Father, again, please set aside this time that we, your people, might be encouraged, that we might be comforted as deep and demanding as these things are to wrestle with. We ask that our sense of rest and our sense of confidence in you, our sense of trust, would be enlarged. Lord, be with us by your spirit as we look at your word and consider these things together. We ask in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, this task of getting through half of the confession of faith in 12 weeks is not fair. It's not fair to ask somebody to do this. It's just daunting because I know that there are lots and lots of questions and lots of comments that folks want to make, but we're going to keep pressing on and we're just going to get as far as we can get and what we don't get done, Bob's going to be stuck with. He'll just have to finish it, you know, next quarter. I wanted to take a few minutes this week and allow you an opportunity to respond or to ask questions, make observations if you want, whatever, about what we talked about last week this whole, again, very daunting and formidable series of ideas, the decree of God, which is God's plan or purpose for all of history. He is the Alpha and the Omega. He knows the beginning and the end. He knows the end from the beginning and he does all things, Paul says in Ephesians 111, he does all things after the counsel of his own will, according to his own will and purpose. So God, before the foundation of the world, has determined the course of history, not just its final outcome, but all of the things that are connected between the beginning and the end. And then we talked more specifically about God having chosen a people and predestined that people. Election is the choice and predestination is the goal, it's the flip side to the same coin, it's the outcome of that choice, which is to be Christlike, to be holy and blameless before him. And that's Ephesians 1 as well, 3, 4, 5. And what we've said when we talk about this is that the decree of God, God's purpose for the ages and his general purpose and plan, and then the specific purpose and plan of redeeming a people for himself, beginning with election and predestination, does not do violence to the will of the creature, okay, it doesn't do violence to the will of the creature. So we're not marrying that being manipulated by strings, by some cosmic deity. God acts, is sovereign, wills to do what He purposes to do, but we are creatures with a capacity to choose. And in the mystery of God's providence, in the mystery of God's accomplishing His purpose, our choices do accomplish His purpose, okay, our choices are His purpose, they accomplish His purpose, they are free, they are not constrained, we do what we want to do, but those choices conform perfectly to and accomplish the purpose of God, okay, and that is true even with our salvation, okay, now that's big, but I wanted to take a few minutes and see if there are any comments or questions that you all have before we move on to the next couple of chapters. Yes, yes, yes, I will say that we can choose not to accept Christ and that people who are in sin do that all the time, okay, now the background, as I said last week, the thing we've always got to remember, when you talk about election and predestination, the background, and this is in those chapters, the sections of the 3rd chapter that we looked at, the thing you always have to remember when you consider the doctrine of election and predestination is that it is in Christ, all right, we are chosen, Paul says it in Ephesians 1, we are chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, that presupposes the fact of our sin, okay, that's the backdrop, that's the canvas upon which the drama of redemption is painted, our own sin, and sin renders people incapable of choosing the good, we are dead in trespasses and sins, Paul says in Ephesians 2, dead in trespasses and sins, now the point at which that's confusing is that you kind of look around the world and you see people making choices, I mean you see people who are separated from Christ doing all kinds of things, they look very much alive, clearly what's being talked about there is their spiritual ability, they are spiritually dead because of sin, and if it were not for the intervention of God first in identifying a people whom he would save, and then second in giving Christ to be their Savior, and then third, giving the gift of the Holy Spirit, who takes all of the benefits of the work of Christ, and applies them to those whom the Father had given the Son, if God doesn't take that initiative, because of sin, because sin keeps us in a state and condition of bondage, if God does not take that initiative, nobody becomes a Christian, nobody believes, okay, and the first work of the Spirit, the first, and we're going to talk about this if we ever get there a little later in the confession, the first work of the Spirit is to change the disposition of the heart of the sinner, and I mean it is an invasive work, okay, it is God sovereignly and graciously invading the life of a sinner and changing the disposition of the heart of the sinner so that that sinner, rather than rejecting God, now exercises his or her freedom and believes God and responds to the gospel, okay, so yeah we can say people are free to reject God and reject the gospel and they do, we also want to affirm that when the Spirit begins this work, He changes the disposition of their heart so that the freedom which they exercise in rejection, because they're enabled to see their own condition and see the beauty and glory of the gospel, they now exercise their freedom by believing, okay, and it's because God intervenes and changes the orientation disposition of their hearts, okay, the question is can an elect person deny Christ, right, right, and I understand I'm going to work with a language a little bit here, okay, the question is very often asked can an elect person, the real question is will an elect person deny Christ and the answer is no, no, He will not, She will not, because God by His Spirit changes the disposition of that person's heart so that the desire now, the inclination now, is to seek and to believe rather than to reject and disbelieve, okay, here's, I always try to contrast, see when we talk about, we talk about somebody, when we ask questions can somebody do something, we're talking, we're talking about ability, all right, is somebody able to do something, all right, here's a question, can God sin, is God able to sin, I got something, there's a lot of hesitation here, this is a generous right there, can God sin, is God able to sin, no, He cannot, why is it that he cannot, because of his character, it would be a contradiction of his character for God to sin, is God any less free because he is not able to sin, absolutely not, in fact as you read the Bible, real freedom is in righteousness, it's not in unrighteousness, okay, real freedom is in righteousness, it's not unrighteousness, okay, the scriptures are replete with references to God's inability to sin, okay, Titus 1, 2, God who cannot lie, okay, God who cannot lie, so we want it, rather than asking, and this is I think where we stumble when we try to understand the nature of freedom, we sort of have in mind that freedom is a kind of an entire autonomy, you know, a capacity to do anything, I get so tired of the NBA and PGA ads and all that kind of stuff, who basically are saying to all of us, if you try hard enough, you can dunk a basketball, if you try hard enough, you can get on a PGA tour, that's bunk, right, that's bunk, there are all kinds of limitations, okay, not just limitations of ability but limitations of disposition, and I say this with all regard, for the character of God and the being of God, there is a sense in which there is a limitation which can be described about God. It's not a self-imposed limitation, it's not like God could be somebody or something other than what he is, and he has just decided because he is God that he's going to be good, and so he imposes a limitation upon himself and says I'm not going to sin, okay, it isn't that, the limitation is an expression of his being and character, he is by definition good and righteous, and one who is good and righteous by definition will always do what is good and righteous, and will never do the other, okay, so okay, we ever really put the word limitation on God, no, that's why I said in a sense, okay, in a sense, you put that word in quotation marks, so when it comes to the Christian, when it comes to the non-Christian, the non-Christian is limited, okay, there is a certain limitation which is placed upon the non-Christian, the unbelieving person by virtue of the influence of sin, dead and trespasses and sins, do people, does God always do what God wants it to do? Yes, does what God always wants to do prove to be good and just and righteous? Yes, does the sinner, apart from Christ, always do what he or she wants to do? Yes, yes, see, if free to do what he or she wants to do, but the thing that influences and shapes those choices is that person's character, the basic disposition and that person's heart, when you get to heaven, will you be free always to do what it is you want to do? Absolutely, will you always do what is good and just and righteous? You hope so, that's the whole point here, isn't it? Get me out of this mixed up mess that I'm into a place where I don't do stupid things anymore, okay? Yes, are you any less free in heaven because you no longer have the capacity to do evil? No, as I said, the theme in scripture is that you're more free when that capacity is forever behind you, okay? So it is the disposition of the soul, it's the disposition or the nature or the character of the being that is expressed through the choices, through the actions of that character. Now we as Christians are in this, we're in this nomans land, but kind of between these two places, we can bring forth good fruit, we can bring forth bad fruit, okay? Because we do have this kind of crazy mixed up schizophrenic existence, okay? But it is still the disposition of our souls for the real Christian to seek after righteousness, to long for righteousness, and we fail and fall and everything else in that process, but the basic disposition because of the work of the spirit is to believe rather than disbelieve, okay? It's tough, hard to explain and understand all the time. Anything else that you want to ask or say about this? Larry? Right. We want to expand all the boundaries and fully ask, can we do this? Can we do that? Right. The observation is that the original temptation was temptation to be like God, to expand the boundaries, to possess things that the creature ought not possess and is not meant to possess. By the way, if I could, this is a thought I had after the death of the Princess of Wales. Now, think about this. You know, we ask a wrestler with us after she died. What is it that killed Princess Diana? What is it that killed Princess Diana? And here's what I think it is. I think what killed Princess Diana is aspirations to glory, right? What do we want our kings and our queens or princesses to be? We want to be God. And we place upon them an unbearable burden of glory. And the glory crushed her. The glory crushed her. What was the original temptation? The original temptation was to possess something that only God possesses. And that is matchless glory, right? Matchless glory. And that temptation continues to be there. But we were not meant to bear the weight of the glory of God. God alone is sufficiently great to bear the weight of that glory. We participate in it because of the work of Christ and our union with Him. But only Christ Himself is sufficiently great to bear the weight of that glory. And I'll tell you, when people get too much attention, too much power, too much authority, too much of anything, it is a glory that ends up killing them in the end. In one way or another, it'll end up killing them. Because God alone is sufficient to bear the weight of that glory and no creature. The proper place, you know, we say this all the time, our proper place is as creatures humbly bowing before and acknowledging the glory of the living God. That's our proper place. So I think that's a great point. The original temptation was to continue to push the boundaries back and to aggregate to oneself things that are not rightfully ours. Becky, quick. Is that this week or next week? I think that's chapter six. I can dodge this bullet by saying that's chapter six. So we are going to deal with that next week, okay? We will deal with it. But I'll be real honest with you. Here's the rub. This is the rub in all of this. God creates the man and the woman in a condition of perfect righteousness and in an environment of perfection and beauty. How is it that one who is created in righteousness could choose unrighteousness? Yes. That's the real difficulty, the real difficulty in Christian, in this sense, terrible. But the real difficulty in Christian theology to me is how did Adam commit the first sin? After that sin is committed, after that sin is committed, everything else in a sense makes sense to me. But the thing that gets the whole thing going, how does the Titanic strike the iceberg? How does that happen? See, how does Adam commit the original sin? And all that the confession will say is that he had the capacity to choose good or evil. Even as a creature created in righteousness, he had the capacity for the choice of evil or good. But the hard thing is, if you have a creature created in righteousness, assuming that what we've said about God and about ourselves is true about Adam, that there is a basic disposition and inclination. Why is it that that basic inclination and disposition is not always in the direction of righteousness? What happens to the basic, we don't want to say there was some defect in character? We don't want to say that. But there was a capacity for the ability to do good or evil. And because evil was chosen, the rest of Adam's race does not have the capacity that he had. We are born in sin, conceived in sin as David says. We are dead in our trespasses and our transgressions, and until the Holy Spirit does something to change us, we will always choose what is evil. Yes. Well, I just put it into something that President says, consider me as a puzzle to me, getting back to the choice of saying, consider the murder, the rate of the murder, the whatever, it goes to prison for many multiple crimes. He's the elect because in prison he comes to crime. Right. He's one of the God's elect. He's one of the God's elect. Why did he have to go through all that before he got there? In other words, God allowed all that to happen. Sure. Sure. And questions like that, I throw away. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, why did the murder have to happen? Why did the murder have to happen? Why did he have to happen? Why did he was one of God's elect? Yeah, why didn't God get him before the murder or before the, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's mystery. Kathy and then Chris. The question was, you talked about the attributes. You talked about being beautiful in nine years ago. One of God's nine attributes is that he's been changeable. That the creature is not unchangeable. Right. That helps me. I don't fully understand it, but it helps me understand a little bit how Adam and he have been changed. Yeah. The observation is that one of the non-communicable attributes of God is that he is unchanging. But the creature, and we know this from our own experience, the creature is capable of change. And in some sense, that capacity was there with Adam. Now, when we get to heaven, we'll be confirmed in righteousness and that capacity will no longer be there. It's not like we have to go through this all again, you know, after we get to heaven. Chris?
Right. After creation and before the fall, the observation is that there is a similar capacity among the angels because there are fallen angels, those who have rebelled and that sometime between the creation and the fall, there was a fall of angels, because one of those fallen angels, the prince of the fallen angels, came and tempted the man and the woman. So, yeah. And you know, we got to say, at some, remember when I said a couple of weeks ago, if it didn't one thing, it's going to be another. Sooner or later, you're going to bump up against something that just, you think, I don't know, I can't figure this out. That's what we're swimming around in right now. We're swimming around in stuff that's bigger than we are. And at some point, sooner or later, again, the right thing for us is to humble ourselves before God and submit to what is clear and explicit in the teaching of Scripture and not run the risk of violating the teaching of Scripture by speculating it points for Scripture as silent. That's a very, very important thing for us. Hold fast to the things that are clear because they're given to us for our comfort. Resist the temptation to speculate about things where the Scriptures aren't clear. Another thing, it's human for us to do that. God created Adam, put him in the garden and told him to give names to everything. That's when we ask questions. That's what we're doing. We're doing the work of science. Adam was created as a scientist. Science is basically the work of taxonomy. It's basically through varieties of me, it's giving names to things. Whether the natural sciences are theoretical sciences. And that's all we're doing and all we're saying is in that process of seeking to give names to things, identify things and make distinctions. We have to be very careful and not speculate beyond what the Scriptures say to us. We have to resist what is a natural impulse in inclination. I think that's a great point, Bob. I'm kind of reading between the lines and what you're saying, that in addition to remembering that we're creatures before the Creator, we need to remember as well that even what we do see, we don't see clearly. And we are sinners. We get the kind of two strikes against this kind of thing. We're creatures and we're sinners. And both of those things should humble us and remind us that we need to be very assertive and persevering and persistent in seeking to arrive at the truth. But we need to resist the temptation to draw conclusions where they ought not to be drawn and to cross over that line and think that we're seeing things when we're really not. We're going to say otherwise we would need light God. And God should be the only one who has that capacity.
Well, you know one hand, no because God is the only one who should have the capacity for what? But yeah, not necessarily because, again, when we're glorified we won't have that capacity but we will still clearly be different from God. So there will be a likeness in that God will always choose what is right and we will always choose what is right. But there won't be any confusion about who's the creator and who's the creature. You know, one of the things that you do here and I do think this is true, that God creates us for fellowship with himself and he delights to have those worship him and delight in him who do that not under constraint but who do that out of the disposition of their souls, the disposition of their hearts. It requires his work in us in order for that disposition to be there. It is a real disposition and it will not be mixed when we're in glory so that our worship and our delight in him will be pure and deeply affectionate, filling all of our senses, the whole of our being, and it will be a glad-hearted worship. But there won't be any question, I mean, I can't imagine that there would be any doubt about my always and forever delighting to do that, which isn't the case now for any of us, but it will be then. Okay. Anything else here? Chris. The capacity has to do with moral choice. Yeah? Right. Yeah. Otherwise, it would be like marrying it. Right. Right. In order to choose a love that comes out sort of, some kind of willing that goes on in love. Okay. Moving right along. Chapter four of the confession. Chief. Listen, I hope this is okay with you all. This is, I am, I'm going to talk to Bob about this. I think this was a bad idea. It's the only one that he's had in the 14 years that I've known him, which I know he wouldn't, which he couldn't say on the other side of the equation, but it's just real tough to deal with this stuff with 60 people, number one, and I don't want to just skim the surface of things. You know, I want to try and wrestle with some of this stuff, to try and benefit you all and encourage you. So, I hope you don't mind too much that we're getting stuck at some good points, but admittedly difficult points. That's right. We can write it all off to the sovereignty of God. It's what he wanted to do, so our hands are clean, huh? Okay. We want to take a few minutes and talk about the creation. Clearly, we're going to have to come back to this next way, creation, providence. We'll try, try and do chapter six next week, too, which is, has to do with the fall of man. But here again, we want to begin at the right place and the beginning place for understanding creation is acknowledging who God is, and that's where the confession is in the first section of chapter four. It pleased God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness in the beginning to create or make of nothing the world and all things therein, where they're visible or invisible in the space of six days and all very good. What, I'll just remind you of this, I mentioned it a couple of weeks ago, I think. And this really is worthy of consideration, with contemplating. And that is that God created everything that we see, all that is around us, ex nihilo or out of nothing. Now, you have to qualify that, the true creation, ex nihilo, the real paradigm for ex nihilo creation is the modern scientific view, which says, in effect, that something came from nothing. The Christian doesn't believe that. The Christian acknowledges that there is the triune personal God who stands behind the creation. But what the ex nihilo phrase refers to is the fact that God did not require any pre-existing matter to fashion his creation. The universe is not eternal. It is not, I don't think, although I've puzzled over this, too, it is not infinite. The universe in both respects, with respect to space and with respect to time, is limited. It is both finite and it is not eternal, no set, not eternal. It owes its existence to the God who is there. And the first chapter of Genesis describes for us the manner of God's creating. And it is simply by his speaking, by the word of his power, to use Hebrew's one language. It is simply by his speaking that things exist. They are called into existence simply by virtue of the power of the spoken word of God. God speaks and it stands fast. God says let there be light and there is light. God says let there be a sun and a moon and stars hanging in the heavens and they are there. God speaks these things into existence. So the universe is not eternal. The material world is not eternal. It depends for its existence upon God and it came into existence at a point in time. And what we will see when we look at the evidence is that the same power sustains what God has made. What God makes, he upholds. Look at Hebrew's one real quick or right, just right this now. The reference is down there a little farther along. Hebrew's one, verse one, verses one and two and three. God who had various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, hasn't these last days spoken to us by his son whom he appointed air of all things through whom also, excuse me, he made the worlds, who beat of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels as he has by inherent to obtain a more excellent name than they. God's spoken times past, in these last days he has spoken by his son and now he upholds all things by the word of his power. You see, the emphasis, this is very consistent with Genesis 1 and John 1. The emphasis on the word of God, the spoken word of God, that reveals and that brings things into existence and providence is in part God upholding what he has made. It is the constant focused energy of God which explains the continued existence of the universe every second. It is the constant attention of God to your particular life that explains your continued existence. The universe is not a wind up toy. The universe is not something God made and then regulated by a whole bunch of natural laws, you know, of cause and effect and that sort of thing. There are those things there, but as chapter 5 says, God is not found by those things, he can go above them, he can go beneath them around him, he can act against them, he can do whatever he wants to do. So these natural laws that we see in operation around us, while they are real and while they explain why the sun rose this morning or why the earth turned on its axis such that the appearance that the sun was rising, all of this together is upheld moment by moment. Your life included, your life included by the continued sustained persistent expenditure of the energies of God in upholding it. If God withdraws his attention, his sustaining power for a nanosecond, you got it, the end. I think that is awfully
important that we are working against the cultural influence at this point. Very subtly thinking that seems to me that the universe has always been here and it is always going to be here. The world has always been here and they are always going to be here. They haven't always been here and they aren't always going to be here. There is going to be this remarkable transformation of these worlds at the end of history. We also slip into thinking very mechanistically about the world and when we do that, and I say this not to beat you up, but just to encourage it or redirect your thinking, when we think mechanistically about the world, you know, in a ceremony when we think it is just kind of the result of these laws that God has put in place, and we are robbing God of the peace of his glory because he is the one who upholds it all and sustains it all, moment by moment, day to day, year to year, decade to decade, century to century. He upholds this all by the word of his power. So creation, X, Neal, is God creating everything that you see without employing pre-existing material. Providence is God's upholding everything that he has made, sustaining it all by the word of his power. And there is one phrase in the confession that appears at the end of Genesis, chapter 1, that I want to call your attention to, because this is important as well. And it is the phrase, all very good. You read the
end of Genesis 1, let me read verses 30 and 31. To every beast of the earth, to every bird of the year, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food. And it was so. I love that. I love it. And it was so. It reminds me, you know, these words that we have heard just recently from Isaiah, in talking about the salvation that God is going to accomplish, it is like the zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. It was so. There is no question, no ambiguity, no uncertainty. It was so. I like that stuff. No wonder Hundle wrote them aside. And it was so. And then this God sought everything that he had made. And indeed, it was very good. So evening and the morning were the sixth day, evening and the morning were the sixth day. Now, why is that important? Well, there are lots of reasons it seems to me. Some get at this business of the nature of the man and the woman. God looks at everything that he has made. And He says it is all very
good. That means there is no defect anywhere in the creation. You know the story about my steps. I have told you the story about my steps just very quickly. I have thought of that with respect to this passage. We have this problem in our backyard. When we lived in Indiana, we didn't have a back door out the house to the backyard. The kids had to go out the side door, down some steps, and then over to a little flagstone wall. And they had to climb up that wall to get into the backyard. Not it wasn't very convenient. Clearly, the previous owners didn't have young children. So, Barb asked me if I would build some steps to get the kids so they could get up into the backyard. Well, Tom, he is looking at me thinking no way. So, what I did, I did the measuring and stuff, and then I consulted with a carpenter. I said, how do you build steps? And so, you have to build these stringers. Those of you who have built, you have to build stringers. And I can't remember how you do this now. But he said, make sure when you do your measurements that you allow a certain amount, it's either at the top or at the bottom because if you don't, you're either going to be like the width of a board short or the width of a board high, whatever. This is all news to me. I'm clueless about these things, but I did what he said. I went but my lumber got some good treated lumber and got good nails that weren't going to rust and all this kind of stuff. And I cut it the way he said and I put that sucker together and slipped it right in its spot. And the top board was right at the top of that flagstone. It was phenomenal. And I took a step back from this and I think I said, hey, Barb, come here. You're not going to believe this. It worked. It fit. It fit. Now, here's what the term good in the text describes. It doesn't simply describe the fact that God from some moral perspective looked at what he saw and saw it to be good. That's part of it. But it's larger than that. It also isn't just a commentary on the aesthetic quality of what it is that he made. It also involves God's pleasure in what he has made. He looks at what he sees. And it's interesting that you see the language change. After each of the previous days, God looks at what he's made and it's good. Cause it good. But then he gets to the end of the whole process after he's created the man and the woman put the finishing touches on the whole thing and the language is that it's very good. He looked at everything that he had made and behold, it was very good. And so when God completed his work, he not only acknowledged that what he had done was good, but he took pleasure in it. That's what's conveyed by that language, by that term. It is good in a moral sense, in an aesthetic sense, and it is good in the sense that it brings delight to the soul of the Creator. God had a plan, had an intention. And if we can use this for a human language, he set out to do what he had in mind to do and he did it. And when he finished the project, he found it to be delightful. Now, he wasn't amazed by his success. I was amazed by my success, but I took delight in that creation. And that is where that is the judgment of God upon what he has made. And it is also a commentary on who he is, on a God who takes pleasure in what is beautiful, what is lovely, what is delightful, what is ordered. But... Yes, yes, he will. When all of history is brought to a conclusion, and after final judgments are rendered, yes, he will. He will say the same. It was all very good. The wonderful thing is that we will agree with him in that. We wonder about it now. We question it now. But at that time, a part of our perfection will be the capacity, not for apprehending the infinite, but the capacity for acknowledging that what God has been good. Yeah, that's good. Now, what are the implications of this? Well, the implications, some of the implications are that all human activity, all human activity, all callings in life, the varieties of callings in life are viewed by God as good. My calling to be a husband, to be a father, those things are judged by God as being good. My calling to be a pastor is judged by God to be good. Your callings, to be in business, to be students, to be engineers, doing whatever it is that you do. The varieties of callings, the diversities of callings are judged by God to be good. And that's very important. That's something that emerges, the recovery of that idea, something that emerges from the Reformation. The idea, the priesthood of all believers, that there aren't these special folk who are called by God and given the special privilege of being called. But we all are called and the call of God upon our lives as diverse as those callings are, are judged by Him to be good, and we walk faithfully before Him in the midst of those callings, seeking to live out the Christian faith wherever it is that God has called us. So the callings of life are good, and that touches things that very often for us, we think as maybe unnecessary or frills that sort of thing. And I'm thinking about things like the arts, people who God has gifted and equipped to be engaged in the arts, that calling doesn't need some sort of other justification for its existence. God prepares people to be poets. He prepares them to be storytellers. He prepares them to be singers of songs, and thank God he does because life would be dull and boring and gray if he didn't. Now, I'd lunch with somebody the other day, and I said, thank the Lord that the world is not like me because of the world is like me, we'd have lots of poems and lots of songs but no indoor plumbing. And he said, well, thank the world that thank the Lord that the world is not like me because of where it was like me, we'd have indoor plumbing and no songs, no poetry, no storytelling. All of these things, the diversities of these things represent the diversity of the being and character of God, and really are expressions of that diversity. So I don't know if that's something you struggle with, but I think it's important to make that point that the varieties of callings, the diversities of giftednesses, all of those things are judged by God as being very good and they all bring God glory as we live faithfully before him and walk faithfully before him. Okay. Okay. I want to take a few minutes next week and talk about, man is male and female. There's some real important things there, I think. We'll have to take a few minutes of that. Talk a little bit more about providence, and then we'll go on to talk about the fall which is chapter six. All right. Any closing thoughts or comments, questions? Okay. Let's pray. Oh, Lord, thank you for the wonder that you are. Thank you for the glorious thing that you've done and making yourself known to us. I pray for myself and for all of us that you'd increase our capacity for acknowledging you and rejoicing in you. I pray that you would also increase our appetites for the acknowledgement and appreciation of you in all of your glory, unrestricted and impaired by sin. Give us appetite for perfected righteousness and I pray that you give us a great sense of thanksgiving as we consider what you've done for us in your Son, the Lord Jesus. And those of us coming to worship now, I pray that you'd enlarge our hearts, that you'd meet with us, that you'd minister to us and speak to us. And I pray that you'd give us a particular sense of delight and joy as we pray for in commission Emiliano and Flor Maria this morning. Thank you for the privilege we've had of knowing them and do bless them as they go. Be with us now as we come to worship in Jesus' name. Amen.