Shawn Snobelen - Be Not Ashamed - Class 6 - The Power of God

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

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   So this is the Watch and Lake Bible School 2024, our speaker for the week, Brother Sean snabling our theme for the week, Be not Ashamed. And this is his 6th and final class in his series under the title The Power of God for the Sean. Well, thank you. Thank you brother and welcome to the 6th class.

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   Apparently I mentioned Marnie too much in my classes so I won’t do that again. This week is, has been a week of learning for me and I do appreciate all the all the comments and all the feedback and all the great verses that I forgot to put in. And I try to sort of throw that in at the end of every night. And, and, and it seems like this series has struck a bit of a chord with some of you as well.

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   And I’ve, I’ve spoken with many of you about these same trials and issues and tribulations that are happening within your life as well. And so if we go back to the theme of the very first class, that Paul makes this very powerful and an emphatic statement, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. I always wondered what what did, what did Paul intend for us to understand from that particular proclamation that this gospel, this gospel is the power of God for salvation? What?

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   What is the power of God? And how does it operate in our life? Because I think we see it in and around us. We see this infinite. Power of God, His omnipotence, His transcendent authority, His sovereign rule over the universe.

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   But we also see his intimate power, his personal relationships, and his involvement with his creation and with us. But sometimes we might see this dichotomy between the infinite power of God and the infinite nature in which he works in our lives. And sometimes we can see the one and not see the other.

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   And so I want to try to to end this series this week by trying to better understand what Paul would have us to know.

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   We know that the power of God brings salvation and it brings salvation to everyone who believes. And the apostle Paul proclaims that the gospel embodies this very personal power of God, This this power that is manifested in his word that brings salvation to everyone who believes in it. The the gospel is not just a message.

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   As we said at the start of the week, it’s not just words on a page. It is a transformative power. And just a few verses on from that, in Romans 1 and 20, the apostle Paul states for since the creation of the world, his invisible qualities, his eternal power, his divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made so that the people without excuse.

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   And so there’s the infinite power of God that is to be manifest, that we all might see, so that we are without excuse. And so I want to explore these two aspects of God’s power, how His magnificent nature might be oppressed upon us, How is infinite and eternal nature might then be personalized for us? And one of the things that I, that I learned very early on, and I can’t remember where this came from. I, I, I attribute, you know, a lot of things to my father. And it might have been from him, but I heard at one point that in Genesis chapter one, in the beginning God. And when you?

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    Think about God from that perspective. Then. Then God has always existed. And so when we think about the eternal power of God, that in the beginning there was God, he he had always existed.

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    He has no beginning, He has no end. God was independent and self-sustaining as a universal force before even the the pages of Genesis begin. It says in Psalm 90 and verse 2. He says before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth in the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

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    It says in Revelation, the last book of the Bible, it says I am Alpha and I Omega. The beginning and the ending set the Lord, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty. And not only did God always exist, but He exists always to sustain all things. He is the source of all things. Everything begins with Him.

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    He’s the, the first ’cause he’s the only agent. He’s the law of every nature and the, and the existence of him in time and space and energy and, and matter has always been and, and I think we need to just stop and reflect on, on how powerful that is. This is not a God that just came into being for us. This is a being that has always existed in John 1 and 3. It says through.

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    Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made. That has been made. And Isaiah 46 and 9 declares I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me. I make known the ends from the beginning, from ancient times, what is till now to come.

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    And so we understand his supremacy and His sovereignty over everything. God is the central figure in the unfolding story of the universe and everything that follows from in the beginning. God is a result of his power.

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    Even science agrees. The great singularity, they call it. The singular power in the universe is God Almighty. There’s no other force, there’s no other being that shares this primacy.

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    The Lord God stands alone. He always was and He will always be. For this is what the Lord says, the prophet Isaiah tells us. This is what the Lord says, He who created the heavens, He is God, He who. Fashioned it and made the earth. He founded it and he did not create it to be empty, but he formed it to be inhabited.

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    And so we understand then from the nature of God’s power that he created it for a purpose. All of this that we have, he created it for a purpose and and we can think he created it for us and and he did in in that sense, and he created the universe by simply speaking words.

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    And with him there is no end. The existence and the nature of God is eternal. Says in Psalm one, O 2. Oh my God, I say, take me not away in the midst of thy days, whose years endureth throughout all generations are forever and ever. Psalm One, O 2 and 25, says that was laid the foundation of the earth in the heavens of the work of thy hands. The eternal nature of God assures us as believers that our relationship with him will also be eternal. Lord Jesus Christ says in John 17, he says this is eternal life, that you know God because God is everlasting and the life that he gives is also everlasting. And so as believers, we’re promised eternal life and a fellowship with the eternal God, which which is is mind blowing and it gives us purpose beyond the grave. And so when we started this this series about believing in the existence of God, surely, brethren and sisters, we must believe in his future existence because that’s where we’re going.

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    The psalmist continues in in Psalm 102, Speaking of the temporal nature of of the things that we see. They shall perish, but thou shalt injury. A. All of them shall wax old like a garment, as a vester there shall change them. And they will be changed. But thou art the same, O God, and thy years have no end. God is immutable.

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    People change, brethren and sisters, Circumstances fluctuate. The world itself is transient and all the things that it does. But God never changes. God is eternal, and His promises are everlasting. Your Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations. We don’t very often quote from Lamentations, but not very often. You hear a Bible class series on Lamentations, but. It is just full of unbelievable wisdom, and I love this. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning.

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    Great is thy faithfulness. And so this brethren and sisters, this is the God that we can believe in the God that always was and the God that will always be and we can rest assured in our future because of it.

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    And and so when I look at the power of God, I, I look at these, these two extreme ends of these two aspects of, of the nature of God’s power that God is manifest in the infinite that we read in Genesis chapter one that in the beginning God created everything. But then God tells us about his intimate, his very intimate and caring power that David talks about when he says. You created my innermost being.

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    You knit me together in my mother’s womb. And so God can create the vast universe, but he also has created us that his power is is infinite, but that his power is also intimate. And, and, and it’s, it’s important for us to also understand because we can have a problem if we focus on one or the other.

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    And, and, and the churches all around us, they trivialize the power of God because they focus on the intimate power of God. And it becomes their faith becomes about them. And God is their personal savior. I’ve even heard somebody say that my God is my personal genie that I can pull out at any time that I want.

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    And if we focus too much on the intimate nature of God’s purpose with us, that our whole existence can become about us. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned in in reading and understanding the word of God is it’s, it’s not about us.

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    And I think of Peter when he was standing in opposition to his Lord and, and, and Christ had, had told the disciples he had to go to Jerusalem and he had to die. And Peter says, no, it it shall not be. And he stood in in Christ’s way and and Jesus said to him, get behind me, you’re an adversary. And he said, because you’re not minding the things of God, but the things of men.

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    And Peter wanted Christ to be the King, then you. Don’t want to wait till the future. But the inverse can also be true because we can focus too much on the infinite power of God and God becomes for us very distant and very uncaring. Like maybe we’re just being pulled along in the current of his power and that our part to play in this moving creation is just a dust speck.

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    The Pharisees did this at the time of Christ, making the nature of God’s relationship burdensome and and. Rule. Driven and fear based. And so this interpretation for some we we saw this with the Roman Catholic Church for for hundreds of years creating this distant terrifying God of wrath so they might control the people

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    and so neither of those. Should be how we see God in our life and the the one man that I can think of in the Bible as an example of where both of these came to play was the man Job

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    return up to the book of Job. Job clearly had a relationship with God. We were told by God that Job was perfect and upright. We’re told that God saw Job as righteous and and was was God a good man? Yes, he was a good man. He was, he was a really good man. I’ve said before that he was the best Pharisee in the best way. Was this man Job?

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    He was upright, he was rich, but he uses uprightness and his wealth to do good things. And we read, we don’t have time to look at that, but we read all about that. But, but I don’t, I don’t think that the book of Job is so that we might be introduced to a righteous man who did good things. I believe the Book of Job is introducing us to a man who had a broken relationship with his God that only saw God in the infinite and terrifying nature of his existence. And yes, Job loved God while things were going well and things for Job went very well,

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    but when things changed, so did Job’s understanding of God. There’s all kinds of beautiful statements in the book of Job about how God’s how, how Job saw God in his life. Job 26 and verse 7, we’re going to get to some verses in just a minute, but it says he stretches out the north over the void.

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    He hangs the earth on nothing. He binds the waters in his, in his sick cloud. Job talks about also the hydrological system of how the, the water and the moisture work. He, he says all these beautiful, majestic things about his God. He talks in great detail about the awesome power of his God.

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    He even says in Job 26 and 14. But these are only hints of his power, only whispers of what we have heard. Who can truly know how great God is? That’s what Job says. But God’s power was a mystery to Job. He didn’t understand how it worked. It was, it was like a black box.

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    And this black box became to Job the fearful unknown. But that was all set aside when Job’s life was good, when his life was amazing. Until one day it was not when his trial and his suffering started, and he no longer saw the light of God’s majesty, but the blackness of his wrath and the fearful mystery of his unknown purpose.

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    And brothers and sisters, this can be true for us. Then when our life is going great, we look at God as benevolent and and merciful and caring and, and bringing blessings to us. And then one day our life changes and what happens, just like Job said, He said, why me?

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    Look at all the good things that I’ve done. God, do you not? Do you not see them? And we start to blame circumstance and we blame our upbringing and we we blame work, we blame our ecclesia, we blame the people around us, but we never blame ourselves. And eventually, as Job did, he blamed God.

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    Turn to Chapter 9 of Job. Because of of many things, Job saw God as a poor ruler of his creation and and I got a lot of pushback for that when I first did my series on Job. They’re like, well, that no, that’s not Job. Well, you, you read the things that Job says about his God.

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    First of all, he thought that God’s power was violent and destructive. Look at look at Chapter 9 of Job and we just look at a few verses. Truly, I know verse 2, truly I know that it is so, but how can man be in the right before God if one wish to contend with him?

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    Job says one could not answer him once in 1000 times verse 5, he moves mountains and they know it not he overturns them in his anger. He takes the earth out of its place, its pillars tremble. Verse 7 This God who commands the sun and it does not rise, whose seals up the stars.

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    Behold, he passes me by and I can’t even see him. He moves on, I can’t even perceive. Look, he snatches away. Who can turn him back? Who will say, What are you doing?

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    This was a God that Job saw as uncommunicative, uncaring, unfeeling, and violent and destructive with how he used creation. On his creative turn to chapter 12, Job also viewed that God’s power was not only unjust and destructive, but it was arbitrary that that God did things that you couldn’t understand. Job 12 and 14 what he tears down, and things that cannot be rebuilt, those he in prisons cannot be released.

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    If he holds back the waters, there is drought. If he lets them loose, they devastate the land. In other words, no matter what God does arbitrarily he brings destruction. Verse 17. He leads rulers away stripped, and makes fools of judges. He he leads priests away stripped, and overthrows officials long established. He silences the lips of trusted divisors, and he takes away the discernment of elders.

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    He makes nations great, then he destroys them. He enlarges nations, then he disperses them. I believe that Job saw God’s power as not only destructive, but completely arbitrary. And look, I understand Job is, is suffering. He, he’s, he’s under trial. He’s lost his entire family. He’s lost all of his net worth. He’s lost everything that he has accumulated in the wealth of his world is gone. His wife is has really left him and he’s lost his personal health.

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    He is sitting in in dust and ashes, scraping the boils on his skin with a piece of pottery. That is what this man has been reduced to. So we can understand in a human sense, brethren and sisters, the the the the agony that he went through and why this is even possible. In chapter 19, Job states many times that God punishes, then doesn’t explain he elevates. The wicked, he suppresses the just because he’s because he uses himself as an example.

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    Look the wicked, they’re prospering, but look at me. I’m righteous and I am being suppressed. He says. He cries out in Job 19 and seven. I cry out violence, but I’m not answered. I call for help. There is no justice. God has walled up my way so that I cannot pass, and He has set darkness upon my past.

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    This is a broken man who has a broken relationship with his God. This can surely be the human reality of suffering, brothers and sisters, that we might be brought to the point where we think that there is no answer to the sufferings that we endure and that God doesn’t care, and that from the depths of our despair we only see an uncaring and arbitrary nature in our God. And I think we can.

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    Feel this in the suffering of this man, and as Job did we, we often look back on our lives and we see all the good things that we have done, and using human math on a calculator of our own manufacture, we punch out these numbers and we say God is wrong

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    and we are right. Holding on, as we do sometimes, brothers and sisters, to the seeming fact that our lifelong investment in our spiritual well-being is somehow then due to be rewarded by some form of immunity from suffering and trial in this life. And it does not.

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    God makes no such promise. He made no such promise to Job, and He makes no such promise to us. Such is the issue with only seeing the infinite and powerful God in our universe. And such was Job’s problem that when calamity struck, as it does for them and sisters, at some point in our life it will strike.

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    If we don’t have our relationship with God right, then we will see Him just as Job did. And if we hold this view, then in the depths of our suffering we will see God also as a black box, unfeeling and arbitrary and meeting out punishment, which is what his friend said.

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    Now, Job, God blesses the righteous and he curses the wicked. And you’re really cursed, so you must have been wicked. We need to have an understanding that is unlike what Job had that that that that actually our pain and our suffering is God’s tool to bring us to repentance. That is actually God showing us that he loves us.

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    And this is counterintuitive to human nature. But this is not our God. And we must understand the nature of God and God’s power in order to understand God’s nature. And so Job needed a mediator. And Job cries out for three solid chapters. He tells us all the wonderful things that he did. My steps were washed with butter.

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    I made a covenant with my eyes because does God not see this? What did I do wrong? I was just and fair. I helped others. I didn’t trust in riches. I wasn’t an idolater. I’m hospitable. I stand up for truth. The problem that Job had was he stood on the pedestal of his own self righteousness and he couldn’t climb down because of the power of his own pride.

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    But job did look. For somebody to mediate for him. But initially when we think about Job’s words, it was in the form of a trial. He wanted to bring God to trial, to try God on his injustice and his unmerciful behavior says in Job 9 and 32, God is not a mere mortal like me, that I might answer him, that we might confront each other in court and uses. There’s all this terminology in the book of Job about a courtroom and how that he he needs to be vindicated. If only, he says, there was someone to mediate between us, someone to intercede, someone to bring us together, someone to remove God’s rod from me, he says, so that his terror would not frighten me anymore.

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    Then Job says I would speak without fear of him, but as it now stands with me, I cannot. The words for mediatorship and intercessor come up almost 30 times in the book of Job.

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    And then Elihu comes on the scene. And Elihu was Job’s mediator. And Elihu, among a number of things that he said, which was just beautiful, he. He lines up all of Job’s accusations and he answers every single one of them. And he says in Job 33 and verse 23 says if there be for him an Angel, a mediator, or an intercessor one in 1000 to declare to man what is right for him. And he is merciful to him and says deliver him from going down to the pit.

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    I have found a ransom which means a covering and a price of redemption. Let his flesh become the flesh of youth. Let him return to the days of his youthful vigor. Then man prays to God, Elihu says. And God accepts him, and he sees his face with a shout of joy, and he restores to man his righteousness. And so we don’t have time to cover all the amazing things that that Elihu said to bring Job off of his pedestal of self-righteous pride.

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    Elihu was preparing Job to meet his God, And we know the whole time that Elihu was speaking, what’s happening? A storm is brewing all around them. And one of the young people asked me, do you think all the friends were still there? I thought, Oh yes, they were all there, Job and his three friends.

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    And Elihu was the youngest, which is why he spoke last. And even when God starts to speak, they’re all listening because Elihu and God both say things that needed to be understood by those three friends. It says in Job 33 and 31, Eli who’s speaking, says pay attention to Job, listen to me, be silent, and I will speak.

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    If you have any words answered to me, speak for I desire to justify you. And that word in the Hebrew means to make you right before your God.

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    If Eli, who by the grace of God had not been inserted. Into this conversation with Job, I believe Job would have been consumed in the storm. Eli, who started the process of reconciling Job to his God in answering his questions and helping him to understand the things that God was then going to tell him. And then Job is brought before his God. And God answers Job out of the whirlwind. Turn to Job chapter 38 and out of the whirlwind and out of the storm that had been building all all of this time. And we can think about it maybe, as God’s wrath is just brewing out there.

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    Chapter 38 and verse 2. Who is this? The Darkens Council with words without knowledge. Dress for action, job action like a man, and I will question you, and you will make it known to me. And then what God does is absolutely beautiful. He begins to show out of the. Infinite power that he possesses the intimate nature of his care. And God begins to ask by saying to Job in in in 38 and verse four.

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    Job, where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you understand who marked off its dimensions. Surely you know Job who stretched the measuring line across it. This man Job, who who did understand the terrifying majestic power of his God, didn’t have any idea how it worked.

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    Verse 8 God continues by describing how he controls the boundaries of the Seas. So the storms that Job saw as only destructive, Whatever God did when he closed the storehouses and when he opened them up, it didn’t matter. There was either drought or there was calamity.

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    God says, who shut up the sea behind, behind its doors when it burst forth from the womb. When, when I fix the limits for it and I set the doors and the and the bars in place, God is saying, Job, I’ve always been in control of creation. It’s not destructive. This is how I created it.

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    I’m the one that’s holding it back. I’m holding it from becoming chaotic. Then God speaks about the provision of, of the creatures. He says to Job, Do you hunt the prey for the lioness to satisfy the hunger of the lions when they Crouch in their dens or they lie in wait in the thicket? And Job 38 and 39.

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    He also describes how he provides for the Raven. Who provides food for the Raven when the young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food? Is that you, Job? Do you do that? I do that Job God goes on to talk to Job about the things in the inanimate and the animate creation.

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    The smallest attention to detail our God has in his purview and throughout his speeches God describes this intimate knowledge and The smallest details on earth, whether it’s the feeding of the young animals, the timing of the birth and the wild creatures, the movement of the stars, the falling of the. Rain in a desolate place in Job 38 and 26, God shows that nothing escapes his notice.

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    And nothing escapes his care and ultimately God’s. God’s speech. Reveals that not only does he care for his creation, but God cares for Job by engaging directly with Job when when when Job didn’t even know it was happening. God shows that he’s been present and active in Job’s life all along. Though Job couldn’t understand why he suffered, God was there.

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    God’s response shows that his wisdom and his power and his love, we’re always there. You don’t need to turn this up and listen to one of the things that Job says in his long rambling monologue about all the things that were amazing about his life in in chapters 29 and 30 and 31.

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    This is what he says in in Job 29 and 19. He says I was like a tree whose roots always have water and whose branches are wet with dew and have the many answers, direct answers that God made against the claims of Job. This is what God says in chapter 38 and verse 28.

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    He says Job. Does either the rain or the dew have a father? What God was saying to Job, He was saying, Job, I was the one that watered your roots. I was the dew on your branches. I was the one sustaining you all that time and all the times of blessing and all the good things that were happening in your life.

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    That was me. That was me strengthening you. We can often see God like that, benevolent in the good times, yet walled off and distant in the times of our trial.

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    A lot of this is born of trial brethren and sisters when we’re in distress, as Job was, and and that clouds our judgement. It makes it very difficult to see and understand what God is actually doing. That God was always there, that God is always there carrying us through the trial and Elihu.

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    And then God points this out to him. This is a fundamental process, brethren and sisters, that we all must go through because in the end, through all the trial and suffering, Job finally sees the beautiful balance of the infinite and the intimate character of his God. And it couldn’t be brought out any more beautifully than Job chapter 42 in turn. Let’s turn to that passage.

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    It says in Job chapter 42 and five after God had finally finished speaking, Job says to God, he says I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eyes see you.

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    And it took the devastating trial that God himself brought on this just and righteous man to fix the relationship that was broken. Job needed to develop and understand that God’s power, God’s infinite power, is there to address all the amazing things in the universe. But most importantly, that we might understand how God can then intimately care for us so that even through our trial, God might be manifest. Even through the good times in our life, God is manifest in everything that we do.

80. 34:18

    What is important, brothers and sisters, is not that we suffer. What is important, brothers and sisters, is how we respond to our suffering. Listen to what Elihu says in Job 36 and 11. This is just one of the many amazing things that this intercessor was able to do for Job. He says to Job in in chapter 36 and 11. He says if they listen to him, him being God, if they listen to him and they complete their days in prosperity and their years in pleasantness, right?

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    So if if we listen to God and we we serve him, then we can complete our days in prosperity and our years in pleasantness. Then he says in verse 15, Remember Job?

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    And and you see the the lead up to this really with Elihu was that one of the things he had to address with Job, as Job had said, God doesn’t communicate. I, I cried justice and he doesn’t hear. And Elihu said, no, God does communicate. He he communicates in many ways. He communicates by dream. He communicates by vision.

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    He communicates by the way, by trial and suffering. Oh, and by the way, Job, God doesn’t communicate with the prideful. He says that to Job. But listen to what he says in Job 36 and 15. In answering that claim of Job’s inability to hear God speaking to him through his trolley, says Job, God delivers the afflicted by their affliction, and he opens their ears because of their adversity. And we have to remember this, brethren and sisters, the two aspects of God’s great power, His infinite power. And the intimate nature of his care for us and, and, and we need to understand the infinite power of God. It becomes for us the foundation of worship. And Job worshipped God.

84. 36:17

    He was in awe of God. He he respected His Majesty and his glory. Jeremiah speaks of this. No one is like you, Lord, you are great and your name is mighty in power. Who should not fear you, king of nations? And so we need to understand the infinite power of God is there, that we might bow in reverence to God’s almighty power, that we might recognize the place of His sovereignty and His Majesty to bring us to worship Him.

85. 36:43

    Psalm 95 says the sea is His, for he made it, and his hands form the dry land. Oh, come, and let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the God of our making. And so we need to understand these things, brothers and sisters, by seeing the hand of God in the grandeur and the majesty and the vastness of creation and its control over the whole universe, that we can truly appreciate His greatness. That if we can believe in all of these things, that God can do all of this in nature, that God can take care of this. That’s what I think He needs us to understand, and it brings us to faith.

86. 37:36

    Once we understand the awesome power of our God and the things that He has done, the things that He is doing, and the things that He will do in this world and with each and every one of us, we can have faith. Our understanding of God’s power builds faith. Isaiah 46 and 10 says, declaring the end from the beginning. My ancient times, the things that have yet come, saying My counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all of my purpose. If we know that God is capable of all things, then He will bring that promise to pass.

87. 38:05

    It’s faith building that we can always rely on our God. If we believe that He exists and we have faith that what God says will come to pass in the future, then we will rely on that outcome and it will direct our paths every single day. 2 to Ephesians chapter 1 it’s very wonderful message in the New Testament about this this very fact.

88. 38:36

    Ephesians chapter 1 starting at verse 9, he says, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, being in heaven, and things on the earth in him we have it obtained an inheritance, having been.

89. 38:54

    Predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory in Him. You also, the apostle Paul goes on to say, when you heard of the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in Him were sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance, until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory.

90. 39:23

    And so, brethren and sisters, knowing this, we can stand firm in our belief that God has already made it a reality for us. And that includes the salvation that we’ve been promised, the guarantee of our inheritance.

91. 39:43

    And this is how our knowledge and our understanding and our acceptance of God’s great and infinite power gives us confidence and faith that God can and He will do all that He has said, that if you can do all those things, surely He can do that in US. And so the infinite becomes the intimate in our lives. And I love these verses because it marries these two attributes of God’s power perfectly together. For this is what the high and exalted One says. He who lives forever, whose name is holy, I live in a high and a holy place, the infinite power of God. But.

92. 40:23

    But also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit to revive the spirit of the lowly and revive the heart of the contrite, the intimate nature of God’s power turn up to Acts chapter 17, Acts chapter 17, starting at verse 24. Because again we we have here again the the infinite power balanced with the intimate use of of God’s love in our lives.

93. 40:59

    And this was Paul speaking to the philosophers in the in the academics. At up at Mars Hill and he says first God is powerful. Verse 24 The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything.

94. 41:20

    Rather he gives everyone life and breath and everything else from one man. He made the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth and he marked out their appointed times in history in the boundaries of their their lands. And then God becomes personal, and God did this. So that would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, and he is not far from any one of us. And then Paul puts the capstone, I think, on that statement. He says, for in him we live and move and have our being. God’s purpose is to inhabit this earth with his glory. God’s purpose is also that we would be part of that glory in God’s power as we opened in God’s infinite power bound up in that is his power to save.

95. 42:25

    Turn to first Peter chapter 1. You know, we can have all kinds of wonderful relationships in this world and and and we do we can have wonderful relationships in our life. Best friends, husbands, wives, the close relationships of family that the relationships we have within our ecclesial community. And the love. That is shared and the friendship that we share in those relationships and those relationships, as wonderful as they are, they are not perfect and they will fail in mortality,

96. 43:08

    but they develop our understanding and our and our dependence. Those human relationships help us develop an understanding of that reciprocity that we need to have the give and the take in the relationship. And and those relationships, I believe, are allegorical to the one relationship that stands above them all, the relationship that we have with our God and our Father and with His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Who did not?

97. 43:40

    Spare his own son, as Paul says in Romans 8, but gave him up for us all. How will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? And so the intimate nature of God’s love was manifest in the giving of His only Son, that we might be saved. And if we think of the pain and the agony that God endured as His perfect Son was sacrificed to cleanse our filthy garments,

98. 44:10

    that we might be made clean because no other relationship, brethren and sisters, can save us from ourselves, only the Divine. Relationship that we have with God through His Son. First Peter chapter 1 starting verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By His mercy He gave us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, that is, unto an inheritance imperishable.

99. 44:49

    Undefiled, unfading, it is reserved in heaven for you, who by God’s power are protected through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

100. 45:03

     And so we understand the intimate nature of God’s power. But the the intimate nature of God’s power offers us salvation by a loving God with an outstretched arm, who gave his Son for us, that he would be crucified and resurrected, that through him we might be saved. And we looked at the verse yesterday, how God rescues us and.

101. 45:26

     Carries us to the Kingdom. This is a God who wants to dwell with us, who is willing to extend his grace to us, to make us righteous, not by our own merit, as Paul says in Ephesians 2, but by grace. You have been saved through faith and it is not of ourselves, brethren and sisters.

102. 45:44

     It is the gift of God. Our salvation, brothers and sisters, is bound up in this understanding, understanding the infinite and the infinite power of God in our lives, how it touches us every single day. Whether we see the glory of God in the heavens or whether we feel it in the trial of our lives, God is there. And so as we close, I I just want to look at at a few of my favorite verses.

103. 46:20

     As we think about being unashamed of the gospel, being being anchored in this understanding of the nature of God’s power, I want to end where we started for the weak. The Apostle Paul given us this this powerful statement. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes.

104. 46:46

     And so Paul’s declaration is, is is both bold and and yet unwavering. He declares his refusal to be ashamed of the gospel of Christ. And he does so because he knows what’s at stake and because he knows that it is the power of God that has done all these things that we might be saved and when we understand the true nature of God.

105. 47:16

     Then we understand what he can do for us, and we have no reason to be ashamed. But we might stand unashamed in a world that rejects the gospel, that places human wisdom ahead of gods. But Paul knew this when he wrote in First Corinthians 2 and five that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

106. 47:48

     Our faith is not grounded, brethren and sisters, in the cleverness of human reasoning, the pervasiveness of of human arguments, the changing tides of popular opinion. It’s not swayed by the philosophy of the world. Our faith is rooted in the power of God, a God that does not waver, that does not fade, and that can never be shaken.

107. 48:18

     And you know, the amazing thing is when I when I read Hebrews Chapter 11 and I read through all those faithful men and women who who believed in the existence of God and who believed in God’s future for them.

108. 48:38

     And we read right at the end that they lie in the grave, not having received their promise because God is waiting for us to be perfected. And I think about what Abraham and and and Joseph and David and all those others that God is holding patiently in the grave. Surely those faithful that deserve the promise of the future, he’s holding them there, brethren and sisters, so that in this intervening time that God has given us, we might get it right in our relationship with Him, so that when that day comes together with them, we might be made perfect. And that humbles me more than you can imagine. The Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 10 he says if you therefore confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved.

109. 50:02

     For with the heart 1 believes and is justified, and with the mouth 1 confesses and is saved. For the scripture says everyone that believes in him, brethren and sisters, will never be put to shame. And so let us brethren and sisters, live out these remaining days, living unashamed of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, living unashamed of the existence of our God, being unashamed of his future, being unashamed of the truth that he has given us.

110. 50:32

     That’s in our hearts that we might be separated from this world, set apart, that we might set a boundary around us and allow God into our lives. That we might be unashamed of the power of God to save us. And when that great day arrives and the Lord Jesus Christ returns to collect his own, he might see our faith and he might say I am unashamed of us and that he will accept us into God’s eternal Kingdom.

111. 51:17

     And so I would just like to thank you for having Marnie and I come here this week. I, I love the schools, only the second time I’ve ever been here. But God willing, we will come as often as we can. And I do pray that we might all continue to. Flock together. To fellow sheep together, that our individual lights might become a great light in our community.

112. 51:50

     To show the light of God’s truth and shine it at the darkness of this world. Thank you.