All right, so we will be continuing tonight in our series, looking at the great doctrines of the Bible through the lens of the Westminster Confession of Faith. Last week, we dug pretty deeply into chapter one, but we were not quite able to finish. So we're gonna start by hopefully just quickly going through the last two paragraphs of chapter one, and then we'll go right into chapter two. So the way that we did it last week for anyone that wasn't here was I would just read a section, a paragraph of the confession, and then I would have some comments and explanation on it. And if you have any questions about that section or anything that you want clarified or whatever, feel free to just raise your hand or call out and we'll walk through that. But I'm just gonna start off by reading chapter one, paragraph nine of the Westminster Confession of Faith. So paragraph nine says this, the infallible rule of interpretation of scripture is the scripture itself. And therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any scripture, which is not manifold, but one, it may be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly. So this is what I call Bible interpretation 101. When you go to seminary, you take a whole class called hermeneutics, which is like the art of how one interprets the Bible, the grid and the framework that you use to interpret the Bible. And the number one thing about interpreting the Bible to know is that the Bible is the best interpreter of the Bible. And that's what the Westminster Confession of Faith is saying. The infallible rule of interpretation of scripture is the scripture itself. So when you're having a hard time with a particular book or a particular chapter or a verse, how do you get clarity on it? Well, number one, you look at the other verses, chapters, and books. You look at the verses around it to get that immediate context. You look at what the whole theme of the book is and the genre of the book. And then you look at the whole canon of scripture. And that is definitely the best way to understand any part of scripture. If everyone would just do this, would be willing to synthesize, that means bring together the various parts to make sense of, to synthesize scripture, and we wouldn't lose the forest for the trees so much. that phrase losing the forest for the trees it means you get so focused on one particular tree in a whole massive forest and you're just dialed into everything this tree looks like and the type of bark and what fruit it has and the shape of the leaf and all this other things and you can almost forget that you're actually looking at an entire forest in front of you. And sometimes we can get so focused on one little verse or one specific doctrine that we kind of lose the bigger context. And we think this is all that we're ever going to learn about this type of tree. When lo and behold, there might be 3000 of that same type of tree in the forest. They can tell you more info than just that tree alone would give you. So we want to look at the whole picture. It helps us avoid a lot of doctrinal problems. We don't want to only be chapter and verse people in the sense of, you bring up a doctrinal question, someone says, give me the verse for it. Well, that's good that you wanna go straight to the word, but it'd be better to say, tell me what the Bible says. Because sometimes there's not just one single verse that addresses something in a way that's sufficient for our limited minds to understand. Luther said that scripture has a wax nose, which means you could grab onto it and just twist it any way you want. A nose is obviously supposed to look one particular certain way, but you could grab it if it's made of wax and just make it look ridiculous, right? Well, scripture has a wax nose. An infidel, a pagan, an unbeliever can take a random verse out of context and make it say a lot of things that it really doesn't say. Make it seem like it's saying a lot of things that it really doesn't say. So we want to interpret scripture by scripture. That's how we get the whole sense of what God's telling us. And then, I mean, we all have run into this before where we're reading something and we just, we don't know what to do with a verse or a chapter. And we think, God, I don't understand what your word's saying here. Well, thankfully, A lot of our modern Bibles, either at the bottom or right down the center, have what's called a reference column. And these are not study notes added by men, though obviously interpretation's involved here, but a lot of times that reference column, it'll just say, Okay, it'll have a little five if you're, you know, wanting to know what goes with verse five. And then beside that five, it'll say, go to, and it might say five other scriptures, five other verses or chapters of the Bible that you could go to if you're curious to find out more about what's being taught in this particular verse. So scripture interpreting scripture. And maybe you're going through something and, you know, one of those notoriously hard books of the Bible, and you might get discouraged at times. Like you're reading Ecclesiastes and you're thinking, I just, I'm really struggling to see the gospel here. Where is Jesus in Ecclesiastes? Well, it's okay if you don't see it also abundantly clear there, because remember the Bible is one book. It's got 66 books in it, but it's still one book with one author, that's God. So you can always go somewhere. You can't expect with our limited minds affected by sin, with our hearts affected by sin, to understand every single doctrine of the Bible from every single chapter of the Bible. And then the confession of course says, that the full sense of any scripture, which is not manifold, but one, what does that mean? That the full sense of a text of scripture is not manifold, but one. Does anyone have an idea? What it means is scripture always says the same thing. And if one verse is talking about one doctrine, emphasizing one doctrine, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. What that means is that God loved the world and sent his son. It's not supposed to mean that I'm having trouble making up something ridiculous, but there's this modern notion that the Bible can say one thing to you and a different thing to me and a totally different thing to someone else. It is absolutely true that the spirit uses scripture to apply things to each of our lives in different ways. And he uses one text of the Bible to awaken a desire for holiness in me, and maybe in you, it awakens in you a desire for evangelism. That's absolutely true that the Spirit does that, but the Spirit doesn't give two different meanings, two different meanings to two different people. the message of scripture is always going to be clear. There's a clarity and a unity in what scripture is saying. And that's why if one person reads first Timothy and says, well, I think men should only be pastors. And the other person says, no, no, no, what Paul really means. And what the spirit was saying to me through that verse is that of course, women can be pastors. Those two things can't be true at the same time. So the sense of scripture is one, not manifold. You can't just, even though it has that wax nose, you shouldn't use the wax nose and make it mean whatever you want. Any questions on paragraph nine? I know we just dived right into the middle of a chapter. All right, we'll finish it out, chapter one here. This is the last paragraph of chapter one. And I'm sorry, I should have said this earlier, but if you weren't here last week, chapter one of Westminster Confession of Faith is entitled On the Holy Scripture. So this is our doctrine of the Bible, what we believe about the Bible, about special revelation. Here's paragraph 10. The Supreme Judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men and private spirits are to be examined and in whose sentence we are to rest can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the scripture. So scripture isn't just our final answer for determining what we believe in church, it is the final answer for everything. Everything, everything, everything has to be subordinate to scripture. Even though we're a hundred years removed from the Reformation proper here, these men are still very much imbibed in, to some extent, Roman Catholic and heavily first and second generation reformational thinking, these Puritans. Even though there's a time lapse from Martin Luther nailing those 95 theses to the Wittenberg Chapel door, this is still heavy stuff for this time. Scripture is above councils. It is above creeds. The Westminster Confession of Faith is saying scripture is above this document that we're studying. The confession itself is saying, if you're confused about what's written here, well, judge it according to scripture. It is the supreme judge of all of our controversies. It is good, of course, to have the authority of the church, both the local church, ruled through ministers and elders, and the universal church tradition handed down to us in the confessions and creeds and catechisms. We don't want to denigrate those things, and that's not what the Westminster divines are doing here, but what they're saying is nothing can come to the level of Scripture with authority and with clarity here. If the Bible says one thing, then it does not matter who it is that says something to the contrary. Even the Apostle Paul would say, even if he himself, the Apostle Paul, or an angel from heaven, Even if Paul himself were to show up here, like how Moses and Elijah showed up, they were dead, you know? But they came and were physically present. Even if Paul did that to us tonight and gave us some, quote, new revelation, we should not believe it if it's not in exact accordance with scripture. Even if an angel showed up, Paul says, in fact, even harder, not that we should just not believe it, but he would be accursed, cut off from Christ if he preached a different gospel. So we have to submit everything, private visions, private judgments, counsels and creeds, all to scripture. We are required not to believe things that don't accord with God's word. Now, interestingly, This teaching can be abused. It can be twisted, especially in our post-enlightenment individualistic age. It can be very, very easily twisted because we don't like authority. You know, especially in America, we're built on rugged individualism. You know, why do we need some other authority over us? There's this me and my Bible, no creed but the Bible mentality in a lot of our American churches. So it can be twisted because the divines did not say our interpretation of scripture. My personal interpretation of scripture is a supreme judge of all controversies. No, what it said was scripture itself is the supreme judge of all controversies. So we on one hand need to take the words of all human beings with the understanding that they could err no matter how holy they were. They could lead us astray. But we have to include ourselves in that category, too. We could err. And remember, there is safety in a multitude of counselors. If I'm reading something that John Calvin, for instance, said or did or wrote, and I don't agree with it, I'm not saying I should believe him because he's John Calvin. full stop, you know, bar none. But knowing myself, I feel like it's just statistically more likely that I'm the one in error over Calvin. You understand? You know, we can't elevate because we know that other men can err. We can't therefore elevate our own interpretation above them and use that as an excuse. We're still required to submit to the authorities God has put over us in general, parents, ministers, other authorities outside of the theological sphere, obviously, government authorities, employment authorities. We need to receive, regarding our doctrine, the teaching of the church with all reverence and godly fear, but we also need to do it as the Bereans did, who were very noble because they examined what Paul said to ensure it was in accord with the scriptures. Now, I don't think they were sitting there with their Old Testament scrolls, like checking every word he said, like, I'm not gonna believe you till I find it. But they had a spirit of submitting all things to the written word. And that's the spirit that we need to have. Judging all church teaching by that standard. All our thoughts about God, all our feelings about what's right and wrong, all of our education, all of our reading, everything, everything must be submitted to God's word. And this should be an enormous comfort to us, a weight off our shoulders, in fact, that we don't up here in our minds have to figure everything out perfectly on our own. There is an objective, unchanging standard that we can point to and say, there it is right there. This is it, the word of God. That's the truth, that's the standard. Let's figure out how we can conform to this best. So that's the end of chapter one. Any questions on anything from last week that has been a burning question or anything we just went over? All right, all right. So let's go to chapter two of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and I will read us paragraph one of chapter two here. So chapter two is entitled, Of God and of the Holy Trinity. This is paragraph one. There is but one only living and true God who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal. incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory, most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, the rewarder of them that diligently seek him, and with all most just and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty." What a powerful paragraph on who God is. Now, we're not going to go through the entire confession of faith as slowly as we'll probably go through chapter two. This is a great foundational paragraph. Well, it's three paragraphs, I believe, but it's a great foundational chapter on who God is with so many things listed. This list that I just read really could serve as like a table of contents for a massive theology textbook on the doctrine of God. So needless to say, we won't make it through the entire list tonight. No one will ever accuse me of rushing through things here in the pulpit, I don't think. But we'll make some progress and hopefully learn a lot about our wonderful Lord that will draw us to worship him more deeply through this knowledge. So chapter two here, the confession begins by asserting that there is but one only living and true God. This is just such a key and foundational message that I know all of us in this room already believe, but it's so important that we receive this wholeheartedly in scripture. There is only one God. God is one, he is not many. The central confession of faith of our old covenant brothers and sisters, which I mentioned last Lord's Day, is hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. As Jesus would say, I and the Father are one. Or as the Apostle John says in his remarks on the Trinity, he said, there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. Not these three are three, these three are one. We serve only one God. So this is foundational. There are a lot of things, church, that you can get wrong in your theology and still go to heaven, still be a godly man or woman, still even be a good teacher or theologian. There are many things that you can be not quite right on, but this one you cannot get wrong. This is essential. There is only one God and he is true and he is living. He's a living God. He's a personal God. He's not just a mere higher power or some impersonal force, or as some of our more enlightenment-informed forefathers believed, a kind of distant deistic watchmaker type who, yes, he in a sense personally created things and set things in motion, but then he stepped back and had no contact or intimacy with the world. That's not the case at all. He's an intimate, personal, true God. And while there are several other gods, quote, mentioned in Scripture, the Bible is clear that all of these are false gods. And the confession here echoes Scripture in saying that our God is the true God. This is evidenced over and over throughout the Bible. You can think of the idol of the false god Dagon, whom the Philistines worshipped, which God calls this idol, this false god, who had no power within himself. God caused him to bow down before the Ark of the Covenant to show that even the false gods at just the wish and command of our Lord, bow down to him. It's amazing. Or how Elijah called on God to send the fire from heaven to consume the sacrifice on the altar, even though all those buckets and buckets and buckets of water had been poured all over and totally drenched the sacrifice. But Elijah called on God to prove that he was the one true living God. And God sent the fire. He sent the fire directly from heaven. It consumed the whole sacrifice. It even consumed the rocks. a fire that can burn up rocks, licked up all the water. This was of course to show that the false God, Baal, was no God at all. Elijah is mocking Baal and just giving them all the time in the world they need. Maybe Baal's in the bathroom, maybe Baal's busy or off on a journey somewhere. But he's doing this to show that in contrast to this false God that people believed in, that Yahweh was the one true living God. The other God wasn't even real. In fact, in the New Testament, one of the things that gets Paul in trouble with the pagan authorities is that he claimed that idols made with human hands are no gods at all. This was a catastrophe, publicly speaking. How could someone claim that these aren't gods that we've been worshipping all this time? And of course, Paul is just speaking the truth here, that these idols that are made with human hands, how could a human make a god? It doesn't make any sense. There are many people today, you know, we in our Western somewhat Christianized world think, well, people don't worship literal physical idols anymore, but oh, they do. They do where Elizabeth and I used to live. There was a huge Indian population where we lived and there were Indian temples and they worshiped these little figurines that they made with their own hands and then claimed that these figurines are the ones that made them. It's absurd. Now, it's possible and likely that some of these false gods, whether the ones believed in today or the ones believed in in the Bible, it's possible that some of them are real, but they're not real gods. They might be real demons. They might be real wicked spirits, but they are certainly not gods. God is in a class all by himself. He is in a category of his own far above all rule and dominion in every created thing and above every vain imagination that we could come up with in our sinful hearts and minds. God is unique. He is God and there is no other. And then the confession here in chapter two, paragraph one continues by describing by describing the attributes of the one true and living God. First, he is infinite in being and perfection. This means that God's being has no limits. All created things, men, angels, plants, animals, we all have many limitations in our being. God does not. One big thing this means is that God is everywhere, everywhere. There's no place that we can go in heaven or on earth that we can hide from God's presence. He's everywhere. And He's infinite in His perfection too, not just His being. That means He's perfect in every respect. In His holiness, God is infinitely perfect. In His purity, God is infinitely perfect. In His omniscience, He's infinitely perfect. He's higher than the highest, attainment than any other creature could ever make in any of these aspects. He's so perfect that it is impossible to quantify, meaning you can't put an exact numerical value on how amazing and wonderful our God is. He's higher than anything we could ever conceive. Now, one thing that's hard for us to understand is the concept of infinity. We've been trying to explain this to our children lately, and maybe some of the other children have thought about this before. Like, well, what number is infinity? Or can you do infinity plus one? No, because infinity is not a number. Infinity just means it never ends and you could always keep going and you could never reach the end of infinity. That's like God. You're never, no matter, we're going to be in heaven and the new heavens and new earth for hundreds of trillions of years. We'll never reach the end of God. We'll never stop and think, well, now I've got it all figured out. I understand God completely. We'll never get there. because he is infinite. He's amazing and wonderful, higher than anything that we could even ever conceive. Then the confession says that God is a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions. And this might be a little confusing with us. I'll start at the end of that clause and then we'll work our way back. What does it mean that God is without passions? Certainly God can feel, right? God can love, God can have affection. We know that's absolutely true, the Bible is clear. But what does it mean that he's without passions? Where the, you know, divine's wrong on this one. I think that this word here, this phrase is a difficult part of the confession for us to understand because of a couple of things, the passage of time, since the confession was written and the way that language has changed since then. That's really the only reason that I don't use the King James Version of the Bible is it's 400 years old. And some of the words that's used in there, we use in a totally different sense today. So that's one thing going on here. Also, the way our passions understood in our cultural moment, there's this just supposed high and noble and pure-ness to empathy and feelings and romance and, you know, passion for us is something that's so important in our culture, that you'd be passionate about things. And so it sounds strange for us to say that God doesn't have that. What do you mean? God doesn't care about anything? God's aloof? Well, of course that's not what the confession means. What the Westminster divines mean here is that God does not have a changing human nature. Now, how do we get that from passion? Well, to show how we use the word passions differently today than they did 400 years ago, we're just gonna look at a couple different passages of scripture in the King James Version, and then compare them to the ESV. You could compare them to anything, the NIV, the NASV. I mean, they're all gonna say pretty much the same thing, a modern version, whereas the King James Version, which was written three decades before the divines met, so it's how they talked, is gonna say it like this. So in the KJV, James 5.17 says this, Elias, or Elijah, Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are. Well, the ESV of that exact same verse says, Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. Very different. Same meaning, but very different sounding word. Or in the proof text, the specific proof text that the Westminster Assembly cited for their comment on God being without passions here, Acts 14 verses 11 and 15, the KJV says this, and when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices saying in the speech of Lyconia, the gods are come down to us in the likeness of men. What they're saying is these people, the Lycanians, thought that Paul and Barnabas were gods themselves because of the healing wonders that God had done through them. They thought Zeus and Hermes are here. That's what they literally thought. But then Paul and Barnabas reply like this. Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you. Now that's the King James Version. The ESV says this in response. Paul and Barnabas say, men, why are you doing these things? We also are men of like nature with you. So every time a modern version. translates the Greek that the KGB translators would say passions, the modern version tends to say nature. So when the confession says that God is without passions, what it means is, it's a subset of that first thing that it said about God here in this clause, that God is a most pure spirit. God is the most pure spirit. Therefore, he doesn't have body parts or passions and he's invisible. God is not a body soul composite like we are. He's not subject to all the things that our human nature are subject to. He's not subject to changing. He's not subject to being driven by his feelings apart from sense and apart from his divine will. He's not subject to mood swings. He does not have a body. Our bodies affect how we think and feel and act. It's not like we are just, you know, shells walking around with a brain or a heart, just pure feeling, that we're just pure feelings all the time. No, but our body and our spiritual elements and our physical elements work together to make us who we are. God is different. God doesn't have a body. Rather, God's not different, we're different. We're different from God. So that's kind of what it means about passions is God does not have a human nature. He's not subject to a changing, fickle human nature like we are. And related to this note about passions, the confession also says that God is without parts. Also an interesting phrase for us, one we might not immediately understand. Strange as it is to our ears, theologians have long held that God is a simple, Being, that's what the confession is meaning here. God is simple and we are complex. Now, doesn't that sound strange? If we're putting us and God next to each other, God's the one that's simple and we're the ones that are complex. That's interesting. Does it sound odd to you? You can raise your hand if it sounds odd to you. We're gonna dive in a little bit here. We affirm along with the confession that God is infinite and that he is incomprehensible, but he's also simple. Think about it. We are complex because what complex means is made up of a bunch of different parts. That's what complex means. We're made up of a bunch of different things. We are, like I said, both physical and spiritual. God's the most pure spirit. Purity refers to not having a lot of admixture and things just put into the pot. He is pure. We have hearts and skin and brains and feet and eyelashes and fingernails and lungs and kneecaps and gallbladders and so on and so forth. God's not like that. God's not up there on his throne with a bunch of different billions and billions of parts all pushed together that change over time and regenerate themselves and do all kinds of things like that. God's not like that. God has no parts. You can, in fact, take some of our parts out completely, like faith is gonna learn soon. You can take our tonsils out and after about 14 days, you have a pretty similar life to you had before. You can take out a kidney or some of your liver or a gallbladder or a finger or All kinds of things. You can just take out appendixes and take off a limb sometimes even. And oftentimes you can do all these things with very little or no change in the long run to how you live your lives. But you can't take any part out of God because God doesn't have parts. He's one. Remember that first point. He is one. He's not many, he's one. He isn't made up of a bunch of different things. Everything about God, any way we could describe God, any facet we could look at God through is God. It's all God. He is one united whole. He's infinite in his being. It's not like maybe some of our kids have heard that rhyme before about what people are made of. Sugar and spice and everything nice. That's what little girls are made of. Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails, that's what little boys are made of. God's not like that. Little boys and girls aren't really like that either, of course, but God isn't like that. He's not a mixture of even the good things, like all these attributes. We could read a list of these attributes and make a mistake of thinking, ah, we wouldn't say this, but maybe our minds can default to, well, sure, he's 20% holiness and 30% omniscience and 5% righteousness. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. All of God is holiness. All of God is righteousness. All of God is purity. And you can't part it out in any way, shape or form. I don't know that it's like logically correct and it sounds mathematically strange, but you could kind of say like God's a hundred percent of all of it. Like all of God is all of these attributes. He's infinite in his being and therefore he's simple in his being. And then finally, I think we might just have to, um, Slow it down here, and I don't know how much of this we'll get to. We'll try to get to a little more here. But related to God being a most pure spirit without parts or passions, we also must recognize that he is invisible. He is without a body. Now, there are places in scripture where it does describe God with bodily terms. It's really strange to think about this in light of the hurricane that we just experienced, but I can remember very vividly, and I've been thinking about this over the past week and a half, several years ago, I was riding on a boat across Lake Lure, and the scripture came to my mind about how God measured out the waters of the earth in the hollow of his hand. I remember thinking to myself, what an enormous hand. I was just looking out at the water and thinking like how big a milk gallon is and thinking how many of those could I fit if I stacked them all in this just enormously massive lake. It could be like, I don't even know, millions or maybe even billions of gallons. And then to think this is one tiny lake that doesn't even show up on a map of the world. Think about all the waters in the world that God measured out all these waters in the hollow of his hand, some hand he must have. Or think about how Jesus himself said when he's being tempted by Satan in the wilderness. Satan says, if you're really the son of God, command these stones be made bread. And Jesus responds, man must not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. So we see in scripture, even our Lord himself describes God as having body parts. God has hands, God has a mouth, God has nostrils, it says elsewhere there. examples in scripture, but none of these mean that God has a literal body like we have bodies. Instead, what the Bible is trying to tell us when it used that type of language is that God has chosen to communicate to us in a way that we can understand and relate to. He has stepped down to our level and he has chosen to communicate in ways that make sense to our feeble minds. We know that you can pick up things with your hand. So we instinctively have a good picture of God's creative and providential care when we think of him measuring out water in his hand. We know that mouths are used to eat and to speak. So we can imagine God speaking through a mouth, that words coming out of his mouth. It makes sense to us, but it doesn't mean that God has a body like us. Several weeks ago, we went through John four on our Sunday mornings. And one of the things that remember Jesus says to the woman at the well, when she has some questions about worship and the difference between Jews and Samaritans, one of the things Jesus says that God is a spirit. God is a spirit. And later Jesus would even go on to say that a spirit does not have flesh and bones. God's a spirit and a spirit does not have flesh and bone. So even the Bible, even though it refers to the hand of God or the face of God, like when talking with Moses, it's also very clear that God does not have a body in the same way that we have bodies. And as God is a spirit and does not have a body, Of course, we can understand, therefore, that God is invisible. One of our hymns that we sing begins by saying, immortal, invisible, God only wise. Enlightened, accessible, hid from our eyes. He's invisible. That's not just fancy songwriting. That actually is almost a direct quotation from 1 Timothy 1. Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God be honor and glory forever and ever, amen. Or as one of the catechism questions that we've taught our children asks, can you see God? The answer is no, I cannot see God, but he always sees me. So the Bible in many places tells us that God is invisible. In fact, in Colossians, Paul says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. an image of something that's invisible. And God's invisibility is probably one of the easiest parts of the doctrine of God for us to understand instinctively. It's just something I think that we kind of get without having to have it explained to us. But when we sit back and reflect on it, it's amazing. this powerful being we can't even see with our eyes. But praise God we can see him with the eyes of faith, as we're seeking to do on these Wednesday night meetings. That's what we're here for, to see God through the eyes of faith that our fathers saw him through. Now, like I said, I think, I know we're making slow progress, but I think we'll stop right there in the confession. But in closing, I did wanna read something from scripture to us, because I think it just is a great cap off to that phrase that we were working through about God being invisible and God being one. I'm gonna read us Hebrews 11. This touches, I mean, we're going through a document that's almost 400 years old. But Hebrews 11 is great because it reminds us that even though these saints are dead, they speak to us today. That God uses a great cloud of witnesses to teach us about who he is. And of course, the topic of Hebrews 11 is faith being what allows us to see that which is invisible. So I'm just gonna close this out by reading this chapter here. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, for by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and through it he being dead still speaks. My faith, Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death and was not found because God had taken him. For before he was taken, he had this testimony that he pleased God. But without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. My faith, Noah being divinely warned of things not seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going. By faith, he dwelt in the land of promises in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. By faith, Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, And she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged him faithful who had promised. Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead were born as many as the stars of the sky in multitude, innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly, if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire better. That is a heavenly country. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, in Isaac your seed shall be called, concluding that God was able to raise him up even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense. By faith, Isaac blessed Jacob, and he saw concerning things to come. By faith, Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshipped, leaning on the top of his staff. By faith, Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave commandment concerning his bones. By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child, and they were not afraid of the king's command. By faith, Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ's greater riches than all the treasures in Egypt, for he looked to the reward. By faith, he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. We'll stop there. Moses endured by seeing Him who is invisible. And that is a good thing for us to remember.