Attributes of God-Volume II by A.W. Tozer
Introduction: God’s Character
…So I only have this one hope: As the poor little donkey rebuked the madness of the prophet and as the rooster crowed one night to arouse the apostle and bring him to repentance, so God may take me and use me. As Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of the little donkey, so I pray that He may be willing to ride out before the people on such an unworthy instrument as I.
It is utterly necessary that we know this God, this One that John wrote about, this One that the poet speaks about, this One that theology talks about, and this One that we’re sent to preach and teach about. It is absolutely, utterly and critically necessary that we know this One, for you see, man fell when he lost his right concept of God.
As long as man trusted God everything was all right; human beings were healthy and holy (or at least innocent), and pure and good. But then the devil came along and threw a question mark into the mind of the woman: “And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said…?” (Genesis 3:1). This was equivalent to sneaking around behind God’s back and casting doubt on the goodness of God. And then began the progressive degeneration downward.
When the knowledge of God began to go out of the minds of men, we got into the fix that we’re in now:
Romans 1:21-28
The first chapter of Romans ends with a terrible charge of unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness and all the long, black list of crimes and sins that man has been guilty of. All that came about because man lost his confidence in God. He didnt know God’s character. He didnt know what kind of God God was. He got all mixed up about what God was like. Now the only way back is to have restored confidence in God. And the only way to have restored confidence in God is to have restored knowledge of God.
I began with the text, “And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee” (Psalm 9:10) The word “name” means character, plus reputation. “And they that know what kind of God thou art will put their trust in thee.” We wonder why we dont have faith; the answer is, faith is confidence in the character of God and if we dont know what kind God God is, we cant have faith.
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