You'll open your Bibles to Isaiah 46. Isaiah chapter 46. Just wanna read a couple of these verses and I'm gonna turn us also to Psalm chapter 50. Isaiah 46, verse five. To whom would you liken me? This is God speaking through his prophet. To whom would you liken me and make me equal and compare me that we would be alike? Verse eight. Remember this and be assured, recall it to mind, you transgressors. Remember the former things long past, for I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is no one like me. If you'll turn to Psalm chapter 50. Psalm chapter 50, verse 7. Here, O my people, and I will speak. The psalmist relating this from God. O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God. Then look over at verse 16. But to the wicked, God says, what right have you to tell of my statutes and to take my covenant in your mouth? For you hate discipline and you cast my words behind you. When you see a thief, you are pleased with him and you associate with adulterers. You let your mouth loose in evil and your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother. You slander your own mother's son. These things you have done and I kept silence. You thought that I was just like you. I will reprove you and state the case in order before your eyes. From Psalm 50 to Isaiah 46, we have, the beginnings of an important doctrine for us, and the beginnings of that doctrine start formally and correctly with who God is. In Bible study this morning, you got a brief, concise look at the doctrine of divine simplicity. God is. It's very important for us to recognize that that is the entrance to what our confession says God is without body, parts, or passions. Our confession puts it this way very succinctly, and yet these doctrines are described from all of Scripture, not just in one place or two or a verse here or a verse there. Sometimes these things kind of catch us off guard when we see a phrase, God is without body, parts, or passions. But in these scripture passages, this is the opening of it for us to think rightly about it. First of all, we have to recognize God is not like us. So this morning, I want us to take a minute to connect what Scott taught us this morning in Bible study, and then bring it to further conclusion into what it means that we confess that God is without body, parts, and especially passions. Scripture is often clear and plain on many subjects, including who God is. Yet sometimes it presents us with difficulties in understanding and knowing God. These difficulties arrive due to our comprehension issues and God condescending to us through intelligible languages regarding who he is. He graciously chose language as the means by which to reveal himself. Yet a language that is intelligible to us is not capable of revealing exhaustively and completely who God is. Therefore, we are confronted with difficulties at times, apparent contradictions in scripture, but they're not really contradictions at all. So how do we solve some of these issues, especially when our confession states that God is without body, parts, or passions? And scripture in places seems to indicate a different picture of God. As God without body and parts has been previously explained to you, and if you weren't here for Bible study, I encourage you to go back and listen to that. There's also the reading you can do about the doctrine as well. But it's been previously explained Now I have the task of building upon that foundation, and I will seek to answer this question. What does it mean that God is without passions? What does it mean when our confession says God is without passions? Now you remember, we're not stating that our confession is scripture. It's not. We're not stating that our confession is higher than scripture. It's not. What we're stating is, is that our confession is the best understanding we have of a description of all that scripture teaches in a succinct document. And you say, succinct? Have you seen that thing? I think that probably says more about modern evangelical churches than anything is that most churches today confess very little about who God is and what he has done through his son and the work of the Holy Spirit. We want to be those who describe the whole of scripture the best we can. And so our confession tries to take some doctrines that are very wide in the whole of scripture and condense them into sometimes words or phrases. And one of those words or phrases is God is without body parts or passions. What does it mean that God is without passions? Well, I'm going to start with answering two questions this morning and then we'll move into some points. Number one, what are passions? What are passions? You may see multiple definitions according to many different dictionaries about the word passions. If you were to go look that up in multiple dictionaries from the Oxford English Dictionary to Merriam-Webster, if you're an internet person, freedictionary.com. There's all kinds of different ways to get meanings of words these days. I even have an app on my phone that is a dictionary, Miriam Webster's dictionary. So, you know, we can go to different places and when you look up this word passions, oftentimes it'll give these several definitions. Passions are emotions. Passions are desires. Passions are affections, that's with an A, affections, not effections, but affections. Passions are sufferings. Now you'll want to note something about these various definitions. Every one of these definitions ascribes some type of change in a person. Some type of change in a person. We have a more positive context for the word passion today. I remember serving at a church and it was often said, oh, I love the way that person prays with passion. It was said in a very positive sense. But they were saying something about the person praying that they thought that they prayed with emotion and they prayed with real passion about the subject. Well, our emotions are wrapped up in our passions. Our desires are wrapped up in our passions. If I have a real genuine desire for something, there's an ongoing change in me, and that desire can be less or it can be more. Even the context of affections. We often talk about having affections for another person. We have affection for our spouse, Sometimes our affections for our spouse are a little less or a little more. Depending on what happened that day or that evening or in that car ride, we may love our spouse a little less or a little more. These are changes in us. We are in a state of flux. We are becoming. We are potential. I seem very calm to you right now, but as this subject goes on, you may say, wow, he got more passionate about the subject. We have those things that happen to us that are changing, and they're changing from the inside out. It's what is changing in who I am in my personal emotive life as an individual human. But also, the word passions is the context of sufferings. Sufferings are those things that we endure. Those sufferings change us. They make us different. When I suffer through a particular circumstance, it often changes me. I may even think different because of that suffering. That suffering may have brought some kind of emotional change to my life. Sometimes think of this in the Christian context of what a martyr may go through in persecution. They suffer something and that suffering changes them. Sometimes they suffer so much that it changes them to the point that they die. Their soul is separated from their body. Well, if we note these ideas of this type of change, We need to note as we read the confession in chapter two, paragraph one, and it lists that God is most pure spirit invisible without body parts or passions. It's interesting that this idea of passions is dealing with emotions and change. It's dealing with the affections and sufferings, saying that God himself as a being does not suffer. And yet, the confession is yet to speak about the doctrine of immutability, which is a doctrine that we would love and hold to very greatly, right? From the scripture, the Lord our God does not change. He is immutable. And we're thankful for that, right? We do not desire a God that's constantly in a state of flux. He's always changing because we're always changing. And this is a very scripturally derived doctrine because God himself has told us he is not like us. He is the creator, not the creature. We may be like him, made in his image, because the scripture teaches that. I'm not doing a study on the doctrine of man, so I'm not going to explain all of that this morning. But we have an idea that we are made in his image. We may be made like him, but he pointedly says he is not like us. And it starts from the very beginning of scripture. Scott pointed it out this morning. The Bible says God in the beginning. created the heavens and the earth. The way the Hebrew phrases it is that the words in the beginning are the context of the beginning of those things, but God never had a beginning. He is, and He created all things from nothing. in and of himself. He did it. He didn't need the earth to exist. He didn't need the cosmos to exist. He didn't need universes to exist. No, he is. And the one who is created. He created time. He created space. He created history. He created matter. He did it. And the scripture later tells us in Deuteronomy, This same God is the Lord our God who is one God, one. The idea of this identification of this one God and the scripture telling us that he is not like us, it's important for us to recognize the confession is already teaching the doctrine of immutability before it ever gets to the word immutability. God is without body parts or passions. He does not have inward change. A theological definition of divine impassibility given by one writer, this is probably the most succinct definition that I've seen. God does not experience emotional changes either from within or affected by his relationship to creation. God does not experience emotional changes either from within or affected by his relationship to creation. And this is how we'll begin to answer the question of how are passions in man and God linked to scripture? How are passions in man and God linked to scripture? Well, Scripture uses words and those words certainly have meaning. We have lots of words in Scripture, don't we? It's filled with words. And we would say those words have actual meaning. And we need to be very careful how we define and interpret those words in Scripture. But Scripture also uses these words so that we can understand things. As we go along, I'll spend some more time developing this idea that God is explaining who he is, but he's using words and language condescending to us. So when we read these words, when we're thinking about who God is, we have to be very careful not to take the words and always give them a one-to-one correlation. We'll develop this a little bit more in just a minute, but just to think about for a minute in places where the Bible says that God has eyes. Does he have literal eyes? Well, if he's pure spirit, he doesn't have literal eyes like a man. But we're supposed to learn something very careful about that identification of God having eyes. One of those things is, is where the scripture speaks of God seeing something with his eyes, is that God sees or knows all things. See, if we begin to tear down some of these doctrines and we begin to walk away from them, we will lose other major doctrines that are so important to us. If you're not careful in defining these things properly from scripture itself, then you'll be left with a God who is no longer omnipresent or a God who is no longer omniscient. He doesn't know all anymore because you've limited him. And you've done so by the very words of scripture themselves sometimes. He's no longer omnipotent because he's been limited by the words of scripture. We have to be very careful to understand these things are given to us in condescension. The eternal, infinite, holy, good, and one God has condescended to us in language. Well, how has he done that? Well, first and foremost, number one this morning, scripture explains God is not like us. He's, first of all, told us he is not like us. He's made it very clear. Now, I pointed out these passages, one from Isaiah 46 and one from Psalm 50 for good reason. Isaiah 46 is written most specifically to the people of Israel. And God is teaching his covenant people of Israel that, hey, you've gone out, you've kept with these idols, you have forsaken me time and time and time and time again. And these idols are nothing. They are fashioned by human hands. They are even fashioned by human minds. You make them and they are nothing. The lavish gold and the silver and the goldsmith who makes them. You bow down to these things and they are nothing. And he questions the people of Israel and says, to whom would you liken me and make me equal and compare me? And then he says, I want you to remember. For I am God. Now that's interesting. Scott taught us, I am who I am from Exodus three this morning. And here a very similar statement is made in Isaiah 46. I am God. He's not saying I am becoming God. He's not saying I was God and I'm not the same as I was. He's not saying I'm God in the present, but I might not be God in the future. Or I became God in the present when at one time in the past I was not. No, he's saying I am God, the one living God, past, present, and future. There is none like me, he says. He wants to make it very clear to us, as humans, he is not like us. And he states that to the people of Israel, his covenant people, because they need to be reminded that he is not like them. The other context of this is in Psalm 50, verses seven and 21, where in Psalm 50, verse seven, he states once again, I am God, your God, speaking to Israel, but then he goes on later to speak of the wicked ones in Psalm 50. He's giving a real delineation, even to those who would make idols of those who are not of my people. He's stating to his covenant people, I am not like you, and he's stating to those who are not in the covenant community, I am not like you. He wants all of the world to know, I am God, I am one, and there is none like me. It doesn't matter who you are, whether you are a Jew or a Gentile, I am God. And whether you bow the knee now, or later you will bow the knee because I am God. He makes it very clear that he cannot be compared to any idols of any sort, whether that be in Psalm 115, which was pointed out to you as well. If you've not spent some time reading and thinking through Psalm 115, I encourage you to do so. Think about the idea of what the psalmist is getting across. He says about these idols, they have eyes, but they cannot see. They have ears, but they cannot hear. They have mouths, but they cannot speak. You thought I was like them. You thought I was like you, but I'm not. Scripture gives us plenty of great language that describes God. But the difficulty sometimes with the language is, is that it presents us with things that seem, seem to be a little contradictory. So, number one, the scripture explains God is not like us. Number two, scripture explains God in language that resembles us. Scripture explains God in language that resembles us. As one writer noted, scripture portrays the context of physical body or presence in its explanation of God. I wish we had time this morning to go through multiple, multiple, multiple scriptures. But I want you to start paying attention as you're reading your Bibles to looking at the descriptions of God in the Bible and to recognize how these descriptions come across. There's places in the scripture that describe God as having location, but he also says he is pure spirit. There's places in the Bible that say that God has a face. Genesis 32, 30. Exodus 33, 11. Deuteronomy 5, 4. Revelation 20, 11. that God has eyes, 2 Chronicles 16.9, nostrils, 2 Samuel 22.9, Psalm 18.15, that he has lips and tongue, Isaiah 30.27, that he breathes, that he has shoulders, he has hands and arms. Even in Psalm 2.4, it is said that God exercises laughter. There are passages that gives some context to God having human form. Genesis 18.1, Ezekiel 1.26 and 27. Well, not only do we see language that couches God in physical terms in a way that we would understand it, and yet in a way that doesn't quite connect to the idea of God being pure spirit, It also portrays the context of emotional change or passions in God. As one writer says, in scripture, every human emotion is also present in God. There's rejoicing in God, Isaiah 62.5, 65.19. There's sorrow, Psalm 78.40, Isaiah 63.10. There's grief, Psalm 95.10. There's also passages that deal with jealousy. God is a jealous God. Is God jealous like us? Like man is jealous? There's passages that deal with God repenting or being sorry that he did something. Of course, we know there's many indications of scripture of God's vengeance, his anger, his wrath. This begs the question of how in the world do we deal with this language where scripture explains God in language that resembles us. He says he's not like us and yet in scripture it seems to be explained as though he resembles us. Well thirdly this morning Scripture explains God in merciful condescension to us. Scripture explains God in merciful condescension to us. I wanna take just a moment to think about this idea of merciful condescension. Have you ever met someone that you thought was condescending? that you just kind of heard them speak to you, and it just, most of the time when they talked to you, it just seemed like they were being condescending. They were speaking down to you, as if you were the biggest idiot known to all of humankind. Does that ever get under your skin a little bit? No, yeah, it's okay, admit it, we're sinners. Gets under our skin, gets under mine. I mean, it just digs right in me. Who does this person think they are? I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday. It might have been two weeks ago, but it wasn't yesterday. Who? Well, this is where we have to be careful with our God, because he is the one being who must condescend to us. Because if he does not condescend to us, we will not know him. We say our God is knowable. The scripture teaches that he's knowable. But he's knowable because he condescends to us. And he has to. Now, if we think too highly of ourselves, we can say, oh, I can grasp God. I can get hold of him fully and exhaustively. And this is the fault of many throughout history itself and different times of history. Some of the philosophers are this way. Some of the context of historians are this way. Even everyday people think they can fully grab hold of God when they know little of him. It tells us how important the scripture becomes to us, that God would condescend to us, and he did it in language. Now I want you to think about something. When we think about language, we think about humanity. If I say, oh man, that's amazing, that person can speak fluent Spanish. Why is that important? Because some Spanish-speaking person they come in contact with, they can communicate with that human. Saw a video not too long ago, you may have seen this, there's a European white fella, he goes to China, walks into a little Chinese restaurant in China, and he hears these ladies communicating back and forth as he's trying to act like he's ordering something and he's asking a lot of questions. And it becomes obvious they're talking about him. And then all of a sudden, he rings out in fluent Mandarin Chinese. And their eyes go. They're saying, wait, he's not one of us. He looks different than us. How does he know our language? It's because we think of language in a human context. Who created our bodies? Who created our minds? Who created the brain? God did. He gave us the capacity to invent language. He gave us the capacity to communicate through language, that our brain would engage fully the mind and that through our mouths, everything would work emotionally, mentally, and physically, that we would create words. We would invent these words and we would use them. And it's God who gave us that ability. I think the question is, why would he give us that ability? That he may condescend to us that we could know him. But here's a little bit of the difficulty. This language that God uses is descriptive of him, but it is not exhaustive in its description. And it cannot give us every single piece of understanding of who God is, but it gives us exactly what we need to know to understand who he is. And the scripture says that God, by his mighty hand, by his mighty hand, protected the people of Israel from the Egyptian army. Did God all of a sudden morph into a human and have a hand? And did he do something physically with his hand to protect the people of Israel? No. He's pure spirit. But it's giving us a picture of his almighty power. That he could do things in his power. But we have the idea of a hand of power that we know of. We've seen humans use their hands very powerfully. It's good imagery for us, but it cannot completely describe the very work of God in his omnipotence or all powerfulness. It's language. It's a condescension to us. It's a language that has a name called anthropomorphic language. It permeates the whole of scripture. One theologian says, for that reason, the words he employs are human words, speaking of how he's going to tell us of who he is. He employs human words. For the same reason, he manifests himself in human forms. From this, it follows that scripture does not just contain a few scattered anthropomorphisms or descriptive words, but is anthropomorphic through and through. From the first page to the last, it witnesses to God coming to and searching for humanity. Certainly these words have meaning. Certainly we do not want to degrade the meaning of those words, but we must recognize those words are a condescension to us, and if we start taking every single word in Scripture when it is describing God, especially in the context of his essence and his being. And if we begin to take that and make a one-to-one correlation, the Bible says God has a hand, so therefore he has a literal physical hand. God has eyes, he must have literal physical eyes. If we start doing that, we will build a God of parts and body. And we will deny he is most pure spirit, invisible. Furthermore, this anthropomorphic language with most theologians includes the language of emotion and passions in it. Some of them use another word called anthropopathisms, but oftentimes they will not use that word. They will just include these words of emotion like grief or sorrow or hurt or pain or or relenting or repenting, they will include those words into the context of these other descriptive words anthropomorphically. We have to understand, as one writer notes, we would not know God or understand his grace if he did not speak to us in human language. If the Bible becomes somewhat confusing to you or you get to a point that you struggle with the Bible, or if you start to think you can find God without the Bible, as there's many that do today, you will not know the one true living God if you do not submit yourself to his condescension and language. One theologian wanted us to note something very carefully, and I've thought about this over the years. I read this quote some 10 years ago or so, and it stuck with me. He said, if God were to speak to us in a divine language, not a creature would understand him. And you think, I don't, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say this, I don't know. Some of you may know Mandarin, I don't know. But you think Mandarin, Chinese Mandarin is hard? What about divine language? We need to be thankful for God's word. That God's word is condescended to us in a way that we can understand it. And yet, in God's condescension, we don't need to go off into a place that we create our own God. We need to see the metaphorical nature of scripture and keep it in context. When God said he is pure spirit and he is not like us, I then don't need to attribute to him body or parts or even passions like a man. I need to be very thoughtful and careful. even in describing his own attributes at times. Scott was speaking to us some about the attributes of God this morning. These are perfections in him that we'll talk about. Even in those descriptions from scripture itself, oftentimes God uses creaturely parts to describe his own attributes. when God is dealing with individuals or his people and he's dealing with them in their false worship. There's places that it says he's grieved or he's very, very sorrowful from his inner parts. There's one passage that even attributes this, that God is very grieved from his intestines. Now there's a real struggle. You have the idea of this grieving of God and it's from his intestines. He's given both something emotionally and physically. If God doesn't have intestines like a man, then he doesn't grieve like a man. There's all of these human actions of God's in the context of thinking through the mind and emotion, God intending to do something, Genesis 50, 20, forgetting 1 Samuel 1, 11, him remembering something. How is God all knowing if he's remembering something or forgetting something? Can God be all knowing and forget? even in the context of naming himself as God the Father. That's descriptive language. I learned this years ago when I first started studying the doctrine of God seriously more than I ever had before. I guess it would have been somewhere around coming to the doctrines of grace and that five years after that. We had a gentleman that came to church here and I was trying to give some description of God the Father. And I was trying to be very careful in my language. And he came up to me afterwards and he thanked me for being somewhat careful. He said, because for years I've heard pastors try to make this illustration of God the Father as a one-to-one correlation from a human father to God himself. And he said, that's never made sense to me because my human father was terrible. I may have a picture of a father in a different way than another person. Someone may grow up with a terrible human father who physically abused them, emotionally treated them like dirt. And so to make a one-to-one correlation for them makes no sense. We need the scripture to build the context of these things for us. God shows us what type of father he is in the way that he shepherds. Oh, and by way, isn't shepherd a descriptive word too? Do we picture God as one who dons a big robe walking out on the field with sheep and a staff? We may picture that in our minds, but that's not who he is. We begin to think about the scriptural language. We see that this scriptural language helps us, even though in places it's not a one-to-one correlation. And you say, oh no, Brandon, what you're doing is you're giving me liberal theology, all this figurative stuff. What am I going to do? Are you saying God's not real? No, I'm saying he's more real than anything you've ever seen. This is why the being of God becomes so important for us. As Scott stated this morning in the Bible study, he used the phrase for you, God is love. That's a scriptural phrase. And he noted the first part of the phrase that's so important to us is God is. He didn't say to you this morning, God does love, God will love, God might love, God loves sometimes, God loves when He wants to. No, He said, God is love. I would say to you that the love of God is greater than anything we could ever imagine because it's not an emotion in Him like it is in us. It's a perfection in Him. God loves you, his covenant person, saved by the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ alone. He loves you when you're not lovable. You claim the name of Christ and you get in an argument with your spouse. You claim the name of Christ and you get angry at someone on the road. You cuss this person or that person. You rage on the inside when no one knows. It boils in you and I, and we want to have it just come out, but we hold it in. But on the inside, we are like dead men's bones if we're not careful. And God loves us. Why? He sealed us with his spirit according to the work that the spirit did, applying what Christ himself did. And that covenant father loves us. He is love. Love is not like this, or it's not like this, or it's not like this, or this. He is love. I say to you, the God who loves is greater than any being we could ever imagine. If we ascribe to him human emotions, we are doing a detriment to who he is. Even when the scripture says that things were so evil in the world that God grieved in his heart and was sorry that he had made man. First of all, it tells us God had a heart. Does he have a physical heart? We would say, no, no, that's anthropomorphic language, Brandon. He doesn't have a heart like you and I do. He doesn't grieve like you and I do. His grieving is perfect. It tells us He hates sin so much. It's giving us a picture of how awful things were in Genesis 6. Not that God all of a sudden looked around and He was happy one moment, and then as He noticed the world, As though he weren't omnipresent and all-knowing, he just looked around for a little while and went from happy to being really, really grieved. Scripture teaches us that God has all joy in and of himself. He does not need you and I to be joyous. He is joy. How does this type of language help us? I ask you to turn to Malachi chapter 3. Remember I told you, the confession states God is without passions before it ever says anything about immutability. I declare to you that the confession is teaching from scripture, rightly, that the Lord our God does not change. And before it speaks about immutability in the context of attribute, It speaks about his immutability in the context of his being first. He is without body, parts, or passions. Malachi chapter three, the Lord declares, For I, the Lord, do not change. Now don't go any further. Think about that. He's saying, I do not change. He didn't give a caveat to that and say, I don't change physically, but I have some emotional change. where I'm up and down and up and down. No, he says, for I, the Lord, do not change. I, once again, I am who I am, the being of who he is speaking and saying, I, as this being, in and of myself, independent, not in need of anything else, I do not change. And then he gives a very good reason that ought to be very encouraging to us. Therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed. All of the covenant love that we want to talk about is wrapped up in the immutability of God, not just physically and not just in the context of some change that we think about in a human body, but it's wrapped up that he does not change in passions. And you say, well, how do we know the identification that God would suffer with us? There was a great period of time at the end of the early 1900s or so, somewhere around the turn of the century at that point, theologians began to ask this question. How can we know that God suffers with us? And they began to put God in the context of suffering with us. They began to make him like a man. because they wanted to have a God that they felt like they could know who suffered with us. The scripture's teaching us that if we have a God who suffers with us, we don't have a God. And furthermore, we don't have a God who can save us. If he changes, we cannot be sure his covenant promises are true. If he changes, we cannot be sure that he will keep those covenant promises. and plainly tells us here that he does not change. The God who is love does not change, therefore we are not consumed. Those who are in Christ Jesus are not consumed. Why? You know where you see the suffering? In the incarnation, the humanity of Christ. You wanna know why the doctrine of the humanity of Christ is so important? The deity is, these two natures, Christ is very God of very God, very man of very man, both important, equally important. But the humanity is so important because in his humanity is where you see the suffering. In his humanity he came to this earth. His deity was not changed. There was nothing added to the deity. There was nothing taken away from the deity. The scripture says He took on human flesh. He assumed that human flesh, but it did not change the deity. But the deity did not change the humanity. It is a true humanity of Christ that He walked among us. He suffered as we suffered. And we noted in our study in Hebrews, how did He suffer even in temptation? It was a suffering for Him to be tempted like we are. He walked on this earth in humanity, and yet it was a humanity without sin. If you want to know of the suffering that can point to what we can really see and understand, look at the humanity of Christ. Don't try to change the being of God. See, liberal theologians of the late 1800s and the early 1900s, they started changing these things, not looking at Christ rightly. So in the end, they had no gospel at all because they changed not only the doctrine of God, but they changed the doctrine of Christ and salvation. If you make God a suffering God and Christ only a good and decent man, then you've lost the whole essence of the gospel. For Christ is not just good and decent, he is the very son of God. And he came to this earth, took on human flesh, and he suffered. And that suffering did not change the deity of Christ. It did not change the deity of Christ because if it had changed the deity of Christ, it would have changed the deity of God. These are very difficult things, but I say to you it's important. Don't change the doctrine of God by entering or bringing change into his being. God is love. If you want to see suffering, look at the humanity of Christ. It's why the Gospels are so important to us. Be thankful today that the Lord our God does not change so that you and I as repenting believers are not consumed. We have a promise made to us that the wrath of God was poured out onto the son. He suffered there hanging and dying on that cross, right? And the suffering that was due to us was put onto him. And when it was put onto him, all of his covenant people who repent and believe, they will not be consumed by the eternal wrath of God, for Christ already bore the wrath. I, the Lord your God, do not change. Amen? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you've been merciful once again to give us time in your word What a glorious thing you've given us through your word. You condescended to us. We praise you for that. We thank you so much for giving us your word. Lord, forgive us if we've fashioned idols of our mind or our hands. Forgive us if we've tried to make you like us. Lord, may we remember that you are the creator and we're the creature. Give us hearts and minds to bow down before you and to do it rightly through the understanding of who your son is, through the understanding of what your spirit does in applying the work of the son. We need new hearts and only your spirit can regenerate dead souls. For those who have repented and believed, Lord, we need to have our souls continually encouraged by the truth of your word. Help us to see how great and mighty you are, and keep us from denigrating your being. Keep us from denigrating your love, that we would see that your love is attached rightly. to your very being, and it's not just a piece or part of you, it is who you are. You are love. Glory be unto you, the one living true God, in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.