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Intro:
In a book entitled God’s Trombones published in 1927, James Weldon Johnson put together 7 negro sermons in verse. The second sermon in the book is called The Creation. The sermon opens with these immortal words, “And God steeped out on space, and he looked around and said: I’m lonely - I’ll make me a world.” It is great poetry. It’s a fun read that is moving and powerful it’s just poor theology! The notion that God was lonely and therefore created the world is not just mistaken, it is an attack on the nature of God as set forth in the Scripture.
We have begun a study of the doctrine of God and we’ve said from the beginning that words matter. There is a need for precision when speaking about God. Tozer reminded us that, “What we think of when we think of God is the most important thing about us.” Anselm taught us that God is the “One of whom no greater can be conceived.” Our God is incomparable (no one/no thing compares with him) and he is incomprehensible (we cannot fully know or understand him). Our knowledge of God is true knowledge but not exhaustive knowledge. We cannot know him comprehensibly - if we could, we would be God, which would mean he is not!
This evening we are going to deal with the doctrine of aseity.
I’m going to shock you, brace yourself - GOD DOES NOT NEED YOU.
To affirm God’s aseity is to say that he is life in and of himself. He is self-existent and therefore self-sufficient. There is no sense in which he is caused by another. God was not created.
Everything has a beginning - except God.
Few seem to be aware of the awe-inspiring and worship-provoking grandeur of the God’s divine character. This is why Moses writes: “Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?" (Exodus 15:11)
God is Happy and Complete in Himself
God is perfectly fulfilled and happy in and of himself. Jonathan Edwards said, “God is infinitely happy in the enjoyment of himself.”
The reason for this is that God is a Trinity.
God is one in essence, three in person.
The essence of God subsists in these three persons, eternally, independent of the created order.
John 17:5, 24
John 5:26
God as Creator Owns Everything and Needs Nothing from Us
Psalm 24:1-2
Psalm 50:9-12
Acts 17:24–25
God gains nothing from us.
Our obedience does not profit Him, it adds nothing to God himself.
God is honored and dishonored by what we do. God has been glorified by creation, by the work of providence, by the redeeming work of Christ but it adds nothing to God’s being, God’s person. Had He not chosen to manifest His glory and had He continued alone for all eternity; He would have been perfectly blessed and content in himself!
How different this God is from the god of the average person and even the God preached from the average pulpit today!
1 Timothy 6:15b-16:
So What?
The Gospel depends on a God who does not depend on you. Read Isaiah 40 and 44. Hear the biting sarcasm. How foolish it is for man to make an idol and then cry out to the thing he created for Salvation. If God were not life in and of himself, if he were not independent of us, then he would not be worthy, qualified, or able to save us. If God were not a se then he would be weak and pathetic because he would be needy and dependent. He would need saving!
We might pray for such a God but we would never pray to such a God.
It is because God is free from creation he is able to save lost sinners.
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