All right, there we go. All right, our scripture reading this morning, if you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn to the book of Isaiah, and we'll be in Isaiah chapter 44. I'll be reading verses one through eight, but our focus for the message today will be on six through eight. So Isaiah chapter 44, verses one through eight, hear now the word of the living and the true God. But now hear, O Jacob, my servant, and Israel, whom I have chosen. Thus says Yahweh who made you and formed you from the womb, who will help you. Do not fear, O Jacob, my servant, and you, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen. For I will pour out water on the thirsty ground and streams on the dry land. I will pour out my spirit on your seed and my blessing on your offspring. And they will spring up among the grass like poplars by streams of water. This one will say, I am Yahweh's. And this one will call on the name of Jacob. And this one will write on his hand, belonging to Yahweh. And I will name Israel's name with honor. And thus says Yahweh, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, Yahweh of hosts, I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides me. Who is like me? Let him call out and declare it, and let him tell it to me in order. From the time that I established the ancient people, and let them declare to them the things that are to come, and the events that are going to take place. Do not be in dread, and do not be afraid. Have I not long since caused it to be heard to you and declared it? And you are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me, or is there any other rock I know of none?" This is the Word of God, and may He bless the reading of it today. Well, it is a pleasure of mine to be here with you. This is my, what I count, my first time in Colorado. I drove through the southwest corner a couple years ago, going down to Albuquerque for Presbytery once, but I don't really count that as being in Colorado. So it has been a wonderful time for me to be here. If we haven't gotten a chance to meet, I'm looking forward to meeting all of you after the service today. My name is Ty Brillhardt, and I recently, just to give you a little bit of background about me as we get into this, I recently graduated this last May from Western Reform Seminary with a Master of Divinity. and I am one thesis away from a Master of Theological Studies, which I am hoping to be done with by the end of this summer. My wife and I, Dalton, have been married for the last seven years, and we have twin daughters who will be three in just about a week and a half. So they are growing up, and I know that the Prouty family has some twins in that. And it's been a joy to be around Pastor Prouty as well. I was there for his examination at Presbytery to bring him into this denomination. It was wonderful to see that as well as on Thursday at the Synod, I got to hear Pastor Prouty preach for the first time. And that was a great blessing for me as I was preparing to come down and be with all of you. So I just thank you for your hospitality here. I thank you for being here. And we're gonna talk about today what I think is some common Christian understanding, but things that I don't think ever get old or should get old in the life of the Christian. And we are gonna be talking about who God is. And this is a very crucial question because it's not just about who God is to you. God can be anything to anybody. Everybody has opinions about who God is. But what I'm talking about is who is God. Who has God revealed himself to be from his word? There are different views of God within the world. You can have the God of Islam, you can have the God of Mormonism, you can have the God of even self, which is a very popular understanding in our world today that we are all part of some great deity. But all of these fall so short of what God has said and revealed to us in His Word. And we should, as Christians, we should, as spirit-dwelt believers, be very concerned with who God is. Not just in our own lives, not just in the church, but how we present, how we witness, how we give our testimonies to a dark and dying world about who God has revealed Himself to be. The whole Bible is God's revelation. It is his word to us, and it is true, it is good, it is perfect, and it tells us exactly who God is, and it gives us everything that we need to know for life and godliness. Isaiah chapters 40 through 45 are some of the most theological portions of scripture. specifically on the study of the character and the nature of who God is. The other that I would point to would be Job 38 through 41, and we're gonna look at some of these passages to give us a context, but before we do that, let us ask the Lord to bless the preaching of his word today. Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. I thank you for your faithful people who are concerned with truth, who are concerned with who you are, who desire to know you, who desire to worship you, who desire to love you. Lord, we thank you for your testimony, the testimony of our Lord Jesus Christ, and what he has done for us, and that he gives us hope for a future in his resurrection. Father, I pray that you would keep me from error today, that I would decrease so Christ may increase. I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Isaiah chapters 40 through 45, I want to just get a scope of the theology that you can find in these chapters. These are some of my favorite chapters in all of Scripture. but because they say so much about who God is. Isaiah chapter 40, verses seven and eight says, the grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of Yahweh blows upon it. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. We talk about God's everlasting nature, that God from eternity past to eternity future is God. That He has no beginning. He has no end. He is the beginning. He is the end. He is not a created being, but the creator of all things. Verses 21 and 22 of the same chapter, He says, Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He who inhabits above the circle of the earth. We read of God's faithfulness and justice in Isaiah 41, 10 and 11. It says, Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will make you mighty. Surely I will help you. Surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Behold, all those who are angered at you will be ashamed and dishonored. Those who contend with you will be as nothing and will perish. We have God's omniscience in Isaiah 41, 21 through 24. It says, bring near your case, Yahweh says. Bring forward your mighty arguments, the King of Jacob says. Let them bring it forth and declare to us what is going to take place. As for the former events, declare what they were, that we may establish our hearts on them and know their outcome. or cause us to hear of what is coming. Declare the things that are to come afterward that we may know that you are gods. Indeed, do good or evil that we may anxiously look about us and fear together. Behold, you are nothing, and your work is nonexistent. He who chooses you is an abomination. Now, this is God essentially challenging the pagan gods of not just Israel, Israel did fall into the pagan worship, but all of the nations around them. They say, we worship these great gods, and God is saying, well, have them predict the future. Have them tell us what happened in the past if they are so mighty and if they are so great. But he says they are nothing and their work is non-existent. Anyone who chooses any other God besides Yahweh not only chooses no God at all because no other gods exist, but they are an abomination to our God. And I'll do one more here as God is creator and sovereign over all things in Isaiah chapter 42 verses 5 and 6. Thus says God, Yahweh, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and its offspring, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it. I am Yahweh. I have called you in righteousness. I will also take hold of you by the hand and guard you, and I will give you as a covenant to the people, as a light to the nations. Now we can go on and on and on, but I'm sure many of you have places to go today, like home, and I start my trip home at some point today as well, so I won't go on and on with the entirety of 40 through 45, but we will be in 44, like I said, verses six through eight, and today we are going to be looking at the exclusivity of God and the oneness of God. Isaiah 44 6 the first verse there it says thus says Yahweh the king of Israel and his Redeemer Yahweh of hosts I am the first and I am the last and there is no God besides me Now, if you are familiar with Scripture from Genesis through Revelation, then this passage may sound familiar outside of Isaiah, because it is repeated, or it is quoted more in Revelation chapter 22. In verses 12 and 13, we read, Behold, I am coming quickly, and my reward is with me, to render to every man according to his work. Am the Alpha and the Omega the first and the last the beginning in the end? Now in the world, the world asks you if you've ever been confronted with somebody who is a critic of Christianity or a critic of the Bible or comes from a different religious background. One of the big questions that I am asked often is, well, out of all the religions in the world, out of all the religions in the past and probably many more religions that'll come in the future, how do you know that your religion, that your faith, that your God is the true God? And church, we need to be able to answer this question. We need to be able to give a response. In 1 Peter 3.15, Peter says, always be ready to give an answer. Always be ready to give why you have the hope inside you that you do. And I think many Christians will say, well, this is just how I was raised. This is what I grew up in, and so I don't know anything else. But the Muslim was also raised that way, and they don't know anything else. The Mormon was raised that way, and they don't know anything else. So we need a better answer than we were just raised in this. In the world, there are many different Christs out there. And I will come back to the give and answer part, but there are many different Christs in the world. And for us as Christians, Christ is our foundation. Christ is what sets us apart from every other religious system that has ever been, is now, or will ever be in the future. It all hinges on Christ. And in the world, there are many different Christs. There's the Christ that you find in Islam. He is called Isa, and he is a good prophet and a good man, but he is not the Son of God. You have the Christ of Mormonism, who is not God from all eternity, but is a child of God the Father, a literal child of God the Father. You have the Christ of Jehovah's Witnesses that says that Christ is the first and greatest creation of Jehovah God. Now, if red flags are going up, that's a good thing. It means that you know better than this. And then you have the secular Christ, which can look good on the outside, but when you dig a little bit deeper down, you've got more red flags that go up. And probably the most popular Christ in our world right now is the Christ that appears in the TV show, The Chosen. Now, I don't mean to offend or insult anybody who may watch this show or like this show, but let me just point something out to you. When Christ is met by Nicodemus in the show, they talk and they give that dialogue. Jesus says, John 3, 16, and so on and so forth. But then Nicodemus asks him, how can I know if this is true? And Jesus says, what does your heart tell you? And I don't know how familiar everybody here is with the whole of scripture, I never want to assume anything, but those words in relation to truth, in relation to the gospel, and I think those words just in general, have never come out of the mouth of Christ as recorded in scripture. Especially if we look at Jeremiah chapter 17 verse 9, the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick. Who can know it? Church, the Bible is not a Disney movie where you follow your heart and you sing fun songs and everything works out in the end. The only thing true about that is everything works out in the end because God is sovereign. But we don't follow our hearts. We look at what scripture says and what it reveals about who Christ is. Another line from the Chosen that got some controversy was Jesus saying, I am the law of Moses. Now, I am the law of Moses is not one of the seven I am sayings that you get in the scriptures of what Jesus said. In fact, it is actually a close quote from third Nephi chapter 15, verse nine. And if you're unfamiliar with that, that is part of the book of Mormon. And he said, the quote is, I am the law and the light. And Dallas Jenkins, who is the writer and producer of The Chosen, on many occasions has said, Mormons are our brothers and sisters in Christ, and they worship the same Christ as I do. This is the world's picture of who Jesus is. and we have a responsibility to get Christ right. Jesus says, I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life, and no one comes to the Father but by me. Nobody else has ever declared that and been right except for Jesus. The world says that these other religious systems can be pathways to God. you can't be the only one that all of these can lead to God but Jesus says otherwise he says I I am the way I am the truth I am the life and then a very very clear words, no one comes to the Father but by me. Christ is the only way. And Jesus is God. He is the second member of the Trinity. And if we take our passage in Isaiah and compare it with the passage in Revelation when it is quoted, we must look at who is speaking. In Isaiah, it's very clear that it is Yahweh. It is God who is speaking. In Revelation, go back to chapter 19 and look at verse 11. It says, and I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it is called faithful and true, and in righteousness he judges and wages war. This is obviously our Lord Jesus Christ. And it carries through the rest of the book of Revelation through chapter 22 to where we read just a moment ago, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. Jesus is placing himself as God. You know, one of the critics, some of the things the critics say, well, Jesus never actually claimed to be God. Well, I beg to differ. because he is placing himself and he is saying what God said in Isaiah, and he's saying it and applying it to himself. I am the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Now this is a, aside from the point, but if you ever come in contact with a Jehovah's Witness who does not believe that Jesus is God, this is a really good comparison to show them and witness to them and lead them in that way. But Jesus is Yahweh, and the one seated on the throne in heaven. He is the one who is high and lifted up, and there is no God beside him, and he does not share his glory with others. The first and last means that he has eternally existed before creation and before time. And we, as created beings, we cannot comprehend this because we are bound by time. Just try and do it for just at some point in the future. Try and picture eternity past and try and picture eternity future. You can't do it. It's a weird feeling that you get in it because we are so bound by time. Now in this, when it says that there is no God besides me, the Hebrew word there can translate to apart from or except. So it is a very clear nothing else. There is no other God beside me. It doesn't even give the chance for anything else. But God says there is none. And when it says that he is the last, he does not mean that eventually my time, God's time, will come to an end and I'm just the last God. But it actually means that he is the end of all things. He sustains all things now with his powerful hand, and he sustains and will continue sustaining things all for eternity. The Hebrew word here translates to the back end of things. So if you think like a bookend on a bookshelf. You have no other books after that final piece, but the bookend holds up all of the other books in front of it. That is the picture that we have here. It is God who is the end of all things and upholds all things. And he says, there is no God besides me. If there were multiple ways to God, church, if all other gods existed and were legitimate, This would be a good time for God in His Word to reveal to us that He is not the only God. But He doesn't do that. He says, there is no God. And this is one of those things we cannot compromise on this fact. We cannot compromise on this truth. When we witness and when we come to the world, we can't say, well, maybe Maybe you're right, but this is just what I believe, and you can believe what you wanna believe, but this is what I believe. No, we have to say, no, we worship the one true and living God. It doesn't say that there are lesser gods. It doesn't say, besides me, there are gods who can bring about some eternal blessings. He says there is none. And then he follows it up with, who is like me? He's putting forth a challenge. And this section of scripture in Isaiah is, some people call it the trial of the false gods. And it is God elevating himself and saying, come at me, show me who you are. If you are real gods, if you are true gods, then prove it, show me. I am the judge, I am the jury, I am the witness, and you have to come and put that before me. He says, who is like me? Let him call out and declare it, and let him tell to me in order from the time that I established the ancient people, and let them declare to them the things that are to come and the events that are going to take place. Now, I just want to, I'm just curious if anybody in here has ever read the Iliad before. It's a very long, very frustrating piece of literature, mainly because it's hard to kind of tell what's going on in it. But it's the Trojan War. You have the Greeks and the Trojans, and they're battling against each other. And one of the things about it is there's a lot of intervention from the different Greek gods that take place in it. But the one thing, if you ever look up the Clifnotes, does anybody ever use Clifnotes anymore? It got me through high school. But if anybody ever uses the Clifnotes version of it, you can see that these gods have no idea what they're doing. They're constantly intervening and fighting against the opposing armies and sometimes changing sides and blessing this person and then taking that blessing away. And when they're confronted with each other as gods, they don't even know what's going on. They're fighting with each other. And these are the gods, these are the pictures of what these ancient worlds believed and worshipped and followed. They don't even know what's happening. They are not sovereign, and they are definitely, if we compare them to Yahweh, they're not like him. They can't declare the end from the beginning because they didn't even know the outcome of the Trojan War in the Iliad. They couldn't even predict that. But God is telling these gods, if you are gods, then show it. And in Scripture, there are standards that God sets for this. One, has to be like Him. That's the first one. So, already, every other God has failed, because there is none like Him. He is the only true God, so strike one. Second, they have to give an ordered account of the past from start to finish. So, you start with creation, and the Bible begins with, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. It wasn't in the beginning there were many gods and one of them created everything we know. No, it is in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And we, even though we have that phrase, even though we have that opening to our scripture, we can't even comprehend it to its full extent because we weren't there. We don't have that knowledge, but what we have is what God has revealed to us, and it is in a way that we can understand to a certain point. We start with time. It's a beginning place, but God has been God from all eternity. As I said earlier, there's a modern belief that we are all gods. We all have a bit of God or deity in us. And some people who believe this are people who want to work a four-day workweek, four hours a day. So if you have a bit of deity in you, if you are a part of God in some way, but you can't even do an eight-hour day at work, and you can't even do a five- or six-day workweek, how are you going to uphold the universe? kind of throws it for a loop there. In atheism, you have the Big Bang Theory, which is the most common theory of creation in atheism, where it says nothing plus nothing equals everything. And we're in a high school, so we should probably do math. Zero plus zero equals zero. So it doesn't make sense. In Hinduism, you have the Rigveda, which is one of the four sacred canonical Hindu texts, and it says this, this is obviously a translation, who verily knows and who can declare it whence it was born and whence it comes, this creation. The gods are latter than this world's production. Who knows thence first it came into being? He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it, whose eye control is world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows it not. So in other words, if I can break that down for you, We have no idea because God hasn't said anything to us. We don't even know some God made everything or from some sort of spontaneous phenomenon. Taoism, the Tao is presented as the mother of all things. Taoism prescribes that space already existed at the time of creation of the universe. Chinese sage, Quanzi, who lived centuries before Christ, wrote, in the grand beginning, that is of all things, there was nothing in all the vacancy of space. There was nothing that could be named. It was in this state that there arose the first existence. The first existence, but still without bodily shape. I don't know what that means. I'll do one more. Mormonism, okay? Now, I want you to, if you're staying around for the Sunday school hour, just kind of hold on to this piece a little bit. It'll come back. But Mormonism, in their idea of creation, God, the God of the Bible, is not God from all eternity. He was once a man, like you and I, and he was elevated by doing good things and following the law to the level of God-ship. And so when he reached that point of God-ship, he then created the world that we see now, and he is the God over that world. So in Mormon theology, Yahweh isn't even the first of the gods. He came at some point, but they don't know when. The point is, church, I know this is kind of a roundabout way to say it, but it's important for us to see how other people view God. But the point is that there is no one else like our God. You cannot read any other sacred religious text and get the same thing that we get in scripture because none of that is inspired. None of that is given to us by God's inspiration and revelation. It's all man-created, it is man-written down, and it appeases the mind and the flesh of men, where the Bible tells us, deny yourself, take up your cross, and go after Christ. There's one commentator that writes, although Yahweh is the God of his own special people, he is also sovereign over all history, and so holds sole title to the designation of God. He is incomparable, especially in his power to interpret the past and predict the future. God knows all things, and God is the only one who could say from the beginning what has happened, how it happened, and he is the only one who can look to the future and say, this is what will be. You have a lot of false prophets now who try, but always fall short. All of these other so-called gods can't reveal anything beyond human reasoning because they are inventions of human minds. The Bible, the gospel, it's amazing, isn't it? It's so simple. that even a child can understand it. It's so simple that a child can believe and be saved. Yet, at the same time, it is so deep, so incomprehensible in some places, that we could spend a thousand lifetimes studying it and not even scratch the surface of God's infinite wisdom and goodness. The third test that God puts forward of these false gods is these beings need to accurately predict the future, and we talked about that just a little moment ago, but a true prophet of God has a 100% success rate. I remember when the last election was going on, you had all these false prophets that would predict that Trump was going to serve a second consecutive term in the White House, and none of them maybe one or two, but not many of them actually came out and said, well, we were wrong. We really messed that up. And now you have them coming out again and making other prophecies about upcoming events. But Deuteronomy 18.22 is a very important passage for us when it comes to false prophecies. It says, when a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which Yahweh has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously, you shall not be afraid of him. Prophet of God has a 100% success rate. If this is true of man, would not this be even more true of other gods or other belief systems, that if a god could not even predict the future of what was gonna come to pass, that we could apply this to them in more, in a grander way? Yahweh does not just accurately predict the future, but He, as the Westminster Confession of Faith says, God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and immutably ordain whatsoever comes to pass. And church, this should give us all comfort. Because God says in our Isaiah passage, do not be in dread and do not be afraid. Have I not long since caused it to be heard to you and declared it? And you are my witnesses. Is there any God beside me or is there any other rock? I know of none. Church, if God knows the future perfectly, If God has ordained whatsoever comes to pass, then we can take comfort in knowing that God also has your life in His hand. That God knows the future for your life and whatever takes place. That anything that happens to you, anything you go through, is not just random chance. God does not have to scramble in His highest heaven to try and figure out what He's going to do for you to work this out according to His will. But God ordained it to happen. And if God ordains it to happen, He will bring you through it. And what I mean by that, I don't wanna give a false hope that you're gonna be healed or you're gonna get rich or whatever it might be, but what I mean by that is sometimes God bringing somebody through is by bringing somebody home. Sometimes God does bring us through those trials, and when He does, it is, as the scripture said, it is to test us, and it is to make our faith stronger, But then sometimes it is to be a testimony to the rest of the world. You think about the martyrs of the early church and the struggles that they went through. They were put to death. But we know about them today. And their testimony still rings forth for us. That when they struggled, when they suffered, when they went through what they did, it was not for vain, but it was for the glory of God. And there are Christians all around the world right now who are being persecuted for their faith. And we do have it pretty comfortable here in our land. We do have freedom here and we do rejoice and we thank God for that. But when it comes to God and who He is, would we be willing to take up our cross and follow Christ even to the end of our lives? Is that something that we can say in confidence today, church? So God being the only God is a good thing. Christ being the only way to the Father is a good thing. We don't have to worry about which religion is the right one. We don't have to guess because we know. We know who he is. We know his word. And we know what he has clearly revealed to us. We don't have to just do the right thing. But the Bible says, for it is by grace that you have been saved through faith and not of works. You don't have to worry if you have done enough because, spoiler alert, you have not. I have not. Nobody has ever done enough to earn God's righteousness because Christ did it all. Christ fulfilled the law. Christ obeyed the law perfectly and he gave us his word and he revealed to you who he is. So no matter what the world looks like today, no matter how dark it may seem, no matter what forces come in beyond our control, We take comfort because we have the one true God on our side. The one who has determined the end from the beginning. The one who ordains whatsoever comes to pass and is sovereign over all things. The one who upholds the universe with his mighty right hand. The one who promised to build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. The one who keeps his covenant promises with his people. And church, the one who loves you. If you are in Christ today, you are beloved by God. You are a child of God, and nothing can take you out of His hand, not even your own sin. And we take comfort in that. We rest in that fact today, church. because he is the one true God, and he will never leave you nor forsake you. So I ask you again, as I did at the beginning, who is God, church? Not just God to you, but who is God? The truth is that we are all sinners. We all fall short of God's glorious standards. God requires perfection, and we cannot give it. God requires perfect holiness, but we cannot give it. But God, in his great mercy, sent us his son, Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, lived a perfect life, the life that you and I should live but can't. He died the death that you and I deserve, and he rose again on the third day. And we look to that resurrection, that hope, because Paul says, if Christ did not rise from the dead, if Christ is not alive and seated at the right hand of the Father right now, then our faith is in vain. But church, we have faith that Christ paid the penalty for our sin, that he took upon your sin on the cross so that you could be clothed in his righteousness, so that you could stand before him on that great day of judgment, guiltless, shameless, clothed in Christ's righteousness, nothing to offer God but Christ. And that is enough, because Christ intercedes for us, He intervenes for us, He mediates for us, and we will be welcomed into the kingdom with the words of, well done, my good and faithful servant. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your revelation and how you have revealed yourself to us. That you have not left us guessing. You have not left us wanting. But Lord, you provide all things for us. Now fathers, we continue in our worship. I pray that your son would be glorified. I pray that you would be pleased with us. And Lord, the saints edified in it. Pray this all in Christ's name. Amen.