Bulletin Insert, Nov. 29, 2020: "Knowing the Incomprehensible"

 

Knowing the Incomprehensible

(Attributes of God Series: God is Incomprehensible)

Pastor Terry Reese, Valley GBC, Armagh, PA, 11/29/2020

 

Intro: Knowledge in an Age of Postmodernism.

Postmodernism: a movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; definite knowledge is held in suspicion.

 

I. God’s Incomprehensibility Defined: 

“God cannot be completely comprehended by any finite mind.” Alva J. McClain, God & Revelation

 

II. Scripture.

Job 5:8-9: “But as for me, I would seek God, and I would place my cause before God; Who does great and unsearchable things, wonders without number.”

Ps. 139:6: Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it. [David, speaking of God’s omniscience]

Ps. 145:3: Great is the LORD, and highly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable.

Is. 40:28b: His understanding is inscrutable.

Rom. 11:33: Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!

 

III. Incompatible with Theological Rationalism.

There is much about God that we cannot comprehend. He cannot be understood through rationalism, intuition, or feelings.

 

Only an incomprehensible God is worthy of worship; any “god” that we can fully comprehend must be smaller than ourselves!

 

IV.  Limitations upon our knowledge of God.

1. Our finite wisdom;

2. Our moral imperfections;

3. Our limited supply of Divine Revelation

 

V. Incomprehensibility  doesn’t mean “unknowable”

a. The claims of Post-Modernism, Existentialism, Neo-orthodoxy, Islam: “God is unknowable.”

b. Response: Because we don’t know everything does not mean that we know nothing. God cannot be known completely or exhaustively by finite minds—but this does not mean that He cannot be known adequately and genuinely.

c. God reveals Himself through various channels—especially through Scripture and through the Incarnate Christ! Through these means, we can have a true—but finite and limited—knowledge of Him (Jer. 9:23-24, 31:34; John 17:3; 1 John 4:7-8, 5:20).