Becoming Better Theologians (part 19)

Father in heaven, Lord, we come before you this morning, thankful for all the things

that are ours in Christ Jesus.

Thank you for salvation.

Thank you for redemption.

Thank you for saving us.

Father, thank you for giving us your word.

Thank you for illuminating our eyes that we might understand it.

Father, I pray that you would bless our time this morning, even as we look to your word, that we would be

reminded and even learn new things about it.

Father, would you consistently throughout this morning, throughout this week,

throughout our lives, point us again and again to your word upon which we can firmly rely.

Father, again, we ask for your blessing this morning in Christ's name.

Well, I will start with the slightly ridiculous,

the TVN newsletter.

So the good news is it is,

what do they call that offering time?

What do they call it?

Oh, the praise -a -thon.

And they have a, for any pledge, Bethlehem anointing oil.

Anybody who was recently in Israel and failed to get this, shame on you.

It's fragrant, virgin olive oil that has been blessed by the Bishop of the Historic Church of the Nativity in

Bethlehem.

Was anybody here on the Israel trip?

They're probably all still sleeping it off.

That was a rough trip home.

But the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is not anything spectacular, but it's been blessed by the Bishop there.

OK.

Has myrrh, spikenard, aloes, and

cassia, and they're blended to create the fragrance of heaven.

I always thought that was Krispy Kreme donuts, but I digress.

Some of our ladies here at TVN feel it is more than anointing oil.

It is literally a unique perfume.

Anyway, just silliness.

For any offering.

How many of you were here last Sunday night when Eric preached through the book of James, chapter 1, a few verses?

Now, for those of you who weren't here, something I think unique in the history of Bethlehem Bible Church took place.

And what would that be?

Eric Johanson in the pulpit.

We had two Mormon missionaries in the house.

And I bring that up not because we have Mormon missionaries here, but because, you know, afterwards, it's kind of like

instantly I'm like, I want to make sure that they're not running around proselytizing people.

So what's that?

Why'd they come here?

They want to hear the truth.

So I'll tell you in a sec.

Well, I'll tell you now and then I'll get back to what I was saying.

Why'd they come here?

They have been engaging one of our members in extended conversation,

and they were so impressed by this man's knowledge of the Bible that they want to come out and check his church out.

So they were here on a Sunday night.

So I've said I'm going to talk to one, and then I noticed I was going to try to engage them both, but one of them was already occupied

by Bruce Binney.

Good job, Bruce.

And I just want to make sure they weren't, you know, getting their two cents in.

So I was talking to one, and I'll skip all over the

gory details.

But I said, I said, let me ask you a question.

Where in the Bible does it talk about temple marriage?

And he says, well, you know, it's really it's not in the Bible.

I said, is there a single example anywhere in the Bible of somebody getting married in the temple?

He says, no.

I said, OK.

Is there a single example of anybody in the Book of Mormon getting married in the temple?

I mean, it's good to know something about Mormonism, I guess.

And he says, no.

And I go, so, you know, why would you have to get married in the temple in order to reach the highest degree of

heaven, which is what they believe?

And he said, well, have you ever been in the temple?

And I said, yes, I have.

And he goes, baptism for the dead?

And I said, yes.

And he goes, you know, the closest I've ever felt to God was inside the temple.

OK.

And he goes, that's why I believe in temple marriage.

And that's why I think, you know, being married there is so essential to go into heaven.

And I'm going, it brought me right back to where we where we've been talking about the Bible.

Scripture versus experience.

And what was this man saying?

He's going by feelings rather than truth.

What I felt when I was in the temple trumps whatever the Bible teaches, whatever it

doesn't teach, whatever the Book of Mormon teaches, which, you know, neither here nor there.

We could talk about, you know, people are always like, you know, do you do you ask him this question?

Do you talk about the I mean, I could, you know, the Spalding manuscript, how the Book of Mormon was copied

from a novel and, you know, whole parts of the King James Bible or list lifted and put into the Book of Mormon.

I didn't talk about any of that.

But if experience is our guide, we can go almost anywhere.

We can wind up with almost anything.

And that's the problem with so much of Christianity today.

Last week, you know, again, these are these things, you know, might seem a little outrageous.

But this is what the kind of thing that people say all the time, not the audible voice.

We talk about, you know, God speaking an audible voice in this man saying, well, if it happened once in the Bible, basically,

God will do it again.

You know, if you're walking around and you hear a voice, it could be the voice of God.

God speaks through a whisper.

Sometimes I don't even understand that.

You know, the old timers still call it still small voice of God.

God speaks through scriptures.

This is all just a lot of it is silliness.

But this is how so many people make decisions.

But again, thinking back to what that Mormon missionary said, how many times do we hear people say,

I had a real peace about this.

I felt really close to God.

Our feelings, can our feelings be an indicator of our spiritual life?

Yes, they can be.

Should they be the ultimate arbiter of our spiritual life or of truth?

No.

So, and I mean, that's the kind of thing, you know, the Mormons will challenge you and tell you to read the Book of Mormon and ask you

if you've got a burning in your bosom and, you know, if you do, then that means it's true.

Well, I will.

Let's put it this way.

If sensation, if excitement, if emotion were the determining factor, how do you think?

And I'm sure we'll see by a raise of a show of hands.

How many of you have ever robbed a bank?

Okay, Chuck.

I wonder what the bank robbers feel like when they walk into the bank.

I'm guessing because having been on the other end of things, you know, where we're approaching an alleged

bank robbery or something like that, there's a certain amount of adrenaline that's going within you.

There's a certain amount of excitement that's moving within you.

Are those bank robbers operating on truth or are they operating on fear or something else?

I mean, there are a lot of emotions that we experience and to try to deduce them, to try to sort them out,

to try to interpret them is problematic.

And again, I'm just reminded of Jeremiah 17 9.

We need to understand that our heart is deceitful and sick.

It misleads us.

What we feel is not necessarily true.

And when we go with our feelings, we're really operating according to the Hollywood style of things.

You know, we just follow your heart.

If I hear that on one more show or one more TV or one more movie, I'm just going to never watch

another one.

Okay.

Sorry.

And then we talked about Roman Catholic Church a few weeks ago, how they said, and this is just incredible, in

Vatican II, how,

I want to make sure I get this quote correct here, the sacred synod professes that

God, the first principle and last end of all things can be known with certainty from the created world by the

natural light of human reason.

And they suggest Romans 1 20.

And I want to start in Romans 1, then we're going to go to Psalm 19 and then we're going to go to Psalm 1 19.

And again, you know, some of these things are things that we've talked about, but I just think we cannot stress them enough

because our tendency is, if we ever have a tendency to do anything

based on our feelings and to think that somehow God is involved in it, I think, could we be right?

Yes.

But unless we have scripture as our basis, we can't be certain that we're right.

Pam.

And, and I think Pam's right.

I think, you know, there can be a tendency to overreact, you know, the other way, but here's what I would say.

I'd say typically what we see, the evangelical church isn't a bunch of

spirit filled scripture, you know, drowning in scripture,

people, you know, worried about making decisions based on their feelings.

What we see is a bunch of people that make decisions based on their feelings and then try to figure out

maybe if it fits within the boundaries of scripture, you know, they've got the ox completely before the cart.

Is that right?

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

No cart before the ox.

Yeah.

Or horse or whatever, you know, cow, if you've got a little dachshund in front of your, and for

those of you who don't know, I have three

dachshunds.

I always think about hooking them up to sled and mushing them through the snow, but I don't think it'll work very well.

Yeah, try it.

Sure.

Okay.

Romans one verse 20.

For his invisible attributes, God's namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly

perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse.

And the Roman Catholic church says, see, that is evidence that we can obtain saving

faith by the perfect revelation of God in

nature.

I think, you know, if you just back up to verse 18, they're a little bit for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven

against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who buy their unrighteousness, suppress

the truth.

In other words, there is truth about God

and man, even that can be seen in nature, but what do we do with that truth?

We inherently suppress it and there's nothing in there that says that we can be saved by virtue of

what we see in creation.

In fact, let's look at Psalm 19.

I think it gives us a very clear picture of the difference between creation and

the revealed word of God.

Yes, Charlie.

Right.

They actually knew God.

I mean, think about it.

You know, I think I mentioned a few weeks ago, but it's really incredible to think when you have, has anybody ever,

well, let's put it this way.

Is there anyone who's ever not looked at a timeline for how long Adam lived and then where

all the different, you know, Methuselah's born and, you know, how they all overlap?

And so it's generation after generation after generation and they're still alive.

You know, they're still all walking around together and pretty incredible to think about it.

But what happens is even while there is still, while there are still

people alive who, you know, knew God, even Adam, you know, walking in the Garden of Eden.

And then afterwards when we had, you know, Cain and Abel and their,

and how that all ends, but Seth and all these others, there were people

who still communicated with God, even if it wasn't quite exactly the same.

And while this is still going on, people are departing, are going and,

you know, following their own gods of their own imaginings.

Why?

Because they don't want to yield to God.

But that's, yeah, that's right.

And then the descendants of people who knew God just depart from him too, even though they knew him.

So that's exactly right.

But Romans, or I'm sorry, Psalm 19, and this first part, first six

verses, talks about his general revelation or his creation.

Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims

his handiwork.

When we look at creation, we are impressed by God's glory, God's

majesty, God's power.

Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words whose voice is not heard.

General revelation speaks to us in a, in a very direct sense that we understand that there is something

greater than us at work in the universe that does not save anyone.

Their voice goes out throughout all the earth and their words to the end of the world.

In them, he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a

bridegroom leaving his chamber and like a strong man runs its course with joy.

It's rising is from one end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them.

And there is nothing hidden from its heat.

Just talking about, again, physical creation.

But look at verse seven.

The law of the Lord is perfect.

Notice what was missing in the first half here.

Listen to this reviving the soul.

We don't see anything like that in the first six verses.

There's nothing in there that would indicate that creation itself revives the soul.

The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

Nothing about wisdom.

We're not guaranteed wisdom in the first half of it.

The precepts of the Lord are right.

Rejoicing the heart.

The first creation just puts us in awe of this God who can do all this.

The law of the Lord is what sets us right with him, which gives us wisdom,

which brings us joy.

I mean, if it were just creation alone, I think we could be in fear of God in the sense

that we would understand how mighty he is.

But we wouldn't understand his love.

We wouldn't understand his holiness.

We wouldn't understand forgiveness.

We wouldn't understand any of these things.

The precepts of the Lord are right.

Rejoicing the heart.

The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

You can see all of creation, all you want, but you're not going to have the same

kind of enlightening of the eyes, that same kind of awareness of who God is and who you are

in the sense of sin and whatnot.

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.

The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

Again, we don't see any of those things said about creation.

It's not righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey

and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them is your servant warned.

In keeping them, there is great reward.

Who can discern his errors?

Declare me innocent from hidden faults.

Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins.

Let them not have dominion over me.

Then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight.

Oh, Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

That there's a quantitative difference, a leap, as it were,

between general revelation and special revelation, that is just

simply the difference between the created world and the revealed word of God and

what it does for us.

Thoughts, comments, questions, revelations.

And Psalm 119, just reading it this morning.

And by the way, I don't know how many of you have the authorized version,

the new authorized version, also known as the MacArthur Study Bible.

Whatever version you have, if you look at Psalm 119, you'll notice that it's divided.

He says, as he starts thinking about it, 20, is it 22 sections?

I think it's 22 sections.

And there's one each for each of the

letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

And so when you look at it and you go, none, you know, N -U -N,

none, it has nothing to do with a nunnery.

It has everything to do with the letter of the Jewish alphabet.

And let's, I mean, you can look at almost any of these.

Again, let's look at let's look at verse 153

and listen again to how the psalmist writes about the word of God.

Look at my affliction and deliver me, for I do not forget your law.

Plead my cause and redeem me.

Give me life according to your promise.

Salvation is far from the wicked, for they do not seek your statutes.

Great is your mercy, O Lord.

Give me life according to your rules.

Many are my persecutors and my adversaries, but do not swerve, but I do

not swerve from your testimonies.

I look at the faithless with disgust because they do not keep your commands.

Consider how I love your precepts.

Give me life according to your steadfast love.

The sum of your word is truth and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.

What do we get from scripture that we cannot get from general

revelation?

Roman Catholic Church says you can be saved by the perfection of creation.

How would you learn about who God is?

You can only learn, you know, I mean, we could probably stretch it and maybe get three, four,

five attributes of God that we would six attributes that we could get from his

creation, but we wouldn't be able to get them all.

Could we understand, for example, just looking at creation, I suppose maybe you could extrapolate triple bank

shot off three cushions to get his justice.

How would you get it?

You could say, well, obviously he's great and we're finite.

And so if we, well, you'd have to go, if we break his law, I mean, you, you, you

couldn't get there.

You just couldn't get there.

But also I think it was interesting in that particular section of Psalm 119 talked about the

promises of God.

How would you know, just looking at creation, how would you know about the promises of God?

How would you know that he's a faithful God?

And the truth is, what would you wind up?

You can easily wind up believing what scientists say, which is that God, if he exists, is

capricious.

He's random.

He's chaotic.

That there's no way of predicting what's going to happen tomorrow because, you know, the whole universe just kind of came out of one

big explosion.

We don't want to be captive to anything but the word of God.

All right.

So we've been looking through this systematic theology here.

And amazingly enough, our next point is something we've been talking about all morning.

God reveals himself through what he has made, which is absolutely true.

God has revealed himself through the materials, through the material heavens and earth, which he has made.

Older theologians call this the light of nature.

She's singing Amen,

the baby.

All right.

The Bible, the Bible is very clear as to the fact that nature does have something to say to people about their

creator.

Let's look at Psalm 104

and would someone read Psalm 104 verses 1, 2 and 3, please?

Just by those those pictures, what would the

psalmist be telling us about God?

He's creator,

his majesty is revealed in his creation.

He's bigger than creation.

I mean, he kind of uses the all of creation as, you know, props

and, you know, just it's just very obvious point.

He's so much greater than we are.

When you just look at that and you go, well, no, no man could do that.

The rest of the psalm in detail declares all aspects of

nature are God's work in creation, preservation and government.

They all, including mankind and human works.

They are all, including mankind and human works, God's works.

Verse 24.

He says this.

Oh, Lord, how well, let me read 23.

Man goes out to do his work and to his labor until the evening.

Oh, Lord, how manifold are your works in wisdom?

You have made them all.

The earth is full of your creatures.

And then verse 31, may the glory of the Lord endure forever.

May the Lord rejoice in his works.

When we look about at all that is and all that is created at all, ultimately it comes from God.

In other psalms, we would see the psalm, psalmist reflecting on nature to

call attention to God's greatness, his honor and majesty.

And Psalm 86, God's manifold wisdom, great riches, his eternal

glory.

He says here, the discerning believer by means of this revelation understands his meaning, our dependence on God

and the importance of.

Uh, praising God and worshiping God while

life shall last, that would be in verse 33 of Psalm 104.

He also understands the unnaturalness of the presence of sin and of sinners in

God's perfect creation.

What does he mean?

Well, let's look at verse 35 and we'll discuss that for a minute.

Let sinners be consumed from the earth and let the wicked be no more.

Bless the Lord.

Oh, my soul.

Praise the Lord.

What do you suppose the psalmist is looking forward to there?

Why would he say that?

Let sinners be consumed.

Is he just thinking I'm better than everybody else?

Could it be, Charlie asked that he sees sinful man as a blemish on his own creation, which is true, you know, and

before he starts sounding like he's some kind of ecological nuts,

you know, I mean, I mean, there are people alive today who, who think, you know, the biggest problem in the

world is mankind.

If we could just get rid of men, this would be a pretty nice place to live.

I remember saying that this group, my son used to listen to, I used to say to him, I go, you know what the message of, uh,

that band is that the world would be a pretty nice place if there were no people in it.

So, uh, of course, then there'd be nobody to listen to their music.

Yeah.

Pam says, you know, that the, the environmentalists, you know, worry about all this stuff and yet the earth is

groaning to be delivered from them.

And that's the psalmist point here is he's saying, I mean, what do we, what do we think when we sin, we

regret our sin.

We're sorrowful before the Lord.

And what do we look forward to heaven because

we won't sin.

And so when he says here, let the earth or let sinners be consumed from the earth and let the wicked be no

more.

He's really saying, I look forward to the day where sin is not a blight on the

earth, where sinners do not infested, where the world is delivered from its groaning and where

all is set as God originally made it.

That is without fault or blemish.

Went through Psalm 119, the message from and about God is,

uh, throughout Psalm 19 is the same as 104.

Um, but God holds people responsible for their unbelief and their disobedience.

We've talked about that at length and some are in Romans one.

It feels like a song.

This is, we've, we've, we've looked at God's, his natural revelation and his

specific or his special revelation.

And these are both, they tell us of him, but the created world can never save us.

It can never deliver a saving knowledge of God to

us.

So what then is the nature of the content of nature's message about God?

It tells of his greatness, his honor, his majesty.

It displays the riches of his wisdom and great glory together with his joy in creating such wonders.

Such revelations teach also the utter inappropriateness of sin and of the

presence of sinners in God's world.

I think that's a striking phrase that it is inappropriate that there are sinners in this world.

We think about God's wrath being kindled and how he is patient and

long suffering.

He is putting off the day of wrath.

Even now, there's a message of God's goodness in nature,

his benevolence, but it is muted.

However, for nature provides earthquakes like that one in Christ church this week in New Zealand, tornadoes,

pestilences and floods.

I mean, do you suppose that there are all those things that existed in the garden of Eden?

I'm quite certain they didn't.

When sin entered the world, so did disaster.

The gifts of sun, wind, rain, fertile soil, fruitful seasons,

fill people's hearts with food and gladness.

This is all the things that God does for us.

OK, God employs mankind's own personal, moral and rational nature to

reveal himself to us.

Furthermore, God is employed in speaking to the sinful race in all ages is to employ mankind's own

personal information.

Certain philosophers from ancient times have sought to begin their search for ultimate truths by searching

their own hearts and minds.

Who said, know thyself or how about this one?

I think, therefore, I am.

What's that?

I think it's before him.

But these are those are famous expressions of that method.

Calvin wrote at the opening of his great work of doctrine, this.

He said, no one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to contemplation of God

in whom he lives and moves and has his being.

And at 1728, for quite clearly, the mighty gifts with which we are endowed are hardly from

ourselves.

Indeed, our very being is nothing but subsistence in the one God.

Then by these benefits shed like dew from heaven upon us, we are led as

by rivulets to the spring itself.

In other words, what he's saying is, as we just reflect on all that God has granted us,

we are drawn toward thinking about the greater being who created us.

Culver says, Calvin's logic is correct, but it is regenerate, sanctified logic.

I mean, the problem with all these, whether you're talking about Nietzsche or whoever else,

I said Nietzsche once, which is the correct pronunciation.

My preaching prof got on me.

Everybody knows it's Nietzsche.

Well, not if you're German, it's Nietzsche.

But all these men, as smart as they were, were operating with one

grave problem, and that's without, they had no Holy Spirit.

So they're thinking in a vacuum.

And that's, you know, I just say that, say it this way, that's one of the problems with psychology.

Nietzsche was the father of modern psychology.

And if you get to know anything about his personal life, you'd realize what a disaster that

all was.

So how smart can they be?

Talking about our ability to reason, it's marred by the fall.

It's marred by the fall.

We don't have a perfect understanding.

We don't have the ability to reason perfectly because of the fall of Adam.

That impacts all of our thinking.

People do legitimately reason of God's nature from their own.

Why?

Because we are made in God's image.

And what does that mean?

We know what it doesn't mean.

It doesn't mean that God looks like us because God is a spirit.

But what does it mean?

It means that we are able to reason.

We're able to, what else?

What else do we do that's like God?

We can be creative.

We'll make decisions.

How about love?

How about be angry?

I mean, when we think about, it really is remarkable to think, to look, just

look at the world the way so many people do.

I heard, or I read, I think it was I heard, but this idea this week that if you

save dogs, it's like saving a human life.

I love dogs.

But it's not, you know, if you gave me a choice between saving 10 ,000

dogs, and saving one human being, what am I going to do?

If you save the 10 ,000 dogs, you know, we're going to close in prayer.

It's the, it's a human being.

Why?

Because the human being has a soul.

The dog doesn't.

No matter how much we want to believe that they do, they don't.

They're not created in God's image.

They are created by him, but not in his image.

There's a, there's a quantitative, a qualitative difference between us and

other creatures.

You know, even as smart as, you know, whatever branch of monkey,

or orca, or dolphin, or whatever they want to compare us to.

It's just, it's vastly different.

You know, let me know the next time you go, you're under the water, and you see some gigantic dolphin city that they've created.

It just doesn't, it doesn't happen.

We're just in a different level, and God created it that way.

And I was thinking too this week, it's funny, you know, what being a grandfather and having a baby around a lot makes you think about.

And I was just like, you know, I can't really think of another species of animal

where the, the, the young are absolutely so helpless.

I mean, all of them, you know, to certain extent, they all are a little bit helpless.

But whatever kind of animal learns how to walk much sooner than a human being does.

They learn how to survive much sooner than a human being does.

And it's just pretty amazing.

You know, aren't we lucky to have survived so long, and really to have such dominion over the planet?

Who knew?

It's an absolute sophistry to think like that, but that's how scientists think.

He talks about ancient Greek philosophy, and he says that even these ancient Greek philosophers knew

God to be a universal free spirit.

And they said so, even though it was dangerous to deny the prevailing idolatry.

Socrates, for example, was executed for, anybody know why Socrates was killed?

For being an atheist.

Those were the days.

Oh, sorry.

And Paul, when he spoke on Mars Hill, was understood when he appealed to the Greeks on the basis of their God

-likeness to see the stupidity of their idolatry.

He told them that they were created in God's image.

They knew that.

But idol worship turns God into the image of mankind and others of God's creatures.

It really is amazing when you read back.

I mean, some of my favorite chapters in all of the Bible are between Isaiah

40 and 48, and over and over and over again, he says, you know, this is what

you guys do.

And this is, you know, this is Isaiah, God speaking through the prophet Isaiah, and he says, this is what you guys do.

You're so sophisticated.

You're so smart.

You get a piece of wood and you carve it all up, and then you, you know, put it up and worship it.

Or you get a stone and you chisel it and you make it, you know, some kind of image for yourself and then you worship it.

Who even thinks, you know, what kind of sense does that make?

But we're still doing it today.

Maybe it's not an idol made like that, but it's something else, some person, it's some other thing.

So we may be sure that Paul was understood when he wrote in Romans 2 .14.

Let's look at Romans 2 .14 to 16, and we'll close there.

Romans 2 .14 to 16, I'm pretty sure it's going to talk about the law

of God.

And would somebody read it when they have that?

Romans 2 .14 to 16.

It's an amazing thing, the conscience, and I would say one of the greatest evidences

of the existence of God ever.

How do we know that something is wrong?

It's not like this man said last week, our knower, it is our conscience, and our conscience is

informed by the law of God.

Not even having heard the word of God before, we still know inherently

what's right and wrong.

Why?

Because God has put that in our hearts.

Pam says that law of God will drive you either into more sin or more religion, and

I think that's true, you know.

And she makes mention of the idea that some religions, it'll be nameless, Islam,

could have you chop off somebody's head or their hand or whatever and, you know, get a

full night's sleep at night.

But if you ate pork, you know, you would be...

I mean, this is just an aside, I just think, you know, what we ought to threaten all these people with is just tell them that we're going to

dip all of our bullets in bacon because that would send them, you know, in their religion,

it would send them immediately to hell.

And anyway, I digress.

But the point of that is, I mean, you can see how my head works.

The point of this is, and what she's saying is that, you know, our consciences can be misinformed, which is

true.

But the point of this passage is that we have a conscience and that what happens over time, and we could

say this further, but what happens to our consciences over time is that we

dull them, we sear them.

And so even a religion like Islam, with all of its rules and all of its regulations, eventually teaches us

to set aside what we know to be true and to follow a set of rules that aren't true.

You know, how do things like Nazi Germany, how do things like slavery, how do these things take

place?

Because over time, we convince ourselves that what we know to be, what we instinctively know to be

true and right, we do it so many times that it becomes nothing.

We're exposed to, you know, hands being chopped off for theft or, you know, people getting

their heads cut off for alleged adultery or whatever.

And we become just sort of hardened to the whole process.

And we lose that capacity to tell what is right and what is wrong.

And the way that we keep that keen and fresh and sharp is by studying the Word of

God.

We'll close there.

Our Father in heaven, Lord, we delight in your word.

We are thankful to have it, to be reminded again that

your creation cannot save us.

The light of your creation tells us that you exist.

It tells us about your greatness, your goodness.

But it doesn't tell us of your promises, of your love, of your, even of your plan

to send your son to die on our behalf.

Father, as we're here this morning to worship you, would you bless our times of

fellowship?

Would you bless our times of singing, praying, and even contemplating

just all that you have done to give us salvation and to give us

access to your truth?

Father, would you bless each one here in Christ's name?

Amen.