I invite you to turn with me this morning to Deuteronomy chapter 6 and Hebrews 11. Deuteronomy chapter 6 as we sing the chapter there, or as we read the chapter there, and then Hebrews 11 as we read together the first six verses. And also if you would turn to the back of the Psalter hymnal to page 70 where we find the first article of our Confession of Faith, the Belgic Confession, page 70 in the back of this altar hymnal. Beginning with Deuteronomy chapter 6 as we give our attention to the reading of the Word of God. These are the commands, decrees, and laws that the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children, and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all His decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey, so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, promised you. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates. When the Lord your God brings you into the land, He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant. Then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Fear the Lord your God. Serve Him only and take your oaths in His name. Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you. For the Lord your God who is among you is a jealous God and His anger will burn against you and He will destroy you from the face of the land. Do not test the Lord your God as you did at Massah. Be sure to keep the commands of the Lord your God and the stipulations and decrees He has given you. Do what is right and good in the Lord's sight, so that it may go well with you, and you may go in and take over the good land that the Lord promised on oath to your forefathers, thrusting out all your enemies before you, as the Lord said. In the future, when your son asks you what is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees, and laws the Lord our God has commanded you, tell him, we were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, for the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Before our eyes, the Lord sent miraculous signs and wonders, great and terrible, upon Egypt and Pharaoh and his whole household. But he brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land that he promised on oath to our forefathers. The Lord commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the Lord our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today. And if we are careful to obey all this law before the Lord our God as He has commanded us, that will be our righteousness. Let me turn over to Hebrews chapter 11, the first six verses. Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. By faith, Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith, he was commended as a righteous man when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith, he still speaks even though he is dead. By faith, Enoch was taken from this life so that he did not experience death. He could not be found because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. And without faith, it is impossible to please God. Because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, we all believe with the heart and confess with the mouth the truth of the Word of God, right? That's kind of a broad and somewhat of a general claim, isn't it? And it's easy for us to make that kind of a claim, right? After all, you see, we do have a foundation for all that we believe and confess. And that foundation is the Word of God and only the Word of God. That foundation is not tradition. It is not majority vote. It is not our feelings. But that foundation alone is the Word of God. But then the question becomes, what do we believe the Word of God says? That claim then becomes a little more difficult. And that's where our ecumenical creeds and Reformed confessions help us. Remember, these creeds and confessions which we hold dear are the church's studied response, often in the midst of heretical attack, but the church's studied response to what the Word of God teaches. The church speaks through her creeds and confessions to answer questions regarding the Bible, to make the Bible's teaching clear. And through the ecumenical creeds and reformed confessions, the church says what God says. And we may be sure of that because the Word of God supports. It undergirds. It is the source of all that we teach in our creeds and confessions. You see, beloved, the confessions, as it were, take us by the hand and lead us right back to the Bible, which has the honor of having the last word. And that means also that we can be confident using the confessions in preaching. Not because they in any way replace or add to the Word of God, but because they fully agree with the Word of God. They say what God says. And the first article of the Belgic Confession says what God says. about himself, about himself. It talks about the believer's confession of God, or we should say the church's confession, the church of which believers are a part, the church's confession of God. And that's a great place to start, isn't it? Because it all begins with God. We said a couple of weeks ago that Article 1 begins this confession with a simple yet profound statement of faith. We all believe with the heart and confess with the mouth that there is one only simple and spiritual being which we call God, and that He is eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, immutable, infinite, almighty, perfectly wise, just, good, and the overflowing fountain of all good. This is a statement, again, that reflects the highest dignity, but at the same time, the deepest dependence. Both of these at the same time, that highest dignity and deepest dependence that anyone could ever express. And that statement that expresses that is, I believe in God. But then the question becomes, which God? And the Belgian Confession teaches the truth of Scripture that there is only one true God. This is called monotheism. The belief in one God. And monotheism is then contrasted to the false isms being taught. Like atheism, which says there is no God. Or polytheism, which says there are many gods. Or pantheism, which says that God is in all and all is God. And there are many other false isms out there. But this points then, beloved, to the duty of this confession. As a church and as believers, we have a duty to confess the truth of God as He has revealed Himself to us. But before we consider this duty together, let's take a step back and notice that the Belgic Confession does not begin by trying to prove the existence of God. The fact that God exists is assumed, and there's good reason for that, and that's because the Bible, His own Word, assumes that fact as it begins, In the beginning, God. In the beginning, God created. Not in the beginning God was created, but in the beginning God created. You see, we cannot prove the existence of God. There are no rational proofs for God's existence. Science cannot prove it, although I think that things I've heard in recent years, that science is getting closer to proving that the Big Bang Theory, evolution, cannot be true. But we know Him to be true. We know that He exists simply by faith. Again, faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. And as the Heidelberg Catechism says in Answer 21, true faith includes, it's not the whole of it, but it includes a knowledge and conviction that everything God reveals in His Word is true. And that includes the truth of God and His existence. Beloved, faith is an act of the heart. And those who enjoy that gift of faith also then understand the duty that is ours as we are called to respond to what we believe by faith. And that response begins with a proper confession of God. And our duty begins with confessing God before God. Now, of course, that may sound a bit strange, but believers are called to confess before God that we acknowledge, as Article 1 says, that He is a simple and spiritual being. We confess He is a being. In other words, we confess that He is real. We confess that He really exists. And acknowledging to God that He is God is pleasing to Him. Hebrews 11, verse 6 again, And without faith, by which we believe that He exists, without faith it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. And the psalmist says in Psalm 29, Ascribe to the Lord, O mighty ones. Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name. Worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness. The psalms are filled with calls to worship the Lord because of who He is and because of what He has done. They are filled with calls to acknowledge Him. Even as we were reminded in adult Sunday school, to remember what He has done to acknowledge Him and confess Him in that way. And beloved, this acknowledgement is a part of that highest dignity that we give to God. By confessing the true God as He has revealed Himself in His Word, we are saying that there is only one God. There is no other that we should look to or worship. And only this God is the God of our salvation. But then that same confession of God before God must also be made before the world. Again, as we know, we've been reminded this morning, the world has many gods. Think of those isms again. We know that the world has many gods already from Scripture. The Bible is filled with stories of God's people facing the heathen nations who worshiped heathen gods, Baal, Asherah, Moloch, Dagon, Diana, to mention a few. And we know that even today there are many false religions with false gods that give nothing but false hope and false comfort. But again, this too should really be no surprise to us that the people of the world look to many different, as we hear it, higher powers. For help. Paul talks about wicked mankind in Romans 1 and says, For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. And he also says they suppress the truth by their wickedness. Calvin refers to this knowledge as the sensus divinitatis, a sense of the divine. All men have a sense of something greater than themselves. I believe even atheists deep down in their heart of hearts know that there is a greater power than themselves. Beloved, the church is the pillar and the ground of all truth. God has entrusted her with the gospel and she is responsible for guarding it and teaching it and preserving that truth and passing that truth along to the next generation. And that includes confessing the truth before the world and her false gods, which are really non-gods. we must confess that our God is the Lord, that He is Yahweh, as Moses made clear when he said, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. He is the great I Am. He is the existing and living One. He is the One who has revealed Himself to His people as their covenant God. He alone is God. And this was to be a comfort to the Israelites as their heathen neighbors tried to appease the wrath of many gods, wondering which one to turn to in whatever situation of life, not knowing exactly how to deal with their gods, while Israel was secure with the one God, Jehovah, the God over all, who dealt with His people by a consistent righteous standard, namely His law, which He had given to them with His own mouth. But it's the church's and the believer's duty also to confess the truth of God for the sake of our children and ourselves. We are to teach our children the truth of God. In fact, Moses commanded this to be a lifestyle approach, didn't he? Sitting, walking, lying down, getting up. In other words, the truth of God is to always be before our eyes. There's nothing else more important that we can or must teach our children than about the truth of God and salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. This is how God preserves His Word in the church. This is how He builds His church. But our confession of God is also for ourselves. As the book of Judges teaches us so clearly, we have short attention spans. We have short memories. Every day we need to be reminded of the truth of God. We need to be reminded of it by means of God's Word and by prayer And by continually confessing Him, we also confess our deepest dependence upon this one and only true God. We confess our greatest need and that only He can fill that need. And beloved, our deep dependence is magnified when we then consider and confess who God is. What then is the content of this confession? Indeed, our confession of God must include what He has done. But you see, that only makes sense in light of who He is. And to begin with, as Moses said, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. First of all, He is unique. There is not a single person or thing that bears the slightest resemblance to Him, but He is also one in that He is the one and only God. There are no other gods. He said, you shall have no other gods before Me. He wasn't saying that there are other true gods that exist in addition to Him. And He also wasn't saying that He is to be the first among many for you and me. But God was saying that nothing else is to take the place of God in your life and in my life. He alone is exclusive. Again, there have been and there continue to be many things that are called God, but they are not God. And time and time again throughout the history of God's people, he proved that he alone is God as he defeated the so-called powers of false gods. Remember, he conquered the Egyptian gods through the ten plagues. He proved Baal to be useless on Mount Carmel when Jehovah sent down the fire to consume Elijah's sacrifice. He made Dagon bow down before him in Dagon's own temple. See, beloved, we cannot fully understand and know God Not fully. But we can know Him as He has revealed Himself in His Word by His Holy Spirit. The Bible describes God using what we call attributes. The attributes are the language of who God is. Article 1 gives this list, along with saying that there is only one simple and spiritual being. He is eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, immutable, infinite, almighty, perfectly wise, just, good, and the overflowing fountain of all good. Now in Reformed theology, we speak of the communicable and the incommunicable attributes of God. And the communicable attributes of God are those attributes which find some slight reflection, however slight it may be, find some slight reflection in man, like knowledge, wisdom, and truth. And the incommunicable attributes are those attributes of God which are exclusive to Him, And they find absolutely no reflection in man, like independence, immutability, infiniteness. Now, of course, the Belgic Confession doesn't give us a complete list of all of God's attributes as we find them expressed in Scripture. But it gives a thorough sample, covering the greatness and the majesty of God. First of all, God is a simple being. Probably one of the hardest to understand, especially for me. But He is without many parts. He is not composed of many parts. He is radically different from the works of His hands. For example, man who is composed of body and soul. The Bible says God is light. God is love. He's not made up of part light and part love and part holiness and part eternality, for example. But He is completely light. He is completely love. He is 100% each one of His attributes, not composed of parts. He is a spiritual being. He's not made up of the material world. Jesus said God is spirit. Yes, the Bible speaks of God as having eyes and hands and feet and a mouth, but He doesn't really have those physical features. But He condescends. He comes down and speaks in our language, to our level, so we might be able to understand His power, as the Bible speaks of His right hand of power. As it talks about the fact that God's eyes see all things. It talks about the earth being His footstool. God is eternal. Not in the sense that He had a beginning and now continues on indefinitely, but the fact that He is without beginning and without end, as Psalm 90 verse 2 says, From everlasting to everlasting, you are God. He is also incomprehensible. Romans 11, verse 33 says, Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable His judgments and His paths beyond tracing out. Again, simply put, as we said a moment ago, we cannot fully know and understand God, His being, His plan, or how He deals with mankind or anything else about Him. There are many things about God, beloved, that are a mystery to us. No doubt we would all agree that the Trinity is one of them. We already said that He is one simple being. Yet the Bible teaches, we glean from Scripture, that there are three in one. God in three persons. We hope to consider the Trinity in more detail later on as we continue on in the confession. But we must be content, beloved, in understanding that while it is possible, Maybe not probable, but while it is possible to be an expert about and know everything about something in this life. Maybe tax accounting or something about a certain animal or whatever else you can think of. To know every single detail. Again, maybe not probable, but it's possible. Yet not one of us will ever get to the point where there is nothing left for us to learn about God. Not a single one of us will ever get to that point. And that's why we continue to study His Word. And that's why we long for one more opportunity to gather together for worship. God is invisible. He has no physical body. He cannot be seen because He is invisible spirit. Jesus Christ Himself, as Paul says in Colossians 1, is the image of the invisible God. God is also immutable. Simply put, that means God is changeless. He never changes, not in His being, not in His purposes, not in His plan, not in His promises. James says, there is no variation or shifting shadow with God. The next attribute listed is that God is infinite. That means there are no limits in God, especially with regard to time. He is eternal. And with regard to space, He is immense over all things. He fills all things and He is omnipresent. He is present everywhere all the time. The psalmist makes it clear in Psalm 139 that there is nowhere to run away from God's presence. He is also almighty. That means that all power belongs to Him. He is perfectly wise, which means He uses His perfect knowledge to perfectly accomplish His perfect purpose. He is just, which means that He governs all things according to His law, which includes that sin must be punished. He is good. There's no evil in God, and His goodness is seen in His grace, mercy, loving kindness, His patience, and His love. Now, beloved, as you can tell, this is only a quick, very, very insufficient thumbnail sketch of the attributes of God. And the Lord willing, I hope to select a few of them to preach on in more detail in the weeks to come. But this is only a small taste, albeit it is a taste. But it's only a small taste of how Scripture describes the being of God. A good taste, I trust, to you. The Lord our God is one. Who is one? He's infinitely and eternally perfect. He is self-existent. He is self-sufficient. He depends upon no one or nothing outside of Himself. And He is totally other than the gods of the world. The psalmist says in Psalm 115, Our God is in heaven. He does whatever pleases Him. But their gods are silver and gold made by the hands of men. They have mouths but cannot speak. Eyes but they cannot see. They have ears but cannot hear. Noses but they cannot smell. They have hands but cannot feel. Feet but they cannot walk. Nor can they utter a sound with their throats. Those who make them will be like them. And so will all who trust in them. But the one true God of the Bible is the One whom we believe and confess exists complete with all of His attributes as described in His Word. And congregation, that confession, calls for a response from you and me. The truth of God calls for a response from His people. What you believe and in whom you believe determines your response. What you say about God and what you do with what God says determines what you do with life. Your response to the God you confess to serve will be evident in all of your life. In how you do your work. Why you do the work you do. In your relationships. How you dress. Simply why you do anything that you do. All of life, beloved, even the most insignificant details of life will reflect the truth of your confession of God. Do you honor the majesty of this great God you confess? Well, finally then, what is the delight of this confession? Well, I think we can speak of this delight in a number of ways. First of all, there is delight simply in knowing this true God by faith. There is to be delight in that, delight in knowing one so great. Remember, not all have this privilege by God's grace. Not all have it. So many suppress the truth in unrighteousness. But this knowledge also includes personal experience. He deals with His people in a way that is consistent with His attributes so that we experience His mercy and grace and love and patience and kindness and peace and even at times His justice through His discipline. As well, God gives us the comfort and the assurance of His power and His majesty, His presence with us, of His infiniteness, of His changelessness. Indeed, our delight is in confessing that He is the overflowing fountain of all good. Our delight is that we are given the confidence by His Holy Spirit that not only has God made all things, including us, but He protects and He preserves and He provides for His creatures, His creation. We enjoy His many gifts to sustain us in this life. Israel also enjoyed the same things. Listen again to verses 10-12 of Deuteronomy 6. When the Lord your God brings you into the land He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you a land with large, flourishing cities, you did not build. Houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide. Wells you did not dig. And vineyards and olive groves you did not plant. Then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Beloved, this God is the cause and origin of true happiness. He is the cause and origin of all true saving and never failing help. He is the cause and origin of relief giving comfort. And He is the cause and origin of eternal life. And all of this is true for us because He is the God of our salvation. That's the pinnacle, the crown of this delight, isn't it? That He is the crown of our salvation. He is our light and our salvation and therefore we need not fear any other. And this fountain of all good includes satisfaction for our most urgent need, and that is that God planned and God carried out through His own Son, Jesus Christ, the perfect salvation. Beloved, there is no other God of salvation. There is no other. And that again then points back to our duty, doesn't it? Why our duty is so important. Why we have a duty to confess that He alone is the God of salvation before Him. To acknowledge that. That highest dignity. To confess the truth that there is no other God of salvation before mankind, before the world. That others too might hear that gospel message. We might confess the truth that there is no other God of salvation before our children. That they too might be taught that truth. And to confess that for the sake of ourselves. In our humble dependence upon Him. Our deepest dependence that we are reminded too. That He and He alone is the God of our salvation. Many have looked and they continue to look in all the wrong places for true peace and safety. Many have concocted false means of hope which involve effort and doing my part to earn salvation. But beloved, the Lord our God has done it all. He is the one who works all things for the good of those who love Him. He is the one who says, You shall have no other gods before me because there is no other. I will not give my glory to another. And I am sufficient for you. Beloved, He alone is the one we are to live for. We don't. Like the nations, we don't have many masters to please. Praise God for that. Only Him. All other religions say, you've got to do this, you've got to do that, you've got to do the other thing, then you might be saved. Only Christianity says, enter into the joy of your rest. because Jesus Christ has done it all for you. And we know this God through Jesus Christ, His Son, who said, He who has seen me has seen the Father. And beloved, our comfort is that our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is this God whom we believe with the heart and confess with the mouth. He owns all of these attributes. And because He is this God, His work on our behalf is perfect. It's forever. and His work cannot, and it will not change. Those who believe in false gods, gods of their own imaginations, or gods of their own making, as the psalmist says, will be like them. That is, dead, lost, good for nothing, without hope, eternally. But those who turn to the true God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and confess Him alone, they will know the truth of God's Word, which says, Happy is the man whose God is the Lord. Isn't that wonderful? Is that happiness yours? Do you own it? Even in times of difficulty, as we talked about in adult Sunday school, can you look back and remember what the Lord has done? And confess that He alone is God? Happy is the man whose God is the Lord. What a reason to get up in the morning. And beloved, that happiness is ours forever. Now isn't that something worth talking about? Do you believe in this God? Have you said it? If not, what are you waiting for? Because there is no other. Only the God of the Bible is real. Only He will do. Amen. Shall we pray? our gracious God and Heavenly Father, God of all power, God of all might, we do extol You and praise Your holy name for who You are and what You have done. We confess, O Lord, that we do not know You because we have come to know You on our own. For if left to ourselves, we too would suppress the truth and the knowledge of You in unrighteousness. But we know You because You have revealed Yourself to us. You have opened our hearts by the power of Your Holy Spirit to know You, the one, only, true God, and Your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. And Father, may we understand more and more every day the wonder of Your greatness, the glory of who You are, And may it be our desire to confess that truth before the world every day of our lives. Lord God, we pray that through this knowledge as well you would strengthen our faith and increase our assurance of that precious gift of salvation. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray these things. Amen.