[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast, Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Okay, so welcome to our first night of class for the new quarter.
So we're getting started.
So the first thing I want you to do and apologize because at first I thought we'd get name tags. Now I thought, well, maybe you don't want to stick something on your shirt. So then I thought, well, we'll make little name plates because there are tables in the classroom. So that tells you how long it's been since I've been in this room.
But what I'd like for you to do is to take.
It's real important because you guys are going to use these later in class. So I want you to do is take your card and like it was a name tag that you put on, just write your name, write your name on the card.
So you just, you write your name on the card and I'm going to start off and introduce myself.
So my name is Mike Baker.
I've been at Madison for a long time.
My wife Amy and I actually met in the singles group at Madison. We have a daughter, Alyssa, and her husband Will, they have a one year old. So I have a granddaughter. They have a son who works it.
He goes here as well.
I'm going to ask Mark Kelly if he'll stand up, introduce himself.
[00:02:03] Speaker C: Hello, I'm Mark Kelly.
[00:02:05] Speaker D: I've been here for 23 years, married to Becky. We have three kids and seven grandkids and retired at the end of last year.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: So this is kind of a new.
[00:02:18] Speaker D: Phase of life for me.
[00:02:21] Speaker C: Good to meet you all.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: And Cam. Cam, why don't you stand up, introduce yourself. All right.
[00:02:27] Speaker D: I'm Cam.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Hi, Cam. That was good.
[00:02:31] Speaker D: I've been going to Madison for about eight years with my lovely wife and our son, Major.
I am a one of the deacons here at Madison and a connect group leader.
That's It. Okay.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: All right. Thank you.
So I'm not going to make everybody do that. Just I picked on these two. But what do. Or what did those introductions all have in common?
State our name, what else? Talked about how long they've been at Madison, mentioned who their wives were, a little bit about their families. And how many of you would, if I asked you to stand up, would probably do about the same thing. Right? Those introductions are pretty normal. What's the purpose of the introduction?
To provide information about yourself, to tell a little bit about yourself. Where else do we introduce ourselves?
What other forms might we use to introduce ourselves?
How many of you have profiles on LinkedIn?
Right. When you look at LinkedIn, what do you put on your profile in LinkedIn?
Resume. It's a resume, right? It's how you know where you went to school, what your past work experience has been, where you work now. So you have these resumes. We fill out resumes. You know, we have profiles and Facebook. How many of you in your job, like, if I'm in a zoom meeting and they go around, ask you to introduce yourselves, I'll say, hey, I'm Mike Baker. And automatically someone I work with says, oh, no, Mike, you gotta tell them what you do, what your role is. Right? One of the roles I have at my job is I speak at a lot of conferences and conventions, and often they'll ask you for a short autobiography that someone will introduce you by. And so what we see is we have all these devices that we use to introduce ourselves, to make our introduction. And the purpose of that is to tell either everyone in the class or whoever we're inducing ourselves to something about ourselves.
Oftentimes it's qualities about ourselves or information about ourselves, such as how long we've been here, who our spouse is, the things like that. But we use this to make these introductions.
So what we're going to do tonight is talk about. We're going to start the class with God introducing himself to Moses. Now, it may be difficult for you to see, but I went into Amazon and I Googled for books about theology, and I got 90,000 responses on books about theology, it seems.
And so anybody want to give me the definition of the word Theology?
It actually means words about God.
So there's 90,000 books that have been written about theology. So obviously, man and people want to know or try to describe some attributes about God. But why do you think there are so many writings? I mean, 90,000, that's a lot. Why do you think there's so many books that talk about God or dwell or talk about theology.
It's a big subject.
What else?
[00:06:19] Speaker E: Everyone has their own opinion.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Everyone has their kind of their own concept about God, their own thoughts about God. You know, it's pretty funny. You know, Aristotle is the one who came up with God is omniscient, meaning he's all knowing, he's omnipresent, he's present everywhere, and he's omnipotent, which he's all powerful. Those were actually words from Aristotle that we often wind up using. But what we're going to do this quarter is we're really going to focus on. On what the Bible says about God. And specifically, we're going to dwell or spend time talking about the qualities that God mentions when he introduces himself to Moses. So I went to BibleGateway.com and I typed in the phrase God is.
And we came back with 1481 returns where it found that phrase in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Now, some of those are where God does some action. So I really wanted to focus on adjectives. God is like God is. So a great example is the one that's the top one is what we see in First John 4. 8, right? Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is. Is love. And so I went through and I tried to pull out just a sampling of those that dwelt with adjectives. And here's a couple of them, right? Deuteronomy 4. 7. God is near us whenever we pray to him. Psalms 47. 7. God is the king of all the earth. God is merciful and forgiving. God is truthful. God is faithful. And these are just a few, but I separated those between an action versus an actual adjective.
So let's talk about Exodus 34. Exodus 34 opens with Moses clipping out, chipping out new tablets at the base of Mount Sinai. So I don't know if you saw it on Facebook, but I asked that for homework, for class, that we read Exodus. You guys read Exodus 32 and 33. So the question is, we see Moses here chiseling out a set of tablets, but why is he there? What got us to this point in Exodus 34? Let's review a little bit what happened in 32 and in 33.
So what's kind of the first thing that we see in Exodus going Back to chapter 32?
Right. We get to the beginning, those first eight verses. Moses was on top of Mount Sinai. He was given the Ten Commandments. He came down off the mountain, and then he saw what he saw the Israelites worshiping a golden calf. And who made the golden calf?
His brother. Right. And so he sees that in those first eight verses. Then kind of what happened as we keep going through the process, what did Moses wind up doing when he saw that in his anger, right, he smashed the tablets. But then also, what did God want to do?
[00:09:55] Speaker D: Continue to promise through.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: Yeah, God wanted to wipe out the Israelites. And God could do this because God said, I'm going to continue. I'm going to wipe everybody out. I'm going to continue the promise through Moses and his family.
So God really wanted to kill the Israelites. And then what we see in 32, 11, 14, is that Moses intervenes. What does that tell you about Moses?
I mean, listen to what God said. Or I tell you what, better rot. Let's go to Exodus 32. And somebody read for me verses 9 and 10.
[00:10:37] Speaker C: The Lord said to Moses, I have.
[00:10:39] Speaker D: Seen this people, and behold, they are obstinate.
[00:10:43] Speaker C: Let me alone, that my anger may.
[00:10:44] Speaker D: Burn against them and that I may destroy them, and I will make of you a great nation.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: So you understand, right? We know God's faithful. We know God keeps his promises. God had promised through Abraham that his descendants would be a great nation. We come to this point, you got the Israelites, you got Moses. God says, I'm going to wipe out the Israelites because I can keep my promise by making that great nation through you. Okay? So imagine what Moses hears, Moses hears. Instead of all the Israelites continuing that promise, my heirs will specifically continue that promise. But yet, in verse 11 through 14, Moses intervenes for the people. So what do you think? What does that tell you about Moses?
He was humble.
It wasn't necessarily about him. Right.
He cared for the people, and so he intervened. And God does bring some punishment. Right? Somebody read for me verses 27, 35.
[00:11:52] Speaker C: And he said to them, thus says the Lord God of Israel, let every man put his sword on his side and go out in front of the entrance throughout the camp, and let every man kill his brother, every man his companion, every man his neighbor.
So the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses, and about 3,000 of the people fell that day.
Then Moses said, consecrate yourselves today to the Lord, that he may bestow on you a blessing this day, for every man has opposed his son and his brother.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: All right, so let's pause there for just a second. So notice what he tells the Levites. He tells the Levites to take out your sword and go through the camp and kill Right. His brother, his companion, his neighbor. And so in that day, 3,000 men fell.
That was due to that punishment. Okay, keep going.
[00:12:58] Speaker C: Now it came to pass on the next day that Moses said to the people, you have committed a great sin. So now I will go up to the Lord, perhaps I can make atonement for yourself sin.
Then Moses returned to the Lord and said, oh, these people have committed a great sin and have made themselves, made for themselves a God of gold.
Yet now if you will forgive their sin, but if not, I pray, blot me out of your book which you have written.
And the Lord said to Moses, whoever has sinned against me, I will blot him out of my book. Now therefore, go lead the people to the place of which I have spoken to you. Behold, my angel shall go before you.
Nevertheless, in the day when I visit for punishment, I will visit punishment upon them for their sin.
So the Lord plagued the people because of what they did with the calf which Aaron had made.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: Alright, so it's pretty important to realize the people didn't get off scot free, right? That the Levites took care of some, and then there was a plague. So that God does bring some judgment. So that brings us to this point. So the tablets, the original ten commandments, have been broken. And so let's go to chapter 34 and someone read verses one through four.
[00:14:30] Speaker E: The Lord said to Moses, Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets which you broke. Be ready in the morning and then come up on Mount Sinai. Present yourself to me there, on top of the mountain. No one is to come with you or be seen anywhere on the mountain. Not even the flocks and herds may graze in front of the mountain. So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones, and went up to Mount Sinai early in the morning, as the Lord had commanded him. And he carried the two stone tablets in his hands.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: Alright? So notice what happens. First God tells Moses, you broke them, you replace them. Right? So Moses is chiseling out the two new tablets.
He's told that he's going to go to Mount Sinai and present himself to God, that he's to do it alone, right? They're not even to let the sheep or any animals graze anywhere on the mountain while he's up there. And then Moses obeys. So he chisels out the two tablets and then he goes up from Mount Sinai, right? So now we're kind of caught up to where we're actually going to start looking at what we see beginning. So let's look at verses 4 through 7.
The Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord. The Lord, a God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.
Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the children's children to the third and the fourth generation.
So this is God passing by Moses on Mount Sinai, making this introduction of himself. So let's look a little bit. Notice the first thing he says is that the Lord the Lord almost as we mark Cam and I gave you our name.
He pronounces who he is. He doesn't say it just once, but rather he says it twice. The Lord the Lord, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin, and punishing the guilty.
[00:17:13] Speaker D: When it says the Lord, the Lord Lord is in all caps in your translations, which means this is God's name.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:20] Speaker D: So God is not saying the Lord God is saying his own name twice.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: And remember, if we were to go and look at it in Hebrew, right, it would have been Yahweh, but they would have left out the vowels because they didn't want to say or even necessarily write the full name. So this is him giving Moses his name, just as we do, and then giving that introduction to himself.
I think it's always good. Whenever I study or whenever I read, I always like looking at the verses in some of the different versions that we have. So this is the Bible in basic English. And the Lord went past before his eyes saying the Lord the Lord, a God, full of pity and grace, slow to wrath and great in mercy and faith, having mercy on thousands, overlooking evil and wrongdoing and sin. He will not let wrongdoers go free, but will send punishment on children for the sins of their fathers and on their children's children to the third and fourth generation.
Got to go to my parents Bible Right the King James and the Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. And that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon the children's children unto the third and fourth generation, the new American Standard. Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, the Lord. The Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin. Yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. Visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generation.
So what you'll see. Same thing as you read the NIV and the message is you get that introduction from God.
So what do you notice about the way God introduces himself? What do you notice about what we read in all those different versions on how he introduced himself?
[00:19:53] Speaker D: He characterizes himself in the way he interacts with his creation.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: He characterizes himself and he gives us his qualities, right? He gives us those things. What else do you notice when we introduce ourselves?
Do we introduced. Do we introduce the positive, the negative, or both?
Compared to how God introduces himself? Look at the first part.
He's slow to anger, he's gracious. You get these attributes and qualities that everybody kind of likes. But then notice that he says, but he's going to punish. He's going to punish those.
How often do we wind up, like, for example, I could say, I'll take my introduction. My wife's Amy. I've got two children.
Also, I'm not very patient.
I tend to get aggravated when I'm sitting in line at Starbucks. I tend to like when I'm at work. We got that one co worker who wants to come and talk every day when you're in the office. So you don't even want to go to the office. You want to say, I mean, what if our introductions had both what we like and those qualities we want you to know about? But then we also included maybe things that I'm not gonna say they're bad, but maybe things that are the things we don't necessarily want to hear, right? It's kind of like my favorite candy are sweet tarts.
And the name is very misleading.
Dad and I were driving. Him and I were on a trip. I had sweet tarts. He goes, let me try one of those. Put it in his mouth. And he goes, well, I taste the tart, but when does the sweet hit? Right?
You know, that's what we. I mean, God gives us his honest introduction. He loves us, he's forgiving. Notice what it says. He'll forgive those who rebel, those who are in sin. He'll forgive all that.
But you know what? He will also have to punish you can't take all the good things and not necessarily think about all aspects. And I hate to use good or bad. That's not the word I'm looking for. But you have to realize God's faithful. And so we don't necessarily. We have to remember to take both pieces.
Why do you think God chooses to introduce himself to Moses at this point in history?
I think it's an important time of.
[00:22:40] Speaker D: Like, knowing, like, with the two stones.
[00:22:43] Speaker B: It'S like something that's a big piece in, like, the Israelite. It's like, of the world. So it's kind of like saying, like.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: These are like, the goals of, like, what's my life?
[00:22:53] Speaker C: And, like, what's going to be on.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: You know, I think having the tablets redone and reintroducing those ten Commandments. Yeah, I think that's a good time. What else?
[00:23:06] Speaker C: The book of Exodus features a lot of God's justice. You find that in the 10 plagues, but it also features God's mercy, which, you know, there was a mixed crowd that went along with the Israelites as they left Egypt. And you find all sorts of stuff like that. And this really hits home how God has operated this whole time, especially pertaining to the fact that he's talking to Moses, who really appreciates God's mercy and really appreciates his justice because both are holding him where he is.
[00:23:41] Speaker B: Good point, Joel. Parents, how many of you, your child does something and you punish them, and then next week you say, hey, because of what you did last week, I'm going to punish you again this week?
Parents, we don't do that. We punish the child at the event. I think part of the thing that God's telling Moses is the punishment he gave out. He wants Moses to make sure the people understand that that punishment for them doing that, worshipping that golden calf, that's not going to necessarily continue or come back and rule them. Right. That he is slow to anger, but he's also going to punish those.
Going a little bit back to Joe's point, how has God already.
Let's go back all the way back into Genesis. How has God already demonstrated those qualities?
Give me some things that's happened before this where God's demonstrated those qualities that he used to introduce himself.
Yeah. He brought the people out of Egypt. How many times have they complained? Right. Through all of that.
Any others?
Sodom and Gomorrah's ark. Noah's ark. Right. You. You see that? He saw all this wickedness, but he saw Noah. Right. And he saved him and his Family.
God has demonstrated all these qualities, pretty much all of Moses existence. Right. Moses, if he knew the stories before, and we know that he knew the story of Abraham because God mentioned to him the promise. God had demonstrated so many of these qualities before, but here he introduces himself.
What do you think about his introduction?
Anything in that introduction, that.
What's your favorite?
What do you find comforting in his introduction?
I got a question. It's not necessarily related to what you're.
[00:26:01] Speaker D: Asking, but it's interesting that he does an introduction again after the burning bush.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: Because the burning bush, Moses is like, who's this? And now he's got a pretty good.
[00:26:10] Speaker D: Idea that God has to remind him.
[00:26:13] Speaker B: Like you said, surrounding the events of the calf.
What, who he is. Right.
[00:26:19] Speaker C: The more qualities of himself.
[00:26:21] Speaker B: And I think, you know, if he reminds Abraham, because Abraham's also going to pass it on to the Israelites. Right. But what about. What do you find comfort if we go back, if we go back and we look at this that's contained as introduction, what of those bring you comfort?
Yeah. Right.
Compassionate and gracious, slow to anger.
What do you think about this one? Maintaining love to thousands.
How would you interpret that or say that today?
Yeah, there's no ending of his love. Right.
Abounding in love and faithfulness. All those things bring you comfort. Is there any that maybe scare you a little bit? Or are there any that brings just a little bit of trepidation?
[00:27:27] Speaker D: Verse 7, where he says it's going to bring iniquity of fathers on the children and the grandchildren in the third and fourth generations.
I mess up a lot, but I don't want my kids to take any of that.
[00:27:39] Speaker B: Yeah, we're going to talk about that one later in the quarter.
Not now. We can't do it right now.
But you know, we see all these good things and you go back to those, what do we say, 90,000 volumes on Amazon. I bet a lot of them focus on these things that we find a lot of comfort in. Right.
But I wonder how many of them talk about that God's going to wind up punishing some.
Do we oftentimes focus on the sweet and we don't ever focus on the sour or we don't ever, you know, like when we have candy, do we like sweet and sour mixed? Right. So I think we have to realize, to me, when we think back about that, when you think about that, when you think about that introduction, you realize that God is giving you who he is.
He's not giving you an introduction that we might present to Someone, something else.
[00:28:49] Speaker E: With the recent history that the Israelites have gone through coming out of Egypt, they've seen the displays of his power and his judgment against the Egyptians and the displays of power against their gods through the plagues. And now they've seen another display of his anger through Moses. And some of what he's saying here is I think, meant to come to their own line. And I have brought you out of Egypt. I chose you.
This is who I am. I am a God who's going to protect you. And I want to be in this covenant with you. But there's responsibilities on your side too. And remember what I did to the people who were disobedient and who did evil in my sight, but also remember who I am.
If you do follow.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: Good point, great point. And I think it, I do think, you know, I like the fact that there's so many of those that he emphasizes love and graciousness and mercy and love for thousands and forgiving, you know, think about it, you know, rebellion and all those. He names three different types of sin that he'll forgive us. So John Goldengay wrote this.
He's an Old Testament theologian and he wrote that based on talking about that introduction, he wrote, God is not only able to be active, decisive, self sufficient, controlling, tough and changing, but also to be acted upon, relational, flexible, sensitive, vulnerable, and risk taking. Not sure if I necessarily agree with the risk taking, but what he's saying and what you'll notice is that throughout the Bible, when people argue with God, when Moses intervenes for the people, what does Moses do? Moses uses the quality that God introduces himself as, as the basis of his argument of why he should not punish the Israelites. Moses says, God, you are a loving, gracious, slow to anger God.
So you've got to let the people continue. You can't destroy the people. Right, let's keep going.
What do you think?
I think I've already said it a little bit. But what do you think? What qualities of that introduction do most people focus on today?
Or perhaps they don't focus on today. But what do you think should be the most qualities that are focused on today?
The loving qualities. Right. We often hear the God of the Old Testament is different from the God of the New Testament. But yet when you look at his introduction, it's the same. He's a loving God, gracious and merciful.
How did Moses. Let's go back to the text. How did Moses react to God's introduction? Somebody read verse 8.
[00:31:59] Speaker D: Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth. And worshiped.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: Notice his response. He immediately, he immediately bowed down and began to worship him on the spot.
When you read through those qualities, what's the quality that makes you want to worship?
What's the qualities that would make you bow your head and worship? Forgiveness. Right?
Do you think we take this introduction with us on Sundays when we worship?
Do you think we focus on these qualities when we take of the bread and of the fruit of the vine, do we forget these qualities sometimes when we worship?
Notice that when Moses heard these things, his response, he immediately bowed his head and he began to worship. I think sometimes we maybe don't necessarily prepare ourselves for worship and think about these qualities.
Think about mercy and grace. Think about God's love, how God's love is for everyone. There's no end to God's love. And I think sometimes we need to make we do that. Let's look and see what he does. What's he do in verse nine Somebody read for me verse nine.
[00:33:41] Speaker D: And he said, if I have now found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord dwell in the midst of us. For it is a stiff necked people. And pardon our iniquity and our sin and take us for your enemy.
[00:33:52] Speaker B: Alright. Notice the three words that Moses uses.
He uses stiff necked.
That's a word we don't use much, but it basically means rebellious.
It means those who don't want to accept authority, they're stiff necked. And then it says pardon our iniquity and our sin. Let's go back to God's introduction. What does God say? He forgives, he forgives rebellion, he forgives iniquity and he forgives sin. So when we see Moses interceding for the people, Moses draws on those very qualities that God says he will forgive.
And I think that's what we see Moses reaction in that. Right?
Any thoughts?
So what we're going to do each week, we're going to take one of those qualities that we read about in that introduction. God makes and we're going to focus. That's going to be our focus for that week. And that's how we're going to approach our study. So here's what I want you to do on your card.
I want you to take. These are the qualities, right? Compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, forgiving wickedness, rebellion, sin, punishing the guilty. I want you to take you in your card and I want you to write which one of these that you need.
What's gone on in your life this week so far, that which one of these is most important to you?
And so by your name, where you've written your name, I want you to write down needs.
And then write, which one of these means the most of you today means the most to you today.
That's the application of this text, what God said. Moses took it, he applied it, he bowed down to worship, and then he intervened for the people by using these qualities of God.
So I want you to write it down, stick it someplace, put it in your pocket, put it in your Bible when you get home, maybe put it someplace where you see it.
Include that in your prayers that you need. Include that in your thoughts, maybe share it with others who support you. But which one of these is it that you need today?
Now, if you've been in my class before, I'm very much about giving homework.
And so this is what I'd like you to do this week. Between this week and next time we meet, I want you to go back to the Biblegateway.com or if you've got your own concordance that works, but go there and I want you to search for the phrase God is, and then also search for the Lord is. And you're going to be given a ton of verses. I want you to go through those verses and separate them out.
There are some verses that where it says God is, it's going to be more of an action, but we want to pull out more like the noun where God is. Like, I had put down like five or six.
But I want you to go through, and that's going to be kind of your exhaustive word study, if you will, is to find all the attributes that the Old Testament, New Testament has, what God is like. Okay? And then jot those down. And then also for next week, I need you to read numbers, chapter 14, verses 1 through 25. So that's your reading for the week. But then either go to your concordance or if you've got olive tree or something where you can search for phrases, search for the phrase God is and then the Lord is. And then write down all the passages that points to attributes of God.
[00:38:17] Speaker D: I'm thankful that God talks about himself and reveals his qualities himself. Because I find a lot of time in our society that people say, well, my God would never do this, and my God is not this and my God is not that.
And it would be different if we had other people saying Moses, saying who he thought God was, but God himself committed, revealing who he is gives us all the clarity we need when it comes to how God is described and who he is.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: And I think it's quite interesting that God, he showed those qualities through actions.
So when we start in Genesis and read Genesis to this point in Exodus, he's shown all those qualities and actions and now he states them. Oftentimes we'll state what we should be doing. And then I ask, do our actions match the introduction that we give here? We see God doing those things and then laying them out to Moses in that way.
Any other comments?
[00:39:32] Speaker C: I just really like how he's well rounded.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: Not only do we get to see his actions with his words and be that depth, but that he's got the balance that we so need. And that makes us easier to lean on him for. Because why would you not.
[00:39:49] Speaker C: And then why would you not want to worship him after hearing that and.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: Seeing that over and over and over again? Fantastic point. And I think that, you know, parents, especially parents to young children, new parents, I mean, look at these. I mean, these are what parents do. Parents show that they're loving, that they're forgiving, that their love has no end. But then parents also show that at some times there's got to be a little bit of punishment. And so I just think those qualities, I think when we read them and we see them and that they're coming from God himself is just a joy, something that we need to take comfort in. We take joy in.
All right, let's pray and then we'll be dismissed. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time we have to come together to study from your word. Father, we thank you for this church at Madison, for the fellowship, for the love, for the support that each of us get from. From this church. Father, help us as we go through this study this quarter to learn more about you, to appreciate the word that you've sent us, and to strengthen our faith and strengthen our love for you. Be with us as we go through the rest of this week. And it's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
