We'll go ahead and get started. We're in Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 2 tonight. Chapter 2. And this will probably wind up being a two-part lesson because there's just so much here. We're going to try and get through the first two sections of Chapter 2 tonight. So we'll try and cover, or at least touch on, Sections 1 and 2, and then we'll finish Sections 1 and 2 up in two weeks. because we're missing next week due to the Reformation party. So Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 2, deals with the doctrine of God. This is called, in some circles, theology proper. There are several different schools of theology. There's the school of Soteriology, those are the doctrines of salvation, how we are saved. There's Hamartology, which is the doctrine of sin, what sin is. There's Anthropology, you all know what that is, the doctrine, the study of man. Theology proper would be the doctrine of God, the study of God as to himself. And I have two disclaimers that I want to put out there for you guys before we jump into this really important subject. One is obviously there is so much more that could be said than we have time to say. I was talking with Bob Anderson earlier today and I was like, we could spend, we're not going to do this, but we could, spend the rest of the year, each Wednesday night, just going one by one through all the attributes of God that are listed here, and there would actually be a lot of profit for us in doing that. We're not going to do that, but just so you know, this is just introductory stuff. This is just scratching the surface. Also, all that we're going to cover tonight and in our next study, going through these attributes, apply to all three members of the Trinity. So the mistake that some people will fall into is they'll hear about God's justice, and they'll say, all right, well, that's the Father. And then they'll hear about God's love, and they'll say, well, that's the Son. And then, no, these are for all three members of the Godhead. There is one God, and these attributes are about Him properly, and they would apply equally to all three and it's important how we think about God because how we think about God will impact necessarily how we think about absolutely everything else in life. While I was on vacation I had the chance to run into a man and he asked me what I did for a living and I told him I was training to be a pastor and I was working with youth in the ministry and he commended me for that and we got to talking about theology and I asked what his religious background was and he is a Mainline which is to say a liberal Roman Catholic So what I'm about to tell you what he believes is not really representative of what the Roman Catholic Church would properly believe but for him The important thing to know about God is that he is the creator That's true. That is a very important thing to know about God But then you ask him, well, is he just? Is he righteous? Is he holy? Does he care about sin? Nope. Just need to know he's the creator. And because that's all that's important in this guy's conception of God, everything is okay. Everything is fine. What you want to do is good for you. And what I want to do is good for me. And we're all fine. I could scarcely think of a more terrifying way to view the world than You turn on the news or you go online and you see that we live in a world where people are harming each other or killing each other every day. And according to this guy's view of God, it's all fine. No, God does care about these things. How we view God affects how we view everything. One other thing I want us to see, just to kind of get our minds in the right gears. Go ahead, if you've got your Bible, and flip to Genesis chapter 1. Genesis chapter 1. I'm just going to read the opening verses here. Genesis chapter 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void. And darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light. And there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day." There are two things that I want to see about God from this text as we consider our study of theology properly. But let me before I get to my two things that I want to hit on Just from looking at Genesis 1 1 to 5 What are some implications about God that you would derive from these verses anybody He's powerful good for All-knowing, how do you get that from there? You're it's true. I It's good. He's the source of all things. He created all things. Therefore, he knows them all. Very good. What else? Yeah, Cameron. It looks like he likes order. He likes order. Yeah, that's very good. That happens to be why Presbyterians love things decently and in good order. We're just following the pattern of our Maker. Frances. He's omnipresent, so because he's the one who was creating things, he was before creation. Yeah. Also eternal, too. Very good. And another word we could use to describe that and what you're hitting on, he is transcendent. He is alone outside of creation. Yeah, James? He's eternal. He's eternal. Yeah, he predates creation right in the beginning. God was already there. Very good. Frances is accusing you of stealing her answer. I don't think that's the case. I may have forgotten what she said. We won't press too far into that. But what we see here that he alone exists outside of creation. He is altogether different. Hanuel, what do you think from these verses? I don't know. I agree that he's powerful. Okay. Do you see anything else that might be there? I'm not really sure. Okay. Fair enough. Another thing to take into account is that he isn't just outside of creation, but to take what Camden said and say it a slightly different way, he's actively involved with creation, right? He's ordering it, to use your word. He's arranging it. That is to say that he is not only transcendent as relates to his creation, but he's also intimate or imminent. He is closely associated and closely involved with it. And those two categories are important to keep in mind when we talk about God because they will keep us out of the two ditches that most people will tend to fall into when we study God. One is to say, God is so big, He is so transcendent, that He is completely unknowable. And therefore this study is not worthwhile, because you could never know God. Because He is so unique, He is so outside of everything. And you see how they take a true premise, and they over-apply it. Because the other ditch that people can fall into is to say, no, he is so eminent, he is so involved with his creation, he has given us his word, therefore we can know everything about God. That's the one that Reformed theologians are more susceptible to fall into. We've got our neat little theological boxes for everything, and God fits here. Both of those are wrong. Rather, I want to tell us that while there are things that we can know about God, We can never know God fully. I'm pretty sure, maybe not every one of you, but I've taken most of you to Ridge Haven. And there's a waterfall that we like to go to. Now imagine if we had gone to that waterfall, and you had an empty bottle with you, and you stuck it out, and you filled it up with water. And then you took it back home, And you gave that water bottle to someone who had never seen a waterfall before in their life. There are certain things that they could understand about that waterfall just from the bottle itself. They could know that the water's very cold. They could have an idea of what it tastes like. I hear it's not good. But they could understand several things. But no matter how violently you shake that bottle to get the water out, They will never really understand what a waterfall is if they haven't experienced it themselves. Does that make sense? There are things that we can understand about God, though we will never grasp Him fully. And so we need to understand that God is always going to be bigger than what we can say here. And so finally then, without further ado, we will get into Confession of Faith, Chapter 2. And we're just gonna talk about two big concepts that are in these opening paragraphs tonight and maybe answer one question and then we'll be done. So Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter two, paragraph one. This is, if you're using the Trinity Psalter, hymnal page 921. And I'll just read them both, all right? 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. Terrible there meaning almost violent, decisive. Strong. Hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty. And the next paragraph says, God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness in and of himself, and is alone in and unto himself all sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them. but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them. He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things, and hath most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them, whatsoever himself pleaseth. In his sight all things are open and manifest. His knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature, so as nothing is to him contingent or uncertain. He is most holy in all his counsels, in all his works, and in all his commands. To him is due from angels and men, and every other creature whatsoever worship, service, or obedience, he is pleased to require of them. And again, that's addressing Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. That's the whole trinity. All of those attributes, all of those qualities apply to both of them. And we're just gonna look at two kind of themes that are in each of those paragraphs. We're going to save the first one for second, because I actually have a video from Kevin D. Young that explains this concept of divine simplicity better than I could. I could have printed off the manuscript and just read it for you, but I thought seeing the video would probably be more enjoyable for y'all. So we're gonna look at, rather, this category that's really spelled out for us in paragraph two first, and it's called aseity. Does anybody know what that means by chance? Has anyone ever heard God, the aseity of God described? Okay. What it means is that God alone is self-existent. He is self-sustaining, right? I don't think I'm breaking ground to anyone here. You didn't make yourself, right? You all came from somewhere, right? And more than that, you do not sustain yourself. You eat three meals a day, two meals a day, whatever, and you drink plenty of water, and you exercise, and you get sleep, because your body needs those things. You need other things to sustain you. God is not like that. God does not need anybody or anything. He is in and of himself all sufficient. And I want to show you where that comes from in scripture and then ask how that understanding of God might change the way you think about things. So flip over in your Bible to Exodus chapter three, Exodus chapter 3, and this is God revealing himself for the very first time to Moses, the great prophet of the Old Covenant, the Old Testament. And would somebody please read for us Exodus chapter 3, verses 1 through 5. Go ahead, 6. Finish the paragraph. Exodus chapter 3, 1 to 6. Mr. Johnson. Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father, Mohamed, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned. When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, Moses, Moses, and he said, here I am. Then he said, do not come near, take your singles off your feet, the place on which you are standing is holy ground. And he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. Thank you. All right. What is it that catches Moses' eye in this passage? The burning bush that wasn't consumed. The burning bush that wasn't consumed. All right. Opal, what's weird about a burning bush not being consumed. A flame would normally destroy what it's burning. What does the fact that this flame is not consuming the bush tell you about its relationship to the bush? It doesn't need it. The flame is sustaining itself. It is giving itself life. It doesn't need the bush. It's manifest there, but it does not need it. This is the picture of aseity. This is something that God, in his first revelation of himself to Moses, wants Moses to get. I'm going to work through you to deliver my people from Egypt, but I do not need you. This is not about you. This is about me. Gerhardus Voss, who's my favorite theologian, says, later in this passage, we know that Moses asks the Lord to say, when I go to the people of Israel, and they ask me who sent me, who should I say that you are? Who should I say that you are? And he says what? I am that I am. Which, I'll go ahead and write this on the board for you. The divine name of God, Yahweh, is how we pronounce it, is Yod, He, Vav, He. Should be the same letter there. And what's interesting is the Hebrew word for to be is hay yod hay. So he's making a claim based on even his name. His name means to be. His name means I am being. I have all being in and of myself. That is who I am. That is who you are to tell the people of Israel sent you. Gerhardus Voss says of this name, that it is a covenant name that signifies self-existence. And John Calvin would add, nothing is more characteristic of God than existence of himself. That is to say that he exists by his own, by his own decree, by his own power, by his own self, he exists. So how might that change the way that we Look at things in life. How would that change? How should that affect our relationship to God? How so? It absolutely should humble us, but how? Yeah. God doesn't need me so that you guys might learn the scriptures. He's using me in that way. But He does not need me. God did not need to redeem us from our sin, and yet He freely chose to. All of God's grace to you is not to get something from you. It is because He desired to do it because that's who He is. It's an expression of who He is. He is sufficient in and of Himself. so that when he commands us to give him praise, honor, and glory, it's not because he needs praise, honor, and glory from us. It is because it is good for us to do that. It's because it is good for us to be in right relation to our maker. So with the time we have left, we'll look back at this idea of simplicity, and I'm just gonna play this video from Dr. D. Young, and then we'll talk about it after. We all believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that there is a single and simple spiritual being whom we call God. That's the first line from the Belgic Confession 1561, one of the earliest and longest lasting confessions to come out of the Reformation. Notice those three words about God. God is a single being, meaning there is only one God. He is a spiritual being, that is, he's not a material substance, he doesn't have a body. And God is a simple being. That's the tough one. What does that mean? The doctrine of simplicity is a classic doctrine of the Christian faith, which most Christians today have never heard of. By simple, we do not mean that God is slow or dim-witted. We don't mean that God is easy to understand. Simple, as a divine attribute, is the opposite of compound. The simplicity of God means God is not made up of things. He doesn't have parts, like a Lego tower. He isn't a kitchen recipe with lots of ingredients. Simplicity means we should not think of God as what you get when you combine goodness, and mercy, and justice, and power, and infinity, and immutability, and roll them all together into one divine being. That would make God the sum of his attributes, and each attribute would be a percentage of God. And then we might rank some attributes higher than others, and certain attributes would be more essential to God than others. Have you ever had someone say, God has justice, he has holiness, but God is love. The implication being, love is the very nature of God, but those other qualities are somewhat incidental to his character. But that's not what God is like. The statement, God is love, 1 John 4, 8, is wonderful good news, but it does not carry more metaphysical weight than saying God is light, 1 John 1, 5. God is spirit, John 4, 24. God is a consuming fire, Hebrews 12, 29. For that matter, more weight than any other biblical statement about God's character, whether that statement has the word is in it or not. Here's the point. God does not just have some attributes. God is whatever he has. Every attribute of God is identical with his essence. There is no attribute that attaches to him like a barnacle on a ship. He's not a jigsaw puzzle of divine properties. He's not a ball of duct tape with lots of attributes stuck to him. The doctrine of divine simplicity matters because it helps us think about God in the right way. We should not first conceive of a class of beings we call God and then relate certain attributes to this particular God. God is in a class by himself. He is not a type of divine being like a giraffe is a type of mammal. The theologian Hermann Bavink once remarked that if God were composed of parts, like a body, or composed of genus and species, or composed of potential realities and actual realities, then God's perfection, oneness, independence, and immutability could not be maintained. In other words, there is only one God. There is only one way to be God, and everything about this one God is absolutely essential to being God. That's why we ought to believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that God is simple. And anybody that wants to check that out again, just YouTube search Divine Simplicity, Kevin D. Young, and it'll pop right up. I'm going to go on a limb and guess that no one here has ever heard of Divine Simplicity before. Did we understand, in some sense, what D. Young said? Not that. What, if, try and put it into your own words, what is he saying when he talks about divine simplicity? Sorry to put you on the spot, but we're already here now. Well, God is certain things, but he has attributes of other things. Okay. So like God is love, but he has attributes of like mercy and justice and everything. Okay. That's true. Francis? He doesn't have attributes. It is his essence. So he's not a sum of things, but it's in his essence. Okay. He's not a sum of things. What do you mean by that? So like, when, I guess for us, when you say something has shown mercy, right. That's not mercy. Isn't there like essence and it doesn't come from there. They're just displaying it while with God, mercy is their essence. Right. Very good. I saw James first and then I'll come to you on it. Because God is like the origin of all the attributes. If, If his character is like another attribute, it would mean that that attribute came first and didn't come because of him. That's very spot on, very insightful. What he's saying there is, to use slightly different language, when we read in the confession that God is most just, most loving, most holy, all those mosts, What they're not saying is that there's like this standard of righteousness. And of all the righteous beings that there are, God is the most righteous. That's not it. Rather, God is the standard of righteousness. God is the standard of love. God is the standard of mercy. God is the standard of all those things by which they are to be measured. Does that make sense? God is not combined into all of those things, or not a combination of all those things. He is all of those things. Anya, did... I was just going to say that one way that I've heard about it is instead of saying love plus mercy plus justice plus all those things, instead of adding them to equal God, start with This is God, and these are the descriptions of Him. Right. Yeah. Very good. This is God, and then these are all the ways that we can describe Him, or relate to Him, or understand Him. But it's God that we're talking about. And one other thing that was mentioned in there that I just want to address. If we took away one of those attributes, say for example, mercy, just to pick one at random. Because that is of the essence of who God is, if we take that out of the equation, we are no longer talking about God. Does that make sense? Because he is not something that you added together, but rather, these attributes you might think of as, these are ways that we understand how he acts in certain situations, is one way to think about it. These are big categories. How might the idea of divine simplicity affect how we think about God and affect how we think about the world. Something I said? We'll just think about that this week, but we'll go ahead and end there. Let me pray for us. God in heaven, we give you honor and praise for who you are, that you are the alone perfect being and that you have called us to know you. We pray Lord that you would bless our study of these doctrines over the next couple of weeks, that we would, come to grow in an appreciation for you. We ask this in Christ's name, amen.