In this week’s teaching, Dr Don G Pickney unfolds the “7-fold Nature of God.” Most believers have never pondered or comprehended this divine truth – that Almighty God is same all the time, yet every expression he renders contains the same seven characteristics. Think of it! No matter whether he is reaching out in love and mercy, or enacting judgment, it was “Love” doing it – because God IS love! So in Sodom and Gomorrah as the fire fell from heaven and consumed the city, IT WAS LOVE DOING IT – because God IS love! When His power is displayed, it IS Love acting in His almighty ways. The same is true with “wisdom, righteousness, mercy, justice and judgment.” Love is displaying all of these characteristics. EVERY ACT OF GOD displays all seven-folds of His nature – IN EVERY INSTANCE. God is not sometimes a God of love, and another time a God of Justice and Judgment. If He is in action, all of His 7-fold Nature is on display.
Someone says, God is “good” all the time, as if that was supposed to be some kind of revelation. Of course He is “good,” because He is God, and God’s ways are perfect! But that is not some kind of disclaimer that God never brings judgment or enacts justice as “the Judge of all the Earth.” (Genesis 18:25)
Pastor Don often says this revelation unveils to the believer “How to Get God to Fight Your Enemies for You!” – a teaching that he has done over many decades. In the case of David and Goliath we see the Seven-fold nature of God. We also see that no matter what God is up to, IT IS GOOD – ALL THE TIME! Pastor Don tells this story, asking his congregants to couple their two hands together and make a kind of telescope to focus in and out. First, he says, “Let’s focus in more tightly to see our story unfold. Everyone centers their focus on a particular home in the countryside:
“Once there was a man who left home early one morning for work. Before he left, he kissed his wife and gathered around him his little children. They hugged him told goodbye as he walked out the door. Later that evening, there was a knock at the door. Two men were sent to the home to tell his wife that her husband, and the father of their children was dead. He was killed earlier that day. The wife and mother exclaimed, as she cried with great tears of sorrow, ‘How did it happen?’ The two men said to her, ‘Almighty God killed him! It is unfortunate that it resulted in your becoming a widow and your children fatherless.’ The two men left with the wife and mother grieving the loss of their loved one.”
Now, Pastor Don asks the question, “Is what we just saw good or evil?” Most of the time people respond, that is something “evil.” So, the congregants respond, “That couldn’t be God because God is good all the time!”
Then the Pastor asks everyone to take their telescope again using their hands, but this time widen and broaden the focus of their hands to see a bigger picture than what was just related. As they increase the scope of the story we find the following. It is told in 1Samuel, Chapter 17:
1Samuel 17:4-10 “And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span. (5) And he had an helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of brass. (6) And he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders. (7) And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam; and his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron: and one bearing a shield went before him. (8) And he stood and cried unto the armies of Israel, and said unto them, Why are ye come out to set your battle in array? am not I a Philistine, and ye servants to Saul? choose you a man for you, and let him come down to me. (9) If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me, then will we be your servants: but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall ye be our servants, and serve us. (10) And the Philistine said, I defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a man, that we may fight together.”
Yep! You’re right! The man who left home that morning was Goliath of Gath. His work was as a soldier for the Philistine Army. And here is why the messengers said God killed him:
1Samuel 17:45-47 MKJV “And David said to the Philistine, You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin. But I come to you in the name of Jehovah of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. (46) Jehovah will deliver you into my hand today, and I will strike you and take your head from you and give the bodies of the army of the Philistines to the birds of the air today, and to the wild beasts of the earth, so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. (47) And all this multitude shall know that Jehovah does not save with sword and spear; for the battle is Jehovah's, and He will give you into our hands.”
