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You have to eat, you have to drink water. You have to breathe air. You have all these needs. We're all like that. We're all dependent on external things to keep us alive.
God depends on nothing. God and God alone Has the power To be. within himself. Isn't that an incredible thought? Our temptation can be to make God smaller.
more like us, and sadly to elevate man. That's why we need our minds renewed according to the Word of God. This is the Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm Nathan W. Bingham.
And it's good to have you with us. This week, you have been hearing messages from RC Sproll series Names of God. You'll hear several of those messages this week, but it is a 15-message series.
So request your copy, along with three books from Dr. Sprohl, when you give a year-end donation at renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4343 before midnight tomorrow.
Well, here's Dr. Sprohl picking up from yesterday's message and continuing his study of the name Yahweh. God revealed Himself to Moses. with his sacred name Yahweh. which is translated into the English by the phrase I am Who I am.
We've already looked briefly at some of the significance of that name. But to be honest with you, I think we could spend the next ten weeks on this name. And only At best, scratch the surface of what's there. In popular religious language. People frequently make the distinction between human beings.
And God. And the distinction is usually articulated something like this We are human beings. But God is the supreme being. I want you to think about that for a moment, and let me ask this question. What's the difference?
Between a human being And the Supreme Being. What's the chief difference, the essential difference? And I'm choosing my words a little bit carefully here when I say what is the essential difference between a human being And the Supreme Being.
Now the word that I was playing with there is the word Essential. What does that word suggest to you? If I say that something is essential, you will suggest perhaps that this means that which is absolutely necessary. And that's a perfectly legitimate interpretation of the word essential. But in its barest boned Meaning, essential means of the essence.
of something. I love to do crossword puzzles. In fact, every morning I do two of them. A day without crossword puzzles for R C's, like a day without orange juice for other people. And there's a word that often crops up in crossword puzzles.
It says the Latin form of being, and it's a four-letter word. E S E Assi. from which we get the English word. Essential. That which is essential, or that which has to do with the essence of things.
relates to something's being. What it is Now, I know we can get very abstract here. We could go for an excursion, if you wanted to, into ancient Greek philosophy when people like Plato and Aristotle spent their days contemplating the meaning of essence, the meaning of being, because their quest, their great pursuit. intellectually was to be able to discover What they called Ultimate Reality. The quintessence, the highest, the fifth essence of things.
We would say that. was a pursuit. of the understanding, in part at least, of the existence of God. Because we are convinced that God is. ultimate Reality.
So when I say When I get back to my original question, what's the difference between Human beings? And a supreme being? Notice those two phrases: human being, supreme being. There's one word that both of them have in common. They both have the word being.
And the only thing that differs is the qualifying description before them. One says human being, the other one says supreme being. And so we would think if we're going to look for the basic essential difference between a creature and God, is that we would look at the difference between human and supreme. And that's a legitimate way to approach the question. But here's the trick here's the surprise The real difference Between a human being And the Supreme Being is being.
Before you turn the radio off. And say I just got lost in a maze of philosophical abstraction. I don't know what this man's talking about here. Let me ask you to hang on in here for just a second. And let's try to to make sense out of this.
Let me say it again. the chief difference between a human being and the supreme being Is being. Centuries, indeed, millennia ago, before there was a Plato, before there was a Socrates, before there was an Aristotle. There was a philosopher who was One of the earliest philosophers that history has recorded, and his work has not survived down to the present day, except. In quotations and fragments that are alluded to by later writers.
And this man's name was Parmenides. And Parmenides is famous. For one quote that I've read literally hundreds of times in the writings of scholars. Parmenides Over 2,000 years ago, made this statement, and I want you to listen carefully to Parmenides. You can quote Parmenides now to your friends.
You can say, the ancient philosopher Parmenides said, Whatever is Comma. I remember the first time I read that in an introductory course in philosophy when I was a college student. I chuckled. I thought, this guy's famous for a statement like this. He stutters.
Whatever is, is. You know, what's the great insight there? Beloved, I don't think there's ever been a statement from a philosopher. that has gripped my mind.
So tightly. and so deeply. As that simple observation. of the ancient philosopher Parmenides. whatever is He wasn't trying to be cute.
He wasn't trying to be mysterious. What he was trying to say is that for anything to exist For anything to be real. and not just imaginary. Not just mythological. or fictional But for something to be real, and you notice how I just said that, for something to be real.
In some sense, somehow it has to. B. We remember Hamlet using the options. When he was contemplating suicide in his famous soliloquy, what did he say? To be Or not to be.
That is the question. That was the question. that gripped his soul. He's sitting there thinking. What happens?
If I kill myself. He wants to know whether it is better. To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or by opposing them. To die. But then he says, what happens if I I don't stop being when I die.
He doesn't know what's on the other side. He's thinking that if he kills himself it will be the end of Hamlet, it will be the end of his existence. But he's not sure. He says to sleep. To die, to sleep, huh?
To sleep, perchance, to dream. Ah, there's the rum For when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, you know. We we don't know what's there. He said it makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of. Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.
Hamlet said. I don't know what's over there, and I have a guilty conscience. And if I don't stop being. I may be. In serious trouble Hamlet was afraid of hell.
Hamlet was afraid. That his life would continue. and that he would be brought before the judgment of God. But he was wrestling. With that question of being.
Do you ever think about that? Why you are? Why anything is? I know this. That 60 years ago, as recently as 60 years ago, in fact, as recently as 56 years ago.
Nobody. In the world. Cared. About R. C.
Sprawl. At least not this R C Brawl. I cared about My grandfather, whose name was Orsis Bro, but nobody cared about the one who's speaking to you now. Do you know why? There wasn't any RC Sprawl.
RC Sprawl didn't exist. The world was getting along fine. Without me. I didn't know anything. About the world, and the world didn't know anything about me.
Because I was not. But then in February My mother delivered a baby. at Southside Hospital in Pittsburgh and called him R. C. I started.
Actually I started when I was conceived, but My life began in this world. On my birthday. But before that I was not. Then I began to exist. I started to be.
But I didn't start to be by myself. I had a beginning. I had to be generated or procreated. By other people. Before this human being, could even be at all.
The one thing I know about you. Even if I don't know your name. is that there was a time when you were not. There was a time when you did not exist and that if you exist now, you Have A beginning. You exist, and your existence is real, even though it's changing from moment to moment, from day to day, from year to year.
You change. You see, you go through all those changes because Really, it'd be more proper, as the old philosophers used to say, to describe us not as human beings, but as human. becomings. Because whatever we are is never permanent. Whatever we are is always changing.
I'm different now than I was when I started this message. If I'm only 13 minutes and 54 seconds older. Than I was. When we started. I am always in process.
I am always becoming. My being Is not. Pure. Beehang. It is not.
Perfect being. Because what I do not have And what you do not have. is the power of being. In yourself. You can't exist for the next five minutes.
without oxygen? Without something. preserving your existence. You have to eat, you have to drink water, you have to breathe air, you have all these needs. We're all like that.
We're all dependent on external things. to keep us alive. God depends on nothing. God and God alone Has the power of the power of the power. To be Within himself.
In theology, we use two different words or phrases to describe this attribute of God. The most common one we hear. is the attribute of self existence. I'm reminded of the two little children that were engaged in a debate, and the first little boy asked the second little boy, Where did the trees come from? And the second little boy said, God made the trees.
The first little boy said Well Where'd the sky come from? And the second little boy, Should God made the sky. First little boy said, Where did you come from? and the second little boy said, God made me. The first little boy was getting tired of this encyclopedic brilliance of his young friend, and he decided to give him the poser that would stump him once and for all.
And so he says, Okay, smarty pants Where did God come from? And the second little boy said, God made himself. And we smile at that. But the first boy really did expose the second little boy as a bad theologian, because God did not make himself. God did not create himself.
Because God is not a creature. Nobody, nothing. makes God. God exists eternally. Because he doesn't need somebody else's power or some other external power to bring him into existence.
Because the God of Scripture is the God who reveals himself to Moses. As Yahweh I am. I have being. In myself. You don't have it, Moses.
Aaron doesn't have it. Pharaoh doesn't have it. The stars don't have it. The sun doesn't have it. The universe doesn't have it.
I, I alone can say I am Who I am. 'Cause I alone Have the very power to be. Intrinsically. It's not borrowed. It's not derived.
It's not gained or gotten from some other source. But I am Eternally. Whoever is. Yes. That's what Parmenides was getting at.
He's saying, if anything exists in this world, Parmenes is saying. If anything has any limited degree of being, a human being, a creaturely being, a dependent being, a finite being, for any of that to be at all, for there to be being somewhere, somehow, something, someone must. B Independent from everything else. I mean, people argue all the time about whether God exists. I mean, to think about this for 15 seconds would answer the question: if nothing had the power of being within itself, nothing could possibly be.
But if something is. Then someone is. Let me say it again, if something is. Then someone is. Someone is in a pure state.
of absolute being. There can be no human being, there can be no earthly being. without Supreme Being. Without someone. Whose name As I am.
Who I am. The other word we use for this is a technical term. I'll just give it to you. You can write it down. You can forget it if you want to.
But if you do ever read serious theology, you'll see it again and again. It's the simple little word assea, A-S-E-I-T-Y. It's one of my most favorite words. In theology, I can't read that word, I see it, E-A-S-E-I-T-Y, without having chill bumps. Because that one little word captures.
This magnificent, transcendent, Character of God A seity means that which has its being. And of itself. All of this, I believe. is clearly implied. By the proper name of God.
For above all things, the thing that is most transcendent about God, the thing that distinguishes God more than anything else, about him from us. is his being. For he alone has the power of being. in himself. And it's only because of that power of being that you and I can even sit around discussing The meaning of being.
Without that power of being, we wouldn't be here at all. This is the Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind, and that was R. C. Sproll from his series Names of God. Don't go anywhere as he'll be back in just a moment.
We have spent two days on the name Yahweh. and Doctor Sprohl takes his time across fifteen messages considering various names of God in the Bible. You can work your way through this entire series when you request access with your year end donation at Renewing Your Mind dot org or when you call us at eight hundred four three five four three four three. In addition to access to this series, we'll send you his title, What Are the Names of God? And to help you introduce people to the God of the Bible.
will also send you two copies of The Great Rescue. As you know, God is holy. And we are not.
So outside of Christ, we stand condemned in His presence. This gospel resource was designed so you could share it with others, which is why we're including two copies in this special resource offer.
So that's access to a 15-message series on the names of God, plus three books when you give a year-end gift at renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast show notes. Thank you so much for your generosity this December. As promised, here's doctor Sproul, with another thought for the day. Let me ask you to think back to the days when you were in grammar school and you first had to go through those nasty exercises of learning the various parts of speech, the nouns and the verbs and the adjectives and the adverbs. and had to learn the difference between various kinds of verbs, linking verbs, transitive verbs, intransitive verbs and it all gave us an eccedrin headache.
But you remember When you learned. The verb to be. What are various forms of the verb to be? I am You are He, she, It Is Past tense forms were and was. Shall be, have been, has been, all of those are various forms of the verb.
to be.
Sometime you ought to sit down and see how long you can go speaking without using some form of the verb to be There's no more common word in our language than am. and yet in that common word We get the uncommon. Hint. of the majestic character of God. Who says?
I Mm. Tomorrow, we'll conclude our time in this series as RC Sproll turns his attention to the name Alohim.
So be sure to join us Thursday here on Renewing Your Mind.
