God's Providence (pt-2)

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We are continuing this morning with our look at the providence of God, which is a topic that causes much controversy.
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It is a difficult topic. It is by no means simple. And we are going to be wading into one of the heavier portions of an already heavy topic as we look at the problems of evil.
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Where does evil come from? How can we say, if God is not the author of evil and the
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Bible tells us that he is not, how can we then say that he causes evil acts, that he causes bad things?
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Because in his providence, God is the ultimate source of everything that happens.
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It is his word and his decree that causes all things to happen. Even though we started exploring last
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Sunday the somewhat difficult concept that God can be the cause of all things, and yet he upholds our ability to make willing and responsible choices for which we are held accountable.
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And we did acknowledge that ultimately we do not have an explanation for that, but that we accept it because the scripture says that that is true, and ultimately that must be our authority.
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Whether we understand it or not is not really part of the equation. And so it does bring us to the problem of evil, because certain principles are laid down in scripture.
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First of all, God never does anything evil. God is not the author of evil.
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Scripture never blames God for evil. God never takes pleasure in evil.
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And scripture never excuses creatures for the evil that they do.
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Men, as opposed to the rest of God's creation of the animal world, men are created uniquely in the image and likeness of God.
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And therefore we are moral beings. He created us with the ability to make choices, and he holds us responsible for the choices that we make.
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And so when we do evil, we are never excused for that.
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And we are never excused for evil even if something good, quote unquote, comes out of it.
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Evil is real. And turn with me, if you will, to Isaiah, the 14th chapter, because we need to see where evil originated.
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If you don't get your arms around this particular passage, you will never understand where evil comes from, and you won't even have a clue to the answer to the question, why do bad things happen to good people?
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We can work on that a little bit later. But Isaiah chapter 14, starting in verse 12.
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How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning? How art thou cut down to the ground, who didst weaken the nations?
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For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven. That's number one.
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I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. That's number two. I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north.
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That's three. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like the most high.
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Five I wills. That marks the entrance of evil into God's universe.
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Where Satan rebelled, Lucifer is son of the morning. He's also the being that we now call
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Satan. He led a rebellion. One -third of the angelic hosts followed him.
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And evil entered God's universe. And the universe has been tainted by sin ever since then.
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That's where it all started. So how does this work into God's plan?
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Because God has a plan for everything, and everything proceeds according to his decree that he set forth in eternity past before anything existed, before the angels existed, before the universe existed.
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God sets this down. And this is a difficult problem. But Scripture affirms that God does bring about evil things.
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Joseph, Genesis chapter 37, talks about Joseph interacting with his brothers.
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First of all, they're jealous. That's verse 11. They hated him, chapter 37, verses 4 and 5 and 8.
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They wanted to kill him, 3720, and they sold him into slavery, 3728.
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Now, most of you know the story of Joseph. So what does Joseph say when he gets down to chapter 45 and he is confronting his brothers, and he has finally revealed himself to his brothers?
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He said, you did all of this, but God sent me here.
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The reason I'm here is because God sent me here. He sent me ahead of you so that I could go through all of these trials that I went through, but so that I could become the number two man in all of Egypt, and so that I could prepare a way ahead of you for you to survive, for the
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Israelites to survive. God did that. God caused that.
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Other places, he goes in, the whole topic of God hardening
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Pharaoh's heart. In Exodus 4 .21, 7 .3,
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9 .12, 10 .20, 10 .27, 11 .10, and so forth and so on, it talks about God hardening
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Pharaoh's heart. It also talks about Pharaoh hardening his own heart, but it specifically says in the verses,
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I decided that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and that's a statement of judgment.
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God is hardening Pharaoh's heart so that he causes him to do what he wants him to do as he works out his plan for the children of Israel.
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This causes a lot of problems with people. How can God be doing this?
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After all, doesn't God owe everyone a chance at salvation? And the answer to that is no.
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That's a shock, isn't it? God is a sovereign God, as we pointed out, and the thing about a sovereign
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God or a sovereign being, what it means to be sovereign is you don't have to do anything.
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The words have to and sovereign do not go together. A sovereign
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God does what he does because it pleases him to do it according to his plan. He does not have to answer to anyone.
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He does not have to explain himself to anyone. He does not have to justify himself to anyone.
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Paul, in Romans 9, verse 17, he states in the eternal principle, 17 and 18, that God is sovereign.
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He shows mercy on whom he will have mercy. He shows mercy when he will show mercy.
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It is his choice. Paul says to the readers, who are you? Because the readers are all saying in their mind, what?
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That's not fair. And so Paul comes back and says, hey, who are you? Who are you to question the actions of a sovereign
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God? God is fair. God is the definition of what fairness is because God, believe it or not, does not have to align himself with man's standards of fairness and man's standards of right and wrong.
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He determines what the standards of right and wrong are. Man is a rebel.
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And God is completely just and justified in leaving us to the consequences of our actions.
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Usually when we're saying, that's not fair, why did God let this happen to me? What we're really asking is, why didn't
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God shield me from the consequences of my own actions? Because we count on God.
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God is so merciful to us. And I'm talking about believers and unbelievers alike.
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God is so merciful to mankind that we bank on that and we get upset when instead of showing mercy, he says, okay, in this case,
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I'm just going to let you take the consequences of what you just did. I'm going to allow the consequences of your actions to come through to you.
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And we get all upset when he does that. And yet, he would be justified in doing that all the time.
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If we got what we deserve, we would all be dead because we are born in sin.
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Thanks to our Father Adam, you know, thanks,
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Dad. This is Father's Day message. Thanks, Dad. We are all now born in sin.
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We are born fallen. And God is completely justified in leading us to the consequences of our actions.
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Instead, he deals with us in mercy so much of the time. But remember, mercy is never owed.
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Mercy is never owed to anyone. Mercy is a gift. Now, there are other examples.
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Samson. Samson had a desire to marry a Philistine woman. That was of the
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Lord, it says in Judges 14 .4 because God was planning to judge the
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Philistines. David. We have the issue of David and his actions with Bathsheba.
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And yet, we look at that and we see that we can see in retrospect that God has worked this into the plan.
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But that does not excuse David's actions. David still bore the consequences of those actions.
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God told him what was going to happen. First of all, that first child died. And God also told him what's going to happen.
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The sword is not going to depart from your house, David. So you don't get to build my house for me.
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Your son Solomon will do that. So the whole book of Job addresses the issue of why do the righteous suffer?
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And the answer comes back to bring glory to God, which is an answer that we all learn and we all memorize and we're all sort of uncomfortable with because we don't really like that too much.
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And yet, that is ultimately the answer. Why does Job suffer? Job suffers to bring glory to God because keep in mind,
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God knew the outcome of the whole thing. God said at the beginning that Job is righteous.
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And when God declares you righteous, you're righteous. But nobody else that played out in that drama knew what was going to happen.
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Job didn't know. Job's three friends didn't know. Satan didn't know. The angelic host didn't know.
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Only God knew. And so that whole drama plays out to bring glory to God because Satan had come in and said what?
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Job is on your side, Lord, just because of what you do to him. You turn against him and he's gone.
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And so God says, all right, you take everything he's got but leave his life alone. And so Job remains firm through that.
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And then Satan says, well, anybody would do anything for his life. So God says, all right, you touch his life, don't kill him.
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And so Job basically breaks out in skin cancer. It's extremely painful and everybody turns against him.
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What did his wife tell him? Curse God and die. And here come his three friends. And after the week where they all sat there quietly, which was the best part of the whole visit, then they start talking to him.
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And basically their view is what? Job, you must have done something because God's after you.
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I mean, that was their view of how God dealt with this. God's zapping you because you're evil.
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But at the end of it, what does Job say? He says, I have seen the
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Lord. I have seen the Lord and I am going to shut up because I cannot say anything against what
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God does in his sovereignty. Isaiah chapter 45 verse 7,
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God states that he forms the light, that he creates darkness, that he makes peace, and that he creates evil, if you read it in the
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King James. Other versions say that I create adversity, but the thought is the same in both versions that bad things,
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I cause good things to happen, I cause bad things to happen. Natural disasters,
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I mean, even the insurance companies, what do they call that when a tree falls on your car?
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Act of God, right? We talked about that last week. So they acknowledge that this is an act of God and what they mean by that is it's something that man has no control over.
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And that's exactly right. God does what he does and man has no control over it because God is the one in charge.
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And then finally, if you want one more example, that God does cause evil things to happen, what is the single most evil act ever committed in human history?
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The crucifixion of his son. And the Bible clearly states that that is foreordained in God's plan, that he set that down.
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So what do we say about this? And again, I said this is one of these issues that causes a lot of controversy and we do not have ultimate answers here.
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This is where we have to start examining very carefully what the Scripture says and just accepting what the
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Scripture says because it says it, not because we understand how this goes because we're headed into the area here of the finite mind, ours trying to comprehend the infinite.
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But first of all, God does use all things to fulfill his purposes including the use of man's evil for his glory and our good.
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Now, that's Romans 828. God causes all things to work together for, and you can put a definite article in here,
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God causes all things to work together for the good. And what is the good?
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That is the plan of God. He fits everything into his plan as he has decreed things to be.
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But God is never the personal agent of evil. God is never the personal agent of evil.
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God is glorified when he punishes evil. That's Proverbs 16, 4, and many other places in Proverbs.
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God never does evil, and he is never to be blamed for evil.
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Now, one of the things that we have to look at here is the concept of necessity versus compulsion because fallen men, we are all fallen.
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We're born that way. We do not become fallen the first time we sin. We are born in sin.
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The little baby that you hold in your arms that is so sweet, that is a little sinner.
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That is, as Jonathan Edwards put it, a little viper that you have in your hands there. And as this child grows, you are going to have to train him or her.
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It's fun to watch new parents. The parents of one child, in the great debate between environment and genetics, the parents of one child are always environmentalists.
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Let that second child come along, and they suddenly become geneticists. You know, when my kids were growing up,
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I didn't have to teach them to be selfish. I didn't have to teach them to fight with each other.
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I didn't have to teach them to lie. I didn't have to teach them any of that. It's funny. They seem to know how to do all of that.
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I did have to teach them to love. I did have to teach them how to act towards each other.
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A doctor friend of ours made a remark to Dallas and me one time that we do not have to teach a baby to hate.
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We do have to teach it to love. And yet, without love, it will die. Isn't that an interesting observation of just the human condition?
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And so, we sin out of necessity. We sin because that's our nature to do that.
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But we are not compelled. There is no compulsion from outside. We sin out of our own free will, if you want to use that term.
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That's one place where I feel it is appropriate to use. Nobody compels us to sin. We make our choices, and we are responsible for them.
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You don't really get to say the devil made me do that. I mean, there's a sense, okay, sin and all the rest of it.
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But you make your choices. You make your choices. And you do just fine on your own.
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Nobody has to force you to sin. You're going to do just fine on your own. Sinner that you are, and sinner that I am.
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And so, James can say, or first of all, Judas. This is how
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Judas carried the moral blame for his betrayal of Jesus. Because what did Jesus say about Judas?
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To this purpose he was born, but better for him had he not been born.
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God decreed, in the decreed plan of God, Judas was going to betray Jesus.
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But he is morally responsible for that act. He is morally responsible for that act.
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He carries the responsibility for it. Matthew 26, 24, and Luke 22, 22, if you want to look at that.
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James, the first chapter, verses 13 and 14. God does not tempt to evil. God does not entrap us.
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He doesn't need to. We do just fine on our own. Left to our own devices.
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God ordains that evil will come about. But he ordains that evil will come about through the personal, moral choices of his creatures.
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That's us. Because man is a moral being. We are responsible for our actions in a way that animals are not, as we discussed the other day.
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We might destroy a vicious dog to protect ourselves.
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But we do not arrest that dog, put him on trial, because he is not morally responsible for what he did.
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And so we, though, are morally responsible for what we do. As John Calvin put it,
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God so uses the works of the ungodly and so bends their minds to carry out his judgments that he remains pure from every stain.
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Now, the third point is that God rightfully blames and judges moral creatures for the evil that they do.
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Turn again to Isaiah, this time chapter 66, and starting in verse 3.
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Well, actually, let's start in verse 1. Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.
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Where is the house that ye build unto me, and where is the place of my rest? For all things hath mine hand made.
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And all those things have been, saith the Lord. But to this man will I look, even to him that is poor, and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.
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So that's what God's saying. That's who I look at. That's what I'm looking for.
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And then by contrast, he that killeth an ox as if he slew a man, he that sacrificeth a lamb as if he cut off a dog's neck, he that offereth an oblation as if he offered swine's blood, he that burneth incense as if he blessed an idol, yea, they have chosen their own way, and their soul delighteth in their abominations.
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I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them.
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Because when I called, none did answer. There's moral responsibility. I called, and you didn't answer.
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Over in Proverbs, he says the same thing. Because I called, and you didn't answer, when you call me,
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I'm not going to answer. When I spoke, they did not hear.
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But they did evil before mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighteth not.
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Men are responsible for their own actions. The creature that does evil is always worthy of punishment.
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Blame for evil is always placed on the creature responsible for it, or the man responsible for it.
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So, the fourth point, evil is real. Evil is not an illusion. There are some religions out there that tell us that everything is an illusion, you know.
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You just think you're sick. You just think you're dead, whatever it is. And so, because evil is real, and has real consequences, we should never do evil.
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It will always harm us. It will always harm us. It will always harm others. That means we should never do evil because there's some good, we see some good outcome down the road down here that may come out of that.
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God can take care of his own plan, you know. He doesn't need us helping him out.
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So, do not think that, oh, well, I can get away with this particular act because I have a good purpose in mind. The second thing, evil is to be resisted and combated.
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Whenever it is within our power to do so, we must resist evil. Even though, ultimately, evil will not be defeated until Jesus Christ returns and sets up his kingdom and takes
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Satan and casts him into the lake of fire and all of his angels. You read
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Revelation if you want to see about the ultimate end to evil. But in the meantime, we are to resist it whenever possible.
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Even though we know we'll have to resist it today, we'll have to resist it tomorrow. We'll have to resist it next week.
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That there's not going to be a permanent solution until Jesus comes and brings the permanent solution with him.
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We are to pray to be delivered from evil. What did Jesus teach his disciples?
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Teaching them how to pray. Deliver us from evil. Matthew 613.
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Now, we do confess that we do not understand how God can ordain that we carry out evil deeds and still hold us accountable and not be blamed himself.
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But the scripture states that that is the case. And so, therefore, we are obliged to accept that.
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Even though we do not understand it, we are to accept that this is indeed what happens.
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Because scripture affirms that these things are true. God does not choose to explain everything that he does to us.
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In fact, he specifically says there are certain things which are the mysteries of God and they are restricted to him.
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You know, he's not going to explain that. And there are other things which he does not explain to us because, frankly, we are not capable at this time of absorbing the explanation.
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We do that to our own children, don't we, as they grow? There are certain things that we do not explain to them when they're very small simply because they are not capable of understanding the explanation.
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And so, at that point, when the inevitable question of why comes, he said, because I'm your father and I said so.
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That's all the explanation you need. Later on, the explanations.
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And when we get to heaven, perhaps we will also ourselves become, get some more explanations from our father in heaven.
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But ultimately, he is infinite. And his ways are higher than our ways. Now, the question of free will.
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That's a big arguing point, too. Is man's will free or is man's will in bondage?
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And the answer to that question is yes. There are senses in which there is certainly a sense in which man's will is free and that we are not compelled.
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You know, we sin out of our own free will, if you want to call it, use that term. Nothing compels us except our fallen nature.
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We are free to do anything that our nature permits us to do. However, in our fallen state, one of the things we cannot do is choose the right.
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We cannot generate good in and of ourselves, good in the divine sense of things.
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We cannot somehow reach down in ourselves and find that spark of good that exists in all of us and pull ourselves up to God.
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It doesn't work because that spark isn't there. And that's the part that people hate.
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They hate to admit that. But we are fallen. That is our nature. Now, within the realm of our nature, we are not compelled to do any particular thing.
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That is why we hold unbelievers responsible if they break the civil law, don't we?
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Our society has come together and based on Christian principles, by and large, or even in countries where they don't work on Christian principles, they have still set down certain laws for the governing of society.
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And they hold their members responsible for those. You break the law, you are hauled into court, and the appropriate punishment is meted out.
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Okay. So if we do that as fallen creatures, how much more does
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God do it as the divine, righteous king of the universe, sets forth his laws and holds us responsible when we break them?
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But apart from regeneration, man cannot choose to do good as God defines it.
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Apart from the work of regeneration in your life, which is a work of grace, you cannot come to Jesus.
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You simply can't. The Arminian argument, which is the other side of things, they insist that we can choose to do right in and of ourselves.
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And if you ever want just a short definition of what that is, that's the whole thing in a crux, that we can do right in and of ourselves.
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However, we are unable to make decisions that are not caused by anything, and people assume that they can.
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That's the flaw in the whole argument. We cannot make a decision in a vacuum, and yet we somehow think we can.
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And yet every decision we make is caused by something. It's caused by the circumstances around us.
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It's caused by our own inner desires. It's caused by whatever it is. And so we make willing choices.
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And at the time of our choosing, we are unaware of any restraints. Even though they do exist, we are unaware of them.
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And so that's the whole necessity versus compulsion argument. We are not compelled to do evil, but we do it of necessity.
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Now, if that still does not firmly satisfy you on that issue, you are not alone.
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Theologians have argued about the issue of free will or the bondage of the will. Martin Luther wrote the famous book,
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Bondage of the Will, in which he is pointing out that your will is in bondage.
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It's in bondage to your fallen nature. It is in bondage to Satan. What did
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Jesus say to the Pharisees? He said, You're going to do what your father dictates. And they're all saying,
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Well, our father is Abraham. He says, No, it's not. Your father is Satan. And you're going to do the will of your father.
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It's another way of saying you're going to act like your nature says you will act. You're fallen, and you're going to act like that.
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But theologians will be arguing that point, I'm sure, until the day of the rapture and probably afterwards. But anyway, do we have any questions so far?
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Because that is a thorny topic. The third thing in God's providence, remember as we started talking about the providence of God, we said there were going to be three things we talked about.
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We talked about his preservation of his creation. We talked about his concurrence. And now we're going to talk about his government.
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And this is not necessarily what's in Washington. It's how he works in his creation.
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But God has a purpose in all that he does in the world. He providentially guides and directs all things in order to accomplish his purpose.
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The scripture states this over and over and over again, that God directs what happens.
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But as we said last week, if you're looking for one of the major breakpoints between Christianity and Islam, because you will hear the argument, well, it's all the same
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God. It isn't all the same God. And one of the big differences, totally apart from salvation, one of the big differences is the
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God of Islam is totally transcendent. He is above everything and over everything, but he is not imminent in any way.
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He does not interact with his creation. The Christian God, our God, is also transcendent over everything because he is the king of the universe.
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However, he is also imminent. He interacts constantly on a daily basis with his creation.
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The Bible tells us that the universe consists by his word and that were he to stop his work of upholding the universe, we would disappear.
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We would cease to exist. Everything that is created would simply cease to exist. If God stopped for an instant his work of upholding and consisting the universe, every breath that we take, the
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Bible says, is a gift from God. The very fact that we draw our next breath is a gift from him.
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So the Bible, and this is just a few of the references, Psalm 103, 19, his kingdom rules over everything.
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It rules over all. Daniel 4, 35, no one questions him. Remember what
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I said about a sovereign God? A sovereign God does not have to explain himself. Romans 11, 36, all things are from and through and to him.
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1 Corinthians 15, 27, all things are subject to Christ. Ephesians 1, 11, all things are according to his will.
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Philippians 2, verses 10 and 11, every knee will bow. Every knee will bow.
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The only issue is are you going to bow willingly or are you going to be forced to your knees? Romans 8, 28, he works all things for the good.
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All things work for the good, his plan that he has decreed in eternity past.
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So we have in God's will and in God's plan, we have two aspects. First of all, we have his moral will or his revealed will as it's called sometimes.
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And these are the explicit commands that he has laid down in the scripture, the specific do's and don'ts.
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You know, get saved, don't commit adultery, do this, do that, don't do this, whatever.
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The Ten Commandments, if you will, are an example of God's revealed will. The specific things that he says to either do or not to do.
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And then you have his provincial government, which is what we're talking about now. And these are the events of history which
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God has ordained in eternity past by which he directs the affairs of men to his ultimate end.
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And in his work with God, in God's work with man, he has had basically two events in history to which everything has pointed.
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The first advent of his son and the second advent of his son. Well, the first advent of his son has already passed.
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And so if you want to look at it this way, everything from the crucifixion of Jesus Christ until he comes again can be considered the last days.
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Because we're now over the hump and we're down on the backside of the mountain and we're picking up speed as we're headed towards the end of history.
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And so we come to the doctrine of decrees. God decreed, God ordained in eternity past.
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And the decrees he made in eternity past are unchangeable. But, and the decrees, if you want a definition, are the eternal plans of God whereby before the creation of the world he determined to bring about everything that happens.
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That's the doctrine of decrees. God does, however, react to his children in time.
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And this is where it starts to get a little bit difficult. Because the Bible is clear.
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He grieves over sin. He delights in praise. He responds to the prayers of the saints.
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So don't get the idea, as some accuse Calvinists of being, as being fatalistic.
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We are not fatalistic. We believe in a healthy prayer life. Because we also believe that God does respond to our prayers.
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God wants us to pray. And those prayers have been worked into the plan.
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God ordains not only the ends, he ordains the means. Everything is ordained.
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And so that's why Daniel would pray. Jeremiah would pray.
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Isaiah would pray. You know, look it up. Lord, it says here, you promised 70 years of captivity.
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70 years are up, Lord. So, set us free. Now, did he think that God wasn't going to set them free?
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No, because God had already said, you know, the captivity is going to come to an end.
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But he's still praying. Lord, bring the captivity to an end. Because the fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.
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And God answers prayer. Just a few references. Psalm 139 .16,
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Job 14 .5, Acts 2 .23 and 4 .28. Ephesians 1 .4
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and 2 .10 and Jude chapter 4. The thing about this is
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God is not making things up as he goes. This should be a source of great comfort to each one of us here.
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Is that God has never been surprised. God has never said, oops. God has never called the executive committee together to discuss the fact that, oh, goodness,
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Adam fell. What are we going to do now? Or, oh, goodness, you know, something else happened and what are we going to do about it?
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God has it all planned out. God has it all planned out.
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Nothing surprises him. He has never been caught unawares.
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He's got it in his hands. This whole idea, and this is where I want to get off into this whole idea of God discovering things and God learning things and all of the rest of that nonsense.
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But, you know, God doesn't learn anything. He specifically states in Scripture, whoever taught me anything.
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Or he says, if I needed anything, I wouldn't ask you. Because everything proceeds from me.
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Everything proceeds from him. So what could possibly exist in creation that he might need?
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Since it all proceeded from him anyway. He's not making it up.
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But under human actions, this is a little bit of recap here as we're wrapping up.
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First of all, we are responsible for our choices. We make willing choices. We make willing choices.
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And they have real and eternally significant consequences. We are not automatons.
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We are not robots. We make our choices and we will be held responsible for them.
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God rewards and punishes on the basis of actions. Now, let me emphasize, this has nothing to do with your salvation.
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Okay? Salvation is a grace. It's a gift of God. Not works.
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But you look through Revelation sometime and look at what the criterias are.
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The criterion is where God is meeting out judgment. It's actions.
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What did you do? I'm going to hold you responsible for your actions. We will be held responsible for our actions.
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Just because we are believers, we will stand at a judgment seat as well.
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Not the same one as the unbelievers. But we are going to stand before the place of reward where Jesus is going to have a chat with us about what we did with the life that he gave us.
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How did we handle it? The decisions that we made, the actions that we did, the deeds that we did, we're going to be judged for those.
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And our rewards are going to be based on that. And that should be an answer to anyone that says that Calvinism leads to a dissolute life.
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It does not if you really understand what's going on. We are never to say God made me do evil.
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We are never to say that God caused this evil and therefore it is good because evil is real.
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And even if there is an ultimately good outcome from something, it does not change the fact that the evil act is evil.
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What David did with Bathsheba was evil. Even though Solomon came out of that union and ultimately
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Jesus because that's the line. So don't say that and don't look at something and say, well, this is in God's will and good is going to come out of this.
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And so therefore it's okay because evil is evil. Evil is evil.
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Our actions have real consequences and really do change the course of events.
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God ordains, as we said before, events and causes. Prayer is a specific action that will produce definite results that do change the course of events.
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You say, how is that possible if God has ordained and decreed what will happen?
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And I'll tell you the same thing I told you last week. I don't know. But the Bible says that that is the case.
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And therefore we must act. We do not live in a vacuum. We don't live in a bubble. We are not passive.
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You know, the Christian life is active. It's active. Second Samuel chapter 10.
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We're about done. Second Samuel chapter 10 and verse 12.
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Joab is speaking. Be of good courage. Let us play the men for our people and for the cities of our
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God. And the Lord do that which seemeth to him good. Joab is giving his speech to his troops before they go into battle.
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And what's he say? Let's go out. We're going to go out and fight. So we're going to take action.
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We're going to go out and fight. The Lord is going to do what he has decreed. And so there's both of those things put together.
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God is going to do what we're going to trust God to do what is best. But we are going to take action.
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And so there he goes. And so finally, don't be afraid during your life.
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Trust in God. Be thankful for all things. Regard everything as a gift from the
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Father's hand. Remember there's no such thing as luck or chance.
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And finally, as I did last week, I'll leave you with the same quote from John Calvin. Because these are hard concepts, and they are not concepts that are easily understood.
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In fact, I can guarantee you're going to have problems with this for the rest of your life. But Calvin says this, talking about he had just gone through the whole problem of evil and God's providence and so forth.
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He says, let those for whom this seems harsh consider for a little while how bearable their squeamishness is in refusing a thing attested by clear scriptural proofs because it exceeds their mental capacity.
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And find fault that things are put forth publicly, which if God had not judged useful for men to know, he would never have bidden his prophets and apostles to teach.
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For our wisdom ought to be nothing else than to embrace with humbleness, teachableness, and at least without finding fault whatever is taught in sacred scripture.
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So Calvin is basically saying, if you don't understand it, but the scripture teaches it, accept it.
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Accept it. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we would ask this morning that you would indeed help us to accept with humbleness and with teachableness what the scripture says.
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Help us, Lord, to not be rebellious children, but to learn the lessons that you have set down for us so clearly in your word.
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We ask your blessing upon the service to follow, ask your blessing upon our pastor as he opens the word to us.
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May the Holy Spirit be our teacher this morning and minister to our hearts. In Jesus' name, amen.