Do people today think of God as an easygoing grandfather they can manipulate?
Yes, many people today hold the idea that God is an easygoing grandfather type whom they can manipulate, tweak His nose, and get whatever they want. That is not the God of the Bible; the biblical God is sovereign, absolute, holy, righteous, loving, kind, merciful, patient, and free to keep secrets.
Les explains that too many people today have the idea that God is just some big, easygoing grandfather type whom they can sort of manipulate, tweak His nose, and get whatever they want. He emphasizes that this is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is sovereign, absolute, holy, and righteous, and 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 and to reveal them when He is good and ready, and not until. The context connects this to Deuteronomy, where Moses wrote that the secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever so that we may do all the words of the law. Les also notes that the God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New, even though there is a different set of responsibilities. God has not changed: what He hated then He still hates today, and what He forbade Israel in the Levitical system He still does not condone today. Thus, He is the same God and the same secret holder we deal with today.