What does the Bible say about God?

The Bible passages below can be used in sermons, prayers, pastoral care, or worship planning focused on God. 

• Genesis 1:1-3, God created (God said, Let there be light)
• Genesis 17:7, God of the covenant (God established a covenant with the people)
• Deuteronomy 7:9, the faithful God (God is faithful from generation to generation)
• Joshua 1:9, ever-present God (God will be with us wherever we go, therefore we can be strong and courageous)
• 2 Samuel 7:22, one and only God (there is no god besides our God)
• Psalm 14:1, God of the righteous (fools say that there is no God)
• Psalm 34:8, God is good (the Lord is good and provides refuge)
• Psalm 47:6-7, God is king (God is king over the earth and deserves our praises)
• Psalm 62:7, God of deliverance (my refuge is in God, my mighty rock)
• Psalm 103:19, God the ruler (the Lord's kingdom rules over all)
• Psalm 145, God of greatness (God is great and awesome)
• Proverbs 9:10, God of wisdom (the knowledge of the Holy One is insight)
• Isaiah 25:1, God of wonders (you are my faithful God and have done wonderful things)
• Hosea 11:1-4, God is a loving parent (God takes care of Israel like a child)
• Matthew 5:44-45, God of love for all (love your enemies so that you may be a child of God)
• John 1:1, God is the Word (the Word was with God, and the Word was God)
• John 3:16, God of love and salvation (God so loved the world that he gave his only Son)
• John 4:24, God is spirit (those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth)
• Romans 5:8, God loves us (the proof of God's love for us is Christ's life and death)
• Romans 8:28, God acts on our behalf (God works for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose)
• Romans 11:33, God of wisdom (O the depth of God's riches and wisdom and knowledge)
• Revelation 21:3-4, God of compassion (God dwells with mortals and wipes away our tears) 

Sermon ideas about God

See also God's Threeness, God's Oneness, God's Attributes.

God is King, our God reigns 

How can a sermon summarize what the Bible has to say about God? Much of what the Bible has to say about God centers on God's mighty acts in creation, redemption, and final restoration of the cosmos to shalom. God administers the history of redemption through covenants and principally through the covenant of grace with Abraham, renewed in Jesus Christ. God is preeminently a promise maker and keeper. All of this happens inside God's kingdom. 

"God is King" or "Our God reigns" is probably the main theme of the Bible. If king and kingdom sound like obsolete political terms, think instead of fantasy literature in which a righteous king battles the forces of evil for the sake of safety, prosperity, and peace. As C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien believed, the story of how in earth's history the righteous king has landed in the person of Jesus Christ to fight for the restoration of the kingdom is the one fairy tale that is actually true. 

Classic Christian theology teaches that while God is distinct from creation, God cherishes the created world. In some marvelous chapters of Job 38–41 God walks in the depths of the sea, cuts water channels through deserts, and leads bear cubs out of their dens. God fathers the rain and mothers the ice. God makes a pet of the mysterious Leviathan, likely a sea creature. These chapters are less about science and more about love. God is enthusiastic about the good creation. 

God's goal of redemption and restoration 

But the created world, including its human inhabitants, has fallen from its pristine state and now groans for redemption, and our sermons must address this. Much of the Bible tells the story of how a loving God has set about to redeem the fallen creation, including a fallen humanity, and to restore things to wholeness and beauty.  

The process is slow and painful, even for God. What it appears to require is the incarnation of the second person of the Holy Trinity to grapple with the world's powers and to bring God's righteous kingdom even closer to the world than it had been before. That this project requires great anguish within God before it culminates in the immensely promising and revealing resurrection from the dead of the Son of God constitutes one of the sacred mysteries of the Christian story. 

This story plus many side stories incorporating themes from the Great Story reveal that the redeeming God is patient, slow to anger, willing to suffer, willing to be ignored. (One of God's poignant claims about the Israelites, the instrument of redemption for all the peoples of the earth, is that "they have turned their backs on me").  

At times the redeeming God seems slow or even silent within his program of restoration. The story is far from one of unmitigated triumph. Though majestic beyond all telling, God makes himself vulnerable to his creatures, and they take terrible advantage of the opportunity to cause God distress. But then, when all appears stalled or even lost, a judge appears, or a prophet with a word from the Lord, or, in the fullness of time, God's own Son, Jesus Christ, Savior and Lord. 

A passage such as Psalm 145 cannot decide whether God's greatness consists especially in God's power shown through mighty acts or, on the other hand, in God's goodness shown in lifting up the fallen. It's safe to say, though, that the king of the universe, though immensely powerful, is especially loved for God's goodness to creatures and most especially for grace to sinners, who deserve punishment but receive forgiveness instead. In fact, one way of stating the uber-message of the Bible is that sinners do not receive what they deserve. 

Of course, the scriptural story loses all its power and beauty if God is thought to be merely a force, or a principle, or an event, or a symbol. The Bible tells instead of a God who is infinitely more alive, more personal, and more capable of sorrow and joy than even the most robust of human creatures. 

Popular piety tends to domesticate God, suggesting that meeting God would be like meeting a favorite uncle. But the Bible, while emphasizing God's love, also presents God as high, holy, and terrifyingly "other" — the kind of being from whom mere humans naturally shrink. The word God-fearing, as in "she was a God-fearing woman," catches part of the reality. Perhaps meeting God would be initially less like having coffee with a friend and more like being electrocuted. Luther confessed that in the presence of God he felt stricken. 

And yet. Believers from psalmists through Augustine through the medieval mystics to the present have spoken of their hunger and thirst for God, of how God is their "beauty so old, so new" (Augustine) and of the sheer warmth and comfort they experience in the presence of God. Psalmists speak longingly of their hunger and thirst for God. The mystery of God's simultaneous electrifying holiness and enveloping love is one of the underreported mysteries of the Christian religion. C. S. Lewis invoked it in his Chronicles of Narnia by making the God-figure lion Aslan good but not safe. Aslan is loveable — but not safe. 

The Bible's story of the kingdom of God climaxes in John's vision of the future in Revelation 21. The text appears to teach not only that there shall be a new heaven and earth, but also that it shall be this earth, renewed. In Revelation 21 the city of God descends to us. We do not go to heaven; heaven comes to us. In a vision lovely enough to break a person's heart, John shows us what God showed him: that up ahead of us, after centuries of tribal feuds and racial arrogance, after centuries of xenophobic snapping at each other, after we human beings have silted history full with the debris of all our antagonisms — after all that, the city of God will descend to us, and God will dwell with us, and, once more, God will make all things new. 

As Frederick Buechner wrote, "We might say God is like the great physician with a cure for every ill. He is like the good president whose Oval Office is always open to even the humblest citizen. But Jesus says something quite different. He says God is like a man who, when his friend comes knocking at his door at midnight, says, `You'll wake the children. Drop dead,' and who only after his friend goes on leaning on the doorbell finally staggers downstairs with his hair in his eyes and his bathrobe on inside out and gives him what he wants just to be rid of him." (Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Comedy, Tragedy, and Fairy Tale, p. 64) 

Excerpts about God 

Following are sample excerpts from Zeteosearch.org sermon resources about God: 

• "God's purposes and plans, after all, remain finally sovereign. So while God's children may question them, we can't finally change them. While human actions may seem to delay it, God's plan still somehow works in and through them. God even uses the dark side of human action and planning to carry out God's will." Sermon Illustration, Sermon Preparation by Doug Bratt from Center for Excellence in Preaching  

• "Paul wanted Christians, 2,000 years ago to be able to move the conversation forward. . . to be able to take their heads out of the sand and see that God is ALWAYS doing something new." Scripture Meditation or Sermon by William Joseph Adams from Sunday GospelTalk  

• "Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise! His greatness no one can fathom. One generation will commend your works to another; they will tell of your mighty acts. They will speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty. They will tell of the power of your awesome works. They will celebrate your abundant goodness. They will joyfully sing of your righteousness." Service Outline, Words of Praise, Song Suggestions by Wayne Brouwer and Peter C. Hogeterp from Reformed Worship