The Spirituality of God

The eyes of the Lord roam to and fro throughout the whole earth is simply a way for God to reveal Himself to us that God sees everything, that God knows everything. In fact, God sees through everything.

The arm of the Lord is just God's way of saying to us He is mighty and He is strong. John 4-24 says, God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. The Westminster Shorter Catechism asked the question, what is God? And based on John 4-24 and other texts, it answers, God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. So what does it mean that God is spirit?

And how does this truth help our understanding of who God is? Welcome to Renewing Your Mind on this Wednesday as we work our way through Stephen Lawson's series on the attributes of God. The spirituality of God, that's the attribute that we'll be considering today.

And no, as you heard Dr. Lawson say, God doesn't have eyes or arms, but He does see everything and He is strong. So here's Dr. Lawson as we continue to delve deeply into the question of who is God. We want to continue our series on the attributes of God, and last time we considered the self-existence of God or the aseity of God. In this session, we want to look at the spirituality of God. Now when we say the spirituality of God, we are not using it as we would refer to our spirituality. By that, we mean that God is a spirit being, that God is without a physical body, therefore God is invisible, therefore God is infinite. That will be our focus in this lesson.

But by way of introduction, I want to say that it was A.W. Tozier who said, The weightiest word in any language is the word for God. The weightiest word in any language is its word for God. There is a gravitas, a heaviness, a weightiness about God in any study of God, and rightly it should be so.

We live in a day in which there are many spiritual lightweights who have light, fluffy, superficial thoughts of God that just blow like a tumbleweed across the horizon of the church. We want to come back to deep thoughts about God, great and grand thoughts about who God is as He is presented in His Word, and so therefore this study becomes the weightiest of all studies. The study of theology is the study of God, and theology proper is that specific area of theology that focuses upon the person, the being, the attributes, the triunity of God. How we understand theology proper in reality defines how we see the other areas of theology. It is the attributes of God that I believe is the greatest lens through which we understand other disciplines of theology.

So as we come in our study now to the spirituality of God, there are three words that I want to set before you. First is immaterial, that God is spirit without a material body. Now when I say God is immaterial, I do not mean that God is unimportant. Quite the contrary, because God is immaterial, He is not immaterial in that sense. Because God is immaterial, He is of enormous importance to us.

The key verse on this is John 4 verse 24 in Jesus' discussion with the woman at the well, in which He says God is spirit. That is a small s, and that is to say that God is without physical composition, and that God does not have a material body like you and I do. God does not have a height that we could measure Him.

He does not have a weight that we could weigh Him. God does not have body parts. We read in the Bible verses that talk about the hands of the Lord, the eyes of the Lord. For example, the eyes of the Lord roam to and fro throughout the whole earth. Well, God does not have eyes. God does not wear bifocals. Other verses talk about the arm of the Lord. Isaiah 53, 1, the arm of the Lord is not short that it cannot save. Verses talk about the ears of the Lord. Well, if God is spirit, how do we reconcile this?

Well, this is a figure of speech. It is called an anthropomorphic expression, that God reveals Himself to us in ways that we can easily understand by assigning human-like qualities to Himself as He reveals Himself to us. The eyes of the Lord roam to and fro throughout the whole earth is simply a way for God to reveal Himself to us that God sees everything, that God knows everything. In fact, God sees through everything. The arm of the Lord is just God's way of saying to us He is mighty and He is strong. John Calvin, writing in his Institutes on the Christian Religion, explains to us that God is so infinite that as He would communicate to you and me with finite minds, God must come down to our level and communicate to us, if you will, with elementary type talk, kindergarten type talk, we would say today.

In reality, even lower than that, baby talk to us. And for God to use these anthropomorphic expressions is an accommodation on God's part to the weakness of our own understanding. But God is not limited to having eyes and ears. If so, then God could only be in one place at one time, right? It is the mere fact that God is without a physical body that allows God to be everywhere at one time. When this session is over, when you go back to your house and when I go to my hotel room, no matter where we go, the Lord is with us. And no matter where we go, the Lord is already there before we arrive. And even when we leave this place, God will remain. And because God is without the spatial limitations of a human body such as you and I have, He therefore can be in all places at all times.

What a wonderful feature this is of the Lord. I remember the first time I ever stood up to speak. I was a freshman in college. I played college football for Texas Tech, and we had a weekend of champions with FCA. And I gathered with other football players around the country.

There were Dallas Cowboys there. And over the weekend, we did various things of Christian activity and ministry with high school students. And on Sunday, they would send us out to churches. I had no idea that I was being sent out to a church. Well, they sent me to a church so far out in the middle of nowhere that I looked it up the other day on Google. And even the post office is closed down now.

I mean, it's so out there. There was a Baptist church on one side of the street and a Methodist church on the other side of the street, and they had one preacher. And every other week, they were Baptist one week. The next week, they were Methodist.

True story. And it came time for the service to begin, and the pastor said, I'm so glad that you're here to be bringing the morning message. And I said, well, I've never spoken.

I don't have a message. He said, well, would you pray? And I said, I've never prayed in public, but I would be willing to do that. So it came time for me to pray. He got up in the pulpit, and he said, and now Steve Lawson plays football for Texas Tech. And I got up and began to make my way to the pulpit, and he said, well, now bring the morning sermon. So now here I am, thrown into first time ever to speak for the Lord.

And the only thing I knew to say as I stood there and looked out into the eyes, it seemed like a million people, was that I had come a long way from home to go to college in West Texas, and that I was very much alone, didn't know anyone on this campus of 30,000 students. But there was the verse that I clung to in Hebrews 13, I will never, never leave you, nor forsake you, that God is with me wherever I go. The only way for that to be possible is for God to be without a physical body, such that He could be with my mom and dad in Memphis, Tennessee.

He could be with me out in West Texas as I went to school. Did not Jesus say, lo, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age? What a wonderful attribute of God this is, His spirituality, that no matter where we go, no matter what we encounter, no matter how alone we may ever be, this God is with us in the fullness of His being. Immaterial is the first word. The second word is invisible. Because He is immaterial, He is invisible. A bodily form can be seen, but not a spirit being. And so therefore, we must live by faith and walk by faith. John 1 verse 18 says, no one has seen God at any time.

You know what that literally means? No one has seen God at any time. It means exactly what it says.

It says what it means. If you ever hear someone come up to you and say, hey, I've seen God, just write them off as a nut. John MacArthur tells the story of one preacher, a fanatical preacher, who came to him and said, I was shaving the other morning, I was in the bathroom, and God appeared to me. MacArthur said, you mean God appeared to you? He said, yes, God appeared to me.

MacArthur said, did you keep shaving? Because if it was God, you would have been on your face on the floor. People trivialize, oh, I've seen God, I've, you know, heard God, whatever. No, you haven't seen God. The only physical manifestation is in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and He is seated at the right hand of God the Father. John 6 verse 46 says, not that anyone has seen the Father.

It's impossible. Now, there are times in the Bible where God has chosen to reveal Himself with physical light, the bright shining glory that emanates and radiates from the being of God in the form of light. Yes, God does reveal Himself as bright shining light in individual situations. Remember, Moses said, show me your glory. And God said, go hide behind the rock and you will see the afterglow of My glory as it will pass by before you. And that is the only physical manifestation.

Something physical would be bright shining light. But other than that, God is an immaterial body. Colossians 1 verse 5 refers to God as the invisible God, that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. 1 Timothy 1 verse 17, now to the King, eternal, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God.

We love to sing that hymn, immortal, invisible, God only wives. He is invisible. And 1 Timothy 6 verse 16 says that no man has seen Him or can see Him. Therefore, because God is invisible, we are entirely dependent upon what the Bible says about God. There is nothing that we can look at as far as a physical representation of God and learn what He is like. There is also general revelation and creation all around us.

We can look at the world around us and see what God is like. If you came to my house and if I was not there and if you had not met me before this, you would learn a lot about me by just walking through my house. And you would see certain things hanging on the walls that are of importance to me. And you would conclude that I love golf. You would conclude that my father was a professor. You would conclude that I have a wife and four children.

You would conclude many things about me by just looking at the house in which I live. And so it is true with general revelation in physical creation. We cannot see the Creator, but we can see much about the Creator by looking at this world which He has made. Romans 1 and verse 20 speaks of His invisible attributes being clearly seen. We look at the world around us and we see many things about God, that He is a God of order, a God of beauty, a God of design, a God of precision, a God who is powerful, a God who is majestic, a God who thunders, a God who roars. He is a God who is sovereign. He is a God who commands the wind and controls the ocean. He is a God of vengeance and wrath, who sends tsunamis and hurricanes that wipe out and devastate.

He is a God of love who sends the rain and causes the trees and the plants to grow and feeds His world. We learn a lot about God just by looking at His physical creation. But most of all, we learn about God in His special revelation in His Word, and that's why we are giving so much attention to these verses. That's what makes also the incarnation of Christ so unique, that the invisible God became visible to us.

Often little children will ask the profound question, what does God look like? The answer to that is to point to the Lord Jesus Christ and say God was fully God dwelt in human form. And as we look at Christ, we see what God is like. John 1 verse 14, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1.18 is so specific. No one has seen God at any time, semicolon, the only begotten God that refers to Christ, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. Literally, He has exegeted the Father. He has explained and revealed the Father to us. This invisible God has become visible to us in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. You remember in John 14, you remember when Philip said, Lord, show us the Father, and that is enough for us. And Jesus said, Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not come to know Me? He who has seen Me has seen the Father.

There are only two possibilities. Either that is a madman talking, or that is the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe the evidence of Scripture and the evidence of all that the Word of God says is that He is exactly who He claimed to be, the one who is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, who took upon sinless human flesh and has come to reveal the Father to us, and ultimately to die upon the cross for our sins. One other verse, Hebrews chapter 1, verse 3, He, Jesus, is the radiance of His glory, of the Father's glory. Jesus is the radiance of the Father's glory. That is the effulgence or flood of resplendent light, revealing God to us. And He is the exact representation of His nature. So what are we saying? We're saying, number one, that God is immaterial.

He is without a physical body. Second, that He is therefore invisible, and He can't be seen. Therefore, we must walk by faith. We must live by faith.

Know what a glory that will be one day in heaven to behold His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and to see Him face to face, as well as the bright shining glory of the Father. The third word that I would give us as we bring this to conclusion is the word infinite. As a spirit being without a physical body, God has no boundaries or limits, and we've already talked about this. He is free from any physical limitations.

He is in no way limited by this time-space world, and therefore God is infinite in His being. He has, as R.C. Sproul says, no ontological boundaries.

Doesn't that just sound like R.C.? No ontological boundaries. There is no place that His being does not permeate with the fullness of all that He is. No matter where we are, the fullness of God is there with us. Job 5 verse 9 says that God does great and unsearchable things, wonders without number. In other words, His greatness far exceeds our capacity of human understanding, and really that also brings in the element of worship.

We can never truly worship a God that we can completely figure out. It puts a sense of awe and amazement and astonishment to our worship that God is beyond us. He is way beyond us. He is infinite.

It drives us to our knees. It causes us to look up in wonder and amazement that He has made Himself known to us. Job 9 verse 10 says that God does great things unfathomable.

It's mind-boggling for us, mind-stretching. It pushes the limits out as far as we can think concerning the greatness of God, and yet He is still beyond because He is infinite. There's no limitation to His knowledge. There's no limitation to His power. He doesn't have muscles like you and I have, and there are certain reasonable limitations to God's strength.

No, He is without body parts, therefore His power knows no limits. Nothing is impossible for God. This is the God that we worship. This is the God that we want to know more deeply as we follow His Son, Jesus Christ. I want to encourage us all that no matter where we are in our walk with the Lord, there is still so much more of God for us to know. We've not even yet begun to touch the bottom or to reach the heights. That is why it will take all eternity for us to know God, and even eternity will not be long enough for us to know the whole of the greatness of our God. May the Lord bless us as we consider the awesomeness of who He is. That was Stephen Lawson on the spirituality of God, and I'm glad you're with us today on Renewing Your Mind. As Dr. Lawson said, we have not even begun to touch the bottom or reach the heights.

There's so much more of God to know. If you'd like to continue this series or read Dr. Lawson's companion book, both resources are available for a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. You'll be able to watch or listen to this 16-part series in the free Ligonier app or take your time as you read through the hardcover book chapter by chapter. Call us today with a year-end gift at 800-435-4343 or visit renewingyourmind.org.

Thank you for your support this month as December Giving informs so much of what we're able to accomplish in 2024. R.C. Sproul was known for saying that there are no maverick molecules in the universe. Why? Because God is sovereign. Learn more about the attribute of God's sovereignty tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind. R.C. Sproul, R.C.