Colossians 1:15 - Who Is The Father?

That gave me so much time this morning, I was able to add to the sermon a little bit. That was great. That was great.

That was funny, because last time he just didn't do the hymn, and I'm sitting down there trying to figure out which page is where I left off last time, because I forgot to mark it.

And he looked down there and said, whoops. It was funny. Good to see all of you guys.

Yeah, we've had some flood trouble ourselves. The water got so high, it got above the brick line on our foundation and came into a couple of rooms.

One of them had to be a room we had just put brand new carpet in not too long ago, and didn't get all of it.

It just got about a foot of it along the, you know, where the edge of the slab was that made us sick.

I don't think it's stained, though. Lord put us out there. But anyway, so I've been out digging ditches, and I told mom, you know, last time

I dug a ditch, I think I was working for my grandfather before college, and it made me really sore in good places, like around my love handles, like tight and feeling pretty good.

And I thought, well, if I kept doing this every day, I'd end up looking like Nacho, this guy that comes and works for us, like he's buffed, because he just does that all the time.

He's the greatest guy, by the way. But anyway, so my goal is to look like Nacho within six months, but we just had one thing after another go wrong out there, and it's so funny, because you'll get a kick out of this,

Katie. Jenny was at our, my oldest daughter, Jenny, lives and walks Hatchie, but she was at our home, and she,

I've been sending photos and stuff of all this bad stuff happening, and she comes, she was in my hand, she came over, she said,

Dad, you just need to make a list of all the good things. Like, for example, you were able to dig ditches, and mom said, well,

Jenny, actually, you know, I was, she's getting over foot surgery, and she was on the couch in there, not supposed to be on it much, and I stayed out there a little too long, you know, in the humidity, digging this ditch, and I didn't have any water, because I'm not used to digging ditches, so I don't know that you're supposed to have water, and so I barely made it up to the back door, which was locked, it's a glass, you know, a glass door, and there was a chair, and I sat there, and I started hitting on the door, help, come get me, and finally

I see her get up, and she's walking, and she goes to the wrong door, it's across the kitchen, the other door, what you need, and I said, water, fast, and she, so she's telling

Jenny, I'm supposed to be thankful, you know, that I'm fit to do this, and she's telling Jenny this story, and Jenny just busts out laughing, because I can't put that on the positive list,

Jenny, he almost, his face was red, he, I thought he was going to die, and Jenny, well, you could add, and she named about four things, and I said, yeah, but that broke, and, you know, stuff around the house, it was not working right, yeah, oh, she said, well, think about it, we can hear, we can see, we can smell,

I said, well, actually, since COVID, I can't smell anything, everything she listed, it was so funny, and so, and so, you know, finally,

I thought about a few things, like I can put grandbabies down there, that's a good thing, you know, no matter what, and so, so everything starts looking up, and we get a lot of ditches dug, and we think it's in good place, hmm, what, or what, oh, so, yeah, it flooded like a foot and a half of water under the old part of our house, the

Purin Bean, a foot and a half of water, so we had to rent a pump, luckily,

I already knew how to do it, but you got, it's, pump is heavy, and you have to lower it down, it's like if I'm here,

I have to lower it down to there, put it under, in the water, and pump water out, took three hours, no, it took about four hours to pump that water out from under the house, so there's other set of muscles to lean over and pull that thing up, so, so anyway, forgot about that, so all of this stuff was happening, and we thought, okay, well, when the water was still under there,

Dave Huber, your son, was over at my house, and I said, Dave, look at this, and he looked at it, because there's a hole in the floor where you can take this thing out and go under the house, so it was out, and he was looking at there, and I said, do you hear a weird noise, it sounded kind of like, like that, he said, yeah,

I hear that, I said, do you think that's like maybe an electrical wire that's down under that water that would fry somebody if they tried to go, you know, he said, no,

I think that's a water leak, so we discovered we had a pipe that also broke under the house, putting fresh water under there, which is cool, because that cost about a thousand bucks a month on your water bill, so all this, all this was happening, so I've got this wonderful friend named

Ray over in Mahea, and it's Mary's brother, and, you know,

I pumped all the water out, but you can imagine what it looks like under there, it's mud and stuff, well, he's willing to go in there and fix that thing, that leak, and he did, so, so we went without water for a whole day and night, so that was happening, no water, you know, it's bad enough when you can't drink, but you also cannot flush, there's a lot of things you can't do with no water, so you just get, like, oh, this stuff's happening, you know,

I'm supposed to be writing a list of the good things for Jenny, you know, and they keep piling up, and I'm the pastor,

I know the word of God and all the promises and all that stuff, but I cannot make a good list yet, so, so she, so finally

Ray comes over, he's just a delightful person, and he goes in there and he finds it and he fixes it, so now we've got water, and it's all done,

I said, Charlotte, we can, we got water, we got lights, we got A .C.,

we got all this stuff, why don't you go take a bath, because, you know, we didn't have water for a day, so she goes and takes a hot bath, and I'm sitting there still in my gritty digging clothes with all this stuff on there, and finally she gets down,

I said, okay, I'm going to go take my shower, we can actually, you know, feel good about things and lay on our couches and watch something, so I go in there and I turn the water on for my shower and it's cold, and I said,

I said, uh -oh, the hot water heater's not working, so this is good preaching, don't you think, see,

I could build a megachurch preaching like this, this is what people like, stories, okay, so anyway, so, so we had had this weird thing happen when the storm, where half of the stuff in our house, like that light would work and this bunch of, like the stove won't work and the icebox won't work, but the microwave works and, like, every other thing was not working, spooky, right, so we had

Encore come out and take a look, they said, ah, it's fine, nothing wrong with it, and probably just the wind and the water, whatever, so right when

I was ready to take my shower, half that stuff went off and one of the things that went off was the water heater, so I couldn't take my shower, so I came back in there and, and I, oh,

I'd already thrown all the muddy clothes and the dirty clothes for her to wash the next day, and so I had,

I dug them all back out, put them back on, because I'm angry at this point, and I'll tromp in there and make sure

Charlotte hears me tromping in there and there's no hot water, half the electricity's off and she said, oh, my soul, honey,

I said, I'm gonna call Ben and get, tell him to get ready to preach tomorrow, and, and I'm in the kitchen by then, she's still on the couch and I'm in there mumbling,

I'm gonna call Ben, I just can't make it, because I gotta call, you know, Encore, they're not gonna come tonight, they're gonna come during church, so I'm gonna have to be here, and this is, you know, she said, oh, don't do that, you need to preach, and I said,

I don't think I'm up to it, and I, she's always like, you got, you know, you can do this, she's always been that way, so literally,

I was dialing it and she was in there, no, no, no, you need to preach, and I stopped and paused a minute and didn't call

Ben, and would you believe, now, how many of you had experiences with Encore, like, like, you haven't had electricity in, like, seven days, and they're driving past your house, you know, so, can you believe that while I was mumbling, this dude shows up, you know,

I had put a call in to the robot, and you wonder if they even get it, robot, yes, we have no electricity, thank you very much, oh, would you like a french fries with that, you know, and stuff like that, and I'm thinking,

Charlotte, I'm not even sure I got through to him, and here he comes, and he was this naive, about y 'all's age, nice young man, he said, yeah,

I'm married, my wife and I live out at the lake, and we got flooded too, and let me take a look, and he had that thing fixed, so I'm here preaching today, anyway, so,

I'm still working on that list of good things, but I can add that young man to it, anyway, it's,

I'm sure, I was thinking about Bobby back there, you know, it's depressing when water gets in your house, that is not a good thing, and Jenny, of course,

Jenny's trying to get me positive, because their house used to flood, and then

Ben and Ashton rented their house for a while, lived in it, and it flooded when Ben was there, so Ben was telling me his stories, so I felt better that I wasn't the only person, well, we've made our way to Colossians chapter one, verse 15, because we took three or four

Sundays on verse 14, and we're done with it, so let's turn to Colossians chapter one, verse 15, we can always be thankful for things, even when things are piling up, and it's so funny, because I get,

I felt kind of stove up and tired, I think a couple of you were telling me you're feeling that way today, too, and we drove over, and it was a beautiful day, and Charlotte and I just talking, listening to some praise music on and off in the car, we get here, and you guys come in, and you're so bubbly, like,

Paul can't even get your attention to start, and he's looking at me, and I'm saying, I like their fellowship -y today,

I can't help it, and so I wouldn't have missed it for the world, but Charlotte knows

I was not in the mood last night, I said, here, Charlotte, you preach, so anyway,

God takes us through things to build patience, and I have such an enormous amount of patience, you can tell,

I've been through lots of tribulation, all right, let's look at this, this starts to getting into what the whole book of Colossians really is about, and it's about the deity of Jesus Christ, who he actually is, and it starts to get into it now, verse 14 was telling us some of the marvelous stuff that he's done for us, and now it starts to get into the person of Jesus Christ, so like, when, really, the way you grow as a

Christian is you study the works and the person of Jesus Christ, the stuff he did, and who he is, and who

God is, and so forth, so this starts to get into that, and it's marvelous,

I don't think any preacher thinks they could get up here and do it justice, it's just amazing,

I mean, I went out and read some stuff Spurgeon said about this, and I didn't get into Calvin yet on what he said about it, and I thought, you know, if I keep reading this,

I'm not gonna preach, because it's so good, and I can't do that, but it's just a marvelous passage, so let's read it, in Colossians 115, it says, who is the image of the invisible

God, the firstborn of every creature, now, any time you start a sentence off with the word who, you gotta figure out who it's talking about, exactly, so we know, because we're going verse by verse, but let's just go up to verse 12, and make sure we know who this is, because there are a lot of people in this world, even in churches, that will say, well, where does it ever show that Jesus said he was

God, you know, I've heard that so many times, where did Jesus ever even say he was God, why do you think that, he's just a man, he's a prophet, you know, even in Christian churches, people say that, well, that's what the

Mohammedans believed, that he was a prophet, you know, that he was a good man and a prophet, and that's not supposed to be all that Christians believe, so look at this, it says in verse 12, giving thanks unto the

Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, so if we want to talk about the

Godhead, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, who's verse 12 talking about, there's a hint, it says, giving thanks to the

Father, hey, how does this sound like me today, sorta, okay, because we got a brand new mixer, you can thank the

Lord for that, and we got rid of all the, it looks like we've gotten rid of all the FM, like a couple of these, something was picking up FM thing, we think we got rid of it, so praise the

Lord for that, it'll really help you guys out there, we're so sorry for the inconvenience we've had for several months, but we finally got a new mixer, we got some guys from Waco over here to help me get more of these mic cables that go from here back to the back, where we had three working, now we have eight, so we can have eight mics, and we have a ninth one that's a signal coming back up here, if we want to have feedback speakers for our rock group up here,

Matt hear that, yeah, we can have feedback speakers, even earbuds, we have the equipment in this thing back here, alright, so, anyway, we, you know, so,

I don't know if it sounds quite like, and I was going to try to fix it perfectly today, and I got looking at it, and I said,

I don't know how to work this, so, it's going to take a YouTube education this week, we'll figure it out, but,

Dave, you sounded pretty good, but we got to fix yours a little bit, because it was a little, too, too trebly and too bassy, it needs to be in the middle, we'll get it fixed this week, anyway guys, thanks for your patience on that, alright, now let's, so we know here that verse 12 is talking about the

Father, not the Son, not the Holy Spirit, but God the Father, giving thanks unto the

Father, which has made us fit, that's a good modern word for that old English word, he's made us fit to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, so, all saved people who are walking in the light, which is

Jesus Christ, we are fit to walk with them, even though sometimes we don't feel fit to, we are, because God makes us fit, we don't make ourselves fit, isn't that nice to know, now verse 13, who hath delivered us, who is that, it's still talking about the

Father, so, you know, if you, all of us had to take a thousand years of grammar in school, which is ridiculous by the way, but it does help us interpret the scriptures, because, you know, the antecedent, the closest antecedent is who it's talking about, so that's still talking about the

Father, the Father who has delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us in the kingdom of his dear

Son, now who are we talking about, Jesus, and that goes into verse 14, in whom we have redemption, so that's

Jesus, not the Father, right, so it changed the subject, in whom we have redemption through his blood, that's talking about Jesus, obviously, even the forgiveness of sins, who, now here's our verse for today, so who is that about, that's

Jesus, right, but here's what I want you to notice about it, it says who is the image of the invisible

God, so it's still talking about the Father too, now God is an interesting word in the

Old Testament and the New Testament, because if you're like me, we all sort of grow up,

I mean, if we're fortunate enough to have grown up some church, I mean, I didn't go much, but I had a godly grandmother and my parents didn't go at the time

I was growing up, later they got right with the Lord though, but I was in church enough, most of us were, but when you think of the word

God, I think you picture the Father in heaven, right, the

Father in heaven, well, for one thing, as you study scripture, you find out the Father is not in heaven, because heaven has time and space in it and the

Father is outside of that, his Shekinah glory is there, which is a resemblance of him, but it's not him, it's a resemblance of him, or part of, you could say it's part of his glory, he allows it to shine through over the mercy seat in the third heaven, so you start thinking about, when you say

God, you're thinking about that person, right, don't you think, but it's not always talking about that person, it could be talking about Jesus, because he is also

God, and it could be talking about the Holy Spirit, because he is God, so we know that, so going into this, we have to know which of the persons is it talking about, and always remember, when you're talking about the three persons of the

Godhead, it's not people like us, in the sense of, I don't know how to explain it,

I shouldn't have even got into that, Ben will be laughing at me back there, but like, it's not like persons like us, but what it means is, a person in the sense of the things that a person has, okay, what does a person has, he has the ability to think, he has emotions to feel, he has the ability to communicate, he has the ability to reason, all of those things is what a person is, so in that sense, the

Holy Spirit is a distinct person from Jesus and the Father, and the other two are distinct from him, excuse me there, sorry about your ears, but still, the essence of the

Father, the essence of the Holy Spirit, the essence of the Son is the same, it's

God, now I had, in my reading, I've read a lot since I got saved when

I was 24, I've read a lot of theology, especially after I got called to preach, which was how many years after 24, maybe five more years later or six, something like that, and I wish

I could remember who I read this under, because maybe I'll Google it and find it someday, I don't know, but he said this, and I thought, this is a really good model to think about, and sometimes when we're trying to learn about God, I remember when

Brother Bill was here, he was a physics professor, so he always, we would talk about physics, and he, we would talk about, and chemistry, and we talked about the fact that what we, he and I learned in high school about an atom, the model of an atom, by the time we got to college, the scientific world knew that was not how it worked, but was still teaching it, because they hadn't gotten the new model into the textbooks yet, even in college, they were still teaching the old model, and he said, but that model was good enough that we were able to put a man on the moon using it, you know, so like it was good enough to understand how

God made the physical world, that model was good enough, but it was just a model, it wasn't exactly how it really worked, you get the idea, so, so when you want to talk about the

Trinity, the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, the best you're going to get is a model, and it's a working model where you can love

God, and praise God, and deal with the fact that he is one God subsisting in three distinct persons, and persons doesn't mean what you think it means, it gets really hard, because when you think of a person, you know, you're not thinking of it right, and some of us have talked about this in private, we wish we could think of a better word than three distinct persons to use, we haven't found one yet, and historically for 2 ,000 years,

Christians have used the word person, so maybe we shouldn't change it, but it's a little difficult, but still it's a model, and, and we can make that work, all right, so this theologian

I was reading, I've tried to read about the Trinity in so many places, and you know, it's so funny, because they talk in big words, and, and you know, some of it, even somebody that studies theology,

I have to read it three times, even know what they're talking about, but inevitably they will go about two paragraphs, maybe two pages, depending on how articulate they are, and they'll get to a place where they'll say, well, here we must leave off speaking of this matter, because we cannot discern, you know, really how this works, and they all end that way, and it's frustrating, because you want them to tell you more, right, well, this one particular guy, though, said something that's helped me through the years, some of you've heard me say it, but if you could, if you could picture

God as particles, like, like as if he's digital, okay, so God is particles, and all these particles, an infinite number of particles make up God, and that's who he is, the theologian said this, if you just took one of those particles, no matter how small it is, and put it over here, it would be fully

God, now chew on that a minute, okay, so if God is an infinite number of tiny particles, and you put them all together, and that's

God, the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, it's all of God, and you took one particle and put it over there, in a different universe or something, it would be fully

God, and that is one of the best explanations of God I've ever heard, I can't explain it or understand it, but it's, it's given me a lot of food for thought, so certainly, if that's true, and we don't know that that's true, because that's just a philosophical thinking, right, we don't know if he was right, but it's a model, but if it is true, or anywhere close to true, then certainly, if you could take

Jesus out from the Godhead, and put him over here, like happened in the manger, then he is fully

God, you understand, he's a bigger particle, he's a bunch of particles, but all of Jesus is fully

God, and if you could take the Holy Spirit, which you can't, because he's the part of God that's omnipresent, he is truly everywhere at one time, and then again, that doesn't literally mean everywhere, it's like he's in every kind of place,

I don't like that, he's not in all places, he's in every kind of place, all kinds of places, because for example, he's not in the heart of an unbeliever, is he, you know, so anyway, but you take the

Holy Spirit, if you could just take one particle of him, he would be fully God, and certainly that's true of the

Father, now the Father may be the most mysterious of all, because we deal directly with the

Holy Spirit while we're in time, in space, while we're on this planet, living our physical lives and spiritual lives, we deal with the

Holy Spirit probably more than any of the persons of the Godhead, but when we're talking to God, I think when we're young in Christianity, we think we're just talking to the

Father, we picture God as all it is, as the Father, but the more we read the Scripture, especially the New Testament, all of a sudden, when we pray and talk to God, we're talking to Jesus a lot, how many of you experience that?

Okay, so how many of you, when you pray, you talk, and this doesn't matter, because you're not wrong, anyway you do it, okay, but how many of you, when you pray, most of the time, you sense that you're talking to God, okay, all right, now how many of you, like most of the time, you feel that way, but sometimes you feel like you're talking to Jesus, raise your hand, probably the same people, right, and how many of you sometimes think you're praying to the

Holy Spirit, raise your hand, not as many, because we're Baptist, but that's interesting, now

I think Charlotte is either my mom or you, but I think it's you that told me there was a season in your life, maybe a year or two ago, or tell me if I'm wrong, it may have been my mom, but I'm pretty sure it was you, my mom is more

Baptist than you are, but she, I think you said you were talking more to the Holy Spirit and recognizing

His role in your life more, right, and so that's appropriate also, because any particle of God is all of God, if you want to think of it that way, so it doesn't really matter, don't get caught up, don't think there's one right way to pray, like you're praying to God when you pray, so it doesn't matter, it's what you're comfortable with, and it's what you feel led to talk about, because true prayer originates in heaven, not with you, you may not realize that, but it originates in heaven, the

Holy Spirit brings God's mind to you and to your mind and your heart and helps show you how you ought to praise you all, we know that, so now we see we have this beautiful passage of scripture that's talking about the

Godhead and it wants to change from the Father and now to the Son, and we get to this place where we sort of need help to understand everything it's going to say about the

Son, and the interesting thing to me is that verse 15, even though it's the beginning of talking about the

Son, it starts talking about the Father, in fact, if you go up to verse 12 and verse 13, it's talking about the

Father, 12 and 13, it's the Father, you skip down to 15, you think, okay, now it's

Jesus, but it says, who is the image of the invisible God, who's that, that's the Father, and so he's the firstborn of every creature, so this magnificent study of who

Jesus is begins with the Father, not with Jesus, so that's where I'm going to begin with this section of teaching, so let's look at this, so here, this whole message, which is, as you know with me, it's not one

Sunday, it's the message is when I go until you can't take it anymore and we stop and then we pick it up the next time, we keep going until we're done, but this next one's going to have two points, and you think, well, he can cover that today, no, because it got like 15 sub points or whatever, so the first Roman numeral is who is the

Father, and the second Roman numeral is who is Jesus Christ, that's what we're talking about, and we're doing it to understand who is

Jesus Christ, the only reason we have who is the Father right now, because the context is to understand who

Jesus Christ is, but to understand that, we have to start with the Father, so that's what we'll do, so we pick up the context here in a little bit, we already sort of did that, we went up to verse, you know, 10, 11, 12, and it's talking about the

Father, but who is the Father, well, we know some things about the

Father, even before we look at the context, and Colossians here to see what it says about the

Father, you're going to be surprised what it says about him, because you think it's talking about Jesus right here mostly, and it is mostly, but you'll be surprised, but let's talk about some of the things we already know about the

Father, and then we'll get into the context here and pick that up, but the first thing, you know,

I think I'll keep these today, I've been digging so many ditches and sweating into my eyes that my eyes are messed up, so like sweat mixed with dirt, it's tough, but I'm going to look like nacho soon, all right, so let's talk about it, who is the

Father, when we first meet the Father in the Bible, in Genesis, it's

Elohim, right, Elohim, now what's interesting about the names of God in the

Bible is that they teach us specific things about the character of God, and when I say the character of God, I mean who is

God, who is God, some of it will say what does he do, if we talk about his character, it'll tell us who he is and what he does, so now we're talking about the person and the works of God, and when we really get into Christianity, we want to talk about the person and the works of Jesus Christ, and you can talk about the person and the works of the

Holy Spirit, the more you want to learn about God, that's how you study God, so when we look at the

Father, as we see his names in Scripture, we learn enormous amounts about who he is and what he does, and who he's not, things like that, so Elohim is an interesting name, it's very fascinating in Hebrew, from what

I understand in the early chapters of Genesis, that it's called a uniplural word, now we don't have that in English, and you're not supposed to have it in Hebrew, if the grammar is proper, it matches, he came up and helped

Ben, I understand, while I was gone, he's going to help Papa, one of these days, he'll be up here helping

Papa, I'm sure, but a uniplural word, really not supposed to happen in Hebrew either, because if it's plural, then the whole sentence should have all the plurals matching, like in English, you can think of English examples, what's it,

I'm trying to think of a funny one, think of one Ben, where you'd say we, we, and then you're not speaking correctly, see

I can't speak incorrectly, but Ben can, so like we, we gonna go do something, but you get the, you get it where it's not matching, that's funny,

I can't think of an example, who can, come on, who's got bad grammar, come on, we all do, we all have bad, we has, we has bad grammar,

I don't know how to do it, but you, you get the idea, so what's interesting is to see how the

Hebrew scholars, I'm talking about Jewish scholars deal with the early chapters of Genesis, because they know the grammar is not right, but they know, but they will, they believe as strongly as we do that God wrote it, because here's what happened, he says, let us create man in our image into a

Jew, there's not, they, there's no Jesus and Holy Spirit to a Jew, it's just God, okay, same as Islam, every, just about every false religion is like that, it's just very simplistic, it's one

God, so that you can understand God, that's the whole idea, so that humanism and humans, you know, with their humanism can understand

God, so you keep it really simple, now how many of you think if God really exists, and he really writes about himself, that that book would be extremely simple to understand when it talks about himself, see, so that's one way

I know that the Trinity is right, because it doesn't make any sense, if there's just one

God and there is no Jesus, no Holy Spirit, that's enough where I could have written that book, you could have written that book,

Sam could have written that book, Abby could have written that book, but none of us could write this book, now you take a look at that plural, that uniplural word

Elohim, where it's used, it's used in the singular, but it's plural, it's let us make

God in our image, and that's the first name of God that we learn in the Bible, and El, the first part of Elohim, El means strength or strong one, and the second part

Elohim, it sounds almost like Allah, I don't even want to say it that way, because that's the

Arabic God, which is a false God, but it sounds like that, I'm not pronouncing it right, but it's El plus Allah, and the second part of that, the

Allah part is to swear on something, to swear that it's true, so it implies this idea of faithfulness, so Elohim is the strong one who is faithful, now let that sink in, he is the strong one, all -powerful one, who is faithful and never lies, that's what that teaches us of God, and it also, if you look into it enough, teaches that he exists as three distinct persons, now it may not teach three, but it does indicate that he is plural, isn't that interesting, and you,

I've asked Jewish people about that, and they don't want to talk about it, I've asked Islamic people about it, and they don't want to talk about it,

I've asked Mormons, one of the high leaders in the Mormon church, one of the, whatever they call them, elders in the

Mormon church, that I did business with once, and I asked him about that, he said, he patted, he's an older dude, and he patted me on the leg, said let's just talk about the stuff we agree on, so we talked about a couple of things, and it was over, because there weren't many, but actually there were a lot of things we agreed on, but not this, so he is the strong one, the all -powerful one, who is faithful, all right, now the next thing we know

God as is Jehovah, right, I mean, everyone knows that, and really the truth is, you don't pronounce it like Jehovah, that's an

English rendering, the Jews don't know how to pronounce it, because it's such a holy name, they won't pronounce it, so they have

Hebrew letters for it, but they don't say it, no one ever says it, they don't know how to pronounce the letters, they don't have any vowels in there anyway, it's just, no one knows, some

Christian, you know, scholars that teach at seminary say, well, it's actually, and I learned this at Baylor, I thought

I was learning so much, I wasn't saved yet, by the way, at Baylor, but they said, actually it's not

Jehovah, it's Yahweh, have you heard that, you hear songs about Yahweh, okay, it's not

Yahweh either, no one knows how to say it, it's that holy of a name, but Jehovah means this, the first part of it,

Jah means the self -existent one, now that blows my mind,

I was talking to the Lord this morning, early this morning, you know, before getting in the car to come over, and I have this talk with him a lot, and I told the

Lord, I said, my vocabulary is inadequate, so forgive me if I try at this a couple of three times this morning, but I want to thank you that you exist, and I thought, that sounds too meager, so I tried again,

I said, well, what I really mean is, Lord, I want to, I want to let you know that I am thankful that you figure out a way to exist, and I thought, that doesn't even sound, that sounds heretical,

Lord, I'm sorry, so let me think about that again, I'm just thankful that you are, and then

I thought, well, that's selfish, because what I'm really saying is, if you weren't, I wouldn't exist, which is really what

I'm saying, and that's why I'm thankful, and he knows it, but if you really,

I've taught this to all my kids, most of you guys, most of my kids here, is that if you really stop and think

God should not exist by what we know as humans and science, because there's nothing that we know of in the known universe,

I'm going to put it in negative, there's nothing that doesn't have an originator, everything that we know of comes from something else, right, like it has to have a cause, and the effect is the next thing that we have, we don't know of anything where you can't look at it and say, who made that, or where did that come from, and you can answer the question, you understand what

I'm saying, except God, so when you ask the baby Christian, ask this question, well, you know, where'd

God come from, that's the baby question, and the Bible actually answers that baby question, it says he's always existed, he didn't come from anywhere, and usually a new

Christian, when you tell them that, they'll be okay, and they know they can go try to study that, and they don't know it's going to take them a whole lifetime, but they don't know that, but they will take that answer, well, he didn't come from anywhere, he's always existed, but if you went a step further, and you ask the question that I ask all the time, is how did he do that, then you get in trouble, because then you get scared, because then you think he shouldn't have been able to do that, and that's what

I was trying to thank him for this morning, it had nothing to do with the sermon, just a coincidence that I'm preaching on this, not really, because God tells us what to preach, doesn't he, but it didn't relate to the sermon,

I just woke up thinking about God that way, it's like, okay, how did you do that, because he shouldn't have been able to do it, and it puts a fear of God in a healthy way in my life, and literally makes me want to only serve him, because he's all that matters, because if he hadn't been able to do that, none of us would have existed, even the thought of us wouldn't have existed, and you can't say, well, there wouldn't be nothing, because he invented the concept of nothing, so there'd be no nothing, and you've all heard this,

I was teaching this when I thought Ben and Matt were old enough that I could say, like, they were like, I don't know, six and nine or something, or five and eight, well, how old do you think you were,

Ben, when this happened, in the car coming back, six and nine, and I said, boys, I want you to think about something, they're in the back seat, and I'm driving them home from Course Canada, and I went through that thing with them, and Matt pipes up and says, well,

Dad, that's a great thing to think about, but not for long, and I thought, he nailed that, okay, so here,

I mean, these are the kinds of things that we think about when we see just the name Jehovah, the self -existing one, can you just say that and drop it, or do you have to chew on that a little bit,

I mean, can you just say, okay, God is Jehovah, he's the self -existent one, and just walk on and do your stuff, wow, okay, so, like, if he can do that, where he just always is just because of himself, he is the great cause of everything, and no one caused him, and he can just do that, and we don't contemplate that, well, we, like, we are still baby

Christians if we don't, you've got to contemplate that, because it will keep you in line, and keep me in line, it really will, that one thought will keep you in line, and that's what the

Bible means when it talks about the fear of God, doesn't mean you're scared of him because he's mean, it means he's so awesome that he's fearful, he's so magnificent, and here

I go again, I'm trying to talk to the Lord, I don't have the adjectives, can't do it, but he's just glorious, and magnificent, and awesome, and when you think about that, and you realize we're not, but he loves us, you want to live for him, so there, we can start there, just from the name

Elohim, we know there's a triune nature, and we know that he's all -powerful, and he's faithful, and he won't lie to us, if he makes a promise to us, like the

Abrahamic promise, where he says, I do all the work to save you, all you got to do is get called, and you know, the

Holy Spirit wake you up, and I'm there for you, because I did all the work, you don't do any of it, because you'd mess it up, that's

Elohim, and then we look at Jehovah, he is the all -powerful, but self -existing

God, who made everything that is, and who was before it, and was perfectly happy that way, but we do know he was love, which means he had to exist as a father, son, and Holy Spirit, because love always has to have an object, so we know that from Elohim, but we know he's self -existent, which means it's the top of the line of the list of any adjectives you can think of to describe awesomeness, self -existence one,

Ja, self -existent one, and Hava, the second half of the word Jehovah, means to become known, so when you look at the word

Jehovah, what you're looking at is God is the self -existent one, who reveals himself, because I will guarantee you this, people don't think about this, and they act like this isn't true, but there is not a single human being who's ever lived on the face of this earth as a man, or woman, or boy, or girl, or trans, whatever, no,

I'm kidding, like whatever, whatever they think humans are, there's not one single human who has ever been able out of his own mind and self -consciousness to know

God, who God is, or understand the works of God, you just can't bring that out from within yourself, and yet most false religions and cult groups come from philosophy, the

Bible calls it vain philosophy of humans thinking up who God is, and they cannot know him because there's only one way to know him, because he is the self -existent one who reveals himself to us, you can't know him without this revelation, and I'm going to tell you something, this book right here may go out of existence, so it wouldn't take but one nuke, and you wouldn't have the internet anymore, so you might want to keep one of these,

I recommend the King James version, but keep one of these, but this book is a book that came from a place that's not a place, into time and space, and is the only thing on this planet that is perfect, and when that which is perfect came, things changed, when we had the whole

Bible, things changed for Christians and Jewish people who had become Christians, so without that revelation, you couldn't know

God, because for one thing, God is transcendent, he does not even live in heaven, except for his kind of glory, his presence is there, but all of him is not there, he's outside of all of it, you wouldn't even know he was there, other than when you saw the stars, and you can see that there are animals, pictures made in the stars, you would kind of think there probably is something with creative abilities, engineering abilities, artistic abilities, that made everything, and maybe it's a big turtle, and the earth is sitting on the back of a turtle, which is what

Hindus believe, at least that's what I think I remember they believe, but I mean, so you wouldn't, you would know something's there, but there's no way you could know

God, you certainly couldn't know he exists as a father, son, and holy spirit, and you couldn't know that he's all powerful, but he will always keep, you wouldn't know he's faithful, in fact, most of the

Greek gods and Roman gods, they were fearsome, because they'll kill you, I mean, they're going to wipe you out, and they would offer various kinds of even human offerings to them, so they wouldn't come wipe you out, or destroy your crop, because God was someone who was just going to destroy you, that's how they feared

God, well that's not God at all, is it? God is love, you could not know that without this book, you would not know it, so when you look at the name

Jehovah, the self -existent one, which means the most awesome thing there is in existence, but he's the one who reveals himself to us, because he wants us to know him, that is in that word, now in looking at who

God is, another thing we understand is, that you can take that word

Jehovah, that name for God, and what's interesting about it, is that there are seven compound names for God in the

Bible, and they all have the word, why can I not put that in there, they all have the word

Jehovah in the compound word, and they are different names of God, the different godly people in the

Old Testament would build an altar to God and name it, and it would reveal something new about God we didn't know yet, and because the

Holy Spirit inspired that, the first one is, he's known as Jehovah Jireh, and let me read

Genesis chapter 22, 13 is where I am, if you want to see it, which is always better than you just listening to me, if you can look it up really quickly, which is even easier on a phone, while you before the nuke hits, you still have that tool,

Genesis 22, 13, and Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold behind him a ram was caught in the thicket by his horns, and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering instead of his son, everybody remember this story,

God had told him to offer his son Isaac, his only son, picture of Jesus, isn't it, he was willing to do it,

Isaac didn't fully understand that, but he was so obedient, he carried the wood to his own altar where he was going to be tied to it,

Abraham lifts his knife up, and right as he starts the movement down, God says stop, there's a lamb over there in the thicket, use him, well that sure made

Isaac happy, but it made Abraham even happier, and this is the context of this verse we're reading here, so Abraham took the ram and offered him instead of his son, and verse 14 says, and Abraham called the name of that place

Jehovah Jireh, now we don't know how it sounded because he was reluctant to pronounce the word

Jehovah or Yahweh or whatever we think it is, but Jireh was added to this name, and he, most of the time the

Jews, like nowadays, if they want to say God in their writing, they'll put a capital G and a blank blank, and so you know they're talking about God, they won't even say the

English word God, okay, so what Abraham actually said, we don't know, but probably he substituted a word for God rather than Jehovah in there, and called it

God Jireh, but when he wrote the scriptures as the

Holy Spirit led him, he put the Hebrew letters for Jehovah or Yahweh, so we know that's who he had in mind, but he wouldn't say it out loud, so he said

God Jireh, but we know it's Jehovah Jireh because it's written for us, as it is said to this day in the mountain of the

Lord, it shall be seen, and what shall be seen? It shall be seen that God is the self -existent one who reveals himself as a

God who will provide for us, now that's really nice to know, and that's what Jenny was trying to get me to see when all this bad stuff was happening, and Charlotte was trying to get me to see when she said, no, don't call

Ben, you're supposed to preach tomorrow, and it's because God will provide, five minutes, 10 minutes later, 20 minutes later, here comes the company that will not come to your house when you need them, and there he is, and he fixed our electricity, so I didn't have to be there today to get it fixed, so plus I had hot water,

I went and took a shower, it was amazing, and then I was all happy and thankful, now

I can pray, Lord, you're wonderful, right, that's how we are, you say, what's this we, Brother David, that's how you are, okay,

I'll go with that, so he is the God who will provide, now what is it he provided in this context, it's what this next whole passage in Colossians is going to talk about, he provided a lamb, the lamb of God for us,

Jesus Christ, John 1 29, the next day John seeth, this is

John the Baptist, sees Jesus coming unto him, and he says, behold, the lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the cosmos, of the ordered creation of God, and John knew that,

John knew that he didn't just die for Jews, that's why he said the whole cosmos, which means all kinds of men,

Isaiah 53 7, he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and his sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth,

Dave taught us a fascinating Sunday school lesson, you guys need to try to be there, because it was fascinating about sheep, and what they can teach us about us in particular, and God, but about us in particular, and so you talk about Jehovah, Jireh, God who provides, he brought us a lamb to the slaughter, a sheep before her shearers is dumb, he doesn't open his mouth, for he was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people, not for every human, not for every individual, but for the transgression of God's people who he knew from the foundation of the world,

I wish people understood that, because then they would know how special they are if they're saved, they would know there's no pride in it, because you didn't choose yourself, you did not call yourself, you did not know yourself, the

Bible says the operation of God happened when Jesus came out of the grave, and you were in him, that was 2000 years before you were even born, you had nothing to do with your salvation, other than receiving it, like a baby being born receives all now in this family, and this is cool, you know, that's how we get saved, it's not taught that way in church anymore, 150 years ago, almost everybody understood it, but God was the one who provided salvation, and he provided it for his people, he was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people, was he stricken, he shall see the travail of his soul, the father, you even see the

Trinity here, the father will see the travail of the son, the lamb, the son of God, the lamb of God's soul, and will be satisfied, greatest teaching in the

Bible on propitiation right there, he will be satisfied, and by knowledge of this one, this lamb, by knowing him, this will justify many, now why doesn't it say all, it would say all if Jesus died for everybody, but everyone that he died for from Adam and Eve till now, will be justified by his blood that he gave for them, and that's why it says many, not all, but that's what the

Bible says, we don't, humans don't like it, but guess what, it's revealed to us by God, we don't get to make it up in our minds, we don't get to make up God in our brain, and make him be like we want him to be, and you've heard me tell the story,

I've actually looked people in the eye before at tradeway meetings, when they said, well God's not like that, and I said, well if I can show you in the

Bible that he is like that, would you still love him, and they walk away, good question, don't you think, all right, so he died for the transgression of my people, he was stricken, he shall see that God the

Father will see the travail of Jesus's soul, and will be satisfied as the payment of the debt that his people owed, so that they never have to pay it, that is called ransom, which we just got through studying for five

Sundays or whatever, right, so he is satisfied because the ransom has been paid by this lamb that the father provided in the thicket, what is the thicket picture, this harsh, cold, fallen world that Jesus was born into, in a manger because they had no home, no place to be, the thicket pictures all that, by his knowledge, in other words, by knowing him, this lamb, shall my righteous servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities, so when he died, he only died for the many, do you see that, you say, why do you talk about it all the time,

I'm just preaching the sermon that's before us, it's just everywhere, he died for the sins of the many, not for every human being, no one wants to believe that now, probably not three percent of even

Baptists believe that now, and yet, if you go back and see who founded Southern Baptist missions work in the world, their seminaries,

Baylor University, all of their history, they were Calvinists who believed that Jesus died for the elect, not for everybody, but well, nobody believes it now, even in those institutions, they don't teach it, in fact, many of them teach it's a heresy, verse 12, because he poured out his soul unto death, he was numbered with the transgressors, in other words, he was on the cross between two thieves, and he bear the sin of how many, many, that's an unfortunate word for Armenians, and he bear the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors, first Peter 1 18, for as much as you know that you are not redeemed with the corruptible things like silver and gold, which is what the pagans believed at this 2 ,000 years ago, you're not redeemed from the vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, which is what the

Catholics believe, and the Baptist Catholics believe nowadays, and everybody that wants to raise their tradition higher than the word of God, this is false, this is bad, this is wrong, but here's how you are saved, by the precious blood of Jesus as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, doesn't name anything else, you're saved by the blood who truly was ordained before the foundation of the world was manifested in these last times for you, now who do you think ordained it that he would do this, the father,

Jehovah Jireh, the one who will provide, ordained that he would provide his son as the love gift to us, and us as a love gift to him, and that he would agree,

Jesus then agreed to this, that he would become the lamb in the thicket, who would die in the place of all of God's other children, who

Isaac pictures, it's just no man could have made this stuff up, 40 different people divided by thousands of miles, in some cases,

I don't know how many thousands of miles, and thousands of years of time wrote the same story, 66 books written by 40 authors from different nationalities, different lifestyles, different geographical areas, over thousands of years, tells the same story, it's a story that is complex, and some of it difficult to understand, like the father, son, the

Holy Spirit, one God, three distinct persons, Jehovah Jireh provided the lamb that taketh away the sins of the cosmos, in other words, when man fell, the entire universe was put into a fallen state, and when

Jesus died, he didn't just die for you or me, we cannot be that selfish to think that, he died for you and me, but he died to put the entire universe back in order, and then there's

Jehovah Rapha, the Lord that healeth, Exodus 15, 26, and he said, if thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the

Lord thy God, and will do that which is right in his sight, and will, now this is to the

Jew, right, because it's a conditional covenant, but there's application to us, and if you will give ear to his commandments, in other words, study the word of God, and contemplate on it, and keep all of his statutes, then

I will put none of these diseases upon you, which I have brought upon the Egyptians, for I am the

Lord that healeth thee, and in the Hebrew that is written Jehovah Rapha, the

Lord who heals, Dave talked about that before the prayer request, and I've sat over here thinking, you know, and back there for a while, because our prayer session lasts for a long time,

I mean, that's the only reason that I'm preaching until 1230, only reason, it's Dave's fault, but you know what,

I am not going to stop him for naming every single one, now Dave, if we had, when we become, not if, like assume close, when we become a megachurch, we will have a longer service, but I'm still going to preach about, you know, an hour, all right, so we'll be done by three or whatever, but listen, that's probably the most important ministry we have, because God is

Jehovah Rapha, the God who heals, and notice it's not the faith healer who heals, and I hate to even say it that way, but the apostles, because they were apostles, and the

New Testament prophets, because God was authenticating the message, which is more important than the miracles, but he used miracles to authenticate the message, that so many people are confused about that, they think we're still supposed to be that way, we're not apostles, you had to live and walk with Jesus in the flesh to be an apostle, so there are none on the earth now, and they act like they are, so they think they can do these things, so the demons say, hey, if you think and want to do those things, you desire to have that power, and for people to know you have that power,

I'll give you that power, and he mimics the Holy Spirit, and they do those things, there's something close to it, it's not really even close, and it makes a mockery of God, and of the true biblical

Christianity, makes a mockery, because if the stranger comes in, and I were to allow you to stand up and speak in tongues, which is gibberish, which is not even what the

Bible teaches, then that visitor would think we're crazy, that's not a good testimony for God, I don't even like Christian jargon, hey brother,

God is good, all the time, you know that kind of stuff, we shouldn't talk like that, people on the street think we're nuts, we don't talk like that here, praise

God, that's a joke, okay, you're dead, let's stand and have prayer, we'll pick it up here next time,

I know you're dead, when you don't laugh at my jokes, it's not the joke, it's like you're tired, so let's stand.

Lord, thank you so much for bringing us all here, including myself today, and we wouldn't miss it for the world, we pray for those who had to miss because of illness, and just ask you to strengthen their bodies, and bring them back to us, be with Jeannie as she struggles with these drugs that the doctors have given her for her blood pressure,

Lord, just pray that you'll do that miraculous healing in her body, where she doesn't need that medicine for very long, and Lord, we ask you to go with us in our time of fellowship now, and bless the meal that we're going to have together, in Jesus name, amen, you are dismissed.