I have said it for years and I will keep saying it: the major problem we face in the church today is that people simply do not know God. And they do not know Him because many evangelical pastors and false teachers who stand in the pulpits do not know the true God of the Bible themselves. Therefore, they preach a distorted God who is known only by a few selected attributes: love, goodness, grace, and compassion… because these are the attributes that best suit their message and their audience.
Too many want a God who loves us just as we are, because “God is love.” A God who must forgive every sin because He is compassionate. A God who must give us whatever we want, because “God is good all the time.” A God who would never send anyone to hell, because He is full of grace and love. This is what is commonly preached from many pulpits and swallowed by people who rarely open their Bibles or spend time on their knees seeking God for themselves.
How can we truly know God apart from His Word, prayer, and sound teaching? How will we ever know who He is if we continue to pick and choose only the attributes that please us?
The late R.C. Sproul illustrated it well: many people approach the attributes of God like a buffet line. They pick and choose what they like and leave what they don’t. They gladly take the love of God but reject His justice. They want His grace but not His sovereignty. They love His compassion and longsuffering but refuse to hear about His wrath. This is the great tragedy among evangelicals and churchgoers today.
Scriptures say: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…” (Hosea 4:6). Because we have forgotten the law of our God, we are perishing.
One of the first signs that people do not know God is that they trivialize sin. Repentance has become an old-fashioned idea. Brokenness and contrition of heart are treated as psychological problems. Church discipline is considered rude and unloving. You hear the same shallow responses over and over: “We are all sinners, who are you to judge?” “Just love your neighbor.” “Let’s practice more tolerance.” “Jesus loves you no matter what.” “Come as you are.”
Second, the preaching of God’s Word has become shallow and aimed more at entertaining the crowd than convicting, reproving, rebuking, and instructing in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16-17). This explains why so many false teachers have large followings. They teach the doctrine of Balaam, their god is their belly, and they do not know the true God (Revelation 2:14-15; Philippians 3:18-19). They have read, but have not believed, the stricter judgment that falls on teachers (James 3:1) and the warning that they will give account for every careless word (Matthew 12:36).
How can anyone truly know God’s holiness and not tremble at His Word? (Isaiah 66:2; Leviticus 10:1-3). If there is no trembling, it may be evidence that they do not truly know or fear Him (James 2:19).
“Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?” (Isaiah 40:21). We have lost sight of the holiness of God. Some even imagine that the God of the Old Testament is different from the God of the New Testament. But He declares, “I am the Lord, I change not” (Malachi 3:6).
Our God is the thrice holy God — holy, holy, holy, the same yesterday, today, and forever (Isaiah 6:3; Hebrews 13:8). He requires holiness from His church (1 Peter 1:16), love and obedience to His Word (John 14:15), wholehearted love for Christ (Matthew 22:37; 1 Corinthians 16:22), and sanctification and intimacy with Himself (1 Thessalonians 4:7; Leviticus 20:26). Because He is holy, He disciplines and chastens those He loves. If He did not, we could question His holiness.
The Triune God is not divided into parts, nor are His attributes placed on different levels. All His perfections: love, justice, compassion, goodness, wrath, sovereignty, immutability, omniscience, and holy hatred of sin, are perfectly united and in glorious harmony within the Godhead. A.W. Tozer rightly said:
“The Bible knows nothing of a God who is half love and half wrath. God is not divided against Himself. All that God is, He is all the time and in every act.”
The Lord cannot set aside one attribute for the sake of another to please angels or men. He always acts in perfect harmony with all His perfections. This is the God of the Bible, the God we are called to know intimately, serve diligently, and preach faithfully.
The people are perishing for lack of knowledge, the church is starving for a lack of this daily bread. Therefore, we urgently need sound, bold, and unflinching preachers of the true Gospel. As Steve Lawson often says, we need men, solid men, who know God and will stand in the pulpit and on the street corners to proclaim this great God to a lost and dying world. Urgently so!
