as we begin. Lord, we bless and praise your name. We give thanks to you. The simple realities of the Christian faith are so often lost by us. They so often slip through our grasp right at the center of them is this simple yet overwhelming idea. What it means for us, O Lord, to be Christians is that we finite people are in a relationship of intimacy with you, the infinite person. And you delight to reveal yourself and you delight that we should know you. And in this you are glorified and in this we are made glad. Lord, as we meet and talk this morning, I pray that you would stir up our hearts that there might be a real rejoicing among us, a real sense of gratitude and wonder that we have been made in your image with the capacity to know you and by the work of Christ we have been made sons and daughters, brought into relationship with our father. May these things thrill our hearts, O God, and be with us by your spirit as we look at your word today. We ask in Jesus name. Amen. Okay, we're going to look this morning at chapter two, which is just three chapters in the confession of faith, but they are three chapters which treat some of the most arguably the most sublime, wonderful realities that the scriptures treat anywhere. Because they deal with the being and character of God. Now I want to make some preliminary remarks if I could as we get into this. And I really think it wise for these to be as much as we can keep them as present considerations. I think it wise that we that we do that, that we not lose sight of this. Some years ago, Barbara and I had the opportunity of spending a week at the Ligonier Valley study center, which is what Ligonier Ministries was before it came down here. And that was back in the early 80s. I think it was even the late 70s. And Ligonier had a campus up in Western Pennsylvania in the Laurel Mountains, or some mountains up there. Anyway, it was a beautiful, wonderful place to retreat. And Barbara and I were involved in some leadership bringing a group to the study center, the Ligonier Valley study center, to take a class entitled The Doctor of God. And the book that was the text for our study was a book called The Doctor of God by Herman Babink. And Barbara members this book with great affection. It was like swimming in concrete to get through this book, but really a wonderful, wonderful book. And the opening line, the opening line, the first line of Babink's book, The Doctor of God. Does anybody read it? Anybody read The Doctor of God? Do you remember what the first line is? Here it is. Mystery is the vital element of dogmatics. Mystery is the vital element of dogmatics. And that line, that first line, is the first line to the first chapter. And the first chapter title has to do with the incomprehensibility of God. The incomprehensibility of God. Now, we could be in this lead, both by the chapter title and by that first line into thinking, that because God is incomprehensible, and because there is a sense in which both the being and the doings of God are shrouded in mystery, that God by definition is unknowable, or is uncertain, is capricious, unpredictable, unreliable, and those kinds of things. And nothing could be further from the truth. But what Babink wants to set before people is this simple fact, God is bigger than you are. God is bigger than you are. There is this wonderful Latin phrase that comes down to us. I think from Augustine, I have been trying to run this thing down for years, and if anybody knows where this comes from, can give me a reference, I would love to have it. But the phrase is this, finitum, non, copox, in finitum. That's when you can drop on your friends lunch sometime. What is finitum? What's that? The finite? What is non? Not, cannot. What is infinitum? What is copox? What do you suppose that means? Comprehend, right? Or it's the word which gives us our word, words like capacity, the capacity for something, to have the capacity to do something, or understand something. And all we're saying here is that the finite doesn't have the capacity for the infinite. The finite cannot circumscribe or comprehend or fully apprehend the infinite. It's so important that we never lose sight of this. When Boving says, mystery is the vital element of dogmatics. He's reminding us of our finitude, and he's reminding us of God's infinitude. God is infinitely larger than your conceptions of it. I heard somebody say recently that somebody else, and I think I mentioned this in my other class before this class started. I think I mentioned this, heard somebody say, even the best of theologians only get it 80% right. Well, I tell you, maybe eight, maybe eight. That's not to say that we should all be good students of the word of God, seeking to understand what God has revealed, and order it properly in our thinking. I'm real reluctant to say that any finite creature has got 80% of it right. That's a big chunk of a pie that's infinitely large. What Boving is concerned that we understand is who we are and who God is. And when you come to these first couple of chapters, listen to the language. Charles Hodges said, I think it's Hodges, maybe Warfield, a couple of theologians from the Hodges was a theologian at the middle and beyond of the 19th century. Warfield's work was at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. I don't remember which one of them said this, but one of them referred to this first chapter or the first section, the second chapter of the confession as being the highest and loftiest expression or articulation of the being of God, the nature of God, anywhere in the English language. Now listen to the language that is used. There is but one only living and true God who is infinite in being and perfection is infinite in being. And when the confession talks about perfection, it is talking about the attributes of God, the characteristics of God. So he is infinite in his being and he is infinite in his characteristics or his attributes. A most pure spirit invisible without body parts or passions, immutable. What does immutable mean? Unchanging. Immense. What does immense mean? Big. Big. Eternal. What does eternal mean? Right. Eternity has reference to time. What does infinity have reference to? Space. Generally when you see these two, I'm sorry, space. When you see these two turns set against each other, eternity and infinity, generally eternity has to do with duration or time, God's relationship to time, infinity has to do with God's relationship to space. They're not really synonymous. They mean different things or suggest different things. Eternal incomprehensible. Almighty, most wise, most holy, most free. Most free. What do you suppose most free means? No constraints. God can do what he wants to do. God can do what he wants to do. Most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable, unchanging, and most righteous will for his own glory. Most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, the rewarder of them that diligently seek him. And with all, most just and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin and who will by no means clear the guilty. Now, I just commend that paragraph to you for your consideration for the rest of your life. There are so many things that could be said about this, but that language is simply an attempt to give some handles upon which to hang our understanding of the being and character and doings of God. Those are handles just to try to hang our understanding upon. And again, any number of these things we could select and pick out. But I want to come back to Bobbing for just this one last shot. His concern and the concern really of the framers of the confession in this first section is to say something to us about who we are by saying something about who God is. By describing God, we have ourselves described. If you take God out of the equation, what happens to man? He grows large. If you put God into the equation, what happens to man? He grows small. He is in his proper proportion and proper relation. Steve Brown has this wonderful way of saying things. And he says one of the things he says is there are three things you need to know in order to get along in life. You know what they are? God is God. You are not. And sin confuses the first two. God is God. You are not. And sin confuses the first two. That's the nature of the struggle. That's the nature of the problem. Us constantly exerting ourselves and pushing God out of his proper place so that we might occupy that place. How do we respond when God attempts to take his rightful place? How do we respond? We kill Jesus. That's how we respond. We kill Jesus. Herod tried to kill Jesus. Why did Herod try to kill Jesus? Because he heard there was another king and he perceived that king as being a threat to his own rule and reign. You're not here. I'm not here. But let me tell you when God seeks to assert his rightful place and rule. We respond the same way. We respond the same way. Herman Hermann Bavink. He was a Dutch. Dutch theologian. Another one of my dead good friends who wrote, help me guys, early part of this century. Back to the middle of the century. I think Bavink was alive the end of the last century beginning of this first century. The doctrine of God. Wonderful book. Right, Bar? Wonderful book. It's tough sledding. It's tough because of the subject matter. Not because the language is so hard, but because of the subject matter. There is a Honda Civic license plate. Don't know the license plate. Okay, blue hatchback Honda Civic. If that's your car, your lights are on. The car is running and the doors are locked. Okay. All right. So that the first thing that we want to say and it's all suggested by that language. The first thing we want to say is that God is incomprehensible. That he is in a certain sense shrouded in mystery. But while saying that while saying that God is incomprehensible, we want to say right along understanding what we mean by that. Okay. That the finite can never fully can't get its arms around the infinite. If you're going to deal with God, you're going to bump up against stuff that is perplexing to you. I mean, we could make a list over here of things that we've encountered in our reading of the scriptures that defy, really defy definition. We can describe them. We can describe things, but can we really define them? What are some things we can describe, but we find hard to define? Love? Grace? What are some other things? Some doctrines? Holiness? The Trinity? How do you do that? How do you have God existing? Try personally who declares himself to be one God, but in the Godhead, each of the persons of the Godhead share all of the attributes of divinity. God is not a pie. You divide into three parts. How do you do that? I don't know. We can describe that, but can we really understand it? Can we really comprehend it? What's another one of those kinds of things? Election. Election raises questions of God's freedom, which is absolute, and our freedom, which isn't, and the relationship that exists between the two. Just sort of parenthetically. If these things are new to you, don't leave St. Paul's because you hear people at St. Paul's suggesting some sort of determinism, where God is the only one who is truly free. And the rest of us are like Marianettes at the end of strings, and God simply works the Marianettes by manipulating the strings. No, that's not what the Scriptures teach. The Scriptures teach that God is free, absolutely, and that we are free, but not absolutely. Our freedom is a limited freedom. You know that in your experience. I mean, you know that in order to get on in life, you have to obey traffic signals. If you don't, you've got chaos and anarchy on your hands. Our freedom is bounded and limited in all kinds of ways. God is not. God is absolutely free. How do these two things work together? The absolute freedom and sovereignty of God, and the limited freedom and sovereignty of willing, choosing agents. How do those things work? I can describe what I see in the Scriptures, but the exact interrelationship of those things, I can't figure out. What's another one? Same kind of thing. Those are related to this question of God's freedom and our freedom. Election, predestination, human freedom. What's another doctrine in the Scriptures? The atonement. How does God die? Charles Wesley writes this to him. And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior's blood? He died for me because of that. His mystery all. The immortal dies. Does the immortal die? No. Does Jesus die? Yes. Yes. Touching his humanity, Jesus suffers a real death and experiences the judgment of God, experiences the full measure of the wrath of God. The calcedonian confessions say that there is no mixing of the two persons of Christ. They remain these distinct persons. They're not conjoined. They're not confused. There's no admixture. All this language. When theologians get together and try to talk about this stuff, what do they do? They use the via negativa, the way of the negative. They say, well, it's not that. And it's not that. And it's not the other thing. And yes, it's this. But it certainly doesn't mean this. That's what theology is. That's what it's like. Why is it that way? Because God is incomprehensible, because there is so much mystery in all of this. But having said that, having said that, we want to affirm just and by the way. But we've got to say this. It is a god of greatness and a god of infinity and a god of eternity and majesty and wonder and glory and mystery and incomprehensibility that constrains people to worship. Now, God you can control. A god you can fully understand is no longer a god. But you are. You are. And that's what gives me the hibi jibis. When folks can suggest that maybe we've got 80% of it figured out. It's like the finish line is inside if you've got 80% of it figured out. That frankly scares me a little bit. So this has everything to do with worship. Who are we going to worship? Are we going to worship someone who is above us and beyond us and more glorious than we can possibly imagine whose ways are sometimes from our vantage point crazy. But who is good and true and just and right and all of his dealings and who is dealing with this broken mess that we live in? That's a god I can worship. That's a god I was made to worship. So having said all of that again about God's incomprehensibility. We don't we don't in any way want to suggest that God can't be known because he's revealed himself. That's what we talked about last week. We talked about general revelation, special revelation he's made himself known and the things that he has made known the things that he has revealed we can know so that what we know about God may be known truly if not exhaustively. What may be known truly but not exhaustively and by exhaustively you can't know God exhaustively and even the particulars of our pieces of knowledge about God. While we know them truly we don't always know them in all of their proper relationships in all of their proper connections. To God's knowledge this is something to ponder. God's knowledge we talk about God being omniscient. We're going to come back to this in a minute. So about God being omniscient that means he knows all things. He knows all things possesses all knowledge. What does God know? Well God knows all things as they are. He knows all things as they could be and he knows all things both actual and potential in all of their actual and potential relationships.
How many do you play chess? I don't. My brain is not big enough for chess. But I remember the Bobby Fisher Boris Spasky things and how they talk about these master chess players and what makes a person a master chess player is that he can look at his 16 pieces on the board. But he knows the opponent's 16 pieces as well. And the trick to this thing is anticipating the other guys moves. Right? And there are all kinds of strategies for moving pawns and rooks and knights and all that kind of stuff. Is it an arrow puzzled you that the queen is the most powerful person on the chess board? That's always found that interesting. Anyway the master chess player knows the relationship of his pieces but this is in order to win the game. This is what you got to be able to do. You got to be able to know the position of your pieces. You have to be able to know the position of your opponents pieces and you have to be able to anticipate the strategies that your opponent might use so as to be able to defeat your opponent by anticipating them and taking his pieces. And master chess players can think with these 32 pieces. You got 32 pieces. The master chess player can think one move, two moves, three moves, five moves, eight moves, ten moves ahead. You got 32 pieces on the chess board and the master chess player can keep all of those actual and possible relationships in mind. Now, here's a little exercise for you. Go on this afternoon, get a shovel, go out in your backyard and turn over a shovelful adult and see all the creatures that are moving around in one shovelful of dirt. And try to imagine, try to see, first of all, all of the actual relationships that exist among worms and palmetobugs and ants and grubs. Try and observe all of the actual relationships where they stand in relation to one another and then try to imagine in your mind in an instant all of the possible relationships that might exist among all of those ants and grubs and worms and palmetobugs. That's one shovelful of dirt in an infinitely vast universe, with stars and moons and planets and suns and who knows how many solar systems spinning around, orderly, predictably. God's knowledge encompasses all of that, what's actual, what's potential, not only because it's not a static universe, things are always changing. God knows everything, your knowledge is not like that, your knowledge is limited. We're lucky aren't we if we get a handful of things as they really are in their proper relationships. Much less imagine what they might be in all of their potential relationships. And then when you put the power of God alongside the knowledge of God, it isn't just that God knows all of these things as they are and as they might be, but because he has limitless power, he orders them as he desires them to be. In that shovelful of dirt, in your backyard out of place, there is no star in the heavens out of place. There is no solar system out of place and the relationships of all of the planets within any solar system, none of those planets is out of shape. It is all there, God knows it as it is and as it might be and by his power he sustains and orders it all for his glory. So he knows how it's going to be because he directs it so that what happens is what he desires to have happen. Ken, what if Barb found the bugs in the kitchen? Would they be out of place then? What if Barb found the bugs? We would all praise God because those bugs would be exactly where God wanted them to be and then we'd call the roach man. And he would come and he would be exactly where God wanted him to be and he would spray and he would exercise his dominion, a dominion which God had given him way back in the beginning and the bugs would be destroyed. So what is God's knowledge like? Well God's knowledge, I'm illustrating something here. God's knowledge is inscrutable, it's incomprehensible, it's unfathomable, it's infinite. Well what God has revealed to us may be known but we don't know as God knows. Neither do we know in the sense that we know all things as they actually are or as they might be, nor do we know them in all of their actual and potential relationships. Diversity is a relationship and causes and effects and all of that sort of thing but God knows all of that. Now having said that again that doesn't mean that what God has revealed isn't any way obscure or mysterious. We may know it. We may know it. Here's another illustration. I grew up in your Chicago. I possess knowledge of the city of Chicago. Somebody said to me do you know Chicago? I could say yeah I know Chicago. I know where Lakeshore Drive is. I know where the Banshell is and Grant Park. I know where Soldier Field is. I know where Marshall Field is. I know where a lot of things are in Chicago and I can direct you to those things. I can get you there. Do I possess exhaustive knowledge of Chicago? No, I don't. But you see the knowledge that I have is true and accurate knowledge. And it's knowledge that I can impart to you for your benefit. So while on the one hand we want to say God is simply inscrutable, incomprehensible, shrouded in mystery, improperly understood. What he is revealed is truth and we can trust it as truth. And we can affirm as we said last week because God has revealed himself and because he always speaks truth, the knowledge that I possess can be of benefit to others. Any question or comment or thought before we go on? John. Right. Absolutely. No. Absolutely. The observation was the bugs in the kitchen. I was tongue-in-cheeking it a little bit. But truly, if the bugs are in the kitchen, I'll tell you. The bugs are in the kitchen for two reasons. Why are they ultimately? No, ultimately, ultimately, ultimately, because God put them there. Why are they there causally? It's warm. I left my door open. They're hungry. They're sugar. They're cracks in the cement. They're all kinds of these secondary causes that accomplish the purpose of God. Ultimately, they're there because God wants them to be there. But secondary causes, mine neglect, change in seasons, any of those kinds of things, explain in terms of secondary causation, cause effect, kind of stuff, why they're there. Good point. You're getting this stuff. Okay. Anything else? Any other thoughts? Okay. All right. Now, we want to try and talk about God's attributes, the characteristics of God. When we do that, we, and there's, you know, when you talk with theologians, they can't agree among themselves about anything, you know. I mean, generally they can. But when it comes to language and that sort of thing, that nobody's ever really all that happy with the categories that are employed for seeking to categorize the attributes of God. But these categories seem to work, the communicable attributes of God. Now, what are the communicable attributes of God? What do you think this, we're talking about things that exist in God. One category of them is communicable attributes. Now, what is that, what does that word suggest to you? What might that be? Yeah. Okay. It's like communicable diseases. Our diseases that can be shared past from one person to the next. Right? Yes. Yeah. Right. But we're talking about, now, we can, we can, there's a lot of things that we can do. There's another sense in which you can share a disease. You could have the same disease and have it not be a communicable disease. So what we're talking about are those things that can be passed from one person to another. And there are these attributes or characteristics, which we find in God, and which, by virtue of the fact that we're created in his image, we share. Okay. What are they? Let's make a list. What are some things that exist in God and that can exist or do exist in us? Can or do? Goodness. Okay. Okay. Love. Yeah. Mercy. Holiness. Remember, I made the distinction between can and do. Patience. Okay. Keep coming. Justice. Creativeness. Intelligence. Remember, I made the distinction between can and do. Truth. Faithfulness. Oh, gee. Wrap. Okay. Wrap. Joy. Now, that's an interesting one. I'm glad somebody mentioned that because I wanted to make a note of this. You know, in the confession, it says this, chapter 2, the first section is the one living in true God who is infinite in being in perfection and most pure spirit, invisible without body, parts, or passions. Now, what, what do you make of that? Okay. What do you make of that? We get angry for the wrong reasons. He can have anger, but it's right. Okay. The word passions with what we're thinking about here, the scriptures make clear that God is a spirit. Okay. The, the sort of catechism that little children's catechism. God is a spirit and have not a body like man. Okay. Doesn't have a body or parts and what, what the confession means by that is that you can't, you, you can't divide God up. All right. You can't divide it into pieces. God's infinity. This is, this is wild to contemplate. God's, God being infinite does not mean that God simply occupies all space. Okay. It doesn't simply mean that God occupies all space so that if you go to the North Pole, you, you know, you, you encounter deliver, you know, or if you go to South America, you encounter a kneecap. You know what I mean? I'm, I'm being silly. But God being infinite doesn't mean that God's infinity means that he, that God in his totality, in his entirety as the triune God of heaven and earth is present everywhere. He is present everywhere. You see, so he's, there, there is no sense in which he spread out, no sense in which he can be spread to thin, no sense in which there's any part of space from which he is absent, but he is everywhere present in the fullness of his being. God is fully present in this room right here, right now. Okay. So there's no dividing God up in any sense, no, no parts in the, in the way that we think of ourselves as having parts. Okay. Katie's, Katie's got it when, when the convention talks about passions, the confession is not suggesting that God is without passion, but he is not capricious in them. Okay. He is not, he is not subject to fits of rage and ill temper. Okay. That's what the confession means. I mentioned that in connection with the idea of joy with someone mentioning joy. There is no creature, no creature, nothing God has made that knows joy in the way that God knows joy. God knows supreme joy. God knows supreme happiness. God knows supreme delight and God joys or glories in his own joy. Okay. I mean read through the scriptures and you see these various passions, if you will, predicated of God spoken of with respect to God. Okay. So God is not, God is not some sort of unmoved mover, you know, first cause, just sheer power and force. He is a person and we're not supplying all kinds of scripture references for all these, but we certainly could in fact you might make this list and just get a concordance and go through the concordance and find scripture references to substantiate every single one of these things. Anything else you want to put up here? Hatred? Ooh, this one's scary. What does God hate? What else does God hate? Hate is a lying tongue, body spirit, injustice? What else does he hate? Those who don't follow him? This is a, this is really something to wrestle with folks, but having talked about God's passions and the fact that God is not capricious. That God is not given to fits of ill temper. Having said that, it is worth thinking about when the scriptures say this. This is Psalm 11 verse four. The Lord is in his holy temple. The Lord's throne is in heaven and then listen to this language. It's, it's very suggestive and and picturesque language. His eyes behold, his eyelids test, the sons of men. The idea is first that God is looking, but then you know how when you, when you want to focus in on something, you squint. It's a, it's a parallelism in the Hebrew, the two lines suggesting the same thing, but the second line is simply an intensifying of the first line. His eyes behold, his eyelids test, the sons of men. The Lord tests the righteous, but the wicked and the one who loves violence, his soul hates. The soul of God hates the one who loves violence, okay? With a, with a pure and perfect hatred. I've preached a sermon the first year that we were here right after and I, you know, this is such risky stuff, but I preach the sermon from this passage and it was right after the announcement that magic Johnson was diagnosed with the HIV virus. And I ask people to think about this, okay? How does God view an unrepentant, bad, magic Johnson, or anybody else engaged in any violation of his law? That one's particularly public and high profile. And there's, it would be wrong to single out magic Johnson and say that he is in some, some category unique. How does God view the one who loves violence, the one who does violence? Some 11 says that God's soul hates. God hates sin, God hates a whole number of things, but, but God hates with a pure and perfect hatred. The one who loves violence, Travis, the question is, what does that do to the axiom hate the sin but love the sinner? That's right, that's right. What, what you have here in this Psalm, you've got two things. Well, you have two things. Number one, you have the Psalm talking about the character of God telling us something about the character of God. And as is true with, that would be the first thing, okay? The Psalm is telling us something about the character of God, okay? The second thing that I would say about this particular Psalm, it is like, or it is similar to the imprecatory Psalms, you know those Psalms where David or someone else pronounces a curse upon his enemies, okay? What those are and what I would suggest that this is is an intrusion, if you will, an eschatological intrusion. You know what the eschaton is? When we get to the end of history, here you got the beginning, and here you got the end, this is the creation, and this is the consummation. This here is referred to as the eschaton, okay? The end of the age, the ends of the ages, after everything is all said and done, there's no more preaching at a gospel, there's no more repenting, there's no more coming to faith, okay? What you have here in the Psalm is God saying something about Himself and saying something about how He will view sinners who have refused to bow before Him and who then, because of that refusal, are exposed to the expression of His hatred for their sin, which is His judgment and wrath, okay? So right now I think it can be said both of God and of us, if you can't isolate it from this, you have to hold these things in tension. It should be said of us that we are to love sinners, and it certainly can be said of God that He loves sinners, even in the midst of their sin, and He is redeeming them, okay? That's how I'd answer that, right?
Right, although in the eschaton, while vengeance is the Lord's and He will repay, there won't be any negative votes cast about God's visiting His judgment upon the unrepentant, okay? The people of God will glory in the justice of God as it is visited upon the unrepentant, just as they glory in the grace of God as it is visited upon us, okay? So yeah, that's true, it is certainly God's prerogative as holy, that's where this passage begins, with the holiness of God, to give expression to His wrath upon unrepentant sinners. And we're popular to know what we deserve, and so it's most inappropriate for us to act as God is free to act. Chris? Yes, the observation is given who God is, it is necessary for God as good and righteous and just to hate evil and to punish wickedness. You know, I make quite a deal with this in my Inquirer's class, when we talk about the cross, I try to make quite a point of the fact that no sin goes unpunished, that when the Bible uses forgiveness, it uses it in a sense different from the sense in which we use it, and I illustrate this with the sermon that I preached when we were living in Florida before, God does not forgive sins, okay? I mean, it'll get your attention, God does not forgive sins, not in the sense that we forgive sins. If you offend me and you come and ask for forgiveness, you acknowledge what you've done, that's the end of the matter. Clearly, that's not the end of the matter with respect to God, where there is the violation of the law, there is a penalty that has to be paid, and the issue before us is, will I pay the penalty for my own sins, or do I look to Christ as the one who has satisfied the law of God, satisfied the justice of God and has paid the penalty for my sins? But somebody will pay, and someone must pay for that reason, Chris, because God is holy, and God is just, and God is good, and necessarily he must punish wickedness. All right? Yeah, Roy? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The observation is that it's just very difficult to separate the two to disengage the sinner and the sin. Yeah, you're right. I guess, I don't know, what do you think? I might say two things, there's, that tells us something about God. I mean, I mean, you know, when I hear some of the stuff I hear, it infuriates me. I'm not impassive about it. I would be less than human if I were impassive about it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Right. The thing I have to watch out for is creating some sort of gradation here, you know, like I'm a better guy, because the publicant in the temple kind of thing, you know, the Pharisee says, thank God I'm not like that scumbag, or words to that effect. Yeah. So, oh my. Yes. Katie, and then John, and then Harriet, and why do we do it? It's kind of like Roy's question. I guess it's what you've been preaching those, you know, thank God needs to be the church. Yeah. In the midst of the world. Yeah. We have to speak the truth. You know, this thing, this stuff that we're talking about here, right, right now, that does not go down well at all. God with talents, you know, God with God with teeth, does not go down well at all in our day. And yet, and I talk about this in the Inquirer's class, in our heart of hearts, as hard as it is for us to embrace this idea, in our heart of hearts, we want it to be this way. Because we want to know that we live in a universe where justice in the end will prevail. Okay. It is a terrifying place to think that the lawbreakers get off Scott free. I wonder where that came from, Scott free. You know, I don't think that Scott's ever let anybody get away. So, you know, it's hard. And I think as we talk with people, we need to try and reason with them and say, look, I know this is, this is hard. But it really is in your best interests, that this, this universe be governed by a God who is good and who is just and who punishes wickedness. If God doesn't care, what kind of world do we have? You know, we have the kind of world that we're seeing around us where the law doesn't matter. John, yeah. I think that we should think on the attitude, you know, Christ is living with a center across society. He was given eternity just because he had faith. Sure. And just like that, we should have the same attitude with these people. We should look up on that person and try and divulge that person or whatever what they really need to be thinking about. Sure. And let God worry about whether he's going to bring that person to him or not. Right. That's the love they were to show him first. And let God take care of this that they're not being worried about. But in the course of the conversation, John, we got to talk about the character of God. We have to talk about these things. And I think that's what Katie's point is, that it's, it doesn't go down well. And how do we, how do we do that? And I think it's, I do think it's by being the church in the midst of this, this moment. Steve. It really is an execute. And I think the same thing about it is the part representing the whole. And the point about God hates the sin is like taking the part away from the whole because God doesn't actually punish a murder. I mean, how do you do that in that abstract idea? The murderer? Yeah. Which is the source of the act. Right. And I think it's separating those two things. Yeah. Now we're to love that sinner and we're to seek to speak the word of peace to that sinner. And it's very conceivable that that sinner who has committed that crime could be sentenced by the earthly courts. And yet be vindicated in the heavenly courts because of the work of Christ. So. But right, of separating the two, you hear it? Hmm. Hmm. That's great. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Hey, you all, this is great fun. We're about halfway through the outline. So I'm going to let Bob make a final remark. We'll talk for a few minutes about the incommunicable attributes of God. We've already talked about that some and talking about God's knowledge, God being omniscient. We'll talk about some of that next week and then we'll move on to talk about the decree of God. If you think this has been fun, just wait until next week. Bob. Yeah. Right. Right. Yep. Certainly was the Pharisees problem. Thank God I'm not like that scumbag over there. Okay. Let me pray for us. And by the way, have a blessed Christmas. Have a blessed blessed Christmas from Barb and me and the girls and Maggie are dog. Have a great Christmas. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that you've extended mercy to us. We thank you that you have. If we may put it this way, you have hated the Lord Jesus by visiting the full measure of your wrath upon him. That we might be spared. And for that, we know that we are eternally in your debt. And we pray that you would make us eternally thankful. Thank you that you love us and that you've not only forgiven us but made us sons and daughters. And would you grant us your spirit as we gather for worship? We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Good time.