus was impressed with the Lord Jesus Christ. He came to him, came to speak to him, to have a conversation and be discipled and to ask questions. But the response of the Lord Jesus to Nicodemus certainly would have made him think. John 3 verse 3, Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And then later, verse 5, unless one is born of the water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. And Jesus was telling Nicodemus that until the Holy Spirit gave spiritual life, that Nicodemus was dead to God. As Ephesians 2 verse 1 puts it, you he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins. A person must be converted. They must be born again by the work of the Holy Spirit before they can begin to truly know God. So to know God we must know Jesus Christ. We must know of him. He's God with us who walked on this earth, who accomplished the redemption and the forgiveness of sins that we need. But then we also need to know God, the Spirit who works in us. In Genesis 2, when Adam became a created, was the first created man, God actually breathed life into him and he became a living being. Genesis 2 verse 7. And in the New Testament, we learn that spiritually speaking, we need the work of the Holy Spirit to breathe new life into us. And that is the way to come to know God. And so the Son of God walked as God with us. The Holy Spirit now dwells in us as God in us. And when that happens, this process of coming to know God, being introduced to the Bible, coming to know something of Jesus Christ, then the Holy Spirit beginning to work. As we come to know who God is and we start to know his attributes, his power, start to become accountable to him, that's actually not an easy process. That's one of the great mistakes of the church in our age or even false teachings. To come to know Jesus, To know God is not all easy. Hebrews 4 verse 12 says that the word of God is like a two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow. It's a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. When a person begins to learn who God is, The Word of God begins to work on them like a surgery, or even like an assault with a sword cutting into them. And they begin to see their sin and their need, and they're confronted with the holiness of God. And one of the things we believe as a Reformed church is that when the Holy Spirit works, it can actually be quite difficult to come to know God. Challenging, heartbreaking, as we begin to see the reality of who we are. You can think of an example of this would be the Apostle Paul and his conversion in the book of Acts. Sometimes some people wrongly speak of the Holy Spirit as always working like a gentleman. Well, if you look at the experience of the Apostle Paul and the bright light that he faced and being thrown to the ground and blinded for days, and then convicted of his sin. You can read of that in Romans chapter seven. There is times in the Christian life a convicting that comes, that brings those that are on that journey to their knees, confessing their sin, crying out for God's mercy in Jesus Christ. Not everybody is born again, by the way, in identical ways. as the Holy Spirit works and people come to know God, not everyone is cut to the heart in exactly the same way. Everybody will become convicted of their sin and see their need for Jesus to be reconciled to God through Jesus one way or another, but through conviction of sin. But we don't always or ever really totally understand the work of the Spirit. John chapter 3 verse 8, Jesus says to Nicodemus, Being born of the Spirit. It's not always easy to discern. It can be challenging as somebody comes to know God. It can take some time. Some may experience the new birth as a radical, quick conversion in their adult years, turning around after a period of obvious rebellion and backsliding. Others may be children who grew up in the church and they begin to know God as toddlers and they might not remember a day where they were not born again. There are examples in the scriptures of those who knew God from a very, very young age. John the Baptist in the womb, or Jeremiah, or Timothy. Apostle Paul says to Timothy how he already knew from his grandmother and his mother as a small child the truth about God. Some may experience this conversion as an ebbing and flowing over some months or years, but in the end it will bear this fruit. There will be a conviction of sin. And then there will be a looking to Jesus and a crying out for forgiveness and a growing trust in him. And so this is the way by which we come to know God. Through his creation, through his word, through his son, through his spirit. And that's the beginning. of what we're learning about knowing God, that we as God's people know him through his word.