Therapeutic Theology: Part 2

What Should We Do: Teach Sound Doctrine.

The Doctrine of God

[The biblical writers begin with God. So must we. Popular literature and teaching today begins with man and then proceeds to make God in our image according to our preference.]

"Again, it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God's face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself." - John Calvin, Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion

[Apart from an accurate understanding of God's nature and character, idolatry and error are inevitable.]

In his book, A Call To Spiritual Reformation, D.A. Carson begins by asking the following question, " What is the most urgent need in the church of the Western world today?"

"People are starving for the greatness of God. But most of them would not give this diagnosis of their troubled lives. The majesty of God is an unknown cure. There are far more popular prescriptions on the market, but the benefit of any other remedy is brief and shallow... It does not matter if surveys turn up a list of perceived needs that does not include the supreme greatness of the sovereign God of grace. That is the deepest need. Our people are starving for God." - John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching

Jer. 2:13 says, "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken Me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water."
Jer. 6:16 says, "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls."

"The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men. This she has done not deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic. The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking." - A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life

[The greatest needs that exist today are for an accurate knowledge of God and for an experiential encounter with His greatness and goodness.]

"What comes to our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us." - A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God, Their Meaning in theChristian Life