What is God Like? – How can we know for Sure? – Part 1

 “I Will Dwell In Thick Darkness” (1 Kings 8:12)

 By Richard Allen – July 08, 2024

What is God like? That is an amazing question, not only in its simplicity – but even more so – because from the beginning of recorded human history, men have always struggled to answer it!  For those of us living in the Christian Era, God has answered this question thoroughly by revealing Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:2). But this wasn’t always the case. The Old Testament reveals the long and tenuous struggle for men to answer this question – mostly with wrong answers! But running parallel to this struggle to know “what and who God is,” was God’s amazing patience in answering this question, progressively revealing who He is to fallen men! So no one mistakes what I’m saying, “I am not giving an excuse for Idolatry,” or “making the case that Idolatry is or was inevitable” in the absence of “knowing who God is, or what He’s like.” What I am saying is: “Nature abhors a Vacuum!” When there is no actual knowledge of something, Fallen Man Will Make It Up! This alone explains much of the Idolatry of the pagans surrounding Israel in Old Testament times. In the darkened minds and souls of Fallen Man, the knowledge of God was quickly forgotten after the Fall (Romans 1:21-23). Into this “vacuum of ignorance,” idolatry flourished. For all mankind – including the Semitic peoples – the Depravity Man inherited from Adam – passed on a permanent ignorance of God!

After recording the “Creation Story” in Genesis Chapters 1 - 3, we see Adam and Eve begin procreating, bringing forth children to subdue the fallen earth, ground cursed by Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God.  Immediately, we see their two sons: “Cain and Abel” competing for acceptance with God through their worship.  Abel, “by Faith” (Hebrews 11:4), brought God accept Abel worship, and was accepted by God.  Whereas Cain brought “the Works of his hands” and was rejected. So, Cain murdered his brother Abel. The very first murder was in a dispute over “What God was like, and what He required of men in worship.”  Apparently, Cain had a much different idea of “who God was,” and “what sacrifice He would be pleased with.”  Genesis quickly moves through the “descendants of Adam” leading to Noah – but “the picture doesn’t get any better!” So, in just a few hundred years mankind became fruitful, multiplying and filling the earth – but they filled the earth with other fallen men and women who were ignorant of any knowledge of God – or what He was like. By the days of Noah, these Idolaters had filled the earth to the point where “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Genesis 6:5-6).

According to the passage above, corrupt worship and ignorance of the true God by Fallen Men and Women, led to “wickedness and acting on every evil intention of the heart.” Noah, like Enoch before him, walked with God. Yet we don’t hear much about God revealing Himself to either righteous man:  And as we look at the Book of Job – which some believe to be “prediluvian,” that is, written before the Great Flood – it appears to have much insight into “Who God is,” and “What is God like?” But we are not informed of the details of God’s revelation to Job. We move all the way until the “calling of Abram” – later named Abraham – before we see God reaching out to make Himself known. This reveals God’s patience in communicating a progressive revelation of Himself, as mentioned at the start of this Blog.

Several things amaze me at the story of God making Himself known after the Fall.

The First thing is the almost immediate and complete ignorance that enveloped all of Adam’s descendants – and not only the descendants of Cain, who was evil, but also the descendants of Seth. All of Adam’s posterity – except through Noah, a descendant of Adam through Seth – were drowned in the Great Flood. Think for a minute. Does that mean other than Noah, there was no knowledge of God in Adam’s posterity?  Had not Adam communicated anything of God’s creation and care for him in the garden? Were there no stories passed down of God’s hand in creation?  Of how Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the evening? Of their temptation, sin and being cast out of the garden? Instead of laughing at Noah as he built the ark for 120 years, was there no one who heeded the warning of God through Noah? We don’t know definitively, but there doesn’t seem to have been much redeeming information about God that was known by Adam’s lineage. Again, by Genesis Chapter 6 we see:

“The wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5).

The Second thing we see is “God’s effort to make Himself known” to the descendants of Adam – not to all – but to a chosen few. As mentioned above, it appears Enoch and Noah were the only two righteous men with whom God had a relationship prior to the Flood. It’s clear that God always left Himself a few witnesses, yet throughout the Old Testament we see that mankind’s general ignorance of God, His person and His character, are epidemic. Yet in the middle of this ignorance, God reveals Himself to “one here,” and later “to another.”  This Sovereign selection and choosing by God reaches a crescendo when he chooses a “Syrian ready to perish” (Deuteronomy 26:5), a man whose father had probably been an Idol Maker to King Nimrod, of Tower of Babel fame, a man named Abram.

This brings me to another observation on the fallen prosperity of Adam – and even more so – from Noah’s children who lived after the flood, Third: “Mankind had become prolific and unabashed Idolaters!” This is strange indeed, if you believe like I do, that some knowledge of God’s anger at man and His destruction during the Flood was present in all of mankind. I believe that men were fearful that God could at any time destroy those with whom He was displeased. That alone is a great motivator to placate and appease the Deity whose “Eternal Power and Godhead” can be seen clearly (Romans 1:20).  As some commentators have thought, the very height of the Tower of Babel may have been a way for wicked men to say to God: “You won’t drown us again, this time we are prepared!” This Third point needs some clarification. There is a difference between the First and the Second Commandment. The First Commandment was: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). This was a commandment not to worship another god. But the Second Commandment is the commandment forbidding Idolatry:

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments” Exodus 20:4-6).

The Second Commandment is a different commandment – even though it can be violated in conjunction with the First Commandment, – it can also be violated by worshipping (or attempting) to worship the one true God in methods that He has not prescribed or condoned!  We see this clearly in the episode of Moses’ brother Aaron and the Children of Israel building a Golden Calf:

“When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, ‘Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ So, Aaron said to them, ‘Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.’ So, all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.” And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play” (Exodus 32:1-6).

What does all of this mean? This sin replicates the original sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in that we all are still “eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gensis 3:4-5). Here’s Aaron – who should have known better than to fashion a “golden calf” to worship. But what he does is not meant to worship “another god,” though that’s what he ends up doing. No, the people specifically say in Exodus 32:4 -  “These are your gods,” using the plural word for God (Elohim), possibly indicating some understanding of the “trinitarian nature of God.”  But even worse, Aaron declares: “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord,” using the word Jehovah – indicating the God of Israel who had made Himself known to Aaron and his brother Moses. With Moses still absent – they were missing the revelation of “who God is, or what He is like.” Aaron filled in the gap with a “concrete, physical example,” a golden calf the Israelites could see, handle and carry before them.

This is how the majority of mankind has worshipped since Adam, until this very day. We are Idolaters at heart. No doubt, we worship another god, one of our own imaginations. That was happening to all the Canaanite Tribes which surrounded Israel. The descendants of Ishmael – Abraham’s son by the flesh, and the descendants of Esau – Jacob’s twin who also descended from Abraham, all worshipped gods whom they thought to be the one true God. Yes, they had different names and images – but all had one thing in common: They were deities made with human hands, in other words, gods controlled by man – that is, worshipping ourselves as God.  That was the lie that our first parents believed when they disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit – “You Shall Be As God!”  When we fashion Idols made with human hands, it’s just another way of showing: “We are gods, knowing both good and evil” (Genesis 3:4-5). Next, we’ll look at the lesson that God taught us through the worship of Cain and Abel, and other lessons to be learned from Adam and Eve – and all their descendants through the Fall. God purposed to reverse the curse brought on by "Satan’s temptation that had encouraged man to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”  He then promised Eve that she would bring forth another “man, who would crush Satan’s head” (Genesis 3:15), and in due time, would provide “true knowledge of Himself,” by the God Man, Jesus Christ!

Soli Deo Gloria!