Open—Conrad Troyer
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Lord Jesus.
Come.
Come forward to Blast.
Lord Jesus.
Come.
Your voice say.
Yeah, Lord, thy word from thy not crying from.
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It is joy.
That's strange.
Best for God's blessing upon the meeting I'd like to read.
Verses that we just ended the hymn with that's found in Revelation 22 verse 17.
And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come, and let him that heareth say come.
And let him that is athirst come.
And whosoever will let him take the water of life freely drop on down to verse 20, he which testifieth these things. Seth, surely I come quickly, Amen. Even so come, Lord Jesus.
Our blessed and Father, our God, we're thankful.
For this thought, this hope for our Lord Jesus coming back for us.
And we're thankful to to have the Holy Spirit here to comfort us, to guide us, to direct us. And we do say, Even so, come Lord Jesus. But while we wait for the Lord Jesus, we have this meeting here before us.
Where there would be words of encouragement, words of expectation, words of uplifting in this very late hour that we're in, we're thankful that we have the freedom to be here this afternoon with a spirit guide and direct and lead during this hour. Lord Jesus, my name, you pray, Amen.
Let's begin this afternoon in Genesis chapter one.
Genesis chapter one and verse one.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, And God said, let there be light, and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good, and God had divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And the evening on, and the morning were the first day. And God said that there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.
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And it was so.
And God called the firmament heaven in the evening, and the morning were the second day.
Verse 10 And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he sees, and God saw that it was good.
Verse 13 In the evening. In the morning or the third day.
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years.
Let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth. And it was so. And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. And he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light up upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good in the evening, on the morning or the 4th day.
21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every wing to fall after his kind. And God saw that it was good. 23 in the evening, in the morning were the 5th day.
25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and God, and God saw that it was good. And God said.
Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea.
And over the fall of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he, Him male and female created he them.
Verse 31.
And God saw everything that he had made and.
Behold, it was very good, and the evening and the morning were the 6th day.
I really hesitated to share today.
Some things that have.
But on my heart for.
Several months and then.
Our brother got up.
Spoke about life and about vessels in the Sunday school and I really enjoyed that and I felt that I felt more compelled to share and want to say at the onset of the meeting that.
I have really serious concerns about.
The word choice and the semantics of the subject we want to talk about.
I have serious concerns about the lack of understanding on the part of the speaker.
But the second component that I'm much more confident in and much more comfortable with.
Is the indwelling of the Spirit, and through God's Word in His Spirit.
We'd like to look at several attributes of God.
His power and His wisdom first, followed hopefully by some thoughts and some verses about his love.
And you may be sitting there saying, why is that such a difficult subject?
And contemplating it.
I realized that I certainly wasn't qualified to speak on the subject.
But I quickly realized that anyone who would be qualified to speak on the subject or thought they were.
We'd probably see their arrogance pooling at their feet. It'd be sad for anyone in this room to claim to have.
Lots of authority about a subject about the attributes of God.
Our human minds are.
One of the single biggest limiting factors we have in understanding God and His being and the English language is completely inept at creating word choices that help us understand that. It seems our minds can gather more of this understanding and greater appreciation than our words could ever convey.
The verses we read intentionally trying to be concise.
We have.
In my words, the largest construction project.
Ever to occur in six days.
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And it's so exciting to me so many times at the end of the day when there's a summary 1St and it says what day it was and it says everything was good.
That's that's something we as man know nothing about.
I remember some years ago at work.
We're involved in a project and it's a small hospital.
Any of you that are familiar with projects like that know there's a lot of Saber rattling and a lot of. We got to get the schedule going, we got to go fast, we got to build this thing, we got a construction project, we got to get this done. All of that usual stuff going on and.
I went out there to visit one day after it had been what I thought mostly complete. I walked into the building and outside looked pretty good. Most of the inside looked good. And then I walked down this white corridor to go to a nurses station and one wall has been torn out, part of the ceilings torn out. The floor is rough.
And it's a disaster. It looks terrible because the rest of the place is essentially complete. Was none of my business because of our scope of work, but I had to too curious to not ask. I said what happened? Well, we built the building and the corridor was too narrow. We got to tear this wall out. We got to make this corridor wide enough.
So didn't we just say we were building something for 90 or 120 days and then we got to go fix a mess? It's exactly what happens when we build things. We have another term in our industry where we talk about completing a project and we get a list of the things that need to be cleaned up at the end. And it's called the punch list. And I'm Privy to some of those lists, and it's embarrassing to see the scale and the length of those lists. There's nothing perfect about any of that work. It's horrible.
But we're comparing our economy.
With God's economy.
And.
As a speaker, I'll quickly say that's a, that's a dangerous proposition, That's a dangerous thing to take on. And that's why I have really a lot of concerns about.
Attempting to share my thoughts on the subject like this.
What God did, He did perfectly.
So when we attempt to understand God's power and.
We're really forced to bring in his knowledge and as a wisdom at the same time, because if any of us look at a person that possesses maybe significant or lots of power, we don't have to look far in our economy and corruption follows that power very quickly. In some cases, the power is is essentially useless because there's so little knowledge accompanying the power. It's just.
Wheel spinning, it's just things going on and we see that all the time in the world right now.
That's not how God is. That's not his being.
When we speak about His attributes in our human mind, we want to talk about one, but in fact, all of the attributes that we're going to mention are inextricably connected in His being. And we think about people doing things and this action happens and this action happens. We miss so much of what His essence is, power, wisdom, all of those things. Those are not just things God does. They are His very.
They are a very.
They are the very essence of who he is. Let's take a quick diversion here.
Chapter 2.
Verse 21.
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone in my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.
Was Adam less of a man after his rib was taken out?
We'd say no, he was just as much of a man. I think most of the married girls in this room would say no. No, he was not less of a man. He was much more complete after he was there. I'd agree with that.
Man as a being is.
Body, soul, and spirit, by definition, components. Our bodies are components.
We think of building things and putting things together and taking components to create what we do. That's not God's economy. God is not a being of components.
One of the challenges with studying a subject like this is for my own small mind. Sometimes I have to think about what I understand, and the closest I can get to understanding God for who He is, is I have to say, He's not that. He's the opposite of what I can see and what I can understand.
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God's power, God's wisdom.
When the earth was formed made, where were the structural engineers?
There were none.
Where were the civil engineers? We can't get too close to the sun. We've got to be aligned with this. What about the force of gravity? What about friction?
There was nobody telling God what to do with that. He knew everything. He knows everything.
When I was a youngster.
My my mother had a large garden, much to my chagrin. Was not impressed by that garden.
We grew a lot of vegetables.
And the difficulty for me was.
My agenda of riding bicycle and.
Tracking down rodents with pellet guns and things like that was.
Frequently interrupted by my mother coming out on a beautiful sunny summer day and telling me.
Let's head out to the garden.
We go out there and there's these lines of vegetables and.
She'd look at a line of vegetables and there's some little weeds there. And she'd say, you know what? Today we're going to focus right here. We need to, I need to have you take these weeds out. Just stick with this row.
And the sun never seemed hotter than it did when you're pulling weeds like that. And I would sit there as a little boy and I wished Adam had made better choices and thought about all kinds of things I wish were different and.
Next day, same thing, go out and do some more gardening.
What's the moral of the story? I don't consider my mother to be a powerful person. I love her dearly and I respect her.
She recently turned 80 years old.
And I had the privilege.
Of telling her in person.
How much I appreciated.
Her wisdom primarily more than her power.
As a youngster.
The lesson she taught me and in my mid 40s.
I still think back about that and it would say I probably really didn't truly understand what she was doing for me until probably the last 10 or 15 years.
My mother is a weak example, as fabulous as she is. But that's wisdom and power put together, working and moving in our lives in a way that we may not now understand. We may understand in 10 or 15 years from now. Maybe we won't have 10 or 15 years from now. Maybe we won't understand.
Until it is how it is with the song we sang when he comes back to take us.
To continue in Genesis.
Let's look at one more intimidating example of God's power.
I'm sorry, I'm showed on notes I.
Exodus 19. I'm sorry, Chapter book of Exodus chapter 19.
Verse 10 And the Lord said unto Moses, going to the people, and sanctify them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their clothes, and be ready against the third day. For the third day the Lord will come down in the sight of all the people upon Mount Sinai. And thou shalt set bounds upon unto the people roundabout, saying, Take heed to yourselves, that you go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it. Whosoever toucheth the mount shall surely be put to death.
There shall not in hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned.
Or shot through, Whether it be beast or man, it shall not live. When the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount.
Verse 16. It came to pass on the third day in the morning.
That there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud, so that all the people that was in the camp trembled. And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at another part of the mount. And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.
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Can you picture that?
You fathom that a little bit. Standing next to a mountain, you've been given life or death instructions not to touch that mountain.
I enjoy spending time in the mountains. I have yet to see any of them shaking or smoking.
It's pretty intimidating, isn't it?
These people had no access. There was number access.
There was number way.
For them to enjoy, be comforted by, or have access.
To the power they were witnessing.
Epistle of John.
First, John.
Chapter 4.
I'm sorry, I'd like to go back, read two more things in the book of Deuteronomy that relate to God's sovereignty and it's really touched by our brother Sunday school and don't want to miss these verses. I'm sorry, Deuteronomy 32.
This this relates back to God breathing into Adam the breath of life. Life begins and ends in God's power.
Deuteronomy 32, verse 39.
See now that I even I am He and there is no God with me. I kill and I make alive. I wound and I heal. Neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.
That verse, to me personally, has been such a value and such a blessing.
May seem scary to you if you're on the wrong side of things, if you don't have a, if you don't, if you don't know the Lord Jesus as your Savior.
Maybe you're saved. Maybe you're at a distance. That verse might be intimidating to you.
I find it to be comforting.
Because my life is entirely under the control of God's hand.
And how, how does he do that work, the work that he does? We talk about executing. And when we say we're talking about executing, we talk about getting work done and accomplishing things, getting done, what we're obligated to do. How does God execute? Always in perfection. Verse four. He is the rock. His work is perfect for all his ways or judgment, a God of truth and without iniquity.
Justin, right? Is he?
Is he sometimes wrong about the timing of life? Is he sometimes wrong about disease and difficulty that comes in?
Never. It's impossible.
Epistle of John chapter first. John chapter 4 Shifting to the Lord's love. God's love for us, subjects so dear to my heart, has become much more so.
Over the last several years.
As I've understood God's sovereignty.
We think we're so smart.
And we think we have such a good idea about how our life should work.
We come up with lots of good plans.
And it's interesting. Sometimes we come up with a good plan and it executes and it does pretty well. We're proud enough to stand back and say we came up with a pretty good idea that worked out. That's how we are. That's our heart. That's my heart.
So many things have been taken away that have helped me understand that's not how it works anymore.
First John, chapter 4.
And diversity. God is love. It's not something he does. It's his essence. It's his very being.
Verse 9 This is the gospel story, and this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world.
That we might live through Him here in His love. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
So why are we in a different place than those Israelites who were at that mountain that was thundering and rocking and so intimidating? The answer is right here.
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God's Son.
Only one who could take away those barriers give us access to that power.
And that wisdom.
And every time we remember the Lord, like we did this morning.
Is touching.
That he would love us.
Me, a sinful creature.
Broken down.
Wretched manifestation of humanity.
Why would he do that?
Because he desired fellowship. Let's go back to the book. Let's go back to the book of Genesis.
Genesis chapter 41.
We all know the story well.
An attempt to be concise all.
Go to the verses that convey the thoughts that.
I've been interested that I've been enjoying.
41 verse 54 in the seven years of dearth began to come, according as Joseph had said.
And the dearth was in all the lands, but in the land of Egypt there was bread.
And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread.
And Pharaoh said unto all Egyptians.
Go on to Joseph.
What he sayeth to you.
Do.
Very profound words go into Joseph. What he sayeth do you do?
And the famine was over all the face of the earth. And Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold them to the Egyptians. And the famine wax sore in the land of Egypt. And all the countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn, because that the famine was so sore in all lands.
I want to make one thing perfectly clear before we continue.
If you have not come to Joseph.
If you have not accepted the Lord Jesus as your Savior.
You have no access to the storehouses.
The famine is going to rage.
You will be outside of the resources that are available.
Go to Joseph.
Would he say it to you? Do.
Very profound, very succinct.
Maybe you're a believer.
And you're just not close to the Lord.
And maybe you have famine.
Chapter 45.
Joseph's brothers have arrived. Verse one. Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him. And he cried, 'cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brother.
And he wept aloud.
And the Egyptians and the House of Pharaoh heard. And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph doth my father yet live. And his brethren could not answer him, for they will trouble that his presence. And Joseph said unto them, Come near to me.
I pray you. And they came near, and he said, I am Joseph, your brother.
Whom he sold in Egypt now therefore be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that ye sold me. Hit her. For God did send me before you to preserve life.
And these two years have the famine been in the land, and yet there are five years, and the which there shall neither be earring nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So it was not you that sent me Hitler, but God, and he that. And he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and Lord of all of his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.
We're talking about God's love.
Naturally, we say these brothers show up.
They conspired against him, threw him in a pit.
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That wasn't bad enough. Let's just sell them. That's what they did.
Did it look like God's sovereignty wasn't there for Joseph? Did it look like things have really gone wrong in his life? I'm sure he had days where he was.
Debating about that. We don't have that recorded force, but humanly speaking, I'm sure it happened. His brothers show up. These are the words that touch me so much.
Verse four come near to me.
Then he goes on to explain to them.
What is hardest toward them?
Because he, Joseph, knew something about human nature.
He knew his brothers would blame themselves.
Probably knew they would be intimidated by him.
God's sovereignty.
Doesn't take famines.
Whatever that famine might be in your life.
Maybe you're a believer. I've spoken to those who are not believers. I've spoken to those who may be believers but not be close to the Lord. Maybe you're a believer. Maybe you're close to the Lord. Maybe your heart is warm, you're on fire. But maybe there's a famine.
Maybe your marriage is rotten. Maybe your job is not what you want it to be. Maybe the degree you want is elusive.
Maybe there's disease in your family.
Maybe there's been death in your family.
All of those things could be famine.
And I enjoy thinking about famine.
Using a different word, the word subtraction. When we think about famine, typically we're thinking about something that is taken away from us.
And speaking again to human nature, sometimes we're so fixated with what's being subtracted from us.
That we don't even recognize.
The blessing.
And the work that's going on around us.
And God's economy works in a completely different scale than ours does.
When we see one thing happening.
The effect level is not just those ripples. The work is happening simultaneously across so many people and in so many ways. Your mind can't even understand it. You have no knowledge of it. If you had knowledge of it, you can understand the full effect of it. That's the scale that he works at when he's doing things.
And as I said, sometimes the subtraction is so difficult and it's so painful.
There are people in this room that have lost spouses.
There are people in this room that have lost children.
I'm medically in a place where.
There's a lot of uncertainty around my life.
And I was surprised by that when I found it out, and I shouldn't have been.
Because really, we're all the same.
Life can end very abruptly, very shortly, but it doesn't end beyond God's control.
But to go back to the subject of subtraction.
Death, disease, many forms of subtraction.
Are brought about by the fall of man by sin.
And it's God in such a way that when those things come about, that he's incapable of doing a great work around. And Despite that, though he's not, absolutely not, He's just the opposite. He's a God who uses those things and he completes a work that we can't even begin to understand. And my personal testimony is that through the process of subtraction.
Since we're talking about math equations, God doesn't work in an economy of simply adding. We think we're pretty wise sometimes as parents. We want to work with our kids and we say, well, we're going to take this away from them, but we're going to do a trade and we'll give you that back. We subtract and then we add. God doesn't subtract and simply add. God subtracts and he multiplies. I want to quickly say God does not work in math equations.
But for our small minds, if we can understand that the subtraction process.
Can be.
A path to blessing that you could barely understand. One more passage.
Staying in Genesis?
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Chapter 49.
The last verse of 49. And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people.
Chapter 50 and 15. And when Joseph's brethren saw their father was dead, they said, Joseph will perdenture hate us. It will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him. And they sent a messenger to Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, So shall he say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin.
For they did unto the evil. And now we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy Father.
And Joseph wept when they speak unto him.
And his brethren also went and fell down before his face, and they said.
Behold, we be thy servants.
Guilty fear.
If you ever experienced guilty fear as a young man, I experienced many, many nights.
Of guilty fear.
Was it because I wasn't saved?
Or is it because I didn't know God for who he really is?
Was it because I was choosing to hang on to the mistakes that I had made?
And as it's hard to say.
But if you're experiencing guilty fear and you know the Lord Jesus as your Savior, it's probably on you. The devil wants to use guilty fear to keep you at a distance, to have you send messengers to Christ.
Do you understand the seriousness of this metaphor? They didn't work. Going to go face him.
Verse 16 They sent a messenger unto him. Are you sending messengers to the Lord Jesus because you have guilty fear? It's not his desire.
All the power, all the wisdom we read about, it's not his desire.
Do you ever question God's motives for you?
Do you ever question his intentions for you? We talked about a subtraction process. Subtraction process is, humanly speaking, so difficult, can sometimes be so intensely painful.
We can hardly see past the pain.
We can't stop thinking about ourselves.
Whose fault is that?
Whose problem is that?
Is it because of a lack of God's resources? Absolutely not.
The enemy of our souls wants to use guilty fear to keep us at a distance. Subtraction and famine comes into our lives.
We question God's intentions for us.
And a person may logically ask, why is it so important to know about God and who He is? Why would we study his attributes?
There are many answers to that question.
One of the easiest answers is.
If you truly believe.
The Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior.
Why would you simply take the gift of eternal life and live your own life?
And believe that you are smart enough.
And competent enough to execute that life in a way that was going to be.
Good for yourself. It's not in you. You don't have it.
Nobody in this room is smart enough for that. Nobody in this room has enough power to make that happen.
Beautiful response from Joseph in verse 19.
Joseph said unto them, Fear not.
For am I in the place of God?
But As for you, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good to.
Bring to pass as it is this day.
To save much people alive. God's grand economy, one man, Joseph.
We have no idea how many souls.
He delivered from that famine.
One more point about the storehouses I find interesting. Find any record that there's an inventory of the storehouses.
So if you know the Lord.
And you're going to be close to Joseph and you're going to access to the storehouses. How would you know what's in there until you start receiving those things? You would have no idea. Sometimes we think we know so much. Verse 21 Now, therefore fear ye not. I will nourish you and your little ones.
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And he comforted them.
And speak kindly unto them.
So whether you're near or far from the Lord.
Whether it appears to you that he's subtracting or that he's multiplying in your life.
These verses.
Are written in a way when Joseph speaks that we can all understand.
Fear not.
God mentored unto good.
Fear not.
I will nourish you and your loved ones.
He spoke words of kindness and comfort.