God, The Father Almighty

Order of Service

• Prelude
• Call to Worship — Romans 11:33-36
• Hymn — Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise (#224)
• Prayer of Invocation
• Westminster Larger Catechism Reading — Questions 6–8
• Hymn — God, Maker of Heaven and Earth (#560)
• Pastoral Prayer
• Scripture Reading — Revelation 4:6-11
• Sermon
• Hymn — How Great Thou Art (#227)
• Benediction — 2 Corinthians 13:14

Sermon Title: God, The Father Almighty

Scripture: Revelation 4:6-11

I. We Believe in a Monotheistic God

• A. The creed's opening "I believe in God" is first and foremost a statement of monotheism, grounded in the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4.

  1. The Shema does not merely deny other gods; it declares Yahweh to be in a class entirely his own — the only true possessor of divinity.
  2. All pagan gods are knockoffs; Yahweh alone is the genuine article, the source from whom all dim smackings of the divine in paganism derive.

• B. The Greek word pistis (believing/trusting) in the creed carries far more than intellectual assent to theism — it conveys active trust and leaning upon this God.

  1. We are not merely acknowledging a first cause; we are staking our lives and hopes entirely on the one God.
  2. Having tasted the real, we cannot return to the knockoff.

• C. Monotheism is not the natural evolutionary product of primitive religion becoming sophisticated, as secular critical scholarship argues.

  1. Scripture's declarations of God's oneness are almost never tied to practical benefits but to his distinctive attributes — as seen in Isaiah 44:6-8.
  2. Monotheism is an intrusion of the one God making himself known by power in the midst of a pagan world — a revelation, not a human conclusion.

II. We Believe in a Personal God

• A. The creed uses the definite article the Father rather than my or our Father, conveying two distinct realities.

  1. First, it speaks of God as the source and father of all human life by creation — Malachi 2:10; Acts 17:25, 29.
  2. Second, it refers to God as the first person of the Trinity, the eternal Father of the eternally begotten Son.

• B. Following Cornelius Van Til, God is not merely a being who has personality as an attribute — God is absolute personality as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

  1. Personal relations flow eternally within the Godhead: the Father knowing and loving the Son, the Son knowing and loving the Father, through the Spirit.
  2. This is why the God of the Hebrews is unlike all other gods — Deuteronomy 4:7.

• C. In Matthew 11:27, Jesus reveals a perfect relational knowledge (yada) between Father and Son that we are invited into.

  1. We do not come to God in prayer to make him personal; we come because he is already, by his very nature, personal.
  2. Through the ascension and the pouring out of the Spirit, the Son's Father becomes our Father — we cry "Abba, Father" (John 20:17; Romans 8:15).

III. We Believe in a Creator God

• A. The creed calls God Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth — he creates ex nihilo, out of nothing, by the word of his power alone.

  1. This is not a bigger version of human creativity working with pre-existing material; it is almighty creation from nothing.
  2. The title is Father Almighty, not merely God Almighty — he is both all-powerful creator and benevolent father who declares all he has made very good.

• B. The creed is deliberately polemical against Gnosticism and its Greek dualism, which held that one evil god (the Demiurge) created the material world and a good god rules the spiritual realm.

  1. The creed counters this by affirming one benevolent Father as maker of both heaven (spiritual realm) and earth (material realm) — Psalm 19:1; Revelation 4:6-11.
  2. Both the heavenly and earthly realms praise the same God, reflecting the unity of creation under one creator.

• C. This ancient polemic remains urgently relevant today — gender confusion ideology is a modern form of Gnosticism.

  1. The claim that one must escape or transform the body because God has made it wrong is inherently Gnostic — Greek dualism 2.0.
  2. The creed answers: only good comes from the benevolent Father, maker of heaven and earth — James 1:16-17.

• D. There are no new heresies — only old heresies in new costumes; the worn, tried, and true historic creeds and confessions are sufficient to combat them in every age.