An Absolutely Unique Being

I ask you to please stand for the reading of God's word. Old Testament reading today is in Isaiah 40, 1 through 18. That's page 599 in your P Bibles. Comfort, comfort, my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, and that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.

A voice cries, in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway of our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low. The uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all the flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. A voice says, cry, and I said, what shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades. When the breath of the Lord blows on it, surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion.

Herald of good news, lift up your voice with strength. O Jerusalem, herald of good news, lift it up, for fear not. Say to the cities of Judah, behold your God. Behold the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him.

Behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will tend his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arms. He will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.

Who has measured the waters and the hollow of his hand, and marked off the heavens with a span, and closed the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?

Who has measured the spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel? Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?

Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales. Behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.

All the nations are as nothing before him. They are accounted by him as less than nothing in emptiness. To whom, then, will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him?

The Supremacy of Christ in Colossians 1

The New Testament reading is Colossians 1, 15 through 23. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dimensions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body and the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that is everything he might be preeminent.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you who were once, oh my gosh, and you who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he was now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

And if indeed you continue in faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

You may be seated.

It's my delight to introduce our speaker today. Dave and I actually graduated in the same class from Cedarville in 1977. Now, when I talk about feeling old, right, that's college. After Dave graduated, he ministered at Grace Chapel in West Liberty for the next 25 years and had a great ministry there with a lot of folks.

And I got to know him in those days. Those were the days when he and John Streets started this pastor's group called Grace Partners, which was a group for pastors and their wives, and we would meet once a month and so we got to know the Dernlins very well back then and got to be very close friends.

I always loved, Beck would always ask him these questions. Now, Dave, you gotta know, Dave is, you know, he had a wrestling family, right? His four boys were great, tremendous wrestlers. And so every once in a while, about every other month, Beck would, during wrestling season, Beck would say to Dave, okay, Dave, can you explain this again to me?

How can one boy inflict pain on another one for the glory of God? And Dave always had a good answer, always had a good answer. It was 2002, right, is that when you guys joined? 2002, Dave and Sue joined Tri-M as missionaries, and that's when our church began to support him as one of our missionaries.

And Dave, with the support and help of Sue's, had a significant impact on the churches in Romania. They tell us that his ministry there was extraordinarily significant, not to mention Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbaijan, and Mongolia, and a little bit of China thrown in, all right?

So Dave's been a dear friend, and I'm thankful for his ministry and the ministry he'll have with us today. So Dave, come minister the word.

I didn't mind when my boys inflicted pain on other guys, but when they inflicted it on me, I minded that. I mean this from the bottom of our heart. It's good to be home with our church family in Leroux.

Susie and I love you, and we're very, very thankful for every one of you, okay? We'll be returning to Romania. God willing, the end of October, beginning of November. I'm shouting hallelujah. I can't believe how long this year seemed, right?

They wouldn't let us go overseas, so we're thankful that we can return. A new Bible college will be starting there in Bucharest. You know Nick Sotir. Nick worked with Brother Tim and I for 12, 15 years, and so he stepped up.

He's taking the leadership, starting a new Bible college, and I'll be teaching Genesis, Doctrine of Man and Doctrine of Sin while I'm there, and then after that, Susie and I will go north. There's many men in the north who've already graduated from the Tri-M College, and they've been saying, Brother Dave, we need some advanced studies.

We wanna keep learning and growing in God's word, so thank God for those men. We're gonna go up and study with them. I've written an entire new course. Just so you know, over in Ukraine, there's two Bible colleges going, and all our graduates formulated those colleges, and they're teaching there.

What a thrill. You wanna talk about 2 Timothy 2 .2? It's going on, and we're thrilled about that. They've built five homes for orphan children there, and their church families are being the parents of those homes and loving those kids.

Many of them have come from the east where Russia moved into that part of their country and afflicted great harm to many families. Parents lost, but your brothers and your sisters went and rescued many of those children who needed rescued, so we're thankful about that.

Before I start today thinking about Tim saying we graduated together, I thought about the men who had influence on us, Dr. Greer, Dr. McGoldrick, Dr. Monroe. They taught me many of the things that went through my mind this year, and so I know we're thankful for them.

Some of them I'm gonna share with you because I had time to sit and look at our country, analyze where our country is. Obviously, I can't speak to all that, so I'll speak to one little part of it, and how we should be responding as the children of God.

Radical Autonomy, Nihilism, and the Rebellion of Our Culture

So this morning, I want us to think then together about the character of God in the context of the character of our culture, and how we should be conducting ourself. In an effort to describe the contemporary character of our country, Oz Guinness, a man I'd recommend that you read, said this, we live in an age drunk with its own heady cocktail of individualism, libertarianism, consumerism, and narcissism.

We are convinced life is all about us. Our primary mode of operation is I, myselfy, and me. Yeah, the current ruler in America is the unencumbered self, and the reigning ethic is radical autonomy. And because of that, this morning, I wanna speak to you about the absolutely unique being, which is God himself.

So I'm gonna ask you to stand one more time with me as I read from Acts 17. We'll show our respect for the one that we revere, and before whom we bow. Acts 17, just a brief reading here, verse 22 through 28.

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said, men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I walk around and I look carefully at the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription,.

To the unknown God.

Now what you worship as something unknown, I am going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth, and he does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything because he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

From one man, he made every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined the time set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out to him and find him, yet he is actually not far from each one of us.

For in him, we live and move and have our being as some of your own poets have said, for we are his offspring. Let's pray, okay? Father, you indeed are so far beyond us that we can't comprehend all of you.

And we will, as your children for all of eternity, plumb the depths of your magnificent being and still not know all of you. For you are the marvelous God of eternity, the infant one, the holy and righteous one.

And we ask today that as your children, you open our minds to the truth we study and transform us so that we respond from what we learn and we'll thank you in Christ's name, amen.

Please be seated.

The Self-Existence of God in Exodus 3 and Genesis 1

Like some of you, I grew up in an age where we walked around singing, humming, sometimes even whistling the song, he's got the whole world in his hands. Yeah, he's got the little bitty children in his hands.

He's got you and me, brother, in his hands. He's got you and me, sister, in his hands. He's got you and me, mama, in his hands, right? He's got the whole world in his hands. The present generation that we are living in is growing up in an age of people all around our country who are screaming for absolute independence.

They want independence from everything, even God himself. They abhor the thought of being held in his hand. They abhor the thought of being dependent upon him.

In any way.

And so as they riot from Seattle to Minnesota, from Portland to New York, and demand unrestricted, untethered independence, they have torn down the statues in our country because they abhor our history.

They have burned police stations and federal courthouses because they abhor our laws, and they have even killed other image-bearers, human beings, because they detest anyone who opposes them. But I want you to think about that.

Ultimately, all history is God's story. Ultimately, the original author of law is the ancient of days himself. And every human being is an image-bearer of God. So you see, when en masse, when seen for what it really is, their rioting is rebellion against the sovereign of the universe, against the Alpha and Omega, against the lion of the tribe of Judah.

Their attempt to attain absolute independence is an effort to escape from any association with God or dependence upon him. People like this are nihilistic, okay? They've committed their life to nihilism.

Now let me explain that. Big word, simple meaning. They view all of life as lacking value. They think human values are baseless. They think life is meaningless and worthless. They think knowledge is impossible.

They are philosophical pessimists, and therefore, they want to be absolutely independent of everything. Their outlook leads to living life as if it has no meaning and no purpose. But in the end, it does not lead to independence in life, which they so desperately desire.

That, of course, is absolutely impossible. If a person is completely isolated, cut off, separated from God, it is impossible to live true life. Act 1728 says, for in him we live, in him we move, in him we have our being.

As some of your own poets have said, we are his offspring. This means without him, we have no genuine life.

Existence?

Yep, that's possible. But authentic life as God desired for his children is impossible. So you see, in the end, the whole world really is in the hands of God. As followers of Christ, as part of his body, you are not simply held in God's hand.

I want you to catch this now. You're not simply held in his hand. You are fingers in the hands of God.

Imagine that.

Fingers in the hands of the Almighty. Fingers which he is using to form and to shape this world. Fingers which he is using and he will use to invite people in this world back to him as you point out to them that only God is truly independent and therefore, God alone is self-existent.

In Exodus 3, God interrupted Moses' regular day of work. He was shepherding sheep in the desert and God stepped in front of him in the form of a burning bush. And he introduced himself by saying in Exodus 3, 14,.

I am who I am.

By introducing himself to Moses in that way, God was telling Moses, nothing alters who I am.

Nothing alters who I am.

Situations, circumstances may change. People may come and go in this world. Rulers and human kings may rise and they'll fall.

But I am who I am.

God is self-existent. He is not dependent upon anyone or anything else for his being. The Hebrew term really mean that is translated that really just simply means to exist.

That's all it means.

God's existence and character are determined by himself alone. It is God's nature then to be. Now, some theologians like your pastor and others speak of God as then being from himself because you see the ground of his existence is within him.

It's in himself. When God finished introducing himself to Moses that day, he said, this is my name forever. This is my name forever. So as we move forward into tomorrow, the next week, the next month, the next year, doesn't matter how far we keep going, or as we move backward into former history and we read about that, we will find that God is still self-existent and he is not dependent on any part of his creation for existence.

Now, for you and I, as we sit here today as dependent beings, God's self-existence is something which kind of just stretches our mind. It's mysterious to us and mysterious to the thoughts of our limited little minds.

So I'm thankful that God's word goes on and explains more about it. In Genesis one, verse one, we read four simple words as it begins, in the beginning, God. And with those four simple words, we immediately learn something profound for when everything begins, God was there, right?

Yeah.

And so he existed when nothing else existed. He was there before anything and everything else. So this clearly teaches us that God brought everything into existence, but nothing brought God into existence.

And therefore, the initial statement in the word of God establishes a fundamental distinction between the creator and everything that is created. There's a fundamental difference between who he is and what he is and who we are and what we are.

It's impossible, right, for something to create itself. And so this concept of self-creation is just a contradiction in term. It's a nonsensical statement. So if we stop and we think about the idea of self-creation, we almost immediately realize that it's absolutely absurd for nothing can create itself.

Not even God can create himself, right? For God created himself for him to do that, he would have to exist before he is, right? Even God can't do that. Every living being must have the ground of existence either within itself or outside of itself.

And so as created human beings, we have the ground of existence outside of ourself for we are created beings. But God is not dependent in that way at all. God is self-existent and his self-existence is seen in the fact that everything which exists was made by him.

So what we have learned so far, we've learned who God is and we've learned what God does. And it reveals that he's a self-existent God. If you want greater affirmation of that, you can look at Revelation 4 and verse 11.

"'You created all things and by your will they were created,' says John.". If you want a statement from Moses, you can find one in Psalm 90 and verse two. "'Before the mountains were born, you brought forth the earth and you brought forth the world because from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.'".

And so God exists by virtue of his very nature. He never was created. He never came into being. He always was and is and ever shall be. He's self-existent. Now, and that's not true of us. That's not true of anyone in this world.

And so God alone is independent, right? Acts 17, 24 and 25. "'The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and he does not live in temples made by hands. And he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.'".

The fact that God is independent means he does not need us and he doesn't need anything in creation. Now that's shocking to some people. But as God speaks to us in Acts 17, 24 and 25, he makes it clear that he does not need anything from mankind, okay?

As I travel around the world, God allows me to talk to a lot of people and I talked to them about God and I talked about themselves and their relationship with God. And many of those people, as we talk, will tell me, well, you know, Brother Dave, God created human beings because he was lonely and he needed fellowship and he needed love from other people.

Can that statement be true? No, that statement cannot be true, right? If that statement is true, that would mean what about God? It would mean that God is not totally independent from creation, but is in reality dependent upon creation.

It would mean that God needed to create people so that he could be happy or that he could be totally fulfilled in his personal existence. As God speaks to us through scripture, he makes it clear that that type of thinking is way out of line with God's word.

In John 17, Jesus, you know, is praying in John 17 and he says, particularly in verse four and five to his father, I have brought you glory, father, on earth by completing the work which you gave me to do.

And now, father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. So Jesus's prayer indicates that the father and son actually shared glory together. So there's this participation, this sharing together.

His prayer also indicates that the father and the son were communicating together about the work that needed to be done in heaven. There's this giving and receiving of responsibility between the father and the son.

Later on in the same prayer, you come to verse 24 and it says there, father, I want those that you have given to me. That's all of you who by grace through faith have trusted your life into Christ, right?

Those that you have given to me, I want them to be where I am to see my glory and the glory that you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. So this portion of scripture is telling us that there was actually love, communication, choices being made, actions being taken, giving and receiving going on between the father and the son before anything here, including you and me, ever came into existence, okay?

So you see, our triune God has enjoyed perfect love, perfect communication, sharing fellowship for all of eternity, even before we existed. He doesn't need us, but you know what? He loves his children.

Don't forget that. Even as I teach this, don't forget that. He loves you. He gave his son for you. He set his heart upon you before the world began, but he doesn't need us. He just loves to love you, yeah.

Now, what we must realize, what we need to come to understand is that God's being is something totally, absolutely unique from anyone you or I have ever known. It's not simply that God doesn't need creatures or anything he created in this entire universe.

The reality is that God could not need anything in the created realm.

He couldn't need it.

The difference between created human beings and the creator is massively, staggeringly, enormously vast, for God exists as a fundamentally different order of being than we do. The difference is not simply that we exist and God has always existed.

That's not the difference, okay? It is also that God, out of necessity, exists in an infinitely better, substantially more excellent way. I'm getting to be an old man. Soon I'll be gone from this earth and you won't miss me.

I have a friend who says, you know what, Brother Dave? It wasn't Tim, okay? But he would have said something like this to me.

To keep me humble.

He said, you know what, Brother Dave? 15 minutes after we lay you in the ground, we're gonna be back at church, eating potato salad and ham. Because Dave isn't needed when God says it's time to come home.

But God must always, always exist, right? The difference between God's being and our being is more radical than the difference of a teardrop and a tidal wave. My little granddaughter's here. I wanna tell her how much different it is.

Yesterday, my littlest granddaughter got an ice cream cone and had sprinkles on top of it. The difference between God and us is as different, even greater, than the sprinkles on top of that ice cream cone and all the stars of heaven.

It's vastly, vastly different, yeah. Yeah, it's as different as this room and the entire universe. It's way beyond that. God's being is uniquely different. And you know what, as you think about God, you must never impose upon him any limitation, any imperfection into your thoughts about God because they make him what he's not.

He alone is creator. Everything else you know is creaturely, it's created. Everything else can instantly vanish from existence, but God necessarily exists forever. Now, I want you to see this because this helped me keep in my mind something that Brother Tim and I were taught back at two as we sat in the class of Dr. Greer.

This is just a visual reminder of what we've been learning here, okay? If you look at the circle representing God, fix in your mind, he's uncreated and independent. He's self-existent. No life support is ever needed for God.

They'll never call an EMT to assist God, right?

Yeah.

But on the other side, if you look at us, man and everything in the created realm is created and it is dependent. Life support is a necessity for us to keep on going. I've already had the EMTs at my house.

Yeah, it's a necessity to keep going, okay? But notice the two lines in between there that we have. That is a picture of a difference in being that will exist forever. You will never cross that metaphysical distinction, that being difference.

When you and I enter eternity, we won't be what God is, okay? There's going to always be a being difference between us. Christ's redemptive work in us and on our behalf makes us fit for that sacred dwelling place with God, but our existence will never be the same as God's.

The creator-creature distinction will never be erased, nor will it ever be rubbed out or obscured. We will never have the same nature of being with God. We are designed for imaging. By the way, Tim, I've had some really interesting thoughts about the word image lately in Genesis.

I think we were created as imagers, not image of God, and I think it has something to do with abortion that we need to understand because if we're imagers at the moment of conception, nothing has to happen.

We're at the point of conception. No abortion is allowed because we are imagers. If we're just in his image, then people will say, how are we in his image, right? We've got to start thinking. Well, wait a minute, that's not thinking.

But if we're born, conceived, I mean, as imagers, it's going to make a difference. We need to check our theology there, as Brother Jim was teaching us in Sunday school class this morning. So we are designed for imaging and reflecting, but never able to obtain the same essence as God there, and this will be true for absolutely all eternity.

As one man said, God is a species unique. God alone is independent, all right? As I mentioned earlier, when we move out of worship this morning, we go out into the world, you and I are going to encounter a world full of people who are adamant about declaring their absolute independence from God.

And pretty soon while you're relating with those people, you're going to realize that at some point, every person in the world is like the man who's just enjoying his life, he's experiencing life, and maybe he's out climbing a mountain, and he's on his way to the summit, to the peak of that mountain, when suddenly he slips, and he's unable to stop himself, and he starts sliding down the mountain, and he's falling down this treacherous incline towards a cliff which plunges 1 ,000 feet to the rocky canyon floor below, and his life flashes before his eyes, for he is sure that he is about to fall to his death.

As he's sliding, as he's tumbling over the edge of that cliff, he throws out his hand in desperation, and he manages to grab a hold of the root of a tree. He had saved himself, he gained life, but soon he began to realize, no matter how he tried to pull himself back up over that cliff and get up to safety, he couldn't do it, and he started to realize, you know, it's just a matter of time before the grip in my hand loosens, and I plummet to my death below.

Now, he'd always lived as a independent man, he had nothing to do with Christianity or following Christ, but as he hung there, he realized that if he was ever gonna be religious, man, now is the time, and so he looked up to heaven, and he says, is anybody up there who can help me?

He didn't expect his answer because he'd never been religious, right? And so he's shocked when this voice calls back, he said, yes, I'm here, I can help you, but first, you must let go of that tree root.

There's this long pause, absolute silence, then the man looked up and he cried out, is there anybody else up there who can help me? You know what, folks?

There's nobody else,.

Nobody else up there that can help you. There's only one. The world we live in is filled with fiercely independent people just like me, just like you, just like we all were before God broke that heart and said, you can't make it without me, you must bow before Christ and follow him with all your life.

As you move out into the world, you're going to encounter, right now, it's changing moment by moment, but you'll encounter 7 .8 billion people who just like that man fiercely cling to their own independence, but as a person that God is using as the fingers of his hand to shape this world, he's going to give you opportunity after opportunity to speak to those desperately independent people and say, release your grip of holding onto your own self and trust alone in Christ to save you and live a life that honors him and by grace, through faith, he will use you to see his son save the ones that he loves.

Brothers and sisters, be good fingers in the hands of God. You wonder what's wrong with our country? Part of it is us. We haven't been communicating the gospel of grace.

As we should be,.

And the power of the word extant in a culture has begun to die, and so people manifest their independence even more. Do it with love, do it in grace, and do it understanding something. You were right where that other person is that you're talking to.

At one time in your life, you were the same place. 24 years, I lived holding onto that root. I know what it's like, I know what it's like, and there's only one way to make it. It's by letting go of the root and by faith through the grace of God, trusting in Jesus Christ, but somebody needs to tell me that.

Somebody needs to communicate that to me, all right? God wants to use you as fingers in his hands.

Let's pray.

Father, we're all humbled that you would seek us through your son so remove the stubborn independence of our own hearts and let us recognize there's no escape for anyone save through Jesus Christ, our precious Lord, in whose name we pray, amen.

Please stand.