Okay, let's start out with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for bringing us once again into your house on your day, Lord, that you've given us to rest in you, to enjoy you, to see you, and to have a taste of what we'll have for eternity, Lord. We pray that you would bless this time we have together and that you would speak through me, Lord, and that you would teach all of us through your Holy Spirit this morning about this this doctrine of your blessedness, Lord. And we pray for all this in Christ's name. Amen. Please start off turning with me in your Bibles to 1 Timothy 1, read verses 8 through 11. Now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, and slavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine. In accordance with the gospel, of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. Amen. Okay, so the last couple of Sundays that I had taught Sunday school, we had talked about the beatific vision, the blessed vision of God himself through Christ. And this class I wanted to talk on God's blessedness that he has in and of himself to show that the inheritance we have is God ordering us toward what he already is inside of himself already. God is beatitude by his very nature. This is the blessedness that God brings us to share in when we reach our final end at the beatific vision. This is God bringing us to participate in a blessedness that has already been going on for eternity. And it is our inheritance, God himself. We are being made to share through Christ in a blessedness that God has already had. So it is good for us to contemplate this together and what it means for us. The passage we just read stated that this is the gospel of the blessed God. This is the very gospel that we confess. God has given us himself in the gospel and he is calling us to walk towards him more and more in this gospel. So we could see all the sins that Paul had mentioned that we're supposed to stay away from in accordance with the gospel of the blessed God. Taking a look at the blessedness of God is something that has many implications once God has chosen to give us himself freely, that shed further light on the gospel for us all. There's a lot of heaviness to this doctrine that we gotta go through beforehand, but there's so many implications that are drawn out of God's blessedness once we see it. The gospel reorients us back to God, This blessedness has been purchased for us by Christ, and we participate in it by union with Christ. This is a doctrine which our confession states. In the Westminster Confession of Faith, we read in Chapter 2, Section 2, God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself, and is alone in and unto himself all sufficient. not standing in any 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 alone the 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. The future we await is grounded in God's very being, this blessedness, because God has ordered our future towards himself. Again, God is blessed by his very nature. We have been created by God, and God is ordering us to himself. In creation, we are breathed out by God, and God is bringing us back to God. So right now, we're going to be focusing primarily on God for a little bit, who he is in himself. I'm largely going to be leaning on some stuff from Fred Sanders, Peter von Maastricht, and Thomas Aquinas in this study. So what do we mean when we say that God is blessed? We had mentioned last time that this blessedness or our final end is a vision that brings us happiness. This is the word that Thomas Aquinas uses to speak of God's blessedness. He speaks of God's happiness or beatitude in other translations of his work. He asks if God is beatitude by his nature, to which his answer is, of course, yes. Happiness conveys the idea of fullness. It is far more weighty than what we mean today when we speak of happiness. When speaking in regards to humanity, most of the tradition would mean a true fulfillment, a delight in doing what the human being was created for. They would often talk of the human having happiness as he excels in virtues that bring him towards his end, which is God and reflecting God, of course being made in the image of God. Having a life that flourishes in all ways with a purpose intended for its nature being fulfilled. It is a life that is filled with all fullness. This is happiness for human beings. But what does this mean in regards to God? In some larger theological works, the doctrine of God's blessedness isn't mentioned in all of them. They'll speak about God's attributes. They'll speak about as much of them as they can conceive of. And then they will end in God's blessedness right before they speak about the Trinity. It's in many ways a summary attribute. We've conceived. of God's attributes, his perfections all separately. And now we remind ourselves once again that God is not separated and that blessedness means that God has all fullness and is happy. He delights in that fullness of his own being. It reminds us once again that all the attributes we have thought through are not a bunch of pieces of things that God has, but are simply God himself. We do not add together goodness, righteousness, and other attributes that equal God. God is simple and one, and his blessedness is his delighting in his own happiness, in all of those things which are his own being. This is, of course, a transcendent happiness, though to be recognized to be so much further above what we think of when we speak of happiness. Petrus von Maastricht orders things in this way in his big theoretical practical theology. He refers to it as a derivative attribute. Fred Sanders has called this an attribute of summation. When he calls it a derivative attribute, he means it's derived or deduced out of all the attributes. Glory is another derivative attribute. After we speak of all the other attributes, this attribute flows out of those attributes. Now, we must remember and be conscious of the fact that when we speak of the attributes of God, all of his perfections, that we have not and can't ever say all that there is to say concerning who God is. Concerning all his perfections, we can't speak all that there is to speak of God. Some of the greatest theologians have spoken much of the perfections of God, thousands of pages. Yet they barely scratch the surface of his beauty and his perfections. So in our own minds, when we see something new concerning the beauty of God, this particular doctrine of God's blessedness is seen in an even greater extent. We see more of God's character that God delights in. All of those perfections are seen to flow through this super attribute of God's blessedness. God's glory is similar. God's glory is a derivative attribute whereby All of God's perfections are seen shining together outwardly in its perfect brightness. That is the glory of God. All of God's perfection shining forth outwardly. Divine blessedness is similar, but this is not shining outwardly, but who God is inwardly. God exists within himself perfectly blessed. This is God's delighting in himself in all of his perfections for all eternity. He has always existed this way. with no need of anyone or anything. God is perfectly happy in himself, in his own being. We just started out with one scripture that very clearly states that God himself is the blessed God. This is a doctrine that is quite clear throughout all of the scriptures. Fred Sanders has pointed out that the entire New Testament speaks of God as blessed, and only two times with this particular word. It occurs both in 1 Timothy, There's a verse we started out reading, and in 1 Timothy 6, Paul charges Timothy, in verse 13, he says, I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate, made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time, He who is the blessed and only sovereign, the king of kings and lord of lords. These are the two times that Paul uses this word to describe God is blessed. The word is, in Greek, is makarios. I hadn't noticed this before because I hadn't been looking at any of these sections in Greek until I heard Fred Sanders mention it. But all the other instances that the New Testament speaks of us blessing God or in Romans 9 when Paul says that Christ is God over all, blessed forever, amen, the word there is actually eulogetos, which means to speak well of. It doesn't mean to be happy in the sense that makarios means. This is what is used in the beginning of Ephesians when Paul says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He says eulogetos. He's offering up praise, speaking well of God. For the great work God has done for us, it's an offering up of praise, to bless someone in that sense, not, yeah, not this fullness of happiness conveyed by the term makarios. However, it is connected, because as we bless God, we are recognizing God's blessedness. We're not adding anything to God's blessedness, though, as we are blessing him. Makarios is the exact same word used when the scriptures speak of our blessed hope, our delighting in God for all eternity, Christ's blessed appearing when we have the beatific vision. When the Bible speaks of our blessed hope, it uses the word makarios every time. It is also the word used in the Sermon on the Mount every time Christ tells us that one is blessed, the poor in spirit, the pure in heart. He's also using that same word, makarios. What God is by nature, God allows us to share in by his grace, this makarios, this blessedness that God has. So Paul is telling us in 1 Timothy, this God who is blessed is the one in whom our blessedness already was and is. But let us be careful, his blessedness is not for us in himself. We must be careful that we never make ourselves the reason for God in that regard. It is humbling for us to consider God's joy, God's happiness, his self-sufficiency in need of no other before we consider him being God blessed for us in the gospel. He did not need to be God for us. The gospel is not necessary. The gospel was certainly necessary if we were to be saved. But God was happy in and of himself. He did not need to save us. He did not need to send his son into the world when we were, when we sinned. He could have been perfectly fine without us and left us to ruin. He could have created humanity and remained perfectly sufficient, letting humanity run to its own destruction after we all sinned. It was not necessary for him even to make us, although we can say it is fitting with his character. He is the type of God that would create, that would be merciful to us after we sinned, but he did not need to do any of that. And let us bear in mind this blessedness is God's, and God is not needy. He does not need anything or anyone. It is God's blessedness, and yet God does graciously allow us to share in it through our union with Christ. And ultimately, when Christ returns, it reaches its fullness in the beatific vision. So there's implications of this for the gospel, as God gives us himself, but it does not directly flow out of this doctrine, until we see that God has given us himself in the gospel, and we see that God is freely chosen to be God for us. It's a free choice for God to give us this. It's not what he had to give us. So this is a doctrine that first pushes us towards humility, recognizing that God dwells in inaccessible light and delights in all his glory, perfections and beauty, completely apart from us. And this doctrine has nothing to do with us to a large extent, but then after we see God giving himself to us, it has everything to do with us. But then when we see that this God, who for no reason that we can really conceive of, freely chose to both create and love us once again in the gospel, then went to the uttermost depths to come into the world and save us, after we scorned his graciousness in giving us life, breath, and everything, it means so much more. He truly did not need to do any of that. He was perfectly happy. He did not need to love us. God perfectly loves, knows, and delights in himself. And through our union with the eternal son that knows the father, we are able to know this one who knows himself perfectly as well, and know this love. The sweetness of the gospel is brought to bear so much stronger in this, and the love of God becomes so much more unfathomable. Why would God, why would this God bring us to share in this love? We don't really know why. When the stubborn and rebellious people of Israel were tempted to consider something in themselves for the reason of God's love towards them, God told them in Deuteronomy 7 that it was not because of their size that he chose them. And in another passage in Deuteronomy 9, not that he chose to give them the land because of anything in themselves, for they were a stubborn and rebellious people, but because he loved them. That's the reason we are given. God has reasons in his infinite wisdom that we cannot conceive of, but his reasoning toward us why he loves us is he loves us because he loves us. Jesus, of course, said in John 17, before he went to the cross, that he was praying that we may know him, and he described eternal life in this way. He said, and this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Eternal life is who God is, not merely what we desire, not merely what we are living, but God himself. That is what eternal life is. Eternal life is God perfectly knowing himself in all of who he is. And of course, his blessedness is delighting in that. He is delighting in that knowledge, and Christ prayed that this would be ours, that we would know him, and through the sending of the Son into the world in the power of the Holy Spirit, we would come to know him. This is the gospel of the blessed God, us being graciously brought to share in a creaturely capacity, of course, we don't become God, into the life of God through union, and having a share in this delight and joy. Again, God delights in all of himself. He delights in his own goodness. He delights in his perfect goodness. He delights in his own justice, his own infinity, his own love. He delights in his holiness, his immutability, his omnipotence. He delights in every single one of his own perfections. And there are so many of them, more than anyone has been able to write down. John Gill has a pretty extensive list in his section in his divinity of God's blessedness. After he's already spoken of a bunch of God's attributes, he says, quote, this attribute may be strongly concluded from the last treated of. For if God is a sufficient and self-sufficient and all-sufficient being, he must be happy as well as from all the perfections of God put together. before discourse of, of his simplicity, immutability, infinity, eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, justice, holiness, truth, and faithfulness, all sufficiency and perfection. He is possessed of all these, and in whom no perfection is wanting, must needs be completely blessed. Another way we can demonstrate from the biblical witness that the scriptures confess that God is blessed is seeing sections of the scripture that don't say God is blessed, but basically say what we've described blessedness to be without the exact wording we saw in 1 Timothy. This is actually how von Maastricht starts in his systematic arguing for the blessedness of God. He starts with the passage, in the psalm that David wrote that says, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures evermore. Von Maastricht's reasoning here, although the word makarios is not used in the Septuagint, I checked, is that the idea of God's blessedness is contained here because the psalmist is speaking of the fullness of joy that God has at his right hand. There are two points I want us to see from this passage. First, we see that this happiness is a fullness of joy. It's not just mere joy, but fullness of joy. This is why this, like we said, this is an attribute spoken of after all the other attributes. After we have thought of who the scripture say God is, we can then think about God's blessedness. This is what God gives us to share in, the fullness of himself. This, sorry, this is what God gives us to share in again, the fullness of himself. We cannot see all there is to see of God, but there is a true sense in which what God is giving us of himself is a fullness of himself. God is giving us, to some extent, all of himself. He can't be separated, so when he's God for us, he is giving us, to some extent, a fullness of joy in himself still. This is the fullness of joy David is saying God has for us at his right hand. Ultimately these blessings are in knowing and delighting in God for himself more than the temporal blessings we get from God. We see who God is and we delight in him. This is the fullness of joy, the pleasures God has in himself that he allows us to share in. We see more of God and we have more joy as we know more of who he is. We can often be tempted to elevate one attribute above another. We ought not to do that, but we must delight in all of who God is as far as we have seen of him thus far. We ought not to love him for some of his attributes and despise other attributes of his that make us uncomfortable. But we ought to take delight in God as God. not delighting in his truth and faithfulness, his grace and despising his justice and his holiness that can terrify us. God is all that he is, perfectly blessed and happy in himself, and in being brought to delight in this happiness, we ought to delight in all of him as well. Second point concerning this passage, David says God with you is fullness of joy. So von Maastricht says that he recognizes when we read this passage, we generally see it as God blessing his people, not speaking of who God is. The blessings he has for his people at his right hand. But what we must recognize is that, of course, God cannot give his people anything that he does not already have himself. God cannot communicate blessedness to his creatures unless God himself is already blessed. He cannot give what he doesn't have. Any temporal thing that God does not have is not because he has any lack, but precisely because of his not lacking that thing. God has perfections and temporal things are not perfect. They're good gifts, but not perfections. But even the temporal gifts that God gives us come out of his own divine blessedness. His benevolence toward us, they flow out of his blessedness in himself to us. This line of thinking that Psalm 94 gives us, he who created the ear, this is the same line of thinking that Psalm 94 gives us. He who created the ear, does he not hear? He who fashioned the eye, does he not see? We cannot assume that God, for instance, can communicate blessedness to creatures and yet not possess blessedness within himself. Just like the passage we had just read, God does not literally have body parts, but he communicates what the perfections that correspond to those body parts are. He hears all, he sees all, he does not need human eyes, he does not need a human ear in order to do that. Even more profoundly, let us remember that God is able to give and give and give, and yet he never loses any of what he gives. God gives and yet he does not give away anything. He has the fullness of blessedness. It is all his already. He allows us to participate in this blessedness, to share in the good gifts of his blessedness, and yet he never loses any of all that he gives. This is very hard for us to fathom. We can't give anything to somebody and it still remain ours at the same time. But God gives away many good gifts to humanity in general, but to his people, and he never doesn't still possess everything he gives. As already said a few times, God does not need us. Everything we receive, we receive from God, but God does not receive from us. We already see this when we ponder God's aseity, that God is of himself. He is perfectly sufficient in and of himself. He has no need of any other. Similarly, God's blessedness reminds us that God has beatitude by his very nature, perfectly happy in himself and no need of the creature whatsoever. He is not enriched by us. The Lord says in Psalm 5012, if I were hungry, I would not tell you. For the world in all its fullness are mine. Again, this is very humbling for us to remember. We must truly, truly feel the weight of this. That God is perfectly and eternally blessed in and of himself. He exists in his triune nature, perfectly delighting within himself. We don't cause him to be any better off by our obedience or by any of the things that we do in this life. Our praising him for his goodness does not add to his goodness, but acknowledges his goodness. God is not actually constantly disappointed and depressed about the state the world is in. This is especially an offense to many in this time period when we see all the evils going on in the world after a few world wars and we're enraged. Why is God not as unhappy as I am? I'm going to read a quote from the great Presbyterian theologian from the 19th century, William Shedd. He says, the criterion for determining which form of feeling in God is literal and which is metaphorically attributable to God is the divine blessedness. God cannot be the subject of any emotion that is intrinsically and necessarily a happy one, an unhappy one. If he literally feared his foes or were literally jealous of a rival, he would so far forth be miserable. Literal fear and literal jealousy cannot therefore be attributed to him. We cannot by our sin cause God to stop being happy. His wrath is, when the Bible speaks of his wrath, it's his justice being manifested in punishment of injustice. But God is not eternally angry inside of himself and sad in a literal sense and brought to ruin by people breaking his law in the world. He is perfectly patient and his justice will be meted out in due time to those who continue to allow them to ally themselves with the devil. But he is not shaken up and disturbed in his being by any of this. Some have said this all sounds too static of God, that God is completely unmoved in every way. And Fred Sanders has proposed that there's ways we can speak of God that don't come off as static. Johann Gerhard, the Lutheran theologian, speaks of God's blessedness to be, quote, understood as that by which God fully recognizes his own perfections through his intellect, that just means his understanding, loves them supremely through his will, his desire, and rests in it quietly and serenely. From this resting arises the joy by which God delights in himself. The philosophical term that tradition has used to speak of God is pure actuality or pure act. This isn't static. God is pure, unbounded being. He is not moved because he is perfectly fulfilled in himself. He is perfectly active, but in himself, not with the creatures acting upon him. He is, in fact, the living God. He is life itself. We cannot cause God to be changed by our sinful actions. God is immutable. This is why we need to be careful, of course, and keep the doctrine as well of impassibility in mind, that God is above human passions. He does not have human passions. When we speak of God's emotions, it's speaking something different concerning God than how we conceive of human emotions. When we are thinking of God's blessedness, we hear passages that speak of God grieving or becoming angry, but when we use the words of God becoming something that he was not prior, we are speaking of God changing, but we don't have any other way of speaking about that, so we just have to keep that in mind when we say that. There cannot be any becoming in God, for God is pure being. God does not actually suffer with us in himself, Of course, the son does suffer as the God-man in his human nature, and we'll speak about that a bit more towards the end. But God can be said to suffer in the flesh, just as Paul says to the church of Ephesus in Acts 20, that God purchased the church with his own blood. But God in his divine being does not have blood. When Paul speaks to the pagans in Acts 17, he tells them in verses 24 to 25, the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life, breath, and everything. God can actually be said to not be served by human hands. We are called the servants of God, but God is not served by human hands. God is not enriched in us. He does not need our service. He does not need our obedience, although he demands it. He does not become greater or lesser by our obedience or our disobedience. We cannot diminish his glory in any way by our sin. But when we see that God is blessed, it adds that much more on the flip side of impassibility. It's not that God is stoic with no emotions whatsoever. God is just perfectly blessed and happy in himself. He is the joyful God. I had mentioned earlier that this doctrine in the systematic is usually spoken of right before the doctrine of the Trinity. The reason why is because right before we speak about the Trinity, we're looking at who God is, and then with blessedness, we're pushed back into seeing, once again, that this God is one. And then we are ready to look at the only, we see that none of the attributes are distinct in God, but God is one once again. And then we look at the only distinction that is in God, which is between the three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And then we are able to see that all three persons share equally in this divine blessedness. The son has the father's blessedness through eternal generation. The son is begotten by the father and the spirit proceeds from the father and the son. All that is in the father is in the son. The son can be said to receive all that the father has through his being eternally begotten by the father. All that the father has is reflected eternally in the son. Some people throughout the tradition have used the language of the actual son reflecting light off of it as this is the father and the son. It's an imperfect analogy, but you can see that the light reflected off of the son is always there with the son itself. And they use that as an imperfect analogy to speak of the eternal begottenness of the son from the father. So all that the father has and the son has as well through the father eternally. So this is of course, yeah, sorry. The son delights in his perfections that he has from the father and the Holy Spirit is delighted in by the father and the son whom he is in eternal procession from. The three persons dwell in perfect love and blessedness. Father, son, and spirit all delight in their perfections and delight in one another in this way. We see this spoken of in Christ's earthly ministry with the father speaking out of heaven and saying, this is my son in whom I am well pleased. This is God's blessedness that he desires to share with us that exists well beyond anything creaturely. As we are united to Christ, as already mentioned many times before, we actually participate in the being of God in a creaturely capacity. We don't become one with God again in a sense that we become God, but we are united to him and we actually do participate in this blessedness. We have his blessedness now through faith. We are united in that very son in whom God is well, God the father is well pleased. The very blessed God is residing in us now because we have been filled with the eternally blessed spirit. We are brought to share in these blessings through our union with Christ. We share in God's blessedness. We have a blessedness that allows us to stay steadfast even through and in suffering. We aren't going to be perfectly happy in this life. Our joy will not reach its fullness just yet, but we participate in that now. It is a great comfort to us that our source for happiness is in God's happiness. Many are tempted to think, as we had mentioned previously, that because so often we are not happy that we don't want God to be happy. If we can't be happy, God can't be happy. But of course, if God is not happy, then no one is happy. If God is not the source of all joy, delight, and happiness, then we can't be happy and remain happy. God can't communicate what he does not have. God cannot be moved and changed to not be happy anymore, or else that would happen to us as well. And it does so often, but we can't go back to the source to ask for it once again. Does this pose a problem for us with the cross, though? We've said that God is above suffering. He is not able to suffer because he is blessed. And this is a mystery that's very hard for us to conceive of, but did not God the Son suffer on the cross on our behalf? This would, of course, seem to pose a major problem, an issue for us if this doctrine I've been talking about this entire time completely contradicts the gospel. Is this contradictory to the, is this what we're talking about who God is in himself? Is this the theology of glory that Luther spoke so harshly against? Not at all. The passage we read at the beginning of this study presents the gospel itself as the gospel of the blessed God. This is a mystery of us to think through, and Fred Sanders has written a lot on this. In one of his many articles, he shows that Luther actually, in one of his sermons, he speaks of Jesus, the son, in a very helpful but mysterious way on the cross. He says that when Christ dies on the cross, he is simultaneously blessed and cursed. He is blessed in his divinity eternally above all of our suffering, and not able to suffer in his divinity, and yet he is both God and man, and he truly suffers in the flesh. He suffers on our behalf in his flesh, and it is a real suffering, but the suffering doesn't reach back up into the Godhead. This is mysterious and impossible for us to truly understand, but the son does not suffer in his divinity, but the son truly takes on human flesh and does suffer in his humanity. And Cyril of Alexandria and many of the church fathers have said to the people they were evangelizing in the early church, they said, we believe in the suffering of the impassible God, which to many of them, they had spoken of impassibility of their own gods, seem to be a contradiction in terms to them. How can an impassable God that is above human suffering suffer? The Son is able to be both blessed and cursed, suffering and yet joyful. He is held up in joy even while he suffers on the cross, knowing that he is doing the will of the Father. That is one with his own in the Godhead. It is his will. He is of one will with the Father. So Christ ran the race set before him in joy towards the cross, suffering many crosses in his earthly ministry, scorns, lies, slanders against him, while remaining the blessed God. And he is therefore able to bear up all this suffering while being the blessed God. Blessedness meets suffering on the cross, and Christ is able to bear us up while we suffer because he was blessed as he suffered. We are able to have a joy of blessedness even through our own suffering in him because of this. Blessedness itself went into the grave and now the saints who die united to this one are blessed in their deaths. Let us never forget death is a curse brought upon us for our sin and death has become a blessing to the saints. Only because we die in Christ, the one who is eternally blessed, that went into the grave on our behalf and rose again. Because being God, it was impossible for death to hold him. As Peter tells us in his sermon, Preach and Acts, it was impossible for him to stay dead because Christ is both God and man. God cannot actually die. It was not fitting for him to stay dead because him being God and being life itself could not stay dead. He rose from the grave and he ascended to the right hand of the father and he gives us many blessings which he pours into us by his spirit. So we are able to go to him in prayer for this blessedness and ask him to strengthen us and to uphold us through all of our walk in this life as we walk towards his throne desiring to see him in that moment when we have nothing but his blessedness before us in the beatific vision. His happiness cannot fail. This is precisely how we can have a joy even through sorrow and suffering that in the background can stay immovable. We have something immovable that we are grounded in, in God's being, that he has united us in Christ to as we are suffering. And we can even have that little glimpse of joy in the background when we are going through the worst kind of suffering. That word makarios that I had mentioned previously is actually the word that that Homer uses before the New Testament to speak of the Greek gods. They were said to be blessed and above human suffering and human passions, but if we've read any of those stories, we know that the Greek gods, they mingle themselves with human beings, they commit sexual immorality with human beings, they did all of these wicked deeds, they become extremely unhappy in their dealings with human beings, and they're corrupted by going into humanity. And as we read this, it's almost as if Paul is mocking the false gods, because the one true God took on human flesh, suffered immensely in that flesh on the cross, and died for us, and yet his blessedness was completely untouched. It's as if he's saying to them, our God is not like your God. He is able to come and share himself with human beings without having any corruption from their sinfulness. He does not engage in the same kind of wickedness as your evil gods do. And that word is mostly been used before Paul in Greek has been used to speak of these other gods. And this was a big evangelical point made to the Greeks when they're preaching to them that our God is able to remain impassable and remain above human suffering while taking human suffering upon himself in humanity. And that's extremely glorious. He is blessedness itself, the fountain of all blessedness. And we, again, we are able to seek our blessedness in him. When we seek blessedness in things outside of him, outside of God, ultimately, instead of God, primarily we are not acknowledging that God himself is the blessed one. in whom all of our blessedness resides. Von Maastricht has a number of points of application in here for us to consider at the end of his, if you haven't seen von Maastricht's, any of his systematic theologies, they look kind of intimidating because they're so large, but one of the things that is so great about them is after every single doctrine he exposits, and it's one of the reasons why it's so large, close to 20 pages of practical application at the end of every single doctrine. So he has a pretty large section of application here that I'm going to bring us through. Point one, he says, the blessedness of God grounds our very blessedness, our final glorification. It is the source of that. He's the one in whom blessings are evermore at his right hand, and he is celebrated for this throughout the scriptures as the most blessed God. As we read already in 1 Timothy 111, that we take our refuge in the glory of the blessed God with which Paul had been entrusted. Von Mostrick tells us to consider that he who is all sufficient in and of himself offers blessedness to us who seemingly are so insignificant. Point one under practical application has a number of sub points. He says, we are told to remember when David says that he desires to build God a tent in 2 Samuel 8. And then Samuel goes to ask the Lord concerning this. God then tells David that God himself will actually establish David's throne and give him many blessings. He says to David, in verse 18, and King David went in and sat before the Lord and said, who am I, O Lord? What is my house that you have brought me thus far? And yet this was a small thing in your eyes, O Lord God. You have spoken also of your servant's house for a great while to come, and this is instruction for mankind, O Lord God. And what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Lord God. We see the humility of David here, and we must foster the same kind of humility within us when we see God's blessings being given to us. Who am I, oh Lord, that you would give me such good gifts? Why, Lord, have you given me so many blessings? When we approach God in this manner through faith, it helps us to keep from discontentment. We see what little we receive sometimes is all good gifts coming from God. whom does not need to give us anything, and yet he has truly given us so much. As Paul says in Acts 17, when preaching at the Areopagus, that he himself gives to all mankind life, breath, and everything. Every good thing that we receive comes from God. David sees the grace of God. This is such a little thing in God's eyes, and it meant the world to David. The grace and blessings he had promised to him. David acknowledges the wonder of this blessedness to such undeserving people that God offers to us as well. In Psalm 8, when he says, what is man that you are mindful of him? And later on, yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. This is what Christ did in making him higher than the angels and taking on human flesh. And this is what he does for us through Christ. He has taken such seemingly insignificant human beings and raised us up, given us so many blessings. And all of this he has given us with no need of doing it. Remember, God does not need us. Our love is a love for self in many ways. We are needy, dependent. We love God and other people not simply for themselves, but the joy they bring to us. But God pours out all these blessings out of the abundance of his own blessedness when he is not enriched or in need of us at all. What love God has allowed us to share in. Point two, he who is most blessed offers this blessedness to us most freely, not moved with any hope of repayment. As we read in Romans 11, 32, concerning the apostasy of Israel, that God has For God has consigned, as we read, sorry, concerning the apostasy of Israel, that God has, for God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and all are miserable sinners. Without any hope of giving God anything, and yet God blesses us most freely in the beloved, as we read in Ephesians 1.6. Point three, let us consider that God has cast his very son into extreme miseries beyond comprehension in order to bring us his blessedness, in order to confer his own blessedness upon us. And again, without any need on his part for us, he did all this. Christ was sweating drops of blood in agony as he awaited the judgment, and yet he as well went and ran the race before him in his joy, in order that we may see his blessedness. Jesus said in John 17 that it was his desire in prayer that we may see his glory, glory that he had had with the Father before anything had began to be. He says that when we look at the doctrine of the blessedness of God, we see the madness of sin itself. We will often attempt to strip God of his very own blessedness by our sin, by offending, provoking, and grieving him with our many sins. There's a section in Stephen Sharnock's Discourses on Sin where he refers to sin as an attempted robbery of God's joy. An attempt, of course, because it's not actually possible for us to rob God of his joy. Next point, he says that it rebukes the foolishness of those who disregard the true vein of all blessedness and pursue their own blessedness in other things outside of God. Do we desire blessedness in all of our earthly possessions? This is how so many speak today, carelessly throwing the word blessed or being blessed around. Are we blessed in our riches and our possessions? Are we just attempting to accumulate stuff that we consider ourselves blessed by, that ultimately we can't take with us when we die? Von Maastricht tells us to consider how many seem to have the greatest riches of the world and yet are the most miserable in the world. Solomon speaks of all his delights in all of the things of the world he had outside of God all over the book of Ecclesiastes. that it becomes stale and bitter at the end of his life. Von Maastricht reminds us that many who seek such things, in seeking them, ultimately shut themselves out of heaven, out of blessedness altogether, through seeking it in riches, as Christ tells us in Matthew 19. And Jesus said to his disciples, truly I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter into the kingdom of heaven. There's nothing in any of these things that can bring blessing to the chief part of us, which is our souls, which only God's blessedness can bring to us. Only God's blessedness, no earthly possession can bring satisfaction to our souls. Of course, we ought to receive Any earthly possession we do have ultimately with a thankfulness and joy to God is seeing them as blessings. Point four, he says, this draws us to seek our blessedness in God. It reminds us that blessedness is possible for us. He says, God would not have created us with an appetite for blessedness in vain. Psalm 4, 6 says, there are many who say, who will show us some good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, O God. God shows us where to seek our true blessedness in the most blessed one, himself. Psalm 144, 15, blessed are the people whose God is the Lord. This also reminds us that God in blessing us again, is always there in all of his attributes for us to bless us. Romans 8, 32, he who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not, along with him, graciously give us all things? And this culminates in the enjoyment of a perfect knowledge and vision of God, again, in the beatific vision, a joy that is embraced in all of this. Von Mostrick says, these are all motivations for us. There's no one who does not desire a kind of blessedness. Men search and desire to obtain riches for the very sake of having blessedness. But there is no blessedness in anything sought outside of God. But blessedness can be obtained. We know the source, it is in God himself. It can't ever be impeded in God himself. We can't ever stop it. He says, this is the reason that God has established the entire council of peace. This is the reason behind the very covenant of grace itself, is the blessing and sharing in the blessedness of his people in God himself. The blessedness of God is able to console us in any adversity. It is profitable for consolation. I can't, I'm going to end on this. I can't say this any better than von Maastricht, so I just ended with a giant quote from, that he ends with. He says, whenever within them they observe nothing but sin, guilt, death, and corruption, slithering, as it were, through all the corners of their soul, whenever outside them nothing meets them but confusion and destruction, and a certain murk of gloom, misery, death and who knows not what evil. Whenever it seems to them that all things threaten eternal damnation, lost salvation, that heaven is closed up, that God has withdrawn from them to such a degree that they wrestle with despair and all but think of hanging themselves at that time, what will bring them more effective help than the fact that God is blessed and the source of all blessedness? and thus blessedness is at least possible even for them, especially since so many have actually acquired it, and that nothing can impede God from conferring it even to them. And not only that it is possible, but also probable, since the most blessed God is the highest good, and thus communicative of his blessedness, and especially since he has offered so many in such great proofs which he has demonstrated his propensity for blessing the miserable, he gave his very own and only begotten son to the world for this end. He gave him over to death and to a cursed death, he takes such anxious care to call forth miserable sinners to sharing in this blessedness. To those who are confirmed in communion with God, in certain of their own blessedness, How great a joy there is supplied. How great a solace that God is not only blessed in himself, but also more certainly than certain will be for them the fount of every blessedness. Now come diseases, come poverty, persecution, death, and any great evil. They will say, if God be for us, who can be against us? Any questions or comments? Your opinion's right. The high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, have you no answer to make? Was it that these men testify against you? But he remained silent and gave no answer. Again, the high priest asked him, are you the Christ, the son of the? Living God. Blessed. Does it say here? Okay. Blessed. Are you the Christ, the son of the blessed? And then Jesus said, I am. And it just brings, it's, I mean, the way this translation has it, it's like, well, why didn't he just say son of God, or son of the living God? But this translation uses blessed, and you know, Caiaphas is bad as he was, and we all know that he was the high priest, and he had certain revelation, and he really made a big one here to give I don't know what the Greek word is. That might be eulogitos, only because they, which it would still fit perfectly with the context, because Caiaphas might be making the point that Christ is not speaking well of God and blaspheming him. So the word eulogitos, to bless, means to speak well of. So he might be trying to make that point, I'm not sure. But it still connects, of course. Any more questions or comments? Okay, let's close with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day bringing us into your house. We pray that you would bless the rest of our day, Lord. Bless us with, continue to bless us with yourself. We pray, Lord, that we would desire this blessedness that we would desire you more and more, Lord, to grow in fellowship and communion, knowing you, loving you, loving all three persons, loving you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We pray, O God, that you would orient our hearts and minds to walk towards you, desiring this as our final end more and more, Lord. And we pray that we would take delight in that which we have of you now, that you have graciously allowed us to participate in, Lord, It's so impossible for us to conceive of why you would do all of this for us when you do not need us. We pray for your servant as he comes up here to speak your word after this, Lord. We pray that you would speak through him to us all, Lord. We pray that your spirit would be at work in him and your spirit would be at work in us to hear and accept what you have to say to us, Lord. We pray that you would open our hearts and minds to worship you, to sing your praises with joyful hearts and that you would accept our offering of praise to you and your son. We pray for all this in Jesus' name, amen.