None Greater (part 3)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Can I get some folks who would be willing to just raise your hand and and tell us about something that you've seen that was really inspiring or That you place you visited something really majestic Something breathtaking something wonderful anybody got

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What are those in mind? Places you've been anybody been to the Grand Canyon That's a you know usually when you say majestic that kind of comes to people's minds

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Anything else yes Simon Smoky Mountain National Park all right.

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What was what was like Breathtaking about that. Thank you very good. That's I was hoping somebody would

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Do me I would change the subject like that and not be just travel yep very good excellent. Yes, I'll do one

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This is gonna be sappy and a little romantic But the guy most of the guys here can attest that they would agree with me on this that When you saw your bride

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For the first time if you did that tradition of not seeing her the day of until you know the moment where she came in And so that first moment where near you're up here standing at the front of the church

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And she appears in the in the back right Takes your breath away

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Yes Yeah, yeah, what when you look up at the clouds?

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What you know what kinds of things about the clouds really you know make you think or ponder or wonder

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Or even what are the thoughts that you're thinking as you look at the clouds like that? Right they appear solid to us, but they're just they're just particles right

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You know they look like something that you could maybe grab on to or touch or move or shape

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But if you're up close to them You know as you fly through them you discover that they're very much not really anything there at all right if you ever heard about fog and About just how much water is actually in fog that when when fog rolls in and covers us blankets a city

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And it you know brings traffic to a halt and everything else that the actual amount of water in That whole giant fog bank if you could you know actually distill it down and capture it all and turn it back into liquid water

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And and hold it. It's you know a cup a few liters right of that water can turn into a giant

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Fog bank that can cover a city. You know entire blocks or towns or cities and of course when we look at clouds very often our imagination takes over right and We start to see shapes in our clouds right we see things

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And we say oh that looks like a dog or a bear or a person or that looks like a face

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Right I remember somebody not too long ago from this church put up a Facebook picture where they took a picture of a cloud formation and said that it looked a lot like the

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Old man in the mountain from New Hampshire had sort of the exact same shape of the face And of course when we why do we do that as people?

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Why do we have we thought we we do that all the time right we have this sort of natural tendency to look at things and assign

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Characteristics to them where it reminds us of people or reminds us of other things And the reason is because we are built to think

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Analogically we're built to think Anthropomorphically those were our two big a words last week from Andrew Analogical and anthropomorphic

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Right and we could describe all these things Simon when he was talking about the mountains one of the first things

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He said was that they are 6 ,000 feet right high Is that right with 6 ,000 feet something like that right that there's six that this particular mountain was 6 ,000 feet high

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It's something that we can describe in concrete terms It's beautiful and majestic and humongous, but we still have a way to measure it

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Right so it's really really big, but it's a measurable big Because it's physical.

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It's local It's examined with our five senses But not so God We cannot measure him we cannot describe him in concrete terms and We talk about him in the

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Bible talks about him often in Anthropomorphic terms and talks about him with eyes and ears and entering and exiting

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Right sometimes. It's not even human sometimes. You know there's psalms language that talks about God having wings

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Like a bird and sheltering sheltering us beneath his wings and And last week

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Andrew dealt with the incomprehensibility of God right incomprehensibility

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And that topic is so big And it's so crucial to the rest of our class that And and really for the rest of this none greater book that we're going to dwell on it for a whole nother week here today in chapter 2 of none greater is

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Subtitled how the creature should and should not Talk about the

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Creator how the creature should and should not talk about the

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Creator How do we speak of an incomprehensible God How do we speak of him is there any language that we can use?

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That does not Reduce him or limit him or even borderline blaspheme him

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Well the way forward that Andrew shared with us last week is through analogical knowledge

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Can anyone define? Analogical knowledge for us anyone keep their worksheet from last week or remember what that term means

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Analogical knowledge anyone have their coffee this morning.

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No, I'm gonna drag it out of you, okay Does is Andrew even in the room where's

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Andrew he's not even here to do it See that'd be really great if Andrew didn't remember

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All right, yes analogical knowledge analogical knowledge, so Baker's Bible encyclopedia says this analogical knowledge is all

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Formulated knowledge about God is analogical Declarative statements about God this is on your worksheet

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Such as thou hatest all evil evildoers or the Lord is compassionate and merciful are

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Understandable only because people know something about hate and mercy in their own experience right declarative statements about God such as thou hatest evildoers or the

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Lord is compassionate and merciful are understandable only because We as people know something about hate and mercy we ourselves have loved someone

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So when we read in the Bible that God loves us we think hey great

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I Know how I feel towards that person that I love very much

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And so if God feels that way towards me awesome. That's analogical knowledge

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But Every analogy has its limitations

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Right every analogy has its limitations Barrett says that it is not totally the same

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Nor is it totally different there is some discontinuity But there is also continuity

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With what is resembled or put another way there are some ways in which

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God is like what we are comparing him to But he is never Totally like what we are comparing

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Tim to and that is the danger When you're talking about God in analogies the danger about it

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Is that he's never totally like what we are comparing him to and later on in the class. We're going to talk about things like God's transcendence and his

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Impassibility and his aseity and in all of those we're gonna see that God is so totally unlike Not just us, but all of his creation that there is such a separation

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There between creator and creation that that makes makes it You know guarantees that any analogy is going to fall short and yet analogies are what we've got

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Analogies are what we've got But this does mean that we can make some really bad analogies

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Okay, some really bad analogies, and if you like me are an alumni of the

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Steinman home group The Steinman's who used to come to our church a long time ago, and they they lived in Milford And we met down in Milford.

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It was the first home group that I went to when I came to BBC Whenever you hear bad analogies

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You are thinking of the greatest YouTube video of all time St.

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Patrick's bad analogies, and we have a treat for you this morning Brian's gonna play for you. Just the audio of this

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Video so you know if we had a projector, but oh well So let me set the scene for you.

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Okay. It's a satirical this this video It's a satirical animated short all right set on the

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Irish coastline St. Patrick has just landed on the Irish coast and he's approaching two peasants who honestly sound a lot more like Robert and Teddy Kennedy than they do medieval

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Irish farmers, but And They're and the first voices you're gonna hear as he plays this are those two peasants

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And then Patrick's gonna start to respond okay, all right here. We go. Hopefully this works All right, that's why we have to be careful with analogies

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Right and how we talk as how we talk as creatures about our

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Creator because every analogy has its limitations and Every analogy can go off the rails really quick But let's pause here and ask ourselves.

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How does God talk about himself? The whole Bible speaks of God of course, but this morning

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Let's read some verses where it gets really focused where God talks in the first person about himself

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So I need one two three four five five different volunteers, please To read some verses bill you get

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Revelation 1 8 Thank you much for more You can do it.

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Yes Jeremiah 32 27 Simon Isaiah 43 11

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John's like trying to point to other people to do it

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John you can have one John 10 27 and 28 and Last all right

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Sam John 14 6 all right Revelation 1 8 again these are all places where God talks in the first person about himself all right

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I am the Alpha and the Omega. What's the analogy there? What is the comparison what's

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Alpha and Omega? First and last what like we have it right the first and last letters of the

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Greek alphabet, right? So by saying Alpha and Omega the analogy is with the beginning in the end

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Right is he really the first and last letter of an alphabet? No is he really is he really even beginning in an end?

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When he exists outside of time No, right, but this is the analogy, okay?

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Jeremiah 32 27 Behold I am the

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Lord the God of all flesh is anything too hard for me. That's a nice rhetorical question Is anything too hard for God no can

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God create a stone? That's too heavy for him to lift No Can we just answer that ridiculous question no

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All right anyway Isaiah 43 11 I am the

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Lord and besides me there is no Savior talking about his exclusivity John 10 27 to 28

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So of course this is in the great chapter chapter 10 of John Which the most of the chapter is about the analogy of Christ as the

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Great Shepherd, and we are to the sheep Are you really sheep? No is Christ an actual shepherd?

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No, right But the analogy is really great and in fact

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I have posited this before I believe that God created sheep So that we would understand this analogy

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Right he's like I'm going to create an animal that is really dumb that is gets in a lot of trouble all the time

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Needs a lot of care in order to survive So that humans and humans will do that so that when

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I say to them. Hey, you know those sheep. You're just like them They'll get it right.

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That's the analogy Be careful yeah, all right John 14 6 right

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I am the way and the truth and the life All right where Jesus uses this

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Metaphorical analogy picture of him as an actual path right when it says the way he means a path

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Right or a door is another or a gate right in that same discourse one one duct -tape headwrap moment from last week

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Was that when we realized that even to say that God speaks to say that is

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Anthropomorphic Right because God does not have vocal cords God the

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Father anyway God the Son does now, but after the incarnation, but God the Father.

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He does not have vocal cords. He does not push air through lungs You know or shape his tongue to enunciate clearly

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When when he spoke on earth when he was heard audibly We don't even know was he causing sound waves to travel through the air

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I don't know I mean were they actually hitting the eardrums of Moses and the prophets or Or Peter and James and John when they were amount on the the

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Mount of Transfiguration or or did they just hear him? But without sound

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Right we just don't know Paul that is on the Damascus Road is conversion even talks about how he could hear the voice of Jesus and everyone else

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It sounded like thunder Who was there? They didn't hear the words being spoken. They just heard a thundering sound and when when

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God speaks in heaven What does that sound like when he said let there be light at the beginning of creating

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What did that sound like? Right Andrew said it one thing.

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It didn't sound like English Not even sure if it sounded like Hebrew so when

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God talks to us For us to even hear him you have to recognize that he is doing something that the theologians call accommodating us

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He is accommodating us. He is stooping down really low

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To a place that even we can understand and even then often only a glimmer of Understanding Barrett calls this in the book.

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He calls this baby talk God's baby talk to us origin

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The church father he wrote of a father speaking to his two -year -old about this kind of thing

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We all just naturally do it right you start talking to a baby or to a two -year -old Your your tone of voice changes you start using simpler words

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You might even babble a little bit and make silly sounds that don't really mean anything as you're talking to them

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But they're you know communicating with your two -year -old Well, I got good. I've got news for you the gulf between you and your two -year -old is tiny compared to the gulf between God the

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Father and you right So his the amount he has to accommodate us is tremendous when we talk about baby talk

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Calvin When he wrote about this he wrote about a he compared it to a nurse caring for an infant

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Calvin said that such baby talk does not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate

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There's the word the knowledge of him to our slight capacity To our slight capacity

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What do you think we open it up for thoughts here? What do you think this means for us in our quest to know

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God if God can only talk to us in baby talk? How can we know him?

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Yes? right

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Yes, exactly that it's it's a the babies eventually grow they learn from the talk

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It's not that they're incapable of learning right or incapable of understanding they just have to be spoken to in a way that they can understand at their current level and continue to grow in levels

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Christine Enough Right Right Right Yes, right

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Right Andrew right yes, right?

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Yep, it's all baby talk right, but there's even a baby talk for Christians versus yes, right?

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Yeah extra baby Savannah Yes Yes, absolutely.

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Yes, and I mean again it goes back to our bad analogy thing right if we're not very accurate with what we say

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Or how we say it Then we fall into it.

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We can fall into error very very quickly Right so we have to be very careful about that Barrett tells us that in the book

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He says it may be impossible to comprehend. This is the incomprehensibility thing from last chapter

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It's impossible to comprehend God in his essence At like the fundamental level in all his glory and his radiance

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But that does not preclude us from knowing God as he has made himself known to us

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Right, so he spoke in the baby talk to us. That is how We can know him now

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Like Christine's saying and so that that is how we can know

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God how he has made himself known to us God cannot be Comprehended but he can be apprehended that's on your worksheet.

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God cannot be comprehended But he can be apprehended now earlier

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I asked if we limit God when we speak of him or Even if God is actually limited by the sheer fact that we can

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Speak of him now. I admit this might sound like kind of splitting hairs to you, and I don't blame you

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When I read it, I sort of think the same thing it's like well, okay But but philosophers have really struggled with this for centuries

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Right this notion of well, wait a minute if we can talk about God Does that mean that he's not? Really infinite because even being able to talk about him

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Is that not in some way putting boundaries around him or defining him or you know any of those types of things?

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And so they they bicker back and forth remember the the the ontological argument from it from Anselm right the ontological argument from Anselm was

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Nothing can be greater than a being which no greater can be conceived by the sort of self -evident

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But that and that's where the title of the book came from There is none greater But also remember

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Aquinas's critique of the ontological argument, which was if we can't fully understand

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God Then we can't truly conceive of this greatest being that Anselm is

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Asking us to think about All right, so that's the you get that's just a tiny taste of the philosopher theologian argument

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All right Um Sharnock Sharnock he summarized it like this.

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He said this is not God Think if you're thinking any thoughts about God, this is not God. God is more than this

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If I could conceive him he were not God for God is Incomprehensibly above whatsoever.

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I can say whatsoever. I can think and conceive of him So it sounds like we're in trouble, right?

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It sounds like we're gonna get lost here. Well, what are we gonna do? How can we talk about him again, like I said at the beginning

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How can we even talk about him without limiting him or blaspheming him? Well Barrett rescues us in The book by bringing in someone from the

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B team The B team you might remember that he refers to Augustine Anselm and Aquinas as the a team

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All right, they all start with a and so the B team member was Bavinck and Bavinck is he's

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Herman Bavinck. He's a Dutch Calvinist theologian from the late 19th earliest early 20th century

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Can somebody read Psalm 145 three for me somebody who didn't read before? anybody

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Anthony Psalm 145 three, right?

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Great is the Lord greatly is to be praised. His greatness is unsearchable If the psalmist is right, then we're gonna need this unsearchable

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God to make himself known to us Right and Bavinck tells us that God has done exactly that he says

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That our knowledge of God three things our knowledge of God is one grounded in God himself two can only exist through him and three has its as its object and content

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God as the infinite one All right, so our knowledge of God is grounded in God himself and It can only exist through him and it has as its object and content

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God as the infinite one So yes, we can have knowledge of God We can talk about God because God is talking to us about himself

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Because our knowledge of him comes from him if he did not

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Reveal himself if he did not share with us that kind of knowledge then

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Philosophically speaking. Yes, it would be totally hopeless. We wouldn't be able to do it There would be no hope of this but because God has stooped low because he has accommodated us

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We can we can have knowledge of God not only can we have knowledge of God?

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But he commands us to have knowledge of him. He commands us to learn of him To grow in grace and peace in what in the knowledge of God the

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Father and the Lord Jesus Christ So Barrett concludes he says in short it is silly to say that knowing

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God limits God When our knowledge itself is completely dependent on the one known that makes sense any thoughts on that?

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It is silly to say that knowing God limits God when our knowledge itself of God is completely dependent on the one known

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Capital O one no. Yes, Andrew. Yes Correct.

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Yeah, Dave. Yes, correct.

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Yes Right, right.

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We want to be able to say we know everything right Sharon. Yeah that we know everything

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Well, so it's it's the well It's the intellectuals the philosophers who just like they've said they want the all -or -nothing

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Right the philosophers they want to be able to say hey, we got a handle on this We got our arms around this.

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Yes. Yep. Yeah, right, right

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Yeah Yes, sir, right exactly, right?

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Yes. Yes that we are that it's absolutely coming from enlightenment. Yes the the notion that we

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Can know everything that our knowledge is the center of understanding right?

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Yes Yeah, yeah, no not

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Right, right. So that is that is so platonic and Neoplatism philosophy not to get too much into this for everybody

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But is you know Plato and Aristotle as Western philosopher tradition? They were all about the absolute truth

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Okay, so back then in That foundational philosophy it was this notion of there is absolute truth.

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We can know absolute truth We can study everything to death so to speak and eventually be able to know it right and then the

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Enlightenment period really picked up on that and loved that and and You know and came to that and so then it became all about the search for knowledge

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And then it turned out as we got to modern times that especially, you know Various world history events kind of started to disillusion those thinkers and they started to say we can't know anything and then it turned into the the post -modernism of There is no absolute truth.

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There is nothing that can be known at all And that that's a good segue because I'm gonna get into the those those two different things.

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But yes, did you? Yeah, yeah

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Yeah, right Yep, there is a very fun.

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There is a fine line. Yes So, so let me go on to say that there's I'm gonna I'm gonna bring in a bowling analogy just for Andrew About okay.

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We got two gutters. Okay. I'm accommodating Andrew. This is language that Andrew can understand

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We got two gutters, okay, we got a gutter on the left and a gutter on the right All right. So the first gutter on the left is agnosticism all right, and Again as we just said and and and we said this last week

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God is only revealed to us through the lens or method that he provides okay, and You know, we read in Exodus 33 that God's glory was filtered so to speak by by the literal putting of Hand, well again anthropomorphic.

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I don't know. Was there a hand whatever? Of God covering

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Moses's face as he walked by and then Moses could only see the back parts, right God Had decided this is the this is the lens through which you can view me, right?

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And and so we have to approach the incomprehensible with that level of humility

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Aquinas I remember I told you two weeks ago that his talent one of his talents was to raise the bar on the practice of Theology as a science of studying

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God, right the ologies always being some kind of study of science, right?

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but while in geology or Meteorology or biology there is some physical thing or phenomena that can be investigated and analyzed or experimented on To build up evidence the evidence for theology is what

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God has revealed to us That's the evidence. The evidence is what he has revealed to us

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Primarily the Bible that's direct rebel We would say direct revelation, right but also supplemented in some ways by what we call natural revelation

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Right that or general revelation as the

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Psalms themselves even say we can look up into the heavens and we can see the stars and we Can consider his handiwork and anyone could do that whether they read the

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Bible or not. That's general revelation God may be incomprehensible, but he is not unknowable right and to be fooled into this.

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This is the left gutter That agnostics what they do is they say that it they they say that if it's if Incomprehensible equals unknowable if I can't know it completely then

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I can't know it and if I can't know it Then why bother?

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Right and then and you sort of get into that agnostic thing of just like well There's a

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God but he's super mysterious and we can't really know him And so anybody there's lots of paths to him, whatever you came up with for your conception of God is cool

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Right. That's the agnostic way of thinking How does agnosticism help to soothe the conscience anybody yes

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Steve, yes Yeah, right

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Hitler's got to be punished, right? Yeah, yep, right.

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Yep. Yes, Cindy Sorry Cindy Cindy I'll call on you next time

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Yes, absolutely. Correct. Yes. What was the temptation that Satan presented to Eve?

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About the fruit. Well, no, he questioned what God said, but what was the appeal?

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What was that? What was the perk that Eve was gonna get? She was gonna get knowledge

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She was gonna know just like God knows She was gonna become her own mini -god, right agnostic is like yes, the the the spiritual ignorance is bliss.

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Yes Yes, Sharon How does agnosticism soothe the conscience of an unbeliever

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Yes, but I'm the Sunday school teacher it's okay Yes, well that That's that's a fair point.

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I think that's that's fine. Yes Yep, I think there's there's something to be said for the soothing.

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There is actually more of a stuffing and silencing and Ignoring. Yep. Yep Andrew's hand is up.

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Go ahead Andrew. We got to go though two seconds. All right, good. Never mind All right, so that's the left gutter agnosticism is the gutter on the left side of the lane on the right gutter is rationalism

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Okay rationalism and that's the Enlightenment. That's the stuff we were just talking about So here's the fallacy that we can know

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God's essence that my reason in and of itself Can know who God is in and of himself

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Last week the great theologian Steve Cooley gave us this great nugget He told us that every error every false teaching stems from this issue whether Mormonism Jesus calling

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TBN that making the incomprehensible comprehensible

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Right making the incomprehensible comprehensible. No, they're not really but they're trying to they're making up a new

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God They're making up some false teaching where now this new God that they've created is one that is comprehensible.

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Yeah, exactly right Mormonism God is actually Formerly a man just like you and then became a

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God and you too can be just like him someday So and it's it's really no surprise that a lot of the cults of today

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That are have lingered around Mormonism Jehovah's Witness Seventh -day Adventist those kind of things they all came in and Like Enlightenment post -enlightenment period right?

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This is when they all showed up So yes, rationalism is also a form of idolatry because we're fashioning a new image of God in our minds where he is not greater

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He is not greater that's their error. He's not greater. He's only comparable So finally this morning

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I want to discuss Finished by discussing this theological principle that Barrett shares in the book that keeps us from such idolatry.

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It's called super eminence super eminence That's at the bottom of your page, but we'll get there in a second in God all that we are is

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Possessed all I'm sorry all that we are is possessed in a higher fuller purer and limitless way

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Whatever good attributes we might have God has them more eminently than us super eminent

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And this is true for any of the communicable Attributes of God communicable attributes being those ones that attributes that he shares with people to some degree, okay?

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We're running out of time. I was going to discuss this a little bit more But just name name me a couple quick communicable attributes of God Ones that he shares with us in some way to some degree

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Love patience grace mercy. Yeah, right. What's one that's in communicable?

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Perfection holiness Yes, okay good good good good We got it so we can look at any of these communicable attributes

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And we can see in them at least a reflection or a hint of what God is truly like so love

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Is one such attributes and let me let me get even more for the sake of illustration get even more specific than just love generally and talk about fatherly love

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I Personally have on many occasions said that becoming a father myself

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Taught me to appreciate more deeply when Jesus tells us To call you know that his father is our father

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Now that I'm a father I have an experience to refer to and in an analogical way to talk about God being fatherly towards me

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Jesus himself even relied on this analogy to a great degree in the Sermon on the Mount and I know we're almost out of time

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But can someone just read for me Matthew chapter 7 No, Matthew 7 7 through 11.

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There you go. How much more? All right, there it is how much more we are sinners and Yet as fathers we give our children good things

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How much more? our none greater God he is super eminent in fatherhood

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Aquinas says that in this life we can understand God insofar as the perfections of his creatures represent it

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Super eminence is the positive affirmative side of theology, and I don't mean the the happy sappy

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K. Love side I'm sorry. I know every one of you that triggered the the little jingle in your heads, but But it's it's the positive affirmative side of theology because and I mean that on one side much of theology is known as by way of negation via negativa and And that's asserting what is true about God by stating what he is not

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Right when we explain immutable we say God does not change when we talk about simplicity

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We say God is not made up of parts. These are so that's the way of negation But with super eminence just to wrap up here with super eminence we state what he is

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Only we state it in the humble way of he is actually much much greater than this

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How much more Jesus said right well your heavenly father Love you.

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Let's pray father. We are struck this morning by your incomprehensibility and how

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We cannot truly know you and we come to you in humility and Thankfulness that you have stooped down to reveal yourself to us at all

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That you have made a way for us to know you and not just to know of you

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But to know you as our father through the sacrificial death of your son

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Jesus Christ that by faith we can

43:10

Be saved from our sins and live forever in heaven with you and him united in Christ father we thank you for this great truth these great