Introduction

In his book, The Root of the Righteous, A. W. Tozer wrote, "Satan's first attack upon the human race was his sly effort to destroy Eve's confidence in the kindness of God. Unfortunately for her and for us he succeeded too well. From that day, men have had a false concept of God, and it is exactly this that has cut out from under them the ground of righteousness and driven them to reckless and destructive living."

My friends, I believe that Tozer is right, and Satan is still at work trying to get us to doubt that God really wants to provide what is best for us. Satan wants to win the battle and sometimes succeeds by getting people to have a distorted concept of God.

Some of you know that five years ago I had the privilege of teaching young Christian men and women in a seminary class in Managua, Nicaragua. I helped train students for Christian ministries as pastors and missionaries. My awesome task was teaching their first seminar class, called Theology Proper. Basically this theology class was designed to help them have a proper, correct, biblical concept of God and His character. One task was to be to clear up misconceptions.

I. Misconceptions

Some people today think of God as being stern and austere, a harsh taskmaster who is distant from them. God may be looked upon as a mean old ogre who has made up many rules to keep us from enjoying life. Such false concepts of God cannot help but adversely effect one's relationship with God. With such a distorted notion of God one might reason that if they are never going to please God anyway, why should they even bother to try. Therefore, many don't try and end up wasting their lives.

The Pharisees, of whom Jesus spoke in the Gospels, thought of God as being stern and austere. However, in spite of this wrong concept of God they did maintain a fairly high level of external morality, but this "so called righteousness" was only outward. Listen to Jesus' description of the in Matthew 23:26-28

The Pharisees did not see God as loving, as desiring the best for His people. For them, the Law of God was not the Law of Love, which Jesus told us it was. See Matthew 23:2-4. Serving God was looked upon as bondage, not as a response to God's love.

If we think of God as cold and exacting we shall find it difficult, perhaps even impossible to really love God as we should. Instead our lives might be lived in unholy fear. However, if we understand God as being kind and understanding our inner life is likely to reflect that concept.

There seem to be many people today, including some Christians who are plagued with an improper concept of God and as a result they are very unhappy and grim. We might consider the example of the old brother in Jesus' story of the loving father. When Christians live like this they mis represent our just and holy God of love.

II. Proper Concepts

Do you really know our God, described in the Bible? Do you really know our God revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? He is Holy, righteous, kind, patient and loving. He created us for fellowship with Himself. Because He is holy and just, He cannot and will not condone sin. So it is against His very nature to tolerate sin, but He loves sinners. Through the blood of His everlasting covenant He is able to treat us as if we have never sinned when we repent and we Him as our Savior. What a joy it is to really know God and experience His cleansing and His indwelling presence. We can only really love because He first loved us. Jesus surrendered His will to His heavenly Father for our salvation. When we trust Him and strive with His help to do His will He is very pleased with us.

God created us and knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows we are made of dust and have human weaknesses. Yes, God may chasten us when we fall, but He does even this, with the love of a Father.

What is your concept of God? It is vitally important to the way you live.

Tozer: "We please Him most, not by frantically trying to make ourselves good, but by throwing ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections, and believing that He understands everything and loves us still."

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