The God of All Abundance, April 15, 2024.

Introduction.

God did not create man because he was lonely.

The creator of all things was not trying to fill up any sort of lack in himself.

He is fullness itself and is never in need of anything. Everything he did was

pure overflow. Abundance is not something God has, but is rather something that God is. And one of the

great privileges that we as creatures have is the privilege of learning how to imitate him in this.

How might we learn to overflow? The beginning of that wisdom is the realization of what God is like.

We are imitative and reflective creatures, and we will become like what we worship.

2 Corinthians 318, 1 John 3.2. As we grow in our realization of what he is, which is what happens

in the natural course of our worship of him, we are transformed

increasingly into his likeness. But there is a possible problem. He is in fact the God of all

abundance, but if Christians are working from a false doctrine that assumes he is the God of all

scarcity, it is not surprising that the results we get are as dismal as they are. But this does

require careful treatment. That careful treatment.

This good world is also a fallen place, and this means that we do have to deal with the fact of

real scarcity. Scarcity is a grim reality. We do have to cope with a scarcity of wisdom,

the scarcity of joy, a scarcity of our old prelapsary inability to see and understand the fullness and

goodness of Almighty God. Our fall into sin did not change or alter his character at all, but our

whole rebellion at the fall was predicated on the lie that God was being stingy with us.

And we have been believing that lie ever since. If someone lets go over the wheel, we drift in

extrably toward the ditch of that lie. We need to have our front end aligned. Quote,

...