The Will of God Part 1

The Will of God and the Tension Between God’s Commands and God’s Decree

Turn with me, please, to the Prophet Daniel, Daniel chapter 4. Prophet Daniel, chapter 4.

And before we open the Word of God, let us pray together.

Our gracious Heavenly Father, we ask that once again You would grant to us the great privilege of Your grace, Your gracious presence with us by Your Spirit, to hear and understand Your Word, that You might be worshipped this day in this place.

We pray in Christ's name, Amen.

I am afraid that this morning our sermon will be somewhat stereotypical. Stereotypical.

What is that?

A stereotype, obviously, for us Reformed Baptists would be that we're going to recite the five points of Calvinism repeatedly during the entirety of the sermon. There are folks who think that's pretty much all we do, that behind the curtain behind me is actually a large portrait of John Calvin, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and maybe a glass-encased, very old copy of the Pilgrim's Progress.

That's probably what some of them think about us.

And I can assure you that none of that is actually back there if you're visiting for the first time. When I say that this morning will be somewhat stereotypical, normally what we do is we open a text of Scripture and we exegete it.

And if that text of Scripture happens to touch upon the great doctrines of the sovereignty of God or the freedom of His grace or the perfection of His work of salvation, then we will preach that. If it doesn't, then we do not seek to shoehorn something into a text that is actually not talking about that.

There are many times when we preach on texts that, quite honestly, we never touch on those great doctrines because they're talking about something else. They have very practical application. It doesn't mean that's not the foundation of everything, but the reality is that's how we do things.

But today, we want to look at the subject of the will of God. The will of God. And my hope is that this morning and this evening, once again, a singular topic in both, that in our exhortation, as we look at the word of God, we will be considering the subject of the will of God and how we are to understand it.

In the process, my hope is that we, as believers, in all we would pray that the Bible teaches about this particular subject, will have a greater understanding by the time we finish of what the scriptures are saying and why they're saying what they're saying, and hopefully have a better ability to explain to someone how it is that we harmonize the seemingly difficult texts of the Bible that portray God in different ways.

Specifically, we know that there are many texts in the Bible where we have God calling out to sinners. We have God with great patience, exhorting men to come to him. Very often, the people of Israel are the object of these exhortations, and all day long, God stretches his hand out toward a stiff-necked and rebellious people, as.

That is said in Isaiah 65.

And all the patience and loving kindness. And it seems from one perspective, and there are people, that God is in essence expressing the deepest desire of his heart. And it's something that he cannot accomplish.

He's trying. He's doing everything he can. He sends prophets and he sends apostles and he sends people amongst his people of Israel to call them to repentance. And he's trying and he keeps holding back judgment.

And he wants something to happen, but eventually he comes to the conclusion that.

It's just not going to happen.

And I tried my best, but eventually I just have to bring judgment. And there are many people who view the scriptures in that way. But then we have those other texts. And we have texts where God says, I'm going to punish someone.

And I'm going to do something and I'm going to harden the hearts of a particular.

People to bring about their destruction.

And you go, well, what God are we talking about here? Is it the one who's constantly stretching out his hand? Or now you've got someone who's hardening someone. I mean, we think of Pharaoh, but he wasn't the only one.

There are many times when God said, this is going to happen. I'm going to bring judgment upon this person right now. And it's not that this person necessarily had, I mean, with Israel, you have decade after decade and literally century after century of sin and God is overlooking these.

Things and he's being merciful.

And then some people, it's just one thing and gone. How do you put those two together? And there are all these texts where God says, I will accomplish all my holy will. Our Lord does whatever he pleases in the heavens above and the earth beneath.

And the texts are many that say this. Well, if he always does what he pleases and it would please him to bring about repentance, then how do you fit those together? Don't you have a schizophrenic view of God and obviously the tendency on the part of many people, all of us, I guess, is we want a simple answer.

And so we end up choosing which texts we're going to put the most weight on and which texts we're just going to sort of hope no one ever really asks us about. Now, I'm not for a moment saying that the truth of the Christian faith is a matter of taste, that the truth of the Christian faith is, well, we put the emphasis upon these and that denomination over there puts the emphasis upon those.

And that's perfectly fine. I'm not saying that. I do believe that there is a harmonious revelation of God. There is a harmonious revelation of his nature and his will and his truth.

I believe that.

And I recognize in even saying that, that I'm putting myself in a fairly small minority today. You need to understand that when I was in seminary many years ago, it was considered to be a, and this is the way it is in most seminaries in our land, it's considered to be a good thing for you to allow the tensions in the text to stand.

Now, I understand.

We should not be seeking artificial solutions, surface level solutions. We should, we should struggle with the fact that God expresses a desire for the repentance of people on one hand. And yet there's the clear statements of Scripture that he has created all things to bring about his own glory and they occur as his will has decreed on this hand.

We have both of them and and we shouldn't, it should never cross our minds to go, I don't like these, get rid of that, I'm just going to hold these. Or vice versa, to just simplify things. But we also don't want to look for some, some Band-Aid solutions, some real simple thing, you know, you get shot by a .45, you don't put a Band-Aid on that.

It takes a little bit more than that. We don't want the simple stuff. Unfortunately, a lot of a lot of folks want the simple stuff. And most of us know in this room, I'm preaching to the choir. Well, we don't have one, but you know what I mean.

I'm preaching to the choir in essence. We've struggled with this and it's in the struggling, it's in the going in deep that you really begin to appreciate the depth of the word of God and you begin to understand the illustration.

And I think it is a beautiful illustration that has often been used of the tapestry. If you see those beautiful tapestries, you see a rug that someone has in their home, it can be beautifully done. And the intricate weaving that is done, it's just incredible, the complexity of it.

But if you turn it over, it's not so pretty. There's knots and there's there's strings and threads going places, and it really doesn't seem to make much sense. And the illustration has been that as we look at what God's doing here on Earth, we see the bottom of it.

We don't necessarily see the beauty of the harmony and the weaving and the threads that go from Genesis to Revelation and the hues of color and all those things. We will someday, but we don't necessarily see it now.

And so. There's very practical reasons why we, as members of this church, should think through seriously and regularly the relationship of what we have rightly, I believe, identified as the prescriptive will of God, which represents his holy character.

It's found in his law. It's how he says this is how mankind is to live. Here is who I am. And I, as your creator, I say this is how you are to live. But then we have those texts, one we probably all know.

The things revealed belong to you and to your children, but the secret things belong to the Lord, our God, the secret thing that I know what the word means. And and many authors use the term the secret will of God.

It almost sounds like something, you know, from from the playground, remember, on the playground. I'll have to confess, by the way, that I would have been arrested as a terrorist from what we've learned just this past week, because I did play cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians on the playground.

I want to seek your your great forgiveness for that. If you're not aware of that, there were some children, I believe, was in Maryland or someplace. It's got to be back east or California or the northeast or never mind.

Who was who was actually kicked out of school for doing this. So the world's gone completely insane. And but back on the playground, you would tell secrets and you'd whisper it in somebody's ear and you'd make sure that someone else saw you whispering in their ear because you're not telling them.

That's what made the secret so cool. And sometimes you do it just to be mean. Well, what are you all saying about me? Oh, nothing. You know, we're just trying to be mean, but that's what we think when we think of a secret.

You know, God just has his little secrets. No, no. The reason that the secret things belong to the Lord, our God, is because God doesn't have to tell us everything. He can draw a line. I mean, there's only so much we could know about God in the first place, right?

I mean, we can spend our entire lives just looking at what the word of God says about God and still never get all of it. We're just not smart enough. And that sometimes bothers us. And we're going to have all of eternity to get to know God even better.

But God gets to draw the line this far and no farther, and we always get in trouble, always get in trouble. When we try to go beyond the line he himself has drawn. But when we talk about the secret will of God, we're talking about God's decree.

We're talking about the fact that, well, we know what God's will is expressed in his law. We know what his prescriptive will is. That is, he's expressed to us what he wants us to do. But we also know from God's word that that's not always what happens.

And so we have to make a choice.

We have to make a choice as to whether God is just frustrated. God has actually chosen to create a world where things are going to go awry and he's going to spend his time, and that's sort of difficult to figure out from an eternal perspective, but he's going to spend his time doing the best he can to make something good come out of the stuff that goes awry.

And there are people who believe that. There are people that that's what God does. You know, when evil takes place, we've got a great God. He can make something good come out of that. But then we have to ask ourselves a real simple question.

And unfortunately, it's forced upon us by the scriptures themselves. And that is, well, when God created, did he know what was going to happen in his creation? Now, some people might want to say, well, you know, I just I don't want to get into all that philosophy and stuff like that.

That's not philosophy.

That's Bible. The Bible founds the very demonstration of God being God on his knowledge of the future and the fact that he's the creator of all things and and that he can tell you what's going to happen in the future and he can tell you what happened in the past and why it happened.

Look at Isaiah chapter 41. So it's not my fault. God brought it up. And sadly, there are people I've met them in seminary. Who really, really, if you if you just got honest, think that God has actually told us some things in his word that, you know, it's probably better if he hadn't.

Yeah, I think the spirit of God was involved, but I just I just wonder sometimes they'll tell you. And there are people who say you shouldn't talk about this kind of stuff because it can it can trouble people.

Well, I'll go ahead and quote Calvin on this one, or at least give you what he said. You are, in essence, bringing into question the very wisdom of the spirit of God to say that kind of thing. If it's found in the word of God, then the spirit of God, the triune God, chose to place it there for our benefit.

And if you question that, then you're questioning God's wisdom. It's there. For our edification, if it's in the word of God, then we need to know it. And so how do we answer the question? Well, there are some people.

There are some people, and amazingly enough, they're still within the bounds of evangelicalism today, or so we are told. There are some people who believe that God only knows certain things are going to happen in the future.

That anything that a free creature does, God can't know that because if God knows it, then you're not really free. So we use a mundane example. If if you're going to have lunch this afternoon, you might ask the question, does God know what you're going to have?

And if you say yes, then you can ask the question, well, can you have anything other than that? Because if you are going to have, if God knows you're going to have tacos, can you have anything but tacos?

What if you decide I'm not going to have tacos, I'm going to have a peanut butter sandwich? Did you just invalidate God's knowledge? What if God made a prophecy you're going to have tacos and you had a peanut butter.

Sandwich? Does that make God a false prophet?

And so these people say, if God knows you have a taco, then you're going to have a taco and God's knowledge can't be falsified. And and so you're not free to have anything other than that. And and therefore you're having a taco isn't a meaningful thing because it's not autonomous.

And these folks are called open theists. The future is open to God. It can it can change because who knows, you know, that peanut butter sandwich you choose to have might be really have bad stuff in it.

Well, actually, it's switched that around. The taco probably is the one that has the bad stuff in it. And and it may take you out like I got taken out a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, over 3000 people, I didn't know this, but over 3000 people a year die from bad food in the United States.

And now I know why and I know how. And so what if he had great plans for you? And now, because of your choice, you ate the taco, you should have had the peanut butter sandwich. You're gone. No more plans.

Can't do that now. God's going to come up with a different plan. So God is constantly having to having to, you know, shift plans and and change things depend upon how man acts.

That's open theism.

Now, as I said, they the Evangelical Theological Society couldn't get rid of the.

Open theist within it.

So I guess that's now an evangelical perspective. I call it heresy.

OK, but that's what's out there.

But then you have other folks and they have what's called the simple foreknowledge view. And that's the idea that that God creates, they look down the corridors of time and he sees what's going to happen.

He has perfect knowledge of it. And that's how God knows the future. But of course, I then ask the question, when he created, did he know that evil would exist? Yes. God knew evil would exist. Then he had a purpose for it.

And that's where they start getting really nervous because they don't want to say that. They want the actions in time to be free, but they want God to have perfect knowledge of what those actions in time are.

And so I have to go, well, so God created and he looks down the corridors of time and he sees, oh, look, I win at the end. Worship me. Why? You didn't determine the actions in time. You just have knowledge you created and you took in knowledge of what your creation would be.

So what's the what's the basis for worship again? Then we have a whole new group called the Molinists, the Molinists. And this is getting really popular. Oh, man, this is this is really, really popular.

And I even know reformed folks that are trying to make fit this in somehow middle knowledge or that come from. Well, historically, and I haven't forgotten about Daniel four, we're going to get there. Don't worry, but you need a little background here.

Historically, theologians had identified two kinds of knowledge in God, not that they had put God under a microscope, but it's just a matter of thinking about God's knowledge and going, well, you have that knowledge of God that is related to his own perfect knowledge of himself.

God knows God and God's the only one who knows God. So he has perfect knowledge himself. But then once he decides to create, then he has perfect knowledge of his creation because he's the one that made it.

So he's the only one that has exhaustive, omniscient knowledge of the created world. Well, this guy named Luide Molina, a Jesuit, even though the Jesuits have abandoned this and now it's primarily alleged Protestants are promoting it, but he came up with this idea and some people say someone came up with it before him, but he came up with this idea.

And the idea was that there is middle knowledge between those two. Before God chooses to create, he has a middle knowledge. What's the middle knowledge of? The middle knowledge is of what any possible free creature would do in any given circumstance.

So God has knowledge of what you would do before he chose to create you. He would know what you would do in any given situation you could be placed in. And so God would know before he chose to create Brick, if Brick were at a buffet with George, that he would eat X at age Y.

But if he was not with George and he was 20 years younger, he'd eat something else at a buffet. So God has perfect knowledge of all that. Now, if you're thinking, first of all, you might be going, and the advantage of this really complicated exercise and mental fatigue is what again?

Well, here's how it works. God then can, God's this supercomputer, and he can run all the possible universes. Where if this happened and I put these people in these circumstances, they would do this and that would result in this.

And then I put these people in there, I can plug this person in here and that person in there. And he can run all these different universes and see which one he wants to actually create. So he runs all these universes.

And he comes up with the best possible universe. Now, you're looking around going, really? Oh, this is the best possible one, huh?

There wasn't anything, this is the best one?

Well, there are some people who say, well, you see, there was no possible universe where.

Everybody could get saved.

Just no possible universe. There was not a possibility to create a universe where everybody could get saved. And so what God's done is he's created a universe where the maximum number of people.

Get saved.

And that's what we've got today, the maximum number of people. And there have to be a certain amount of evil and a certain amount of suffering. And this is, he just ran it all. And this is the best. And as the primary proponent of this perspective said just last year, God's got to deal with the hand he's been dealt.

And you go, the first thought across my mind, as soon as I heard him say that, was who dealt him that hand? I mean, I don't have any problem with the idea that God can know me perfectly and would know exactly what I would do in any given situation.

First of all, I'm rather predictable.

Am I predictable, Rich?

Yeah, Rich says. I'm predictable.

Thanks. If Rich can figure out what I'm going to do, God can do it even better, OK? But there are some people who are not predictable at all.

But God knows them so well.

I can understand that.

But you see, the reason is that God made me. I am the way I am because God made me this way. And so that's not a middle knowledge. That's because he decreed to create.

How could God know what I would do before he decreed to create me?

Decreed to give me the kind of body I have and the mind I have and experience that. How in the world could God know what I'm going to do? There's some other God out there that's dealing this hand out.

And now God's become a second God.

I don't get that at all. And those are the Molinists. And oh, are they popular. Oh, they are running all over evangelicalism saying this is it. We've figured it out.

We've figured out a way to deal with the sovereignty of God.

God actually isn't in control of all things. But what he's doing is he's micromanaging everything to get the results he wants. But we do it all freely. Of course, we couldn't do anything other than what he knew by middle knowledge we would do.

So it doesn't really end up helping much. But a lot of people think it's very, very popular. How does God know the future? How does God know the future? Well, I wonder what Nebuchadnezzar would have said.

Remember Daniel chapter 4? Beginning of the chapter, there's this dream. And what I find fascinating is Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar what's coming.

And it's interesting.

Beginning of verse 28 says, all this happened, Nebuchadnezzar the king, 12 months later, he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon. A year had passed. And how quickly we forget.

God even gave him a warning.

He said, here's what the dream means.

Here's what's going to happen.

And it's 12 months later and Nebuchadnezzar hasn't really learned the lesson. Maybe in the first month he was thinking a lot about it, but not anymore. So 12 months later, he's walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon.

The king reflected and said, is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?

Yes.

Oops.

While the word was in the king's mouth, a voice came from heaven saying, King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared sovereignty has been removed from you and you will be driven away from mankind and your dwelling place will be with the beast of the field.

You'll be given grass to eat like cattle and seven periods of time will pass over you until you recognize that the most high is ruler over the realm of mankind and bestows it on whomever he wishes.

Let me stop for just a moment.

It doesn't sound like a Molinist view. It doesn't sound like a simple foreknowledge view. It certainly doesn't sound like an open theistic view. It sounds like what God is teaching Nebuchadnezzar is, I'm sovereign and you're not and I place you in positions of authority.

I place you where I wish. It says bestows it on whomever he wishes. All these other systems. I did a debate with a man a couple of years ago on our webcast. And he actually held the view that Paul could have said on the Damascus Road, don't think so.

Thanks, appreciate it. Can I have my vision back maybe?

I'm just going to keep doing it.

No, don't want that.

And then God would have just had to go looking for somebody else. So all the plans he had, even from our perspective, we want to go, well, from eternity past, God chose to reveal at least 13 books of the New Testament through the ministry and writing of a man by the name of Saul of Tarsus.

That was his choice. That was his plan. But there's a lot of baggage that comes along with that. Because, man, think about all of the, think about everything that's happened over the course of all the years since God created and to bring about a guy named Saul who would have the personality and the experience and the reactions and the constitution to be what he wanted to be.

And we could think, remember, we believe God actually uses men to speak from God as they're carried along by the Holy Spirit. But we all recognize, you know, Paul has his style and John has his and Mark has his.

And God uses men. And that means if God had intended his word to have a certain form, that means the men that he uses to write it had to be created in a certain way. And most of us go, yeah, I don't have any problem with that.

But think about what that means.

Think about who you are.

How influential were your parents on you?

Big influences, right?

How influential were your brothers and sisters? How influential were your neighbors, your teachers? Maybe the people in your church, the people in your community. Where did all they come from? I mean, think of the complexity that's involved in bringing about a particular human being at a particular time who has particular characteristics.

Just to bring about our understanding of where scripture comes from. Man, that's a pretty mighty God. And he has to be in control. This idea of running around going, oh no, that whole planet just fell apart because that guy didn't watch where he was going and fell off a cliff.

Oh man, now what am I going to do now? Let's see, can I get this guy over?

That's how we're supposed to view God?

It seems that God says Nebuchadnezzar, I'm in charge. So it continues on, verse 33. Immediately the word concerning Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled, and he was driven away from mankind, began eating grass like cattle, and his body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair had grown like eagle's feathers and his nails like bird's claws.

I think I saw someone like this crossing Indian School Road recently.

I really do.

I mean, do you see this picture?

This does not look like a guy who's in charge of one of the greatest dynasties and nations of the world. But at the end of that period, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored him who lives forever.

Now, I stop right there.

You notice something?

God said it's going to be for a certain period of time. It wasn't that Nebuchadnezzar says, at the time that I appointed, I became reasonable again, and I thought this through. No. God said a certain amount of time, and that's how long it was.

Was that just because God looked down the corridors of time and said, hmm, I see how long this is going to last.

No.

And that's not even what Nebuchadnezzar believed, because listen to what he says. He blessed the Most High, praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion. And his kingdom endures from generation to generation.

All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing. But he does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth. And no one can ward off his hand or say to him, what have you done?

At that time, my reason returned to me, and my majesty and splendor were restored to me for the glory of my kingdom. And my counselors and my nobles began seeking me out, so I was reestablished in my sovereignty, and my surpassing greatness was added to me.

Now, I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise, exalt, and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are true, and his way is just. And he is able to humble those who walk in pride. Now, obviously, there are many today that would say, ah, it never happened to Nebuchadnezzar.

He was just a pagan, he never would have said such things.

Let me tell you something.

If your leader had gone through what Nebuchadnezzar did, and you had to sort of put together a barnyard for him out back, you wouldn't exactly put that into the annals of the kings of Babylon. And you wouldn't advertise it, because now your enemies would know you're weak.

I'm of Scottish extraction, as you know, and so I've seen the film Braveheart. Sinclair Ferguson is a real Scotsman, and his students told him about it. And he said, I'm going to have to go see that, when it first came out.

And I said, oh, Professor Ferguson, it's pretty violent. You might not want to go see it. And he goes, oh, he says, I'm a Scotsman.

Killing an Englishman isn't an act of violence, it's patriotism. So, I've seen it, and if you've seen it, you know that there's this one, there's Robert the Bruce's father. And remember, Robert the Bruce, his father doesn't look really good, because he has leprosy.

And so he lives in this tower, away from people, and they lie about where he is. He's still in control, but they lie about it. Because it would show that you're weak, if your leader was actually, you know, a leprous person who couldn't come out in public.

And you'd probably lose your influence. Well, if Nebuchadnezzar is eating grass, and his hair is long, he's got claws like talons, that's going to tell all the enemies around Babylon, now's the time to do something.

So you're going to keep it quiet. And so when his reason returns, what does he confess? He doesn't say, oh, I am great again. No. He had talked about his dominion, now he talks about God's dominion. It's an everlasting dominion.

His kingdom endures generation to generation. Mine won't, but his does. And then notice this. It's one thing, you know, there's a lot of folks who don't mind having a God who's sovereign out in space someplace.

Or maybe on the big macro stuff. I mean, there's actually a lot of folks who'd like to have a sovereign God today when it comes to Iran and nuclear weapons.

That's pretty cool.

I'd like to be able to confess that God is sovereign over Iran and nuclear weapons. There's a lot of folks that would like a God like that. But they're the same ones that say, but not over me. And not over my, quote unquote, decisions.

Ahmadinejad, that's okay. You can do that.

He's over there someplace, but not me.

That's not Nebuchadnezzar's perspective. All the inhabitants of the earth are counted as nothing.

That includes kings.

But he does, according to his will, in the host of heaven. Oh, if it would just stop there.

It doesn't.

Because I can't really imagine anybody that would complain about God doing his will in the host of heaven. That's out there someplace, right? And among the inhabitants of earth. He does, according to his will, among the inhabitants of earth.

And no one can ward off his hand or say to him, what have you done? Notice that last line? No one can put God in the dock, so to speak, and bring allegations against him of injustice.

Nebuchadnezzar understood the sovereignty of God.

He does, according to his will, in the host of heaven.

But wait a minute.

The brothers of Joseph would always speak the truth. Thou shalt not lie. His will was that Peter would stand firm in his profession of faith in Jesus Christ.

Right?

His will would be that none of the disciples would betray Jesus. His will was that the people of Israel would walk in his laws and his statutes. And they would worship him aright at all times. If we do not see that there is the prescriptive will of God, and then there is either what we, if you want to call it his secret will, fine.

Call it his decree, fine. But it is that which God has purposed in his creation that results in his glory. And without a doubt, the Bible reveals to us that that involves, includes, encompasses, and makes meaningful the evil of man.

How else can you understand it?

If you want to distance God from all evil, if you want to say, oh he's got nothing to do with it, you Calvinists, you made God the author of evil. I didn't say God was the author of evil. Because none of those instances I just mentioned to you, not a one of them, involved God taking some innocent man and putting a big divine gun to his back and saying, you go do something evil.