Which Side of the Cross - Lesson 19

All right, we're less than 19. We're continuing on a little bit. with, I guess you'd say, the things of God. Although last week we talked about 1 Corinthians 1, 18-25, we're going to stay in that verse for a little bit. So, let somebody read 1 Corinthians 1, 18-21, and then we'll deal with the question. I guess we could go to 25. Anybody?

For the work of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God for it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever. I will set aside. Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know God. God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. That's good. Stop there.

So the question is, The message of the cross has two effects on men, what are they? The wisdom of the cross, you say? I'm always struck when we read a verse and then I ask questions that are right there in the verse, everybody gets tongue tied. The two effects on men, and actually they're both in verse 18, It's either foolishness or the power of God.

That's right. So I think it's important for us to recognize that the message of the cross to the non-believer is foolishness. We seem to think that if we are pretty articulate in expressing the message of the cross to a non-believer that they're going to say, oh yeah, I got that. That's not foolishness to me. But unless they're acted upon by the Holy Spirit, it is total foolishness. Sometimes it's hard to rethink, well they're educated and they have a good mind, why don't they get it? It's because it's foolish to them, it doesn't make any sense.

And then the rest of the verses talk about what God in his wisdom will do and how he does things. That's a really good object lesson for us to realize that God works in ways that are, a lot of times, well let me put it another way. We invariably go to God and say, look I have this problem and here's how you can fix it. and we pray and we pray and he doesn't fix it that way and now we're angry because he didn't respond. We don't realize the capacity of God is so beyond us.

And the other thing that it says here is, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God. So the next question is, how is the message of the cross the power of God? How is it that? But to those which are called Jews and Greeks, or Jews and any non-Jews, Christ is the power of God.

Why is it the power of God? It's because when we believe in Jesus, we're brought with Him, and then we're empowered by Him, so He can live through us. Let's look at it from God's perspective, not mine. Why is it God's power? What makes it His power? What does it demonstrate? What was the cross designed to do, from God's perspective?

About sin. There was this issue. the issue from God's side about sin. And how was there going to be a solution for sin? Was there going to be something to be done that would pay the penalty that God put on man in the garden? He said the soul that sins he will surely die. There's a punishment.

So he's got that problem and the second thing is that The whole creation fell because of this thing, sin. And then the third problem he's got is that man became a sinner. He acquired this thing called the sin nature that continually sins. And how is he going to solve that problem? Because how do you define sin?

And who's the mark? Christ is. God is the mark. So anything short of him is sin. As we were going through those aspects of who God was the last couple of weeks, hopefully it expanded our understanding of who He was, who He is. And that sin is just something that can't be tolerated by Him because it doesn't arrive or come up to who He is. He can't have something in His creation that isn't part of Him.

You see that? So the cross is the demonstration of the solution for the sin issue. And the second problem that sin caused was separation from God, which is the death part. Man is separated from God, and God didn't want that. That isn't what his intended purpose was. So, God, through the cross, reconciled man back to himself.

And put it this way. This one event made man saveable. You understand what I'm saying? Without this event, man is not saveable. Do you see that? No cross, I don't care what tap dance you do, man is not saveable. Why not? Why wouldn't he be saveable? Try the other side of it. Why wouldn't man have been savable? There's no way to be righteous. What's that? He has no way to be righteous. Righteous? There's nothing in him that would satisfy God.

See, that's the point I'm after. We call it propitiation. God has got to be satisfied about this thin issue. And nothing but the cross would do it. See that? In order for God to extend His grace to us, He's got to be satisfied about sin. The whole question and issue of sin. If He's not satisfied, we are not savable. Is that okay? You understand that? I mean, that's really an important part about the cross. We think, well, we've got the gospel. We don't think about There were events that had to take place in order for God to make us savable. See?

If God had just wiped out humanity after sinning, would he have been satisfied? What do you think? Would he have been? He just blipped Adam and Eve out of existence so he didn't have to worry about the rest of them, right? What do you think? Would he have been okay about the sin issue? Answer, no, he wouldn't have been. Because what could Adam and Eve do to satisfy God about their own sin? Nothing. What can you do to satisfy God about your sin? Nothing.

How do I say this? I was just going to say, had he done that, he would have been just, but it wouldn't have balanced with his characteristics of love. So it would have been an extension of one of his characteristics, but not an equal balance of all of them. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. It really does. That's another interesting principle here that has to do with identification and being resurrected with Christ. God is here, let's say, and he creates and all men are, you know, some angels in here and then men. Right? So men, angels and men sin. Now, because men are not, and angels, are not on the same plane as God is, they can't satisfy him.

You know, I've used the example, you come over to my house and my dog bites you in the knee. Where do you seek satisfaction? From the dog? No, because he's down here somewhere in terms of the level of creation. You come to me and say, your dog bit me and I want to be satisfied. So I, as a human being, have to satisfy you as a human being. Well, here's God. And man, in essence, bit him in the knee.

And man can't go to God and say, well, how can I satisfy you? And he says, you're not qualified. So enter the Lord Jesus. who's the son of God, 100% God, 100% man. Now we've got a human divine person who can do what? He can satisfy God. See that? It takes somebody up there to do that. Here's the other cool part about it.

Because we were identified with his death, birth, and resurrection, we've been resurrected up to here. So when you think about that for a while, As we go on now into eternity, who are we going to be hanging with? On what level do we exist? Up here, above angels. So we are totally pleasing to God because of our position in Christ up here. You know one thing you said in one of your tapes, is you said that God never sees us After we're saved, we're never seen as ever being in heaven again.

That's powerful. Yeah, and it isn't because he just says, oh, never mind. No, that's right. He sees us here. And he works from here. He doesn't work from down here anymore. He works from here. So, if we're going to talk about the message of the cross, is it powerful to reconcile man back to himself? Rendering man savable? Yeah. Because what it did was, for lack of a better way to put it, it opened the door for me to go and you to go from here to here. And when you're up here, you're totally satisfying to God because of what Christ did. Yeah. I was just thinking of several conversations that have come up recently.

There's this tendency with this whole satisfaction, that word propitiation is a big word, but this idea of God being satisfied with something. That is what is frustrating to so many believers as well as unbelievers. They look at this and they say, I think God's kind of satisfied with the way I'm living.

I'm not doing this, I'm not doing that. So he's got to be satisfied to a degree. So there's that problem. And then on the flip side, you get a believer, potentially, who thinks that, yeah, God's satisfied at least to a degree, but there's more that has to be satisfied based on my works. This issue of satisfaction is really the heart of works, both for the believer trying to earn salvation on his own right, Or, I'm sorry, an unbeliever, or even a believer trying to continually satisfy God to greater degrees even after being saved. That's right.

It's really the motivation for works. It's to try to satisfy God somehow, someway. And sometimes their definition of God is not biblical in any way, shape, or form. But where all works are done, good works are only done to satisfy something. It might be myself, it might be some big guy in the sky. But people are doing what they think of as good things or going to confession or whatever in order to seek satisfaction with something or someone. And so that truth is pretty powerful when you look at the motivations to live by grace or to live by works.

It is powerful, and what's interesting about it is that the reason we're spending so much time right in this sort of understanding is that we're to live by faith. And faith, as we've discovered, is resting in the substance of the things of God. So we're spending time learning about what those substances are. Who is this God that we have to deal with? And the more we know about Him and about what He's done and His incredible character and His glory, His attributes, the easier it becomes for us to trust Him and to believe Him. We're going through Hebrews on Wednesday night and we're in 11 like we were here.

But you get down to verse 6 and it says, without faith it's impossible to please God. You mean all these spiritual push-ups I'm doing and all this fancy religious stuff I'm doing, none of that pleases Him? None of that. He wants me to believe Him. Now the problem we have with faith is that we don't think faith is dynamic. We don't think faith gets up off the couch. We think that faith is sort of something that doesn't, I just sit there and I believe. What you don't understand, what we don't understand about faith is how incredibly dynamic it is.

That if I believe God and what he tells me, I'm not going to have to worry about whether I'm going to please him or not. His spirit is going to begin to motivate me to do things I've never even dreamed of. and never have a problem with whether I'm pleasing Him or not, because it isn't a matter of whether I'm pleasing Him or not, it's a matter of whether I believe in Him or not. That's what pleases Him. So as we learn more about the Lord Jesus, and we learn more about God, it causes us to rest. And God does everything from a position of rest. He's never nervous. He's never sweat. He's never in a hurry. He's never late. He's at rest all the time because of what Christ did.

See that? So I must learn to live like that. And the only way to do it is I have to believe Him. When He says things to me in His Word, I just rest in what He says. And I let Him worry about getting up off the couch. And trust me, you'll be up and moving. You read about a guy like the Apostle Paul. He was so busy that his body was wearing out because this spiritual resurrected life, the body couldn't keep up. It can't. Your body can't keep up with this new life it has. And life is not static. It's operational all the time.

So you can look at God and say, well, I'm just going to sit here and believe you. Okay, fine. Let's see how long that lasts. Well, sometimes that comes to you. You're on the couch and you don't see any You don't see a way to walk by faith in a particular issue at the moment. All of a sudden somebody walks in your door. The phone rings. Absolutely. Or some circumstance comes along and you find yourself in it before you even thought about it. And there you are. And you're rocking and rolling. And walking in dependence happens all the time.

So I know this is not a class on don't work. But you know something else that I'm struck by is that you're not on the old side and the new side, which side of the cross do you live on, but the old side is earthly and the new side is heavenly. It's a spiritual relationship that we have with the Lord. Well, like Russ said, God only sees us in Christ. He doesn't see us in Adam anymore.

So everything functions from here. Now, down in Adam, I can be a lifer in the penitentiary. But if I'm in Christ, now I'm up here. You think the life of Christ can be manifested on a spiritual level in a penitentiary? You better believe it can. Absolutely it can. Because it isn't restricted. Unless I'm not living by faith, then I'm going to stay down here. And I'm going to believe all the crap that comes into my sphere of influence. But if I trust Him about who I am, where I am, and what I have in Him, then I can start to function on this level.

I think it's really critical. Faith is the key. It's the appropriating key to live in this life. You have to trust Him. Well, the other thing, not to talk too much, but you know... You get one more. You see faith, you know, you see those signs faith, you see those signs believe, but it's interesting that faith is only operational as you understand the essence of faith. I agree. As it's connected with the things of God. That's really good. Yeah, that's right. Everybody understand that? Faith is something you've come up with. Yeah, everybody got that? Do she need to repeat it? I don't know if she can.

So how does the cross represent the wisdom of God? The message of the cross is to them that are perishing foolishness but unto those who are saved it is the power of God and the wisdom of God. What is wisdom by the way? Wisdom is what? What's just a quick definition? It's applied knowledge. I have an understanding and I know how to use it. Well, God has wisdom, one of his eternal characteristics.

Why is the cross the wisdom of God? How does it represent his wisdom? Notice he says in 19, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside. And so he challenges man, he says where is the wise man, where is the scribe, where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? How did he do that? How is the cross representing the wisdom of God? Using the definition of applied knowledge. Let's ask it another way. If you and I, if God came to us and said, now look Russ, you and Mike get together, I'll give you five years and you have to come up with a solution for sin.

Would we ever come up with a cross? Never. We never would come up with a solution to the cross because we don't have the understanding We don't have the wisdom of God. We don't know what it's going to take. We would come up with a religion, or an ism, or something, a denomination, a system whereby man could do 35 spiritual push-ups and then maybe they would be let in the door. God's wisdom is, I'll take care of the whole thing through my son. through this horrible death, he's going to become a man, he's going to die on the cross, we would never come up with that. It just isn't in us. We couldn't solve the sin problem, but God could, and we wouldn't even recognize that we had a sin problem. Would we?

We would think, well, you know, like you were saying, I've got some good stuff and I've got some bad stuff. The good stuff outweighs the bad stuff. I'm in good shape. Right? No, you're not. So God's wisdom is represented or demonstrated in the cross. And if God said, now look, you two guys, you've got five years. You have to come up with something that is going to satisfy me about sin. You need more time? I'll give you another 5 years. How about 10, 15, 20? We've never come up with it. But that's what religion does. The denomination I came out of it, they've been 2,000 years putting this plan together that somehow man is responsible for the plan of salvation and the deal with sin.

I know that sounds a little sweeping as a statement but I mean that's why people argue and fight and nations battle nations because they think they have an idea of what they think is right versus what another person thinks is right and they have to protect those things so they're trying to solve a sin problem to a degree by protecting what they think is right. And then what they think is right may be abhorred.

Yeah, and we're going to go to war over it. That's right. But that's the way it works in the relationships all the way up to the wars that we fight. It's a battle of what is sin and what isn't sin. And I'm going to protect mine and you're going to protect yours, so here we go.

And at the end of the day, to think that way is to think that the stronger is the right. Whoever wins the battle is right. Whoever wins the battle prevails and their definition of good and their definition of evil is now worldwide. And they've somehow satisfied the sin nature by being in control. That's right. That's exactly what they do. Like we talked about the last couple of weeks.

Why is God so small to us? Because we can get him in a box and we're now God. And that's what we really want to do. We want to get God where we can handle Him. We can tell Him the rules. We do it all the time. We go to Him and say, Oh Lord, my elbow hurts and here's how you can fix it. We've got a sin issue and here's how you can fix it, God. We're going to not do this and now we're going to do this and that will fix it. And we seldom stop to think or to investigate what did God do about this and what does he say about it? It's important for us as believers to get down, to remind ourselves of the root of what's going on. You know, we see things that, there's nothing new under the sun, really. Things have been worse, actually, at different times. A lot worse. You know, if you think about the environment of the Romans and so forth, things have been worse.

But at the end of the day, these are, the root is this sin issue. This whole discussion is what has to be pop to the top of our mind when we start to evaluate the things that are going on around us because the leaves at the top of the tree are always going to change but the root of the issue is still this one thing. That's right. It's where they stand before God with regards to sin and they have that offer and they're savable. Right. But this is a sin issue. You know somebody challenged me this week about that and I thought, well how can God let this happen? I said, you ever heard about a guy named Noah?

How many people were left on the earth when he shut the door to that boat? None, but the ones that were in his boat. And they had over a hundred years to make up their mind whether they wanted to be in the boat or not. And they said, no, we don't want to be in the boat. We don't want your solution. So what did he do? He wiped out everybody on the earth. Does he have the right to do that? Why? Because we sin. We sin. And he set the rules. He said the soul that sins, it will die, certainly be separated.

Does he have the right? I mean, the fact that God is even gracious is overwhelming to me. That he would even send his son, that he would solve the issue and then give us an opportunity to get into it. He didn't have to do that. Because if salvation is by grace, then it must be given to us or offered to us on a non-covenant basis. He's got to just freely do it out of his heart.

After he's totally satisfied, I've said this before and people don't like this, when Christ was raised from the dead and he's standing there, he could have said to the Father, well I'm satisfied, how about you? Yeah, I'm satisfied, let's wipe the rest of these bums out. He could have said that and he'd been totally just in doing it.

And he said, no, here's what we're going to do. Now that we've got it solved, we're going to offer it to man. And we're going to do it on the basis that they believe us. That we did this and we've solved it. And we'll give them the whole thing. All they have to do is believe. No obligation. No obligation at all. On their part. Talking about wisdom.

Let's look at Isaiah 55.8, Romans 11.33.

Isaiah 55.8 says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. If this verse does anything else, it should cause us that when we talk to the Lord, we understand who we're talking to here. We can't dictate to Him anything, that we're receivers.

And then Romans 11.33, Oh the depths and the riches of the wisdom of God, the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out. For who has known the mind of the Lord, and who has been his counselor? Or who has first given to him, and it shall be recompensed to them again? For of him, and through him, and to him are all things, to whom be glory forever." So this verse says, and the other verse says, it's incapable, God's wisdom and his thoughts are incapable of investigation. Do you agree with that?

And you can't analyze them. They're beyond. And you can't scrutinize them. They're impenetrable. That goes against my thought because I think, well, I can figure out God. I've got my Bible. I'm rocking. You say, the things of God are not easily understood. Would you say that? They're mysterious. They're unfathomable. That's the word inscrutable means that they're incapable of being seen through physical interpretation.

They're like, you ever been out in the ocean? I mean, we were, where were we? We were in Hawaii, and you can, on a clear day, you can really see down Caribbean. You can even see farther down. But you get out, I mean, the ocean is miles deep. The tallest mountain in the world, from the base of the mountain to the top of it, you know what it is? It's Mauna Kea in Hawaii. because it's 35,000 feet from the floor of the ocean to the top of that mountain. Something like that. It's the tallest mountain in the world from its base. And its base happens to be five miles under the ocean.

Isaiah shows and Romans show the depth of God is inscrutable. What does inscrutable mean? Unsearchable. Unsearchable. Can't know them. So would you say God is inscrutable? What do you think? Can't be scrutinized. Can't be scrutinized. There's only two things you know about God. Every man knows about God, and it's in Romans 1.

What do they know? What's that? Eternal power and divine nature. That's right. He's powerful. And he's divine. And you can know that through his creation through, I think it's your conscience. Those are the only two things you know about God. Okay. But that's it. And that's all he reveals to us in his creation. But these verses talk about the fact that we are incapable of understanding who God really is past those two things.

How would you know that God was love? How do you know that? Without Jesus Christ you don't ever know that. So in Romans 11, Teach us that we will never get to the complete understanding of God. Is that a good thing? Not ever getting to a complete understanding of who God is, is that a good thing? That's the... Why is it a good thing?

Well, because it's true that you really can't know Him fully and He's okay with it. So, it seems like if we could really fathom him, he'd just melt on the spot. He's so big and powerful. Yes, and somehow he doesn't want us to melt. Think about this. We're to grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, right? And he's God. And that stops when we go to heaven, right? No, it doesn't. So when we're about 40 million years into eternity, then we'll know it all? We'll have it all down? No, we'll never reach the bottom of who God is, ever.

I think that's a cool thing. It's like a series that never ends. A good series, like Sherlock Holmes, it goes forever. But that's right. To grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord is eternal. And the thing is that rather than Like, you know, in any educational process, you get bored after a while, or you run out of gas, or your mind freaks, freezes. That's never going to happen with the Lord Jesus. More and more all the time. And I think that's amazing.

So, when I see you in heaven about 40 million years from now, and say, well, is God still inscrutable? Yeah, He is. Would you say that God's thoughts and ways are beyond our grasp? And we say yes. Actually, I answered question six because I said, is that fact of our benefit? And the answer is yes, it really is. How does God let us know His ways and His thoughts? That's the right answer.

He gives us the word. He creates this. I was going to hold up the Bible, but today I don't have to do that. I can hold this up. I'm learning how to do this. I've got the Bibles on here and I'm actually reading them. It's cool. So he gives us his word, and this is a really critical point. Why do we have God's word? And we know what the rules are. The whole Word of God is designed to go from objective fact to a personal fellowship with the God of the universe. This knowing Him is really important to Him. So He gives us His Word.

But that's not enough. Because He's on this plane, and I'm down here somewhere, and He raises me up, but I don't know like living up here. He raises me up. And what does he do? And you said, he indwells me with the Holy Spirit. And if we would recognize that he very succinctly, Jesus very succinctly told us in John what the Holy Spirit was here to do. What's he here to do? He said, I'm going to send the Spirit and he's going to reveal me to you." That's really what he said. So we're dependent on him and we have his word. If you wanted to put it into one capsule, it's like he didn't want us to become theologians. He just wanted us to know him. That's it.

So many of us start out reading our Bibles from an academic viewpoint And we think if we accumulate all of these facts, because we all think like Greeks, you know. We accumulate all the facts into our own mind, then we cogitate on them, and then we decide which ones are true or not. And we discard the ones that aren't true, and we go with the ones that are true. Well, we go at the Word of God that way, because our culture is Greek thinking, we're not Jewish thinking. When in fact what God is about is revealing Himself to us through the Word via beholding Christ and the Holy Spirit in us.

That changes the whole dynamic of why you even read the book. Why pull it out and look at it? So that you can come to class and answer the questions? I was talking to Vern one day and we were talking about this subject. I said, you know, I know you've got this incredible memory. He can read a book and you can ask him a question and he can tell you on what page and what part of the page that information is. So I said to him, how does that help you know Christ? He said, it doesn't. I said, yeah, that's an important point. It doesn't. It doesn't.

So from the lowest, most uneducated you know, stumbling around believer to the one who's the most educated, we all have the same, what's the word I'm looking for? We all are the same in the sense that we have the word and we have the spirit. And if we recognize that what those two things were given to us for, it changes the equation It levels us out in terms of who we are. We're sons and we're learning about the Lord Jesus because we're learning about the Father through Christ.

And that's what they want. That's what they want. It's like lawyers. We've got enough lawyers and we've got enough theologians. We don't need any more. But we don't have a lot of people that have this intimacy with Christ. He's after. He wants. And it's not difficult if you understand those two things. As you spend time in the world, you understand, well, this is what he's doing. Again, what does it come back to? I trust him to do what he says he's doing. I trust him to reveal Christ to me, because he said he was going to. And he gave me the spirit to do that. So I trust him with it. Eight is a redundant question. We've already been over that. The question is what represents the wisdom of God? We've already talked about that.

What's the definition of faith? What's your definition of faith? The substance of the things of God. I'm sorry? That's your definition of faith. Now, one of the things we want to talk about, and Phil, I'm disappointed Phil's not here, because when Phil Mills calls you up and says, look, I've got questions about the class, that's an exciting thing. Because he knows about hammers and nails, and for him to have a question about the Word of God is a very exciting thing to me. So, we were talking about There are four aspects of biblical faith.

What are they? There's personal faith. That's one of them. There's the essence of faith. What are the other two? Principle of faith. And when you see faith with the definite article, the in front of it. So the essence of faith is this. This diagram with an essence verb, a linking verb between faith and God, and the things of God, evidence and proof, that's what faith is in and of itself.

Where are you in that equation, in that diagram? Nowhere. It just talks about what faith is in its essence. Could we say we are in that reality? Say that again? We are in that reality. Yes, we are. where are we? We're in that reality. We may not respond, but that's the reality. That's the reality of how we're to function. But that's what it is in and of itself. So the next part of faith is, well let's do them this way, the faith.

What does that represent? When you're in the word and you find the word faith and maybe the English will say the in front of it, maybe it won't. And not that you have to scramble and get a Greek dictionary out or a Greek interlinear out and find out. But when you see the faith, what is the Bible referring to? What it means to me is what He has revealed to us. for his word, particularly for us in the church age and the New Testament.

It can be the gospel message? How many gospel messages are there? More than one. Oh sure. Did Abraham was accounted righteous because he believed God about what? About Christ and the death, burial and resurrection of Christ? No. How about Adam? Did Adam get a gospel message? Yeah, he did. He got the skins. He didn't have to take them, but he took them.

The faith can refer to the whole thing, as you're describing, the whole thing that has to do with Christianity. It's like we talk about the beginning of Christianity and the word, where does it start? Where does the exclamation of Christianity begin? What part of the Bible? What book? Christianity. It's promised in Genesis. Where does it start? When did the body of Christ start? Pentecost. When is Pentecost talked about? Acts 2, right? So would you say the church began then? Was there much discussion in any of the Bible up until that point about what the body of Christ was or is?

There was a reference to it, but you didn't know anything really about it. So I could say the faith that I'm talking about for Christianity starts in Acts 2 and goes to Revelation beginning in chapter 5. That's where it is. Why? Because that talks about us, the body of Christ. After Revelation 5, what are you talking about? Talking about future events, church has gone to heaven.

Romans is Christianity 101, the basics are there. Or I could say, the faith, and refer to a certain part of the truth like identification truths. The faith. I could do that. The example is, well on that block there are a bunch of homes. How about the home? I'm talking about a specific one.

The third one is the principle of faith. How do you define the principle of faith? What does the principle do? What is the principle? You engineers should know. What is the principle? It's like an operating system. It never changes. It never changes. It operates the same way every time. So the principle of faith is what? How does it work? What's the principle? We could say, well, it operates the same way every time. Well, what's the operational principle?

Belief. God reveals, we believe. Right? We believe. It's belief and rest in what God has revealed to us. And then personal faith, what would you say that is? What, you don't have any? It's what you do. It's my personal faith. What do I believe? What do I believe? Personal faith. And my personal faith in the things and the substance of God is what saves me.

We'll spend more time on that. We'll pick up on next time, 20, okay? Let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you. We thank you for... We thank you that you are God and that your ways are past finding out, that you are all of the... attributes that you are and that you have let us in to grow in you from now for all eternity. And the most important part of that is that you love us and that we can be loved by you and we're thankful for that. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.