The Man of God

Well, let's get started for tonight, and we're in the sixth chapter.

J. Timothy, he issued some very timely and timeless truths. Last week, we saw Paul return once again to the dangers that false teachers have on the church. This is a big issue in the New Testament. It's big with the Lord when he was on earth. It's big with Paul, Peter, and the others. And all of them say in the last days there's going to be a gaggle of those guys, and there really is. I wanted to show them to you on YouTube, but Jonathan said no. So we have this exposure concerning false teachers, and today we're going to start by talking about Paul. We won't hang out here very long, but speaking to the danger of falling in love with money. I've never had that problem because it's never around long enough to get acquainted, but he's going to talk about the danger of falling in love with money, starting in chapter 6, verse 6.

But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. For we have brought nothing into the world so that we cannot take anything out of it either. If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content. But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction.

For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

An interesting passage here. I'm drawn to those words content and contentment. I don't have this in the notes, but I heard Dr. MacArthur preach one time, and he said in his entire ministry he has never had anyone walk up to him and say, you know, I am really content. Pastor, have you ever had anyone do this? Well, I am really content. I'm content with my life. I'm content with the church, my relationship to the Lord, my Bible study, my prayer. I'm really content.

Anyway, many times in the word of God we find warnings about the love of money. Jesus told us where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. That's in Matthew chapter 6, verse 21. How then should we view money? And one thing we must get completely clear is that having money is not wrong or sinful. The Bible does not condemn the possession of money when it is done correctly. The Bible, though, very clear, issues a condemnation for the love of money.

And that's a big difference. Possessing and loving are two different things. And we need to realize that money is a gift of God. Everything that we have is by the providence of God and should be used in bringing honor and glory to Him. God wants our needs met. He's promised God to meet every need. He wants us to part with our money or a portion of it when He requires us to do so. It is just that God does not want money to receive preferential treatment in our lives. And let's face it, some people are better at acquiring money than our others.

And I'm terrible at it. Absolutely terrible at it. But some principles we should live by is that the acquisition of money, number one, should never make us proud or puffed up. Neither should we seek riches because we false believe that is where our security lies. And how many people have ever known that feel that way? Our money can be gone in a moment. Neither should acquiring money be our highest goal. Our highest goal is this, seek first God's kingdom and His righteousness. And when we do that, our needs will be met. Matthew 6, 33. And I love the wording here, which is obviously not original with me. The best use we can have for our money is to make eternal friends. I really liked that when I read that. I read that two or three times.

That is a great way to put it. And it is not original, but we make eternal friends when we use our money to see souls led to Christ. I would suggest that the unpayable debt connects in to that. The Ukraine and Hong Kong and China and Bibles in Vietnam. And you can go down a whole list of things. We're making eternal friends. We've made eternal friends in Vietnam. We don't know who they are. And we won't know until we get to glory. We won't know. God keeps that score apart, not us. The main principle concerning money is that we're not to love it. Again, that's never been a problem with Diane and I. We just don't have it around long enough to even get acquainted. As Paul closes his letter, he next instructs Timothy again. He leaves money and he goes into the qualities of a spiritual leader. And remember what Paul's doing here. He's getting

Timothy ready. Ready for this church at Ephesus and ready for hard days. And Paul knows that there's hard days ahead for the church at Ephesus with the spirit of God revealed that to him or just he looked around. I don't know. But there are hard days. Peter talked about it. Jude talked about it.

And then John in Revelation says the hard days are here. You've left, you've left your first love. But he's going to talk about the qualities of a spiritual leader. And we call this the man of God, the man of God. But fleeing from these things, you man of God, that's Paul talking to Timothy, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness.

Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called. And you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things and of Christ Jesus, who testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that you keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The title man of God is of great importance in the scriptures. It is spoken of in the Old Testament.

It's actually spoken in both testaments. But in the Old Testament, it is used extensively. In the New Testament, it is used to describe Timothy.

Paul used it. It's exclusive here. By so referring to Timothy, the apostle Paul is placing him in a long line of godly men from under the Old Covenant. Because there were frequent references to that man of God, mighty man of valor. Remember that term. And this was important because Paul knew the formidable task that Timothy was facing in ministering to the church at Ephesus. He was being called upon to lead a church that had lost its way through the influence of false teachers. And again, lurking in the shadows throughout this book has been false teachers. That's not going to go away in September, by the way, when we get into 2 Timothy. To be successful, Timothy must exercise the right characteristics to mark out a man of God. Now, here's the importance to you and I. These have not changed over the intervening centuries. So what are the characteristics? First characteristic, know what to flee from.

Know what to flee from. It's hard to say. What was that cowboy? Never mind. First Timothy 6, the first part of verse 11. But flee from these things, you men of God.

I think today Paul would look at us and say, you men of God. Flee from these things. If we are to be men of God, there are going to be things that we must flee from. And interestingly, the word flee, which by the way, my spell check hates that word for some reason. It likes F-L-E-A. The word flee is where we get the word fugitive.

And we deal with those downtown. There can be no doubt that the most significant thing we can flee from is sexual sin. Repeated over and over and over. And connected to those are idolatry, youthful lust. We can go down the line.

We are to make ourselves fugitives from these things. Talking to Jonathan, we have lunch every Monday or most Mondays.

And I remember listening years ago to a pastor that I really liked. And I think he's probably gone by now. But he had a number of kids, a little help from his wife. And he said that he would go in every night after they went to sleep.

He'd get on his knees to every one of his young children. And he would say, Lord, please deliver my children from religion and pornography.

That was his prayer. He wanted him delivered from both those things. We were talking about John Piper at lunch today. And at a conference recently, Piper said, you know, talking about pornography, it's just invaded our land.

There's a billion websites now on the Internet. Including Facebook. Yeah. And they asked Piper at this conference, what's your advice on it? He said, tear out your eyes.

And everybody laughed, you know, kind of triggered. He says, Piper, you're a stone face. He said, I'm serious. Just rip out your eyes. You know? He said, that's a quote.

Yeah. He said, that's a quote. He'd quote me. And I'm quoting the Bible. He said, know what to flee to and pursue. That's fleeing to, right?

And pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness. So Paul's telling Timothy and us, flee and flee to, run to.

We are to run from corrupting sin and run toward spiritual virtue. When we are fleeing sin, we should be pursuing holiness.

And I can recommend the book, The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges. Jonathan and I are doing a book study on that right now. Pursue holiness.

If we are to legitimately bear the title man of God, we are to pursue virtues. And I've named six right there.

Pursue these six virtues. The first two virtues we are to pursue are righteousness and godliness. And that's interesting because righteousness is external and godliness is internal.

The righteousness spoken here is not the imputed righteousness of Christ, although that's vitally important. That is the believer's gift at the moment of justification.

He imputes to us his righteousness. He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God.

That is our gift when we're saved. This is the holiness of life that becomes the lifelong pursuit of the true follower of Christ.

Pursue righteousness. Pursue holiness. Pursue holiness. We're to be known as men who do righteously, and that comes from obeying the commands of God. And people say, well, when will that ever end, that pursuit?

Well, when you stand before Christ and see him as he is, and you will be like him because you will see him as he is. That's in 1 John. Well, Wesley struggled with this because he thought and preached that you could arrive in this life.

And even near death, maybe even on his deathbed, he finally said, I couldn't attain it. I could never attain. I was always pursuing, but never fully attaining.

Spurgeon at one time, believe it or not, the great Baptist prince of preachers, Spurgeon one time was praying, and he said, and he caught him, he was in his private chambers, and he said, Lord, I want to thank you that I'm not like other men.

You've given me all this knowledge, this ability to pray. And then all of a sudden, he was just overwhelmed with what he had just prayed. And he wrote, he said, I never felt further from the Lord when I said that.

And he said, I was driven to my face. And he said, I spent much time down there. And I imagine he would have said like Thomas Watson, the great Puritan, said, my eyes did swim in their orbs.

They had great ways of saying this. We are to be known as men who do righteously, and that comes from obeying the commands of God.

I've never done this, and I'm not going to do it in here. There's hundreds of commands in the New Testament. You know, let's all write down just a hundred of them. We can't do that because we're not diligent enough students of the Word.

We've got to dig in there and write down what is the Lord commanding us to do. The internal part or counterpart to righteousness is godliness.

That has to do with attitudes and motives. Right behavior flows from right motives. Godliness is, we can think of this as a reverence for God.

We reverence God. And that quality leads us to worship God in spirit and in truth. We are to offer acceptable service with both reverence and awe.

We're in awe of the holiness of God, the purity of God, the person of God. Exercising righteousness and godliness connects us to our next two virtues being faith and love.

Faith can be defined as the trust we have for God in all things. It comes from a Greek word, kistua. We get the word faith or belief.

Faith, it is the trust we have for God in all things. And in that regard, it is a confident trust. A confident trust.

Faith is, for the believer, faith is the air we breathe. I'm going to write a song, the air we breathe. Faith is the air, the very air we breathe. We trust God to keep and fulfill His Word.

I like that example of the air we breathe. You can't take another breath without the grace of God. No human can. No living thing can. The love spoken of here is the highest form of love.

This is sacrificial of agape. It is love in the highest order. It is the love that says, I will go to a cross and die for sinners.

Christ exercised this sacrificial love in the atonement. In that regard, the virtue of love is to be unrestricted and unrestrained.

It involves our love for God first, for fellow believers next, and for unbelievers. We're to even have love for the unbeliever.

We are to love those whom God loves. And there's a great rule here to live by, very consistent with the words of Christ. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

This is the great and foremost commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Those are red letters in Matthew chapter 22, verse 37 to 39. And of course, I think it was a lawyer that asked Jesus, who is my neighbor?

And basically the answer was, everyone is your neighbor, especially the one who is in need at that moment. And who is not in need at any particular moment.

And Paul then mentions two external values, perseverance and gentleness. And perseverance is a very interesting word, meaning to remain under.

We are to remain under Christ. Be loyal to him. We are to have, we have out east of town, a martyr's wall at VOM.

I encourage you to go look at it. The name, those named there persevered. They remained under Christ, even in death.

I look at that wall frequently. I'll be out there Friday and Saturday with our, with our board meeting. And I know a lot, not all of them, but I know a lot of the history of the people that are up there.

Diane and I in less than a month will be going to Scotland. And we're basically taking a tour of covenanters, the people who died rather than deny their faith. And we're going to the great monuments and even the places where they died.

Some of them are relatives. Perseverance means we stick with it even to the point of death if God so calls.

Even to the point of death. Gentleness means kindness or meekness. We recognize that the work belongs to God.

We contribute nothing but rely solely on him to accomplish his will through us. In regard to gentleness, no man is ever taller than when he is on his knees before God.

Bunyan wrote that a man spending frequent time on his knees before God need not fear falling away and need not fear pride rising up inside him. That's all caught up with, with gentleness, kindness, meekness.

What are we to fight for? Paul says, fight the good fight of faith. So right there he identifies what we're fighting for.

Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called. And make the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

Very interesting language. Many witnesses. Now, if you harken back to when we started our study of 1 Timothy, remember in our opening lesson, perhaps even two, we developed the idea, the truth.

We are at war. There is a war going on all around us of cosmic proportions. And, you know, the regrettable thing is we can't see it.

By and large, we don't see it. And so it's like it's not here, but it's more intense, more deadly than any human conflict. There was this is a spiritual battle, spiritual warfare of cosmic proportions.

In fact, the day is coming and there will even be war in heaven. And there's been a war there before. There will be another one. If I'm reading Revelation correctly. Now, down here on this planet, we fight a daily battle.

I mean daily, hour by hour, moment by moment. What do we fight against? We fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Remember that middle one, their flesh, and Don's used us many times. We are living out this life in unredeemed flesh. And we war with members of our own body.

In his next letter to Timothy, Paul would speak of the good fight he had fought and would that our epitaph would read the same as Paul's. He fought a good fight.

I remember a number of years ago, Steve Farrar, you know, in one of his books, and he said, wouldn't it be nice on your epitaph just to be able to say he finished strong? I told my wife I'd love to have that if it's true.

Don't put it on there if it's not true. And we live in a time, and I'd have to put a parenthesis there, especially in America where many in the church don't even realize that they are in a battle.

I'm rereading Radical by David Platt. If you've not read that, you really need to get a copy of that and read it. But it will shake you up.

He intended it to. But he had come back from India, and this church that had provided him financial support and everything, they wanted him to come and preach.

And the first night he got there, they had a dinner with the leadership, the pastor, the elders, the deacons. And he got up there and kind of spoke briefly about what he would be speaking the rest of the week and everything, and how there's so many lost people in India, a billion lost people, and they worship 80,000 gods or 80 million gods or whatever.

And one of the leaders of the church said, I personally wish they'd all die and go to hell and we wouldn't have to worry about them. And David said, I was floored.

And he said he got some amens. He said, I was just floored. And they had no concept of this global cosmic battle at VOM.

We have actually had people tell us that if the persecuted had more faith or were more obedient to their government, then they would be just fine.

That they put themselves in jeopardy by not obeying the law. I remember some years ago, Paul Crouch now has gone to his reward.

Co-founder of Trinity Broadcasting with his estranged wife, Jan, a woman with eight inches of makeup. He was in China.

And on TBN, I heard it live. He said, the Chinese have every right to put controls on the underground church.

He said, they don't know what's going on in that building and they need to know. He said, it's the same in America. If we have an underground church movement, then our government needs to know what's going on. Well, one of my dear friends at VOM, former member here, Bill Collins, he called him.

And he said, I'd like to get a copy of that video from Paul Crouch last night from China. Well, there had been a – they had gotten thousands of emails.

And they said, we don't copy our programs. We don't have an archive. Well, now that he's dead, all you find on there is old programs.

They lied. I mean, they got all of them cataloged. But they told Bill, they said, oh, no, we don't keep it. Later, he did issue a disclaimer and said he was confused by the question.

And so that was his excuse. But we've actually had some blame persecution on the persecuted. That if they would conform more to their government or whatever, they would do just fine.

Paul mentions faith here, and that is the total body of truth revealed by the Holy Spirit. There's another word for that, and it's called the Word of God. The Word of God.

And, guys, there's no new revelation. If someone comes to you and says, I've got some late-breaking news from God. If you go to the National Day of Prayer, and they say, well, God told me today that this is going to happen.

And, you know, if it doesn't square with the Word of God, it's not from God. It's got to square with the Word of God. And we are in a fight.

What are we fighting for? For the faith that has been once delivered to the saints. Jude verse 3. The faith that has been once delivered.

Paul also mentions here the called. That refers to God's sovereign call to salvation. Timothy had been so called, and now God had extended a further call to him to preach the Word.

And we'll be seeing that more in 2 Timothy. Paul had the same call. Brother Don's got that call. To preach the Word. A call of God. The sovereign call of God.

If we are to be men of God, we are to be constantly aware of the call God has placed on our life. Don't engage in petty battles.

Don't engage in petty battles. Use your calling for things that impact the kingdom of God. It used to be a bumper sticker. Don't sweat the small stuff. And it's all small stuff.

Remember that? You use your calling. If you're a follower of Christ, it's because you've been called for things that impact the kingdom of God.

And the man of God knows what he is faithful toward. I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things and of Christ Jesus, who testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that you keep the commandment without stain or approach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The key phrase here is to keep the commandment. Now, in the broadest sense, that's the Word of God. 500, 600 commands.

Not burdensome either, according to Jesus. How do we keep, though, the commandments? Guard it. Proclaim it.

Protect it from error. Don't let it get twisted and perverted by some human interpretation. Paul here entrusts Timothy to the power of God the Father and Christ the Son.

In their power, he is to keep the commandment, thus bearing evidence that he is a man of God. And so then the question becomes, well, how long was Timothy supposed to do this?

And Paul tells him, until the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ. Very interesting. Until the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ. Timothy was to remain faithful until either Christ returned for him, or until, through death, Timothy had his own personal rapture and went to be with the Lord.

It's exactly the same for us. It's no different. We are to remain faithful to the commandments until Jesus comes back for us, or we go to be with him.

That's the time frame. Now, what should motivate the man of God to be a spiritual leader? I love Dr. MacArthur here listing. He lists six features.

To motivate the man of God to be a spiritual leader. And believe me, if you're a follower of Christ, you're a leader.

You're leading somebody. Trust me. Six features. The power of God, the invincibility of God, the blessedness of God, the sovereignty of God, the eternity of God, and the holiness of God.

And I'd like to spend one week on each one of those, which will put us through the summer. We're not going to cover these in the depth in which they richly deserve. This is one of your summer assignments to cover it.

First, the power of God. I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate.

Paul points out that God is the giver of life to all things, and he's referring to God as creator, sustainer, protector, and he who raises the dead.

It is interesting that Paul refers to the confession Christ made before Pilate. Now, think back to that.

Although it would cost him his life, the Lord told Pilate that he was indeed the king and the Messiah. It is for this reason I have been born.

We can serve God faithfully and sacrificially when we understand his ability and promise to raise us from the dead.

Just as Christ was raised from the dead, so shall we be. I remember what Tom White told me. We had a hard trip to Indonesia, some pretty bad areas. And he said, you know, if we really believe that book and we lose our lives over here, what does it really matter?

If we really believe that book, you know, where do we go? Immediately. It made sense to me. The invincibility of God.

That you keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the proper time. History, as we know it, will culminate with the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I'm always aggravated when the whole wing of the church wants to deny that Jesus is coming back bodily and visually. And I've always used this argument.

And it's not original with me. I don't remember where I got it. The last view the world had of Jesus Christ was of a criminal hanging in a Jerusalem sky covered with blood, flies, and spit.

That's the last view the world has of Jesus. Remember when Jesus resurrected, he didn't appear to unbelievers. Only to believers and only about 500 of them.

The last view of the world has of him is what I just described. God will not permit that to be the last view the world has of Jesus Christ. They're going to see him as a conquering king and sovereign Lord.

History will culminate with the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. The world denies this, but those born from above understand it.

Christ is going to return. He's going to set up his earthly kingdom. He will be vindicated in all that he taught and did. And as we live out our lives on this planet, we need to understand that the return of Christ is imminent.

Nothing need happen prophetically for Christ to return to his church. Nothing. We need to live in expectation of his return.

Now, we don't do that by sitting on a mountaintop or hiding in a cave. We wait, watch, work, and worship until he returns for us. Four W's. Wait, watch, work, and worship until he returns.

Many, many years ago when my youngest son Rob was little, I was carrying him into Walmart. And it was a Sunday afternoon after church, and I don't know what it was.

The clouds and the blue sky. And I said, Rob, I'm not sure we're going to get to that door before the Lord comes back. And he couldn't even talk yet.

And I remember thinking that. Well, it didn't happen, obviously. But, you know, I've had a lot more of those in the last year or so. Am I going to get off this tractor and make it to the house before the Lord comes back?

I mean, I just, maybe it's just me. Something's going, we're headed somewhere in this world. And this world's headed somewhere. And it's happening very fast.

The blessedness of God. He who is blessed. This is the beginning phrase of one of the great doxologies in the Scriptures.

Christ is the blessed, and those who are in him reap the benefits of those blessings. The psalmist repeatedly says, blessed are those who take refuge in him.

Get out of your concordance to look that word up, refuge. Blessed are those who take refuge in him. I remember in the Passion of the Christ, Jesus in the garden was saying in Aramaic, shelter me, Lord.

Shelter me. The Scriptures describe those who are blessed as the one whom God chooses, who know Christ, who believe the gospel, whose sins are forgiven, to whom God grants righteousness apart from works, and those who obey the word of God.

Those are the blessed ones. So just latch on to that list and be one of those. And then he speaks of the sovereignty of God.

And only sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Paul continues the doxology by testifying to the utter sovereignty of God.

He is sovereign because there is no other God beside him. He has revealed himself to us in awesome trinity. But remember, there is one God who is the three persons of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the one true God.

I find it interesting that many church members, many churches, and even denominations deny the sovereignty of God, the absolute sovereignty of God.

I've had good friends. In fact, I had one who used to tell me, he says, boy, you know, sometimes I wish I was a Baptist and could believe in the sovereignty of God. I almost think God's sovereign.

And I'm, you know, shake my head. Yet it stands, you know, the sovereignty of God is very encouraging, very comforting as far as doctrine in the Bible.

God's in control. He's in control. We see all this going around in the world. What does the psalm say? He sits and laughs. He sits in derision.

He looks down as men plot their little plots and he laughs. This is an encouraging and comforting thought that God is sovereign in all things.

Knowing that God is absolutely sovereign should remove anxiety from our life. It just should. It should also, as I turn the page, motivate us to fearless service for him.

If God is sovereign, what's going to happen to you outside his will? His sovereign will. And, you know, if this building collapses on us right now and we all die and go to stand before the Lord, he's not going to say, what are you guys doing here?

You're not on schedule. You're out of schedule here. What happened? It's not going to catch him by surprise. The men that founded modern missions, and, boy, if you've never read their biographies, you ought to do that.

Dedicate some of your summer to reading their biographies. They held fiercely to the sovereignty of God. I mean, how do you take a sailing ship to India or to the South Sea Islands, live among cannibals like John Patton did, William Carey in India, Adoniram Judson in what is today Burma and that whole part of Asia, Hudson Taylor in China, and Robert Thomas, who served on the mission field in Korea for about five minutes before they cut his head off.

People look at that story and say, what a wasted life. And I've told you before, they took the 5,000 Bibles he had printed in their language, and they tore the pages out and papered the walls of their huts.

And for 150 years, people went and read the walls and got saved. They took massive movement for Christ there because they read the walls. That was not a wasted life.

God had all that figured out. Their success and ours depends totally on God who is in perfect and absolute control of all things.

What about the eternity of God who alone possesses immortality? Paul lived in the Roman world. If you've never studied the Roman world, it was an interesting world.

They believed and they proclaimed that their emperors were eternal, but that was only in their imaginations. That was to keep out of hot water because they were always dying or being assassinated.

Only God possesses immortality. I still like that shirt. Diane got it. Nietzsche, God is dead. God, Nietzsche is dead.

Which one do you believe? We can go to Nietzsche's grave. We can't go to God's grave. Only God is eternal. He possesses immortality.

Angels and men all have a starting point. You know, you go back and back and back and back and back and back.

You come to a point where there were no humans. And you go back a little further, you come to a point where there were no angels. What was there? The triune God. The Holy Trinity.

God lives in eternity. And that goes back far beyond our ability to comprehend the infinite past. He is above history.

He is beyond all time. God lives in eternity. What does that mean? Past, present, future. He lives in eternity. No matter what happens in this little brief period of time called our life.

And my stars, it is so brief. No matter what happens, God, the eternal one, will be there to hold up his children. He will be there.

And then the holiness of God. And dwells in unapproachable light whom no man has seen or can see.

We live in a time when many in the church and around the world think God is their buddy. You ever heard that? That think God is some cosmic sugar daddy?

If we put him in a box and ask him the right way you can have a Mercedes, as one of our extreme charismatic guys said not too long ago, he said, I don't know how much faith you all have, but I drive to church every day in a Mercedes.

Well, of course he does. He's at the top of the Ponzi scheme. Of course he's going to have a Mercedes. I got mad and got lost. He's not our buddy in the sky.

He's not a cosmic sugar daddy. And he's not a killjoy. That's the other charge. Well, you know, if I come to the Lord, I'm going to have to give up my girlfriends.

And then my wife will find out about him or something stupid. The true God dwells in unapproachable light.

The scriptures say he is a consuming fire. Light and fire serve to express God's holiness. Talking to Jonathan Day at Lunch.

And I've had this view for a long, long time. Picture a wheel. I won't draw it. With spokes. All these spokes. And it centers this hub.

The spokes are the attributes of God. And there's a lot of them. More than we can even name. Because there's some we never think about. Like hatred of sin. Wrath. Impartiality.

But there's, you know, so many attributes of God. I suggest that hub is the holiness of God. And everything, every attribute flows from his holiness.

I really hold to that. In him there is no sin. And he dwells in a place where sin is not permitted.

And that is why we who are sinners must be cloaked in the holiness of Christ. In that way we are hidden from the wrath of God toward that which is impure.

We are hidden from the wrath of God. Paul Worsher had a seven-night revival.

He got up there the first night and he said, It pleased the Father to crush his son so his wrath towards sinners would be satisfied.

And when he got down, the pastor motioned him into a side room. He said, What did you just say? And Paul Worsher repeated it. It pleased God to crush his son.

He satisfied his wrath. And he said, Don't come back. He said, We don't hold of that. We would never. He would. God would never do that.

The devil killed Jesus. God is to be honored. For he has eternal dominion over all things.

Paul ends the doxology with amen. So be it. Let it be so. We need to come to grips, at least in some small way, the best of our ability, with the greatness of God.

Camp out in the scriptures and see the greatness of God. We who know him and are known by him have nothing to fear.

I was listening the other day about this college professor. And he'd been ostracized because he believed in sovereignty and he believed in all these things. And this guy was asking him about the other professors.

He said, Well, he said, They're much better seminary professors than I am because they know a lot more about God than I do. But I know him personally. It doesn't get any better than that.

We know him. We are known by him. Don't fear. Reverence him today. Reverence him today and forevermore.