The Attributes of God (c)

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I want to welcome everyone back to our study of the attributes of God.
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If you have your Bibles, you can go ahead and begin making your way to Isaiah 55.
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That will be the opening text for tonight.
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And hold your place at verse 8.
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I want to give an introduction before we read the Scriptures, however.
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And I want it to be by way of the apology.
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I want to make an apology.
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In my last lesson, I made a mistake.
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Oh, I know, I see your excitement.
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Everybody loves to point out my errors, don't you worry.
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But most of you, I don't think, well actually, I don't know that anybody caught it, but I caught it the next day.
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Because I came in and I had written on the board, because we were talking about the foreknowledge of God, and I had written the word prescience or pre-science.
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And I said that's what foreknowledge, you know, the pre-knowledge in science means knowledge and pre- is the prefix for the before, so the foreknowledge is knowing before.
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Well, because I sometimes go off script that wasn't in my notes, and prescience is Latin, Greek is prognosco, it's where we get the word prognosis.
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So I was wrong because I was speaking, I was using the wrong term.
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And I said, you know, it's Latin, prescience, it should have been prognosco.
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It means the same thing.
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Everything else I said still holds as far as God's knowing, and what does it mean that God knows? It means that he has a relationship with, like he knew Israel, he knew, he said, depart from me, I never knew you.
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That's a relationship, it's not just God passively knowing, but knowledge is something God does, he knows someone, and foreknowledge is God setting an affection on someone from before the foundation of the world, for whom he foreknew, he also predestined.
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That's what that word means.
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But again, somebody somewhere would send me an email at some point, and challenge me because I used the wrong word.
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So I gotta fix it, and I gotta fix it publicly, so I did, and now I've said I made a mistake, and I've done.
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So am I forgiven? Okay, I didn't even wait for an answer, I hope the answer was yes.
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Well, you know, the important things, you know, accuracy is very important to me.
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And when I came in the next day, and I saw that word on the board, I said, whoops, next time I come in, I gotta make that known.
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Alright, so tonight we're gonna begin by reading Isaiah 55, 8 and 9.
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This is a very common passage, I imagine some of you have it memorized, if you don't, you probably at least know the text, have heard it.
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Isaiah 55, this says, beginning in verse 8 in the ESV, it says, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
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For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
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And may God add His blessing to the reading of His divine word.
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That's gonna be the foundation of tonight's study, is understanding this text is telling us something about the mind of God, about the thoughts of God, about the will of God, and the first and most profound thing it's saying is it's not like ours.
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I would hope that this far in the study of the attributes of God, one of the things that you have hopefully come to realize is that God is not like us.
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And even though we have been made in the image of God, which means we bear certain characteristics that emulate or magnify or look at the person and nature of God and are reflected in us, as the light of the moon reflects the light of the sun, so too do we reflect the light of God in His attributes certain ways, we are not like Him in many other ways.
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And we said that's the difference between the different attributes.
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We said there are the incommunicable attributes and the communicable attributes.
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The incommunicable attributes are the ones that God does not share with you and I.
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And the communicable attributes are the ones that He does share with you and I.
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On your list, you have a list, and unfortunately I handed them all out so I don't have the list in front of me.
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Here, let me come grab one real quick, just so that I can, very quickly, because we're not going to go through them all again, it wouldn't be right to rehash everything, but I do want to remind you, and for those who were not here, at least give you the rundown of what we've looked at so far.
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Under the incommunicable attributes, we've looked at first the aseity of God.
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The aseity of God is the discussion of God's self-existent nature.
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That God is self-dependent, He is independent, He is not dependent upon anything else outside of Him for His existence.
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No one created God.
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The age old question, if God created everything, who created God? God is the only self-existent one.
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That's what He means when He says, I am.
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There is no need for anything else.
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That's the aseity of God.
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The immutability of God.
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To mutate means to change.
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Immutate or immutable means to not change.
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God is unchanging.
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He says the reason why Israel wasn't destroyed is because He changes not.
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The eternality of God.
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The eternality of God is what? That is His nature of being without beginning or end.
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Most of us can fathom, at least in some sense, being without end, but none of us can fathom the idea of being without beginning.
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And yet the Bible clearly describes God from everlasting to everlasting.
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You are God.
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And so it is not just something that men create about God in their minds, it's something the Bible clearly teaches us, that God is eternal.
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Omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience.
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The three omnis, the three descriptions of the might of God.
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Omnipotence describes His power is all powerful.
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There is nothing that God is impotent to do that is according to His will and nature.
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I always add that qualifier because if somebody says, well, if God can do anything, can God take and put a square peg in a round hole? And I say, well, not without violating His nature of reason.
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God is reasonable and square and circle aren't the same.
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And so God would have to violate His own nature of reason to make square and circle be the same.
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And because He's not going to do that, He won't do that.
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And God cannot lie.
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The Bible says it is impossible that God would lie.
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So when we say God is all powerful, it doesn't mean God can do anything.
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It means God can do anything that's in accord with His nature and His purpose.
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So that's omnipotence.
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And then we say omnipresence.
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God is everywhere and He's every when.
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Remember, we talked about that.
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God is not bound by space or time.
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He's as much with Abraham as He is with my descendants.
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If I have any, if He chooses not to come or until I'm long gone and I have descendants, Lord willing, He'll be with them and He is with them.
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He's everywhere and He's every when.
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Omniscience, all knowledge, there's that word science again.
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There's nothing God does not know.
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God does not learn anything.
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He is not surprised by anything.
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He is not caught off guard by anything.
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And then we talked about foreknowledge, that is God knowing people everywhere.
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The word foreknowledge is used in Scripture.
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It is always with the direct object of the verb of the person God foreknows an individual.
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So it's always in relationship to God knowing someone or being in a relationship with someone.
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So we talked about that last time.
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Well, tonight you'll notice there are three left.
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Holiness, sovereignty and will.
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But I want to add one because I made these handouts before I before tonight.
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But as I was preparing for tonight, because I'm always studying, always thinking, I realized I left one out and I want to add one right here.
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So if you wouldn't mind being so gracious as to indulge me right underneath foreknowledge, we're going to add the impassibility of God, the impassibility of God.
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Now, this one I had previously decided not to include because of the ones that we have gone through so far, this one's a little bit more difficult to understand.
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So you're probably all very excited because we're going to talk about something that's difficult to understand.
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But this one, I think, is important.
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And the more I thought about it, the more I said I didn't want to leave it out.
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Just because something is difficult to understand doesn't mean we shouldn't at least attempt to understand it.
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How many of you ever heard the phrase the impassibility of God? It's not a common one of God's attributes.
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We talk about God's love, God's mercy, God's holiness, God's sovereignty, God's impassibility.
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Not a lot.
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It doesn't make the top 10 in general, but it's important.
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It comes off of this idea, passability, passability means, excuse me, passability means to be impassioned, means to be susceptible to emotion.
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And every human being is passable.
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We are susceptible to emotion.
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And boy, don't we emote a lot, right? When theologians speak of God's passability versus his impassibility, they're referring to his freedom to respond emotionally versus a perceived lack of empathy for his creatures.
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The question becomes, does God actually have feelings like we have feelings? Now, our immediate instinct would be to say, yes, the Bible talks about God being angry.
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The Bible talks about God being jealous.
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The Bible talks about God having compassion.
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So it would be foolish of us to think of God as being without those things.
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And yet, if we look at the ancient creeds and confessions of the church, we will notice there's a consistency among the theologians that God is without passions.
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In fact, not an ancient creed, but at least one of the reformed creeds, the Westminster Confession of Faith, says this.
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There is but one living and true God who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible without body, parts or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, etc.
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And this is one of those times where people say, I don't know if I agree.
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And this is where I want to tell you it is difficult to consider, because what we have to consider is one might say, if God had no passions, then he is without he's without any relationship to be able to communicate with us.
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And thus, if God had no passions, we would be no better than the deist who says God simply created the world and walked away and had no desire to be in a relationship.
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But yet on the other side, if God is passionate like us, God's attitude is moved up and down with the movement of time.
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And yet we've already discovered in this study that God is not bound by time.
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Neither is God bound by us.
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God is not contingent upon you and I.
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And thus, when we talk about his passions, are his passions contingent upon you or I? You see now where the question starts to become a little heavier on one side, if we say we're totally impassable, God's totally impassable, if you push that to the extreme, you become a deist.
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God is unfeeling, he's unloving, he's uncaring.
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You get to the other side and you get to open theism, which says God is always waiting for what's going to happen next.
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And he doesn't know how he's going to feel from moment to moment.
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You see the difference, it's two wild variations of extreme.
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And when we're dealing with the nature of God, we come back to this text and it says his thoughts are not like ours and his ways are not like ours.
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And so we have to go back to the ancient creeds and we say, why did the theologian stress the impassability of God? I think it was for this, because the impassability of God helps us to understand the immutability of God.
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God is not always changing.
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Remember what immutability means, God doesn't change.
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And yet, if we think about God changing as we change, think about the relationship that you have with God right now.
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Does it change tomorrow? Does it change the next day? Does it change the day after that? Is not our relationship with God set in the cross of Christ, in the work of Christ? I want to read to you from J.I.
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Packer.
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You guys know who Packer is, Knowing God, wrote several books.
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This is what he says about the impassability of God, he said, this means not that God is impassive or unfeeling, which is a frequent misunderstanding, but that no created beings can inflict pain, suffering or distress on him at their own will.
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Insofar as God enters into suffering and grief, which scriptures many times describe, it is by his own deliberate decision.
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He's never his creature's victim.
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We cannot victimize God.
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The Christian mainstream has construed impassibility as meaning not that a God is a stranger to joy or delight, but rather that his joy is permanent, clouded by no involuntary pain.
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We can't take God's joy.
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We can't rob God of his happiness.
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These are the thoughts that this describes.
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In fact, I want you to most of you are familiar with the term anthropomorphism, right? You've heard me use that term.
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You remember what it means? A man form, right? Anthropos means man.
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Anthropomorphism means man's form.
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And that's described to God, talks about his feet, his hands, his eyes, his ears.
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Right.
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But the Bible says God is spirit.
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No, it doesn't say God is a spirit.
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We're going to talk about this when we study more about who God is.
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God is spirit.
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He's not a spirit.
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He is spirit.
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Right.
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That's an interesting thought.
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He he doesn't have hands like you.
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He doesn't have eyes like you get.
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The Bible talks about his hands, his eyes and his ears.
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And so we call those anthropomorphisms the description of God's hands and feet and eyes so that we can understand him because we can't understand a truly spiritual being.
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His ways are above our ways.
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He's not like us.
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And so how does he describe himself to us? The only way we would know, the only way we would understand.
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Well, there's also something called the anthropopath.
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We try to get anthropopathism that is describing human emotions to God.
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Ascribing the human emotion to God and anthropomorphism is describing form to God.
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Anthropopathism is describing an emotion to God.
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What's that? Write that word.
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OK.
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Anthropos, this is the word for man.
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Pathism is where pathos, where we get the word emotion or the idea of pathos or, you know, this is describing an emotion to God in the way that we have.
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And this is I love this one quote from one writer who wrote on this subject at length.
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His very simple quote, God doesn't have mood swings.
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That's the whole point of this doctrine is that God is not a God of mood swings.
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And so if I had to say the impassibility of God, how is it to be described? We don't move God, God chooses to move, but we don't move him.
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He's not dependent on us and he's not contingent on us.
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He moves.
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Not us.
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OK, so I have a lot more on this, but for the sake of time, I don't want to spend.
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I've got a couple other.
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I'll quote one more person.
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Derek Thomas wrote on this.
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He's a pastor.
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He preaches at the Ligonier conferences.
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He says this.
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What is being safeguarded is God's independence and his sovereignty, his absoluteness.
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His experiences are not like ours.
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His are foreknown, willed and chosen and not involuntary reactions.
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Impassibility is affirmed both externally to God.
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God is not a victim and internally to God.
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God does not suffer from anxiety, depression, and he is not emotionally stunted or remotely or stoically disengaged.
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God chooses to do what he does.
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He doesn't respond and do what he does.
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That's the point.
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Does that make sense enough for me to move on? Move on, brother.
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OK, we'll move on.
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And sometimes I get that move on to something else.
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All right.
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Well, that's I wanted to add that in, because I think sometimes when we think about immutability, it can be very confusing because we say, how is God unchanging when God talks about all of these things where it looks like he's changing? Because he's making the choice to do these things, he's not changing by virtue of his nature and he's not responding to us as a as a as a father might come home and his child, his has tore up his favorite toy, his favorite tool and used it as a toy and broken it.
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And the father gets angry and he slams his car keys on the table and he lashes out at his child in anger.
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All the fathers in here don't look at me like you're perfect.
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We all have imperfect moments.
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God doesn't have those moments of imperfection.
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All right.
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That's what this is about.
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All right, moving on now, as I said before, the last three on this list.
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I have described as middle attributes, middle.
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You can put that word off to the side.
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Middle, M-I-D-D-L-E.
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The middle attributes of God are what I describe attributes that are they are not shared by us in the way that God has them.
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So in that way, they're incommunicable.
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But we do get to share a sort of them.
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And so I say they're sort of communicable.
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And so I can't in any other way say except like this.
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These are the middle ones.
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These are the three that I say these really belong only to God.
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But there is a sense in which we get to share in them a little.
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All right.
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And the three that I've put on that list are holiness, sovereignty and will.
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The will.
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So let's look first at God's holiness.
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You can turn in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter six.
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Just stay in Isaiah and just turn a few chapters over.
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How many of you have read The Holiness of God by R.C.
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Sproul? A couple of people.
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Good.
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If you haven't, I make copies available for free.
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I buy them to give away because I think it's a very important book.
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It's one of the most important extra biblical books that's been written in the last hundred years.
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And I think everybody who is a believer should read it.
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So I'm willing to give you a copy if you want one.
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But let me just make this point.
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If I give it to you, I'm giving it to you to read, not to put in your in your study and leave.
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I'm giving it to you to read.
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So if you're not going to read it, don't take it.
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That's my that's my agreement.
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OK.
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But it's the holiness of God is an important work because he describes this.
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And I could do again.
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We could do several sermons on the holiness of God.
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But I think that it's important at least to see in the scripture where this is expressed in its highest form.
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And this is an Isaiah chapter six.
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It says in the year that King Uzziah died, I, that is, Isaiah, saw the Lord seated upon a throne high and lifted up and the train of his robe filled the temple.
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Above him stood the seraphim.
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Each had six wings, with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
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And one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
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The whole earth is full of his glory.
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The foundation of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called and the house was filled with smoke.
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And I said, woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.
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For my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts.
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The holiness of God refers to God's special nature of being absolutely and completely unique, separate, and without flaw.
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Unique, separate, and without flaw.
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Of all of his attributes, this is the only one that is ever described in the threefold expression.
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In Hebrew language, anytime something was repeated, the repetition of that thing indicated whether it was important or very important.
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Where we would call the comparative and the superlative.
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If I say something is good, better, and best, I'm saying this is good, better is the comparative, and the best is the superlative.
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Well, if somebody said something twice, usually that was intended to say it was important.
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Jesus said, Simon, Simon.
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Verily, verily, I say unto thee.
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Right? So every time Jesus makes a repetition, it's to drive home the point that this is important.
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This is the only one of God's attributes that we ever see described in the threefold term, holy, holy, holy.
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God is never called justice, justice, justice, mercy, mercy, mercy, grace, grace, grace, or even love, love, love.
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But he is called holy, holy, holy.
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And thus I've come to point out to many people that God's holiness is the attribute that undergirds all the others.
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His love is holy love.
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His wrath is holy wrath.
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His grace is holy grace.
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Every other attribute is affected by this attribute.
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And when the angels are in his presence, it says they have six wings.
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With two they flew, but with two they cover their face, because they're in the presence of God.
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With two they cover their feet, because they're standing on the holy ground.
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Remember when Moses was with the burning bush? Take your sandals from off your feet, for the ground upon which you stand is holy.
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It's separated.
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It's unique.
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So the holiness of God refers to his separateness, his uniqueness, his absolute otherness.
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That's one of the things that if you do read the book, Sproul stresses the otherness of God.
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Everything you can imagine, God is other.
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He is over.
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He is greater.
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He's other.
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He's not like anything else.
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And so the holiness of God is his special characteristic that affects all others.
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Why would I, in a second, why would I say this is a middle attribute? Why wasn't this the first one that we talked about? Because we are called the hagiosmus, the holy ones.
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In Scripture, the believers are always called holy.
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Because God sets us apart from the world, and sets upon us a holy name.
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And he calls us holy.
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Are we holy like him? No.
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But we are made holy in him.
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And so, I can't say that we aren't holy.
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I can just say we're not like God as holy.
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But we are made, this is why I don't like the word saint.
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In the Roman Catholic Church, they identify certain people as having had special characteristics of faith.
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And those people having done special works, or having been special characteristics, they call them Saint Teresa, or Saint Peter, or Saint Paul.
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But the reality is you are Saint Jack.
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Don't shake your head, I didn't call you that, God did.
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This is Saint Andrew.
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Hey, looky there.
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Saint Michael.
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If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have been made holy.
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Not by anything you did, but by what God has done.
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So the holiness of God is unique to him.
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And yet, when he sets you apart, just like communion, we say communion is holy.
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God sets the bread apart.
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From all other bread, this is the bread.
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From all other cups, this is the cup.
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And we share in this holy thing, which is communion.
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It's different from everything else.
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It's this.
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So that's the holiness of God.
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May it never be that we ever forget that.
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The holiness of God undergirds everything else.
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Let's move to the sovereignty of God.
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I hate to just run past that one.
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As I said, I've preached on it so much, though.
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I hate to...
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Like I said, I could continue, but I won't.
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Alright, sovereignty of God.
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Boy, this is one that I bet you've heard about.
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Being in Sovereign Grace Family Church, you've probably heard the word sovereignty a few times.
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I have to keep looking at the time, sorry.
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Sovereignty of God.
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Look at Psalms.
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Let's go to the Psalms.
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We're all over the Old Testament tonight.
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I'm going to go to Psalm 115.
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Psalm 115.
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Did somebody come in? I saw you wave.
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Oh, Ashley's here.
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Okay.
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Psalm 115, verse 3.
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I like this passage.
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It's short.
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It's in the context of God giving glory to His name.
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But it says in verse 3.
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Psalm 115, verse 3.
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Our God is in the heavens.
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He does what? Whatever He pleases.
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All that He pleases.
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God does His will.
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I remember when I really first started realizing this.
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And I started kind of understanding more about the sovereignty of God and how He works.
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It changed my vision of how I understood the world.
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Because I began to remember all of these times in my life that God has, by His mercy, led me in directions.
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That at the time I didn't realize He was leading me and guided me in directions and put me in places.
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I didn't realize He was putting me for His purpose.
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Because He was sovereign over my life.
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And I certainly don't have a life that I could ever compare to Joseph of the Old Testament.
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But you remember Joseph of the Old Testament.
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His whole life was under the mighty sovereign hand of God.
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Even though his brothers did evil, at the end of his time in Egypt, when his brothers were brought before him.
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Genesis chapter 50 and verse 20.
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He says to them, what you meant for evil, God meant for good.
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You did this for evil, but God did this.
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It's interesting because the verb is the exact same.
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Because some people will say, well that just means God can make lemonade out of lemons.
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No.
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God was sovereign over everything that was happening.
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He had a purpose for everything that was happening to bring about this day.
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This is what He said, Genesis 50 verse 20.
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What you meant for evil, God meant for good.
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So that He might save many this day alive.
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That He would do this work.
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God is sovereign.
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You can write this passage on to go there.
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Daniel chapter 4 verse 35.
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All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing.
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And He does according to His will among the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.
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And none can stay His hand or say to Him, what have you done? Do you know who said that? It wasn't Daniel.
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Nebuchadnezzar.
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Daniel 4 and verse 35.
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Nebuchadnezzar said that after what? After he'd been out in the field eating grass.
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Because he stood on the top of his kingdom and he said, look at all that I have done.
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At that moment God robbed him of his senses and he ended up out in the field eating grass.
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And his hair grew like feathers.
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And his nails grew like claws.
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And he was like an animal of the field and he was a beast.
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And when his sense came back to him, he said, oh, there is a God in heaven and He doesn't need my permission.
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There is a God in heaven who doesn't need my approval.
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There is a sovereign over me.
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Sovereignty is God's absolute reigning authority over this world.
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And it has never been abrogated.
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A few years ago, Pat Steed likes to tell this story more than I do because she was there.
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A guy came into the office and Pat was here with me.
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And he walked in and he started talking to me.
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I want to talk to you about something very serious, Pastor.
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It's very important.
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I'm always nervous when people have something very serious to talk about.
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Because I never know what it's going to be, but it's always very serious.
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And he came in and he was very serious, Pastor.
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Something I want to talk about.
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Okay, tell me.
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He said, you see these lines in the sky? They're contrails.
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Chemtrails, right? And that's the government producing chemicals that are raining down on us and it's changing us mentally, physically and all kinds of other things.
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And I don't even want to get into whether or not that's true or all the conspiracies around it.
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But in the midst of it, he said something I just couldn't forgive.
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Because in the midst of all that conspiracy, he said, and God has no control over it.
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And I sat back in my chair.
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And I said, take a seat.
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I hope you brought a lunch.
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Because you're going to be here a while.
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That's crazy.
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And I tried to explain to him the sovereignty.
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No, no.
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God gave up His sovereignty in the garden.
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What? You must be out of all of your mind.
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God gave up His sovereignty in the garden.
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No, He did not.
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Ephesians 1.11 And in Him we have attained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.
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Not some things.
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All things work according to the counsel of His will.
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All things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
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Romans 8.28 All things are under the hand of Almighty God.
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Do not tell me He doesn't have control over it.
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Because I will disagree.
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And I was nice.
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Pat will tell the story differently, but I was nice.
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But I was firm.
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I said, I steadfastly disagree.
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I don't care about the chemtrail thing.
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I don't care about all that.
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I mean, I'm not saying it doesn't matter.
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But I'm saying, you lost me.
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And for any step forward you were going to take, you took a mile step back.
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Until we understand God alright, we're not even going to talk about anything else.
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The sovereignty of God must be understood.
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Now, we have a few minutes left.
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That clock is fast.
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Don't let it lie to you.
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Yeah, exactly.
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We're going to finish this page tonight.
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Because next week we get to the communicable attributes.
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And I'm so excited.
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Because the first communicable attribute of God is the love of God.
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Don't you want to hear about the love of God? I want to talk about it.
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And so next week we're going to talk about the love of God.
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So don't miss next week.
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But also remember, we want to finish tonight.
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So don't let me get off track too much.
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We're going to finish tonight with the will of God.
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The will of God, you might say, well that's not an attribute.
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It certainly is an attribute because it's His will.
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It's something that is attributed to Him.
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But if you wanted to describe it another way, you could say it's His providence.
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You could write down the providence of God.
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Because that's His will in action.
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The sovereignty of God is God's authority.
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The providence of God is God's authority in action or His will in action.
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We'll talk about, I was providently kept.
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Or I was providently moved.
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Here, there, or yonder.
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You've heard people say, well I had a divine appointment.
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You've heard that term.
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That's just another way of saying God providently put me at a certain place at a certain time to meet a certain person.
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So that's the providence of God.
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And that's in the will of God.
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So we talk about the will of God.
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We're defining the faculty by which a person decides or initiates action.
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It's a deliberate or fixed desire or intention.
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It's the thing that one desires or obtains.
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And God does that.
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He does His will.
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The Bible says He does His will in heaven.
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And He does His will on earth.
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And what do we pray for? Thy will be done in heaven and on earth.
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We're not giving God permission.
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We're saying we want it too.
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We want Your will done.
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We submit to Your will in heaven and on earth.
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Even though we often do not.
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But that's the prayer.
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Is that we would, when people die, what do they leave? A will.
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It's the expression of your desires.
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When we talk about God's will, it's a little different than that.
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Because God's will doesn't work like our will.
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I can will something and it not happen.
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I can will something.
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I can write up a will.
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How many people have you ever seen? They leave a will and the government comes in and destroys it.
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Takes it.
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Their will is not sovereign or supreme or authoritative.
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It simply says their wishes.
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We can call a will our wishes.
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What does James tell us? He says, don't say that today or tomorrow I'm going to go here and do this or do that.
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But say, if the Lord wills, I'm going to go here or I'm going to do this or I'm going to do that.
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Right? So a lot of times when people ask me, are you going to be at church on Sunday? Well, they don't usually ask me that because I kind of got to be here.
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But they'll say something about, hey, we're going to meet here on this day at this time.
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And I'll say, if the Lord wills.
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That doesn't mean I don't want to go.
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That just means I might be providentially hindered.
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Right? Because the Lord's got to will it for me to get there.
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The old phrase, if the Lord wills it and the creek don't rise.
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Or the Lord willing and the creek don't rise.
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That was the old phrase.
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That was a little bit of a funny way of expressing a truth.
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God's the one who wills me to go or come.
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And if he doesn't will it, I'm not going to go or I'm not going to come.
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I just won't be able to.
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He could will me right now to drop dead right here.
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God's the one who keeps my heart beating.
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He's the one who keeps my lungs filled with air.
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And even though I participate in life by doing the things God calls me to do.
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If I stop eating tomorrow, I might live for a while.
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But I would eventually not live anymore.
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But God would be providential over that too.
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You know you have those children that hold their breath.
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I'm mad at you mom, I'm going to hold my breath.
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Eventually they'll pass out and they'll start breathing again.
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So I'm not too worried about it.
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My kids haven't done that yet, but I'm just waiting.
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But here's the thing, I want to express this to you.
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When we get to anthropology, which is part of this bigger study of theology.
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Anthropology is actually, anthropology began in the church.
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Because anthropology is the study of the nature of man.
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We talk about anthropology as scientific, it is.
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But it's also theologic.
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We study it as part of our understanding of scripture.
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But in our study of this, when we get to anthropology.
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We're going to talk about a big phrase that everybody loves to talk about.
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And that is free will.
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And will's not in prison.
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Free will.
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That's a bad joke.
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We talk about free will, everybody wants to argue for the free will of man.
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But I'm here to tell you my biggest argument with people.
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Is the free will of God.
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Because most of the time when people express how much they care about the free will of man.
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The first thing they're willing to undercut is the freedom of God.
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Man is completely free, God has to be A, B, and C.
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You say, what do you mean? How about this? God loves everyone absolutely equally.
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If that is true, which I don't believe it is.
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And if you want to talk about why, we'll talk about it later.
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But let's just for now, God loves everybody absolutely equally.
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That means God's not free to choose how or whom He loves.
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It means God doesn't make a choice.
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Why does the Bible say, Jacob I have loved, and Esau I have hated? From the mouth of God.
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Because God makes a choice.
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He is free in His will.
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Psalm 135 verse 6.
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Whatever the Lord pleases, He does in heaven, on earth, in the seas, and all the deeps.
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God does what He pleases.
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So, now I want to go a little further.
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Stay with me another few minutes.
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Because from a theological perspective, a big question comes up.
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Does God have one will or two wills? And you say, now I see confusion.
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I want to express to you, God is not double minded at all.
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But a distinction can be made in His will.
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As it is the prerogative of the human to make a distinction in everything.
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And that's what theology is, is making distinctions.
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We have to make a distinction between, and this is important if you want to write this down.
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Between what we call the prescriptive will of God.
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The prescriptive, like a prescription that you get with medicine.
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And, I don't like this term, but I'm going to use it because it starts with a P.
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I like to keep it simple.
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And Brother Andy, don't kill me for using this one.
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You might not like this term.
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Maybe you do, maybe you don't.
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I don't know, we've never discussed it.
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But the permissive will.
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The permissive will of God.
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Now I'm going to clarify that one in just a few minutes.
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But for the simple breaking down of the will of God.
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The prescriptive will is found in His command.
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Thou shalt not murder.
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The permissive will is that there are still murders to happen.
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Wouldn't you agree? That there were murders that happened today that God could have stopped.
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Had He so chosen.
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And a lot of people say, oh no, I don't think God could have stopped it.
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Let's go back a few minutes to that whole God is in control thing.
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Because I already kind of expressed where I'm standing on that.
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So I still think God's in control.
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And I believe God's in control.
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And I know murder isn't part of this will.
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Because His word tells me, thou shalt not.
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Yet He allows murders to occur.
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He allows people to worship false gods.
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But yet His word says to not have any graven images.
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Not have any other Lord before me.
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He allows people to violate the sanctity of life.
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And the sanctity of marriage.
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And all these other things.
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And people say, well I don't like the word permissive.
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Because that sounds like God.
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I don't want you to think of it like this.
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A police officer comes to the scene of a crime.
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He sees 15 drug dealers.
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All of them are armed with AK-47s.
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And he steps out and he's got his Glock 17.
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And he goes, I think I'm going to permit this.
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And he gets back in his car and he leaves.
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Well that's permission by impotence.
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Because he doesn't have the power to stop it.
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I'm not saying the police is impotent.
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I'm saying he doesn't have enough power.
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I'm not saying he's totally powerless.
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But if he took his pistol and went against those 15 guys with the AK-47s.
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He might find himself in a bit of trouble.
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God never looks at the world and says, oh I can't do that.
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Right? So when God permits something.
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He permits it with purpose.
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He has a purpose for it.
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And thus I've always said the permissive will would much better be called the purposeful will of God.
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Because nothing that he permits is purposeless.
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This is why when people come to me and they've gone through tragedy.
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I don't look at them and say, God wasn't anywhere in that.
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That happens every time there's a hurricane.
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Oh God didn't do anything.
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God wasn't in that.
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Every time somebody gets down with cancer.
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God's not in that.
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Every time somebody loses someone.
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God's not in that.
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God has a purpose for everything that happens.
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Thus we call it his purposeful will.
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Another word that we use is his will of decree.
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God decrees that certain things will be.
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Because they're in the line of bringing other things about.
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Now I go back to the life of Joseph.
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He decreed that his brothers would hate him.
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He decreed that his brothers would sell him.
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He decreed that Potphoff's wife would lie about him.
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He decreed that he'd be in that prison.
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He decreed that he'd be second only to Pharaoh.
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He decreed that he'd save many people alive.
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And yet each one of those people acted on their own wills.
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And on their own passions.
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And on their own desires.
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And we call that connection between the will of man and the will of God, compatibilism.
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The will of man is here.
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The will of God is here.
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And it's like two train tracks.
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And if you were the conductor of the train, you'd notice at the end of the line they meet.
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And there's a meeting at the end in the mind of God that we don't understand.
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That's the compatibilism, how we understand the mind of God.
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I'm going to read to you from James Pettigrew Boyce.
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This man was one of the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention.
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By the way, if a Southern Baptist tells you that they were never Calvinistic, tell them to come see me.
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It's just not true.
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There's a Greek word for it, and it's baloney.
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The first systematic theology, the abstract of systematic theology written by James Pettigrew Boyce.
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This is in that document.
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This is just a short statement.
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He said, the term decree is liable to some misapprehension and objection because it conveys the idea of an edict or some compulsory determination.
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Purpose has been suggested as a better word, as I just did.
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Plan is still sometimes even more suitable.
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The mere use of these words will remove from any some difficulties and prejudices which may make them unwilling to accept this doctrine.
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They perceive that in the creation, preservation, and government of the world, God must have a plan, and that that plan must be just, wise, and holy, tending to his glory and to the happiness of his creatures.
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They recognize that a man who has no purpose nor aim, especially in important matters, and who cannot or does not devise the means by which to carry out his purpose, is without wisdom and capacity and unworthy of his nature.
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Consequently, they readily believe and admit that the more comprehensive and at the same time, the more definite the plan of God, the more worthy it is of infinite wisdom.
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Indeed, they are compelled to the conclusion that God cannot be what he is without forming such a purpose or plan.
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So if you have a problem with permissive or purposeful, just say we have God's prescription and we have God's plan.
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His call is that we live according to his prescription.
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And because men are, by nature, children of wrath, the first thing they do in life is buck that prescription.
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Absolutely.
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As I said, the decreed of will, the purposeful will, the permissive will, it's the providence of God.
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And here's the thing.
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Here's the beauty, folks.
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We don't know what God has decreed until it's done.
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So we don't go around commanding people based on the permissive will of God.
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We command based on the prescriptive will of God.
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This is why it's so hard when somebody comes and tells me, I got a job in Mississippi, I got a job in Maine, and I don't know which one to take.
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What's God's perfect will for me? I don't know.
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If one's going to cause you to sin, then I would say the answer is obvious.
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But all things being equal, both are virtuous and good, both are lending toward righteousness.
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And you don't know which way to go.
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I say pray and start going.
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Go where you want to go.
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Delight yourself in the Lord and he'll give you the desires of your heart.
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That doesn't mean he's going to give you everything you want, but he does mean he's going to give you new wants.
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Ask God what he wants you to do and then do what you want.
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If you're trying to be in the will of God, he'll make sure that you are and you're either going to have something great or you're going to learn a lesson.
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Either way, it's God's will.
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Because it's the decree of God, right? I will always say this anytime somebody asks me, what is the will of God for me? Last verse of the night.
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We'll end here.
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Last verse of the night.
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First Thessalonians four, three.
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This is the will of God, your sanctification.
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First Thessalonians chapter four, verse three.
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This is the will of God.
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And I say this to everyone here.
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The will of God for you is that you be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, that you be made holy as he is holy.
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And that is his will for you.
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Whichever job makes you more holy, whichever job draws you closer to him, whichever job makes you a better husband, father, wife, friend, Christian.
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You go there and love Jesus on the way.
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And by the way, if you had a choice between Maine and Mississippi and you're from Florida, go to Mississippi.
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Does Maine be cold? Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for this night and for the time of studying.
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I pray that it's been it's been a blessing to everyone here.
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Lord, I know that your word is always a blessing to those whom you open their eyes and open their ears to see and to hear.
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Father, I pray that you would write these truths on our heart.
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Those things which are difficult to understand, help us to understand that we can't carry the Atlantic Ocean in a bucket.
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Neither can we carry all the mind of God in our in our finite brain.
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So, Lord, help us to be understanding of the things that we don't understand and that we won't understand them, but that we can accept them as truths from the word of God.
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We thank you for all that you've given us in Christ's name.
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Amen.