The Godhead (part 4)

Father in heaven, we just thank you this morning that you are a God who saves, that you are a God who transforms us. Father, we gather together to just worship you, to learn about you, to be reminded of what a great God you are.

Father, I pray that this time that we have together in your word would be a blessing to those who are here. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Well, I'm going to read you something and then I want you to identify the religion.

How's that? Talking about the Godhead still. All right. We believe in God the Eternal Father and in his son Jesus Christ and in the Holy Ghost. These three things, or these three beings, make up the Godhead.

They preside over this world and all other creations of our Father in heaven. I'll read a little bit more here. The Father and the Son have tangible bodies of flesh and bones and the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit.

Any guesses? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is correct. This is straight off their website. Listen to this. Although the members of the Godhead are distinct beings with distinct roles, they are one in purpose and doctrine.

They're perfectly united in bringing to pass Heavenly Father's divine plan of salvation. Now, how far off does that sound? Not too far. I don't think it sounds so far off. You really have to kind of listen to it.

Listen to it again and tell me what's wrong with it. Although the members of the Godhead are distinct beings with distinct roles, they are one in purpose and doctrine. They're perfectly united in bringing to pass Heavenly Father's divine plan of salvation.

What's wrong with that? Is there anything wrong with it? Who thinks it's perfectly okay? Well, obviously it's not. But listen to this. The persons or the members of the Godhead are distinct beings. Is that how we define the Trinity?

Okay, the answer is no. How would you define the Trinity? One being three persons, correct? And listen, they are one in purpose and doctrine. Okay, I mean, we don't think they conflict. They're perfectly united in bringing to pass Heavenly Father's divine plan of salvation.

Well, if it was just his plan, that would be correct, but it's not. It's the Godhead together who decides. Okay, another religion. The Godhead resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.

Hinduism, not quite, but you're in the right continent. Buddhism is correct. Buddhism is correct. By the way, the author of that is a man who wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. But listen to the subtitle, an inquiry into values.

I can't wrap my head around that title. Let me read the whole title together. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, an inquiry into values. Did you change that spark plug? Let me talk about your values.

I don't even get it. All right, how about this one? This religion misrepresents the Godhead, claiming that Christians believe in three gods, Father, Mother, and Son. What religion believes that about Christianity?

Islam is correct. Why would they believe that? I don't know. It might have something to do with the crusades, with all those banners they saw parading the Mother and Son together. Basically, they're familiar with Catholicism.

Okay, how about this one? This is too easy for some of us. Only Jehovah is God. Jesus was created by Jehovah and is inferior to him. Also, the Holy Spirit is a force of Jehovah. Jehovah's Witnesses. Yep.

So, if you read their belief statements and then you think about what they do, it's pretty consistent. If I think about the Jehovah Witnesses and I understand that they think that Jesus is not eternally God, that he was created by God the Father, and that he is inferior to him, what about that?

What about that idea that Jesus is inferior to the Father? It doesn't, I'm sorry, it doesn't match what Jesus said. He said, I and the Father are one, but didn't he also say that the Father is greater than I?

What does that mean when he says that the Father is greater than I? Okay, I think that's part of it. That he knew his, that the three, Father, Son, and Spirit, are equal in essence, in power, in attributes, but there is a difference that theologians like to call the economy of the Trinity.

That is, there's a hierarchy in how they operate together. And the closest human institution I can come to is that of a marriage, where the husband and wife have different roles, and the husband is the titular head of the family, but is there a difference in value?

No. And in the same way, there's no difference in value between the Father and the Son, they just have different roles. So when he says, you know, the Father's greater than I, what he's saying is, listen, in my human existence, as I think about ascending back to heaven, there is a, there seems to be that difference.

And he's talking to his disciples and explaining that you should be happy that I'm going because I'm returning back to heaven. Okay, so we've been talking about the Godhead. And by the way, just to kind of get back to this Buddhist model, if you think about that, if you just think that God is in everything, then you would say something ridiculous like, he resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer, or in the, you know, because God is everywhere.

God is everything. God is in everything. So you wind up with some really bizarre ideas. Been talking about the different, really, attributes of God as we talk about the Godhead. And last week, we closed just talking about his omnipotence, that he is all-powerful, which, of course, leads to some, you know, stupid questions.

Well, if God's all-powerful, can he create something so heavy he can't lift it? You know, all the kind of dopey things that teenage boys like to say, because that's what I did when I was a teenager, too.

Well, if he's all-powerful. Okay, moving on. So we talked about that. And this morning, we're going to talk for a few minutes about the incomprehensibility of God. And just to kind of get our minds right, let's open up to Romans chapter 11.

And I think this is such a powerful passage in so many ways, right there at the end of Romans 11. And keep in mind, you know, when we think about Romans 11, who wrote the book? Paul. And Paul's introduction to the Lord Jesus Christ was meeting him on the road to Damascus and being blinded by him.

And having his life literally turned upside down from church persecutor to the primary instrument of writing the New Testament and one of the great messengers and missionaries that the church has ever known.

Now, as we come to verse 33, just with that mindset, think of this. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. When Paul considers God, he doesn't think, oh, I know Jesus.

I met him on the road to Damascus. I spent time with him, with the resurrected Lord, learning from him. So let me just tell you what he's like. He goes, no, he goes, it's just beyond my ability, even though I've had these privileges, even though I've learned from the Lord himself, he's beyond my capacity to even describe.

And when we talk about the incomprehensibility of God, Culver says this, this somewhat misleading term indicates simply that no one except the triune God fully comprehends God. That's pretty basic. If we think that we as creatures, and this isn't this, well, I'll just put it this way.

I won't even ask a question. This is the nature of our problem as human beings. When we talk about the sovereignty of God, we go, I have trouble understanding that. How is it possible that God is sovereign and yet we're responsible, but we're not robots?

How are these things possible? Well, our problem is we don't fully comprehend God. We don't fully understand him. We start attributing things to him that are true of ourselves. You know, how is it possible that God can love us and allow these things to happen to us?

Because when we think, you know, if I think of my children, my grandchildren, we think about them. Do we want them to suffer? Do we want them to suffer? No. So we think inherently the suffering is bad.

So how is it possible that God could ever allow one of his children to suffer? What is a stumbling block for many unbelievers? If there's a God, why do bad things happen? I remember a song that came out in the late seventies.

Probably most of you have never heard it because it was one of those album fillers. And the writer said, you know, if there's a God in heaven, what's he waiting for? You know, there's all this suffering, there's all this warfare.

There are all these bad things happening. Why doesn't he just make things right? And the problem is we tend to look at God and go, well, if I was God, I would do this. I would make it this way. Nobody would ever suffer if I was God.

That's human thinking. It's wrong. Culver goes on to say, people should not find this difficult to accept for we do not quite understand ourselves or our fellows. And he says, Proverbs 25, three, the heart of Kings is unsearchable.

If we don't understand ourselves rightly, if we don't understand our fellow man rightly, then how can we ever hope to understand God? If we can't comprehend the finite, how are we then going to comprehend the infinite?

Speaking as a man, I know many men struggle in fully understanding their wives. I don't personally have that struggle, but I find that many men, thank you. I do struggle with humility. Why is that? Because there are emotions and there are little differences in personality and we don't quite get it.

And you know what? I have to confess, I don't even understand some men. Shocking. I don't understand some Christian men. I certainly don't understand some un-Christian men. Why? Because we can't get inside somebody's head.

And how much less can we get inside the mind of God and understand him? Culver says, we cannot now and never shall fully understand all that an infinite God is and does. Does that bother you? And that's a great point.

You know, through scripture, we actually get to know about God. We get to know about him through his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We get to see examples of portions of his person. When we see him suffering, when we see him obeying, when we see him doing the work of the father, we get to see part of God in that sense.

Part, yeah, exactly, Joni. Part of scripture is anthropomorphic language so that we specifically can understand him. So for example, you know, when we read, do not grieve the Holy Spirit, do we really think that the Holy Spirit is, you know, like sitting next to a box of Kleenexes?

And no, you know, that's not the point. The point is that there are actions and attitudes that we can have that displease God. Not that he's, you know, all that emotional about things, but it's so that we understand it.

It's put in language that we can grasp. Yes, Charlie. Which is a great point. You know, why do people suffer or why do they go through difficulty? May not even be technically suffering. I mean, I didn't really think of it being suffering when I would go, wow, macaroni and cheese is on sale five for a buck.

I mean, that's not really suffering. Now, I don't know what it costs these days because I don't do any of the shopping. It's probably more than five for a buck. Probably a lot more, but yeah, that's right.

I mean, even as parents, we understand that there's a process by which our children grow and learn. At least some of us do. Others of us would prefer that our children remain infants into their forties and fifties.

Some, someday they'll be able to stand our health plan until they're 50. But you know, I digress. Yeah. I mean, if we have those kinds of thoughts where it's good for our kids to learn and to grow in responsibility, then how much more would we expect God to do that?

Especially for those that he loves and he is conforming, that is shaping us into the image of his son. He uses events. He uses people. He uses trials, illness. I mean, here's one thing. If you are young and vigorous, you're healthy, you're in great shape and you get sick, what's it remind you?

It reminds you that your body is not flawless, that you are susceptible to elements in the world and that your body is, I know this is hard to believe kids, but your body is going to decay. It's going to get harder to get out of bed.

Someday, just rolling out of bed will be an exercise for you. You know, you get up now, you do 40 or 50 pushups, you do your 30 crunches, you run around the block a couple times and eat breakfast, you know, and someday you'll be like, I made it downstairs.

You'll laugh, but it's true. I was thinking about having a ramp put on my staircase, you know, so slide down there. Well, let's read Psalm 36. And by the way, if there's a book of the Bible that really just expounds on the attributes, characteristics of God is the book of Psalms.

Why is that? See, I'd apologize for asking a question like that this early in the morning, but it's not that early in the morning. Charlie, it's the hymnal. You know, I, and you know, just as an aside, I mean, think about this.

We could sing a lot of really cool songs that have almost nothing to do with God and telling us about what he's done for us. Or we can think the things that God would have us sing, and we could try to sing those kinds of songs.

And that's what we try to do. I mean, if you want to know about God, you read just about his person, everything, then you can read Psalm, the book of Psalms, who has Psalm 36 verses five and six. Okay, we'll just look at the comparisons that he makes there.

First of all, he says, you know, your steadfast love extends to the heavens. And he's just talking about just trying to give us some kind of, I mean, where do the heavens end? You know, where do we, where's the end of existence?

You know, the end, the edge of the universe. I don't really know, haven't been there yet. I was, just as an aside, a couple weeks ago, we were at Pastor John Bulger's house, and he has a map of the United States.

And you go, well, what's the big deal there? It's a map of the counties of the United States, you know, all divided up into counties. And he's colored in all the counties that he's visited. That was pretty impressive.

Because he's been to most of the counties in the United States, you know, you'd see like little strips that he's missed and just going, well, I see a road trip in your future. But what's the edge of the universe, the edge of the heavens?

We can't even imagine that. We just think, wow, that's incomprehensible. Incomprehensibility of God. And then look at the language again. He says, your faithfulness to the clouds. What does he mean, just the edge of the atmosphere and then he's done?

No, he's talking about again, and that sort of, I can't even grasp it language. But notice it's in this next phrase, your righteousness is like the mountains of God. Your judgments are like the great deep talking about the seas, just talking about unfathomable, immeasurable.

I can't imagine them. I can't grasp their limits. And again, that just goes right in with what we were reading before in Romans 11. Culver says this, he says, God's mercy, faithfulness, righteousness, and his judgment.

David says in the Psalm, he says, exceed human comprehension. Paul in Romans 11 adds God's wisdom, knowledge, and ways. Every aspect or attribute of the nature of our infinite God exceeds our limited comprehension.

What did Job's comforters say when they were talking to him? Eliphaz in Job 5, 9 says, can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the almighty? Is there any end of him? And the answer is no.

He is incomprehensible to us. So he says, where are the practical benefits of this? And this, I thought this was really good. Culver says this, he says, these things, these ideas, these attributes of God do not inspire long speeches.

We don't see, you know, big soliloquies in scripture about this, that, or the other thing, not long sections. What do we see? He says, stumbling words of repentance and silence. In fact, just thinking about that, let's go to Isaiah chapter 6, because I think this is spot on.

Isaiah chapter 6, I don't know if I can get some reverb, but I probably should have some. I'm just kidding. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple.

Above him stood the seraphim, each had six wings, with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

The whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said, well, this is really neat. I really am enjoying myself here.

This is the best show I've ever seen. Woe is me, for I am lost. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

This is what happens when we ponder, when we think about the greatness of God. And here Isaiah has this vision, and then it goes on here. Then one of the seraphim angels flew to me, and having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar, and he touched my mouth and said, behold, this has touched your lips.

Your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for. His first thought, Isaiah's first thought when he comes into contact with him is the greatness of God and his creatureliness, the gap that exists between what he sees in God, what he knows he ought to be living, and then the way he is.

And Isaiah's not some crazy kid. He was a godly man, and even he understood this. Culver goes on and he says, no painter will ever exhaust the beauty of God's own workmanship. There's no amount of painting, no pictures.

I mean, I love some of the digital photography now that people do, but there's no artwork that we will ever see that will exhaust the beauty of God's his own work. Nor will any oratorio, any musical work attain the heights and depths of the Lord God omnipotent, whom the composer seeks to praise.

I mean, there are great pieces of music, and we listen to them, and we just think, I'm so thankful that we have music, that we have these kind of thoughts that we can wrap our heads around to think about God and to praise him, but there's nothing really quite worthy of him even.

As for learning the researches of the academic disciplines, as one of Job's friends declared, we will never know more than the outskirts of his ways. There will always be immensely more to challenge the researcher.

Can we ever exhaust the truths about God? And the answer is no. He has, Culver, what he calls an additional glossary, some additional terms to apply or that apply to God. And he says, we cannot seem to dispense with some abstract terms such as eternal, absolute, transcendent, imminent, timeless, above time and time space.

We seem unable to speak exactly about God's greatness without them, even though none of them appears in the Bible and almost none in the great theological confessions. For that matter, very few of the names that theologians necessarily give to the characteristics or attributes of God appear in scripture.

Yet it would be hard to get along without them because why? Why would it be hard to get along without them, without these phrases that we've come up to or come up with to explain God? Because we'd wind up just, I think, just repeating scripture and just going on and on and on.

These are like shorthand, theological shorthand for grasping with the truth of God. Now, talking about the absolute being of God, the word absolute in common speech seems to mean without qualification and usually as part of a vigorous affirmation or denial.

What are some examples of absolute that you think of? Absolute what? What's that? Absolute is zero, okay. Absolute zero, which is cold. How about ever hear the phrase absolute power? How about, I think there was maybe a book by this title, absolutely free.

When we say that, what do we mean? Absolutely free means 100 free. Absolute power means unquestioned power. If we say that a man has absolute power, we mean that he is the dictator, the monarch. No one can question anything that he says.

In fact, he says it's used of Supreme Courts. I don't know about that. I don't know if our Supreme Court has absolute power. But as used of God, Christian theologians mean it to say that God has independent existence without or being utterly without need, without external sustenance or support or stimulation either to exist or to be happy.

This is, to just kind of expand on that a little bit, this is what bothers me when things even pop up my Facebook page for well-meaning people, I'm sure, but it says something like, God is so in love with me.

You know, like if you agree. What's wrong with that? You know, I exist because, I mean, this would be the idea. I exist because God was a little needy. He needed a friend. He needed some fellowship. So instead of phoning a friend, he created us.

So this idea that he's absolute, what's the term he uses here? Absolute being of God. He had no need. He was not lonely. He was not seeking companionship. In fact, he says, Culver says, God did not create the world in order to supply some need of his.

Let's look at 1 Timothy 6 verse 15. Does somebody have that? 1 Timothy 6? Yes, Stephen. Okay. He was the only sovereign. Again, that idea of absoluteness, having no need, you know, did he become the Lord of lords when he created everything and everything came into existence?

Did that improve his standing in the universe? In fact, the universe didn't even exist before he created it. But it's just this idea that somehow God is in need or incomplete without us. And that's just false.

Let's talk about the infinity of God. This does not mean no known bounds, which would only mean indefiniteness, but no bounds at all. His being is not limited by any other being or by what he has created.

The idea is positive, even though infinite, literally no end seems like a negative expression. Excuse me. None of the attributes of God being grounded in his infinite person is willed by God. Now, let me just get back to that.

Let's think about that. None of the attributes of God, his holiness, his righteousness, his love, any of those being grounded in his infinite person. In other words, being an extension of who he is, is willed by God.

He doesn't decide to be righteous. He doesn't decide to be holy. He doesn't decide that he's going to love. This is who he is. So when we see something like God is love, it just means this is his person.

This is an absolute description of who he is, not something that he decides to do. Culver says that all these attributes of his are infinite just as he is. Now, infinite does not quite mean the same as without qualification.

To say, for example, that God's mercy is limitless does not mean that it is not qualified in some way. How is the mercy of God qualified? I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, meaning that not every single person gets mercy.

He gives it to whom he desires. Unqualified mercy would mean that everyone gets it. Now, talking about the transcendence and imminence of God, what do you think about the transcendence of God? What do you think about his what?

Otherness. Okay. Outside of the physical bounds that he's created. Okay. I mean, basically we would just get the idea that God is transcendent or over all. He's above all existence. When we think about the imminence of God, what do we think?

What's that? His closeness. So he's both far away and he's close. Now, there are a couple theological layers that we can run into. What do you suppose those are? Well, agnosticism. Okay. Or deism, which would be if we just think of him as being or neo-orthodoxy.

Karl Barth, some of these other German theologians. If we just think about him as being so transcendent that he's not imminent. He's so above the fray that he's not involved in the fray. God is indifferent to our suffering.

He's indifferent to the things of this world because he is the cosmic watchmaker, more or less. And then the other wrong way of thinking about this would be that God is so intimately involved that he's not outside of creation, that he's not outside of time and space.

So Culver says the distance is both physical and metaphysical, talking in terms of transcendence, as well as moral. No matter what we think about people being godly and good and righteous, what's the truth?

I'm sorry, what? You're a hunk of clay and you're not good and you're not right, except for what? His grace, but more specifically, was his awakening. Yes, but I mean, if I were to show a hand, you know, show of hands this morning, how many of you are righteous here this morning?

I might see some hands go up, but I probably see a lot of hands go kind of like this. Yes, because it has to be imputed to us. We're only good or right in Christ on our own. How many times does Paul say, I'm the least of the apostles, I'm the worst of all sinners.

Why? Was it false humility? No, it's because he always kept his kind of creature, creator status in mind. He knew who he was, he knew where he was on the scale of things. But Culver says this, he says, the so-called deists, I don't know why he calls them so-called deists, I think they mostly were, among the founding fathers of the 18th century, believed in prayer and otherwise showed their theistic convictions.

I guess that's why he calls them so-called deists. Think about the contradiction there. They prayed, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, these other men prayed, but why? If God was, you know, Pastor Mike has a Bible in his office, what's unique about the Jefferson Bible?

Some things are cut out. And what specifically are those things? I'm sorry, supernatural, the miracles. This is, you know, again, product of the enlightenment. Man is the center of the universe. And so what Jefferson thought was all these miracles, all these interventions by God in time and space, they could not have happened.

They must be false. And so I'm going to cut out those things and I'm just going to live by the moral code. I mean, to me, I just heard a radio ad the other day for free masonry, you know, where I think it's kind of amazing that a secret society that's set about to destroy the world.

Oh, sorry. And their advertisement, by the way, said, you know, if you want to do good works, including finding lids for all the jars, join the masons. But yeah, that's their top goal there. But I find it funny that they would be so concerned with, you know, doing good and doing right and all that in this life and maybe thinking that they earned some kind of reward.

But the idea that you can pray to a God who's not concerned about the things of this world, that seems like a contradiction. And that's his point here. But even the neo-Orthodox theologians, the Karl Barthes, etc., who believe in basically this kind of transcendent God who's too good to intervene in this world, why would they ever pray?

And the answer is they shouldn't. But when we get into the other side, the flip side of that, his imminence, that is God being in creation, it comes actually from the word, which if you spell it out, you can see it's I, he spells it I-N-M-A-N-E-N-C-E.

And it means that it comes from the Latin words to dwell in. And, you know, God actually dwelt in our world when he came into the world in the physical form of Jesus Christ. But now listen to this. He says, the tendency of many people who rely greatly on feelings in religious matters strengthens acceptance of the imminence view of God as much private devotion and public worship show.

I mean, what do we hear from our charismatic friends often? I felt the spirits, right? Or, you know, the presence of God was heavy there. You know how I would know the presence of God was heavy somewhere?

When there was repentance, when people were like Isaiah saying, I'm undone. It's not, oh, that was so nice today. We felt really good. I remember, just to give you an example, we're in seminary or when I was in seminary one day, you know, we had, this is going to sound terrible, we had to go to chapel twice a week.

Had to. It was required. In fact, they actually took attendance. And, you know, we would go through times of trial and times of blessing. Times of trial were like the missionary months where the missionaries would come and they would mangle the scripture as they were trying to preach.

And, sorry, sounds cynical, but you just go, brother, stop trying to preach and just tell us what the Lord is doing with you out on the mission field. But one day we're having a student chapel and this brother got up there, one of my fellow students, he got up there and his text was do all things without grumbling or disputing.

And by the time he got done, you know, laying out all the grumbling and disputing he'd heard during his years at seminary. I don't know if anybody had the strength to sing the closing hymn as they were playing the organ and we walked out, they didn't open the doors, we all went under them.

That is the presence of God where you're just undone and you realize, I'm a sinner. I'm a sinner who needs a great savior. That's the presence of God. That's the way we ought to be thinking about. I mean, are there times where we're just in awe of God?

Yes. You know, when you have, you know, a new grandchild or something like that, yes, we're in awe of God. But much of what passes for kind of imminence thinking now is really just nothing more than mysticism.

God told me that kind of thing. All right, just one more thing and then we'll close up. Next week, we're going to start a series on the church. In fact, I've already decided on the title. Should You Love the Church?

And I'm pretty excited about that. But anyway, time and space, space, time and God. There are texts of scripture which tell us that God is greater than time. Then he asked the question, does that mean that he has no relation to time at all?

And the answer is no. He actually comes in to time. He's not just outside of it. Otherwise, we wind up again with the kind of cosmic watchmaker idea. But he says both height and depth are his creations.

How do we know that? Because if we read through Romans 8 and we see all the things that Paul is describing, he says neither height nor depth, all these other things can separate us from the love of God in Christ.

That's his point there. But he says, does that mean that space is without meaning for God? No. And he goes on, he talks about what science has done with it, with space or with time and how it's the fourth dimension now that they use to measure it.

But he closes by saying this, to say therefore that God is eternal and that he is omnipresent omnipresent in all creation are meaningful statements. God has created a world of clocks and yardsticks. Time and space are both meaningful.

God operates in time and in space. I mean, think about this. If while Israel was battling and they needed some extra time, if God stops the sun or if he turns the time back or however he accomplished that, is time meaningful?

Yes. If Paul is transported into the third heaven, is space meaningful? Yes. We don't fully, again, here's the overarching theme. When we read through scripture, we learn about God, but we'll never fully comprehend him.

We're not going to be able to nicely fit him into a slot in our heads. What it ought to do is cause us to think great thoughts of him and humble thoughts of ourselves, even as we see in Paul or as we see with Isaiah, any of the prophets, God is great and I am his creation.

I'm his creature. I should worship him. Let's pray. Father in heaven, what a great God you are. It is beyond our comprehension that you would condescend to come into the time and space continuum to take on a body that is limited, that suffers from the world and the effects of sin all around, that you would do these things on our behalf, that you would even cause your son to be crucified on a cross for our sins.

Father, these things are beyond our capacity because we wouldn't do them, but you are not like us and therefore you are worthy of our praise. You are a great God who has saved us, who is transforming us and one day will cause us to be holy and blameless and standing before you, righteous in Christ.

And we give you all the praise in Jesus name. Amen.