None Greater By Matthew BarrettSample

Day Two:  Embarking On A Pilgrimage

Scripture: Isaiah 6:1, Matthew 1:21-23, 28:18

Our study this week is about the perfections—the attributes—of God and how God’s perfections profoundly affect our understanding of who He is. It is probably unlike any other study you’ve read before on the attributes of God. Most studies typically address one attribute and then another and then another. But it is unclear how these attributes relate to one another and whether they all stem from a foundational belief about God.

Our time together, however, is different. Not only do I believe each and every attribute is key to each and every other attribute in God, but I am convinced that we only understand God’s attributes in all their glory if they originate from one core conviction:  God is that, the greater than which cannot be conceived. These words reverberate from Anselm. 

The Christian life really is a quest for the truth about God, a pilgrimage that leads us into a personal encounter with the living God. There is none greater than our God, not because He is merely a greater version of ourselves, but because He is nothing like ourselves. Only a Creator not to be confused with the creature is capable of stooping down to redeem those who have marred His image.

On our pilgrimage together, we will head to the Scriptures to understand who God is. The God of the Bible is a God who is not silent. He has spoken and told us what He is like. In doing so, the Creator and Lord of the universe invites us to know Him and enjoy Him forever. Our goal is not to walk away with mere knowledge. Rather, this knowledge of God is meant to lead us into worship. 

But I must warn you at the start: I will not be interested in wasting your time with a God who is tame and domesticated, a God whose divinity is humanized. That may be the God of popular culture, but it is not the God of the Bible. The God of biblical revelation is the God Isaiah saw, the One who is high and lifted up (Isaiah 6:1), possessing all authority in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18), and yet one who is simultaneously with us and for us as our Savior (Matthew 1:21–23).

It is a grave error of human nature to create God in our image, defining God’s attributes according to our limitations. How have you made assumptions that God is to be known from the ground up?