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CPC Sunday School | Attributes of God #1 (9-24-2023 Dan Wann)
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The speaker has finished a series on heathens and heretics and is starting a new series on the attributes of God. They discuss various attributes such as immutability, simplicity, love, goodness, kindness, omniscience, omnipresence, sovereignty, and righteousness. They explain that these attributes are identifying qualities or inherent parts of God and are true metaphors that go beyond mere comparisons. They also mention the concepts of transcendence and eminence, where God is both far off and beyond our understanding, yet also condescends and comes near to us. They refer to a Greek concept of forms to explain how our knowledge of God's attributes is like moving up a hierarchy towards the ideal. They mention the Westminster Confession's description of God as a spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable, and highlight the difference between incommunicable and communicable attributes. The incommunicable attributes are beyond our comprehension, while the communicable attributes are shared wi So, we finished our whole series on heathens and heretics, and as I said, we've got this long strain that we're trying to put a whole bunch of thoughts together. And so, the last series was us looking at where people are getting God wrong. It's a natural idea that we're going to now pivot and say, well, what then can we know about the Lord as he has revealed himself to us? So, we're now beginning a new series on the attributes of God. So, we say attributes of God. These are probably some of the things on the list that you think about, or maybe not think about, but we're going to add some definitions to them and be able to know more about what we're talking about when we talk about God's attributes. Today, I'm going to talk about immutability, but there's also a satie, simplicity, love, goodness, kindness. Maybe you think of more often omniscience or omnipresence, that God knows all things, that God is everywhere at all times. Maybe you immediately are drawn to his sovereignty, that he controls and directs all of the events of everything that comes to pass. Or maybe when you think about God's righteousness, that's the principal attribute that you think about God. When we look at these today, we're going to have this series focus on the bold column on the left, but we should always have a view of the last two, transcendence and eminence, a high aboveness of God, that he is a creature entirely not like us, who are, excuse me, he is a being, not a creature, a being entirely not like us, creatures, but that he condescends and he comes near to us so that we may know him, his eminence. So he is both far off and beyond our ability to know him, and then at the same time, he has come close to us so that we might know him. So when we're talking about attributes, we should probably begin with a definition. Attribute is a quality or feature regarded as a characteristic or inherent part of someone or something. Well, if you have that definition, you're probably going to need a little bit more definition. And so when we say a characteristic, we're talking about an identifying quality. We're able to say it is this thing and not that thing, it is this one, not this other. When we say an inherent part, we're talking about the essential source, meaning that if you were to take away this characteristic of this being, person, person, place, thing, it would no longer be the same thing we're talking about. And that really is the tie that we find when we're talking about the cult series. If we make some errors in our doctrine, some errors in the way that we talk about God, that we're no longer talking about the same God. We see this with Mormon's Jehovah's Witnesses, the two classes that I taught last, because they use the same words, but they don't actually mean the same thing as they've defined it. So when we say Jesus, we mean a particular Jesus, the Jesus of the revealed in the Bible. When they say Jesus, we mean a different Jesus. It's very important that we understand that because that is where so many things go awry. So what I'm saying on identifying quality, we use this kind of idea in speech all the time. We'll speak like, say, like, well, this is like that. He is like this. So the simile is the part of speech that we're used to in that facility is a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing to another, typically using the words like or as. Now metaphor is to say a little stronger to make that comparison, but stating it as fact. We say this, you know, even in advertising, you know, for like a rock is a simile or the man was a mountain. Well, he's not a mountain, right? So we're making this a bold declaration statement or using this metaphor to be even stronger emphasis. So these parts of speech are something that we're really familiar with. Those are identifying qualities that we're going to use about God also. But we're talking about God. I'm going to pose this idea that God's attributes are true metaphors. They're the essential characteristics of God are metaphors that go beyond just saying it is like this because we're using metaphor. We're always talking about something that is a smaller comparing it to a greater for the most part, whereas God really is the fullness of all greatness. So we're saying this metaphor imparts qualities that are greater to a smaller being. We're talking about that there's a concept that we're applying to a particular, whereas with God, that's not so. He is larger than any word or language that we can ascribe to him. Is that making sense question so far? So for example, if we take an identifying quality like God's power or his wisdom or his love, we're not saying he is merely powerful. He's not merely wise. He's not merely loving, but he is the fullness of power. The fullness of wisdom and the fullness of love. There is no subservient or subordinate portion that we can say, well, there's an even greater love than God. So that is the way that we can say that God is power and is wisdom and God is love. And so that's probably the most common phrase that you'll hear. Well, God is love. What do you mean by that? It's not God is this aspect of love. It's not that God is loving in this way is that there is no love which can be derived or extracted from God's essence. If you need coffee today, this is a, this is a tough one. And so it's sometimes helpful to think about things using other, even non-Christian sources like the Greeks had this concept of forms. And so Plato particularly developed this where we started the bottom of this pyramid of hierarchy where we have instances or particulars and Plato would talk about the horse. There is a particular horse, but when we think about horse, we're identifying it with a concept of a horse. And then there's so above that would be the general category of a horse. So a particular horse corresponds to what we know and identify about the attributes of horses in general. But because of the Greek ideals of goodness, truth, and beauty, there is even in the general knowledge of a horse, a higher concept of a horse. And so these were an idea that there is a non-physical, non-existent, an internal immutable perfect and necessary concepts of, for example, the horse in this category. And so what we know about a particular horse translates to horses in general, but horses in general are still just a concept of the ideal horse. And so as we move upward in the hierarchy, we see that as we're getting better and better, better images of what a true perfect horse would be, for example, we're moving toward what the Platonic ideal of the good would be. And so we can apply that to various things. And when we're thinking about goodness, truth, beauty, power, all of those things about God, this is a helpful concept. All right, ignoring the Greeks now. What does the Westminster Confession say about what God is? The answer to that is God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. I've broken those off and highlighted them in two different colors. When you think of a spirit, can somebody describe to me a spirit? Non-physical being. Has anyone seen a spirit? Can you bottle a spirit? When you manipulate a spirit, there's not a physical world that we can interact with with a spirit. So that concept is a little bit beyond our grasp. We say eternal, and we don't even have to think about God in particular with eternity, but if you consider eternity or infinity, that which goes beyond your measurement, you can't grasp God's eternality with that. In the same way that if you gaze up at the stars at night, you know that space goes on for a very, very long time. We can't really even fathom that, and we measure the distance between stars in light years. But even if you were to consider the term a light year, we've used language to package a concept into something we can't even begin to really wrap our minds around. Because imagine that you could travel for a light year, you would be dead very shortly into this journey. It's not something that you can wrap your mind around because it's so much vastly beyond you. Unchangeableness. Has anybody encountered anything in your life which is unchangeable? Certainly not. So these attributes in yellow are different than those who are in blue. We do have experience with wisdom. We certainly have experience with power and holiness, or lack of holiness at times. And we understand goodness, justice, and truth, because those are concepts that we can interact with every day. And these can be broken off into two different categories. So the eternality, simplicity, the almightiness of God, those are incommunicable attributes. Those are things that we as creatures, being subordinate to God, being made by him, cannot fully comprehend because they are beyond our existence. There's things, there's limits to what we can know from our perspective as creatures, because we are not infinite. We have a beginning, and we certainly have an end, at least in this life. We are not simple creatures in that we are combined parts. We have a physical being. We have spirit. We are not eternal, and we certainly are limited in our ability to exercise our power, so we are certainly not almighty. But then those communicable attributes, like wisdom, goodness, knowledge, and agency, the ability to change the world around us, those are things that we do have practical experience with. So we share those attributes with God. So God is beyond our comprehension in his first category, but there are some attributes that God has that we also share with him. We share them because we are derived from him, that we are made in his image, but we do not have them in the fullness that God does. God has wisdom. We have wisdom, but God's wisdom is unlimited, whereas ours is acquired and limited. God has perfect goodness. We have some goodness, hopefully more and more, but it is limited. So these are those two concepts I started with, with transcendence and eminence. So God's eternality, the things that are beyond our comprehension, are the ways that he transcends our existence. We cannot know them in a practical way because we are creatures, whereas his eminence, as God draws near to us, he shares some of his attributes with us. We are made in his image, and so because we are made in his image, we are like him in these ways. So again, when we're thinking about moving on from cults or moving on from proper doctrine in this, Bavinck, and I loosely paraphrase this from a lecture I was listening to, but he was quoted as saying that all mistakes in the divine attributes, those things when we think about God, arise when we begin with what we know about human beings and then think about God. But rather, we should instead start with what God has revealed about himself and then make comparisons to ourselves. So if we begin with God and then think about human beings, we're far better off because we're apt to make mistakes if we start with ourselves and then say, well, how is God like me? We're thinking about how we are made like God, not how God is like human beings. So practical example of this, this is a great quote by myself, Pastor Mark is wise and strong. I said that, however, Pastor Mark has not always been wise. He was a boy and a baby before that he has not always been wise, but he could become more wise even than he is today, and we pray that he continues to grow in wisdom. However, with senility, old age, maybe poor judgment, Pastor Mark may not always be wise, so his wisdom can change. And in the same way, he has not always been as strong as he is today, but he could become stronger still. And we know that he will not remain as strong as he is forever. So tying into what we're talking about today, Pastor Mark's strength and Pastor Mark's wisdom is not immutable, as much as he will fight to keep it going. All right, let's tie this in and make it more biblical. So these characteristics that we see, we can see these in all creatures. If we take Genesis 3, now the serpent was more crafty than the other beasts of the field that the Lord had made. So the serpent is creaturely. In this portion, he is embodied. He has craftiness. So craftiness is agency to manipulate the world, and there's a thought process behind this. There's a mind, there's a desire, there's a will, all attributes which are derived as a creature, and so he shares that with God. However, there's a division here between the wisdom or the mind of the serpent and his goodness. So more than any of the creatures, he has an intellect, but less than most of the creatures, he is lacking in goodness. And so these are divided attributes that we see. Chesterton, this is a great quote, says the word good has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of 500 yards, I could call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man. We need to be particular and precise about what we mean by good in these things, but it's because the goodness and wisdom should and ought be properly tied together that they're in their most perfect state. So you can have some good intentions but make poor judgments, or you can have great judgments but not have the best of intentions behind them, as we see in the serpent. So the key here for us to understand when we're thinking about immutability is that God's attributes are absolutely not to be divided. When we think about all of the things we're going to talk about in this series, we cannot think about his immutability, his unchangingness, without considering his love and his kindness. We should not think about any of these things as isolated incidents because that is a creaturely thing. Our attributes are in some ways divided, but God's attributes are never to be divided. Questions so far? All right. So Luke 11. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you for that segue. Now we're going to talk about some biblical anthropomorphism. So let's take a Luke chapter 11 as an example. So we're going to have this view of the fatherliness of God. So we're going to have this view of the fatherliness of God. So we're going to have this view of the fatherliness of God. So we're going to have this view of the fatherliness of God. So we're going to have this view of the fatherliness of God. So we're going to have this view of the fatherliness of God. So we're going to have this view of the fatherliness of God. So we're going to have this view of the fatherliness of God. So we're going to have this view of the fatherliness of God. So we're going to have this view of the fatherliness of God. So we're going to have this view of the fatherliness of God. So we're going to have this view of the fatherliness of God. So we're going to have this view of the fatherliness of God. So we're going to have this view of the fatherliness of God. 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And there's never any division between that. It may not be that we, from our perspective, can appreciate it, but it's always true. So when we call God a father, we understand what fathers are because we all have one. But God's fatherliness is different than the fatherliness that we have with our true earthly fathers. But we're not comparing earthly fathers to God the father. That's a mistake because we see the shortcomings in our own fathers. We imperfect men will not be a good father the way that our heavenly father is. Instead, what we should recognize is that earthly fathers are a picture, in a way, an inferior picture of what a true heavenly father is. So we're moving, like in that Platonic pyramid, up the ideal. We know that there are particulars, and we know that the general category of fathers exists, but there is an aspirational perfect father above us. And so again, when we're thinking about God the father, we shouldn't always consider him as the ideal and work from the bottom up. So creatures, as we exist, because again, we are made in God's image, are theomorphic. We are made to reflect God's image, but our image of God in our minds should not be built on men first. So finally, we're going to get into immutability. With all of that as pretext and a little bit of way of introduction as far as these attributes class, we've begun now kind of understanding where we ought to be, how we ought to be thinking about God, that his attributes are not to be divided, that he's the ideal and that he's the fulfillment of all of those perfect concepts. We're going to get into those concepts now and understand that. So immutability is this concept that God does not change. Micah 3.6, I, the Lord, do not change. We're done. I feel like we should probably do more than that. All right, we'll do more. So when we think about change, we all have various kinds of change that happens over our life, whether that's developmental change, growth in our knowledge and ability, maybe reactive change. We have something that happens to us and then in that moment, we change what we're doing. We have a new plan, a new strategy, or maybe we think something is going to happen. And so because we have foreknowledge, and again, we're not talking about foreknowledge that God has, but we have an anticipation of things will come our way. We have a thought that maybe this will come to pass. God does not anticipate the way that we anticipate. He does know we don't. And so maybe we're going to change our methods based on what we think will happen. Or maybe over time, just things because of entropy and laziness, like, well, you know, I'm going to differ in the way that I'm approaching this because, well, maybe there's even thought about it. Maybe it's just that insipid kind of slow change over time. There's a lot of different ways that we see change in human beings. Even maturational change, we grow, we're stronger, we have new experiences and perceptions, or maybe degradation. As we grow older, maybe we don't have the same ability that we used to. God is not susceptible to any of those types of change. So let's rearrange some of the Westminster Confession on those two categories, both the immutable and immutable, the transcendent and the near. So with the developmental change, God is a spirit, eternal and unchangeable. Because he is a spirit, he does not grow in knowledge or ability. His knowledge is eternal. He has always known everything from the beginning to the end. He does not react because there's no new information which presented to him. He does not susceptible to operational or maturational or degradational change because he does not ever have new abilities that he did not have previously to that. He does not grow in his strengths. He does not have new perceptions. He has no new experiences. He is not thinking to himself, wow, I didn't know the human beings were going to do that this week. Maybe I should change the way I'm working with them. His justice and his truth, likewise, do not change. He does not develop new methods according to foreknowledge, but he also does not drift in time. There's a lot of streams of theology and thought that says, well, maybe God worked that way before, but he's got to do something now. You see this really commonly in evangelical Christianity as we think, well, that was the God of the Old Testament, and now we're worshiping the God of the New Testament, not like God the Father, but now Jesus, and now we have the spirit. You can see where this ties back to a lot of bad theology. No, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He does not mature. He does not learn or develop. He does not adapt. He does not conform. So Packer, in Knowing God, has a really great chapter on this, depending on which version of the book, it's 15 or another one. He makes six categories for us to consider, that God's life does not change, his character does not change, his ways, truth, and purpose do not change, and thank goodness, his son does not change either. So those are the ways we're going to go through some of this. At the same time, immutability does not mean immobility. It is not that he does not interact. God does use time, although he is not beholden to it. It is something that he has created. We see God in Scripture as being steadfast, constant, resolute, unwavering, faithful, unfailing to his people, but he does work through time. He has appointed the means and the ends, not just that he will save his people, not just that his will will come to pass, but also the ways in which it will come to pass. God is using events in history to glorify himself through all of that. God has chosen to interact with his creation, again, his eminence, his nearness to us. So as an example, through Scripture of life, God's life not changing. In Genesis 21-3, Abraham planted a tamarisk tree near Beersheba, and there he called upon the name of the Lord, the Eternal God. Even in Genesis, we see that God is eternal. This is not a new concept. In Exodus, he says, I am who I am. All of us, every single one of you, you are because some other event happened. You are contingent upon something else, but God is self-contingent. God is. He's not dependent on anything whatsoever, and even as he declares his name to Moses, makes that very clear. Psalm 100, for the Lord is good, his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness is to all generations. Isaiah, for thus says the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy. It's striking we think about concepts of infinity and eternity a little bit differently today, but considering even in Isaiah's time, we see this eternal God, the one who is always before all things and will remain after all things. John 8, Jesus tells him, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am, taking on that same identity that God spoke to Moses with. So we see Jesus also in this. Timothy, now to the eternal, now to the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the God only, the honor and glory forever and ever, with no end, and a revelation. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, says the Lord, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. We see beautiful examples of these attributes of God from Genesis all the way to Revelation. So therefore, God is not susceptible to any development or maturation. He is ageless. He does not grow old. He's not subject to senility. He does not break down. He does not tire. The Lord does not sleep. We'll take these two at the same time. God's character does not change and his ways do not change. Well, character is something we can say, you'll hear this phrase, well, that seemed out of character or maybe to the positive. Well, yeah, that seems right about that person. That seems consistent with their character. Well, this is only something you can really appreciate if you have a relationship with them over time. So the love, goodness and kindness are experiential phenomena. We know someone's character because we have lived with them, seen what they have done. And God thankfully has shown us his character throughout the entirety of the Bible. James 117 says that every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of life with whom there is no variation or shadows change. So I've got some whatabouts as I was considering this, there are times in the Bible where we see God says that he regrets that he did this or he. Repented that he did this thing, what does that mean? How do we deal with these passages that seem to say that maybe God's character did change or maybe God did change his mind? Great example of that, we have King Saul deposed and David placed on the throne. So let's read some of 1st Samuel. And so God says, now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, oxen, sheep, camel and donkey. Saul is told to completely obliterate the Amalekites. But Saul and the people spared Agag and the rest of the sheep and the oxen and the fattened calves and the lambs and all that was good, it would not utterly destroy them and all that was despised and worthless. They devoted to destruction. Saul disobeys the Lord and through through Samuel, the word of the Lord came to Samuel and it says that the Lord states, I regret that I have made King Saul king for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments. I have another slide that answers this question, but what do you guys think about that? How is how do we approach that? I know Brian can go ahead, Brian. I think, you know, the example in Genesis where he talks about how I forget the exact language, but God is grieving. I may have the term God, he grieved that he had made man, you know, seeing the wickedness and seeing the tragedy. Right. Just before Noah, God regrets or grieves that he had made man. Same kind of a concept. Absolutely. So when we say that God regrets something or when we say that God is lamenting that something has come to pass, we don't mean that he's doing that in the same way we do. We do not want to make the mistake of having a human interaction superimposed upon the divine. We're going to have the divine tell us how he does that. So the answer that actually comes just a little bit later in the chapter. What do we do with God regretting? Samuel says to Saul because Saul tears his clothes, he's like, I'm sorry, you should have done this, you know, like, you know, like, let this judgment pass from me. And Samuel says, no, Samuel said to him, the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and has given it to your neighbor of yours who is better than you. And also the glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man that he should regret. So which is it? Did God regret that he had made Saul king or does he never lie and never regret? Because in the same chapter, it seems to say two opposing things. He does not regret because he is not a man that he should regret. So we do not want to superimpose regret as a man upon the divine. God regrets as God, we regret as humans. And so this is anthropomorphism. We're ascribing characteristics of human beings to something that is far greater than us, far more vast than us. And we cannot say that God regrets in the same way that we do. Another example of this, we've seen Jeremiah 18, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah from the Lord. Arise and go down to the potter's house and there I will let you hear my words. So Jeremiah goes and he says, I was sent down to the potter's house and there he was working at his wheel and the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand and he reworked it into another vessel as it seems good to the potter to do. And the word of the Lord came to me, oh, house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done, declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand. So you are in my hand, oh, house of Israel. If at any time I declare concerning the nation, a nation or a kingdom that I will pluck it, it will pluck up and break down and destroy it. And then if that nation concerning which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent it of a disaster as I intend to do. We say back, relent. We're talking about backing down, giving in, yielding. Well, God does not regret and he does not relent in the same way that men do. He may regret as God because he chooses to do so, but he does not regret as a man. And he also does not relent as the clay, but as the potter himself. If God relents, he does so as God, and so there is no contradiction within this. Consider the idea of Jonah. Now, the word of the Lord came to Jonah and said, go and arise to Nineveh, the great city, and call out against it for their evil has come up before me. But Jonah does not do that. Why does Jonah not do that? At the end of the Jonah, we see, oh, Lord, it is not is not is not this what I said when I was yet in my country. That is why I may haste to flee to Charshish, for I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster. So Jonah does not want to go to Nineveh because he knows God's character, because he knows that God is internally consistent. So he's told to go. And the reason that Jonah doesn't want to go in the beginning is because Jonah does not want to see the Ninevites come to repentance. So it's not that God had purposed to destroy them, and if Jonah maybe could make it work out, then God would back down. What we see here is Jonah even knows that God is a God of mercy, that he is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and that he will relent from disaster. So it is internally consistent with God's character. So any apparent change that we see in God is always consistent with his attributes, not inconsistent with his attributes. God does not do things which surprise us because it's contrary to his character, although he does surprise us because it's not consistent with our character. His truth does not change. Psalm 119, your word, O Lord, is everlasting. It is firmly fixed in the heavens. We say this time and again, the grass withers, the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever. First Peter, being born again of corrupt, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth and abides forever. So God's word is that which will continue beyond anything that we have in ourselves. We do not have to put our hope in man. We do not have to put our hope in God's maybe character. It is sure his truth, his word does not change. We see that even in Christ in the prologue, in John, in the beginning was the word. So from the very beginning. And the word was with God and the word was God. His purposes, this is one of the most comforting practical sections, we consider the purposes of God. Ephesians one, we see in him we have attained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things, according to the counsel of his own will, so that we were first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. Same thing with the purposes in Isaiah, who has measured the spirit of the Lord or what man shows him counsel? Whom did he consult? And who made him understand who taught him the path of justice? And taught him knowledge and showed him the way of understanding. God is the fullness of all understanding, and so his purposes do not change because he has new methods, new ways. He is not reacting to any new opportunity. And in Romans, how inscrutable his ways. The same thing we see also with Job and his friends, and the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm and he said to Job, who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man. I will question you and you shall answer me. See this great painting of Job and his friends accusing him like, well, you must have done something wrong, or Job even regrets and has pity over himself. Like, why has this come to pass? But we don't see that everything happens in this courtroom where Satan asked to test Job ahead of time. We don't know always the reasons that things come to pass, but it's always consistent with God's character. Why do you exist? To glorify God and enjoy him forever so that you may be his image bearer and you may bear his attributes as a creature and the things which come to pass, his purposes may or may not be along the lines of your purposes and your plans, but they are certainly the Lord's. Finally, God's son does not change. John 1, again, the beginning with the word. Colossians 1, like last week, I gave you guys the cheat sheets, all the ones Genesis 1, Colossians 1, Romans 1, Hebrews 1. Great answers to heretics. Colossians 1. He is before all things and in him all things hold together, holding together, meaning that if Christ were not holding them together, all things would then fall apart. He is continuing to sustain all of creation. We continue to breathe. We have our movement and being. Your life is dependent upon Christ holding you together even this morning. And not only just for your physical well-being, but in Hebrews 7, consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them. We have Christ sitting in the right hand of the Father interceding for us always, not just for physical strength and health and life, but also for our continued spiritual growth and development and revelation. He shall reign forever and ever. Christ also does not change. Well, if Christ does not change, what about this whole thing about Jesus growing in stature and wisdom? How can we reconcile the incarnation, Christ being a man, becoming a man? Is that not change with God's immutability? We say that Christ at one point was not physically born yet and then became born. Is that not change? Again, remember that his life, character, truth, ways and purpose and the son does not change. We are not to divide these attributes. So if we say that, if we start with this thesis that will Christ in the incarnation, that was some kind of change. We just said, but he realized it or not, is that a member of the Trinity is subject to change. We divided an attribute of the member of the Trinity. And if Christ is God, because the father is God, the son of God and the spirit of God, the father is unchanging, the son is unchanging, the spirit is unchanging. We've just committed a trinitarian heresy, if we say that. So that can't be the case. So what do we mean by that? Again, we've got these two categories, incommunicable attributes and communicable attributes. Christ becomes man in a way that is real and creaturely and like us, but he does so as God. So the incarnation does not need to be reconciled with God's immutability because it's actually the display of both transcendence and eminence perfectly. Christ coming as a man shows us how God on high comes near to us. So this is not something that we actually do need to reconcile. Christ is showing us God on high, but then also drawing near to us. Jesus says, if you've seen me, you've seen the image of the father. So where does this leave us with God's immutability in general? What should we take away from the concept that God does not change? Well, it should give us tremendous hope, because if God's purposes and his plan and his sovereignty is all unchanging, then we know that we can trust him. We know that he will be faithful to accomplish everything that he has set out to do. We know that if he has saved us through the work of Christ and that the spirit will come and apply that in our lives, that we can trust him to do it successfully. We do not stand on shaky ground. We are not hoping that we will cling to our salvation. It's Christ who plucks us from the grave and will deliver us completely. And also having this concept of transcendence, that God is so much bigger than us. In the same way that if you stare at the night sky and think to yourself, this is so much farther than I could ever think of. There are so many more stars. It's so much more infinitely vast. You should feel small on that. And it should give us a sense of awe and a sense of deep gratitude that a God who is so far and high above us will come near to us. I don't know who's doing what next week, but that is it. Questions about the immutability of the transcendent, eternal God who is so high above us that we cannot grasp him without him condescending. How I would square the circle of Christ's growing wisdom and stature. I think that that's an apparent change. Christ physically, obviously, was born as a baby, but I think that that's reflective of, and Mark, maybe you can chime in on this too, is if Christ grew in wisdom and stature, how is that not change? Well, it's not a change in the member of the Trinity because Jesus is fully God and fully man. So I would say that that's happening as fully man. But we don't want to divide the concept where, well, there's two Christ's. There's no divine entity which is superimposed upon a man who became Jesus. He was always Jesus. And he was always, even in the manger, Christ is God of God, light of light, eternal, perfect, and sinless. And so I think what that means is we take this concept of, like with the potter and the clay, when God relents or when he repents, he does not do so as a man. But I think we see God growing in wisdom and stature among men as God. And so there are going to become, in this whole series, when we're talking about those noncommunicable attributes, there are ways that God is doing this as God that we will not fully be able to grasp. I can pull an Eastern apologetic here and say, well, it's a mystery. But it is. There are limits to what we can know and say. But what we shouldn't do is say, well, we can make it make sense to ourselves, but we're applying human attributes to God rather than having human beings reflect God's true attributes in the fullness. So it's a difficult question, but I think it's because he's doing so as God. Other questions? Yep. I got one of those. It's way back. That's OK. Yep. Yep. Yeah, that's fair. I've taken some editorial liberties with the way I've structured this, but yeah, I think what you're getting at is that this sentence is not exactly taken directly from the Westminster, and it's imparting that he's unchanging in all of these things. So there is both a blending of incommunicable ways with incommunicable attributes. But for the sake of showing you these concepts, yeah, I did highlight selectively and edit a little bit. Christy? So the person said that when God has these changes of mind, and says, so we've been waiting for a change to be made in us. And then this is like the landscape we were looking at. We're appealing to a different part of his nature as he's changed, and then says, then he's changed his mind and does what we are asking him. I mean, so I've heard things like that, or even as a simple practical question, what is the purpose of prayer if God has ordained everything that comes to pass? And again, I have another slide in here that his, where is it? Yeah, I'll forget that. His immutability does not mean that he is immobile. He does interact. And so some of this is a question of perspective. And so again, because God is even not constrained by time, that we are living life through an existence. And from your lens right now, there is a future which is potential, but there is also a future for the Lord which is realized. And so I come to a frame of reference question, and I don't have a great answer for that. But I think, you know, like when it appears that God has, he's dealing with us, we have circumstances, and those circumstances do appear to change from our moment. So I would say the purpose of prayer is that we would be more conformed to his will, that we would better understand the reasons that he has for us, that we would be more supple material, that we could be shaped as he desires. And it appears that he does, I mean, even with the potter example, maybe the potter begins one way, but there could be something that happens in the shaping of the clay that as it warms up and it changes and it molds, that there is a difference in its workability to do a new thing. And so I don't know if that's helpful. Is that getting to more of your question? Or maybe you could state it another way. I think there's two things we can say. We know that we are called to pray, and that God desires us to pray, and that God appears to change circumstances in our lives. But I think we also can't say that we have changed his plans. We definitely don't change his plans. We definitely do change our hearts and our perspectives, and we are called to do so. And so because of that, I don't think we need to reconcile two things that maybe from our perspective seem irreconcilable, but in truth are completely friends. Paul, did you have something else? Brian. So in terms of Plato's forms, are you saying that it's helpful to understand God in terms of the type, like a father, a father, an imperfect representation of the true ideal of God? Is that the basic argument? So if we're talking about that we're using anthropomorphic ideas to describe God, but that really creatures are theomorphic and that we are made to reflect upward, right? If we start with the particulars and we move up, then we're getting closer and closer to who God is, rather than us saying God is skipping all through the line, saying, look, we have fathers, so God is a father. It's not in the same way. So I think the purpose of that idea is that there is something that we can use practical examples around us to understand what these words mean, that there are communicable attributes, that we understand what those concepts and ideas are, but we need to understand, again, with the ideal, that there is a highest form of goodness, highest form of power, highest form of love, and God embodies that entirely or encompasses that. I don't want to say we're embodied in that. So it's helpful to a point, right? I think it's helpful to a point. Our understanding breaks down. Right. We don't want to be Greek in our thoughts, but at the same time, sometimes it's helpful to have a picture to say, well, particulars to forms to an ideal concept, but then there's the ultimate truth, goodness, beauty, who God embodies entirely, which is never to be divided, which is never to be divided. All right. Father in heaven, thank you so much that we gather here today. We pray this Lord's Day worship will be pleasing to you. Help us to know you as you have revealed yourself to us. Help us to worship you as you have called us to do. Pray that we would be united together in unity, that we're sharing the love of Christ. We first are loved by you, Father, and so then we love one another in turn. Help us to be a group, a called out assembly, a church that embodies that love and be enabled by your Holy Spirit well. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
