2023 BBC Bible Conference - Session Three "The Aseity of God"

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Well, now that we've established that God is back in Exodus 3 again, it would be good by quoting my favorite theologian.
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We've quoted a lot thus far. We haven't quoted my favorite theologian, my beautiful wife, Jen. One time after she was listening to one of my speeches that always involve hand -waving and exclamations, and she endures these quite a lot, we were talking about some of the debates of the doctrine of God and things we're looking at this weekend, and after I'd finally finished my soliloquy to her of all these important things, she was eating her salad and she just looked up at me and said, yeah,
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God's not like us, what's not to get? Of course she was right.
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But what we don't get is we assume that if God's not like us, then we cannot know
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Him or know that He loves us. But what we've come to see hopefully and what we'll see further is actually the exact opposite.
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If God isn't unlike us, then He isn't blessed, and then we have no joy coming to us now or in eternity, and His radical difference from us is actually what establishes our relationship with Him.
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And we'll see how that's the case. It's actually knowing how God is not like us that assures us that He is with us,
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He is near us, He is with us always and can be sought by us. In other words, God's otherness secures
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His nearness. The fact that God is not like us gives us assurance
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He is always with us. And that's what we see in our pivotal text we want to return to in Exodus chapter 3 as God interacts with Moses, this weighty passage that communicates the priority of how we understand what
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God is. God speaks to Moses as we've seen, not only about who He is, but what
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He is. And again, even the manifestation of God's presence by the fire in the bush is communicating profound aspects of the being of God.
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God comes to Moses, manifests Himself in chapter 3 verse 2 in a flame that is a fire out of the midst of the bush, burning, but yet the bush is not consumed.
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This is a vivid depiction of God's being. The bush isn't being consumed. The fire isn't sparked by creation, it isn't fueled by creation, it's independent of creation.
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Yet it is there with creation and even we could say the fire is preserving the life of the bush even by its presence.
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God is communicating vividly aspects of His infinite and independent being.
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The fire has a life of itself. What God is depicting by His work and by His manifestation,
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He's explaining in His words here in verses 14 and 15 to Moses. We've looked at God being incomprehensible and what
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I want to look at in this session is God's independence and His irreducibility.
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God is independent and irreducible. We'll explain that with more common terms,
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God's aseity and His simplicity as well. But again, let's just look again at verse 14 where God says to Moses, I am who
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I am. Notice God does not compare Himself with others. He does not say
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I am that or I am this, just I am who I am. God does not belong to any category of other created beings by which
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He can be categorized. God is not in any genus. God's not a member of any species.
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So we can't reference Him in the categories of creation of which He's a part, not like we can do with us.
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You could say I'm a human, I'm a male, I'm an American, I'm a Californian, so on and so on.
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You can't do that with God. God's in no category. God is the genius behind every genus but He's not in a genus
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Himself. We call this God's aseity and it's kind of a clunky word because it's not even really an
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English word. It just comes from the Latin ase, from itself, from Himself.
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So when we say God's aseity or His aseity, we're just saying God is of Himself. He's independent.
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What we're saying is God is self -caused. He's not caused. He has His own explanation.
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He's absolute. He's independent. He's of no one. He's of nothing else.
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He is completely independent. You can remember aseity like the acai berry.
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It's a super fruit. Aseity is a super attribute. In fact, we couldn't even say with Bovink, our
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Dutch brother, that aseity is God's primary attribute. In a sense, there's a real sense where aseity is not even an attribute at all.
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We're talking about God's Godness. He's absolute. He's independent. We're describing what
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God is. When Paul said in Colossians, the fullness of deity, Theodotus, the
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Godness of God, that's what we're talking about. The absoluteness of God. He is most absolute.
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He is independent, self -existent. What we're saying is God exists necessarily.
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In fact, even properly speaking, God doesn't have existence. Now, this is a challenging concept.
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If we stick with this, it'll really pay off for us. God doesn't have existence.
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God is identical with his existence. What we're saying is he alone possesses the power to grant existence to creatures.
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Again, we saw that in 1 Timothy 6. He alone has immortality. God is self -existent and necessary.
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For us, our nature and our existence are not identical.
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We are humans. We're male or female. But neither humanity nor femininity begin and end with us.
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If somebody stood up in the middle of our session and said, when I die, humanity ends, we'd have them committed.
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That's insane. Humanity does not begin and end with you. Humanity existed before we did.
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In the Lord's timing, when we depart this life, humanity and femininity, if we're female, and masculinity, if we're male, will continue.
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That's true of every creature. It's true of my dog, Hodge. He does not embody canininity. When he dies one sad day, canininity will go on.
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There will be dogness in the world. So nothing in our nature demands that we exist.
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You are not necessary. I am not either. I am capable of non -existence.
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We know because there was a time I did not exist. Our nature and our existence are not the same.
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And all we're just saying there is that we're creatures. We're created. But God, God is identical with his existence.
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His nature is his existence. God exists necessarily.
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And the existence of everything else that's not God depends on God, while God depends and derives nothing from anyone or anything else for his own existence.
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Or it's been said, God is his own is. He is the reason for his own being.
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God is independent. He has aseity. He is most absolute. This is why
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God is blessed. A couple of quotes here from our brothers John Gill and Edward Lay.
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First John Gill said, God is his own blessedness. It is holy within himself and of himself.
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He receives none from without himself or from his creatures. Nothing can add to his happiness and he himself is the blessedness of his creatures who are made happy by him.
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We looked at that last night. If there is joy, it is because God has joy in himself. God derives joy from no one and nothing else.
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He is his own joy. And the reason we can have joy is because God has joy in himself and is derived from him and conferred to us.
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Edward Lay says something similar. God's happiness is that attribute whereby God has all fullness of delight and contentment in himself, needs nothing out of himself to make himself happy.
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When we talk about God's aseity, his independence, we are accounting for the radical difference between us and God and the fact that God is on a whole other order of being than we are.
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The difference between us and God is a difference in kind, not just degree. It's not like us and God are on a spectrum and scale and God's just at the opposite end.
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Just a really, really, really superman. No, it's different in kind, not just by degree.
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John Owen said this and wants us to think about the similarities between angels and worms.
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So John Owen said this, what is an angel more than a worm? A worm is a creature, an angel is no more.
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God has made the one to creep in the earth and also made the other to dwell in heaven. There is still a comparison between these two.
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They agree in something, but what are all the nothings of the world to the
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God infinitely blessed forever? Think about that. Think of an angel.
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What does an angel look like? It's a trick question, they don't look like anything, they're invisible. Yet angels are spirits, they're invisible, and yet are angels identical with their nature, their angel -ness?
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No, they're creatures, they depend on God, God created them.
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They don't exist necessarily, they've been brought into existence by God just like every other creature, even worms.
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You see what Owen is saying here is that worms and angels have more in common than you and God. Worms and angels are on the same spectrum of creation, now they're at opposite ends in terms of the degree of excellence of created being, but they're still created beings.
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And so are we. God is not. When we say God has a saty, when we say he's independent, we're saying he's absolutely other from who we are as creatures.
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Worms and angels have more in common with us than God because we're all creatures and God is asse, he is independent creator.
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God is not a big angel. The sad truth is that many Christians' conception of God is basically just a grown -up angel.
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God is not a created being at all, he is the creator who is independent and absolute, which means not just God has life,
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God is life. And so what we say is the God who is, is pure being.
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He is pure life himself. He is the fountain of life and being himself, that's his name.
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Think about every created thing you know and they're all named by nouns.
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Rock, tree, dog, man, woman. That's what it means to be created.
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It means to be named by a noun. We're finite, we're contained, we can be classified, we can be categorized, we can be laid alongside other nouns and compared and contrasted and put into different categories.
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But how does God name himself when Moses asks him here in Exodus 3, I am.
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That's a verb. We are qualified by verbs. The man running, the woman speaking, the fire spreading, the tree growing.
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But God is a verb. He is life itself. He is pure being.
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He is pure spirit. He gives being and he gives existence to everything in creation.
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But we are and we have existence because God is. And even when we use the title
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God, which is technically a noun, we must always remember it refers to a verb. And so God gave his name
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Yahweh related to a Yah, a verb, I am. So that we always remember he is pure life.
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So when we say God is independent, God is absolute, we don't mean that God is absolute like an iceberg.
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We mean he is absolute and independent like the ocean. He is the infinity of life that confers and grants life on everything he's created and even upholds it as he transcends and infinitely beyond the bounds of his own creation.
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Again, Herman Boving said this, God is no abstract, fixed, monadic, solitary substance, but a plenitude of life.
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It's his nature to be generative and fruitful. And those who deny this fecund productivity fail to take seriously the fact that God is an infinite fullness of blessed life.
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God is an infinite fullness of blessed life. It is impossible for God to be more alive or become more alive.
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He is life itself. And we always remember when we talk about God, we're talking about a verb.
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We're talking about the fullness of life. And that means that all that God does is always according to the pure being that he is.
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And it explains all that we receive by virtue of his independent life.
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Let's think about some of the implications of what we're learning here about God. Most basically, our communion with him.
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This was the point the Apostle Paul in Athens in Acts 17 was trying to drive home to the idolaters and the pagan philosophers in Athens.
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Remember, he said in Acts 17, verse 25, the God who made the world and all things in it is not served by human hands.
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And he says, as though he needed anything. There is a mountain of theology in that clause.
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As if God needed anything, he needs nothing. He's not served or helped by you.
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God has no need. He's self -sufficient. He's separate and distinct. But then what does Paul go on to say?
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So, therefore, you can have no relationship with God. No, it's the basis of him saying he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
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And he goes on to say, even as your own poets have said, in him you live and move and have your being. Verse 27, that they should seek
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God. He is actually not far from each one of us. Is God near to you?
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God is the reason for your is. You are because God is.
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Augustine famously said in his confessions, you are more inward to me than my most inward part.
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We are upheld by his infinitude of life and power. God is more inward than our most inward being.
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He accounts for it. Do you realize that we are as close to non -existence as the very creation, the very first seconds after creation was accomplished by God?
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People say sometimes, well, I don't want to do something or God will send a lightning bolt to me. God doesn't have to send a lightning bolt to end us.
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He just needs to stop us and we're done. The very atoms that comprise our material being are upheld by the power and life of God.
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He's more inward to us than our own inward parts. He is the is for our is.
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And so that's what Paul was arguing with the Athenians. He was saying God doesn't need anything. In him you live and move and have your being that you would seek him.
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He's not far from you. You don't have to go to these pagan temples and build these false idols. You are because God is.
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So repent and turn to him because he's spoken in his son. That's the message he brought.
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That's the message God still is bringing. You see, it's God's absolute separation from creation that makes communication and communion with him possible and meaningful.
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If God were not distinct and absolute from creation, we could not have genuine interaction with him.
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He would be indistinguishable and impossible to separate from the trees and the wind and the stars.
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He would be an impersonal force. And he would be removed from us because creation is constantly changing.
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It's constantly moving and it would make God more distant. It is
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God's distinction that accounts for his nearness and his transcendence.
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The reason God is far above us and is as near to us as our most inward parts is because he does not depend on creation.
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He is independent of it. So whenever we think of God's aseity and his independence, it communicates and explains and accounts for his nearness.
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And the reason that you can seek God wherever you are on the face of his earth or even in outer space.
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Because God is and accounts for it all. This reminds us too of what's happening in worship.
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Why do we worship? In a very important sense, don't come to worship to give
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God anything because he needs nothing from you. We come to worship ultimately to receive.
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Augustine said this in City of God wonderfully. We must believe then that God has no need even of man's righteousness.
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And that whatever right worship is paid to God profits not him but man. For no man would say he benefited a fountain by drinking or the light by seeing.
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What benefit do you give to light by seeing it? Or fountain by drinking it? We come to worship
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God to receive. To receive even from him and his infinitude of light and glory.
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The fountain of life and light to us. Edward Lay said God is also to be blessed by us.
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That is we ascribe blessing to him. We praise him. But he goes on, but this blessing adds nothing to his blessedness.
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But is therefore required of us that we may somewhat enjoy his blessedness.
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Do you realize God commands worship of him that we might receive what he plans to give us in worship?
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It's all a gift. He is owed worship that we might receive what we are created to.
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To delight, to praise him. We bring to God what he empowers us to offer to him.
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We add nothing to him. Our offering is the fruit of his grace. And he commands our worship that we would receive and delight in his goodness and grace.
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It's all mercy. We were made to delight of God. Now this has significant implications even for as we think of divides in church history and tradition.
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The sacramental system of Rome, for example, is a grand violation of the aseity of God and the independence of God.
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You don't activate God by anything you've done. It's all of grace. But even in our modern settings, we should think about titles we give.
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Forgive me if I step on any toes, but even the title worship leader, ultimately, worship leader is
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God. God is the one who inspires and empowers and even gives us the worship we offer him that we might receive from him what he asks of us.
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We come to receive by his grace even as we offer him praise. God is pure being, infinite life, independent.
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And that is the ground of all our communion and worship. Now we need to take another step further.
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If God is an independent, then he must be irreducible.
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And that's what we want to see secondly. God is irreducible or the usual term we use for this is simple.
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God is simple. Now there's a story told of a lady who picked up a book on God and she saw the table of contents and God's simplicity.
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She turned to that chapter and then she shortly set the book down and said, well, if that's God's simplicity, I'll never get his complexity.
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When we say God is simple, that is not a simple statement. And we don't mean simple like easy.
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We mean simple by uncomposed, uncompounded. Something like simple syrup, which is just water and sugar.
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It's not made of a bunch of ingredients. It's simple. It's uncomposed. That's how we're using simple here.
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We mean God's simplicity without other components. And all we're saying is extending what we've already reflected on in God's independence.
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If God is absolute, if he's of himself and the one from whom all things are, then he must be simple.
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He must be uncomposed. We're saying he's without body and also we're saying he's without parts.
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That's what's in the Second London Confession, chapter 2. God is without body, parts, and passion. When we say without parts, we're not just saying physically
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God has no appendages like arms and legs. We were already denied that when we said he's without bodies, pure spirit.
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When we say parts here, we mean something even more fundamental, that God is without elements. He's without principles.
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There's no other component that comprises of him which he was made up. God can't be composed because everything that's assembled has a maker.
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And nobody in eternity put love, justice, holiness, and faithfulness into some primordial soup, stirred it together, and out popped
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God after 30 minutes. God's not composed of these things. He is the maker of all things, so he can't be made up of things.
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He can't be composed. And anything composed of parts is less than infinite.
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You can't put together a bunch of finite parts and come out with infinity. That's impossible. And God is the infinite creator, so he's simple.
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He's uncomposed. We say with Paul in Romans 11 .36, From him, and for him, and to him are all things.
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As one theologian said, and I agree, you can reduce the entire Bible to that sentence in Romans 11 .36.
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From him, and for him, and to him are everything. So God is independent. He is the one from whom all things are.
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So he cannot be made up of things himself. Edward Lay made that point.
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He said, God is absolutely simple. He is but one thing and does not consist of any parts.
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If he did consist of parts, there must be something before him to put those parts together.
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Then he were not eternal. That's why it's been said that denying simplicity is akin to atheism.
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Because if God is made up of parts, that means God is a creature like other creatures.
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Because to be a creature like us means to be composed and to put together and assembled. So there is no
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God. For there to be God, creator, he must be simple. And that helps us as we think about when we talk about attributes.
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We mentioned this briefly last night, but what we're saying when we're referring to God's attributes.
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We're not saying that God is God because he has brought all these attributes together.
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Or he's figured out the perfect way to balance love and holiness. He balanced them just right, so he's
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God. Because he's figured that out. What we've said for centuries is God is his attributes.
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Or, all that is in God is God. Or negatively, there is nothing in God that is not
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God. So if you want to condense simplicity down, it's just that simple statement.
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All that is in God is God. I teach that to our single
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Christians. I say if you meet somebody that you're interested in considering marrying, make sure they know the answer to the end of all that is in God is what?
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And if they can't get that right, then you move on. So the doctrine of divine simplicity is fundamental to all of existence, including your future marriage.
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But this is basic to theology. And from the early church down through the Reformation. So take
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John Owen. John Owen said this, The attributes of God, which alone seem to be distinct things in the essence of God, are all of them essentially the same with one another, and every one the same with the essence of God.
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Or another Puritan, Lewis Bailey, there are not in God many attributes, but one only, which is nothing but the divine essence itself, whatsoever you call it.
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So as we think about the attributes of God, we remember we're reflecting on the perfections of the divine being, like rays from the sun or the eminence or the reflections of a diamond turning.
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We are not thinking about distinctions in God. So when you think about God's attributes, don't think about God like a pizza or a pie that you slice up.
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And there's a slice of love here, a slice of justice here, a slice of faithfulness over here, as though there are distinctions in God.
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Nor do we think of the attributes like Velcro balls that have been attached to a bigger
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Velcro ball, and there's divine essence, and then love has been attached, and the holiness ball is attached, and the faithfulness ball is attached.
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No, we're reflecting on the rays of brilliant light that are coming to us as God has revealed himself in creation.
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God has only one attribute, God, Godness. He is, and he is through and through.
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The Puritan Stephen Charnock used this illustration for simplicity. He said, it's like all the seas and oceans of the world.
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We distinguish the bodies of water in the world according to the shores they touch, the
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Indian Ocean, the English Channel. But in truth, how many bodies of ocean water are on the world?
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One. That's it. That's God's simplicity. And just as we distinguish the different bodies of water according to their effects, depending on the climate and circumstances in different parts of the world, it might be stormy on one beach, and it might be placid and beautiful on the other side of the world, in the same way,
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God can be judging the world while he's saving others. And that's not different sides of God, it's the effect of the perfectly simple
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God in relation to the status of the creature. Creatures that are repentant versus creatures that are not.
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Or, I mentioned last night in the Q &A, I like good coffee. I like this illustration for simplicity.
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When coffee is properly sourced, and it's roasted well, you can taste various notes in the coffee.
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And that's what you call them. You call them tasting notes. And to get the full effect, when you taste coffee, it's called cupping.
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So if someone invites you to a cupping, it's coffee tasting. Do you do cuppings in Massachusetts? No, I guess not.
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They don't do them at Dunkin' Donuts, I know that. But to get the full effect, you get a spoon and you slurp your coffee.
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It's proper to slurp the coffee. That's how the coffee gets coated on all the proper taste buds in your tongue so you can pick up the right notes.
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And you can get a tasting wheel also to help you categorize what you're tasting. It's a whole thing, trust me. But as you're tasting coffee, you have various notes that you then, if you go to a proper coffee roaster, they'll write them on the bag.
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They'll say this has notes of caramel, chocolate, blackberry, orange, floral, hibiscus, whatever.
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They're just different tasting notes. Now, the tasting notes that are being written by the roaster there after they've cupped and tasted the coffee are not flavors that are being added to the coffee.
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Flavored coffee is from the Antichrist. So just be very clear about that.
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So nobody is putting flavor in the coffee. Now, the tasting notes are the notes of what is evoked in our senses and in our taste buds when we encounter the coffee.
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But all that is in coffee is just coffee. That's all it is.
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And all you taste is coffee. But the taste and the smells are what that coffee evoked to your senses, our taste buds, and our experience of the coffee.
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Now, this is something of an analogy of what we mean when we talk about the attributes of the simple, irreducible
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God. At the end of the day, properly speaking, everything that God does is just God acting as God.
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And you could reduce the whole Bible and just say, well, what's God doing here? Well, He's acting according to the infinite perfection of God.
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Well, what's He doing here when He's judging? Well, He's acting according to His infinite perfection as God. Well, what about saving?
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Well, He's acting according to His infinite perfection as God. That's not comprehensible to us.
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We can't grasp that. And so God has accommodated Himself to our conceptions and our experience as creatures, and He's communicated us to Himself and give us labels and names of who
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He is, like love and justice and holiness and goodness and wisdom and power, because we know something of what those are, because we have similarity, though not sameness, with those very things in our own experience, so that we might know
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Him, and we can apprehend something of His glory, and we can know what holiness and justice and love are as He communicates
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Himself to us. But at the end of the day, all that is in God is God. When we talk about holiness, love and justice and goodness and power and wisdom, we're not talking about parts of God.
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We're just describing who God is as He acts and speaks in creation.
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So William Ames said this, because we're not able to take in this divine essence in one act of comprehension, we can't breathe the whole air, we can't grasp infinity, it is explained as manifold, that is to say, as if consisting of many attributes.
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So that means, importantly, as we consider what we call God's attributes, they are distinct in how we think about God, but they're not distinct in God.
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And we must distinguish His attributes because the limitations of our finite ability to grasp and reason, but they're not diverse properties in God, they're not parts in God.
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That would mean God has components, that would mean God was put together, that would mean someone somewhere took love and holiness and faithfulness and justice and made
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God, and that means that then we don't really have God, we need to figure out whoever that is, because they're
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God, and they're the real creator. And so we're saying that He is who
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He is, God is independent and simple as God, and as the simple one,
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God is blessed. You and I have attributes, we have kindness and love and goodness, but we don't always have them, do we?
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We lose them just by being hungry. You can be a different person just because your blood sugar drops.
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That never happens with God. God is completely independent, irreducible, and He is never not who
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He is. He is always God, always blessed. Our essence and our attributes are different things.
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For God, He is His essence, He is His attributes.
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All that is in Him is in Him, so He is blessed, always, period.
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Let's think through some implications here of God's simplicity. The first, and this is important,
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God is simple means God is personal. Now this is counterintuitive for many, but it's true.
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God's simplicity protects His personality, His personableness,
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His relatedness. If we were talking about the attributes of a rock, it would be nonsensical to say the rock has an attribute of circularity, spherical, and angularity, because it's a thing, it's contained and finite.
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But when we say that God is His attributes, we are saying something about Him being the personal, perfect God.
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Let's say my wife was, we were out walking, and my wife was abducted by some assailant.
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And of course I spring to action, and I track down this man who's grabbed my wife, and I use some sweet Matt Damon, Jason Bourne moves.
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Karate kick him in the face, disable him, neutralize, I always love to say in the movies, they're neutralized. I've never neutralized anyone, but it sounds cool.
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They're neutralized, I rescue my wife, recover her, and we go on our way.
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And I'm the hero, of course, of the story. What could you say is being what would be attributed to me in this event?
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Well, you could say love, right? Most basically, I love my wife. You could also say faithfulness, being faithful to a covenant
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I've made to her. You could say power, of course, my sweet karate kicks exhibit power.
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Also wisdom and knowledge, because you have to have some kind of assessment of the situation, or the best way to intervene.
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And you could go on. You could actually, we could make a long list. Well, here's all the attributes. But at the end of the day, what was happening?
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Well, Steve was acting as Steve to protect his wife. When we talk about the attributes of God, that's something like what we're doing.
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We're talking about who he is. And as I would act, that's just the concurrent expression of my attributes at any one act.
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So God is expressing who he is, in his wisdom, in his love, in his power, in his holiness, in his goodness, in his blessedness, always.
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So the attributes by which he reveals himself to us remind us that God is personal. He is who he says he is.
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He is a personal, created, loving God. Simplicity also means that we can trust
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God. We can trust him. It's been said that God won't go to pieces on you because there are no pieces of God into which you may fall.
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We can know God is. He's reliable. He's faithful because he's irreducible. Like we've said, otherwise, our faith and confidence would have to go into whatever put
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God together. We'd have to figure that out and trust that. But simplicity means that God can be trusted.
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It's the accounting of his faithfulness and his goodness. Simplicity also means, and this is very important for our cultural moment, simplicity means
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God defines virtues. God is definitive for everything.
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God is the original. He's the archetype. He's the one from whom all blessings flow.
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And it's quite significant to moral confusion today when you hear that ubiquitous slogan, love is love.
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Let's think about that. Is that true? No. In fact, scripture tells us that God is love.
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Another Dutch brother, Wilhelmus O 'Brackell, said this, The love of God, by definition, is the loving God himself.
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God doesn't have love. He is love. It's him. For from him are all things.
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The independent, irreducible God is love. Love is not a prior principle to him. We don't know
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God because we have a conception of perfect love and we got it out and realized, well, God matches it so he must be God.
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No, it exists. Love exists because that's who God is. So love is only true then to the extent it conforms to the
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God who defines it, to the God who accounts for it. You see, without the very being of God, we are set adrift on a subjective sea that has no backstop or foundation.
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And when we explain, as we talked about last night, the goodness of what is because the creator made it, he also explains how do we have definition and objectivity to what we call virtues in the world because God is.
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How do you know what love is? Well, because it's in the Bible. Well, how do we know what's in the Bible is good, true, and objective? Because the
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God who spoke it is the reality that defines it. He's the truth maker. Love is what
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God says it is because God is love. It's him. He is the backstop and foundation and the definer of virtue.
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Simplicity also means something really important for us as Christians. It means wrath is not essential to the nature of God.
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Dear Christian, if you are in Christ, God is never angry with you. He has no wrath against you.
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Wrath is the effect on the wicked of God's justice. But wrath is properly not an absolute attribute of God.
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If it was, God would always be angry because he is his attributes. The Bible says
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God is love. God is good. God is a fountain of joy. The Bible never says
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God is wrath. Gerald Bray said this simplicity also makes it impossible to say that God is wrathful by nature.
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Wrath is the way disobedient people experience God's justice, but it is not a divine attribute.
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If it were, God would be angry with everybody all the time. Wrath is a relative expression for the effect of God's justice on disobedient sinners.
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Just think if it were otherwise, with whom was God angry before the fall? Will he be eternally wrathful and expressing wrath in heaven and the new heavens and the new earth?
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Is wrath expressed in all of God's acts? For we who are in Christ, God has satisfied his holy justice in the
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Lord Jesus. So the divine perfection of justice, which God expresses in wrath on sinners outside of Christ, now approves the righteousness of everyone in Christ.
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That's why we sing with John Newton, when through grace in Christ our trust is, justice smiles and asks no more.
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Christ has fulfilled all righteousness in his perfectly obedient life, and laid it down as a substitute on our behalf on the cross and risen again for our justification.
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Justice of God smiles and asks no more. God's justice is satisfied in Christ, so there is no wrath for the
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Christian. And even when we, as our confession says, fall under God's fatherly displeasure through sin, we never have to fear his wrath.
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We are being chastened by the Father's love, because the Father loves whom he disciplines, and disciplines those he loves.
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Simplicity means that God is not wrathful by nature, and that if we're in Christ, God is never wrathful towards you, ever.
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It also means that salvation is personal. God's redeeming work is personal.
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Remember in John 8, when Jesus stood before his accusers, and he said that Abraham rejoiced to see his day?
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And the Pharisees jeered, you've seen Abraham? And Jesus replied in John 8, 58,
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Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. And they picked up stones to kill him, because they knew exactly what he meant.
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He is the I am who I am. The God of the burning bush assumed humanity, and became a man to communicate to us, and to save us.
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And at the end of his ministry, before the cross, you remember what the Lord Jesus said to his disciples in the upper room in John 14?
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John 14, 6, I have a way, and truth, and life.
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That's not what he said, is it? I am the way, the truth, and the life.
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He did not say, I have way, truth, and life, but I am.
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I am their source, I am their all -sufficient foundation, I am the fountain,
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I am the simple God in humanity. The I am of the burning bush is the same as the
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Lord Jesus, who has assumed humanity to himself in the person of the Son. That means that truth, and grace, and love from God in Christ aren't things.
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It's him. And God has communicated himself to us by virtue of our union with him in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. He's given us himself, that we might be brought again to him by his grace, which is him.
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Salvation is personal. And when we are rescued from justice by faith in Christ, we're not just getting goods, we're getting the good.
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We're getting God. The great discovery of the gospel, John Owen said, is you discover the
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Father is full of love to you. You get God. God's simplicity is wonderful.
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It means when we come to him in Jesus, we get him. The independent, irreducible, all -glorious
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God. Amen. Let me pray. Father, we thank you for your grace that has come to us in your
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Son, our Lord Jesus. And we thank you for what you've revealed to Moses and given us in your word, that we might get a glimpse of the glory that we cannot fully see, and that is an unapproachable light.
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Help us to bask in the meditation of our hearts and the contemplation of our minds, your wonder and goodness, that we might have hope and happiness and good news to share with others, that we might be rescued from your wrath and your holiness and justice satisfied in your
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Son, Jesus. Help us, our Father, to rejoice in the wonder of who you are and how you've called us to yourself and your