1689 London Baptist Confession Of Faith (part 7)

We talk about persecution from time to time. And it was interesting to me that this week,

I don't know, probably most of you saw the clip of a senator, he was basically supposed to be vetting a nominee for kind of an undersecretary of management budget, director of management and budget money thing.

And asking him, because this man, I don't know how many of you, how many of you saw this interview? Or this interrogation, this questioning between Senator Sanders and, okay.

And this man, I think his last name is, it's either Vought or Vote or something like that,

V -O -U -G -H -T. Anyway, this man graduated from Wheaton College and Wheaton College, a year or two ago, fired a professor there.

Do you remember what she was fired for? Yeah, she said that, teaching universalism was the answer, that Christians and Muslims worship the same

God. Now, is there a problem with that? Some people say no, right?

So she said that, she got fired, and he wrote an essay. And what he said in this essay was essentially that Muslims have deficient theology.

Why would he say that? Muslims have deficient theology. Because they do is not an answer.

Next. I mean, that's, if I'm your instructor and you say because they do, that's an

F minus. It's a failure and you didn't try. So, next, yes,

Anthony, thank you.

Because they don't believe in the triune God and they don't believe that Jesus died for our sins once for all. That's the essence of Christianity.

I mean, we could expand further on that, right? But they're not, they're not Christians. They don't believe that Jesus Christ is deity.

They don't believe that he died for our sins, that he rose on the third day, right? So that's a, to put it nicely, a deficient theology.

I mean, I could say, you know, you know, such and such a church down the street has a deficient theology.

Well, that's an errant theology. That is a theology that, Islam is a theology that condemns, consigns one to hell, if you believe it.

So, Senator Sanders is asking this man, well, do you believe that these people are condemned, consigned, you know, to eternity?

I don't remember how he said it, but they're condemned, basically, in the sight of God. And he just went on and on and on, and the man just kept saying,

I'm a Christian, I'm a Christian, I'm a Christian. Here's my point. This man is defending

Christianity, right? He's just saying, this is the content of our faith. And Sanders is saying, well, you can't be a

Christian and serve, basically, you can be a Christian, you just can't espouse

Christianity, right? You can't defend Christian views. You can't enumerate

Christian beliefs. You can't recount Christian doctrine.

In fact, you can't even quote Jesus, which he does at one point, not Sanders, but this other man.

You can't quote Jesus and still serve in the government. What's that?

And I think we're just heading for a time in this country where this stuff, confessing the faith, believing

Christianity, having some content to what you believe is going to get you in trouble.

And it does all the time. There are some other things that happen in the news.

I don't know how many of you saw, this wasn't really the news. If you'd turn on the news this morning, you wouldn't have seen this, but people are going after James White for not understanding

Islam correctly. And I'm like, that's pretty interesting, considering he has, I mean, he already had a

PhD and he went back to school and got a PhD in Islam. So I don't know.

My response to somebody posting about it on Facebook is I said, you don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spin into the wind, you don't poke the mask off the own little ranger, and you don't mess around with Jim, also known as James White, just don't do it.

Don't call him Jim either. But, okay, so all that said, we've been talking about the 1689

London Baptist Confession of Faith, talking about scripture, what the confession says about scripture.

And we got to talking about the Trinity last week.

Let me see exactly how far we got. Because I find it hard to believe that that's as far as we got.

Okay, that's as far as we got. I'm still, I'm turning and I'm turning and I'm turning. Okay, there we go.

So, anybody want to try to define the Trinity?

And by the way, if you do, I won't label you unable to serve in the government. God in three persons, okay.

Nobody, all right. Well, let's let the confession define it for us.

The Lord our God is but one only living and true

God. Whose subsistence is in and of himself, infinite in being and perfection.

Whose essence cannot be comprehended by anybody himself. A most pure spirit, invisible without body, parts or passions.

Who only hath immortality. Dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto.

Who is immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, every way infinite, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute.

Working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will for his own glory.

Most loving, gracious, merciful, long suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin.

The rewarder of them that diligently seek him. And I think

I tried to say this last week, and with all, I can't say it, sorry. It looks like it should be with all.

And with all, most just and terrible in his judgments. Hating all sin and who will by no means clear the guilty.

It's a mouthful, should be a hymn. Although it wouldn't really rhyme very well. Okay, so I was reading through and I think

I mentioned this last week. I've been reading through Waldron's book on 1689. And when it got to the

Trinity, I don't know if I confessed this about the confession last week. But when

I get to the part where Waldron discusses the Trinity, I was reading it and I'm going, I read it and I read it again and I read it again.

And I still, after four or five times, I had no idea what he was talking about. So Pastor Mike had said, there was another book about this.

And I thought, well, I'll read that one and see if it makes more sense. So, and it does. This is what

Van Dixhorn said. He says, we can of course ask questions about who

God is, but scripture often answers or first answers the question, how many gods are there?

How many gods are there? The most basic creed of the Old Testament is the cry, hear

O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one, which is found in Deuteronomy 6, verse one is not correct.

Can I get two? Anybody three? It's verse four.

It's verse four, hear O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one. Anybody know what that's called?

It's the Shema, okay. This is a quote

I stole off something else here. Listen to this describing the Trinity. Whatever is in the father is in the son.

Since the father is not a creature, neither is the son. The will of the father and the will of the son are one since they are indivisible.

The son is an exact seal of the father. I think another word that's used to describe that is what?

He is the, or he is an, the Greek word is icon.

He's the image. The triad is one and indivisible without degrees.

There is no first, second, or third God. Why is that important? When we think about the

Trinity, do you just tend to think, it's like, okay, I'm gonna be mildly blasphemous here for a moment, but is it

Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parrish? In other words, do we have degrees of the

Trinity? There's God the father, Jesus, the

Holy Spirit. Is that right? No, it's not right, and that's exactly what he's saying here.

He's saying there is no first, second, or third God, and we need to, if we allow ourselves to think about God in that way, then we're actually committing blasphemy.

Even if we don't ultimately believe that, we ought not to, we need to try to think about God rightly.

From the Westminster Standards. In general, the doctrine of the Trinity may be stated thus.

In the Godhead, three distinct persons who are the same in substance and equal in power and glory. There we go, back to the equality.

Subsists in a single, indivisible essence. Why is the Trinity hard to explain?

Okay, he's unlike any of his creations. Very. He's infinite.

Okay, but specifically to do with the Trinity, why is it hard to explain the Trinity? That's well said, very confusing, but well said.

There's one God, three persons. Each of the persons is

God, but they're not individual gods, they're one God. I mean, this was the hardest thing when

I was, you know, I hate to even describe, you know, getting saved as a process, because it's not a process, but it felt like a process at the time.

The hardest thing for me to wrap my head around was the doctrine of the Trinity, because I'd spent my whole life disbelieving the

Trinity. Let me go on a little bit more with the Westminster Standards here.

There is a, this is a slight expansion of the shorter catechism. We say the larger catechism names the three persons, and adds that there are one, these are one true eternal

God, the same as substance, equal in power and glory, although distinguished by their personal properties.

The confession makes a very compact utterance when it says that in the unity of the

Godhead, there be three persons of one substance, power, and eternity. Putting what our standards teach upon this great subject in an orderly form, there are some particulars to be noted, and we'll get to that in a minute.

But it's just important to note, one God, three persons. Not three personalities, not three different modes, but three separate persons in one

God. How does that, again, we can't fully wrap our minds around that.

Jesus is God, the Father is God, the Spirit is God, one God. The Godhead subsists in three persons.

The names of these persons are the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, or the Holy Spirit. These three are properly called persons because in the scriptures, the qualities of personality, such as individuality, intelligence, and free agency, are ascribed alike to these three.

In other words, self -consciousness and self -determination, the elements of personality, are applied in the scriptures equally to the persons of the

Godhead. The Father stands first in the order of being and operation, hence he is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding.

I wanna back up for just a second here. Can you think of, and if you've taught or taken

Fundamentals of the Faith, you ought to be able to think about this. How would we say that the Holy Spirit is a person instead of a force?

What scriptural evidences could you give for that? Yeah, Gary.

Okay, male pronouns are used, good. Can you think of anything the Holy Spirit does where we would go, that is something a person would do?

He leads, he draws, he convicts, he comforts. Okay, Acts 5 says he can be lied to, right,

Gary. He can be grieved. Who gives spiritual gifts?

Says in 1 Corinthians that he distributes the gifts just as he wills of the

Holy Spirit. So yeah, he does all those things. And so when we think of the

Holy Spirit, we ought not to say it because he is not an it. That's for other religions to describe him that way.

He is a person. Let's see, okay, the

Father stands first. Now, this is, I'm gonna get down to the weeds for a minute and then we'll try to dig our way out of the weeds.

The shorter, or the Westminster standards, they say uniformly he, speaking of the Father, is spoken of as first in order.

The Son always stands second in order and is eternally begotten of the Father. He is and ever has been the only begotten and well -beloved

Son of the Father. The Holy Spirit always stands third in order and is represented as eternally proceeding from the

Father and the Son, for he is called alike the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ. On account of this order of subsistence and operation, they are called the first, the second, and the third persons of the

Godhead. But this does not denote that there is any inferiority of essence or any limitation of attributes in any of the three persons.

It is only meant that there are three eternal and abiding relations subsisting between the three persons and the individual essence of the

Godhead. Thank you. So what does that all mean? It means this.

We can say that the Son is sent of the

Father, right? What did Jesus say over and over again? I don't do what I wanna do.

I do what he who sent me, you know, sent me here to do. I don't say what I wanna say.

I say what he wants me to say. Can you think of, now this is an easy one.

It is, it is, it is easy. I guarantee it. Can you think of an

Old Testament verse that kind of demonstrates the idea of the Trinity? And I know you'll have one, and then

I'll give you a second one. I heard Genesis something. Anybody wanna help Corey out? Okay. Genesis 126, why don't you go ahead and read that,

Corey? Okay, and why does that demonstrate the Trinity? Okay. Some people think that's a plural of majesty, but okay,

I mean, I'll take that. I would go even further back in Genesis 1, of course, right to, you know, basically the beginning.

Why? Because the spirit is hovering, so we're brooding, depending on how you have the, what the translation is there, and I just lost my other thing.

But the other, and we would know from other places that Jesus, we could go to John 1, where it says, it talks about Jesus creating all things.

But for a moment, I'd like you to turn to Isaiah chapter 48. And I think

I've recounted before how I tried to use this on the Jehovah Witnesses.

I thought I was so clever, because they came to my door one fine Saturday morning, and I said, you know,

I just thought, you know what, I'm just gonna be, well, I'll be honest. I was just gonna be a little bit lazy and not go get my

Bible and just ask for theirs. So I turned to Isaiah 48, verse 16, and they had changed the translation.

Didn't really, shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. I mean, they really, they're thorough. If you're gonna be in a cult that changes the word of God, that's the cult to be in, because they change everything.

48, 16 says this, draw near to me. And by the way, this is the pre -incarnate

Christ speaking. He says, draw near to me, hear this. From the beginning, I've not spoken in secrets.

From the time it came to be, I have been there. And now the Lord God has sent me and his spirit.

And this refers to both the father sending the son and him sending the spirit.

And we would also see in John that Jesus sends the spirit. So there's a sense in which they both, the father and the son send the spirit, and then the father is only said to have sent the son.

So there is a sense in which there is a, an order of operations,

I guess, is a good way to say it. Now, let's put it another way. Let's put it, let's bring it into our homes. We use this sometimes.

We say, you know, here's the father who's in charge nominally of the household, you know, and the mom and the wife, you know, who is in charge of various things and everything.

But technically, biblically speaking, the husband is the head of the household. Does that make the husband more important?

Does it mean he is more beloved of God? Does that make the wife a second -class citizen?

Makes it more, see, I'm just like, it just means he has a higher accountability, right? On judgment day, you know, the wife will be able to just go, his fault, you know.

He's gonna be held accountable. And there's a sense in which the

Godhead is sort of mirrored in this way. There is a sense in which, not in terms of accountability, but just in terms of responsibility and the scope of what they do.

We don't see, for example, the son pointing to the Holy Spirit and saying, worship him. We don't see that.

What we see is the Holy Spirit pointing to Jesus and saying, worship him. So let's keep moving here.

The second point about the Trinity here relates to the peculiar property pertaining to each person.

This is a point which the theologians say much, but the standards do little more than state the fact, as is done in large catechism.

Personal properties are possessed by the three persons. Okay, first, the peculiar property of the father is paternity or fatherhood.

The term here is taken in its narrow sense as expressing the relation of the father to the son. The property of the father is to beget the son eternally.

This does not apply the genesis of the son in time. And let me just kind of put that into English here.

Jesus does not have a starting point. He always existed. But there is some sense in which he has, he is begotten of the father, and that's all it says.

And to try to go further than that is to, you know, tread in dangerous ground, so I'm not gonna do it.

Jesus, there was never a time when Jesus did not exist. And that's important for us to know.

He is ever existent, eternal, fully God. Comments or questions about that?

Yes. I don't know, you wanna give it a shot?

Yes, probably somebody can, but they've probably written about 300 pages on it, and we can't possibly,

I don't think, discuss that, you know, reasonably in this setting.

Anybody wanna try to explain eternally begotten? I think, you know, to put it in shorthand, here's what

I would say. I think it just refers to the functionality of the Godhead.

I think that's probably the safest way to talk about it in a few seconds. So other ideas or thoughts?

Anybody wanna be a heretic this morning? Did the DNA of Jesus exist eternally?

I think it might be too literal. I think what we could say safely is that the

DNA that was in, or that became Jesus' body, what was in Mary didn't exist before Mary existed.

I don't think there was a vault in heaven where they kept that or anything. So I think we could just say he is eternally begotten in the sense that his position was always that of the

Son, if he had chosen to reveal himself in that way. I mean, you could have a

Christophany, I don't know. I mean, that'd just be speculation. I don't think there'd be any particular purpose, though, in Jesus having a different appearance before he was born than, you know, after he was born.

But that's speculation. Okay, the peculiar property of the third person is procession or spiration.

That just means that he is sent from the

Father and the Son. This means that from eternity, the Holy Spirit holds the relation of one proceeding from the

Father and the Son. It is to be remembered here also that this relation does not imply a beginning in time of the third person.

In other words, that there was a time that he didn't exist. Holy Spirit is ever -existent. All the properties of the godhood applies equally to each person.

It is rather an assertion that from eternity, the third person sustains a certain inner constitution, inner constitutive, sorry, relation to the other persons.

Just means that they always related in the same way. And this is the chief doctrinal barrier between the

Eastern and Western churches today. Protestantism has followed the opinion of the Western church and holds that the

Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, not from the Father only, which is the

Eastern church. Let's see. Divine names are applied indiscriminately to each of the persons.

Why? Because they are all God. Secondly, divine attributes such as omniscience, omnipresence, absolute rectitude, and many others are applied equally to the three persons.

This is done in such ways to imply community of essence and true deity in each. Thirdly, divine works such as creation, inspiration, working of miracles, and regeneration are connected with the agency of each of the persons.

We tend to think of, I think, we tend to think of them each having their own categories.

You know, for example, who causes somebody to be born again? What's that?

Okay. Any other answers? What's that?

God draws them. Okay. I mean, you could make a case if you were to do an exhaustive study.

Yeah, I think you make a case for each of the, it's easier to go to John three and just say, unless you'd be born of the spirit, et cetera, et cetera, you must be born again.

But if you look at 1 Peter chapter one, I think you'd make a case that that's the father. You can look at different places and say, well,

Jesus chose that. I mean, in other words, I'm just gonna kind of run over these. We know that the father chooses. We also know that Jesus chose the

Holy Spirit seals. Who does the miracles? Well, the Holy Spirit does them. Is it only the

Holy Spirit? Well, no, it appears that it's also Jesus. And yes, it also appears it's the father.

It's hard to narrow one down and say, this one only does this or only does that.

Except we can say that only Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Divine worship and homage are to be given to each of the three persons.

This is evident from the terms of the apostolic benediction and the formula of baptisms. If none but God is to be worshiped and if each of these three persons is to be reverenced as God, then it must be that they each possess the essence of deity.

From these proofs, it is evident that essential deity and true personality belong to each of the three persons.

Okay, let's talk about what it means to, and I just took some, these are mostly from Van Dixhorn, with regard to some of the attributes, because I think

I mentioned this, Waldron completely punts on attributes. He's like, there's plenty of written about that elsewhere, so I'm not gonna talk about it.

Okay, the infinitude of God, that he is infinite. Van Dixhorn says, but while God is limited in number, one, he is unlimited in his being and in all his perfections.

Job and his friends were wrong about many things, but at least all of them understood that the depths of the divine being cannot be sounded by any mere man.

We can hardly even grasp the outer fringes of his works. He is unlimited in his being and all his perfections.

He is perfect. What about angels?

Are angels perfect? You know, when we say that God is perfect, well, if angels are perfect, do they have the, do they have an attribute of deity?

Okay, Charlie. Charlie's willing to step out on the ledge. Yes, his perfection is from his nature.

It's in his being. Isn't it interesting though, because we're told that angels long to look into the things of the gospel and how

God saves people, right? Because it fascinates them. And I think Pastor Mike said either last week or months ago, whenever it is,

I could just hear it rattling around in my head, just talking about how they wanna look because the idea of something fallen being redeemed is completely foreign to them.

Because what happens to fallen angels? They stay in their fallen state. They can't be redeemed. There's no hope for them.

And it's interesting though, too, to think about elect angels. Charlie was just kind of hinting at that.

If they have that element of perfection in them, if they are the elect angels, then guess what?

They can't sin. So this whole thing of redemption is really utterly fascinating to them because it's just beyond their experience.

But to me, angels are kind of interesting because the idea of never being able to sin,

I think that's pretty interesting. Let's see, talking about attributes of God, how about incomprehensible?

Let's look at Psalm 8. Psalm 8, and if somebody would read Psalm 8, I think it's reasonably brief, not 176 verses or anything like that.

Thank you. What's the focus of the psalmist here? What do you think?

If you were gonna summarize this, I mean, there's the little interlude here about the babies and all that, but what's the focus of the psalmist in Psalm 8?

The majesty of God. And really we could say, as I'm gonna say here in a minute, we could say really the incomprehensibility of God, how difficult it is to even understand it.

When he says, when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, then he says, what is man that you are mindful of him?

In other words, he's contemplating his place in the universe and just thinking, when I see what you have done,

God, when I look out on it, when I think even of this world and all the creatures and everything that you've put under me, and I look up at the heavens and I'm just like, why do you even pay attention to me?

Why do you care about me? How is it possible that someone who could do that would care about me?

And it talks about the incomprehensibility of God, just the majesty, the awe that we ought to have for God.

R .C. Sproul says, incomprehensibility is related to a key tenet of the Protestant Reformation.

The finite cannot contain or grasp the infinite. Human beings are finite creatures, so our minds always work from a finite perspective.

We live, move and have our being on a finite plane, but God lives, moves and has his being in infinity.

And really we could say in himself, right? Our finite understanding cannot contain an infinite subject.

Thus God is incomprehensible. This concept represents a check and a balance to warn us lest we think we have captured altogether and mastered in every detail the things of God.

It should also tell us to check ourselves before we wreck ourselves. I think about the Tower of Babel.

You know, we will do this and we will, and we will and we won't. God says, no, you won't.

If we misunderstand the doctrine of God's incomprehensibility, we can easily slide into two serious errors.

The first error says that since God is incomprehensible, he must be utterly unknowable.

And then you wind up, well, he says, anything we say about God is gibberish, right?

Because we don't know, it's just rubbish. But Christianity affirms the rationality of God.

In other words, that what we can know about God is revealed to us alongside the incomprehensibility of God.

Our minds can only go so far in understanding God and to know God, we need his revelation.

But that revelation is intelligible, not irrational. It is not gibberish, it is not nonsense.

The incomprehensible God has revealed himself truly. So we can know

God, we can't know him fully, we can't know him comprehensively, but we can know him via his revelation.

Thoughts or questions about the incomprehensibility of God. Okay. God is an actual spirit who can cite or recite

John 4 .24. God is a spirit, those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

This is from, again, R .C. Sproul, the verse we've selected, John 4 .24.

This may immediately conjure up images of a ghost or some other apparition, but we must be clear to say that the

Lord is spirit does not mean he is wispy or ethereal. When Jesus says

God is spirit, he is simply teaching what the Father is like, divine, not limited by physical corporeality.

That means he doesn't have a body. As human beings, we are defined by our locality.

We can be localized at one particular, well, we are localized at one particular place, at one particular time, not we can.

Though we are composed of body and spirit, our spirits are always where our bodies are, at least while we're alive.

God, on the other hand, cannot be localized. When we say that he is spirit, we're saying that he is invisible and not contained.

There's some analogical similarity between our spirits and the being of the Lord, but they are not identical.

Okay, to be physical, we have extensions, blah, blah, blah. Okay, I mentioned impassibility a few weeks ago.

Who remembers what that means? What does impassible, not impossible, mean? God is impassible.

It's impassible. Come on, everybody. That's right, he doesn't have emotions.

He's not subject to emotions. Like we are, you know, God is never wringing his hands.

He's never depressed. He's never nervous, never edgy, never, you know, in love, in the kind of flighty sense.

So he's not subject to emotions in the same way we are. Another attribute, he is immortal, immortal, cannot die in the sense of eternally dying.

He's always existed. And it's really difficult because we are creatures who exist in time.

It's hard for us to imagine someone who is not a creature and someone who is not subject to time, but that's

God. Immutable, immutable.

Ben Dixhorn writes, which just means he's not subject. He doesn't change. How right they were, talking about the people who wrote the

Westminster Confession, how right they were to draw distinctions between the creator and his creatures. God is immutable.

He does not change like shifting shadows, James 117 says. Indeed, the prophet Malachi once noted,

God does not change at all, Malachi 3 .6. God is immense. He fills all things and is everywhere present.

We cannot hide from God, and there is no place for God to hide. We cannot hide from God because he's everywhere, and he cannot hide from us because the universe testifies to him.

He's everywhere present. He fills it from one end of the universe to the other and from past the universe.

He is the king of ages, which is only to say that he is eternal. And what is true of space is also true of time.

In other words, he exists outside of time and space. Both of those are his creation. Even though we say that we know all these things about God, how can we search out what these categories really mean when applied to God?

God is knowable. He has revealed himself, but there are such vast limits to our knowledge that we also have to admit that in a profound sense,

God is incomprehensible. Let's go back to the confession. It says that God having all life, glory, goodness, blessedness in and of himself is alone in and unto himself all sufficient.

That is to say, he needs nothing. And they go on to say that, not standing in need of any creature which he hath made.

I heard somebody say the other day, and I don't know who this was, but they were quoted as saying that without us,

God would not be God. Oh, you know who it was? Sorry, it was the Pope. I heard that and I was like, that's terrible.

You know, God, if we did not exist, God would not be God. Horrific. He may be many things, but not a good theologian.

He is not a good theologian. Oh, let's see. Not saying anything. Not deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them.

He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things.

And he hath most sovereign dominion over all creatures. I read this and I'm like, this God, this is a

God worthy of worship. This is not a God that you come in and just kind of give a high five to and talk about Jesus, your best friend.

This is a God that you worship. He hath most sovereign dominion over all creatures to do by them, for them, or upon them whatsoever himself pleaseth.

In his sight, all things are open and manifest. In other words, he knows everything. His knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature.

So as nothing is to him contingent or uncertain, he is most holy in all his counsels, in all his works, and in all his commands.

To him is due from angels and men whatsoever worship, service, or obedience as creatures they owe unto the creator, and whatever he is further pleased to require of them.

Now, that's a mouthful. But ultimately, what we're talking about here is the sovereignty of God, his sovereign decrees.

And in fact, we're going to be talking about his will. And we're going to be describing how everything, everything works according to the counsel of his will, which is hard sometimes to understand.

And that's what we're gonna be talking about. How is it possible that he even ordains sin?

Sin, disaster. You know, is it correct? True or false?

This is true or false? Is this a correct statement? Well, let me see. How can I do that? True or false? This is a correct statement.

No. Is the statement true or false? There we go. I know if I punted around for 30, 40 minutes,

I'd figure it out. Okay. God allows things to happen. Wow, let's close in prayer.

We'll discuss that in two weeks. Father, we just thank you. We just are amazed by you.

So we consider all that you have created, all that you have established, all that you have done, all that you will do.

Who are you, oh God, to be mindful of us? And yet you are. From eternity past, you chose us.

You set your affection upon us. You determined to redeem us in spite of our actions, not because of our actions.

Father, we praise you for being a saving God, one who sent his son, the

Lord Jesus Christ, to bear our sins and to redeem us from the damnation that we surely deserve.