The Holy Architect

[UNKNOWN]: Thank you for watching.

[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey everybody, welcome to First Free Church.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for being here today.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am really, really excited to get to share what we are going into today.

[SPEAKER_00]: If your new, my name is Adam and one of the pastors here, awesome time of worship this morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for singing out loud.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is just the worship leadership team you are the choir and the choir was in full force today.

[SPEAKER_00]: So good job.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are starting the first ever 10 year sermon series here at First Free Church.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let me explain what I mean by that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to walk through the statement of faith, which has 10 points and cover 1 point per week until we realize we probably need to go a little more in depth than that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so what we're going to do is have one series per year for the next 10 years where we cover one article of the statement of faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: So for the next four weeks, we're going to be talking about the first article in our statement of faith and diving into what all that means.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is about the theology of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I thought, well, wouldn't it be great this morning?

[SPEAKER_00]: if I give you a little chance to interact about this.

[SPEAKER_00]: So here's what I want you to do for the next minute.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to share with someone close to you the answer to this question.

[SPEAKER_00]: When you think about God, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?

[SPEAKER_00]: Go ahead and share.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I'm over here in lots of good conversations about God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anybody have an example?

[SPEAKER_00]: What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about God?

[SPEAKER_00]: Creation, creator, wow, good, good minds think like great.

[SPEAKER_00]: What else?

[SPEAKER_00]: Barbra's with him, that's so good.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's homemade, we cry, that's amazing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jim, that's amazing.

[SPEAKER_00]: What else?

[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think about God?

[SPEAKER_00]: Holy, yes, someone's been studying ahead.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we're going to talk about today.

[SPEAKER_00]: What else?

[SPEAKER_00]: Sovereignty, grace, what else?

[SPEAKER_00]: Peace, love, father, what else?

[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome, yes, is that Delaney?

[SPEAKER_00]: Good job, Everett.

[SPEAKER_00]: Scott, one, two, what do you got, Everett?

[SPEAKER_00]: What's that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Guy with the beard.

[SPEAKER_00]: I thought that's what I heard.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't sure if we were confused and was Santa Claus for a minute.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, both Supreme Beans with omniscience and, you know, just Santa only does it for children.

[SPEAKER_00]: So,

[SPEAKER_00]: When we think about God, there are lots of things that come to our mind, but our statement of faith at this church as part of the evangelical free churches of America actually outlines a very specific theology of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: The attributes that we believe that he has, the things that he has done, and it's what unites over 1600 churches across this country in a common theology of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there are lots of other beliefs that we may have differences of opinion on in different

[SPEAKER_00]: And we think it's good for us to all know what they are and understand where they come from, where are they in scripture.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, usually we preach through books of the Bible.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes we do topical series on specific topics that we think are important to dive into relationships and marriage and justice and things like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But this is going to be a sermon series about systematic theology.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to be doing kind of what you might expect to get in a seminary lecture.

[SPEAKER_00]: And because of that, it may come across a little more dry than usual.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we'll try to keep it interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't get me wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we're not going to have the natural flow that you get from working through a book of the Bible.

[SPEAKER_00]: or the natural flow that you get from a narrative that we get to preach through.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, if you're a note taker, that's gonna help you a lot in this.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, if you're younger, if you're a kid or a teenager, you may really benefit from taking notes in this because it's going to feel a little bit boring and dry and you may not always know where we're going, but I promise you, it is worth it because the things we will discuss are the foundation of everything we believe.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the foundation of everything else we have to start with God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what we believe about God and what He has done and who He is because everything else is built on that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this is so, so, so important.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now to give you some bearing for where we're going here.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you go to our website,

[SPEAKER_00]: And you look at our beliefs page.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are going to see our vision, our distinctive values.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you scroll down, you'll get to our theological values.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is a condensed summary of our statement of faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you scroll down even more and click the complete statement of faith, you'll see the whole thing there.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is our entire statement of faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: And for anyone who has watched our undivided series, I'm going to give you a little bit of context in where this fits in the buckets of belief.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of you have seen it, maybe some of you haven't.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've covered a couple of times here at the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you're going to be a member, you have to go through this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Go ahead and put the buckets of belief up there.

[SPEAKER_00]: So in the buckets of belief, you will find that our statement of faith goes in the doctrine bucket, but it also goes in the dogma bucket, some of it goes in dogma, and all of it goes in doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, these buckets are nested, so all of dogma is within all of doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you've been through the undivided series, you probably know exactly what we're talking about.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't, don't worry, just stick around because after Easter, we are going to cover the buckets of belief in a new series that will kind of go at it from a different angle and all of that will make sense then.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for those of you that understand the buckets, this is the core of our doctrine bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is our statement of faith?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the most important thing for us that goes in there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then some of the things we'll talk about in the statement of faith also go in that dogma.

[SPEAKER_00]: bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for now, we are going to focus on that first part of the statement of faith, article number one about God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the overview for the series over the next four weeks.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to see God as the holy architect, the loving community, the sovereign king and the gracious finisher.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to kick things off by having us read article one of the statement of faith together.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to put the whole thing about God on the screen.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not very long and I would ask that you read this with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Can we all read this together?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll read, but you read out loud with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: We believe in one God, creator of all things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Holy, infinitely perfect and eternally existing in a loving unity of three equally divine persons.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Having limitless knowledge and sovereign power, God has graciously purposeed from eternity to redeem a people for himself and to make all things new for his own glory.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is what we believe at first free church.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is what all of the evangelical free churches believe about God.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what exactly does it mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: Today, I want to explore God as the holy architect.

[SPEAKER_00]: What does it look like for us and what should it mean for us to look at a God who has created everything and what should our response to that be?

[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to take the first three little phrases in that statement of faith about God and study them together today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, throughout history, people have looked at the natural world around them and they've looked at the stars and they've looked at the events of their lives, the experiences that they have, and most people have concluded there's got to be something more.

[SPEAKER_00]: More recently, it's been popular at least in the Western society to think that maybe random chance has caused everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: But throughout history and for many people still today, there is this idea that there is a supernatural being or for many people, and especially throughout history, many supernatural beings that are beyond our comprehension, that are able to have powers and do things that we can't understand.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, maybe they're even fighting with each other, and that view that there are multiple spiritual beings that are all deities is called polytheism.

[SPEAKER_00]: and a lot of people throughout history and many people today have that view that there are multiple gods who are at work in the world and maybe sometimes they get along and sometimes they fight against each other and some of the things that we see that we can't explain or because of them interfering in our lives or because of them fighting with each other in some cases and this has been a prominent view that a lot of people have had throughout history.

[SPEAKER_00]: because they just look at the created world and they look at their lives and they think, okay, there's something else at work here.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just the material things that I see, there is some kind of spirit world outside of this.

[SPEAKER_00]: The interesting thing about that view polytheism.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that it's not that far off?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually based in a lot of truths.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually based in a lot of biblical truths.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we say in our statement of faith, that we believe in one God.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the Bible actually talks about many gods.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, in our study of Daniel two years ago, we talked about the many gods, the Bible talks, but we talked about it in Genesis last year, but we talked about the fact that God created spiritual beings gave them power and authority.

[SPEAKER_00]: God created spiritual beings in the Bible, sometimes called the sons of God, he assigned them to the nations, he assigned land to the nations, and he actually judged those spiritual beings for their failure to lead humans the right way.

[SPEAKER_00]: for their wickedness, their rejection of God in their leadership.

[SPEAKER_00]: We see this in Psalm 82.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a Psalm of ASAP.

[SPEAKER_00]: He wrote, God presides over heaven's court.

[SPEAKER_00]: He pronounces judgment on the heavenly beings.

[SPEAKER_00]: How long will you hand down unjust decisions by favoring the wicked?

[SPEAKER_00]: They wander about in darkness while the whole world is shaken to the core.

[SPEAKER_00]: I say, you are God's.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are all children of the most high, but you will die like mere mortals and fall like every other ruler.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so clearly, God is talking about beings that are not just mere mortals, because He's drawing a distinction.

[SPEAKER_00]: Between them who He says are gods, and their children of the most high, and yet they will die like mere mortals.

[SPEAKER_00]: Listen to what Isaiah says, Isaiah 24, in that day, the Lord will punish the gods in the heavens, and the proud rulers of the nations on earth, they will be rounded up and put in prison, they will be shut up in prison and will finally be punished.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the Psalms and Isaiah both tell us there are multiple gods.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's going on here?

[SPEAKER_00]: We believe in one God.

[SPEAKER_00]: We'll Paul kind of clear some of it up for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says in Ephesians 6, for we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers.

[SPEAKER_00]: And authorities of the unseen world against mighty powers in this dark world and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are some religious groups that read the Bible and read these passage about multiple gods and conclude that there are multiple gods and God is just one of many gods.

[SPEAKER_00]: their confusion is based on a misunderstanding of how we translate that word, God and God's.

[SPEAKER_00]: So in order for us to understand what we believe about God and in order for us to understand the idea of there being one God, we have to make sense of these passages that say, there are multiple gods, why is that?

[SPEAKER_00]: We've got to go back to the language.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the language is Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: Elohim is a word that means spirit beans or spirit rulers, spirit powers.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is used throughout Scripture to refer to Yahweh, and sometimes it refers just to God as Elohim, sometimes the Bible refers to him as Yahweh Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's used to refer to the sons of God and the divine counsel, the heaven's court as Psalm 82 says.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's used to refer to the gods of other nations.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's also used to refer to demons, it's used to refer to angels, it's used to refer to the angel of the Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: And even the disembodied dead, and so people who are now dead and their spirit is separate from the body are even referred to in one instance in the Bible in Samuel as Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just to give you one example, here the gods of Moab and Amin are called Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is in first kings.

[SPEAKER_00]: On the Mount of Olive's east of Jerusalem, he even built a pagan shrine for Kamoosh, the detestable god of Moab, and another from Molek, the detestable god of the Aminites.

[SPEAKER_00]: Solomon built such shrines for all his foreign wives to use for burning incense and sacrificing to their Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people today and Christian circles who've grown up and learned a lot, we feel that Elohim refers to God, maybe it's a name for God, but it is not.

[SPEAKER_00]: Elohim is actually a word that means spirit beans or spirit rulers.

[SPEAKER_00]: It can be used in both ways, and the idea in scripture when it's talking about these other gods is not that they are man-made fictions.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are beans of the spiritual world that have some influence, some authority, some power in some way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, there might be all sorts of lore made up about them that humans have come up with.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, the way humans talk about them and every individual name for them may not refer to an actual spiritual being.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the idea here is not that these are just idols that are man-made, not that these are fictions that are man-made.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there are actual spiritual beings that Paul talked about in the New Testament as spiritual forces that are unseen to us, but that are at work in the spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: world.

[SPEAKER_00]: There were many Elohim, but God is above them all.

[SPEAKER_00]: God is unique.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is one of one.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is Elohim because He is a spirit being, but He is not like the other Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: But just being spirit means he would get the word Elohim applied him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the word that we translate as God or gods.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's why you find places where it says, God Elohim referring to Yahweh and other places where it says, Elohim referring to just spirit beings that God created.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is unique among the Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is the creator of all the other Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, of course, we are also spirit, but we are spirit and material.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're a hybrid.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're a hybrid of spirit and material, but God has spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, Jesus told the Samaritan woman, God has spirit, and so you should worship him in spirit and in.

[SPEAKER_00]: Truth, you know how to fill that it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Moses writes about God as being an Elohim of other Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: But here's how he puts it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look, the highest heavens and the earth.

[SPEAKER_00]: And everything in it all belong to the Lord your God.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the Yahweh, your Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's Yahweh, that's his name, your Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: For the Yahweh, your Elohim is the Elohim of Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: or the Elohim of Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is the God of God's and Lord of Lords at a day of Adonine.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is the God, the great God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's just L, but it's just the shorthand for Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is the great L, the mighty and awesome L. So he's different from all those other Elohim, who shows no partiality and cannot be bribed, but be careful.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't let your heart be deceived so that you turn away from the Lord, Yahweh, and serve and worship other

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's important that we understand what this word Elohim means and how it's used in Scripture or we can come to some wrong conclusions.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we read the English version and see, there's God and there's God's and how do we make sense of all of this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Elohim refers to the Spirit means, God is Spirit, but He is the Spirit that created everything else.

[SPEAKER_00]: This message of Moses here in Deuteronomy is so important to him because this is the message that he gives to the people of Israel as they're about to enter the Promised Land.

[SPEAKER_00]: They came out of Egypt 40 years ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: They had the opportunity to go into the Promised Land and they turned it down.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so God said, every adult that's alive right now will not be alive by the time you are able to go into the Promised Land.

[SPEAKER_00]: Over those 40 years, they wander in the wilderness.

[SPEAKER_00]: The kids who were children when they came out of Egypt have now grown up, they're the adults now.

[SPEAKER_00]: They have kids of their own now.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Moses is talking with him and he's sharing with them the most important message he has.

[SPEAKER_00]: because back in Egypt, multiple gods were worshiped.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in the land they're about to go into, the other people who are there worshiped multiple different gods, not all made up fiction, actual spirits, beings who are at work in the world and who love wickedness and who favor the wicked Psalm 82 says.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Moses wants them to know you are not to follow after them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Your Elohim, Yahweh, your Elohim is greater than all those other ones.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do not be tempted, he says, be careful.

[SPEAKER_00]: You'll let your heart be deceived so that you turn away from Yahweh and follow other Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, the Bible tells us that all the mythological heroes and the gods and the goddesses that we know of as just fun fictional characters today actually trace their roots back to these other Elohim, back to the sons of God, the heavenly beings that God created because they interacted with humans.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that interaction led to the myths.

[SPEAKER_00]: Moses says this, we covered this last year, it led to the myths of all the heroes and the gods and the goddesses that became lore in the Canaanites and the Aminites, and then we can trace literally back from the Roman and Greek gods and goddesses back to those early legends from the Canaanites and Aminites.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's enough similarity between all their stories.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Moses says that all traced back to those Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when you watch Hercules today, just think about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: that you are actually watching the evolution of what happened with those sons of God way back then to now becoming just a fun kid story today.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Hercules.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just saying that now you know where it comes from.

[SPEAKER_00]: But our Elohim, Yahweh Elohim is not like those others.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's not like the sons of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's not like the other Elohim that people worship.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is one of a kind.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's the

[SPEAKER_00]: One, big G, God, even though we acknowledge that there are other Spirit beings that have power and authority that are also called gods in Scripture because that's actually a generic term Elohim that's used for Spirit beings.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are some religious groups.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's worth covering just briefly here.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are some religious groups that believe that we should only refer to God as Yahweh.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because in their view, God is actually a pagan term that we shouldn't use to refer to God and his name is Yahweh, so she'd only call him Yahweh.

[SPEAKER_00]: The problem with that is that we translate into God as Elohim and Elohim is used in Scripture 2,500 times for the one true God.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's used 250 times for the other Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: So even just that generic term of Elohim in the Hebrew is mostly used for the one true God, sometimes it's applied in these other instances.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think it's absolutely fine for us to use the word God to refer to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's just in our common language today that's what we do.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not too many of us are throwing the word Yahweh out a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's fine to do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's fine to use that name.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is another group.

[SPEAKER_00]: of religious people that believe that we should only refer to God as Jehovah, that that's his property.

[SPEAKER_00]: The problem with that is that actually stems from a mis-translation of Yahweh, where in the Middle Ages scholars who did not understand Hebrew well enough merge the words Yahweh and Adonai together, and they took the vowels from one of the constants from another, and they created this term Jehovah, which if you go from the Latin and the English, the Y becomes a J.

[SPEAKER_00]: and you end up with Jehovah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so all the people who believe that you're supposed to only call God Jehovah are just misunderstanding because of a mis-translation that happened in the middle ages when the Bible is translated from Latin into English.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whether you call him Yahweh or God or Jehovah, I don't think any of those are a problem or wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's what you mean in your heart that matters the most about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's more important.

[SPEAKER_00]: is that you have in your mind, he is the one true Creator God, the Supreme Being, the Elohim of Elohim who's above all the others, even though yes, there are other spiritual beings.

[SPEAKER_00]: And whatever power and authority they have, it comes from the one true God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's check back in our statement of faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: Go ahead and put the statement of faith back on the screen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, we've covered two words.

[SPEAKER_00]: One and God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't worry, we're not gonna do the whole thing today.

[SPEAKER_00]: The next phrase I want to look at is creator of all things.

[SPEAKER_00]: God is the creator.

[SPEAKER_00]: of all things.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's the master planner.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is the grand architect.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's a designer.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's a builder.

[SPEAKER_00]: One look at the intricacies of the universe, and it makes it clear that there is some intelligent mind that's behind all of this.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we look at our world and our universe, we don't find a collection of accidents, but we find a masterpiece of

[SPEAKER_00]: where all of the laws of physics are on a razor's edge just to keep the stars and the galaxies existing like they do to the microscopic level with cells and cellular division, all the things that they form to create the human body.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's clear that there is design here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Cosmos means order, and we live in an ordered universe.

[SPEAKER_00]: Think about DNA and this incredible network of information, this digital code that is so advanced and we barely understand it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's got the building blocks for life or the distance between the sun and the earth, how we're not too close to burn, not too far to freeze.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even if you look at the water system and how you have the symbiotic relationship between the rain and the plants

[SPEAKER_00]: all of the celestial machinery that exists in this world.

[SPEAKER_00]: The way everything is put together, it is so finely tuned and so delicately balanced and so interdependent.

[SPEAKER_00]: that we don't believe it could have happened by chance.

[SPEAKER_00]: It could not have been an accident.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are the fingerprints of an intelligent designer all over this.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, this is exactly what the Bible tells us we should expect.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Bible says we should be able to look at all the things around us in the world and know there's something greater than us that's behind all of this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Psalm 19 says,

[SPEAKER_00]: The heavens proclaim the glory of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: The skies display His craftsmanship.

[SPEAKER_00]: They speak without a sound or word their voice is never heard yet their message has gone throughout the earth and their words to all the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: God has made a home in the heavens for the sun.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's behind all of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Isaiah says to whom will you compare me, who is my equal asks the Holy One?

[SPEAKER_00]: Look up into the heavens.

[SPEAKER_00]: Who created all the stars?

[SPEAKER_00]: He brings them out like an army.

[SPEAKER_00]: One after another, you think about the stars appearing at night and just showing up like a heavenly army.

[SPEAKER_00]: One after another, calling each by its name.

[SPEAKER_00]: God not only created them all, he has a unique identifier for each of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's got a spiritual database that keeps track of all this stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because of his great power and incomparable strength, not a single one is missing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul says in Romans, for ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky.

[SPEAKER_00]: Through everything God made, they can clearly see His invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

[SPEAKER_00]: The idea here is that we should be able to look up into the stars, look around us, look at the mountains, look at everything that's created, look at the intricacies, the things that we just barely understand.

[SPEAKER_00]: and say, wow, there is something intelligent behind all of this.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you look at a house, even a simple house, no one thinks, well, give it enough time, and that's just going to appear like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, we think, wow, someone had to construct that and put that together, because it all fits in certain ways that are interdependent and relies on each other, and it can't take too long or else.

[SPEAKER_00]: None of it would exist like it does.

[SPEAKER_00]: It has to be put together by someone who had intentionality behind it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you,

[SPEAKER_00]: And the chair you're sitting on right now, and the building that we're in, and the world that we're in all required intelligent design to make it happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the building blocks of the universe are infinitely more complex and difficult to put together than a simple home that we might live in.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've probably at some point gone to a very remote place like a national park or a desert or somewhere away from the city, away from light pollution and looked up in the sky and just seen the stars.

[SPEAKER_00]: Few years ago my wife and I went to Northern Washington State and we went to a national park there which was way out in a remote area, went up on a mountain, got to see the stars.

[SPEAKER_00]: You look up at night and even with your bare eyes, you could see the Milky Way galaxy.

[SPEAKER_00]: You could see all sorts of things that we would never catch a glimpse of here.

[SPEAKER_00]: and it's just amazing, it's awe-inspiring, it's epic or if you've ever been to the Grand Canyon, seeing it with your eyes, pictures don't do it justice or up into the mountains, hiking in the mountains, you look around and you just see this glory that's all around you and it gives you this sense of, wow, I am small and there's something bigger than me and the Bible tells us, yeah, that's exactly what you should expect and the appropriate response you should have to

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul tells us that is what shows you the invisible qualities of your Creator.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so no one has an excuse for not believing that there is a higher power that is behind all of this.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's amazing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's too intricate to be made by chances, too interdependent to have emerged from chaos.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is an ordered cosmos, which is redundant.

[SPEAKER_00]: Cosmos means it is ordered.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's an ordered plan.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we believe that there's one God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we believe that he's the creator of all things.

[SPEAKER_00]: We see that in scripture and all around us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's look at one more aspect of our theology of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: We believe in one God, creator of all things,

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, Holy is a word that means set apart, separated.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what Holy literally means.

[SPEAKER_00]: And God is separated from us and from others in a lot of ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is transcendent and above us in every way.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is separate from us in power.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is omnipotent.

[SPEAKER_00]: He has all the potent.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is all power that we don't have.

[SPEAKER_00]: And others don't have.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's separate for us in knowledge.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is omniscient.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is all the science.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is all the knowledge that we don't have.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is separate from evil, the very existence of evil is based on what is contrary to God in his character.

[SPEAKER_00]: So he is perfectly moral and righteous in everything that he does.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what Moses said in Exodus.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, who is like you among the gods, O Lord?

[SPEAKER_00]: And there it is again.

[SPEAKER_00]: Who is like you among the Elohim, O Lord, the Spirit Beans that you've created?

[SPEAKER_00]: Glorious and holiness.

[SPEAKER_00]: awesome and splendor performing great wonders.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is completely different, set apart, unlike the others.

[SPEAKER_00]: Isaiah says, but the Lord of Heaven's armies will be exalted by his justice.

[SPEAKER_00]: The holiness of God, the separateness, the uniqueness of God will be displayed by his righteousness.

[SPEAKER_00]: God is set apart in His morality and His righteousness.

[SPEAKER_00]: But God has also set apart in His quality.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just that He does no wrong, it's that He has no wrong in Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: He has no flaws.

[SPEAKER_00]: He Himself is holy and infinitely perfect.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, He is the objective standard by which everything else gets judged.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's the only objective standard that we could have.

[SPEAKER_00]: James tells us in James 4, God alone who gave the law is the judge.

[SPEAKER_00]: He alone has the power to save or to destroy so what right do you have to judge your neighbor?

[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, you don't get to pick and choose what is right and wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: If we all got to pick and choose what was right and wrong, if it's all up to us, if everybody can just do what's right in their own eyes and determine their own morality, which is a fairly popular view these days, then it's going to lead to chaos, which is exactly what happens.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it, James, told us, no, no, no, God is the standard.

[SPEAKER_00]: He alone is the judge.

[SPEAKER_00]: The standard bearer who has the right to determine what is right and wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't get to choose for you or anyone else.

[SPEAKER_00]: What is right and wrong?

[SPEAKER_00]: He is holy.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is set apart.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is perfect in quality and everything he does.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so he is the standard by which everything we do must be judged.

[SPEAKER_00]: Holy and infinitely perfect.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is going to be a bit of a jump a stick with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: French Revolution.

[SPEAKER_00]: At the end of the French Revolution, they realize we need something that is going to keep us united in what we do so that now it just doesn't turn into disordered chaos.

[SPEAKER_00]: We do not have a government in place that was there before to kind of tell us what to do and what not to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we need some standards that everyone can appeal to an agree on and say, okay, we're all going to follow those standards so that we don't end up with different measurements here and there and disagreements and people cheating each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's a common practice in the marketplaces for dishonest scales.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Bible even talks about that, dishonest lengths of measurement.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and you say you're getting 40 qubits and really your qubits stick.

[SPEAKER_00]: You shorten it off a little bit, give a little less.

[SPEAKER_00]: What the French government, the new French government did, is they established a new unit of measurement called the meter.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they did something really smart.

[SPEAKER_00]: They said, we don't want the meter to be based on like a part of your body, which was often how measurements were done by the hands, by the forearm, that kind of a thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: We want the unit of measurement to be based on something in the natural world that is unchanging.

[SPEAKER_00]: So here's what they did.

[SPEAKER_00]: Super smart people.

[SPEAKER_00]: They calculated the difference between the North Pole and the equator.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have no idea how they did that.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can look at a blader if you're curious.

[SPEAKER_00]: Somehow they calculated it and they said,

[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to take a unit that equals a 10 millionth of the difference between the north pole and the equator, and that's going to be the meter.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so for a long time, for many, many years, that was the standard of the meter.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, since then, more accurate measurements have been calculated in the meters actually a little different today.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what they did is they said, we need some way to have an objective standard that everyone can appeal to to know we're all working off the same measurement.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can't have different standards of measurement here.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they forged one solid platinum rod.

[SPEAKER_00]: that was exactly one 10 millionth of the difference between the equator and the North Pole.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they stuck that platinum rod in a vault in France.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then a deep, dark vault where nobody could get to it and whether it could impact it and sun couldn't shine on it and people couldn't touch it or mess with it and it couldn't erode or degrade or anything like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: They said, that's where we're gonna keep our ultimate standard of measurement for what the meter is.

[SPEAKER_00]: But of course, we need a way for people to be able to reference that standard of measurement.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, they created 16 marble bars.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they measured them by the platinum rod.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they put those 16 marble bars all over Paris.

[SPEAKER_00]: If there was ever a question of being cheated, if you thought that you weren't getting enough fabric as you were supposed to get, and you thought that maybe his measurement stick for the meter was wrong, you could say, we're going to hop over to that street, and we're going to check that marble rod that's up on the building there, and we're going to see if your measurement stick is right.

[SPEAKER_00]: They recognize that you have to have some objective standard to judge against, in fact, you have to replicate that objective standard, so more people have access to it, and that is exactly what God is for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: God is our Platinum rod.

[SPEAKER_00]: God is our objective standard that's not supposed to change that we could always reference and go back to butt.

[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, we all need access to understand how long is that Platinum rod?

[SPEAKER_00]: What are we dealing here?

[SPEAKER_00]: What are the measurements here?

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why we have his word.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's why he gave us the marble rods in the form of scripture so that we can share that and pass that around all though, we're going off the same objective standard.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now today, people have a love-hate relationship with the objective standard that they inherently know as there.

[SPEAKER_00]: See, everybody understands that there's something of a moral standard at work here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody knows that they don't want somebody to steal from them.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, they feel like other people should probably feel the same way.

[SPEAKER_00]: They think that other people should have the same objective standard of morality that it's wrong to steal from them.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's wrong to hurt them.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's wrong to cheat them.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's wrong to betray them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we want other people to have commonality in that standard.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we recognize that somehow outside of us, there is this objective standard of morality that we don't just get to make up the rules.

[SPEAKER_00]: Put on the other hand.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes we don't like that objective standard.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes we don't like the morality that God has put before us.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't like the marble rod that we can walk up to and read and scripture and see where he says, oh, you're not supposed to do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're not supposed to gossip and you're not supposed to lie and you're not supposed to cheat.

[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes we're like, but I wanna do those things.

[SPEAKER_00]: So at the same time, paradoxically, everyone in the world has a bit of a love-hate relationship with that objective standard that God has set before us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because we recognize there are certain things we all want to agree, yeah, it's wrong to kill unjustly, it's wrong to hurt people, it's wrong to cheat, it's wrong to do this things.

[SPEAKER_00]: I certainly don't want them done to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want them done to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then other aspects of that standard, we like to throw away.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't like to follow.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we all have this sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: of there being a moral standard that we need to follow in our lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: We just have to learn to live in submission to the objective standard that God has for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, God has passed down to us through his word, those marble rods, the standards that he expects us to live by if we want to follow his objective standard for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we believe in one God, creator of all things,

[SPEAKER_00]: Holy and infinitely perfect, and therefore he is our standard.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what do we do with that?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's great to learn about God, it's great to know more about Him and His attribution, His qualities, and to maybe dive into the theology a little bit, but what does that mean for our life?

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of my teaching today has actually been from Moses, because he says a lot about this to the people of Israel, and his teaching is remarkably relevant for us today.

[SPEAKER_00]: The things he told the Israelites, as they were coming out of Egypt and preparing to go into the Promised Land, could easily be, you tweak a few words and it applies perfectly to you in me today, especially because he teaches them about God and his nature and the Elohim of Elohim and the other Elohim and how not to follow them, and then he says, because of that,

[SPEAKER_00]: Because of everything you believe feel logically, that should impact the way you live.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, this is not a dry academic study.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not a while that's fascinating to learn all log that away and then never do anything with it again.

[SPEAKER_00]: It has to impact how you live, but how.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Moses tells us how.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to read an expanded selection from Deuteronomy 10 and 11.

[SPEAKER_00]: I read a few verses earlier.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to read an expanded selection.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're not going to put it on the screens.

[SPEAKER_00]: What I want you to do is imagine you're there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine you are one of these two groups, maybe preferably the second group, but I'll let you pick.

[SPEAKER_00]: One group of people were kids when they came out of Egypt and they were not under the curse because they were not adult.

[SPEAKER_00]: They did not reject going to the Promised Land.

[SPEAKER_00]: Their parents have all died off now and they're now the adults.

[SPEAKER_00]: But they've witnessed the miracles of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: They've seen incredible things that they've also witnessed the judgment of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: They have evidence of Yahweh

[SPEAKER_00]: That's one group.

[SPEAKER_00]: The other group, the second group, is their children.

[SPEAKER_00]: Their children have grown up in the wilderness.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's been 40 years in the wilderness.

[SPEAKER_00]: So all of the kids now did not experience cross in the Red Sea.

[SPEAKER_00]: They did not experience the plagues.

[SPEAKER_00]: They did not experience the discipline in the judgment of God that happened early on in that wilderness wandering.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they don't have the benefit of seeing it firsthand.

[SPEAKER_00]: So a picture yourself is one of those two groups and you're now all sitting around by the thousands.

[SPEAKER_00]: Listening to Moses as he delivers this and probably other messengers are then carrying that on and repeating that for others and then eventually Moses writes it all down so that it gets shared with everybody.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they all get to hear his wisdom before they go into the promised land.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can close your eyes if you want and just imagine it, you can do whatever you want but just listen to magic and you're in that crowd in one of those groups.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what Moses says.

[SPEAKER_00]: What does the Lord your God?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yahweh, your Elohim, require of you.

[SPEAKER_00]: He requires only that you fear the Lord your God and live in a way that pleases Him and love Him and serve Him with all your heart and soul.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you must always obey the Lord's commands and decrees that I am given you today.

[SPEAKER_00]: For your own good, look the highest heavens and the earth and everything in it all belong to the Lord your God.

[SPEAKER_00]: change your hearts and stop being stubborn.

[SPEAKER_00]: For the Lord, your God is the God of God's and the Lord of Lords.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is the great God, the mighty and awesome God who shows no partiality and cannot be brought.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is the objective standard.

[SPEAKER_00]: He alone is your God.

[SPEAKER_00]: The only one who is worthy of your praise, the one who has done these mighty miracles that you have seen with your own eyes.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's to group number one.

[SPEAKER_00]: You must love the Lord your God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And always obey His requirements to crees, regulations and commands, keep in mind that I am not talking now to your children.

[SPEAKER_00]: who have never experienced the discipline of the Lord your God or seen His greatness and His strong hand and powerful arm.

[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't see the miraculous signs and wonders He performed in Egypt against Pharaoh and all His land.

[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't see what the Lord did to the armies of Egypt and to their horses and chariots.

[SPEAKER_00]: How He drowned them in the Red Sea as they were chasing you.

[SPEAKER_00]: He destroyed them and they have not recovered to this very day.

[SPEAKER_00]: Your children didn't see how the Lord cared for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the wilderness until you arrived here.

[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't see what he did to Dafton and Abairam, the sons of Aliab, a descendant of Rubin, when the earth opened its mouth, and the Israelites camp and swallowed them, along with their household intents and every living creature that belonged to them.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you have seen the Lord perform all these mighty deeds with your own eyes, therefore be careful.

[SPEAKER_00]: to obey every command I'm giving you today.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you may have strength to go in and take over the land you are about to enter.

[SPEAKER_00]: But be careful, don't let your heart be deceived so that you turn away from the Lord and serve and worship other gods, other Elohim.

[SPEAKER_00]: So commit yourselves, wholeheartedly to these words of mine, tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders, teach them to your children.

[SPEAKER_00]: Talk about them when you were at home and when you were on the road, when you're going to bed, and when you're getting up, write them on the door post of your house and on your gate so it as long as the sky remains above the earth, you and your children may flourish in the land of the Lord, sword to give to your ancestors.

[SPEAKER_00]: Be careful to obey all these commands I'm giving you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Show love to the Lord your God by walking in His ways and holding tightly to Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Moses messaged to the Israelites while explaining theology of God to them was to say this should cause you to serve.

[SPEAKER_00]: This should cause you to love.

[SPEAKER_00]: This should cause you to obey.

[SPEAKER_00]: This should cause you to be committed to him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what you need to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: You need to remember the fact you need to recognize the fact that your kids as he's talking to the adults did not experience all of this firsthand.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you've got to pass it on.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to write it down.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to saturate your life with the commands of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's got to be all over the place.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, on the back of your hand and on your forehead, it's got to be on your doorposts.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure that Moses literally meant, hey, make sure you put scripture in all those places and then you can check that box.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's more of the idea of it's got to be everywhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's got to saturate and fill your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to be in his word every single day.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's got to be the foundation of everything you do.

[SPEAKER_00]: We talked about that a week ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: God has to be the foundation for everything, because He is the foundation for everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: We just don't always recognize it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we go about and we live our lives, we have our jobs, we have our hobbies, we have the things that keep us busy and interest us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And some of those are wonderful and good things, but when they take priority over God, when they come first before God, as Marty told us before last week, that's when we get in trouble.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so Moses says, as a result of who God is, as a result of this theology that you believe, don't let it just be head knowledge.

[SPEAKER_00]: but it saturates every aspect of your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And pass it on to your children because they didn't get to see all those miraculous things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now which group do you most identify with?

[SPEAKER_00]: I identify with the kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't get to see Jesus turn water into wine.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't get to see God raise anybody from the dead.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't get to see a lot of them miraculous things that happen in Scripture.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm like the kids, they didn't get to witness it all personally, but it's been handed down to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've never seen the Platinum Rod, but I've seen the marble rods.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen God's word.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen the things that have been handed down to me that show me there's an objective standard here that comes from the one God who is holy and perfect the creator of all things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And based on that knowledge that has been handed down to me, I need to live my life differently.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus told Thomas, you believe because you have seen blesser those who believe even though they haven't seen.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's you and me.

[SPEAKER_00]: We haven't seen all the miraculous things.

[SPEAKER_00]: The ones that God did with the children of Israel, the ones that God did during the life of Jesus, but it's been handed down to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have the evidence of that standard in front of us.

[SPEAKER_00]: The question is will we live according to it?

[SPEAKER_00]: Will we strive to follow the commands and the teachings of God in everything we do?

[SPEAKER_00]: but this impacts your life tomorrow.

[SPEAKER_00]: This impacts how you live on Wednesday, this impacts how you interact with your co-workers and the students that you're around and the people that you meet as you go out and about.

[SPEAKER_00]: You live your life in a different way.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have a phrase here that's one of our distinct values.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is the difference.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is he the difference everywhere you go?

[SPEAKER_00]: And everything you do because God has so saturated in your life that you're a different person because of him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Constantly surrendering more of that old self to him.

[SPEAKER_00]: and putting on the new clothes as Paul says of the new self.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is the appropriate response to the God of the universe.

[SPEAKER_00]: The one God, the one big G God who was holy, who was the creator of all things, who was infinitely perfect.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the challenge for you and me today.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to invite you now to just bow your heads with me and spend a moment in prayer with your heavenly Father.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you haven't been doing this all that greatly.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe this is a time where the Holy Spirit is challenging you to get back on track, to make God the foundation for everything that you do, to saturate your life with His Word, with His standards.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you don't even know God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you're not familiar with Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you don't have a relationship with Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is your time to get right with Him to admit that you're a sinful person who's rebelled against God and you need His salvation in your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you ask him to change your life and make you a new person, make you part of his family and forgive you for your sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: If that's you when this is over, we'll have a prayer team up here who would love to talk with you about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Answer any questions you have and pray with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Help you become a child of God, part of his family.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for everyone, the challenge for us is will we strive for God standard for us?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what Moses called the children of Israel too.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we are being called to today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Heavenly Father, you have given us all we need to live a life of Godliness.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have the standard that's been passed down to us from you are holy, perfect God.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Lord, we fail so often, I fail so often.

[SPEAKER_00]: I failed this week.

[SPEAKER_00]: We fail to live up to everything you have called us to.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so Lord, again and again, we must come before you and humbly confess our sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: Confess that we're not perfect, but we have a perfect God who's on our side.

[SPEAKER_00]: who forgives, who promises to forgive when we confessors.

[SPEAKER_00]: Who's made us a part of his family so that we can have eternal hope with you and one day we won't have to worry about anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be perfect as you are perfect, you said.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for now, Lord, I pray that you would bring to our minds those things that we need to turn over to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Where we have not been living up to your standard, God.

[SPEAKER_00]: help us to be a people that is always checking against your word, that has sat in our lives with your words, that everything we do is just built on you and what you have taught us.

[SPEAKER_00]: We thank you in advance for what you're going to do in our lives as we go from here as we grow spiritually, as we have conversations about this and talk with each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: It just continue to get better and better because if you and because of your people, that's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.