Open Theism (pt-1)

Let's open with a word of prayer our Heavenly Father. We thank you for the opportunity to come together to worship this morning

We ask that the Holy Spirit Minister to us this morning and prepare our hearts to receive the word and we ask this in Jesus name.

Amen we're going to start this morning on a three -week tour a three -week look at a major heresy that is

Threatening the Evangelical Church by that I mean open theism Some of you may or may not have heard of that.

What is open theism? Why why is it a threat and What can we do about it?

And this morning is going to be primarily Introduction We're not going to get into a lot of scripture this morning

We're going to sort of lay the groundwork on what we're going to do for the next two weeks on this topic and so We'll start off John Stott listed

Characteristics of evangelicalism. What what is we call ourselves evangelicals?

What does that mean? what does it mean to be an evangelical and Stott defined the three defining characteristics of evangelicalism is this first of all there is the revealing work of the

Father Christianity is a revealed religion Not that men thought it up The second thing is the redeeming work of the

Son and the third aspect is the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit These three things are what define what we call evangelicalism.

Now that name has been co -opted by all sorts of people Literally a huge percentage of the population would define themselves as evangelical

We would not necessarily agree with that definition but this this is the core thing and Up until the 1960s the primary challenge to evangelical thought to the evangelical approach to life

If you will the primary challenge of that came from what we would call the Enlightenment or rationalism the idea that human reason could define how we needed to approach life that men by exercise of their minds and Looking around them and studying nature and what -have -you could come to Answers To the great questions of life.

Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? What is the purpose for my life?

And so this started back even before say the French Revolution and became the defining characteristic of the time and It enabled certain things.

First of all, it enabled men to live as if God did not exist

And this was kind of curious because one of the characteristics of modernism is that they they all Pretty much agreed that God existed that there was a

God But he was not the God that interfered in human life

That directed anything. He was sort of the he was he was what has been termed sometimes the watchmaker

God You know There was a creator God who had made the watch and had wound it up and then just set it on the shelf and was watching

It to see what would happen But this is the God of the deist is not the God that directs your life that interacts with your life

It's a God that's totally transcendent and is not imminent in any way

And so you can live as if God did not exist Throughout history there have not been too many actual overt atheists

But the world is full of practical atheists Churches are full of practical atheists if you will people who live as if God is not there regardless of what they say and so the other another characteristic was the human being was the source of all morality and meaning somehow we could reach down grab a hold of our own bootstraps and pull ourselves up and We could by exercise of our rational thought become moral beings and This this whole idea this modernistic idea repudiated all external authorities particularly external religious authorities

Instead of the church Being the authority in your life now you are going to be your own authority

Well that continued up until the early 1960s But starting in the 1960s

We began to swing away from that and swing into what is what's become known as post -modernism and The Defining characteristic of post -modernism if you will is the rejection of truth per se

The modernist would agree with you that truth existed He may not agree that we knew what it was

But they would at least agree that yes out there somewhere is Truth and if we ever do discover what it is, it will apply to everyone

Because that's the characteristic of an absolute truth. It applies to everybody and so But then you start to get into the 1960s and into the post -modernist era and they reject that idea

They reject the basic idea that there is absolute truth and Which once you do that?

Morality is no longer self -evident How we are to act with one another

No longer becomes self -evident The very idea of knowledge itself is seen as being biased

The very fact that we claim that we know something Well, who are you to claim that you know anything?

You know, how do you know that that that type of attitude comes out of this? And finally you come to the point where everybody and everything is seen as being false

Everybody and everything is seen as being fake and so there is no longer any truth

With a capital T there are only truths Which are things that are true for you, but they're not necessarily true for me.

And if that's your truth, well, that's fine I'm glad you found your truth, but that doesn't apply to me That sort of attitude

We no longer have any principles We have only preferences What I would prefer to do

It's interesting a principle was once defined by the court as what you're willing to die for and We no longer have things like that that we're willing to die for what would you go to the wall for?

What principles are there in your life That you would that you would go to the to the wall for To go back to the age of martyrs

What what is there in your life that you would go to the stake for that you would not recant

Okay but Carl You're in the minority. I would say everyone else here would probably go to the stake for that, but we are in the minority in The world in general the world around us

There are very few things in this country in particular that people would go to the wall for Now and this is one of the things to diverting slightly this is one of the concepts that we why we have trouble

Understanding our adversaries in the world and the war on terrorism There are people out there who believe in something and they will go to the wall for it

These are the kind of guys that drive the car loaded with explosives up beside something and blow it up We have a great

Deal of trouble in this war in this country Understanding the mental processes of people that would do that because we have long since abandoned that type of commitment

Okay, no principles only preferences. There is no meaning outside ourselves

There is no Fixed greater meaning than ourselves. There is only what we define within ourselves

Again this idea it goes back the idea that there's no absolute truth and so words

We no longer use words. We no longer use language to describe a

Meaning that is outside of ourselves or a reality that is outside of ourselves they are used only to create a reality within ourselves and So again another way of putting that is words no longer have fixed meanings

It's kind of like Alice in Wonderland, what does it mean? It means whatever I want it to mean and It might not mean that tomorrow.

It only means that today or right now Truth has become a construct

Truth is not an absolute anymore in the post -modernist world. It's construct All of this does have a point by the way

We will get there God willing sooner or later And so the moral universe

Because of all of these previous things we've just talked about the moral universe That is a universe in which your actions have consequences

No longer exists The idea of a moral universe no longer exists in the post -modernist mind

And this affects to a great extent we go out and try to evangelize a great deal of the time we go out and we we use phrases and words and methods

That are no longer appropriate Because they don't mean anything to the people we're talking to we have also substituted values for virtues

Now we talked about family values and that's a good thing But what we really mean is family virtues

Now, what's the difference? Virtues are aspects of good which are supposed to be normative for all and when you even as late as the 1950s most of society

Functioned from what we would call a Christian worldview They were not Christians, but they functioned from a

Christian worldview There were certain virtues that everyone accepted as good even without proof

They sort of defined the way that we interacted with each other and what -have -you Now we've substituted values and that's just a personal preference

That's just a personal preference and what is a value for me may not be a value for you and What you value

I might not value is the way it goes. We have also substituted self Which Self are the unique characteristics of each individual we've substituted that for human nature and Human nature is that which makes man man?

We are created in the image of God He gave us a nature and even though that nature is fallen

There is still an echo of that in human beings Why are we different from animals?

Why is why are the people of PETA? fundamentally wrong

Because you know their idea is is that animals have all the same rights and privileges that human beings have what makes human beings different Why are we special is?

It just that we have clawed our way to the top of the food chain No, it is that we are created

Differently we are fundamentally different from the rest of the animal kingdom because we are created in the image of God Notice I said created in the image of God.

We did not evolve in the image of God we were created that way and So that is what makes that that's human nature, but we have substituted self for that We have also substituted personality for character you see this around you all the time

What is character character is what made the practice of the virtues habitual and unconscious personality is

Just the the characteristics of an individual. Oh, he has such a nice personality

You know and personality is what matters you know, we've heard we've heard this so often and we it's we have come into a world in which

Character no longer matters for anything in so much of the area of life, you know, particularly in the area of politics you know, the old joke is you know, the trouble with political jokes is too many of them get elected and That's more true now than it's ever been

You know, it's the guy with the glib answer the guy that can get the good spin But character it's all about character a

Couple of elections ago, you know, we heard a great deal of the fact that it did well character doesn't matter it's you know, how well does he do the job and At the same time

Norman Schwarzkopf general Norman Schwarzkopf developed or delivered a speech in which he made the point

It's all about character They still teach that in our military academies fortunately is that leadership is all about character

We've basically abandoned that idea. And finally we have substituted shame for guilt.

So what's the difference there? Shame is embarrassment at something that we would prefer to have hidden becoming public

There are things about each one of us that we would prefer that other people do not know about and When that does become known for whatever reason we we are embarrassed at that and that shame and of course

Modern psychology has put in a great deal of effort in just doing away with shame

Guilt By contrast is our state before a thrice.

Holy God Guilt is our state before a thrice. Holy God.

We have violated his laws And this is a concept that modern society absolutely detests that there is a holy

God we are accountable to him because he made us and we have offended him mightily and The problem that we face is how can we fit ourselves to stand in his presence?

Modern society does not want to deal with that issue and It's not only

Postmodern society this whole attitude is starting to come its way into evangelical society as well where we are trying to Reinvent God in our own image we are trying to we don't like the

God that is revealed in the pages of Scripture So we're going to reinvent

God into something that's more palatable and we would like a

God that's sort of like a Cosmic grandpa Who is you know is going to be indulgent and is this going to sort of wink at our sins?

We don't like the idea of a God that demands He's a righteous

God. He's a holy God and he demands that sins penalty be paid

We don't care for that and so in society in general we have the church the body of Christ and What is the role of the church?

In modern society or in ancient society for that matter. Well, first of all, the church is supposed to be different We are not supposed to be like the world

We are supposed to be in the world but not of the world we function inside the world inside The cosmos, you know, that's where we function, but we are not of that We are different Unfortunately, what is happening so much today?

Is that the idea comes that well what we should do is we should be really?

like the world and We will attract them You know, we'll be such nice guys that they'll want to be around us and so they're gonna be comfortable with it

They got to be comfortable in our meetings, you know, so let's don't talk about sin and let's don't talk about guilt and Heaven forbid we should not talk about Substitutionary atonement first of all, those are big words

I mean nobody knows what those words mean and secondly the we don't like the idea that there is something that needs to be atoned

For and that we need a substitute Because we are not capable of Paying the price ourselves

We don't like any of that So we've started to become like the world

You know and use the world's methods To attract, you know, we have we have defined

Success in the church is bodies in the pew and bodies in the pews If you have all the bodies you got the pews filled you're succeeding

Not necessarily and so we are what are we supposed to be doing?

We are supposed to be proclaiming the truth of God. God has revealed his truth to us in his

Word 2nd Timothy 3 15 16 that from a child you have known the holy scriptures

Which are able to make you what? wise Under salvation and We're supposed to be proclaiming the truth of God Instead we have substituted psychobabble

For God's revealed truth We are supposed to be using God's revealed truth for regeneration and sanctification

They're able to make you wise unto salvation you want to be wise study the Bible What God wants you to know he has revealed in the pages of his

Word And it's not some obscure thing either. It's plainly revealed

But we have substituted 12 -step plans or self -esteem workshops or whatever for simply proclaiming the

Word of God I carry around a Cartoon in my Bible. I've had it for years

Some of the characters out of Doonesbury and You know there's a there's a minister one of the characters and and he's going through the whole list of what's going on at the

Church of Walden and he finally gets to the end and he says are there any questions and Some a voice from out of the frame says yes.

Is there a church service and he says no I'm sorry, it conflicted with the self -esteem workshop

But you know, we we'd laugh at that except that is largely what so much of Modern church life has become and so the

And we argue about things that used to be self self -evident we argue about inspiration and today even in evangelical churches

Unfortunately, the issue is not so much inspiration, but sufficiency You know most people in an evangelical church will agree that the

Bible is the inspired Word of God But is that sufficient to handle whatever it is that we're facing

Is that sufficient to handle our problems? Is that truly what we need to know for for life and godliness?

Or do we need other things? Do we need the cycle babble? Do we need the 12 -step plan?

Do we need whatever it is thrown in? And we try to redefine this idea that you know that old -time religion

It was good enough for our mother, but it's not good enough for us Because it can't handle the modern world, you know

Or as somebody else put it now that we have modern communication. Give me that primetime religion You know, there we go and so Why is this important?

It's because Christ's accomplishment at the cross presupposes a moral universe

It presupposes a moral universe that is created by God and that God runs

It was not something it the universe is not something that God created and wound up the watch and he's just watching it happen

God Upholds the universe Actively moment by moment the fact that you draw your next breath is

A gift from God the fact that you woke up this morning and realized you hadn't set your clocks forward.

That's a gift from God All of those things the fact that you're still here is a gift from God the universe consists

Because he holds it together as an active as an active part of his will and so It's a moral universe and what

Christ accomplished on the cross presupposes that that actions have consequences and so if Christ dies in our place on the cross that has real

Consequences in our lives but if you don't have a moral universe the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross becomes unnecessary and incomprehensible if we don't need a

Savior Why would he do that? Why would you go to the cross and die?

Why would you go die in the first place much less of death like that? You know if there's no if there's if you're not living in a moral universe

But to go back to what we said earlier, you know in the postmodern mind the moral universe no longer exists and so when we start talking about Truth as if it existed

You know, we're talking like this. We're going past each other We're going completely past each other

So the doctrine of justification by faith has become redundant, why do I need to be justified?

what have I done to be justified for and finally the problem the church is left with nothing to say and In so much of the modern

Liberal church that has happened. They have run out of something to say they no longer have a message

They're out there saying well we should live a good life why why should

I live a good life? Because it makes people like me maybe but maybe not and so the idea of what is an evangelical

You know, that's that's debated now Just like the church is supposed to be different the church is supposed to be different because its members are supposed to be different Kingdom citizens are supposed to be different Matthew chapters 5 to 7 what we call the

Sermon on the Mount that defines how? Kingdom citizens are supposed to act what they're supposed to be like what we call the

B attitudes are the attitudes that are supposed to Characterize our lives and we read that and we get very uncomfortable.

Don't we at least I do Because I realize I'm not like that.

I'd you know meek Who wants to be meek? You know,

I want to stand up for my rights, you know, and don't anybody get in my way and I'm supposed to put others in front of me and I am supposed to love the

Lord my God with all my heart soul and mind Any of you do that this week?

Even for an instant See if you if you if you're looking for something to confess when you go to your prayer time, you can always hit that one

Lord, I have not loved you with all my heart soul in mind Because we all fall short of that but if you survey and they do this if you survey the

United States the population of the United States a huge percentage claims to be born again

Big percentage claims to be born again. What does that mean? Well, that means that in their life.

There's some moment of significance There's some moment of experience that they can point to but and While they view this as kind of a turning point

They're not quite clear on what it was. They turned from or what it was. They turned to but they know they turned and And Does it have a moral significance

Probably not Because those same surveys reveal the fact that the majority of those that claim to be born again

Live lives that are exactly the same as those who do not make that claim. And so what does it mean?

There don't seem to be any moral considerations to what being born again means in the minds of all too many people we have

Separated being born again that phrase from an understanding of sin and repentance and Therefore we have divorced being born again from biblical salvation what salvation means in the biblical terms and so We are confused over what evangelicals are

Who's a Christian Is it somebody that says I'm a Christian is it somebody that you know got their head wet when they were an infant

What is it? What's a Christian and so? Our view of God our

Knowledge of the word our knowledge of Christ our knowledge of the Holy Spirit all of these things work into Can we define who and what is a

Christian who and what is an evangelical if we don't have an accurate view of God the rest of it all falls apart and so the church cannot maintain its moral distance from the world unless it has a sense of supremacy and Centrality for God I told you we would eventually get to the point.

This is all preliminary. Okay, I promise Here's a quote

The reality of God's glory is vast boundless Infinite filled with splendor and wondrous it is

God's alone and is absolutely unshaken and undiminished by human efforts to make the infinite finite

Surround the boundless by boundaries and make human like what is uniquely

God's It comes from Bruce Ware. He also said this our conception of the glory of God as opposed to the reality

He's shaped by our understanding of his nature his Perfections his sovereignty his knowledge his holiness his goodness and his providence

So there's two things at work What God's glory really is the reality of it and what our conception of it is?

and while The reality of God's glory is completely unaffected

By what we think I made that comment one time in a totally different venue

But I made the comment that God is not impressed with what we think There was one lady in the room got very upset about that But it's true.

God is not impressed with what we think God is only impressed with what he thinks however our conception of the glory of God is a variable and I would offer to you that our focus upon our

Christian life is Driven directly by what our conception of God's glory is and our conception of God is

Because our view of God and his glory and I'm using the term

God's glory to mean everything that God is and And how much he isn't like us

What RC Spruill calls the otherness of God But that is the bedrock on which all of Christianity rests

Everything else in our lives flows out of that You know, we've got to have this great anchor rock that we tie ourselves to Otherwise we are going to be blown about by every wind of doctrine that comes down the road

Now, I know every one of you knows people that just as soon as some new doctrine comes down the road some new idea

I mean off they go, you know, they're headed off and Why is that it's because they have no anchor

They are not tied to an unmovable foundation We've mentioned before, you know, you go to New York City and you look at those great buildings that are there

Empire State Building Well underneath the Empire State Building where you can't see it

There are pilings that go all the way down to bedrock. And that's why that building stands is because it's resting on a firm foundation and If we don't have a firm foundation under us then indeed we are going to be blown about by every wind of doctrine that comes down the road and that is

Why this open theism thing is so dangerous The bedrock is under attack

Serious attempts are being made to alter our fundamental view of God's glory

Now what we're going to do from here for the rest of the time we have left to us. I'm going to do a fast overview of What open theism is all about and the objections to it?

I want to do that because while we are going to continue with this next Sunday God willing we may not have next

Sunday. And so the Lord may come by then So I want you to at least have something to sort of wrap this package up in part of this introduction and then next

Sunday We're going to start studying in detail and in some depth Passages that address this whole idea.

So what is open theism? First of all, it's a movement within Evangelicalism seeking to alter our view of God It is a prominent alternative to classic

Arminianism What is Arminianism? If you feel that you had any part to play in your salvation any part at all

Other than to sin if you feel other than that you had any part to play you are Arminian If you feel that your salvation is 100 % a result of the sovereignty of God you are

Calvinist That's the bottom line of the whole argument now we can we can preach for for years on those two things

But that's the that's the crux of it right there But open theism is an alternative

To classic Arminianism. It is also a major heresy. That's the only word for it

It is a major heresy the principal proponents today are Clark Pinnock Who used to be

Calvinist by the way? Richard Richard Rice John Sanders William Hasker David Basinger and Greg Boyd Those are the names that you see attached to this a great deal.

It's also called freewill theism It's also called the openness of God Now what are the major theater the major theses of this whole argument?

It's this that God's sovereignty is Limited Now they don't really explain how you can have limited sovereignty

That's sort of a contradiction in terms But nonetheless, the idea is that God self limits his sovereignty by the creation of free agents that is agents you who

Who possess what would be we would call libertarian freedom or?

Contra -causal freedom if you want a really $10 word That the idea being that you know

We make this that we can make decisions without any outside influence whatsoever nothing influences our

Outside decisions and any decision that we possibly made we could have made the other decision

Now when you think about this, this is really kind of a ludicrous idea Because all of you will admit that Even though you are free.

You are free moral agents meaning that you can make choices and You bear the consequences of those choices nonetheless as We as we drove to church this morning

Even there our decisions were constrained, right? Because we followed the road didn't we we didn't go driving off across somebody's front lawn you know and there were places where I turned and there were places where I did not turn because there's no road there and There were places where I could have turned left

But I couldn't have turned right because there's no road on the other side that way So I made yes,

I was making free decisions and the fact that nobody was coercing me holding a gun to my head, but on the other hand,

I Wasn't completely without restraint as as we drove here

In fact when we sometimes when we make decisions completely without restraint, we call that an accident, right?

Because so anyway Yeah, here we go There's really no such thing as as Libertarian freedom that is freedom that is completely unconstrained by anything and Yet that is what these individuals are trying to to say that God created.

Yes, ma 'am We'll get there

We'll get there, but that's an excellent question. That's a very excellent question because they say also

That God can only have comprehensive knowledge of the past and the present but not the future and As we'll see in a minute.

They don't really believe that he has comprehensive knowledge the past and the present either Then God cannot have comprehensive knowledge of the future they say because future events haven't happened yet and therefore are not

Real and so God's foreknowledge is an impossibility because the future cannot be known

So God is genuinely baffled by the future now, they will admit that God is very quick on his feet and He's really good at Making contingency plans when you guys do something that he was surprised about You know and that God has a really really good database and a really fast search engine

That lets him come up with things in the past see But nonetheless the idea of a sovereign

God who has decreed That certain events will happen is anathema to these people.

God is genuinely baffled by the future God's power is limited prophecies therefore are just an educated guess and That the supreme attribute of God is his love for us

You know, he is doing his best to save mankind because he loves us so very much

But as John MacArthur put it to elevate One of God's attributes above the others is idolatry and that's what you really have now

They they claim a biblical basis for this there are a handful a Relative handful of places in the scripture where it says

God regretted something God changed his mind about something

What did God say to Noah? He says in effect. I'm sorry.

I've created man on the earth and they say see there God's changing his mind or they point to something like where God asked questions regarding the future or Where God confronts a surprise something that's supposed to have surprised

God or that God gets frustrated Or that God tests individuals to learn their character like Job or like Abraham They point to the verse

Genesis 2212 I think where he says now I know what your character is

Implying that before that God did not know Whether or not

Abraham would take Isaac up and sacrifice him God speaks of what may or may not happen

God is seen as being flexible and responding to our choices. You look in Jeremiah chapter 18

For that and of course God changes his mind. That's where you look in Exodus chapter 33

Where God's talking to Moses, you know and and saying, you know Moses I'm going to get rid of all

I'm going to get rid of all these people and get some new people and I'm gonna you know get a New chosen people and Moses is pleading with God But in his book on the subject

The whole book Clark Pinnock uses exactly 13 references To scripture.

So what what kind of things are they running into? First of all, they're claiming that They claim an inherent incompatibility between first cause and second cause in other words the idea that You can say that both man and God caused something to happen

They reject the idea of second causes That We cause things to happen by our actions and we are morally responsible for those choices, but nonetheless above it all

God is the first cause They reject that idea

They also say that you cannot extrapolate a general principle from biblical examples of God's foreknowledge

That's the question you were asking. They they they admit that they're there but they say you can't take a general principle out of all of these examples of God's foreknowledge and God saying you know,

I have I Have decreed this will happen and it will happen on the other hand they say you have to take a general principle out of the limited set of Examples where it says

God changes his mind God regretted something, you know You must take you must take your general principle from that not from this vastly larger group of Examples to the contrary and then finally they say that more is open than then is settled

Although the Bible specifically says forever. Oh Lord thy word is what?

settled in Heaven now, what do they claim for this?

They claim first of all, it makes more intellectual sense Although they do not explain what made

God what made makes man's comprehension a criterion for anything They say it deals better with passages intention whatever that means

That foreknowledge harms our view of God They also say the

Calvinistic doctrine of God's providence causes Christians to not praise They should because quote it doesn't make any difference unquote

Now that argument has been around a lot longer than open theism If you study anything about this, that's one of the charges that's always leveled against the

Calvinist position Calvinism stresses Calvinism stresses the sovereignty of God and the providence of God and they say well, you know, why should

I pray? overlooking the fact that well, we're commanded to pray is one reason and secondly, the

Bible does have Many examples of where someone prays and God responds to the prayer of the

Saints Another claim for this has made it help us understand the problem of evil and also that it interacts better with modern science, although they do not explain why that is a criterion either and You know what set that up so by contrast

BB Warfield said this it is immoral to create what you are unwilling or unable to control

I'll say it again. It is immoral to create what you are unwilling or unable to control and So claims that what you are really claiming here in the open theism position

Is that God has created something that is out of his control? He created it, but he can't control it

And so what are the problems? Well, first of all, it reads the Bible atomistically that is each verse is taken in isolation

Individual atoms, you know type of thing and The second thing is is that it's basic hermeneutic which is a quote straightforward reading of the text unquote

See it says that God says now I know so that miss must mean that before this

God didn't know that right? Well, you can't consistently apply that and you go all the way back to Genesis chapter 3 verses 9 to 11

Which is God interacting with Adam and Eve in the garden? Now, what does God come down and say first thing?

He says, where are you? So if you're reading this the way the open theists say you are

God does not know the present He needs information. He does not know where Adam and Eve are

According to this and Then he says God is spatially limited it's denying the doctrine of omnipresence because this

God is is spoken of as being in one place God came down to the garden and That must mean that he wasn't in the garden before right?

And then finally he's got to ask for information What have you eaten? What have you done? And These are events that have happened in the past So you you're already denying that God even knows what the past is

Or the present he doesn't know where Adam and Eve are. He doesn't know what they've done in the past and So you can't apply their humber nudity breaks down immediately when you try to explain it the we'll go fast here it takes anthropopathisms and anthropomorphisms literally

Anthropopathisms are applying human emotions to God Anthropomorphisms are applying human characteristics to God.

God does not really have hands. He doesn't have eyes. He doesn't have ears Physically like we do but we talk about the eyes of God the hands of God.

And so it applies this literally and Not as figurative language and not as language of accommodation as one pastor called it

It ignores the use of Hebrew idioms It assumes that there is an incompatibility with divine sovereignty and human responsibility

Although there is no basis for assuming that it fails to deal with what the

Bible teaches Throughout its length about divine providence and human freedom such as in Romans chapter 9

This is where a knowledge of systematic theology pays off Why do you want to study systematic theology, why do you want to come to church on Sunday night?

commercial Because you want to know what the Bible says as its entire in its entirety about a subject

That keeps you from picking up one little verse and building a theology on it. And so the

Bible says much more Than the open theists are willing to allow

They basically ignore to answer your question. They don't deny they just ignore the all of those other passages and Finally they suspect that man is more loving than God and So we're out of time and I want to leave you though with three references

To to think about for this coming week the first Remember this and stand firm recall it to mind you transgressors

Remember the former things of old for I am God and there is no other I am

God and there is none like me declaring the end from the beginning

That's what defines God only God can do that declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done saying my

Counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my purpose calling a bird of prey from the east the man of my counsel from a far country

I Have spoken and I will bring it to pass. I have purposed and I will do it

Isaiah 46 8 to 11. The next one is Malachi 3 6 for I the

Lord do not change therefore Therefore you Oh children of Jacob are not consumed

And finally Hebrews chapter 6 verses 17 and 18 So when God desired to show more convincingly that the heirs of the promise

To the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose. He guaranteed it with an oath

So that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie

That's a critical phrase we who have fled for refuge might have strong Encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us

Let's pray our Heavenly Father We praise you and we thank you that you are an immutable unchanging

God and That you are a sovereign God and that what you have decreed will indeed happen for Lord, we acknowledge that our hope of salvation rests upon that bedrock and If we don't have that then we are truly without hope and we are truly miserable

And so father we praise you that you sent your son that you called us to yourself that you have revealed yourself to us and that you

Deal on a regular basis in our lives that we feel your hand regularly

We thank you for this. We pray for the remainder of the service rest your hand this morning Lord upon pastor