That We May Know Him
And Make Him Known
A Study Guide for Individuals and Small Groups
by
Gary W. McCall
2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Week One / 3July 22-27 / Monday / The God Search
Tuesday / Sharp Eyes, Keen Minds
Wednesday / Can You Trust the Bible?
Thursday / Totally Different
Friday / Full of Grace and Truth
Saturday / Holding You Back!
Week Two / 11
Jul 29-Aug 3 / Monday / El Elyon
Tuesday / El Olam
Wednesday / El Shaddai
Thursday / YHWH
Friday / YHWH +
Saturday / Pater
Week Three / 19
Aug 5-10 / Monday / God IS!
Tuesday / God is Spirit
Wednesday / God is ONE
Thursday / God is Infinite
Friday / God is Life
Saturday / God is Light
Week Four / 27
Aug 12-17 / Monday / Be holy, as He is.
Tuesday / Be just, as He is.
Wednesday / Be jealous, as He is.
Thursday / Be perfect, as He is.
Friday / Be true, as He is.
Saturday / Be love, as He is.
WEEK ONE
I have to confess that I am making a couple of assumptions about you as we begin … you are not a fool, just ignorant.
I hope that hasn’t turned you off, but consider the truth of this verse.
Since you have decided to do this study, I consider that you are not a fool. You believe that God exists and you really want to know this God. Coming to terms with Him means coming to terms with a basic truth about ourselves … it is our sin that keeps us from God. The fool does not reject God because of intellectual difficulties with the concept of a supreme being. Rather it is because the atheist wants to continue doing all they please, even if what they want to do is ‘sin.’ Each one defines ‘good’ in terms of whether or not something is the right thing to do.
Searching for God means discovering the unvarnished truth about ourselves. Confronting who we are results from considering who God is and what He is like. Encountering and experiencing God and His works demands change as a response. The purpose of searching for God is to change to become like Him. Otherwise this is an exercise in self-condemnation rather than a means of worship.
Lord,
I want to know You as You have revealed Yourself to be. Keep me from relying too much on what others have said about You. Give me first-hand insight and experience with what You have said about Yourself. Guide me to know the truth about who You are and what You have done. I seek this knowledge of You in order to become a person who worships You truly and becomes what You desire for me to be.
Amen
Monday
THE GOD SEARCH
What do you know about God?
The first lesson about knowing God is that there is an awful lot we don’t know and some things we can know, but never comprehend. Let that sink in for just a minute …
Our ignorance is almost overwhelming. We could sink into despair or we could get started. The best place to begin is to figure out what you know or think you know about God. Then we will begin to compare our ideas with what God has actually revealed about Himself.
As we talk about God, we are going to be using two common terms in a very technical way … attribute and characteristic.
We will reserve the term attribute for those things about God which are essential to His being. For instance, Jesus revealed to the Samaritan woman that God is Spirit (John 4:24). This makes a distinction between who God is compared to statues or artwork depicting Him as someone with a body.
In contrast to those things which define His being, are characteristics which may be true to some degree in others, but find their perfection in Him alone. We are told that God is love (1 John 4:7). Many of God’s creatures, including human beings, exhibit some degree of love towards others. Parents love their offspring, but not to be level of perfection that God does.
Take some time to reflect on what attributes and characteristics you already know to be true of God:
· What attributes are essential to God’s being?
· What characteristics are true of God as well as others?
[There is a pretty complete list on page 10.]
Tuesday
SHARP EYES, KEEN MINDS
Where do you see God in creation?
To find God, you just have to know where to look and how to look. Our first sourcebook about Him is not the Bible, but the world that He made. The Bible is clear that He is the Creator and we are His creation. What we call Nature is preaching God to every person on this planet.
For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.
Romans 1:20 (NLT)
God’s power is on display in the world around us. We don’t need telescopes or microscopes to be able to understand this idea of infinite power. There is enough evidence in our own backyard and in the night sky to teach us that lesson.
It is also possible to look at the creation and discern that it did not make itself. The Creator must be someone other than the creation itself. There is no force in the universe which could make what we see with the naked eye, much less all that lies in telescope range and beyond.
Why don’t people see this? Who and what we were made to be has been horribly corrupted by sin. We were made in the image of God and it ought to be possible to look at mankind and see the character of his Creator, but it isn’t so easy to do. You might find it easier to discover a four-leaf clover than a person who truly exhibits the characteristics of God.
When mankind became so sinful, God washed all but eight people away and totally changed the world that He had made through the dynamic forces of the Flood (Genesis 6-9). The marvels of creation are still there, but most people miss the Creator.
Today I want you to go looking for God. First in your own backyard.
· What do you see in your yard that is evidence of God?
· Look up tonight at the night sky. Do you see the moon and the stars. What does the amount of energy in the universe indicate about the power of God?
· What else do you know about God from what you see, feel, taste, touch, and hear?
Wednesday
CAN YOU TRUST THE BIBLE?
How reliable is the Bible as a guide to knowing God?
Some people have given up on the Bible as a means of knowing God. Either it is just too hard to understand or people have told them that the Bible is unreliable. How reliable is it?
The Bible is a collection of works that was written by men over a period of about 1,400 years in two major languages: Hebrew and Greek. These were not just any men, they were men authorized to speak God’s message. Some were prophets and others were chosen apostles. What we have preserved are the things that they spoke and wrote down.
Men have made copies of the works in the Bible through the years … thousands and thousands of handwritten copies. Sometimes they made errors in their copying and sometimes they added things they thought would make the Scripture clearer or more useful. People who work at figuring out what was the original and what was the error or the addition are called textual critics.
The problem is not what has been changed through the years by these men. Our real problem is that more than enough has been preserved to call our whole life into question!
Others have translated the works in the Bible into other languages. These people are called translators. There are hundreds of different translations, some of them from ancient times. About 2,400 years ago, a scribe named Ezra began this work. He read the Hebrew out loud, then he and his men would translate it into the common language that people spoke then … Aramaic.
About a hundred years later some scribes were asked to translate the Law of Moses, Genesis through Deuteronomy, into Greek. It was so well received that this work continued with the works of the Prophets, the Writings, and even some other works. Those that were in the Hebrew Scriptures were recognized as authoritative and were used by many of the leaders in the early church.
After the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, His apostles began to teach what He taught them. Before they died, they or those closely associated with them began to write what they had been taught in Greek. Later these individual works were collected and arranged into the New Testament.
What the prophets and apostles wrote was inspired by God. He wanted them to write so that you could get to know Him. If we would get to know Him as He is, we must go beyond nature and read what He said about Himself in the Bible.
Thursday
TOTALLY DIFFERENT
How is God not at all like you?
One difficulty we encounter in knowing God is that in many ways He is not at all like us. We have already mentioned one way … God is Spirit, that is, without a physical body (John 4:24). This means that He is simple … without parts. He ever exists as Spirit without any change in His being.
We have an immaterial part, some call this the soul, heart, spirit, or life force and a material part, our physical body. We are not simple, but compound beings tied to a material world. Our bodies are declining to the point where they will not sustain life. A body without life decays to corruption. This never happens to God.
Another difference between us and God is that He exists eternally of Himself. The child’s question, “Who made God?” reflects the understanding that everyone and everything has a beginning. For the child, that means their mother and father and their own birthday.
Comparing God to ourselves runs into a brick wall … or an uncrossable chasm. How can God not have a beginning? That makes Him totally unlike us or anything we know.
Moses pondered this truth about God in Psalm 90:2,
Before the mountains were born,
before you gave birth to the earth and the world,
from beginning to end, you are God.
Psalm 90:2 (NLT)
His conclusion was that since we die and God does not, it means that we are dependent upon Him. He is not dependent upon us. If we would be successful in life, He must work on our behalf. God will succeed in His plans with or without us. He is not dependent upon us (Psalm 50:12).
· In what ways do you wish that you were more like God?
· How do you find yourself dependent upon God to act so that you can be successful in what you need to do?
Friday
FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH
What makes Jesus the best guide to knowing God?
We have seen that people are given an introduction to God with every encounter with nature. He has spoken to people through prophets and apostles who wrote the various works of the Bible. But we have also considered that God is so radically different from ourselves as to be somewhat incomprehensible. We really are dependent upon Him, not only for life, but also for our understanding of who He is.
There is an old saying, “Like Father, Like Son.”
If you want to know God, you must know the Son, Jesus. He is the fullest revelation of the character or attributes of God. We need to take Him at His word and base our understanding of the Father from the Son.
No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God, is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us.
John 1:18 (NLT)
There is another great truth related to the Son that will help guide us in our search for knowledge about God. The preacher who wrote a letter to the Hebrew Christians said that Jesus is the filter for looking at everything else which has been revealed.
Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he created the universe. The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven.
Hebrews 1:1–3 (NLT)
We need to first of all give as great weight to what Jesus said about God as to what God said through the prophets about Himself. Through Christ we should evaluate everything that others have said about God.
· What do you know (or can find out) about God from the words of Jesus?
Saturday
HOLDING YOU BACK!
What is your greatest hindrance to knowing God?
Some would describe it as fear. We are indeed to fear God, but that is not what is holding us back from spending time with the Almighty. I have found myself afraid at times to pray and read the Scriptures because of what I might encounter there about God … and about myself. Looking into the mirror of God’s revelation is not pleasant for those whom sin has marred greatly.
Others hold back because of the enormity of the task. Theologians and philosophers refer to this as the immensity of God. Trying to understand all the descriptions of what God is like is huge! One writer lists twenty-five separate attributes, another thirty, and when combined the total is closer to forty-two concepts.
Still others hold back in their study of God because of resentment over past hurts. Maybe it is the idea of an Almighty One who could have stopped some of the bad things that happened to you. Have your experiences made you question whether God is really good?