1 JohnEverlasting Mercy Fellowship

The Father: Our Great God & Judge

1st John 2:11 My little children, I

am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

Analogy of the Human Condition: A Judge, A Lawyer, and a Courtroom

What is the judge like?

God is the judge Psalm 50:6

▪ 6 The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge! SELAH

The terms justice, justified, righteous, righteousness, holy and holiness are found more than 1300 times in the Bible.

God owns everything including you! Ezekiel 18:4

▪ 4 Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.

What is he like? Holy Isaiah 6:3

▪ 3And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!“

Righteous – perfectly wonderful Nehemiah 9:32-33

▪ 32"Now, therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love, let not all the hardship seem little to you that has come upon us, upon our kings, our princes, our priests, our prophets, our fathers, and all your people, since the time of the kings of Assyria until this day. 33 Yet you have been righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly.

God speaks out the abundance of His character (heart) Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. See

Matthew 12:34; Luke 6:45

What is the judge like?

What do the things that God speak say about Him? Creation – see Genesis 1-3 The Law – see Exodus 20:1-17

God gave us creation & it was good. Genesis 1:31

▪ 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

God gave us the law & it was good. Romans 7:12

▪ 12So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

God gave us the law yet men are too weak to fulfill it. Romans 8:3-4 3For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could

not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Why God, why?

Why would God give something to us that we can’t fulfill. For the same reason parents give good to children who eventually break them.

What is the judge like?

We are in no position to judge God. Romans 9:20-26

▪ 20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me like this?" 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— 24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? 25 As indeed he says in Hosea, "Those who were not my people I will call 'my people,' and her who was not beloved I will call 'beloved.'" 26 "And in the very place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' there they will be called 'sons of the living God.'“

God is gracious. He stores what is precious in a jar of clay. 2nd Corinthians 4:7-10

▪ 7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.