Jeremiah 10:10-13 - Homiletics

The nature of God.

The true nature of God is seen in contrast with the objects of heathen worship. Error is sometimes serviceable in furnishing an occasion for a clearer definition of truth. Christian theology has grown up through controversies with heresy and unbelief.

I. THE NATURE OF GOD .

1. God is real . Jehovah is the true God. He is not only superior to heathen deities. They are non-existent. He alone is, Religion is based on facts. Its first affirmation is this—"God is." It is not a growth of the poetic imagination, a fabric of baseless speculation, nor merely "morality touched with emotion," without any object for that emotion to rest upon. It is the worship of a God who exists. Otherwise no poetic charm nor practical expediency can make it anything but a delusion, which all who venerate truth should abjure.

2. God is living . The word "God" is not a name for the totality of being, for the unconscious forces of the universe, for a blind "Not ourselves that makes for righteousness." All faith affirms more. No worship is justified without the belief that God is spirit, thinking, willing, living. God is, indeed, the one self-existent life, the life in which all other life is contained ( Acts 17:28 ).

3. God is an everlasting King . He is eternal and changeless—not a God of the past alone, but equally active in the present. He is not only the Creator who formed the world ages ago, but the King who now rules it. Our worship is not merely veneration for what he has done, but a constant appreciation of what he is doing, and prayer touching his future action—a real and effectual communion with a living and acting God.

4. These thoughts of the nature of God should induce submission and reverence . None can compare with him. All are in his power. His eternal presence demands constant attention, and his ceaseless activity requires a correspondence in all our activity.

II. THE MANIFESTATION OF THE NATURE OF GOD .

1. It is seen in creation . Power is revealed in the original formation of all things, wisdom in their orderly establishment ( Jeremiah 10:12 ). A real world can only come from a real God. A living world must derive its vitality from an original source of life. The less cannot produce the greater. All that we see in the universe must have been originally in the thought and power of God.

2. It is seen in the present activities of the world. The tumult of waters flows in obedience to God's voice. Clouds, and wind, and lightning, and rain, follow his directions ( Jeremiah 10:13 ). The great energy of the physical world testifies to an energizing power behind it. The universe is not a beautiful crystal, nor a fossil relic of past life. It is replete with force, undergoing perpetual change, and constantly developing fresh forms of vitality. Such a condition of things implies that the real and living Creator must be also an ever-present Ruler, "an everlasting King."