I must confess that I am not cool and laid back with what is going on in the religious world these days. I am not just talking about what is going on outside the church, but I am talking about certain trends even within the church.

I was talking with a relative of mine one day who sounded at the time almost like he was an agnostic. He defended his right to his far-out views. He said, "I am a fourth- generation member of the church."

Is being a member of the church like being a citizen of a particular country? In this country a person can be a citizen and be a member of the Nazi party. I appreciate the fact that we live in a country whose constitution guarantees that we can have complete religious and political freedom. I wonder though if being a Christian carries the same rights.

It seems like we have or are reaching a point where being a member of the church is a right and not a privilege. This is affecting the way that we do church on Sabbath and also the way that we live the rest of the week.

This sermon is about God. I believe that the problems that we are having are not so much between us as a church or as individuals as much as the fact that we are having problems with God.

I am doing this sermon because of my great heartache as to what is happening around us and among us. Please be patient with me and listen closely. I hope that I will be able to share what is on my heart.

How we worship God depends on who we perceive Him to be and how we perceive that He is. It is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of God is wrong or distorted. If we are going to bring back spiritual power to our lives, we must begin to think of God as He really is.

Whether we realize it or not, we are always moving toward our mental image of God. We do this not only as individuals but as a group in the church. If you want to know what the church will be like in the future, you can ask the religious leaders of today what they think about God.

If our theology is going to be right, our concept of God has got to be right. Not only that, if our lives are going to be lived right, our concept of God has got to be right. A right concept of God is as important to our church life and personal lives as a foundation is to a building. If the foundation of a building is flawed or inadequate, sooner or later the building will be destabilized.

I believe that many have a concept of God in this generation that is bordering on being decadent and is in fact beneath the dignity of the Most High God. For those who have this philosophy, this has resulted in a moral calamity.

A few years ago an American evangelist was going to hold public meetings in a city in Ethiopia. One of his sermon titles was, "Does God Exist?" An Ethiopian told him one day that he was wasting his time preaching that topic, because in his country whether or not God existed was not debatable. I believe this is true even in this country. The majority of people believe deep down inside that God exists. What must be resolved, however, is, what kind of a God is He?

I don't need to tell you that there is a lot of debating these days, and I might say not only in our denomination, as to what Christian standards should be. I don't know if you are aware of it or not, but much of the confusion that seems to exist in some places around the issue of Christian standards springs out of a confusion as to who God is. Once we understand who God is, then the matter of how He expects us to live is not difficult to figure out.

This generation is incredible. God has commanded us to love Him with all our hearts, with all our strength, and with all our minds, and our neighbors as ourselves, and what does this generation do? It says, "OK, OK, I'll do all of that provided that you let me love myself first!"

These days it seems like we have become locked in endless debates on what the gospel is. We argue about how we are saved, why we are saved, and when we are saved. I do not believe that we will arrive at the truth to these questions until we get a true vision of God, high and lifted up. Until we understand who God is, the gospel is not going to mean much to us, and if we think we have the gospel, it could very well be a false one.

You have heard of idols and something about the people who worship them. What is an idol? Listen, an idol is merely a substitute for the true God. An idol tends to be a reflection or an exaggeration of the people who create it.

It is not hard to understand, then, that we cannot rise any higher than our concept of God. The moral anarchy of our time is actually the result of our refusal to worship the true God as He really is.

In the 21st century we have created our own trinity of God. We call them the Father, the Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. However, if you notice the way the majority of Christians serve these Gods, you will recognize at once that they are not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, neither of the apostles, the saints, and the martyrs of the past.

The greatest crime of the 21st century is that this generation has, by and large, dethroned the concept of a pure and holy God. "Thou thoughtest," said the Lord to the wicked man in the Psalm, "that I was altogether such a one as thyself." Friends, we don't need to be kneeling in front of images to be worshiping idols in the 21st century. I think you know what I mean.

You see, idolatry begins in our minds. The Apostle Paul wrote, "...when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were they thankful, but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened."

An idolater then is a person who simply imagines things about God and then acts as if they were true. A religion that holds perverted notions about God sooner or later is going to rot.

The first step down comes when we give up a high opinion of God. Our worship and our moral standards will then soon reflect the change. The experience of Israel in the Old Testament and the history of the church since the time of Christ confirms this.

You have heard the word "heresy". Do you know what heresy is? Heresy is teaching something about God that isn't true.

Brothers and sisters, I am now going to begin to talk about some of the concepts of God that have been revealed to us in the Scriptures. Before I begin, I must point out that in our study of God, we must understand that God is not exactly like anything or anybody. This is important for us to keep in mind.

Let me illustrate. When the prophet Ezekiel saw heaven opened and he saw visions of God, he found himself looking at something that he had no language to describe. So he had to compare what he was seeing with something that was known, but notice how it comes out. He says, and I am reading from Ezekiel 1, "As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire."

As Ezekiel approached the burning throne, his words become even less sure. "And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it. And I saw the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it...This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord."

You notice that the prophet uses the words "likeness," "appearance," "as it were," and the "likeness of the appearance." Even the throne becomes "the appearance of a throne." He that sits upon it, though like a man, is so unlike one that he can be described only as the "likeness of the appearance of a man." Can't you see the problem?

It is like a native from some isolated Pacific island trying to explain to his fellow villagers what an airplane is like. He would say it is like a bird (that is, it flies), it is like a lion (the roar of a jet), and it is like the sun (it rises and sets).

So then when we try to image what God is like, we have to use something, which is not God as "raw material" for the purposes of our description. Yet we must realize that whatever we visualize God to be, He isn't, because the thing that we use to describe Him is something that He has made, and of course, what he has made is not God.

We must realize the wonderfulness, the awfulness, and the uniqueness of God, but must not allow ourselves to try to imagine all that He is. When we try to do this, we end up with an idol.

When we try on our own to figure out God, we tend to immediately reduce Him to something that we can get a handle on. It is no wonder; we want to get God to where we can use Him or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a God we can, in some measure, control.

The gods that were worshiped by Greece and Rome were superhuman powerful gods who possessed human characteristics. On the other hand, the god that has been created by this generation tends to be a weak and powerless god who has his hand outstretched pleading for our vote.

I believe you will soon understand a little bit better what I am trying to say by the following example.

You probably realize by now that small groups have become a powerful force in our society. Millions of people are involved in small groups for all kinds of problems. There are small groups for everything from alcohol and drug addictions to co-dependency to overeating to shopping to sex; you name it, there is a group for it.

Some years ago, a man named Robert Withnow, who was a professor of sociology at Princeton University, conducted a three-year national research project on small groups and spirituality. He discovered that one out of every four Americans belongs to a small group, such as a Sunday School class, Bible study group, political or civic group, twelve-step group, sports or hobby group, or singles group.

Many of the people who participate in these small groups swear by them. They claim to have found close friends, to have overcome addictions, and to have received emotional support; they say that they have learned to forgive others and that they have grown spiritually. All of this is good; however, the studies discovered some disturbing facts.

Dr. Withnow writes that the kind of community that small groups create is quite different from the communities in which people lived in the past. He discovered that small group communities in the 21st century are more fluid and more concerned with the emotional states of the individual members. Some small groups merely provide opportunities for individuals to focus on themselves in the presence of others. What's more, the social contract binding members together requires only the weakest of obligations. Come if you have time. Talk if you feel like it. Respect everyone's opinion. Never criticize and leave quietly if you become dissatisfied. He states that families would never survive by following this kind of operating norm.

He wrote that a majority of small group members say they joined because they wanted to deepen their faith, and that their sense of the sacred has been profoundly influenced by their participation in the group.

Yet his research showed that small groups are not simply drawing people back to the God of their fathers and mothers; they are dramatically changing the way God is understood. God is now less of an external authority and more of an internal presence. The sacred becomes more personal; but in the process, it also becomes more manageable, more serviceable in meeting individual needs, and more a feature of the group process itself.

He made one final observation. He writes: "The deity of small groups is a God of love, comfort, order, and security. Gone is the God of judgment, wrath, justice, mystery, and punishment. Gone are concerns about the forces of evil. Missing from most groups even, is a distinct interest in heaven and hell, except for the small heavens and hells that people experience in their everyday lives."

Friends, I am sure that you are aware that one of the early pioneers of small groups in modern times was Alcoholics Anonymous. "AA" is based on the twelve-step program (aka The Recovery Program). I am sure that you must also be aware what Steps Two and Three in the twelve-steps says: "We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity and we made a decision to turn our lives over to the care of God as we understood him."

Ladies and gentlemen, I don't need to tell you how dangerous this concept is. It is dangerous because it encourages the addict to view God as a mere concept that is conformable to the addict's every wish. In Step One you can create any sort of God that you want. You can perceive him to be anything you think he is or ought to be. You can call him anything or anyone you prefer. Almost anything goes when it comes to the god of the twelve-step program.

Though we may not have gone to that extreme, it is nevertheless possible that as we move more and more toward focusing on ourselves and our own needs, we are, in fact, moving farther and farther away from God. And to keep ourselves comfortable we are taking the liberty to create gods to carry along with us just like a little child takes their blanket with them wherever they go.

Now, there is no doubt that small groups are a valid concept. I appreciated the weeks that I attended Al Anon and the help that it was to me. The problem is that the curriculum for many small groups these days is increasingly being centered on self, on us and ours, and less and less on the personhood of God, His authority, and on the fact that we are first accountable to Him before we are even accountable to each other.

As was discovered in the study by Dr. Withnow, when God is brought into the small groups these days, it is often in bits and pieces, so to speak. There is a view of God that is "in" and there is a view of God that is "out."

Friend, the problem in all of this is that any view of God that does not take into account all of what God is may not be the true God at all.

I am not going to say that the God that was represented in the past, as the angry God and the wrathful God, was all the truth about God. The whole story about God was not being told then either. But that is the way that things seem to go. We seem to go from one extreme to the other.

Please don't misunderstand what I have said about small groups. I am not against small groups. After all, the family is the original small group. What I am saying though, is that I firmly believe that we need to study and understand God before we need to study and understand ourselves. If we study ourselves first, we will never get a right picture of God. When we study ourselves first and then study God second, we tend to make God like us.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will never understand what things are supposed to be or even what the plan of salvation is all about until we get an idea of what God is about. A true picture of God will actually give us an accurate picture of ourselves.

So it is time that we stopped worshipping God as we understand Him, and set out to find the true God--for only the true God is worthy of our worship. It is only the true God who can save us; the god of our understanding cannot save us.

By now you might be saying, "If God is not like we think that He is, what is He like?" If by that you mean, what is God like in Himself, then there is no answer. But if we mean what God has revealed about Himself, there is an answer.

As we study God we need to realize that even His name is secret and that His essential nature is beyond our understanding. Yet, through revelation, He has revealed certain things to be true about Himself; these things are called "attributes."

An attribute of God is whatever God has in any way revealed as being true of Him. Theologians have said that God has seven attributes. But if an attribute is something that is true about God and if God is infinite, that means He must possess attributes about which we know nothing about.

What is God like? What kind of God is He? How may we expect Him to act toward us and to all created beings? To answer our questions, God has provided answers--not all the answers, but enough to challenge our minds and thrill our hearts.

He has provided answers in nature, in His Word, and in the person of His Son. Yes, God has revealed Himself in nature and in His Word and in his Son. Those who understand God best will be those who find Him in all three. Let me explain.

Though Jesus was all God and though He said, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father," we must understand that Jesus was God veiled in human flesh.

There are those who believe in Christ who do not believe in His Word, and there are those who believe in Scripture who do not believe in Christ. There are also those who say that they believe in both Christ and His Word, and yet they refuse to believe in Him as the Creator of all nature. I think you can see then what I mean when I say that a person who sees God in His Word and in His Son and in His created works, sees Him best.

Now stay with me. We are going to do some deep thinking about God. So don't go away. The Holy Spirit will help us do it. Here we go.

We have got to understand that when we say that God has certain attributes, this is not to say that He has certain traits or characteristics or qualities. The words traits and characteristics and qualities can only be applied to created beings. We must not allow ourselves to think about God in the same way that we think of those whom He has created.

Now, I realize that when we think about God, we must think about Him in words. We cannot think about God without words; but listen, if we use the wrong words when we think about God, we will get wrong thoughts about Him.

A human being is the sum of their parts and a person's character is the sum of the traits that compose it. These traits will vary from person to person and may even vary within the same person. Human character is not constant, because the traits or qualities that constitute it are unstable or may even be in a state of change.

What we call the divine attributes are what we know to be true about God. God does not possess His attributes as qualities or traits; rather His attributes are how God is as He has revealed Himself to us.

Stay with me. Though we are created, God exists in Himself and of Himself. He owes His being to no one. He has no parts. He is single and un-complex in His being.

I said that God is simple and un-complex. By that I mean that the harmony of His being is not the result of a perfect balance of parts, but the absence of parts. What I am leading up to is that, between God's attributes there can never be a contradiction. By that I mean that God does not suspend one attribute to exercise another. In Him, all his attributes are one. God doesn't divide Himself to do a particular thing, but always works in total unity of His being.

Our God is self-existent. He is self-sufficient. He is eternal. He is infinite. He is immutable. He is omniscient. He is all wise. He is omnipotent. He is omnipresent. He is faithful. He is good. He is just. He is merciful. He is gracious. God is love. He is sovereign. God is holy.

These are some of the attributes that in Christ, in His Word, and in His created works that He has revealed of Himself to us. But our God is one. These are not parts of who He is, but some of the things that are true about Him.

By now you may be saying, "I surrender. I give up. What are you leading up to?" I am leading up to this. What I am about to say now is the punchline, so to speak. Please listen. If you have missed the rest, don't fail to get this.

God is One and Indivisible. That means that He is never more faithful at one time and less another. He is never more merciful under one set of conditions and less in another; neither does He manifest His love sometimes and His justice other times. He is always as merciful as He is just and He is always as holy as He is love.

This is the point that is at the heart of our current problem in our deliberate or ignorant misunderstanding of God. You see, as we learn more about God, the unregenerate heart will begin to pick and choose. The unregenerate heart will try to play off God against Himself or to pick a favorite attribute of God and ignore or deny the other things that God has revealed about Himself. This causes a person to create a god of his own mind and is an insult to the only true God.

I think it could be demonstrated that almost every heresy that has afflicted the church through the years has arisen from believing things about God that aren't true or from over-emphasizing certain true things in such a way so as to hide or obscure other things that are equally true.

To magnify one attribute of God to the exclusion of another is to go off the road of truth. For instance, the Bible teaches that God is love. Some have interpreted this in such a way as to virtually deny that He is just who the Bible also teaches. Others emphasize the doctrine of God's goodness so far that it is made to contradict His holiness. Others make His compassion cancel out His truth; still others understand His sovereignty in a way that destroys or diminishes His goodness and love.

If we are to have a correct relationship to God, then we must believe everything that He has said about Himself. A person takes a grave responsibility upon themselves when they try to edit out of God's self-revelation features which seem objectionable to them.

There is a little song that is sung these days called. "Our God is an Awesome God." Though God is indeed an awesome God, this generation seems to have lost the meaning of the word.

If we really understood what awesome was, we would not be standing there, in some cases, to the accompaniment of a modified rock band, clapping our hands and our bodies swaying to the rhythm of the music.

We sing that we have come into His presence, but have we forgotten, or do we prefer not to remember, that whenever God appeared in an unveiled state to men in Bible times, the results were the same--an overwhelming sense of terror and dismay; a wrenching sensation of sinfulness and guilt?

When God spoke, Abraham stretched himself on the ground to listen. When Moses saw the Lord in the burning bush, he hid his face in fear to look upon God.

When Isaiah saw God, he cried out, "Woe is me," and confessed, "I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips."

Daniel's encounter with God was probably the most dreadful and wonderful of them all. The prophet lifted up his eyes and saw One whose body also was like beryl, and His face as the appearance of lightning, and His eyes as lamps of fire, and His arms and His feet like in color to polished brass and the voice of His words like the voice of a multitude. "I Daniel alone saw the vision." Afterward he wrote, "...for the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so they fled to hide themselves. Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength. Yet I heard the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice of his words, then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the ground."

Friends, it is an awful thing to come face to face with our Holy God.

Many call themselves by the name of Christ. They talk a lot about God, but evidently they don't know who He is. The Scripture says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," and in another place it says that when men fear the Lord they depart from evil. Do I need to say more?

We can never overcome our problems until we return to the God of Daniel and of Isaiah and of Abraham. When Paul saw Jesus on the road to Damascus, he was blinded. Even when John the Beloved saw Jesus in the Book of Revelation, he said, "I fell at His feet as dead."

These days they talk about those who preach "cheap grace." It is not just a cheap grace, but a cheap, narrow-yes, even a carnal view of God that is being held up before the people in so many places.

The Scripture says that when we fear the Lord, we will depart from evil. Friends, only a true view of God in all His awesome and terrible glory, only a true view of all of the attributes of God, not just a little love here and a little compassion there, will bring us to the point where we will cry out in our heart of hearts, "Woe is me! Lord be merciful to me a sinner."

The God and, yes, even the Savior our Lord Jesus Christ that is being presented to so many these days is not the true God. Because if it was, there would be a call for repentance. There would be a confession of sin and a hunger and thirst after righteousness.

A true understanding of God will not leave us hopeless. Helpless, yes, but not hopeless. A true understanding of God is the only thing that will save us, because without it we will simply perish in our sins.

The Bible calls us. It says, "Acquaint thyself with God." If the church is to regain its lost power, if we are to receive power to cleanse us from unrighteousness and to fill us with the Holy Spirit of the crucified and risen Christ, we must see, as it were, the heavens open and have a life-transforming vision of God.

But the God we must see is not the utilitarian "ATM" god who is so popular today--a god who we are told will bring success to our various undertakings and who, for that reason, is being cajoled and flattered by everyone who wants a favor.

The God we must learn to know is the Majesty in the heavens, God the Father, Maker of heaven and earth, the only wise God, our Savior. He it is who sits upon the circle of the earth, who stretches out the heavens as a curtain and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in, who brings out His starry hosts by number and calls them all by name through the greatness of His power, who sees the works of man as vanity, who puts no confidence in princes and asks no counsel of kings.

This is why, my friends, the last warning message that is to prepare this planet for the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ is not a one-liner or a little ditty that we sing as we clap our hands to the accompaniment of the electronic band.

It is a call to fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come. It is a call to worship Him, who made heaven and earth, the sea and the fountains of water.

We will never appreciate our Savior until we see His majesty as Creator and sovereign God. What then shall we do? By the saving power of our Creator God we must:

• Put away our sins. Our Holy God is going to destroy sin one day and Scripture is clear that those who refuse to be saved from sin will be lost.
• We must make, by His grace, a complete commitment of our whole lives to Him. This means we must have a firm purpose to obey Him in everything--keeping His commandments, carrying our cross, loving God and our fellow men.
• We must recognize ourselves dead to sin and alive unto God in Christ. When we open our hearts to the inflowing of the Holy Spirit, we will denounce the works of the flesh and begin to manifest the fruit of the Spirit.
• We must repudiate the cheap values of this fallen world. Friendship with the world and friendship with God is an oxymoron.
• God must become the focal point of our lives as we daily strive to love Him with all our hearts, our souls, and our minds.
• We live in this world to bless others. The more perfectly we know God, the more we will feel the desire to transmit that knowledge into deeds of mercy and service for others.