London Baptist Confession Ch 2,3

I forgot to say that I found, not like they were lost, it wasn't like Josiah and the temple, but I did find a few copies of the London Baptist Confession in print, and there's 5 of them on the back table there. You're free to those if you would like them. You might have to wrestle, there's more than 5 people here, and it would not hurt my feelings if you wanted to get up and go get them. I should have said that at the beginning. I got 2 already. You got 2? I'm a good table wiper. See that? Two tunics? You saw somebody that needed your tunic? Yeah. Well, so there's still a few back there, and there's a couple in my office too. But it's free online, and I emailed it to the church, so I assume that you can get your hands on it.

So tonight we'll be covering chapters 2 and 3, sort of. We are going to go very quickly through chapters 2 and 3. Any honest or even a cursory look at Christianity at all, if you ever look at the actual thing called Christianity, you learn very quickly that one unifying doctrine amongst anyone called Christian is that there's only one God. We are monotheistic. That means that we're not polytheistic. We're not pantheistic. And we for sure are not atheistic, right? So we don't believe that there are many gods. That's polytheism. And we don't believe everything is God. That's pantheism in Eastern thought. Mm-hmm. We are actually monotheists, which is, believe it or not, you might not know this, but that's often something that we're criticized for, that we're not monotheistic because we believe in the Trinity. So there are people who think that because we're Trinitarian and we believe that Father, Son, and Spirit are God, there are people who believe we're tritheistic, that we believe in 3 gods. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses would say that about us. They would say that we had, in some sense, hold to tritheism. That's not true. We'll talk a little bit about that tonight. But there is only one God. And if you didn't know, God cares what you think about Him. Most importantly, He cares that you think about Him what He thinks about Him. That God cares that He's properly understood. He doesn't leave Himself open for interpretation or our opinions. And it is also— it might not surprise you, it might surprise you, it might not— that almost— this is something that Hank Hanegraaff, before he went Sideways, used to say all the time that almost all heresy or false doctrine either begins or ultimately culminates in a misunderstanding of the nature of God.

So you can almost find in all bad Christian teaching, if you want to call it Christian, just bad Bible teaching, that one thing that will happen is the nature of God will get misunderstood, God himself. So there are times when there are side issues, things related to Christianity, practices like Does the preacher need to wear a tie or such things? Those are all side issues, but in the main things or the doctrines of God, that's where you'll usually find a heresy born is out of the nature of God being misunderstood or abused or twisted or manipulated. So that's why the confession addresses it so quickly. If you didn't notice in your notes or from last time, in the London Baptist Confession of Faith, the first chapter is on Scripture. And I come from, in my training, my— The Reformed Church. Theological training, they also start in systematic theology with Scripture. You begin with the Bible. And the reason you begin with the Bible rather than you or with God or with salvation or any other thing is that the Bible explains all those other things. So you know about the nature of God from Scripture. You know about the nature of salvation from Scripture. So the authority and the beginning place in the confession that you have in chapter 1 is the Scripture and the place it's supposed to hold. But now we're moving to chapter 2 and 3. And it's crazy how many notes I have. Mm-hmm. When you're looking in your London Baptist Confession of Faith at 1 or 2 pages, like I have 11 pages of notes. That's a lot. That's a lot for me when they're single-spaced. It's not outlines. It's full notes. So I'm going to go so fast because I'm committed to us getting out of here at a reasonable time tonight after I found out last week what I found out. I literally asked Judah. I literally said, "Tell me what the 50-minute mark is because I don't want to go over 50 minutes." And he said, "It's 3:40." 3:40. And I said, "What? What am I doing then? What in the world was I thinking?" And because we're used to starting at the rounded-out hours, you know. And by the way, I like preaching a long time, but I just thought I would tell you that I'm going to be on it and get you out of here at a reasonable time. And by the way, if you're tired during this hour, I join you in that. One of these times I'd like to fall asleep myself during the preaching because— Because this is normally— I'm still getting used to this is nap time right now. Like, this is prime Sunday nap time that we're getting used to our new service time. So I just want you to know I don't judge you if you're having trouble staying alert and staying awake. I'm with you there. But I would ask, especially here today, because we're going to move very quickly, there are things in here that could be sermons in and of themselves, individual lines. And if you happen to have the confession in front of you, I am just going to be going almost word by word through the things, particularly the attributes of God, and explaining those. And I'm going to explain them fast, but hopefully thoroughly enough. And if you've ever been through the discipleship material with me, a lot of this is going to sound similar to that, because not only is Wayne Grudem— in a good tradition who I developed the material from, but I also adapted a lot of the material from the confession itself. So I hope you can buckle up. Pastor used to say in his new members class, he would always say, "We're going to fly low and fast." He would say that over and over again because you can't camp on everything as much as you'd like to.

So let's pray and we'll get rolling.

Father, thank you for revealing yourself in your word. And then as we said last time, and the good traditions, the traditions that are trying to be faithful to what you say about yourself in your word, like we think is the case case with the London Baptist Confession. Father, we don't hold to confessions as the authority. We hold to your word as the authority. And we only want to say things confessionally that agree with your word. And Father, there are times where we might have to adjust our confession. And that's okay to do that as long as we're adjusting it to your word. So please help us be biblical above everything. Because you revealed yourself in the word of God, not in confessions. And they are helpful when they help us understand that. So please— Thank you. Use the confession as you see fit and help us never get that out of balance. In Jesus' name, amen.

The attributes of God, there are a lot of books written on it. I have a saying that's really important to me, and that is the attributes of God are what God is. He is his attributes. Now that might seem obvious, but you need to stay with me here. When we say attributes of anything else, When you say the— like if I were to ask you, who was Willie Mays? Who knows that name? What was Willie Mays? I said what was Willie— what, not who. What was Willie Mays? Professional. Professional what? Baseball. Baseball player. What else was he? He was a man. He was also a man. He was also a father. He was also— maybe he played checkers. I don't know. We don't know any of that about him. We only know the one thing about him. We only know one attribute of Willie Mays, and that's that he played ball really well. Okay. I say that to you because Willie Mays has parts, and we don't know those parts. We all have parts. But please hear me when I tell you God does not have parts. God's attributes are not parts. He's— to use the technical word, he is not composite. He is not composed of parts. God is all he is all at once. So God is 100% just and 100% merciful at the same time. So it's really important that we know that when we're talking about God with attributes and we say these things about God as we list them here in a moment, that he's not like anything else. Everything else has parts. A cake is part egg, part milk, part flour, right? But God is not part anything. He is all he is all at once. He is his attributes. Amen. He is not made up of His attributes like we say other things are. He is His attributes. So I hope that you take that with you as we go through each one of these things, especially that we'll get to the concept pretty— not in-depth, but strongly on God being triune in a moment, that He is all, He is all at once. So I hope you're ready to move quickly with that idea. So every one of the things we're going to talk about, He is that 100%, every one of them. He's not a little bit that. Those things aren't what they are. Yeah. Compared to him. He is the definition of those things. Okay?

So the first thing is that we say right out of the gate is that there's only one God. Paul says it in 1 Corinthians 8, and most of the verses I give you in this are actually in the Confession. The references are in the Confession. So I almost exclusively used Confession-proof texts. So therefore, concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world. So in other words, fake gods, false gods, they're nothing. They're not the real God and they have no power and idols are nothing. So if you go to, say, a Chinese restaurant and you see a Buddha up there that they give bananas to or whatever, that Buddha is nothing. It's a statue. It's ceramic. But it's not a real god. But then he says, "And there is no other God but one." So there's only one true God. That makes him singular. Jesus says, "This is eternal life, that they would know you, the one true God." So no, not all religions are equal. Not all roads lead home. There is one God, the God of the Bible. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Father of Jesus, the God that we know of from the Old and New Testament.

Second thing is— told you we're going to go fast— he is self-existent and independent. When you hear those words, like in Isaiah when he says, listen to me, O Jacob and Israel, my called. I am he. I am the first. I am also the last. You normally probably think of eternity, right? You think of time, and then you think of God being bigger than time, right? That's true, but that's also something that makes him independent of time and creation. So God is not part of creation. God is not bound by creation. He is completely independent of creation. If you want the fancy word for that, he is ase, of himself, A-S-E. It's two words, but it's a compound word. So when you're talking about the aseity of God, the fact that he is distinct from his creation, he's independent of it. So God is self-existent. He— when the Bible says, "I am," That's literally a verb. Remember when Moses talked to Pharaoh and he says, "Who do I tell them? I talk to the Lord, and when I go talk to Pharaoh and I go talk to the people, who do I say sent me?" And what's the answer? "Tell them I AM sent you." It's literally, "Tell them a verb sent you." The verb of existence. It means that God exists. He is self-existent. He's not dependent on anything else. In fact, there's a great word in the Confession. Doesn't it say, "He has subsistence in Himself"? Yeah. What a great word, subsistence. The idea means he exists, but in himself. His existence is sub-him, meaning the only thing his existence is under is him. It's really a neat way of saying that. So God exists in himself. He's totally independent. He doesn't need creation. He didn't make you because he was lonely. He was completely self-existent.

The next thing is the incomprehensibility of God and the fact that he's a mystery. Now, there's a couple of things here. One of them has to do with sort of the qualitative incomprehensibility, meaning like how he can't be understood. And then the other one we'll get to in a little bit is about how big he is so that we can't understand him, right? Because it's beyond comprehension in size. One of them is he's beyond comprehension in the what, and the other one is the how much. Okay? So the first thing is he is God and he alone is God. The secret things belong to God. Paul talks about an indescribable gift. Mm-hmm. Paul talks about peace that surpasses understanding. Paul talks about praying that people might know the height, width, depth, and the magnitude of the love of Christ. God is incomprehensible. He can't be exhausted. He can't be fully understood. That's the idea there. There's mystery to God. By the way, don't let that intimidate you. Don't go either way. There's one way where people say, "Well, if there's any mystery at all, then I can't know anything." And that's sort of the modern agnostic view of God, like we can't know anything, you know. If you act like you know stuff and you're too certain, you're arrogant, right? So there's the, "I can't know anything." But then there's people that go all the way and say, "Well, since something can be known, I can know everything and I'm the only one who knows it correctly and my denomination's correct and my doctrine is correct." And they essentially try to monopolize. No, God can't be fully comprehended. Watch out for anybody that says they know everything and watch out for anybody who says they know nothing. Neither of those people you should be listening to.

And then the next thing, it might be obvious, but it isn't obvious, and that is the spirituality or the invisibility of God. That God is invisible. He is spirit. He is the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, the Bible says. He is worshiped in spirit and in truth. Why? Because he's spirit. That's why he's worshiped in spirit. He's not worshiped in spirit— that doesn't mean enthusiastically, though it can mean that. The main idea is it says God is spirit. Therefore, you worship him according to the fact that he's spirit. That's what it means to worship him in spirit. Amen. It means that you worship Him as a spirit, in a spiritual way. He's not an idol. He's not a statue like other gods that get bowed down to. He's spirit. In the Latter-day Saints religion, in the Mormon religion, and they do, in fact, still think of the word Mormon as an insult, so I try never to call a Mormon a Mormon. I try to be respectful and call them a Latter-day Saint. Even though they're wrong in their doctrine, that doesn't mean I have to be a mean human, right? You can be respectful of people. In their religion, God used to be a man, a mortal man with a body. Mm-hmm. And he became God. Okay, the Father did in Mormonism. And so at one point he was a man, physical. Do you see how God is spirit contradicts that? You can't have a God that was physical and now becomes spiritual. No, he has always been spiritual and invisible. Now Jesus took on a body, but that doesn't mean he changed from spiritual. The second person of the Godhead was always and is always God. So Jesus— became a man, but that didn't mean he came into existence. That just means he took on a body. But so the second person of the Godhead is also spiritual and invisible in that sense.

Now these next ones are fun. These are the ones I like to talk about that it's hard for me not to slow down and talk about everyone. And those of you who have been through discipleship with me, I have so much fun talking about this stuff. I never— it never gets old to me. I love doing it. I love discipling people. It's the— Especially this is all lesson 2 in the discipleship material. I have fun doing it. But I'm going to try to go— Slow enough so that something is gleaned, but fast enough that we don't take too long. The next item or the thought in the Scripture or in the confession— and by the way, you're probably, if you're following along, you're seeing I'm saying the things word by word in the confession right now— is that God is infinite. And infinite is funny. You don't know that it's funny, but promise, I promise you, it is funny. Infinite. Infinity is funny for people to talk about because some people think of infinite as "eternal," as though they're synonyms. And there are times and places and languages where that was true, that in one place you might use the word "infinite" and "eternal" as synonyms, same word. But in other places, you might use— infinite is only to do with mathematical-type things, like infinity is a number that is the biggest number, right? And so you can get yourself twisted up in a mental pretzel if you get too caught up in those things. But for us, The easiest way to take it and understand it is God is just the biggest in all areas. He's biggest in time. He's biggest in space. He's biggest in number in the sense that he's the biggest number, like the biggest number, infinity. He is fully infinite in all areas. And he is the only one like that. God is the only one that is infinite. And incidentally, for people who talk about— like I'm in a discussion with someone right now over such things. There's a teaching called infinite regression that says our universe popped into existence and then it burns out and then it fades out and fizzles out and then another one pops into existence. And so there's never been a beginning, it's just infinite regression, blah, blah, blah. That can't be true because that would make the universe infinite. Only God is infinite. Everything else is finite. Everything else is finite.

So here are some things that makes— that God is infinite in. So all of these things that I'm about to give you are things where God is infinite and has no limit. The first one is, he is immutable. God cannot be changed. He is changeless. I always use the example, what does the mute button on your TV do? And everybody says, turns the sound off, because that's what it does. But that's not actually what it's doing. It's changing it from sounding to not sounding. It's mutating it from audible to inaudible. The word mute, mutate, like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. That word mutate means to change from one thing to another. And God is immutable. Malachi says he changes not. He's immense. He's omnipresent. He's everywhere all at once, even in the highest of heavens and lowest of hell. He's eternal now in time. Now I'm going to speak specifically to time. So if you want— the Discipled people know that I say this. I say if you want an easy way to say it, say God is everywhere and everywhen. No one ever says everywhen. I made up that word, so I'm going to trademark that. But if you want to use that word, that's how you can use it. So God is everywhere. That's omnipresence. But he's also everywhen, which is eternity, forward and back. I don't actually use the language eternity past. You maybe have never noticed that I don't say that out loud. It's okay to say it. I just don't, because the second you say past, you're talking about a time. And I always like the idea of separating the eternity from the time. It's just a thing of mine. It's not a doctrinal issue. It's okay to say eternity past. I like to say maybe before time began. Maybe that's a way I like to say it. He's incomprehensible.

Now, this is the time where I'm saying— so before when I say He's incomprehensible, I'm saying the idea that is that He's bigger than understanding. And now is more like the idea that we are limited in our understanding of Him. We can't comprehend how big He is. He's past our understanding. That's the idea. Then Genesis 17 calls Him the Almighty. I am Almighty God. Walk before me. He's almighty. He's omnipotent. He has all power. And I love talking about this too. Put this in your pocket, especially if you're going to deal with dime store philosophers of this world on the internet and everything. There aren't even any dime stores anymore, are there? Even though— even I'm too old that I remember a dime store or two or something that used to be called a dime store. Even the dollar store, did you notice everything's more than a dollar now? That's messed up. You can't call it a dollar store if everything's more than— every store is a dollar store in that sense. Follow me here because this one's a tricky one. People will say, "If God can do anything, then can't He sin?" And if you say, "No, He can't sin," then they say, "Gotcha! Limited. Your God is limited. I gotcha. Haha." No. Omnipotence, all power, does not mean God can do anything. God limits Himself to His own nature. God cannot deny Himself. The Bible says that. Omnipotence means he has the most power. That's what it means. It means no one has more power than him. It doesn't mean he has the power to do anything. It just means he has the most power. He has the— if there is power, he has the most of it. So don't fall for that idea of God can't lie, God can't recreate God, God can't deny himself. These are things the Bible clearly says he can't. He can't contradict himself. So is that a limit? Yeah, but it's a self-imposed limit on him to to be consistent with His nature.

The next thing He is is holy. I always talk about the two-sided coin of holiness. A lot of times, like right now is a really— it's still— it's more true than ever because I keep stumbling on this happening. I've been saying it for like 10 years now and it's only getting— well, I'll say it worse— that if you listen to modern Christian music— there's nothing wrong with listening to modern Christian music. I don't— it's not the modern part of it that's the problem. I don't care if it was written— you all know, right, that all music was modern at one point? Like Fanny Crosby was the pop artist of her day. Like, we all understand that, right? So because our hymnal has old music in it doesn't make it better. It's doctrine that makes hymns good or bad. I'm saying that to you because almost all modern singing about the holiness of God is not doctrinally accurate. Almost all modern music when it's using the word holy, and I haven't found many exceptions. Maybe you can look for me because some people have taken that challenge. Yeah. Go listen to your favorite songs when they're singing and they usually repeat it over and over. Right. Holy, holy. They'll sing it 54 times, right? That word holy, the way they're using it, you do this on your own and tell me if it bears itself out. If you replace the word holy with special, does the song still work? And if the answer to that is right, they don't understand holiness because holy does not mean special. Holy means pure, and it means completely other. Those are the two sides of the holiness coin. One side of that coin is absolutely pure and free from any and all pollution. There is no impurities in God. There is no faults in God. There was no sin in God. There are no imperfections in God. He's absolutely pure. That's one side of the coin. The other side of it is that that makes Him different than anything else. There is nothing like Him. So He's not just special like, "Oh, I want to give Him a hug because He's special." You might say He's special. You could say He is special, but the specialness, if it means like special like a little cute baby is special, or special like your favorite drink at Starbucks is special. It's a different meaning than the understanding of the Bible. He is completely unique. So holiness is both of those. He is holy, holy, holy.

He is wise. He knows everything. And he doesn't just know everything, he does what's right with what he knows. His wisdom is perfect in every way. This is a neat one. I got into a fun argument with a guy who literally got his master's based on a paper he wrote, and I argued with that paper. And I don't have my master's. I have the equivalent of a master's, but I— because I didn't have my undergrad, I didn't get awarded a master's, but I did the work. So here's the issue. Trick question. And you know if I say trick question, you know you don't have to answer, right? Like, I'm giving you the out. I'm giving you the out. Here's the trick question. The confession— and I am saying God is free. Is God free? Yes. To sin? I told you it's a trick question. Is he free to sin? The reason I asked that is because my friend wrote, and he essentially agreed with Jacob Arminius and others, even though he's a Calvinist, he agreed that God is free to sin. He chooses not to and doesn't, but he's free to. And I argued with him. My answer to that is he's not free to sin. He's not free to sin because it would be a contradiction to his nature, just like he's not free to deny himself. He's not free to lie. So God is free, but what that really means, like I said about omnipotence, is it means there's nothing outside of God that can limit him. There's nothing outside of God that can bind him or limit him. So he has absolute freedom. And by the way, he's the only one that has absolute freedom. Nobody else, not even us. Obviously, we don't believe in the typical understanding of free will, but even when we were in the garden with Adam— and you might think, well, Adam had the power of contrary choice because he didn't have a sin nature yet. So Adam had truly autonomous, ultimate free will. No, he didn't. Adam was still under God's will. He could never be outside of God's authority. Nobody can, or God is not sovereign. So God is the only one like that. And that brings us to the next one. I'll read it actually from the Confession, is the sovereignty of God. God is sovereign, working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and righteous will for His own glory. That's in the Baptist Confession. You see why I like that confession? Says good stuff like that in it. It's almost a direct quote of Ephesians 1:11, that He predestined— we're predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will. So God is sovereign. Sovereign means absolute ruler. You might even say tyrant. God is a tyrant, but He's a good one. Yeah, you might— maybe you didn't know there are good tyrants, but there are. He's not a tyrant the way we understand the word, so I'm just— I'm being a little bit facetious there. But God is an absolute ruler. He's not an elected official. Okay, he's not a representative. He's not a president. He's not even a king in the normal sense where he's a king by lineage or anything else. He's sovereign, absolute ruler, absolute authority. And we'll get to his decree in a bit on how he carries that out. But for now, he does his— everything he does for his own glory. And some of you know that if I can, I buy gift cards for $11.36 because of Romans 11:36. It says, For of him— Of him And through him and to him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen. And it's never not been funny to me when someone sees that 11:36 on a gift card. And what is this guy doing? You know, I like being weird like that.

The next ones might be more understandable, obvious to us, that God is loving. He's loving, he's merciful, he's gracious, he's forgiving. We talked a lot about that this morning. You know that passage in Exodus. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but when he passed by Moses and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord, the God merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgressions and sin." And then he goes on to say he also doesn't let the guilty go unpunished. He gets the guilty, right? But just so we're clear, he's loving, he's benevolent, he's gracious, he's kind. God is not like the lightning bolt-throwing God many people think he is in heaven. God has his arms outstretched ready to accept And I have something here to say about Esau too, because he was even kind to Cain. He was even kind to Esau. Even though the Bible says he hated Esau, that doesn't mean he was unkind to Esau. And if you didn't know where that comes from, I said it this morning, the idea of love less, that hate means hate. Hate doesn't mean directed anger at somebody, just so you know. That's not what hate means. Hate means you choose not to give them the benefits of love or sacrifice. That's what it means. So when the Bible says God hated Esau, it doesn't mean he was throwing rocks at Esau. It just means he wasn't the object of God's love. Just like when Jesus tells us, "Unless you hate your father and your mother," right? You're not supposed to go out hating your parents. The idea is you can't love something more than the Lord. If you love something more than the Lord, that's equivalent to hating the Lord, right? And the idea is to love him more than anything else. So I want to be careful, but God is loving. He— the Bible is very clear that he hates the workers of iniquity. Mm-hmm. I'll read that verse in just a second. But it is important to see that God is loving and merciful in His nature. These are things that are His attributes. God is merciful. He doesn't act merciful. He does, but this isn't about His actions. This is about His nature. He is merciful and loving and forgiving.

He's also just. Now, I don't have time to go into it, but the short version here of justice and righteousness, they're not the same. Yeah. Maybe you don't know the difference between those two. Righteousness has to do with the fact that God always does what's right. That is righteousness.

Justice has to do with all of his verdicts being good, those judgments. So how he judges the things around him. And they're both true, and you can use them sort of interchangeably sometimes. But if you want the precision to be a good theologian, you'll recognize right has the word right in it. He always does what's right. And just has the word justice in it. Think of the justice system and making judgments. So that's how the two are different. They're still similar and related.

Okay. You have to— in order to be a Christian, you have to believe that God is and He's the rewarder of those who do good, right, who diligently seek Him. Like I already told you, Psalm 5 says He hates the workers of iniquity. It doesn't mean He hates people because they're people. He hates the idea that they're working iniquity, that they're choosing lawlessness, they're choosing to reject His authority. That's what He hates.

Yeah. This might shock you, but the Bible says, "The Lord has made all for Himself, yes, even the wicked for the day of doom." That sounds like God decided those things. So the confession talks about Him rewarding goodness, but it's also true that He punishes evil.

In fact, from the— ooh, this— we don't use this Old English like this anymore, but I've often said to you that terrible and terrific are the same word. If you just take a quick second and think about the words in your head. Spell the word terrible and spell the word terrific. In fact, go even closer. Spell the word terrific and use that word and instead of -ic on the end of it, put -ying on the end of it. Terrific, terrifying. Those are the same word. Our language is weird, the way we use our language.

What does that mean? Well, listen to the Confession. It says that He is terrible in His judgments, hating all sin. And who will by no means clear the guilty. What does that mean that it says God is terrible in his judgments? Well, the problem isn't the confession. The problem is us. We don't use the word terrible correctly anymore. The idea of terrible means his judgments are terrifying to the people who get them, right? They're terrifying in that sense. And when something is terrific, the idea is that it's surprisingly something we didn't expect, and we're usually terrified by those kind of things the way we use that word. So something can be terrifically terrifying. Right? Hey, here's $1 million. That might be terrifying. I'll take it, by the way, if you want to give me $1 million.

So these are the attributes of God. These things are all that— well, they're not all that he is, but they are a lot of what he is. The Confession doesn't use the language like we do of communicable attributes versus incommunicable. I learned that in seminary too, that I don't use those words. And if you don't know what that means, it is okay to use them. Totally fine to use them. But the idea here would be is that God The communicable attributes are the attributes of God, the things about God that he shares with us, like the fact that we can love, the fact that we can choose, the fact that we can create, right? Not out of nothing, but we can work and make things. So in that sense, God has shared those ones with us so that we have some attributes like he does. But the incommunicable ones are like omniscience, that he can be everywhere at once. Omnipotence, he's all-powerful, right? We don't share those ones, eternality and those attributes. It's okay to speak in those terms.

The problem is that the Bible doesn't do that. And if you're not careful, you'll do what's called attributionism, where you actually force God into pigeonholes because you think, I have a doctrine that this is the doctrine of God, and I'm seeing a verse and I have to shove that verse into my doctrine so that I can explain God in a way that I am comfortable with. But then you're actually trying to make God fit into your box, not actually trying to get the nature and character of God out of the Word. So you have to be careful with that.

You don't want to— like if I asked you, "Who's the Savior?" Who's the Savior? What would your answer be? Everybody would say Jesus. But the Bible also says God is Savior. Like Mary says, "My soul exalts in God my Savior." Her son hadn't been born yet, right? So God is the Savior also. But carefully, the Spirit is never called the Savior, right? But is he? I don't know. I don't know. But I'm just trying to tell you, you want to be careful not to say, "Well, Jesus is the Savior." This box says Savior and only Jesus goes in there. And you only attribute Savior to one person of the Godhead when the Bible doesn't do that. So that's the danger of that kind of thing, attributionism, pigeonholing, you know, trying to make God fit in our boxes. Just be careful. You can use the language. I don't mind it. Just don't try to make God do what you want Him to do. Like, don't tell Him what to do. That's pretty basic.

All right. Now we move into a couple of things, these attributes of God in relation to God and His creation. So how does God and those attributes and what He is relate to creation? I'll read it from the Confession itself. Nor He does not derive any glory from them. Now that's confusing. If I tell you the most important thing for you to do in your life is to glorify God, give God glory. Who said that? That's my jam. That's the thing I care most about. If I say that to you, but then I tell you God does not derive any glory from people. You actually can't give Him glory. Sounds like a contradiction, doesn't it?

The thing to understand is there is no absence of glory in God that you are giving to Him. You're not— you might ascribe glory to Him, but that is you saying He is glorious. That is not you taking something He doesn't have and giving it to Him. So that's what He— God does not get His glory, or maybe I'll say it— this might make it clear if I say it this way. God does not get His gloriousness from creation. He is glorious. So that's the idea with His relation to creation. He does not get it from creation. He gives it to creation. He intrudes— how does it say in Acts? Does Paul say there about He doesn't dwell in temples made with hands? He doesn't need anything from us, right? In Acts 17. So that goes back to His independence. He's not— Right. God is not dependent on us for anything, including His glory.

He's glorious. Our job is just to recognize it. That's our job of praisers is to appraise His goodness and glorify Him for it. We're essentially just saying what He is when we say hallelujah. That's what we're doing is we're like we're acknowledging what He is.

And then the other way, the creature to the Creator, is that He expects us to be holy. So God does not come down to our level, though He does in the person of Jesus. Yeah. What I mean is He doesn't compromise any of His attributes to be down here with us. He doesn't compromise, He doesn't set aside anything. He doesn't stop being God to be close to us. And in fact, He tells us, "You're the problem. You're down there in the dirt in sin, so I'm going to rescue you from your sin in Jesus, and then I'm going to bring you up to Me so you can be holy."

So we are called to be holy as Christians toward Him. To Him is due from angels and men whatsoever worship, service, or obedience as creatures Listen, they owe unto the Creator and whatever he is further pleased to require of them. If you haven't been to or listened to modern preaching— when I say modern, I don't mean that I'm old. I just mean preaching that isn't anchored in good historical theology. In modern thought, there's not a lot about us owing God anything. There's not a lot of requirement. There's not a lot of obligatory language to Christians. The idea is the doors are open. Come in, and God is there waiting for you. And you come in empty-handed, just as you are, without one plea, right? The idea is that God has no requirements, and he's just waiting for you to come in and give you a big old hug. And there's some truth to that because God is waiting and he does have open arms. That's all true.

The problem, though, is to think that God does not expect devotion or obedience from his creatures. If I say out loud, "You owe God obedience," does that rub you the wrong way, or does that make sense to you? Yeah. Because the Bible is pretty clear. We owe Him obedience. We're required to obey. And we need to be saying that and knowing it in ourselves.

Now let's talk just briefly about the triunity of God. The idea that God is indeed three in one. And whenever— is that lesson 4? I think in the— 3. It's lesson 3 in the material. The first— the second lesson are the attributes of God, or God, the nature of God. And then the third lesson in the material is the Trinity. And I always start it the same way when I'm discipling someone. I always say—So good news, when we're done with this lesson, we're not gonna know any more than when we started it. Because you can't understand the Trinity. You can't. Be careful, you can't. As much as you might think you can, you can't.

So the Bible uses this language, and the Confession uses this language. God is three subsistences— man, I slobbered all over myself— the Father, the Word or Son, and Holy Spirit, of one substance, power, and eternity, each having the whole divine essence. So the Father is not 33.33333% God, or the Son, or the Spirit. They all are 100% God. They all— If you want an easy way to say it and repeat it, whatever makes God God is true of Father, Son, and Spirit. Whatever makes God God I know he's not made. You know what I mean though. Whatever defines God is God. Whatever he is in his eternality and his essence and his— I'm gonna use my ghetto language. I'm sorry, but I'm trying to make it make sense. In his stuffness, in what he is, all three members of the Godhead have equally. And it's 100%.

Okay. And the reason I say be careful is 'cause there is nothing else like that. And every time you try to use anything to define God or understand him from creation, You're actually bringing him down. So the best thing to say is, I don't understand it. I don't understand how you can have 3 persons that all are the same essence. I don't understand it. It's a mystery, but it is what the Bible teaches. And it is important that we accept it as the Bible teaches it. The confession says it is the foundation of all our communion with God. They're essentially saying it's a requirement. It's important, the confession that we hold to, the Baptist Confession is saying you have to believe the Trinity to have any sort of communion with God. So it's an essential doctrine. You can't be Christian without it. That is true. So God is triune.

And I love what A.W. Pink says. He says that an unknown God doesn't deserve worship or service. Meaning, I'm paraphrasing, but the idea is if you don't know God and you're not trying to know God and get to understand him as the way he spells himself or declares himself in scripture, you can't possibly worship him accurately. Mm-hmm. That would be like me saying, "I really, really love my kids, but I just never ever want to talk to them. I love them a lot. I just don't want them around me. I don't want to know anything about them. I don't want to care what they're doing, but I really love them." Well, the same goes true of God. You can't say that you worship Him in spirit and in truth and love Him if you ignore the truth, if you stand back from the truth. You got to learn about Him to actually worship Him.

All right. Now, third chapter in the Confession, we move on to our next major point. And that is the decree of God. This is something that I've cherished— make sure and pass this along to Pastor that I said it— I've cherished about his teaching all these years is his emphatic teaching on the eternal decree. Now, I do want to say a couple things here because you all know that I went to a Reformed seminary. If you didn't know, my seminary was Reformed and not Baptist. Because of that, in the Reformed world, in the covenantal world, they use language for this same doctrine that is a little different than us. Even though the Westminster Confession says decree, even though it says it, the understanding of the language is different, but the meaning is the same. So in this case, normally, like I said, righteous and justice are not exactly the same. I'm going to give you 3 names for effectively the same thing, just so that you don't think I'm using language against my Reformed brothers, okay?

I like the phrase eternal decree, but it's not the only phrase for the idea of an eternal decree. Okay. I'm going to talk about what the decree is. But the language you can listen out for. The first one is the covenant of redemption. If you've never heard that language, that's the language that's there in the Reformed thought. And the other more technical name for that idea is the intra-Trinitarian covenant. Not inter-Trinitarian, intra-Trinitarian covenant. And the idea is this. In the Reformed world, they use that language to say what we say in the eternal decree is that God had a council meeting with himself, within the Trinity. That the Trinity had a meeting, and that meeting decided everything. That's the decree of God.

Now, we use eternal decree because we want to make sure and emphasize the fact that it's etched in stone, authoritatively, sovereignly established. It's okay to call it, though, the intra-Trinitarian covenant, and it's okay to call it a covenant of redemption. There might be some differences in— It's okay. Some people's thoughts on those two. But I do want you to know, if you ever hear anybody say that— I might even say it because, I don't know, makes me sound smarter than I am if I say intra-Trinitarian. I like to throw a big word around every once in a while just to try to act like I know some things. So it's the same thing. We are saying the same thing, that God in himself planned, purposed, and decreed, and essentially wrote it down for all time, everything that would happen.

I'll read it from the Confession. Here's what the Confession says. Amen. God hath decreed in himself from all eternity by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will freely and unchangeably all things whatsoever comes to pass. Yet so as thereby in neither— in God neither— is God neither the author of sin nor hath fellowship with any therein, nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away. But rather established, in which appears his wisdom disposing all things, and power and faithfulness in accomplishing his decree. There's a typo there from my end.

So what is he saying? God is absolutely sovereign, but he doesn't violate the will of creatures. Their will is their will. They can choose. They're not absolutely free, but they do have free choice, meaning they're not outside of God's authority. He's also not the author of sin. His sovereignty and his plan and decree does not mean he authored sin. He did not create sin. We just had that discussion in Sunday school not long ago. And the idea is that just like there— you can't create cold. You can't create cold. You can't create dark. There are no darkness molecules. Did you know that? There are no darkness molecules. Darkness is what's left when you take away light. And that is the same with sin. There are no sin molecules, meaning you can't create sin. What sin is, is the definition of the absence of God's righteousness or commandment keeping. Okay? So when we say that God is not the author of sin, we're saying that God did not make righteousness and sin. He did not make that. He made righteousness, and then when people disobeyed His commandments, the thing that is resulting is called sin. So it's important to make sure— don't let people push you around on that.

So He decrees everything. He didn't create sin. He doesn't invade on the will of man. He also doesn't not use second causes. So if you say, "Well, God planned everything." then why do I pray if everything's just going to happen the way it's going to happen? Or why should I share the gospel? If God's just going to choose who he's going to choose, then why should I share the gospel? The short answer is because he says so. That's a good enough answer. But if you want a detailed answer, the answer is because he didn't just ordain the salvation, he ordained how it was going to happen, and how the evangelist would be born, and how the word would be spread, and how the gospel would be delivered.

So this is a passage that I've heard 100 times because it's a Heinrich special and now a Sloan special. Isaiah 46, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure,' calling a bird of prey from the east. Do I do it? Do I say Sennacherib? My wife teases me for saying Sennacherib. Sennacherib is the bird of prey. He's the Assyrian king that's on his way to take over Israel when Isaiah is giving this prophecy. He's essentially saying the bird of prey is coming from the east. And that was his name, "Calling a bird of prey from the east, the man who executes my counsel from afar." Listen to this language. Listen to the certainty of this language of what God tells Israel when the judgment's coming. Indeed, I have spoken it. I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it. I will also do it. God says it, that settles it. So that is the idea of sovereignty. That is the idea of his decree. Sovereignty says he's the authority and the ruler. Decree says he has a plan from that authority, a purpose from that authority. He has planned and purposed everything that comes to pass. There is nothing that's not decreed. I'll talk about sin in a moment and reprobation too.

This— I'm going to use another big word here that you don't need to remember. It's unconditionality. That means there are no conditions in the world or in people or in our choices whereby God is obligated to respond to those choices, including our choice for salvation. In fact, the— on the salvation front, Romans 9 is quoted, I think, 9 times in this section. And if you read Romans 9, you'll see why, because God is in charge of salvation there, and he's talking about Jacob and Esau. And then Ephesians is quoted something like 5 times or something like that, if you read the first chapter of Ephesians. So if you want to know what I believe about God's sovereignty and salvation, Read Romans 9 and Ephesians 1 and 2. And that's it. I just believe that. You can say, well, it says that he chooses people based on nothing, no good of their own. Yeah, I believe that. It even says there's some, maybe some vessels for dishonor. I believe that too. It even says that he predestined us before the foundation of the world. Yep, I believe all that. That's where the doctrine comes from. It's not because of a guy named Calvin. It's because it's those passages.

So there are no conditions that need to be met on earth for God to act. His decree is His decree. It precedes everything, precedes everything. So God doesn't learn. Did you know that? That God doesn't learn, that He knows all. So He's not waiting for the choices of men to make His own choices. That's why when we use the word foreknowledge or foreseen, we don't mean God looked ahead, saw something, and reacted to it. That is not how it worked.

Now God's decree to save. Now this is the part where we very much get into this sort of doctrines of grace and Calvinism. In fact, this particular section of the decree very much distinguishes it to the particular Baptists. Particular Baptists are people that believe that in the election of some, limited atonement and those things. So there are general Baptists who don't hold to that, and there are particular Baptists. I'm a particular Baptist. And this part of the confession is very narrow to those people who hold to the doctrines of grace the way we have taught them at our church all these years. So it's— Like I said, in fact, right now I could show you. Here, I'll show you my notes right here. Other than the little purple thing, that's all just Ephesians 1 and Romans 9. So I'll just let you read those on your own. But that's the idea, that his decree is that he planned and purposed to save some people. And the confession says only some, not all, right? So that's important. He predestines only some to eternal life.

There is one important note here. This is really important. But it's important for me to tell you and then leave you alone. Okay? I'm gonna tell you a thing and I'mma leave you alone. I do believe in double predestination. What I mean is I don't just believe in the predestination to eternal life. I also think God ordains people to destruction. Now I don't mean that they don't have a choice or anything like that. What I mean is the language that says, like in Peter, that they were appointed to destruction, the vessels made for dishonor. That language is a language I can't escape. I can't just say it's a mystery to make myself feel better. The reason I'm bringing it up to you right now is because the Westminster Confession of Faith, on which the London Baptist Confession is based, actually has another paragraph here in this section in chapter 3 on the decree. And their paragraph that they still have in their confession speaks to the idea that God essentially ordains some to destruction. So the Westminster Confession of Faith says it, and the Baptist Confession of Faith took it out. And that might make you comfortable. And it's okay, by the way. You don't have to believe what I believe on that. I recognize the difficulty of that doctrine. I would never force anybody to believe it. The reason I'm telling it to you is so that if you're ever in those discussions and you hear things like that, or you hear me say things like that, I don't want you to think it's thoughtless. Mm-hmm. I don't want you to think I'm pounding my pulpit and saying it has to be this way, and if you don't believe this, you're wrong. I just happen to believe that God decreed everything. I happen to believe that He purposed everything. I happen to believe He's sovereign over every molecule, including the molecules that end up in destruction. So you don't have to hold to that, but I am telling you that the Westminster Confession has it in it. I would wish it was in the Baptist Confession of Faith, but I'm also humble enough, I hope, to say that it's missing from our confession. Mm-hmm. So it's okay that you don't hold to it.

So right now, and if you're looking at the Confession, paragraph 7 in your version right now is actually paragraph 8 in the Westminster Confession, and paragraph 7 actually has language in it about ordaining some to destruction or hell, okay? So you don't have to hold to that. If you want to talk about it, we can talk about it. And if you just look at those passages and say, I'm not seeing that there in that Romans 9 passage, I'm not seeing that there, and— I'm not seeing that there. 1 Peter chapter 1 and 2, I'm not seeing it, I don't see it that way, that the same word for a point or place of Jesus as the chief cornerstone is used of the sons of disobedience in 1 Peter, it's okay that you don't go with me as long as you have an answer for those texts.

So we definitely believe in individual soul liberty at our church. You do not have to believe what the pastor believes. But you do have to believe the Bible. And you have to have an answer for it. You have to be able to look at those texts and honestly answer those. So when I tell it to you, I'm hesitant because I don't want it to sound like you have to believe what I do here. That is an area of doctrine where people don't agree and they have different statements. Even the Westminster and the Baptist Confession of Faith are different on it, and that's okay. And by the way, I welcome you if you don't hold to it. I'm not trying to convince you. I just want to make sure that you don't think I'm off my rocker if I say those kind of things. Like, what? How is he saying that? He must really love condemnation. He must really love people going to hell. That might— No, no, no, no. It's dealing with passages honestly is what it is. It's looking at those passages to see, to understand the meaning of them and how they apply.

So He decrees everything. He decreed Christ. Christ was the Lamb slain when? When was the Lamb slain according to the New Testament? Before the foundation of the world. Before the foundation of the world. He was planned and purposed for— He was the seed of woman that God told Eve would come and crush the head of the serpent. So in other words, all of those things— you can even go read Acts chapter 4 and the crucifixion of Jesus when the guys are all praying, and because they thought they were going to get arrested, and they're praying and they say to the— they pray to the Lord, "We're praising you, Lord, for doing all these things, that all of those men— Pilate, Herod, all the bad guys, the Jews that killed Jesus— they did what you determined would be done." So all of that is the decree and the plan of God. Decree is just another— Decree. Fancy way of saying plan. So evangelism, wars, peace, nations, babies, all of it planned by God in His sovereign hand, every bit of it decreed.

So everything that He planned and decreed flows out of His attributes. Why does God save people? Remember back when I said He is loving and merciful? Yes. That's why He saves people. Why does God condemn people? Because He's just. Remember that part where we talked about Him being just and righteous? He condemns sin because sin is bad and commandments are broken. You expect a judge, if somebody murders a family member or something like that, you expect a judge to do what's right. Why wouldn't you expect God to do what's right? Do you expect Him to just lay His judgments down and say, "No, I just want to love everybody"? Yeah, you— You sin, you lie, you steal, you covet, you do all the things I hate, but I'll just keep loving you anyway. No, he's just. He has to do those things. So he is all he is all at once. And he's awesome. We didn't even say that. We use the word awesome pretty flippantly these days. But the real understanding of awesome is terrible. Like seeing God makes people fall apart. I don't know if you know this, but in the Bible, nobody who sees the unveiled glory of God gives the man upstairs a hug? Nobody. Everybody that's ever confronted with the glory of God or His holiness falls apart. They all fall apart. They— what does Isaiah say when he saw the Lord in His temple? Woe is me! He cried, he fell apart at his knees. He shook at his knees, you know. So God is awesome, but God is also approachable. He's not approachable by sinners. He's approachable by forgiven people. And so make sure, when you get a chance, read the Confession. It's really solid. This section of the Confession is really, really solid.

We'll pick up there next week. Look at the time! You're gonna get out of here on time. I think I'm gonna just make up another sermon right now. I'm not. Let's pray.

Father, we are thankful you are what you are. And it can be, Father, that we get confused and we're that way. We tend to put a lot of stock in our opinion, and in this case, we might even have opinions of you maybe ideas that have been floating around in our head or things we've heard or things that maybe we're even echoing in our culture. Father, we do not want to tell you what you are. We want to hear what you are from your word. We thank you that the confession outlines so succinctly and clearly the main points of your attributes and tells us what you're like. Father, it would be my goal that we would hear these things today and leave here singing your praise, that we would love how awesome you are. Amen. That we would even go through the week thinking of your awesomeness and praising you for it. Please help us do that. You deserve it, and we also know it's good for us. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.