Attributes of God
“For my people are foolish,
They have not known Me,
They are silly children,
And they have no understanding,
They are wise to do evil,
But to do good
they have no Knowledge.”
Jeremiah 4:22
The prophet, Jeremiah, brought a message from God to the people of Jerusalem. He told the Jewish people that God was unhappy with them. He brought the message that God says, “They have not known me,” So, it appears that God wants us to get to know Him. We can start that journey by checking out what His attributes are.
When we speak of God's attributes, we are talking about those characteristics that help us to understand who He truly is. That which follows is a thorough, yet incomplete list and summary of His attributes.*
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Exodus 34:6-7 — The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation.*
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Psalm 25:8 — Good and upright is the Lord.*
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James 1:17 — Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.*
God wanted the people in Jeremiah’s time to know Him, to embrace who He is, and to have faith in who He is; and He asks the same from us. To be people who know God, we must be people who meet Him in the Bible. If we just spend 10 minutes a day getting to know our God, in a year, we would have spent 3,650 minutes with God. That adds up to a little over 60 hours a year! How much can we get to know our God in 60 hours? In 120 hours?