Live with Lon-Jesus' Baptism, the Trinity, and the Attributes of God

Well, hello everybody.

We're so glad to have you back with us at Live with Lon. And this morning we're going to be continuing in our series in the Gospels. We're going to be finishing up our look at John the Baptist and then we're going to move on from there. And, you know, I thought this week, it's very interesting with all that's going on around us with this virus, how much we need to pray for God's mercy to the human race. I don't know why God is doing this.

I've heard all kinds of theories, whether it's to call people to repentance and punish our nation and the world for sin or and who knows, I can't even begin to speculate all of God's purposes. But I know that we need to pray and I know we need mercy from the Lord. And so not just for our family, but for the whole human race.

So let's do that before we begin today. Let's bow our heads together. Dear Lord Jesus, I want to ask you for mercy for each of our families, our loved ones. Lord, protect us from this coronavirus according to your perfect will and plan for each one of our lives. O God, cover us with your wings and hide us under your feathers and keep the pestilence of the coronavirus by day and the terror of it by night away from us. But Lord, we also want to pray for your mercy to the entire human race. O God, please, I pray thee, help us to find a vaccine quickly or a medicine that will work quickly against this virus. O God, stop this virus.

Stay the hand of whatever being in the universe you've entrusted with this virus. And we ask you, Lord, to do this as a display of your power. O Father, we desperately need your mercy. And I do pray that people who either get sick or even just hear about it will turn to you in salvation faith. And I pray that those of us who are believers will turn to you in an attempt and a desire to purify our faith and our behavior and stop tempting you and playing games with you, Lord.

Use this virus in a mighty way to bring back many people to you, some for the first time, some who need to come back to you. And we pray this in Jesus' name and commit our time in the word of God to you now. Amen. Well, here we are, and we are continuing, as I said, in our Trenta study of the Gospels. And today I want to pick up in Matthew chapter three, where we end the story of the narrative about John the Baptist in Matthew chapter three. And we're going to look at what he says and then talk about it, exposited, expositionally and exegetically, and then talk about so what for our lives. So let me just say before we dig in that we're going to be talking today about an area of theology called theology proper. We have a bibliology, which is the study of the Bible. We have hamartiology, which is the study of sin. We have eschatology, which is the study of the last things you like the return of Christ. We have ecclesiology, the study of the church. We have soteriology, the study of God's plan of salvation.

But theology proper is a look at the nature and the character of who God is himself. And we're going to talk about that today because the scripture that we're going to look at points us directly at that. So let's look at John the Baptist here in Matthew chapter three. Of course, we're using our King James version of New King James version of the Bible. And so I want to direct your attention to chapter three beginning at verse 13.

Here we go. Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. But John tried to prevent Jesus, saying, I have need to be baptized by you and are you coming to me?

And Jesus answered and said, permit it to be so now, for thus it is full fit is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. And then he, John, allowed him Jesus and Jesus, when he had been baptized, came up immediately from the water. And behold, the heavens were open to him and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon him.

And suddenly a voice came from heaven saying, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Now, the thing about God and understanding God and theology proper is that God is inscrutable. By that we mean that no one can understand God on their own. He is beyond our capacity to understand by ourselves. And therefore, the only information about God that we have as human beings is what God chooses to make known to us, to reveal to us in the word of God.

And so this passage reveals to us God allows us to see something about himself that is very important. And that is that there are three persons, three personalities, if you will. There's no perfect word for this, but historically the word persons has been used in the Godhead. We call this, of course, the Trinity. And the Trinity simply means that we have one God, but he manifests himself.

He exists in three distinct persons or personalities or expressions. Now, here in our passage, we see, let's look at it again, all three persons of the Godhead at the baptism of Jesus at once. Verse 16, and when he had been baptized, Jesus came immediately from the water and behold, the heavens were open to him. And he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon him. So there we have the Spirit of God. And suddenly a voice came from heaven saying, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. There we have God the Father. So in this baptism that Jesus had in the Jordan by John, we see God the Father speaking from heaven. We see God the Son being baptized in the Jordan and we see God the Holy Spirit alighting on Jesus like a dove. So all three persons of the Godhead appear at the same time. Now, we also are told about these three persons of the Godhead in Matthew Chapter 28.

Let's look at that together. Verse 18, and Jesus came, this is after the resurrection, and spoke to them saying, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Here we go. Go therefore, he says, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name, singular, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Now, the reason Jesus didn't say baptizing them in the names of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is because God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one being. Therefore, he uses the singular in the name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And even though there is a tripartite, there is a Trinitarian manifestation of the Godhead in three persons, the Godhead is still one unified, undivided, indivisible Godhead, one being. Now, I don't understand that.

By the way, neither do you. No human being completely understands this because there is no human analogy anywhere in the universe. There is no analogy to a being like this. You might say, well, let's what about let's try to illustrate it by an egg. I mean, an egg has a shell and a white and a yolk, that's three individual pieces, and yet it's one egg. Well, but that doesn't work to describe the Trinity because, yes, it's one egg, but the shell, the yolk and the white are not the exact same substance.

They're different. You say, all right, well, then can we illustrate it with a man? He is at the very same time a father, a son and a husband, but he's still the very same man. Or a woman is a mother and a daughter and a wife, but she's still the same man. Well, that doesn't work either because the Bible is not talking about the Trinity in terms of roles that different part of the Godhead fulfills. He doesn't fulfill the role of God, the son, the role of God, the father, the role of God, the spirit at different points. No, no, the Bible is telling us there are three distinct entities, supernatural, spiritual entities, persons that are unique, that make up the one Godhead. Not just ways God functions at some times, but three legitimate individual personalities. So the bottom line is, folks, nobody understands the Godhead. We simply accept the Trinity, the Godhead, because the Bible tells us this is who God is. And this is how God exists in three persons, but one God. And so we don't understand it. We simply accept it and believe it because the Bible tells us it's true. Now, the Trinity is a real problem for some people.

It's a problem for Muslim people. In the Koran, the Koran says God has no son and therefore they reject Christianity in large measure on that basis that God can have a son. In the Jewish faith, Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad, Hero Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one, and therefore they reject the New Testament view of God because God is one, Echad. But Echad doesn't mean one without any kind of persons.

It just means unity. God is a unity. So that verse does not contradict what the Bible tells us about the nature and the person of God. And by the way, the Trinity even appears in the Old Testament.

Let me read to you. Let's go to the book of Genesis. Genesis chapter 1, verse 26. It says, Then God said, Let us, first person plural, make man in our first person plural image according to our first person plural likeness. And so the Bible goes on to say, in the likeness of God, in the image of God, God made man. Now, who is God talking to when he says, Let us make God in our, make man rather, in our image? You say, well, he's talking to the angels.

No, that can't be right, because the Bible is very clear. We are not made in the image of angels. We are made in the image of God himself. So if he's not talking to the angels, then who's he talking to? Well, he's talking within the Godhead to the persons within the Godhead. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are conversing and saying, Let us make man in our image.

Wow, I don't understand it, but I believe it. And, you know, this is the historical, traditional, I would say this is the pure doctrine, Orthodox doctrine of the church from the very beginning. Let me read you the Nicene Creed, 324 A.D. And by the way, look here for a second, the Nicene Creed, which was codified at the city of Nicaea in northern Turkey on the Black Sea in 324 A.D. Emperor Constantine, the new Christian Roman emperor, called this conference of all the bishops in the Roman Empire to codify doctrine, to make sure that good doctrine was written down and that people who didn't agree with it were dealt with this heretics in the Christian church. Dan Brown, you may remember, talked about the Council of Nicaea. And but that the only thing he got right about the Council of Nicaea was the date 324 A.D. Everything else he said about it is wrong. They did not make up the deity of Jesus here.

No, no, friends. All they did was get together to codify what the church had agreed to from the very beginning. And here's what it says. I read now, quote, I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance, homoousius in the Greek with the father. Usius means your your your basic nature, your intrinsic substance, and homo, of course, means the same homoousius made out of the same substance as God the father. It goes on to say, I believe in the Holy Spirit who with the father and the son together is to be worshipped and glorified.

And a little bit later, the Athanasian Creed in 500 A.D., we worship one God in trinity. Now watch, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. This is so important. We don't mix and confound and mess up and confuse the persons. We keep them separate and at the same time, we don't divide the substance, but we recognize they're all God equally.

This is very important. Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance in this trinity. Nothing is greater or lesser, but all three persons are co-eternal. Wow, that's the trinity, folks. That's what the Bible teaches. That's what God reveals to us about his very character and nature. And that's what we believe. And we see it here at the baptism of the Lord Jesus.

All three persons together in the Godhead at one time. Now, God also reveals to us in the Bible his attributes, not just his character as a Trinitarian God, but also his attributes. The attributes of God are very important. And what is an attribute?

Well, let me read you a definition. An attribute of God is not something God does. It's a description of what God is in his intrinsic nature. Now, why is that important to make that distinction?

Well, very, very important and very clearly that this is why. If an attribute of God was something he does, his goodness, his mercy, his benevolence, his long suffering, whatever it might be. If it was something God does, well, then, friends, God at any point could make up his mind not to do it, not to be merciful, not to be forgiving, not to be long suffering. But if an attribute of God is something God is in his very intrinsic nature, in his very being, then God cannot change an attribute without stopping to be God. An attribute of God means if this is the way God is, the way he will always be, the way he always has been, it can and will never change.

And we can base our confidence, we can base our assurance on his attributes because they're not going to change. And this is what God says in the Bible. He says, Malachi chapter three, verse six, for I am the Lord.

I do not change. Hebrews 13 eight. The Bible says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. God's attributes never change because God can never stop being totally forever and eternally God.

All right, we understand that. Now, there are probably more attributes of God than are revealed in the Bible. I don't know for sure that there are, but I there's nothing in the Bible that says God has revealed his every attribute to us. But he does reveal many of them, probably depending on how you classify them, nine to a dozen attributes of God. God shows us about himself in the Bible. Now, if we were doing a full course on theology proper, what I would do now is I would lead us through the attributes of God. Each one of them explain what they mean, show you scripture that reveals this and says this about God.

And we would really get a full picture of God in all of his attributes. I've got the message, you know, a little note or two from some people saying, Lon, you know, maybe you're preaching too long. I don't know. You preach too short. People don't like it. You preach too long.

People don't like it. Oh, welcome to the life of a pastor. But if I did that and went through all the attributes of God today, we would have kind of a long message. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to only talk to you about one in our. So what? And then if you want to stick around for another 10 minutes or so, I'll go through the attributes of God for those of you who want to stick around and hear them and learn them. But we'll do that after the people who don't want to do that or don't have the time can break away. Fair enough. So everybody's happy.

I hope so. Now it's time to ask our our most important question. Are you ready? Everybody, come on now.

One, two, three. So what? Great.

How Jackie Gleason used to say what he say. How sweet it is. OK. Now, the attribute of God I do want to talk to you about today is God's omniscience. And let me define that for you. His omniscience. It simply means that God knows everything about everything with an absolutely perfect knowledge.

Everything about everything about everybody with an absolutely perfect knowledge. And Luke, chapter 12, verse six, Jesus said, are not five sparrows sold for two copper coins, meaning they're not really worth that much. They're they're very common and everyday birds. And yet not one of them is forgotten before God. God sees every single thing about every sparrow in the world.

Why? Because in his omniscience, God knows everything about everybody perfectly. And the Bible says this when it comes to us as people. Listen, Psalm 139. Oh, Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know, my sitting down and my rising up, David said.

You understand my thoughts are far off. You comprehend my path and my lying down. And you are acquainted with all my ways. Look at verse four for there is not a word on my tongue. But behold, oh, Lord, you know it all together, even before it comes out of my mouth. David says, you know what I'm going to say? He goes on to say such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too amazing for me.

Above my pay grade, by orders of of magnitude, it is high. And I cannot attain to it. There's no way I can completely take it in that you have this kind of absolute knowledge that you even know what I'm going to say before I say it. You know, my very thoughts and not just me, but every human being in the world.

How can that be? David said, I can't get my arms around that. Now, this means that God knows every jot and tittle about you, that God knows every nook and cranny about you, that he knows the flotsam and the jetsam about you, that there is nothing hidden from his sight whatsoever. And the Bible goes on to say this. The Bible says Hebrews 4 13 and there is no creature hidden from his sight.

But all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. Psalm 90 says you have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance. You're you see the secret sins of our heart. Well, guys, we all have secret sins, you know, and we hide them from people and we think we've gotten away with them. Maybe it's jealousy, maybe it's bitterness, maybe it's hatred towards somebody.

Maybe it's pornography, maybe it's lusting, you know, trying to look and pretend like we're not lusting, but we are. Maybe it's an unwillingness to forgive, but we paste on the plastic and people think we're all good. But in the secret recesses of our heart, we have malice and we have hard feelings and on and on and on the secret sins of our heart. But you see, they're not secret because God knows them all. Every secret sin that no other human being in the world knows about you and how you feel and what you think.

And me too. God knows them all. Wow, that's frightening.

That's frightening. And look what the Bible says back to Hebrews four. It says all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Friends, nobody's going to get away with anything.

We're not going to get away with anything. Those secret sins are going to come to light. Jesus said the things that were whispered in the back rooms are going to be shouted from the housetops. And the things that you did in secret are going to be made known in the light because God's going to judge us and all those secret sins are going to come out. That's terrifying. You can't hide them from God. You say, yeah, to think about that is a little terrifying. Well, I want to say, if you're not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, my dear friend, you need to be scared. You should be scared when you stand before God that not just the sins people can see, but the ones that were all you thought you got away with it. You thought nobody knew. They're all coming out.

So how do you deal with that? Well, the Bible is very clear. We need to be covered with a spotless righteousness, the righteousness of Jesus to protect us from the judgment of God. Go back and listen to my messages on the plan of salvation.

First John one nine. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins. He will do that for you if you don't know Christ. But friends, you dare not go into the presence of God. You dare not stand before him in judgment without the blood of Christ covering you and without the death of Jesus. Having paid for your sins, secret sins and public sins, I appeal to you do this.

But for us who are believers, I want to close with this thought. And this is the so what? You know, we've all seen like a Law and Order episode or whatever, NCIS or whatever, FBI, where some woman or man gets married to someone and they've had a shady past that they didn't tell about to their new marriage partner. And they live in fear that someday that shady past is going to come out and somebody finds out about it and then they blackmail them or else they'll tell their partner about this. Right. These these are skeletons in the closet.

Yeah. And we all have skeletons in the closet. And, you know, with a different God, we might would say, wow, I'm terrified that maybe one day he's going to find out about this or he's going to find out about that. Folks, this is beautiful.

This is wonderful. Our God knew every skeleton in our closet. Our God, when Jesus died for us on the cross and he took us into his family and he made us his child, there wasn't one single secret that we had buried deep down in the recesses of our soul. Things we've said, things we've done, things we've thought, none of that that God didn't already know about.

Amazing. And yet he still rejoiced to take us as his children. We don't have to worry some skeletons going to come tumbling out of the closet. God knows about them all. You know, I often think that the Bible calls the devil the accuser of the brethren.

And I could just see the the the devil showing up in heaven and saying, Lon Solomon. Yeah. Hey, I need to tell you about him. I need to tell you about Lon Solomon. Did you know that he forced his girlfriend to have an abortion against her will?

God says. Yep. Knew that.

Did you know that the dope he sold and some of the things that he did? Yep. Knew about that. Did you know about the profane behavior that he had as a college student towards women and others?

Yep. Know all about that. Satan says, well, how you know all of that already? And God says, yeah, I did.

I know it all. And Satan says, you still took him as your child. You still paid for his sins. You still made him part of your family through adoption by Jesus Christ.

Yep, I did. And I can see Satan just kind of sulk it away with his tail between his legs. If he has a tail and saying, oh, man, I doubt how depressing is that? He knew all about this guy and still took him. Hey, my friends, this is the the beauty of God's love for us. He knows it all. He knows deep stuff that you may have forgotten about or that you are not anxious to admit to yourself. He knows every crummy, dirty, nasty piece of what's down inside of you and me. And he loves us anyway.

Listen, Robert Murray McShane said, and I love this. He said, none but God knows what an abyss of corruption is in my heart. He knows that beautiful and covers all in the blood of the lamb. And this is why the Bible says Romans Chapter eight, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword or skeletons in the closet or things I did in my past or secret sins? No, the Bible says, for I am persuaded, Paul writes, under the the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor skeletons, nor your past, nor any secret sins in your life, nor any other created thing that covers it, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. God's love, my friend, is forever.

It's eternal. He knows all the junk. He knows all the stuff, the profane stuff inside of us. He loves us anyway. He bought us anyway. He adopted us anyway. He covers us with the blood of Jesus anyway. And nothing, no accusation by the devil himself will ever, ever change that.

You are his and he is yours forever. Praise the Lord. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you that in your omniscience you knew it all.

And Lord, we think of even political appointees who suddenly have something in their past come to life and they have to withdraw their name. And Lord Jesus, I thank you, we never have to withdraw our name from the role of heaven. We never even have to offer that because, Lord, you knew it all and you loved us anyway. You knew it all and you redeemed us anyway.

You knew it all and you adopted us anyway. You knew it all and you made us co-heirs with the Lord Jesus Christ anyway. And thank you, Lord Jesus, for this wonderful truth that nothing will ever separate us from the love of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. May that give us hope and may that give us encouragement this day. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Now, for those of you who want to stick around and let me go through the attributes of God very quickly with you, because maybe nobody's ever done this for you and you're curious, you wanted a little bit deeper study, then let me do that.

OK, remember what I said. The attributes of God are not things God does. They're things that God is in his basic, intrinsic Godhead nature. He can't change these things because they're what it means to be God.

He can't stop being God. So here are the major ones in the scripture and there are a few more in the scripture and probably more we've never been told about by God. But here are the major ones. I'm going to go through them with you.

Are you ready? All right. Number one. Number one is God's self existence. And what we mean by that is that God alone is the eternally preexisting being in the universe. He has no beginning.

He has no end. He's the only being in the universe that has independent life in himself. Independent existence in himself. John Chapter one, verse four says in him was life. And John five twenty six for as the father has life in himself. So he is granted the son to have life in himself. Folks, we do not have life in ourselves. Jesus said in the John's gospel that he gives life to whomever he wishes. And God breathed the breath of life into the nostrils of Adam.

But in the garden. But we don't have life intrinsically in ourself. We have life because every day the life giving God of the universe grants us to have life that day.

We're not alive every day because our hearts beats. We're alive every day because the life giving God, the the the eternal God of the universe breathes life into us that day. And this is who God is. He is self existent.

He has life in himself and no one else in the universe does. Number two, we have the eternality of God, which means that God lives totally outside and above time and space. It means that God is not limited by time and space. Listen to Psalm 90 before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth in the world from everlasting to everlasting.

You are God. What that means is if we go all the way back before the universe was even created, God is there and God is God. If we go all the way into the future until the universe ends and beyond, God is there and God is God. And if we look at today, God is here and God is God. You say, OK, I understand that. Yeah, but wait a minute.

There's more. What the what it means to say that God is is eternal is to say that not only is God God was God God at the beginning of the universe and at the end of the universe. Will he be God? And now he is God.

Wait a minute. To say God is eternal means that God is at all three of those places at once and is God at the very same time. Now, how can that be?

I have no clue. He is above time and space. He doesn't live in time and space. He created time and space, but time and space have nothing to do with him. He is eternal, eternally everywhere in his universe at the same time as God.

Wow. Number three, God is omnipresent, meaning God is everywhere in his creation at once, which is what I just talked to you about. And Psalm 139, verse seven. Where can I go from your spirit, David says? Oh, where can I flee from your presence if I send into heaven? You're there if I make my bed in hell. Behold, you're there.

David says, if I go into the darkness later in the song, you're you can see in the darkness just like you can see in the light. If I go out in the desert, you're there. God, you're everywhere no matter where I go. And and we need to, however, make sure that we don't confuse this with pantheism. Pantheism says God is everything in the universe.

No, no, no. God is not everything in the universe. God is above everything in the universe. God is separate than everything in the universe. It's just that he is able to be everywhere in his created world at the same time. But the created world is not God. God is above that world. This is not pantheism. OK, number four.

Number five. God is omnipotent. The omnipotence of God means that God can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants, to whomever he wants. God is omnipotent. And and I love Jeremiah 32. God says, behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh.

Is anything too hard for me? Answer? No. I love what Gabriel said to Mary when she announced the virgin birth. He said, for with God, nothing will be impossible. I love that God said this to Sarah when she laughed and when he predicted that they were going to have a son the next year, when when Abraham was 100 and Sarah was 90. And God said to her, Sarah, you did laugh. Hey, is anything too hard for the Lord Sarah?

And they had that baby. Friends, we have an omnipotent God. There is nothing our God can't do. And if he wants to, he can suspend the laws of time and space and nature and do whatever he chooses.

He is omnipotent. And therefore, I love what one quote I keep it in my Bible. It says that the man who understands his God is omnipotent should never despair. If our God is omnipotent, there is never a reason for despair.

Now, let's move on. Number six, God is holy. God is holy.

What does this mean? It means that God is utterly, perfectly and impeccable, impeccably pure, sinless, virtuous. Now, you remember Isaiah Chapter six, verse three. Everybody in heaven was crying out, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of the universe.

The whole earth is full of his glory. Leviticus Chapter 19, verse two says, You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy. Holiness means that there has never been, will never be, can never be sin in God. Not even the thought of sin can be in God. He is utterly pure and virtuous, and we don't talk about the holiness of God as much as we should in the church, because the justice of God makes no sense and the judgment of God makes no sense unless we understand the holiness of God and how offensive sin is to the holiness of God.

I use this example a couple of weeks ago. The holiness of God is like a bright red hot as it can get electric burner on a stove. And sin is like a drop of water that the minute it hits that burner, it vaporizes, it disappears, is what happens. This is the holiness of God when it comes to encountering sin. This is why no sinner will ever, you've heard people say, Well, when I meet God, I'm going to give him a piece of mom. No, you're not.

No, you're not. I don't even know if we'll be able to stand in the presence of God will probably be prostrate on our face completely without energy or the ability to speak. You're going to argue with God in his holiness of friend that will never happen. But that because God is holy like that, he must judge sin, which is why we must be covered by the blood of Christ. And this leads us to number six, the justice of God, which is the fact that God punishes on the holiness everywhere within his creation. He must.

He has to. A holy being has no choice but to punish sin everywhere in his creation. Listen, Jesus said, Matthew 16, verse 27 for the son of man will come in the glory of his father with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to his works. God is going to even the score with everybody. Perfect justice is going to prevail because, as an all holy God, he has no choice.

It's who he is. He must pronounce judgment on sin unless that sin is hidden behind the blood of Jesus Christ and atoned for by the work of Christ on the cross. Now, another one, verse seven is God's mercy. Praise God for this. The mercy of God means that God is kinder and more benevolent to sinners than we deserve. And this is why he provided the plan of salvation in the first place.

Ephesians two, verse one. But God, who is rich in mercy, there's our word, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together in Christ. Mercy, mercy. Thank God that mercy is part of who God is and that we can appeal to God's mercy. And we're appealing to a basic part of his intrinsic being. He is a God of mercy, but he's also a God of justice. He has to be because he's holy and the way God found to reconcile his holiness and his justice to his mercy and his grace. How did God find a way to do that when it came to sinners like you and me?

Very simple. He sent Jesus to take our sin, to pay for our sin, to cover our sin and to satisfy the judgment and the holiness of God and the offense that our sin is to the justice of God. He sent Jesus to do that for us in his mercy. And now that our sin has been forgiven through Christ, now he can exempt us from his judgment for sin and he can take his mercy and his love and magnify it to you and me as his children.

Ah, beautiful, beautiful. Now there are other attributes. We have the loving kindness, the patience of God. We have the goodness of God where he's good to us even though we don't deserve it. We have, of course, the love of God.

We have the forgiveness of God, that God is a forgiving God. We have the sovereignty of God, meaning that this is God's universe. He owns it, he runs it and he does whatever he wants to do, however he wants to do it. Not only does he have the power to do it in his omnipotence, but he has the right to do it in his sovereignty because the universe belongs to him and he sovereignly runs it. He runs every detail of it.

He doesn't give the angels. You know, when I was running a church, people said, well, you know, you got to delegate. God does not delegate the running of the universe to anybody. God runs his universe and he has a sovereign plan for the universe and a sovereign plan for each one of our lives. That he has the sovereign right to have and nobody is changing his mind or his plan because he is sovereign. Well, anyway, I hope that helps just to go through a few of those.

And, you know, if you want a little more detail, you can go to my website, lomsolomonministries.com, and you can look up the sovereignty of God under my series on who God is. And you can you'll learn more about that. Anyway, wonderful to be with you. Hope this little extra time was valuable for those of you who stayed and listened. And Lord willing, next week, we'll see you. We're going to talk about the temptation of Christ next week. Matthew Chapter four, where the devil said to him three times and Jesus answered him three times. And there's some great lessons there for us. So I hope I'll see you then. God bless.