A Wrong View of God

The Bible presents us with many metaphors for God. Even so, I doubt the Scriptures exhaust all the metaphors that could be used -- much less do I think any one metaphor suffices for the whole of God. I will go even further and say there is so much more about God to be known than what the Bible reveals.  Yet, we can only know what there is to be known about God by His self-disclosure (divine revelation: 1 Corinthians 2:9-14). To that I might add that the Bible is God's only self-disclosure that is sufficient to lead us to Him for all of eternity. It is just humbling to realize, because of what we can know about the greatness of God, that there is so much more about Him than what He has revealed. What an awesome God and worthy to be praised.

However, a wrong view of God may well lead to a life that provokes God. Just ask Israel. Quoting from Psalms, the Hebrew writer uses Israel as an example to remind us of this fact, "Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’ As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’” (Hebrews 3:7-11) The wilderness generation was the failure generation for they could not imagine a God sufficient to destroy their enemies in the promised land.

How is that possible? For forty years God demonstrated His Sovereign power but Israel failed to grasp the implications of its tangibleness, which God had clearly displayed before their own eyes (Deuteronomy 8:1-4). I can only say Israel had an inordinate desire for the "here and now" owing to a myopic (nearsighted) view of God. They could only conceive of God related to their present circumstances and needs in the "here and now" (sometimes referred to as their apparent needs). They could not imagine God's ultimate plan with all of its future implications for them which He had promised through Abraham (Genesis 12:2-3).

I think this is as much our problem today as it was Israel's. We are too focused on the “here and now” and not on eternity with God! We try way too hard to understand or force God in terms of our own culture (here and now) and the result is everything about our focusing on Him becomes impaired! Namely, our hearing Him in the Scriptures, our seeing Him in terms of our creation and redemption, our tasting that He is gracious to us beyond this world! It is so crippling to our faith. One of the greatest challenges to our faith in the "here and now" (present) is believing God will do great things in our present lives because of His future promises and plans for us. It is our own limitations which often defeat us because we refuse to see that with God all things are possible relative to His promises for us.

Israel had failed to surrender to God completely as God reminded them many years later through the prophet Amos saying, “'Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? You shall take up Sikkuth your king, and Kiyyun your star-god—your images that you made for yourselves, and I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,' says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts.”  (Amos 5:26-27) Israel's backup plan, in essence, was for the tin gods they had carried out of Egypt to "have their backs" in case the God who called them out Egypt failed them. God did not fail -- they failed God! Their wrong view of God led to a distorted way of life.

When we are truly "all in" for the God of the Bible, we don't need a backup plan. God has our backs and we will not fear what man can do to us (Romans 4:17; Hebrews 13:6). We trust in Him because He is God and He does nothing by accident (Revelation 4:11).

What is your view of God?