This one is infinite but personal, the other side of what God is like. The three different talks that you're going to get today, if we were to try and break them up into talking about the different things about God, Phil's would kind of be the ways that God is very different to us. There's some connection going on, but in terms of God being everywhere, we're not everywhere. In terms of God being in control, God not depending on anything, we're not like that. And then later, Jonathan is going to look at the ways in which God is like us. And so the one that we're doing now is somewhere in the middle. These are the ways that, I mean, we're not like God in these ways, but these are ways that God relates to us. He's not just far away. He is infinite, but he's also personal. He's also close by. And that's the kind of thing that we're going to be looking at in this talk. So God's infinity is only half the picture. God is infinite, but he's also personal or relatable. If we stop to infinite, we would end up with a God who is very far away, a God whom we could never actually know. who would be beyond our understanding and who we could not talk to or pray to. It would be hard to imagine that a God who was far away and who was only infinite would ever even want to create. Why would he need to make us? It's even harder to believe that he would send his son to save us. What would be the motivation if he is not also a God who is personal, who relates to us? So God is not just infinite. He is also a personal God. He is not an ethereal force. You know, some religions, they picture God as, you know, he moves things, but he's maybe not even a he, he's more of an it, and kind of a force behind the universe. You know, the Buddhists have this sort of view. But God is not like that. God is an infinite person. He is someone, not something. So although God is entirely independent, he relates to his creation. For us, when we relate to things, when we relate to people or relate to objects, we need to be in some way adaptable or vulnerable. Relating for us implies some kind of vulnerability. If you get to know someone, generally as you become friends with someone, you change each other. So your friend will change in some ways that you might have an effect on them, and they will have an effect on you, and you'll change as well. But when God relates, it's not like that. When God relates, that is all one way. So we will change as we get to know God, but God doesn't change. So the personal side of God is different to how we are personal, how we relate to one another, But God is personal. God is not changed by anything. He's still fully infinite and independent. But he can be related to and talked to and learned and known. So we're gonna think about the ways that we relate to God. This is, if you guys like outlines, this is the general outline of the things that we're gonna look at. So God's personality, God can be known, what that means, what it means that God is present. Phil started to explore this a little bit about what the presence of God is. And then the fact that God is responsive. So those are the broad headings that we're gonna be using. And then because we wanna be doers of the word and not just hearers, as we thought about this morning, we're gonna have some applications as well. So we'll get to those. So, to start with, let's think about God can be known. Jeremiah 9, 23-24 says, let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me. that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, declares the Lord. So it is true that we can never fully understand God. We will never completely understand everything about God. But that does not mean that we cannot know God, and it does not mean that we cannot know things about God. It doesn't mean that we can't understand things about God correctly. We can truly know true things about God without fully knowing him. And this is very, very important. It's very important to realize that you can know things about God. God can be understood even if he can't be completely understood. Because knowing God is exactly what we are designed to do. It's very important that we know God correctly. Remember yesterday when we thought about Romans 1. Wickedness suppresses the knowledge of God because it's by knowing God that we can glorify God. Remember Romans tells us that although we knew God, we didn't glorify him as God. Glorifying God is dependent upon knowing God. That's the logical flow of how it should go. Think about the Ten Commandments, the way that God wants us to live our lives. The first two commandments, you shall have no other God before me and you shall not make an idol to worship, those are about making sure that we serve the correct God. It is important we know who the true God is. Think about Jesus coming to earth. Obviously it's not the entire reason or even perhaps the main reason that Jesus came to earth, but Jesus is the complete revelation of God. When he was asked, show us the Father, he said, do you still not know me? He shows us who God is entirely. God wants us to know him. He wants us to know him so badly that he became a person and came to earth so that we can know him. So God wants us to know him. His whole plan involves revealing himself to us. It is our purpose to know God properly. It leads to our other purposes that we thought about yesterday. So we can trust that even though we can't understand God fully, his desire for us to know him means that what he says about himself in the Bible is true. This is important. It's important to know that what the Bible says is true. Because a lot of what I'm going to say might sound like a contradiction to what you've already heard. It might sound like it doesn't make sense that what Phil said is true and what I also say is true. There might be some things that you might be really confused and you can be like, well, how can that be the case and also that be the case? So you might be tempted to think, well, maybe they're just talking in metaphors. Maybe this is just an analogy. Maybe God is kind of like that, but not really like that. Maybe that's how we're meant to understand it. But that's not the case. We can truly know things about God without fully knowing him. So we may know two different facts about God without knowing how they fit together. An example of this is perhaps the Trinity. We can know that God is one and we can know that God is three. Now in our minds, we can't really understand how those two can fit together. But it is true that God is one and it is true that God is three. We can truly know things that are true about God without fully understanding him. So here's an example I'm gonna use of this. This is a pomegranate. Imagine that I had never seen a pomegranate. It's an unfamiliar concept. And so imagine that I asked Peno, I said, what's a pomegranate like? And Peno said, a pomegranate is smooth. Now you can see it on the picture, the pomegranate. In case you've not seen a pomegranate, that's what it looks like. And you can see in the background there, when the pomegranate is whole, it's smooth. So Peno has told me the truth. He's told me something that is true about a pomegranate. But then imagine I went to Frederick and I said, what's a pomegranate like? And Frederick said, well, a pomegranate, it's lumpy. Because he's thinking about the inside, and in the inside it's all lumpy. So what do I know now? I know that a pomegranate is smooth, and I know that a pomegranate is lumpy. And I might think, well, that doesn't make any sense. How can a pomegranate be both smooth and lumpy? Those two things are like opposites. But what they've told me, both of those things are true. I just don't know enough about the complete picture to understand how they can both be true. And this is like a small example of what we might be doing today. You might have to know two things that sound like they may not fit together. But both things can be true, we just don't know the whole truth about God in order to understand how they fit together. So when we meet God face to face, there may well be some things that we finally understand about him that we can't understand now. But until then, there are some things that we can know about God that don't seem to fit together, but are true. We can know truly, but not fully. So yeah, once again, it's very important that we know that when the Bible talks about God, It's not just metaphors or analogies. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's picture language, but we can know true things about God. We can't only know God through metaphors. When we talk about the rest of God's attributes, the things that we're going to be talking about are real. It is not the case that God is actually infinite and only appears as though he is personal. He is personal and he is infinite. Both are true. How can he be both? We don't know. We've not seen the whole thing. We've not seen the whole pomegranate, if you like. But both things that we know are true. Okay, so, God can be known, even though he can't be fully understood. That's the first thing that we need to think about. Here's a contradiction that we're gonna look at next. Although God is Lord of space and time, and is also everywhere, God is present within space and time. God is present within space and time. As we've seen, he's Lord of them. But if we were to stop at God is Lord of space and time, we would only be getting half the picture. We wouldn't be understanding completely how God works. God does not just stay outside of the universe that he has made. By all means, he can be outside of the universe that he has made. He's not bound by it. He's not restricted by it. But the Bible does talk about God as acting inside of space and time. He does things within his creation. Let's think about the very beginning of creation. I've got it up there, Genesis 1.1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So God is not bound by time, but he decides to do something in the beginning. How does that then continue? He creates things over the course of seven days. A day is a unit of time. God is working within the bounds of time. God, who does not need to do things within time, is choosing to create over a period of time. Even though there's no one around at that point to know the difference. Isn't it kind of cool that God chooses to work inside of time? Even though we're not there, we're not looking at God and seeing, you know, oh, this is God working inside time. But he does it because he wants to work inside his creation. The very first few verses of the Bible paint God as a way that shows him as within time. God creates in the beginning, and then he speaks after that. And then you have days. God is choosing to put himself within time as he creates it. This is just the beginning of a theme that continues throughout the scripture. God is never content to remain distant or apart from space and time. He wants to be inside it. He's there, he's with us inside space and time. Think about the description of God as patient. This is something we thought about yesterday, at least in the group I was in. We thought about God's patience as one of the attributes that we can know about God. God is described as patient. Even in Phil's talk, you look at 2 Peter, And as it's talking about 1,000 days and a day, it also talks about God being patient with us. But the concept of patient, that's working within time. You're thinking about being inside time. The Bible does appeal to patience as a sort of, God is patient because 1,000 years are like a day and a day is like 1,000 years, but it's also a reason not to make him impatient. If you think about what Peter is saying in those verses in 2 Peter 3, he's talking about a thousand years are like a day and a day is like a thousand years. So God isn't worried, God is taking his time, but don't act as though it's never gonna end. Don't act as though the end of the world is never coming because God's patience will run out. So how can God be outside of time and yet also he seems to have an extent of patience that in the end it runs out. That's God acting within time. That's God being within the universe. We also talk about God as being slow to anger. Numbers 14, 18 there, you've got up on the slide. The Lord is slow to anger. But what does slow mean if we're not thinking in terms of time? God talks about himself with relation to time as we understand it. He expects us to think about the way that he works in a way that is within time. And it's not only time, but it's also place. God is described as being specifically present in different places. If you turn to Exodus 19, if you've got your Bibles with you, Exodus 19, which is on page 60. Exodus 19, and I'm gonna read from verse nine. So this is the Israelites have come out of Egypt and they get to Mount Sinai where God is going to speak to them. And so, Exodus 19 from verse nine, and the Lord said to Moses, behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud that the people may hear when I speak to you and may also believe you forever. When Moses told the words of the people to the Lord, the Lord said to Moses, Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments, and be ready for the third day. For on the third day, the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. And you shall set limits for all the people all around, saying, take care not to go up into the mountain or touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death. No hand shall touch him, but he shall be stoned or shot. Whether man or beast, he shall not live. When the trumpet sounds a long blast, they shall come up to the mountain. So where is God? God is talking about himself coming onto the mountain. God wants Israel to understand him as being there on that mountain. So much so that if someone goes onto the mountain, they have to die because of it. We got a picture there of what it might look like. God doesn't just operate within the idea of God is everywhere. God is everywhere, but he wanted Israel to know he was specifically on that mountain. There's another instance, even in Exodus, of this same sort of idea. If we look at Exodus 13, 21, where it says that the Israelites, they've come out of Egypt, and before they crossed the Red Sea, and it says, and the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they may travel by day and by night. The Lord was in the pillar of fire and the Lord was in the pillar of cloud. It doesn't say that the Lord caused there to be a pillar of cloud or the Lord made there be a pillar of fire there. He was in it. He went before them in a pillar of fire or a pillar of cloud. So it's not the case that God is only everywhere. And this is a theme that carries on throughout scripture. God describes himself as being in the tabernacle when the Israelites set up a tabernacle. We already thought a bit about the temple in the time of Solomon. God puts on a big show of coming into the temple when Solomon builds the temple. And in Ezekiel, one of the most dramatic things that happens in the book of Ezekiel is that God leaves his temple. Now, if God is everywhere, what does it mean that he enters or leaves his temple? And interestingly, as we noted, Solomon, when he sets up the temple, He seems to recognize that this is a possible contradiction. This is something that God is not actually in the temple per se, but it's where he causes his name to be. Solomon says, but will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built. Yet give attention to your servant's prayer and his plea for mercy, Lord my God. Hear the cry and the prayer that your servant is praying in your presence this day. May your eyes be open towards this temple night and day. This place of which you said, my name shall be there, so that you will hear the prayer your servant prays towards this place, hear the supplication of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray towards this place. Hear from heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive. So even as Solomon is building a temple for God to dwell in, he builds the temple, and the idea behind this temple is that this is where God is going to dwell. Now he prays a prayer where he says, well, you know, It's kind of bizarre to think that God would dwell in a temple because God is much bigger than that. This temple couldn't hold God. But then he finishes his prayer by saying, when we pray, hear from heaven your dwelling place. So he's again talking about God as though God is in a place. Is God in the temple? Is God in heaven? Solomon does still express a location for God. Even after he said that the highest heavens can't contain God, he calls heaven God's dwelling place. And of course there are other mentions of the idea that God is in heaven. Ecclesiastes 5.2, do not be quick with your mouth. Do not be hasty in your hearts to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few. What does it mean that God is in heaven? This is something that's mysterious. What does it mean that God is anywhere? But God talks about himself as though he is in places. He wants to interact with the world from the perspective of being within location and within time. This is what God does. It's amazing that he's both Lord of time and Lord of space, but he's also within it. And in the New Testament, it continues. Most ultimately, of course, we see it in Jesus. Jesus is in one place at one time. Jesus is in a human body. What does it mean that God is on earth? We can't really understand. There's still the idea of God being in certain places after Jesus leaves. One of the notable passages is in 1 Corinthians 14, 23 to 25, so we've got it up here. So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues and inquirers or unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if an unbeliever or an inquirer comes in while everyone is prophesying, they are convicted of sin and are brought under judgment by all, as the secrets of their heart are laid bare. So they will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, God is really among you. This is what the person notices who comes into the church when people are prophesying in 1 Corinthians, whatever we think that means. We are also told that where two or three are gathered together, there Jesus is with them. He says, again, truly I tell you, if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them. Now, this is the idea that where God's people are gathered, God's presence is there in a special way. So it's not just the case that God is there because he is everywhere. God is there in a special way, in a special way that the person in Corinth who comes in when everyone's prophesying would notice that, wait, God is here. It's not just the case that God is there like he is everywhere. Of course, we also know that we are temples of the Holy Spirit. God is inside us individually. Is it just a metaphor? What does it mean that God is present? God's presence, one thing that it definitely seems to mean is that God's presence is seen by what he is doing somewhere. You know, when this person who walks into this church in Corinth declares God is really among you, it's because he sees what God is doing. He hears the secrets of his own heart being laid bare. It's a horrifying idea, isn't it? Imagine walking into a church and you hear people telling you about your own secrets in your heart. Of course you'd say, well, God is here, clearly. That's what's happening to this person, so that's why he knows that God is there. Now, God is not everywhere causing everybody to have the secrets of their heart laid bare. So the difference is that what God is doing shows his presence there. God is not present everywhere in the same way, because that's not what he's doing everywhere. In the same way, God is not binding and loosing everything that everyone on earth binds and looses, when Jesus talks about where two or three are gathered. You know, God is not doing everything that two or three people agree on, wherever they are. But if they're two or three of God's people, and they're agreeing on something on Earth, then God is doing it. God's presence is expressed by what God does. So the Bible seems to indicate that God does have different kinds of presence. God is everywhere, even above and in some ways outside of space and time. but he interacts from within space and time. His presence is seen in special ways at special places and times. And so as Phil said, we can pray at the beginning of a church service that we would know God's presence because God is present in a special way when his people gather. Okay, so we've thought about God can be known and we've thought about God is present. We're now gonna think about God is responsive. Responsiveness, what does it mean? Although God never changes, he is not aloof and unfeeling. The Bible portrays him as responding to his creation. He shows love as a response. He shows pity. When he looks on people suffering, he pities them. He shows anger. People can make him angry. So it seems that God can, in some way, be affected by his own creation, even though he never changes. Consider the following. This is from Genesis 6. The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created, and with them the animals, the birds, and the creatures that move along the ground, for I regret that I have made them. This is, of course, the events that lead up to the flood. But how can a God who does not change, a God who does not change his mind, how can he have regret? How can he do something and then later say, I regret doing that? How are we to understand this? It seems that as humans, we know that we have capacity to feel and we respond to the situations around us. And it seems that our ability to do that is in some way analogous, is in some way a picture of what God is like. God also in some way has emotions or feelings or is affected. God feels, not in quite the same way that we do, but not so differently that we can't understand it in words that we would use to describe our own feelings. God uses our words, the words that we describe how we feel, God uses to describe how he feels as well. It's probably worth you turning to Hosea 11, eight to nine, which is on page 757. So Hosea 11, eight to nine, this is what God says. How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboim? My heart recoils within me. My compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim. For I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. Some people describe God as though he is emotionless. Some people think that when we read a passage like this, where God talks about his heart recoiling within him or his compassion, some people think that that's maybe just a metaphor, that's maybe just a picture. But if that was true, then the force of this passage would be completely lost. If we could say, oh, well, God says that, but it's not actually true that he feels compassion and his heart recalls within him. I mean, that would remove any meaning that these verses had. It would remove any force of God changing his mind about bringing wrath on Israel. What is it that God wants to communicate in verses like this if it's not a deep attachment to his people? He wants us to understand how he feels in the same kind of words that we understand how we feel. God uses the Bible to communicate to us and tell us about himself. What is he telling us about himself in this passage if we say that he doesn't have feelings, if we say that he doesn't in some way feel in a kind of similar way to how we do? He's clearly using language that we use to talk about feeling. He wants us to understand him this way. Let's look at Psalm 95 as well. Psalm 95, seven to 11. which is on page 499. Psalm 95 from verse 7. For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation, and said, they are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways. Therefore I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. God, again, using the language of strong emotion, God wants us to understand his reason for making this decision that the Israelites who came out of Egypt, they weren't the same ones who went into the Promised Land. The reason he did that is because he was angry with them. He describes it as he loathes that generation. He swore in his wrath. The reason he swore was because he was angry. God wants us to understand the way that he makes decisions in this way, the way that he has almost affected by his creation with the same kind of language that we use to understand our own emotions. God uses the language of emotion to explain why he does things at least as much as he uses the language of infinity and of knowing and of planning everything. God does both. God is infinite and plans everything and is always in control. But God uses the language of emotion. He explains why he does things to us using the same words that we use to describe emotion. God does want us to know that he is infinite and unchanging, but the Bible is clear that he also wants us to know that he feels and responds to what happens in the world. Okay, so let's get an important distinction now about the difference between God's feelings and ours, about the difference between the way that God responds to things and the way that we do. Our responses and emotions are unplanned. We don't know how we're going to react to things beforehand. We don't plan our feelings. Often our emotions will affect what we do. We will want to do something because we feel, not the other way around. We feel a certain way and so we do something. Our mind and our plans, we might change our mind based on how we feel. Our emotions can influence our will. So we understand our emotions as having a degree of control over us. We feel a certain way, and so we act a certain way. It's a response to things that are beyond our control. So for instance, if someone says something that annoys me, this is something that is beyond my control. I didn't make them say something that annoys me. Someone, without me impacting them so they do, they say something that makes me angry. I feel angry as a result. Now I didn't plan to feel angry, but them saying something that made me angry made me angry. And so then I plan to do something about my anger. Because I'm angry, I think, what am I going to do because of this anger? And so I hit them. That is something that I plan to do, but I only plan to do it after I felt angry. I didn't get up in the morning and think, today I'm going to get angry and I'm going to hit somebody. It's because I got angry that I did that action. Now, my response is not necessarily proportional in that situation. It's maybe not the right response. And I definitely didn't have it planned before the thing that made me angry. But it's important to know that God is different to that. Here's a little diagram for us. So you can see what I talked about there. The thing that happened to me, the way that I felt about it, and so then I planned to do something, and then I did it. So that's how humans work at the top. Something happens, we feel something about it, and so we decide what we're gonna do, and so we do it. God is different. God must be in control of his own responses. God never acts against his plan. God has everything planned out. God never goes against his will. He wills everything. So we know that he must plan his own appropriate response to whatever situation happens. And it also means that God's responses are always proportional to what God is responding to. God doesn't, you know, give you a harsher punishment than the crime deserves. God is always fair in his reactions. So for instance, we thought about Israel. Israel turned away from God and worshiped idols. This is something that happened a lot in the Old Testament. Now, God knew and planned ahead of time that Israel was going to turn away from him and worship idols. That was part of God's overall plan of everything. And he knew that that will make him angry. Now does God plan that he is going to be angry? Or does he plan that that will happen and so he knows that he will gonna be angry and he'll get angry because of it? I don't know if we can, I don't know if that's a question we can answer. I don't know if we can make the distinction. But he plans what is gonna happen, he gets angry as a response, and then he acts in a way that is appropriate to that proportional anger that he feels. So while we go, the thing that happens to us, feeling what we plan to do about it, action, God goes, everything is planned, and so something happens, and then he feels a certain way about it, and then he acts. The important thing is that God's plan, God's will comes first. That is the big distinction between God's reactions and responses and emotions, if you can use that word, and ours. God does feel as a response to what happens. It's only after the thing happens that he gets that feeling. But it is all planned. He does act on his feelings. It's because of his wrath that he said that those people would never enter the promised land. So he's acting because of his feelings, but it's all planned. It's a real anger. It's not an act or a metaphor. But it's not out of God's control. So remember, God is responsive. He genuinely cares. He genuinely cares about sin, and it makes him angry, and he genuinely loves his people. Remember those words that he used in Hosea. All of my compassion is aroused within me. My heart recoils when he thinks about punishing his own people. God genuinely loves his people. Never think that God does what he does impassively, unemotionally. Don't picture a cold, unfeeling God who sits back as history plays out. When he destroys people for their sin, his anger is real. He feels the wrath that is reflected in the destruction. And similarly, he feels sadness that people do not, he feels sadness that people do come under his wrath. This is what Ezekiel says, this is what God says. As surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways. Why will you die, people of Israel? So God feels sadness over people being foolish and people dying as a result. God's pleasure is also a genuine felt pleasure. In Zephaniah, it says, the Lord your God is with you, the mighty warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you. In his love, he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing. If God loved in a way that did not affect him, then this verse would make no sense. What could be a clearer display of feeling than singing? We sing when we're happy. We sing when we feel something. The Bible describes God as rejoicing over his people with singing. We have to understand the way that God responds in a way that is, you know, in a way that uses the same words, that is the same kind of thing as what we understand as our responses and feelings. Similarly, and this is very important. Oh, sorry, I didn't put the Zephaniah verse up. That's the Zephaniah verse, we're a bit late. But this is very important, the next thing I'm gonna say. God's unchangeableness does not mean that he cannot be reasoned with. Because God is responsive to his creation, we can pray and we can reason with him. We can talk to him. So God's unchangeability does not mean that he is unnegotiable. It doesn't mean that you can't negotiate with God. So let's look at those verses, Exodus 32, seven to 14. Which is on page 72. Exodus 32 from verse seven. And the Lord said to Moses, so this is the golden calf has happened. Moses has gone up onto the mountain and the people have made an idol. And the Lord said to Moses, go down for your people whom you have brought up, sorry, go down for your people whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And the Lord said to Moses, I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore, let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them, and that I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation out of you. But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, with evil intent he did bring them out? to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth. Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self and said to them, I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and all this land that I have promised, I will give to your offspring and they shall inherit it forever. And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people. There's another good example in Jonah three that I won't read because of time. But in Jonah 3, Jonah goes into Nineveh and announces, in 40 days, God is gonna overthrow Nineveh. And then the people of Nineveh repent. And so God doesn't overthrow Nineveh. It's a great passage about God relenting. But here we, in this Exodus passage, and in the one in Jonah, we see people reasoning with God. So in Exodus, we see Moses reasoning with God. He's having a discussion. He's using arguments and proving things to God so that God will act a certain way. Now think about everything that we've said about God. Think of everything we learned about in Phil's talk. That he is the infinite Lord of space and time who does not change. Yet, he allows himself to be talked around. He allows himself to be persuaded. He says he wants to do something, but because Moses asks him not to, he doesn't. Can we say that God was never actually gonna destroy Israel? That's a tricky one. God does not lie. So if Moses hadn't talked to him, then he would have destroyed Israel, like he said. And he would have turned Moses into a great nation instead. Or Nineveh in Jonah 3. God does not even talk about his judgment in Jonah 3 as though it's conditional. All that Jonah says is, in 40 days, Nineveh's gonna be destroyed. He doesn't even say, you know, beg for mercy. He just says, this is what's gonna happen. But when they repent, God relents. God doesn't bring the disaster that he promised. Now, if the people had just heard 40 more days and Nineveh will be overthrown, and if they thought, well, God doesn't change his mind, guess there's no point in praying, they would have been destroyed. But instead, they repented, and so God relented, God changed his mind, and they were saved. God does not lie. He was planning to destroy the city in 40 days. but he does respond when people cry out to him. God is unchangeable and does not lie, but he is responsive. He interacts with us inside the space and time that we inhabit. Okay, let's think about some applications. We wanna be hearers of the word and doers. We wanna be able to act and live according to what we're thinking about. So, applications for this. We've got them here. The first one, the first application, Seek to know God more. We thought about the knowability of God. We thought that we can know true things about God. We can get to know God, even if we can never fully understand him. And so we can be encouraged to try and learn more about God. We can know that the things that we know about God are true. We can find out amazing things about the real God who is all powerful. You can know God truly, even if you'll never completely understand him. Don't be put off by thinking that God is too big to know. He made us to know him. He made us able to know him. Study God's word. Ask him to teach you more about himself. We don't only know him by metaphor. The things that we find out about God, they're not just illustrations. We can know him truly. Also, remember that God is near. God is not far away. God is in charge of space and time, yes, and when we think about it that way, he is huge, he's really big. But he acts within them as well. God loves to interact with his creation. Don't live as though God is far away. I think that's, we can say that that's perhaps something that Muslims do. Muslims live as though God is very far away. And all they're trying to do is they're trying to maybe reach to him and please him, but they don't interact with God on a personal basis. But we know that God is not far away. God is near. We'll talk more about this when we look at the Holy Spirit later, a slasher in the week, but don't act as though God is far away. Know that he is present and near us. And also pray boldly. If God was going to destroy the whole nation of Israel and Moses prayed and God changed his mind, then we should be very encouraged when we come to God in prayer. Don't pray like a fatalist. Don't pray assuming that God is not going to answer. Don't think, well, you know, God, he always acts this way, and there's no point in me praying, really, because God's gonna do what he's gonna do. That is not how the Bible treats prayer. We can talk to God. We can negotiate with him. We can come to him and say, please, God, you know, you care about people, and so please answer my prayer because of that. God welcomes negotiation. He welcomes our pleas. He can be talked round. Remember Moses. Remember the people of Nineveh. Pray boldly. Pray expecting that you can convince God, that God will listen to you. So these are the applications. Seek to know God more. Remember that God is near. Pray boldly. God is present. So hopefully you can see that this is the other half of the pomegranate. We've seen that God is infinite and transcendent. We've seen that God is near. We have to be willing to accept that God is gonna do something sometimes that will go against our will. But there are examples of people negotiating, like I said. And so think of Moses praying for Israel to not be destroyed. But one thing that we can definitely be very encouraged to pray for and negotiate with God about is the salvation of our friends and our family and people that we know. God delights to save. The people of Nineveh repented and so God had mercy on them. We can definitely negotiate with God about God's mercy and say, hey, look, God, you've said that you love people. If you love people and you've said that you work through me and I've been praying for ages and you say that you reward persistence in prayer, your own Bible is saying that you have to listen to me. I mean, it sounds like you're being kind of disrespectful, but obviously don't do it in a disrespectful way, but we can pray like that. We can reason with God and tell him what his own word says and prove to him, you know, this is what you said you'll do, so do it. And that's a way that we can pray because God is responsive. Yeah. Negotiating is far more than reasoning. The Bible prayers are people reasoning with God. Negotiating, sometimes we think, well, negotiating is, but if you don't do this for me, God, then I'm not gonna give you. And that is not praise. Yeah, we can't make a trade. We can't make a deal. Be careful with the word negotiate. It's reasoning with God in the basis of his revelation. Yeah, don't try to blackmail God, but appeal to him on what he said he will do and on his goodness. Okay, how's lunch looking, James? Okay, let's pray. Father, we pray that we would understand you better. We thank you that you are a God who is so powerful and so infinite, but you are also a God who is close to us, who loves to be prayed to, who we can understand properly and truly. We thank you that you are a God who rejoices over his people with singing. who feels compassion for his people, who genuinely feels love, and that we can understand that to an extent. Lord, we pray that we would think more about these things, and that as we think more about them, our lives would be affected. We would want to love you more because of them. Father, we thank you now for the good gifts that you've given us, and particularly for the food that we are about to enjoy. Please let it give us strength that we can carry on focusing and learning this afternoon. In Jesus' name, amen.