Glock, David: Week Of Meetings-2008-06 ~ We Love God For His Own Sake-1

I was given permission to touch this. There. Now I'm satisfied. It is the, uh, normal practice, uh, as we come to faith in Jesus Christ to find particular interest, uh, just after salvation in reading the Gospels. We've come to know the Lord Jesus as our Savior, and we really want to get to know what he is like in, uh, the reading of the Gospels. This is a rather regular pattern. And then after reading the Gospels, we recognize there's a lot more to the Bible, and we start reading the epistles, and we get into the, uh, doctrine that fills up our understanding of Christ. Uh, the theology in the, uh, Gospels is rather tucked away in the narratives. John's a bit different, but tucked away in the narratives. When you get into the epistles, you really understand what happened at birth time, that there is, uh, the fullness of the Godhead bodily, Colossians, and you come to understand priesthood in Hebrews, and you, uh, come to understand the freedom we have in Christ in Galatians, and and we come to understand all that he did for us in its doctrinal content. We probably then would like to, uh, read the whole of the Bible and see how that is, uh, foreshadowed in the Old Testament. And it is very frequent as we get older that knowing all of that, having learned it all, we now go back to the Gospels and bring a whole new wealth of information and a life of experience back to knowing Jesus. Have any of you followed a pattern sort of like that? Seems to work. I remember, uh, in my own life, uh, early on when I came to faith in Jesus at, at twelve or so, I went through that same experience and then thought, you know, I need to read the whole Bible. And, uh, I remember in that year finally getting to the book of Revelation, and when I finally got to Revelation, I just stayed up and read the whole book through so I could say that night I had finished it for the first time. One of the great thrills of my life was to, uh, walk by my son's room, uh, when he was about twelve years old, and it was late, and I opened the door and said, John, what are you doing? He said, I, I got to the book of Revelation tonight, and I'm going to finish it. Praise God. That's what we want to see. And, uh, life is a continual exposure to the r- word of God. My father, when, uh, he had trouble seeing well enough to read, took up in his last, uh, decade of life the concept of listening to the Bible on tapes. And he had exactly how many minutes it took to listen to each book of the Bible, and, uh, he would convince all the young people from school that they should be in the Word and read it. It only, only takes about forty eight hours to read the whole Bible or listen to the whole Bible out loud. And he would go on to say, I've done that seven times each year for the last decade. It's a very doable thing. Encourage young people to be in the Word, because we come to understand God better through his Word, and we come to love God for his own sake, for what he is like. My wife and I, on one occasion, uh, when Dan Smith was on sabbatical, uh, we were asked to teach, uh, marriage and family life. They only let us do it once. It's probably best, but, uh, uh, we did a number of different things to make it interesting to the kids as much as we could. We had them marry up, uh, and, uh, then make budgets and, and do all those sort of things. There were more girls and guys, so we had to practice, uh, some of the Mormon practices for a while, but it was just, uh, playing, you know. And, uh, in the process of that, I said, uh, that dating and getting married is like the song Getting to Know You. Do you know that one, anybody? We're not supposed to know these things, but we do. Getting to know all about you. Getting to love you. Hoping that you love me. Now, we know that's true of God. But in fact, it is a thrill to get to know God, isn't it? And that comes through the word, and it comes through our walking with him and his walking with us day by day. Uh, we understand the Ephesians passage that we now are his workmanship in Christ Jesus, and then we want to come to know him. And to know him is to know his attributes. Theologically, there is a technical vocabulary in the Bible. Uh, words that describe God, and as we expand on those, we come to understand what they mean. Tomorrow, in the morning, I would like you to look at the verses related to this section. We'll look at some of them tonight again. Uh, but to, uh, dwell on some of these attributes of God and share with us some of the appreciation you have for this particular attribute as it has been manifested in your life. Uh, pick out your favorite attribute of God, if you can, and share with us how that has impacted on our day by day experience. We'll look at some of these briefly, and, and a few of the texts that are given, and tomorrow we'll, uh, have some participation in that as well. One night, when I was having trouble sleeping, do any of you ever have trouble sleeping at night? Just the best thing to do is relax. Even relaxing is good for us. And sometimes we have great thoughts. I was talking to Bill about some of these things, and they seem so good at night, and then in the morning they're not quite as good as they were. They understand it doesn't seem quite as wonderful, but this night they were wonderful. I was thinking to myself, can I go through the attributes and make a summary statement, bringing all together that I knew, and and put it into a simple statement that can capture the meaning of that attribute, at least to me. And I have listed those, teach these to the students in our doctrine class, and I think it's very helpful to be able to analyze this. These various attributes, we'll just look at them briefly, a summary statement of them, some, uh, contextual situation for that, and then look at some of the verses on the, uh, detailed page. The first page, we love God for his own sake as we get to know what he's like. God, first of all, in this list, not a particular order, but somewhat, uh, deliberate. He is omniscient. I call this the informational attribute. This is the, the database from which God operates, and he is omniscient. Omniscience, as we look at how God knows, uh, can be defined this way. God knows all things, past, present, future, real and potential, at once, without effort, intuitively. Hmm. What does that all mean? He knows all things, past, present, and future. He knows what has happened, will happen, is happening, and what will happen. He knows that in reality, and what it would be like if you would extrapolate one set of circumstances onto another. He will say, if the works that have been done in Capernaum and Bethsaida would have been done in Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have repented, and those cities would remain until this day. Now, that's a wonderful ability to describe his knowledge. He knows all the options as to what would happen if. He knows the options as to what would happen if, in fact, you were, uh, born with a different personality, if you grew up in a different family, if you had another station in life, if you looked a different way, if you had different intellectual abilities than you have. He knows all those options, and he knows how that would impact. He knows all things real and potential. And hence, when I look at myself, or you look at yourself, you can be thankful. And that the God who was, as we have seen, involved with us in prevening grace from the moment of conception on, knows all the options. No mistakes. Real potential. He knows it all at once. That's different from the way you and I come to learn things. We learn some things, and we forget those things. We know them, and then we don't know them. I, uh, in high school, went to an engineering high school, and periodically my grandchildren say, I'm having trouble with math, grandpa. I said, I think I'll probably help you, and they come, and, uh, it's as though I didn't know some of those things anymore. I think I could do the quadratic equation still, but, uh, I just don't quite remember. He knows, uh, all things at once. He does not go through a progress of learning. He goes, he does not go A to B to C to D the way you and I, uh, learn building one thought upon another. He, he knows it all at once. He knows it all without effort. And that's very much unlike us. We have to work hard and go over it and over it and over it, don't we? Even to get the technical vocabulary of the Bible, it is hard work. He knows it without effort. And I'll say another thing that only the ladies real will understand, he knows it intuitively. Have you ever noticed how the ladies do indeed have a sixth sense? Men, have you recognized that? Yes? Yes, thank you. I came bursting into a survey doctor class one time, the- some girls were down the front row, and I came bounding down the steps. Imagine that. And I said, how you doing, girls? Shouldn't ask that question because one of them was sitting there crying. And I didn't know it until full-blown straight in her face look. My wife could have walked in that auditorium and sensed something was wrong down on the front row, that easily, just by body language or whatever it was, just by the temperature maybe, I don't know. Yeah, but they have that kind of sense. God intuitively knows. He's He's omniscient. ambitious. That has lots of great lessons for us. It doesn't make a lot of sense to try to hide things from God, does it? That's why confession of sin should be immediately upon the sin. We can fool one another, we can fool our parents, we can fool our children, we can fool everyone, can't fool God. And finally, after all those months, David had to say, I confess my sin as if God didn't know about it all along. And David finally catches up with the omniscience of God. A wonderful attribute. There are no skeletons in the closet, no surprises to God. He knows our frame, that we are dust. It is both a challenging and a comforting attribute. He knows our words, our thoughts before we speak them. He knows the intents of our heart. It is all open and naked before him. And hence we have to have a real relationship with God based on his omniscience. Uh, there are no surprises to God that can, uh, be transferred to us. The informational attribute. He is the holy God. Uh, holiness is the dominating attribute of God. Now, when we talk about the attributes of God, recognize they're not things outside of God. There's not a standard of holiness out here that God matches up to. He himself is holy. Be holy, for I am holy. This is his characteristic, his nature, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, as we made reference to him already, he sings, cries, he hears the Seraphim singing, holy, holy, holy. He recognizes his own lack of holiness. From that time on, Isaiah never got over the attribute of God's holiness. The Holy One of Israel is a title of God that occurs fifty some times in the Old Testament, thirty five times in the book of Isaiah. That's amazing. What a frequency of, of usage, because he saw and heard about this. And he puts all the other characteristics of God subservient to that. You are the Holy One of Israel who redeems. You are the Holy One of Israel who forgives. You are the Holy One of Israel who creates. You are the Holy One of Israel who delivers. And he lists all different names of God under the, uh, descriptions of God under that name of God, the Holy One of Israel, dominates it. It is the favorite song of the angels. Isaiah 6, Revelation 4 and 5. They continue to sing, holy, holy, and holy. All the other attributes work in accord to the holiness of God. He cannot forgive us without being holy. He must be impartial, or his holiness would be a violation. His power without holiness would be tyranny. His love without holiness would be favoritism. His forgiveness without holiness would be a, a fickleness to his favorites. You see, it all goes through this grid of God is holy. It even is characteristic of, uh, the attribute of love. We'll skip down one. The motivational attribute. We will refer to the great verse of scripture we all know by heart, for God so loved the world. The purpose of love, the end of love is holiness. I came on that in relationship to the Ephesians passage in five where we are talking about marriage. Christ loved the church. Uh, we men are told to love our wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. We are to love our wives that way. We usually stop there. We're to love our wives as Christ loved the church. But it goes on with a purpose clause, that he might present her holy. Love encompasses holiness. True love always has the object of holiness as a product in the person that we love. We love our children with a view to them becoming holy before God in the way they live our lives. We love one another to, uh, encourage holy living as God's people. That's always the object of love. When we love God, we love God in all of his attributes, and this dominating attribute of holiness. We buy into holiness when we say, I love God. We can't say, I love God, and play games with the world. Because loving God says, I love. And I must go in that direction. Justice is the relational attribute. It's a level playing field. God is not impartial. Romans one and two tell us that, that God will render to any man who continues in well- well-doing eternal life, and those who do not, judgment. And James says we cannot hold faith in Jesus Christ as the sa- in the same time we are partial with one another. There's an attribute of God to be ultimately fair. He is not an impartial. He is not partial, I'm sorry. The truth, the verifying attribute. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, not I tell the truth. I am the truth. In all of these attributes, there's the, the concept of, uh, it is true with love or, or kindness, kindness of being, kindness of will, kindness of action. It is true with truth. He is the source of truth. By nature, he is truth. Consequent- quently, he thinks in a true way. And then what he says is the truth. And that's a process that goes through, should go through us and our attributes as well as we reflect them of God. It is what we are in being, what we are in will, what we are in action. I love this attribute of God's free, God being free. He is not obligated to act in any way apart from the harmony of his attributes. This is the gracious attribute. I see it most clearly when the author of Hebrews will say, he did not take hold to help angels, but he did take hold to help the seed of Abraham. That's an amazing concept. Angels sin, what did God do about it? Nothing. He did nothing. There is no provision for fallen angels. He's not obligated to provide deliverance for fallen creatures. For mankind he does, for angels he does not. He could have done the same thing to us and said done. But he didn't. Out of his freedom, he acted on our behalf. He did not take hold to help angels. He did take hold to help the seed of Abraham, those who believe. He takes hold to help us. He is free to do that. He is free, as Jesus comes to earth, to go into the pool of Bethesda and heal one man and not heal anybody else. He's free to do that. He does not act out of obligation. He acts out of grace on our behalf. And that should make us rejoice, as the Apostle Paul does in Ephesians one three times over, to the praise of the glory of his grace. He's gracious to us. He is omnipotent, the enabling attribute. What he knows and how he loves can be executed. You see, he has power to do it. He, God, can take all of our sins. Only God can do that. Take all of our sins and place them on his son. I can't do that. I don't have the judicial power to do that. I don't have the judicial power to do that for one person. That requires the omnipotence of God, the saving omnipotence of God. The omnipotence of God is used in a slightly different way than his other attributes. With his omniscience, that is always in place. With his omnipotence, it is always in place, but he doesn't use it all. Have any of you, in time of accident, automobile accident, say, aren't you thankful that God protected them? It was only a minor accident. There were only minor injuries. You know, a thought goes through my mind. I wish he'd have lo- used a little more of his power and prevented the accident altogether, instead of just having a minor accident. Have you ever thought a thought like that? I'll ask that again. Have you ever thought a thought like that? You know, and and when people, yeah, that's right, he did exit. Well, God uses it in ways that are in keeping with his omniscience, omniscience, and within, within keeping of how he desires us to grow and how the different things are going to have impact on us. He doesn't always deliver totally. He uses it according to his wisdom, his knowledge. Infinite and eternal. You know, that's a tough one for me to get hold of. These other attributes we all have reflected somewhat in our human experience, but infinite and eternal is totally different. We only know things that have a beginning, except God. And this is the all-encompassing attribute. I am the Alpha and Omega. I am the beginning and the end. The eternal God. He is im- immutable, the stabilizing attribute. Because he does not change, we have confidence in his promises and in his word. He is omnipresent. I love this attribute of God. Omnipresent, everywhere present. There are various levels of his omnipresence. There's the general omnipresent, where he is everywhere present i- in space and in non-space, whatever that might be. He is everywhere present, no matter where anyone goes. Though I descend into hell, though I, he is there. He's everywhere present. General omnipresence. There is the special omnipresence when God comes together and his people are meeting, such as tonight, where two or three are gathered in my name. I'm there in a special way. He is there in a special way when we gather for communion. He is indeed the host at the table. We receive the bread and the cup from his unseen hand. He is with us in a way that he is not over at McDonald's in his general omnipresence. He meets with his people in a special way. And then there is that very personal omnipresence. He says to the disciples, lo, I am with you even to the end of the age. In Philippians, the Apostle Paul starts out, be anxious for nothing. The Lord is at hand, be anxious for nothing. He's as close as you can reach out. I am there. The Apostle Paul will say that at the first defense of the gospel, no one stood with me, but the Lord stood with me. We are no, never alone. His omnipresence, his sovereignty, the integrating attribute, all these other attributes working in harmony in God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and they are executing Father, Son, and Spirit, this one great detailed plan that we have spoken of. It's good to know God, to come to understand something of what he is like. And then there are the great doctrines of scripture. We love God for his own sake, if you could find that page for these last few minutes. We start out, as we all do, with a great verse when we come to faith in Jesus Christ, if not this verse, the essence of it, and we believe this, for God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes on him should not perish but have eternal life. That is a great verse, isn't it? A magnificent verse. The beginning of our salvation. We finally have, through prevenient grace, come to that point, and we believed. And then we find out some great other words as we grow up spiritually. The beginning of a survey of doctrine class, I asked the students to put down on a piece of paper in a ten-minute period all their vocabulary, theological vocabulary words. It's a very short list. Very short list. Forty two hours later, in final exam time, I send out a second sheet of paper and ask them to put down all their vocabulary words, theological vocabulary words. The percentage of increase is three hundred, three hundred fifty percent. There is a technical vocabulary, and it's part of what we come to understand about God, and we come to love him for what we come to know him, uh, as he describ- describes himself, and what he has done and how he has worked out this great plan of salvation. There are three great words that are the content of what Jesus said when he died on the cross. It is finished. What's finished? We call it the finished work of Christ, and we rejoice in that. But what did he do? And we come to love him even more when we find out how God worked out so great salvation. First great word is in First John two two. You know this word. He himself is the propitiation for our sins, not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. How many of you love that word, propitiation? That's a great word. Louis Fair Schaefer, the founder of Dallas, I was not there in his time, but the legends go on. When he would come into the classroom, he'd take chalk in hand and write on the board, God is satisfied. That's what propitiation means. God is satisfied. What is satisfied in God? His holiness. How is his holiness satisfied? He made him sin for us. He who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. We sing about it. Jehovah lifted up his rod. Oh Christ, it fell on me. I was so stricken of thy God. There's healing now for me. And God takes his wrath and comes down on his son for every sin of every person in all the world, through all the history of man. Peter personalizes it. He bore my sins in his body on the tree. Don't you love God for that? His holiness is satisfied. Otherwise, he couldn't save it. We sing about that sometimes. How can God save us and righteous be? That's how. He poured out his wrath, his holy wrath against his son who bore our sins. God is satisfied. In second Corinthians five, it says, uh, God was reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us. We implore the unsaved to be reconciled to God. God has provisionally made reconciliation. Christ has done that. Reconciliation means to change. And we are changed from, uh, the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of the son of his love. We're a new creation in Christ Jesus, and we praise God for that. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. I'm not who I used to be, are you? We're a new creation. Old things have passed away. There's this great other word of the finished work of Christ. We've sung about it this week already. We've been redeemed. You love that word? What's that mean? Five different Greek words are translated redeem in the New Testament. It's a wonderful word, to buy the slave market of sin, to buy us who were enslaved, to buy us out, to loose us, take off the shackles of sin, to turn us away from the slave market of sin so we'd never go back, and to buy us for his own possession. All those words translated redeemed. We've been redeemed. And God, through his son, redeemed us. We have been redeemed, not with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. And in second Peter, we see that great provisional statement as me- as well, as in propitiation for the whole of the world, as in reconciliation for the whole of the world. Here, there were false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, denying the despot who bought provisionally the apostate teachers who turn from the truth they once said they embraced, but nonetheless, provisional redemption for all. Great words describing God. And so are these other great doctrines of scripture that describe our great God who worked on our behalf, and we come to love him for his characteristics. We love God for God's sake as we get to know him, get to know all about him, get to love him, get to walk with him in our day by day experience, and we love God for his own sake, and we bring back all of these truths to the life of Jesus Christ. And we see God manifested in his fullness. He who has seen me has seen the Father. We continue to read Holy Scripture. We continue to walk with God, and we come to love him more every day of our lives because of who he is, for his own sake. Let's pray to that end. Our Father God, how much more we love you now than when we first came to know you and your son in our lives. We thank you for this great growing experience of coming to know the love of God, your holiness, your righteousness, your mercy, your grace, your fairness, your truth, your sovereignty, your omnipotence, your omniscience, your omnipresence. We praise you for being so great a God and seeking us and finding us, and bringing us to yourself, so that we can glorify you and enjoy you forever. We thank f- you for this in your son's name. Amen.