Sovereign Grace Bible Church
These are the sermons and teachings of Sovereign Grace Bible Church in Biggsville, Illinois. We exist to fulfill the Great Commission through the Great Commandment within Gospel Community.
Sovereign Grace Bible Church
Our Great God
We examine the doctrine of God's nature through Exodus 34:6-7, where God reveals His character to Moses as merciful, gracious, patient, loving, and just—all without contradiction.
• God's communicable attributes include love, justice, and creativity that humans can share in partially
• God's incommunicable attributes like omnipotence and sovereignty make Him utterly distinct from creation
• God's glory and goodness are synonymous, as revealed in Exodus 33-34
• In God's self-revelation, He intentionally leads with mercy to show what He wants us to know first
• Unlike humans, God is always fully every attribute at once—never partially loving or partially just
• The Hebrew word "hesed" (steadfast love) is God's most frequent self-description in the Old Testament
• God's justice requires payment for sin, which Jesus satisfies through substitutionary atonement
• Sin's consequences affect multiple generations, showing why we need community and accountability
• God's holiness (repeated three times by angels) defines His set-apartness and transcendence
• Our proper response to understanding God includes worship, imitation, and reverence
May we never forget that this is God's church, and as soon as someone else gets glory, may He take it away.
Good morning. Okay, go ahead and turn with me and your Bibles to the book of Exodus. Exodus, chapter 34, is where we'll be today. Primarily, we're in a 14-week study on what we believe. So we're going over the core doctrines of Christianity, which is important because, if you're anything like me, it probably took me uh, 10 years of being a Christian before someone said the word do you know what God is like? And I had to kind of fumble through, like, yeah, I think he's like this and he's good. He's definitely good. I got that part he's God.
Speaker 1:And so a lot of us in Christianity, those that are saved, come in and there's no baby steps. There's no. Okay, now, this is a whole new you. Here is step one Learn about the God whom you now claim to worship. And so what happens, on accident in some ways, and then also just by implication of poor leadership and love, is that a lot of churches gather and they don't understand or know the God of the Bible. They want to worship God in some way or another, and yet they do not know God. So when someone comes in and says the Bible contradicts itself. They've never been taught about the doctrine of the Bible, so they have no defense. They have no even general answer when they say well, god has got multiple personality syndrome or something, because how can he be like hellfire and brimstone, and also sunshine and rainbows? That makes no sense. In all of that, though, the issue becomes from I think it's Psalm chapter 50, towards the end, and there's a verse where God is rebuking the Israelites so the ones that should know God and he says the problem is that you thought I was just like you, and that's what we do. We tend to put God in this human box and like he's grandpa in the sky, some sort of father figure of some kind, and we say, yeah, like God would act like that, because that's reasonable, as if we are the end-all, be-all of wisdom and judgment, and we're like, yeah, god would do exactly what. I understand that makes complete sense. One of the foundational truths that we're going to learn today is a doctrine that's called theology proper. It's the doctrine of God, the Father. Effectively, the title of our sermons are Great God, and while the entirety of Scripture reveals God right, we learned that the other day that's his revelation of himself there are texts that specifically reveal him in special ways. The part that we're going to in Exodus 34 is like the bedrock doctrine of God. God reveals himself to Moses In Exodus 33, there's this moment where Moses, this great man of God, looks at God and says show me your glory.
Speaker 1:That's a big ask, right? I mean like you and I, we say, hey, show up with your best. That's a lot of pressure, right? You go to a fancy dinner, you're dating someone and you're trying to impress. We already feel this like okay, I got to put all the best of me out. There is no pressure for God. And what's really cool is we learned synonyms, because Moses says there is no pressure for God. And what's really cool is we learn synonyms, because Moses says show me your glory. And God says, okay, I will have all of my goodness go by you. And so we learned that God's glory and his goodness are synonymous. They mean the same thing. The goodness of God is the glory of God and the glory of God is his goodness. But all of those need to be defined. Well, we have a beautiful moment in Exodus 34 where that happens and God himself defines himself.
Speaker 1:But first we've got to go through a couple of theological terms not many With the attributes of God. We're going to go over two terms here. There's communicable and incommunicable. If you have a dry mouth, that's really hard to say, which I have.
Speaker 1:So the communicable attributes of God, these are the attributes of God that humans can share in to some extent. These are shared with his creation, but are never at the same level of God. So examples of this would be love. Right, god is love, he's perfect love. You and I. We have little glimpses of love sometimes. We do pretty good every now and then. For the most part, though, we are fickle and finite and fail. Justice you and I have a sense of right and wrong. No, that can't be right. God is always right, though, and our sense of justice can be skewed and emotionally manipulated. And even creativity. God, with creativity, made everything, and you and I can paint a picture or make a Play-Doh statue with some toddlers, and we're like feeling pretty hot. We're like I did it. Like, do you see what I made? I made a gecko. I'm not creative at all, bree's creative. So like if I did that, I'd be really proud of myself.
Speaker 1:All right, other examples of the communicable attributes of God, these ones that are shared with creation, would be the fruit of the Spirit. Right, the Holy Spirit grows that inside of us Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. Also, relationality. The fact that we're relational beings is something that comes from God, because God is relational within himself, as we learned last week learning about the Trinity, rational thought, holiness. So our sharing in God's communicable attributes is for this purpose, for his glory, and is only made possible by his design and empowering. For instance, if you and I thought you know what I would love to be perfectly loved, I would just be able to do everything in the most loving way possible and never fail at that.
Speaker 1:We can't, because we are not designed to be infinite or perfect and God would not empower us to be able to do that. Why? Because he is God and he must be distinct from his creation. That leads us to the incommunicable attributes of God. So these are the attributes of God that cannot be shared with his creatures in any way. These are the attributes of God that make him God. It's the godness of God. They distinguish him from his creation perfectly.
Speaker 1:So examples would be his omnipotence, his omnipresence, his omniscience that's fancy words for his all-powerfulness, his presence everywhere and his all-knowingness, his sovereignty, that he rules over all. He can't share that with anyone. He is God and he rules over everything. His transcendence, the fact that he's above everything, his immutability, that he cannot change you and I, our lives, are a natural depiction of change at all times. So we can define these terms, but we can never fully comprehend them, because the idea of having unlimited power is not within the scope of rational human thought. We have no example to go off of, no illustration that would fit that. So we cannot comprehend them and we can never call them our own. And all of this leads us now into Exodus 34, 6 and 7.
Speaker 1:When God is deciding to describe himself to Moses, this same text will be said at least 10 more times in scripture. That's a big deal. When God describes himself and then it's repeated 10 times throughout the rest of scripture, that means something. All of these attributes, you'll realize for the most, most part, are the communicable attributes of God. They are the ones that are shared with humanity. And so when God decided to describe himself in his goodness, in his glory, to humanity, to Moses, in this moment, he chose to use the simplest terms, the most understandable aspects of himself.
Speaker 1:So this is God's holy word Exodus, chapter 34, verses 6 and 7. The Lord passed before him, moses, and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious. The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation. Now this will be great, because, if you're anything like me, I think this was actually taught to me at one point in time about how God is incomprehensible because he's two opposite things in this same text. So let's learn about how God is one throughout this.
Speaker 1:The first thing that we see is God's name. It says the Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord the Lord. Again in your Bible, if you see Lord in all caps, that is the personal name of God. We know it as Yahweh or Jehovah. It means the existing one. It is the same thing that God said to Moses at the burning bush when he said I am that I am. Who do I say I am that I am? It is God's self-existence, meaning he has no needs, he has no wants. He is perfectly content and full within himself. So God's name reveals something about himself, but even more so in this context, because, back in this day, names really meant something. Again, we've talked about this before, but when you have names in the Bible, you'll read a story, and the guy that's acting foolish, his name means fool, and you're like, oh, this makes sense. Like Shakespeare wrote this the woman that's beautiful. Her name means pretty, and you're like, oh, this makes so much sense. The same thing here. God's name is revealing something immense about himself, that there is no one like him. He is God and God alone.
Speaker 1:The next thing, though, is that he reveals that he is a God who is merciful. Now, mercy is God's compassionate and loving treatment of mankind, specifically in giving forgiveness and transferring our just punishment onto Christ instead of on us. You see, you and I, we deserve the wages of our sin. That was true even in this moment. The context of this communication of God is the Israelites are in the middle of worshiping an idol, while God is giving this to Moses, and so what God's going to show in just a moment is when Moses prays, he won't kill everybody, even though that's what's deserved, that's what's earned by them. God is merciful. He is a God who desires to not give us what we rightly deserve. And again, also in the Bible, order matters. Both in the Hebrew language, but especially in the Greek language, order of words matters. And so when God begins by saying he is merciful, we see very intuitively here, built into the text, that God wants us to know this side of him first. Now, as we go on, we'll see God's grace next.
Speaker 1:One of the most important theological things I'll probably teach you today is that when it comes to the attributes of God, you and I can think in this moment he's being gracious and in this other moment he's being just, and then over here he's angry and over here he's peaceful. God is never partially anything of himself. He is always fully every aspect of himself. So even when we see a scene where righteous anger is coming through and he smites a town, in that moment God's love has not diminished. In fact it is fully in action in that moment. And that's important for you and I to understand, because again, we have this idea of putting God in a human box. When I'm angry, it's usually sinful anger, and there is no love in my eyes, in my heart, in my mind, if I'm even thinking straight. God is not like that, when he displays his anger, his wrath, his grace or his mercy, nothing else is diminished in that moment, because he is perfect, unlike you and I. So we see God's grace. He's merciful and gracious. God's grace refers to the unearned favor, kindness and love that he bestows on us as a gift that we cannot earn and do not deserve. That is the most full definition I could possibly think of you and I. Again, we can think of a gift sometimes.
Speaker 1:I remember this was a moment for me when I was a kid, growing up in church. Was you learned that eternal life is the free gift of God? Well, you know what free means? Free means that the value of it is not that much, right, I mean I was. So I was I was selling some of my library when I was moving from this location to the other location for my study and I was selling it at like 45 off of what it's actually worth, just trying to get some cash right, and I noticed it wasn't selling as much as I thought it was going. I mean I thought it would be like hot off the press, like just going, and so I got discouraged and I'm like, all right, fine, whatever, I'll put it closer to what it's worth. So I put it at like 15% off and then a bunch of books sold and it proves the market point that the market will tell you all the time in business, which is if something's too cheap, people say there's something wrong with it.
Speaker 1:You and I can think that of grace and we can think it's cheap grace, like yeah, okay, it's a free gift. That means God didn't have to do much to do it. Like what did it cost him A weekend? You're like oh, no, no, no, no, the eternal son of God gave his life for you when you hated him. There is nothing cheap about that. God is gracious. He gives us what we do not deserve and he doesn't give us what we do deserve, deserve, and he doesn't give us what we do deserve.
Speaker 1:Not only that God is patient, or slow to anger, or long suffering. I especially appreciate the definition of long suffering as a synonym. There are many things that are patient Like. Again, slow to anger is one. You and I have to deal with that all the time because we're both humans and so when we communicate, there's miscommunication and it's very easy to be offended. It's very easy to believe the wrong thing about somebody. You and I have to not be easily provoked. We have to be patient with each other. Not only that, you and I go through difficult circumstances where you must be long under the suffering. The weight of how awful life feels in that moment you have to bear under it. That is patience. So patience isn't just dealing with that annoying person and not blowing up on them. It has multiple aspects to it.
Speaker 1:My favorite is that in the Hebrew the words are God is not long-nosed, aren't you glad there's translations? So God is long-suffering, he's patient, he's slow to anger. Why is that important? Because God is holy, he is just, he is righteous. What does that mean for us? Well, we'd say like again, get your hand out of the cookie jar. And when I was a kid you'd have a ruler hit across your hand If you did something wrong. That might be considered ill, proper and proper. Now, but that was a thing was like no right, it was an instantaneous exact. You're in trouble, don't do that again.
Speaker 1:So we think of the same thing with God's justice. And actually going back to Psalm 50, that was the issue the Israelites were having and you and I have. All the time is when God doesn't strike us in the moment like we do something wrong and we think we got away with it. We're like see, god's okay, god's not that mad about that, it's all right. God's not that mad about that, it's alright. And it's not true. God says you think, just because I am patient and slow to enact justice, that I'm just like you. You are wrong and every account will be rectified at the end of this life, either in Christ or in ourselves. So God is patient. This refers to God's restraint of his justice and choosing to forbear with sinful people as an outworking of his love, grace and mercy.
Speaker 1:If there's a favorite word I have in Exodus, if there's a favorite word I have in Exodus, it is stiff-necked. And the Israelites get called it a lot by God, moses, I mean, I think it almost was like a euphemism, where they said it to each other Like you're being stiff-necked, like we're all stiff-necked. God has this people who do not listen, who are not sorry, who continue to fail, and what does he do? He's patient with them. He bears under the burden of their weakness and says I will wait Again.
Speaker 1:In Peter, peter writes all of us think that just because the world hasn't ended, that God is wasting his time or his justice is off. And Peter says don't you understand that God hasn't ended the world, because he wants more people to be saved and he's waiting for those people to come to him. You should be happy. The world hasn't ended yet. God is patient. Not only that, he is abounding in steadfast love. This is the Hebrew word. I'm going to say it actually Hesed. It is awesome.
Speaker 1:It is the number one word used to describe God in the Old Testament. The number one word, the number one word God's loyal love. It is his loyal love and he is overflowing with this loyal love. I want you to think about all that we've just gone through so far here. We're just like five words deep in this sentence. And what has God revealed about himself? He is merciful, he is gracious, he is gracious, he is patient and he has a loyal love that he overflows with. Talk about the goodness of God.
Speaker 1:The word for love, here again, is best translated as loyal love. So if you see steadfast love or I think some translations will do loving kindness In your mind now when you think loyal love. So if you see steadfast love or I think some translations will do loving kindness in your mind now, when you think loyal love, it is God's unfailing, unyielding, never changing love. He has an overabundance of this love, which is poured out on his creation, and this love is an act of the will, seeking the benefit of the one being loved, no matter the sacrifice required. And that's good for you, for your marriage, or for your family, or for life, or for that one person that you have to see every week. I'll say it again Love is an act of the will, seeking the benefit of the one being loved, not the lovable one, not the enjoyable one of the one being loved, not the lovable one, not the enjoyable one, the one being loved. It's a choice, no matter the sacrifice required. That is love, and God is overflowing with this. Amen. I love all the littles, all.
Speaker 1:Next, we learn about god's faithfulness. It is his unwavering truth and really what this is pointing to is god's perfect reliability. There is never a question of if god will come through. There's never a question of if his word will be fulfilled. There's never a moment of if his word will be fulfilled. There's never a moment where we have anxiety saying well, god promised this, but my situation looks like.
Speaker 1:The word for faithfulness here describes the sureness, stability and truthfulness of God. He cannot fail. He is unable to fail. He cannot change and he will never falter. He is unable to do that. And, my friends, no matter where you are in life right now that should be the most securing, comforting thing you've heard this week is the God, who is mercy and grace and love will never change. From that. You will always depend on him and no matter how many people fail you, no matter how many times I fail you, god will always succeed and he takes better care of you than anyone else can, which is why we don't build a church around a man or a personality or a program, but around a perfect God.
Speaker 1:Now we transition from where God is described in kind of one word portions to now we're going to have four actions or implications. Again, as a good teacher, god is the best teacher. He knows that you can't just tell people I am love, and they'll expect to know what that means. So we see God's love in action first, and that is that he keeps steadfast love for thousands. Now, again, one of the things in Hebrew writing is they would use numbers to exaggerate a point. So one of the things I pointed out in this text is that we'll see later on that the curse of sin, the judgment on sin, does go to the third and fourth generation. But, in contrast, god keeps. That means he guards, he preserves, he ensures His loyal love for thousands. What is this trying to communicate? God is 1,000 times more desirous to show his grace and his mercy than he is to enact his justice and again going to Peter. That's why the world hasn't ended yet. Because he's so patient and loving. God guards and preserves his loyal love for thousands. Not only that, we see his mercy in action, that he forgives iniquity and transgression and sin. Now again, if you're anything like me, there were many years of my life that I read stuff like this and I was like iniquity, transgression. I know what sin means. I have no idea what iniquity and transgression mean. So let's go over this. I'm going to give you a general definition of forgiveness.
Speaker 1:Forgiveness is freeing someone from their guilt and consequences. I'll say it again Forgiveness is freeing someone from their guilt and consequences. I'll say it again Forgiveness is freeing someone from their guilt and consequences. So, for instance, someone wrongs you, they talked bad about you, they lied to you, they kicked you in the shin. That probably doesn't happen as often, but still In that moment you can demand justice. I'm going to kick you back in the shin or I'm going to fill out a report, or you may never come into my house again. I can enact some level of justice. To forgive is to take the guilt of that person kicking me in the shin and the consequences. There are consequences to kicking people and say I will take that on me. Not that I'm going to be guilty now, but the idea being I'm going to absorb that guiltiness Instead of expanding it onto you and pushing it out of me and saying no, no, no, you must give me back. Pushing it out of me and saying no, no, no, you must give me back, I will take the loss and not demand the justice required of me.
Speaker 1:Forgiveness is freeing someone from their guilt and consequences. Now terms here we have iniquity. Iniquity is to continue to knowingly sin, habitually. So a good example would be something like David with Bathsheba. Most of us kind of know the general of that story. Right, there's this premeditation and like instead of like. Stopping at go like man, I committed adultery. Stopping at go like man, I committed adultery. Okay, we should just go ahead and get this over with, fess up and deal with the consequences. What happened? The snowball of sin continued. So now it's not one sin, it is now a continued knowing sin that's multiplying on itself. That's the idea of iniquity. Iniquity is this premeditation, this habitual continuance in sin, transgression. Transgression is to knowingly choose to sin.
Speaker 1:So in the Bible there's two kinds of sins. There are the ones that we don't know about and there's the ones we do know about. So, for instance, I remember when I was first saved, people would explain things like certain words, like I thought there was like clean cuss words and then like the dirty cuss words, and so like I got rid of the dirty ones, like pretty quick, I was pretty proud of myself, and then I just like kept the soft ones, you know what I'm saying. And I got a lot of nods to that and someone eventually explained to me Dan, that doesn't count, you're still sinning. I mean, you're not sinning as egregiously, but you're still sinning. Why? Because everything that's supposed to come out of your mouth is to glorify God, to be gracious and kind, seasoned with salt, timely and loving. And you saying that is none of those. It's like you trying to get away with a little bit of slice of pie as opposed to the whole pie. You're still eating pie.
Speaker 1:Okay, transgression. I'll add another one for you. That's not on your notes. It would be trespass. It's the only other word usually that's used in scripture is trespasses, right? So, like Ephesians 2 talks about that, or trespasses and sins. Trespass is the idea that God has made a perfect box for us to operate in and it said if you stay in this box, you won't die. So stay in the box, right? You drew chalk on the ground like you're playing four square and said don't step out of it. It will not go well for you if you do that. And you and I, we just just dip a little toe out. That is trespassing. It is going outside the boundaries of what God has declared to be perfect in his expectations.
Speaker 1:And then sin. The most basic definition of sin is to miss the mark of God's perfect standard. It's the idea that God has a bullseye target and says this is what is right and you and I miss is what is right and you and I miss. So, god now? So we gotta. We gotta get all these things together. God is all of these things. He is merciful and gracious and patient. He's loyal love, abounding at it, reliable. His love is in action to thousands and his mercy is in action to thousands. And His mercy is in action by forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin. So he's kind of covering the full gambit here of sin, right From the smallest sin to the my goodness, you've been doing that for years Sin.
Speaker 1:But we see God's justice in action and this is where we have to. I mean, you got some explaining to do, but who will by no means clear the guilty? Okay, who's the guilty? Everyone raise your hand, go ahead. I believe in you, yeah, yeah, be honest. Sean didn't raise his hand, okay, so God just said he will by no means clear you. That's a big deal and it makes sense. God is perfectly just. His justice is in action.
Speaker 1:Here's what's really important again, because you and I can think like there's, like again, multiple personalities of god. We're like sometimes he's being merciful and sometimes he's being just, and like if we're Christians, then he's only merciful with us. He's not just, and it is a lie straight from the pit of hell. God's mercy does not remove his justice. He is a fair and unchanging God. And guess what? The wages of sin is death, and that will always be true, no matter who you are, what you've done or what you believed, the wages of sin will always be death. God doesn't overlook sin, because that's what you and I will think, right, well, like, god's just and he's merciful. But what mercy means is that, like, when it comes to his children, he just kind of turns an eye and doesn't look so much. No, god is perfectly just, even for his children. He pours his wrath on his own son, jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:You see, and that's the only way that any of this makes sense. Without Jesus, none of this makes sense. It literally would be this like no, god is withholding his justice and will somehow turn it back around later on to just let us all have it. He's being gracious for a moment, but it's going to come. Hammer's going to drop. Jesus is the only way this makes sense. Why? Because he can be gracious and merciful with you, not because he just loves you so much that he's just going to forget about it. He's going to forget about all the terrible things you've done and how you've broken his law so many times. He's gonna. No, no, what he will do is every one of your accounts. Every time you've lied, you've stolen, you've been angry in a sinful way. Every time you've cheated. Every moment is documented, no matter what the good news is.
Speaker 1:When the bill comes due it's gonna say already paid in full. If you're in christ, if jesus is your savior, you and I don't worry about the bill. We're like a guy that goes into a restaurant that has a really rich friend that has a tab open and we're like, yeah, uh, put it on jim's tab. Sorry, jim, um, we. We just say like we never even think about it. You order whatever you want. You come back and you do it again and again, and again, and you're never worried about how much has the bill gone up. Because you and I can do that when we forget God right, we put God in the human box. We'll forget and we'll say no, no, the bill's pretty high.
Speaker 1:Today, like I blew up at least three times. Someone did cut me off in traffic and I promise you they almost got rear-ended. I did look at so-and-so's paper, I didn't control my thoughts and I gossiped at least five times. That's like gotta be a thousand dollar bill right there. I just cannot afford that and we'll forget that.
Speaker 1:Every day his mercies are new. Every day christ says I've already paid for every future sin you will commit, and he knew every past one, present one and future one, when he died on the cross for you. That is a perfect revelation of the character of God. Now, that being said, there's implications to sin and justice. What will God do? He will visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation. Okay Again, if you're anything like me, you grew up around church or in church, and this was like the mean God, right. It was like God in the old Testament did this, and God in the new Testament You're good, don't worry about it. God in the New Testament you're good, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1:What does this mean? Idolatry affects not only the generation which chooses it, but the falling ones are tainted as well. As an act of divine judgment, god does not intervene to restrain the negative implications of sin and justly allow sinful people to have exactly what they've chosen. That is exactly what this means. It's not complicated. It is the idea that if you have an abusive parent, that child is impacted for the rest of their life and they might do better than the parent before them. But guess what? They're still going to have a temper or they're not going to engage in the healthiest ways and guess what? That's still sin and that's going to affect the next generation, and so it might get better, degree by degree and, by God's grace, all of it can be redeemed.
Speaker 1:But sin is not a personal issue. Your sin affects everyone around you and God says you are foolish if you think that it's just you, if you think hiding an addiction is gonna be just you and god. I'm like you guys can handle it. Don't worry about it. I got it. I'ma figure it out. No one knows. No one's affected. You're lying to yourself and you are going to fall on your face.
Speaker 1:We have have to understand that God is God and he is just, and when you and I choose sin, he lets us fall on our face. That's why you and I need accountability. We need friends, we need community that helps to restrain this. We have to gather regularly, not just when it's easy, not when it's comfortable, not when there's not seven more people in here, there's no more chairs. We have to gather regularly, no matter what, because we need it, because we're weak, and when you and I skip for no reason, when you and I avoid relationships, when we avoid accountability. We set ourselves up to fail for ourselves, our family and those around us for generations. God says take sin seriously, and part of that is the humility of saying I don't got this, I can't do it, I need help.
Speaker 1:We'll end at Isaiah, chapter 6, verses 1 through 3. You're welcome to go there if you'd like. It says 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, and above Him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings. With two he covered His face, with two he covered His feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory.
Speaker 1:My friends, you will learn in the Bible that there's a couple of God is statements, and again, that means a lot. We learned that God is light, god is love, god is spirit. We learned that God is holy. Those are the kind of the is statements of God. Now, none of those will be repeated three times in worship other than holy. God is holy above all else. And guess what? This is the Old Testament and the New Testament.
Speaker 1:You go to Revelation 4, you'll see the exact same thing happening. God is holy. Not only that, the three holies is showing us again that he is triune, he is three in one. He is not just holy, he's holy, holy, holy. Now, what does holy mean? Does the average Christian know what holy means? Right, does the average Christian know what holy means? Let me give you some descriptions and then I'll maybe give you a definition that is more for the street.
Speaker 1:God is holy because he is more set apart from his creation than anything or anyone else. Basically, god's holiness is a function of his transcendence, because he is high and exalted. Nothing in creation can match the Lord in his glory, power and purity. It is his separated-ness, it is his other-ness. Holiness defines his God-ness. To be holy is to be set apart, to be different, to be distinct, and God is perfectly holy, and the only time we share in that is when he creates it in us, when he shares his glory and his holiness with us. Now application okay, god's holy, he's merciful, gracious. He's got all these things.
Speaker 1:My mind's spinning with words right now. What do I do? How should we respond to what our God is like? Three things for you today. Number one when we learn about what God is like, we should respond with worship. Learning about God, knowing God, should train our hearts to desire to worship him. To train our hearts to desire to worship him.
Speaker 1:Number two as we learn about what God is like, there should be some intimation. We should try to imitate. That was the wrong word. Imitation is the word you should have there. You're welcome. I am my own secretary. I'll have you know Imitation. So worship. Number two is imitation. As we see, god is merciful. We pray Holy Spirit. Remind me of this the next time. So and so talks to me, because I will be tempted to not be merciful again and give them exactly what they deserve. Help me to be like you.
Speaker 1:And the last one is reverence. America has taught you about a God who is a lot like a better version of you, Like it's just it's. I mean, it's the. It's the Jesus who fails Sometimes. He forgets things. It's the Jesus who fails sometimes he forgets things. It's the God who would never send people to hell. We have to revere God. We have to keep him high and lifted up in our minds, not that you and I are like holding him up, but that in our minds we are tempted to always go back and to go back and say God's just like me or God's just like that person. We have to have a reverence for God where in our hearts and our minds we say he is God. And that should keep me silent for five seconds after I say that, and if it doesn't, I have some more praying to do. Will you pray with me?
Speaker 1:Father, we come before you just in awe of who you are. Lord, there's so many more things that you are than we explained today. You are impossible to fit into one sermon, let alone a year's worth of sermons. You are God and you are God alone, and you reign and Lord. We praise you, we worship you. We ask that you would get all the glory and the honor. Lord, you are majestic, you are high and lifted up. Lord, help us to never forget that as we build this church for you, there will be temptations to think this is my church or it's our church. Lord, help us to always remember to be humbled when necessary. This is yours, and as soon as someone else gets glory, may you take it away. In Jesus' name, we pray, amen.
