Whitten Q and A - Ep. 6 WHO IS GOD & WHO ARE WE? Part 1

Hello everybody welcome to questions and answers brought to you by Witten Baptist Church and Before we launch into anything.

Let me just kind of go over a few things for you You may have noticed that I'm not

Josiah Shipley. If you haven't noticed that you may be blind Josiah has graciously asked or offered me the opportunity to do a couple of these lessons and I thank you brother

I appreciate the chance to do this and love any opportunity to go over what we're going to be going over tonight

For those of you who don't know me, my name is David McCallum I've served as a pastor and I've taught and I've done a lot of things at Witten But all of that's irrelevant in the sense that I want everyone to understand whether you're watching this and you're a believer

You're a non -believer or you don't know what you are Just because someone's a pastor just because someone's a teacher a

Sunday school teacher or a deacon That doesn't make them Anymore qualified to teach the

Word of God Than anyone else who's a child of God What scripture clearly teaches us is that the

Holy Spirit once you become a child of God the Holy Spirit? Dwells inside of you and the wisdom that that brother

Jeff has access to is the same wisdom that I have access to It's the same wisdom that the

Apostle Paul has access to had access to the same wisdom that Josiah that Gosh I hesitate to say it, but yeah, even my kids have access to Why is that important because far too often we get way too hung up on titles on Positions or just on specific pastors.

I'm sure all of you can think of at least you know one church I'm not going to name any but I'm sure you could think of and it's not the big one down the road that you might

Be thinking of at least that's not what was in my head But there's plenty there's been plenty of times where a church dies after a pastor dies.

Why is that? Because Their faith their belief their dedication was to a man and not to the

Word of God. This is something that Witten is the complete opposite of Something that I praise

God that we get to that we get to enjoy there There is no exaltation of a pastor or of a deacon

Anyways, I'm gonna get off on a whole nother lesson. So hopefully you get the point that I'm making there now the lesson that we're going to be doing tonight is

The sinner sin and the gospel but before we we jump into that I wanted to explain something

Because this is going to be a bit of a different approach for me now typically when discussing the reality of sin when discussing the nature of man when discussing

You know who God is when discussing the gospel all of those things You know,

I have in the past gone through an apologetic discourse. In other words

Giving a defense for why I believe what I believe, you know Here are all these different evidences, right and these things should prove right or these things should at least give some kind of weight to Why I believe what

I believe Another approach I've used And by the way, both of these approaches that I'm not using that I'm about to explain.

They're not bad. They're not wrong I just chose to go in a different direction tonight but one of the other paths

I've taken is That's a perfect segue into the

Romans Road, what is the Romans Road? Well, there is a book in the Bible called Romans and it's actually

Yeah, it's it's my favorite book in the Bible and One thing

I love about that book is that Paul and it's actually we call it a book but it's a letter that Paul wrote to the church in Rome and what we see in there is

Paul begins with the universal indictment against all mankind

Paul's basically Framing an argument starting from step one and working his way all the way up to the cross

And then once he's at the cross, then he begins to talk about living as a Christian It's a very systematic book and very heavy in theology very heavy in doctrine and Again, definitely nothing wrong with it's my favorite book in the

Bible nothing wrong with it whatsoever But you know where I'm working now

I Spend a lot of time driving I have a lot of service calls in Arkansas and You know, sometimes

I'll be on the road three four hours at a time and when I'm doing that I listen to podcast

You know, sometimes I listen to music lately. It's been a lot of podcast and you know the other day I was driving to Hot Springs and You know,

I started listening to Some teaching series from the late R .C. Sproul Theologian whom

I Actually when I was a new Christian I started listening to him to Ravi Zacharias quite a few others, but really those two and There's one lesson that dr.

Sproul taught Well, there were a lot of lessons he taught but there's one that he was very well known for And he even wrote a book

About it that was based off of this teaching series and it's called the holiness of God well that came up in my podcast and as it began

I was like, oh man, I've heard this a lot of times and you know, I was getting ready to change it, but I let it play on through and Dr.

Sproul begins that particular lesson the This one I think was in Washington DC.

It was part of a conference, but he get he begins that lesson and Or I'm sorry by Sharing a story with everyone about a man that the ministry that he helped start

His ministry had hired this individual to help them come up with a mission statement

And so the guys asking dr. Sproul, you know, hey You know, what would you say is the number one thing that you have to offer

You know non -believers that are listening You know within your ministry, what what would you say that one thing is and He said would it be you know, what is

God and Sproul? Thanks for a while and he says well Not what is

God? But who is God? And he begins to explain to this gentleman that you know, although he can well he could

When he was still alive Um, you know, he could he could use all different types of arguments all different types of apologetic arguments

To explain what is God, you know does God exist is God real, you know to answer all of those type questions

And they could do it very well Robbie Zacharias could do it very well as well But he paused and he said i'm more interested in teaching who is

God And i'll get into in this lesson tonight what that means

And I loved I loved the next part The guy says, okay.

Okay. Well What would you say the number one thing is you have? To teach evangelical christians and with no pause.

Dr. Sproul says Who is God? Now why is that We can know the what behind God or we can disagree

Uh, you know if you're an atheist if you're a non -believer you may even kind of turn towards that We can we can agree disagree

We can receive that information about the what about the existence of God or the non -existence of God and all those different Arguments and there's a lot of value to having those discussions

But let's say for instance that Let's say someone spoke to me

Years ago and they said hey look There's this guy there's this guy there's this

God and Here's all this evidence Here's all this reason

Here's all this philosophy Right. Here's all this logic That points towards that God and me as a man

I began to turn it over in my head and I began to think about it think about it think about it and then

Intellectually I become convinced that there is a God Good for me, right?

But what changes Well until we know what the gospel is or what sin is

You really can't answer that question I suppose But to my fellow christians You know what i'm getting at If I believe only intellectually

Right, but I don't believe in my heart. But more importantly, I don't know the heart.

I don't know the nature I don't know the beauty. I don't know the holiness of God Then knowing the reality of God means nothing to me

And I said if i'm a christian, well, here's the problem If I don't know

And I don't respect the holiness of God Then Well, I don't think i'm a christian at that point, right?

So it's a very important thing to look at and So with that in mind

I'm, definitely acknowledging Dr. Sproul and that setup there

And also a little bit of the framework i'm using tonight Because i'm a bit out of my element but instead of spending a whole bunch of time

Explaining why the bible is a trustworthy source instead of explaining, you know, why

You can know that there's a god right and i'm going to give you all this cosmological evidence

I'm going to begin With the supposition that the bible is the inspired word of god.

It is the revealed word of god And i'm going to begin with the knowledge With the truth that god

Does exist and that this is his word He said well, how dare you you're just skipping right past apologetics

Well, let me share something with you the bible actually speaks to that and psalm chapter 14 verse 1

Only fools say in their hearts. There is no god That's that's not the only spot

We can roll over to romans we can look at romans chapter 1 We can look at the verse 22 of the romans chapter 1 and what are we going to find the same thing?

The fool says in his heart there is no god How does god apologetically defend himself?

You're a fool if you don't believe in me So I'm gonna start with that and i'm gonna move forward, but I want you all especially those of you who don't know me now

If I had to stop delete And restart this video a few times because i'm here at home and my children are upstairs and moving about and they keep

Forgetting that i'm down here doing this. So Uh, I say that because I really don't remember at this point if I introduced myself, uh, my name is david mcgowan

So if I didn't there it is if I did you got it a second time all right, so I want to launch into this and I want you all no matter who's listening to this

Um, I want everybody to hear this because I believe this to be very important there

Just as it is foolish to say there is no god It is foolish

But it is incredibly dangerous as well To proclaim or to profess yourself as a christian

And then to teach things That are untrue about the bible You say well

You know I'm, not a christian man And I don't really believe all that stuff and you're about to tell me that well

There's stupid people who are doing dangerous things teaching the wrong things yet. They're probably saying the same thing about you

How do I know? Who's telling the truth? How do I know what truth is?

You know, there's a guy named ponty his pilot and he asked the same question when he was tasked

With the decision of whether or not to crucify jesus when the jews brought jesus before him

He said what is truth? My friends whether you're a real believer

Whether you're a professing believer Whether you're an agnostic an atheist or Whatever i'm going to answer that question in a very simple way

Open up the word of god and let god's word speak to you Anything that I say tonight

Anything that I say tonight and especially Anything that I reference from scripture

And anything that I speak about off of that If there's anything that I say wrong

Anything that doesn't line up with scripture guess who's wrong? me Guess what truth isn't what

I said right You have my full permission as a matter of fact,

I encourage you strongly to fact check everything I say Unlike god,

I am very fallible. I am prone to making mistakes As a matter of fact,

I make it look like an art form sometimes. All right So please check everything

I say through the word of god and if you need help finding things in the word of god Please ask anybody you can comment on here.

I don't know if this is going to facebook and youtube or just youtube Either way, we have people that are monitoring the comments

Not like police but actually reading them to see if there's questions So we can help answer those questions or at least point you in the right direction so you can find those answers

All right. I know that the church has a terrible history

At certain points in times and it's not just exclusive to certain denominations

Sure, the catholics have the stain of the crusades But southern baptist we got the stain of racism

Both of those things were very wrong, right? both of those things

Uh Have left a bad taste in people's mouth over the years.

There have been churches that have I don't want to say excommunicated and use that word that have kicked out

Members because of adulterous affairs now if if they were

Continuing in it. No one was repenting Then I understand that that's actually biblical if people go to them and try and correct them

And they refuse to hear it and then you try again with more people and they refuse to hear it that's actually what scripture tells us to do but Let's say that they have

Repented well, there's plenty of churches that still kicked them out because of what they did, right? There's churches that have kicked women out that had an abortion

I could go on and on and on and on And one thing you'll never hear me defend ever

Is any of that bullcrap that any of those churches have done? Because that's religion right

That's man -made religion That's legalism That's evil

That's not God's desire. That's not god's will that's not god's word

How do you know that that's true? Read god's word search god's word.

All right I know that there's lots of christians, you know holding signs saying god hates fat westborough.

I was trying to remember the name of the church There's lots of christians professing christians

Who have done and said many horrible things? in the name of christianity and It breaks my heart and it fills me with rage quite honestly sometimes

Because I hate that that can become the testimony Of the words of god the words of christ of the work of christ so I said we're going to learn about sin in the gospel, but really

The course that we're going to go tonight What we're actually going to learn about what I hope to teach you about or share with you is the

I am The I am right What who is the

I am? If you've never heard that you're probably going this guy. What is what is up with him?

All right, so there's this dude named moses Right, we find him. We first come upon him in the book of exodus and You know god speaks to him now if you even if you're a non -believer i'm sure you you you're somewhat familiar with the story

Where god speaks to moses through a burning bush, right? and God's telling moses.

Hey Go down to egypt where your people are my people They were also your people are being held captive being held as slaves

Go down there And bring them out of egypt do all of these different things, right?

and moses You can question his faith and say yeah, he was full of doubt.

I think he had a pretty normal response moses is like um Okay, okay

Do you want me to go to the jews? And you know basically tell them hey y 'all follow me

Yeah, I know I was part of pharaoh's household for a while and you're probably like what is this guy really up to is he

Wanting to you know kill us like he did this other day. I mean what what's about to happen?

And then you also want me to go to pharaoh, right who is the leader of the largest um,

I don't want to say nation, but To use a term that we're familiar with today The largest nation on earth at that time the strongest army, right?

You want me to just walk up to him and say hey, let those people go You know, that's a bit of a scary proposition, right?

And then when they asked me Who sent me? I said well the man in the bush told me

I'll see myself out Yeah, so moses was kind of in a weird situation.

So he did ask god he said hey When I go to these people who shall

I say sent me? And god responds to him and he tells them

You tell them yahweh sent you My name is

I am and he uses those two words. I am Right, and that's how god defined not not some.

What? Yeah, that's how god defines himself I'm not getting my words, right?

You guys know what I mean, though And i'm pausing here for a moment because we're when we get ready to read here

When we encounter the word lord in scripture, especially when we encounter

That word spelled in all capital letters what that means is

Even though in other words, we get capital l capital o capital r capital d All right other times you'll see capital l little o little r little d

All right, same english word, right? But it's conveying

Similar but different things. Okay When we see it in all capital letters

That is Yahweh Right. That is the great I am

Okay When we see capital l little o little r little d Then it's not like well, it's insignificant not at all, right?

But that's the word that really translates to lord right to master so I'm trying not to go down into that study just yet, but just to give you a little basic understanding here all right, so We have moses, right?

And moses has been tasked to go tell Or to go set everyone free All right now fast forward a little bit

Okay, a bunch of crazy things happen a bunch of signs a bunch of miracles pharaoh says nope

You can't have them then he changes his mind because of plagues and he says Okay, fine.

Take them they Think they're about to leave and then pharaoh goes. Nope. You can't go and then this goes on and on It goes back and forth back and forth back and forth right until finally until finally uh with the final plague

And Oh gosh, i'm going to get off into a whole another lesson and I don't have time to do that But Please please please if you're interested in that read through the book of exodus.

Okay, and Read the story of moses read about About the deliverance right of his people and read about the different plagues really really cool fascinating stuff

But that's not where i'm wanting to hang out tonight What i'm wanting to get to is past that okay now

You know, the jews have left egypt, right And they're making their way to the promised land and god is going or god is with them on their journey, right and so moses begins

Receiving all this information all these laws right from god. And at the same time the israelites are just You know, oh wow, this is awesome.

God saved us But Yeah, there's always a but there's always something else and it gets to the point of ridiculousness where they've got this golden calf

And they're worshiping this golden cat. I'm doing this because they're holding it on a stick and it's Really seriously people, huh?

Uh Really really really really cool foreshadowed shadowing of christ in that though Again, another lesson.

I gotta stay focused. So Turn with me, please that only took 25 minutes, uh to get to a verse

No, I did read uh, psalm 14 and romans 8 And bear with me here because i'm using

Two different bibles and my bible on my phone. So what we see here and Let's see and make sure i'm on the right chapter

Yes, exodus chapter 33 exodus chapter 33 and starting in verse 17 verse 17

So the lord said to moses I will do this thing that you have spoken for you found grace in my sight and I know you by name and he said

Sorry verse 18 and he said he meaning moses This is moses speaking to god, please show me your glory

Then he said I will make all This is god speaking to moses now I will make all my goodness pass before you and I will proclaim the name of the lord capital l capital o capital r

Capital d I will proclaim the name of the lord before you I will be gracious to whom

I will be gracious and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion But he said you cannot see my face for no man shall see me and live

And the lord said here it lord capital l capital capital capital d said here is a place

Here is a place by me and you shall stand on the rock So it shall be while my glory passes by That I will put you in the cleft of the rock and will cover you with my hand while I pass by Then I will take away my hand and you shall see my back

But my face shall not be seen now. Let's pause there for just a moment

What are we talking about here? We want to know Tonight I want to share with you

Who is man But to know who man is to know what man's nature is

We first have to know who god is right And we're starting to see here through this passage passage that I just read and that was again in exodus chapter 33

Starting in verse 17 and going through the end of that chapter right and what we see there is

Moses asked god he says god Show me your glory You know, there's even songs written about that, you know, god show me your glory, right?

God says okay. I'll do this thing that you asked. All right, but And he goes through that that whole statement, you know, no man can see me face to face but Let's stop and think about what god's really saying here.

He's saying moses I don't think you quite understand what you're asking for Um, you want to see my glory you want to see my full glory

I'm gonna do this thing, but i'm not going to show you my full glory. I'm going to show you some of it

I'll carve out this spot in this rock. I'll pick you up and i'll put you in that spot

And then i'm going to pass by And you'll see And I think some translations if i'm not mistaken,

I think it even says hindquarters or maybe that's You know digging into the hebrew, but anyhow that that's literally what what we got here, right?

And moses can see the back of god, right? Not the full glory.

Why couldn't he see the full glory? Why would he die? Is that a punishment thing?

Is god just so awesome? He's like bruh. I show you me i'm gonna have to kill you

No, no and before I explain why or give you another example why

I'm gonna turn One more chapter turn to the next chapter All right.

Here we go All right, so we're Exodus 34 beginning in verse 33 All right

When moses had finished speaking with them He put a veil on his face

But whenever moses went in before the lord capital l capital capital capital d

To speak with him. He would take the veil off until he came out And he would come out and speak to the children of israel

Whatever he had been commanded and whenever whenever the children of israel saw the face of moses that the skin of moses's face shone

Why do I struggle with that word? It was shining Then moses would put the veil on his face again until he went in to speak

Guess think about this for just a second Moses was shown just a small amount of the glory of god

Of the beauty of god of the holiness of god And just that little bit

Moses's face was shining so bright so bright. He had to put a veil over his face

When he was around those children of israel Turn with me now to isaiah the book of isaiah

All right and this Is going to be chapter six.

Now, who is isaiah? Who was isaiah? Isaiah is probably

I guess arguably the most well -known prophet in the old testament

Reason why I say that is because isaiah well, first of all, it's a very long book Um, that's why it's designated why isaiah is designated as a major prophet

A lot of the other prophets that actually we're going to read another one here in a little while. Uh, zechariah

Excuse me. He's known as a minor prophet It's not has nothing to do with stature or importance has everything to do with the length of the book right so uh, yeah, it's a long book, but what isaiah was prophesying about was the coming messiah and My goodness so much of what we read in isaiah

It is uncanny How accurate these prophecies of christ ended up being but let's look here chapter six

All right, we're going to start in verse one And it says this in the year that king uziah died

I this is isaiah speaking. I saw the lord Now this is capital l little o little r little d

I saw the lord seated on a high and lofty throne and the hem of his robe filled the temple

Verse two seraphim were standing above him. They each had six wings

With two they covered their faces with two. They covered their feet and with two they flew

And one called to another holy holy holy is the lord of armies his glory fills the whole earth

All right. All right. Let's pause there for a moment before we go any farther We look back here in verse two

And it says it tells us about the seraphim, right? And it gives us a little bit of a biology lesson about them, right?

We've got six wings All right. Well, obviously, you know what you may be asking why six wings?

That's weird. Well, two of them are to fly All right. Okay And then we have two of them covering their feet and i'm not going to get into all that just yet But or at all tonight,

I want to focus on the two That are covering their face now Why were they covering their face?

Why? We go back to verse one And it says in the year the king was i died

I saw the lord seated on a high and lofty throne and the hem of his robe filled the temple

Seraphim were standing above him So here are these these angelic creatures these angelic beings right and they are in the presence of god

And now we may think because of of certain traditions of certain denominations or because of hollywood or because of whatever

We may think that well. Hey, these are angelic creatures. They're hanging out with god like They could just be

Chilling like I am right now What is up god? They had to cover their faces why

Why why did they have to cover their faces? Well, let's look back again into exodus and in chapter 34

Right when moses came down he had to put the veil over his face right because his face was shining, right?

So the seraphim who are in god's presence all the time They know this they

They're already aware Of the greatness of god, they're already aware of the glory of god.

They're already aware of the holiness of god Right. How do we know that because of what they say here in just a second, right?

They had to cover their face Okay, they had to right now.

We look in verse three And one called to another holy holy holy

Is the lord of armies his glory fills the whole earth now I'm borrowing again a little bit from dr.

Sproul here, but that was just More so it was a refresher. I was like, oh, yeah,

I forgot about that This is something that's it's not

Not something that's exclusive to rc sprawl this is something that you can study and find through many different resources, but You know the jewish people the israelites they had a lot of devices when they were writing things right um, you know, they could like us, you know still today if we want to Put emphasis or importance on something that we're writing we can we can use bold type we can use italics we can

Use brackets, right? We can use exclamation points. We can underline words.

We can circle them We can highlight them. There's all different things we can do. Okay But one of the devices the jews used was repetition okay and Whenever we see this in scripture

And we know we need to pause and go hold on That's important Something important is going on here.

Something important is being said here, right? You know jesus says at one point in the gospels jesus said

That many will come to me and say lord lord right now

We continue in that and you know, jesus is saying these people are basically coming up to him going. Hey, man

I did or i'm sorry. Hey lord lord I did all of these different things and I was this great person

And you know basically was up let me in i'm ready to party and jesus goes

Depart from me You worker of iniquity. I never knew you It's a little harsh jesus but That's a difference between someone who's a professing christian and someone who's truly a christian, right?

Doesn't matter what you did, but that's yet another lesson But we know that there's emphasis being placed there, right?

lord lord right Jesus even he's he used that uh at other times too uh when he calls um when he called um,

Oh gosh paul, but of course his name was saul then Right when saul was persecuting christians before He became a christian

And he was persecuting the early church. He hears this voice. It says saul Saul Why are you persecuting?

Okay, so we know that there's emphasis Um and that that emphasis is there for a reason that it's very important and look at these three words that the seraphim use holy holy holy three times

Is the lord of armies? His glory fills the whole earth

These seraphim these creatures They knew they know right they know

That god is holy Right, and they know That they are in the presence of the holy one

And they don't take that lightly right Because We're about to see it, okay verse four the foundations of the doorway shook and the sound of their at the sound of their voices and the temple was filled with smoke

Then I said now this is isaiah speaking then I said Woe is me for I am ruined

Because I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips

And because my eyes have seen the king the lord of armies pause

Consider this God didn't and i'm actually a little upset here at god.

It's sarcasm. God didn't use evangelism explosion

If you're a non -believer and have no Experience or familiarity with with Christian ministries and witnessing bear with me, please

I'm speaking to those who do know this God didn't use the evangelism explosion method.

He didn't use the way of the master method, right? He didn't take them down the roman's road

He didn't even do what he did with job right Job the man who had so much taken away from him right and just lashed out out of anguish right heart -wrenching anguish

So upset And he's just letting all this emotion out all this anger all this confusion out all these different things

And when god responds to him Man One of the first things god says is

Gird your loins like a man Right And he begins to ask him a series of questions

Were you there when I created that were you there when I did this were you that who are you you punk?

You know, but isaiah didn't get that Isaiah didn't need that right

Isaiah simply Is in the presence of god It's in the presence of god

And i'm looking here because i'm trying to make sure before I say this um to make sure

I didn't forget something or look past something, but no Within this context within these verses that we're reading

God didn't say anything Isaiah simply Was in god's presence and immediately

Immediately he said woe is me

Phrase that we just I don't even know that people use it that much anymore and the ones that do

I think it's just kind of become something you say and you don't think about it But you want to know what that means?

Read the rest of that that sentence woe is me for I am ruined

Other translations say I am undone Woe is me.

I am undone I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips and Because my eyes have seen the king the lord of armies

Do you want to know how to know Who god is and who you are

It's simple Enter into god's presence and you'll immediately know both

Right, just like isaiah did Right. Isaiah didn't stop and go

Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. This is all smoke and mirrors. Where's the hidden camera?

You know, come on y 'all. This is all just some big gag Isaiah didn't have an apologetic discourse with someone

All right. He didn't have to be convinced intellectually. Why? Because in the presence of god he was ripped to his center to his innermost being

And No sooner no sooner than he could take that in He immediately was aware of who he was

Better yet. He immediately was aware of what he's not right

When man encounters god He sees god for the greatness for the glory for the holiness for all of these amazing things

Right that answer the question of who god is right when man

Encounters god he sees that immediately but at the same time mirrored in that He sees everything that he's not right

He sees all of his frailties all of his weaknesses all of his sin What is sin

I said we weren't going to do a what is we're going to do a who is but This is important.