A Stranger in the Church

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Amen.
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If you'll take out your Bibles and remain standing while we go to the Word of God for our message this morning, we're going to be in Isaiah chapter 44, and we're going to be looking at verses 6-8, God speaking about His own unique nature.
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Isaiah 44 verse 6 says, Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and His Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am the first and I am the last, besides me there is no God who is like me.
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Let him proclaim it.
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Let him declare and set it before me.
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Since I appointed an ancient people, let them declare what is to come and what will happen.
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Fear not, nor be afraid.
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Have I not told you from of old and declared it, and you are my witnesses? Is there a God besides me? There is no rock, I know not any.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your Word.
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I pray that now as I seek to teach, that you would keep me from error as I know that I am capable of error, and I pray also Lord, for the sake of your people and for the sake of their hearts, for the sake of my own conscience Lord, that you would keep me tied to the truth of the Word of God.
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And Lord, though I know today I will say some things that may by some be considered to be hard sayings, difficult to hear, difficult to understand, I pray Lord that these are the things that you have ordained for us to hear today, and I pray Lord that you would guide and direct my words and that your Spirit would do the teaching.
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And ultimately Lord, whatever conviction may come, that it would come from your Spirit, that he would lead those who are apart from Christ into a relationship with him through repentance and faith, and those who are in Christ that he might deepen that relationship today.
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And I pray it all in Jesus' name and for his sake.
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Amen.
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Well, as many of you know, we have been in a series now for several months on the subject of the foundations for the 500th, that being the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.
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In October of 1517, Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the door of the castle church at Wittenberg, sparking the Protestant Reformation, bringing what was a necessary division between truth and error in the church, and we celebrate that down to this very day.
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We celebrate those who had influence in bringing the Reformation about, not only Luther himself, but also those who predated Luther, men like Wycliffe and Huss, and those who came after like Calvin and Zwingli, some being his contemporaries, and some even later.
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And this series has been driving, as I have been talking about, we've been driving toward a purpose.
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And today we're going to see that purpose somewhat fulfilled, because our goal has been to teach through one of the confessions that came out of the Reformation.
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And as I told you last week, and I think weeks prior, I have chosen to teach through the 1646 London Baptist Confession of Faith.
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This faith confession closely lines up with our own stated position on foundational doctrines, and it also represents an important historical moment where the 17th century Baptists of England were distinguishing themselves from the radical Anabaptists, as well as the Congregationalists and the Presbyterians and the Church of England, known as the Anglican Church.
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The Baptists were distinguishing themselves as thoroughly Baptist.
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The 1646 London Baptist Confession of Faith was a statement of faith of seven churches that came together.
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Seven congregations in England.
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And this statement has 52 individual articles of faith.
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And I've told you over the last few weeks, if you want to read ahead, I encourage it.
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Everyone can get a copy of the 1646 Confession.
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It is available for free several different places online.
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Just go in to Google or whatever and type it in.
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You'll notice that the outline of the confession can be grouped into several theological groupings.
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You have Theology Proper, which is the study of God and His nature.
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You have Bibliology, which is the study of Scripture.
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Christology, the study of Christ.
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That's actually the longest portion of the confession.
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It deals with the nature and work of Jesus Christ.
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Sociology, the study of salvation.
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Ecclesiology, the study of the Church.
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The study of the ordinance of baptism.
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Discipline, civil government, and eschatology, which is the study of the end of all things.
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And my plan is not to spend a whole sermon on each individual statement.
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Because if I did, it would take a whole year to get through it.
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Because there are 52 of them.
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So at times, I'm going to combine two or three of the shorter ones and try to condense some of what is taught in the confession into one lesson.
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But for the first few messages, I am going to be looking at the first individual statements, the first individual articles of the confession, because they deal with the nature of God Himself.
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And I would be doing a disservice to the Lord and to the subject matter if I were to rush through those and try to simply gain ground for the sake of gaining...
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We're not going anywhere.
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Unless the Lord takes me home, I'll be here a year from now.
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So even if it does take a year, we'll do it.
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It doesn't matter.
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But there are going to be times where we do two or three at a time.
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The reality is that it's very uncommon for churches to sit down and really address serious theology and serious doctrinal truth.
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And oftentimes what we get on Sunday morning are sermonettes.
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They're sort of little platitudes on how to get through this week of life, how to make your finances better, how to make your wife happier, how to make your husband happier, how to do better in your job or get that better parking spot.
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And to be honest with you, what passes for Christian teaching and Christian preaching is really nothing of the sort.
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And as smart as we have become and as intelligent as we think we are, we are so far behind our ancient predecessors of the faith.
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The men of God in the 16th and 17th and 18th century sat and thought these things through.
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And they passed down to us a rich heritage of Christianity which has been lost in the shallowness of the modern church.
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In fact, the modern church as it has been said many times is a mile wide and only an inch deep.
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It has many, many people, not many of which know much about their faith.
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So my goal in this whole series has been to teach you history and also to teach you theology because as is our church sort of motto, even though it's not official, but the unofficial motto of the church is theology matters.
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And theology matters because God matters.
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So we're going to begin today by looking at the first statement about the nature of God that is in the 1646 Confession.
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And it deals with the nature of God.
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The nature of who God is and what God is.
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And before I dive into that, I have sort of an introduction I'd like to give.
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What I just did was the introduction to the introduction, so I'd like to give a short introduction because as uncommon as it is for churches to study theology today, it's even more uncommon for the people of God to contemplate the nature of God as He is described in the Scripture.
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Paul Washer, a missionary pastor and preacher, many of you have heard of him, many of you have heard him preach.
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Paul Washer was once asked by a pastor, Pastor Washer, would you come to our church and give a lecture on the attributes of God? And Paul Washer responded, he said, brother, you haven't thought this through.
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And the pastor sort of thought, he said, what do you mean I haven't thought this through? What do you mean? And Paul Washer said, this is actually quite controversial.
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And Paul Washer, the man talking to him said, what do you mean? We're Christians, we all believe in God, we all believe in the God of the Bible.
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Why do you think it's controversial? And this was his response, I'm going to read it directly.
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He said, dear pastor, when I begin instructing your people on the justice of God, the sovereignty of God, the wrath of God, the supremacy of God, the glory of God, you are going to have some of your finest and oldest church members stand up and say something like this, that is not my God, I could never love a God like that.
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Why? Because they have a God they have made in their own mind, and they love the God they have made.
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He said, they won't stand for the hearing of God as he's described in scripture.
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They want the God that they have created.
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And I can personally attest to this, because I've been here for 12 years, and the most vicious battles that I have fought in 12 years have not been over the color of the carpet, or where the TVs go, or any of that stuff, even though those do create some contentious moments.
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I wouldn't lie.
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But the most vicious fights I have fought have been when I preached about who God is, and people did not want to hear it.
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And people did not want to know what the Bible said.
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So I agree with Paul, I think he, Paul Washer, I think he is right.
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If I were to go to most churches today and preach on the attributes of God, I would be shouted down and asked to leave.
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And the reason for this is the modern church has been sanitized, rather the modern church has sanitized the nature of God.
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The modern church has sanitized the nature of God.
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Many Christian people have largely ignored entire portions of Scripture in favor of ones which do not challenge their sensibilities.
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They have placed a protective bubble around the character of the Almighty to the point that His most difficult attributes to understand have been largely ignored or hidden from view.
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I want my God to be like me, is the attitude of the modern church.
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I want Him to think what I think is right and I want Him to think what I think is wrong is wrong.
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And what happens is we are not made in the image of God anymore, we make God in our image.
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And that's the attitude of the modern church.
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And I want to tell you something.
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This has not escaped the skeptics view.
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You listen to men like Richard Dawkins.
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And you know what Richard Dawkins does? Richard Dawkins points out the parts of the Bible that nobody ever reads.
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If you don't know who Richard Dawkins is, he is a evolutionary biologist who is one of the most famous atheists in the world.
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And he goes about proselytizing atheism.
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Trying to turn men away from God and trying to get them to believe in reason.
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What he calls reason.
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And often times he points to parts of the Bible that nobody ever reads, nobody ever looks at.
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And he challenges people.
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And people who have been in church 10, 15, 20, 30 years aren't able to give a defense of the faith.
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Let me ask you a question, this is true.
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Do you understand the character and nature of God to the point that you can look at God's command of the destruction of the Canaanites? Every man, woman and child.
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And know that it occurred not only under His command but by His divine appointment.
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Do you have a theology that can take into account God's willingness to crush the rebellious hordes of Noah's day under a deluge of water from above and below? And know that He was absolutely just in doing so? Does your view of God allow you to consider the fact that He created a hell for the sole purpose of punishing eternally those who would refuse to worship Him? I see some of you grimacing but I'm telling you this is the God of the Bible.
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If you don't like the way I'm describing it, I'm not going to sanitize it for you.
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When Isaiah, we already had it read for us, Michael read it this morning.
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When Isaiah the prophet was faced with Almighty God.
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He didn't come away with a hat that said Jesus is my homeboy.
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He didn't come out of that with a knot of this world t-shirt.
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He fell on his face, he put his hand over his mouth and he said woe is me.
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For I am undone.
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For I have seen the Lord of glory.
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And I am a man of unclean lips.
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This is the most holy man in Israel at the time.
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This is a prophet of God.
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And what does he say of himself? I've seen the Lord.
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And now I know myself.
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Now I understand this, I am not trying to paint a negative picture of God.
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What I am saying is that most people don't have a biblical view of God.
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They have substituted a biblical view of God with a much more palatable view.
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Which sits in line with their modern sensibilities.
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The modern view of God is much more akin to a grandfather figure.
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It's an aging grandfather who sort of just appeals to you to come sit on his knee and tell him what you want.
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And he's just begging for your attention and begging for you to tip your hat in his direction.
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That's not the picture that Isaiah paints for us.
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He paints a God who is holy, holy, holy.
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So many false teachers.
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Yes, I had a vision and I walked with God.
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And I talked with Jesus.
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My question is always the same.
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Did you fall on your face in absolute disgust of yourself? Then you have not met God.
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Because the most holy man in all of Israel met God.
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And all he could do was put his hand over his mouth and say, woe is me.
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Used to be there was a term.
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You guys remember when people used to use the term God-fearing? I mean, that's pretty common, right? There was a time when if you were asking someone about their religious convictions, you might even say, are you a God-fearing person? And that's based on the scripture.
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The Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
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Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
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And everybody says, well, that doesn't mean fear.
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It means reverence.
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Well, I think it means reverential fear.
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I don't think it means the type of fear that you would have for someone who's out to get you, as it were.
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But it is a fear of reverence.
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So that's not exactly wrong.
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But when we would ask people, are you God-fearing? It carried the connotation of the understanding of the nature of God.
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God is worthy of our worship.
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He's worthy of our love.
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He's worthy of our affection.
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But He's also worthy of our reverential fear.
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Somebody says, well, I don't want a God like that.
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Well, you don't get to choose.
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God's not up for a vote.
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He's not running for office.
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There's not a platform.
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And we're going to have the Republican God and the Democrat God and the Libertarian God.
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And we're going to choose.
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He didn't ask your permission.
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He was here before you came.
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And He'll be here after you're gone.
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So you either learn God as He is, or you make God up in your mind.
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But know which it is.
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Because some people can't tell the difference.
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But know this.
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When you make God up in your mind, you're breaking the second commandment.
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You're becoming an idolater.
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Because you don't have to make an idol out of gold.
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People take gold and they form a golden statue.
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They put it up and they worship that.
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And that's idolatry.
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If you do that in your mind, you make a God that's to your sensibilities.
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And you form Him in your own mind.
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That is no less idolatry.
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And I want you to consider this.
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Because you may not like what I'm saying.
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But I want you to consider this.
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It's so important.
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There is nothing, nothing more important than what you view God.
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How you view God.
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Because it's going to affect every aspect of your life.
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It can be rightly said, if your understanding of God is flawed, then your understanding of everything else is flawed.
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The most frustrating thing, and now I'm going to get a little real.
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For the most frustrating thing I have as a pastor.
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And I'm not trying to make this about me.
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It's not about me.
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But as a minister of the gospel, one of the most frustrating things is those who have no desire to grow in their knowledge of God.
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And I say that not to be contentious or argumentative.
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But to speak the truth.
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Some have been in church for years.
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And not shown any positive growth in their understanding of God, who He is, His word, or anything related to Him.
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And I'm going to ask you this.
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If you spent the last year, the last ten years of your life going hunting once a week, you'd be pretty embarrassed if you didn't know anything about hunting.
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If you spent the last ten years of your life practicing a sport once a week, you'd be pretty embarrassed if you couldn't do that sport with any type of ability.
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If you didn't know anything about that sport.
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So why is it we have people that come to church for 5, 10, 15, 20 years and know nothing about God? Sometimes I wonder what it says about our relationship to Christ.
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Because I've been married to my wife for 18 years.
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And I look back 18 years ago, when we met, we met 20 years ago, and I look back, I didn't know her very much at all.
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I really didn't, compared to now.
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When I met her, we met, we knew each other for two years, got married, I thought I knew her pretty good.
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20 years later, I know her a lot better now.
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But again, I know people who say they've been in a relationship with Christ for 20 years and don't know Him any better than the day they supposedly first met.
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So this tugs at my heart, it really does.
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And considering the importance of knowing the nature of God as He is, I want to turn our attention to the confession now.
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And again, that was the lengthy introduction.
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We're going to now go through the first line.
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If you open your worship folder, you'll see on the back, I have printed for you the first article.
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And I even printed the outline, or had Miss Pat print the outline for us this week.
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So you don't have to write anything unless you just want to take additional notes, but I've written down the outline for you.
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I'm going to read the confession.
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And this is a short paragraph in comparison to some other confessions.
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This is very short, but it is filled with truth.
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It says, The Lord our God is but one God, whose subsistence is in Himself, whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but Himself, who only hath immortality dwelling in the light, which no man can approach unto, who is in Himself most holy, every way infinite in greatness, wisdom, power, love, mercy, and gracious long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, who giveth being, moving, and preservation to all creatures.
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Now, you'll see afterward, there's a litany of scriptures that the writers of the confession used to address their statement.
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And I encourage you to read through those.
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Unfortunately, we will not read through them all today.
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But I want to break this down, this confession portion, down to four main truths that this confession teaches that we need to understand about God.
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The first one is that God is incomprehensible.
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God is incomprehensible.
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It says in the confession, The Lord our God is but one God, whose subsistence is in Himself, whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but Himself.
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Now, why is that? Because there's none like Him.
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As much as you are made in the image of God, you were not made to be God, or to be even like Him in the sense of His nature.
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You are not gods.
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As much as some of the false teachers might want to run around and call you little gods, it ain't true.
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The Bible says in Isaiah 46, I am God and there is no other.
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I am God and there is none like Me.
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And when we talk about God and His oneness, which it says here, Our Lord is but one God, what we're focusing on there is not so much the fact that He is the only God, in the sense of monotheism, which is true, but it's talking about the fact that He's absolutely unique in His nature.
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There is no being like Him.
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He is the only one that has ever existed.
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Likewise, He is the only one who has existence in Himself.
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And see, that to us is incomprehensible.
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No one can say, I really understand God in His fullness, because none of us are like Him.
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That's not to say that we shouldn't try to learn what He has revealed.
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We should, and that's what we're doing.
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But because He's absolutely unique in His nature, we cannot say that we have a perfect grasp of His being.
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The only one who can comprehend God is God.
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In theology, there's a principle called aseity.
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Some of you probably heard that word.
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Some of you probably read it.
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But it's not the most common of words.
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It's A-S-E-I-T-Y, aseity.
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The aseity of God references His independent self-existence.
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All other beings exist because they're caused to exist by their Creator.
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But God has no cause.
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In fact, one of the most common questions, kids ask this, but adults ask it too, one of the most common questions people ask, well, if God made everything, who made God? That's a very common question, and it's not a dumb question.
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And it leads, if you have a child who asks that question, don't blow that question off.
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Because what they're showing you, is they understand the basis of cause and effect.
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Because they say, if God created everything, He caused everything, then what caused Him? It's a good question.
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And it allows you to give a good answer.
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Because you can then talk about the fact that God is the only being everywhere, anywhere, that has existence in Himself.
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He is not caused by anything else.
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He is the cause of everything else.
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It helps you to understand that cause and effect is not eternally regressive.
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There has to be a point where everything begins.
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And God is the point of that beginning.
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And it helps you to help your child understand that there is a...
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It wasn't a big bang, it was a big God.
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And whether or not He banged it into existence, I think He spoke it, because that's what the Bible says.
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But it might have been loud enough that we'd have called it a bang.
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But we know this, God didn't have a cause.
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God owes existence to no one.
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He has it in Himself.
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I owe my existence to God.
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If it weren't for God, I wouldn't be here.
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If it weren't for God, you wouldn't be here.
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And God continues to make me exist.
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If He chose today for me not to exist anymore, I'd be out of here.
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Thank God He won't, because He doesn't deny His own word.
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But the reality is, God is the reason for my existence.
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God is the only being who has existence in Himself.
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And in that, He's incomprehensible.
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That doesn't make any sense to us.
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Because everything we know, and everything we've ever seen, and everything we've ever touched, tasted, or felt, or anything, was all the result of something else.
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It was all an effect.
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God's the cause.
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So that's it.
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And that's incomprehensible.
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God is incomprehensible, as it says.
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Cannot be comprehended by anyone but Himself.
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He has subsistence in Himself.
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The second thing we see here is that God is holy.
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It says, He who only hath immortality dwelling in the light, which no man can approach unto, who is in himself most holy.
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God is unique, and God is separate, as we've said.
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All of creation is subject to death and decay, but not God.
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God is not subject to death nor decay.
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He's immortal.
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And He's immortal not the way we think.
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Everybody who thinks of immortality right now, thinks of immortality going forward.
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Because if I said, God makes you immortal through Jesus Christ, meaning you're never going to die.
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You'll die in this life, but your spirit will live forever, right? That's not immortality.
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Not in this context.
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Immortality in this context means without beginning and end.
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See, God not only can't die, but He was never born.
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He's always been.
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That goes back to the incomprehensible part.
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People always say, I have trouble understanding God's sovereignty.
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I have trouble understanding God's eternality.
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I don't have any trouble believing God's in control of everything.
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I have trouble believing, how in the world has He always been here? I do believe it.
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Don't get me wrong.
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I'm not saying I don't believe it.
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What I'm saying is I don't understand it.
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But that's part of His holiness.
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It's part of the fact that He's absolutely separate from His creation.
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We live in a light that's fading.
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God lives in perpetual light.
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We live on a creation that can be tread, but God's presence cannot be tread.
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As R.C.
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Sproul said, God's holiness can be known as His otherness.
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For He is not like anything else in creation.
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He is other.
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He is different than everything else.
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He is completely and totally other.
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That's the holiness that Isaiah got a glimpse of.
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In that moment, he realized God's holiness, and he realized his own sinfulness.
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You guys have heard me talk about the Hitler diagram before.
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You know, people will say, if you put Hitler on a, you know, if you think of the worst person you can.
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But Hitler kind of ranks, you know.
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You put Hitler really over here on this scale, and you take the scale all the way over here, and you put the only holy person to ever live, Jesus Christ.
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And you say, now where are you on the scale? Boy, I'm hugged up next to Hitler, if you compare me to Jesus.
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He said, well, you got a sure bad thought way of yourself.
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No, I got a high view of Him.
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It ain't about having a low view of me.
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John the Baptist said what? He said, he must increase, and I must decrease.
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I am nowhere on that scale, close to Jesus Christ, because He's holy.
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And the only reason why I can be called a holy one, a saint, a hagiosmos in the Greek, the only reason why I can be called that is because God makes me holy through Christ.
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And I'm holy because of what He did.
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Not because of what I do.
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I'm not holy because I preach.
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I'm not holy because I give a tithe.
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I'm not holy because I come and sing.
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I'm not holy because I pray for you, or because I come to your house, or because I come to the hospital, or because I do any ministry work for you.
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All of those things I do because of Jesus Christ and what He did for me.
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And any holiness I have is the holiness of Jesus Christ.
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None of myself.
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Nothing in my hand I bring only to the cross I cling.
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Number three.
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We've got to move because there's a lot to say in this short paragraph.
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God is wondrous.
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I love this one because it starts here.
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It says, He is in every way infinite, in greatness, wisdom, power, love, mercy, and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.
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I just love the term every way infinite.
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If you're taking notes, circle that.
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Every way infinite.
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We often think of God's infinity as only related to time.
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Well, God's infinite because He's always been, and I mentioned that earlier.
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But God's infinity is more than just time.
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You know God's infinitely great? You know God's infinitely wise? Infinitely powerful? Infinitely loving? Infinitely merciful? Gracious? Longsuffering? He's infinite in goodness and in truth? You know what that should cause us to do? That should cause us to sit and wonder.
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With God, there are no ends of possibility to our ability to meditate on Him.
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As it has been said, capturing the whole of God in our mind would be like capturing the whole of the Atlantic Ocean in a thimble.
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And that's why we ponder.
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That's why we meditate.
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Because we can never meditate enough on the nature of who God is.
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We sing the song, God of Wonders, and I love this.
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It's one of my favorite songs.
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And He is a God of wonders.
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He has created things in this universe that when we look at them, it just makes you go, hmm, I just can't imagine.
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But you know what the most wondrous thing in the universe is? God Himself.
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Not the huge stars that we call suns.
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Not the planets that orbit those suns.
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And not the world that we stand on, and even the beautiful mountains and trees and valleys that we see on this earth.
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Those are wonders of God, but God Himself is the true wonder.
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His infinite nature cannot be comprehended, and yet we are told to meditate upon Him.
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Make Him our desire.
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He is the wonder of wonders.
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Finally, number four.
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God is mighty.
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And again, these are just four that are in here.
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There are so many other attributes of God, but these four are found in here.
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He's incomprehensible, holy, wondrous, and mighty.
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Because it says in the last section here, it says He giveth being, moving, and preservation to all creatures.
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And think about this.
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When we think about God's mighty nature, when we think about the mighty God, our minds often go to the things that He's done that we would call miracles.
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God is mighty because He parted the Red Sea.
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God is mighty because He raised the dead.
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God is mighty because He covered the earth in darkness when Jesus died, and He rent the veil of the temple from top to bottom.
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God is mighty because of all of the miracles.
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But do you realize that that's not really where we see the greatest example of the might of God? This passage, this section rather of the article here says this.
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It says that God giveth being, moving, and preservation to all creatures.
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The greatest act of God's might is the fact that He gives you life and He preserves your life.
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Every moment of every day of every second you live at the behest of Almighty God.
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Our very being depends upon Him.
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This is why when Paul was on Mars Hill in Acts 17, he said, in Him we live and move and have our being.
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Not just in grand miracles, but in the sustaining power of God do we see His might.
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And as I've said before, if God were so to choose, we would cease to be.
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Because our being is wrapped up in Him.
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I know this, I'm not immortal in the sense of the fact that I can't die in this life.
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But I do know that when I die in this life, I'll be in the hands of Almighty God in the life to come.
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And when I'm in the hands of Almighty God in the life to come, even that life will be sustained by Him.
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There will never be a time, a million years in eternity will never be a moment where I can look at God and say, I'm good, I don't need you to sustain me.
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The very sustaining of my existence is in the hands of Almighty God.
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If God ceased to exist, so should we, so would we.
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God is the only independent being and we depend upon Him for all things.
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And in that we find His might.
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As I said earlier, one of the most serious problems in the modern church is the lack of understanding regarding the nature of Almighty God.
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Because it is ignored, it is covered over, it's hidden from view, it's debated into obscurity.
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And the church has replaced biblical theology with emotional pragmatism.
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Pragmatism is doing what works to attain a goal.
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The ends justify the means.
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So we give up theology and we turn to practical pragmatism, whatever works.
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And as a result, and I want to finally explain the title as we draw to a close, because as a result, God is a stranger in the church.
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If you wonder what the title means, that's what it means.
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To the modern average person going to church today, God is a stranger.
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You say, Pastor, how do you know that? Because when you introduce that person to Him, they recoil and rebel rather than embrace.
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So I ask the question, is God a stranger to you? When God is described as the Bible describes Him, do you recoil and say, that's not my God? Unfortunately, that's the way many respond when people are faced with the God of the Bible because they don't worship Him.
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They worship an idol, they worship a God of their own mind, a God of their own making.
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And I love the fact that this confession begins unashamedly affirming the nature of God as He is described in the Bible.
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And I pray, and I truly do pray, that we as the people of God here at Sovereign Grace will seek to know God better, to know Him more.
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To not be satisfied with God as a stranger.
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And certainly not be satisfied with a shallow understanding of Scripture.
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But to seek the Lord, to seek to know Him.
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And then, as a result of that, seek to make Him known.
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Is God a stranger to you? Or do you know Him today? Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word, I thank You for the truth, and I thank You that even though we've dealt with some heavy material today, I pray, Lord, that this will not fall on deaf ears.
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But that this might pierce a heart and have us all ask the question, Is God a stranger to me? Do I know Him? Not.
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I pray, Lord, for everyone in this room, for everyone who will hear this message, that God would not be a stranger to them.
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But that we will seek to know You as the Scripture gives revelation.
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And it's in Jesus Christ's name.
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Amen.
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Let's stand together and sing as we prepare our hearts for communion.