The Spiritual Nature of God

If you look at the handout sheet for tonight, we're going to be looking at the spiritual nature of God. That's going to be the topic for tonight. But on the back, there is in the upper right-hand corner, systematic theology. And I just want to take just a minute to show you where we are. We're going to be doing what we call theology for the next 15 weeks. And that may seem like a scary word, but it's not at all. Those of you who like to study the Bible, what is "theo" in Greek? What does that mean? God, right? And so theology is the study of God. Just like biology is the study of life, or geology, the study of our earth and the minerals and whatnot. Theology is studying God, and we are all theologians in that sense, right? We look to God's word to find out more about Him, to strengthen our faith. So we can be like Abraham, who staggered not at the promises of God, but was made strong in faith, because he believed that God was able to do what He had promised, right?

And so when you look at the 15, or sorry, the 10 headings of systematic theology, it starts, first of all, with bibliology, or we could call that scriptology or epistemology. That's basically, how do we know truth? And where do we find God's truth? But what? The Bible, right? And in bibliology, we study also how we interpret scripture, which we've already got a head start on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings, as we've been doing a 3D Bible study, right? We look at the passage within the context of its chapter, within its book, and the whole relation of scripture. Second, you'll find theology proper, and that is where we're going to be in for the next 15 weeks. This has to do with who God is, what His character is, His attributes. When we talk about attributes, we talk about those things that define an individual.

Oftentimes, as humans, we describe one another in pretty much shallow terms, don't we? Maybe because we don't know someone very well.

Right now is summer football season, right? And all the pro teams have their summer camps and they're trying out their rookies. And maybe there's, say, I'm a Dallas Cowboy fan, maybe they have a running back this year, and someone says, "Wow, that guy is built like a tank, and he runs like a deer." It tells you he's fast, and it also tells you that he's strong. But it doesn't tell you much else about him, either as a player or as an individual, does it? It doesn't tell you, is he coachable? It doesn't tell you, can he read a defense? Can he move laterally? Is he a team player? It doesn't tell you, is he mature? Is he ethical? Is he the kind of guy that you want to have as a role model to represent your team, right? So it's kind of superficial because it takes time to get to know someone. And we know someone through observation and through communicating with them and through hearing their words. And that's what we're going to be doing over the next 15 weeks, is listening to God's word, what it says about God and who He is.

After that, we go from theology proper to Christology, which is the study of Christ. Then we go to pneumatology, which is the study of the Holy Spirit. From there, we go to angelology, which is the creation of angelic beings, both fallen and righteous angelic beings. From there, we go to creation of man, which is anthropology. From there, we'll go to hamartiology, which that sounds weird, but that's simply studying sin and its effect on humanity. Because when Adam and Eve fell into sin, it changed everything in this world. From there, we go to soteriology, which is the study of salvation. The reason why Christ came in this world is to save us, right? And once we study salvation, we then turn to what we call ecclesiology, which is the doctrine of the church, right? Because Christ saved the church. He called a people. From there, we go to eschatology, which is the study of the last things.

I'm mentioning all that just to let you know where we are. We're right here at the very beginning of theology, theology proper, but your view of God affects everything else in theology, right? What you know about Him, for example, let's say you're studying eschatology. It says, "Well, it sure seems like Christ has taken a long time to come back." But what does the Bible tell us? That He is slow to come back because of His mercy, right? That points to the love of God. When we look at ecclesiology, we see that Christ has been appointed as the head of all things for who? For the church, right? Because He loves His bride and He loves His people. So it all goes back to what we believe about God. It's one of the most important things that we can ever say about ourselves is what we believe about God. So we'll be studying that here over the next 15 weeks.

So flip back to the front of the page on lesson number one, the spiritual nature of God. We're going to look at number one here first, and I'll read out the blanks to you so you can fill this in. "God is not material, but is spiritual." God is not material, but is spiritual.

John 4, 24, is the account of Christ talking to the Samaritan woman at the well. And he says, "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth."

God is spirit. He doesn't have a human body like we do, right? He's spirit. And therefore, He's to be worshiped with spiritual means, according as He's revealed Himself, and in truth, according to His word. If you flip over on the back, you're going to see the first reference there, which is where the woman speaks to Christ. And she's a Samaritan. If you remember, the Samaritans were the remnant that was left over from the lost ten tribes of Israel after the Assyrians had knocked them out, and they had gone in and they had planted their own prisoners and their own people in the area that was formerly occupied by the northern ten tribes, and they intermarried with the remnant that was there and became the Samaritans. And the Jews viewed them as half-breeds because they were mixed bloodline, and they were mixed with their enemy, of course. And on top of that, they weren't even allowed to go down to worship at the temple in Jerusalem. The Jews in the southern kingdom did not like them at all, and likewise, the Samaritans did not care for the Jews one iota. That's why we were so amazed at the parable of the good Samaritan, right, that he would take time to help someone who was a foreigner, who wasn't a Samaritan.

And she says to Christ, she says, "The woman said to him, 'Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is a place where one ought to worship.'" So the Samaritan said, "We believe Moses told us to worship here on Mount Gerizim, but you say it's Jerusalem."

"Jesus said to her, 'Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. You worship what you do not know, and we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.'"

The application for this is this. God desires our faith, our love, and our obedience. Those are the blanks for the first application. God desires our faith, our love, and our obedience. Because God is not material, He doesn't need our material possessions, does He? He doesn't need our material things such as sacrifices. What He wants is our trust, our faith. What He wants is our love. What He wants is our obedience. One man who knew that very well was King David.

King David took the kingship because God had taken it from Saul. Do you remember the story in 2 Samuel where Saul goes out and he's commanded by God to destroy the enemy and not to take the spoils? But what does he do? He saves the king. Yes, and he takes the spoils, right? When he's confronted by the prophet Samuel, what does he say? "Oh, I'm going to use these spoils to worship God." Right? And what is he told? Let me read it to you. This is actually 1 Samuel, chapter 15, verse 20. "And Saul said to Samuel, 'But I have obeyed the voice of the Lord and gone on the mission which the Lord sent to me and brought back Agag king of the Amalekites, and I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took of the plunder, sheep, and oxen, the best things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.' So Samuel said, 'Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, it is better to obey than what? Than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of lambs, for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you rejected the word of the Lord, He has also rejected you from being king.'"

So David would have been highly aware of what had happened with Saul. And Psalm 40 is such a beautiful reflection of King David. Many scholars believe that this was used at his coronation because the first half of it tracks so well with his life when Saul was still king and David was on the run. And then the second half of this particular psalm is so messianic, pointing to the King of kings and the Lord of lords, Jesus Christ. And Psalm 40, verses 6 through 8. Would someone read that for us, please?

"Sacrifice and offering you did not desire. My ears you have opened. Burnt offering and sin offering you did not require. Then I said, behold, I come. In the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do your will. Oh my God, and your law is within my heart."

Amen. That's what God delights in, is us doing His will, right? He doesn't want the sacrifices because He's not material. If you flip over on the back, you'll find another reference verse is Hosea 6:6. Christ quoted this twice in the New Testament, once in, I believe it's Matthew 9, and then the other time in Matthew 12. In Matthew 9, remember He calls Levi the tax collector. And He's eating with the tax collector and sinners. And what do the Pharisees do? They wag their finger and they say, look at this man. He is eating with tax collectors and sinners. And Jesus tells them, hey, the sick are who need the physician, right? I've come to seek and save the lost. And He says, you need to go and learn what this means. He says, "For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings."

Christ quotes this again in Matthew 12, when His disciples are hungry and it's the Sabbath day, and as they're going through a grain field, they begin to pluck the heads of wheat and to eat it. And what happens? The Pharisees are watching. And they say, why do your disciples do what isn't lawful? And again, He tells them, go and learn what this means. "For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings." That's what God wants from us. He wants our faith, our trust. He wants our obedience. He wants our love.

Number two, because God is spirit, He is invisible. Because He's spirit, He is invisible. We can't see God, but that doesn't mean He's not there just because we can't see Him, right? He's a spiritual being, so therefore He doesn't have a body like us. First Timothy 1:17 is a beautiful sentence of exaltation. Would someone read that for us, please?

"Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever."

Amen. He's eternal. He's immortal, and He is invisible, right? Now, if you flip over on the back, I want to look at the references, which you'll find in Numbers 11 and also Psalm 34. The Bible often speaks of God as having hands and arms and eyes and ears. For example, Psalm 34:15 says, "The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry."

Why, I thought you said that God was immaterial, that He is spiritual, that He doesn't have eyes or ears or a body like men?

Scripture speaks of God in such a way to accommodate His revelation to men. In other words, God is so unlike us and so above us and so transcendent that He accommodates us by using such language. God is speaking in the manner of men.

Calvin, the theologian, said that God speaks to us in a lisping way, as we would speak to a child or an infant. When you're speaking to an infant, like I have a seven-month-old grandson, I sound like a fool. It's like, "Hello, how are you doing?" We accommodate our speech because we're trying to make a connection, right? That's how God reveals Himself to us through mere words in our language, and He's condescending to our capacity, right? Numbers 11 says, "And the Lord said to Moses, 'Has the Lord's arm been shortened?'" What He's saying is, "Can I not do what I've promised?" He had just told Moses that He was going to provide meat, and Moses says, "We got over 600,000 men here in the wilderness. You could empty out the ocean and take every fish, and it wouldn't be enough." And God says, "Watch me. Has my arm been shortened? Have I not been able to do what I say that I am able to do?" So God condescends to us and uses human language to describe Himself, but He does not have a body. He is invisible. We cannot see Him with our eyes.

The application for number two is this. We cannot know God by material means. We can't know God by material means. We can't get out a measuring tape and measure Him. We can't get out a scale and weigh Him. We can't know Him by material means.

2 Corinthians 5:7 says, "For we walk by faith and not by sight."

So we're not walking in our spiritual walk by what we see, but by what we know to be true, right? Faith is the highest form of knowing. Those who study the physical sciences oftentimes will look down on theology and say, "It's predicated on faith." Well, so is the physical sciences, right? Let's say that you study chemistry or you study geology, whatever it is that you study. It's totally based on faith. It's based, first of all, that I am a person, and it's based on the fact that there is a world that's external and objective outside of me. And it's based on faith that what I observe, what I see, what I hear, is real and measurable. It's all based on faith. And to be able to throw out theology because it's based on faith, then you have to throw out every other science as well.

Faith is the highest kind of knowing, and let me prove that to you. Every single one of you are exhibiting great faith right now, because when you came in here tonight, you sat down on that chair, didn't you? Did you test that chair first? Did you go to it and say, "I wonder if this is really going to hold me up? Is it sturdy enough?" No, you just sat down because you have confidence that whoever engineered that chair did it right, right? And the same thing with our faith. It's the highest kind of knowing because we are able to say, as Paul said, "I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I've committed unto Him against that day." So it's by faith that we apprehend God. Hebrews 11:6 says, "But without faith, it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him."

John 1:18 says, "No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, in the heart of the Father, He has declared Him." If you want to see God, look to Christ, right? That's how we know who God is.

Let's go to number three. Number three, because God is spirit, He is immortal and is everlasting. Because God is spirit, He is immortal and is everlasting. Material things corrode, do they not? Material things have an end, do they not?

When I was growing up, my mother, she loved to entertain, and she would have a lot of people from our church over. When my father was alive, she would have the bar auxiliary. My father was an attorney. And when she would entertain, she'd bring out her finest china, the stuff that we didn't use every day. And she brought the sterling silver. Don't do so much of that anymore, but she brought it out. She kept these special protective cases, because what happens to sterling silver if it's exposed to the air and grease and the elements? It tarnishes, and then you've got to spend all kinds of time polishing to get it to shine, to look pretty once again, right? Well, God never tarnishes. He is spiritual, right? He's not material. So therefore, He is immortal and is everlasting.

First Timothy 6:16 says, "Who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power."

The application is we can trust His name and His promises. To trust the name of God is to trust who He's revealed Himself to be. Do you remember in the Old Testament when Moses was called out to God from the midst of the burning bush? He says, "Take off your shoes. You're on holy ground." And He says, "I want to tell you what you must do. You're going to go, and you're going to deliver my people from the hand of Pharaoh out of Egypt and into the Promised Land." And what does Moses say? He says, "Who am I going to tell the people of Israel has sent me?"

And God tells him, "Tell them, 'I Am' has sent you." That's the name Yahweh, right? That name tells you that He's always with us, right? That He's the God who was and is and is to come. There's no one like our God. So to trust His name is to trust who He has revealed Himself to be, and to trust His promises. Psalm 9:10 says, "And those who know Your name will put their trust in You, for You, Lord, have not forsaken those who seek You."

He's promised us, "I will never leave you nor forsake you," right? The application is we should seek and value eternal things. Because our God that we serve is everlasting, because He is immortal, we should seek and value not temporal things, not material things, not things that have an end, but we should seek eternal things. Matthew 6:19, Jesus said on the Sermon on the Mount, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

If you set your heart on temporal things, they're going to fly away. Money runs out. Our youth fades. What does the Bible tell us in Isaiah? All the people are what? Grass? "The grass withers. The flower fades. But the word of our Lord endures forever." So set your heart on eternal things, because our God is eternal. He is immortal. He is immaterial.

Number four, because God is spirit, He is incomparable. In Isaiah 40, that beautiful passage, one of my favorite chapters and one of my favorite books, Isaiah, God says, "To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare to Him?"

He is incomparable, right? We often have men or women that will say, "Well, they're incomparable." They'll say, for example, Michael Jordan, he's the greatest of all time, until another guy comes around, right? Maybe years down the line, but another guy is going to eventually break all his records, right? And that man will be forgotten.

When I went to seminary in North Carolina, Toby and I, we lived there and raised our kids when they were all born there. And in North Carolina, when you go to the buildings, you'll see a lot of buildings, whether they're government buildings or educational buildings, that have names on them, such as RJR Reynolds or Broyhill. These are North Carolina names. Does anyone know Broyhill? Furniture. What about Reynolds? Tobacco. Exactly right. They are tobacco. That's what North Carolina used to cut their teeth on, both textiles and tobacco. But many people these days don't even know those names, right? Because those names fade from our memory. But God is incomparable.

The application is that we're to trust His revelation and not our imagination. We are to trust His revelation, whom He reveals Himself to be. He's incomparable, and not our imagination. God cares so much about this that His second commandment makes it very plain. It says here in Exodus chapter 20, verses 4 through 5, "You shall not make for yourselves a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God."

God forbade the use of idolatry because idols misinform. They lie about God.

God tells us this in Exodus 20, and then He continues to expound on the laws. But then we get to Exodus 32. Let me read that for you. While Moses is still on the mountain, while he's still receiving revelation from God that he's going to then convey to Israel, in Exodus 32 it says, "So when the people came to Aaron and said, 'Where is Moses, this guy who brought us out of Egypt?'" We haven't seen him in a while because he's been up there for 40 days and 40 nights.

They said, "We need to make idols and serve the God who brought us out of Egypt." In Exodus 32, verses 4 and 5, some of the saddest words in scripture say, "So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation, 'Tomorrow is a feast to the Lord.' Then they rose early on the next day and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play." What did he see? It tells us in the immediate verse prior to that. "He received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and he made a molded calf. Then they said, 'This is your God, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt.'" How terrible, right? They probably thought they were honoring God because a bull is a symbol of strength, right? And God strongly brought them out of Egypt. But every time you resort to idolatry, it misinforms. What does a bull tell you about God's wisdom? What does a bull tell you about God's grace? His mercy, His compassion, His love, His covenant faithfulness? Nothing, right?

That's why we are not to give in to idolatry. We're not to worship with our physical senses, but we're to worship. Instead of using our imagination, we resort to revelation. We take His revelation, how He's revealed Himself to us in the scriptures, and that is how we worship God.

Flip over on the back. Exodus chapter 33, verse 4. While Moses is still on the mountain with God, he's been in God's presence for 40 days. He's been so blessed by God in receiving His revelation, he asked a favor of God. And this is natural. This is what we'd probably all do in Moses' place. He says, "And he said, 'Please show me Your glory.'" He's asking God to reveal Himself in some physical manifestation that he could maybe have a tangible revelation, if you will, of God. And in verse 19, He says, "Then He said, 'I will make all My goodness pass before you.'" He doesn't say that He's physically going to pass before him. He says, "I'm going to make My goodness," which is one of His attributes, one of His characteristics of who God is. "And I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you, the name Yahweh, that I Am the God who is I Am, who was and is and is to come, the God who brought you out of Egypt and who's with you right now. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious." That's another one of His attributes. "And I'll have compassion on whom I'll have compassion." Again, that flows from His love, His graciousness, His compassion, and His sovereignty, right? He's revealing His attributes to him. "But He said to them, 'You cannot see My face, for no man shall see Me and live. And the Lord said, here's a place by Me, and you shall stand on the rock. So it shall be while My glory passes by, that I'll put you in the cleft of the rock and will cover you with My hand while I pass by.'" Covering was for his protection, right? So he wouldn't burn up in the presence of the holy God. He says, "Then I'll take away My hand, and you shall see My back, but My face you shall not see."

He would give him some display of His glory, maybe the Shekinah glory that would come on the tabernacle in the wilderness, or that would fill the temple later on, maybe the same kind of Shekinah glory that we saw on the Mount of Transfiguration. It was some type of visible representation of God, but it wasn't God Himself. He could not see God's face, right? And that is the way our faith operates. We place our faith in His attributes, who He's revealed Himself to be, that He is gracious, that He is merciful, that He is good, that He is sovereign, just as God revealed it to Moses on the mountain.

David wrote in 1 Chronicles 17:20, back on number four on the first page, "Oh Lord, there is none like You, nor is there any God beside You, according to all that we have heard with our ears." Notice David didn't say, "according to all that we've seen with our eyes," but "according to all that we hear with our ears." Because again, Judaism, which would become Christianity, is a revealed religion, right? It's based upon God's revelation of His word to men.

Have you ever seen, there's a wonderful lecture that Voddie Baucham has given multiple times, and it's called "Why I Believe the Bible Is True." Have you ever seen that? If you haven't, Google it, okay? It's a 45-minute lecture, and what he does, he explains why reason and faith are not inseparable, but how they work together. He starts off with a statement, and it goes something like this. He says, "I believe in the Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents recorded by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses who testify of supernatural events in fulfillment of specific prophecies whose writers claim them to be divine and not human in origin." And he goes through and he unpacks that. It's well worth your 45 minutes to watch that video, and in it he talks about how scripture is a historical document, how it's a trustworthy record, and how it was written by eyewitnesses in the time of other eyewitnesses. If they wanted to contradict them and say it's not true, they could have done it right then and there, right? And they recorded supernatural events that fulfilled specific prophecies, and they said this was the writing of the Lord. This is God's work. The scripture is inspired by God. It's God-breathed, so we can trust His revelation in His word. That's how we learn and know about God.

Number five, because God is spirit, we can perfectly see Him only through His Son, Jesus Christ. That's number five. The blank is Jesus Christ. Jesus said, in response to Philip, Philip says, "Show us the Father." And what does Jesus say? He's been with me all this time, and you're saying, "Show me the Father?" In John 14:9 He says, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father." You want to see the Father? Look to the Son, right? He is the revealer of God. Colossians 1:15, we read this a couple months ago here in Bible study, "He is the image of the invisible God," speaking of Christ, "the firstborn over all creation." Hebrews tells us this. If you look on the back, Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 through 3, "God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom He also made the worlds, who, being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high." Christ is in the very presence of God at God's right hand, and He is the revealer of God. So if you want to see God, look to His Son, look to Jesus Christ.

The application is Jesus satisfies our desire for a tangible God. Jesus satisfies our desire for a tangible God. He came to this world and He took on a fleshly, incarnate existence, which blows us away, that the One who spoke this world into existence, the One who holds all things together by the word of His power, He reduced Himself in the incarnation to almost the point of non-existence, to a human embryo implanted in the womb of Mary. And He did that because He loved us so much that He would leave glory, that He would humble Himself, become a man subject to hunger, to sickness, to all the pain and things that a human would experience. He did that for us to save us, right? He is the satisfaction of our desire for a tangible God. There is more archaeological evidence for Jesus Christ than there is for Julius Caesar. I have more confidence that Jesus Christ said on the cross, "It is finished," than that Julius Caesar ever said, "Et tu, Brute?" Scripture is replete, history is filled with accounts of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. John 1:14 says, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

Number six, because God is spirit, He is recognized only by spiritual means. Not physical means, because He is spirit, He is recognized only by spiritual means. Look what Paul tells the Corinthians, such wonderful wisdom. He says, "But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God."

Every believer in Christ has been graciously united to the Son through faith by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us, right? And He has promised to lead us and guide us into all truth, right? So we take the word of God, and the same Holy Spirit who inspired the writing of the word of God is working in our hearts to apply the word of God to us, to help us to understand it, for us to be conformed into the image of Christ.

The application is this, read God's word guided by His Spirit. One of the maxims that came out of the Reformation was, never the word without the Spirit, never the Spirit without the word.

Some of our Charismatic friends will say ridiculous things that the Spirit moved them to do or to say, and it doesn't line up with the word of God, right? And it's not just our Charismatic friends, I've heard many Baptist people do the exact same thing, right? But what the Spirit is saying will always be confirmed by the word of God, and the word of God is always keeping in step with the Spirit, for the Spirit is the author of the word of God. So we're to read God's word guided by His Spirit. John 16, verses 13 to 14, says this is Jesus, "when He, the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth." So He's promising, Christ is promising His disciples, that He's going to send His Spirit. This is in the upper room discourse, right? He's about to be betrayed by Judas and about to be crucified. He says, "However, when He, the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine, and He will declare it to you."

We look to Christ to know God, and we know Christ through the word of God and the Holy Spirit, right? That's how we see God. Flip over on the back, please, last reference verse. John chapter 20 has such a beautiful ending. John the apostle writes, "But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name." What a blessing that is. God wants us to know Him. I want to challenge you tonight as we close to study God's word.

Be in God's word. That's how we know Him, right? Many of us have all kinds of wonderful knowledge in this room. If I were to ask Jimmy about anything, computer or printing, I'm sure he's an expert about that. If I were to ask Mike about construction, he knows everything about that. If I were to ask Robert about truck driving, if I were to ask Hal about the law, if I were to ask David Hal about warehouse runs, if I asked Joe about public speaking consulting, if I were to ask Russ about how he does financial things for people, or Caleb, the same way, they would be a wealth of knowledge, right? And those are all good things. But look on the back, Jeremiah chapter 9. Let me tell you what's the best knowledge in the world to know. "Thus says the Lord, 'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom. Let not the mighty man glory in his might. Let not the rich man glory in his riches. But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, exercising loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight,' says the Lord."

Jimmy, would you come and lead us, please?