The Perfections Of God - His Omniscience

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Well, I pray that you are all in good health and prospering this morning in every way, just as your souls are prospering.
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I regard this opportunity, I want you to know it, I regard this opportunity to deliver this series of sermons on the attributes of God as a high honor and privilege, and you may be assured that I am praying that the series, though small, though short, will contribute both to the advancement of your knowledge of God and to the improvement of your soul's spiritual health.
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To that end, let us pray together now, all wise and all knowing
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God, we acknowledge before you this morning that to satisfy our spiritual thirst, we have in our wisdom, thinking we know better than you, we have all too often hewn out for ourselves broken cisterns that can hold no water, and we have all too often in our wisdom, again thinking we know better than you, turned away from you who alone are the fountain of living water, and we pray for your pardon for this our folly.
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We bow before you in our acknowledged ignorance of your sovereign ways and works and cry to you for illumination.
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Grant again, we pray, as you have so often done before, that your
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Holy Spirit may hover over the acknowledged confusion of our hearts, as he did over the primeval
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Genesis chaos, and out of our spiritual darkness bring forth light, and out of our life's disorders bring forth order and peace and beauty.
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And we pray that what your word will give us this morning will have a lasting positive effect upon our lives.
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In all this I ask, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.
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The little Westminster Shorter Catechism, question four, asks the question, what is
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God? And our children learn that God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.
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This morning, for our second address or sermon, I'd like to talk to you or preach to you about God's infinite, eternal, and unchangeable wisdom.
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This morning we want to consider God's wisdom and knowledge. The Church of Jesus Christ has always believed and confessed that the one living and true
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God is all -knowing and infinitely wise. Not only is he in every place, but he of course knows all things as well.
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The scriptures are replete with this teaching, the following passages being just a sampling of the scripture's fullness on this topic, and again,
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I'll not bore you with telling you where every verse is, I'll just read the scripture verses, and if you need or would like to have the references later, you can come and get them, as this young man over here just did.
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He said, I want to know those verses that you gave me. So you'll be coming up after this and you'll want these verses, references too, won't you?
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Okay. But listen to the word of God. You are a
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God who sees. The Lord is a God who knows, and by him deeds are weighed.
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Man looks at the outward appearance, the Lord looks at the heart. He knows the way
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I take. Do you know those wonders of him who is perfect in knowledge?
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From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind. From his dwelling place he watches all those who live on earth.
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He considers everything they do. Not a thing do you do escapes him.
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That's awesome. That's awesome. That's scary. You have placed our iniquities before you.
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Our secret sins, oh my, our secret sins.
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You have placed them in the light of your presence. How many are your works, oh
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Lord, in wisdom have you made them all? Oh Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
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You know when I sit and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down.
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You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, oh
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Lord. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret places.
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When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.
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All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Great is our
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God. His understanding is infinite. There is no measuring it. The eyes of the
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Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good. Who has the understanding of the spirit of the
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Lord? Who has instructed him as his counselor? Whom did the
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Lord consult to enlighten him? Or who taught him the right way?
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Who was it who taught him knowledge or showed him the way of understanding? Why do you say, oh
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Jacob, and complain, oh Israel, that my way is hidden from the Lord, my causes disregarded by my
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God? Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting
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God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary.
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And his understanding is unsearchable. And I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times what is still to come.
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The sons of Israel do not consider in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness. They are before my face.
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God gives wisdom to wise men and knowledge to men of understanding. It is he who reveals the profound and hidden things.
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He knows what is in the darkness. Jesus, in his divine nature as the second person of the
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Godhead, we're told knew all men and knew what was in man.
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In learning this, Peter later declared, Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you.
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Paul, overcome by the marvel of the intricate inner workings of God's plan to save Jews and Gentiles, exclaimed, oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out who has known the mind of the
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Lord, who has been his counselor. Paul declares that the
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Christian God is the only wise God. That means that Allah, not only is he nonexistent, he's dumb.
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Our God is the only wise God. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight.
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Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.
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And John sums it all up in 1 John 3, 20, when he says, God knows everything.
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Clearly, our God, to use this Latinism, our
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God is omniscient. God's knowledge, intuited in the sense that he never had to learn anything through the learning process, encompasses all possible and actual knowable data.
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He knows to perfection and without qualification all things, all things visible and invisible in heaven and on earth, all spirits, thrones, and dominions in heaven, earth, and in hell, all matters past, present, and future, all the thoughts of every mind, all the words of every tongue, and all the activities of every creature living and dead, all their purposes, all their plans, all their relationships, all their complicities, and all their conspiracies, all physical and spiritual causes, all natural and supernatural forces, and all real and contingent motions, all mysteries, and all unuttered secrets, all true propositions as true, he knows all false propositions as false, all valid syllogisms as valid, and all invalid syllogisms he knows as invalid, and always has known them, and always will know them.
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And his knowledge is related to his wisdom so that God judiciously employs his knowledge to accomplish perfectly his holy and just end.
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This is just to say again that God knows everything and that he employs what he knows wisely with the wisdom that is first of all pure, then peace -loving, considerate, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial, and sincere.
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But while the church of Jesus Christ has always believed and confessed that the one living and God is all -knowing and infinitely wise, it is the
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Calvinistic or Reformed church alone that includes within its exposition of God's wisdom and knowledge a serious study of God's eternal purpose.
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Reformed theology, which it is our happy lot to have inherited, stresses that God's eternal purpose reflects his infinite, eternal, and unchangeable wisdom that divides perfect ends and achieves those ends by perfect means.
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God in his infinite wisdom had wise reasons for determining all of the ends and all of the means to those ends that he did for his creation, even though these ends and means for the most part, if not totally, are inscrutable and hidden to most, if not to all, of his rational creatures.
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Let me take you into this matter of God's infinitely wise, eternal purpose a bit further.
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Let's think about that eternal purpose of God. The fact that God's infinitely wise purpose is also eternal and immutable means that there was never a moment when
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God deliberated whether he would create the world or not, for his purpose is eternal and immutable.
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A God who might have determined not to create this universe is simply not the God of the
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Bible. This fact also means that there was never a second moment when
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God deliberated whether he would save some people whom the Bible calls his elect or not, for again, his purpose is eternal and immutable.
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A God who might have determined not to save anyone is not the God of the
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Bible either. This fact also means that there was never a third moment when he deliberated whether he would save them through Christ's work or through some other means, for yet again, his purpose is eternal and immutable.
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A God who might have determined to save his elect by some means other than through his own beloved son's cross work is not the
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God of the Bible either. All of these features of his purpose were eternally and immutably determined.
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And to suppose that God's eternal immutable purpose could have been other than it is, is to suppose that God could be other than he is.
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But this is impossible since he is eternally immutable not only in his being, but also in his purpose.
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Therefore, God had to create the world because he had eternally purpose to do so.
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He had to save the elect because he had eternally purpose to do so. And he had to save his elect through Christ because he had eternally purpose to do so.
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To suppose otherwise is to suppose that God's eternal purpose had at some moment a degree of immutability about it that is foreign to the eternal and immutable being and purpose of God.
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So much for the debate then as to whether Christ's cross work was only hypothetically or absolutely necessary.
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Christ's cross work was absolutely necessary for the salvation of God's elect, for God's eternal immutable purpose, among other reasons that could be advanced, rendered it so.
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Salvation is still the result of God's free and sovereign grace grounded in his sovereign good pleasure since no cause external to him forced him to purpose eternally as he did.
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Now, with regard to the execution of his eternal purpose, his perfect wisdom and knowledge were exhibited in his creative activity in Genesis 1 and 2.
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Upon the completion of his creative work, God declared that all that he had made was very good.
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The psalmist, very likely David, exclaims, How many are your works, O Lord, in wisdom?
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Have you made them all? God's wisdom and knowledge also lie behind all his ways as he providentially executed in the past, continually continues providentially to execute at the present, and will providentially execute in the future his eternal plan throughout present earth and later new earth history.
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And we see God's eternal wisdom, especially on salvific display in Christ's death at Calvary.
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For the crucified Christ, note, not just the Christ, but the crucified Christ, Paul tells us this crucified
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Christ who is at the center of all God's ways and works is the wisdom of God.
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First Corinthians 124, the one in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
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Pastors, listen, preaching devoid of the cross and never forget it. If you desire
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God's blessing on your ministry, preaching devoid of the cross is preaching devoid of the divine wisdom.
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Which means should you ever abandon the cross in your preaching, that your sermons, if they can be called sermons any longer at all, will become bromide moral platitudes at best by instilling self -righteousness in those who think they are morally good, or positively harmful dogmas at worst by fostering despair in those who know they are incapable of keeping
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God's commandments perfectly. The verses I cited earlier clearly teaches that the all wise
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God is also all knowing. At every moment he is cognizant of everything that ever was, now is or ever shall be.
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He necessarily knows his own created essence exhaustively, and he necessarily knows his created universe exhaustively, and he knows both intuitively, instantaneously, simultaneously, and everlastingly.
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His knowledge of himself and of all created things is absolutely comprehensive and eternally intuited.
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That is to say, he never had to learn anything through the learning process because he already knows everything there is to know.
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He never receives from some other source or from his own inventive genius an idea he never previously had.
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He cannot learn more than he knows already, for he already knows the limitless infinity of facts that can actually and possibly be known.
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He knows every detail of every being in the universe, in heaven and on earth, and in hell. Never are his wisdom and knowledge nonplussed.
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Never is he in a quandary about anything. Nothing escapes his notice.
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Nothing is hidden from him, which means, of course, I say again that you've never had a private conversation with anyone in your life, nor will you ever have one, so be careful what you think and say.
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God has never forgotten anything either. Never will he experience a momentary lapse of memory, know a senior moment, or suffer from Alzheimer's disease.
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I make this point simply to note that when God says in Jeremiah 31 -34 that he will not remember our sins, what he means is that he will not remember our sins against us, but he will never forget that we're redeemed sinners.
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All this is what we intend when we attribute omniscience to him, and he has always been, is now, and ever shall be everlastingly omniscient.
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A few early fathers questioned whether God bothers himself with such earthly trivia as the number of gnats that are born or die every second or the number of fleas that are on earth, but the holy scriptures affirm that God has just that kind of knowledge, and it does not bother him in the slightest.
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He not only determines the number of stars and calls them each by name, but he also knows when the sparrow falls and he determines the number of hairs on our heads as well as the number of fleas on earth at any given moment.
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To all this we can only say with the psalmist, such knowledge is too wonderful for me, it is too high,
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I cannot attain unto it. I preached last
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Sunday in another church obviously, I preached, there were a lot of pastor and I preached there, and I preached on the fact that God knows even when the sparrow falls, and I asked the congregation,
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I said, now how many of you have ever walked past a penny on the sidewalk and didn't bother to pick it up?
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Anybody here ever done that? You saw a penny, you walked past it, you didn't bother to pick it up.
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And I asked them, well why did you do that? And I know the answer, well because a penny isn't worth very much, it ain't worth the trouble.
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And then I have to, then I reminded them that our Lord told us that two sparrows sell for a penny.
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I said, now how much would one sparrow be? Half a penny? Two sparrows sell for a penny and not one of them falls without the knowledge and the will of your heavenly
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Father. That is a marvelous thing to contemplate. My colleague at Covenant Seminary, Dr.
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David Calhoun, professor of church history, told me that one day two sparrows flew into his garage and began to build a nest in a high cozy corner of the garage.
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And he said, I had to remember to open up my garage door every day to let those sparrows come and go.
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But he admitted that sometime he forgot to open the garage door and those two sparrows had to, they stayed in that garage all day long and couldn't get out.
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He said, I had trouble keeping up with two sparrows. And our
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God cares for every single sparrow that ain't worth very much.
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Every sparrow in this world he cares for. That's the kind of God that we have.
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He does know how many gnats there are on earth. Well, I think we've set forth enough theology.
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So once again, let's turn to application. I have three.
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Two are rather short. The third one will be the longest. The first application, you've already heard it.
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Awareness of God's omniscience. The fact that God knows everything of knowing that should encourage and comfort you, the believer.
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The scriptures inform us that no matter how bleak things appear to be in this world, our wise
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God is in control and that all his acts are carried out in perfect wisdom to accomplish his wise and holy ends.
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The scriptures inform us that in our times of weariness and weakness of discouragement and despair, the all knowing
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God knows about our trials and that he's working out for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
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And when we stumble and fall, he knows how we are formed and he remembers that we are dust and he is concerned and will act to address our problem.
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And again, awareness of his omniscience, not just his omnipresence, awareness of his omniscience should also restrain believers from sin.
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Adam could not hide from God and even though we tried, Aiken could not hide his theft of the band booty from Jericho.
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And David could not cover up his adultery by murder. And neither can we hide our sin.
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God says to us, as to all mankind, be sure your sin will find you out.
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So don't sin. Avoid places of temptation close to its evil ways, your ear gate and your eye gate.
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As you walk through this vanity fair world, awareness of God's omniscience should also fill believers with amazement and all the wisest mortal doesn't even know what the next minute will bring forth, but all futurity down to the minutest detail is open to God's omniscient gaze.
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Finally, awareness of God's omniscience should fill believers with worship and adoration and with praise.
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When they recall that God already knew their every lapse, their every sin, their every backsliding before the foundation of the world, yet in spite of them all, he said his great heart of love upon you and having loved you, he gave his son for you and he will love you to the end of the world and through the final judgment and throughout all the ages of eternity to follow.
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My second application is drawn from Paul's statement that God created all things. This is an
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Ephesians three. He says, God created all things in order that the many faceted or manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
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Here, Paul informs us of the ultimate reason insofar as the angelic order is concerned for God's creation of the world, namely that he might show to the angels, his many faceted wisdom.
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God never says anywhere else for the Greek word here is a hot plot is a hot box.
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That is a once spoken word. God never says anywhere else that by anything else, the angels see such a display of his many, many faceted wisdom.
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Now, did God put on display his many faceted wisdom when he spoke sons and moons and stars into existence?
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Well, not as far as we're informed. Did he manifested when he created this earth and in particular man, his image, not as far as the
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Bible tells us, did he display his many faceted wisdom by his general works of providence?
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Not as far as the scripture enlightens us. Then how does God display to the angelic world his many faceted or manifested or manifold wisdom?
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And here it is. Paul replies by the church of Jesus Christ.
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The grand object of the angels attention today is the church because God's manifold wisdom shines forth in it and by it alone with undiminished luster in its things, in the church's things, the angels long to look.
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They observe our decorum and our worship services. The church is very entryway.
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The gospel is a display of the wisdom of God for therein is the righteousness of God revealed to faith.
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And if by faith, and it is not by our works, but by the grace of God, the angel saw
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God's mighty power. When he spoke the entire universe into existence, they saw the display of his awesome justice when he cast
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Satan out of heaven. But it is only in God's so great salvation and the church he created by it that the angels see by virtue of his manifold wisdom, his grace, his love, his mercy, his pity, his kindness, his long suffering, his gentleness displayed to the sinful sons and daughters of Adam.
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The church of Jesus Christ truly amazes the angels, and it ought to amaze us as well.
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Does this give you some estimate of the importance and worth of the church?
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It should, for there are more sides, if you will, of the wisdom of God on display in the church,
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Paul says, than throughout the length and breadth of the entire creation. There are more aspects of the wisdom of God to behold in his saving of souls and fitly framing them together into the church of Jesus Christ and in all the splendors of the natural universe.
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When the angels behold the ruin that sin brought upon us, removed through the death and resurrection of our
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Savior, they stand in utter amazement at God's manifold wisdom.
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My third application has to do, and here's where I would like to ask you to get your
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Bibles out and follow this exposition. We will be in Matthew 11,
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Matthew 11, 25 through 27. My third application has to do with God's infinite knowledge vis -a -vis
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Christ's identity. Is Jesus Christ really God the
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Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity? If you have been carefully listening to this address,
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I can believe that more than once your spirit uttered, God's knowledge is too wonderful for me.
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It is too high. I cannot attain to it. For what mortal could or would even dare to claim equality with God in knowledge?
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Well, one mortal did, Jesus Christ.
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In Matthew 11, 25 through 27, Jesus said at the very moment that entire cities, indeed his generation, were rejecting him, he prayed,
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I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things about me from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children.
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Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. Now listen, no one knows the
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Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the
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Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
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Now let's expound that. By these assertions, assertions that Benjamin Warfield declared, excuse me, these assertions contain in some respects, he writes, the most remarkable utterances in the whole compass of the four
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Gospels. Gerhard as Voss judged these statements to be by far the most important seat of the testimony which
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Jesus bears to his Sonship. Follow my exposition of this passage and discover for yourself that Matthew 11, 25 through 27, confronts us with some very remarkable utterances of Jesus.
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I'm going to focus your attention on I'm calling three great parallels that Jesus draws between God as the
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Father and himself as the loved Son. The unique and intimate nature of the
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Father -Son relationship Jesus asserts here of himself, higher than which it is impossible to conceptualize unless it be uncertain of his utterances found in the fourth
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Gospel, such as I and the Father are one, comes to expression precisely in these parallels.
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Now what are the parallels? Notice, the first parallel that he draws is the exclusive mutual knowledge that God the
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Father and he the Son each has of the other. Jesus declares no one knows the
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Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the
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Son. The first thing I would note is Jesus' dual employment of the same
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Greek verb to describe the Father's knowledge of him and his knowledge of the Father, a verb with its attached preposition which means something on the order to know exactly, completely, through and through, implying in Jesus' case that the depth of the
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Father's being incomprehensibly finite, infinite, and as such inscrutable to the finite intelligence, his knowledge was competent to plumb.
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And the second thing I would note is Jesus' emphasis upon the exclusiveness of this mutual knowledge reflected by his twice -used phrase, no one knows except.
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Only a moment's reflection will show that the nature of this exclusive knowledge which Jesus claims to have lifts him above the sphere of the ordinary mortal and places him in a position not of equality merely, but of absolute reciprocity and interpenetration of knowledge with the
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Father. The second parallel which rests upon the first comes to focus in Jesus' assertion of the mutual necessity of God the
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Father and of him the Son each to reveal the other if men are ever to have an acquired saving knowledge of them.
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This parallel is highlighted by Jesus' declaration in 1125 that the
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Father had hidden from the wise, from the spiritual know -it -alls of this world, the mysteries of the kingdom that were centered in him, the
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Son, and had revealed them to babes, such as Peter you'll remember, to whom you will recall
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Jesus said flesh and blood has not revealed this to you Peter but my Father who is in heaven.
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And then his own statement in 1127 that no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the
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Son chooses to reveal him. I call your attention again to Jesus' dual employment of the same
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Greek verb to reveal to describe the activities of the two. The Father must reveal the
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Son, the Son must reveal the Father. The third parallel Jesus draws is that of the mutual absolute sovereignty
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God the Father and he the Son each exercises in dispensing his knowledge of the other.
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The Father's sovereignty in this regard is displayed in Jesus' words in 1126 even so Father for this was your good pleasure.
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And the Son's sovereignty is exhibited in his words in 1127 to whom the
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Son wills to reveal him. A higher expression of parity between the
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Father and the Son with respect to the possession of the divine attribute of sovereignty and the dispensing of saving knowledge is inconceivable.
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Jesus teaches here by implication that no sinful creature has a right to such a revelation.
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If the creature ever learns about the Son it is because the Father has sovereignly determined in his grace to reveal him.
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If the creature ever learns about the Father it is because the Son has sovereignly determined in his grace to reveal him.
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Warfield is surely justified when he summarizes this amazing utterance with these words quote in it our
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Lord in this passage our Lord asserts for himself a relation of practical equality with the
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Father as the Father only can know the Son so the
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Son only can know the Father and others may know the Father only as he is revealed by the
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Son. That is not merely as the Son the exclusive revealer of God but the mutual knowledge of Father and Son is put on what seems to be very much a par.
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The Son can be known only by the Father in all that he is as if his being were infinite and as such inscrutable to the finite intelligence and his knowledge alone again as if he were infinite in his attributes his knowledge alone is competent to come to compass the depth of the
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Father's infinite being. He who holds this relation to the Father cannot conceivably be simply a creature.
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Can you understand better now my beloved why Jesus then issues this invitation come unto me all you who weary who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.
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He alone is the revealer of the Father. He alone is the
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Father's exegete. Jesus invitation here provides a fourth and formal
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New Testament parallel to Yahweh's Old Testament invitation in Isaiah 45 22 in if you put those two those two passages together
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God states in Isaiah 45 22 turn to me all ye ends of the earth and I will save you.
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Here Jesus says come to me all ye who are weary and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.
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His invitation is universal and it's all -encompassing comprehensiveness.
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It includes everyone here. His invitation is unqualified in its promise to grant the blessing of rest to all who come to him and I will give you rest.
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It contains no qualifying clauses. Such an invitation would be nothing less than grossly audacious.
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Indeed it would be indicative of delusions of grandeur were it to come from the of any other person.
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No pastor however great his gifts abilities and fame has ever dared to issue such an invitation nor would it ever enter his mind to do so and were he to do so the entire world would scoff at him and would have the right to ask him how do you have the temerity to say such a thing and if he continued to issue such an invitation the world would have the right to judge him to be insane and yet millions and millions of Christians through the ages have testified that such an invitation is perfectly proper in the very model of sanity on the lips of Jesus for they have discovered that he can keep and has indeed kept this promise and they have found rest for their souls through him.
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So now I ask you have you have you anybody here tired and weary are you just plain worn out struggling on your own have you tired and weary one heeded his invitation and have you come
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I mean really come in trustful repose to Jesus Christ for rest have you come humbly not as his weak equal or as his teacher but as one who was at the end of himself in order to become his disciple have you taken his yoke upon you and begun to sit at his feet as his disciple and to learn about his father and are you learning from him daily about his father only as you do so will you find rest for your souls why do you delay you have no need to hold back or to fear this divine teacher for this teacher he tells us is gentle and humble in heart and his yoke is easy in the burden of discipleship and I thought about that his
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Jesus said his yoke is easy and my burden is light and I thought how can that be how can
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Jesus yoke be easy in the burden of discipleship light well the yoke he places upon you is infinitely lighter than the burden of sin that you presently bear without him so respond to his invitation come to him and find that rest that can be found nowhere else that rest that can be found only in him that rest that alone can deliver you from the guilt and power of sin and hell that rest that alone can save you for a life of fruitfulness and for heaven find that rest in him come to him
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I beg you tired and weary one come and trust his teaching to meet your every need let's pray our father and our god thou who art the only wise god to whom belongs all praise and glory we stand in awe of your creative wisdom when we have viewed the pictures of this universe that are being sent back to earth in our day from the hubble space telescope and surely there is reason for such all because the universe does display your eternal wisdom but this morning my father
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I'm overcome by the display of your manifold wisdom revealed to the angelic host in the gospel of Jesus Christ and his church can a sinful mortal stand with the angel bands and sing of your amazing grace
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I trust so for indeed I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the
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Nazarene and wonder how he could love me a sinner condemned unclean oh how marvelous oh how wonderful in my song shall ever be oh how marvelous oh how wonderful is my savior's love for me in Christ redeeming name our god we bring our praise and adoration as beneficiaries of your so great salvation to you as the pensioners of your grace and should someone here not yet know the sweetness of your salvation move him to close with you through Christ this very hour
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I pray in Jesus name yeah you have fortified what
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I tell my my preacher students I say you're going to be asked that a hundred times you better know how to answer it so how do
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I answer it yes when the when the bible tells us that Jesus increased in wisdom and in knowledge and in favor with God it's talking of course about God about Jesus Christ in his humanity as a human being
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Jesus Christ did not know everything he was finite in knowledge he's infinite he's infinite in his knowledge as God and he is finite in knowledge as a man and here is a mystery of the incarnation and he is both of these at the same time infinite in knowledge is
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God infinite or finite in knowledge as a man and as a man our lord increased in wisdom and in knowledge and in favor with God and with man as a man that's how
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I would explain that is there something further that I that you would like me to say or that I anybody well maybe
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I should ask anybody have a question further while we're here yes did you understand that question see see orthodox orthodox
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Christology tells us that Jesus Christ is well let me give you the catechism answer
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I'll give you the Westminster catechism answer to that that we ask our children where we teach our children through question 21 of the shorter catechism who is the redeemer of God's elect that's the question who's the redeemer of God's elect here's the answer the only redeemer of God's elect is the
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Lord Jesus Christ who being the eternal son of God became man and so was and continues to be
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God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever period so that's orthodox
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Christology that Christ is one person with two natures that he has as God a full complex of divine attributes and that as man he has a full complex of human attributes and he has both at the same time and so we have to say this means that that Jesus Christ this one person both knows all things as God and doesn't know all things as man and by the way has that changed has that changed think about it when our
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Lord rose from the dead I've had people say well now surely surely now as a man he knows all things no the resurrection of Jesus Christ does not grant the power it doesn't it doesn't infuse infinity of knowledge into a human being and so the resurrection of Jesus Christ glorified the man
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Jesus but it did not apotheosize him it did not divinize him so he is still today in heaven he is as man finite as God he is infinite now that's all set forth to get that now your question comes how can that be right how can the same person be both infinite in wisdom and know all things and finite in knowledge and understanding and not know all things and how can he be all of this at the same time
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I put that as about as boldly and about as baldly as I can is that your question or am
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I putting words in your mouth I was afraid so I was hoping he would say no
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I understand that no my question is this that is a question my beloved brother that has been a quandary for Christian theologians through the centuries and there have been suggestions made let me give you a suggestion
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I'm not telling you that I think that I'm not saying that this is the way it is but I'll give you a suggestion you and I even as human beings you and I have what we call a subconscious awareness of things we have a conscious awareness we're all consciously aware or should be unless you're asleep you're all consciously aware that you're in this room now listening to me but there is a great amount of subconscious knowledge also which you have that is you sit there you don't you're not thinking about it but it's there and you've all had that experience of suddenly you don't know what triggered it but suddenly you remember the name of your third grade grammar teacher you think where did that come from so we we recognize that even in us there is a conscious level of understanding and knowledge and then there is a subconscious level of understanding and knowledge it's probably a fuller than our conscious level of understanding and so some have suggested to use that as an analogy that it that at a at one level a level of consciousness
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Jesus of Nazareth as he's going about doing his ministry at his level of consciousness he is thinking as a man he's speaking as a man generally but he has at another level of consciousness as God a full complex of divine attributes and thus he knows all things and occasionally he calls upon that he can call upon that level of consciousness you know if it was in if it's in God's ordained preordained plan that he do so he can call upon that knowledge to be a benefit for some purpose now that's one possibility that there were levels of consciousness in the in the person of Jesus I think that might help you to understand how a person could be both infinite in knowledge and finite in knowledge and both at the same time
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I have just written an article and it's a it just appeared in an intervarsity intervarsity press has just published a book entitled always reforming always reforming and they asked me to write the article on of all things
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Christology how what what are the problems that yet remain of in the area of Christology that you would recommend that reform thinkers give more thought to and come up with some decent answers to and would you believe that that was one of the one of the problems that I say reformed theologians still should be thinking about and wrestling with how the one son of God one person and he is one person he's not he's not two persons he's not a dual personality he didn't go around saying verily verily we say unto you he's one person but how can that one person be both infinite and know all things at one level of understanding and not know everything at another level and I've said
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I challenged the Reformed Church to give for its theologians to give further thought this was one of about a dozen that's just one you've just mentioned one but there are
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I mentioned about a dozen problems that still still are out there that we should give further thought to thank you for their question does that help you at all here's one thing
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I should say to let's suppose that we cannot come up with an answer that will satisfy the everybody in the church how this one person can be both at the same time let's suppose we can't come up with an answer what do we do are we then to shed one of these two great teachings that he is
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God or that he is man are we to shed one of these in the light of the other and I say no
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I would urge I would plead I would insist that whatever the church do even if it cannot come up with an answer to satisfy itself that the one thing that it must not do is to shed one of the two sets of answers so to speak about who
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Jesus is he's God he's man we must not shed one of the two in the favor of the other we must continue to affirm both even if it means we have to conclude and say there is mystery to us in the incarnation in fact great is the mystery of godliness
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God manifest in the flesh those are the words of Jesus of Paul himself there is mystery we should not be afraid to affirm that there is mystery that's there are things about the faith that we will never be able with our understanding in the light of the data that we've been given that we'll never be able probably to understand in this world but we must not therefore if we can't understand it reject his deity or reject his humanity in favor of the other we must continue to affirm both and because that's what the
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Bible teaches that was how the early fathers wrestled with the problem in that great
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Council of Chalcedon in the year 451 they didn't so much tell us how the natures are to be related they by their four great negative adverbs they adverbs they tell us how the natures are not to be related they're not to be understood this way they're not to be understood this way they're not to be understood this way they said four different times so they're faced with they're confronted with what
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I think they realize is some mystery here but the way to resolve your problem is to resolve it by trusting that while we cannot always understand or trace out
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God's ways we can always trust his wisdom and leave it with him okay anything else