LIVING GOD

The Bible’s first reference to the living God is in Deuteronomy 5. 26, and there He is said to have spoken. He stands in contrast to the lifeless gods of the heathen who ‘have mouths, but they speak not’, Ps. 115. 5. They are vanities. He is ‘the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea’, Acts 14. 15. So the living God is the God of creation. He is also the God of salvation, for the living God is a Saviour, 1 Tim. 4.10. We found Him to be such when we ‘turned ... to serve the living and true God’, 1 Thess. 1. 9, and that conversion experience made us ‘the children of the living God’, Rom. 9. 26. How blessed to have links with the living God! He gives us’richly all things to enjoy’, 1 Tim. 6.17. By contrast, the unbeliever will quail when faced with this majestic being, for ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God’, Heb. 10. 31.

Goliath’s physique and military prowess emboldened him to defy ‘the armies of Israel’, 1 Sam. 17.10. He failed to understand that in reality he was defying ‘the armies of the living God’, v. 26. Such blatant defiance could not go unchecked. Already the living God had delivered His young servant from the aggression of the lion and the bear, vv. 36-37. The Philistine would share their fate. He cursed David ‘by his gods’, v. 43, but his pagan trust in lifeless idols was futile: David’s God was the living God who guided the stone to its target, and the threats and bluster died on his lips. Sennacherib was another who had the nerve to ‘reproach the living God’, 2 Kgs. 19. 4,16. His spokesman scoffed, ‘Have the gods of the nations delivered them?’ v. 12. Of course they hadn’t, but now he was pitting himself against the living God. By the end of the chapter, he too lay cold in death. The living God is strong to defend His honour, and quick to shield His people from those with intentions to harm them. The living God delivered Daniel, Dan. 6. 20, 26, and, in a future day, 144,000 endangered Israelites will be preserved, sealed with the ‘seal of the living God’, Rev. 7. 2.

Let us be encouraged then, that our trust is in the living God, and, like the sons of Korah, ‘thirst’ and ‘cry out’ for this living God, Ps. 42. 2, Ps. 84. 2.