The Greatness Of The Godhead (part 3)

Father in Heaven, we come before you this morning, our hearts overwhelmed,

just in love and gratitude in all that you've done through us, or in us, through your Son, Jesus

Christ.

Father, as we come before you this morning, we would just pray that you would encourage us by what your Word says,

that we might live in light of it, that we might have hope in light of your promises, that

we might live in light of who you are.

Father, we pray for these things in Christ's name, Amen.

Well I thought I might open with just a little story.

Some of you may know that at my age I got to be a groomsman here a few months ago.

And I was at this wedding in Los Angeles and it was a little bit unique.

My friend Han, the attorney of a Korean descent,

marrying a woman who was a Messianic Jew, which means she's a Christian, but

she's of Jewish heritage.

And she was part of a Messianic Jewish congregation before she started going to Grace Community Church.

So their wedding was a little bit unusual.

I mean, I think the rehearsal dinner we had Korean food, which was a

unique challenge for me.

But then on, I keep getting a little feedback here,

on the day of the wedding, now we did the wedding rehearsal and you just kind of walk through

things and at this point, Han, you'll do this and you'll do that, Heather, and blah, blah, blah, blah.

And we're all walking through and everything's fine.

Well the day of the wedding comes and this is where the part

of the Jewish thing comes in because the groom is supposed to take this cup of

wine at some point, he's already eaten the bread, and he's supposed to take this cup of wine and take a sip of it.

So the man is speaking in Hebrew who's doing this, he's the leader of the

Jewish congregation and he's pronouncing these blessings in Hebrew.

And so Han's waiting for him to get finished.

And now I can't fully see, I can't, at this point I can't see Han, there are decorations kind of in my way, which

is really, you know, it's just the way it goes.

So here's what's happening.

He's pronouncing the blessings and Han's holding this cup of wine.

And the, I'll call him a rabbi, even though he's not really a rabbi, but the rabbi pauses for a minute and

Han starts to lift the cup up to his lips.

And then the rabbi starts going in Hebrew again, and so Han puts the cup down.

The rabbi pauses, Han starts with the cup up again.

The rabbi continues again on that cup.

Well by now everybody in the audience is watching and laughing.

So finally, about the fourth or fifth time this happens, Han just kind of shrugs his shoulder and drinks it.

I'm just telling you that for no reason at all.

Good morning.

Sometimes it's just fun to tell a story.

I did, on a more serious note, I received an email a few days ago, very encouraging.

It was about, it was actually about my dad.

It was from a retired sergeant and he said some very nice things about my father and, you know, things that

I wouldn't have known any other way.

Just talking about what it was like to work for my dad and some of the things that had happened.

And this particular deputy, now a retired sergeant, had worked for my dad and

my dad was a leader of a SWAT team.

You know, he was the road cop.

And he, one of the things that happened while my dad was at this unit was they had a couple deputies get killed in the line of

duty.

My dad wasn't there that day, but he always felt personally responsible.

Well, this man who sent me this email was on that team and he just talked about how dad

cared for him and looked over him and wanted to make sure that this deputy didn't melt down because of what had

happened.

And he said, he said, I'm confident that your dad

is now in heaven, you know, awaiting all the riffraff, you know,

to march before him and that God will use your dad basically as a judge of these people.

And I thought, I love the rest of the email.

Wasn't so wild about that part.

But it's common among police officers to think that there's

some kind of special dispensation for cops.

There are policemen prayers where, you know, this is why I'm going to get to heaven because of all the things that

I've done.

And I'm sure it's the same for firemen and other organizations like that.

Of course, I couldn't help but wonder, you know, what do lab chemists have?

Do they have a lab chemist prayer or, you know, what does an attorney

prayer look like?

It's probably like you'll be sitting on the right hand of Satan.

Sorry to any attorneys.

But what we think about God can often influence how we behave.

And so we've been studying the Godhead, really the attributes of God and the different

things that are said biblically of God.

And we talked a little bit about openness theology last week.

And I wanted to get back into that because we're going to see really how this plays into

what the Bible actually says about the knowledge of God and how limitless that is.

But Culver writes, talking about someone who supports this kind of idea, listen to

this.

This author is saying that God purposely limited his knowledge of the future by creating agents who

have freedom of the will.

We talked a little bit about free will and I want to do so again this morning.

But because those two things, the knowledge of God and the freedom of the will, those two things kind of

either go together or conflict depending on your viewpoint.

But he said, God purposely limited his knowledge of the future by creating agents who have

freedom of the will.

That complete knowledge of the future by God would destroy freedom of the will.

If God knows everything, then the idea of free will is an illusion.

Culver goes on to say, but this seems contrary to the view that the same author takes of the super

temporal eternity of God, forget that, and it is certainly contrary to the plain truth of scriptures, which is

the important part.

Old Testament prophecy of the career of Christ specified many details utterly conditioned upon the future

acts of unworn people.

So when we read the Old Testament and we see, for example, a virgin will

conceive and we think, well, that foreshadows what will come about in Mary and how

Jesus will be born.

If that didn't happen, then we'd know a few things.

We'd know that God isn't able to do what he said.

But it would also mean that we couldn't really trust scripture.

And this really gets the heart of it.

Listen to Culver goes on, he says, precisely for this reason, modernist or liberal theologians quite

uniformly deny the possibility of detailed prediction of the future in the Bible.

Why?

Why would they do that?

Why would they deny that God has told us what's going to come about in the future?

Okay, if he doesn't fulfill prophecy, then he doesn't know the future, then man still has a free will and man is

in charge.

I mean, this really is a man -centered view of the universe that they're trying to

support, to preserve.

And where do those ideas come from?

Anybody want to speculate on that?

Where do they come from other than sin?

I mean, we know that.

But where do you think they come from?

They really come ultimately from the Enlightenment, that period of history where,

you know, man really came into his own, so to speak.

You know, when we deal with people like Erasmus who proclaimed the freedom of the will and this

really that man is the center of the universe.

That's the idea.

That's the thinking and it's amazing that people would call themselves Christians and yet kind of support this

idea that man is the center of the universe.

Culver says the result has been a revolution against historical orthodox faith and that in the trustworthiness

of the testimony of the Bible itself as to the date and authorship of every portion which predicts

identifiable events such as the destruction of Jerusalem 586 B .C. or the

desecration of the temple in 165 B .C.

This was mentioned in class the other night, which I found amazing.

Somebody was joking and said, you know, what is there, Second Isaiah, listen to this.

Therefore, there is now for such scholars a, quote, Second Isaiah, which would be

chapters 40 to 66, composed after and during the exile

of Israel.

Why?

Because 40 through 66 is written, Isaiah looking forward

to the day, not, you know, not eagerly anticipating it, but from God telling the people

what they would be thinking, what they would be doing, what the world would be like when they were in captivity, when they were

carried off into Babylon.

Now listen, he says, well, he says, and it also has to

do with a second century date for Daniel because what liberals, what modernists say

is the Bible can't predict events before they happen.

It's written so that it looks that way, but they're actually looking backwards on things.

So in other words, Daniel was written at such a point where these things had already happened.

Actually that would be the Babylonian captivity and the other one would be the Assyrian captivity, but looking backwards and then

writing these.

So you even have people saying, oh, there weren't two writers of Isaiah, there were three because there's another, you know,

variation there.

And all these things to deny ultimately the sovereignty of God, his ability to carry out what he

says.

Culver goes on to say, however, Peter says that Christ was delivered up, crucified according to the definite

plan and foreknowledge of God.

Where's that?

Acts chapter two.

Very good.

It's actually verse 23.

And then Jesus told his disciples what about the Old Testament that they,

what's that?

They predicted his coming, but they really spoke of him in their entirety.

They were about him.

Now there's a story in first Samuel about how God

made known the ideal contingent future.

He says, for example, he answered a what if question about an event that never really occurred.

But here's his point.

He says, even events which people attribute to chance are said to be known because they are under

God's control.

Let's look at Proverbs 1633.

And would somebody read that please?

Proverbs 1633.

Paging.

Okay.

Eric.

Okay.

Can you think of occasions when a lot was cast?

And what does that mean, by the way?

What's that?

Okay.

At the foot of the cross, a lot was cast.

What's another time?

Jonah.

Bruce.

Right.

Replacing Judas among the twelve.

So is that random luck?

You know, Pastor Mike was about to swim from Alcatraz to

the shore, and you said to him, good luck.

What does that mean?

What's that?

Hope you make it.

Fingers crossed.

And what's he likely to say to you?

I mean, have you ever tried that?

Good luck.

Oh, you're going to write a double century tomorrow?

Good luck.

Because he'll say what?

Because there's no such thing as luck.

There's no such thing as luck.

Even things that we think are luck are not luck.

So for example, you know, somebody wins the lottery and we say how lucky they are.

Not really.

And in fact, it might be a curse.

But in any case, it's not luck.

It's already providentially ordained, which is why I don't buy lottery tickets.

Because my attitude is, you know what?

If God wants me to win the lottery, he'll have somebody give me the winning lottery ticket.

I don't need to buy it.

You know, you have to buy it to win.

No, you don't.

Now, let's read Romans 11, 33.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.

How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways.

For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor or who has given to him that he

might be repaid?

You know, I sense in Paul a certain lack of resentment that God knows everything.

He seems okay with this idea that God is, that he's ordained everything, that he's in

control of everything, that he knows everything.

In fact, the scriptures would say, would attribute this also to the wisdom

of God.

I can hear it scratching against me.

But denial that God has certain knowledge that everything that he, everything that comes about he

already knew of the contingent future is too much of a concession to make to

a prejudice against predestination.

In other words, if you are predisposed to think that God did not choose before the foundations of the world

some people to save them, then you can't believe in a God who knows everything.

Well, you can, they'll say.

Well, he knew who was going to believe.

Of course, I always get, let me ask you this, and I've asked this before, but let me put it to you again.

If God knows who's going to believe and he elects on that basis, and as we've discovered in our class on

Thursday night, he didn't do that.

And, you know, even with Dr. Geisler trying to dance around the whole time issue, it doesn't really work.

But if God was to look into the future and to know for certain who would believe,

and obviously it would be also when they would believe, and then he chose on that basis,

I see that Steve is going to believe on thus and such a date.

And, to be honest, I don't really know what date that was.

But if he saw that and he chose me on that basis, then

I think there's a real argument about who's sovereign in salvation.

Because if God chose on the basis of me, of me choosing, of me generating

the faith to believe, then we've got a real issue because I don't know if we can then say, along with

Jonah, that salvation is of the Lord.

But more than that, if God sees that Steve is going to believe at some point,

then my entire life leading up to that point and my entire life after that, well, I never had the ability

to change my mind.

So did I really have a free will?

I mean, it was set in stone anyway.

It's not like I made a spur of the moment decision because God knew it from before the foundation of the world, according to the Arminian.

But listen to this.

Culver says, free will and predestination present a great mystery.

But true Christian piety should not deny anything God reveals

about either of them.

In other words, if we're going to honor God, then we

need to believe both things, that God predestined and that we choose.

I agree.

We believe, right?

We have to believe.

I don't have any problem holding them both in tension.

Now he gets back to this idea of openness theology.

It seems every so many generations of scholars must go over the well -canvassed objections to God's

prescience, his knowledge, his pre -knowledge of events of

the future conditional upon

the choices and acts of free personal beings.

At present, under the rather ambiguous guise of the openness of God, and he says

openness to what?

Is God open to new and exciting things?

It is being fiercely debated in several theological journals and promises to go on for some time.

It is contended that God limited his sovereign control of the course of the future in the

act of creating the human race and angels.

Hence, he can be surprised by developments.

We frequently then would, I think, expect to see God scratching his chin and going,

Who knew that?

So, he says it bears some relation to the debate between Arminian -Westlian theology and Calvinist

theology, but Westlian theologians usually do not demur on the assertion that

God knows the future.

In other words, they would say that God knows the future in detail, although they do not relate the divine foreknowledge to

divine decrees in the same way Calvinists do.

So here's the issue.

Is God working out a single decree, which he decided the

entire course of the universe, and that we are secondary causes that bring his decree

to fruition?

Or, are we really the kind of first cause, and then God sort of

reacts, or in the case of openness theology, does he even kind of, is he even involved?

I mean, openness theology most reminds me of what?

You've heard the term deism, the cosmic watchmaker, and to me, openness theology mostly sounds like

that.

Very, very close to that, only maybe a little different.

But it's this idea that God is not sovereign, that he's not in control.

And listen to this.

This actually came from the Middle Ages from some Roman Catholic

theologians, notably Luis de Molina, who developed a doctrine of middle

knowledge, an area of divine knowledge dependent upon his foreknowledge of the acts and decisions of free

creatures, rather than upon his decree.

So again, to be crass about it, it's God looking down the corridors of time,

seeing what we will do, and then organizing his decree, his plans on that.

And as we read, I think it was Isaiah 46, let's go there again, because I

think that's just such a strong passage.

This is just not what the Bible talks about.

It doesn't talk about a contingent God, a flow chart God, who has plans A, B, C,

D, E, F, G, and he's just kind of adapting on the fly.

You might think that I'm stuck, but I'm not.

And this is just not the way it is.

And we'll start in verse

8.

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.

Again, this is in the context, and remember, we just talked about Isaiah 40 to 66 being a forward look,

and he was telling them that even in exile, they were going to be tempted

by idolatry, they were going to fall, they were going to stumble, they were going to do a lot of things that weren't right, and they did, and

finally they repented.

But listen, he says, 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, not flow

charting, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times, things not yet done.

He tells the future, he's not moved by acts of the present to take alternate

action.

Saying, my counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my

purpose.

That sounds pretty much like a doctrine of sovereignty, not a doctrine of kind of, gee,

I'll just kind of take whatever comes.

And remember what Culver said, true Christian piety should not deny anything that God reveals

about either predestination or free will, and it shouldn't,

thinking about God rightly and worshiping him rightly should cause us to want to say, okay, I don't know that I fully understand that,

how God could ordain all things, but the Bible says it, I believe it.

Anyway, he goes on here, he says, in scripture, God has no middle knowledge.

In other words, some kind of ability to change on the fly.

There is no created thing hidden from his sight with whom, from the side of him with

whom we have to do, but all things past or future are naked and exposed to the eyes of him

to whom we must give an account.

That's Hebrews 4 .13.

And so there have been all kinds of theologians who come to this basic conclusion

that God knows the future and that the divine decree precedes the knowledge.

How does he know everything?

Because he's determined everything, because he decreed it, because he ordered it as it were.

These are the things that are going to happen.

People say, well, doesn't that make us robots?

We'll get to that here.

But let us be reminded that although the faculty of volition, that is our ability to choose,

the power to choose is present in all our freedom in the exercise of it in

loving obedience to the will of the father has now been greatly damaged by the fact that we are all now sinners were under the

curse.

And because of that, we don't choose to obey God.

We don't willingly do that.

He goes on.

He describes us as what children of disobedience.

And there is no exception to that.

Then he says the biblical doctrine of decrees, i .e. God's sovereignty over

all history, has important bearing on this subject.

We talked about openness, and this is a little variation on it called process theology.

And this is interesting only because this sounds more intellectual.

Listen.

He says these theologians in process theology have been influenced not only by liberalism

but also by a vigorous philosophy known as panentheism.

Pantheism is what?

What's pantheism?

God what?

God, well, that's panentheism.

Pantheism is God is everything.

This is, well, actually, pantheism is God is everything.

Panentheism is God is in everything.

Panentheism maintains that God exists but not previous to or apart from the universe.

Now, that's interesting.

In other words, when the universe came into being, God also came into being, this says.

He is not its creator but exists contemporarily as a pole exterior to it and also within all the

universe, which is God's other pole.

Though God is ubiquitous, that is, everywhere in the universe, he is neither omnipotent nor omniscient.

For, like the world, God himself is evolving.

He's in process, hence process theology.

As advocates acknowledge, those with academic preparation or without academic preparation, listen to this.

Those without academic preparation, i .e. without 20th century, 21st century now,

non -biblically rooted philosophical theology will find it demanding to understand what these theologians

mean.

In other words, you have to be steeped in evolution and the Big

Bang Theory and all these kind of things outside of the Bible to sort of understand this, to put it together.

But these process theologians have as much in common with atheistic existentialism and

even pagan religion as with Christian theology.

Philosophically, the ancient roots of the system lie in pre -Socratic, pre -Socrates Greek philosophers

whose world, including their gods, were evolving

forever in the void with no superintending wise and powerful supervision.

I've mentioned this months ago, but when you think about...

How many of you have ever read Greek or Roman mythology?

I used to go to the library.

I think I was probably in the third grade.

I mean, I was kind of an idiot.

And among other things, I used to read mythology.

I found it very interesting.

And what do we know about those Greek and Roman gods besides the fact that they don't exist?

They sure seem a lot like us.

I mean, they get revenge.

They commit horrible sins.

They do all the things that...

They're not gods in any kind of sense other than they have a lot of power.

But he says that there's no

superintending wise and powerful supervision.

In other words, there's nothing over them.

Well, in that same kind of way, they would say that the god who exists

doesn't have that kind of power.

But this is quite inconsistent with the unmistakable biblical doctrine of divine

omniscience, that is, all knowledge.

Process theology has no personal center, such as the triune god, who might know much

less predestinate or plan anything.

Yet from within evangelical circles, and this is the point, have emerged several

academics who borrow as much process theology as they think can

be brought into sync with an orthodox doctrine of God.

So what do we see coming about in our churches now?

When I say our churches, I just mean broadly evangelical churches.

We see new kind of ideas coming in, and what happens is these men and women who've

learned process theology and also know the language of evangelicalism

creep into our churches, and they begin teaching.

And once they get us off of true north and just turn a little bit this way or that way, we wind up with all kinds of

error.

I was talking the other night about what starts a cult.

I think Culver even talked about this.

What starts a cult or a false movement isn't a lack of truth.

It's some truths emphasized at the expense of others.

So you have the free will of man, for example, pushed out to its furthest extreme, and you wind up with something like this,

where if we're going to say if we're going to maintain the free will of man, then we have to say, well, then God

can't be sovereign.

Or we could wind up with a complete sovereignty of God to the extreme where man has no responsibility.

We wind up with hyper -Calvinism.

We don't want to go to either extreme.

We want to understand both correctly.

John Wesley had great reservations about the doctrine of individual personal election, that is,

predestination.

But this has not impaired or diminished his proclamation of an orthodox doctrine of divine omniscience.

He goes on to say Richard Watson, who was first and still the

major interpreter of Wesley, supported God's knowledge of the future.

In fact, Watson anticipated, this is in 1823, he anticipated the

doctrine or the current detractors, process and openness theologians.

After plainly presenting the biblical proofs of omniscience from Scripture, he says it, quote,

unquestionably, the authority or has unquestionably the authority of the Holy Scriptures.

He proceeds at length 8 ,500 words, do the math, if there's 200,

that's a lot, to meet the objections, especially the

objections of God's perfect foreknowledge of future events conditional upon uncoerced choices

made by free beings.

In other words, here's an Arminian who spends 8 ,500 pages explaining why God is

fully omniscient.

So that's the omniscience of God.

There's no doubt that he is omniscient.

We see it over and over again in the Scriptures.

He knows everything.

Now, let's talk about the omnipotence of God.

The word omnipotent means, obviously, having all power.

In the Greek, the word would be pantokrator, which means almighty.

It appears nine times in the New Testament, and I think eight of the nine

occurrences are in Revelation, and it has to do with the final judgments.

In the Old Testament, it's a translation of Shaddai, you know, from the song, the Amy Grant song,

El Shaddai, El Shaddai.

It just means God, El, Shaddai, almighty, all powerful.

The theological doctrine of omnipotence is simply this, that God is able

to do all things that are objects of power, that he can do whatever he wants, and that he is able to do so

without diminution of his infinite strength.

We say that God is able to do all things that are the objects of his power inasmuch as such things

as...

Well, what things are outside of the power of God?

He's constrained by his will.

He can't renounce his goodship, or his godship, yep.

And I think he identifies a few other things.

I mean, if God has...

And this is where, if you don't believe in a sovereign God, if you don't believe in a creator, I think this is

where you run into issues, because there are some things that are true, and you just go, well, what makes them true?

And I would argue, and I think this is what he's getting at here, that God established them as true, and they cannot change.

And he goes on to say, a world...

Oh, he says, God created the world in harmony with his own reasonable nature.

And then he gives this example of maybe something that couldn't be changed, even by God,

because of the way it is, and this is the way he established it.

A world where there were several contradictory multiplication tables would not be heaven and earth,

but hell.

Not a universe, but chaos.

When you talk to people, and you suggest that maybe, for example, carbon -14 dating may not be

accurate, they frequently don't understand that it's based on

what?

On the idea of uniformity.

That is, that things have always been the same.

That there was never any disaster that fell upon the earth, etc., etc., etc.

So the idea to a scientist, to a mathematician, is that some truths are always true.

Yet, what makes those truths always true?

Well, it's God.

He keeps things exactly as they are.

Otherwise, we would have chaos.

But he says, here's a joke.

I don't know how funny this is, but we'll try it out anyway.

He says, one theologian likes to tell this joke, if ever you should meet an angel who tells you that 3 plus 4

equals 8, this angel will certainly have soot on his wings.

So I don't know how funny that is.

But he says, in contrast, he says, I have a pastor's

Christmas letter in which he asserts that the Trinity is an example of God's ability to break mathematical laws

because he is both one and three.

Culver goes on to say, a better theology affirms that God is not three in the same respect that he is one.

And I'm like, well, that would be a nice rebuttal Christmas letter.

Here you go.

Can he write a rebuttal Christmas letter?

I don't think he can.

But there are some constants, some truths, that God has established and he upholds.

And he would not change them because they're the constants by which he upholds the universe.

Listen, he says, God exercises his power according to his own will.

He never acts in power apart from wisdom, in other words, to bring about his own will.

God is not the servant of unlimited energy, meaning he

doesn't do things just because he has the ability to do it.

But he says a scriptural way of saying this is he cannot deny himself.

Therefore, God cannot be tempted with evil and he cannot lie.

So here's some scripture statements and some of these kind of get abused.

Jesus said, With God, all things are possible.

And what's the context of that?

I mean, if somebody has eye black on their football, you know, underneath their football helmet

that says, you know, With God, all things are possible or whatever they put on their face or whatever they have on their

helmet or their football signs.

What do they mean?

That because they believe in God, they can run through, you know, ten tacklers or whatever.

But what's the context in Matthew 19?

Salvation.

Because what seems impossible to us, which was, if I recall correctly, you know, the idea of rich people

getting into heaven, right?

Isn't that right?

And the disciples say, Who can be saved?

You know, that seems impossible.

And he says, With God, all things are possible.

And that's the context of that, not the idea that we can do whatever we need to do.

He says, Texts are numerous which trace everything, both specifically and in general, to God's creative, sustaining, and governing

power.

Let's just look at one.

Let's look at Job 42, verses 1 and 2.

Job 42, verses 1 and 2, and who has that?

Go ahead, Eric.

Now, is that a blessing or a cursing?

I know that no purpose of your hand can be thwarted.

I think that's a blessing.

And that's the point of this whole, really, this whole lesson.

If we just kind of understand that God is working out His purpose, that no purpose of His can be thwarted, then

what's our response to that?

Our response ought to be to say, Everything that comes in life is what?

It ought to be a Romans 8, 28 thing.

I don't really understand how that's for my good, God, but you say it's for my good, and I believe it.

I believe it.

Let's see here.

He also says here that if God, under practical benefits, if

God hears prayer, He is able to answer.

Again, I just say, you know what?

I'm thankful for this.

If you pray to a God who cannot change things, who cannot, for example,

the most basic example, if I pray for someone's salvation, why do I do that?

Because I believe that God is able to save, that He's sovereign in salvation.

If I say to myself, Well, man has to make that decision.

It's independent man, not God.

It's not a question of God regenerating him.

It's a question of him coming up with enough faith, and I'm wasting my time praying.

Because in the Arminian view, in fact, this was also in Geisler's book, he says that God

is wooing all men.

God is begging men to come to Him.

And if that is the picture, then we're wasting our time praying for

the salvation of others.

But that's not the scripture.

That's not what the Bible says.

He says, Culver says, If we are sent to be evangelists, there is power available to secure results.

Why do we preach the gospel?

Because Romans 10 tells us that people are saved when they

confess with their mouth Jesus as Lord, and when they believe in their heart that God raised Him from the dead.

And how then do they believe?

Because they hear.

They only believe after they hear.

That's why we go.

Third benefit he cites, Should the course of the world seem perverse and threatening, it's helpful to

remember that God has the power to change it if He wills.

If we don't like the way the election's going, if we don't like the way it turns out, what do we know?

We know from Daniel that God establishes thrones and He unestablishes them.

He sets kings up.

He brings them down.

He gives us presidents.

He takes them away.

That should be an encouragement.

Why?

Because God can change it anytime He wants.

And ultimately he says, This doctrine is a deep will from which to draw abundance and

comfort.

Why?

Because if God is sovereign, if God is working everything according to the counsel of His will,

then our responsibility is to do what we're commanded to do, but it's not to worry about...

We don't have to worry about how things end.

We don't have to worry about a lot of things that we like to worry about.

We don't have to worry about food and shelter and clothing.

Why?

Because Jesus told us not to worry about them.

There are a lot of things we shouldn't worry about that we do worry about.

I mean, I think of myself and sometimes I worry about...

I'll confess.

I think about, you know, Well, how are my kids going to be able to live in a country that has freedom of religion when the country is about

to go bankrupt?

God knows.

God knows that even if this country ceases to exist, guess what?

The gospel won't.

Nations come and nations go, but the power of Christ goes on.

The power of the gospel goes on.

Any thoughts or questions about the omniscience of God, His

omnipotence, His working out His will?

Okay.

Well, yes, Joni.

It's a good question.

What do they do with verses that seem to indicate the sovereignty of God or the sovereignty of Christ to hang on to

those who are believers?

What they frequently do is they go a few verses down or

even they'll say things like, Well, God can keep you, but you have to

make the decision to be kept.

And I mean, they will kind of expand the language.

For example, in John 6, is the one that I most easily

remember from Geisler's argument during reading that book.

And he says of John 6 verses 37 to 44,

he says of verse 37, he says, All that the Father gives me

will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

And he says, Okay, that shows that God gives some to the Son.

But he says, Who does He give?

Well, it's right there in the text.

Whoever comes.

So that's what they do is they're trying to emphasize the human

responsibility of it and they kind of gloss over.

Well, Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, they say the same thing.

I remember this argument too.

He'll say, Well, that's through faith.

And they use it not as faith as an instrument, which is what the Greek

and everything would indicate, but that it is something that you must generate on your own.

How do you do these things?

Through faith.

And, you know, also in that passage, it says it's a gift.

Well, what do we know about gifts?

You have to receive the gift.

So those are their arguments.

Stephen.

That's right.

And that's what they say.

They don't believe in the spiritual.

In fact, what he says about Ephesians 2, 1.

And Norman Geisler is no slacker when it comes to understanding the Bible.

He's been a seminary professor for 50 years, written a lot of books.

And here's what he says about Ephesians 2, 1, where it says you were dead.

Well, that doesn't mean that you were fully dead because you're still an image bearer.

You're still an image bearer of God.

Well, wait a minute.

And so then he makes the argument that if your image of God

was annihilated, then that would be the same as in Revelation 10, where it talks about annihilation, which

would be destruction.

And your image of God, if it was destroyed, then you would have no ability to choose, and that wouldn't be right.

So he'll argue, and really he does hopscotch all over the place, because he has to somehow

preserve what Stephen was talking about, this ability to choose.

It doesn't matter how dead you are.

You still have the ability to go, Water.

Water.

Yes, it is, but I'm not going to talk about the princess bride this morning.

Charlie.

That's right.

And what Charlie said, and I'll really just summarize it real quickly, is that even if God was looking down the

corridors of time and saw that you wouldn't believe, he's still creating everything or setting everything

up or allowing everything to progress so that you still will either choose or not choose.

He could change it either way.

Or he could choose to, you know, Geisler argues that God is all love, and he doesn't

say it this way, but pretty much he argues that that's all God is.

But if we say, if we want to just stick with what Geisler says, that he's all loving, then how can he even

know that you're not going to choose him, and then say, wait a minute, it's better for Steve not to be born, so I'm not going

to allow him to be born.

That would be better, right?

That would be more loving, but that's not how it works.

And, you know, just one more thing, and then we really have to close in prayer, but I need to explain for those who may not know what a

Rube Goldberg is, since he mentioned that a few times.

A Rube Goldberg would be, you know, rather than, say, opening your door, you know, because you just don't

want to get off the couch, so a Rube Goldberg would be a contraption where maybe you flip a switch

that causes a ball to roll down, which, you know, flips a hammer, which will, you know, make some

squirrel run across the roof, which will create a little electrical charge, da -da -da -da, and so eventually it

all winds up with the door being opened that was two feet away that you could have opened yourself, but, you know, at least you

didn't have to get up, and so that's what a Rube Goldberg, it's a major contraption,

usually, to do something simple like that, but the fact is that the

sovereignty of God, and I'll just say this in closing, you know, really, I've been thinking a lot about Romans 8 .28

this week, about God works all things together for good, and if we believe that, and if we

allow that to work in our lives, it's a great blessing, because even, no matter what we think, whether

they're good things or bad things, if we think God means this for my good, I don't need to

understand right now why it's good for me, I need to trust in God, who loves me

more than anyone could possibly love me, and has established all these things to conform me

into the image of his son.

Let's pray.

Father in heaven, we just praise you for your sovereignty, for your omniscience, for

all your attributes, and we are especially, we're thrilled, we're humbled that you

would love even such as us.

Father, would you bless each one here, in Christ's name we pray.

Amen.