SPEAKER_02: You're walking out of there with 20-20 vision.
SPEAKER_02: Now, I can't prove this, but I'm pretty confident that sometimes they don't even switch between one and two.
SPEAKER_02: They just want to mess with you and to see if just keep you feeling a little bit on your toes and vulnerable a bit.
SPEAKER_02: But ultimately, you get to leave the eye doctor with clarity because someone took the time to kind of help you put the right lenses on so that you can see clearly.
SPEAKER_02: I say that to say you can function with a blurry idea of who God is.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: When you read about the earliest members of the church, they didn't seem to have all the theological concepts figured out.
SPEAKER_02: They didn't have every single nuance to God's nature understood, but they understood enough to respond.
SPEAKER_02: But there should be this process within us that as we know God, we want to know him more closely.
SPEAKER_02: That as you spend more time getting to know Jesus, as you spend more time receiving from his love, you won't settle for a blurry image.
SPEAKER_02: You want to know that God more clearly.
SPEAKER_02: You want to see all the features, all the textures of his nature.
SPEAKER_02: And so it's important that you take time to understand who God is.
SPEAKER_02: I think it actually might be one of your greatest acts of worship that even though you'll never have every single answer about who God is and why he's done the thing that he does, he's worth searching to the best of your ability.
SPEAKER_02: I think this is part of Jesus' great commitment when he talks about this in Matthew 22, when he says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.
SPEAKER_02: The famous theologian A.
SPEAKER_02: W.
SPEAKER_02: Tozer puts it this way in his book, Knowledge of the Holy.
SPEAKER_02: What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
SPEAKER_02: Meaning that our thoughts about God will eventually shape everything about our relationship with him.
SPEAKER_02: And if you and me are creatures that our primary function, our primary purpose in this life is to relate to the God of the universe, then what he's like and what he values and what his character is like and what he's been up to, all that stuff is really important for us to take time to figure out.
SPEAKER_02: So for the next few weeks, we're gonna take some time and we're gonna kind of sit in the spiritual optometrist chair.
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna try and sharpen our focus about what the Bible tells us about God so that as we know him, we want to engage with him all the more.
SPEAKER_02: Now, here's the truth.
SPEAKER_02: We need a thousand sermons to be able to get this done.
SPEAKER_02: But we're gonna work a few for the next eight weeks, and then I can promise you, over the next couple of years, we'll just keep bringing this topic back up and bringing more of these things to your surface.
SPEAKER_02: So for week one, we're gonna start with an easy one.
SPEAKER_02: Who is God?
SPEAKER_02: That's a joke, folks.
SPEAKER_02: This is the hardest sermon I've had to write in my life.
SPEAKER_02: For my theologians, the concept we'll talk today is the doctrine of God.
SPEAKER_02: And again, I could have taken eight weeks for this sermon, so we're gonna float on a couple of important ones, and then more will pop up over the next coming seasons.
SPEAKER_00: But would you join me in prayer?
SPEAKER_01: God, we thank you.
SPEAKER_01: God, that we don't have to shoot in the dark to try and find you.
SPEAKER_02: As we just go through a couple of them, Lord, we we don't just want to know about you, we want to know you.
SPEAKER_02: God, we don't just want to be uh book smart about what it means to be a Christian.
SPEAKER_02: God, we want to feel it in our bones.
SPEAKER_02: So, God, would you help us today to open ourselves up to you, God, to hear from you and in this sermon, in our worship together, and in our conversations, Lord, that all that we might do might point us to a wonderful and amazing God.
SPEAKER_02: So, God, already we give you praise.
SPEAKER_02: Because you're so good to us and so faithful.
SPEAKER_02: And so, Lord, you help us to draw close to you.
SPEAKER_02: In Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: So, to begin the conversation, I want to talk about who God is before creation.
SPEAKER_02: And so, to do that, we're gonna anchor ourselves in two pat two passages in Genesis 1 so we can scan through the rest of the Bible and see where this specific idea reappears.
SPEAKER_02: But I'm doing this for two reasons.
SPEAKER_02: First, to help you see that, hey, what you're gonna learn in Genesis 1 isn't an isolated event of God just happening to act in a bizarre way and never doing it ever again.
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna see these characteristics flow throughout the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: But second, I want to give you a tool so that when you're at home reading scripture, that you develop this muscle that says, wow, when I've seen God do something, say something that sounds similar to what I've read earlier, I have to stop and ask myself the question, what kind of God must this be?
SPEAKER_02: So that as you're home reading your stuff, you can also do that same practice.
SPEAKER_02: So if you got a Bible, go to page one.
SPEAKER_02: Genesis chapter one, verses one and two.
SPEAKER_02: Says, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
SPEAKER_02: The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
SPEAKER_02: And this is a pretty wild start to the story.
SPEAKER_02: It's important to note that Genesis' primary aim is not to be a science textbook, but the book is telling us about the kind of God who's out there and how he would interact with humanity.
SPEAKER_02: It's more concerned about the who than the what when it comes to creation.
SPEAKER_02: But in this short two verses we already read, some things about God are becoming clear.
SPEAKER_02: And the first is this is that God is different.
SPEAKER_02: A fancy word, I want to say that God is holy.
SPEAKER_02: God existed before the created world, which means he is different than the world.
SPEAKER_02: Before the Bible shares about all the ways that we're like God, it's really clear to state that God is different than us.
SPEAKER_02: It's really important because this means that our understanding of what holiness means begins all the way back on page one of our Bible.
SPEAKER_02: For some reason, when we think of holiness, our brains tend to go straight to morality.
SPEAKER_02: We think of, oh, this person sins less than I do.
SPEAKER_02: They do more good works more than I do.
SPEAKER_02: They look like Mother Teresa more than I do, so they must be holier than me.
SPEAKER_02: And yes, that's part of how God is holy, but it's only scratching the surface.
SPEAKER_02: Here in Genesis 1, you begin to learn that the God of the universe that's out there is of a completely different substance than you and I.
SPEAKER_02: And he's never had a beginning.
SPEAKER_02: That's really hard for us to grasp our minds around, but it seemed really evident to those folks who are following God early on.
SPEAKER_02: That's why you could read things like Psalm 90, verse 2, and read, before the mountains were brought forth, or you had ever formed the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
SPEAKER_02: One of the earliest depictions we have of God, and this is something that they already picked up on.
SPEAKER_02: John, one of Jesus' closest apostles, would pick up on this language in John chapter 1 when he says this, in the beginning was the word.
SPEAKER_02: That sounds a little familiar, right?
SPEAKER_02: Little Genesis 1 action there.
SPEAKER_02: In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
SPEAKER_02: Talking about Jesus being there at this moment in the beginning.
SPEAKER_02: He was in the beginning with God, and all things were made through him.
SPEAKER_02: And without him, not anything that was made.
SPEAKER_02: Paul later on in Colossians 1:16 says this, for by him, talking about Jesus, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, dominions, rulers, or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.
SPEAKER_02: He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
SPEAKER_02: The Bible seems to be very clear all throughout that there's no higher order than God, and that he existed before everything else was created.
SPEAKER_02: That everything you know, everything you can imagine only has its basis because God allows it to be so.
SPEAKER_02: You can see how already, just one to two verses into the Bible, that this drastically begins to affect your picture of God.
SPEAKER_02: That God must be the center and focal point of everything we do.
SPEAKER_02: That God sits on the highest throne, nothing else we can experience will ever come close to him.
SPEAKER_02: Again, maybe how this maybe connects a little bit more closely today.
SPEAKER_00: God cannot be an afterthought in your life.
SPEAKER_02: God cannot be part of your self-care goals for 2026.
SPEAKER_02: He's not the thing that you pick up because you think it'll help you raise moral kids.
SPEAKER_02: He's not something to be checked off on your to-do list.
SPEAKER_02: God is the list.
SPEAKER_02: If this is the being who's out there, then we've got to spend our lives asking the question: if there is a God who actually sits on the highest throne, how do I respond to that kind of a God who's out there?
SPEAKER_02: And here's why I think this is extra important in 2026.
SPEAKER_02: You see, we live in a world that's trying to remove God from the conversation.
SPEAKER_02: We live in a world where people will say things like, Man, I'm so glad the universe brought you into my life.
SPEAKER_02: Man, I just give out positive vibes to the universe, and sometimes I get positive vibes back.
SPEAKER_02: I haven't I haven't felt a vibe in my life yet, but if you find one, let me know.
SPEAKER_02: And these things, they're cool and they sound great, but I think they're actually trying to teach us the exact opposite of what we read here in Genesis 1.
SPEAKER_02: You see, that way of thinking is an attempt at saying God and his creation are the same thing.
SPEAKER_02: And in Genesis 1, we learn they are not.
SPEAKER_02: That the God of the universe who's out there is holy.
SPEAKER_02: Folks, if if you spend your life trying to think that you deserve to sit in the highest seat, you're gonna have real tough sledding when it comes to following Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: If you spend your life trying to get the rest of the world to submit to your way and never stop to wonder, hey, could there be a bigger, greater, more important being out there that I have to relate with?
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be very hard to move in God's direction.
SPEAKER_02: So I beg you, if you're here today and it's your first time coming to church and you aren't following God, would you begin asking that hard question today?
SPEAKER_02: Hey, is there a God out there?
SPEAKER_02: And if he's out there, then what is he like?
SPEAKER_02: And if he made me, how I ought to, how ought I relate to that kind of a being?
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe if you are a Christian, if you have been following Jesus for a while, would you would you begin asking yourself the hard question this morning, like I ask myself often, is there something else I've elevated to that highest seat?
SPEAKER_02: Is there something else that I've given the throne of my heart in my life?
SPEAKER_02: Is there something else that unlike anything else in humanity, I've decided that that is the holy thing that deserves my worship?
SPEAKER_02: Have I been operating like I'm the king of the universe lately, or have I given God his right throne to be king of my life as well?
SPEAKER_02: Because we learn early in Genesis 1 that God is different, that God's holy.
SPEAKER_02: And boy, that's good news for us.
SPEAKER_02: The second thing we learned about God is that he is powerful.
SPEAKER_02: Again, the awesome theological nerdy word is he's omnipotent, he has all power.
SPEAKER_02: Now I'm gonna get extra nerdy with you.
SPEAKER_02: Buckle up.
SPEAKER_02: This is gonna be fun.
SPEAKER_02: Hopefully fun for y'all, but really fun for me.
SPEAKER_02: Before the serpent enters the picture in Genesis chapter 3, we already have a villain in the story.
SPEAKER_02: And it's water.
SPEAKER_02: If you've ever dealt with flooding issues in your house, you know water can be evil.
SPEAKER_02: It feels like it has a mind of its own, it feels like it's untamable at times.
SPEAKER_02: In ancient Near Eastern literature, water was understood as this chaotic, dangerous, evil force that is the obstacle to human flourishing.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: Think about it.
SPEAKER_02: If you're hanging out in Moses' time and you live near the ocean, you don't have an explanation to why the sea tends to just freak out every once in a while and start flooding stuff.
SPEAKER_02: If you lived in ancient Israel and all of a sudden it would rain and these big flash floods would come and take out your house and your neighbor's house, you'd begin to understand, hey, water is this wild, untamable thing that we really don't know how to deal with all that well.
SPEAKER_02: And so here, at the very beginning of creation, you've got a God that's creating order out of chaotic water.
SPEAKER_02: The symbol of uncontrolled chaos, and here God is able to separate and make ordered goodness out of a chaotic mess.
SPEAKER_02: So not only early on in the very first two verses of scripture, we're learning, yeah, God existed before creation, but also he's got power to make order out of chaos.
SPEAKER_02: At the thing that no one else in the universe can even fathom doing, God does it on instinct.
SPEAKER_02: Which means that, folks, we serve a powerful God who is able to bring order out of chaos.
SPEAKER_02: That's who he is, that's in his DNA.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna give you a little tool so that when you read water in the rest of the Bible, it might be worth asking yourself the question: hey, where might this be an incident of God actually showing how he can make order out of chaos?
SPEAKER_02: You ready?
SPEAKER_02: Come along for the ride.
SPEAKER_02: In Exodus 14, the Israelites are getting ready to cross the Red Sea, and God has given them instructions.
SPEAKER_02: He said, Hey, stand between Migdal, which is a town, and a place called Baal Zephon.
SPEAKER_02: Now, here, extra nerdy, extra bonus points for the quiz tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02: Baal Zephon was the pagan storm god that was worshipped in that region at the time.
SPEAKER_02: So folks would make sacrifices to that God saying, Hey, if we make a sacrifice, you'll just chill out and the waters will be fine.
SPEAKER_02: And so God says, Hey, you're about to cross the Red Sea, stand in front of that God.
SPEAKER_02: I'm about to show him something.
SPEAKER_02: And then God parts the waters in front of Baal Zafan.
SPEAKER_02: Folks, if that's not the biggest flex in church history, I don't know what is.
SPEAKER_02: God's saying, You, you, you guys think this God, I am the one who tells, I'm I put the water on a leash like my pet.
SPEAKER_02: I'm the one in charge of it.
SPEAKER_02: So, right early on in the history of God's working with humanity, he's already saying, Hey, I'm the one who brings order out of chaos and nobody else.
SPEAKER_02: Go a little forward to uh Matthew, uh Mark chapter six, is this awesome incident recorded in Matthew, uh, Mark, and John directly after the feeding of the 5,000, the disciples hop in a boat and they leave Jesus behind.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know what was on their mind, but they left Jesus behind.
SPEAKER_02: They're messed up friends.
SPEAKER_02: Some of y'all know what that feels like.
SPEAKER_02: But somewhere in the night, they hop in the boat, they begin crossing the sea, and they begin uh hitting rough seas and rough winds, and is making it difficult for them to get across the other side.
SPEAKER_02: Listen to what Mark records in chapter 6, verses 48 to 52.
SPEAKER_02: He, Jesus, saw the disciples straining at the oars because the wind was against them.
SPEAKER_02: Shortly before dawn, he went out to them walking on the lake.
SPEAKER_02: He was about to pass by them, which I'd have done the same.
SPEAKER_02: If your friends leave you behind and you have a chance to pass by and walking on water, leave me behind again.
SPEAKER_02: Learn that lesson quick.
SPEAKER_00: So he was about to pass by them.
SPEAKER_02: But when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost.
SPEAKER_02: They cried out because all they all saw him and were terrified.
SPEAKER_02: Immediately he spoke to them and said, Take courage, it is I, do not be afraid.
SPEAKER_02: And then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down, and they were completely amazed.
SPEAKER_02: That sound a little bit familiar.
SPEAKER_02: When you go back to Genesis 1 and you see God hovering over the waters, and now here in Mark chapter 6, you see Jesus walking on the waters.
SPEAKER_02: You've got a God who can bring dry ground out of chaos, and a Jesus who can calm seas with just a word.
SPEAKER_02: And not only a God who looks to order the chaos of a physical world, but God who's looking to order the chaos of our spiritual world as well.
SPEAKER_02: Let me get nerdy with you one last time.
SPEAKER_02: If you go all the way to the end of your Bible, Revelation 21, that same apostle John that we referenced before is giving a glimpse to the end times, and he talks about this moment where there'll be a new hurt, a new earth and a new heaven.
SPEAKER_02: And he writes this in 21:1, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.
SPEAKER_02: For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
SPEAKER_02: If you have beachfront property, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_02: Taylor Swift, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_02: Well, right, if if you remember the sea being the villain in Genesis 1, and now we're picking up at the end of the Bible, the sea being no more, we realize that the source of eternal chaos is gone forever.
SPEAKER_02: I say all this to say one of the key messages throughout scripture is about the God of the universe who has power like no other and has the ability to bring order to chaos.
SPEAKER_00: Which means something.
SPEAKER_00: That there is a being out there that is powerful enough to bring order to chaos.
SPEAKER_00: But that being isn't you.
SPEAKER_02: Only God can create order out of chaos, and that chaos includes you.
SPEAKER_02: So if you're here today and you've been leaning on your own strength to try and order the chaos of your life, I beg you, would you come and choose Jesus?
SPEAKER_02: Would you let him rule and reign and have authority over your life?
SPEAKER_02: Would you let him order the chaos of your world?
SPEAKER_02: You're not strong enough to do it on your own.
SPEAKER_02: Luckily, the God of the universe, who is Jesus, loves us enough to order our chaos.
SPEAKER_02: And here we see in Genesis 1, it's in his DNA.
SPEAKER_02: That's just how he operates.
SPEAKER_02: So would you let him do that?
SPEAKER_02: The third thing we learned about God in this early passage is that he wasn't lonely.
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna scoot forward a couple verses to the end of Genesis 1 to understand something about God's nature that I think is critically important to how we understand him.
SPEAKER_02: And it's that God wasn't lonely before we showed up.
SPEAKER_02: God was already in loving relationship.
SPEAKER_02: So a few verses later, God's making all of creation.
SPEAKER_02: He makes the birds and they're good, he makes the land and it's good.
SPEAKER_02: Somehow mosquitoes are included in all that, and there might be good too.
SPEAKER_00: Some that's gonna hit somebody on the way home, like, oh yeah, you're right.
SPEAKER_02: But in Genesis 126, it begins to God showing how he's gonna create humans, and he does something a little bit different, but look how it records it.
SPEAKER_02: It says this in 126.
SPEAKER_02: Then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness.
SPEAKER_02: Now, this isn't a typo in your Bible that God refers to himself as us.
SPEAKER_02: God's not having an identity crisis and beginning to split up his personality.
SPEAKER_02: This is revealing something about the nature of God that changes everything.
SPEAKER_02: This is our first introduction to this awesome theological idea called the Trinity.
SPEAKER_02: Now, buckle up.
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna get a little bit complicated, but it's gonna be great.
SPEAKER_02: I won't pretend this answers all your questions.
SPEAKER_02: Theologians have been wrestling with this since the beginning of Christianity.
SPEAKER_02: But if you want further research, go home and hit YouTube, Council of Nicaea 325 AD.
SPEAKER_02: All my nerds are locking in right now, writing it down.
SPEAKER_02: I see y'all and I love y'all.
SPEAKER_02: But right, that was the first time the Christians had gathered together to really hash out how do you want to describe this particular concept.
SPEAKER_02: But let me kind of break it down for us.
SPEAKER_02: If you've been around church, you've probably heard somebody say at some point, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: Now, these are not three different gods.
SPEAKER_02: These are not three different versions of God that show up at different times.
SPEAKER_02: This is one God who exists in three persons.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is not the free trial of God.
SPEAKER_02: The Holy Spirit is not the unlockable DLC that you get afterwards.
SPEAKER_02: It's not how it works.
SPEAKER_02: So when we look at other scriptures, we begin to get this picture of a God who exists in three persons.
SPEAKER_02: In Deuteronomy 6, verse 4, God says this when he's describing to Israel as they're getting ready to go into uncharted territory to a place where people are going to be vying for their religious attention and trying to make them serve their multi-the polytheistic pagan gods.
SPEAKER_02: God says, You need to know this about me in Deuteronomy 6 4.
SPEAKER_02: Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
SPEAKER_02: It's really important.
SPEAKER_02: In a culture that they were about to step into where they had gods for everything, God is trying to remind them, Hey, I am one being.
SPEAKER_02: Don't get me confused with all the other stuff out there.
SPEAKER_02: I am In John 17, when Jesus is praying for his disciples, he says this amazing line.
SPEAKER_02: He's asking for them to have unity just as he and God the Father have unity, and he says that they may be one, the disciples, even as you and I are one, meaning him and God.
SPEAKER_02: But there seems to be no other question in all the other scriptures that God exists as one being.
SPEAKER_02: But it seems to be clear that he exists at the same time as three persons.
SPEAKER_02: Now, this is really hard for us to understand because we're human.
SPEAKER_02: We don't have this luxury of existing this way, but when you're dealing with an all-powerful God who isn't bound to human categories, he can do this kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_02: But here's something crazy.
SPEAKER_02: I don't think God does this just to mess with our brains.
SPEAKER_02: I think he chooses to exist in this format because it portrays something.
SPEAKER_02: You see, of all the ways that God could have, he's in charge of all the categories in the boxes.
SPEAKER_02: He could have chosen whichever way to exist, but he exists this way because it means before creation, God was perfectly being loved and practicing love all by himself.
SPEAKER_02: God the Father, before any of us show up on the scene, is perfectly giving love to the Son and being loved by the Son.
SPEAKER_02: He's loving and glorifying the Spirit and perfectly receiving love, and it's out of that hurricane, out of that overflow of love, that God then creates humanity.
SPEAKER_02: God didn't create us because he was bored or lonely.
SPEAKER_02: God was all set by himself.
SPEAKER_02: Even now, God doesn't need us.
SPEAKER_02: Uh we are not the gift to God.
SPEAKER_02: God is the gift to us.
SPEAKER_02: And because it's in his nature, it's in his DNA to be loving, it's out of that, then God chooses to create us.
SPEAKER_02: I boil that all down to say you've got to recognize this.
SPEAKER_02: At the core of God's DNA, at the very basis of his existence, one of his most primary attributes is love.
SPEAKER_02: And so before you and I, he exists in Trinitarian community because you need people to make that happen.
SPEAKER_02: You need other beings.
SPEAKER_02: And so God says, I'm going to choose to exist that way.
SPEAKER_02: That's why John would be able to pick it up and say this in 1 John chapter 4.
SPEAKER_02: Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God.
SPEAKER_02: And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
SPEAKER_02: And anyone who does uh anyone who does not love does not know God.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Because God is love.
SPEAKER_02: In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him.
SPEAKER_02: In this love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.
SPEAKER_02: Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
SPEAKER_02: No one has ever seen God.
SPEAKER_02: But if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
SPEAKER_02: Pretty wild.
SPEAKER_02: For John, it wasn't that hard for his mind to make the connection between Jesus and God because when he saw Jesus, he saw the richest version of love.
SPEAKER_02: And so you recognize when we choose to love one another, we we help ourselves see God a bit more clearly, and we help people around us look on and see God with more clarity.
SPEAKER_02: I say all this to say, church, you've got to remember that our God is a loving God.
SPEAKER_02: That He could have chosen to exist in so many other ways.
SPEAKER_02: God could be vile and greedy and angry and nasty, all these things, and all the ways that we've concocted God's to look like us, God isn't like that.
SPEAKER_02: God is love.
SPEAKER_02: So if you're here today and your primary image of God is of something other than that, it's gonna make it really hard to run towards him.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, God is He's got righteous wrath, He's got anger, God loves to take care and deal with sin, but He does so out of a response of His love.
SPEAKER_00: So, church, would you let Him love you?
SPEAKER_02: And I think so many Christians sometimes are afraid to have a conversation with God after they sin, or they they feel like they've got to walk on eggshells around God because they feel like God has stopped loving them.
SPEAKER_02: And today I I need you to understand that God will never stop operating out of a place of love.
SPEAKER_02: It is in his DNA.
SPEAKER_02: Long before you and I were in the picture, this is how God chose to exist, to be a loving being.
SPEAKER_02: You can't earn his love any more than he's already given it to you.
SPEAKER_02: You can't stop him from choosing to be that way, so would you just accept the gift?
SPEAKER_02: Would you respond to his loving kindness in Jesus?
SPEAKER_02: Would you believe that he loves you enough to have died on the cross for you?
SPEAKER_02: And would you begin loving him in return?
SPEAKER_02: Would you enjoy the community that God created from way before the beginning of time to enjoy his love as he shares it within himself in that way?
SPEAKER_02: And as a result, maybe you may find yourself loving others and God all the more.
SPEAKER_02: Folks, there's a lot of other things that we didn't get to touch on about God's nature, things like his omniscience and his will, his relationship to time, all exciting and amazing things, but I pray that something in our conversation stirred a hunger in you to know God and respond to him well.
SPEAKER_02: Folks, if that's the kind of God who's out there, he's worthy of our searching after him.
SPEAKER_02: Luckily that that God has promised that if we seek him with all our hearts, then we will find him.
SPEAKER_02: So here's some practical ways as we get ready to leave in just a few moments to uh think about what we learned about God today.
SPEAKER_02: Number one, invest the time that it takes to know God.
SPEAKER_02: For some of us, the conversation, some of these elements may have been new to us, or maybe it struck up some more questions.
SPEAKER_02: But would you consider it today your act of worship to search after God?
SPEAKER_02: That if you're only curious about God in the 35 minutes or so that we get to teach and have these conversations on Sunday, you're gonna miss so much about who God is.
SPEAKER_02: And church, I I pray that we would develop a holy curiosity to want to know more about the God who's out there.
SPEAKER_02: What if your question about God is not something to be ignored?
SPEAKER_02: What if that question is the very thing God wants to use to bring you into deeper relationship with Him?
SPEAKER_02: Would you give God the time he deserves to evaluate that question further?
SPEAKER_02: Church, uh you know, we're gonna always encourage you to read your Bible, learn all the things that are out there, but it's also worth there's other resources that might help you as you're learning in that skill of reading the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: I've listed a few here behind me.
SPEAKER_02: I think they're up there.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, Bible Project, Gospel Coalition, GotQuestions.org, uh, friends of ours, the Watermark Church Podcast.
SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of resources out there that I, these are just some that'll scratch the surface.
SPEAKER_02: If you want to come and don't steal them from my library, but borrow books from my library, you're welcome to.
SPEAKER_02: But I say you can spend all of your life searching for God more.
SPEAKER_02: And it'll never be wasted time.
SPEAKER_02: Every page you turn, every time you come to a new little glimpse of clarity about who God is, it changes your heart all the more.
SPEAKER_02: Can I tell you that that God is big enough?
SPEAKER_02: That every time you you grab something, it's gonna be great and amazing.
SPEAKER_02: You can spend all day finding more and more things, so it's worth searching.
SPEAKER_02: Second thing, would you increase your worship?
SPEAKER_02: But the more you begin to identify how big and how amazing God is, that the natural human response would be we want to worship him more.
SPEAKER_02: I encourage you, as we go through this series for the next couple of weeks, would you find opportunities to worship God because of what you're learning about him?
SPEAKER_02: Some of this is gonna happen in the songs that you sing as we talk about God's holiness.
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna take on new definitions for you than it did before, and it should increase and say, Wow, God, I I thought you were holy, but this is actually how holy you are.
SPEAKER_02: And in that we begin to celebrate and recognize him all the more.
SPEAKER_02: Some of it's gonna talk is gonna look like those conversations you have with your friends about what you're learning about God in this season.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it's it's the sharing of the new revelation with your friends around you that helps us and others glorify him all the more.
SPEAKER_02: Conversations like, wow, I didn't realize that God actually loved me that much, and this is what made it clear.
SPEAKER_02: But as you say that, it helps your soul grow and it helps your friends to hear and know God in that particular way.
SPEAKER_02: The last is this would you share his goodness?
SPEAKER_02: As you recognize the specialness of God, as you enjoy the beauty of his plans for creation, as you see what he's been up to all along, that you wouldn't want to keep that gift to yourself, that you'd want to share it with people around you.
SPEAKER_02: As you learn about the kind of God who would die on a cross to rescue us from our sin, that would increase our desire to share about him all the more.
SPEAKER_02: So, church, in just a moment, we're gonna give you a chance to practice this.
SPEAKER_02: We've heard some concepts about who God is and what he's like and what he values, and we're gonna sing a song here in just a second to focus on the qualities and attributes of God.
SPEAKER_02: So would you praise him?
SPEAKER_02: Would you celebrate him?
SPEAKER_02: Would you thank him for who he is?
SPEAKER_02: And would you not leave this place without that dialogue, without that moment conversation between you and God and say, God, I love you.
SPEAKER_02: God, I'm responding to you, God, you've got all of me.
SPEAKER_02: You stand and join me in prayer.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus, we thank you.
SPEAKER_02: As we worship you, Lord, as we take these moments to identify you and who you are, would you help us to focus on you and the entirety of you?
SPEAKER_02: God, thank you that you're you've chosen to come close to us.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you that you are all powerful.
SPEAKER_02: God, thank you that you are first before everything.
SPEAKER_02: And so, God, in these moments, we just want to worship you, God.
SPEAKER_02: God, we want to declare your attributes and enjoy you for all that you are, and God, we love you.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, you hear that in our singing and our praise.
SPEAKER_02: We love you.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_04: From begin to the end.
SPEAKER_04: From beginning to the end, it will always be, it's always been you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, as we follow you, that you'd continue to be the center, God, nothing else can take that place.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, you help us to realize that we truly begin to live when we have you at the center of who we are.
SPEAKER_02: God, that human life actually flourishes when you take your rightful throne in the center place of all of our being.
SPEAKER_02: So, God, as we leave this place, Lord, in a thousand and one other things you're gonna try and vie for that center space.
SPEAKER_02: Would you help us keep you at the center?
SPEAKER_02: But some of us maybe need to go home and maybe budge some other things aside to put you back at the central point of our lives.
SPEAKER_02: Would you help us have the strength to make hard decisions that look like worship?
SPEAKER_02: So, God, we love you.
SPEAKER_02: God, we thank you that you are a loving, gracious, powerful, order-making God.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, as we experience all the more of that, we respond to worship.
SPEAKER_02: God bless our friends as we leave this place, Lord, as we go and carry this same presence with us into the world around us, Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Would more people encounter an order-making God just by bumping into us?
SPEAKER_02: So, God, would you help us be bold, be brave?
SPEAKER_02: God, we love you, we thank you.
SPEAKER_02: Would you be with us today?
SPEAKER_02: In your powerful name we pray.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: God bless, church.
SPEAKER_02: We'll see you next week.