The Story of God.

This is the story of God. I am going to start out by telling a little bit about the character of God and his being. Then I will tell why God created the world, and how he is actively involved in human history. I will finish by telling you what part of the story you are involved in.

There are  aspects of God’s character that are hard for us as humans to understand, but it is still possible to grasp the concepts about him. But there are some aspects that are simply impossible for us to wrap our minds around. First, I will discuss the understandable, or communicable, attributes of God. 

God is omniscient. He knows everything. He has exact knowledge of every happening, every thought, and every idea (such as scientific theories and such). He knows them all; past, present, and future. God is good. Every action that God preforms comes from purely good motives, and the results of his actions are always perfectly good. God is love. God defines love. In today’s culture, love can be confused with affection, lust, or feelings of enjoyment. But God defines love.

 God is holy. Holy means set apart and sacred. God is just. God does not tolerate sin(to be defined later). He destroys evil and upholds righteousness. God is free. He is free to do whatever he wants to do. No action or decision that he does depends on anyone or anything outside of himself. God is all-powerful, or omnipotent. Everything is subject to him. God is perfect. 

God is independent. He does not need anybody. He is self-sustaining. God is unchangeable. He is perfect. He always has been. He cannot change to become any better or worse. God is eternal. He has no beginning and no end. He has always been and will always be. He is not a created being. God is omnipresent. He is present everywhere. God is three persons in one being. Theologians call this the trinity (from tri-unity). The three persons that are God are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father is fully God, the Son is fully God, and the Holy Spirit is fully God. However, the Father is not the Son nor is the Son the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is not the Father. They are equally God, being united as one, yet unique in their persons. 

Now that we have an idea of who God is, lets take a look at what He has done, is doing, and will do. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He created the world and everything in it for his own pleasure. He delights in his creation because it brings him glory. God created the planets, stars and galaxies, he created the plants, animals and humans. He even created gravity and photosynthesis.

The first man was named Adam. God made him in his own image and gave him dominion over all of the plants and animals. He put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. He told the man that he could eat the fruit off of any tree in the garden except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God  said that the day that he eats of the tree he would surely die. Then he gave man a wife, Eve.

Through the deceptiveness of a serpent and man’s decision to disobey God’s loving warning and eat from the fruit of the tree, sin entered the world, and death entered through sin. Adam and Eve did not die physically that day, but they did die spiritually.

The consequence of their disobedience resulted in a curse on all of creation. But in that curse, God promised to provide a deliverer from the curse. From the very beginning, God had a purpose to deliver his creation from the curse that they were subjected to. 

Humanity started and people went about their own lives, pursuing their own passions, and turning away from the love of God. So God called upon a man named Abraham; a worshiper of false gods. God spoke to him and said, “Go from your country to the land that I will show you. I will bless you and I will make your name

 great. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless all of the nations of the earth through you.” God blessed Abraham so that he would be a blessing to the rest of the world. God was making an unconditional covenant with Abraham. There was nothing that Abraham could do, either good or bad, that would cause God to withhold his steadfast love from Abraham and the rest of the world. 

In their old age, Abraham and his wife, Sarah gave birth to a son named Isaac. It was through Isaac that the promise would be fulfilled. Isaac gave birth to Jacob, who was re-named Israel. Israel had twelve sons who became the twelve tribes of Israel. This group of people, known collectively as the nation of Israel, is the continuation of God’s promise to Abraham. 

God blessed Israel so that they would show the world who he is.

Israel continually turned away from God and still God remained faithful to his people and his promise. He delivered his people from slavery in Egypt, and created a new kind of covenant so that the people would know him better. 

This time, God made a conditional covenant with the Israelites. It was a two way covenant, so that both parties, God and Israel, had to keep the promise that they were making, or else face the consequences of breaking the promise. He tells them that if they keep this covenant, that they will be his treasured possession. But if they did not obey all of his commands, they would be guilty and have to pay with the shedding of their own blood. Israel chose to accept the offer, and joined into this special relationship with God. 

This new covenant, called the Mosaic covenant was created as a reflection of God’s holiness. God’s restricting the Israelites from unclean things and his demands for justice in the covenant show his character. God’s love for the widow and the orphan are evident in his demands that Israel love and accept them. His demand that the blood of animals was to be shed when they sin shows the justice of God, and the severity of sin. He will not tolerate sin.

But before God could even finish giving the instructions of the covenant, Israel got impatient and made an idol, turning away from God once again. This raises the question, “ ‘What becomes of the covenant?’ They had broken it before it was even completed. If this covenant were based on works or on strict justice alone Israel would be done for.”

 But that was not the case. God showed his love and grace by renewing the covenant with Israel. 

Israel often turned away from God, but he remained faithful to them, despite their unfaithfulness. 

The last covenant that we will talk about is the Davidic covenant. David was the King of Israel (and a decedent of Abraham). In this covenant, God promises to establish David’s throne forever. God was not saying that David would be the King of Israel for the rest of history, but rather, like in his promise to Abraham, that through his offspring the Kingdom would be established forever.  

At this point in history, these three covenants are remaining. God is continually showing his steadfast love and faithfulness to the nation of Israel. But Israel is still separated from God by their sins. They are constantly having to sacrifice animals to pay for their sins (because they joined the Mosaic covenant with God).

During the next step in history, God is still showing his love for the Israelites. He also reminds them of the promises that he has made to them, that he would send them a deliverer. Then, God is silent for 400 years. He does no miracles or signs or wonderful works. 

But after 400 years of silence, God does something crazy! Jesus, who is God the Son (the second person of the trinity) arrives on the scene. He is born of a virgin, an Israelite from the line of David. He is the one who has been promised.

He lived a perfect life, the first person to ever keep the law fully. But the purpose of his coming to earth was not just that he might be a good moral standard. Remember the Mosaic covenant, whereby the disobedience of the Israelites would have to be paid by the shedding of their blood? And remember how God withheld his wrath this whole time, allowing the blood of animals to atone for their sins? Jesus came to earth and lived perfectly so that He might pay the price of Israel’s disobedience once and for all.

Jesus died on the cross, a death that he did not deserve, because he had done nothing that caused him to be guilty. He paid the price that Israel was responsible for. So his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead was the beginning of a new and final covenant. And this new covenant includes both Jews and the rest of the world. All of the nations are included in God’s redemption (remember God’s promises to bless all nations?). This new covenant is not based on the obedience of works, but on the obedience of faith. That means that in order to be included in the new covenant, a person must have faith in God and the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The death of Jesus was huge in that it paid for the sins of the world. But his resurrection from the dead is where we find our hope and our motivation for living. Because we understand that this world is passing away, and we ourselves are passing away with it, we do not hope in this world or this life. We see that Jesus was resurrected from the dead, and we know that what has happened to him will happen to those who have faith. Therefore we do not have to worry about the struggles and sufferings that we are going through on this earth. We know that through faith comes suffering, but in that suffering we are becoming more like Christ, and we can endure anything for a little while because we have confidence that one day we will be united with him.