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Thursday, October 3, 2013

THEOLOGY PROPER--The Study of God [Lesson 1]

These are the notes for our Thursday Night Theology Class at Northshire Baptist Church in Manchester Center, Vermont.  Anyone familiar with J.I. Packer's classic, Knowing God will find its influence and content in these notes.

Theology Proper is simply the technical term for that discipline of study that pertains to knowing God.  Those who enter into the study of God are entering into what used to be known in Puritan days as the Queen of the Sciences—Theology Proper.

A Disclaimer from C.S. Lewis:
“Those like myself, whose imagination far exceeds their obedience are subject to a just penalty; we easily imagine conditions far higher than any we have really reached.  If we describe what we have imagined [studied] we may make others, and ourselves, believe that we have really been there—and so fool both them and ourselves.”  (The Four Loves)

Beware of the trap of thinking you know God or are becoming intimate with God merely because you are learning and mastering more information about God.

An Endorsement from C.H. Spurgeon:  [January 7, 1855]
“It has been said by someone that “the proper study of mankind is man.” I will not oppose the idea, but I believe it is equally true that the proper study of God’s elect is God; the proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father.

There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can compass and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, “Behold I am wise.” But when we come to this master science, finding that our plumbline cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild ass’s colt; and with solemn exclamation, “I am but of yesterday, and know nothing.” No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God....

But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. He who often thinks of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe.... The most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity.

And, whilst humbling and expanding, this subject is eminently consolatory. Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead.”

Important Considerations:

1.    Knowing God is more than knowing about Him.
Whereas, knowing about God is a necessary prerequisite to knowing God [Rom. 10:14], the depth of one’s knowledge about God is no gauge of the intimacy of one’s experience of God.

Psalm 34:8

2.    Knowing God is a matter of grace.

Knowing about God requires God to make Himself known in impersonal and personal ways.  Impersonally, God has made certain facts about Himself know through “General Revelation”.  Personally, God has made His Identity, Character, Passions, Likes, Dislikes, and Plans known through “Special Revelation”.   

Knowing God in a personal, experiential, positive, and loving relationship requires God’s initiative in making Himself personally, experientially, positively, and lovingly known to us through His grace which is His unmerited and undeserved favor.

We do not make friends with God; God makes friends with us!

John 15:16
1 John 4:10
Romans 5:8

We come to know and love God because God first knew and loved us.  And if you are a child of God there has never been a time when God has not known you.

Psalm 135:13 w/Psalm 138:8

1.    Knowing God requires knowing Jesus

God’s lovingkindness is His eternal covenant love with those He has chosen to love in a special, experiential, positive, intimate, an eternal relationship which has been forged by the requirement of His perfect righteousness being met by those He has chosen to love in this way. 

The Hebrew word from which “lovingkindness” is translated is chessed  [Pronounced hess-ed, with a light "k" at the beginning, like you're clearing your throat]. 

God's loving-kindness [chessed] is that sure love which initiates a saving relationship with His people which will not let His people go. Not all their persistent waywardness could ever destroy it. Though they be faithless, yet God remains faithful still. This steady, persistent refusal of God to wash his hands of His wayward people is the essential meaning of the Hebrew word which is translated loving-kindness.

However, chessed is sometimes misunderstood so as to see it as an unwarranted or even unconditional love on God’s part.  Chessed, while being concerned with God’s love for His covenant people cannot be separated from the righteousness He demands of them in order to be His covenant people.  Chessed demands a perfect righteousness.  In other words, God’s love for His people is dependent upon God’s righteous requirements being met in and by His people. The reason God is able to love His people with an unconditional love is because He, in His Son the Lord Jesus, met the condition of perfect personal righteousness He requires. 

This perfect righteousness required by God which enables Him to initiate and establish a relationship with people in which He knows and loves them in a personal, experiential, positive, loving, and eternal way was, is, and always will be provided by Christ Jesus.

2 Corinthians 5:19
2 Corinthians 5:21 w/Psalm 85:9-10 w/Hebrews 7:25
John 1:18
Matthew 11:25-30

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