2023 BBC Bible Conference - Session One Q&A "Divine Blessedness"

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Steve you want to give us your testimony how the Lord saved you? Yeah, sure I grew up in the
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Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ the Latter -day Saints You did I did I did not know that really
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So that's the branch that's not the Utah branch that's the Missouri branch so after Joseph Smith's with Lynch then
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Brigham Young took the big group to Utah and then Joseph Smith jr. Took the group that was left back to Liberty, Missouri where eternal side of my family's from so I grew up in that environment
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I mean honestly, I really worshiped Joe Montana not not You know anything else and the
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Lord is very kind through Neighbors invited my family to we relocated to Monterey County Where I mostly grew up and then invited us to a
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Baptist Church It was not a healthy church unfortunately But the youth ministry there was faithful, and I heard the gospel and I came to Christ when
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I was 15 in the summer of 1994 and Yeah, the Lord was very kind and as much saved my family and so all my my parents and my brother and the
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Lord as well And then the call to gospel ministry how'd that work so I went to school in Fresno's where I met my beautiful wife at Fresno Pacific University is a
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Mennonite school and a Christian school went there. I was a pre -law major But I was part of a church plant there in Fresno, and I began to care more about The the church and ministry than I did about the law.
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I was studying. I worked for a lawyer I worked on the courthouse legal work is dreadfully boring. It's not at all like what you see on TV and so And I was my gifts and desires for ministry were being affirmed in that context
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So then I was went to ministry from there after I graduated Yeah, I Have a variety of questions that we put together especially with the help of Pastor Steve And we could just kind of make it no compromise radio
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Shows today. Yes, you didn't know what I was gonna ask you, but a good job You talked a little bit about God in the radio interview
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We're known as nouns, and you said God is a known as a verb you might talk about that more tomorrow
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What do you mean by that God's name is a verb and our names now, what do you what do you mean so God is
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Psalm 36 verse 9 the fountain of life So when we sometimes when we say things like God is immutable he doesn't change
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God is impassable He doesn't undergo change in the form of emotion or impassionate changes people draw the wrong
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Connotation that will therefore God's like a stone. He's inert. He's apathetic
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What we're saying actually is the exact opposite When Moses asked God and we'll see this tomorrow in Exodus 3, you know, who are you
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God gave him three names? I am who I am I am and then the God of your father's
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God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob God's essential name and Yahweh is connected grammatically in Hebrew to I am who
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I am God's essential name is to remind us that he is He's a verb to be verb so God is even though the technically that the the title and description of God is a noun we must always remember it stands for one who is a verb and He's named by a verb.
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We are qualified by verbs. God is a verb is a fountain of life He's pure what we call theologically.
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He's pure being he's pure life We talked about a little bit when R .C. Sproul said the word human beings is probably wrong because Humans always become and so there's one divine being that never changes, but human beings are human becomers.
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Yeah, that makes sense Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly, right and in a sense God doesn't God doesn't we use being because what else are we gonna say, but he he's not a being like like us he is
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You're talking about Revelation tonight and God accommodating himself so if we can understand
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Can you talk to us a little bit about what we might say? Would be anthropomorphic language or anthropopathic language
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What is that and how can we kind of spot it in Scripture? So we're not ascribing things to God improperly
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Yeah, so what we'll do and in essence what we're doing This weekend is we're thinking about the absolute statements of God and how they must govern
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Everything else that we say or think about God in Scripture It's on but I have half a lung
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Check one two, all right. Thank you Thanks guys, shall
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I repeat the question would that help I went to the lung doctor this week and I said, you know if I can't ride a bike, that's fine
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And if I can't, you know surf or whatever, that's fine, but I would like to be able to talk and to preach
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He said I'll hear some steroids go. I didn't get any this week. All right. Here's my question. Yeah Some of the language of Scripture God has a mighty right on hand.
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Yeah, something like that. We might say to ourself Oh, we're thinking about God wrongly How do we think about anthropomorphic and anthropopathic relating to God's Form or God's passions.
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So we're reading the scripture. We'll automatically say oh, that's that's right. I understand that This is a language of accommodation.
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Yep Yep God is accommodating himself and talking to us in ways that we can understand so that we can grasp something of his acts and his
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His his decrees in creation, so we've already we've already gone down that road thinking about his blessedness
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God is blessed period. That's a fact that must mean that when we encounter statements in Scripture like Genesis 6
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God was grieved Well, then that must not be Absolute or literal because you can't have a blessed
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God grief So so this so that so we understand that to be answer we call it anthropopathic
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That is a human like passion and God speaks to himself that way we'll talk about in order to so that we understand
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The acts he takes and it communicates who he is otherwise scripture would be can you imagine if God only spoke to us literally or absolutely and He just said things like I'm going to act according to my infinite perfection
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Okay, cool, what's that mean? You know I can't comprehend that and so God what we call accommodates scripture is accommodated revelation
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God speaks to us and condescends to speak to us in ways that we can understand and grasp and it says something actually really
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Important won't give away the third session tomorrow But it says something really important about God's constancy and his unchanging goodness and love and and blessedness
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Yep, as nurses are want to do listening to the infants That's what I meant to say yeah, yeah
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Sorry I wasn't trying to fuck you Okay Well there is no just and we'll talk a bit more tomorrow morning there is no
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Comprehension of God's trinity in fact Augustin in I was not infamously but famously said in his day turn at Ate We we speak of three persons not so that we may
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Not so that we might say who he is but that we may not remain silent And what Augustin was saying is even here we're grasping at the ham of glory we don't have full comprehension, but we have to say something because we see it so clearly in scripture and so What we would say simply
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The God who is the only God who is is? father son and spirit
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And so we don't want to what we don't want to do is separate the being of God from the persons of God as though They're like different things
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The the older words and sometimes people get tripped up to hear the word mode. We're not talking about modalism
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But the mode of God's being how God exists is as father son and spirit
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That's how he subsists his older language so the second London and chapter 2 paragraph 3 says three subsistences
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So as to communicate and not have any hang -ups with the word person when when
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Tertullian first applied person to the three modes of subsistence in God he did not have any of the connotations that we might have now on this side of modernity of Self -consciousness and self -will so we don't have three wills in God We don't have three people like a family the one
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God who is is the father begetting the son in the mutual love of the spirit and that that is
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God well
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I Mean depending on the urgency of the marital problem, maybe but but I would say stepping back
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You know I was once told by a Christian that if you know I couldn't explain it to them to their understanding in 10 minutes
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Then it must not be worth knowing And I just sat and I thought I'm like you know all the things I know that are worth knowing in life that Literally drive my life and the decisions
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I make as a as a man as a husband a father and a pastor and lays a pastor took like a decade to understand
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And so I think in the bigger picture And our confessions is something wonderful in chapter 2 paragraph 3 about God's trinity being the basis of all our comfortable dependence upon him
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How do we know that the God who has acted and that the gospel that we cherish
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Is real and true and accounted for and it all comes back to God's trinity And that's why the the insights of God's trinity show up so often in Scripture I'm in the gospel of Matthew right now on my ordinary preaching and we just looked a couple weeks ago at the baptism and you have and Augustine again said if you want to learn the
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Trinity go to the Jordan Because you there at the Christ baptism you have the voice from heaven the father to his beloved son as a spirit descends and The act of salvation is the act of God as father son and spirit each person acting according to their proper order in mission
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Reflecting the being of God and we are salvation really is at the end of the day What does salvation mean it means being caught up into the triune life of God?
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That the eternal love between the father and the son by the spirit is now ours
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And God is bringing us into his Divine life not we're not being defied, but we're being brought into the divine life of God and that is salvation and so While it's not it's not intuitive and it takes time and effort
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The the the foundation of our confidence and our courage and our wonder and joy and hope
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Are all connected to God's Trinity So When you say something like that What you inevitably end up doing is if I could just kind of reduce it to its basic error
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Is you end up pulling God into the created realm? And when you do that you lose as we looked at at the beginning of the introduction you lose not only
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God But you lose yourself because you have no God Whenever we
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Some Guys recently have said and and I'll qualify here in a moment, but God is utterly useless
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And what they mean by that is not that there's not Practicality of the Christian life that we are pursuing what they mean is that God does not exist for some other end that is not
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God So we should never be in the position where we're putting God in the service of something like God is really useful for Recovering traditional marriage in America or what it started with is actually after the
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Second World War and Liberation theologians saying that God is really useful for the spread of Marxism and what they were doing in liberation theology
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And what happened is conservatives evangelicals said hey That's pretty handy for our fights in marriage and and and all the chaos we see in the
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Western world and I agree with all those things but Scripture already tells us and we don't need to monkey with the being of God and reject what
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Christians have held for centuries and once we do that you end up losing God and you lose all the what we've already said are the fruits of Knowing him and our joy and confidence and dependence upon him if God if the relationship between the father and son for example
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Is one of order and submission? You you're a functional tritheist because you now have multiple wills in God will is proper to nature
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So you have a collection of deities and you have no deity I mean it just you end up functionally erasing
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God out of the consciousness and conviction of the church True True Was there is no there is
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The divine nature has nowhere. He's everywhere and he's beyond all space so in the the
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Act of creation. So we say we want to say that the incarnation is more than a miracle I mean, it's miraculous and it's fine to use that language
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But we have to understand what's really happening. The Spirit is recreating a man in the womb of a virgin of Mary and so you have this miraculous act of the
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God the Son Assuming a human nature to himself to have a union between human and divine without mixture confusion or separation is what we say and And that's happening
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There in the person of Christ But also God the Son is he I mean he didn't you you don't get to leave the
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Trinity because that's God, right? And it's not three people and so God the Son is still upholding the universe by his power and upholding the existence of of Everything I was just talking with a brother
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We were interacting after there after the session and we were just talking about the incident on the boat of the Sea of Galilee in the
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Middle of the storm and Jesus is asleep and you know, they wake Jesus up But Jesus was awakened according to his human nature because the divine nature was causing the storm for which he had to be woke up for and so And it's we have to think that way.
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Otherwise We're we're denying that the true deity of the Lord Jesus and what scripture teaches the incorrect this
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People bristle when I say this, but it's true. Think about the incarnation did not change God The incarnation did not change
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God the incarnation is God the Son assuming humanity to himself If the incarnation changed
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God, we're all in trouble Because then that means that what Jesus did in his life is not just human work
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Fulfilling righteousness for us. It's some kind of tertium quid or mixture of of human and divine
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So we don't have real human nature and then also the God who is saving us to himself is not really the
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God We've looked at her and we'll consider further as the God who is He's some lesser form of deity and he's changeable and and so on and so you erode all
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Confidence in the gospel and in the wonder and miracle of what's actually happening in the
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Lord Jesus Right exactly
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We sing in Charles Wesley's song
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Yeah You tell me
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Jesus Well, it kind of it sort of ties into what we've already just said is that you have what what's being said often unintentionally there but what's being said is that God is somehow changing to be
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Man and then you don't have a real Incarnation of the only true
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God you have an admixture of something happening And so we have in the incarnation
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God the Son Taking humanity to himself in the person of Christ and Christ living according to the human nature in real true humanity
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But in the Union without mixture separation or confusion with the divine nature
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Which is what which is what secures? so you have to the the human nature of Christ and being true humanity is
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What is what secures us having a mediator one in our line a new Adam? fulfilling the the the obligation to the law on our behalf and the divine nature is what secures that the work of The last
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Adam is eternally ours because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today forever And so when we are being careful to think and speak clearly about what true deity is
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That's what we're protecting and preserving and so whenever you have any kind of Well put off divine prerogatives or laid -aside
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Deity well, then you don't no longer have true God assuming true humanity. You've now functionally
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You've now erased that and and and you know put it in a blender to make something else
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Why do most? Yeah, because There's no there's no change in God or addition to him
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God has no need he is all sufficient So we don't want to use language.
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I mean don't go accosting people when they say that we know what they mean But it'd be more proper No, no, no, no,
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I'm just trying to you know, that's how I talk in my church, you know Sometimes I say things and then the young guy and I find out he's like, you know rail on some
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Okay, yeah, I don't know so I'm just I'm gonna be go easy on me
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I'm a Californian we're nice Kind of and shallow.
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Yep shallow all those things. They're all true So we don't want to say we don't want to use any kind of language that implies any kind of change or In God in the act of the
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Incarnation and so assumption the the reality that the Divine Son along with the
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Father and the Spirit are are is For the causative act in in taking humanity to himself
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Yeah Yeah, oh yeah, it's in the Bible yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good
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Yep. Yep. No Bible's good Yeah, there's lots of issues in there to be careful of there the church has
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And our confession says and again in chapter 2 paragraph 3 is well -worded succinct
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It's worth reading multiple times and thinking through it to understand it that the distinction of the persons in God Father Son and Spirit are only by particular personal properties and what we mean by that is
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The father begets the son Affiliation the son is eternally begotten and the spirit is spirated
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Spiration from the father and the son and those are the only distinctions between the persons of God and that when we start adding and on all those come out of scripture and Scriptural texts and hard work that generations of Christians put into in the early church
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When we start adding other elements of relation like authority and submission we end up falling back into old eras and heresies where the father is
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Superior to the son Because to have a subordinate you have some sense of superiority
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You also have a real problem with the concept of will to have one submitting to another you have to have one will being brought
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Under another will so that means you have two wills three wills in God That's three gods because will is proper to nature.
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So, you know have three deities in the Godhead and If you take take that further going back to what we were talking about with the gospel that means then in the incarnation you have the will of the
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Son and the will of Christ human nature. So what what what will is operating in the incarnation?
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Is it the will of Christ human nature or is it the subordinate will of the Son to the father?
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So it raises the question is it truly human obedience or is it just an extension of the divine act?
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Into creation so that we can't really say it's a true incarnation on our behalf Once you start extending the logical implications of these things
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You really again you start pulling on the threads of the gospel really really fast. And so It's really important that we understand
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God Father Son and Spirit has co -equal co -eternal all
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Three possessing the the divine being and so all the attributes we're going to all the attributes we look at this weekend blessedness immutability
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Aseity they apply to Father Son and Spirit so it's not like the father is immutable and then the son is not or or what have you
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We want to be really really clear that we're not talking about three gods who just happen to get along or three demigods or whatever
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If we think about the theological work, what's inseparable operations and what does it even matter?
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I'm sitting in the pew. I'm a late person. Oh inseparable operations. Opera Trinitatis Ad Extra Indivisa Sunt so You don't have to know the
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Latin you have to know what it means It means that the external works of the
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Trinity are undivided and So this goes back very very early in Christianity and we could we we call it inseparable operations by operation
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What we mean is opera Latin works the works of God. So all we're saying are
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Well, I don't does anybody listen to Shilin here the rapper Shilin when? Sorry He has a he has a rap where he says, you know, they when
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God does something they probably work together And and that's that's inseparable operations. They're in like a couple verses of a rap
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And what we're basically just saying is that what God does God does?
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Period so that means everything God does is what God does and if God is the
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Father Son and Spirit Everything God does the Father Son and Spirit do according to the one will and the single nature of God who is
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Father Son So you see this in Scripture how where it shows up just Biblically is you see the same and you've noticed this reading your
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Bibles You see the same act being attributed to different persons of God So we'll look at the creation and you'll see that all things were created by Christ in Colossians 1 and that has important Significance for how we think about Genesis 1 and God speaking and the word and a lot of touch points there
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You see that in the resurrection? Christ was declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection
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Romans 1 4 You see Christ attributing the resurrection to himself
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John 10 18. I have authority to take this life I have authority to lay my life down and I have authority to take it up again
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So God this who raised Christ God the Son raised Christ Romans 8 11 he was raised by the
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Spirit who raised him from the dead So and you could do that and guys have written books that to help us you can do that and you can go through all the acts of God and see how they might they're appropriated to each person of God the same act and What's being reflected there?
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Is the the singularity and the unity of God everything God does God does? So Yeah, so they what we would wouldn't use the word roles we would we would talk about each person of God Appropriating works that are proper to their order not in subordination submission, but to their order in the looking for another word besides taxes
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And the order of God is the there is a proper order to the persons of God as father son and spirit in the being of God and God by so speaking to us in Scripture is revealing who he is as father son and spirit without giving any
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Indication of subordination in God or division between the persons of God so we might think of them
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It was already said as demigods but we think of a proper appropriation of what is it is proper that the
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Son who is eternally begotten is The one who came to assume humanity for us
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It is proper that the Spirit who is the bond of love between the Father and the
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Son is the one who sheds the love of God abroad in our hearts is the one who
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Awakens us and brings us to Christ and so we have God revealing himself even in the act of salvation of who he is
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Yeah What's a question I don't know
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Yeah, I'm sorry I am yes, I like good coffee and Sing sing oh, that's yeah, that's a few poor people
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Starbucks to Starbucks is a scam. Yeah, I like, you know
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Directly sourced single -origin Lightly roasted we have a bunch of micro roasters in Sacramento.
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It's one of the great things We have a ton of micro breweries and a ton of micro roasters is a great place to live in minister. Yeah I'll actually use it in my when we talk about divine simplicity.
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I have a coffee illustration. So we'll save that for tomorrow You can coffee helps you understand
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God That's right, that's right, that's right Yeah, good.
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I've tweaked it. Yes Yeah No Yes, according to his human nature so again, if God suffers and and that's basically what was behind a lot when
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I was talking at the end about Blessedness that if we if we ever if we say that God isn't blessed when we aren't what we're doing
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Basically is eroding the very basis of any eternal joy or hope at all If God suffers then that means
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God's in the same boat we are and that we're all in trouble And so if he that means he's subject to Change which is a mark of creation which means
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God is no longer that that though Christians will say that they don't understand the logic of what they're saying
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They're actually espousing pantheism and that God is now enmeshed in the order of change which is creation and motion that That that we are in as creatures and so he is now a part of it with us
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It also erodes creation and redemption the gospel being an act of God's sheer goodness and joy because God now has to rescue himself to get us out of this in you know trouble and Taking it further.
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He really can't because in order to pull us out of these The cosmic disorder that sin has caused we need someone who's going to come from outside Who's going to help us and if God is in the boat as it were again with us?
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Then there's no one coming and there's no one to help and it's only it's it sounds It basically comes from our obsession with modern philosophy and our obsession with emotions today that we are
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That we are obsessed and we think that emotional expression is the is the basis of authenticity
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I don't think that's true and Christians haven't thought that for many more centuries than they have
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And if we think that well if God's suffering with me as God That's comforting for about 15 seconds, and then you realize
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Wait a minute if God's in this mess with me who's coming to get us
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And the answer is nobody and so we'll talk about more as we as we as we move towards the end of our time tomorrow
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But it's really important to uphold the truth that God does not change including he has no passions Yes, he's our sympathetic high priest and he suffered according to his human nature to bring us to God and if that's it going back to him we repeating the same order of thinking we saw before we referred to before but if If God suffers, then that means
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Christ's suffering Well, was it really human or is it some kind of an extension of divine suffering?
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And it again it erodes the whole ground of the gospel and it makes the gospel more of an enacted myth by the divine not
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God assuming true humanity on our behalf Yeah, I mean basically what we're confessing when we when we have a confession is a reminder that the
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Bible didn't drop from the sky last Tuesday and It didn't fall at my feet privately and personally and that I somehow in the founts of all wisdom and what it says
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And it reminds me that Scripture was always given to the people and that's what we're talking about People of God corporately to be interpreted corporately and to be understood within the community of the church both now and both down through the ages and so it ought to matter to us if What we think some passage says every other
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Christian says well, that's not what it says now Is it absolutely is it possible? We might be right and everyone else wrong.
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Yeah, it's possible, but it's not too likely And so God has always given his word within the
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Community of the church as a guardrail and as accountability and a confession is an extension of that reality
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And so it's it's a room. It's a reminder that we are called to believe The same gospel and the same truths about God in Christ that Christians have believed since you know, the church was birthed
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And so we're standing in that stead in that same line and we want to repeat those same truths
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And we want to do so clearly and carefully These things that we
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Understand as confessional theology is orthodoxy They weren't hammered out by one guy like on a week
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You know, he sat down with the Bible on Monday and he had something completely worked out by Sunday I mean we're talking about centuries of work of guys working on one another stuff to our tech articulate things
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Clearly and carefully and consistently with Scripture So like in our confession in chapter 8 you're pulling out of Nicaea you're pulling out of the
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Council of Chalcedon you're building on what Christians have done and We are not going to reinvent a better Version than what took
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Christian centuries of reflection on Scripture to do So we want to stand on their shoulders and we want to learn from those who have gone before And have a sturdy place to stand as we address our world
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It also gives us I think even in our particular cultural moment having a historic confession
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Helps us in evangelism. It helps us and whatever is going on in our in our nation and culture so after the
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Bergerfeld decision in 2015 There was a news crew at our church
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The deacon came to me pastor the news guy wants to talk to you. Oh great So we go
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I'll go out this before the evening service went outside. There was a news guy there He said, you know since the
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Supreme Court decision, you know legalizing, you know gay marriage on Friday We've heard there's some churches that don't agree with that which yeah, right
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And he said, you know, we wondered if you'd like to you know Be on camera and you know share what you know, you think and I was thinking well
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I don't want my church bird building burned down on Monday. I'm not getting on your camera. I invited him You can come and worship what
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I did tell him I said, you know our views on marriage were actually and what the Bible teaches about it were written down in 1677 and nothing, the
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Supreme Court said Friday or that I'll ever say is Abrogating any of that and so that's still our view and I was able to say in that moment and then we're able to say
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Collectively to our culture. I haven't gone anywhere We've been here since the 17th century saying what marriage is you've moved
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So any charge of bigotry or malice or anything else is is completely it's it's it can't be honest
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Based on that fact and so I think when we have a historic confessional basis It it really does have a lot of I think evangelistic benefits to it as we're trying to testify to our world and culture and try to Have a place to stand that's clear and consistent from God's Word.
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Yeah I have some friends that maybe don't like confessions, but they love systematic theologies.
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Yeah So I think to myself why wouldn't you like you're using other sources right to help you understand the
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Bible Yep, matter of fact those sources even with this doctrine of God.
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Yes If you read our statement of faith by the chapter 2 of the
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Holy Trinity, you'll think yourself The next time I read the word Lord in the
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Bible, I'll think to myself Oh or blessed be Yep, absolutely.
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All right So Yeah, we meet urban Midtown, Sacramento, we're about six blocks from where Gavin Newsom goes to work and Way we rent a parking lot from a school
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He has not no no surprisingly we're doing our best So, how do you
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God doesn't suffer how do you account for and you can multiply your question by many texts so the particular I'm sorry, brother. What was your name?
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Bill? So Bill's questioning you can multiply in many texts, but he mentioned, you know
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Grieving the Holy Spirit, but there's many passages where it says God grieved. We'll look at one tomorrow
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Genesis 6 That is what we would call is an anthropopathic so it's
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God's speaking to us accommodating to us and describing the act of God related to our
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Status as grief It is a response of holy justice is a response of love and when we understand it properly
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What God is doing is actually communicating the unchangeable miss of his perfections
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So what we might say to put it in like a tagline God doesn't have passions. He has perfections God has
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God doesn't have love. He is love God doesn't have joy and said real sense
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He is it and so By taking on human expressions like grieving the
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Spirit it reminds us that the effects of God's simple perfections are
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Are being communicated in terms of our relation to him and our status whether we are repentant or disobedient and that the response of holiness is
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Towards the response of holiness towards one who is unrepentant or sinful in that context is grief
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But we ought not to think that we we don't want to read that back in To the nature of God and think that he is grieved in himself
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It's an accommodation to us to communicate that the God who has called you to himself in Christ Whose spirit indwells you he is no less holy and he is not modified
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By us and it actually is when we understand it properly what's literally being communicated is the unchangeable miss of God God doesn't have partiality
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God has not brought us to himself by forgetting his holiness or by discounting his justice
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He's done it by satisfying it and the Lord Jesus and so when we understand the immutability of God we can see these human like expressions in Scripture as really communicating the
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Unchangeable perfection of God, but we would take it as anthropopathism a human like expression of emotion
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That's communicating literal truth about God that when we say that I've had Christians ask me We're not trying to like get away or brush away any part of the