What is God like according to the Bible?
According to the Bible, God is sovereign, absolute, holy, and righteous, yet also loving, kind, merciful, and patient. He can do whatever He wants and is not an easygoing grandfather to be manipulated. He is unchanging, the same in both Testaments, and keeps secrets until He chooses to reveal them.
Les explains that many people today imagine God as a big, easygoing grandfather type they can manipulate and tweak His nose to get whatever they want, but that is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is sovereign, absolute, holy, and righteous; yet He is also loving, kind, merciful, and patient. In His sovereignty, He has every right to keep things secret as long as He wants, revealing them only when He is good and ready. Deuteronomy 29:29 says the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever, so that we may do all the words of this law. Moses wrote this, but the God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New; God has not changed. The things He hated then He still hates today, and the things He forbade Israel in the Levitical system He still does not condone today. He is the same God and the same secret holder we deal with today.