God? Face to face with Her Majesty?John MacArthur finally has a Guide to Personal and Group Studies to help the reader delve deeper into the theme of the book: God’s Attributes. and help others do it, we thought it would be nice to have the Study Guide available to download for free. Well, here it is:
Feel free to download the study guide, print several copies and distribute it in your Sunday school, in small groups, etc.
(Introduction to the book: God? Face to face with his majesty)
There is an old fable about six men, blind by birth, who lived in India, one day they decided to visit a palace in the neighborhood, when they arrived, an elephant was standing in the yard, the first blind man touched the side of the elephant and said, “An elephant is like a wall. “The second blind man touched his horn and said, “An elephant is like a snake. “The third blind man touched his prey and said, “An elephant is like a spear. “The blind room touched his leg and said, “An elephant is like a tree. “The fifth blind man touched his ear and said, “An elephant is like a fan. “The sixth blind man touched his tail and said, “An elephant is like a rope. “Because each blind person touched only part of the elephant, none of them could agree on what an elephant was really like.
By bringing this analogy to the spiritual realm, many people have misconceptions about what God really is. Believing that something is wrong with God is a very serious question, because it is idolatry. Are you surprised by that? Contrary to popular belief, idolatry is more than bowing to a small image or worshipping in a pagan temple. According to the Bible, idolatry thinks of everything that is not true about God or tries to turn it into something that is not.
God Himself drew attention to the error of idolatry by saying of man, “Did you think I was your equal?”(Salt 50,21). We must be careful not to think of God according to our conditions or to feed thoughts that are not worthy of Him. It’s dangerously easy to do both.
Voltaire, the French agnostic, once said that God created man in his image and likeness, and paid for him in kind. One author wrote: “This is not only true for the wicked, but Christians are also often guilty of the same mistake. “. ” Because we are finite beings, we tend to perceive infinity in the light of our own limits. Even the scriptures present truth through language and thoughts that can adapt to our human understanding. But while it speaks to us at our level, the Bible also encourages us to go beyond our limits and have lofty thoughts about God.
It is essential that our ideas about God correspond, as faithfully as possible, to who He really is. And our box is incredibly small!We tend to let our culture, rather than our Creator, determine our values. These values influence our thoughts of God and shape how we relate to Him in our daily experience.
The only way to know exactly what God is like is to find out what He revealed about himself in the scriptures. The revelation of God’s nature consists of different categories of attributes, which are definitions of His character.
What do the scriptures say about God? For starters, in the fullest sense of the word, it is incomprehensible. Zoofar understood this fact well in his inadequate rebuke against Job: “Are you going to unravel God’s arcans or will you penetrate the perfection of the Almighty?”the heights of heaven is your wisdom; What can you do?It is deeper than the abyss; that you can know His measure is longer than the earth and wider than the sea; if he passes, holds someone and asks for trial, who can stop him?(Job 11:7-10). David said it this way: “Great is the Lord and more praiseworthy; Is your greatness unsinkable?(Psalm 145,3). Is God infinite? There’s no end to that.
To define the infinite God in a way that we can understand, we must often affirm what is not, have a basis of comparison; for example, when we say that God is holy, we mean that He has no sin. We cannot conceive of absolute holiness because we are so familiar with sin.
Knowing what God is like is essential for us to know God Himself. And the knowledge of God is the very essence of what it means to be a Christian. The Apostle John wrote, “And this is eternal life: make them know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom have you sent?(Jn 17. 3, I stress). When most people hear the term eternal life, they think of a life that lasts forever. But the scriptures claim that it is more than that, it is a quality of life for the person who knows God.
Unfortunately, many believers today have placed their affections in the temporal things of this world, exchanging their great privilege of knowing God better for the worldly. God Himself disapproves of this kind of thought, for he said, “Do not boast of the wise in their wisdom, neither the strong, in their strength, nor the rich, in their riches; But he who bubbles, who boasts of this: knowing me and knowing that I am the Lord and that I do mercy, judgment, and justice on earth; because I’m happy with these things, said the LORD?(Jr 9:23-24).
What does the Lord enjoy? It is not because we boast of the wisdom of the world, of human achievements or of material gains. He’s glad we know him. In his book, A Heart for God, Sinclair Ferguson asks:
What are you and I boasting about, what topic of conversation stimulates us the most and fills our hearts?Do we consider that knowing God is the greatest treasure in the world and by far our greatest privilege?Otherwise, we are nothing but pygmies in the spirit world. We are selling our Christian birthright for a lentil stew, and our true Christian experience will be superficial, inadequate and tragically confusing.
Instead of selling our spiritual birthright, we should learn to say like David, “O God, you are my strong God; I’m waiting for you. My soul thirsts for you; Does my body suck you, like an arid, exhausted land, without water?To see your strength and your glory? (Salt 63,1-2).
Learn to say like the Apostle Paul: “My determined goal is to know him?So that I can gradually become more deeply and intimately acquainted with him and perceive, recognize, and understand his wonders in a more intense and clear way?( Philippians 3,10).