If you would, please turn in your copy of the scriptures to the book of 1st Timothy. The book of 1st Timothy and chapter 6. 1st Timothy and chapter 6. And we're going to begin reading in verse 11. 1 Timothy chapter 6, beginning in verse 11. This is the word of the Lord. But thou, O man of God, flee these things, and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. Fight the good fight of faith. Lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses. I give thee charge in the sight of God. who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession, that thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which in his times he shall show, who is the blessed and only potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen nor can see, to whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen. Thus ends the reading of God's holy inspired word. Let us go to him now in prayer. Oh, Father, we come to you through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and we thank you for the responsibility and the privilege of worshiping you this Lord's Day morning. God, we ask that you would open this word unto us, that it would be unto us as sweet as honey, that it would be a mirror that would reveal our sins, that it would be a sword that would cut us to the heart, that through the reading and the preaching of your words, you would show us something of Jesus Christ, and that we would be changed more and more into his image. For we ask this in his name. Amen. A. W. Tozer, in his classic work, The Knowledge of the Holy, made a very profound and startling statement. He said, what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. What comes into your minds when you think about God? I think for a lot of people, especially in the broader evangelical church, when they think about God, they think of the man upstairs. They think of a permissive grandfather, a casual friend, a good luck charm, something to keep handy when things get rough, an easy button to press when bad things happen, a spiritual Band-Aid to apply to felt needs. an automatic dispenser of cheap grace. Ultimately, for a number of Christians today, God is really just a projection of their own desires. He is made in the image of man. And the sad thing is is that even for us in good, solid, reformed churches, as Calvin says, that idle factory of our hearts is always tempting us to try to craft and manufacture God in some way other than He has revealed in His word. And so there's a great temptation for us all to have a view of God that is too low, that is too weak, that is too shallow, that is not worthy of Him. As one author put it, your God is too small. But that is why God has given us passages like 1 Timothy 6 verses 15 and 16. Here we see Paul coming to the conclusion of a charge to Timothy to keep the faith, to hold fast, and he gets to that doctrine of the return of Christ in glory by the Father, and he's so overwhelmed with the truth that he can't help himself, but he bursts into praise. He bursts into praises. His theology becomes doxology. Here, in these couple verses, we behold the majesty of the triune God as represented by the Father. We behold a God, not of human imagination, but the God of the Bible. We see here language that sets God apart, that puts him in a category all by himself. Notice the words of exclusion and negation. It says, no man, no man, only, Only these words set God apart They testify that he alone is God and beside him there is no other When we come face to face with the God of the Bible, the only proper response is what it's what we've been doing all morning worship As one author put it, reflecting back to God the radiance of his worth, ascribing to God the honor due his name. So I want us this morning to think about it. If you are struggling with a view of God that is too low, too small, too weak, too impoverished, then the word of the Lord to you this morning is this. You must worship the Lord. because of who he is. You must worship the Lord because of who he is. You must worship God because he is God. And so this morning I want us to explore this theme of worshiping God by looking at three attributes. Three attributes of God in this text that drive us, that call us, that compel us to worship him and him alone. Quite simply, first we'll look at God's sovereignty, then second we'll look at his eternity, and then finally his invisibility. Three attributes that drive us to worship. First, you must worship the Lord because he is sovereign. The Lord is sovereign. He is the great king. If you look at our text in verse 15, it says, who is the blessed and only potentate, the king of kings and lord of lords. Now that word potentate, at least for me, isn't a word that I use every day. But it has the basic idea of a monarch, a ruler, a sovereign, a king. The word that is used there, that's translated as potentate, is related to our English word for dynasty. So it has an idea of power, authority, control, royalty. God is sovereign. And we know from the scriptures that he is sovereign in two ways. He is sovereign as creator, and he is sovereign as redeemer. Notice first that God is sovereign as creator. This is what theologians call God's essential kingdom, or the kingdom of power. We know in the very beginning, one of the first verses in the Bible, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. God made everything that we see. And because he made everything, he owns everything. And because he owns everything, he has the right as Lord to control everything. God is sovereign as creator. He established his kingdom in creation and he upholds it by providence. For we know that in creation, what happened? The father spoke the world into existence through the word while the spirit hovered over the face of the waters. And in Providence, the Father preserves and governs all things through his word, while the Spirit renews the face of the earth. The triune God is sovereign. We see this in Jeremiah 10.10, where it says, for the Lord is the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting king. Or Psalm 103, the Lord has prepared his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom ruleth over all. He ruleth over all, not just some things, not just big things, all things, even down to the minutest and smallest of details. We have that beautiful statement by our Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 10, where he says, there are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and one of them shall not fall to the ground without your heavenly Father. This extends not just to good things. We know from our confession that God is not the author of evil, and yet he ordains and orchestrates even evil things to his own glory. Perhaps the greatest example is the life of Joseph, where in Genesis 50, what does he say? But as for you, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it for good. God is sovereign over even evil things, small things, everything. He ruleth over all. You almost can make an umbrella statement out of Ephesians 1.11, where it says, he worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. Or as R.C. Sproul puts it, if God is sovereign, then there are no maverick molecules. There are no Adams out there doing their own thing. Everything is sustained and governed by our creator, sovereign king. But there is a second dimension to God's rule. Not only is he sovereign as creator, and we should worship him for that, but he's also sovereign as redeemer. This is what theologians call God's mediatorial kingdom, or the kingdoms of grace and glory. And this really takes us all the way back to the beginning. In the Garden of Eden, what did God do? He commissioned Adam to rule and to subdue, to have dominion over the face of the earth, to extend the borders of Eden till it covered the whole planet. But Adam failed, and he was exiled from the garden. But God wasn't finished. In his grace, in his mercy, he called a nation, Israel, to be a kingdom of priests. And in particular, he made a covenant with the house of David. And he said, David, I will make you to have dominion and dynasty. But what do the kings of Israel do? They failed. They disobeyed. And God exiled not only them, but all of God's people into Babylon. But then finally, In the fullness of time, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born to be king. the Lord Jesus Christ, not simply as the second person of the Trinity, not simply as the agent of creation, but as the God-man, as the Messiah, as the second Adam, as the only Redeemer of God's elect. Jesus is King. Jesus is Lord. Jesus is sovereign as God's Redeemer. And that brings us to an important phrase in verse 15, the title, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And that title is used at least three times in the Old Testament. But in the New Testament, it is used particularly and especially of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Revelation 17, he is called the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. And then in Revelation 19, he is called the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Jesus Christ is King. Where was he born? The royal city of Bethlehem. What did he receive? Kingly gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. He lived every day of his life in accordance with God's royal law. And then he was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, a death that involved a crown of thorns and purple raiment and mockery and a sign that said, Hail Jesus, King of the Jews. The king was dead. But three days later, his father raised him up again and declared him to be the son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead. And then after 40 days, he ascended on high and sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. Jesus Christ, the crucified, the risen, the ascended, the seated savior is king. And there he will rule, for God has said unto him, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. And there he must reign until he delivers that kingdom to the father. And then it will truly be said that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Yes, God is sovereign as creator in his providence. But even now through the gospel preaching, through the discipling of the nations, God is realizing his moral will in time, in space, in history, and Jesus must reign. He must reign until he offers that kingdom back to the father. I think in America, we can struggle with this kingship idea because we love democracy. And we sometimes think of ourselves as rugged individualists and self-made men, rebels without a cause. Frank Sinatra said, I did it my way. But what happens when we come face-to-face with the only potentate, the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings? We are humbled. We are broken. We are shattered. And so I call you, bow before King Jesus. Kiss Him with the kiss of faith. Pay homage to Him. When you bring tithes and offerings, you're bringing royal tributes to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Oh, worship the King. Oh, worship the king. Praise his name. Oh, gratefully sing his power, his love. There's a second attribute I want to call your attention to. You must worship the Lord because he's sovereign. But second, you must worship the Lord because he is eternal. The Lord is eternal. He is the ancient of days. And we see this in a phrase in verse 16 where it says, who only hath immortality. Who only hath immortality. God alone has life in himself. God alone is eternal. And as we look through the scriptures, God's eternal nature has three aspects. First of all, this means that God has no end. The eternal God has no end. God will live forever. As we look out at our cursed and fallen worlds, we see things that wax old and die. We see things that are perishable. things that are frail, things that are here one day and they're gone the next. This has become especially apparent to me as a parent of two young children, and I remember with my wife we were looking at a photo album of our baby pictures, and then I looked over at my son and I thought, wow, he's the same age as I was in that photograph, and I feel like time has just fast-forwarded like crazy. We're all terribly aware that Things change, things die, things pass away, things grow old. But in the midst of all that, God alone hath immortality. God has no ending. He alone has life in himself. But there's a second aspect, and that is that God has no beginning. He not only has no ending, but he has no beginning. It says in Psalm 90 verse 2, before the mountains were brought forth, wherever thou hadst formed, the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. Or Revelation 1.8, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is and which was and which is to come. No ending, no beginning. our eternal God, who alone hath immortality. So we see that God is uniquely uncreated. My children haven't asked this question yet, but I'm waiting for it. When they say, who made God? We often ask them, well, who made you? God. Well, who made God? That curious philosophical question of a child. Well, who made the Lord? And the only answer is no one. the Father eternally unbegotten, the Son eternally begotten of the Father, the Spirit eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son, the triune God who has life in himself, no ending, no beginning. But there's a third aspect, and this one almost blows our minds. God has no succession of moments. no succession of moments. He transcends time itself. In Exodus 3.14, God said unto Moses, I am that I am. And he said, thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you. I am. Not simply I was, or I will be, but I am the eternal God, transcending time itself. Or 2 Peter 3, but beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Or Isaiah 57, 15, he is the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity. You see, what this means is that God not only has the whole world in his hands, But he has all of time in his hands. He has not only the Earth in his hands, the cosmos in his hands, he has all of history in his hands. He, as it were, stands above time, outside of time. He created time. He's not bound by time. He's not bound by clocks and calendars. He transcends time itself. Charles Hodge, in his systematic theology, has a beautiful section, just almost poetic, waxing eloquent on this truth. And he says things such as this, with God there is no yesterday or tomorrow. There is no before and after. With God all times are now. As the great I am, he lives in the eternal now. He transcends time itself. What a God we serve. What a God we worship. What a God we have the privilege to obey. And yet, at least for me, as I think about God's eternal nature, that he is no ending, no beginning, he transcends time itself, it can become easy and tempting to think, well, how can he have any relationship to me? He's high and lifted up. He inhabits eternity, but I am a creature. I am a person of dust. I'm feeble. I'm frail. How can I relate to an eternal God? And if that's causing you to hesitate and to shirk and draw back, think on this truth, that God has done something absolutely marvelous. The eternal God has entered time, has entered history in the person of Jesus Christ. For Christ, the eternal word, entered history. Christ, the immortal God, took on mortal flesh. Christ, who as the Son of God has life in Himself, He died the cursed death of the cross. The incarnation, how in the world can eternal God relate to us in time? We know not how it works, but that it works in the person of Jesus Christ. So worship him for being eternal. Worship him for relating to us in our time, in our frame as creatures. And so for us, I think this truth has a number of practical applications. We live in a world that is very busy, very cluttered. A lot of technology, email updates, text messages. Your calendar might be chock full of different appointments. And in the midst of all that busyness, all this doing of things, it can become easy to lose sight of the simple truth of being still. and knowing that the eternal God is God. So I just want to encourage you as you think about this truth of God being eternal. God transcending time. Take time to get to know him. Take time to worship him every day. Take time to gather your children around the Word of God and to do family worship. Take time every Lord's Day, as we're doing right now, to sing his praises. What a beautiful fact that the Lord has set aside a whole day, sacred time, where we can worship him. Worship the Lord, because he is eternal. But finally, I want to bring us to a third attribute. Yes, God is sovereign, as creator and redeemer. Yes, he is eternal, no beginning, no ending, no succession of moments. But finally, you must worship the Lord, because he is invisible. You must worship the Lord. You must reflect back to him his worth because he is invisible. We cannot gaze upon him. And this is true for a couple of reasons. First of all, God is invisible because he is blindingly glorious, blindingly glorious. We get a hint of that in verse 16 where it says that God dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto. God dwells in unapproachable, inaccessible light. Light that is so bright that it makes him invisible to our eyes. If you're in a dark room and you pull out a candle and you light it, that light opens up and illuminates the whole space. If you go outside and it's dark outside, it's early morning, and then the sun begins to rise, that light from the sun illumines the whole landscape and you can see. But if you take your eyes off of the landscape and you look directly at the sun, what happens? The sun is so bright, it's so luminous, It's so powerful that if you stare at it, it literally blinds you. It burns out your retina. And if that's true of the sun, a created body, how much more so of a God who dwells in light which no man can approach unto. If you were to stare directly at the blindingly glorious God, It would be so majestic in splendor, so luminous in holiness, so bright in magnitude that the sight of him would kill you. It would blind you. It would burn out your retina. God is invisible because he's blindingly glorious. And I want to just read a brief illustration of this from the life of Moses in Exodus 33. In this passage, the Lord has had the golden calf incident. He's killed some of the people. Moses has interceded as a type of Christ. God has relented. But then he says, well, I'm not going to go with you. You can go on ahead, but I'm not going to go personally with you. And Moses pleads with him. In this context, Moses makes a very audacious, very bold request. In Exodus 33, in verse 18, Moses says these words, and he said, I beseech thee, show me by glory. Me, a mere man, yes, but I'm going to call upon you, O Lord, show me your glory. And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee, and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. And he said, thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live. And the Lord said, behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock, and it shall come to pass while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by, and I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see my back parts, but my face shall not be seen. Moses says, show me your glory. God says, I can't do that. No man can see my face and live. But here's what I will do. God in his mercy takes Moses and says, I'm going to put you in the cleft of the rock. I'm going to cover you with my hands. At the last second, as my goodness and glory pass by, I'll remove my hand and you will get a glimmer, a vestige, the edges of my ways. but you cannot see my face and live. And even that glimmer, that vestige, those edges of God's glory were so bright that we know that Moses' face shone and he had to put a veil over it before the people of Israel. God is invisible because he's blindingly glorious. But there's a second reason God is invisible and that is that he is a spirit and has not a body like men. God is invisible because he is a spirit. We get a sense of this in verse 16 where it says, whom no man hath seen nor can see. Now why can't we see God? Because he is a spirit. John 4, 24 says God is a spirit. He is invisible to our eyes. The Westminster Confession puts it this way. God is a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions. He cannot be detected by the largest telescope. He cannot be detected by the smallest microscope. He is a most pure spirit. And from his being a spirit flows the fact that he is invisible. And this is glorious, and we should worship him for it. But at least in my own heart, I struggle at times to worship a God whom I can't see. This is a perfection of God, and I worship him for being invisible. And yet, because I cannot see him with my physical eyes, in my human weakness and in my fallenness, sometimes I struggle. How can I love someone? How can I worship someone whom I can't see? And if you feel that way, and I think many of us do, God has done something absolutely incredible. In the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, the invisible God has become visible to us. Great is the mystery of godliness. God, the invisible God, was manifest in the flesh. scene of angels priests under the gentiles believed on in the world received up into glory jesus christ the eternal son of god was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Surely no man hath seen God at any time, but the only begotten Son, who's in the bosom of the Father. He has declared him. He has exegeted him. We behold the glory of the invisible God in the visible face of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, the brightness of the Father's glory, the radiance of the Father's glory, the express image of his person, the image of the invisible God. In Jesus, we behold the glory of the invisible God in his visible face. But again, you might be thinking, that's true. The incarnation is a fact. God has condescended to make himself visible in Christ. But Jesus isn't here right now. Jesus is seated at the right hand of God the Father in heaven, and I still can't see him. The apostles saw him, they ate with him, they broke bread with him, they spoke with him, but then he left, he ascended. How can I worship Jesus when I can't see him? Now, for Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox people, they break the second commandment to try to see Jesus. They make icons, they make statues, they make pictures, and they idolatrously try to make Jesus visible to them. And that's wrong. There's a better way. There's a better way. How can I see Jesus? I see him by faith in the pages of scripture. Through the lens of scripture, through the eyes of the apostles, by faith, we gaze on the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. By faith, we gaze upon him now. And someday, when he returns, then we will be like him, for we shall see him as he is. We shall behold on that great day the king in his beauty. On that great day, we will be able to testify, as Job did, that I know that my Redeemer liveth. And though worms destroy this body, when I'm raised up again, I know that in my flesh, I shall see God. On that day, not simply by faith, but by sight, When we gaze upon the God-man, we will see the glory of the invisible God in the visible face of Jesus Christ. What a motivation for worship now. What a motivation for holiness now. This glorious truth of Jesus Christ. So I hope from this text, we've seen that God is not the man upstairs. He's not a casual friend. He's not a permissive grandfather. He's not a good luck charm. He's not a genie that we can summon just when we want to. He's not an automatic dispenser of cheap grace. He's not a spiritual band-aid to put on our felt needs. He's not a projection of our own desires. He's not made in our image. No, the God of this text He is God, and there is none besides Him. And when we encounter the God of the Bible, what can we do but worship? That's exactly where Paul takes us. At the end of verse 16, he bursts into praise and says, to whom be honor and power, everlasting amen. He's cataloged these three attributes, sovereignty, eternity, invisibility, and he says, to whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen. Paul's theology becomes doxology. His theology just overflows into acts of prayer and praising. So because God is sovereign, eternal, and invisible, I call on you, congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, worship him in spirit and in truth. Let your theology not just remain in your heads, let it become doxology, let it capture your hearts. This is what we're made for. What's the chief end of man? To glorify God and to enjoy him forever. So whether you eat, as we're going to do later today, or drink, or whatsoever you do, in all your vocations and all the duties of life, do all to the glory of God. Let your theology become doxology, even today. Let us pray. Oh, father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. We thank you that every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from heaven. And what greater gift have you given us and the person of your son? Oh, Lord, he is our king. He is. A shepherd king of love. And Lord, he entered time to save us. And Lord, he took on flesh to save us. Oh father, we worship you through the sun by your spirit. Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, the honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.