The Self-Sufficiency of God

Imagine what would happen if we eliminated the word “need” from our vocabulary:

• John needs to be at that doctor’s appt. at 10:30.

• I need a breath of fresh air

• Stella was unhappy with her church because it wasn’t meeting her needs.

• Frank needs to find a job when he graduates from college

• I need to go to the store to get groceries

• You need a haircut.

• Bill needs to get his car inspected

If you took the word “need” out of the English language, we’d have a hard time communicating! We have so many needs.

We have basic physical needs—air, water, food, protection from the elements.

We have intellectual needs—the need to think, the need to know.

We have emotional needs—the need to be happy, to feel a sense of well-being, the need to love and to be loved.

We have social needs—the need to relate; the need to belong.

We have spiritual needs—the need to worship; the need for God.

We are creatures of need. And because we are, it is very difficult for us to grasp that aspect of God’s nature that we are going to look at this week—His self-sufficiency.

We are in the midst of examining the attributes of God because we want to develop a heart for God; we want to develop a passion for God. And we can’t love him unless we get to know Him. So we’ve been looking at the various aspects of God that He has revealed to us about Himself in the Bible. We’ve studied his Eternity - how He exists outside of time and how he has an eternal perspective on our lives. We’ve looked at His Immutability - how God never changes—we can count on him always being the same. This week, we’re going to look at His Self-Sufficiency.

Take out your sermon study sheet. We’ve come here to think about God this morning, and this little sheet may help you to do that better. When we think about God, we’re doing the highest thing that human beings can ever do.

The Bible tells us that God is COMPLETE in Himself. He is entirely self-sufficient. He doesn’t need anyone or anything outside of himself. He is not dependent upon anyone or anything for his existence. Turn to Isaiah 40. The prophet Isaiah asks a series of rhetorical questions, beginning in v. 12…

Isaiah 40:12-14 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance?

Who has understood the mind of the Lord, or instructed him as his counselor? Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him, and who taught him the right way? Who was it that taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding?

And the answer, of course, is no one. Nobody instructed the Lord. Nobody taught Him anything. He didn’t need to go to school; he didn’t need to learn. His knowledge is not dependent upon anyone or anything outside of himself. He is self-sufficient.

Think of how different he is from us in that respect. Everything that you know—every piece of knowledge in your head, every skill, every ability—you got from someone else. Your parents taught you how to talk and how to walk. Your teachers taught you how to read. Your books and your education taught you how to think. Your culture taught you how to behave. Your friends taught you how to feel. Your church taught you how to believe.

Everything you are and everything you have, you got from somewhere else. Even your physical features are borrowed. You may have your mother’s eyes, or your grandfather’s chin. You are a composite of many others who have gone before you.

But God is not like that. He is self-existent. His life and his character do not depend upon anyone or anything else. He is totally independent; He is complete in himself.

When he showed himself to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus 3, God told Moses his name. He said my name is “I am who I am.” I am the one who is, and you can’t define me by anything other than myself because I’m completely self-sufficient, and self-existent. So if the Israelites want to know who sent you, Moses, just tell them “I am who I am” sent me. And that remains one of the most profound declarations of God’s self-sufficiency in the Bible.

In the Gospel of John, chapter 5, verse 26, Jesus said “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself.” The life of the godhead is not dependent upon any external source. That is why God is so often referred to in Scripture as “the Living God”. He is the source of life; the fount from which all other life flows.

So the Bible teaches us that God is complete in Himself. Secondly, the Bible teaches us that, because he is complete in Himself, God has no NEEDS. Let’s go to Acts 17.

In this chapter, we find Paul in the city of Athens—the home of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—the intellectual capital of the world. And yet for all of their learning, for all of their philosophical brilliance, the Athenians were ignorant concerning spiritual truth.

They worshiped a pantheon of gods and goddesses who were not much more than projections of themselves. The city of Athens was full of idols and temples devoted to these various deities. And they even had an altar dedicated “to an unknown god”. And Paul saw it and said “I want to tell you about this God you don’t know.” Let’s pick it up at verse 24…

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.

The gods that the Athenians were worshiping were nothing more than extensions of themselves. They had invented gods who were like our modern comic-book characters—Superman and Wonderwoman—creatures who supposedly possessed supernatural powers, but who had all the vices and weaknesses of human nature.

You only have to read Greek mythology to discover this. They needed to be loved. They needed to be worshiped. They needed to thought significant. They needed an audience. And if they didn’t get what they needed, they would throw a tantrum.

But Paul says “The true and living God is not like that. He is not a projection of ourselves. He is not a god that we have made in our image. He is unlike anything we could ever imagine. And he is utterly independent of us.” God has no needs!

So that means that He doesn’t need ME. He doesn’t need MY WORSHIP. He doesn’t need MY HELP. He doesn’t need my service or devotion. He is utterly beyond needing me. You and I are completely unnecessary to him, because he is self-sufficient.

Think of the sun shining in the sky. It gives us light and warmth, and we appreciate that; we benefit from that. There is a relationship of sorts between us and the sun. Now imagine if every person on earth were suddenly struck totally blind. Would the sun continue to shine? Of course it would. Because our being able to see and appreciate the sun is completely unnecessary to the shining of the sun.

It is the same way with God. He doesn’t need us. If all the people in the world suddenly became atheists, it wouldn’t affect God in the least. To believe in God doesn’t make him greater and to doubt God doesn’t make him smaller. He is completely independent of us.

I fear that we often forget this truth. For example, in the way that we present the Gospel, we sometimes portray Him as weak and needy. We imagine Him up in heaven—like an elderly parent sitting by the telephone—wringing his hands, hoping against hope that someday his children might call.

Or even worse, we paint a picture of a God who wants to buy our love; to win our favor, like an insecure mother who is always reminding her children of how much she has done for them; how much she has sacrificed for them, so that they’ll show her a little appreciation and make her feel good about herself.

A.W. Tozer has said “The Christian concept of God current today is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the most high God.”

The God of the Scripture is far beyond needing puny little us. We are not necessary to him. He is utterly independent of us. And until we get that fact straight, we will never come to know Him as He really is.

Now having said that, the Bible goes on to tell us that although God is independent of us, he is not aloof from us. He has chosen to love us. He has chosen to reach out to us. But his love is entirely voluntary. It is not a love which springs from need. He is not compelled to relate to us. He is not a heavenly co-dependent. The Bible talks about his love as “agape” love—utterly unselfish volitional love—disinterested in anything but the good of the one being loved.

Now we have seen that God doesn’t need US. And he doesn’t need our WORSHIP either, because “need” is a creature word. If you have needs, it implies that you are incomplete. There is something lacking in you.

But God is perfect in and of himself. He doesn’t need our worship. Our worship doesn’t supply Him with something that is lacking in His being.

Okay, but what about those passages in the Bible that say that God is a jealous God. Like Exodus 20—the Ten Commandments—where God says…

You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God…

Does this not seem to indicate that God does, in a sense, need our worship, and gets very angry when he doesn’t get it? Well, let’s think about that for a moment.

The word jealous has a rather negative connotation in our day and age. We think of someone who is consumed with jealousy as being a rather insecure, unstable, unhappy person.

But the word as it is used here in Scripture means “to have a strong desire for”—not in a negative sense, but in a positive sense.

You see, God does not want us to worship him with a divided heart. He wants our loyalty to be pure; he wants us to be wholeheartedly committed to him. Why does he want that? So that it will make him feel more secure or appreciated? No, He wants it because He knows that it will make us better people.

God is jealous for our benefit, not for his. He knows that if we are lukewarm in our commitment to him—if we are trying to straddle the fence, trying to worship gods who are not gods, while at the same time we are trying to worship Him—we will be miserable. He wants our love to be pure and undivided.

Here’s a fascinating story that illustrates that kind of love.

There once was a World War Two U.S. Army officer named John Blanchard. One day, before the war broke out, Blanchard picked up a book in his local library in Florida and was intrigued with what he found. The content of the book was not what intrigued him—it was the handwritten notes in the margin. The soft handwriting revealed a thoughtful soul and an insightful mind. In the front of the book, he found the previous owner’s name—a woman named Holly Maynell.

With time and effort, he located Holly’s address. He discovered that she lived in New York City. He wrote her a letter introducing himself and inviting her to write back. Meanwhile, the United States entered the war, and John was shipped overseas. During the next year and half, John and Holly grew to know each other through the mail. They wrote back and forth numerous times.

Each letter was like a seed falling on a fertile heart. A romance began to bloom. John asked Holly to send him a photograph, but Holly refused. She felt that if he was really interested in her, if he really cared about her, it wouldn’t matter what she looked like.

The day finally came for John to return from Europe, so they scheduled their first meeting—7:00 p.m. under the clock at Grand Central Station in New York City. Holly wrote “You’ll recognize me by the red rose that I’ll be wearing in my lapel.” So it was that on the appointed day, at 7:00 p.m., John Blanchard was in the busy station looking for a girl whose heart he loved but whose face he had never seen.

Presently, a very attractive young woman came toward him. Her figure was long and slim. Her blonde hair lay back in curls from her delicate ears. Her eyes were as blue as flowers. Her lips and chin had a delicate firmness, and in her pale green suit she looked like a vision of springtime come alive. She was radiant.

Almost in spite of himself, John started toward her, but then he saw that she was not wearing a rose in her lapel. As that beautiful young woman passed by, he pulled his eyes off her, and that is when he saw Holly Maynell.

She was walking alone across the concourse, from the same direction the young woman had come. She was much older than John. Her graying hair was tucked under a well-worn hat. She was quite plump and her thick ankled feet were squeezed into low-heeled shoes. And she was wearing a red rose in the lapel of her dingy overcoat.

John felt torn in two as he watched the girl in the green suit walk briskly away. He yearned to follow her, but he knew that his heart belonged to the woman whose spirit had become entwined with his.

The older woman stood there waiting by the clock. Her pale round face was gentle and kindly; her gray eyes had a warm twinkle in them. John took a deep breath and stepped toward her. This would not be love, he thought, but it would be something precious, something perhaps even better than love—a friendship for which he would always be grateful.

John swallowed his disappointment, squared his shoulders, and saluted the older woman. He said “I’m Capt. John Blanchard, and you must be Holly Maynell. I’m so glad you could meet me. May I take you to dinner?”

The older woman’s face broke into a smile. She said “I don’t know exactly what this is about, soldier. But that young lady in the green suit who just went by a moment ago—she gave me this red rose and asked me to wear it on my coat. And she said that if a soldier named John Blanchard were to ask me out to dinner, I was to tell you that she is waiting for you in the big restaurant across the street. She said it was some kind of a test.”

Holly wanted to know how much John really loved her. And God wants to know how much we really love him. Not because he needs our love, but because we need to love him with an undivided heart.

Jesus said that the Father seeks worshipers who will worship him in spirit and in truth. Wholeheartedly, without reservation.

God doesn’t need US; he doesn’t need our WORSHIP; and he doesn’t need our HELP.

Sometimes we forget this. Sometimes we think of God as looking on helplessly from heaven, hoping that someone will pitch in and lend him a hand. Hoping that Christians will rally together and advance his cause.

Yet the Bible says in Romans 11:35 “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?” An all-sufficient God doesn’t need our help to get his work done. He is quite capable of doing it alone. Jesus didn’t say to his disciples “You will build my church.” He said “I will build my church.”

Listen to the warning words of A.W. Tozer again. He writes “Too many missionary appeals are based upon this fancied frustration of Almighty God. An effective speaker can easily excite pity in his hearers, not only for the heathen, but for the God who has tried so hard and so long to save them and has failed for lack of support.

“I fear that thousands of young people enter Christian service from no higher motive than to help deliver God from the embarrassing situation His love has gotten Him into and his limited abilities seem unable to get him out of. This, I fear, is what is behind much Christian activity today.”

When God invites us to be involved in the work of His kingdom, it is not because he needs our help. When God asks us to give to His work, it is not because he needs our resources. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. His resources are endless. He needs nothing from us.

He simply desires to bless us by allowing us to be involved with him in eternity’s work. He is like a master craftsman who invites his infant child to come into his workshop and help with a project. It is for the child’s good; it is for the child’s learning; it is for the sheer companionship that the child can enjoy in the company of his father.

And that brings us to our final point. The Bible teaches us that, far from God needing us, we need God. God Himself is our GREATEST NEED. Look at Psalm 42:1ff.

Psalm 42:1-2 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?

Does your heart have that kind of need? If it doesn’t, it is because you have anesthetized that need.

Several years ago, a psychologist named Abraham Maslow came up with the idea that every human being operates according to a hierarchy—a list—of human needs. As the lower needs are met—the need for sleep, the need for food, the need for shelter, etc.—an individual can then give himself to pursuing the higher needs: the need for relationship; the need for significance; the need for self-actualization.

That is all well and good, except for the fact that Maslow left out our most basic need: our need for God. And what we have done is persuaded ourselves that we can substitute the fulfilment of these other needs for our need for God. If we can somehow get these other needs met, then we will be complete. We will have no need for God.

But God tells that we can never reach maturity and true satisfaction in life without Him being at the very center of our life. Because He is our greatest need.

There is an interesting paradox about spiritual maturity. When a baby is born, that child is utterly dependent. A newborn could not survive long without care. But as the baby grows, a process of independence takes place.

First she learns to walk; then she learns to talk. Then, as the years go by, she learns how to take care of herself, to make decisions, to accept responsibility. As she grows through adolescence to adulthood, she becomes more and more independent and self-sufficient. And this is the normal process of physical and intellectual maturity.

The process of spiritual maturity is just the opposite. When you receive Christ, and you first begin to get to know God, your relationship with God may seem to occupy just a small part of your life. But as time goes on, and you begin to grow spiritually, you begin to realize just how all-important that relationship is, and how utterly dependent upon God you actually are for every aspect of your life.

Decisions which you once would have made by yourself without a second thought, you now submit to God’s authority. Circumstances which you once would have written off to coincidence or sheer fate, you now see God’s hand in.

The process of spiritual maturity is the opposite of the process of physical maturity. In physical maturity, you go from dependence to independence. In spiritual maturity, you go from independence to dependence.

1. God is complete in himself

2. God has no needs - He doesn’t need us; He doesn’t need our worship; He doesn’t need our help.

3. God Himself is our greatest need