Can We Know the Almighty God?

Date: July 1, 2001- P.M.
Speaker: George Bailey
Main Scripture References: Ephesians, Psalms, and Romans

Here’s how the Bible begins: Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth.” Here’s how the Bible ends: Revelation 22:21, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.” And between those two verses, what a marvelous revelation we have! It’s the only revelation that we have OF God, and the only one that we have FROM God. God is the subject of the first sentence of the Bible, and Christ is the One Who is in the last sentence of the Bible.

In Job 11:7, two very timely questions were asked about God. “Can thou by searching find out the Almighty? Can you find out the Almighty onto perfection?” And the answer to the first question is, “YES, by searching, we can find out the Almighty.” In Isaiah 55:6, we see, “Seek the Lord while He may be found of you.” In Hebrews 8:11, mention is made of knowing God. And Paul said, “I know Whom I have believed,” 2 Timothy 1:12. He knew what he believed, but he also knew WHOM he believed. He knew about God, but he also KNEW God.

God can be known, but the answer to the next question is, “NO, He cannot be found out to perfection.” This is because God is God, and man is man; He’s infinite and we are finite; He’s outside of time and space, and we’re within time and space. He knows all, but we’re limited as to what we know and what we can do. The Bible said, “His ways are past finding out,” Romans 11:33; “His peace passes all understanding,” Philippians 4:7; “His love passes all knowledge,” Ephesians 3:19. In Psalms 147:5, the Bible says, “His understanding is infinite.” Isaiah 40:28 says, “there is no searching of His understanding.” In Job 26:14, it says, “Lo, these are only a part of His ways, but how little a portion is known of Him.” Then consider Job 37:5, where he said, “He doeth great things, which we can not comprehend.” But we can know all we need to know about God, even “though the secret things belong to Him,” Deuteronomy 29:29. We can know all we need to know to love Him, to serve Him, to follow Him and to be with Him eternally in the world to come.

What can we know about the Almighty? Can we really know that He exists? “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God,’” Psalm 14:1 and Psalm 53:1. How FOOLISH, in the face of so much irrefutable evidence, to say that there is no God!

Somebody has figured out that, if you take the 26 letters in the English alphabet, and toss them into the air, and let them promiscuously [indiscriminately] fall to the earth without any intervention, then (according to the one who figured it, and I don’t know how he figured it that far) there would be one chance in 500 million, million, million, million—that’s the number “500” and twenty four zeros following—that they would fall in their proper order of A, B, C, all the way through to Z. That means that, if you allowed one and a half seconds per fall, it would take 2 million, million, million—that’s the number “2” and eighteen zeros following—years for them to fall in the order of A, B, C, all the way through to Z. Now if that’s true of the chances of orderliness with only 26 little things, like the letters of the English alphabet, how ridiculous! how out of the question! for ANYONE to think that, in back of ALL of this vast universe, there was not a Maker!!

But we can know that the Maker has always existed. Psalm 90, verse 2, says, “He’s from ever lasting to ever lasting.” Look into the distant past as far as your mind will allow you to go, and there was God. And then turn and look into the future until you are forced to collapse and are filled with exhaustion, and there is God. It doesn’t matter how far you go either way, there will be God, existing at both ends of time, and completely unaffected by either. There’s never been a time when God didn’t exist! Now, that’s a hard concept to get hold of! It is difficult for us because, so far as WE are concerned, everything HAD to have a beginning. But not God. And furthermore, the Bible tells us that, “He has Life in and of Himself,” John 5, verse 26. Everything else, everyone else depends upon something else or someone else for existence. But not God. And furthermore, ALL good came from God, James 1:17. And bad, of course, originated otherwise; but the GOOD came from God.

If you took the letters in the word “G O O D,” and, like you would in math, use a minus symbol, and take out the letters “G O D,” then draw a line under “-G O D,” what do you come up with? You come up with a sum total of “O”!!

G O O D - G O D = O

And when you take God Almighty out of what is supposed to be good, then all you have left is a ZERO. ANYTIME you take God out of anything that’s good, you don’t have anything left, because all good CAME from God! The Bible says He is the origin of life. “He giveth (present tense and continued tense—now and forever) life and breath to all things,” Acts 17:25. “In Him we live (present tense—meaning, “continue to live”), move, and have our being,” Acts 17:28. We’re said to be “His offspring,”—same passage. We are made “in His image” we’re told in Genesis 1: 26-27. We’re “made after the similitude of God,” James 3:9.

We can also know that God is EVERYWHERE. This concept, too, is mysterious. How can He be everywhere? Well, being as we are, we couldn’t be everywhere. But being as HE is, He could and IS everywhere. HE is that circle, that center, which is everywhere, and the circumference of which is no where. He’s outside of all, but not excluded within all, and not confined. In 2 Chronicles, chapter 2, and verse 6, the Bible says; “the heaven and the heaven of heavens can not contain Him.” Or consider Psalm 139, verse 7 and following, “If I ascend up into heaven, You are there.” This Scripture continues to say that if I make my bed in Sheol [the waiting place of all of the dead, i.e., “Hades”], He’s there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea…well, there just isn’t ANYWHERE we can go that God isn’t there.