Audio: A Positive Purposeful God by T. Austin Sparks

The first words in the Bible, the book of Genesis, chapter 1. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was waste and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, Let there be light. And there was light. Place alongside of that four prophecies which you will see presently, a few words from the prophecies of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah's prophecy is chapter 4, I beheld the earth, and lo, it was waste and void, and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved to an end. I beheld, and lo, there was no man.

All the boughs of the heavens were fled. I beheld, and lo, the fruitful field was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and before his fears. For thus saith the Lord, The whole land shall be a desolation, yet will I not make a full end.

In the beginning, God, and everyone will say, That's right, that is the place that he ought to occupy. So with these words so familiar to us, the whole Bible is introduced. And from this note, this keynote, the whole Bible runs and becomes a harmony.

God. Here, God, the subject of the whole Bible, is introduced. In the beginning, God.

And when God is in his place, which is first and primary, there is always a new beginning. This is a point of departure, and a point which marks a new prospect. It is always like that when the Lord has his place.

Now for these few minutes, I want to dwell upon the kind of God that is introduced with these words. These early verses of the Bible contain in principle the great truths as to what God is like. The kind of God that he is.

We open this book and are at once confronted with a state that is wholly negative. Wholly negative. Everything about that condition is negative.

There was not this, and there was not that. That is the mark. And God, introduced over against a negative condition, is immediately shown to be a God who is positive.

God who is not negative. And a God who cannot bear anything that is negative. He just cannot endure a negative condition.

He is like that. He is the great yay God. The almighty yes.

And whenever God comes to his place, the change will be from a negative to a positive. Things will at once begin to assume some positive character, some meaningfulness. With God, all that is negative will just begin to go out.

And we shall find that whatever his activities may be, and his activities are many indeed, and sometimes they seem to be walking in a negative way, the fact and the truth is that whatever he is doing, he is doing it with a positive object and a positive mind. His end is not going to be a negative. I will not make a full end, we read in Jeremiah.

However it may appear things are being brought to an end, I will not make a full end. It is all unto a positive purpose. The very first thing about this God who is the subject of this whole mighty book is that he is a positive God who is set against any negative condition.

Take that as a great truth in your relationship to the Lord, in your apprehension of the Lord. These are the foundations of everything. The next thing is, and God created.

Put that in another way, God got to work. God is a God of purpose and not passive, inactive. He is a God actuated by positive purpose.

We know from the rest of the story how true that is, but here again, how much there is in the Bible that just comes back to this truth, God is not an inactive God, a standoff God, somewhere amidst the shadows, just a spectator. He is right on the scene. He is right in things, working in all things.

Working in all things, as Paul says. Working in all things. He is not a purposeless God, and he cannot endure a state of things that has no purpose.

Look upon this, without form and empty. Well, God is not going to tolerate that. He is introduced to us as one who will not bear any state that is without a purpose, and will do all in his power to turn things to positive purpose.

He is the God of purpose. He is not a passive God. Then, without form.

Without form. And he comes in as set against anything that is formless, or disorderly, or without order. He is a God of order.

It's a beautiful story of an order being evolved, introduced, where there was no order. Disorder is always weakness, isn't it? Disorder is always loss. A disorderly person is wasting a lot of energy, and a lot of time, and throwing away a very great deal of vital value.

Disorderliness in our person, disorderliness in our home, or in any sphere, disorderliness in the church, it means weakness, it means loss. God is a God of order. So, when it says it was without form, God is introduced as one who is not going to put up with that.

He's not going to allow that to continue. His activity is to bring about an order that is not order for its own sake, not because he's fastidious, finicky, that kind of a God, but because, as we all know, economy is always bound up with being systematic, being orderly. And that's the kind of God he is, who does not want there to be all that loss that is associated with a lack of heavenly order.

God is not a God like that. If there is one thing that the Bible says about the Lord all the way through his, it is that he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God of order, and he is a God who believes in fullness. His thoughts are full thoughts.

His ends are fully. He believes in fullness. The great end which we have already been looking this morning is that when the earth shall be filled, shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord.

Working toward that, now the Lord cannot bear to have a condition that is not full. He just cannot. He does not like people to be empty.

He does not like us to be just partially full. He wants us to know his fullness, of his fullness to receive, grace upon grace. Now, God cannot bear vacuums.

A vacuum is always a dangerous thing. Always a dangerous thing. He acts against that.

Next, God said, let there be light. God cannot bear a state of darkness. He is the God of light, the God of illumination, and his desire is that there shall be light everywhere, fullness of light.