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Information. 2

Chapter 1 - The Importance Of Thinking. 3

Chapter 2 - God Transcendent 10

Chapter 3 - The Holiness Of God. 17

Chapter 4 - The Faithfulness Of God. 24

Chapter 5 - The Power Of God. 31

Chapter 6 - The Love Of God. 38

Chapter 7 - The Sovereignty Of God. 45

Chapter 8 - The Mercy Of God. 53

Chapter 9 - The Grace Of God. 61

Chapter 10 - The Unchangeable God. 69

Chapter 11 - The Omnipresence Of God. 77

Chapter 12 - The Omniscience Of God. 84

Chapter 13 - Knowing Your God. 92



David Legge studied at the Irish Baptist College, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He served as Assistant Pastor at Portadown Baptist Church before receiving a call to the pastorate of the Iron Hall Assembly. He now serves as pastor-teacher of the Iron Hall, and resides in Belfast with his wife Barbara and their daughter Lydia.

The audio for this series is available free of charge either on our website (www.preachtheword.co.uk) or by request from info@preachtheword.co.uk

All material by Pastor Legge is copyrighted.  However, these materials may be freely copied and distributed unaltered for the purpose of study and teaching, so long as they are made available to others free of charge, and the copyright is included. These materials may not, in any manner, be sold or used to solicit "donations" from others, nor may they be included in anything you intend to copyright, sell, or offer for a fee. This copyright is exercised to keep these materials freely available to all.

Behold Your God - Chapter 1

"The Importance Of Thinking"

Copyright 2000

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

Now we're turning within the Old Testament to the book of Exodus, the second book within the Bible, Exodus and chapter 33 - this is one of my favourite passages of Scripture, for it depicts for us the patriarch Moses, the father of Israel. And there he is, and within that great book he is receiving the law from God and, if you like, he has great experiences with God and many of them are recorded for us within the revelation of this book. And here we have one, in chapter 33 and verse 8 - and it says: "And it came to pass, when Moses went out unto the tabernacle, that all the people rose up, and stood every man at his tent door, and looked after Moses, until he was gone into the tabernacle. And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses" - isn't that a lovely expression? "...the Lord talked with Moses. And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door. And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle".

If you look at verse 18, you find here the prayer of Moses as he stands before God: "And he said, I beseech thee, show me thy glory. And he said", God said, "I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. And the Lord said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen".

In chapter 34, if you look at it, and verse 5 - you see another experience that Moses had with his God: "And the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation".

If you turn to chapter 40 of Exodus, not only was there that answer to Moses' prayer: 'Lord, show me Thy glory', but here we find another instance were Moses beholds - and indeed the whole company sees - the glory of God. Verse 34, and after the tabernacle was formed and built: "...then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle" - now don't read over that quickly - "the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle".

The word of God is full, isn't it, of experiences of men with God. Ordinary men, men who were sinful, shapen in iniquity, conceived in their mother's womb in sin - yet we read accounts of how they experienced God, sometimes in extremely supernatural ways and strange ways. We've read about Moses, and that never fails to thrill me, how it says that God talked with Moses - not Moses talked with God, God talked with Moses! Can you imagine that? Walking into a tent and talking with God as a man would talk with his friend. That wasn't enough for Moses - it might be enough for me, or perhaps for you - it wasn't enough for him, and that teaches us a lesson that we should never, ever get to a situation where we have enough of God. And so he cries to God: 'Lord show me Thy glory' - we would've thought we had seen it, to stand talking with God as a man with his friend, face-to-face, it says, with God! Yet he cries: 'Show me Thy glory! I want more of Thee O God!'. So God says: 'Look, you can't behold Me in all My glory, you couldn't take it!' - what did the hymnwriter say? 'In light inaccessible', we cannot approach God without being exterminated by His great holiness, by His great light! But God says: 'I'll do this for you: I'll put you in the cleft of the rock, and I'll cover your face and I'll make all My glory to pass by you - you can't look upon it. But what I'll do is: when I get past you, I'll take My hand from off My eyes and you will see My after-glow - the great Shekinah glory that I leave, it's not even Me, but I leave it wherever I go' - and that is why, when Moses came down to the people, his face shone.

Isaiah 6, if you wish to turn to it, you read: 'In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord' - I saw Him, and what does he say he saw Him like? '[He was] high', sitting on a throne, 'and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke'. What great experiences men had with God. Ezekiel chapter 1, if you wish to turn to it, in verse 1 you read this at the beginning of another great prophecy: 'Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God'.

I've entitled my message today: 'Behold Your God' - indeed the whole series I want to entitle with that, I want us to come and behold, to look upon our God. To contemplate what it means: that word and that Person, that great triunity in one - God Almighty. I want us especially this morning to think of 'The Importance Of Thinking' about God. I think it's self-evident as you look at these passages of Scripture, and you look at these men and their experiences with God Almighty, that it wasn't simply a quick look and then they forgot Him - but it was a look that when they beheld their God, it was life changing. They were never the same man or woman again! If you read Isaiah, you find in chapter 5 a great many woes that describe the situation of the nation at that time, and then all of a sudden the man that was withholding the blessing died - King Uzziah - and at times it takes those that are withholding the blessing, for God to deal with them - and God removed that man and then Isaiah could see God. That's what I want to happen for us in these Lord's Day mornings - for whatever is removing our sight and our vision of God to disappear and for us to stand, like Isaiah, and see the Lord high and lifted up, and that His train would fill this temple!

Ezekiel was downcast, wasn't he? He was disheartened - he was in the exile and there he was sitting at the river of Chebar with all those children of Israel that were brought out at the exile - and he was depressed and dejected! But all of a sudden Almighty God opened the windows of heaven and he saw visions of God! That's why, I believe, the writer to the Hebrews in chapter 12 and verse 1 says these great words: 'Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us' - such a great cloud of witnesses! Great men of God, great prophets and priests and kings who show us their experiences of God - and because of all them, ought we not also to behold our God?

In Exodus chapter 24, if you turn to it please, Exodus 24 and verse 13, we read of a man whom we have already read of in chapter 33. We read: 'And Moses rose up, and his minister', or his servant, 'Joshua: and Moses went up into the mount of God'. Moses had a servant called Joshua - and it is the Joshua that you read about in the book of Joshua, and indeed throughout the whole of the Pentateuch - this was the understudy of Moses. Now I want you to see this: what a responsibility it was for Moses to show Joshua God, and to lead him into experiences with God as we see within this book. And that tells us - at least it tells me - that I have a great responsibility to influence others by contemplating God. In other words, when I start to contemplate who God is and what God can do, it will affect my life - and when He affects my life, my life in turn will overflow and affect others. That is exactly what happened with Moses and Joshua.

You find exactly the same happening in the book of Kings with Elijah and Elisha - it was the mantle of Elijah that Elisha took, wasn't it Elijah that Elisha followed and never took his eye off him? He asked for a double portion of his spirit - why? Because he saw the experiences and the blessings that this man Elijah had with God, and he wanted it! There is a great responsibility that not only we be blessed by God for ourselves, but we be blessed by beholding God for the benefit of others. It was the case with Paul and Barnabas, was it not? I'm sure that Paul taught Barnabas a great deal about beholding his God. Was it not the same with Timothy? Paul taught him, as his own son, about God and how to behave in the house of God, which is the temple of God, the church of God.

It's the case with us, isn't it, that often it is the lives of others, and it is the blessings of others, and the walk of others that impresses upon us to go after God. We are surrounded with so great a cloud of witnesses, that we want to press on as they have pressed on, we want to behold our God as they have beheld their God. We read biographies: Murray McCheyne, John Calvin, Martin Luther, D.L. Moody - we read of so many, and we read of their life that it's possible for a man or woman of like passions to follow God and to behold God and to be used of God - it excites us! Indeed I would go as far as to say this: that the greatest effect that you will ever have on others will be through your walk with God. The greatest effect that you will have on other people will be if you are beholding God.

Now, the opposite of that situation is found in the New Testament in Luke chapter 10, if you wish to turn to it, Luke chapter 10 - and we're just laying the foundation this morning as an introduction of why it's important to think upon God. Luke chapter 10 and verse 39, and we find the famous incidence in Bethany, where the Lord comes into the home of Lazarus' sisters, and there He is in a place where He loves. In verse 39 we read this: '...Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word...', and a little bit on, you read: 'But Martha was cumbered about much serving'. So you have Mary who was at Jesus feet and heard His words, and then a little bit later you have Martha who is cumbered about much serving. And then the Lord says: 'Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her'.

It is hard to behold God in a busy world - in fact there are times that I think it's nigh impossible to live as the world lives and to behold God in the way that He longs to be beheld. It can even be in the service of Christ - yes: was not Martha in the kitchen serving Christ, whatever she was doing? But there is one thing that is needful, there is one thing that is primary and foundational - which means that it must come first, and if it doesn't, it doesn't matter how much you serve the Lord, if you don't behold God you can't be anything for God! Yet we may have the prospect, as one writer said, of meeting an unknown God after death. Therefore it is our need - now - to behold God, to be at the Saviour's feet listening to His words, that chosen part that is good and better, that cannot be taken away from us.

In Genesis chapter 24 we find an instance where Abraham sends out his servant to get a wife for Isaac. And we read throughout that beautiful story - and if you're looking for a girlfriend or a boyfriend that's a good story to read, for it gives us what the will of God is for us and how to find it, for Isaac and Abraham were willing to accept God's will, no matter what she looked like! And here we have within this story an amazing verse that gripped me this week as I read it again - it says: 'Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide'. He went out into the field to meditate at evening, and the next time he lifted up his eyes he saw his future bride! And if we go out, and if we meditate, we too will behold the King in all His beauty.

Joshua was the servant of Moses - if you look at chapter 33 that we were reading from, you find in verse 3 at the beginning of the chapter that still there was that promise of the promised land - '...unto a land', they were going to, 'flowing with milk and honey:', God says, 'I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people'. Yet still there was the promise of that land of milk and honey, the promised land. Now at the end of the book of Deuteronomy you find Moses dead, and then the next book you find is the book of Joshua. Now look: Joshua became God's conqueror, Joshua became the man that would stand there at the Jordan and would take the people of God into the promised land. Moses could not go because he smote the rock, you remember, and God said: 'It's not for you, but Joshua's going to go into the land - he is My chosen future deliverer'. Where did Joshua learn his example? With Moses. Where did he learn it? Verse 11. Now I believe that this is a message from God, verse 11: 'And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle' - isn't that beautiful? He was young, he didn't have the responsibilities upon his shoulder of the millions of murmuring, stiffnecked, rebellious Israelites that Moses had - he didn't have that burden. And in the time that he didn't have that burden he redeemed the time, and he redeemed it with God, in God's presence. Now, young people: if you want to be anything for God, you've got to behold Him, you've got to be with Him - and when others leave Him, you've got to tarry in His tabernacle. This is where Joshua became God's conqueror - and this is where anyone will become a conqueror for God: in His presence, where he was remembering now his Creator in the days of his youth, while the evil days came not, nor the years draw nigh when he would say: 'I have no pleasure in them' - he didn't wait till it was too late!

The great human need today is to know God, and my friend if you're here and you're not saved, you've never had a conversion experience with the Spirit of God - you need to know God in salvation! You need to be saved or you'll be lost! It is the only way - Christ, the way, the truth, and the life - no other way to the Father, but by Him. You need to know Him through His death and His resurrection! But Christian: once you have known God in that capacity, you must now know God through contemplating Him, through beholding Him. And that is the importance - we could finish there! - the importance of thinking about God, that is why it is important to contemplate Him, to behold Him. But if that doesn't suffice, we can ask the question first of all: why contemplate Him? Why do it? J. I. Packer in his book 'Knowing God' - which he wrote before he got ecumenical - he gives one reason why we should know God. He says: 'Christian minds have been conformed to the modern spirit', I quote him, he says, 'It spawns great thoughts of man and leaves room only for small thoughts of God'. It spawns great thoughts of man and leaves room only for small thoughts of God - and what he is saying is this: a weakling view of God produces weakling saints of God.

We are in a battle today and it seems that we are downhearted at times because we feel that, as we look around at the world and the church, that we are losing the battle - although the gates of hell will never prevail against the church of Jesus Christ. But one of the pitfalls that we can fall into is to get preoccupied with maintaining the religious practices in a pagan world, and lose sight of God! A W. Tozer says: 'The church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men. This she has done not deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge - and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic'. He goes on in his book to lament that he believes that this is the cause of a hundred lesser evils among us, that we do not take time to wait and to behold God. He believes that this is why there is a loss of spiritual awe in worship, in the divine presence, why we are not struck dumb as Moses was when the cloud filled with His glory the tabernacle. He believes it is one reason why we can no longer say that we are able to 'be still and know that Thou art God'.

What comes to our mind when we think of God is probably the most important thing about us. What comes to your mind when you think of God? The reason why that is so is because no religion, or people, or person, has ever risen above its view of God. I'll give you an example from the Old Testament: you have Baal worship. Baal worship was passed down, right to the New Testament where we look - as we've been studying in Ephesians - at this awful temple of Diana and the ritual prostitution that went on within it. And we may think it's debauched and depraved and terribly immoral, without realising the thought, the religious theology that was behind it. Without going into too much detail, it was simply this: that their gods, many of them, were fertility gods - and they believed that the way they worshiped their fertility gods was with copulation with temple ceremonial prostitutes. Whether male or female, they would copulate with them, and they believed when they copulated that their god would be pleased with that worship, and he in turn would be fertile with regards to the ground and the fruit and the crops and the vegetables. And they believed that through this type of immoral worship that god would be pleased - now when you have a god like that, you have people like that! Isn't that right? Therefore a people, or a person, cannot rise above his own contemplation of God. If you believe in a god, like those in Islam, who is a wicked god, who is an angry god all the time - a god of wrath - you'll dress up women in black, you'll not let them out of the house, you'll have rules and regulations and all sorts of awful things done to your children, because that is the type of god you believe in. If you believe in Molech of the Old Testament, you will take your baby boy and feed him to the flames, because that is the kind of god you have! And that's the kind of person you become.

You see our thought of God determines our spiritual state and also our spiritual future. It is, without doubt, the mightiest thought that the human mind can have to contemplate God. Have you ever thought about that? We think of so many things, but do we behold God? Do we behold Him, realising that in this scene and in this dispensation that we are in in human form, and in the bodies of death that we are in, that we will never have a greater experience than contemplating God? You would know to look at the meetings that we don't believe that! For when we have a chance to stare into the face of God, we're staring into our pillow, or into the television set. When we have time to remember God's Son, we are remembering - lying in bed - what we did on Saturday evening. And then we come expecting the blessing.

In the Psalms, in 48 and verse 9, we read this: 'We have thought of thy lovingkindness, O God, in the midst of thy temple' - we have thought! We read in the book of Malachi, chapter 3 and verse 16 and 17, that God has a book and he says: 'Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name. And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him' - those that are Mine are they that think of Me! And I vouch to say that if you don't think of Him, you're not His.

I'm not talking, and in this next few weeks we won't be studying dry theology. 'Theology' literally means, in the Latin: 'Theo' - God, 'Ology' - study. Study of God - and that is what we will be doing, but it won't be dry theology, but it will be [a] life changing - hopefully - study of great God Jehovah! Why contemplate God? Daniel tells us, in chapter 11 and verse 32: 'the people that do know their God shall be strong, and shall do exploits'. Do you want to do exploits for God? Do you want to be strong for God? Do you want to be put in God's book, because you're a precious jewel for Him? Then we've got to learn to behold our God - like Joshua, we've got to learn to tarry when others leave, and when others aren't there, and when others are cumbered about with many things, we've got to learn to tarry in the tabernacle with the Shekinah cloud of God's presence!

I want to read you a portion of a sermon preached by Charles Haddon Spurgeon on January the 7th 1855 in Newpark Street Chapel in the morning. And I want you to listen very carefully to what he says: 'It has been said by someone that the proper study of mankind is man. I will not oppose the idea, but I believe it is equally true that the proper study of God's elect is God. The proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy which can ever engage the attention of a child of God is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father. There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of divinity. It is a subject so vast that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity, so deep that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can compass and grapple with, in them we feel a kind of self content and go our way with the thought: 'Behold I am wise'. But when we come to this master science, finding that our plumb line cannot sound its depths, and that our eagle eye cannot see its heights, no subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind than thoughts of God. But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it - he who often thinks of God will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around the narrow glow. The most excellent study for expanding the soul is the science of Christ and Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead and the glorious Trinity - nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity. O, there is in contemplating Christ a balm for every wound, in musing upon the Father there is a quietus for every grief, and in the influence of the Holy Ghost there is a balsam for every sore! Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your care? Then go plunge yourself in the Godhead's deepest sea, be lost in His immensity and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul, so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief, so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead - and it is to which I invite you to study this morning'.

Does that answer the question why we should study God? We should study Him because it exceedingly improves our minds. Do you want your mind improved? Well, study God, don't study science, don't go to university - not that there's anything wrong with that, but you'll not improve your mind going there! Do you want to humble the mind? It will be through a sight of God that you will cry like Isaiah: 'Woe is me for I am undone!', you'll cry like Peter: 'Lord, depart from me for I am a sinful man!'. Do you want to [enlarge] your mind, expand your soul, enlarge your intellect, magnify the whole of your being? Have you a great wound in your soul this morning that you want a balm for? Do you want a quietus for your grief, a balsam for every wound and sorrow and loss? Do you want to drown your care? Do you want rest? Do you want to be refreshed? Do you want to be invigorated, comforted in your soul? Do you want those swelling billows and storms of sorrow and grief to cease? Do you want peace to be spoken to the winds of trial? Well then behold your God!

Our learning of God will give birth to a life of godliness. We must learn and contemplate upon God not only for that, positively for the help it is, but negatively - because to think wrong thoughts of God is idolatry. To assume that God is other than He is is idolatry. As one said: 'A God begotten in the shadows of a fallen heart will quite naturally be no true likeness of the true God' - it cannot be! And many of us have our ideas of God, and it's not God at all! For we have never beheld Him. He says to many: 'Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself, but I will reprove thee and set them in order before thine eyes'. That's what He said of the Romans - when they knew God they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened because they didn't think right thoughts of God - do you see the importance of thinking right thoughts of God?

Finally, as we close: how do you contemplate God? Someone has called the Bible a photograph of the Almighty. That is what the word 'revelation' means - 'reveal', 'reveal-ation', to reveal God, His person. That is how you know God, through the word of God, the written word of the living God - and it is to take the word of God and do something that very few do today, a lost art: it is the practice of meditation. To take time, to take the word and to ask what it means, and to ask what it requires of my soul and my life, and my practices and my possessions, and my family - to take it and to make it yours and to make it part of you, and to chew the cud of the word of God until you inwardly digest it and it becomes part of your whole being. The written revelation of God, that is how you will know how to behold God for the Bible is a portrait of His character and all His ways of His doings, His plannings, His infinite holiness and His unlimited graciousness.

The old Puritans knew their God, the old Presbyterians knew their God - indeed one, from 1643-1647, was part and party to the Westminster Catechism. And it was being drawn up, and there came a point of reverent indecision when those assembly divines wanted to frame a concise but worthy definition of God - they didn't know how to speak within their catechism of who God was and what He was like - and they resorted to special prayer to find out what the mind of God was about this. They requested a young man, the youngest of those Westminster divines, called George Gillespie, to lead them in prayer. Gillespie, one of the four Scottish members of that assembly, prayed these words: 'O God, who art a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable, in Thy being wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth' - and unanimously it was decided that the answer had been given, and that is the definition that you find within the Westminster Catechism. How did they get it? They didn't get it with a degree in theology, they got it from beholding their God - and God was so much part of their heart, that when that man opened his mouth God could speak through it!

You behold God through the written word, and as we close let us read together from Hebrews chapter 1 as an introduction to the weeks that lie ahead, of probably the primary and indeed the most important way to behold our great God. Hebrews chapter 1 and verse 1: 'God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness 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 on the right hand of the Majesty on high'. Do you want to behold God? Listen to the words of God: 'Behold My beloved Son'.

'Strangely I sensed Him everywhere,

The God I ached to find.

Yet could not find Him anywhere,

Above, before, behind.

Mystery amazing, love unknown,

In human form He stands

And calls me with tender human tone,

Uplifting nail-torn hands.

Yes, for in Jesus, God most high

Has come from heaven above,

To answer all my aching cry

With His redeeming love.

Oh, magnify the Lord with me,

My Saviour, King divine.

For in my Saviour now I see:

Lo, God in heaven is mine!'

May, in these next few weeks, we behold God.

Oh Lord, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. Oh Lord, we thank Thee that Thou hast revealed Thyself in Jesus Christ Thy Son. But Lord, we are called now to contemplate Thee, to consider Him, to look upon Him in whom the Father dwells and be lost in wonder, love and praise. We pray in these next weeks that Thou wilt bless our study, and Lord that we will not be puffed up with knowledge at the end of it, but that we will be filled with all the fullness of God. In Jesus name, Amen.

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Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - December 2000

www.preachtheword.co.uk

info@preachtheword.co.uk

Behold Your God - Chapter 2

"God Transcendent"

Copyright 2000

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

Now we're turning in our Old Testaments to the book of Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy and chapter 29. Last Lord's Day morning we were in Exodus chapter 33, we were looking at the fact of how Moses met with God, and spoke with God as a man talks with his friend, face-to-face. And we noticed the tail-end of one of those verses that told us that Joshua the servant of Moses, his understudy - who later would become the conqueror of the promised land in conquest - was made great as he waited in the tabernacle with God, face-to-face, just as Moses, when Moses went out to deal with the children of Israel. He had not the responsibility of his forefather in the faith, but he took the time - when he had it - spending it with God and bathing in the presence of the Almighty. We looked last week at how it is so important, as we enter a study [such] as this, that we think right thoughts about God, that we learn that it is important to contemplate God. It is not left for the theologians or the 'high-browed' preachers, but it is for every child of God to come into the presence of God and learn of Him, face-to-face.

And so, as we laid the foundation last week about why we ought to contemplate God and how we contemplate God, we look at our first study on the person of God: "God Transcendent". And we are looking at chapter 29 of Deuteronomy and verse 29, and God has outlined the promises to the children of Israel in the passage that lies before us - it's the promises unto the penitent, unto those who will obey God, the children of Israel who will live by His commands and His precepts - He tells them that He will bring blessing upon them. And of course, you will know that throughout the whole of the first 5 books of the Bible that not only are the blessings of Israel outlined, but the cursings - if they do not walk in obedience and trust and obey in their God, He will curse them. And at the end of these precepts of what God will do for His people, we have in verse 29 this strange statement: 'The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law'.

You know that the book of Deuteronomy, in its very name, is the second giving of the law to Moses. It was given there, first of all, in Exodus 20 on Mount Sinai. And what the word of God is saying here is that God has been revealed in His law - God has been revealed to men and women through the precepts that we've already read in this book, by His blessings and by His cursings. And one of the basic lessons that we learn from these words before us is that God is a holy God, that is why His law was revealed to us. He is a righteous God, His eyes cannot look upon iniquity and therefore his law portrays and conveys that truth to us. But do you see what verse 29 is saying? There are secret things that belong unto the Lord our God that we do not know. Those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children's children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. There are things that God, in His mercy and grace, has revealed unto us as His children - but there are other things, things that no man or woman, or perhaps even the angel in its height, can know.

What God has revealed to us through the word of God is staggering. It's hard even to come to grips with His revealed will, His revealed character and persons - in fact, when we read the word of God and come into a deep knowledge of who God is in all His attributes and being, we are like Isaiah, we fall at His feet and say: 'Woe is me for I am undone!'. We have that experience of Peter when he said to the Lord Jesus: 'Depart from me for I am a sinful man!'. We have the experience of the great apostle Paul: 'Who shall deliver me from this body of death?'. But to think that what has been revealed to us is very little, in comparison to what God is and the secrets that God holds within Himself about Himself. And the conclusion that we come to from a verse like this - and it seems even to be a contradiction in terms - that we, knowing God and beholding our God, enter into a journey where we begin to know the unknowable.

You remember those in Athens had, upon their temple, an altar to the 'unknown God'. And we praise God today that He is not such a God to us, for we have know Him in salvation, and - God willing - today we are knowing Him day by day in sanctification, and in a daily relationship with our Father through the Lord Jesus Christ. But yet, in a small measure, because the secret things belong unto the Lord our God - in a great measure He is still an unknown God. There are many paradoxes in scripture and this indeed is one of them: that we can know many things about God, yet there are still things that we do not know about Him. As you read these first 5 books of the Bible, you read of Jacob and Moses, and both of them are said on different occasions to have seen God face-to-face. Moses, in the tent of meeting; Jacob, as he wrestled with God. We read last week in Exodus 33 and verse 20, God said to Moses: 'Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live'. So you've a paradox right away - Jacob says that this place shall be called 'Peniel', for here where I wrestled I saw God face-to-face; Moses, in the tent of meeting, it says he saw God face-to-face and talked with Him face-to-face as a man with his friend. Yet in the same passage, you read in verse 20, that God said: 'Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live'. You remember the angel of God appearing to Samson's future mother and father, and Manoah's wife was barren. And one day an angel appeared unto them and promised them the birth of Samson, who would be a conqueror and a deliverer in the land. Manoah asked him his name and he refused to disclose his name to him, and you remember the story goes that, after the angel ascended into the flame above the altar, that Manoah despaired to his wife and turned around and cried - you read it in Judges 13:22 - 'We shall surely die because we have seen God'.

You see, to see God was death! To see God was fatal because God was such an 'other' one, so beyond us, so above us, something that we cannot understand or grasp in all of His power and being, that in the mind of Manoah, he knew - without an Old Testament or a New Testament - that to see God is to die. Indeed it's cemented for us in the New Testament - 1 John 4 and verse 12, John says: 'No man hath seen God at any time' - so you have a paradox, don't you?. Men who we read of seeing God - Jacob, Moses - talking to God, wrestling with God and perhaps in God's will in the weeks that lie ahead, we will look into that great paradox of how men could be said to see God and know God in this way, yet no man can see God and live.

The scriptures are full of paradoxes and mysteries. That is why I want to pause here for a moment and say, as Paul said to Timothy, without controversy: 'Great is the mystery of godliness'. There is a danger in the age in which we live that we bring everything down to a manageable level, where we feel that we have got God in a box, that we can understand Him, we can define Him, we can speak of all His attributes and his persons that are revealed to us - yet, in depth, we forget that the secret things belong unto our God and there is a measure of mystery and paradox in God. Let us never lose the mystery of God. Is that part of our problem today: that we have lost the awe and the reverence of the unknown? Those secret things that no man can know, that great glory of God that no man can see and live, that great person of God that no human mind can hold and sustain. Old W.P. Nicholson said that today's society spells God with a small 'G' and man with a capital 'M'. And if I can say anything to you this morning, especially to the young people, it's this: have high thoughts of God! Don't reduce God down to your level, don't push God into your understanding - and beware when contemplating and thinking about God that you do not strip God of the great mystery of His godliness.

The transcendence of God simply means that God is above us, that God is beyond us, He is unreachable in His character and in His person. It simply means that He excels us, He surpasses, He is independent of us, He is all-sustaining, self-sustaining within Himself - He needs nothing but Himself. Do you think God needs us? No, God doesn't need us, neither was God obliged to create us, was He? It was the choice of His will! He didn't have a missing part in His life, and he decided that He needed to fill it by making creation. Nor, in our sin, is God obliged to save us. Now, we must grapple with these issues: God does not need man, but man needs God - but God does not need him! Only for the fact that He chose to create him, only for the fact that He has chosen, in our sin, to save us and has promised that He will do such - but God gains nothing from us, or indeed from anyone or anything outside of the universe.

If you turn to Romans 11 you were read this of God's mind, and it's only one little attribute or part of God, yet His very mind, distinctly and accurately it says that God has no need of anyone. Verse 34 and 35: 'For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?' - God is a self-entity. God is above us! God is beyond us! God does not need us! We must have high views of God. If we are going to think of God, we must realise that, before the creation of the world and the universe, God was perfectly blessed in Himself. Father, Son and Holy Spirit - that divine fellowship of love between those three Persons of one essence - there in eternity past, if we can say it, there was perfection, perfect blessedness. God did not need man nor creation! Creation added nothing to God, for you cannot add to God - and can I go as far as to say this: even Christ and His cross added nothing to God's divine being or to His glory. Now ponder that! Christ and His cross could not add to God, for God cannot be added to - yes, it revealed Him; yes, it manifested His glory and brought great glory to God and praise to His name; but it did not add to His essential goodness and greatness and holiness and godliness! God has never been without it, neither will He ever be without it. Oh, you cannot add anything to our God.

Turn with me to Isaiah chapter 40, and we see outlined by the great prophet the transcendence of our God, and it has to be seen by us in comparison to our own situation and how small we are. Isaiah chapter 40 and verse 15, and speaking of the nation the prophet says: 'Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity. To whom then will ye liken God? Or what likeness will ye compare unto him?'. Verse 22: 'It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in: That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity'. Oh, we have a great God - can we just contemplate that for one moment? We have a great God! He is God and there is none other! He is God above all gods! He is above, He is supreme, He is exalted, He is a place that none can approach to! He is a being that none can strive after or even find!

One old biblical scholar said: 'Quite truly, how vastly different is the God of scripture from the God of the average pulpit'. It is not a great God, it is not the God that we read of in 1 Timothy 6 and verse 15 and 16: 'Which in his times he shall show, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen'. There is no god like our God! Oh, that we could lift ourselves from the depths of our own human existence, our pitiful daily chores in life, the sphere of all our existence, that we could be pulled by His Spirit at this moment to see that God is transcendent!

The irony of studying God is that He is unknowable. Yet we will seek to try and know the unknowable. The first question I want to ask today is: What can be known? What can we know about God? And indeed that capitulates, perhaps, the greatest question of all the ages: what is God like? How do we define God? How can we describe God? And even though it's our purpose of studying God in these studies, and it's our intention to understand from God's divine revelation - the word of God - what He is really like, the paradox is that God is not like anything! Isaiah said: 'To whom, or to what, shall ye compare God?' - God is not exactly like anything that exists in this universe - in other words, He can't be compared to anything. The prince of preachers, no matter how eloquent he may be, is redundant in attempting to illustrate by any natural means possible what our God is like, for He is transcendent, He is above, beyond, superior to anything!

However, although that is the case, God - in revealing Himself through the word of God - has endeavored to reveal Himself to a natural world. That means, because He knows that we in our puny, finite human state could never really grasp what He is like and who He is, He has condescended Himself to describe Himself like natural things, so that our natural mind might understand. That's why within the word of God He incorporates many 'like' words, to say that God is like such-and-such, to describe Himself by comparing Himself to another thing - and, although He is not exactly like that thing, He borrows those things of nature to communicate what He is above nature, what He is beyond nature - and you could multiply all the comparisons of God within the word of God by infinity and still not come near to what God is in all His transcendence. It's amazing to think, isn't it, the lengths that God has gone to that we might understand! Can I say that He even may have stripped Himself of some of that mystery, in order that He might communicate to a natural world who He is and what He is like.

Let me give you an example, turn with me to Ezekiel chapter 1 and we were in this passage of scripture last Lord's Day morning. Ezekiel chapter 1, now I want you to notice every single word as we read them together, you remember in verse 1 it describes: 'It came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God'. He saw what no language could describe, and the point of Ezekiel was - keep that passage open because we're going to look at a few more verses - the point of what he is saying is this: he had no reference point, he had nothing to compare God with. He just says, 'I saw visions of God', he had nothing to interpret, there was no language that could describe the visions of God that he was seeing - and he saw something different from what he'd ever known in his whole existence, so what he does is he uses 'like' words. He uses comparisons, if you look at verse 13 he says: 'As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance', note that word, 'their appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps'. He didn't see burning coals of fire, he didn't see lamps, but he saw something that he couldn't describe, that he didn't know what it was, but it was like burning coals of fire, it was like the appearance of lamps. And as you read down this passage, the nearer he comes to the burning throne of God, the less definite his words become, the less specific and accurate they are. Look at verse 26: 'And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it. And I saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord'! He couldn't see the glory of the Lord and live, so God had to convey to him the likeness, the appearance of the glory of the Lord. Do you see what a glorious God we have? In light inaccessible hid from our eyes!

We are so poor that God has to describe Himself in likeness, in appearance, in the languages of 'as it were'. And it's no slavish literalism that God wants as we read the book of Ezekiel, because God cannot be put into our pitiful language, He can't be contained into our puny minds - and we need to beware that in all our doctrines that we take from the word of God, that we do not ever try to define the indefinable! We need to beware in contemplating God that we never ever put Him into our conception, for we tend - as in everything in life - to reduce God to our manageable terms. A. W. Tozer said this: 'The God of contemporary Christianity is only slightly superior to the gods of Greece and Rome - if indeed he is not actually inferior to them, in that he is weak and helpless while they, at least, had power'. What have we reduced God to? This great transcendent, superior, the secret things that belong unto Him - we have brought Him down and stripped Him of all His power, all of His sovereignty, all of His dignity and we have made ourselves god over Him!

Idolatry is when we move from what God is said to be like, to imagine that He is that way. For instance when we read that there was an appearance of burning coals, or we read that God appeared like unto the form of a man, that we make Him into a man - that's not what the word of God says. It's 'like' the appearance, it's 'like' the thing, it's 'as it were' - and that's why we reject idols and idolatry, because we can make an idol out of God. And the awful thing about it is this: that even our thoughts can become an idol, the way we conceive God in our minds, the way we have a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ looking a certain way, or God looking a certain way - if we have any picture in our minds of God, it is idolatry! Nicholas of Cushea (sp?), in his book 'The Vision of God', prays this prayer addressing Him - and this is what he says to God: 'If anyone should set forth any concept by which Thou canst be conceived, I know that that concept is not a concept of Thee'. Have you got it? If any man or woman, or book or picture, tries to depict God, it is other than God is because God cannot be depicted! He goes on to say: 'For every concept is ended in the wall of paradise' - I think that's beautiful. Draw a picture of God if you like, and make a statue, and have a picture in your mind of who He is and what He looks like - even the Lord Jesus Christ Himself - but Nicholas is saying that when we come to the walls of paradise, and when we behold the glory of God and perhaps even then are not able to look upon His greatness, we will know then it's all ended - all our concepts, all our puny thoughts, all the ways in which we have stripped Him, and reduced Him, and brought Him down, and de-qualified Him to everything that we can understand. He goes on: 'So to if any were to tell of the understanding of Thee, wishing to supply a means whereby Thou mightest be understood, this man is yet far from Thee'. If any man comes unto you and says: 'I've a way you can see God, I've a way that you can understand God or reduce God down to manageable terms' - he is yet far from God. 'For as much as Thou art absolute above all concepts which any man can frame' - do you know that God is above the Bible? That's right! We can worship the Bible - we don't worship the Bible, we worship God! He is greater than what the Bible depicts, He is greater than any language, He is greater than any vision, He is greater than any concept imaginable, any thought that can enter into the heart or mind of any child of God. He who is invisible can never be depicted.

What can we know about Him? The paradox is: we can know that we cannot know everything. The second question I want to ask is: how can we know? If we cannot know everything and the secret things that belong to our God, how can we get a little bit of a glimpse of His great transcendence? How can we enter into the rays of His glory, at least to be as the hymn says: 'Lost in wonder, love and praise' at the greatness of our God? If He is incomprehensible, how can we get to know Him? How do we satisfy the deep that calls unto deep within our souls, to know God, to long after God, to be truly satisfied in no one but God? Well the answer to that question, strangely, is another paradox. You see, God cannot be known by the reason of the mind - please listen: many make the mistake of thinking that they can know about God, and then they know Him. But God can only be known by the soul, the spirit within us that has been made to know God - that is the only way. And as F.W. Faber put it in his poem:

'God is darkness to our intellect,

But He can be sunshine to the heart'.

If you try to reduce Him into manageable terms, intellectually speaking, and you try to reduce Him and push Him into a theological treatise - you will fail! For He is darkness to the intellect, there is no mind of man that can conceive Him or can hold Him! - but oh, to the heart, to the soul...

How can we know God? Plainly, I believe the only way to know God is through revelation. Revelation: you see, this God is so great, this God is so above us, this God is so beyond us that we cannot conceive in our mind, or in our heart, what He is like. Yes, the pagan in the jungle can look at creation, and the sun, and the moon, and the stars and realise there is a Creator, and realise that there is another in the universe - but he can never contain, from looking at creation, the greatness, the magnitude, the dignity, the almighty nature, the holiness and righteousness and powerfulness of our God - it cannot be done! Zophar the Naamathite asked Job the question: 'Canst thou, by searching, find out God?'. You cannot, He can only be known when He reveals, to the human heart, Himself. When He takes the word of God and it is preached, and that word of God is found on good ground in the heart of an unbeliever, and faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God, and a revelation has taken place through the revelation of the word of God - God has made Himself known by His Spirit to a human being.

Of course, the word of God tells us no man knoweth the things of God but the Spirit of God. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:11: 'For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man?' - you know everything about you inside you, it's only your spirit that knows everything, the person you're sitting beside doesn't know everything that's in your soul, but only your soul and spirit can tell what is in you as a man. 'Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God' - and if we are to know a God who is transcendent, a God who is above us, a God who is beyond us and unreachable, it must be His Spirit that reveals Himself unto us.

God isn't known through intellect or through reason - that's why we don't fall at the feet of the intellectuals. Why? Because John says in chapter 4 of his gospel and verse 24: 'God is a spirit'. God is a spirit! Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:14: 'The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned'. And if man is dead, as Paul says and we have been learning, in his trespasses and in his sins - how can a man know God!? Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Isn't it a wonder? Except a man be born from above, the supreme knowledge of God can be found only as the Spirit of God reveals the Christ of God in the gospel of God! Matthew 11:27, the Lord Jesus said it Himself: 'No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, except the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him'.

Where is the revelation of God? How can we know this unknowable God? How has God chosen to reveal Himself to us in a form and in a way that we can understand and manage and accept? Where is this revelation found exactly? Paul tells us: for God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Isn't that wonderful? In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and:

'Where reason fails

With all her powers,

There faith prevails,

And love adores'.

It's not knowledge, it's not sight but it is faith that is the evidence of things not seen. God does not reveal Himself to the head, He does not reveal Himself to the intellect, or to the emotions. He doesn't reveal to the eyes by sight, or the mind by imagination - but to the heart by faith and by love. Christ is God's complete disclosure of Himself. Oh yes, God still is incomprehensible in His essence and in His divine nature - but imagine, oh just imagine, that He has condescended to reveal Himself in the incarnation of His own Son.

God does dwell, for us, behind a cloud at times - doesn't He? It seems that we can't understand Him, that we try to behold Him but we're grasping in the dark of unknowing - and so we feel He can never, perhaps, clearly be seen by the light of understanding, nor felt by the natural senses that we have. Yet, believer, by faith - by faith - we can reach out and we meet Him in the Incarnate Almighty Word of God, and the hand - nail-scarred - of the Lord Jesus Christ pulls us towards God and whispers in His still small voice: 'Behold your God'.

I finish with the poem I finished with last week:

'Strangely I sensed Him everywhere,

The God I ached to find.

Yet could not find Him anywhere,

Above, before, behind.

Mystery amazing, love unknown,

In human form He stands

He calls with tender human tone,

Uplifting nail-torn hands.

Yes, for in Jesus, God most high

Has come from heaven above,

To answer all my aching cry

With His redeeming love.

Oh, magnify the Lord with me,

My Saviour, King divine.

For in my Saviour now I see:

Lo, God and heaven are mine!'

Let us pray. And as we bow our heads together, there may be those who are broken hearted and in pain, those who are not well, those who are not saved, those who are believers living in sin - and if you would only behold the greatness of God, you would find your need.

Our Father, there is so much that we think we know, and so much that we do not know. Lord help us in this, to adorn ourselves with humility and to recognise that the secret things belong onto our God. To recognise, O our God, that Thou art holy and separate from sinners and above us and beyond us. Yet Lord, our hearts are warmed to realise that You reached down to us in the person of Your own Son. He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, and help us through His poverty to be rich. And may we be lost today in wonder, love and praise, beholding our God. Amen.

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Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - December 2000

www.preachtheword.co.uk

info@preachtheword.co.uk

Behold Your God - Chapter 3

"The Holiness Of God"

Copyright 2000

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

I hope that hymn blessed you, for it's a real blessing to my heart to read such great hymns like that. You know, there's a great dearth of good hymn writing in the day in which we live. There are some very good new chourses that are coming about - and hopefully, in days to come, we may sing some of those - some very sound ones theologically speaking, but there are some very unsound ones. The trend in hymn writing today is a focus off God and on self - but we need to get our focus back on God. That is the theme of these studies that we are doing these Lord's Day mornings, and if you have a gift of poetry in any shape or form - you're a poet and you don't know it - perhaps you could put your pen to writing poetry for God, for the saints of God to praise. It takes you to be a theologian to write hymns, you need to know your God, and men that wrote those hymns - old Presbyterians some of them, godly men - knew their God, you can tell from the expressions of their heart as they wrote praise to Him.

We're studying today in the book of Exodus again - our first study was in Exodus chapter 33, and today we're in Exodus chapter 15. And, as one brother was sharing with us this morning, Moses is a great man of God, he's a man who knew the presence of God in his life, perhaps - as was expressed already - in a way that no other saint in the Old Testament experienced. We're looking today at "The Holiness Of God", and we find in Exodus chapter 15 - a book of Moses, the second book - and verse 11, Moses is singing. And we find in verse one of that chapter, Moses sang "...and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea'. And we were looking, [during] the Breaking of Bread, in Exodus chapter 20 at how God redeemed His own people by blood - He took them out of Egypt, He saved them out of the bondage and He saved them with a view of delivering them - and that's the picture: it's deliverance, that's what salvation means, to be delivered from something. And they are being delivered from Egypt, and you remember that they got to the Red Sea and they couldn't cross it, and the Egyptian soldiers were behind them, and they cried upon God. And Moses said: 'Stand and see today - look - the salvation of God', and the waters opened and they went through, and when they got to the other side of the Red Sea the waters closed again, and the horses and the riders and the armies of the Egyptians were drowned. And then Moses, at the other side of that great river, shouts and sings praises onto God and the whole people join together - and one of the expressions or stanzas within this great song of praise is found in verse 11: 'Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?'.

Who is like unto Thee, O God? Who is like unto Thee, glorious in holiness? That's a wonderful expression, not just 'holy' but 'glorious in holiness'. In the Westminster shorter catechism the question is asked that we are asking: what is the holiness of God? And the answer is given back: 'The holiness of God is His essential property' - in other words, it belongs to Him and only to Him. It is His essential property, that simply means it's not only something He has, it is something He is. It is His very nature, it is His essential property. The great divines go on: 'Whereby He is infinitely pure' - He is not just pure, He is infinitely pure. They go on: 'He loveth and delighteth in His own purity' - who of us can say that, that we delight in our own purity before God? But He delights in Himself, He loves His own purity and holiness! And they go on: 'And in all the resemblances of it, which any of His creatures have'. So He loves holiness within Himself, and if He sees it in other creature - in other words, if His holiness is seen in another one that He has made, He rejoices in it also. He has great delight and He loves holiness in anyone. They conclude: 'He is perfectly free from all impurity, and hateth it wherever He seeth it'.

What a picture of God! What a dreadful picture of God! Yet in its dreadfulness there is the glory, and that's what Moses is saying: 'He is glorious in holiness'! It's not just something to be feared it is something to bring praise to God for, it gives Him glory - and as the old puritan Thomas Watson said: 'Holiness is the most sparkling jewel of God's crown'. It is the name by which God is known. It is not just an attribute of God, but God's holiness is His very name. It's what He is called - if you like, it is His definition. Indeed the Psalmist said that, Psalm 111 verse 9: 'Holy and reverend is thy name' - and He's the only name that is reverend. He is called in Job, and right throughout the Old Testament, 'the Holy One'. Isaiah 6, that we looked at in weeks gone by, the seraphim - didn't they cry, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is filled with His glory'?

The Father is said, within scripture, to be holy for He was addressed by our Lord Jesus Christ as 'Holy Father' - the only Holy Father. The Son is said to be holy, you remember when the apostle was preaching, he spoke of 'Thy holy child Jesus'. The Spirit is the 'Holy Spirit'. Holy, holy, holy, thrice holy is our God - and that holiness is what makes Him glorious. If it's His power, His omnipotence, the fact that He is Almighty, that makes Him mighty - His holiness is what makes Him glorious, His holiness is what makes Him resplendent, the eye cannot look upon Him. And as those old divines said: 'His holiness consists in His perfect love of righteousness' - it is a 100% love of all that is holy. It doesn't fall short, it is absolutely perfect - indeed, within the word of God the metaphors and similes that are given to describe that great holiness is 'perfect purity', it is white, perfect whiteness, perfect light - the most pure light in which there is no darkness at all, it is absolute uncreated light. He delights in perfect righteousness.

That is the positive aspect, and the negative is: He has a holy abhorrence of all that is evil. The old prophet Habakkuk said: 'He is of purer eyes than to behold evil and cannot look on iniquity'. Sure even the things, if you look through the word of God, the things that are associated with God are made holy because of their association with such an holy One - they become holy! When Moses, in this same book, speaks of the burning bush, the ground becomes holy ground because God has spoken out of this bush. Within the same book, the articles that are formed for temple worship in the tabernacle are denoted as holy things because they are used to worship a holy God. The day that is set aside - one in seven - as the Sabbath, the day of rest within this book, it is described as His holy day. The place where He is to be worshiped is described as God's holy house, and later His holy temple. The outfit that the high priests were to adorn themselves with was holy - and indeed, the crown that they were to wear was entitled 'a holy crown' and across it was emblazoned these great words: 'Holiness to the Lord'. The Ark of the Covenant that represented God's holy presence with His people, was the holy Ark of God. The hill of Zion was God's holy hill. The city of Jerusalem was God's holy city. And heaven itself, where God dwelleth, is His holy habitation. And all those things aren't God, but they've only come near to God and been made holy by Him.

I want you to see this today: God is a holy God. He is inherently holy - that simply means that He's holy in nature. As I've said already, it's not something about Him - but He as a being, He is holy Himself. He's made up of holiness, just as the sun shining through the window here is made up of light, God is made up of holiness. His word, the expression of His thoughts, if we could say that, His hearts desire that is expressed audibly and linguistically within the Bible that we have before us, it is holy. It is right to call it the Holy Bible - in fact, it is said of it that, like silver, it is refined seven times, and seven is the number of perfection - it is perfectly holy! His movements are holy, His decisions, the choices God makes are absolutely holy. The Psalmist said it in Psalm 145:17: 'The Lord is holy in all of his works' - God cannot do anything that is unholy or that falls short from something that is absolutely and perfectly holy! Indeed, when He made this creation around us, before Adam fell in sin, it was very good, wasn't it? Because God can't make a thing that isn't very good.

He is originally holy, that means that all holiness begins with God. He began holiness, and any holiness that is in the universe follows His pattern - it's not a new holiness, it must reflect His holiness, because He is the originator of all holiness, the sum of all moral excellence found in the universe comes from God and God alone. All good gifts come down from the Father of lights, from glory - all holiness comes from Him - and it is such a holiness that, even in this universe of sin and wickedness and evil, it is unsullied from any of it. In Him is light, and God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. He's the Author of holiness, that means He causes it in others. Not only did He begin it, but if it ever happens in your life or my life or anybody's life, it's because God has started it within your life! He made the angels holy - they are holy, they cry 'Holy' because they can come into the presence of God in their holiness - but their holiness is not their own, sure they could lose their holiness, that's why the fall came about wasn't it? Lucifer lost it and he was kicked out of heaven, and there was a whole band of angels lost it with him - they can lose it because it comes from God, it's not their own! And it's not equality of God, it's the essence of God - and it's no quality of any human being to be holy, it is because they are reflecting the holiness of God. Even the highest seraph in heaven, the greatest creature that God has ever created in the universe, the holiness that it has is from God!

He is transcendent in His holiness. We looked last week at how transcendent means to be above all things. There's nobody reaches Him in His holiness, that's for sure. 1 Samuel 2:2: 'There is none holy as the Lord, there is none beside thee, neither is there any rock like our God' - He's a wonderful God! Does that not thrill your heart today? Does it not? That we have a holy God who is transcendent in His holiness, absolutely holy, no angel can surpass Him in any form or shape! Old Thomas Watson said this: 'He is holier than any saint can be holy' - I have known some holy saints, and I have read some holy saints, but there is none holy as the Lord. Listen to what he says: 'God's holiness is pure holiness. The saints holiness is like gold in the ore, imperfect. Their humility is stained with pride. He that has most faith needs to pray: 'Lord, help my unbelief'' - isn't that right? - 'But the holiness of God is pure, like wine from the grape it has not the least dash or tincture of impurity mixed with it. And though the saints cannot lose the habit of holiness, for the seed of God remains in them, yet they may lose some degrees of their holiness. Grace cannot die, yet the flame of it may go out'. Did the Lord not say to that church: 'Thou hast left thy first love'? The flame of our holiness can go out. 'Holiness', he says, 'in the saints is subject to ebbing, but holiness in God is unchangeable. He has never lost a drop of His holiness. As He cannot have more holiness because He is perfectly holy, so He cannot have less holiness because He is unchangeably holy'!

My God, how wonderful Thou art - are you getting the grasp, are you seeing a glimpse of the holiness of our God? He doesn't conform to a standard. We don't look at Him and say: 'Well, He's got A, B and C, so He's holy' - He is the standard! He is holiness in His essence! That is why Moses says it is glorious holiness. In fact, it is beautiful holiness - we worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness because holiness is God's beauty, holiness is what makes God beautiful. Stephen Charnock said: 'Power is God's hand', or His arm, 'Omniscience, all-knowing, is His eye. Mercy is His bowels. Eternity is His duration. But holiness is His beauty'. You see, this is how God is known - God is known, primarily, through His holiness. Whenever you read the word of God you don't hear His name expressed as 'His mighty name', do you? Never 'His mighty name', or 'His wise name', sometimes it is 'His great name', but more than not it is 'His holy name'. It is how God is known, it is His name, in fact He swears upon His name - and by swearing upon His name, Psalm 89 tells us He swears according to His holiness. Why does He do that? Because His holiness is the fullest expression of who He is!

I want you to see this, this is our God. He is absolute holiness and His holiness is what conveys to a world the greatness of Him. It is the name by which He wants to be known, it's the attribute by which He wants to be conveyed to everyone who comes near to Him. It's the fullest expression of what and who He is, it is the attribute of attributes - it makes Him beautiful! And if our God was to stamp a correspondence to us today - a letter with a stamp of wax - it would be His holiness that He would stamp it with. If I can say it - I do not wish to be irreverent - it's His trademark. Holiness.

I trust you can see that we have such a holy God, and that is why in the vision of Isaiah 6 - if you wish to turn to it - the seraphim worshiped Him, crying 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. The whole earth is filled with His glory' - and they worshipped Him with more wings than they flew for Him! Because God requires our worship in spirit and in truth, and when we catch a vision of God's holiness - if you look throughout the word of God at any person who ever saw God's holiness and glory (remember, they didn't see God) but anybody that came close to this glorious holiness, they fell prostrate, their knees went weak and they fell on their face before God! Some were described as dead men, some are described as being in a trance - we must move on, but this is wonderful.

Where do we behold the holiness of God? If we want to see it, where do we go? The first place I believe we go is His law. God's law - indeed, we're reading from it today, the first five books of the Bible and the ten commandments is God's law. Why do we go to His law to find His holiness? Do you know why? Because in His law He forbids sin in everything! He doesn't permit it now and again, or this instance, or this circumstance - He forbids sin absolutely, in thoughts, in words, in deed. He forbids sin in the holy place of the tent, the tabernacle. He forbids sin in any religious movement that He has within the word of God - the priesthood, He forbids sin. He forbids sin in the home between a husband and a wife, between a child and a parent. He forbids sin in the workplace. He forbids sin in everything!

And that's all - well, not all, but that's perhaps the primary reason - why God gave His law and He told them that ye may discern between what is unclean and clean, and between what is holy and unholy. If you want to know how holy God is, you'll look in His law. Paul said it in Romans 7: 'Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good'. The Psalmist said: 'The commandment of the Lord is pure. The commandment of the Lord is holy, just and good. The commandments of the Lord enlighten the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether' - and if you want to know the holiness of God, get to know the law of God. Draw near to Sinai's mount, draw to its foot and see the lightning, hear the thunder, see the smoke billowing in God's holiness, and realise that God's holiness is unapproachable - for we all fall short of it!

Where do we behold His holiness? Secondly we behold it in His cross - don't we? Magnificently we see it in Calvary, and at the same time, awfully and terribly, we see it in the Lord Jesus Christ. And it begs the question: how God must hate sin to do such a thing! How He must hate sin to demand blood, and demand the blood of His own Son at Calvary to make an atonement for it! Listen to this, Stephen Charnock said in relation to the holiness of God in the cross - and this thrilled my heart: 'Not all the vials of judgement that have, or shall be, poured out upon the wicked world, nor the naming furnace of a sinners conscience, nor the irreversible sentence pronounced against the rebellious demons, nor the groans of the damned creatures give such a demonstration of God's hatred of sin as the wrath of God let loose upon His Son. Never did divine holiness appear more beautiful and lovely than at the time our Saviour's countenance was most marred in the midst of His dying groans. This [He] Himself acknowledges in Psalm 22 - when God had turned His smiling face from Him, and thrust His sharp knife into His heart which forced that terrible cry from Him: 'My God, My God, why?''.

Do you see His awesome holiness? That's why, and we hear it quoted so often, why the hymnwriter said:

'Oh, make me understand it,

Oh help me take it in,

What it meant to Thee,

The Holy One,

To bear away my sin'.

Would you see God's holiness? Well, you're going to have to get to Calvary, that's where you're going to have to get to. You're going to have to get to an old bloodstained gruesome cross. Are you saved today? Are you? For you'll be damned for all eternity unless you get to that cross. Unless you get to where a holy God punished His holy Son that you might be forgiven, you'll never be saved, you'll lift up your eyes in hell, not in heaven! Believer, would you see the holy glory of God? Do you want to see it? Well then, oh hear that all important cry: 'Eloi, Lama, Sabachthani', draw near and see the Saviour die on the cross.

You see God's holiness in His law and in His cross, thirdly you see His holiness in His hatred of sin. I want you to think about this, because one sin in the Garden of Eden banished our forefather - one sin! How many sins do you think will damn us? If one sin cast us out of paradise, one sin will take us to hell! The smallest indiscretion, one sin against a holy God, is a damning sin - beware! You often hear it said that God forgives sin. I know what that means, but you know God doesn't just forgive sin. Some people have this picture of God just saying: 'Right, we'll forget all about it and I'll wipe the slate clean' - God can't do that, God is a holy God, God must punish sin. And the only reason we are forgiven is because Christ bore our sin, Christ bore God's holy wrath - for one sin would keep us out of heaven. You remember that it was one sin excluded Moses from the promised land, you remember one sin smote Elisha's servant with leprosy, Annanias and Saphira in the New Testament it was one sin about lying to the Holy Ghost that cut them out of the land of the living! Because God has set the standard for the universe, and to preserve His creation - get this - He must destroy whatever would destroy it. To preserve His creation, He must destroy all that would destroy it - and He must destroy sin! And God's wrath is His utter intolerance of whatever degrades and destroys His creation. Tozer said: 'He hates iniquity as a Mother hates the polio that takes the life of her child'.

Now let me ask you - we're going to spend a moment here with the unsaved - why do you live the way you do? Why are you living in sin? Why are you living, consciously, in rebellion against God? Do you know why? Because you don't know this holy God, because if you knew Him you wouldn't be living the way you are - it's as simple as that. Why do you live in sin if this is the holy One with whom you will have to do one day? Do you know why? Because your God is a one-sided God, we have made God like us! A wee child, when he offends you or does something wrong against you, you're not going to hold it against him forever, are you? My friend, if you sin one sin against God, God will hold it against you forever - forever! But you see, we want a God like ourselves, don't we? We want a God who will just wipe everything away, we want a God who will wink at sin and overlook sin and bless us anyway, regardless and in spite of our sin - but that's not our God! For our God says: 'Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself, but I will reprove thee'. And many have a god that they made like themselves, who can ignore sin and look over it - but this God must punish sin. He doesn't just forgive sin, doesn't just forgive it, He must punish sin! And if He doesn't punish it upon the Saviour, He'll punish it upon the sinner!

'The God', one man said, 'which the vast majority of professing Christians love is looked upon very much like an indulgent old man, who himself has no relish for folly but leniently winks at the indiscretions of youth'. But the Word says: 'Thou hatest all workers of iniquity. God is angry with the wicked every day'. What happens, what happens when a sinner - whether they're a believer or unbeliever - gets a glimpse of the glory of God? They say, like old Isaiah: 'Woe is me', they feel the awesome depravity of their own heart and their own sinfulness, they're overwhelmed by the presence of pure white light holiness. They say:

'Mine eyes have seen the King,

Jehovah throned on high.

Adoring myriads sing

Veiled seraph's holy cry:

'O, woe is me, undone am I,

Before the throne I prostrate lie''.

That's what we need! Oh God, give us it, that's what we need! That's what we need, to see God glorious in His holiness! We don't need new plans, we don't need new strategies, we don't need new ways of preaching, we don't need new anything! We need God, and we need God's holiness! We need a glimpse of it, and until we see God my friends, we are absolutely finished - because unless we see God we become comfortable in our unholiness, but a vision of God's holiness makes us uncomfortable. You can't know the holiness of God just by thinking about it. You think the greatest holy thought you can about God and multiply it by the greatest number that you can - that's still not God's holiness. As old Tozer said: 'Quite literally, a new channel must be cut through the desert of our minds to allow the sweet waters of truth, that will heal our great sickness, to flow in'. God needs to cut a new channel in our minds, that He might reveal His holiness.

But as we close today, we ask another question: what should we learn from the holiness of God? We've learned where we can behold it: in His law, in His cross and in His hatred of sin. But what should we learn, what should we go away today different about because of His holiness? One: only on the grounds of the atonement can we approach God. My friend, listen! This is a holy God, holy, holy, holy - and if you want to get to heaven one day, if you want to have your sins forgiven, remember this: God has no evil in Him, and sin has no good in it, and sin that you are committing has deflowered the virgin soul and made it red with guilt, and black with filth. It is - the Bible says - the accursed thing, for sin strikes at the holiness of God, and He had to therefore strike it upon His own Son! Wonder of wonders, He was made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. And my friend, if you think a holy God is going to create a 'Plan-B' for you to get to glory...who do you think you are? This is the only way, God's way! God's holy way, the way of His holy Christ - and you must know that the only grounds of atonement that we can approach God by is the precious blood.

Secondly: we must realise that that holiness which demands holiness provides grace to meet that demand. That's marvellous, isn't it? What does the old hymnwriter say?

'So sinful, so weary,

Thine, Thine would I be.

Thou blessed Rock of Ages,

I'm hiding in Thee'.

That which holiness demanded, grace has provided in our Lord Jesus Christ. And this series is slowly becoming a commentary on what we've been studying in Ephesians, that we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Aren't we? It's all Christ, isn't it? We ought to learn secondly, not only about the atonement, but to show great reverence toward God for He is holy. All we think about God must be holy, all we say about God, all that we do to God - if I can say that - in worship, and all that we do concerning the whole divinity and the divine Trinity must be absolutely holy! For God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are about Him. In prayer, in praise, in the handling of God's holy Word, we need to put off the shoes from off our feet for we are on holy ground.

Thirdly: we should be holy. Both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament the saints of God were told: 'Be ye holy, for I am holy'. It's amazing, isn't it? God doesn't call us to be almighty, does He? He doesn't call us to know all things, or to see all things - and the irony is: the things He doesn't call us to do are the things that we try to do. We try to be almighty, we try to get through everything ourselves, we try to see everything before we see it, predict things, we try to know everything, know-it-alls. But God hasn't told us to do those things, He's told us to be holy - which, ironically, is the very thing we don't do! God wants from us, most of all, that we live to Him in living like Him.

I've said it before, and I say it in closing: the only life that God is pleased with is His own life. And the only holiness that He will be pleased with is His own holiness, like a mirror reflecting from your life the holiness of the only wise God - so as we think about it, as we go away, what should we learn about this holiness? We should learn to submit to Him! To follow Him in His Word, to believe Him, to fellowship with the saints, to be anointed with the Spirit and to be often at the cross confessing our sins, and we will be holy. For God's desire has always been to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.

'Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises and doing wonders?'. Lord, we bless Thee and we praise Thee that this God is for us - so who, or what, can stand against us? And we pray, in Jesus name, that that great holiness may be imputed to us, for we know that our sin was imputed to Christ. We say as McCheyne: Lord, make us as holy as saved sinners can be. Amen.

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Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - December 2000

www.preachtheword.co.uk

info@preachtheword.co.uk

Behold Your God - Chapter 4

"The Faithfulness Of God"

Copyright 2000

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

Now we're looking, as I have already said, at the fourth study in our series: 'Behold Your God' - and specifically we're looking today at 'The Faithfulness Of God'. We're turning to 1 Peter - the New Testament this time - 1 Peter and chapter 4, and only one verse, and then we're looking at Psalm 37 - so if you want to find that as well, we're looking at one verse in it also. Let me just say, while you're looking for that passage, there has been found a jewel of great price (I don't think it really is of great price, but I don't want to offend anyone!) and it was found in the ladies toilets. So if you've lost that from your ring or from a necklace or something like that, it's up here and you can get it if you wish.

1 Peter chapter 4 and verse 19: 'Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator'. 'Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator' - now remember that term 'a faithful Creator'. And then turn over to Psalm 37, Psalm 37, a well-known Psalm, a great encouraging Psalm, verse 3: 'Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed'. Now that literally, in the Hebrew - 'verily thou shalt be fed' - translates like this: 'feed on His faithfulness'. So let's read it again: 'Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness', or, 'be fed on His faithfulness'.

So there are two phrases concerning our God. Peter says He is a faithful Creator, and David encourages us to feed on His faithfulness. Now, faithfulness is a concept that isn't very - what would you say? - 'in vogue' in our world today. In fact, unfaithfulness is one of the outstanding sins of today - many of you in business will realize that - disloyalty and unfaithfulness. And also in the social realm, and especially we see it in our world in the marital realm, there is so much infidelity and unfaithfulness. Even within the church of Jesus Christ there are men who promise to teach and carry out the word of God as it is written in the apostle's doctrine and right throughout the whole counsel of God - but we find that when they get to their position, or when the world's pressure comes in upon them, or the pressure within the church, they fail to walk in those paths of righteousness and theoretically they're unfaithful to the word of God. There is unfaithfulness all around us in every single sphere, and indeed if we are honest with ourselves we must say that there are times that we are unfaithful ourselves, in transactions that we give, in the words that we speak, and more severely and seriously in our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. There's a measure of unfaithfulness in our part, therefore it strikes us and it is totally foreign to us when we read a verse such as Deuteronomy 7 verse 9 that says: 'Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God'.

It's remarkable, isn't it, that there's no taint of doubt? It's absolute, 100%! And it staggers us - living in an unfaithful world, living around unfaithful people, and when we look at the unfaithfulness in our own heart - to realise that there is one who personifies absolute faithfulness, there is a 'Lord thy God, He is God, the faithful God'. Indeed the fact is that if He was not faithful and if He was not absolutely faithful, He would not be God. Paul said to Timothy, 2 Timothy 2:13: 'If we believe not' - in other words, in our context, if we are not faithful, yet God is faithful, 'he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself'. It doesn't matter what we believe about ourselves, or what we see in the world around us, that doesn't matter really because God is - as we have learnt - transcendent. He is above all of this universe, all of our standards - in fact He sets His eternal holy standard, as we were looking at last week. And even if we believe not in this faithfulness, yet He abideth faithful, He cannot deny Himself. If He was unfaithful, He would deny Himself, He would topple from His throne and He would cease to be God.

Perhaps one of His most radiant glories is God's holiness that we pondered last week. But you know, God has many glories, doesn't He? And this is another: His faithfulness. The Psalmist glorified in it in 89 and verse 8: 'O Lord God of hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto thee? Or to thy faithfulness round about thee?'. God is a strong God, and God clothes Himself - His aura round about Him, His sphere and environment is absolute faithfulness. Again the Psalmist in 36:5: 'Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds' - in other words, it is beyond us, it is above us, it spans us. It's no wonder that we have been singing the inspired word of God from Lamentations 3:22-33: 'His compassions fail not, they are new every morning'. You see, we've said it in weeks gone by: God is not a man that He should repent, nor a son of man. He does not lie, there is no unfaithfulness in Him, and we dare not compare Him to men or men's standards or men's attributes. And that's when we fall down, and indeed let me say this: that is when we fall down when we look at our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, when we compare Him to other humanity. Therefore we must - as the hymnwriter says:

'Judge not the Lord with feeble sense,

But trust Him for His grace.

Behind the frowning providence,

He hides a smiling face.

Ye fearful saints fresh courage take,

The clouds ye so much dread

Are rich with mercy and shall break

In blessing o'er your head'.

Why? For we have a faithful Creator! I want that to be branded upon your heart today: a faithful Creator! It's as if - or at least it should be as if - we've inherited a fortune! A faithful God! When all are unfaithful, when we are unfaithful ourselves, we have this great One, this One who is God, who is a faithful Creator! That is why the Psalmist David, in our Psalm 37, tells us to feed on His faithfulness. Do you feed on His faithfulness? Do you use that as your diet of the soul? That's what I want us to do now, as we look at the word of God, I want us to feed on the great faithfulness of our faithful Creator. And do you know what will happen if you do that? You will find mental relief. The Lord knows there are many of us need that, isn't that right? But if you learn to feed on your faithful Creator, you will find mental relief. And that mental relief will go beyond your human suffering, because it means that you are beginning to realise that there is a God greater than the universe, there's a God greater than the 'falling-shorts' within our world, greater than the failures, greater than the infidelities, greater than the indiscretions - there is a faithful God and, wonder of wonders, glory to God, He's our God!

We can feed on that today. Now, I know the world can be so frightening, and we hear so many things that come in upon us, right into our hearts and grip us with fear and anxiety - but when we realise that He is faithful, and He is our God we ought to have no fear! Sidlow Baxter observes this: 'The faithfulness of God is like a gigantic archway, spanning human history from its beginning to its ending'. God's faithfulness like an archway, right from the beginning to the end of time. And he goes on to describe how that archway spans the pillars of God's attributes, what do I mean by that? Well, you will know - hopefully - through studying these Lord's Day mornings, that to understand God we must see all His attributes as one. He isn't just faithful, but He is loving, He is angry, He is holy, He is omnipotent, all-powerful, all-knowing, He is omnipresent, He is everywhere. He has many attributes and parts to His being, but you can't separate those - just like you can't separate God Himself, or you can't pull you apart, you have many parts but you can't separate those. And in the same way, God's faithfulness - as Baxter says - is arching over all of His attributes, you can't pull any of them apart and make them separate or single entities of themselves. And that's seen within His faithfulness: no one of God's attributes contradicts another of His attributes - in other words, God's love never contradicts God's justice. That's what some would teach today, that it doesn't matter really what you do, God will just love you anyway and take you to heaven: universalism. But that's taking one of God's attributes and looking at it and forgetting about His justice. But the justice of God and the love of God together mean that God's justice came down on Christ - hallelujah! - and His grace was shown toward me.

It's the same with God's faithfulness, it harmonises with absolutely everything. Now I want to show you this: there are seven pillars that you find of God's attributes, and every single one of them, that arch of God's faithfulness overflows it. The first is God's righteousness. You see, if God was not faithful what would His righteousness mean? It would mean absolutely nothing. You see, God cannot go back on His word, He is absolutely righteous in everything He says and everything He does - and you see there God's faithfulness in His righteousness. In His omnipotence, in other words all-powerful, He is Almighty God - God never starts a thing and is unfaithful to finish it, isn't that right? When God starts a thing, God carries it on and God accomplishes it and brings it to completion - so you can see there in His omnipotence, His faithfulness over-arching it. Thirdly, God is truth, isn't He? He does not just say the truth, He is the truth. Now, untruth and faithfulness don't go together, so you see there again marked and stamped on God's truth is His attribute of faithfulness. His immutability, and that simply means 'Thou changest not', He never changes. Jesus Christ is the same today, yesterday and forever, and God is the same, He never changes, there is never any deviation or declination in His goodness, or in His grace, or in His anger, or in His mercy - and that is absolutely trustworthy, absolutely faithful. Then there is His wisdom, if He's to be wise then He has to be faithful - He's got to know everything before we know He's faithful, isn't that right? We couldn't say that God did something faithfully if He didn't know all the facts, if some of the facts were hidden from God and He made a wrong decision. But He is the all-wise God, and that makes Him faithful! He's a God of love, and when I know He is a God of love, and loves me, I can be sure that He has only good for me - isn't that wonderful? You see, the love of God reeks of the faithfulness of God, it's got the grains of it right throughout it!

There are seven texts corresponding to those seven truths, corresponding to faithfulness of God, in the New Testament that I want to bring you to today. And