The God Who Absolutely IS!

Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

Exodus 3:13-14, “Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” 

Jeremiah 9:23-24, “Thus says the LORD: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.” 

John 17:3, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

A.W. Tozer was right when he said, "The gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most important fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us."

The modern church’s worship of God is flabby and fleshly. It’s faith is feeble. It exerts more effort in making people feel good about themselves than it does in helping them to fear God – which is the beginning of true knowledge and wisdom. It causes people to be more man-centered in their thoughts than God-centered. Our problem is the same as the Greek scholar Erasmus had and which Luther pointed out, saying, “Erasmus, your thoughts of God are too human.”

Today great emphasis in evangelical circles is placed on the truth that God is personal and relational – both of which are true – but this truth is so distorted that it leaves the impression that God is just like us – weak, inadequate, ignorant of the future, and impotent of the power to do what He really would like to do.

The greatest need of this hour is for us to come to know personally, savingly, and increasingly in depths of intimacy, the mighty, majestic, mysterious God of the Scriptures, who is solitary in His glory, unlimited in His power, and unique in His excellencies. The God who never tries, lies, or dies!

1. The Unavoidable Reality of the God Who Is – Gen. 1:1

Luther said of the first book of our Bible, "There is nothing more beautiful than the Book of Genesis, nothing more useful," and he regarded the opening verses as "certainly the foundation of the whole of Scripture." Needless to say, not everyone has approached the opening words of the Bible with such warm delight! Rather, the early verses of Genesis have become a veritable battleground where those who defend the faith have waged war with those who approach them with calculated skepticism or outright antagonism. Brief excerpts from Humanist Manifesto I and II illustrate the point: "Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created … we begin with humans not God … we can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species … no deity will save us; we must save ourselves."

The theological importance of Genesis 1:1 cannot be overemphasized. It begins with no apologetic to defend and define the existence and actions of the one true God.

In Genesis 1:1, composed of just seven Hebrew words, the emphasis is on the word translated “God.”  Any Hebrew grammarian would immediately notice an apparent grammatical inconsistency in this verse.  There is a deliberate disagreement in number between the subject (“God”) and the verb (“created”).

Elohim (“God”) is the plural form of the word “God”, while bara (“created”) is the singular form of the verb for “created.”   The “apparent inconsistency” is deliberate, and the purpose is clear.  The plural name with the singular verb accommodates the concept of plurality within the unity of God.  Here is “the one infinite, unique, eternal and transcendent God who subsists as a trinity of Divine Persons.” 

Elohim refers to God the Creator, the planner and sustainer of the universe (Is 45:18; cf. Jn 1:9) – hence sovereign over all events and circumstances of life (Is 54:5; Jer 32:27).  The divine title, ̓Elohim, stresses God's governmental power (control, administration) over all mankind and every scene of history.

John Piper notes that the assertion that God absolutely IS, is the most basic fact and the most ultimate fact. Period. Of the billions of facts that there are, this one is at the bottom and at the top. It is the foundation of all others and the consummation of all others. Nothing is more basic and nothing is more ultimate than the fact that God is.

Nothing is more foundational to this church than that God is. Nothing is more foundational to your life or your marriage or your job or your health or your mind or your future than that God is. Nothing is more foundational to the world, or the solar system, or the Milky Way or the universe than that God is. And nothing is more foundational to the Bible and the self-revelation of God and the glory of the gospel of Jesus than that God is.

This verse identifies God as Elohim, plural noun which emphasizes His majestic power and glory. That the noun's plural form does not reflect polytheism is evident from the form of the verb of which the noun is the subject – “created” – which is a third masculine singular. It is generally agreed that the noun's root meaning is "power, strength, glory."

Implicit in Genesis 1:1 are important statements concerning God's nature and character, statements which refute at least seven fundamental heresies.

A. The Refutations Made by This Verse 

It refutes atheism for the universe was created by God. Dr. Robert Morey said, “The only person who can be an atheist is God Himself. To say dogmatically, "There is no God!" requires one to know all things, to be all places at the same time, and have all power. Thus, you would have to be omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, ... i.e., God! Atheism is a theological absurdity. It is self-refuting.”

It refutes pantheism, the idea that the world is God and God is the world. The God of the Bible is transcendent above what he has made. God created the world and is distinct from it, though He is not unconcerned for it.

It refutes polytheism, for God was alone when he created all things.

And it refutes materialism from matter, the stuff that everyone wants so much was created by God. He spoke it into existence.

It refutes dualism, the idea that there's a good God and an evil God battling it out because there was one God, and he created all things good.

At the beginning, it refutes humanism, because God is the center of his creation, he rules over it all. We are not the center of the universe, but God is.

And it refutes evolutionism as well. Time and time again, it's clear that God created all things and created them to replicate after their kind according to his wise purpose.

B. The Revelations Manifest in this Verse

The Reality of God - From the very first verse of Genesis, we learn that God is, and that He is personal. God is not a "thing," an "it," a "force," the "universal mind" or "Nature." He is not the Celestial Santa Claus, the Resident Policeman or the Man Upstairs. Jer. 10:10 reveals that He is the true and living God, an Everlasting King.

This is so important in our own day and time. The late Carl Sagan, on his program "The Cosmos" declared, "The cosmos is all there is or was or ever shall be." This is what I call a “little god-player declaration”, asserting that the only thing outside of our human experience in this universe is an impersonal created order. It does not care about our future, our presence, or our past. We have no personal relationship with it.

Notice also in the book of Genesis, God is self-revealed. The God of Genesis isn't found out by men reflecting about the nature of things and hypothesizing Him. The God of Genesis is not found out by men groping ineffectually to figure out what He's like. The God of Genesis reveals Himself to man. God never proves Himself in this book. Such proof is ridiculous. He has written Himself on our hearts. He has revealed Himself unmistakably in creation. He's already built the proof in. It's there. But the God of this book reveals Himself in His character, in his names, and by His Son, i.e., in the Old Testament, the Angel of the Lord.

In Genesis chapter 1, God is declared to be the Creator. In chapter 2, He is declared to be the Lawgiver. In Genesis chapter 3, He is the Judge, as well as the Savior. If God is the Creator, then He has the right to be the Lawgiver. If He has made the heaven and earth, and all things in them; if He gives life to all, then He has the right to govern all.

If He is the Lawgiver, then He has the right to be the Judge or the Savior. The reason men are quick to accept the teaching of evolution is because if they can repudiate the fact that God is their Creator, then they can dispense with God's right to be their Lawmaker and Judge. Men choose to believe in evolution because by nature they are at war with God. If men can prove God is not their Creator, then they have no obligation to obey Him. Molecules-to-man evolution is attractive to so many, for it allows them to live as they please with no judgment to ever come.

The Bible begins with the operating presupposition that "God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). If this is not the starting point, then nothing makes sense. There is no way to account for reason, logic, love, goodness, personhood, or meaning of any kind in a random, matter-only cosmos. This position is called “presuppositional apologetics” which argues for the truth of Christianity from the impossibility of the contrary.

Frank Turek asserts that “atheists are using aspects of reality to argue against God that wouldn’t exist if atheism were true. In other words, when atheists give arguments for their atheistic worldview, they are stealing from a theistic worldview to make their case. In effect, they are stealing from God in order to argue against Him.” 

When we open our bibles to the book of Genesis, there’s an immediate confrontation with the evolutionary formula that Nobody times Nothing Equals Everything. In other words, starting with nothing, nothing created everything!”

The foundational assumptions of atheism make it impossible to make a sound intellectual case for atheism. If atheism is true, there’s no way to know it with any confidence. In fact, if atheism is true, there’s no way to know anything with any confidence. 

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) commented, "If God does not exist, then everything is permitted." Christian scholar Steve Kumar, suggested an appropriate creedal formulation for atheists:

There is no God. There is no objective Truth. There is no ground for Reason. There are no absolute Morals. There is no ultimate Value. There is no ultimate Meaning. There is no eternal Hope.

2. The Unique Revelation of the God Who Is – Ex. 3:13-14

God was saying, in effect, to Moses, “Before you worry about my name, where I line up among the many gods of Egypt or Babylon or Philistia, and before you wonder if I am the God of Abraham, be stunned by this: ‘I Am Who I Am.’” In other words: “I absolutely am. Before you get my name, get my being. That I am who I am — that I absolutely am — is first, foundational, and of infinite importance.” God is.

In answer to Moses’ question, “Who shall I say sent me?”  God said, “Tell them that I Am sent you?”  “I am what?” asked Moses.  “I Am who I AM,” God answered.  “This is what you are to say to them, ‘I Am has sent me to you’.”  What an awesome disclosure of God’s eternal being – and of His covenant commitment to His people. 

The form of the verb in Exodus 3:14, “I AM,” is imperfect and may cover all three tenses, “I was,” “I am,” and “I will be.”  “I continuously am (eternally),” and I characteristically “am.” 

But what is the (staggering) meaning of this name of God?  The “I Am” name of God reveals:

His Personality (“I”),

His Eternality (“am” – always am),

His Identity (“Yahweh,” the faithful covenant-keeping God),

His Inequality (“I Am who I am”—there is no one equal to me),

His Adaptability (I am whatever you need), and

His Availability. 

Writing the book of Exodus, Moses leaves us no doubt about the aim of knowing God, either by way of salvation or judgment:

• Exodus 7:5: “The Egyptians shall know that I am [Yahweh].”
• Exodus 7:17: “By this you shall know that I am [Yahweh].”
• Exodus 8:22: “That you may know that I am [Yahweh] in the midst of the earth.”
• Exodus 10:2: “That you may know that I am [Yahweh].”
• Exodus 14:4: “The Egyptians shall know that I am [Yahweh].”

What does it mean for God, the God of Israel, our God, to be absolute being - to be “I Am Who I Am”? It means:

1. God has no beginning. I Am Who I Am means he never had a beginning. This staggers the mind. Every child asks, “Who made God?” and every wise parent says, “Nobody made God. God simply is and always was. No beginning.”

Space, time, and matter had a beginning, we know that the cause can’t be made of space, time or matter. Spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, personal first cause flows logically from this fact. Then the conclusion is that there is an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe, who is outside the universe, and is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful.

2. God has no end. I Am Who I Am means God will never end. If he did not come into being; he cannot go out of being, because he isbeing. There is no place to go outside of being. There is only he. Before he creates, that’s all that is: God - in perfect union and communion in the sweet society of the Holy Trinity.
3. God is absolute reality. I Am Who I Am means God is absolute reality. There is no reality before him. There is no reality outside of him unless he wills it and makes it. He is not one of many realities before he creates. He is simply there as absolute reality. He is all that was eternally. No space, no universe, no emptiness. Only God, absolutely there, absolutely all.
4. God is entirely independent. I Am Who I Am means that God is utterly independent. He depends on nothing to bring him into being or support him or counsel him or make him what he is.
5. All else is entirely dependent on God. I Am Who I Am means, rather, that everything that is not God depends totally on God. All that is not God is secondary and dependent. The entire universe is utterly secondary — not primary. It came into being by God and stays in being moment by moment because of God’s decision to keep it in being.
6. All else is as nothing compared to God. I Am Who I Am means all the universe is by comparison to God as nothing.. “All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness” (Isaiah 40:17).
7. God is constant. I Am Who I Am means that God is constant. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He cannot be improved. He is not becoming anything. He is who he is. There is no development in God. No progress. Absolute perfection cannot be improved.
8. God is the absolute standard. I Am Who I Am means that he is the absolute standard of truth, goodness, and beauty. There is no lawbook to which he looks to know what is right. No almanac to establish facts. No organization to determine what is excellent or beautiful. He himself is the standard of what is right, what is true, what is beautiful.
9. God does whatever he pleases. I Am Who I Am means God does whatever he pleases and he is pleased with whatever he does. There are no constraints on him from outside him that could hinder him in doing anything he pleases. All reality that is outside of him he created and designed and governs. So, he is utterly free from any constraints that don’t originate from the counsel of his own will.
10. God is the most valuable reality. I Am Who I Am means that he is the most important and most valuable being in the universe. He is more worthy of interest and attention and admiration and enjoyment than all other realities, including the entire universe.
11. Jesus Christ is absolute being. I Am Who I Am, God’s absolute being, means that Jesus Christ is absolute being, because Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). They responded, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” (John 8:57). Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). He could have said, “Before Abraham was, I was.” But he didn’t. He said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Because he is the I Am. Very God of very God. Absolute being. “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17).

12. Absolute being dwelt among us. I Am Who I Am “became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Absolute Being united with humanity in such a way that we can say, when Jesus died, God purchased us by his own blood (Acts 20:28).

Again, to quote John Piper: “It is an electrifying truth that God simply is. Explosive. Wild. Untamable. Changing absolutely everything.

“And that this God, this Yahweh, this absolute I Am Who I Am, came to us in the man Jesus Christ, and made a second Exodus (Luke 9:31) to bring us out of the misery of condemnation into the promised land of God’s happy presence — that is thrilling beyond imagination.”

“O Lord, make us a God-besotted (obsessed, love-struck) people. To know you, and admire you, and love you, and treasure you, and make you known, as Yahweh. I Am Who I Am. Jesus Christ. Savior. Friend.”

And by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, we can call Him, Our Father!