The Trinity (Part II)

All right. Well, we'll get started. We're going to try. I'm going to try. I'm fine -tuning.

So I've confessed to a few people here, I have not taught through a statement of faith ever.

And so hopefully the goal is, just like Paul said to Timothy, that if we devote ourselves to the public reading of Scripture and exhortation and teaching, that people will see our progress.

So hopefully every time we go through this, there will be progress. So before we begin, let's pray and then we'll carry on.

Father, oh Lord, our God, we love you.

Lord, we want to consider you tonight. Lord, we don't want to be distracted by the thoughts that have filled our minds throughout the day that are outside of you, that are maybe burdens we're carrying or anxieties or whatever the case might be.

Lord, we pray that you'd help us today to focus, to hone in on your word. Lord, that you would teach us.

Lord, that we wouldn't go through the motions tonight, that we wouldn't play games. But Father, that we would seek the living

God, that we would seek you in your word, and that Father, you would show yourself to us.

Lord, that you would be pleased by your Holy Spirit to reveal yourself to us for your name's sake, for your glory here, oh

Lord. So we pray, Lord, please help us, help us to be attentive, to focus.

Lord, help me to teach your word with clarity and conviction tonight.

And Lord, we pray that you would be honored, that you would be exalted here, that you would be pleased with what becomes of this evening.

I pray this in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen. Amen. All right.

Well, so for those who haven't been here for a little while, we finished up teaching through the doctrine of Scripture.

So we looked at two, did two parts on the doctrine of God's word.

And then last week, Elias taught on the doctrine of the Trinity, part one. So theology proper.

And then this week, we're going to do Trinity part two. And so we've already been doing this for a month.

That's gone really quite quickly. But it's such a weighty topic that we could be in the

Trinity until next year. So we're going to do our very best to do it justice in two sessions, to speak about our triune

God in two sessions. So last week, I'll read out our full statement here on the Trinity, and then we'll work through it.

So last week, you'll remember we read, The one true God exists eternally in three distinct persons,

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are equal in deity, power, and glory.

God not only created the world, but also now upholds, sustains, governs, and providentially directs all that exists, and will bring all things to their proper consummation in Christ Jesus.

So that was last week. Amen. This week, we're going to look at this. God has absolute foreknowledge.

He hears and answers prayer, and he saves from sin and death all who come to him through Jesus Christ.

God alone deserves all of creation's worship, service, thanksgiving, and fear.

God is to be lived unto in all spheres of life, and called upon as Lord, Creator, and Redeemer.

So there's a lot packed in there. So what we're going to do, at the very onset,

I'll confess that I had way too much fun with God's divine foreknowledge, and so there's going to be more emphasis there.

But I've tried to balance that out. I've tried to cut and paste, but we'll get right into it.

We'll look at that first. So God has absolute foreknowledge of all future events.

Now at the onset, at first glance, that doesn't seem like too much of a controversy, does it?

That God, who is omniscient, who possesses all knowledge, who knows all things, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch that God knows the future, right?

It would seem that way. Well, actually, there are many people, maybe even people here,

I'm not sure, but there are many people who would deny that. There are many people that would look at our statement of faith, this assertion that God knows the future, and they would say, absolutely not.

And one such example would be a movement, theological movement, known as Open Theism.

I'm not sure if anyone here has heard of Open Theism or Openness Theology, but what

Open Theism teaches, essentially, and this is something that has crept into the

Church to the point that many people believe it without even having a name for it, but what

Open Theism teaches is that God can know all possible things that can be known.

We would generally agree with that. However, what they would say is this, that because the future has not yet happened, it cannot be known, and therefore, because the future cannot be known,

God cannot know it. So, a proponent, a modern, kind of the modern popularizer, if you want to call him that, of the

Open Theism movement, his name is Greg Boyd, and he writes this. He says, if we have been given freedom, and I want you guys to think about this, just for a second, to think about, as we've heard about the sovereignty of God, and maybe as you've read through the statement of faith, where we're going in terms of who

God is, what he knows, our relationship, God's divine sovereignty and our human responsibility, but he says this, if we have been given freedom, we create the reality of our decisions by making them, and until we make them, they don't exist.

Thus, he says, in my view at least, there simply isn't anything to know until we make it there to know.

So God can't foreknow the good or bad decisions of the people he creates until he creates these people, and they in turn create their decisions.

Now, we would categorically disagree with that statement, but to sum it up, maybe that's to put it lightly, to sum it up, what

Greg Boyd is saying is that because man has absolute free will, absolute free moral agency,

God cannot predict what man can do, and so until man has done something,

God does not know about it, and I heard, I'll just say this quickly, I heard about a particular counseling session that Greg Boyd had with one of the people in his church.

She was a young woman. She wanted to become a missionary. She met a young man on the mission field.

They chose to marry and later found out that he was engaged in adultery and sexual immorality and all sorts of things, and when she sat down with Greg Boyd, Greg Boyd said, well, there's no way that God would have known that that was going to happen, and in essence, in some ways, rather than maybe saying she could or should have been more careful about choosing a husband, it's put on God who couldn't possibly know the future and therefore may or may not have made a mistake, so the popularity of open theism has ebbed and flowed, but like I said, it has really, especially in Arminian circles, has infected large parts of the church to the point that I know many people in Edmonton that hold to an open theistic point of view, even if they don't even know it, and I know pastors who have openly said that God cannot know and cannot intervene in human events, human decisions, or world affairs, and we would say absolutely not, so those who would aggressively preach this idea of open theism would actually say that those of us who have statements of faith, that's what

I'm trying to say, like us, have actually assumed God's divine foreknowledge, that it is not taught in Scripture, but it's something that we have deduced from looking at passages in Scripture, so what

I want us to do is ask, is this a doctrine that we've assumed, first of all, and then does

God have foreknowledge at all? So we're going to start there. We're going to go right to the basics and look at a few passages and ask, does

God have divine foreknowledge? And does God know all things? So I'll just go through a couple passages like we have in times past.

We do have a lot of passages to reference. What I'm going to do is,

I've tried to pick some of the best ones, and just if I'm losing you, put your hand up, let me know, but Job 37, 16, so one of Job's counselors,

Elihu, he asks Job, he says, do you know the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of him, he's talking about God, the wondrous works of him who is perfect in knowledge.

1st John 320, John, the Apostle John says, God is greater than our hearts, talking about our hearts condemning us,

God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Hebrews 4, 13, this one

I think unequivocally points this out, no creature is hidden from his sight, so much so it says, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.

God knows everything that any person has ever done in the deep, dark, secret world of their own sin, and not only that, but God knows even our private motives, our private logic, he's able to discern, and we must give an account.

God knows everything. A few years ago, we were traveling,

I can't remember where exactly we were going, but I was randomly selected for one of those new body scanners.

I was going to get a full body scan in one of those three 360 -degree body scanners that apparently seized under your clothes, and I was given the choice of having a body scan or of having a pat -down search, and I opted for the pat -down search because I just wasn't comfortable with that level of scrutiny, but no man or woman in all the world gets to opt out of God's divine knowledge.

All of us, whether you like it or not, are naked and exposed before God's perfect knowledge.

Romans 11 says, oh the depths of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways.

So the Bible's clear. God knows absolutely everything, for the darkness is as light to him,

Psalm 139 says. So what about the future now?

So for those who have an open theistic point of view, what they might do is they might point to passages like Genesis 6, where it says that God saw man and all of his wickedness, and it says there that he regretted that he had made man on the earth.

Or they'll point, especially a favorite is 1 Samuel 15 11, where it says that God had regretted that he made

King Saul because he turned back from following him. So what they would say is because God communicates regret,

God would not have known ahead of time what was going to happen. He's now learned, and he's regretting that decision.

And really they're not saying it out loud, but they're implying that God has essentially made a mistake, that if God had known, he would have chosen differently.

Now what open theists don't often include, especially when they're looking at that 1

Samuel 15 passage, is that word regret. So the word regret that we see in the scripture is the word,

I'm going to try to say it, it's a Hebrew word, naham. It's that throat sound, naham.

And so this regret that God experiences, what it's actually, what

God is actually doing there, is he is using anthropomorphic language. So that's language that God can use to relate to us.

And so, and the reason why we know that's the case, is because later in 1 Samuel 15, what

God says in 1 Samuel 15 29, if you want to note this, it says the glory of Israel, that's

God, will not lie or have regret.

He uses that same word, naham, for he is not a man that he should have regret.

So what God is actually saying, when he says that he regrets that he made man, he's demonstrating at least from a first -person point of view, from a human point of view, that he is grieved by man's sin.

However, he clarifies in that 1 Samuel 15 29 passage, that he is not a man.

He even likens having regret to lying. Just as God can never lie, God can never truly have regret.

So God knows the future. He knows what he's doing.

So now I'm going to skip over a little bit here. Now let's see how

God's divine foreknowledge develops itself in Scripture. So in Psalm 139,

David writes this. He says, You search out my path, and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways, even before a word is on my tongue.

Before he has spoken a word, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.

You hem me in behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.

It is high. I cannot attain it. God knows what David's going to say even before he says it.

He's behind and he's before. David cannot attain to this knowledge. He says later in that same chapter, he says,

Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

Even before David had lived, before he had been born, before he was even an unformed substance,

God had seen all of David's days. They were in his book. He knew when David would be born.

He knew when David would fall into sin. He knew when David would die. This is the last

I'll share. Isaiah 46, verses 9 and 10. God says, I am

God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done, saying my counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purposes.

I will accomplish all of my purposes. So brothers and sisters, what I want you to see is, most assuredly,

God does know the future. Most assuredly, God knows what's going to happen tomorrow.

God knows if I'm going to get into a car accident tomorrow. God knows if I'm going to wake up tomorrow and serve him.

He knows if I'm going to wake up and backslide, and he knows everything else in between. Now, I want us to consider this.

Not only does God have perfect foreknowledge in the sense that he understands the future, but God has perfect foreknowledge in the sense that he foreordains the future.

And so that Isaiah 46 passage says, my counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish my purpose.

So not only does he know the future, but God is actually directing the future. He is fixing the future ahead.

And so without this, without God's ability to both know and fix the future, we would have no predictive prophecy in the

Bible. We would have no messianic prophecy in the Bible. I would even go so far as to submit, we would not even have the guarantee of a successful Messiah in the

Bible if God does not know and control the future. And I want to point this out a little bit.

So there's, in a book it's called Science Speaks, there were a couple of guys who are much smarter than me that did the math on what it would look like for someone to come and to fulfill what they classify at least as the 60 major messianic prophecies and 270 ramifications, so the consequences of Christ's coming.

And what these scientists came up with is this, and it was, this Science Speaks book is a peer -reviewed book even by non -Christian organizations, so it's interesting that they would acknowledge this, but what they said was that in order for someone to come and to fulfill all the 60 messianic prophecies and all those 270 ramifications, the likelihood, the mathematical likelihood of that happening is 1 in, what is it, 1 in 10 to the 17th power.

So to put that into perspective, that's 1 in 100 quadrillion.

So kids, little Poiriers, if you know your math, we have millions, billions, trillions, and then what's after that?

No, close, quadrillions. So, the likelihood of one man coming and, yeah, quadrillions.

So, the likelihood of Christ coming and fulfilling all those prophecies, if God does not know and control the future, that's a 1 in 4 or 100 quadrillion, there we go, chance.

And just to put that, because that's an abstract number, they illustrated this, they said if you were to take the entire state of Texas, and you were to cover it in silver dollars, and you were to cover the entire state, the whole footprint of Texas, in silver dollars, 2 feet deep across the entire state, you were to pluck one of those silver dollars, maybe write your initials on it, frisbee it back into the pile, and then stir it thoroughly, and then if we were to send

Steve anywhere in the state of Texas to find that silver dollar, the likelihood that he would find that silver dollar is 1 in 100 quadrillion.

So, the Lord knows the future. The Lord planned that Christ would come, that Christ would die in our stead.

It says in Acts 2 23, Jesus was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, and killed by the hands of lawless men.

Even the greatest act of human evil, the murder of the Messiah, God's anointed

Son, was part of God's foreknowledge, and part of God's divine plan.

And so what I would submit to that woman whose husband left her, there's no comfort, there's no comfort for her if this is a meaningless, purposeless event.

But if this is, well, perhaps you did not look close enough. Nevertheless, Romans 8 28 is true in this situation, that God causes all things to work together for good, including this, for those who are called, for those who love him, for those who are called according to his purpose.

So, what does this mean? I've spent quite a bit of time already talking about these first few words, that God has perfect knowledge of all future events.

What does this mean for us? Well, I think in the world that we live in right now, I think it has a lot of application. We live in a world of uncertainty.

We're in the midst of a global pandemic. By God's grace, and hopefully according to God's will, we're in the midst of planting a church that has no guarantee of success.

Nevertheless, the Lord is sovereign, and I think that this doctrine, if we really understand

God's foreknowledge, God's sovereignty, his foreordination, it really ought to be a source of great peace and great trust for us as God's children.

God knows if we're going to get sick with the coronavirus. God knows if we're going to survive that sickness, and that's not to overblow it, likely you will, but God knows if this church plant is going to take root and grow, or if it's going to fizzle out in the heat of the sun, and that's okay, and the

Lord is in control, and so we can have perfect trust in this.

We're not at the mercy of men's depraved minds. We're not at the mercy of happenstance, or the unpredictable forces of nature.

We're in the hands of a good and gracious God, so if you've had a busy week, if you're experiencing spiritual attack,

I felt it this week too. We're in the Lord's hands. Greater is he who is in us than he is in the world.

The evil one cannot touch us apart from God's foreknowledge and foreordination.

I found a really powerful illustration this week, and I'm just going to tack it on, just to drive this a little bit further.

In April 20th, 2001, that was actually, I think, the same day that I was at my dad's funeral, so it's interesting that I know where I was on this day, but on April 20th, 2001, there was a missionary couple, a

Baptist missionary couple named Jim and Ronnie Bowers, and they were missionaries in Peru, and they had two children, two young children, a six -year -old named

Corey and an infant daughter named Charity, and so in the course of their missionary duties on April, I said

April 20th, they were flying in their missionary plane with a pilot going from one locale to another, and because in Peru there's there's a serious drug trade, the

Peruvian Air Force was on patrol looking for drug planes, and they spotted their little

Cessna plane, and they followed them, tried to make communications, and through a series of miscommunications, eventually the

Peruvian Air Force shot their missionary airplane down, and according to God's perfect sovereign plan, at least one of those bullets tore through the back of the aircraft, went through the back seat of Ronnie, the wife, went through the back seat of her aircraft seat, through her, and stopped in Charity, and both her and Charity died right then and there.

The plane crashed, and according to God's sovereign plan, the pilot and Jim Bowers and his son

Corey survived, and at the funeral, can you imagine what would an open theist say to Jim Bowers?

That was a meaningless death. God had no control over that. Who knows, maybe

Satan has thwarted your missionary purposes in Peru, but thankfully

Jim Bowers was not an open theist. At the funeral later on, he spoke there, and he gave 15 reasons, 15 reasons that he could identify that God had allowed this to happen, and he said, it was not a stray bullet that killed my wife and daughter, it was a sovereign bullet.

Now it's in situations like that that we can take great peace, that the Lord knows ahead of time, and he knows what he's doing, and that momentary and light affliction, that one bullet shot in a split second, is producing in that family an eternal weight of glory, right?

Okay, I had a lot of fun there, so we'll go move on next. So he hears and answers prayer.

So if you've been listening astutely up to this point, you might wonder, so if God knows the future, and if the future is fixed, what is the purpose of praying?

You know, why do I pray? If God already knows what he's going to do, and he's going to do it, and there's nothing

I can do to add or to thwart, and I once heard

R .C. Sproul in a lecture, he asked the question, does prayer change God? Does prayer change

God's mind? If you've been paying attention for the last couple weeks, we serve a sovereign, so he's all -powerful, an immutable, so he's never changing, an immortal, eternal

God, he has perfect foreknowledge. If you've been paying attention, if we ask that question, does

God, or does prayer change God's mind? The answer is no. The prayer does, our prayer does not change

God's mind, but in the same lecture, R .C. Sproul asked the question, does prayer change things?

And the answer, the biblical answer, the scriptural answer, is yes. Well, prayer does not change

God, it does change things. Good example, James 4, chapter 4 and verse 2.

James says there, you do not have because you do not ask.

God has ordered the universe by his great wisdom in such a way that our prayers actually do something.

Our prayers actually do something, and that something serves

God's greater end. And so what that means, and take heart in this, make this, embolden your prayers, that when you pray, things happen, and when you don't pray, things don't happen.

And according to God's perfect plan, that accomplishes his desired ends. Now, my tiny brain, and no offense, but likely yours too, is not able to just compute exactly that interplay between divine sovereignty and human responsibility.

But as I once heard a brother say, that isn't our department. We don't need to know it all to be obedient in this area.

And so we have a God who's commanded us to bring our requests to him, and we have a

God who is pleased to give us the desires of our hearts. So I want to look first at how

God hears our prayers. So in Jesus Christ, we have been granted the privilege of approaching God, immortal, invisible,

God only wise, the living God in prayer.

And that in and of itself ought to be too much to bear, that we can actually come to the

God, the living God, and that he hears us. If I wanted the ear of our prime minister tonight, there is almost nothing that I could do to have his ear.

If I were to go south of the border, and hop over the fence, and walk across the

White House lawn, I would probably be shot before I could even knock on the door. And yet, right now, at this very moment, we can have the ear of the high

King of heaven, of the Lord of glory. We can come to the

Lord right now, or this evening, or tomorrow morning, and we have God's undivided attention.

That's the beauty of God's attributes, his omniscience, his omnipresence, is that we can have all of God's attention, as if we're the only one in the universe speaking to him at that moment.

And for those who are in Christ, he hears our prayers. It's amazing. 1

John 5 verses 14 and 15 says, and this is the confidence. We come to him with boldness and with confidence through Christ.

And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, whatever we ask, we know that we have the request that we have asked of him.

Not only does the Lord want us to pray, but he takes pleasure in our prayers.

We see this in Revelation 8 as an example, that the prayers of God's people ascend before him like an incense, like a pleasing aroma.

He commands, he takes pleasure in our prayers. And the Lord has given us passage after passage and promise upon promise to encourage our praying, to strengthen our praying, to embolden our praying.

I'm going to list a few. We'll go through them quickly. There are so many. I could just list them all.

So what I've done here is I've just picked one promise from each gospel. There are more than one in each gospel, but I picked one from each gospel, and then

I snagged one from James. So we'll look at those together. Matthew 7.

Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you.

That's verse 7. A few verses later in verse 11, he says, If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your

Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask of him?

For the parents in the room, or maybe the, you know, uncles or aunts in the room, I'm not sure. How much joy do you take in giving a gift to your child, right?

To see them open a gift, right? You take great efforts to find the right gift, and to wrap it, and to deliver it, and you look for the expression of happiness and joy on their faces when they open the gift.

Well, the Lord likens our gift giving to those of evil gift givers, and how much more does the

Father give good things to those who ask him? Mark 11 .24. Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

In Luke 18, the Lord Jesus tells the parable of the persistent widow. This persistent widow who is trying to get the attention, who is crying out for justice from this unjust judge, and it says that he told this parable that they ought always to pray and not to lose heart.

And at the end of this parable, he summarizes everything. He says, and will not God give justice to his elect who cry to him day and night?

Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily.

Nevertheless, think about this. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?

Will he find faith in our hearts to come to him in prayer? Bear with me just a little bit longer.

I have one more verse on this. James 5. Listen carefully. I know I've been pumping them out, but James 5, the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth.

Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. What James is getting at here, what the

Lord is getting at through James, is that Elijah was not superhuman. Elijah was a man just like us.

He was a human being just like us, and what made the difference?

He was a righteous man who prayed fervently, and it was God who provided the answer.

So brothers and sisters, I want to ask you this question. Really, really take this seriously.

Do you pray like these verses are true? Do you, if you were to look at your prayer life, would you say it is consistent with the promises in these verses?

I would say that we would all have to say no. It's, I mean, I don't, I've never met a person who is satisfied with their prayer life, but nevertheless, these are the promises that the

Lord has given us to prompt us, and so if you haven't, maybe tonight is a reminder, an opportunity.

Lord, strengthen my prayer life. I fear that too many

Christians pray like atheists, that we come to the Lord out of a sense of duty.

I do it because I should or because I have to, and I come to the Lord not expecting that he will answer my prayers, that he will give me that which

I am requesting. Now the Lord is sovereign, and he may not. I'm not saying that he will answer every single prayer that we ever pray in the way that we would expect him to, but we ought to come to the

Lord with a sense of expectation that he is going to answer these prayers. John Piper, I harvested a good quote from him.

He says, if you do not avail yourself of the privilege of bringing to pass events in the universe that would not take place if you didn't pray, in John Piper fashion, he says, you are acting like a colossal fool, that we might have unbelieving family members.

I'm convicted by my own words here, that we might have unbelieving family members and not to pray for them, to not pray for their conversion, to not expect that the

Lord would answer that prayer. So in terms of application, a couple things.

How can we improve our prayer lives? I know this isn't a sermon, so I'm not gonna preach too much here on the application, but a couple things here is, if you haven't already, plan to pray.

I know that a lot of people are under the impression that the only real genuine prayers are spontaneous prayers, that if it's not born out of a sense of spontaneity, it's not genuine, and therefore the

Lord is not pleased, but I think that's a very unhelpful idea. I think that when you look even at the way the

Lord Jesus approached God, there was a plan, there was consistency, there was a habit, if you want to call it that, about their prayer lives, and so you might be a mom with young children,

I'm mindful of Susanna Wesley, she had a plan in a place and it was under her apron.

For A .W. Tozer, I believe it was, it was a furnace room where he could get away to be with the

Lord, but if you don't have one already, find a place, find a time, make a plan, and go to be with the

Lord. Go to the inner room and draw near to him, and what I think you'll find, really and truly, is that as you do that, those spontaneous prayers are going to come more frequently, they're going to be more genuine than if you relied on spontaneity alone.

Next thing is approach prayer as communion with God. Prayer is so much more than bringing a list of requests to God.

Lord, this is my laundry list, would you please do something about it? But prayer, we need to appreciate, is a gift from God, and prayer is a mechanism, a means by which we have fellowship with the living

God, that we get to walk with God, that we get to talk with God, that we get to have intimacy, friendship with the living

God. I named my son Noah, and this will get his attention, I named my son

Noah, Nicole and I did, one of the reasons is because we would, we would look at Genesis 6 and the description of Noah in the

Bible, that he was a righteous man that walked in close fellowship with God.

It's like Enoch, he walked with God, and then he was not. Or like Moses, where it says in Scripture, thus the

Lord used to speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks with his friend.

So before anything else in our group, in this church plant, one of my prayers for us, for our people, is that we would be righteous men, righteous women, men and women of God who know

God, who walk with God, that we would have, that we would know him, that we would be known by him, that when we walk, enter through the, from the reality of faith to sight, that it would be, it would not be a big shift, that we would be ready for an eternity with God.

And so, whatever you need to forsake to do that, TV or social media or phones or whatever it is, forsake all of these hindrances for the sake of knowing

God. There's a man named Howard Guinness. He wrote a book called Sacrifice in 1939.

He was part of student ministry, which is something that's dear to our hearts, and he says this.

I find these powerful words. He says, where are the men of prayer? Where are the men who count

God's word of more importance to them than their daily food? Where are the men who, like Moses of old, commune with God face to face as a man speaks with his friend?

Where are God's men and women? Where are God's men in this day of God's power?

In this day of God's power, are you a man or a woman who walks with God? Next part of our statement of faith, part three of four, he saves from sin and death all who come to him through Jesus Christ.

Now, we're going to hear this for three weeks straight, starting next week. So, for the sake of Steve and Elias and myself,

I'm not going to speak too much on this. All I'll say is this, because it speaks to who our triune

God is. God is holy, holy, holy. God is just.

God is just. He is a righteous judge, it says in scripture, who feels indignation for the wicked every single day, and yet, he is gracious, and he is merciful, and he is kind, and he is patient, and he is slow to anger.

He is the perfection of love, and it says in Isaiah 43, and he is the

Lord, and besides him, there is no other Savior.

There is no other Savior. And so, just as the Lord is pleased to hear and to answer our prayers, the

Lord is pleased to save, to justify, to sanctify, and to eventually glorify any and all who will come to him in repentance, and who will cast themselves by faith upon the

Lord Jesus Christ. Our triune God is to be extolled for flawlessly authoring, and accomplishing, and applying a perfect redemption for lost sinners.

So we're going to hear about more next week. I'll subdue myself there. And then the very last section that we'll look at here, it's the longest, and unfortunately,

I'm going to devote the least amount of time to it, but God alone, think about this,

God alone deserves all of creation's worship, service, thanksgiving, and fear.

God deserves those things. God is to be lived unto in all spheres of life, and called upon as Lord, Creator, and Redeemer.

When we consider who God is, we've had two weeks to consider the

Trinity, and so consider what we've spoken about in the last two weeks, and then consider what you've read in Scripture.

Consider what you've heard from faithful and godly men. If we consider all that God is, all of his marvelous attributes, all that he has revealed himself as to us in Scripture, the only appropriate response, brothers and sisters in Christ, the only appropriate response before a holy, holy, holy

God is, I think, what we see in the Apostle John at the beginning of the book of Revelation.

This is the Apostle John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, who rested his head on the bosom of Christ, and when he saw the glorified

Lord Jesus, I love how it describes it, it says, he fell at his feet as though dead.

The only right response that we ought to give, or that we must give, that we should give to God, is to fall, prostrate before him, and to declare that he is

Lord and God to his own glory. When we behold the living

God, not the God that we even, that many of us, that some of us, that many of the, much of the world has fashioned in their own minds, but when we behold the one true

God, what inevitably follows is what we've said here, fervent worship, fervent worship, unconditional service, wholehearted gratitude, and reverential awe.

He is not common. He is not anybody's homeboy. You see people with that t -shirt,

Jesus is my homeboy. He is not a man like one of us.

That was one of the errors that the nation of Israel made, is that they thought that he was like them.

He is almighty God. If you look at Isaiah 6, Isaiah's interaction with God, he gets a glimpse of God and the seraphim and the cherubim, and they're saying, holy, holy, holy is the

Lord God almighty. What does Isaiah do? He says, woe, woe is me, for I am lost.

I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the

King, the Lord of hosts. And then when

God had his guilt taken away, and when he atoned for his sin, and God put an opportunity before him, what did

Isaiah say? Does anyone know? Here I am. Here I am.

Send me. That is the heart of a godly man, or a godly woman who has had an encounter with the living

God, to recognize that he is holy. I don't have words to express this adequately.

I pray that the Spirit would imprint that on your heart, that he would drive that deep, that the

Lord is holy. And so the only right human response is not lip service, but it is worship in spirit.

So that is with the whole of our beings. Let me ask you, when we're going to sing some hymns after this, that's one form of worship.

But when you sing to the Lord, is it lip service, or is it the whole of your being, worshiping the

Lord in spirit and in truth, according to how he has revealed himself, not how you'd like him to be, or wish he would be, or how your friend says he is, but as he has revealed himself in spirit and in truth?

We worship him with all of our faith and trust, all of our allegiance, all of our obedience, not fearing man.

We're not to fear man. We're not to fear death, but to fear God alone. The apostle

Paul, if you know the book of Romans, the book of Romans is a wonderful book.

It contains, by my estimation, some of the most glorious truths, some of the most glorious doctrines that you will find in the whole of scripture.

It's all of God's word. It's all good, but Romans, there's just, there's a depth about it, a richness about it.

And the apostle Paul, go have a seat, please. The apostle Paul, he speaks about the righteousness of God.

He speaks about the unworthiness of man. He speaks about the glorious grace of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

He speaks about the sovereign providence, the sovereign perseverance of God.

And then as Paul normally does in all of his epistles, he saves some room near the end for application.

And so Paul goes through all of this glorious doctrine in the book of Romans, and then in Romans 12, he begins his application.

And what does he say? He says this, Romans 12, I appeal to you, therefore, so in light of everything that you've heard,

I appeal to you, therefore, and by the brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable as your spiritual worship.

I pray that that would be the case for us, brethren, that we would be a church where we're all here on the

Lord's day, worshiping together, and at the same time, we're all on the altar.

Lord, where would you have me? Lord, where ought I to go? Lord, anywhere, anything, any job, any place, any time.

I pray that we'd be a people that are sold out to God, no reservations, nothing held back, nothing in the bank.

It's all there, all for him, all for his purposes. When we behold

God aright, Lord, I pray that we would, when we behold

God aright, we'll say like Paul, to live is Christ. To live is for Christ.

Whatever I do, it is for Christ, and to die is gain. I will live for him, and then

I'll die, and then I'll be with him. We'll say like Paul, I have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, in the life

I now live, in the flesh, by faith in the Son of God. Sorry, I'm misquoting that.

I live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

I'll close with this, just this little illustration. There was one such man who had an experience of the living

God in history, who's left a mark on all of church history, on Christian history, at least in the 19th century.

There's a man named Charles Thomas Studd. I don't know if anyone knows where I'm going yet, but Charles Thomas Studd was born in England in the 1800s, and he grew up to become a very popular, very famous, very talented cricket player in England, Noah Bear.

Charles Thomas Studd, C .T. Studd, was like the Connor McDavid of British cricket.

Very talented, full of potential, all eyes were on him. What is going to become of this cricket player?

And Charles grew up in a home where his father had become a believer at a

D .L. Moody revival. And so children, listen to this, listen to this. Charles's father would come to the children at night when they were in their beds, and he would try to persuade them.

He would say to his children, come to the Lord Jesus. Come to Christ.

Come to Christ. And Charles had a very hard heart, and so what he would do is he would pretend that he was asleep so that he didn't have to hear about Christ.

He didn't have to hear his dad's appeals to come to me, to come to Christ, excuse me.

So Charles grew up, and I'm not sure if it was when he was 17 or 18, but had an interaction with essentially,

I think it was a street preacher, and through that interaction he came to Christ. And then through a series of events, eventually he had the conviction that God wanted him on the mission field.

He met Hudson Taylor and him and a group that became known as the Cambridge Seven.

They all went and joined Hudson Taylor's China Inland Mission. And so this very promising cricket player left the luxuries, the comforts, the applause of Britain, and over the course of the next,

I believe it was 40, 45 years or so, went to China, and then to India, and then to Africa.

And he died in Congo, in the Congo, I believe it was at age 71 in the early 1900s.

And C .T. Studd just has a plethora of good quotes. I mean this is a man who, like I said, had tremendous potential, left it all, and by God's grace had some words to share with us that we might do the same.

And he said this, he said, if Jesus Christ be God and died for me, there is no sacrifice too great for me to make for him.

If Jesus Christ is God in human flesh and he died for me, what can

I hold back? He wrote the poem, probably many of you have heard this poem,

Only One Life. Only one life, it will soon be past.

Only what is done for Christ will last. Most people know that part. There's an optional stanza at the end, and I actually like that more.

Only one life, it will soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last.

And this is the stanza. And when I am dying, how happy I will be if the lamp of my life has been burnt out for thee.

Brothers and sisters, let's live like that, that when we get to that day when the Lord calls us home, there's nothing left in the tank, that we have spent and been spent for the cause of Christ and for the glory of our triune

God. We serve a good God, and I pray that as we continue to teach and as we continue to grow together in fellowship and in unity and in purpose, that that would be our central purpose, that we would live and breathe and move and have our being for the glory of God.

Let's close in prayer. Father, I pray that you would drive this home in my heart, that you would drive this home in the hearts of everyone here, that you would drive this home in the hearts of the children.

Father, that we would behold you, that we would see you as holy and as good.

You are not common. Lord, you are God Almighty. And Father, if we could just,

Lord, like Jonathan Edwards, stamp eternity on our eyeballs.

Lord, that we wouldn't live for this world, that we wouldn't live for the fleeting pleasures of sin, but Lord, that we would look to that city whose builder and founder is

God, and Lord, that we would live for your glory. Lord, that we would walk in obedience to you, that we would offer ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to you as our spiritual act of worship.

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.