These lessons are about God.

He is the central character of the Bible and I hope the central character of your life.

Well, it's good to be with you.

And I wanted to begin a lesson with a story of a young man that I encountered years ago in Athens, Greece.

The young man was an Albanian.

And it was back in the years when Albania was still under this terrible rule and completely atheistic.

There was no information about God allowed in Albania.

But when he escaped along with his wife, a young man, he ended up in, you know, where refugees end up, you know, kind of a group of people.

And while he was there, he had this intense feeling inside.

Inside that he ought to, and I'm gonna give you his words, study for God.

I ought to study for God.

And that's what he kept saying.

And he said it to his colleagues and others from Albania, and nobody knew what he was talking about.

And he said, I have to study for God.

And he kept asking people and he went outside of his group and he kept talking to people in his broken Greek because he didn't speak Greek natively, but it came through, I wanna study for God.

Where do I go?

Where can I go?

And finally, as one person said, well, I don't know really, but I've heard that there is a school up in the north of Athens, up in a little suburb called Kastri.

And if you go up there, I think they would help direct you to a place where you could study for God.

And so after talking with a number of people and talking to a cab driver and a bus driver, he finally got enough directions that he could actually find the place.

So he takes the bus up as far as he can and walks over, and it actually is a difficult place to find because it was in an old house.

So if you didn't know where it was, you weren't gonna drive by like you do Dallas Seminary.

You can't miss it.

You know, it's three blocks long.

So here he was, and he walked up, and the little receptionist, they always have the sweetest girls as receptionists, don't they?

Every school is smart.

They put these sweet girls as a receptionist, and he came up, and he said to her, I came, I want to study for God.

And she wasn't quite sure what to do with him.

She said, well, the president of our school is here.

Would you like to talk to him about that?

Yeah.

So she took him down to the president's office, and he walked in, and he said, I want to study for God.

And the president said, really?

Well, maybe we can help you here.

We do talk about God here.

And let me call in my academic dean, which he did.

And by the way, these are two graduates of Dallas Seminary that were running that school.

And so they began to talk with him and find out a little bit about him, and that he was from Albania, and he didn't really know what he was talking about.

Didn't have any idea about God, had no concept of God.

It's just that he had this impulse inside of him that he needed to study for God.

And so the president of the school and the academic dean says, well, that's a good thing to do.

We will get you in.

Let's pray about that.

And so these two Americans bailed out of their chairs and got down on their knees, and the little Albanian guy was there and he was going, what are you doing?

And he said, well, we're talking to God.

And for the first time in his life, he began to realize God might be real.

For two proud Americans, rich, wealthy, in his mind, to get down on their knees and talk to somebody that was not physically present in the room, he began to think, wow, God might really be real.

And he was in my class.

How fun is that?

The Lord has allowed me to do amazing, wonderful things that I didn't deserve.

And that was one of them.

And so you meet these people in these various places, 35 different countries, over the years.

And every time I was in a place, I would try to talk to as many students as I could.

If I started telling you the stories, it would go past your lunchtime.

So I'm not gonna do that.

But I wanted to tell you that story because God is the center, isn't he?

What we know about God is the most important thing.

And I hope that as we go through this series, that you're going to add to your understanding of who God is.

I'm still doing that.

I have a very limited capacity.

So I'm always adding to what I understand God to be like.

And that has grown over the years.

And I hope it's still growing with you, that as you're reading the text, as you're listening to sermons, you're adding to your understanding of who He really is and what it really means to be embraced by Him and to understand that He came looking for you when you weren't looking for Him, just like He did that little Albanian guy and his wife.

So with that in mind, want to see if we can struggle through this series on theology.

Oh my goodness, what a word.

If that doesn't intimidate you, I don't know what will.

All right.

Basically, all it means is, you know, in Dallas Seminary and all those seminaries, you have to use fancy words to impress people, but theology basically is just the study of God, is you're just trying to learn about him, what he is like, and fortunately he has revealed himself in your Bible.

Now it's not systematic.

So what scholars have done over the years is to pull out of the scriptures what they call systematic theology, or what does everything in the Bible say about God himself?

Now, that's quite a mouthful, isn't it?

So what has the church done to try to figure this out and to begin to communicate it around the world?

Well, first of all, they developed the Nicene Creed and you have a copy of it there at your desk, at your table, the Nicene Creed.

I'm not going to repeat it for you, but as a good Episcopalian growing up, we recited that routinely.

So that is a part of my memory base.

I had that, even though I didn't know what it all meant, I had it memorized because we said it every single Sunday.

By the way, at Dallas Seminary, when I went there, we never said the creeds, nor the Nicene Creed, but I understand, I've been told, that the faculty now recites it.

Interesting, I don't know why, but they do according to what they tell me.

So the Nicene Creed was the first attempt by Christian scholars, Christian thinkers, to come together and say, what is the essence of what we believe?

What is the most important part of what we believe?

What is our essence theology?

And I think, honestly, today, although we have this splintering of groups, church groups, theological groups, if you check them, this is the heart and core of it.

What you believe about God, and what you believe about Jesus, and what you believe about the Holy Spirit, that's the essence of it.

And those are the three areas that we're gonna be talking about together over these next three weeks.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

So we're not gonna venture out very far.

I'm not gonna put you on a long leash.

You're gonna be on a short leash, and we'll talk about the essence of our faith.

So that document right there is worth keeping.

If you don't have it, you should have it.

And now you do have it, so you have no excuse.

And look at this next one, would you?

In the year 1647, the Protestants broke off from the Catholics, and there were issues and issues.

I'm not gonna go into the reasons, but what they did was they wanted to articulate what is it that distinguishes us?

What do we believe?

Now, we're gonna break off.

Am I gonna join you if you break off?

Well, what do you believe?

So that's what they did.

They wrote up what they believed.

Now, at 33 propositions, it takes about eight or 10 pages for them to get that done.

It's a lot more than we did with the Nicene Creed.

So the Westminster Confession began to expand Christians, make them think more precisely about theology, about who God is and what he is about.

So it was a big change because before that, all you had to affirm was the Nicene Creed.

Now, you've got to be aware of what's in this Westminster Confession.

You can look it up on the internet if you have an internet access and read it for yourself.

Ah, 1947.

Dr. Lewis Ferry Chafer opened the Dallas Theological Seminary where I graduated, and they published his theology.

Seven volumes.

Seven volumes that were this size.

Those were the books that I cut my teeth on.

Seven volumes, and you have to understand, I did not go to Dallas Seminary because I loved studying and reading.

That was not true.

I went to Dallas Theological Seminary kicking and screaming.

I did not want to be there.

I actually didn't like professors.

I had no real use for them.

I grew up in a business background, and the question was, what can you produce?

What can you show as evidence for what you're doing?

And I was actually in accounting, and I was good at it, in my own humble opinion, of course.

But I was in accounting from the time I was a freshman in college.

I got hired by a firm in downtown Dallas, 17th floor of the Vaughn Building, and I just loved it.

Yeah, throw me in the briar patch.

Now, some of you, you don't like numbers, you don't like accounting, la, la, la, whatever.

Well, I'm the guy that made money on you because I did your taxes, and I audited your businesses.

And by the way, my favorite thing was fraud audits.

Oh, yeah.

I can smell the money.

I'd track you down like a hound dog.

I was on three very famous fraud audits, and I thought, I have found home.

Throw me in the briar patch.

It was awesome.

And in the midst of that enjoyment, in the summer after I graduated, Tisha and I got married in January.

In June, I graduated from the University of North Texas, Mean Green had a great accounting school.

And a friend of mine and I, he'd had a terrible wreck.

They were staying in our home, he and his wife.

And we decided to go to eat Ashburn's ice cream, which we did on a regular basis, by the way.

But on this occasion, we had gone and gotten some ice cream cones, and we were outside in the backyard under a yellow bug light.

And by the way, this is all playing in my mind.

I can see this.

If I had a way to project it on the screen, you could see it.

It's just as vivid as if it were yesterday.

We're under this bug light, and we're eating this ice cream, having a wonderful time.

He was a good guy, become a close friend.

He was a seminary student.

And so, you know, your conversation kind of just rolls.

You know how it is when you're eating ice cream, it goes everywhere.

And all of a sudden, out of his mouth popped these words.

Do you have any reasons why you're not going to seminary?

Now, something else you may not know about me.

If I don't want to do something, I can give you a hundred reasons right now.

You want to learn it now?

Yeah, no.

I mean, I'm fast.

They come quick to me.

I didn't have one.

I couldn't think of one.

Now, the conversation moved on.

He never remembered it when I told him later on.

That conversation blew past us.

All I can tell you is it must have popped out of his mouth because that's what God put in his mouth.

And I could not sleep.

I could not do my accounting that I loved.

I couldn't do anything.

And so I began to wrestle.

And I went to sweet Letitia.

You know her, not feeling good today.

I said, well, what would you say if I said I've been thinking about going to seminary?

Now, remember, we'd been married six months, right?

We were young.

I was just barely 21, barely 21.

And she said, well, now that's about the dumbest thing you've said so far.

All I needed was an excuse.

I said, thank you, God.

Because I put that right out of my mind.

I said, if you think, and I said this to God, okay?

Now, I was a young Christian.

So my talking to God was in the vernacular.

Do you understand what the vernacular is?

Okay, I didn't use these in vows.

I just told him whatever it was was in my heart, in my mind.

I just told him, if he can't handle this, he's not the God I think he is.

And so I said, let me just tell you something.

If you think I'm gonna go to seminary and fight that all day and then come home and fight her all night because I decided to do this in spite of her, you're crazy.

I'm not doing it.

And I went back to accounting.

I was the happiest little accountant you ever saw.

Fraud auditor, oh yeah, show me the money.

Three days went by.

You know how it is in a marriage.

You don't think about past conversations.

You keep moving.

You're moving on, right?

We're young, we're active.

And she comes to me and she says these fatal words that women ask to men.

Do you remember what we were talking about?

I mean, Lord, please help me here.

I'm really not knowing what to say.

I was still young.

I didn't keep these things in my mind.

And I said, well, help me out.

What was it?

And she said, oh, about going to seminary.

I said, no, I'm not thinking about that anymore.

She said, well, direct quote.

If you believe that God is calling you to Dallas Seminary, I'm in.

Now, what are you gonna do?

Well, I did it and it wasn't easy.

And I had to read seven of Chafer's systematic theology volumes.

Wonderful reading.

Are you aware that Metropolitan has a theology?

Hmm, yeah, I heard that.

I'm not gonna ask you to state your name.

But we do.

We have a theological position that we hold.

And it's actually in the Constitution.

You can find it online.

They used to print them up.

I don't know if they do that anymore.

But you ought to read it.

It's good because it's a summary of theology.

It obviously is not seven volumes of theology.

It's statements about theology that will help compress it down so that you've got some awareness of those things that you are affirming.

And there may be things in there that you haven't really thought about.

I've been amazed to bump into people who were in the church and they said, well, you don't believe Jesus is God, do you?

Actually, I do.

And they were gonna join the church.

So I don't think that Jesus is God.

And I said, well, you're gonna bump into a whole bunch of people around here that believe that he is God.

It's probably worth your thinking about.

Very important part of theology.

Ah, Grandpa Mike talks about God.

I had the notion that I would help children because I'd read dozens of children's books, 50, 60, 100, who knows.

But they all tend to do the same thing.

They tend to be summaries of the Bible.

Bible summaries that kind of give an overview about the Bible itself.

And I thought, children are deprived of theology.

They're not getting enough theology.

And I actually taught children theology when I taught junior church.

So I thought to myself, my goodness, I think I'll write one.

And so I did.

Little book.

I neglected to bring it naturally.

It's still at home.

It's safe.

It's dry.

Didn't get wet.

But it's a little volume like this.

And it's basically, Grandpa Mike talks about God. 35 propositions, five paragraphs each.

I'll bring it next week, maybe, if I remember.

And I thought, okay, how hard can it be?

I've already digested seven volumes of Chafer's systematic theology.

Surely, I can write a small volume about God himself for children, right?

How hard is that?

I have a TH and M from Dallas Theological Seminary.

I can write this.

Yeah, no.

The Lord said, and what was funny was, when the idea came to me, I thought, boom, I got this.

Bang, I wrote out an outline just, I mean, just as fast as I could.

I was on an airplane.

And I was preparing to speak at a conference, but I thought, no, this is coming now.

I'm writing it now.

I had that outline.

I had it on paper.

It was ready to roll.

And the next thing that happened was nothing.

Nothing.

And I went to the Lord.

I was just, what happened?

I thought, you wanted me to write a theology for children.

Oh, yeah, a theology for children.

And by the way, you're writing about me, right?

Well, sure, of course, I'm writing about you.

Who else are we talking about?

Well, actually, Mike, there are some issues between you and me.

Lord ever said anything like that to you?

You ever had some issues between you and the Lord that maybe hadn't gotten resolved yet?

Okay, well, what is it?

Oh, by the way, it's this issue and this issue, and you need to clean these up.

I didn't even know they were issues.

Okay, well, it's not the kind of thing you can just do overnight because these were ingrained behaviors in me.

So I had to take some months to finally get through that thing.

And so, okay, now I'm ready.

I'm ready.

I got the next little section of it.

Man, bang, went right through that thing.

And I thought, okay, I'm on the rails now.

And I went back to the Lord, I said, hey, what happened?

He said, well, we dealt with the important issues, but there's some more issues.

Oh, gee, really?

This is miserable.

That book was the most miserable book I ever wrote.

The Lord beat me up with that book.

You're gonna write about me?

You gotta be in touch with me.

You gotta know who I am and what I'm about and what's important to me.

I'm not letting you write that book until you're ready.

Took over three years to write a children's book on a theology I had studied well.

Well, I'll just suggest to you that if you decide to write something, you might oughta check in with the Lord ahead of time.

See if he has any issues that he wants you to deal with.

So Grandpa Mike talks about God.

I'll bring a copy of it.

And the little book was painfully written.

And so I finally finished it, but it was by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin.

So Grandpa Mike talks about God.

But the book I'm going to use is not actually a book.

Actually, it has been turned into a book.

In its original form, and I actually have the things, but of course I don't have them with me.

Why would I do that?

Okay, it's two eight and a half by 11 sheets of paper, front and back.

Systematic Theology by Charles Ryrie.

And that's what I'm going to use as the outline for our time together.

Because he was a master at pulling things together.

Chafer was a master of words, and that's why it took seven volumes.

Ryrie was a master of theology, and so he could boil it down to where you just get the essence.

It doesn't give you everything you need to know, but it gives you enough to get you started.

Now, here's the good news.

Those little things are out of print, naturally.

If they're any good, they're probably out of print.

But...

Ryrie Study Bible?

Rita has the authorized version right there with her.

Ryrie Study Bible.

Now you say, oh, God, I don't wanna buy another Bible.

Okay, well, good news.

Go on Amazon and look up Ryrie Study Bible under used volumes.

You can buy these puppies for, what, two or three dollars?

Yeah, I know, two or three dollars.

You'll love it.

So I urge you to take advantage of it.

Get yourself a Ryrie Study Bible.

And why?

Because his Bible study, study graphs, his condensed systematic theology that was on four pages, right there, it's in the Bible.

It's in the back of that Bible.

As I went to him, I was looking for copies of that thing to use in a class I was gonna teach.

I said, Dr. Ryrie, I said, I can't find any of those.

Do you have any extras at home maybe that you have in your inventory?

And he laughed and smiled.

He says, Mike, those are in the back of my study Bible.

Oh, so you mean I need to get a copy of your study Bible.

Yeah, that'd be a good plan.

So here it is.

Dr. Ryrie is with the Lord, but his study Bible is still with us.

And it's an extremely helpful synthesis.

And what he used in his theology was what he called central passages.

Okay, now God has talked about all the way through the Bible, Genesis to Revelation.

But what are the essence?

What are the central passages that teach about him?

So he will give you two or three of those, and those are central passages.

And those were the ones you had to know on his test.

You never know everything, but you do need to know something.

Do you know those central passages?

Can you find them in your Bible?

Can you tell me what they mean?

So I encourage you to get a copy of his study Bible and check those out.

It will help you with your systematic theology that you need to be developing in your own thinking.

All right.

So Ryrie's categories.

Here were the things that show up on his study graph.

Scriptures, God, Christ, Holy Spirit.

These are the three that we are going to be talking about together.

Talking about God today, talking about Christ, Christology, and then the Holy Spirit, pneumatology.

So we'll talk about those three over the next few weeks.

Angels, Satan, demons.

Those three kind of come together as spirit beings that we contend with or cooperate with, as the case might be.

Man, sin, church.

Important issues.

I've had people tell me, well, you know, I'm a Christian, I just don't go to church.

Excuse me?

So, you don't associate with the body of Christ.

Well, you know, Christians, they're just kind of.

Yeah, I know Christians, and they are kind of.

I mean, just look at us.

Aren't we like that?

Of course we are.

Come on.

But we are the body of Christ.

We are who he is living through today.

We're not perfect.

Well, a few of us, maybe.

Close.

Close.

Seriously.

I mean, we're struggling.

We're trying.

We want to be better, but we are what we are.

We bring into this relationship with God our old sin nature.

He has decided for his own reasons not to remove that yet.

So we're dragging that along, but by his grace, better.

Better than we were.

And of course, the last of future things.

There is a plan, and God has it.

He is implementing it.

There is no changing it.

What was I talking to?

Ron?

I was talking to somebody right before class.

Yeah, and we were saying how deep our sin nature is.

We were saying how deeply grateful we were.

Ted, excuse me.

How grateful we were that there is a future that we know.

We're getting older now.

I not only have a hitch in my get along, okay?

I have a hitch in both get alongs.

You know, I feel age more than I ever did.

And it's miserable.

I hate it.

I don't like being slowed down.

You should see my schedule that I kept.

I can't keep it now.

I don't like it.

I wanna go fast.

I always liked to go fast.

When I was a little boy and had a bicycle, how fast will it go?

Fast as you can pedal.

Oh, watch me.

You know, I just, that's all I cared about.

And I did the same thing in school.

I did the same thing in ministry.

I liked it.

I liked the challenges of it.

I liked the travel.

When I left here and went to Dallas Seminary and traveled in the summer times, I loved all of that.

It's horrendous.

You wouldn't even believe the things you have to fight through just to get to the place that you're gonna teach.

But that was just who I was.

Not anymore.

Future things.

So we're talking and we were rejoicing that as we get older and get closer to that time when the Lord takes us home, we look forward to being with him forever.

Oh my goodness.

Oh my goodness.

I envision that meeting.

There's gonna be a lot of people there.

Have you thought of that?

I don't know how far back in the line I'm gonna be, but I don't think it's close to the front.

But I just wanna see him for a glimpse.

His glorious face.

Experience his wonderful grace free of this flesh that I carry around.

Oh my goodness.

Future things.

All right.

We're talking about the doctrine of God.

Here are the things that Rari puts in his list.

His existence, his attributes, his names, his decrees, his triunity, and he as father.

Just, I'm gonna just comment on this last one, but it's not a last one.

It's a huge one.

He is in a family relationship with you.

Now we exalt him.

We worship him.

He is God almighty.

We don't deserve to be in his presence, but how he wants to reveal himself to you is as your father.

The New Testament uses the word daddy.

Does that have a different connotation to you?

Does that have a warmer feel to you?

Daddy.

Yeah.

Yeah, daddy.

I was a daddy.

I had a daddy.

Come sit on their lap.

Let me talk to you.

Oh my goodness.

So, God as your father has a horrendous impact on how you relate to God.

I encourage you to think about it.

So we're gonna look at these three, though.

Attributes, names, and triunity.

Simplicity, unity, simplicity.

What does simplicity mean?

It's not complicated.

Whatever it is you know about God, you know about him as is.

It's not a combination of things.

He is altogether.

He's one.

He is infinite.

He is eternal.

Oh, wait a minute.

Aren't those the same?

What do you think?

Infinity and eternity.

Okay, infinity talks about God's existence in time.

Yes, he is infinite.

He has no beginning.

He has no end.

Eternal is about the quality of his state of being.

He is eternal in his state of being.

So he is both of those things at the same time.

In fact, he is all of these things and more in the same time.

I just selected some, the same ones that Rory selected for this list.

He is immutable.

He is not changing.

He doesn't change.

Did you deal with parents that changed?

Sometimes, I mean, you made a mad boy, I'm telling you.

Or if you did something, you didn't even know what was wrong.

But he doesn't change.

It's always the same.

And that's why this book is so important.

So that you know, so that you know what he's like.

He's consistent, doesn't change.

He's omnipresent.

Always good to know when you're in a bad place.

And I've been in some.

And I thought, wow, okay, this looks pretty hopeless.

But the Lord is here too.

He's in Albania.

He's not just at Metropolitan Bible Church.

He is sovereign.

He is the ruler.

He is omniscient, knows everything.

Doesn't need to be taught anything.

I still need to be taught lots of things.

And I'm still studying things.

In fact, I was studying for this lesson, to be with you.

He is just.

He is love.

His justice means he's always fair.

It was a big thing to me when I was a kid.

You ever get in games where, well, maybe it's a boy thing, who knows?

I wasn't with the girls.

I was with the boys.

But, you know, on our teams, certain guys could get away with things that the rest of us couldn't get away with.

Yeah.

So there was not, it wasn't any justice.

There is love.

If I was tempted and accepted that temptation, this is where we would spend our time.

Because that's the most misused word in the English vocabulary.

We have no idea what in the world that means.

I'm gonna give you the Bible's definition of it, but only the first word.

Love is, can you finish it?

Patient.

I hate it.

I've always hated it.

It's terrible.

Tell me love is patient.

Professor at Dallas Seminary sent us home.

He was trying to teach us how to love our wives.

Okay, everybody knows how to love your wife.

Come on, how hard can it be, right?

This isn't hard.

Piece of cake.

So what I want you to do is I want you to take 1 Corinthians 13, wonderful chapter on love, and I want you to read it to your wife.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, okay.

But I want you to change it just a little because if you're doing what it says, you can change it and say I am.

Now let that settle on you for just a heartbeat.

I remember what it was like.

I was just so naive.

I didn't know.

I just did whatever they told me.

Now I get home, I got Tish right here.

Okay, sit down, sweetie.

I gotta do this.

This is an assignment and I gotta read 1 Corinthians 13.

She's so patient with me.

She'd sit there and I said, okay, I've gotta read this to you, but I gotta change it.

It says from love is, I gotta change I am.

So I get to the first, I am patient.

Well, she broke out in laughter.

It was uncontrollable laughter.

I never got past patient.

If you know anything about me, you know, I am not patient.

I hate patients, unless we do it right now, of course.

Miserable word, but it's the word God wants to implant in us artificially because it's not there.

We're not like that.

I'm not like that.

I want to be like that.

And over the years, God has helped me.

I am better.

No, you don't believe it.

And you don't have to, I don't care.

All right.

But what I'm telling you is that when I'm under a car or under my boat or working on something mechanical, in the past, okay, in the past, I have actually, you won't believe this, I have actually lifted a Volkswagen off of the floor.

That bolt was not coming loose.

You want to bet?

That sucker's coming loose.

You just need a bigger cheater bar.

You get out here with that sucker.

You can lift a Volkswagen off of the floor.

I did it.

Thank you very much.

And it still didn't come loose.

You know why?

Because they were reverse threaded.

You got to pull them this way.

I didn't know that.

Why do you have to know things like that?

I don't know.

It's love.

It's patient.

Patient, patient.

Love is patience.

That's what he wants us to exhibit.

Not only on Volkswagens, but with each other.

With each other, being patient.

Truth, free.

Omnipotent, holy.

Nothing like him.

Nothing like God.

All right.

You have these printed out for you handily.

Right there on the handout, on the page.

One of the pages looks like this.

Yeah.

See it?

Got it?

Okay.

Now, for those of you that like to take notes, and some people don't like to do it, so it's on the website now, this new revised standard version.

I want you to see that these names in the Bible reveal parts about God that we don't get in the English text.

It's one of the things I learned in seminary that was so powerful for me, that there is a revelation of God that gets past English.

It's bound up in the original text, and until you read that, or read it in a translation that gives full credit to it, you don't really understand the names that God is going by.

Do you have pet names for your grandchildren?

Or your children, or your spouse, or your mommy, or your daddy?

Do you have pet names?

Well, God has pet names.

And in the Bible, these are given to us.

Jehovah, I am that I am.

Jehovah-jireh, I will provide.

Jehovah will provide.

Jehovah-shal-aniseh is my banner.

He is my banner.

Jehovah-shalom, Jehovah is peace.

Jehovah-sabaoth, the Lord of hosts.

Jehovah-machadei-chum, can you say it?

Chum.

My Hebrew professor was not happy if you couldn't go, chum.

You practice that this week, okay?

He's our shepherd, he's our shepherd.

He tends us, how sweet is that?

When we say it, the Lord is my shepherd, those words ought to have the impact.

We don't have a lot of sheep in our community.

So it doesn't have the same impact for us that it had for those that heard it at first.

So you have to think about it and remind yourself in what ways he's been a shepherd for you.

He's our righteousness, he's our recompense, he's the one who strikes.

This is not an easy one for me.

The Lord says, vengeance is mine, I will repay.

It's okay, don't bother yourself, Lord, I'll take care of it, okay?

I can handle this one all by myself.

You have to hold yourself, no, it's not your business, that's the Lord's business, he'll take care of that.

Yeah, but that's gonna be a long time from now and I wanna do it right now.

Not that I'm impatient, you understand that.

The Lord is there.

You ever find yourself in a place where you wonder, is he really here, is he here?

You're lonely, you're tired, you're exhausted, worn out.

I'm here, it's okay, I'm here.

He's right here with you, not far away, isn't that wonderful?

Why am I a Christian?

Because no other god is like this.

There's nobody like this.

You go to the countries where they believe in other gods, they're not like this.

He's not like this.

He's not here.

He's not present.

He's not helpful.

He's not caring.

He's not any of these words.

One of the biggest questions outside of our group is, is God plural?

The plurality of the godhead.

Now what I said just now was in theological terms, an oxymoron.

It doesn't make any sense.

The tri-unity of the godhead, how do you say that?

Let me say it in a way that maybe will make sense to you.

God is much bigger and much more complex than you or I as human beings can understand.

He's revealed himself through the Father, through the Son, and through the Holy Spirit.

Now if you want some clear designations of that, read the Gospel of John again.

Because the Gospel of John is probably the most theological of all the Gospels in that regard.

You will see Jesus talking to somebody.

Well, who is he talking to?

He's talking to himself, because he's God?

No, he's talking to God the Father.

And then, just as he gets ready to leave, he tells his disciples, don't worry, I'm going to send you the Spirit, He's going to be with you.

Now I've thought about that one.

I can remember reading those words.

I'm not sure I've really changed my opinion.

I'm thinking, okay, wait just a minute.

You're telling me it's better for me if you go away?

I don't think so.

I would like to veto that one.

Once you found the Savior Himself, okay, would you ever want to turn Him loose?

That's why when I read Mary's response in the garden, she grabs a hold of Him, and I'm sure He knew exactly what that meant.

I'm never letting you go again, pal.

I'll let you out of my sight one time, and what happens?

Not again.

And he had to remind her, no, it's okay, it's okay.

But you have in you this morning His Holy Spirit, whom He sends to each believer.

Right now, right here, not a substitute, not an angel, His Spirit who is His personal representative.

The Spirit never says and never does anything that Jesus would not do or say.

And Jesus did not say or do anything that the Father did not say or do.

In fact, He says it.

I only say what the Father tells me to say.

I wish I did that.

I really wish I did that.

I don't do that.

The name for God in the Old Testament is Elohim, Elohim.

The I am at the end is the plural, El at the first is God, plural, Im, Elohim.

By the way, Jews have a very difficult time with this, so do Muslims.

Some Muslims actually believe the Genesis account, but this part is really a booger.

The pronouns of creation are plural, let us create or make mankind in our image after our likeness.

Now, you can fool around with Elohim and I've heard people try to get around it, but this you cannot get around.

These are pronouns.

They're very specific in the Hebrew text.

Let us make mankind in our image after our likeness.

Now how are you baptized?

We still do it.

When we have the baptisms, you watch them, you pay attention.

We're still doing 2,000 years later exactly what we were told to do.

Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, amen.

Let me tell you something, God does not share his name with anybody.

Doesn't share it with me, doesn't share it with you.

He doesn't share it with Charles Ryrie, doesn't share it with Lewis Briggs Chafer.

You baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, amen.

We still do that.

It's the essence of theology.

We believe in that God.

He is a triune presence.

We don't know what that means.

Neither did the church fathers take comfort.

They couldn't explain it.

They danced around it.

They did everything possible.

Theologians at the school where I taught did the same thing.

It's impossible.

We're talking about God himself.

So your opening round of theology, study of God, my goodness, my goodness.

I know many of you in here have a Bible reading program that you follow, okay?

When you're reading, just keep a little notepad close to you.

What did I learn about God today from this passage?

He's everywhere in it.

What did I learn about God today?

Because he's the one who loves you, who sent his son so that all of your sins go away.

Psychologist, a friend of mine was saying, had a young man who just couldn't deal with that.

So he was having trouble with this forgiveness of sins thing.

He said, yeah, I would come to God, but I still have this sin.

He said, what do you say to God?

Well, I said, don't you remember what I did in such and such a day and such and such time?

And what do you think God says?

He said, yeah, sure.

No, he doesn't say that.

He says, I put your sin as far as the East is from the West.

And then the best part, I will remember it.

Sorry, son, I can't remember.

Dear God, thank you.

You're so much bigger than we were able to explain.

You're so much better than we've really experienced.

Help us, God, to come to you this week and worship and thanksgiving for your kindness and your presence with us.

In Jesus' name we ask it, amen.

Thank you.