This talk is on the theme of what the Bible says about God. However, this is an enormous subject because the Bible has many things to say about God. So in this talk I'll just cover six things and then in future talks I will be saying more about God.
The first sentence in the Bible reads, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Throughout the Bible, you find that God is there. A somebody, outside of everything else: people, the world, the universe. The Bible tells us that God is not just a religious idea or an abstract thought or a feeling. For example, love is real but we explain it by talking about emotions inside us, or ways in which we treat other people, or the bonds that keep a family together. We say things like: "I love my wife"; "Mrs Smith loves her children"; "What we need in the world is more love". But love isn't out there. Love is about what we are and how we relate.
God isn't like that. He isn't just a feeling inside of certain religious people or an idea to fill up the hole that we can sense inside. Rather, the Bible says that God is there. Not just inside our heads. Not just in our thoughts. Not just in our feelings. He is there; out there. He is something real and separate from us.
In one passage in the Bible, a Christian preacher says this, "God made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that people would perhaps reach out for him and find him" God is out there and can be found, says the Bible.
God is eternal. The Bible speaks of the world as having a starting point, a beginning. The world isn't eternal. If you go far enough back in time, then you find that there was a point at which it began. Everything comes from somewhere. I came from my parents. A chick comes from an egg. A tree comes from a seed. Science tries to trace back the chain of events which explain how things came to be as they are today.
But as you trace that chain backwards, then you start to wonder where it stops or indeed if it stops. Even if you decide that the universe itself had a starting point, you wonder what was there before that could cause the universe to begin. Alternatively, you may wonder whether the universe itself has always been there in one form or another. When we think hard about it, we do imagine that something must always have been there, in some sense.
"Yes, you're right," says the Bible, "it is God." He is the answer which satisfies that thought within us which asks what has always been there. One writer in the Bible puts it this way, "Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God." No beginning, no end, just always there. God is the eternal one.
Thirdly, God is all-powerful. Let me read you some more words from the Bible preacher I quoted earlier, a man called Paul. He said, "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else." God isn't dependant upon anyone or anything else to sustain him, to empower him, to provide for him, to keep him. Indeed, says the Bible, the very opposite is true. He is the one who made everything and gave life to everything.
But couldn't it be that things ran away from God? After starting the universe couldn't it have gone off in all sorts of directions which he never expected? Like a boy starting a campfire in a wood, who suddenly finds that the fire has caught the bushes nearby alight, which in turn set the trees on fire, and so before he knows there is an inferno raging out of control.
The Bible says no. Whatever exists God has designed and God has given its power to it. When God started things there was nothing else around him. The reason the boy in the wood has trouble with his fire is because there are other things outside of him which he can't control: the bushes and the trees and fire itself. But when God created the universe there was nothing else. No other materials. No other forces or powers. He wrote all the laws which would apply. He set all the parameters in the system. He made all the materials. He underwrites it all. He is all-powerful.
But God isn't just a blind force which creates all other things. The Bible also says that God is alive. In day-to-day usage we distinguish between things which have life in them and things which don't. We don't think of a rock as being alive, but a tree is because it goes through changes and it can grow and it can produce further trees. We also recognise the absence of life in something that has been living. When we find a cat dead at the roadside, we know it has lost its life by the stiffness of the body, the lack of reactions and the staring, cold look in the eyes. A living thing has died. But if workmen then came along and smashed up the tarmac on that road and dumped it in a pile at the side, we wouldn't think of the road as having died. The cat was once alive but is now dead; the road was never alive and so cannot die.
God, says the Bible, is alive and that's made plain when he makes the first human being. That event is described in this way: "The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." When your grandad died you knew that although all the parts of the body, and the chemicals, were still there in the hospital bed - the person had gone. It was God who first made that difference. God injected life into us, because God himself is alive.
The specialness of that gift - the gift of being alive - is seen in the fact that most of us don't want to die. We know that life is something precious that we have. But if God is alive and gave us this gift, why does he take it away again? Well we'll think about that in a future talk. For now just see in your awareness of being alive, a pointer to the God who made you and is alive himself.
The Bible says that God is not simply alive like a tree or a flower. He is alive and personal. There are features of human beings which make us personal creatures. The thoughts which pass through our minds; the ways in which we can communicate with others; the variety of feelings which run through us; the relationships which we can have with others. There is something different about us: we are people
The Bible says that the reason we are like that is because God is a person. Yes he is a far bigger person than we are. Our lives are limited in many ways; God does not suffer those limitations. But he is still personal. Our personality, our relationships, our capacities to feel, our desire to speak and listen, our thoughts, these things come from God. And they come from God because he has made people to be like himself.
The important thing to know, says the Bible, is that God has made us like this so that we can know Him. He made us this way to know one another. But he also created us to know him. Not just know about him. Not just know enough to treat him properly. We can know him, personally. Indeed, He can become our Father.
On one occasion, recorded in the Bible, Jesus was talking to his followers about God and he said this to them, "In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you." You see how he presents God to them in family terms. They are to think of God as a father: the father of Jesus. He is a person and he has living relationship with Jesus. And he is inviting into his family home other people: those who are the followers of Jesus. What Jesus then makes clear elsewhere is that the invitation is not simply to be a guest but to be a child; an adopted child in God's home.
Lastly, if all the previous points are true then, says the Bible, God should be worshipped. He's the only eternal being - that warrants adoration. He's all-powerful - that warrants praise. He's alive and the giver of life - that warrants thanks. He's a person and the one who has made other people to know him - that warrants love and submission. These things should come together in worship of God. It is the only right response we can make to this person, who is so far greater than we are. If you haven't discovered him already, and given to him that worship that is due to him, I hope you will start to seek him. I hope you will seek to discover this God today.