Redemption Hill Church | Adult Bible Class
Theology Proper Part 1 - Existence, Knowability, and Incomprehensibility of God
"Do you have any father? "Thank you for another opportunity to come "and learn more about you. "Father, my prayer request this morning is very simple. "Will you please bless this lesson "and reveal yourself more fully? "We believe, Lord, help us with our unbelief. "Pray that you would bless this lesson "in the hearing of your word in Christ's name. "We pray, amen." But I'm gonna start with a very simple question for all of you today, and that is, how do you know God exists? How do you know God exists? Have you ever had to deal with that question? With a skeptic, maybe a family member or an acquaintance, or maybe even a stranger on an airplane? Or have you ever had to deal with this question yourself on a personal level? How do you know God exists? What was it that ultimately tipped the balance and convinced you that indeed he does exist? Or is there someone here who's maybe a bit of a secret agnostic thinking that really there is no possible way to prove that God exists? Well, that's what we are going to talk about today as we open up a new series called Doctrine of God the Father known as Theology Proper. The Doctrine of God the Father known as Theology Proper. And we're gonna start by answering the first question, does God exist? That's today's lesson. And then we'll ask also complimentary questions. If he exists, can we know him? If we can know him, how well can we know him? Next week, Chris Barnes is gonna talk on the attributes of God as we get to know him a little better. Then we will talk in the next week about the triune God. The following week after that we'll talk about his sovereignty over everything he created outside of himself. And then finally, I think I'll be teaching on the fifth question again, the problem of evil. If God is holy and good, how in the world can we explain the existence of evil? Today, again, we talk about does God exist? And I wanna say this, first of all, I commend everybody who's here. You know, this stuff that we go through when we talk about systematic theology as we attempt to answer, what does the Bible see on any one particular theme or topic? This is really essentially seminary level stuff that you're getting. And sadly, the vast majority of churches in America don't teach these things, but I will speak as a teacher and the majority, and all of us teachers, I think we would agree that we don't want these systematic theology lessons or any lessons that we teach in Sunday school to be merely head knowledge or intellectual understanding. We hope that these lessons result in doxology in praise for the one true holy God. So with that in mind, let's begin. And I'm going to begin by talking about what we call systematic theology includes the natural theologies. No, wait, before I go into that, I wanna quote this. This verse here, "Without faith, it is impossible "to please him for he who comes to God "must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder "of those who seek him. "If you want to know God and be in a relationship with him, "you have to believe he exists." That makes sense, right? If you don't, then according to scripture, you're prideful and wicked. In the pride of his face, the wicked does not seek him. All his thoughts are there is no God. Not only, if you don't believe God exists, you're not only prideful and wicked, you are also a fool, so says the psalmist twice. The fool says in his heart, there is no God. So we're gonna start our lesson today again by talking about four of the most famous apologetic arguments for the existence of God. For those of you who don't know that word apologetics, it's based on the Greek word apologia, which means not to apologize, but to make a defense. So apologetic arguments make a defense for the existence of God in this case. Sometimes these four famous arguments I'm gonna go through are called natural proofs because they come from the world of natural theology, which is the knowledge of God from the created realm. And we're going to do this because if you think about it, nature provides sufficient evidence for God's existence. He has revealed himself through general revelation in the things that have been made if you read Romans 1. So I'm gonna give you these four apologetic arguments, three famous ones at a very basic general level because I don't wanna stray too far from the main focus of our lesson, which is to examine what God's special revelation, in other words, scripture says about his existence. And then once we've gone through these four natural proofs or arguments from apologetics, we'll return to that main focus. And we'll examine what does God's word say about his existence. So we'll start with what's known as the cosmological argument. This was first argued by a Muslim cleric by the name of Al Ghazali. He argued for the existence of Allah, the Muslim God with this argument. Couple of centuries later in the 13th century, the Roman Catholic priest St. Thomas Aquinas used this argument, really popularized the cosmological argument as a proof for the existence of God. And then in the 18th century, the enlightenment philosopher and mathematician von Liebnitz used this argument to argue for the existence of God. Now in modern days, there has been a tweak to the cosmological argument. It's known as the Kalam cosmological argument. Guys like William Lane Craig, who we'll talk about J.P. Morland and others have argued the Kalam cosmological argument for the purpose of simplicity and understanding when I stick with the basic cosmological argument. And it is a fairly simple argument. It says for everything that has a beginning, there is a cause. This is what we know as the law of causality. If you see a dent in your car door, you know the causes that something had to hit it. If you feel hunger in your stomach, that's the effect. There had to be a cause which means you didn't eat. If you smelled dead rotting decaying flesh, that's the effect the cause is something had to have died. If we heard the door in the back of the sanctuary slam, you know that somebody had to slam it. There is, do we live in a cause and effect universe? And since we know that the universe had a beginning, this is the general belief. So the argument goes, we know there had to be a cause, and that first cause would necessarily be a creator, and that creator would be God. That's how the cosmological argument goes. It's pretty simple and straightforward, right? Well, let's move on to the next one. This is an argument I love known as the teleological argument. It was made famous by a philosopher named William Paley back in the 18th century. He argued that if you're wandering through the forest and you look down on the path and you see a Swiss watch, you'd know, if you looked at it, that a Swiss watch is a complex, an intricate mechanism inside that implies the existence of a watchmaker. And he said also the natural world is a complex, an intricate mechanism that implies also the existence of a divine creator. Paley believed that the complexity and order that we see throughout the natural world, and I'll give you a couple of examples of that, could not have risen, arisen through blind, random chance, or by natural process alone. And that it means that must have been designed, the natural world, by a divine being. Now, in recent years, you would know this as the intelligent design movement, and it was popularized in the mid-1990s by these two guys, William Dempsky, who wrote the book, Mirror Design on the Intelligent Design Movement, and then Stephen Meyer. They both work at the Discovery Institute. Another way of thinking about the teleological argument, the argument from design, I always like to point out to skeptics, you know, if you look at this building, you know that it didn't create itself. There was an intelligent designer known as an architect that built this building, we know that. You look at a painting on the wall, you know that painting did not create itself, it was an intelligent mind, a painter that created that painting. There's another example that's just phenomenal, you think about DNA. DNA is the most complex information storage system known to man, and man cannot create anything like it, in fact, if you took all the data in the world, it could be stored in a DNA archive the size of a small room. Or if you talk about the National Archives, which contains 74 million, million bytes of information, all of that information in the National Archives could be stored in a DNA archive the size of a poppy seed. It is incredible. Regarding information itself, information itself speaks of a divine, intelligent designer. Information is not something you can grab, touch, feel, see. It's not testable in a lab, it's an immaterial, non-material entity, it's an abstract concept. And when we talk about the laws of information, you know this is getting pretty deep, but it's amazing when you think about the fact that the laws of information, studied by information scientists, say that in order for something to be information, it has to be understood by an intelligent mind, like ours, and it has to originate from an intelligent mind. That's information. It is supernatural in and of itself, and DNA is way beyond anything that we could design. So I tell you, that's a pretty good argument, don't you think? I love these arguments, these evidential arguments. Now we're gonna look at a couple of philosophical arguments. One is called the moral argument, and you'll hear guys like Frank Turic, JP Moreland, and Alvin Plantiga, who's actually a Christian philosopher, they'll argue the moral argument. It begins with the fact that all people recognize some sort of moral code, that the existence of a moral order doesn't make sense without God, and I'll explain this a little bit. We intuitively know, we all know that some things are right, some things are wrong, right? Some things are good, some things are evil. And when we argue what's right, or what's wrong, what's good or evil, we actually are appealing to an unwavering, universally agreed upon, higher law that we assume everybody operates under. So just the very notion, this is what the philosophers say, just the notion that we know that there's such a thing as right or wrong implies that there's a higher standard or law, and that law requires a law giver. And because the moral law transcends us as humans, this universal law, this transcendent law, requires a universal transcendent law giver. The argument is that this universal transcendent law giver must be God, therefore God exists. On the other hand, if the atheist is correct in saying that there is no God, then there is absolutely no basis for morality, because each individual person sitting here gets to decide in his own mind or her own mind what's right and wrong, because absolutely without a creator God, then there's only one other explanation for how we got here, and that would be materialistic evolution. And because we're the product, so says the evolutionist, of blind, random chance, our thoughts, our beliefs, our feelings are just the consequence of our personal chemical accidental evolution. So your thoughts, your beliefs are no more right or wrong than mine, therefore there is no absolute truth. And by the way, without a creator, there's not only no absolute moral truth, no universal transcendent standard of law, there's also no hope, there's no purpose, there's no meaning for life. So none of this that I've just explained from the atheistic perspective, disproves atheism in and of itself, but because these logical conclusions are fundamentally at odds with what we know instinctively to be true, according to the philosophers, atheism has to be discredited. Without God, again, there would be no objective basis for morality, for knowing right from wrong, no sense of right or wrong, no sense of justice. We wouldn't have those things, we'd have no compassion, we would have no forgiveness, so sense of beauty, no reason for living whatsoever. Yet, we know all these things do exist, don't we? And if you believe in objective, good and evil, and everybody does, if I say to you, it's okay to torture babies for fun, you know that's wrong, everybody knows that's wrong. Philosophically speaking, these ethical standards must originate from a universal transcendent divine source, and since they do exist, therefore God must exist. That is the moral argument for the existence of God. Okay, so finally, our last argument, we're gonna go to what's called the ontological argument. Onto, the Greek word onto means being, so ontology is the study of being. This is a philosophical argument that was popularized by Saint Anselm of Canterbury in England, that's why a lot of times you'll hear this called Anselm's argument, or Anselm's ontological argument. Became popular about the 11th century, he felt this was the most definitive proof of God's existence. It is a very, you'll also hear Renee Descartes, who is an Enlightenment philosopher who's argued this, and then in modern times, William Lane Craig, and I'm gonna let him explain it for us today. It's very abstract, that's why I saved this one for last. I could never do it justice, that's why I'm gonna quote William Lane Craig, I'm not a philosopher, but it basically, it's kind of hard to understand, so bear with me here, we're gonna take a few minutes and go through this, it basically states that God's existence is proved by man's thought that God exists as the perfect being, okay? So, here's how William Lane Craig explains this argument, and first, you understand this argument, Craig says we have to understand by what philosophers mean by possible worlds, okay? A possible world is just another way to describe how our world could have been. It doesn't actually mean we're talking about another real world, like another planet, or another universe, any physical place. A possible world is just the way the world could have been. So, to say that something or some entity exists in some possible world is just to say that there's some description of reality, which includes that entity, whether it be God or some other entity, okay? So, to say something that exists, something exists, some entity exists, in every possible world is just to say that no matter what description is true, that entity would be included in that description, okay? So, for example, we know that, if we say the entity we're talking about as a unicorn, we know that unicorns do not exist in the actual physical world that we live in. However, there is, according to the philosophers, some world in which unicorns might exist. See, this is why I'm not a philosopher. This stuff is just crazy to me. But on the other hand, when it comes to possible worlds, the mathematicians say that numbers exist in every possible world because they would exist necessarily. So, that's just a little background on what they mean by possible worlds. Now, we'll dig into the ontological argument. According to Anselm, God is by definition the greatest being conceivable. If you could conceive something greater than God, then that would be God. So, by definition, God is the greatest conceivable being a maximally great being. So, what would such a being be like? Well, we all intuitively know he would be all powerful, all knowing, all good. And he would exist according to the philosophers in every possible world. Any being that lacked those properties would not be maximally great. We could conceive of something even greater. But what that implies that if God's existence is possible, then it follows that God must exist for if a maximally great being exists in any possible world. It exists in all of them. That's part of what it means to be maximally great, to be all powerful, all knowing, and all good in every logical possible world. So, if God's existence is even possible, he exists in every logically possible world. And therefore, in the actual world, are you able to regurgitate that back to someone now? Probably not. Let me summarize it as follows. This is how Craig does it in his lectures. Primus number one, it's possible that a maximally great being, in this case, the entity as God exists. If it's possible to maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world. Therefore, a maximally great being exists in the actual world. Therefore, a maximally great being exists. Therefore, God exists. Now, William Lane Craig explains that in the world of philosophy, there really is no controversy about steps two through seven. So, I've isolated number one here. The question really lies in premise number one, is God's existence even possible? We'll go back to what the atheist argued. Our argument of the atheist is that the concept, the very concept of God is illogically, is illogically incoherent, logically incoherent, such as would be, if I said to you, I smell the color blue, or I know of a married bachelor, or here's a round square. These things are logically incoherent. That's what the atheists say about God, okay? But the problem with this argument of the atheist is it doesn't appear to be coherent. The idea of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God is in every logical possible world, according to the philosophers, seems perfectly coherent. And additionally, we just went through some other arguments that are very strong arguments for the existence of God, which at least suggest that it's logically possible that God exists. So, the big question here is, is it possible that God exists? If he does, then it follows logically, that God does exist. Okay, have you got all that? I told you, it's abstract and complicated, but that's the ontological argument. Now, and it went through these arguments from the world of apologetics, from natural theology, because they are fascinating, aren't they? I love some of these. I love the intelligent design argument. I love the moral argument. I think they're useful. They can remove doubt sometimes, and they can plant seeds of faith. And it's important to talk about them because we're talking about God's existence here today. I asked that question, how do we know God exists? And since God reveals himself in the things that have been made, we shouldn't dismiss evidence that he's given us. However, I do wanna give a word of caution here. Every one of these, what we call natural proofs, are either observations from the material world, or they're philosophical arguments from the mind of man, who is part of the created world, like the moral argument, the ontological argument, those are philosophical questions. And so they originate from the created realm. Are you with me on that? And because, and Stephen talked about this, as he went through the Doctrine of Bibliography, general revelation, the things that have been made, is insufficient to save. So these arguments, as wonderful as they are, as convincing as they may be, as fascinating as they may be, they should never be considered adequate without scripture. And they should never be argued independent of scripture, because as scripture tells us, left to his own thinking, man, will, and always does, corrupt what God has revealed through general revelation. We've seen it over and over and over again. It's also very important, as we do our apologetic arguments, to ask, what is the goal of these arguments? You see, they don't necessarily, these arguments don't necessarily lead to knowledge of the one true, eternal, triune God of the Bible. In fact, a lot of the men who made these arguments, and we had more time, you would see, they were not necessarily saved Christians. Okay, by themselves, the point is, by themselves, these arguments, and we went through from natural theology, do not necessarily prove the existence of the triune creator God of the Bible. And we have to remember what our mission here is at Redemption Hill Church, it is to be and make disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not merely to make intellectual arguments, they're fun, they make you look smart, even when you quote from somebody else who actually argued them. But, we're not trying to just get people to believe in some higher unnamed power. We've seen it with the intelligent design argument. You can argue an atheist who believe that there's an intelligent designer, but sometimes they attribute that intelligent design to an extraterrestrial life form. And they go, oh, there is alien life that seeded the universe with amazing intelligence. That is not our goal. We're not trying to just move an atheist from a position of atheism to deism, deism is the belief that there is a God, but he's kind of distant, uninvolved, that's deism. We're not trying to make him even a monotheist. A monotheist believes in one God, but that's what the Jewish people believe who don't believe in Jesus Christ, that's what Al-Gazali and the Muslims believe. They believe in one God, his name is Allah. That is not our goal to bring people to Allah or an extraterrestrial life form. So the point is, these arguments from natural theology, this important to keep in mind, can be useful if argued in combination from scripture with the presupposition of the truth of scripture. We sometimes think that non-believers, they just need more evidence, right? Well, what they really need is a conviction of sin. They need regeneration. And for those things to happen, they need to hear God's word as Paul said, how then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? Preaching the word of God. That's the sharpest two-edged sword in the universe. So if we're gonna properly assess God's revelation of himself in nature, we need the guidance of scripture and believers need to hear scripture. When people say to you, you need to come with kind of a come to a position of neutrality. You're so biased with the Bible. When we are duped into believing, we can set our Bible down and come and argue these things on intellectual grounds. You have just put down the most important weapon you have. The Bible, so there is no neutral ground in these things. So we need to make sure we keep that in mind. So now, let's get back to the emphasis of what we're here today to talk about. Let's talk about what the scriptures say about God's existence. Because if we're gonna properly understand this doctrine of God the Father, like any other doctrine or subject we're gonna talk about in this series, we have to begin with what God himself says on the subject. And since he happens to be the subject expert on the existence of himself, we cannot exclude him from testifying about himself, right? That makes sense to me. So proof of God's existence has to come first and foremost from God's testimony about himself. Because again, he has provided irrefutable proofs of his existence in the Bible. So if you want pure trust for the evidence, then the first thing we have to look at is scripture. And that's what we're here for today. In fact, if you open up your Bible, the very first words in Genesis 1 say, in the beginning, God, right? So the Bible never tries to convince someone or proof to someone the existence of God. It just merely assumes it. It assumes that he has always existed before the beginning of time, before anything was created, that he just is. Now I wanted to answer this question for myself. How many times in scripture does God announce himself? Check this out. God said to Abraham, I am God almighty. He said to Isaac, Abraham's son, I am God. I am the God of your father, Abraham. Do not fear for I am with you. He said to Isaac's son, Jacob, I am the Lord, the God of your father, Abraham, and the God of Isaac. God also said to Jacob, I am God almighty. So he announced himself to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. He also said to Jacob, I am God, the God of your father, and then to Jacob's great-great-grandson Moses. Did you know Moses was the great-great-grandson of Jacob? He said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And God also said to Moses, I am who I am. Throughout the Old Testament, 54 different times God said, I am the Lord your God. 96 times, 96 times. He said these exact same words, I am the Lord. He also said, be still and know that I am God. I am God, your God. I am God. I, the Lord, am the first, and with the last. I am he. Do not fear for I am with you. Do not anxiously look about you for I am your God. I am the Lord. That is my name. For I am the Lord your God, the holy one of Israel, your savior. Five times, he said to different prophets, do not fear me for I am with you. Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh, he said to the prophet, Jeremiah. He said to Isaiah, you are my witnesses, and my servant whom I have chosen so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me, there was no God formed, and there will be none after me. I am God, he said again. Yay, before the day was, I am he. I am the Lord, your holy one, the creator of Israel, your king. I am the first and the last, and there is no God besides me. I, the Lord, am the maker of all things stretching out the heavens by myself and spreading out the earth, all alone. Four times, he said, I am the Lord, and there is none else. I am he. I am God, and there is none like me. I am, and there is no one besides me. He said twice to Isaiah. I am he, I am the first, and I am also the last. I am the one who is speaking, here I am. He said that two distinct separate times to Isaiah. Three times, he said to Jeremiah, I am with you. And I am the Lord. Four times in the book of Revelation, he says this, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning, and the end. That's, by my count, I think it's roughly 200 statements. And I could have missed some. I had help from Esauard, which is a great search engine for scripture. So how much evidence do we need? How much more evidence do we need? God's existence is throughout the Bible. This book, this holy book is the only holy book that writes history in advance through fulfilled prophecy. It's the only book that is in complete unity with itself. 66, think about this, 66 different books written by 40 different men, speaking different languages from different places, different socioeconomic backgrounds, different educational backgrounds, writing over a period of almost 1500 years, and they're all agreeing on the single topic that they wrote about. This is the only book that answers all of life's big philosophical questions. How did I get here? What's the purpose in life? What happens after I die? What's wrong with the world? What's the answer to what's wrong with the world? This book, this book that's survived throughout centuries despite hatred from mankind, men who would wanna destroy it, rid the earth of it, and it still survives as the number one selling book in all time, not even close. This book is evidence itself of a supernatural creator God, and that makes me just tremble. This is a supernatural creator God who says in its pages, I am, I exist, I am the creator God, I am the Lord Almighty, over and over and over again. And he's not hard to find, by the way. Here's what Moses was given to say to the Israelites, but from there you will seek the Lord, your God, and you will find him if you search for him with all your heart and with all your soul. The chronicler said, if you seek him, he will let you find him. And also the chronicler wrote, the Lord is with you when you are with him, and if you seek him, he will let you find him. The Lord is near to all who call upon him and to all who call upon him in truth, says the psalmist. He said in the Proverbs, I love those who love me, and those who diligently seek me will find me. Prophet Jeremiah, God said through him, you will seek me and find me. When you search for me with all your heart, I will be found by you, declares the Lord. Paul, when he was in Athens speaking to the philosophers who didn't know God about it, he talked to them about this unknown God, and he said this, he himself gives to all people life, and breath, and all things, and he made from one nation, made from one man, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth. Having determined their appointed times and their boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God. This is the reason he created them, that they would seek God if perhaps they might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. So in summary, the Bible gives us ample proof of God's existence, and he exists, exactly as he's revealed himself to us in the Bible, and we have to believe he exists, because he's told us he exists. And that's a pretty good starting place. In fact, it's a necessary starting place. However, I wanna pause here. Okay, so you believe God exists. You believe there's only one God, good for you. That's a really good starting place, but guess what? James says even demons believe, and they shudder. So what's the difference between us who may believe in God, one God and the demons? Well, the Bible says, hang on a second. This brings us to another important question, actually. If we know that God exists, can we truly know this God? Is it possible to know him? The Bible says, not only can he be known, but he can be known in a personal relationship. Think about that, it's profound that we could know the creator of the world. Think about this, in Genesis two and three, God walked in the garden of Eden, talked with Adam and Eve. He spoke with him and they knew their creator. They were in relationship with him. Exodus chapter three, God appears to Moses in the burning bush, and he speaks with Moses, and he continues to speak with Moses throughout his life. And even for 40 days, God spent conversing face-to-face with Moses on the top of Mount Sinai as he gave him his law. God knew his prophets, and he spoke to them, and they recognized his voice. God was personally and emotionally engaged with his people. And this God who knows us desires that we would know him. Jesus prayed this to the Father himself on our behalf. And this is eternal life that they know you, the only true God that they would know me, Jesus Christ whom you sent. So can we know God? Yes, we can know God in the person of Jesus who came to earth in human form. He walked and he talked with countless people he interacted during his earthly ministry. And Scripture tells us, we need to remind her, that Jesus himself is the incarnation of God. And here's what Matthew says. He interprets what the prophet Isaiah said, "Behold, the virgins shall conceive and bear a son." And they shall call his name Immanuel. And then Matthew tells us that means God with us. For in him Christ, he's talking about Christ, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. And by the way, here's another proof. If you loved one another, says John, this is proof that you're born of God and that you know God. And not only can we know the one true God as believers, never stop and think about this. We are actually adopted. We are adopted out of love into a very special relationship with him. Listen to this. Paul says, "But you've received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, 'Abba, father.'" The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. Think about that, we are the children of God. That's us, the believers. This is why Jesus taught his disciples to pray, "Our father, our father in heaven." He's our father and we're his children. Do you ever think about it that way? It's profound. The author of Hebrews says, "God deals with you as sons for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?" So when he reproves us, when he disciplines us, it means he loves us. That's more evidence of his love for us. If he doesn't, it means he doesn't care. John said, "See how great of love the father has bestowed on us that we would be called children of God and such we are beloved. Now we are children of God." And not only that, do you know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit, God's spirit dwells in you. Jesus even said this, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and we will make our home with him. So do you think you can know God? He says he'll make his home with us. He's even described as a friend of the believers. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness and he was called a friend of God. So according to scripture, God can be truly known and only known by him but loved by him as our heavenly father. Okay, so this brings up another question. How well can we know him? Can we know everything about him? Let's find out. No one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God, his greatness is unsearchable, his understanding is unsearchable. He does great things that we cannot comprehend. His understanding is beyond measure and in Isaiah 55, nine, God speaks himself and says, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your thoughts and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts. And I love how Paul said it beautifully in Romans 11. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgment and how inscrutable his ways for who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor. Here's the point. We may know something about God's love, we may know something about his power, we know something about his wisdom, but we can never know God's love completely or exhaustively. We can never know his power completely or exhaustively. We can never know his wisdom completely or exhaustively on and on and on through all the other attributes. Next week, Chris Barnes is going to teach on God's attributes because we wanna know as much about the Father as we can and as capable a teacher as Chris is, Chris, I know you're already doing your homework and teach the attributes of God. And no matter how wonderful that lesson is going to be, I'm sure Chris would be the first one to tell all of us and he'll probably will next week that there is absolutely no way we can ever completely and exhaustively and extensively know God, but we can know him truly. He's made himself known to us. So to bring this lesson to a conclusion, oh, did I say this one? What David said, I don't know if I hit this one, I was so caught up in what I was saying. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high, I cannot attain it. That's how we should all feel. So to bring this lesson to a conclusion, God exists. He has revealed himself not only in the things that have been made but through his word. He has testified to us that he exists and that if we seek him, we can find him and we can truly know God. We can have a relationship with him through what God has revealed about himself through scripture and that should be that is sufficient for God to know him. In a personal saving relationship. So we go back to the first question I asked, how do you know God exists? The consequences of your answer to that question are massive. This goes way beyond, this question and your answer goes way beyond just some lesson on this systematic theology in a Sunday school class because the consequences are eternal. So what I've been praying this whole week, what I prayed this morning, what I'll continue to pray, we should all pray that as we as believers who listen to God's testimony that we would believe and be saved. And with that, I will end. And again, I wanna thank you all for being here. It is so wonderful that you come to learn these things. May these things result in doxology. And you're dismissed for now, but we'll see you back at 10.30 as we worship this incredible, awesome God. [BLANK_AUDIO]