In this sermon, the preacher begins by referencing a passage from the Bible where the speaker is beaten and bruised by watchmen. The preacher then relates this story to the concept of Jesus knocking on the door of the church and the individual Christian. He emphasizes the importance of being awestruck by Jesus and lays a foundation of theology and systematic understanding. The preacher also mentions the testimony of David being a man after God's own heart and shares a story about a young man who is stood up by his girlfriend. The sermon concludes with a discussion about the concept of freedom and how it is tested in a hypothetical scenario.

For more messages by Glenn Meldrum and his Presence Ministries, go to www.ihpministry.com. You are welcome to make additional copies of this CD for free distribution. This evening I want to look at the beauty of God and examine what the beauty of God is and how that is to affect our lives. I'll deliver this message kind of in two halves. The first half, I'm going to deal with some theology, and I'll do my best not to bore you with it. And theology is not a cuss word. It's just two Latin words put together, theos, which is God, and ology, which is study. So it's just a study of God. And when you pick up your Bible and you read it, you're doing some theology, or you sit down and fellowship with one another and you're doing some theology as you talk about Jesus. It may not be formal, systematic theology that you get in a seminary situation, but you do theology every time you sit and you study God's Word in one way or the other. And we're going to look at a little bit of theology, and I'm going to do a little bit of systematic, but I'll do my best not to bore you with it. And there's a reason for it. And so bear with me as I lay this foundation. It'll take about half the message for me to lay this foundation. And there's a purpose. There's something I really want to say, but it's going to take me time to get there and to lay that foundation. So as we look at this, in the second part of the message, we'll turn the Scriptures together. I will touch on a couple of verses in the beginning here, but we'll turn together and look at some Scriptures together a little bit further in the message. David was a man after God's own heart. What a phenomenal testimony. I mean, that was God's testimony of the man, a man after God's own heart. I can't imagine a much better testimony that an individual could have. Maybe Stephen's a man full of faith and full of the Holy Ghost. That's a pretty good testimony. And here's a verse that defines David. It comes out of Psalms 27.4. He says, One thing I have desired of the Lord, that I will seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple. Here's the king of Israel saying there's one thing he desired. Not the defeat of his enemies, not greater wealth, not greater boundaries to his kingdom. That there was only one thing that he wanted. Only one thing that he really desired. The others were part of his life as a king and the ministry he had as a king and so on. But there was one thing that moved and motivated the man. One thing that defined him. And he says that he wanted to be able to inquire of the Lord and to behold His beauty. And you find the tenderness of the heart of David come out time and again in the Psalms. And then you find the heart of David manifested in the Psalms of Asaph. And some of the Psalms of Asaph are just wonderful in desire and yearning for God, panting after God, desiring to behold His beauty. There's a beauty of God that we haven't even scratched the surface of. I mean, whatever we could imagine as human beings on this planet does not even come close to the beauty of who He is. When we walk through them pearly gates, we're not going to care about the streets we walk on or the mansion that's waiting for us. They're going to be irrelevant things. When we walk them pearly gates, it's not going to be whether we see grandma or grandpa or husband or wife or children or whatever. Those will be important. There will be one thing when we walk through them pearly gates that will literally consume us, consume our hearts, consume our minds, consume our passion, consume everything. The most beautiful thing that we could ever gaze upon will be before us and it will be Him who's seated on the throne. We don't understand the beauty of God. And if we did understand it a bit on this planet, I guarantee you it would change our Christianity. One thing I desire. We do have a problem. Paul brought it out in Corinthians 13, we see through a glass starkly. We don't see Him clearly and when you get into the Greek there, it has the idea rather than a glass that you're looking through, it's more the concept of looking into an ancient mirror. An ancient mirror was just this polished brass and all you would see is this image that was not clear or perfect because they were unable to make it like our mirrors are today. And all we can do is see this form of God, this idea, this concept that He's revealed to us, but yet it's so vague, it's so difficult for us to grab hold of. Job ended up saying God passes us by now one way and now another, though man does not perceive it. And in another place in Job it says God speaks now and again, though man doesn't hear it. There's a God that communicates and is revealing Himself constantly, but the blindness, the veil between us and God is so thick, especially those who are not Christian. They cannot see Him. They cannot understand Him because the veil is so thick they have no concept of it. And in Christ, the veil has been rent. We can see through the veil. We can see His form. But that's all we see is His form, unless of course He runs the heavens, unless of course He rips them open and for a time He comes down in the beauty of His splendor and all of a sudden we get this overwhelming sense of who He is. We see Him as we never saw Him before and He breaks into our world in a way that can even terrify us, that can even terrify us. Isaiah made a statement in the 40th chapter of Isaiah in the 18th verse, and I'll just read it to you. He said, to whom then will you compare God? And what image will you compare Him to? Who can you compare God to? You see, you go back in time, and it's not necessarily back in time, you go to other parts of the world, and not necessarily in other parts of the world, it can be in our own country now because we know this is not a Christian country. And so there's people that have multiple gods that believe in all kinds of things right now. But let's go back in time to the Romans. The Romans believed in what was called their pantheon of gods. Their whole array of gods, Zeus and Ares and all the names that they had to them. And what was interesting about Rome is every country that Rome would conquer, this was part of the genius of Rome. I'm not saying it was a good thing, but it's what they did and it helped advance Rome and keep a certain amount of peace with it. Every kingdom they conquered, they incorporated their gods into their pantheon of gods. So the people that they conquered, their gods became part of Rome, and then they accepted the Roman gods. Just added a few more gods to it all. They had their whole array of it. And so they could say, well, Zeus is like, Ares is like, this god is like their god, because all their gods were, were men in essence, and women with supernatural power. They lusted, they hated, they warred, they had all the problems that man has. All of them, they just had supernatural powers. They were just like you and me. A problem we have is that, what reference point do I have to God? Now imagine if God is silent. If He does not speak, if He does not reveal Himself, what can we do? Can we go and shake our fist in His face and say, you will? Who could make God? Who could say, you must show yourself to me? God is not obligated to man. He is not bound to man. He does not have to do anything that man says. Man cannot say the name Jesus, and all of a sudden, Jesus jumps to attention as if He was a slave. He is the Almighty God. He is sovereign. He needs nobody. And we'll look at that as we begin to look at some attributes of God. What reference point do we have? We have no reference point, other than what God has given us. Apart from the reference point that He gives us, apart from God's self-disclosure, we will make gods up in our own image. And then sometimes we will become so base, we will make gods up in the image of animals and bugs. And then we'll even get baser and make them in the image of demons. But left to ourselves, we will make gods at least in the image of man. When you look at every philosophy on this planet, they are no greater than the minds that conceive them. I don't care how brilliant the man is, or the woman is that sat down and wrote the philosophy, it is no greater than the mind that conceived it. That's all the bigger it is. My wife and I were in northern Wisconsin ministering, and we took a day and went to one of these quaint little towns. It was on Lake Superior shoreline, and it was one of them artsy little towns. And sometimes those artsy little towns become towns of liberalism, because I don't know why the two sometimes go together, but they do. And we walked into this one little shop that was a used bookstore, and sometimes in those little used bookstores you can find some real treasure. But it was all kinds of New Age and all kinds of junk in there. And so I went up there and started talking to the man, and he spoke about the aspect that he was a Lutheran that had now an experience, so he's no longer Christian. He had an experience with a different God. That's a terrifying thing. Do you realize the devil's giving experiences out there? In New Age he's giving experiences. In Satanism he's giving experiences. Through witchcraft there's experiences out there. The devil's giving experiences. And the church, because she's powerless, has nothing to offer that can say, here is a living God. He left Lutheranism because it had nothing to offer him. And he went to another religion, and he ended up saying that he had an experience that was overwhelming. And as I talked to him, the whole concept of his idea was that he was God. And I just went to him and I said, I pity you because you make a pretty poor God. He's a pretty sad God. He looks in the mirror and says, this is all the bigger God is. This is all the greater He is. I look at Him and I see Him and that's it. But that's what a man does. That's what an unsaved person will do. That's all they got. That's all they got is what they can conceive in their minds. Whatever name you put on it, they are conceived in the minds of men. And that's all the greater it can be because that's all man can do. That's it. What is so astounding about the Word of God is that there is a concept of God that does not come from man. That is bigger and greater than any of the concepts that are in any of the world religions, no matter what name it has. A view of God, a concept of God, that is from another world because man, left to himself, would never think of God in the terms that He has revealed Himself. It's astounding. Tozer made a statement. He says, left to ourselves, we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. What Tozer was saying is that we, even as Christians, reduce God to a way that we can understand Him. That we are so prone to take this God that is greater than mind itself, to take this God and make Him a manageable deity to our concepts, to our ideas, to our philosophies, to work into our lifestyles, rather than going to this God that has revealed Himself, that says, walk in this way, and we abandon ourselves to His way, we try to make Him fit our lifestyles. We try to make a manageable God. We try to make Him like us. But He's not like us. He was never like us, never will be like us. Even when He took upon flesh and blood, He wasn't like us. He was God, entirely, completely, absolutely God, in flesh and blood. He had only flesh and blood in common with us. That was it. He was absolute God, though He was absolute man. And I'm not even going to tell you I understand it, because I don't believe there's one person on the planet that understands the concept of God and man being in one person like that. It's mind-boggling to us. It's mind-boggling. And so God began His self-disclosure of who He was to us in a greater way. Jesus Christ is the most beautiful and full and complete revelation that we need of who God is and what God does and how God does it. And apart from that revelation, we are left to our own conceptions, our own ideas, our own thoughts. Solomon made a statement, he says, There's a way that seems right unto a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death. In essence, he was saying, what does it matter about all your opinions about God if they're all wrong? You can have all the opinions, I think, I think, I think God's like this, or I think it's like this. What does it matter if it's not founded upon His self-disclosure, what He has revealed about Himself? That is the most important thing, what He has said, not what I think, or not what others think, not what theologians have said, whether good, bad, or indifferent. What has He said in His Word? What is true? What is His self-disclosure? What does He say He's like? And that becomes so important, what He says. And if we understood that, we would understand Him quite possibly as a very different God than we perceive Him as. You see, when God shows up in revival, He blows our illusions about Him out of the water. All the misconceptions, all the ideas. Do you know how many times people fight against revival? Because when God shows up, it doesn't fit in their theological boxes, it doesn't fit in the way that they preconceived it. Time and again people fight against it, because they say, well, I don't know if God does that. And do you want to know what? I'm glad He doesn't ask our permission when He does something. He has moved in history that is mind-boggling. And I found time and again when people are critical of revival and the move of God, it's because they have no concept of what it is in history, and they've never tasted of it themselves. They've never known what the move of God is. They've never known what it is to be in the presence of a holy God, and absolutely terrified by His goodness. Because His goodness is terrifying. I mean, it's terrifying because you're so ungood. We are so opposite of what God is Himself, that we are, and let me disturb you with this, that we are actually repulsive to God, and repulsed by God left to ourselves. The only way that we become attractive to Him, and attracted to Him, is that He starts changing us, and He breaks into our world. Romans 8, the 5th to 8th verse, I'll just tell you real quickly basically what it says. It says, The carnal mind cannot understand the things of God. I just briefly had explained about the secular gods, the worldly gods, the gods that people have that don't know Christ. And I understand, they're not Christians. They're not going to act like Christians. We shouldn't expect them to act like Christians. We should not. The world does not, they do not have the power of God to be holy, so we can't expect them to be holy. But you want to know what? Something that's very interesting about the move of God. Every time God shows up, and He brings awakening, He brings revival to a community, or to a nation, the power of God changes lives, but it does something else too. It restrains evil. It restrains and holds it back. Those who, right now, we have in society, ungodliness loosed upon the nation, homosexuality that is in a rebel state, a revolutionary state in our country. And the only remedy is the salvation of those, and then revival that would hold back the wickedness and restrain it. Apart from the presence of God, man is unrestrained. And we can't expect the world to live godly lives when they're not godly, and they have no concept of what godliness is. What is a shame is when we as Christians should know what godliness is, and we don't live it. I want to take a few minutes, and I want to look at some attributes of God. And I want to portray something to you as we look at these. One purpose of this, this isn't the main purpose, but one purpose of this, is I want to stir you, and to stretch you about your thoughts of God, your ideas of God, because we have a small conception. And so many times we as individuals never push ourselves to say, Who are you God? Show me a little bit more. Stretch me. Overwhelm me with your greatness. We like a nice safe little Jesus, but you know Jesus isn't safe. He's not a safe Jesus. That little baby that was in that manger was not a safe baby. That baby came to upset the world, to reap havoc upon darkness and the kingdom of hell, to set captives free, to upset kings. He did not come in peace. He came to upset the kingdoms of men by changing the nature and character of men. And those who didn't want to be changed, hated Him, such as Herod who tried to kill Him. And so Jesus is not a safe little Jesus, and He wants to upset our concepts of a safe little Jesus, because He's almighty. He's the one who spoke a word, and everything came into existence. And you want to know, that's not a safe God who can speak a word, and everything that is comes into being. That's not a safe God. But one thing we have to understand is that He is a good God. Though He's not safe, He is good. There's a story about St. Augustine that's interesting. I don't believe it's true. But it's a wonderful story. I mean, it's a great illustration. Augustine is dying. He's on his deathbed, and family and friends is all gathered around him, and they're mourning his soon passing. Death is on his brow, and finally he slips away, and he's gone. And they stand around him for some time in just total silence. A man of God had just died. While they're there in silence, some time has passed, and all of a sudden, he sits up! His ashen face turns flesh, and he's trembling, and he says, I have seen Him! I have seen Him! And everything I wrote about Him is just straw. Augustine wrote some phenomenal things about God. And it's just straw. It says nothing compared to the reality of who He is. Nothing even close. Our greatest concept, human language, is degrading to this God. Because human language cannot even define the Divine. Can't even define it. Words are degrading. Because how do we speak of... Just think of the little simple thing of the Trinity. How much trouble we have over the Trinity. You want to know what? We use words that are terrible. Terrible words we use about the Trinity. We say three persons. That's terrible. But you want to know what? We don't know what else to say. And so cults, every single cult, every single Christian cult attacks the Trinity. Every single one. Because they can't understand it. And you want to know what? Whoever told us we had to. Where did we ever get that thought that we had to figure out this God? Do you know the moment we figure out God is the moment we have proved that He was a lie. Because we have proved that He is no bigger than our minds. That's the sad thing. Jehovah Witnesses, they want a God they can figure out. Mormonism wants a God they can figure out. A God they can put in a little box and say, this is my Jesus. If that's God, I don't want Him. Because He's a useless, powerless God. Because He is no mystery to us. He's nothing for all eternity that we'll be able to seek out after. A God that we know is beyond conception. And we'll touch on that as we begin to look at a few attributes. And let me begin with one attribute I'd like to touch on. And it's called the freedom of God. Has anybody ever thought of the freedom of God? Just pop up a hand. I won't ask you to define it. Freedom of God. Anybody. It's not one of them popular things that somebody just goes around and thinks up. But I'll challenge you to get out of the comfortableness of your Christianity. There's a God bigger than you've ever dreamed of. And you can go on 10, 20, 30, 50 years and never conceive of a God greater than what you understand right now. And it's not because He can't be known. It's because you have not aggressively sought Him. Because you've not thirstily said, you know, there are so many books out there and so many Christians waste their time on shallow, mush, worthless stuff. Burn it. Get something that's going to stretch your mind, that's going to bring you to your knees in repentance. You don't need a bunch of prosperity things and God wants to bless the socks off you and make you happy, happy, happy. But you know, there's a God that is beyond our comprehension. And if we don't push ourselves to understand Him, to know Him, to press in, we're going to have this small little God. And do you want to know what a small little God can do? It's small little things. That's it. Small little things. But a God that is infinite, that is so magnificent, He's a God of wonders. He's a God that does signs and wonders. He's a God who does raise the dead and makes the blind to see and the lame to walk. He is a God of miracles because it's nothing for Him to do it. It's nothing for Him. So let's look at the freedom of God. Freedom of God. Let me define it, beginning at looking at ourselves. And let's just say I ask a question and I get a response. I don't want anybody to respond to it. Let's say, is anybody here free? And somebody goes, Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm free. I'm free. And it says, Okay, let's put your freedom to the test. So we get you a ladder and you climb on top of the church here at the highest point. And we all go around outside and we gather around. And then after they see us all gather around out there, some newspaper people come with their videos and all their stuff. And they're all filming you. And so now you're going to be on primetime news. We're testing the freedom of Joe. Okay, and we're all there. And on the count of three, Joe's going to test his freedom. One, two, three. And he jumps. How long is he going to float? You know, it's not the fall that hurts. It's a sudden stop. You will find very quickly that Joe is not free. He is bound to this planet. He's stuck to it like glue. And we don't have a problem with our kids that we're afraid of them jumping too high. And all of a sudden, they're going to cross this threshold. Oh, there goes Junior! Whoa! It's not like you have to have bungee straps on them to keep them from going too high. There is, in the environmentalist movement, there is no save the gravity foundation. We're not afraid of using too much and all of a sudden it's gone and depleted. It sounds crazy, but you know, we're stuck to it. We're stuck to this planet. We're bound to it. We couldn't live without it. Without gravity, there would be no life. We would just be no different than the moon that's just a hunk of rock out there. And so it's a part of our existence, a necessity of our existence. Let's look at some other things in some simple ways. How long can you go without food? I'd venture to say most of us, most of this room went out to get something to eat, whether at home or out at a restaurant. Some of you went out and ate because you needed to. Some of you went out and ate because you wanted to. Those of you who wanted to look like it, those of you who needed it, you look like it. Well, we've seen the pictures of people starving in other countries. We've seen the pictures. Bloated stomachs from malnutrition. There are literally people out there who aren't even getting a meal a day. Children who are dying from starvation. Eating in garbage dumps. It's a real thing. Food is a necessity. They say that you can go 40 days without food. I knew a guy, when I was a young Christian, I knew a guy that fasted for 39 days because he did not want to outdo the Lord. He lost every bit of hair on his body and it never grew back. I mean, he was like 21 years old. He ended up in the hospital for weeks because what happens when you are starving to death, your body starts devouring its own organs and muscles. It starts eating itself. He did himself tremendous damage. It wasn't a God-ordained fast. It was a religious fast. So he could have maybe kept on going and five more days, I don't know how many more days it would have been until he was a dead man. We need to eat. It's a necessity. I mean, how long can you go without water? Well, here maybe three days, they say. Go into Phoenix at this time. 120 degrees. And you'll be lucky to last a day. It's an absolute necessity. You want to see how bound you are to this planet? Have somebody hold you underwater. I mean, 60 seconds, you're going to see how bound you are, how needy you are, how you must have this thing outside of you called air. You've got to have it. Without it, you will die. And so there are things that keep us bound, that we are not free. Let's look at it in a couple other ways. Let's say your 16-year-old boy is going to test his freedom. He just got his license. He's going to test his freedom. And he gets Dad's car. He's going to test his freedom. And all of a sudden, Vroom! Vroom! Vroom! I mean, 90 miles an hour down these hills. Vroom! I'm free! I've got my license! Until that nice little car comes along behind him with those pretty blue lights. And, you know, they start following him all over. Vroom! Vroom! Two cars. Vroom! Vroom! And three. And four. And a whole bunch of them. Eventually, they pull him over and they're going to demonstrate, Boy, you're not free! You can't do that. You see, there's no such thing as a free society. Does not exist. We are not in a free society. What we say when we are free, that we are less bound than others. We are not as bound as communist countries or socialist countries. But there's no such thing as a free society. Not in a fallen world and not even in the world to come. Because there will be laws that will govern God's kingdom even in heaven. Let me touch on it a different way. We've heard some of the bizarre stories of children locked up in a closet for seven years. Imagine a child put in a spot where they are not loved. And they grow up in that. Just by the sheer fact that we are fallen people, that we have a sinful nature, our personalities are twisted. And if you don't think your personality is twisted, yours is more twisted than anybody else's in this room then. That's the result of what the fall does, period. Salvation is restoring of what He created us to be. And we're in that process of it. And imagine somebody that is put in a place in a loveless situation and it would twist their thinking even more. My wife and I took foster children and fostering on the streets of Detroit, we took in kids off the streets. We've dealt with damaged kids that have been severely sexually abused and all the pain and all the sorrow and all the anger that goes with it. God created us to love and to be loved. It is an absolute necessity. It's not just that we want to be loved. It's that we need to. Apart from being loved, we become very demented individuals. Very twisted. Now let's look at God for a minute. When you look at the Word of God, it says that all of the heavens from one end to the other is no bigger than this to Him. The span of His hand. Do you know, we can't even find the end of it. Scientists, as they get newer telescopes, or they put bigger cameras on the Hubble, they look deeper into space and they see it further. Blaise Pascal, a man who was a phenomenal mind, he got saved and became a phenomenal believer. And he made a statement that he believed that we were halfway in the middle of creation. He had no verse to support that. It was just his theory. He believed that from us, from human beings, everything goes bigger and bigger and bigger to the vastness of all the cosmos, but everything from us gets smaller and smaller equally. Can you imagine? We don't even know how to look that small. I mean, we get into genes and DNA, and that's nothing. And God permeates it all, from the hugest to the smallest. And He is unique and separate from His creation, but yet He knows every dimension of it. Nothing escapes His understanding. He is not bound to gravity. Gravity does not control Him. He is outside of His creation, separate, distinct from His creation. He does not need food or water or air. When Israel offered the sacrifices, all the pagans offered sacrifices to feed the gods and to appease the gods. Only Israel, only Israel, unique in all the world, their sacrifices were for atonement of sin. They knew God did not eat those sacrifices. He did not need food. He is outside of His creation, separate from His creation. Let me give you another situation with this. God does not need you. He's not a needy God. He did not make man because He was lonely. You want to know why He made man? Because He chose to. That's all we're told in Scripture. Beyond that, we know nothing else other than what He has said. He chose to create. But He needed nothing outside of Himself. You see, He does not need us. And let me say something here that's very important. He has something better. He desires us. He does not need you. God does not get bigger because you praise Him. And if you don't praise Him, He gets smaller. God does not change one way or the other. He remains the same no matter what I do. When I worship Him, it's for me. If I worship with half a heart, I suffer. Not God. I suffer. If I worship with everything in me, I am the one who benefits from it. And then others will benefit from the fire and zeal that is within me that I'm able to give to others. But God does not change the result of it. He remains the same. He does not change. We cannot manipulate Him. We cannot count Him. We can't force Him to do. He is separate and unique from His creation. He is free. You know what's astounding? One day when Jesus chose to be bound to this planet for 33 years, He made this statement. He said, Whoever the Son sets free is free indeed. You know, that is so astounding. Let's just pretend we're all in prison. One big old prison room. And I walk up to one of you and I say, You're free. Get out of here. And all of a sudden your face lights up. I'm free. And you run to the door and you start beating on the door. Guard! Guard! Open the door! And the guard comes there all sleepy eyes. What do you want? He says, That man over there, he said I'm free. Open up and let me out. And he'd break out in a laughter. Yeah, right, right. Another prisoner saying you're free. Yeah, what a joke. You see, one bound person cannot set another bound person free. One prisoner cannot set another prisoner free. It must be somebody that is free to set prisoners free. And there's only one free being. Only one free being. Only one who has the right and the authority to set captives free. Only one. And His name is Jesus. Let's touch on a couple other attributes of God. Let's look at a couple dimensions of His infinitude. And what infinitude means is that there is no end to any dimension of God. And I want to say something here. None of us understands what I'm going to say. That may sound bizarre. I'm going to give you some theories. We don't understand. We do not understand. And we're going to use words to try and relate something that we have no reference point to. And so the aspect that God is infinite in every dimension of His being, we don't comprehend. Let me illustrate it. What is God infinite in time? What do we call that? We call that eternity. Do you understand eternity? No. We understand a concept. Do you want to know why we don't understand eternity? Let me relate this to you. Everything in my life, everything has beginning and end. Everything. That's all I know. I was born, I will die. My daddy was born, he'll die. My grandpa was born, he's dead. Right on down. And it'll go on until Jesus comes back. You know, those little cute fuzzy puppies grow up and they get big. Their little piles become big piles. I mean, it's just the way it goes. Then they die. And they fertilize your ground. I mean, it's just what happens. I mean, the plants. You know, we have these beautiful plants and then they die on us. It's what happens. Going back to the cosmos. The most secular scientists know that everything is in this place of decay. Everything. It's spoken of in Scripture that all of creation suffers under the fall. All of it. Death is touching everything. To the furthest star. To the entire cosmos. To our plants. To our own bodies. Everything is breaking down. Everything. Beginning and end. And then one day God breaks into Moses' life. And Moses says, who should I say is sending me? And he says this word that you and I don't even, it doesn't even really bother us. But I bet you it disturbed Moses. Moses heard the Lord say, I am that I am. And you know that all the concept of God that they had at that time. All the pagan concepts of God. Was God's have beginnings and God's have ends. You want to know why? Because God's are made in the image of man. And all of a sudden God says, I'm not like you. I am that I am. I am self-existent. I have no beginning. I have no end. And we're supposed to understand that? All we can say is, God. Let's look at another dimension of His infinitude. His omnipotence. And omnipotence means that He's all-powerful. Do we understand that? No, we do not. What does all-powerful mean? It means that God super abounds with the power to do anything He wants to do. So how did He create? With a word. He didn't even crack a sweat. Nothing. Just a word. Nah! Quiet! It was no effort to Him. If He wanted to make it a billion times bigger, He could have made it a billion times bigger. It would have cost Him no more energy. There is no strain in God in His creative powers. There is no one. Whatever He wants to do, He super abounds with the power to do it. He super abounds with the power to save. Super abounds with the power to heal. Super abounds with the ability to deliver from sin and the power of sin and the love of sin. Super abounds. Super abounds. He is all-powerful, can do anything He wants to do. God is infinite in knowledge. I'm going to confuse myself with this one. It means that He knows everything that there is to know, but yet has no end to all that He knows. Don't ask me to explain that one. But it's knowledge beyond what I can understand. Do you know that because there is billions of people on the planet today and there wasn't back in the days that Jesus walked this planet, it doesn't mean that all of a sudden God's on overload. And it's not like God's up there saying, Oh, no more babies, I can't take it, I can't keep track of them anymore. It's nothing. Nothing. He knows that every single moment, with the hair upon every head of every single person, knows the thought, the heart, the intent, everything about every person that is right now, that will be, that has been, all at one time. There is no want of knowledge. He knows everything perfectly, completely, absolutely. When He judges, it is not based upon opinion. There will be no attorneys at the judgment seat of Christ. No attorneys there, because only absolute truth will be dealt with in that situation. Those who deserve heaven because they repented of their sins and trusted in the saving work of Christ will be saved and the justice of God will be delivered in declaring them righteous and they'll enter into heaven. And the justice of God will be delivered against the ungodly because they did not repent in turn and trust in God. And in His justice, they will be damned to hell. The justice of God will be based upon absolute truth. Not upon opinions, not upon lies, not upon sentimentality, but upon absolute truth. Because He knows everything. You want to know something that is so astounding? So astounding. God has given man a gift. He's given us a gift, this phenomenal gift. And you see it really clear in your little children. They get to that terrible twos, and what are they doing? Their hands are in everything. Do you know why their hands are in everything? Because that's how they're learning. This quest for knowledge. They want to know, they want to know, they want to know. And they know by touching and stick it in their mouth. It's a quest for learning. And they grow in that. And we want to learn and we want to know and we want knowledge. And He created us that. But the thing is that He created us ultimately to know Him and to be in a relentless pursuit of God now on this planet. Because when I walked in Pearly Gates, I've just begun. This God who has no end to Himself will forever be able to be sought out and never come to an end forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever. I have no intention on sitting on a cloud with a little harp in my hand just humming for the rest of eternity. There's this God who called me to be a king and a priest and a ruler. I don't know what that means. I'm not even going to pretend to. But the greatest thing is He's called me to know Him and I will be able to know Him more and more and more and more and more and more. And do you know when that quest is to begin? Right now. Saints, we do God a tremendous disservice. If you are not more in love with Jesus today than you were a year ago, you're doing a tremendous disservice. You are robbing yourself of the treasure of knowing a God in a greater way than you've ever imagined. To stay where you are is a travesty. Is a travesty. Because there's a God that longs for you to know Him, purchase you that you might know Him more. You need to be on that quest. It's where we become radical. And you want to know what radical is? It's normal Christianity. It's normal Christianity. One day there's this old man in the park. He's bent over in the ground and it looks like he's playing in the dirt. This little boy sees him from a distance and is curious what this elderly gentleman is doing. He comes closer and closer and finally the gentleman says, Oh, come here, son. Let me show you what I'm doing. So the boy sheepishly comes up. Come on, come on, let me show you. Finally the boy is right up there and trying to figure out what this old man is doing. The old man points and says, Well, son, here, look at that. Well, you see that little ant right there? You see that big old thing on his shoulders? Well, you know, that's really heavy for an ant. And I moved some sticks and stones out of his way and made his path home a little bit easier. And you know what? He doesn't even know I exist. The little boy looks at him and says, Mister, did you break out of the Usain Asylum? We try and kill those things. We don't want them in our homes. I mean, we try to drive them nuts. We buy those little cans, those round cans, so they walk in there and go in circles and get dizzy or whatever. I don't know what goes on in those cans. I mean, we don't want them in our home. And here's an old man helping a little ant. How crazy! But you know, the illustration is not anywhere even close to the reality of this God who needs nobody. Who needs nothing outside of Himself. Who does not need man, does not need a one of us. And He stoops down. This God who creation can't even contain Him. And He stoops down and becomes near to prevail broken man that is not just frail and broken, but that even becomes rebels against Him. And He stoops down to make Himself known. It turns me to Song of Solomon. The fifth chapter. Let me explain to you what's going on in this chapter. Or this whole book. You could think of the book as a play. And you have three parts to the play. You have the lover that refers to Jesus. You have the beloved that refers to the church. And you have the friends that speak of the world. So it's kind of a play or dialogue that's going on between these three parties. And when you look in your Bibles, you'll see little headings that'll say friends, beloved, and lover, and so on. Those are not original in the Hebrew. Those are later editions, kind of little commentaries trying to tell you who's speaking. I don't agree with them. There's one change in there I think is different that I think they missed. And I will tell you who's speaking as it's going on. So that we can understand. Beginning in the second verse of the fifth chapter. It says, I slept, the beloved speaking here. I slept, but my heart was awake. Listen, my lover's knocking. The lover speaks. Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew. My hair with the dampness of the night. The beloved speaks. I have taken off my robe. Must I put it on again? I have washed my feet. Must I soil them again? My lover thrust his hand through the latch opening. My heart began to pound for him. I arose to open for my lover, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh on the hands of the lock. I opened for my lover, but my lover had left. He was gone. My heart sank at his departure. I looked for him, but did not find him. I called him, but he did not answer. The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city. They beat me. They bruised me. They took away my cloak. Those watchmen on the walls. O daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you, if you find my lover, what will you tell him? Tell him I am faint with love. Now the friends speak. How is your beloved better than others, most beautiful of women? How is your beloved better than others that you charge us so? And the beloved speaks. My lover is radiant and ruddy, outstanding among ten thousand. And she continues to describe the beauty of her lover. Let me just take a few minutes and explain what's going on here. Let me get quickly into how it relates to us. Jesus comes knocking on the door of the church. Knocking on the door of the individual Christian, and He says, Open to Me, My darling, My dove, My flawless one. You want to be awestruck. Think about what I have told you about the character of God. Just a little itty bit of what I have shared. And think that He would call you His beloved, His darling. Think of how tender those words are to a people who we were rebels. I was a rebel. Every one of us were rebels before we came to Christ. Because nobody is born a Christian. They are only born again a Christian. Rebels. He comes knocking on the door. Why does He come knocking on the door? Because He desires us. This was His bride-to-be. He was engaged to her. He had worked a whole day in the field and He wanted to spend time with His bride-to-be. He thought of her. He thought of her and He wanted to come to her and sit down and talk with her and share His heart and the burden of His life and His desires and His wants. He wanted to share with her. And so He comes knocking on the door. It was evening and the dew was heavy and it was upon Him and He was drenched with the dew. He came at sacrifice. He came in genuine desire of her. And He knocks on the door. But there was a problem. You see, she had a bad day. It was the pits at work. The boss was all over her. And she comes home and the kids were just nightmares. And she just wanted to veg out. And so she goes and throws the lean cuisine in the microwave and a bag of popcorn and gets a Christian mush book and goes hops in the bed with her jammies and bunny slippers on. I mean, she just said, leave me alone! Leave me alone! This is bad! And what happens? Jesus comes and upsets it all. He wants to spend some time with her. She says, I don't have time, Jesus! Just leave me alone! It's been bad! And I just want to veg out! You relate what I'm talking about here? I mean, guys, maybe you say you came home from a bad day at work. Or maybe, who knows? Man, we're fickle people. Let's be honest. We're fickle people. Those of you who don't think that you have problems in your life, those of you who don't understand the reality of sin in your life, you are greatly deceived. You see, the reality is many more need to be at the psalter this morning and much pride and blindness kept people from the altar because you didn't see your need. That's the truth of it. Jesus knocking. You know what the real issue was? She made a manageable Jesus. She made a manageable Jesus. She thought it was no big deal to shun off the Creator of the world. Do you know when we make a manageable Jesus, we think we do Him a favor if we pray. We think we do Him a favor if we serve and labor in the church. We think we do Him a favor if we witness to somebody. Because we made a manageable Jesus rather than understanding the tremendous privilege that He would pursue me. Who am I that He'd pursue me? Who am I? I was a renegade, a rebel. I had war with God in my life, in my actions, in my thoughts, in my heart. There was nothing about me that was desirable of myself to God. He pursued me. He broke in my world. Upset my life to save me. He pursued me. Same thing with every one of you that's a Christian. He pursued you. You never wanted Him. You never wanted Him. You better be honest. You think you wanted Him before you were a Christian. You're deceived. You never wanted Him. Scripture says no one sought after God. No one! He sought you. And He started drawing on you. He started showing you the beauty of who He was. And for whatever reason, you started drawing near to Him by the gift of God, by God pursuing you. And so now to the Christian, He comes knocking on the door and He says, Child, hide away with Me. And we say, I'm too busy, God. And we say it because we have a manageable Jesus. A manageable God. Do you hear what I'm saying? Because if we were awestruck by this God, if we understood how phenomenal was the privilege, we would ache for Him to come. We would be waiting at the door. Understanding the privilege that He offers to us. We have it all wrong. We think that prayer is this thing that we've got to do rather than understanding the privilege. God, You allow me to speak Your name. You allow me to know You that I would even desire to communicate with You. You allowed me. You pursued me. The gift of God pursuing us and how phenomenal it is He does not need you. Like I said earlier, He offers you something better. He wants you. He wants you. He yearns for you. Let that overwhelm you. Let that overwhelm your thoughts, your ideas, your concepts, everything about it. He wants you. He is breaking into your world because He desires you. Desires you. There is no greater gift. There is no greater privilege offered to man or woman than that we could walk with God in fellowship, that we could know Him. There is no greater privilege. You see, when we come to a point, we understand how phenomenal is His pursuit of us. How great is the gift of God that we could know Him, that we could commune with Him. Everything else, everything of the world just loses its glamour. All the pursuits, because now you see true beauty. You see it in the face of Jesus. You long, you thirst to gaze in His eyes. You become like Moses that cries and says, God, show me Your glory! Show me Your glory! Show me Your glory! It aches, it burns, it yearns in your heart because that's what you live for. You don't live for another car or another thing, or another this or another that. You live because you were created to know Him. And you were created to walk in fellowship with Him. You were created to serve Him and glorify Him. You were created to enjoy Him. And that's what moves you and defines you. That's what sets your hearts ablaze. That's what makes you wake up in the morning. That's what makes you lay your head down at night. That's what makes you seek His face in prayer. That's what makes you touch a perishing world. Corrie Ten Boom made a statement. She said, Beware of the barrenness of a busy life. We can be extremely barren in our present American life. It's fast-paced, very fast-paced. I just can relate this to growing up in the Detroit area and pastoring in Detroit for almost 12 years. And I've seen the exodus out of the city of Detroit. When I pastored there, it was over a million people. Now it's under a million people. They're exiting to the suburbs and you go to some of the suburbs and these massive houses, humongous houses that are 250,000, 300,000, 500,000 dollar homes. And I'm going, How in the world can so many houses be built that cost that much? But you know what it's all about? The greed of people. So husband and wife work and have to put in overtime. I'm talking about even Christians. And they live maxed out that they can have no prayer life because they're driven by the lust of their flesh, by the wants of their life, because they have their eyes focused upon what they can possess. And their charge cards are at the hill. They couldn't give to a missionary beyond a couple bucks if they wanted to because they are so strapped by money because they live by the lust of their eyes. They live by what they wanted. And everybody, the world's telling us that bigger houses are better, so you've got to have a bigger one because that means you're somebody. And we believe the lies and we go after more and we go after more and deeper debt and deeper debt and we're more balanced and we've got to put in more overtime and we keep getting more and more. And the whole time here's Jesus knocking at the door saying, Open the door. And we say, I can't Jesus. I've got to do some overtime. I've got to put in more time. Jesus, I know you understand. Be terrified if you ever say those words because He does. He knows what is really inside here. What's really inside here. Jesus is knocking. And finally, you know, she goes and says, Well, maybe I should get out of bed and get to Him. By the time she finally gets out of bed and goes to the door, do you know what happens? He's gone. And you want to know what? Jesus was good to leave her. Jesus was very, very good to leave her. Let me give you an illustration of why. Let's just say Saturday there's going to be a wedding here. The pastor's going to do the wedding. The wedding's at noon. So here's everybody in the church that packed out. Those for the bride are on her side and those coming for the groom are on his side. The pastor's standing up here looking all dapper. You know, the groom's up here and the women's standing up and the men's standing up and everything's up there and the runner's down the aisle and they're just waiting for the bride to walk down for that wedding march to begin. And all of a sudden, the father's back there making these weird gyrations. You know? The pastor's trying to keep your cool. You know, you're in front of all these people trying to be prim and proper and you're just going, what's going on? And eventually this little boy comes down the aisle and says, Pastor, the bride's not here. Oh, okay. And so he has everybody sit down and so people start talking amongst themselves and by 1230 the church is almost empty. By quarter to one it's cleared out and just that young man and the pastor's here and this boy's broken hearted. Man, he's just pacing back and forth and saying, what's happened? I know something disastrous happened. She wouldn't stand me up. There's no way. And so finally the pastor says, I've got to find her. I've got to find her. And he gets in the car and he starts driving to one place and another and finally he says, I'll go home. I'll go home. And maybe she's at her apartment. And he goes there and he knocks on the door. He knocks on the door again and hears some noise in the background and knocks on it again and then there's a rustling of the handle and the door opens up and there she is. She's in her jammies and her bunny slippers and there's a mush movie on and a big bowl of popcorn and some bonbons. And he goes and he says, Where have you been? She says, Well, I've been here. He says, You were supposed to be at church today. She says, What is it, Sunday? He says, No, it's Saturday. He says, Why was I supposed to be at church today? He says, We were supposed to be married. She goes, Oh, I forgot. Alright. Now I don't doubt the pastor needs some counselors here to help with his counseling load. And so this is a test. What would somebody counsel this young man? Let's hear some wisdom. Anybody. Get rid of her. Smart woman. Boy, she don't love you. She don't love you at all. Find yourself one that loves you. So what should a bride look like? Here's the days coming. This young man is just sweating up a storm. Nervous as can be. Man, he's almost having an ulcer over this thing. And it finally comes time and he goes and he kneels down before and he has this ring in his hand and he says, Will you marry? And he can't even get it all out. And she grabs him and says, Yes, yes, yes, yes. And then they're bouncing around and she's kissing him and hugging him and then she drops him right where she is. And she runs to the phone. By the time she gets to the phone, she has the wedding dress picked out, the date, the time, the colors, and everybody's standing up. That's an excited bride. That's a fit bride. You know, brides drive their friends nuts. They drive their friends nuts. Those who are excited brides, they can't talk about anybody else. I mean, here she is, she's with her buddies and she's talking about Harry again. Oh, Harry, I just love Harry, he's so great. You know what he did for me. And he says, Will you be quiet? We're sick of hearing about Harry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And they're talking about this for five minutes. Oh, that reminds me of Harry. You know, she just has to, man, she's in love. You see, she wasn't a fit bride that Jesus came knocking on the door. She was not a fit bride. She was not excited that Jesus had come knocking. She had made a manageable Jesus. Let me ask you a question. As Christians, are you a fit bride? Are you a fit bride? Are you excited? Is it burning? Is it raging? Don't tell me how long you've been saved. That's irrelevant. That can be sheer deception that we say, well, I've been saved X amount of years. So what? Do you know how long they've been in cemeteries?