Obviously thinking about the Shorter Catechism and just to put this in order because it's always good to have some overview. I remember when I first started getting assignments to learn the Shorter Catechism, I was just being given some random things to memorize and I really didn't understand what I'm doing. I was just memorizing some things because I had to for class. But later on I come and I realize that some of the important things we see, and it's very simple right up front, that help us put it into perspective. So what are we really learning here? When you think about it, one of the most important questions in the lives of most people, whether they spend time articulating it at an early age or at a later age, it's the question of what am I doing here? What is my life all about? How should I be spending it? What is my purpose here? And when you come to the first question of the Shorter Catechism, that's what we learn, isn't it? What is man's chief end? Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. So we're really looking at, and we looked at the scripture behind that, we're looking at something that answers an overarching question that almost everybody has. Second thing, all right, well, if that's my purpose, how do we go about it? And take my word for it, you can take a look at everything that passes as religion today and realize that even inside of places that call themselves Christian, the idea of how to please God is going to be radically different from place to place. Where do we find out how we do that? And the scripture, once again, answers us, and the catechism summarizes it this way, the Word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments is the only rule to direct us, how we may glorify and enjoy God. So how are you going to fulfill, that last phrase says, how are you going to live up to your purpose in life? How are you going to fulfill your purpose in life? And it starts with coming back to the Scripture and learning from Scripture. Well, we understand that, so if that's the case, then the third question we looked at was, so then what's this all about? Okay, it's great, say the Bible. Well, that's a lot of material to go through. So what are we gonna try and focus on as we summarize the Bible? We asked the question, and question number three, what do the scriptures principally teach? And what was the answer to that? Who took the time to learn this one? A little louder. Absolutely, so what do we, oops, back it back up there, back it up for me, there we go. What do the scriptures principally teach? What man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man. So now we're coming to question four. In question four, if that's the outline, and it breaks the Shorter Catechism into two sections, this is a Whose Buries and Grant's Tomb question, so then what are we gonna start looking at now? what were to believe concerning God, right? And now I heard a question, I heard an answer to that, and it's an answer I might most easily give, and the question is, answer was, who is God? But interestingly enough, the question is not who is God, the question is, what is God? If we ask the question, who is God, we're really kind of distinguishing between all of the people that might claim, and events that might claim to be God, the concepts that might claim to be God. And quite honestly, if you get out of the, well actually in the United States it's not even so obvious anymore, but it used to be, there was a consensus here, if you say God, you could just utter the word, and people understood something about what that meant. Now if you happen to get on a plane and fly to Japan, and you're gonna get there as a missionary, and you use the word God, you're liable to find your translator keeps talking. You know, so like, you just said God, and you're sitting here wondering like, what are you saying? All I said was God, and you're going on and on and on and on. And there's a reason. Because throughout the world, answering this question will get very, very different answers. here in the United States, you'll get very, very different answers now. And so before we start talking about what we're to believe, God has blessed us with a shorter catechism that starts off and says, all right, what is God? What is it that this person you're gonna refer to, what is that person? What is he? And so that's what we're gonna start looking at as we look at this catechism question. Now, once again, let's start off with the examination of some of the scripture that lies behind this question. And I'll read some, you can look up some. Why doesn't somebody, why don't you somebody start turning to Job 11, that'll be the next one, and I'll just read John four, it's so familiar. God is a spirit, capital, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Well, as we start talking about building our definition of what is God, John 4, 24 has something significant to say to us. How's about Job 11, verses 7, 8, and 9? Who can read it for us? Yes, Russ. We get an impression about God here, this doesn't say he's a spirit. What does this tell us a bit about the character of God? Mighty? Immeasurable? Can we, in our mind, in our knowledge, can we comprehend everything about this God? No. We might say that what we're talking about here is God being infinite. Unmeasurable. Infinite in his existence. Well, we could go on. Let's take a look at another. How's about this next one from Psalm 90 verse 2. What does this tend to reference for us about the character of our God? Eternality, right? So here we're looking at a God not bounded by time. We might even go further and say outside of time, but here at least this God, our God, is beyond time. Before the creation, after the creation, and if time includes the movement of the sun and the measuring of that time, then it's beyond all of that, right? Here's another from Malachi chapter three, verse six. Who's got that, would like to read that one for us? Malachi 3.6. And I'll pop up another one that somebody else can look for. James 1.17. Malachi 3.6. It's a very short statement. Yes, Paul. Sometimes I like the wording of the King James a little bit better. It says, I am the Lord, I change not. It really puts the emphasis in it. So, I don't change. So, again, if we're going to talk about our God, what's one of the things that we learn about God from the Word of God is that he doesn't change. The God who revealed himself to Abraham and all of his attributes and characteristics, all of his faithfulness that appeared at that time, is absolutely the same God that is our God today. And in all of eternity, when we stand before the throne of God, it's going to be the same God with the same attributes and characteristics on the throne. He is not a changeable being. Just think about how important that is to you. Think about how important that is, that what you read in the Bible about what God did in the past, and what your own personal experience is today, God will not have changed his mind in the future. I remember going to a Bible conference. My wife and I, we got just a last minute vacation, so we drove up to a Bible conference, pitched a tent outside, went in to listen to a speaker who I've heard many times that I really enjoyed. And he began to question. I kind of knew it was going to be a bad week, because he started off by saying, normally I like the shorter catechism, but that was not going to be a good week. And he began to suggest that God changes. It's called the passivity or impassivity of God. And so God could change. And you try and do it in this really sort of emotive manner. It sounds really kind of huggable. So you know, when God looks at his son suffering on the cross, he knows something about suffering he never knew before. No, he didn't. You know, what you're really positing is, you know, there are some things that God did, it's like, he could get into it and say, so I'm going to do this, I got new information now, so forget that, I'm not doing that. The logical implication of suggest, now, did Christ, the God-man, in his humanity experience something he had not experienced before? Yes. Was God learning at the cross? No. God was demonstrating at the cross. God was exposing at the cross his character and his nature and all of those things. This was nothing of a surprise. This was not a learning experience. And between now and the time you stand before God, God is going to have no learning experiences. His knowledge surpasses that and he is unchangeable. James 117, who had that for us? Okay, so this goes into the same thing that we just said about the unchangeable nature of God. And it also talks about God's goodness. You know, when you look at things in life that are good, that you appreciate, you know, anything that's on your list to say thank you to God for, come Thursday, comes from God. Everything is a result of God. You might have worked hard for something, but the ability to do that comes from the Lord. You might have made some good decisions through your life, and we thank the Lord for that. Some of the best decisions I've ever made in my life, I made them completely ignorantly. And just God blesses them along the way. I mean, I thought this was a good reason for doing this. I'm like, OK, Lord, help me to know what to do about this. Well, I look back at these things and say that's one of the attributes that we appreciate about God. Here's one we all know from Exodus 3.14. And the Lord God said unto Moses when Moses asked him, when the people say what's your name, what shall I say? I am who I am. I am who I am. Now the Lord says that in a few cases. A lot of people like that and put it up on posters. Here's all the names of Jesus and the I am is up there. This is really cool. What does it mean? When God says I am that I am, what does it mean? Paul? OK. What does it mean? Self-existent. All right. Self-existent. I'm going to bring in something from when I was in high school, from studying the Bhagavad Gita and other things. But when they talk about Brahma is, and the Hindus say, why can't you say more than that? Because you say anything more than that is limiting. I love the two things about this. Number one, first answer was the best answer. It describes God as self-existing. He didn't derive his life from anyone else. But he doesn't go on and keep adding to stuff because when you go beyond just God saying, I am who I am, you can start creating your own image and view of God. And so here's God. He's asked, this is really answering a question, Paul, that you asked, or answered, right? Who is God? When God's asked, so who do we call, what do we call you, who are you? Tell your people, I am who I am. I'm the self-existent one. That's what you should tell them. So we're going through some of these scriptures that are behind this catechism question. Psalm 147.5 says and get somebody, if you would look up Revelation 4.8. I'll just share one Psalm 147.5. Great is our Lord and his understanding is infinite. Not a lot of question about that, right? When it comes to the understanding and knowledge of God, that is not limited in any way, it is infinite. Does somebody have Revelation 4.8 to read? Am I tiring you? Oh yes, thank you. Yes, Nancy. In that one verse, how many of these attributes and characteristics of God get packed, right? So you've got His eternality. But the thing that we're adding here that we haven't looked at so far is what the angelic beings are singing. He is, at the very beginning, they start off with, holy, holy, holy. And when we think about our God, He is set apart from us, transcendent above us, and absolutely sinless and perfect in all of His attributes. God is holy. It's an important aspect of the God that we love and the God that we serve. Revelation 15.4 says this, Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you are holy. So it adds on to that same idea. And then somebody, if you would, let's look up Exodus 34 verses 6 and 7. It's the last one of these we'll look at. Exodus 34 verses 6 and 7. Yeah. Yeah. And is that verses six and seven? Okay, and showing, we'll go on later, I didn't get it down, and showing kindness, mercy to thousands as well. Well, let's start off and just sort of, we can pull this together. Some of you have been doing some memorization throughout your life on this. I think this is one of the most compact and yet deep questions and answers in the Shorter Catechism. And it's the kind of an answer that you can spend time unpacking from scripture and contemplating and growing in your understanding of the character and nature of our God. Who knows the answer to question four? What is God? How many people? Raise your hand. We've got one, two, three, four, all right, five. Let's just start off together, and anybody else who wants to can join in. God is a spirit. infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. That's the first one that we're going to be looking at. What is God? God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, being, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. Now, if you're sitting in the back and you can't read this, they're going to have a few of these today. So I keep giving this warning out this class. Feel free right now. I won't be upset. Just get up and move on up to the front because we're going to look at some of these and they're not going to get a lot bigger. So this is actually bigger than what I had before. So if you can read them everywhere, then I did get it to a good size or your prescription is up to date. It's one or the other. So the first thing we're going to talk about is that God's a spirit. And we talk about God being a spirit. It's easy when you say this question to just sort of jump over this, isn't it? You know, God's a spirit, and then you get on to an infinite being. Let's start off with the first thing. God is a spirit. And what does that mean? Well, in one sense, it's pretty obvious that we're talking about not spirit with a small s. We're talking about one who is absolutely different from all the rest. This is the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. But when we talk about a spirit, one of the things that comes quickly to our mind is that there is no material aspect to his nature. There's a children's catechism that was created. It's not one that's really authorized, but it's used often for children less than four years and younger. And it asks this question, in answer to this, what does it mean that God is a spirit? And the answer is that He has not a body like man. In fact, He has not a body at all. And so when we think about the Holy Spirit, the first thing is that he's an immaterial being. It's sort of, think of your soul that we have as we have this sharing of the image of God, we'll talk about that later, not perfectly in any way, but inside of you there is your soul. Have you ever seen it? No. Do you know it's there? Yes. When it's not there, you're dead, right? So, I mean, you know it's there, and you know it's there by the effect of what your soul does. And we'll look at some of the things that that soul does that we share with God. So, this is the essence. There is a spirit. He has a substance. He shares it with God. He is the same substance with the Father, the same substance with the Son. This is our Holy Spirit part of the Trinity. yet in his personality and his manifestation, like the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, None of them have a physical, material being. We'll talk about later on, we'll talk about the fact that the Lord, in fact, Christmas message, right? Is that the Lord, second person of the Trinity, takes to himself a human nature and therefore has a body as the God-man. But the three persons of the Trinity are immaterial. They have no body. Now that's a problem for some people as you go reading through the Bible because sometimes you'll see, you know, by my right arm I'll do this or, you know, with my own hand or with my eyes are upon the righteous. And it would be a mistake as we read those passages to presume that what we're saying is that God has some material, you know, there really are eyes somewhere. We're going to get to the resurrected, the image of the resurrected Christ today when we come to the book of Revelation, our study of the morning sermon. And there is this glorious picture of the ascended Christ who has a resurrected body. But apart from that, when we look at the Trinity, we're looking at an immaterial being. And when we say we're looking at an immaterial being, we're not saying that this is like some cartoon ghost or some invisible gas. What we're really saying is that here is one who has the same soul and spirit in that sense, glorified, deified, but has this part of this being that does not manifest itself in a body. I say all that because it's so easy to forget that and jump over it. Now, how do you know that this thing you can't see exists? This always becomes a question, right? We ask this question in simple human things. How many of you believe there's love? There's such a thing as love. How many of you have ever seen, not a person, not an action, actually seen love? You don't see it. Do you deny it? You don't deny it. Well, when we're talking about our soul, once again, have you ever seen it? No. How do you know it's there? Because you can see the actions that are the result of that. It's kind of like when there's mud outside your house and you have little kids. And you go out and you look in the mud and you can see footprints. And probably, if you're not super careful, when you go in the house, you can still see footprints. How do you know that child is there? Footprints, right? And when you get a hold of him, then, no, we'll leave that off the side. So, okay, so that's in part, when we look at God, we can say, how did you, how do you know, before the coming of Christ, how do you know that there is a God? Well, certainly He appears to man in the garden. That's one way. He's appeared to the patriarchs, the second person of the Trinity, walks with the people in the garden, Adam and Eve, appears to Abraham and to others. So there's those, I always get a kick out of how did they know in the Old Testament that there, anything about Jesus? Well, he talked with them. That's probably a good way to figure out anything about Jesus as the angel of the Lord of hosts. But beyond that, you see what God does. You can look wherever you are, you can look at the heavens. You can see the creation around you. You can see the orderliness of nature. You can see God in control of these things. And that's in one way how we actually understand that there's a God around us, even though He is a spirit. When we're thinking about God and this, the scripture says of God's spirit, 1 Corinthians 2.11, what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a man? And in the same way, how do you know anything about God? You know about yourself because you know your own spirit. And how does anybody know what you really are like inside? When you tell them. Or some evidence of it. The same thing with God. How do we know what God is really like? Some evidence of Him in this world, enough to let us know He exists, and He tells us in His Word. That's how we're going to learn about Him. So, we have God, the uncreated, self-existing spirit, who creates the world, angelic beings, creates humans, all who are dependent on him. So again, summarizing it together, God's a spirit. We'll just skip by this one because it's so hard to read. God's a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. We can get rid of the slides for now because I want to just go on and discuss some more facts about the spiritual nature of our God. We have many things from reading the scripture that we can say is a way of describing this God who is our God. Anybody ready to stand up and give an absolutely thorough, complete explanation of the Trinity? You know, I have a friend, that's his field. You know, Ryan McGraw, I don't think I've ever heard him pray or preach. You've had him as a professor. Have you ever heard him preaching or praying that he didn't mention the Trinity? No. It's in there in everything that he says and does. he would not tell you that he could thoroughly explain all the mysteries of the Trinity. So this is a topic that certainly is going to expand our thinking a bit, but nonetheless it's important to say this, that God is a spirit, that he's non-corporeal, that he has no body like man. None's ever seen him, according to John chapter 1. So here's a corollary from this. And it has to do with the second commandment. And the second commandment essentially says, after we say there's not going to be any other gods before him, we're not to make any image of God, right? And that begins to come to a whole discussion on the regulative principle. And I can put 10 Reformed people in a room and come up with 13 different definitions of all the minutia of the regulative principle. But here, let me boil it down to this very basic thing. You'd never make an image of God to worship Him. You just don't do that. That's an offense to God. In fact, as we try to make images of even the second, you know, you make an argument for, well, you know, the second person of the Trinity, and the second person of the Trinity actually was incarnate in human flesh. Have you ever noticed how little description you get of the person of Jesus? I mean, if we just want to be clear, let's just start off and go, okay, show me the verse where you know that Jesus had blonde hair. Because, hey, that's what many of the pictures of Jesus were, blonde hair. Show me the pictures that you know of Jesus with soft and gentle hands, holding up little, I mean, because, you know, the son of a carpenter, I'm just thinking. And quite honestly, I still remember a friend of mine who was Jewish, converted Jew, Richard Gantz. He wrote on Psychobabble. I still remember one time just tossing out a comment in a room. Because here's a guy, you know, more olive skin tone, longer nose, curly dark hair. And he says, I don't know what Jesus looked like, but I'm sure one thing. He looked more like me than you. And if you say that and you take a look at every picture you've ever seen of Jesus that's been portrayed in curriculum somewhere, you ever notice that they don't show up with curly dark hair and kind of olive skin? Now you can go to the other end. I was driving through Buffalo yesterday and there's a particular group of black people who claim to be Christians that were preaching on the street corner and they're citing the passage we're going to look at today from Revelation. Interesting to hear while I was at the stoplight. And because Jesus described as having hair that was white like wool, they claim, well that means that he was black. Because he had curly hair. And that's their whole big message. Everything else you know about Jesus, he's just a devil. So, you want to know how much trouble we can get into as we start to make images of God? Even the second person in the Trinity. I mean, you know, when you have to teach a story, and you know, there's a picture of a grouping of people, and you're, you know, I get that with some little kids, but by and large, once we start making images of Jesus, we can cause so much trouble. You know how many people think that, in my generation, grew up thinking Jesus is effeminate, because we had this very standard view of Jesus with long, flowing, blonde hair, and kind of effeminate features? I kind of liked it, we got a new curriculum and now Jesus had shorter, darker hair and looked like he could take out, you know, the Terminator. I mean, he was just, you know, a more buff kind of a guy in that, probably more accurate. But can I give you a verse that says that? No. No. So when we're talking about the fact that Jesus and, in fact, the entire Trinity are a spirit and they don't have a body, part of that means they're invisible. And so how do you know anything about this God? Well, one way we know something about God has to do with the effects that we'll see. Can you turn this back on for me? And I want to advance it to my own little diagram. There it is. You can tell this is so horrible. But if I could write on it, I could maybe tie things together. Here's a shorter catechism. What I want you to notice is it starts off and it says, God's a spirit. And then it says, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. I don't know how to get glory off of there. I don't know what it's doing there. But anyways. So, how do you know anything about God? Well, one way you can know about God is that some of the attributes that are mentioned in this Shorter Catechism are called communicable attributes, and other attributes in the Shorter Catechism are known as incommunicable attributes. Communicable attributes are those attributes which human beings, because we're made in the image of God, in some measure, not completely, but in some measure, share with God. And so when you look at this, are there people who are wise? You don't have to put your hand up, but the Bible says there are, right? So, okay. Are there people who have some power? Well, yes, there are powers in this world. A person takes an oath of office and all of a sudden a little suitcase goes with him everywhere in the United States. He could nuke half the world if he wanted to. That's power. Whether you like that power, whether you wish the person had it or not, that's up to you. But that's power. So when we take a look at these things, many of them are things that are advocated for us to have. And then there are the incommunicable attributes. In first place, even the communicable attributes, God has in a measure that we never can. But God is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, and there isn't any one of us. Let's just start with unchangeable, any one of us that could make a case for that. So how do you know anything about God? Well, if God has made you in his image, and you know anything about these communicable attributes in your life and the life of others, then you know a little bit about God. Because when God says that he's wise, and you think about the wisest person you know, and realize that God's wisdom extends beyond that to such a measure that we don't have a way to gauge it. You can look at some of the things that you find in human beings, in yourself. Look in the mirror, and the things that you know that are true about you, in God's case, they're at a measure that is hard for us to be able to believe. Well, God has these attributes that he doesn't share with us, the incommunicable ones. The ones that he does are gifts from God. And isn't it amazing that Satan's lie was to come along and say, so you really want to be like God? God's already made you like him. But you really want to be like God? Well, let's just disobey God. And if we disobey God, somehow you'll become like God. Well, man became much, much less like God in that fall. So communicable attributes. Here's a little thing I want to just have you think through, which was really helpful for me. Because I keep learning as I go through some of these things. And I remember a while back, I was teaching through this section on the Shorter Catechism. And some of these things are so obvious, it's like, duh, you should have known this. But I didn't. So I'll share it with you so you can be smarter than I was. And it's this. I look at those incommunicable attributes, and I think you can append those as a descriptor for every one of the communicable attributes as it relates to God. God is infinitely wise. God is infinitely powerful. God is infinitely holy. God is infinitely just. You could keep going, right? You can go to the next one and say, God is eternally, is an eternal being. He has an internal goodness, an internal truth. God is unchangeable in his truth, in his justice, in his power. You can apply every one of those to all of the rest, and it tells us a little more about the character of our God. And those are the things we want to be focusing on for the next couple of weeks. So let's close in prayer. Father indeed, I want to thank you for the revelation that you have given to us of yourself. It has not been necessary for us to go to some far-off guru at the top of some mountain. You are true and wise and faithful. You tell us of yourself and you do not deny your own character. So Father, we thank you for the promises that you give, which are equally eternal and enduring. We thank you for your unchangeable nature upon which we depend. We thank you for your goodness and your kindness, and more than we have time to think of right now. Father, we thank you for these things. We pray that you would build gratitude in our hearts to you for these things. We pray that out of them we might worship you. And not only that, we might be motivated to live for you in a way that honors you. For we ask these things in Christ's name. Amen.