Equip 2024: Our Blessed and Boundless God #7 - He Who is Holy | Steve Meister

Good morning. I want to take your

Bibles and turn with me to the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 6. And what

I want to do is a continuation a bit of what we looked at over yesterday and Friday night, but if you weren't there you don't need to worry about it.

We will pick up in a properly summary topic on the holiness of God.

And let me start by reading for us just a portion of Isaiah 6. Beginning in verse 1.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up. The train of his robe filled the temple.

Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings. With two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.

And he called to one another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

The whole earth is full of his glory. Now for many

Christians, the word holy has become ironically and tragically common.

Maybe we use it when we say things like someone is holier than thou, or use it as a quip.

I saw a Christian coffee shop that called itself Holy Grounds one time. But scripture, far more than any other descriptor, describes

God as holy. And in the Hebrew Testament, before you could italicize or underline terms, repetition was how you emphasized a concept.

And so for example, you probably were pointed out by your pastor in Genesis 2 .17 that when

God warns Adam and Eve, the day you eat of the tree, dying you will die.

You shall surely die. The Hebrew there is literally dying you will die. God repeats death as in seriously, you will die.

But there's only one triad in the Old Testament, and it's right here in Isaiah 6 verse 3, where God uses a threefold naming to make the point.

He is holy, holy, holy. That is completely, utterly, unequivocally holy.

God is holy. And this emphasis of the holiness of God is not at all altered when we move into the

New Testament. You remember the Lord's Prayer. The Lord taught his disciples to pray. The very first petition of the

Lord's Prayer is, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. And hallowed is sort of biblish.

It's old English we don't use anymore. It just means, let your name be holy. Sanctify your name.

Our first petition in prayer, our first ambition in life, is that God's holiness would be regarded in heaven, on earth, as it is in heaven.

And so here we have a vision of heaven, where God is being proclaimed, holy, holy, holy.

The failure here to understand holiness, then we can rightly say, if we do, is to not understand

God. Holiness is God himself. And what I want to do is just think about the holiness of God and what it means, and then what it means for us, significantly.

And I want to ask two simple questions with some, hopefully, answers that will stretch our conception of God's holiness.

First, what is it? What is God's holiness, and what does it mean? And what we will find is that God's holiness is his own regard for his glory.

And so therefore, our holiness is our regard for the glory of God. So it's holiness, we will find out, is

God's regard for God. And our holiness, then, is our regard or devotion to God.

So let's think about what is God's holiness, and think about the Bible's description. When you think of holy, what's the first thing that comes to your mind?

Sacred? Yep. Probably set apart, very good, so you know where I'm going.

Probably moral purity, more often than not, rises to the surface when we think of holiness. We think of holiness as the exact opposite of evil, and that's absolutely true.

God is pure and righteous. He can never do any evil. But holiness is even more basic than just being morally pure or never doing anything wrong.

It's fundamental to God's being. So for example, J. I. Packer said, holiness signifies everything about God that sets him apart from us and makes him an object of awe, adoration, and dread.

It's the godness of God. And that's a good summary. Holiness is God's godness.

You see us throughout the scripture. In Revelation 15, for example, the saints who conquered and praised

God in his final judgment, they sing in verse 4, Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name?

For you alone are holy. So that is the motive to glorify and praise

God is rooted in his holiness, his godness. We revere

God because he's holy. And this praise of the church in Revelation 15 is typified in Exodus 15 with the song of Moses, with Israel's triumph over Egypt.

And in Exodus 15, verse 11, we hear, Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?

Who is like you, majestic in holiness? It is what separates

God from every other false god and what sets the true God apart is his holiness, his otherness.

And perhaps of all the prophets, Isaiah in particular, distinguishes the holiness of God and exalts it in his prophecy.

And for example, elsewhere in chapter 40, verse 25, To whom will you compare me that I should be like him says the

Holy One. So God says, No one is like me because I am holy.

And God there even will notice he says the Holy One, he takes holiness as his name, that he can be just named holy.

This is true throughout scripture. Mary in her magnificat in Luke chapter 1, verse 49, after the angel tells her she's to carry the

Messiah, Jesus. She says, He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

That is all that God is and who he is, is named by holiness.

So the most basic concept then behind the word holy is set apart, is distinct, even cut off.

So the main idea you want in your minds when you think of holiness is separation, otherness, set apartness.

And this is what God revealed to Moses in Exodus 3. We looked at Exodus 3 quite a bit yesterday as we thought about the attributes of God.

You remember the bush that is being burned but is not consumed? And then in that incident, God is distinguishing and showing by his work, his own being that he's about to reveal by name.

And what does he say when we see this flame of fire that is not sparked by creation, that is not sustained by creation, that is set apart?

God tells Moses, Do not come near, take your sandals off your feet for the you are standing is holy ground, right?

Ground that is set apart. The God who is, the God who is not dependent on anything, the

God who has fire that does not consume is holy. And then God, we know, asks for,

Moses asked for God's name and God says, I am who I am. His independence, his self -sufficiency, his eternality, and all these things.

God has no peers. God is in a class all alone. He's not in a genus or he's not a species.

He's independent. And all that is to say, he's holy. Holiness is a, we might say, a summary attribute that embraces the godness of God, his set -apartness.

And this is what we see here in Isaiah 6 verse 3 with what the song of the seraphs. Seraphim, again, is biblish.

The im is just Hebrew for plural. If we weren't bound by tradition, we'd just say seraphs. So there's multiple angels.

And they're singing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory.

And notice, Isaiah tells us just before this in verse 2 that each angel had six wings.

They had two covering their face to their feet. Now remember, these are unfallen angels.

These angels are purer than you and I. They have no sin. They're morally perfect. And yet, still,

God's distinction, God's holiness requires morally unfallen angels to cover their feet and their faces in regard for the holiness of God.

God is holier than even perfect angels. He is set -apart. He is distinct.

Angels will sing this around the throne for eternity. As we find at the other end of the Bible in Revelation 4 verse 8, that angels day and night never cease to say, holy, holy, holy is the

Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. The God who is, the

God who is other, the creator of all things, he is holy. And even morally pure beings have to shield themselves because they cannot take in the brilliant holiness of God.

God is set -apart and distinct. So when we consider the distance between God and us as we talked even just yesterday, it's a difference in degree, in kind, not just degree.

It's not like there's a continuum of holiness and we're on one end and God's on the other.

He's on a whole other continuum. We are not on the same plane as God at all. He is wholly set -apart.

And so we see holiness is far more than God's purity. We might say holiness is

God's peerlessness. He has no peers. Or we could say not only is

God impeccable, but he's incomparable. Who is like me, says the

Holy One. God has no comparison. He has no peer. And this is even what helps us understand

God's more standard of morality. To say God is holy is simply to say

God is God. And this is how scripture defines it. Some friends that help us,

Edward Lay, says that the holiness of God is the incommunicable eminence of the divine majesty, exalted above all and divided from all.

Wilhelmus Brackel is a Dutch friend and he said the Lord is holiness itself. That is holiness is not a thing that God has, it is him set -apart.

Thomas Boston, who is a Puritan, said holiness is the essential glory of the divine nature.

And we see that here. Do you notice here and in several places in scripture, glory and holiness are interwoven.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. Because when

God magnifies his excellence and greatness, what does he display? His holiness.

He shows his otherness. His peerless incomparability is revealed. And this is true throughout the

Bible. Another example would be Leviticus 10 verse 3, after Nadab and Abihu bring strange fire, and they are struck dead for disregarding

God's instructions. And God tells Aaron in explaining what's just happened, and he says, among those who are near me

I will be sanctified, that is treated as holy, and before all the people I will be glorified.

That is to say, to regard God as holy is to glorify God. To magnify him and to praise him is to recognize his godness, his peerlessness, his incomparability, his exalted nature.

He is glorified. And so when God seeks his glory, he seeks the display of his holiness.

It's regarding himself. So we might say, to bring things together, the holiness of God is

God's perfect devotion to himself. God's devotion to his godness, if you will.

God's holiness, one theologian said, is his sacred self -regard. So the holiness of God is a sacred regard for himself.

A sacred self -regard. In other words, we know God is because he's perfectly devoted to himself, because who else would he be devoted to?

There's no one greater than him. There is no one alongside him as a peer. Now what should that mean, then, about us?

What does it mean, then, for us to have a personal holiness? Well, it must mean, then, we have a regard for God.

A sacred regard for God like he is. In other words, to grow in holiness is to join

God in his self -devotion. It's to join him in his devotion to himself.

Now I want to ask the next question about what, then, that means and sort of start unpacking that.

But any questions about this sort of cursory overview, skipping a stone across what holiness means and thinking a bit more deeply about it?

Okay, well, let's work through what it means, then. And maybe if you have questions, feel free to shoot your hand up. I want to touch on four.

So we'll touch on four implications of what holiness then means for us. Now that we've reoriented ourselves, hopefully, and expanded our grasp of holiness.

So it's not just moral purity. It's God's majestic peerlessness. It's not just that he's impeccable.

It's his he's incomparable. It's God's wholly set -apartness. Let's touch on four things.

First, let's just start with God's moral standard for us. What does this mean, then, for God's moral standard for us?

So when we talk about the holiness of God, or we talk about God's holy law, we always have to remember we're not talking about a standard outside of God to which

God submits. So holiness is not a thing or a standard that we measure

God against and say, oh, yeah, he meets that, so therefore he must be God because he meets the standard. He is the standard.

It's him. There's nothing before him or prior to him or above him. That means what we call holiness or morality, or sacredness, is simply just the expression of God's very character.

He is the standard of purity, of morality, of holiness. And then if holiness is his sacred self -regard, then that means seeking to keep his moral standard is simply seeking to regard

God with God. It's to seek to exalt God. And we always have to remember this is what the moral law of God is for us.

The do's and the don'ts of the Bible, they are reflections of the character of God. They are joining

God in his devotion to himself. So an old friend, Stephen Sharnock, he said it like this,

God's law is the image of God's holiness, a transcript of his righteousness and the overflow of his goodness.

That's a really good summary. What God has set down in his word isn't arbitrary. It's not things he's just picked out of nowhere as though he was some fickle dictator just determining rules randomly.

It's the overflow of his goodness. It's the very transcript of his righteous character. This is why we never want to set obedience to God's law and devotion to God as though they're opposites, or as though they're opposed to one another.

Or sometimes someone will say, well -intended but misinformed, well, I just want to be devoted to God.

I don't care about the do's and don'ts, or morality, or those kinds of things. We're separating what can never be separated.

This is who God has revealed himself us to be as his creature. So when God says be holy for I am holy, he's saying be devoted to me as I created you to be.

He's saying I'm eternally devoted to my own glory. You are to be devoted to my glory as well as my creature.

I've called you to be devoted to me. This is why we're all guilty before God as holy, regardless of the variety of means and conduct by which we are guilty.

It's because sin is in essence, the Bible says, exchanging the glory of God for that of the created thing.

It is disregarding the holiness of the creator and setting it aside. And it's significant that Isaiah here in his call is called in chapter 6 of his prophecy.

I want to point out something you may not have noticed before, but the call of Isaiah is in chapter 6, not in chapter 1.

I've spent a lot of years of theological study to make observations like that for you. But typically, it's unique because typically when you go to prophets, their call to ministry is the first thing of their prophetic book.

So Ezekiel's call is Ezekiel 1 -3. Jeremiah's call is in Jeremiah 1.

And when you think about it, it makes complete sense. Before you read a book of a prophet, you want to know, is this dude actually a prophet?

So that's the first question they answer for you, typically. But here Isaiah begins with five chapters of Israel's unbelief.

The beginning of Isaiah describes Israel's idolatry and oppression of one another. And Isaiah gives a litany of woes.

I don't use woe anymore like this, but it's an oracle of condemnation. Woe to Israel.

There's six of them actually, and they start in chapter 5, verse 11. Isaiah says, woe to those who rise early in the morning that they may run after strong drink.

That's the first. And then in verse 18 is another. Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood.

In verse 20, woe to those who call evil good and good evil. 21, woe to those who are wise in their own eyes.

22, woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine. There's six woes.

And now judgment is coming from the Babylonians. Things are so bad, there's a crisis.

At the beginning of this chapter in verse 1, we're told that King Uzziah died. So the short story on King Uzziah, he was largely a good king, but then he tried to play a priest, and he was struck down with leprosy, and he died under judgment.

So suffice to say, things in Israel were not great. They were bad. But notice there's six woes here.

If you know anything about Hebrew accounting, especially as it goes with the day of creation, six is something like a cliffhanger.

You know, like when a song ends on the wrong note, you're waiting for it. No, you need one more to finish it. Six is a cliffhanger.

Where's the seventh woe? Well, that's in chapter 6, verse 5.

Woe is me. You see, there was still one more party that needed to be condemned in Israel, and it was the prophet himself.

The judgment of God was not complete until Isaiah himself was condemned for his sin.

And in view of God's holiness, Isaiah saw that was exactly what was necessary. He saw who he really was.

I doubt Isaiah was the worst person in Israel in that day, but he was still condemned by the holiness of God.

He fell far short. Thank you very much. It's too early in the morning to try to pull off that many

F's in one sentence. He fell far short. And Isaiah here is totally undone, and what's the proof in verse 5?

His unclean lips. Now, this isn't just his speech, like Isaiah had a cursing problem perhaps.

His speech is reflective, like our speech, the Bible's consistent, is reflective of ourselves.

Jesus said, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. What we say and how we say it is reflective of our being.

It's exposing. And so when Isaiah says, I'm a man of unclean lips, he's condemning his whole self.

He's saying, I'm a sinner through and through. And notice what else he says. He says, and I'm in midst of the people of unclean lips.

That is, he says, as I look around, there is no one with any different resources to help me.

So I recognize myself as undone by the holiness of God and condemned in sin, and you know what?

Everyone else I know is the same. I don't know anyone who's any different. And so he says, woe is me, he's undone.

What's to be done? That brings us to think a little bit, secondly, about not just God's moral standard, but secondly about God's saving grace and holiness.

What do we think about holiness and our salvation, or God's holiness and love?

We'll think a little more in the sermon this morning about God's love, but right here we can say we never want to think of holiness and love as things that God balances, because they're not things in God.

If you remember from yesterday, God's attributes are how we describe his divine essence. They're not little things in God that God balances.

So God's not just managed to figure out how holiness and love go into play and keep them perfectly balanced.

The good news about God's love is that it's holy. And the good news about his love is that holiness defines it.

So if holiness is God's sacred self -regard, that means his love is also reflecting his sacred self -regard.

Let me give you an example from another prophet, the prophet Hosea. In chapter 11 verses 8 and 9, the

Lord speaks to Israel that is bent on turning away from him. And listen to what Hosea says in verses 8 and 9 of chapter 11.

I will not execute my burning angel. I will not again destroy Ephraim, which is a sort of a nickname for Israel.

For I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.

Notice significantly in Hosea 11 9, God explains the reason his wrath and judgment will not come is because he's holy.

He will not bring judgment because he's holy. He says, I'm God and not a man.

Now think about that. What do men do? What do we do in the face of repeated, inexcusable, incomprehensible offenses and indignities?

Yeah, we will retaliate. We go off. Who do you think you are? We take vengeance.

We execute our burning anger. People don't deserve it. That's the human thing to do.

But God says, I'm not a man. He says, I am God. I am the Holy One among his people.

And so God's holiness turns him to spare his people because he set his name on them.

God's love is the goodness of his holiness upon the unlovable. It's wonderful.

We're so grateful that God's love is holy. Otherwise we'd be without hope. If God's love was humanly, we'd all be in trouble.

But God's love is holy. It's a love of radical difference, as we'll see this morning. It's a love that Paul the

Apostle says in Ephesians 3 .19, surpasses knowledge. So God is not only peerless in justice and peerless in righteousness,

God is also peerless in love. His love is pure and perfect.

And he's so committed to his people in grace that his love is equally holy. So here

Isaiah declares that he dwells in the midst of a people of unclean lips.

He's got no resources. And what does God do? He sends a seraph, in verse 6, who takes a hand, in his hand, takes a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar.

Now the altar there, remember Isaiah's in the temple, the altar is the bronze altar where the sacrifices were consumed.

And those sacrifices on the altar were substitute deaths suffered in the place of sinners, so they could enter

God's presence without dying. Because what sinners deserve from the presence of God is death to be consumed.

And so God set up the sacrificial system so that death would be borne by another, so that those who were born for could enter the presence of God.

So with this coal that is being taken to Isaiah, God's not just ceremonially wiping sin away, waving it away with theatrics.

This coal is coming from the throne of God as a promise. The angel is bringing the fire of the sacrifice on behalf of sin to touch

Isaiah and say that sacrifice is for you, it's done. So he says, behold this has touched your lips, in verse 7, your guilt is taken away, your sin atoned for.

The God who is holy, holy, holy, resolved to deal with his people's sin in perfect holiness.

Holiness means salvation is of the Lord. And so the cross of the Lord Jesus, what this was pointing to always, is an expression of the holiness of God.

Not only in that the cross, on the cross Jesus became our substitute to satisfy our judgment in our place, but God's love is revealed and demonstrated there, which is a revelation of his holiness.

Never pit the holiness and love of God against each other. There's nothing in God as opposed to any other thing.

God's love is holy. And the reason we know that if you confess your sin,

God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins is because he's holy. Because he's committed to his name.

Because he sent his son to be our savior. Well let's think then thirdly of God's sanctifying work in those who are

Christians. We see God's holiness in his moral standard, his salvation.

Let's think about his sanctifying work. If God's holiness is God's devotion to himself, his sacred self -regard, then our growing in holiness is simply growing in devotion to God.

Becoming growing more devoted to him. That's why when we think of holiness, we're not just ceasing sinful patterns of behavior.

We're seeking to become more like God, who is a God of love. So we need to have in our holiness bucket passages like Luke 6, where Jesus says of God his father, be kind, he is kind, your father is merciful.

Kindness, love, and mercy is a part of what it means to be holy as God is holy. That is a reflection of the holiness of God.

We love our enemies because we're seeking to be holy. And love is a reflection of holiness because that's who

God is. Or a well -known passage in Leviticus 19 verse 18, which

Jesus says is like the great commandment, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the

Lord. That is, I am who I am. I am love. So therefore, love your neighbor.

You're like me. So all our change and our growth and our sanctification and our holiness is reflected in the full spectrum of what

God has called us to in love, kindness, mercy. And we see this in Isaiah in verse 8, the question of who will go.

Isaiah replies without reservation, here am I, send me. And Isaiah is being sent to no easy ministry.

You put up this advertisement in a seminary classroom and no one is signing up. Send me to these people who will, in every human sense,

Isaiah is going to fail. That's why in verse 11, he has to ask, well, how long, Lord, do

I do this? And God says, verse 12, until judgment comes, you will precede judgment and you will basically fail in ministry until judgment finally falls.

And yet for Isaiah, he still does it because he's devoted to God and he seeks to be like the

God who has called him and sanctified him. It's Isaiah's worship that has drawn forth his response.

And so what we see here is that God's sanctifying work in us and his call for us to worship him, they're concurrent realities.

That God works in our lives and in our hearts as we are devoted to him and as we seek him.

As we adore more and more the character, love, and greatness of our God, we grow more and more like him.

And the Lord continues to root out those things that are unlike him and our Savior, the often

I have this conversation all the time. Pastor, I have this issue, whatever it is, fill in the blank.

I need help. Wonderful. We sit down and we talk and I always start with, tell me about your commitment to worship in the church and worship privately.

And invariably I get a response, but I'm not here to talk about my worship stuff.

I'm here to talk about this problem. And I always have to say, that has everything to do with your problem. So we want to start in the big picture.

We will get there and talk about your issue, and there's always very practical things to do, no doubt. But it all begins with our conception and devotion and adoration of God.

Always, every time. And our commitment to seek him and to say to him, here am

I, send me. Whether that's on the mission field or just being a more faithful parent or more obedient Christian or whatever it is the

Lord is calling us in his life. Lord, send me as you will. How can I be sent for you?

And lastly, we want to think about God's holiness as comfort. Comfort from God.

Now, not a lot of Christians put holiness in the comfort bucket. We want assurance. Think of God as holy.

But God's holiness is our comfort. Consider Hannah's prayer in 1 Samuel 2.

There is none holy like the Lord, for there is none besides you. There is no rock like our

God. It is the fact that because our God is incomparably and singularly independent, he is unlike anything that he's created that we can always rely upon.

Because he never changes. He is our rock. And there is no pillow as soft as the rock who is our

God. Because he is the sovereign, the set -apart, the only holy one.

That's why later in Isaiah, Isaiah 43, he will write to Israel in distress and say this in verse 3,

I am the Lord your God, the holy one, your savior. And it's precisely because God is set -apart and distinct from all he has made, it's precisely because of that we can rely upon him as our savior.

And we can trust his promises. And we can rest in his coming presence according to his plan.

It's because God is holy, holy, holy. We can call on his name. We can be reassured of his goodness.

We can know his love is eternal and never changing. And we can have rest and comfort in the holiness of God.

God will never forsake any of his people because he is holy. He has regard for his great name.

There's more we could say, which is what you say when you come to the end of your notes and what you have planned to say. But curious responses and questions.

Remind me your name, sir, I'm sorry. I know you're Eddie's father -in -law. Brad, that's right. I think, so the holiness movement is, like many things, a good idea gone awry.

And I think the biggest, the biggest, when we think of that sort of general area that still has influences today,

I think the biggest concern is the idea that somehow we can achieve a secondary state of holiness in this life.

Yep, yep. And every professing Christian I've met who thinks that is intolerably arrogant.

So they're obviously not holy. And so, so I just think, and obviously there's really biblical problems with that.

So, but in terms of having a regard for holiness and wanting to be holy,

I don't think should be a bad word amongst Christians. Desire for personal holiness should still be a good thing.

And I think one of the things we need to, I touched on it, but one of the things I think that needs to be there in our conception of that is remember that kindness and love and mercy are reflections of holiness, because that's who

God is. So sometimes the picture of holiness is sort of one aspect of it, and sometimes it has a, maybe a sternness or a coldness, at least that's a caricature.

So we always want to remember and press that kindness is holiness, love is holiness, and that's clear in God, and He calls us to the same.

Yeah. Yeah. Good question. Yeah. Good.

Yeah. Yeah. Good. I'm glad. So the illustration I used yesterday, and it's helpful again, perhaps in this context is that, and I'm stealing this from John Owen, that angels and worms have more in common than us and God.

And when we think here of unfallen angels that still shield their faces from the holiness of God. And the reason that's true, well, think what does an angel look like?

Think of what does an angel look like? It's a trick question, because angels are invisible.

So whatever answer you're going to give is wrong. So angels are invisible spirits, right?

We don't see them, but God created them. And the unfallen angels are morally pure, right?

But at the end of the day, the similarity between an angel and a worm is that they're both created by God.

They're creatures, right? And so angels and worms, so if we had a continuum of creatureliness, they're probably on opposite ends of the spectrum without question.

Angels way over here and worms somewhere way down here past us. And yet they have more in common because they're creatures than us and God, because he is the creator.

And so when the remembering what we call the creator creature distinction is absolutely vital.

And that's essentially at the heart of holiness. That's what holiness is, is God's entire set apartness and explains his purity.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, of all the creatures, we were made in God's image, and we were made to have particular communion with God.

So we have something that worms don't have in that regard, or any other creature, right? Because we are made in his image, and we remain to commune with him.

But just as we talked this weekend about how all of God's communication is a condescension, he's accommodating like a nurse to an infant.

He's cooing to us as it were, even in his word. So that distance is still there between the creator and the creature.

And it's probably important to remember when we think about being made in the image of God, that analogy is asymmetrical.

It only goes one direction. So if you think of copy machines and making, does everyone still remember

Xeroxing things and copies? So you had a copy, you would go to a copy machine and make a copy.

The copies always reflected some kind of distortion. The words were a little fuzzier, or maybe there were lots or stuff because the glass wasn't clean, and so it would have marks on it.

Or maybe you didn't put the paper on right, so it kind of copied kind of wonky, you know, and it would have the shade in the corner, all those things.

Now, those copies are true copies of the original, right?

They reflect it. And you can see something of the original in those copies. However, you wouldn't want to take all the blemishes and the little shaded corner and the fuzzy letters and say, well, those must all be reflected in the original.

No, it only goes one direction. And so when you have that copy, you know that there are some of these blemishes here and things.

This is just reflective of the nature of being a copy. So it's the same thing as the image of God.

So when we look at ourselves, we can't look at ourselves and say, well, everything I see in creatures, I can now import back to the creator.

That analogy only goes one direction. We can see true reflections of the creator, and as he reveals himself, we see, oh,

I understand now. Love and this, all this comes from you, and that's why it's reflected in us and why it's here.

But I wouldn't want to take everything of the image and import it back to the creator so that that distinction between the creator and the creature is still present.

Yeah, yeah. Good question. Excellent question. Yeah. Yeah.

And that comes up. People say just that thing, why should I worship some egomaniac? And we have to just start in the order of really, you just you enter into a conversation of discussing the order of reality and the nature of good and what we see.

The fact eventually we have to get to the fact that we're all creatures and that we did not bring ourselves here. This isn't our stuff.

We were made by God and he owns everything. And then we start talking about the nature of higher goods and the fact that to be

God, to be the one who has brought forth all things and have nothing prior to him and no one he depends upon, what else would he seek but himself?

There is nothing higher than him. We all seek something to have happiness and something greater and higher than us, however we perceive that, and we usually do it sinfully.

So that is reflective of our design to be dependent and created, to be dependent and to worship

God. So we want to have that conversation about the very nature of desire and seeking and how

God has no one higher than himself. So it is actually morally right for God to seek himself.

And he's the only one of which this is true, where seeking himself is not intolerable arrogance because he's not a dependent creature.

The reason seeking ourselves is intolerable arrogance is because what do we have that we haven't received?

We were made for someone else. You just have to sort of patiently unpack that conversation and explain that.

And then eventually you get to the reorienting, the conception of what creation is, which is an expression of the mercy and goodness of God.

Because he needs nothing, he seeks himself because he has all sufficiency in himself and all joy in himself.

So that means God didn't create because he was lonely. God doesn't have a human -shaped hole in his heart.

And so he made all things, ultimately why? To bless us, to bless us with himself.

And so our existence in the creation, the existence of everything, is a reflection of God's benevolence, his charity, his kindness.

He made us to live so that we could enjoy him and know him. And so we just have to reframe some of that sinful prejudice and rethink it as a tremendous mercy that we are.

And then we start explaining just things about how, I think you can have conversations too, about just what it means to be created and how things work and what real liberty is.

Real liberty is living according to your design and nature. And it's a lie of the devil to say that real liberty is being free of your nature.

So to take like trains, like Sacramento is where I'm from, there's trains everywhere.

And when you see a derailed train, what do you see? A wreckage. Nobody looks at a derailed train and go, wow, look at that liberty, such freedom.

The train's free of its track. Oh, the train's useless now. It's a complete wreck because it's free of its design.

In the same way, that's who we are as sinners. We're derailed trains. We're a wreckage.

It's not freedom. It's the liar who told you that's freedom. And so just reframing the divine benevolence of creation and that God's created intent with our natures, real liberty is not seeking foolishly to be free of that as some way how we can, but actually living in line with how our creator made us to be.

That's where real liberty and freedom is found and flourishing because we're living according to our design, like a train is supposed to be on the tracks.

So that's in a real rough, I mean, typically longer conversations, but I was just trying to reframe some of those conceptions by God's grace with folks who would say that, which is not uncommon.

Yeah. That was good. That worked? Yeah. Okay, good.