Book of Romans - Unity in the Church | Contemplating God's Greatness, Pt. 2 (09/19/2021)

We may actually, let's see what time we have, yeah, we may actually finish Chapter 12 today, we'll see.

But we probably won't, but we'll get really close to finishing Chapter 12. In my opinion, one of the great themes of this chapter is church unity.

And I think it's a little easier in a little country church this size to have unity than maybe in larger churches, but this chapter tells us the components that have to be there in the life of the members of the individual members of a local church in order to have unity.

So I think this is really important information. And really, if you think about it, a lot of this could be applied to the church at large too, because you take all the different groups of Christians today around the country and around the world, there's so many different denominations, we can pick on each other because of that.

But, you know, if we choose to, I always tend, you know, sometimes

I tend to do that. Usually I'm kind of making fun of somebody. And I grew up Southern Baptist, so I make fun of what

I was. And I make fun of what I am. And so I sometimes make fun of Church of Christ or Methodist or call them, you know,

Pento -Baptist or whatever. But I do it with a smile. And the thing is, if my heart gets wrong on that issue,

I try to remember that passage where Jesus' disciples came to Him and said, you know, that guy over there is preaching in your name and he's not of us.

And Jesus said, look, if he's not against us, he's for us. Let him preach. Right? So that's a good thing.

But I mean, so this could be applied to unity of the true church on the earth, which is all different denominations, but it's the born -again people within those denominations that are the real church, correct?

So, but we should have unity as well. It doesn't mean we have to agree with everything, you know, doctrinally.

If we see things that seem to be contradictory to Scripture, we don't have to agree with that, but we can still love the person.

And if you get the opportunity, we can always instruct in meekness, correct? So all right, so let's review the hair.

We were on Job 42, 1 and 6, which were, you know, we're discussing this aspect in Romans 12, that the first step to unity was to be a people of prayer.

And the second step was to walk in God's will. And then we started talking about the third step, which

I'll pop on up here. It's contemplating God's awesome nature and being, who

God is, and really contemplating that, thinking about it, being informed by Scripture and thinking about it.

So we went into Job to talk about the awesome nature of God. And if you remember, Job was kind of complaining about his circumstances and God appeared to him.

Now, Hebrews chapter 1, 1 through 3 says God used to do that in former times, but he no longer does it today.

In the church age, he does not appear to us. He does not speak in voices because he said he wouldn't.

And the Holy Spirit can't lie. The Holy Spirit wrote Hebrews 1, 1 through 3, said he won't do that now. What he does now, he speaks to us by his son.

And that is the written word, which was canonized certainly by 300 AD. It was already done by then.

And at that point, the apostle Paul said several of the gifts that the early church had to have because they didn't have the whole

Bible, that certain of those gifts would cease. And they did cease. And Christ Ostrom wrote, I don't know, around even before 300

AD, a commentary on 1st and 2nd Corinthians. And when he was talking about the tongues part, he said,

I don't know what this is because it no longer exists in the church today. That was prior to 300 AD.

So predominantly, those things ceased in the church. However, Paul said there are different spirits, different Jesuses, and different gospels.

So certainly, we all have to be careful to try the spirits because one thing demons will do is they will try to mimic the

Holy Spirit and get churches to get off on a wrong tangent. And it happens all the time.

So we all have to be careful about that. But he started complaining about some circumstances in his life.

And his circumstances were bad because Satan had really taken it to Job. And yet,

God appeared to him as he did in the Old Testament times, or actually even certainly prior to the death, burial, and resurrection, the ascension of Jesus Christ.

And he talked to him and he said, Job, were you there when I created everything from nothing?

And Job fell on his face, didn't he? Remember that? He just fell on his face because he saw

God and he saw that made him see himself for who he was. That's the response everyone that I remember in Scripture that ever saw

God did as they fell on their face. Well, what's funny about it, look what happens. Then Job answered the

Lord and said, now this, if you remember right at the end of last time, God told

Job, get up, stand up and be a man and answer me. You remember that from last Sunday?

Okay. So that's where we're picking this up. So Job stands up out of the dirt and he looks at God face to face and Job answered the

Lord. Now, there's going to be information in this passage that's going to do a couple of things.

It's going to first talk about the deity of Jesus Christ, the fact that he is fully God. And it's going to also prove that the appearances of God, when

God did appear to man on the earth in time and space, it was actually the son of God who appeared to him, not the father.

A lot of people just think when they say God, they think that's the father. Well, God is also the son. He can appear as the son or he won't appear as the

Holy Spirit, but he can make you feel himself. I remember Dr. Freeman used to say Jesus was God seen and the

Holy Spirit is God felt, right? But they're God, right? So because God subsists as three distinct persons.

Now, when you read this, you think it's the father, but it's not. And when it's all caps, see that up there,

L -O -R -D in verse one, all caps, that always means in the Hebrew, it's

Jehovah. And the Jew would not even pronounce that word. It was so holy. So we don't really know how to pronounce it.

We don't know how it's properly pronounced. But in English, we say Jehovah, and we probably shouldn't even say the word, really.

And frankly, I have a bit of a problem when people are praying and speaking and writing songs where they call

God, God all the time. Oh, God, do this. God, do that. I just think it's almost, you know, if you're talking about the father, let's just call him

Lord. Let's call him Lord. Let's don't use that name because it's too holy for us.

And I promise you, the Jewish people never say that word that's in Hebrew that is translated into all caps

LORD there. So, I mean, I'm not telling you you have to do that.

That's just a personal thing with me. You can say God if you want to. I mean, it's not even going to grate on me that much.

It's just I prefer to say Lord. Because I know this information. Once you know stuff, you're accountable for it, right?

So now I just messed you up, didn't I? Sorry about that. Well, let's see who this

Lord is. Is this the father or is this Jesus who is God seen, who is

God in time? My opinion is if the father came into time, the elements would flee.

Guess what? There's a scripture that says that. And so time would cease, elements would flee.

So the father is not with us here. He's with us, but he's with us in his son and by the

Holy Spirit. Jesus is God with us, the scripture says. So then

Job answered the Lord and said, I know. Now remember, God just told him to stand up like a man because he fell on his face, right?

And this is after Job's already recognized the awesome nature of God because he has seen him appear to him and speak to him and he fell on his face.

So he's really thinking about the awesome nature and person of God right now.

Job is. And look what he does. Job answered the Lord and said, and the only reason he answered him is because God commanded him to.

He didn't want to talk. You think he wanted to talk? He didn't want to say anything. He didn't want to look at God.

And this is not the father. If he looked at the father, he'd die in a second. In a nanosecond, he'd be dead. That's another way

I know this is Jesus. But Job answered the Lord because he commanded him to.

And he said, I know that you can do everything and that no thought can be withheld from you.

I did counsel without knowledge. Now think about that.

You know, a person, would a person try to give counsel to you or me if they had no more knowledge than we had?

Don't you go to someone that's more knowledgeable to get counsel, right? And he's referring to the

Lord is that, Lord, I know you're giving me counsel now, and it's not without knowledge. I'm the one that's lacking the knowledge.

That's what he's talking about there. Therefore, have I uttered what I understood not. So he said,

I was giving counsel to God because Job, in essence, was saying,

God, why did you do this to me? Or he was at least doing this. His three friends were saying,

Job, the reason God did this to you is because you're a sinner. And Job knew he had not done the sins that those three gentlemen mentioned.

He knew he hadn't done those sins. So he's wondering, well, why did God do this? I didn't do that sin.

So why did he do it? And he's kind of complaining in his heart. He's acknowledging God saw his heart, right?

Right here. Because Job didn't say a lot of anything bad about God, did he? His wife wanted him to, but he wouldn't.

But God saw his heart. And so he knows that. So he falls on his face. And so now he says,

I said things that I didn't understand. And he's apologizing for that, I think. He's saying,

OK, Father, I complain. But I don't have all the knowledge. I don't have all the facts. And I shouldn't have said anything.

Shouldn't even have thought it in my heart. So he's apologizing to the Lord here. Therefore, have

I uttered what I didn't understand? Things that were too wonderful, too amazing, too big for me to understand.

Things that I didn't know anything about. And I'm sorry for that, Lord. Do you think we ever need to say that to the

Lord? Anytime we have an initial thought that questions God, we should say that to him.

We say, wait a minute. But I don't have all the information, Lord. And you do. And you're good. And you're wise.

And you love me. And forgive me for that thought. Right? So there's a great, great practical thing we all have to know.

And then he says, here I beseech thee and I will speak. This is Job talking, not God. This is

Job. I will demand of thee and declare thou unto me. So Job's saying, OK, I'm going to pray.

What do we do when we pray? Well, we ask God for things, right? That's what he means.

Demand, I think, is a little bit strong of a word. We don't demand things from God, but we ask.

And I will demand of thee and declare thou unto me. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear,

Job says. Job says, I've been taught. Now, we know the scripture back in those days was not in written form.

It was tradition passed down from family to family, all the way from Adam, all the way down to this day, because Job is one of the most ancient books in the

Bible. So he has heard about God from many good teachers. And all the philosophers of the day who knew

God would talk about what they knew and teach each other what each of them knew. And we do that today, don't we? Because we've all been places in scripture the other person hasn't been, seen things they haven't seen.

I mean, people come up to me here almost every Sunday after I preach a message, and they'll teach me some other stuff about the passage

I was in that I had not seen. So then it goes in. If I ever preach this again, it goes in there next time, right?

But I mean, that's so he says, I've heard of you by the hearing of the ear.

But now my eye has seen you. Now watch this. So now he doesn't just know about God.

He has now seen God and knows God as a person. You see what

I'm saying? The difference? It's one thing to hear about. Sometimes we might call that religion, right?

You hear about God and you learn all about God. It doesn't mean you have met him. And when

I say you, I mean, collectively the world. Most of you, I know you're born again and you've met the Lord.

But just because people are in church or studying the Bible, there's a lot of seminary professors flat lost as a goose.

There was one I had at Baylor named Dr. Christian, and he wasn't one. He didn't believe a thing about the

Bible. He just studied it from a scholarly viewpoint. So he had heard about God, right?

But he wasn't like Job here. He'd never met God. And Job says, well, now I've seen you with the eye.

Now look what happened. Look at the result of that. So think about this. When you spend time contemplating the grandness of God, the awesomeness of God, the almighty nature of God, here's what will happen.

Wherefore, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. It makes us see the sin, the inadequacy, the lack of knowledge, the thinking we know everything, thinking we're

God. It's human nature to think we're the God of our own life. And when you see

God for real and you recognize his awesome nature, that just goes away.

Because you see yourself as you are. You not only see God, but you see yourself as you are.

And I see myself as I am. And we then hate our old man, the fleshly part, right?

Our old man, we abhor that and we fall on our face in dust and ashes.

We repent, we get right with the Lord, and it changes our activity. Sin habits will go away.

Things will change. Even whole cities. If you study the great revivals of history, Charlotte and I are reading about one on the way here in the 1700s, right after John Owen passed away in the late 1600s, crying because he hadn't seen revival and the false prophets were getting all the attention in his day and the true church was just dwindling.

And he died sorrowful because of that. Less than 100 years later was the first great awakening of the whole like Europe and America.

People like John Wesley and I started to say Finney. I don't remember when

Finney was, but Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards over here in the United States rose up and God used them in a mighty way with true doctrine,

Bible doctrine, not like the Quakers, which was just terrible, terrible doctrine.

Not saying some of them weren't saved, but they just, they put the word of God too low on their list of priorities and it should be right up there at the top and it wasn't with them.

But with these guys it was, and they preached the word across the world and bars were closed down, prostitution would disappear from cities.

I mean even later there was a second great awakening. And even after that you had people like Billy Sunday who was a professional baseball player drunk, sitting on a curb with a bottle of alcohol across the street from Salvation Army and they were in there preaching and he just stumbles in there and sits down there and God saved him.

And he became an evangelist and he was fiery like he would run across, he'd be in the middle of a sermon, he'd run across the stage and slide like he's sliding into second base and make a point about the

Lord or the Bible or whatever. And when he left a city there were no bars open, no prostitutes working, they were all out of business and people were walking down the street singing hymns.

Where have you seen that effect after a Bible meeting at any church you've ever been to in your lifetime? You have not seen that because only the

Holy Spirit can choose when to make that happen. We cannot choose when it happens. A lot of groups think they can make

God perform but they can't. Like that word demand, I wish I had looked it up in Hebrew but you can't demand stuff of God.

So I will look that up later. It's a softer word than that. But anyway, you see the result in his life.

He abhorred himself, that means the fleshly part of himself, the sinful part of himself and he repented.

Well that's, you know, the third step is to contemplate God's awesome nature and that is the result of it when we do it.

So if you think about this, if the third step of unity in a church is that a local church is contemplating

God's awesome nature and being often, maybe it's even better other than contemplating it to experience it.

Don't you see the difference between when he said, I had heard, I had heard about you but now I see you.

You see the difference? He had already contemplated it his whole life. Job was a godly man but now he's experiencing

God's presence. Do you see the difference? Now it's nice that we live on this side of the cross because we have the

Lord dwelling within our bodies all the time. Job didn't have that on the other side of the cross but he did have the ability to come into the presence of God and when he did, he experienced

God and it changed him. So people who have experienced God are different than they were before they experienced

God. They don't just keep living the same sinful life and the same sin habits and have no victory over them and I will say this, we don't get victory over all of them at one moment when we get saved but some of them go away forever.

I could name a few in my life that just never have come back and then others you kind of battle with.

Anybody experience that besides me? You kind of battle with them and you know how the apostle Paul said,

I've been in a situation where I've got something wrong with me and I've asked the Lord three times to remove it and he refused to remove it.

Remember that passage? A lot of people say, well, it was his eyesight. I don't think so. I think it was some sin that easily beset him and God didn't take it totally away because it would cause him to come back and abhor himself and repent in dust and ashes and get right with God and sometimes

God gets glory from the fact that we're not perfect. Does that make sense? This treasure is in earthen vessels on purpose.

God made it that way on purpose. So don't beat up on yourself when you sin. Just go to 1

John 1 9, read it and say, do I believe that or not? And if you believe 1 John 1 9, then do it.

And when you do it from your life, even ones you didn't think to repent of, is that amazing?

So see, this is what Job's experiencing and he sees God. John Calvin said this, our very existence is subsistence in God and God alone.

You don't even exist if God goes to sleep. You don't even exist if God folds his arm and says, well, let's see what'll happen.

Some theologians have taught that's how God is. Some teach God is dead. Like he put it, flung everything out there and then he went away or something.

And that's why you have evil in the world. All you have to do is read the Bible. You'll see why you have evil in the world because Adam and Eve said they wanted it.

They said, we want to know not only good, but good and evil. And so that's what they got.

It's man's fault, not God's. Didn't surprise God though, did it? So our very existence is subsistence in God alone.

If the awesome nature of God were not there, we would not even exist. Our molecules wouldn't even exist.

The atoms would not even exist. And so what is John Calvin practicing there?

He is contemplating in his study, probably preparing for a sermon or writing a book.

This was a quote out of one of his books. He's contemplating the awesome nature of God.

And John Calvin was one of those people that is a little earlier than the 1600s. I mean, the 1700s, this was in the 1600s, but he was one of those people that changed the world because he contemplated the nature of God and spent time with God so much that it changed him.

So he was such a bright light to the whole world. But that's what he said about it. Now, here's something else he said.

John Calvin said, God sustains this world by his immense power.

So he holds the entire world together. The gravity, the centrifugal force of the spinning, everything about it, the water cycles, all the things

Job talked about and more. God holds that together, John Calvin says, by his immense power.

And he governs it all with his enormous wisdom. He preserves it all because he is good.

If God weren't good, he would get tired of us very quickly and just let it all go away. And there'd be nothing left but the

Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. There'd be no time. There would be no substance. And you're part of both.

You wouldn't exist. So John Calvin says, look, we've got to contemplate

God's power. But we've also got to contemplate his wisdom. But we also have to contemplate his goodness.

Because if you had any one of those three missing, we would be missing. We would never have existed. He rules over the human race, especially by the righteousness of himself and by his justice.

So now we've got to contemplate his wisdom, his goodness, his righteousness. That what he does is right.

Like you say, if God's such a good God, why do we have so much evil in the world?

So now you're questioning that God is good. And you're questioning that he's righteous. Because the word righteous really sounds like a religious word.

And we use it like that. But it just means right. Righteous means I'm right. Here's wrong over here.

Here's right. And that's what God is. God is always right. He is never wrong. He's always good.

He's never evil. He's always light. He's never darkness. And we get a little further into this as we go this morning.

But you start to contemplate those things. And then when those bad thoughts come in where you're questioning him, they just go away.

And you'll fall on your face like Job did and repent and say, I'm sorry. I'm talking about stuff I don't know anything about.

Right? His righteousness and justice is important as he rules over the human race.

So you look at inequities among humanity. And we have such division over race now.

Worldwide. It's not just in America. It's worldwide. Jesus predicted it. He said, ethnos shall rise up against ethnos.

That means race shall rise up against race in the end times. And all that we talk about social injustice.

We talk about white power. We talk about all of these new phrases that the new generations have brought to us.

I'm having to memorize words because I don't even know what they mean anymore. Like I didn't figure out what is a jab?

A jab is a shot. It's not called a shot or a vaccine anymore. It's a jab.

Did you know that? Everybody knew that but me. But I mean all these new words. And so you talk about white privilege.

I never heard that before my whole life. I've studied history a lot in my youth. And I never heard that before until now.

And it's a phrase that's been brought about to create division. And I do understand history.

I understand everything that happened pretty much. My best friend in the world is Myron Golden. He's African -American.

He's told me a lot about slavery that I might not have known as a white man. But now I know it because I learned it from him.

So I do understand the history. But why do we need that? Why do we need divisive words? Don't we need to understand that God in his righteousness and justice and his sovereignty, that it didn't play out this way by accident.

Do you understand what I'm saying? Is that too strong a little bit? Maybe we turn the recording off. Did you ever turn it on?

Yeah, so maybe you shouldn't have. But you have to understand when you look at things that we call bad, and I mean, there are bad.

There's good and bad in there. There's bad things. But in God's wisdom and goodness and knowledge and justice, he is sovereign over it all and brought it to pass because it's the best plan there was, because it's the only plan.

It's his plan and it's perfect. And it has those things in it. And the whole reason that it's there is because God allowed

Adam and Eve to choose to serve him perfectly or to follow

Satan and want to have evil and good in their life. And so that's what they chose. And God allowed them to choose.

Now, it didn't surprise God because God had already created saber -toothed tigers and mosquitoes and flies and buzzards and all that was created.

So it's not like it wasn't going to happen that way. God knew it would happen that way. And you know what?

He put this treasure, the born -again state we have, in earthen vessels on purpose, the scripture says, so that he would get the glory.

So it's all about him getting glory. And when we start and we complain about things like slavery or we complain about things like some of the terrible things we see health -wise happen to people or accidents like one that was mentioned in prayer today about an 18 -wheeler death, it's so easy to look at that and say,

God, why me? Why did that happen to my family or whatever? And we should be like Job and say, wait a minute, though.

We don't have all the knowledge. We don't see how the whole plan fits together.

And we have not thought about God's wisdom or his power or his goodness or his righteousness or his justice often enough.

And so that thought takes us over. And people, just think about this, people that aren't born again, how do you think they think when things like that happen?

They don't know anything about God's power, his sovereignty, his wisdom, his goodness. They don't know

God's good. They think he's bad. Didn't Satan convince Eve, look, if God were good, he would want you to know good and evil like we do, right?

So he implied that God's not good, didn't he? He implied that Satan's good and God's not good because I want you to know everything and God's holding back on you.

And that just goes on all the time in people's minds and thoughts where they'll blame God for these things when it's human.

It's Adam and Eve's fault. And God has the solution. But God has never changed.

His goodness has never changed, nor his righteousness or his justice. So his righteousness and justice bears with it in his mercy.

He defends it by his protection, John Calvin. So God, he talks about a lot of the attributes of God in that little part of his writings.

Now, this is interesting. We're going to go into Exodus 34, verse 6 for a second here.

And John Calvin wrote about this particular verse, especially verse 6. But I'm sure he's like me in the sense that he would look at the whole context before he would just talk about verse 6, so you know he did.

But this verse is the verse that got him thinking when he wrote what we're about to see here.

So his analysis of this passage, and he analyzed this passage in Exodus 34, 6, with a view to drawing out the descriptions of the divine perfections.

So what is he thinking about as he studies Exodus 34, 6?

He is thinking about the divine perfections. He's thinking about the awesome nature of the person of God himself.

He finds the divine eternity and self -existence of God embodied in one of the names of God in the

Old Testament, Jehovah, which they won't pronounce. But when you see all caps, L -O -R -D, that's the name of God John Calvin's talking about here.

And that very name, all the names of God in the Bible give you certain teachings about how

God subsists, how He exists, how He is. And that particular name,

Jehovah, speaks of His eternity and self -existence. In fact, the word

Jehovah actually means the self -existent One who reveals

Himself. The self -existent One who reveals

Himself. That's what Jehovah means. So when you see that name, it's God saying,

I'm that kind of God. That's who I am. It's not that I do that. It's that I am that.

Do you see the difference? See, we can do good, but God is good. We can love each other, but God is love.

So it's not so much about what God's doing as it is what God is. And so John Calvin, just in that one name of God in the

Hebrew, saw God's divine eternity and the fact that He's self -existent.

Now, self -existent. This whole part of this message, when I started preaching it, I told you the funny story about Ben and Matt when they were little in the back seat and I was driving them home from school.

And I said, you guys are old enough. I'm going to tell you something that's a deep thought. Have you ever stopped to think if God had not, we know

God's always existed, but if He hadn't been able to do that, there'd be no nothing. So that's what this is talking about.

The self -existence of God. If He had not been self -existent, there'd be no nothing because God created the idea of nothingness.

And Matt said, that's good, Dad. Good to think about, but not for long, which is true because it'll mess with your mind if you think about it very long.

You have to think about something else. It is a dark thought. It is a fearful thought, an awesome thought.

Or as the scripture would say in the old English, a terrible thought, meaning awesome, right?

And this is what John Calvin sees just in the name of God. So these people that lived in the 1600s didn't have

TV, didn't have baseball. God forbid they didn't have golf. They didn't have tennis.

They had a lot more time to contemplate things. And they would just sit and think and think about certain scriptures and every word in that verse.

And even one name of God out of the many. And so he begins in Exodus 34, 6, and I'll show you why in a minute, because there's more than one name of God found in that passage.

But one of them is Jehovah. And in that name, it made John Calvin think about, you know, God is awesome because nobody made

Him. He just has always, He's just been there. He's just there. He, I am,

He's in the eternal present tense. The Father is, that's why He can't come into time and space or won't,

He could, but He would destroy us. So He won't. So He finds the divine eternity and self -existence embodied in that name.

The divine strength and power, virtus et potentia, which means the virtue of potentiality of everything in Latin.

It's a Latin phrase. It just means sheer power because there's potential to do anything He wants to do in His existence.

Do you see that? That's Latin. A lot of the early fathers studied about God, not only in Greek and Hebrew, but also

Latin. And there is a wonderful, pretty good, I don't know about wonderful, but there's a pretty good

Latin version of the scriptures. Predominantly, the Roman Catholics use it today.

It's not as good as our Bible, the received text, but it's, the

Latin is amazing language. And that's what He meant by that. The divine strength and power expressed in the name of Elohim.

So now think about that. In this little passage in Exodus 34, you have two of God's names.

One, Jehovah, which means the self -existent one who reveals Himself.

And then El or Elohim, which literally translated in English, Almighty God.

So think of the word Almighty. That's what that name means, like all -powerful. So now

He sees the eternal nature of God that has always existed. He sees the self -existence of God that nobody made

Him. He's just always been. And He sees the power of God just in the two names of God in the passage without even studying the rest of the passage.

And in the description itself, now this is a little difficult, but I want to walk you through this because I love reading the old books.

You know, why would I read something a preacher today wrote when I can go back and read John Calvin? So, and in the description itself, an enumeration of those virtues which describe

God, not indeed as He is. And you got the Latin here where it's, and I won't pronounce it right, because I took

Spanish instead of Latin in school, but anyway, bad mistake. But He is Apudse, but in Latin, that means

He is with us. God is among them. And He says these virtues were described not as these attributes are among God, or He has them, but rather as Ergo Nos, which means

He not only has these attributes, but is the opposite of humans. He's the opposite of the way we are.

So, when you think about God's eternity, His self -existence, His strength, and His power, and His goodness, and His virtue, and all these things,

John Calvin reads that as, okay, what the Scripture is saying is He is different than us. Do you see the point?

That's what the Latin means. So, when you talk about God's clemency,

His goodness, His mercy, His righteousness, His justice, His truth, it's from the viewpoint of that's different than us.

God has those and is those, unlike us, because we're falling way short of those things.

The strongest claim, which this passage has on our interest, however, is the suggestion that it bears a classification of attributes.

Now, this was interesting to me, these two English words. The predication to God of eternity and self -existence evidently is, for Calvin, something significantly different, or especially different, from the ascription to Him of those virtues.

Now, if you read the old books, you got to have a dictionary sitting there, don't you, Brother Bill? At least I do.

You got to have one of the thick, kind of unabridged dictionaries sitting there. Now, I've got to look up predication description.

I kind of know what they mean, but in the context of this, what are we talking about? Well, predication means the logical affirmation or affirmation of something about another person, especially assigning something to that person, or assigning that person to a certain class, okay?

So then you look up ascription, it basically means noticing the attributes or qualities of that person.

So what John Calvin was doing, to put it in plain modern English, is he was not talking about these things, the self -existence, the divine strength and power and goodness, as if they were mere attributes that God could do, but he spoke of them as God's being.

God is these things. And so it's a little bit different than thinking about, well,

God has goodness, or God does good things, or God... And then

Calvin said, no, it's not that He does those things, He is those things. And so that's what he's talking about.

So John Calvin's sitting around contemplating God's nature. And John Calvin, it is said that one time he was in his study, and Satan became so real in the temptations in his heart and mind while he was sitting at the study, maybe writing some of those things we just read, that he picked up an inkwell and threw it at the opposite wall where he saw

Satan, threw that at Satan, and the ink went down the wall. And so he was in such deep spiritual warfare that he saw a demon or Satan appear into his room, and he threw an inkwell at him to get rid of him.

He was angry that he was messing with his mind while he was thinking these things about God. Are you at that level yet in your walk with God?

Am I? I mean, you see, but we got baseball, football, and golf, and we love those things, and we just have a lot of things that take...

We don't spend as much time in prayer and contemplation of the word of God. We just don't, but you know what's wonderful? We can read these men, and we have this thing in business we call collapsing time.

There's a better phrase for it. I just drew a blank on it. Time compression takes time compression.

And an example of that would be that Myron studied marketing and sales for something like 15 years.

And in day seminar, in four days, he taught us everything. It took him 30 years to learn about that aspect of marketing.

That was compressing time for us. So we can go and read John Calvin, and he spent hour upon hour upon hour meditating and contemplating on certain scriptures, and he could just write three or four paragraphs.

We read it, and we can do that in three minutes. So God's given us that. I say that to justify playing golf.

Okay, so let's look at this passage. Let's see if we got a little time.

Yeah, we got a little time. Look at Exodus 34, 1 on your phone or in your Bible.

And let's just look at what John Calvin was studying when he saw all these amazing attributes of God and contemplated them.

And I'm sure he was just like Job, and he fell on his face in prayer as he thought about the awesome nature of God.

And here's the passage he was studying that day. Think about this. In the 1600s, no electric lights, just a little lamp, late at night, his eyes probably didn't last real long because of that, who knows?

But there he is studying his books and the scriptures, and he comes across this passage, and he has these amazing thoughts.

He says, And the Lord said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first. Now, why was

Moses having to make two new tables to write the Ten Commandments on? Because he broke the first ones.

And what do you think that pictures that man does with the law? He breaks it, right?

So that's part of this. So now God tells him, Bring two new tables of stone like the first, and I will write,

I, God said, I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables that you broke.

So that's mercy, isn't it? What if you'd have been the one that broke the Ten Commandments and had to go back up and talk to God after you did that?

What would you be feeling? Like you might get a whooping, right? But God was merciful, all right?

And be ready in the morning and come up in the morning unto Mount Sinai and present yourself there to me in the top of the mountain, and no man shall come up with you.

Because the children of Israel already said, No, we don't want to go into God's presence. You do that for us. So they were offered to have this kind of presence of God that we have this side of the cross where he dwelt with them, and they rejected it because they didn't want to be that close to God.

So they sent Moses up on their behalf. Well, now God didn't even invite the people at this point.

So he just invites Moses. No one comes with you, neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount, neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mountain.

What happens if one of them strayed over there? He was destroyed by a lightning bolt or something.

Or if a man followed Moses without permission up there, he'd be killed. Because this speaks of the holiness of God.

It speaks of the separateness of God from sin. And it pictures it.

And no man shall come up with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout or the flocks come close.

And he hewed two tables of stone like the first ones. And Moses rose up early in the morning, went up into the mount as the

Lord had commanded. And he took in his hand the two tables of stone. And the Lord descended in the cloud.

Didn't we talk about that last time? Every time you see God come into this time and space realm, the dimension we're in, he comes in a cloud.

That cloud could be covering anything. An exos rocket, flying saucer. I don't know but what angelic beings come in vehicles and come into the clouds and then get out of the vehicle and come down here.

I don't know because it's always hidden. I do know in Ezekiel, Ezekiel saw

God and he saw a vehicle. Go check it out. A flying saucer, a

UFO type thing. So check it out. But anyway, here comes the

Lord. He descends in the cloud and he stood with him there and he proclaimed the name of the Lord.

Now look at this. Here you have God proclaiming

God's name. Odd language, don't you think? What if you said this?

David arrived on the scene and he proclaimed the name of David. Doesn't that sound weird? But when you understand something about this, well, let's just go one more verse.

The Lord passed by Moses and proclaimed the Lord, the

Lord God. Now in that passage, we have the all -cap Lord, which is

Jehovah. But now we have the word God in the English. But when you go into the Hebrew, that second one for God is

El, which Elohim comes from. Which means the almighty nature of God.

So now you have the two names of God that John Calvin was contemplating as he studied this passage.

Is you have Jehovah, the self -existent God who reveals himself. And you had

Elohim, which is all sheer omnipotence. And I think one thing

I noticed when I read this is you have one of them proclaiming the other, each called

God. So now you have Jehovah proclaiming the name of Elohim.

So now you have the son of God. It shows us that it was the son of God that he saw. It was Jesus. It was

God with us that he saw. And Jesus was proclaiming the father's name, which is always what

Jesus does. And the Holy Spirit always proclaims Jesus' name. And that's how I know that a lot of the charismatics are a little bit off on their doctrine.

So lovable folks, many, many friends in that movement. But they want to talk about the Holy Spirit a lot.

And the Holy Spirit never talks about himself. Hardly ever. We don't even know a lot about the Holy Spirit because he always talks about Jesus.

And I shouldn't say always, but 99 .9 % of the time in scripture, the

Holy Spirit reveals Jesus. And Jesus 99 .9 % of the time reveals the father.

Not himself, but he reveals the father. As Rocky said, he is God seen. So the

Holy Spirit points to the son of God. And he loves to do that. He will not shed a bright light on himself.

Isn't that interesting? And yet all are God in essence, fully God in essence.

So here we see the son of God proclaiming the name of the father as he appears on that mountain.

And I'm sure Moses, well, let's just watch. And the

Lord passed by before Moses and he proclaimed the father. And here's what

Jesus said about the father. He is merciful and gracious and long suffering, which means patient and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving sin and transgression and iniquity.

And that will by no means clear the guilty. So isn't it interesting that Jesus said,

God has a nature, God the father has a nature where he can be long suffering and gracious and mercy, but he never clears the guilty, both.

So not only is he love and gentleness and goodness, he is just and he never clears the guilty.

How do you work that out in your own life? Only by the blood of Jesus. If you tried to achieve a relation with God by being good or by keeping the old, even the 10 commandments, which have given to the

Jews, by the way, and you try to keep the law to be good, you fail every time because God does not let sin slide.

He does not overlook it. He does not clear it. What he did was he sent his son to remove it and to pay for it.

And that's justice. It was paid for. The bill was paid in full for our sin, but he visits the sin of the fathers upon the children.

Now, when you want to complain about God, letting things be like they are in this world and you see families over there and just sheer poverty,

I will promise you that if you could look back a couple or three generations, you're going to find an alcoholic.

So usually it'd be an alcoholic. I would bet, and I don't know this to be a fact, it'd be a neat study to do.

It could be done too. I bet you nine out of 10 of those families, if you look back just three generations, you're going to find one or more alcoholics.

And it started that family down or he'll be a whoremonger or she'll be a prostitute or they'll be just totally hate

God. You're going to find some kind of sin that affected their whole life and allowed them to have none of the blessings of God in their life.

And they pass that down to the children and the grandchildren and those grandchildren living in poverty.

And our government wants to take half of our money and give it to them through the taxation system.

Do you think that's God's will? Well, if it happens, it is God's will, but do you think it pleases God or is that rebellion?

It's actually rebellion. And what will happen is it may well be God's will for America to fall.

And he will use the fact that Americans refuse to do things God's way. God says, you don't tax the rich more than you tax the poor.

But we have a progressive tax system, which means you tax the rich and take... Did you know that the wealthy pay,

I don't know, about 40 % of all the tax? Just the tax they pay is almost half of all the tax.

And yet Hollywood and Washington always say how evil the wealthy are. They don't pay their taxes. It's a lie.

All you have to do is look at the statistics from the IRS. It's a lie. And if you take the top 25, I don't even think it's that many, probably about 10 % of the people, they pay 75 % of all the taxes.

And yet what does Hollywood and Washington say? Well, they're not paying their taxes. So it's a lie, but it's not right to tax the rich more heavily, but we do.

So what does that tell you? It's not part of God's economic plan. Therefore, it won't work. It will fail.

So you say it's not God's will. Yeah, it is God's will, but it's also God's will for America to fall, most likely, because most of the nations are going to fall into the great apostasy.

All of them will before the Antichrist rises and he will try to fix, he'll say,

I can fix that, right? So it is all part of God's will, but it doesn't mean it's not sinful. I had a lot of double negatives in that.

Keeping mercy for thousands, but he doesn't clear the guilty. Visiting the sin of the fathers upon the kids and the grandkids.

That's why you see people in the state they're in and they want to blame God for it. Well, why don't we look back in the history of that family and see what kind of sin was there?

What kind of sin habits? And then you'll have some child that God finds grace like he did

Noah in a family lineage like that and God will raise that child up to walk close to him and it'll stop that cycle and then they'll flourish for the next few generations.

Isn't that interesting? And Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped.

Isn't that the same thing that Job did? Why? Because they're recognizing the awesome nature of God.

Well, that pretty well concludes our third step of having unity in the church.

And Moses added this. He said, look, God, if I found grace in your sight, will you be among us as we go?

Because if you're not going to go with us, I'm not going, Moses said. So once Moses recognized the person of God and saw him with his eyes like Job did and fell on his face, he stands back up and he says, look,

I am useless without you. The skill sets that I think I have, it's total lack of knowledge compared to you.

So if you're not going that direction, I'm not going to go that direction. God, show me where you're going. I'm going with you.

That's what he said. That's what happens to us when we contemplate the awesome nature of God.

Isn't that pretty cool? Now, I thought I was done, but I got to make this point.

It's all got to be in context, right? And he said, behold, I make a covenant,

God says to Moses. Before all thy people, I will do marvels. Now, I want to show you the result.

And this is what America needs more than anything right now. I want to show you the result of a man and a woman and a family who will see

God as he is and contemplate his awesome nature and fall on their faces and repent and say, I am nothing before you and stand back up and say, okay, from this point on in my life,

I'm not going off and doing stuff and hoping you go with me. I'm figuring out where you're going and I'm going with you.

What happens when a family does that? Maybe just one family, maybe one John Calvin, maybe one family in this room or out there in the internet world listening.

Look what happens here. He says, God says, okay, I'll make a covenant with you then

Moses. And I'll do this before all the people. I will do marvels such as have not been done in all the earth.

Stuff you think can't even happen can happen. Nor has they been done in any nation and all the people among which you are will see the work of the

Lord. Now look at this for it is a terrible thing that I will do with you and your people.

So what is God about to do? Observe thou that which

I command thee this day. Behold, I'm going to drive out before you and your people. I'm going to drive out the

Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the

Hivites, the Jebusites and the Democrats. Now, why would

I say that? Because I grew up in Texas when everybody's a Democrat. But you know what? Those Democrats were against abortion.

Those Democrats were for the flag. Those Democrats believed in history like we all studied it.

Ronald Reagan came along and most of the Texas Democrats switched to Republican just because he stood for right.

And they said, well, the Democrats aren't, the other candidates not doing it. I'm switching. So now they're mostly Republicans in Texas.

But Democrats have not been like they are now. But as if you say, well, how do you know what they're like?

I look at their platform. They're pro -gay. If there's any sin

God talks about the most that he hates, it's that sin. They're pro -gay.

They're pro -killing babies. Where did that come from if not Satan? So they're not the party of God, right?

So, and yet they look like they control everything, don't they? They look like they're ruining everything, don't they?

I want a $3 trillion bill. Where's that money gonna come from? Your great -grandkids will be in poverty because they can't pay their taxes.

But the truth is, this place could get nuked before they even have the chance to be in poverty because we deserve it as a nation.

So here God says, wait a minute though, if you will humble yourselves before me and recognize who

I am and who you are, I'll do things through you and your family that the world doesn't even think are possible.

So could it be possible that America could have another boost of righteousness? We don't know

God's timing. It absolutely could be possible. It could be possible that we, being the salt of the earth, salt is a preservative, we preserve this nation because God rises up the church to preserve this nation a little longer for our little kids to grow up and see some of the goodness we saw in this nation.

We don't know his sovereign secret will, do we? We'll step into that as we go.

But one thing we know is if we fall on our faces and we recognize the person and attributes and who

God is and see ourselves as we are and repent and get right with him, he says,

I will do things with you that are terrible in the world, which means awesome. It's an old

English word. It means awesome. I'll accomplish amazing things that the world does not even think could happen.

And that's the place we need to be is to make things change, isn't it? But you will destroy their altars, break the images and cut down their groves.

People like that are false worshipers of false gods. They seem to be in control of America, and especially the media and the big tech companies and everything, don't they?

Seem to be in absolute control at this point. They already control the East Coast colleges, most of the seminaries, all the public school systems, the rock industry,

Hollywood. They control all of that and all of them are worshiping man.

Man is God. Humanism is what they worship. And God says if his small group of people,

Moses was one man and the people were small, it was the smallest nation in the world at the time

God chose Israel. He didn't choose them because they were great. He chose them because he wanted to choose them. He said, but if you fall down and you recognize who

I am and who you are, and you get right with me, I will do terrible things with you and change the world.

That's the promise that I see here. For thou shalt worship no other God. Now there's a warning right at the end of this and we'll be done.

But you need to understand after you go into those places and you destroy those false worshipers and kill them and remove them from the land and now it's your land, it becomes the promised land.

It's Israel, it's your land. You have to be careful not to let your sons marry their wives because they will then bring, you'll bring their gods into your family and you'll become like them and I'll have to spank you.

I'll have to pull you out of the land and send you all over the world, which is what happened. We know the history, don't we? He says he's going to bring them back though, doesn't he?

His people, the Jews. For thou shalt worship no other God. For the Lord, whose name is

Jealous is a jealous God. Jehovah, whose name is Jealous. So one of God's name is,

I'm jealous over my people. I don't want them going off worshiping other things or people or gods.

Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land and they go a whoring and then you go a whoring after their gods and sacrifice into their gods and one call thee and thou eat of his sacrifice.

So one of the people of the world says, come over here and let's have a steak dinner and you're eating something. They sacrifice to demons.

He said, don't do that. Be separate. Come out from among them and be separate, saith the Lord, right? And now then take your daughters into their sons or you take their daughters into your sons and their daughters go a whoring after their gods and make your sons do the same.

Don't do that, God says. So we've got to be different. We've got to be separate. That's why we have our school, by the way.

We're trying to raise up Christian kids unlike the world, not like the world. And the more we recognize

God's person and power and goodness and justice and follow his feasts and recognize our badness and inadequacies and we walk with him and know him better, the more power we have for him to use in this world to make it be what he wants it to be.

So that's the message today. And it just like, it ends with verse 18 where God tells them to do the

Passover. They stopped it. He says, get back to it. And what is that picture?

That picture is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the blood that he gave for us. So it ends with remembering that.

So, wow, there's a whole sermon in that one passage that John Calvin was contemplating that day.

Who knows how many hours he spent on that passage? We have so little time to spend here, but we're done.

So let's stand and have prayer together. I think we've well covered that third step of how to have unity in the church is to be a people who think about how awesome

God is a lot. And next time we'll do the fourth and fifth step and we'll be done with chapter 12.

Dave, Kevin Root asked that we remember his aunt.

Oh, the husband passed away. His name was Bob after routine surgery. And what?

Oh, good.

Thank you. So when you guys looked up that word demand, I knew that was kind of an older English meaning.

It didn't mean what it means now. So it meant to request or to ask. I didn't hear the last one.

What was it? Petition, beg, basically, beg God for things.

That's the attitude, not demanding. So, OK, I knew that. But thanks for looking it up.

I'm glad we confirmed it. All right. So that's it. Let's stand and have prayer together. Lord, we just thank you so much for your word.

It's so powerful. It can change the world. It can cause us to do awesome and marvelous things as we follow you.

And we don't know everything you will do with us in these end times. We don't know the timing of everything, but we do know we're salt and light and we can do that.

We can't save the world, but we can be salt and light to the world and let you work according to your sovereign will and help us to remember it and do it.

Help us to be humbled by your presence, humbled by your nature, humbled by who you are, and yet help us be so thankful that you've chosen us to count us as your own dear children.

And Lord, work in our lives. Let us be always on the playing field and never on the bench.

And guard us from the tricks and strategies of Satan as he tries to tear up our lives and our families and our testimonies.

Protect us, Lord. We ask you to put angels round about our families and protect us.

And now go with us in this time of fellowship and bless the meal we're about to have in Jesus' name. Amen. You are dismissed.