May 8, 2019 Show with Terry L. Johnson on “The Identity & Attributes of God”

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May 9, 2019

May 8, 2019: TERRY L. JOHNSON, author, conference speaker & senior minister of Independent Presbyterian Church of Savannah, Georgia, will address: “The IDENTITY & ATTRIBUTES OF GOD” & announcing the upcoming East Coast Ministers’ Conference of the BANNER of TRUTH!!

00:04: Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown
00:10: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,
00:23: Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the Church and the world today.
00:31: Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
00:38: Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
00:50: It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
00:58: And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,
01:11: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.
01:19: This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 8th day of May, 2019.
01:28: And I am thrilled that we have returning for a second time our guest today, Terry L.
01:34: Johnson. He is an author, conference speaker, and the senior minister of Independent Presbyterian Church of Savannah, Georgia.
01:41: We are addressing today his book, his new book, The Identity and Attributes of God.
01:48: And we're also going to be discussing and announcing the East Coast Ministers Conference of the Banner of Truth, where Pastor Johnson is on the speaking roster.
01:58: And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Terry L. Johnson.
02:04: Thank you very much. Well, although you did this on Monday, please let our listeners know again, especially those who missed
02:14: Monday's show, tell us something about Independent Presbyterian Church of Savannah, Georgia. Well, it's a downtown church, an old historic church.
02:23: It was established in 1755 on the basis of a land grant from King George II, and it has continued in ministry over these 260 -plus years.
02:38: I've been there since January of 1987, so for the last 32 -and -a -half years.
02:48: And we are a very traditional, historic church with a traditional, historic form of ministry and worship.
02:57: I preach expository verse -by -verse sermons. We have a very ordered and Bible -centered,
03:06: God -centered, gospel -driven worship service. So that's about it.
03:18: And is it still an independent church, or has it become a part of a denomination such as the
03:26: PCA, the OPC, or other Presbyterian denominations? We have four ministers, and we are all members of the
03:33: PCA, but the church itself is independent. It has been independent since 1755.
03:39: It predates the Presbyterian. When the Presbyterian was formed in the 1820s, they opted not to join with it and remain autonomous.
03:50: And it has resisted various and sundry opportunities and calls to be a part of the denomination.
03:57: Over the decades and centuries, it has resisted doing so. Well, tell us something now about the upcoming
04:06: East Coast Ministers Conference being run by the Banner of Truth here in Pennsylvania at the
04:12: Elizabethtown College. I know that you're speaking on the general theme. The umbrella theme is,
04:18: I believe, in the Holy Spirit. But if you could remind me and inform our listeners who are hearing you for the first time, what subtitle or subtopic you have underneath that umbrella theme of,
04:34: I believe in the Holy Spirit at this conference. Well, I'm going to focus on the way in which proper understanding of the work of the
04:43: Holy Spirit shapes the way that we do ministry, beginning with how the minister understands himself and his own work, and then the way it then shapes his ministry, and then also how it then leads one to include substantial time for prayer in the public assembly.
05:22: Because I think a proper understanding of the Holy Spirit means both that there's going to be a simplicity about Christian ministry.
05:30: We're not going to succumb to the temptation to either dress up the gospel or to tone it down.
05:36: We're going to be content to preach it as given and depend upon the power of the
05:42: Holy Spirit rather than human ingenuity in order to minister faithfully.
05:49: And then I think that we're going to fill our services with prayer as a further expression of our dependence upon the
05:58: Holy Spirit. And that's exactly what happened at the time of the Reformation. The Reformation was a revival of prayer, was a prayer revolution, you might even say, so that the meager prayer offered in the medieval service was enhanced, which altogether resulted in six basic prayers being included in the regular service of the
06:25: Church, one of which was the prayers of intercession, and those intercessions were then further divided into five different categories of focus for the intercessory life of the
06:38: Church. So that I think a Church that does understand the role of the
06:47: Holy Spirit is going to feature a full diet of biblical prayer in the public services of the
06:54: Church. All the prayer genres are going to be present. You may recall 1
07:03: Timothy 2, 1 and 2, where the Apostle Paul says that prayers and thanksgivings and so forth should be offered.
07:10: Well, he just heaps up the prayer terminology there to say all sorts of prayers should be offered.
07:17: When the Church gathers, all sorts of prayers, all those genres, all the different types of prayers, all these kinds of prayers should be a part of the regular service of the
07:26: Church. And I think if you understand our dependence upon the Holy Spirit, then you're going to be calling upon God with prayers of praise and thanksgiving and confession of sin and intercessions, and there will be a prayer of illumination prior to the reading and preaching of the
07:45: Scripture, and then a benediction at the end. Or at least that's what the
07:51: Reformers believed and what they established in their orders of service, which
07:57: I think we would be wise to follow today. Well, if anybody would like to attend, that is if you are a man in ministry leadership, whether you are a pastor or an elder, and I believe those are the same office, by the way, or a deacon or a parachurch ministry leader, as long as you're a man in ministry leadership, you can register for the
08:16: East Coast Ministers Conference, which is being held from Tuesday through Thursday, May 28th through the 30th, and I will be there,
08:25: God willing, at the Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. So if you attend, please try to look for me, ask around, say, where's
08:31: Chris Arnzen from Iron Trip and Zion Radio? The other speakers, in addition to our guest today, Terry L.
08:38: Johnson, include Jeff Kingswood, who we've had on this program, a real remarkable preacher and teacher,
08:46: David Vaughn, a Reformed Baptist missionary in France, Steve Nichols, who is the president of Reformation Bible College, the college founded by the late
08:54: R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries, Michael Morales, and Chad Vegas, who has been a guest on Iron Trip and Zion Radio as well.
09:03: So that's Tuesday, May 28th through Thursday, May 30th, at the Elizabethtown College at Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.
09:09: The website to register is banneroftruth .org, banneroftruth .org,
09:15: click on Events, and then scroll down to East Coast Ministers Conference 2019. And you can also look up books by our guest,
09:24: Terry L. Johnson, and other phenomenal authors that the Banner of Truth publishes. You just can't go wrong with a
09:31: Banner of Truth book. Now, the book that we are discussing today, as I already mentioned,
09:36: The Identity and Attributes of God, this is a beautiful 400 -page hardback, by the way, if you could, before we get into the contents of the book,
09:48: I am curious as to why there are three heroes of the faith to whom you dedicate this book,
09:58: Stephen Charnock, George Swinnock, and William Gurnall. If you could, in a summary fashion, tell us why these three heroes of church history, which may be completely unknown to the general audience of Iron Trip and Zion Radio, other than the more studious or well -read
10:17: Reformed listener. Tell us why these three men are so important to you that you dedicated
10:22: The Identity and Attributes of God to them. Well, let's start with Charnock.
10:29: He wrote The Existence and Attributes of God in the 17th century.
10:35: So my title is a play on his title. His was Existence and Attributes, mine is
10:41: Identity and Attributes. And Charnock's work is, you know, you fail to find the superlatives really to describe it.
10:52: It is extraordinary. Every page of it is exceptional.
10:59: I find myself wanting to underline whole pages at a time.
11:09: And my background with Charnock extends over several decades.
11:16: When I was still in college, a seminary president by the name of Earl Rotmacher was teaching at a conference that I attended, and he challenged college students to purchase and read
11:33: Charnock's Existence and Attributes. And he said, if anyone will do that, I will buy them the copy. And he referred to a student who did, and several years later called him up and said,
11:43: I finished. It's about 1 ,100, 1 ,200 pages, and it's very substantial, as you can imagine.
11:55: He's an English Puritan. He's writing in the mid -to -late 17th century. And his work was such an inspiration to me,
12:06: I wanted to dedicate the book to him. And then Swinick wrote a work
12:14: I'd never heard of until just a couple of years ago, and it's called The Incomparableness of God.
12:21: And it's only 133 pages. But it, too, is just extraordinary.
12:28: It's what you might call the Reader's Digest version of Charnock. He gives you 133 pages, you know, the best of Charnock, with fresh insights.
12:38: And just like Charnock, he is illuminating, he is inspiring, he is challenging, he is convicting.
12:48: It's just wonderful, page after page after page. And then William Gernal's Christian Incomplete Armor is another book
12:56: I was reading around the same time. He writes about 1 ,100 pages also on 11 verses, the 11 verses in Ephesians 6 on the full armor of God.
13:10: And like Charnock and like Swinick, he doesn't ever seem to repeat himself.
13:17: He just goes on, page after page, fresh insight, fresh challenge, fresh illuminating statements, memorable statements.
13:34: It's just exceptional. And I, you know, by the time I finished reading these things, and there were others as well in preparation for writing the book, you know,
13:47: I just was left with the sense that it's almost as though these men were from another planet.
13:54: Where did they get their insights? How did they sustain the insight for, with Gernal and Charnock, for 1 ,100 pages?
14:04: Where did they fly in from? Are they a completely different breed?
14:11: Just the depth and the profundity, yet the accessibility of their writing.
14:20: So I thought that I should dedicate the work to them because they had been so meaningful.
14:27: Let me just tell you this. When I finished reading Gernal, and by the way, I recommend reading people like Gernal and Charnock, Swinick, at the rate of three to four pages a day.
14:38: If you do that, at the end of the year, you've read all of Existence and Attributes, or you've read all of Christian and Complete Armor.
14:46: You know, three pages a day, you read over 1 ,000 pages in a year. And I think that that's about the right pace to absorb the depth of what they are saying.
14:58: But what I started to say, when I finished Charnock, mid -December, a couple of years ago, I was touched with a note of sadness.
15:09: There was a melancholy that came over me because I would no longer be meeting with my friend,
15:16: William Gernal, who had been teaching me and speaking to me for every day over the past year.
15:24: That's how significant these men had become for me.
15:31: I could add, too, really the whole study of the Attributes got started for me by reading
15:38: Knowing God by J .I. Packer. I read that my junior year, got halfway through it, and gave up. Went back to it my senior year and read it again.
15:47: And I was so moved by it that I wrote to England and asked Packer if I could come study at Trinity College in Bristol, where he was on the faculty.
15:58: And we exchanged letters and transcripts and so forth. So that's what I ended up doing. I went over there for two years from 1977 to 1979 and studied at Trinity Bristol.
16:10: So I've always had this bias, this sense, this conviction that's foundational to everything is our understanding of God.
16:22: Everything builds on that. Everything is based on that. Every error ultimately flows from a flawed view of the nature of God.
16:32: So that's always been on my mind and a conviction that I've had. In 2013,
16:43: I wanted to provide for the local college students the opportunity to study the
16:49: Attributes that I felt like I had had by reading Packer my senior year.
16:56: And so I set out to preach ten sermons on the Attributes in the fall of 2013 as the semester began for local college students.
17:06: Eighty -two sermons later, I finished. So what was meant to be a ten -part series, it just expanded and grew and expanded and grew just because of what
17:19: I was reading and how much benefit I was getting from it and what I hoped to pass on to my congregation.
17:27: The difference between the book and the sermons is most of the sermons did not have all of the quotations.
17:36: I think that quotations tend to bog down sermons, so I mainly avoided that.
17:42: Some of the very best of them I included. But in the book itself,
17:48: I wanted everyone to have access to the wonderful, succinct, clarifying, challenging, illuminating, inspiring statements that I was able to collect from Swinek, Gernal, Charnock, Baxter, Boston, Flaval, Edwards, Matthew Henry, Matthew Poole, just to name a few.
18:21: Well, before we go into some of the Attributes of God, and I already know, looking at this nearly 400 -page book, that I'm going to want to have you back if you are so desirous yourself, perhaps in June after the
18:37: Banner of Truth conference, because we're all full up in May now. But I'd like you to answer the question in a summary fashion.
18:47: If someone were to ask you, like I am going to do right now, what is the identity of God?
18:54: That might take years to answer, or you could give a succinct summary of things that are vital and necessary for a
19:03: Christian, Orthodox, biblically sound answer to that question. So how would you answer in a succinct fashion, what is the identity of God?
19:14: Well, I'm making a distinction in the title itself between identity and attributes, because I wanted to deal with God as Creator, God as the
19:25: God of Providence, or God as Governor and Sustainer, and God as Father.
19:32: So those are aspects of His identity that aren't exactly attributes.
19:39: So when you talk about attributes, you have the communicable, which are true of God alone, like God is infinite, eternal, and unchanging, and independent, self -sustaining, self -existent.
19:52: So you have incommunicable, you have communicable attributes, those of which He passes on to us, that we can share in to some extent, like holiness and righteousness and grace and mercy and truth and faithfulness and so forth.
20:11: So you have the two kinds of attributes, communicable and incommunicable. But then there are these aspects of identity.
20:18: God is our Maker, God is our Sustainer, God is our Father. So in order to have both,
20:27: I think to have a full picture of who God is, I think we need to know, okay, God is the one who created all,
20:33: God is the one who sustains all. And these are the characteristics that He reveals to us, beginning with the attribute of attributes, as it so often has been called, which is holiness, and then moving on from there.
20:50: Well, I'm going to give our listeners our email address right now if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Terry L.
20:58: Johnson on the identity and attributes of God. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,
21:04: C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And please, as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the
21:15: USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.
21:22: Well, let's start with what you call the badges of divinity in a series of explanations of the incommunicable attributes of God, those that you just mentioned, that God alone possesses.
21:40: Okay. Go through in more detail some of those things that, if you're giving an orthodox description of God, and of course, since we have finite, fallible, and sinful minds, we can never plumb the depths of a complete and perfect definition or explanation, but there are those things that you would have an unorthodox or even heretical understanding of God if you didn't include them.
22:09: So if you could even go into a broader explanation of the incommunicable attributes. The phrase, the badges of divinity, that's a phrase that I borrowed from James Henley Thornwell, a 19th century
22:26: Southern Presbyterian theologian. Yeah, I actually love him. I've done a couple of programs on Brother Thornwell with my friend
22:37: Jeff Waddington and I believe one or two other guests who discussed this hero of the faith and interesting view of baptism that many
22:49: Presbyterians today disagree with because Thornwell did not believe that we should embrace
22:55: Roman Catholic baptism. But anyway, that's just another topic for another day.
23:04: But continue. Well, the incommunicable attributes are the attributes that, in a sense, govern all of the other attributes.
23:21: In the Shorter Catechism, the fourth question, what is God, begins with God as a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable.
23:29: And then it goes on to speak of his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.
23:36: So the introductory attributes, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, they govern being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.
23:47: So God's wisdom is infinite wisdom. It is eternal wisdom. It is unchanging wisdom.
23:55: God's holiness is infinite or perfected holiness.
24:01: He was eternally holy. He is unchangeably holy.
24:10: So the incommunicable attributes, sometimes called sovereign attributes or power attributes, they're the attributes in which we have no share at all.
24:19: They are the goddishness of God. You could almost say the thing that makes God God are these incommunicable attributes.
24:27: God is independent. He is self -existent. He is self -sustaining.
24:34: He is self -sufficient. We are none of the above. We are dependent.
24:39: We are insufficient. We are not self -existent, but we are created by God.
24:50: God is unchanging. We are not. We are constantly changing, fluctuating, changing our minds, changing our outlook.
25:01: God doesn't change. His character doesn't change. His word doesn't change. His truth doesn't change.
25:06: His purposes don't change. Consequently, He is a rock of stability for us.
25:13: In a very changing, fluctuating world, He is like a rock and steadfast and reliable.
25:27: We also hope God is infinite, infinite in His power.
25:35: The way I've treated infinity is I've applied infinity to various spheres.
25:41: God is infinite in connection with power, so He's omnipotent. He's infinite in connection with knowledge, so He's omniscient.
25:49: He's infinite with respect to time, so He's eternal. He's infinite with respect to space, so He is omnipresent.
26:00: These are the sorts of issues that I explore in plunging into these incommunicable attributes of God.
26:15: Another that people don't think about so much is the simplicity of God.
26:22: God is a unity. The attributes, indeed, are not different parts of God. God is singular.
26:31: It's an aspect of His immutability. He doesn't change.
26:37: He doesn't have body, parts, or passion. As the
26:43: Confession of Faith and the 39 Articles and the Older Creed all say,
26:49: He's free of composition and division. The old theologians would say,
26:57: So these are all aspects of the otherness of God. He is wholly other.
27:03: And I think this is something that is very difficult for Christians to grasp today. We tend to think of God as a larger version of ourselves, rather than Him being of a higher order of being.
27:19: Right. Beyond us. I don't think anything could terrify me more than viewing
27:28: God as a larger version of myself. Right.
27:38: So God is independent, self -existent, self -sufficient, immutable, infinite, perfect, eternal, omnipresent, simple.
27:47: And He is all those things that we are not. And this is why the prophet
27:55: Isaiah will say, His ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts.
28:01: The apostle Paul, who has known the mind of the Lord, He is beyond us.
28:07: He is incomprehensible in the sense that our minds are not able to know
28:13: Him comprehensively. We can know Him truly, but we will never be able to plunge the depths of the
28:18: Almighty. We are finite and He is infinite. And that should always be kept in mind.
28:27: And I think that when we do, I think that we are more likely to fall before Him and worship Him, rather than treat
28:35: Him as someone on the same level with us.
28:41: Amen. And brother, if you could, remember to keep your mouth as close to whatever microphone or device you are using, because sometimes you get a little muffled and sometimes you are crystal clear.
28:54: So whatever you can do, that would be great. We do have a listener in White Plains, New York.
29:01: We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who asks,
29:06: How do you explain how God is...
29:14: Well, I guess we are going to have to wait for our guest to call back. Our guest,
29:20: Terry L. Johnson, just got disconnected, obviously. And hopefully he will be calling back momentarily. But while I am waiting for him to call back, let me repeat our email address for those of you listening who want to join us on the air with a question.
29:34: Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com.
29:42: And here is... And brother Johnson, are you back? Hello.
29:47: I am back. Yes. I don't know what happened, but we lost the connection.
29:53: Yeah, that's strange. I am going to read RJ's question now, and I will have you answer it when we return from our first break.
30:02: RJ in White Plains, New York. He says, How do we defend the immutability of God, the fact that He never changes, and yet there was a point in time in history when
30:18: Jesus Christ, who always existed as a part of the Godhead, even before He received the name
30:25: Jesus, became incarnate in the womb of Mary by the power of the
30:32: Holy Spirit? Therefore, there is a change that took place because of the fact that the
30:39: Second Person of the Trinity took upon Himself human flesh and remains the
30:45: God -Man for all eternity, something that He was not prior to the Incarnation.
30:50: How do we explain this without robbing God of His immutability in our explanation?
30:56: Of course, we can never rob God of His immutability, but in the way that we describe it, we may give people an erroneous or heretical understanding of Him.
31:07: And we will have you answer RJ's question when we come back from the break. And if anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com
31:16: chrisarnson at gmail .com Don't go away, God willing. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.
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43:08: Iron Sharpens Iron Radio remain on the air because we rely upon their funding to exist. We are now back with our discussion with Pastor Terry L.
43:18: Johnson, author, conference speaker, and senior minister at Independent Presbyterian Church of Savannah, Georgia.
43:24: We are discussing his latest book, The Identity and Attributes of God. And we're also announcing the
43:30: East Coast Ministers Conference of the Banner of Truth, which is being held from Tuesday, May 28th through Thursday, May 30th, here in Pennsylvania at the
43:38: Elizabethtown College, on the theme, I believe, In the Holy Spirit. And our guest today,
43:43: Terry L. Johnson, is one of the speakers. If you have a question for Pastor Johnson, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,
43:51: chrisarnson at gmail .com. And Pastor Johnson, as you most likely recall, before the break, we had
43:58: R .J. in White Plains, New York, asking how can we explain the immutability of God while at the same time teaching accurately that there was a point in time and space in history when the second person of the
44:12: Godhead, who always existed and still exists for eternity, became incarnate, which was a change of sorts that took place involving the
44:23: Godhead. How do those two things coexist? How do we explain them correctly? The classic doctrine of the
44:35: Trinity utilizes the concept of union without confusion.
44:44: What we have in Christ is the union of the human and the divine. But the divine and the human natures are not confused.
44:52: They maintain their distinctive qualities so that Jesus is not a divinized man, and he is not a humanized deity.
45:03: You have united in the one person true humanity and true divinity, but each retains its distinctive qualities.
45:12: And so, really, the point of the Incarnation is not that there was an alteration of divinity.
45:18: It's that divinity was united in the person of Christ with humanity.
45:24: This does not involve an alteration of the immutability of God. In fact, it presupposes it.
45:31: It was only because divinity was united to humanity, to use one example would be that there was a participation in suffering.
45:45: So it was necessary for there to be an Incarnation if there was to be a sacrifice of infinite value.
45:54: So Christ suffered in his human nature, and it was necessary for God to become man because God in his own nature is incapable of suffering.
46:05: So that's why I say the Incarnation presupposes the immutability and impassibility of God both.
46:12: Because God cannot suffer in his own nature, it was necessary for divinity to be joined to humanity so that in the one person of Christ the suffering could take place in his humanity, not in his divinity.
46:29: The divinity, as the Westminster Confession explains, upholds and adds value to that suffering, but the suffering takes place within the human nature.
46:41: So you have the union without confusion. I know this is a very difficult discussion, and in many ways it's beyond me also.
46:51: But I think the writer to the Hebrews, for example, makes something of this, of the necessity of the
47:01: Incarnation if there was to be suffering in connection with the deity. Because the deity itself is incapable of suffering.
47:10: So that's why I say the Incarnation presupposes immutability. And I think that it's important to keep in mind, too, that the
47:21: Bible utilizes anthropomorphic language throughout, and this is where the Mormons get very, very confused.
47:29: Right. They think we speak language of God having an arm and God having hands, and so they think of God as a physical being, and they don't understand that the
47:40: Bible is utilizing anthropomorphic language, speaking of God as though he were a man for the sake of our ability to comprehend what he is speaking of, so that there is that in God which corresponds to a hand or arm, such as power, but we're to understand that language is being used metaphorically.
48:04: He does not have a hand. How do we know that? Because Jesus has got a spirit. God is immaterial.
48:12: As the children's catechisms say, God is a spirit that has not a body like men. So in the same way, language that speaks of God repenting and changing and these sorts of things,
48:26: I think that we have to understand those as anthropomorphic, speaking of God in human terms, so that that which corresponds to change and repentance in human actions finds a point of contact with God.
48:49: God is acting in a way that we do when we repent, but we're not to think that God changed his mind.
48:56: I mean, we change our mind because we're taken by surprise by something, because there's some unanticipated factor that comes to play.
49:06: So we've decided we do one thing, and now we have to change and decide to do something else, or we learn something new.
49:12: Well, that's never the case with God. He's never learning something new. He's never becoming something other than he was.
49:19: He is always omniscient, always aware, never taken by surprise, and so never needing to change.
49:31: Well, thank you, RJ, in White Plains, New York, and you have won a free copy of The Identity and Attributes of God by our guest
49:38: Terry L. Johnson, compliments of our friends at the Banner of Truth, which is about a ten -minute walk from where I'm sitting, the
49:46: American headquarters, that is. And CVBBS .com
49:53: will be shipping that out to you at no charge to you or to Iron Trip and Zion Radio. They are also right around the corner from where I'm sitting.
50:00: So please make sure we get your full mailing address in White Plains, New York, so CVBBS .com
50:06: can ship that out to you. We have not a question, just a quick comment from Tom in West Islip, Long Island, New York.
50:16: God's suffering is impossible without incarnation. Makes so much more sense now. What a great point. Thanks a lot,
50:22: Tom. Let's see here. We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.
50:31: And Susan Margaret asks, What do you think are the primary errors within Christendom today, in the 21st century especially, in regard to The Identity and Attributes of God, primarily those things that are left out of a proper description by many pulpits today and many popular
50:54: Christian preachers, teachers, and writers? I think the most obvious one is that the love of God is preached to the exclusion of what we perceive of as his harsher attributes.
51:11: J. I. Packer said years ago, a half -truth taught as the complete truth, or taught as the whole truth, is a complete untruth.
51:24: And that is, I think, the case when it comes to dealing with the attributes. If you don't preach and teach the whole counsel of God, and all you ever say is that God is love, which is a very important, foundational, fundamental truth cherished by believers everywhere.
51:41: But God is love, but God is a lot more than love. God is also light. Same formula, you know, same grammatical construction.
51:50: God is love, God is light. God is a consuming fire. At the end of Hebrews 10,
51:57: Hebrews 10, 28, 29. So to ignore the justice of God, the righteousness of God, the holiness of God, judgment day, eternity, heaven, hell.
52:15: I think those are the mistakes of our era. I think that we want to talk about the positives.
52:21: I think we want to say things that are encouraging. I think that we're very tempted to only say things that people will find to be uplifting and quote -unquote helpful, and ignore some of the darker, eternal realities, which is there is a judgment day.
52:38: Why is there a judgment day? Because God is just. Because God is holy. Because God is righteous.
52:44: God is going to vindicate his holy name, and he's going to punish evil. And that's why there is a cross, and that's why
52:55: Christ came and why Christ died. The fact that we only preach the love of God undermines our gospel altogether.
53:02: That's the irony of it. In the name of the gospel, people preach only about the love of God, the grace of God, the mercy of God, the patience of God.
53:12: But by doing so, you actually pull the rug out from under the purpose behind the incarnation and the purpose behind the atonement.
53:25: These presuppose that humanity is in need of salvation.
53:33: Salvation from what? Salvation from damnation. Damnation because of what? Because we're sinners, and we are under the condemnation of a just and holy
53:43: God. So this is the problem with the truncated gospel of our day, is that in the long run, it is self -devouring.
53:56: It is self -destructive. It undermines the reason for the gospel itself, when we shortchange the full message of the gospel.
54:09: I was just saying the other day there was a rugby player in Australia who got booted off of the national team because he was asked about homosexuality, and he quoted 1
54:25: Corinthians 6 and said that it was sin, and that God didn't approve of it, and such shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
54:35: So they wouldn't be going to heaven. And there was a megachurch pastor there associated with Hillsong whose response was to, in fact, throw this
54:46: Christian rugby player under the bus and say, well, I believe that God is love, and he made token reference to, yeah,
54:57: I believe there's sin, and it's important, and heaven and hell. But what
55:02: I really believe in is that God is love and that Jesus came to save. Well, the obvious question was, save from what?
55:13: A question that he didn't answer. And I just thought it was completely irresponsible when you have a layperson, this
55:20: Christian brother who's an athlete and who is, when asked, you know, about his own beliefs, was bold enough to stand up and say what he believed, and here's this pastor of a megachurch, and made it sound like that there was distance between him and a rugby player.
55:43: I thought it was irresponsible. I thought it was cowardly. Yeah, obviously, and congratulations to that courageous rugby player.
55:50: He probably didn't even view himself as being courageous, just telling in plain, simple language what he believed.
55:56: But perhaps one day we can get that rugby player on this program. And by the way,
56:02: Susan Margaret, you've won a free copy of The Identity and Attributes of God by Terry L.
56:07: Johnson, so make sure we have your full mailing address so that CVBBS .com can ship that out to you free of charge.
56:14: We're going to our midway break right now. This is the longer than normal break because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1
56:20: FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break so that they can localize Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to Lake City, Florida, with their own public service announcements and commercials while we air our own commercials that are heard globally.
56:32: So please use this time wisely. Write down the information provided by our advertisers so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize them because, remember, we cannot exist without the funding involved from the advertising campaigns of our sponsors.
56:48: So please try to patronize our advertisers as much as you can. Also write down questions for Terry L. Johnson on The Identity and Attributes of God and send them to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.
56:58: ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Don't go away. God willing, we're going to be right back after these messages with more of Terry L.
57:05: Johnson and The Identity and Attributes of God. ...announcing
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01:00:07: Chris Sorensen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio here. I want to tell you about a man I have personally known for many years.
01:00:13: His name is Dan Buttafuoco. Dan is a personal injury and medical malpractice lawyer, but not the type that typically comes to mind.
01:00:22: Dan cares about people and is a theologian himself. Recently, he wrote a book titled Consider the
01:00:28: Evidence for the Bible. Ravi Zacharias wrote the foreword. Dan also has a master's degree in theology.
01:00:35: Dan handles serious injury and medical malpractice cases in all 50 states. He represents many
01:00:41: Christians in serious injury matters all over the country. Dan is an exceptional trial lawyer.
01:00:48: He wrote the test for the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and currently his firm has over 100 cases that have settled for $1 million or more, and in approximately 10 different states.
01:01:01: In Illinois, his lawyers had the fourth largest settlement in the state's history. In New York, his case involving a paralyzed police officer made the front page of the
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01:01:24: Dan Buttafuoco's number is 1 -800 -669 -4878. 1 -800 -669 -4878.
01:01:32: Or email me for Dan's contact information at chrisarnson at gmail dot com.
01:01:38: That's chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Hey, this is
01:01:46: Pete Orta, former guitar player for the Grammy Award winning Christian rock band, Petra. I'd like to invite you to my new podcast called
01:01:53: Christian Conversations Unfiltered. This channel is much different than my sermon podcast. The episodes are intimate conversations with people who
01:02:01: I enjoy about topics that I can't really unbox from the pulpit. Each episode is unproduced, unedited, and unapologetic.
01:02:09: Conversations that might not only help you answer some relevant questions you might be struggling with, but also help create some questions in your head that you might not have even ever thought of.
01:02:18: The purpose of this podcast is to help people apply their theology while broadening their biblical worldview.
01:02:23: So go to PeteOrta .com, that's P -E -T -E -O -R -T -A dot com, and click subscribe to podcast, and then choose what podcast you'd like to hear, if not both, and what platform works best for you.
01:02:37: Can't wait for you to join us. God bless. I'm Dr. Gary Kimbrell, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Laurel, Mississippi.
01:02:45: God tells us in James 127 that pure and undefiled religion is a visit to fatherless and widows and their affliction.
01:02:51: In the providence of God, three years ago, I discovered a poor small church outside Lusaka, Zambia, in a township called
01:02:57: Kabanana, who are taking care of 24 orphans. I found them just at the time when they had lost all their funding.
01:03:03: What was I to do? Could I just say, God bless you and walk away? The situation of the children set heavily upon me.
01:03:08: As I was praying concerning this need, it came to me, I trust from the Lord, to tell the orphans' plight to a broader audience.
01:03:14: The entire need for their clothing, food, education, and some medical services is $73 per month per child.
01:03:20: If just 50 of us would give $35 a month, we could meet the need. Bethlehem Baptist Church will pay the fee to get the funds there.
01:03:27: So if you give a dollar, a dollar will get to the orphans. In this season of hope and giving, will you consider giving hope to 24 orphans?
01:03:34: Please send your gift of any amount to Bethlehem Baptist Church, 838 Reed Road, Laurel, Mississippi, 39443.
01:03:42: Or donate through our website, bbclaurel .com. Again, the address is
01:03:47: Bethlehem Baptist Church, 838 Reed Road, Laurel, Mississippi, 39443.
01:03:53: Or bbclaurel .com. Thank you. Hi, I'm Stephan Limblad, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas.
01:04:05: I accepted this call to teach at the seminary because I'm firmly convinced that the people of God in the churches of our
01:04:13: Lord Jesus Christ need to be firmly grounded in the truth of Holy Scripture. I'm excited to be teaching such subjects as the nature of theology and the doctrine of Scripture, and even the doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ.
01:04:29: Our churches and our people need to be well grounded in these truths. Indeed, future ministers of the gospel need to understand these truths in order to proclaim them to all of God's people.
01:04:42: If you want to learn more about our program, visit us online at irbsseminary .org.
01:04:48: I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, host of A Visit to the Pastor's Study, and I am so thankful to be part of the advertising family right here on Iron Sharpens Iron.
01:04:57: If you live on Long Island or if you're visiting the metropolitan New York area, I invite you to join us for worship at The Haven on Sundays at 4 .30
01:05:05: p .m. We meet at the Ascension Lutheran Church facility, 33 Bayshore Road in Deer Park, New York.
01:05:12: At The Haven, you'll find God -saturated singing, gospel -rich ministry, and great commission opportunities.
01:05:18: Learn more about us at thehavenli .com and join us this Sunday at 4 .30
01:05:24: p .m., 33 Bayshore Road, Deer Park, New York. Have you been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio?
01:05:38: We remain on the air because of our faithful sponsors and because of listeners like you. There are four ways you can help.
01:05:45: First, do you know potential sponsors who may wish to advertise their goods or services on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio?
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01:06:17: We hope that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio blesses you for many years to come. My name is
01:06:29: Steve Lawson, founder and president of One Passion Ministries, as well as teaching fellow for Ligonier Ministries.
01:06:35: I serve as professor of preaching and oversee the Doctor of Ministry program at the Master's Seminary in Los Angeles.
01:06:41: I would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students, Andy Woodard, serves as the pastor.
01:06:47: It's called New Covenant Church, NYC. They are a Reformed Baptist church that meets in Midtown, New York.
01:06:52: You can find their service times and location on their website, which is www .ncc
01:07:00: .nyc. They believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.
01:07:08: If you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching, which is simply biblical preaching, in New York City, I'd like to recommend that you visit
01:07:18: New Covenant Church, NYC. Again, their information can be found at www .ncc
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01:08:57: They typically man that phone line Monday through Friday between 10 a .m. and 4 .30 p .m. Eastern Time. And they are offering something that I've been mentioning every day ever since they first made this offer available.
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01:09:14: A pastor in New York, the life and time of Spencer Cone, a pastor who served the
01:09:21: New York City area in the 19th century as pastor of the First Baptist Church of New York City in Manhattan.
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01:09:32: Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary was involved in. He was the keynote speaker at this event.
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01:10:12: I think even unbelievers. Pastor Cone, Spencer Cone was a school teacher.
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01:10:24: He became a pastor. He was a Reformed Baptist. He requested to be baptized in the dead of winter.
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01:12:26: Now I have to just tell you about some upcoming events that I hope that you participate in if you are able.
01:12:33: First of all, I am having my next IRONSHARPENSIRON Radio Free Pastor's Luncheon for all men in ministry leadership, whether you are a pastor, an elder, and as I keep reminding you,
01:12:43: I believe that's the same office, a deacon, a parachurch leader, any position of church leadership.
01:12:49: If you are a man, you are welcome to the free IRONSHARPENSIRON Radio Spring Pastor's Luncheon, which will be held
01:12:55: Thursday, May 23rd, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at the Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
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01:13:14: Bible, but you'll also get fed for free, and you'll also get free books. You will get between two and three dozen free books, brand new books donated by almost every major Christian publisher in the
01:13:27: United States and the United Kingdom, and they have been doing this for years, ever since my precious late wife,
01:13:33: Julie, began these luncheons in the 1990s. Just because she wanted to bless men in the ministry, she knew that I had, working in the radio industry, she knew that I had an unusually high percentage of friends that are pastors.
01:13:49: So she said, one Christmas, please, let's forego our Christmas gift -giving to each other, and treat your pastor friends to a
01:13:57: Christmas lunch. And that began the annual free pastor's luncheons, which now have become biannual, and I have continued them in my precious late wife's honor and memory ever since she went home to be with the
01:14:11: Lord. So they continue, and I hope that you can join us at the luncheon
01:14:17: May 23rd, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at the Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Go to, or should
01:14:23: I say, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line.
01:14:31: Right after that, Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary, my luncheon speaker, right after that, he is heading to Long Island, New York with me to a number of churches that weekend, from Friday the 24th of May through Sunday the 26th of May, and he's going to be speaking on all kinds of issues and topics, and these are also free events.
01:14:55: Unlike my luncheon, these are open to everyone in the general public, man, woman, or child. These churches include
01:15:01: New Hyde Park Baptist Church in New Hyde Park, Long Island, New York, Wading River Baptist Church, Wading River, Long Island, New York, Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, New York, and Missio Church in Ridge, Long Island, New York.
01:15:16: If you send me an email and put in the subject line, Tony Costa's itinerary or something like that,
01:15:21: I will give you a complete itinerary of where he will be preaching. Then, after that,
01:15:26: I am packing up my bags and heading back to Pennsylvania for the event that we have been discussing already today, the
01:15:33: East Coast Ministers Conference of the Banner of Truth, from Tuesday, May 28th, through Thursday, May 30th, at the
01:15:40: Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. The speakers include my guest today, Terry Johnson, and also
01:15:47: David Vaughn, a Reformed Baptist missionary in France, Steve Nichols, president of Reformation Bible College, the college that was founded by the late
01:15:55: R .C. Sproul in Ligonier Ministries, Michael Morales, Chad Vegas, and Jeff Kingswood.
01:16:01: On the theme, I Believe in the Holy Spirit. That is Tuesday, May 28th, through Thursday, May 30th, in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.
01:16:09: If you are a man in ministry leadership, you may register at banneroftruth .org, banneroftruth .org,
01:16:15: click on Events, and then scroll down to the East Coast Ministers Conference 2019.
01:16:22: Then, later on this year, in fact, at the end of the year, December 19th and 20th, which is a
01:16:28: Thursday and Friday, I am going to be heading back to my old stomping grounds in Manhattan, and I'm heading to the
01:16:34: Foundations Conference, which is a conference of sermonaudio .com. They always have a phenomenal lineup of preachers, and this
01:16:43: January, I should say this December, they include Dr. Stephen J. Lawson, whose voice you've been hearing promoting
01:16:50: New Covenant Church NYC, one of the sponsors of Iron Shepard's Iron Radio. He's founder of One Passion Ministries and an extraordinary preacher.
01:16:58: Another truly remarkable preacher is Paul Washer. He's on the roster. Reverend Jeff Thomas.
01:17:04: Everybody who knows Banner of Truth, I'm sure, knows Jeff Thomas, at least by reputation and also by hearing him preach and reading what he has written.
01:17:14: Reverend Armin Tomasian is going to be one of the, I think, household names amongst
01:17:20: Reformed Christians over the next decade. He's a young pastor with gifts and abilities far beyond his youth.
01:17:26: I urge you to go hear him preach whenever you have the availability or possibility.
01:17:32: Richard Colwell Jr. and Anthony Quigley are also on the lineup. I have not heard them preach yet, but sermonaudio selected them, so I'm sure they are remarkable.
01:17:40: If you'd like to register and attend this conference with me, go to thefoundationsconference .com,
01:17:46: thefoundationsconference .com. Then in January, I'm heading back to Atlanta, Georgia, specifically
01:17:53: College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta to the Georgia International Convention Center for the
01:17:59: G3 Conference 2020. It's being held Thursday, January 16th, through Saturday, January 18th.
01:18:07: The theme is Worship Matters. As always, they have a remarkable lineup of speakers.
01:18:16: They include Kosti Hinn, H -I -N -N, which is the nephew, believe it or not, of the notorious charlatan
01:18:23: Benny Hinn. But Kosti, unlike his uncle, is a
01:18:29: Reformed Baptist and a cessationist and has dedicated much of his ministry to exposing and refuting the heresies and lies of the
01:18:38: Word of Faith Pentecostal movement, including his uncle. He is truly a remarkable and humble and gifted young man.
01:18:44: I hope that you go hear him preach. He's now a pastor at a Calvinistic Baptist church in California, and he is a true gift to the body of Christ.
01:18:53: David Miller, a man who has been preaching the gospel for many decades.
01:18:59: What a gem of the faith he is. I'm sure our Banner of Truth listeners,
01:19:05: Banner of Truth fans will readily recognize Derek Thomas. He's also on the lineup.
01:19:12: James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, my good friend since 1995, one of the most brilliant minds in Christendom today.
01:19:20: Joel Beeky, president of the Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, a friend of mine since the 90s.
01:19:26: Paul Washer, again, is going to be on the lineup, and so is Stephen J. Lawson. My friend
01:19:31: Dr. Tom Askell, executive director of Founders Ministries, and Vody Baucom. If you don't know who
01:19:36: Vody Baucom is, you should. He is also one of the most remarkable speakers you'll ever hear alive today.
01:19:42: If you'd like to register for the G3 Conference, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com,
01:19:49: and I would urge you to not only register to attend, but also register if you have a business, a parachurch ministry, or anything else you want to promote.
01:19:58: There's going to be over 5 ,000 people attending the G3 Conference, so I would urge you to register for an exhibitor's booth while there's still room.
01:20:05: So, that's it. g3conference .com, g3conference .com. Please tell them that you heard about them from Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
01:20:13: And last but not least, if you love the show, you don't want it to disappear, please go to ironsharpensironradio .com,
01:20:20: click support, then click, click to donate now. You can donate instantly with a debit or credit card.
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01:20:41: Never put your family in financial jeopardy in order to give to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Those two things are commands of God providing for your church and home.
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01:21:17: Please help us out if you don't want us to go away. We really need, in an urgent way, your donations and your advertising dollars.
01:21:25: If you want to advertise with us, send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and we'll help you launch an ad campaign as long as whatever it is you're promoting is compatible with what we believe here.
01:21:35: You don't have to believe identically with what I believe, but you need to be promoting something compatible with what
01:21:41: I believe. So please send an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line.
01:21:47: And if you are not a member of a local Bible -believing church, and you're not prayerfully looking for one, you are living in rebellion against God.
01:21:55: So please, if you need help finding a good church home, send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put
01:22:01: I need a church home or something similar in the subject line. Because I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the world, and I can help you find a church, and I have helped other people, many other people in our audience, find churches that they have either joined or visited during a vacation.
01:22:16: So please send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put I need a church home or something similar in the subject line.
01:22:23: And that's also the email address to send in a question to our guest, Terry L. Johnson. On the theme,
01:22:30: The Identity and Attributes of God, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. chrisarnsen at gmail .com
01:22:38: Let's see here, we have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks,
01:22:49: Pastor Johnson, are you familiar with the controversy that is currently roaring on, especially amongst
01:22:57: Reformed Baptists, over the impassibility of God? It seems that both sides of this conflict are saying they truly do believe, and believe that it is a vital teaching that God is immutable, but both sides disagree on whether or not his emotions have any fluctuality or change.
01:23:21: Even the side that believes that God's emotions do change, do not believe anything catches them by surprise, and they do not believe that God has emotions just identically like a human, but they do believe that there is a variation and fluctuation that he foreordained before the foundation of the world as a part of his own being.
01:23:41: So if you could let us know what you think about this controversy, if you're familiar with it. I'm somewhat familiar with the controversy.
01:23:52: I think it's, just to be frank, I think it's very difficult really to wrap your head around it.
01:24:02: I think that, you know, we are really dealing with the deep things of God, and the way the relationship between anthropomorphic language is used, and how that relates to the language of emotion, and how that in turn relates to the blessedness of God.
01:24:26: I think it's a very difficult subject. I think that it's undoubtedly the case that the classical doctrine is correct, and there's an interrelatedness to immutability, and eternality, and independence, and all the intermunicable attributes are interrelated.
01:24:47: And so when you give up impassibility, you end up eroding the foundation for the others, for eternality, and immutability, and independence, and simplicity, and other crucial doctrines.
01:25:03: And I think that that's not always been appreciated. And so a very careful thought has to be done.
01:25:11: I mean, Dr. Packer was always very eager to make sure that we understood God is never the victim, and he liked the language that the caller used, that God chooses
01:25:27: His responses. He's not a victim. We are a victim of our emotions. And I think it's essential that we understand that God never is a victim.
01:25:38: He's never caught off guard. He's never merely responding. What God does and doesn't do,
01:25:48: He chooses to do and not do, and there is something in God that corresponds to our emotions, and yet is very, very different from ours.
01:26:00: For example, God doesn't have a body. So what does it mean to have emotions when you don't have a body? Emotions are a description, to a significant degree, of physiology.
01:26:11: Our emotional response is, to a significant degree, it's a physical response.
01:26:23: And if we're not careful, we will find ourselves saying, given that God is eternal and unchanging, that God is perpetually angry and grieving, because sin is always taking place in massive quantities all over the globe, and if God is angry in the sense that human beings are angry, then
01:26:59: God is perpetually miserable. And that can't be. I think the picture of heaven that we get from the
01:27:07: Bible is that heaven is a very happy place, and God is a very happy God. Heaven is a place of joy.
01:27:14: Heaven is a place of celebration. Heaven is a happy place. God is a happy God. And so however we understand the language of emotion as it's attributed to God, we need to make sure, one, that we don't make
01:27:30: God a victim, and then I think it further that we not envision that God is made miserable by the things that we do and the things that we don't do.
01:27:48: And I think that those who buy the book and are introduced to some of the concepts found in it are going to be surprised at the strength to which the older classic authors insist upon this.
01:28:07: By which, and I mean the classic Protestant writers. I mean people like John Owen and Jonathan Edwards to name two,
01:28:17: Stephen Charnock to name another. They affirm the classic doctrine. The Westminster Confession says that God is without body, parts, and passions.
01:28:27: And there is something in God that corresponds to emotion, but we need to understand them very differently than our own.
01:28:35: Typically what the Bible means when it talks about the emotional life of God, what it's talking about is
01:28:42: God responding to us as we do when we are angry, when we are rejoicing, when we are avenging.
01:29:00: That's typically what the Bible means by it. When it uses this kind of anthropomorphic language, we're to understand this is how
01:29:10: God is acting in a way that parallels the way we act when we are characterized by the given emotion that's being described.
01:29:26: Let's see here. Before I go to our next listener question, when
01:29:32: I have spoken to my brethren that are on the side that does not have a fully confessional understanding of impassibility, none of them that I know would outright deny his impassibility.
01:29:45: They would just say that they have a different interpretation, because they would say that God does not have passions like a man, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have passions or emotions.
01:29:58: But they are afraid of portraying a concept of God who is much like a perfect and omniscient
01:30:09: Mr. Spock, from Star Trek, who was just devoid of emotion, other than when his human side erupted on occasion on the
01:30:21: TV program Star Trek. But you know what I'm saying? Where love is not really a deep and profound and amazing love, and wrath is not really a frightening and terrifying wrath.
01:30:32: They would claim that if you deny any kind of change of emotion in him, that it muddles those things and makes them less severe, if you follow what
01:30:43: I'm saying. And does it, in your opinion? Like I say, this is a very nuanced subject.
01:30:56: So J .R. Packer would say God is immutable.
01:31:01: That doesn't mean he is unmovable, or that he is frozen.
01:31:07: So God is responding, but his responding is not responding to situations of which he is ignorant, or unanticipated, or taken by surprise, or shocked, or disturbed.
01:31:34: So that his blessedness is never interrupted. So I think you have to be very nuanced when you start dealing with these things.
01:31:49: There are things that we have to affirm, and then there are things that are just a mystery to us. God's truth doesn't change.
01:31:56: His purpose doesn't change. His plans don't change. He is never other than blessed and happy.
01:32:07: And I think those things need to be maintained, and then we need to nuance the way we talk about these other things, so that we don't turn
01:32:13: God into an object of pity, so that we don't see God as a victim, so that we don't have these kind of poor
01:32:20: God appeals. He's so frustrated. He didn't anticipate what people would do, and so his purposes are being thwarted, so that we end up with a
01:32:36: God who is just a larger -sized version of ourselves, and not one who compels our worship and adoration, and does not inspire us to bow before him, and confess with the apostle who has known the mind of the
01:32:55: Lord, who can fully comprehend him. And the answer is, of course, none of us can.
01:33:04: We have Grady in Asheboro, North Carolina. Brother Terry, it always seems that we hear from the world, and even from the
01:33:11: Evangelical Church, about nothing but the love of God. This is something that you said earlier, so maybe
01:33:17: Grady didn't hear that. But as you know, we all deserve his wrath. Have you included a section on his wrath?
01:33:24: How important is it we stress the wrath of God when sharing the gospel? I have a chapter on the justice of God.
01:33:36: I have two chapters on the holiness of God, and two chapters on the justice and righteousness of God, including one on righteousness satisfied and conferred, where I elaborate on the
01:33:55: Apostle Paul's declaration that God is just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
01:34:04: And so, as I said earlier, I don't think that we can comprehend the gospel if we only speak of the love of God.
01:34:13: I think without justice, the gospel collapses. It doesn't make any sense. You know,
01:34:18: James Denney, a 19th century Scottish theologian, lived into the 20th century, but he once used the analogy of a man wishing to demonstrate to his fiancée his love for her, and so he walks with her out to the end of a pier and says,
01:34:43: I'm going to now demonstrate how much I love, and he hurls himself off of the end of the pier and drowns himself.
01:34:51: And he then asks, has he demonstrated love, or has he demonstrated that he's a fool?
01:35:00: You know, drowning only is a statement of love if, in the process of drowning, you are saving somebody from their own death.
01:35:13: So greater love has no meaning than if you lay down his life for his friend. It must be that you are saving someone in the process.
01:35:21: And unless Jesus is saving us from something, his death becomes incomprehensible.
01:35:27: And these other attempts to, you know, such as the governmental theory of the atonement and the moral theory of the atonement and these others, what they lack is that from which
01:35:37: Christ is saving us. What is his death saving us from?
01:35:45: He's saving us from our own death, from our eternal death, from damnation, from the wrath of God, from the justice of God, from the day of judgment, from condemnation for our sin.
01:35:55: He is bearing our guilt. He is our substitute. He is dying in our place, in our stead, as our substitute and on our behalf.
01:36:04: And unless that is true, then we just lose the whole gospel. And I think that that's what's happening in the evangelical world right now.
01:36:12: I think that this whole seeker -friendly approach is itself, it's a self -consuming, self -destructive approach to the gospel because one ends up saying,
01:36:25: I cannot say anything that would be disturbing to the unbeliever, that might frighten him, that might chase him off, of which he might disapprove.
01:36:32: And so I end up watering down, toning down the justice side of just and justifier.
01:36:41: And when I do so, again, the gospel becomes incomprehensible. Well, thank you,
01:36:48: Grady. And you have won a free copy of The Identity and Attributes of God. Make sure you give us your full mailing address.
01:36:53: And we have Joey in Clifton, New Jersey. Joey in Clifton, New Jersey says,
01:36:59: Dear Terry, Thank you for your comment about the formula of union without confusion.
01:37:05: It is very important to avoid Christological heresy. As a general principle, I think the hypostatic union is quite clear.
01:37:12: My question involves how to view the union and operation of Christ's two natures in general during his life and ministry.
01:37:21: For example, in his stages of growth in stature and knowledge, times when he apparently exercised or not exercised his divine attributes, etc.
01:37:31: Can we make any general systematic statements about this? Is it that although in union
01:37:38: Christ chose to sometimes not exercise the prerogatives of his divine nature?
01:37:45: It seems that in some sense this must have always been the case. Or alternatively, was the distinction in the natures in some way related to the phenomena we see in those cases?
01:37:58: Can you shed any light on a systematic view of this? I wish we would stop getting these moronic simplistic questions from people.
01:38:06: I'm only kidding. But anyway, if you could. Well, I have, in the course of my ministry here in Savannah, I've preached through the four
01:38:19: Gospels, and I'm working my way through the Gospel of John the second time.
01:38:24: And I don't... You know, I've not checked this out with other people, but I don't think there is a systematic way to determine that.
01:38:33: I think you have to look at a case -by -case basis. I think that there are times when
01:38:40: Jesus is performing miracles on the basis of faith. He is trusting his
01:38:47: Father in Heaven. He is calling upon the Holy Spirit. He is calling upon the
01:38:55: Father to heal. So there are times when he is praying, and in prayer the miracle takes place.
01:39:02: And so we're being led by the passage to believe that it was in response to the prayer that the healing...
01:39:08: Even the raising of Lazarus. Jesus calls upon the Father. So was that Jesus exercising power, or was that Jesus calling upon the
01:39:20: Father to raise Lazarus from the dead? And, you know, it may be that there's a clearer answer in that example than in some others, but I...
01:39:29: When is he drawing upon his own power?
01:39:35: And when is he performing miracles and accessing knowledge as a man of faith, trusting in his
01:39:48: Father to support and validate his ministry? So in the
01:39:53: Gospel of John, these are the Father's testimonies. The Father bearing witness to the
01:39:58: Son. So are these the Father's miracles, or are they the Son's miracles?
01:40:05: You know, I don't have a great answer to that question. For example, when Jesus says, no man knows the time or the hour of his return, only the
01:40:14: Father knows, there clearly Jesus is not accessing the knowledge of his divine nature.
01:40:24: He's not allowing that knowledge into his human consciousness. Now how exactly that works,
01:40:32: I am not able to say. But I know that as the second person of the
01:40:37: Trinity and the eternal Son of God, he is omniscient. He knows all things, but that knowledge was not allowed into the human consciousness, so that he could honestly say, no man knows, including the
01:40:49: Son. Everything he did not know, as the member of your audience said, he grew in knowledge and in wisdom.
01:41:00: That means there were things that he did not know in his humanity that would have been available to him in his divine consciousness.
01:41:10: So again, you have union, but not confusion. He was truly a man, and therefore as a man lived a truly human life, which meant he grew, he matured.
01:41:24: And all of the knowledge that was present in the divine consciousness was not present in the human consciousness.
01:41:33: So can I conclude by just saying, this is a mystery for us, is it not?
01:41:41: Well, thank you, Joey, in Clifton, New Jersey, and you have also won a free copy of The Identity and Attributes of God.
01:41:47: Please make sure we have your full mailing address in Clifton, New Jersey, and we'll have cvbbs .com ship that out to you.
01:41:53: I'm going to read a question for you, Pastor Terry, before we go to our final break, and I'll have you answer the question when we return.
01:42:01: This is nearly identical to a question that we received earlier in the show. I think it may have been from Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, but there's a significant word change in here that may change the answer.
01:42:16: Lou from Sharpsburg, Georgia says, What do you believe is the most neglected attribute of God within Reformed Christianity today?
01:42:24: Before it was really just a general question about modern day Christendom and evangelicalism, but what do you think is the most neglected attribute of God within Reformed Christianity today?
01:42:35: And we'll have you answer that when we return. This is our final few minutes of the show, so if you have a question, you better send it in now because we're rapidly running out of time.
01:42:43: ChrisOrenson at gmail .com. ChrisOrenson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.
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01:47:53: Pastor's Study, and I am so thankful to be part of the advertising family right here on Iron Sharpens Iron.
01:47:59: If you live on Long Island or if you're visiting the metropolitan New York area, I invite you to join us for worship at The Haven on Sundays at 4 .30
01:48:07: p .m. We meet at the Ascension Lutheran Church facility, 33 Bayshore Road in Deer Park, New York.
01:48:13: At The Haven, you'll find God -saturated singing, Gospel -rich ministry, and Great Commission opportunities.
01:48:20: Learn more about us at thehavenli .com and join us this Sunday at 4 .30
01:48:26: p .m., 33 Bayshore Road, Deer Park, New York. Hello.
01:48:31: My name is James Renahan, and I'm the president of IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas. The Word of God says, if a man desires the office of an overseer, he desires a good thing.
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01:48:48: Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies at Westminster Seminary, California, was born. For those two decades, these institutions worked together to train men for ministry in Reformed Baptist churches.
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01:49:08: Master of Divinity degree. This is IRBS Theological Seminary. We believe that the scriptures of the
01:49:14: Old and New Testaments are the inspired and inerrant Word of God, that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh who came to save sinners by His life, death, and resurrection, and that the task of the
01:49:24: Church is to honor and serve the Triune God in all things. IRBS Theological Seminary is dedicated by God's grace to preparing godly ministers who will be committed to these doctrines.
01:49:35: Do you sense a call to serve Jesus Christ in His Church as a pastor? Why not consider IRBS Theological Seminary?
01:49:41: You'll find more information at irbsseminary .org. That's irbsseminary .org, two
01:49:47: S's in the middle. I hope to hear from you soon. God bless you. Lindbrook Baptist Church on 225
01:49:54: Earl Avenue in Lindbrook, Long Island is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century. Our church is far more than a
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01:50:06: It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement. It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people and healing.
01:50:14: We're a diverse family of all ages. Enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ. In fellowship, play, and together.
01:50:20: Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman and I invite you to come and join us here at Lindbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.
01:50:27: Call Lindbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402.
01:50:34: Or visit Lindbrookbaptist .org. That's Lindbrookbaptist .org. Listening to Christian radio can be a big gamble spiritually.
01:50:57: Even many of the major Christian networks that include excellent biblically faithful teachers on their lineup sadly often also include the worst of doctrinally dangerous heretics.
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01:51:35: FirstLoveRadio .org also livestreams my Iron Sharpens Iron Radio program daily.
01:51:41: Please stick around on FirstLoveRadio .org after Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is over to continue being blessed by the unwavering proclamation of the gospel of sovereign grace.
01:51:52: Spread the word about FirstLoveRadio .org. Welcome back, and Pastor Johnson, as I read before,
01:52:08: Lou from Sharpsburg, Georgia, asks, What do you believe is the most neglected attribute of God within Reformed Christianity today?
01:52:16: Well, I would say the one that I was least familiar with and had never seen a proper exposition of was the blessedness of God.
01:52:27: Hmm. Is that an aspect of identity or attribute? I think it probably should be classified as an attribute, but the blessedness of God is a theme that was very common amongst
01:52:40: Reformed authors and it relates in a significant way to impassibility and immutability, but I had never seen it really developed, and actually, one of the authors, you'll be happy about this as a
01:52:58: Baptist, I think, one of the authors who developed the thought more than any other of those that I read was
01:53:06: John Gill, the old Baptist theologian. From nearly back to the
01:53:13: Puritan era, John Gill broke down the blessedness of God into,
01:53:19: I don't know, four, five, or six different categories, and I've written on this. It didn't make it into this book, but if there's a second volume, there's two chapters on blessedness.
01:53:32: And to give you an example of what we mean by this,
01:53:38: John Owen, if you don't mind, I'll quote a little bit from Owen. Owen said, If God be properly and literally angry and furious and wrathful,
01:53:48: He is moved, troubled, perplexed, desires revenge, and is neither blessed nor perfect.
01:53:55: That which is inconsistent with absolute blessedness and all sufficiency is not to be ascribed to God.
01:54:02: To do so casts Him down from His excellency. Can He be blessed? Is He all sufficient who is tossed up and down with hope, joy, fear, sorrow, repentance, anger, and the like?
01:54:17: And of course, his answer presupposes no. Jonathan Edwards, God is a being possessed of the most absolute perfect happiness, and He is free from everything that is contrary to happiness.
01:54:34: So those statements are rather typical of our theological and ecclesiastical ancestors.
01:54:42: They had, ironically, given the public image that Puritans have and Reformed people more generally have, they spoke so warmly of the happiness of God.
01:54:59: One more from Edwards. God is infinitely happy in Himself.
01:55:04: There is no such thing as any pain, grief, or trouble in God.
01:55:12: He is perfectly and unchangeably happy, absolute happy with all possible happiness.
01:55:18: There can be no proper addition to the happiness of God because it is that which
01:55:25: He eternally and unalterably had. So that was an aspect that I had not thought of before,
01:55:34: I had not considered this as an important aspect of God's attributes, and I learned a lot from the older authors.
01:55:43: Hugh Martin, this 19th century Scot, was another one who wrote significantly on this subject, and it was interesting, when
01:55:51: I preached on this in my congregation, it was so warmly received by the members of the
01:55:58: Church because they, too, had never thought of it that way. They had not thought of heaven as a happy place and God as a happy God.
01:56:08: They had thought mainly of God as, you know, disturbed and in turmoil and in an unpleasant census and had not really thought deeply about His blessedness.
01:56:30: So that was eye -opening for me. It was eye -opening and it was very refreshing to give consideration to this theme that I heretofore had not encountered.
01:56:42: Well, thank you so much, Lou, and you have our last free copy of The Identity and Attributes of God. Please send us your mailing address.
01:56:49: Let me close the program with a question of my own. The Shorter Catechism asks,
01:56:55: What is the chief end of man, as you know, and the answer is to adore God and to, or glorify God and enjoy
01:57:01: Him forever. What does it mean to enjoy God? I think that there's an enjoyment of His presence.
01:57:12: I think there's an enjoyment from the contemplation of His identity and attributes, but I think that it goes beyond the mental.
01:57:19: I think that there is an enjoyment, a fellowship, a spiritual cognizance of His presence, and the
01:57:28: Psalms, I think, are especially helpful with that. The Psalmist can speak of partaking of the fullness of His house, and drinking from the river of His delights.
01:57:38: His lovingkindness is better than life. He has the deer that pants for the waterbrook, thirsting for the presence of the living
01:57:45: God. How lovely are thy dwelling places, O Lord! A day in His house is better than a thousand besides.
01:57:53: And then Jesus said that He's the bread of life, and whoever feeds upon Him will never hunger and thirst again.
01:58:01: And, of course, that's the hunger and thirst of the soul. He's speaking of spiritual satisfaction, the quenching of our hunger and thirst within our souls that comes from knowing
01:58:14: Christ, knowing God in Christ. And so I think the experiential dimension is crucial, and I think you have a very truncated understanding of the knowledge of God if it doesn't include the experiential dimension.
01:58:28: To know there's knowing God, and then there's knowing God. Amen. In fact, even though that's the first question of this
01:58:35: Shorter Catechism, it's amazing to me how much I think Reformed Christians have lost that sense of enjoying
01:58:41: God. But I thank you so much, Pastor Johnson.
01:58:47: And by the way, I am a Reformed Christian for anybody listening. I'm giving a critique of my own people here.
01:58:53: But I thank you so much for being on the show today, Pastor Johnson, and I look forward to your return.
01:58:58: I hope you return again soon, and often. And I want to remind our listeners that if they either live in Savannah, Georgia, or nearby, or if they are visiting
01:59:08: Savannah, Georgia, or if they have friends, family, and loved ones in or near Savannah, Georgia, the website for the
01:59:13: Independent Presbyterian Church of Savannah, Georgia is ipcsav .org.
01:59:19: IPC for Independent Presbyterian Church, SAV, short for Savannah, .org.
01:59:26: ipcsav .org. Don't forget to register for the East Coast Minister's Conference of the
01:59:31: Banner of Truth Tuesday, the 28th, through Thursday, the 30th of May, featuring our guest
01:59:37: Terry Johnson and others in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Go to banneroftruth .org, banneroftruth .org.
01:59:43: I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.