CPC Sunday School | Attributes of God-3 (Only recorded 2nd half: 10-8-2023))

The speaker discusses the concept of a Sadie, which refers to God's eternal and unchanging nature. They emphasize that God is the creator of the universe and everything in it, including time. They explain that God's a Sadie allows him to enter into relationships with his creation, particularly through Jesus Christ. They also highlight the importance of trusting in God's plans and the assurance that he remains the same. The speaker connects the idea of a Sadie to spiritual growth, worship, and the need for faith as a seed from God. The picture from the Hubble telescope you guys see these pictures is beautiful, right? So you're looking out in the beginning God Good created the heavens and the earth so right at Genesis 1 1 we have probably the most important confession of all of life For us to defend in the beginning God, let's just take those two words beginning and God We have in that confession the creator Preacher distinction we have a beginning and then we have God So what does that tell us about our world? It tells us very simply. It's not a trick question that it had a beginning Our world had a beginning and then the next word is God Okay, each of you here had a beginning Our world had a beginning In order for our world to have What we see around us in existence It required for there to be something on The other side of that beginning it required Something that's not dependent on the world Something that's outside of that beginning and we confess that that is God The triune God that has revealed himself in the Bible because If there was ever a time in our universe where there was nothing guess what a big explosion of nothing provides a Big nothing there had to be something and that something Had to have had qualities that are different than what we see around us the something and so in Genesis 1 1 We confess this great truth of a Sadie that God in the beginning God That there was a starting point for The earth there was a starting point for me and you we depended on parents We depended on you know to be here today God Necessarily Didn't depend on anybody that he in and of himself is self-existent if you can grasp that Then you grasp the great truth of a Sadie I want to stop there and see if there's any comments or questions on that part I Will keep going. Thanks for fixing the projector so John frame if we look at briefly the creation and the cross we look at a Sadie marking the great difference between the Creator and the creature But it also guards God's freedom to enter the creation without compromising himself To enter relationships to the world and with the people so he saves us from sin not because he needs to do it But because of his free gift of grace, okay, let's take some time to just Reflect on this and maybe to caution ourselves Against what a Sadie can make us think about God it can maybe make us think well God's not like us Therefore God is remote from us God is separated from us and the lap that should be the last thought from our head Because a Sadie in and of itself is God not needing to do anything with us on his own Free gift giving Christ the triune God to us in baby form growing to be a man Living perfectly as the God-man suffering actively giving up his body on the cross up until the point of his death and Then rising again. This is God Entering our world and our time choosing for himself of people to glorify himself This is as close of a truth and close to everyone here as you can imagine this is what it means for God to not be removed from us, but to be suffering in a way that You know week he can at the right hand of the father, right? Sympathize with our suffering. So this is a very personal God Any questions or thoughts on that? Let's Keep going with Burkhoff says as a self-existent God He is not only independent himself, but also causes everything to depend on him It is only as a self-existent and independent one that God can give the assurance that he will remain eternally the same in Relation to his people and then in John 5 26 For as the father has life in himself, so he has also granted the son also to have life in himself So we see this concept of the Sadie flushed out throughout Scripture So when we think about time now, I want us to spend some time thinking about time Time is an aspect of Creation let's think about that so that when we think about God in the beginning God so before God Was there time before the beginning of the universe and you know granted there is some Discussion and debate in regards to what we mean by eternity, but we mean by time But eternity would be God's a Sadie applied to time So when we think about God's separateness or outsideness of something So when we think about God's a Sadie of time we think about eternity no beginning no end so Oh, we're still in Hebrews here Who's gonna let me know that I was on the wrong slide So in if we back up just a minute on the cross Now we think about Hebrews 1 1 through 3 and really what we want to just bring out here here's Christ sitting down Christ why is this important for us in our salvation? When you're on a work site, when do you sit down? When the jobs done and if you've got that one guy while you're sweating and swinging the hammer on your finger That's just sitting in the corner, right? Not a good look, right? But Christ in Hebrews that confess is sitting down That is incredibly significant because what he's done on the cross for our salvation is not changing What he's done is secure and it's finished and now as the priest as the high priest he's able to sit down So his a Sadie is that his unchangingness is Incredibly important as we think through our salvation and the confidence and trust we can have in that Okay in regards to time so the Lord is The everlasting God the creator of the ends of the earth So when we think about time again, God's eternality is as a Sadie with respect to time He's the Lord of time he exists above and apart from it But again, he is free to enter into time as he sees fit to accomplish his purposes for I was driving the other day up the road here and there was a sign on one of these church signs and it said for I know the plans that I have for you and it said dot dot dot and I don't know if that was a teaser to Come in or where they were going for that. But you know, I'm on the side of the road preparing for this and I say Declares the Lord Right that saying that that verse Without declares the declares the Lord is just a saying but it's tempting because what do we want to know? We want to know plants like this is the entire This is the when we think about the conflict last night and what's ongoing between Israel and Hamas Did they as far as we know, you know when we think about right now what they're trying to figure out is What is the enemy's plans? You know that they talk about this as being a surprise attack. They did not know the enemy's plans We want to know in warfare. This is what you know, all of World War two and the codebreakers and that whole Whole group of effort revolves around is knowing the plans. Well only somebody that's outside of time You know can say declares the Lord. I know your plans. I know the plans God is the plan keeper and so when we think about You know verses that talk about God's You know, this is this is an incredibly encouraging verse I remember when we had guy in the hospital our pastor shared Psalms 112 7 He says he's not afraid of bad news. His heart is firm And it should say trusting in the Lord, right? How and why can we trust the Lord? Word is that what is that rooted in for us as we are afraid, you know Even when you have a baby in your arms, that's brand new. What is the first thing that I did when we had Evie? You know three our firstborn three weeks into having a girl I go and I buy a shotgun It just felt like what I needed to do, right? Who's gonna hurt her? I remember bringing her home to our small apartment and there was a guy smoking You know next to where we were right I How dare you Like my girl will breathe good air Third day of life Right, and so we have this this instinct where all of a sudden what's precious to us we have this instinct to want to protect it and that that can lead to fear and that can lead to all sorts of Responses and so we read a verse like this Don't be afraid of bad news. Our heart is firm. Why? because of what we've done our heart is firm because we're trusting in the Lord and Only a Lord that doesn't change only a Lord that's revealed himself in the Bible Only a Lord that is good to his people in a way that we understand. Can we can we confess this first about? It It's vital for spiritual growth so now we're going to transition to worship the so what What do we do if we understand a Sadie? if we have to start in spiritual growth confessing that God is great and grasping the truth of his a Sadie is the first step on the road to doing this and Packer goes on to say in his book concise theology in the introduction theology is for doxology and devotion That is the praise of God and the practice of godliness So that if we understand God rightly and we say God is great then our natural response should be to just say whoa God is great. I want to praise this God I want to worship this God and then our natural response from that should be us growing together I Want to with the time we have left. I want to talk about gardening Any gardeners in here? Okay. We got at least one person excited about this And I want to ask you what do we see in this picture Beautiful garden. Does anybody have a garden that looks like that here in in, Texas? Oh This the heat is brutal For a brief moment, that's all right. I've never say that again. Oh How much work did it take for your dad's garden to look like that a lot of work Okay, so I'm going to be calling on you. Were you ever a part of that work? Did he ever bring you out there and what kind of stuff did you do? I was living there Lots of work when you said that you planted things what did you need to plant things obvious non-trick question So You've got those things you got the shovel the rake you've got the dirt the location now, what do you need? You're ready to go dug that hole. What do you need? The seeds, okay So none of this would happen without seeds and if I'm going to call your attention back and we did the order of Saludis Order of salvation we talked about faith being as the Puritans called it, you know a seed from God, right? So we confess in here that any garden requires a seed and in our life and in our growth It starts with that seed of faith given to us by God What else what else is important for good gardening and the application is here just to get right to it is how are we growing? Together, how are we growing individually? And how are those two things connected? So we've got individual. What did you call these things? Raised beds maybe so you got these individual raised beds, right? They're all kind of close together They've got a fence around them, right? So we've got all sorts of Analogies here, right and like all analog analogies They some of them break down sooner than other but this is one that we can carry through quite a ways so you've got Weeds what do we do with weeds? After they've been there a couple weeks Probably, you know if you go on vacation and you come back and then there's all the weeds They're going to have gotten deeper and they're going to have gotten meaner and harder to pick out what's the encouragement for us here as we're growing together as we think about you know, the verse that says don't allow any seed of Bitterness right to grow in your heart, right? Why do you want to pluck that out as fast as you can? Because before you know it it's going to take your heart So it reminds us that we should have short accounts with God to agree with God and confess that when we have sin in our Life, what about for one another nests that as you say, hey Watch out for poison ivy. Don't rub that all in your face right Why is it important for all of us, you know to say hey, I think I see something in your life That you may want to be careful with to have each other looking out for one another and to be Overseeing over one another in a way that you know, we're looking out for you know potential dangers that are ahead What other applications are there? in gardening in the back Eric You're turning this on one thing that strikes me about gardening is, you know, we don't make the plants grow That's God's work, but God invites us to build these Structures to put I Don't want to overstate our role, but we're putting boundaries around What God is calling us to do and we're putting boundaries around? Our role but we're putting boundaries around What God has created what only God can cause to spring from the soil and he invites us to be Kind of co-laborers with him in that work of creation. Yeah, great point And I don't and it doesn't overstate our role because if we're talking about justification anything overstates our role Justification is a hundred percent dependent on God But our sanctification is a hundred percent dependent on ourselves and a hundred percent dependent on God, I know that's 200% but it's a hundred percent on both and so anybody that is saying well, I'm just going to act like I'm going to act and Leave the sanctification of the God does not understand biblical sanctification What else there's a fence around important, right? So many ways We fence stand in the back. There's a Seasons for your garden. There's a time to plant time to tear up time to put Various harvests will be available to you at different points and and knowing the crops is very important in that Yeah, that's good. And so that as we as we look around and we say this is a tough season of life You know and you become discouraged in the toughness of a season take heart You know that just hang on, you know continue to rely on the promises of God continue to be faithful and just hang on and Springs coming right? We've all been through that February around here where it's hard to believe and we say to ourselves man I just can't wait till I go outside and don't have to have a coat and then we get to August and we're like Ah, I just can't wait to have to wear a coat and back and forth we go What else Feed the plants, how do we feed the plants in our life and grow? That's an obvious question How do we feed Manure or fertilizer of some sort to make the plant strong that's right leaf and so, you know, we think about an application that When we read the word, you know, we are Growing and feeding our garden and so that if you haven't read the Bible From last week to this week Then you have spent an entire week not feeding your garden and there will be consequences for that What about? Gardens, let's say we we have a potluck in two weeks Maybe two weeks. Okay PSA potlucks in two weeks and you show up to the potluck and you've got a picture of Some tomatoes from your garden that you took a year ago, right? Check out this picture of this huge tomato, right and you put it out on the table for the potluck Look at that tomato, right? You know, what are we doing when we you know Basically want a pause of life, but we talk about the good that we did two years ago Look at these accomplishments that I had two years ago And so now I'm at a place of life where I can just show people pictures of my tomatoes Vice versa. What about a tough season of life? Take a picture of that like an awful-looking garden worms in the tomatoes just got eaten alive and This is what you bring. Ah Let me tell you about this tomato That was just awful here. I've got a picture of it, right? So when we do well on those parts in those seasons of life at the expense of what's growing right now Right also to ours and to others detriment all sorts of applications in terms of growing when we think about Gardening any other thoughts on that? Okay Okay, so finally When we taught when we bring this back around to how are you doing? How are you becoming? We are always growing. We are always becoming one way or the other and so what does God say in? First Peter 1 15 through 16 you shall be holy Right, this is our calling for I am holy and Then in first Thessalonians 4 1 finally then brothers We ask you and we urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God Just as you are doing that you do so more and more So you either are becoming holy or you're not one way or the other Thoughts questions with our time left on Aseity and then on Worship on growing. What are some of your guys's thoughts? We have a little bit of time Good Yes, tell us more Right and thankfully without the microphone that won't make it on the audio recording But you know, I've only heard I've heard one beer announcement, you know from a pulpit And so that's number two But those are confessing good truth, so I will agree with you anything else related to what we talked about Okay All right with that. Let's pray our Father in heaven We through even this brief time Confess that you are a great God we Confess that we are not God We see the great difference between the two we ask you Lord for your continued mercy and grace on our lives We thank you Lord for this great treasure of Being in church of being able to worship you and being able to grow together. We pray this all in Christ's name. Amen