In this lesson, Greg Ho finishes overviewing the attributes of God by discussing eight other attributes: eternality, immutability, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, love, truth, and mercy.
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all right let’s um start out with the word of prayer and we will get into our second session of God his character and attributes let’s pray father we are um once again humbled to come before you this morning uh and to encounter the truth that you have for us in Scripture of who you are your character and um the amazing things that we can observe in your character that you’ve told that you’ve told us and that we’ve proven to be true not only in our own life experience but through careful study through the faithful study of many faithful men and women throughout the ages we thank you Lord we pray that you would help us to internalize what we’re going to say what we’re going to study today and help it to affect our lives and replace in Christ’s name amen all right we are in um our study of God’s character and I don’t think the clicker is working is it on the right um is it on the right slide I mean yeah is it focused okay good so let’s see if it’ll work okay we’ll test it out in a little bit um so these are the 11 attributes that we will be looking at today this is not an exhaustive list in any way this is not some type of inspired list or anything like that it’s just basically what the fundamentals of the faith book has said there’s other ones which we’ll touch on a little bit but last time we talked about three of the 11 which means that today we have to get through in 55 minutes um the other eight so it’ll be a little bit of a ride but uh let’s see what happens all right so last time we talked about holiness we talked we basically looked at how God um is the Holiness of God means that he’s totally separate from not only his creation he’s he’s a separate entity from his creation but he’s also holy in the sense that he’s separated from all sin separated from all impurity unlike us and his Holiness necessarily leads to righteousness and Justice his righteousness is basically how he acts how he acts is always in accordance with his character which is Holiness um it’s whatever he does is right 100 and Justice is how he dispenses um I guess how he basically um uh judges really the his creation for violating a lot of violating his righteousness and Holiness and then sovereignty uh we talked about how God is it’s just the idea that God is Sovereign he’s the ultimate Sovereign and of course uh yesterday there was the coronation of the I guess the Sovereign of the king of the king of England now um uh well we call him a sovereign because you know back before all of this sort of play acting stuff Kings actually had power and uh you know you had to actually do whatever the king said or you would lose your head right um and so it’s a sovereignty means Authority it means all authority is given to God um it’s really gods and that’s Authority not all not only over all people but also all things in the universe everything that happens not one uh Sparrow falls from the sky apart from God’s sovereignty okay so today we’re going to continue and we’re going to be talking first about the nature the attribute of eternality um this is an interesting one this is the idea that uh God has no beginning and he has no ending um and he’s not bound by time so this is an interesting and a very different a difficult way of sort of different difficult thing to think about um how can you imagine an entity that is outside of time God created time and space and so he sees not only the past he’s outside of time he sees not only a past not only a present not only and also the future and he sees them all equally well not only does he see what you did yesterday he also sees what are you gonna do tomorrow and he sees that all with perfect clarity this is an interesting um attribute because it’s the one that is uh frequently you know in the news headlines today with the James Webb Telescope a lot of what’s been going on in the in the game flood telescope which we’ll talk about a little bit more later is um you know they’re they’re finding that all of their models of cosmology um were wrong that the Universe didn’t seem to it doesn’t seem like the data matches up with the uh the the age of the universe that they thought was the age of the universe before they got all of this data from the new telescope and you know this this means that secular scientists really can’t answer this question of where did the universe come from right I mean they’re the best answer right now even though it’s actually um just you know just if you look carefully enough at the literature it’s actually come under a lot of debate but the best answer right now is the Big Bang and so of course the question is well what came before the Big Bang and you could ask that question and there’s this there’s this uh famous uh story from uh I can’t remember where it came from but there was this well-known scientist and he once gave a public lecture on astronomy and he was describing how the Earth sort of came around this comes around the Sun and rotates around the Sun or revolves around the Sun and then in turn uh these uh the the sun rotates around the Galaxy and then at the end of the lecture and actually if you can go to the next slide actually I don’t have to do this I don’t think this is going to work today yeah okay we’ll just put this up um and if some people can just be good enough to sort of look up some of that verses so it can be ready to get there um so at the end of the lecture a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said what you have told us is rubbish the world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant turtle and uh the scientists gave a superior smile and said well what is the turtle standing on and the woman looks at him and says well you’re very clever young man you’re very clever but it’s Turtles all the way down Turtles all the way down um so that’s really the best that our world can do um what’s before the Big Bang well another big bang what was before that another big bang and it’s Big Bangs all the way down but anybody can know that that’s not an explanation you can see that that’s not any sort of explanation that’s silly um everything needs a prime mover it needs something to uh to start it up and you can’t explain why there is something rather than nothing that’s The Big Unit that’s a big mystery nobody can explain apart from God but we know that from the Bible God Eternal stepped out of Eternity to create the heavens and the Earth so there is no before God because God created even all sense of time so God is eternal from Everlasting to Everlasting in Genesis 1 1 um it says it starts out the Bible from in the beginning what God and he just assumes that God was there there was no explanation to how that happened or there’s no Creator mentioned about God um they’re because God has no Creator he is the first and the last for the Alpha and the Omega there’s two verses here that I want to read the two Isaiah verses that are held up on the screen if somebody can read for me Isaiah 44 6 and then somebody else if you can get ready Isaiah 43 13. these are two of the best verses to memorize um when in in evangelism especially to to well Mormons and but other religions too um because they really speak to the eternality of God so let’s read the first one Isaiah 44 6.
can somebody read that I am the first okay so he is the first he is the last there is no God besides him um other religions that say yeah there was Gods who begot gods or God was a man he became a God all of these religions can’t really stand up to this verse what about Isaiah 43 or 13 can somebody read that for me okay okay so if he’s from eternity and it I think there was actually another verse but that’s okay that’s good enough um so Isaiah in these two passages makes it clear that God is eternal and God has always been God he wasn’t a man that became God it wasn’t he wasn’t a small God that was promoted to a big God and um he is all that there is from Everlasting to Everlasting so now let’s open up for a little bit of thought what does this attribute of eternality mean to us how should it change your life if you fully grasp the concept of God’s eternality oh yeah be with us always that’s actually interesting I put John 3 16 up there we don’t have to read it because we we all I think Pastor Dave’s going to preach on it in like a week or two but um John 3 16 for God so loved the world he gave it one only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but we’ll have everlasting life right your eternal life well how can God give you eternal life if he’s not Eternal himself but because God is eternal you can trust that your life will also be Eternal because as long as God is there he has promised he will give you eternal life and if you think about it God has lent his attribute of eternality to you because you will be Eternal with God that’s what that means John 3 16 tells you you will be eternal um so he can deliver on that promise because he’s eternal and as uh Linda was saying God has already seen all there is to us right he knows what came before he’s no he knows what you’re going to do tomorrow he knows what’s going to happen to you not only does that mean you’re perfectly safe because God has told you he will take care of you he will never leave you but it also means um that he has already seen everything there is to see of us um there’s nothing that will surprise us this sort of surprise him never nothing that’ll ever make him go hmm I don’t know I was I was wrong about Glenda you know maybe we should maybe we should do something else um nothing that you can ever do and I think the last thing that we can consider is you know we are creatures that really only see a small segment of our life right we look forward maybe a year maybe maybe not even that maybe a few days and that’s sort of what we experience and that’s sort of like just what we sort of optimize for in our lives but if you think about it God has told you you are a Eternal creature and even if you have an incredibly long lifespan and you live to maybe 120 years old which is probably something like the record um well what is that in comparison to Eternity it’s nothing it’s a drop in the bucket right um so for us it lets us take an eternal perspective and realize it lets us realize that what we experience here just a minuscule fraction of our actual lives everything that you’ve known in your entire life is just an infinite testimably small almost insignificant portion of your actual eternal life and so you think about that and you realize well I can the why thing to do is to store up Treasures in Heaven um it’s not to optimize for um you know this life here because it’s short life is too short and then there’s eternity all right any other questions on adrenality before we move to the next one we gotta so that we uh move on today okay can we go to the next slide okay the next one is immutability immutability this is the idea that God never changes and can somebody read to me uh read for me Malachi 3 verse 6.
some people will be so good to to read that for me and then somebody else if you could get James 117 ready the immutability of God Malachi 3 6.
foreign okay so the Lord never changes and James 1 17.
somebody have that okay right there’s no variation that means he doesn’t change there’s no shifting Shadow there’s nothing in him that that’s that’s sort of Shifting um and he will he will not change from day to day and that makes perfect sense because God is eternal he’s already seen everything has happened he’s he sees the end from the beginning there’s nothing that could actually happen to change god um he he is a Eternal creature he’s always been the way he is and he will always be eternally the way he is you know you and I have mood swings right we may have one day we might be in a good mood the next day we might be snapping at people um well God’s never liked that God never changes his mind God never has any regrets God never learned something new that changes his mind about you he’s already perfect and he will stay that way and let’s consider now sort of what this means to us um let’s consider this question first what would it mean to us if God did change but what it mean to us if God was not immutable yeah we wouldn’t be secure because how do you know he won’t change his mind how do you know that suddenly you know God is Holy today and today tomorrow maybe he won’t be holy um God is righteous today maybe tomorrow he won’t be right so because God is immutable we know that he will not change what else it would cease to be perfect can you elaborate on that what do you mean by that yeah interesting because right well yeah I was I wasn’t going to get into that but obviously with you know Moses that happened maybe another part time in Scripture it says you know God sort of repented of what he was going to do um however if you think about it you realize that God knows the end from the beginning and you know even his seemingly change of mind was a uh was a was basically a reaction to what was going on that he had already sovereignly ordained from the beginning so all of that is within God’s sovereignty and within God’s immutability none of that was going to change in the beginning at any time at all I mean if you ever want to admit uh the sort of the changing of God’s mind you have to really uh sort of let in a lot of very disturbing sort of doctrines right um uh so why won’t he change his mind about you um right so a lot of a lot of um you know what what would have happened if he can change his mind does that mean that humans can now um can now do things that are unpredictable to God outside of his control and that God would react to that right um so that’s not the way that uh the Bible depicts our relationship with God sure yeah yeah definitely thank you um so it so it gives us security as somebody has said um but it also gives you a sense of awe because if you think about this if you think that you’re an unbeliever and you get sent to Eternal punishment um it’s a grim reality God will never change his mind he will never change his mind you’re there you will never be laid out of God’s judgment and also if God never changes that means his word never changes right yes Cheryl right right yeah yeah God might change in how not not change but God might adjust how he interacts with Humanity throughout the ages you know at first in the Old Testament he deals primarily with Israel and then in the New Testament he deals with all of the basically all of the church but his character all of the things in fact nothing in his plan ever changed uh nor in his character okay so that’s the immutability of God and it also gives you a sense of stability in an ever-changing world right where people are trying to adjust all of your morality every day and they’re trying to sort of read that into the Bible and say that you know God’s law is really something that can be sort of a living document um well God never changes his law never changed right right yes hmm thank you yeah yeah that’s that’s a great Point um better answer than I gave all right let’s go to the next one um menu for some time uh can you uh Advance the slide please all right so the next thing to talk about is the omniscience of God so now we’re going to talk about all of these Omni Omni traits which is basically all right Omni means all so God’s omniscience is that he is all knowing um he’s all-knowing he knows absolutely everything about the universe and uh Psalm 147 5 it says it’s understanding is infinite it’s an infinite understanding and not only does he know the important stuff that you want to be curious about who’s going to win the next presidential election things like that but he knows all the most trivial details in your life just as well um in fact not not even a hair on your head gets adjusted except you know for some of us there might not be that many hairs on our heads but um not even a hair on our head moves without God knowing about it um not only does he know everything about you but he knows everything about the entire universe he knows everything in your life just as well as he knows things going on in the most distant Galaxy he’s numbered all the stars in the heavens as well as all the grains of sand on the Earth and not only does he know everything that’s happening now but he also knows everything that’s ever happened in the past in the past and also he knows everything that will happen in the future he knows the perfect accuracy the history of think about it everyone who’s ever sat in these pews all the way up to the third you know 18 20 or something and he also knows everyone that’s going to sit here until uh until Christ comes he knows the trivial the important the past the future and this is actually the scary one he also knows all of your innermost thoughts not only does he know everything that happens if he even knows what you’re thinking at any moment in time the things that you will be embarrassed for other people to know about and um maybe somebody can read to me Psalm 136 1-6 is that 139 could be right okay yeah read 139 yeah that’s right so this is actually I mean if you really sit down and think about this for a little bit just to kind of scare you a little bit I mean uh Lord searched you knows you he knows not only what you do when you sit down when you get up but he understands your thought from far away um he’s acquainted with all your ways he knows you better than you do he knows you better than you know yourself you know we we can fool ourselves into we lie to ourselves all the time right um God never does that God never always knows the truth and even before you utter a word he already knows what you’re going to say and he knows how you’re going to say it and what you really mean by that he knows your motivation perfectly for every action whether it be a noble motivation whether it be a sinful motivation even though the outward act may be seemingly righteous God knows your heart maybe you’re not doing it out of righteous motivations or maybe it’s a mix of motivation that he knows exactly what that mix is there’s not a sin indeed or thought you can hide from God and uh you know I think uh we just you know Pastor Dave just preached on John 2.
where it says he knew all people and he knew all the thoughts of the people in the crowd in Matthew 12 25 Jesus knows the people’s thoughts and uh you know John McArthur when he was talking about this I think in the sermon uh he he said this he said the most astounding thing about God is that he knows everything about you and you’re still here um Okay can somebody read to me Romans 11 verses 3 33 to 34.
how unless thank you um see not only does he know all the thoughts but he’s also infinitely wise omniscience doesn’t mean he just knows facts but he also knows the perfect interpretation of those facts um he knows all the implications he knows all the what the what the best courses of actions are God is infinitely wise he’s never made a mistake no one’s ever shown God a fresh perspective or suggested a course of action he hadn’t yet considered see God operates the universe with Infinite Wisdom and sometimes we don’t agree with that with them sometimes we think the universe is kind of messed up the Way It Is God maybe should have done it this way instead but you know when we disagree with God’s wisdom as finite beings who have only seen maybe a few short years um of existence we are just laughably arrogant God is infinite he’s infinite in knowledge and he’s infinite in wisdom and what he does is perfect so how does God’s omniscience dictate or affect how we should live what do you think first of all it should scare you right if it wasn’t for God’s mercy which we’ll talk about later God’s omniscience this would be a would be a Horror Story yeah Mark you had something oh yeah yeah that’s great that’s definitely true and not only does he know all things but later on we’ll talk about his omnipotence and his I mean we talked about his sovereignty and all of these things together means you’re not missing out on anything um everything that God everything that’s good for you God has already given you all right um you know yes Glenda and then you um thinking about hmm it’s a humbling thing uh Danny that’s great um early on when I first became a Christian and uh I think somebody had told me um you should okay okay so I’m not a bad driver I mean okay maybe I am so I should just give you some background information that you know um uh I I you know I’m a little bit like flighty in my head so like I don’t mean to do it but like I’m a little bit accident-prone right um so I think I’ve totaled like three cars in the last like 10 years but but um you know somebody once told me you should drive as if Jesus is sitting in the passenger seat he sees all you do and um you know when I was younger when I was younger you know people I was in California and in California people drive you know fairly badly on the freeways and you would uh you would get cut off and then you’d be like oh um but you drive because you drive as if Jesus is in the passenger seat um in fact you do everything as if Jesus is looking over your shoulder um you’re under computer you know Jesus knows what you’re doing uh on the on the positive side uh you know one of the problems that we have today is really that people are lonely because they desperately want to be known by somebody people are people are made to have relationships and sometimes we get depressed because we feel like we’re misunderstood nobody understands us nobody gets our side of the story um but then you realize that God perfectly understands you he understands your side of the story perfectly he’s never missed any nuance there’s no time where he overlooked a factor and uh you know it’s you know you it’s possible that the whole world will misunderstand you and persecute you for something that you didn’t do but God knows and he won’t let that go so God also knows every pain every heartache that you have and this is this is also good for people who whose life is really service to to the church and to people of God he never forgets any active service you’ve done he never forgets any cup of water you’ve given even a cup of water that you’ve given to somebody in his name or any word and passing that you that you of encouragement that you’ve given to a brother all of those things are counted for by God and he will reward you and for every single thing even things you’ve forgotten even things you don’t think is a big deal but God will count that for you all right let’s talk about the next one can we go to the next one the next one is omnipresence and again this is another Omni trait it’s again one of these things that is all um all presence it’s basically that God is always present everywhere it’s present all at once everywhere high in the heavens in the farthest reaches of the universe and also down here on Earth right in this room if you think about it God is present there’s there’s a lot of sort of popular sort of Christian songs out there trying to call God into the room right sort of calling God into um um you know holy spirit is present and they would like to sort of sing things like that um or he’s here and the the problem is God is always here you can’t call him here he’s always here um he’s not here more now than any other time God is present equally in every in the same measure which is infinite in every place in the universe so let’s start by reading Psalm 139 can somebody read 139 7 to 12. I hope I got that Psalm right this time okay this is really interesting not only is God in heaven but God is also in hell he’s God is to the east it’s to the West he’s in the bottom of the sea where there’s no light and no human has ever gone but the thrust of the psalm that uh you just read for us you know is not just that God is there but that God is also going to act and you know I don’t think you’ve read this part but later on it says you know your hand Will Lead Me Your Hand will hold me and not so so not only is God God’s not present in a passive sense he’s not just there and just sort of like passively watching but he’s actively there accomplishing his purpose um and a lot of times it’s holding you upholding you um now depending on who you are God’s omnipresence is either extremely comforting or absolutely terrifying um if you are of course one of the people who belong to God and his family then this means that there is nowhere you can go that God is not there to rescue you no there’s no place in the universe that’s outside of God’s control no situation too dangerous Jesus’s promise is that he will never leave you or forsake you anywhere you are but if you’re not part of God’s family and maybe you’re running away from God like Jonah which was an interesting uh sort of thing right the prophet of God who knows God possibly better than everybody anybody else on the face of the Earth at the time was trying to run away from the ever-present god well we try to do that too sometimes and you should know that your situation is utterly hopeless it’s utterly hopeless there’s no escape from God there’s no escape from God anywhere and of course in the psalm Christian you just read God is even there in hell and you think about it what is God doing in hell well God is administering his Justice he’s doing this in an active way he’s in a sense making sure there’s never a spark of hope or even a moment of Joy because the hell is not a place for that hell is a place for Eternal Justice and where God’s holiness as we talked about last week is literally burning up those who have not been cleansed by the blood of the Lamb so there’s no escape from another present God there’s nowhere you can escape and uh in fact Jeremiah 23 can somebody read that verses 23 to 24.
can a man hide himself hmm yep there it is um you cannot hide from God there’s nowhere you can go all right so how should we live in light of this truth yeah yeah it’s also a lot added really accountability in the sense where you know there was nowhere I mean just being aware that God is present all the time that God knows everything you’re doing that changes how I act and the times where you know I don’t keep that in mind you know I’m prone to go off the rails a little bit so it’s it’s you know when the quote from Tozer we were talked about last week where the what comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you well if you serve in omniscient and I’m and uh omnipresent God and later on we’ll talk about in the next one or omnipotent God that should change the way you act but if you don’t really believe those things or maybe you’ve forgotten them or maybe you you know them up here but you don’t really you haven’t really thought through it down here um then that will also change the way you act um one thing the last thing I’ll say about this is you know this omnipresence of God is a uh it’s an attribute of God that is uniquely God and what that means is you know there’s no other entity in the universe that’s omnipresent or omniscient um and Satan is not omnipresent right in fact Satan goes about on the earth like a roaring lion seeking who he’s devours well an omnipresent God doesn’t have to do that you know he’s already saw you out there’s nowhere you can go to hide um and now Satan’s very powerful in the sense where you know he’s probably uh I mean he’s very powerful and he has a minion he has a whole Legion of demon to do his bidding um but he’s not omnipresent like God is and so there’s not really even a contest there okay uh next slide uh so the next one we’re going to talk about is omnipotence omnipotence see God is this this means you know Omni all-powerful omnipotence um and all God is all-powerful he has more than enough strength to do anything and in fact uh in another quote from Tozer um he says that God you know in God for God no thing is harder to do than any other thing think about that that’s amazing there’s no you know lifting a small pebble is just as easy for for God as creating the universe out of nothing there’s there’s no degree of difficulty in tasks for God right God can do whatever he wants whenever he wants he’s all-powerful nothing is harder for God than any other thing um everything you can imagine would be equally easy for God um this slide actually what we talked about the James Webb Telescope um a while ago um so it’s just a uh basically the best telescope that man has ever created this is one of the pictures recently from that telescope um it was taken from an area of the sky where if you take a grain of sand and you sort of hold it out at arm’s length that’s how much of the sky that this picture covers so uh basically you know the people who took his picture basically said they essentially picked this part out of this guy in random it’s not um it wasn’t like targeted or anything so this is just like the universe just looks like this I mean like everywhere um if you walked anywhere else you would see the same thing the universe is just covered with galaxies if you think about it the if you sort of look at the calculations currently they estimate that in the visible Universe we have at least two trillion galaxies two trillion galaxies each Galaxy with something like 100 billion stars so that is impossible to fully grasp those numbers you can’t you can’t even understand what that means each star just one star would it can generate enough power to literally wipe out your entire solar system um and God created all of that in a blink of an eye not even a blink of an eye um the mere utterance of words so that is the scale of the omnipotence of God can somebody read for me Jeremiah 32 verse 17.
we have to speed up a little bit right nothing is too difficult for you and if God’s power can create the heavens and the Earth then all of our problems are fully trivial right nothing nothing that is difficult for you is actually really difficult for God in any way um and you know one thing of course the Bible says is impossible is how a rich man can enter the kingdom of God remember that and said Jesus said with man this is impossible but with God what all things are possible so God’s omnipotent has even covered this impossibility how how can a Unholy man come before a completely holy God like we talked about last week and um we already know that Jesus declares you know God With God all things that are possible even that impossibility of an Unholy man can come in the presence of a holy God made a way when there seems to be no way he has the power to save the heel to make the nations rise and fall to raise from the dead and when faced with the armies of Humanity on the last day God simply laughs it’s not even a battle so do you realize that you know what would we um Colossians 1 17 or I guess we’ll just read it to you um is that he is before all things and in him all things hold together see not only did God create everything but he actively sustains it at every moment in time he at any point if he sort of got tired of sustaining you he could just simply let go and you would crumble the Dust this is a terrifying attribute of God um one one verse Isaiah 40 which is really a comfort to me when I first became a Believer and I really didn’t know what I was doing with my life um and you know I was running about to and fro trying to do a whole bunch of stuff um and I was tired and Isaiah 40 do you not know have you not heard the Everlasting God the Lord the creator of the end of the Earth does not become weary or tired his understanding is unsearchable he gives strength to the weary and to the one who lacks might even increase his power the youths grow tired and weary and tired even young men grow tired and weary and vigorous young men stumble badly yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new Strength um how well because God supplies that strength omnipotent God supplies strength to you they will Mount up with wings like eagles they will run and not get tired they will walk and not become weary um quickly now what are some of the implications of this in your life God’s omnipotence hmm it’s not like a restoration yeah yeah you have an infinite battery of power strength strengthening you from an infinitely powerful God yeah so if you are weak just like you were saying before you don’t know you know you might have a fomo you might you don’t know everything but you you serve a God who knows everything well you might not have a lot of power um and but you serve a God who has infinite power and in fact all power that you that anybody has in this universe is just delegated to them from God Kings presidents any any power is all authority and all power is given to God um you know I think this is also a South for people who are prone to be anxious because you know Isaiah 41 10 do not fear for I am with you do not anxiously look about you for I am your God I will strengthen you I will help you surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand well if an infinitely powerful God is going to uphold you with his infinite right hand there’s no reason for you to be anxiously looking about you wondering whether or not you’re safe so you do we depend on on God’s strength and not our own and the last thing is you know you humble yourself that you serve a now-powerful God and you be grateful you even have the power to get out I could get out of bed in the morning that that power even is applied to you from God so we can only give thanks that’s what we can do all right we have 10 minutes left and we can talk about love now uh the next slide um this will obviously be easy right because I mean love is such a small topic all right God’s love let’s see if we go to a thousand verses we’ll do two verses um so first John 4 8 and I’ll just read it to you in the interest of time first John 4 8 says anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love God is love I mean have you thought about that not it didn’t say that God loves um or it doesn’t say that God has love for God is love God is love everything that is Love Is God and God in his whole being is love and man that’s a relief you know after talking about omnipotent submissions omnipresence if it wasn’t for God’s love we’d be doomed be doomed but we’re thankful for the love of God now we we looked when we were talking about those attributes that God is the god of infinite power of infinite presence of infinite knowledge and we marveled at the Infinity of those attributes but when we come to love we realize we have to realize that God’s love is also as infinite as those other attributes God is the god of infinite love infinite love it’s just as mind-bending as its omnipresence or his omnipotence so what ways can we observe God’s infinite love well the first way we can notice is God’s love is infinite in duration um Ephesians 1 4 he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before him in love and so his love was was from the beginning of the world from before the foundation of the world and his love is to Everlasting his love is infinite and duration he’s loved you from the first uh moment the universe was created before you even took your first breath and he’s he will love you even when the universe the last spark of the universe dies Romans 8 39 says nothing can separate us from the love of God his love endures forever so it’s infinite duration it’ll never end um and suddenly secondly God’s love is infinite in intensity it’s infinite in intensity God’s love is not like what we experience as human love that sort of Ebbs and flows right maybe I love you for one second and then the next second you do something that’s kind of you know kind of not great and you know I love you a little less then maybe maybe okay fine if I remember yeah you’re my um brother you’re my son or whatever okay if I love you again well the next day you do something yeah I don’t know if I like that much right so like that’s how human Love Is Right but God’s love is infinite in intensity it’s not an academic thing it’s not an intellectual thing it’s not checking off boxes in heaven um you know God’s love for you is a raging passion it’s a raging passionate love it’s a deeply Emotional Love at least that’s how it’s described to the Bible um God’s love never goes goes cold and never Fades with time um in the parable of the prodigal son Jesus describes God’s love when the son comes back to the father after living a life of of wastefulness and throwing God’s love in his face we’re throwing the Father’s Love in his face the father before the son even finishes apologizing the father has already wrapped him up in his arms ran to him hiked up his robe to run to him gave him the finest robe a ring for his finger and then kill the fatter calf for a celebration because he’s Overjoyed that his son has returned and that’s the emotion and the light that describes God’s love and that love is given to you from beginning before the world end and and so before the world began and when the world ends I mean number of Ebbs and flows that’s that’s how God rejoices over you and not only is it infinite duration and intensity but it’s also infinite in depth because there’s no way you can exhaust God’s love the word used in the Bible is what to describe God’s love is what word you guys know Agape which is unconditional love if the love without any conditions because that’s really hard to wrap our minds around because you know that’s not how human love works um even in in you know in most cases maybe there’s some exceptions but in most cases there’s conditions attached to love you know don’t go on a mass murder Street spree and uh and do it and become Hitler right um that’s not good maybe we’ll we would love that person less but God ‘s love has no conditions at all God’s love is not transactional it’s not I’ll love you until you can’t carry your weight in the relationship if not I’ll love you until you do something horrible um in fact listen to this you have nothing to offer God and you never did at any point you have nothing to offer him that he would possibly need yet he loves you without condition so you sin a million times and every time you do that you throw God’s love back in his face yet he loves you exactly the same Romans 8 32 I’ll just I’ll read that um he who did not spare his own son but delivered him over for us all how he not also with him freely give give us all things he’s already gave given his son that was the deepest and truest expression expression of his love a son who who loved and adored him who uh never sinned in his life he gave up his son for basically convicted criminals like us who richly deserved the punishment coming our way would you do that would you give Your Righteous son for some random Criminal who deserves his own fate that’s what God did and I’ll just finish with this at least to put the love part and then we’ll try to do with the other ones really fast John 17 23 this is this is just the amazing verse um one of the most amazing verses that it’s in the Bible I think it says when the word world will know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you loved me this is Jesus talking about you know High Priestly prayer and he says to like God loves you even as he has loved Jesus which means God loves you as much as he loves Jesus and you know it’s been said that you know that’s actually that that would be sort of heresy to say that if it were not written in the page of the Holy Scripture um because how would that how would that have been possible how could he love you with that kind of love okay um we’re just gonna move on real fast in terms of time so truth uh can you go to the next one all right truth you know I told my God I mean I told my kids that God is omnipotent but there’s one thing that he can do that you can do sorry one thing that you guys can do that he can’t and what is that lie that’s right you guys can lie but God can never lie and Titus 1 2 basically says God can never lie God is the god of Truth it says in Psalm 31 5 and in John 16 35 even the holy spirit is called the spirit of Truth the sun is also the the the it says in other places in the scripture that the sun is also truth Jesus is also truth now I am the way the truth and the life right so even Jesus is truth so every word that God utters is true every promise he makes is fulfilled he never deceives you he never sort of shaves the truth to sort of get her to sort of like uh to deceive you or fool you um God is the god of Truth in the same way that God is the god of love in the same way God is the god of omni presence or omnipotence um his truth is also infinite and that means that we can trust God’s truth completely expressed in the book that he wrote for us and we can trust that his truth that when he when he says that your sin can be forgiven when he tells you how the world came to be and how it will end when he tells you the nature of man and who he you know what that he is a fallen man that he will go to judgment you can trust those things and when he tells you that you can have victory over sin that in fact he has given you all power that you need for sanctification you can trust that as well um so this is all right this this uh next verse Romans 3 4 um is really I think the Capstone version of this section which says let God be true and every man a liar um and we know every man is a liar and not only do men lie they don’t also know very much right men have very limited experience and even if you knew one percent of everything that there is to know in the universe your knowledge would still be so severely limited um but God is knows everything and he communicates to you with perfect truth all right the last thing is Mercy and just give me one minute for this um in order to understand Mercy uh Mercy is basically you know compassion upon those whose oppose God’s Will and to understand Mercy you have to understand the wrath of God right so think about this when Adam and when Adam sinned and the world fell into chaos and the whole universe was cursed his sin was basically that he watched his wife eat fruit that ship wasn’t supposed to eat and um that’s a pretty trivial sin by comparison to the things that we do isn’t it and um you know I have a bucket of candy out on the dining room table because of you know all of these holidays and stuff there’s this candy that just piles up and we’re you know we don’t really know what to do with it we’d want to eat it we tell the kids they can’t really eat it um but then we don’t want to throw it out because we’re Asian can’t throw out free stuff so it just like sits there and then they just sort of evaporates like after after some time like the candy is like not there anymore and you know the kids ate it but you know we never told them they could eat it anyways the point is um we sin millions of times a day worse than Adam and Eve has sinned right how many universes should be destroyed for your sin just even this morning how many universes should be consumed because of your sin for Adam’s sin the entire universe all of mankind was cursed right um so you think about that and you you can now realize what is at the heart of God’s mercy God’s mercy is not giving you what you righteously deserve um you’re the destroyer of universes but God did not give you what you deserve which is Justice and Wrath and instead virtually fundamentally means you get to live so Ephesians 2 4-5 God being rich in Mercy because of his great love which he loved us even when we were dead in our wrongdoings made us alive together with Christ you get to live God’s mercy means you get to live first Peter 3 blessed be the God and Father by the Lord Jesus Christ according to his great Mercy he has caused us to be born again to a Living Hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead so God’s mercy means we deserve to die but we get to live um that’s all the time we have today next week I think uh Khalif will be up talk about I can’t remember what the next one is yes okay good thank you all right thank you guys I know we went long let me just close the word of prayer father we thank you for allowing us to study your attributes even in this limited time there’s so much more to say but um Lord I trust that you will help these people as these true sleep into their hearts that you would have it accomplished or purpose help them to live in light of these truth and help us to um conform Our Lives to who you are that understanding who you are will change us and pray this in Christ’s name