Article 3 - The Decrees of God

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We decided, when we started this, to do two articles a week, and there's going to come a point where we may even do more than that, because there are certain articles that go together so well that we need to look at more than one at a time.
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So understand sort of the purpose of what we're doing, and I think this might help.
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We're trying to make sure everybody understands what the confession is saying.
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Like Brother Andy said, I could spend the rest of the time talking about the Trinity.
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It's one of my favorite subjects, but for the sake of what we're trying to do is simply making sure that if we have any questions about what the confession is saying.
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The second article, as Brother Andy just said, confirms our belief in the Trinity.
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That's what it does.
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And the third article is what I'm going to look at now, is confirming our belief in the decree of God.
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And so I want to read to you this article, and then I want to explain some of the language in the article to help understand what it is we're saying.
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And then, as Brother Andy did, we're going to look at some scripture as time allows.
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First and foremost, let us read the article together.
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God had decreed in himself, before the world was, concerning all things, whether necessary, accidental, or voluntary, with all the circumstances of them, to work, dispose, and bring about all things according to the counsel of his own will, to his glory.
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Yet, without being the chargeable author of sin, or having fellowship with any therein, in which appears his wisdom in disposing all things, unchangeableness, power, and faithfulness, and accomplishing his decree.
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And God hath before the foundation of the world foreordained some men to eternal life, through Jesus Christ, to the praise and glory of his grace, having foreordained and leaving the rest in their sin, to their just condemnation, to the praise of his justice.
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If 30 minutes wasn't enough time for the Trinity, it certainly isn't enough time for this, but I want to quickly, in my time, try to break this down into three parts.
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You know me, I'm the Holy Trinity, or my sermons tend to be Trinitarian in nature, almost always three points.
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I have a feeling that there's some godliness in that, I don't know why.
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But I do think...
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It's because you do it.
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Huh? It's because you do it.
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That's right, yeah.
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It's just, I don't know why, I like three points, it tends to come out.
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The first point refers to God's being essentially the one who has determined all things.
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And the second point, beginning at the word yet, in parentheses, is the clarification that God does not engage in sin, and that is a clarification statement that even though God has determined all things, he has not engaged in sin by doing so.
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And the third point, beginning with the word and God hath before the foundation of the world, is addressing the outworking of that.
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So God decrees all things, yet that doesn't make him the author of sin, but it does make him the author of salvation.
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So that's the breakdown of these three points.
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And let's look at the first part.
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God hath decreed in himself, decreed in himself, what do we think when we hear the word decree? We think of royalty? Executive orders? Maybe.
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We think of lordship.
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We think of kingship.
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When we say that God is Lord, we are actually exercising a use of superfluous language.
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God is Lord.
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God means Lord.
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So to say God is Lord is superfluous.
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But when we talk about God's decree, we are talking about him being the Lord.
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We are saying he exercises his lordship.
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And it should not be offensive to our minds that the Lord has set up his world according to his will.
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That's what the decrees of God are.
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The outworking of the will of God.
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God has set up his world according to his will.
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But where the issue often arises, and I'm going to write down two words, is the question of expansive and meticulous.
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How expansive are the decrees of God and how meticulous are the decrees of God? Just how much is God involved? Just how much is God intertwined in what happens? And that answer has divided Bible interpreters for centuries.
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Some see God as merely observational and reactionary.
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God looks at what we're doing and reacts to what we're doing.
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And that's the typical Arminian view.
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God looks down the corridor of time, he sees what Mike Smith is going to do, and based on what Mike Smith is going to do, God sort of gauges his action based on Mike Smith's actions.
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And so God becomes observational and reactionary.
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That's what we would call the typical Arminian perspective.
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God does what he does based on what I am going to do.
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God reacts to me.
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The other side of that is what we would say is that God is more intentional and deterministic.
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Mike Smith does what he does because God has decreed that that is what Mike Smith is going to do.
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And therefore, and I'm not picking on Mike Smith tonight, but he shaved his beard, he's lost all of his Solomonic power, or Samson lost his hair, you lose your beard, you lose all your strength.
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Anyway, but Mike, you chose to shave, but you made a choice and it was a real choice.
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And yet, I can assure you, as seemingly insignificant as it may be, the choice to shave your beard was part of the decree of God.
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For whatever purpose, I don't know how God functions in the outworking of that decree, I have no idea, but that is the perspective that we would take.
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That is the perspective that this confession is taking, is that God has decreed all things.
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And I want you to notice the three terms that are used, necessary, accidental, or voluntary.
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Notice it says, God has decreed in himself, before the world was, by the way, when did he do it? Before there was a Mike Smith, before there was a Mike Ward, before there was all the Mikes, we had God, huh? God decreed that our church would be so full of Mikes that all we'd have to say is one name, and we could get everybody who, you know, all the people to come forward.
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So we have this decree of God that came when? Before the foundation of the world.
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Very important language, because again, if God is observational and reactionary, he's not doing this before the foundation of the world.
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He's doing this in conjunction and in reaction to what happens in time.
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This is saying this decree happened outside of time.
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Time began when the world was created.
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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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What is the beginning? It's the beginning of time, right? God lives outside of time, and therefore when we talk about time, it's a part of creation.
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We are moving forward in time.
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The world is moving to the end of what? Time.
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We're looking forward to the end of time where we will step into eternity.
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I don't understand how that works any better than I understand the Trinity in the sense of the fullness thereof.
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But that is the truth, and God, before time began, decreed.
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And we talk about decrees, plural, but actually it's decree.
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It's one decree that God chose to do that affects everything.
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And it was before the world was.
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And the phrase is concerning all things, and then the writers of this confession used this language, whether necessary, accidental, or voluntary.
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I spent a little time with that, seeking to discern what the men who wrote this were trying to say, and knowing that most of the men who wrote things like this were led to their language by older languages.
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I looked at where the words necessary, voluntary, and accidental come from, and I think that probably they are leaning on the Latin here.
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The word necessary in Latin means it's necessarious, it means essential, and the word accidental means nonessential.
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And the word voluntary means of the will, means it's where we get the word volition, voluntarius, of the will.
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So the idea, I think, that the writers of this confession are saying is that everything that happens, whether it's what has to happen, or whether it is what happens by chance, which there's no such thing as chance from God's perspective, but from our perspective it is, right? You came here tonight not out of necessity, but by will.
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You chose to come, but yet we could say whether it was necessary, unnecessary, or voluntary, it's all of the decree of God.
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That's the point.
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It's trying to put everything into the basket so that no one can say to God, I did this independent of your will.
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No one can say to God, I did this independent of your decree.
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I remember years ago I was, my office used to be over there, this whole end of the building was different, and I spent many hours with a man who was totally opposed to the doctrines of grace.
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He was totally opposed to Calvinism, and he just so happened to be working here.
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And so I spent many hours in the workday often debating with that man about these truths.
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And I remember oftentimes, well, did God decree that I was going to sit in my chair? Or did God decree that I was going to stand up? Or did God decree that I was going to drop my coffee this morning? It was always some type of response of indignance.
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God can't possibly be involved in every little part of my life.
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And my answer was always, yeah, He can, because He's God.
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As R.C.
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Sproul said, if there's one rogue molecule that is not under the decree of God, that could be the one molecule that turns everything on its head.
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You know, it's the nail in the shoe of the horse.
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You've heard that analogy.
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You've all heard me say it.
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The nail in the shoe of the horse causes the horse to throw the shoe, and it's one horse that causes the battle to be lost.
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It's one battle that causes the war to be lost, and it's one war that causes a nation to fall.
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One nail in the shoe of one horse can cause a nation to fall.
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So if God is sovereign over the rising and falling of nations, then He's sovereign over the nails in the shoes of the horse.
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It's a very simple way of looking at it.
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But again, go to the other extreme.
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What if He wasn't? What if there were days where God just wasn't involved in what you were doing, and God had not decreed what happened? Maybe it was that day that your child got sick.
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Maybe it was that day that the accident happened and now you can't walk.
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Maybe it was that day that you lost your job and you can't pay your bills.
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You see the way people look at God and how absolutely desperate it becomes when you begin to see God as observational and reactionary.
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So the question of expanse and meticulous, yes, we are saying God's decree is expansive and we're saying it's meticulous and we're not ashamed of it.
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That's what this confession is declaring.
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We are saying it and we're confessing it.
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As Brother Andy said, we're not defending it, we're just saying it.
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We're saying it's the truth.
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Now we'll move to the second part.
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He goes on to say, yet without being the chargeable author of sin or having fellowship with any therein, in which appears His wisdom in disposing all things, unchangeableness, which would later be, we would use the term immutability, power and faithfulness in accomplishing His decree.
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Now, when we talk about God decreeing all things, God has decreed all things, yet in such a way that He has not allowed Himself to be the person, and when I say person, remember when I say God, we speak of God as person, personal, as the person responsible for sin.
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And what this confession doesn't use the language, but the language is here, it's just, it's in its older form, it's the concept of what would be referred to as secondary causes.
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Because, the decree of God is what causes all things, but the decree of God includes what we would call secondary causation.
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Secondary causation would be the acts of agents in time, and therefore, God is not responsible for your sin, and the responsibility for your sin is on you.
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And very simply, the reason for that is because your sin is part of your desire and your will.
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And you might argue back, and many people do, well, does that mean God isn't in control of my will? No, that's not what we're saying, but God has, in His decree, given us the ability to be agents and act according to our desires.
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So I don't understand how those two things go together.
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Well, for a moment, let us just consider Adam and Eve.
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Adam and Eve fell according to the decree of God.
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I say that without shame.
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They fell according to the decree of God.
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The Bible said Jesus was the lamb slain from the foundation of the world, which means that there was a fall, which was part of the plan.
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But, God did not tempt Eve to fall.
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Eve fell through the temptation of the serpent, and she fell because she chose to fall.
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And you say, how can you connect those two things? I have to believe it because it's what the Bible says, and I have to trust that there is a part of that that is, though difficult, very true.
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The Bible tells me in James, and this is what's so interesting, is this passage is not, I've got all the scripture references right here, all the scripture references that are in the Confession, I printed them out.
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Not one of these is James chapter 1.
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And I was like, how could they miss that? Of course, I mean, I'm not denying that those guys spent a lot of time choosing scripture verses that affirm what they were saying.
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But James chapter 1, to me, because he says this, let no one say when I am tempted, I have been tempted by God.
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For God tempts no one.
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And so we have to trust that the scripture is correct when it says God tempts no one.
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That's an important reality.
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And you say, well, how do we understand this from the concept of causation? Let's look at it from this view.
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I think I've given this example before, but just in case I haven't, we talk about primary causation and secondary causation.
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Imagine a, and you may have heard this, if you have, just pretend you haven't.
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Imagine a room with a table, and on the table is a bowl filled with water, and it is the bowl be emptied of the water.
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Okay? That's God's decree.
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Now, he could, by a miracle, simply send a bolt of lightning to lick all the water up as he did with the prophets of Baal.
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Remember, there was water poured all over the sacrifice.
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God sent a lightning bolt, licked up all the water, the text says, and it would just be gone.
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If that is God's will to choose to act in that way, he can.
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But he could also orchestrate that a group of very thirsty football players, after practice, come into the room and empty that bowl.
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And that would be what we would call a secondary cause.
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God uses the thirst of those men to empty the bowl.
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You say, I understand, but I don't find that incredibly satisfying.
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We can go, there's a thousand examples just like that.
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How did I get here today? Well, let's go back.
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I got here today by driving a car.
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Andy asked me, why did you drive your wife's car? Because my wife's car gets better gas mileage, and gas prices being what they are, I may be looking at a Toyota of some sort in the very near future, because I now live 30 minutes away, where when I lived five minutes away, it didn't matter what my...
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Or you'll have an electric car soon.
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Yeah, yeah, perhaps.
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But you understand that, in a way, that is a cause.
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Right? That's a cause, but it's a secondary cause based on a need.
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But if I said, how did I get here today? Somebody could say, well, 40 years ago, your parents came together and had a baby.
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Well, that's how I got here.
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We could argue.
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And then the question is, was my birth decreed by God? Psalm 139 says, God formed us in the womb, knew us before we were born.
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The Bible says my name was written in his book even before the world was, and all the days of my life have been written in his book, even though there yet was none of them.
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And I always make this point, and people get a little uncomfortable.
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I say that something had to happen to cause a baby to be born.
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That act of two human beings coming together and producing a child had to happen.
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So that was in the decree of God as well.
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You see, if I believe something is part of the decree of God, I must believe everything is part of the decree of God.
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But that doesn't mean that I can take God and make him the culprit of sin.
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So the confession is saying we are not charging God.
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By announcing that God has decreed all things, we are not making him the chargeable agent of sin.
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We are saying that he has decreed as such secondary causes us who are the agents of sin.
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And this leads us to the third point.
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And God has before the foundation of the world foreordained some men to eternal life through Jesus Christ to the praise and glory of his grace, having foreordained and leaving the rest in their sin to their just condemnation to the praise of his justice.
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Two words that need to be truly remembered in this part of the confession are the words grace and justice.
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Because what the confession is saying, and notice it says before the foundation of the world, this is the second time in one article it has referenced a timetable.
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In the beginning of the confession it says before the world was, God decreed.
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And now it says before the foundation of the world, God foreordained.
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And notice the phrase some men.
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Now don't get all woke on me and get upset that he didn't say some men and women.
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Because in this, this is the generic form of mankind.
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It has nothing to do with men or women.
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It is simply saying he has ordained some people, you're going to get real woke about it, to eternal life.
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And some he has not.
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And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the part that really bothers people.
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Because they want everybody to go to heaven.
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And I want to say this, I get it.
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I get it.
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I understand how easy it would be to be a universalist.
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Because the universalist doesn't have to concern himself with hell.
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I mean, he will one day.
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But at least when it comes to doctrine and understanding scripture, if a universalist would say, well everybody is going to heaven and God has made a way for everyone, and certainly that sounds nice, but there is no self-respecting Bible student who could read the New Testament and come away with universalism.
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The Bible clearly says that some will be saved and some will not.
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Even the verse that is used most commonly to argue for universalism, John 3.16, for God so loved the world.
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See, God loved the whole world.
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I say yeah, but read the passage.
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For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that the believers will not perish.
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Whosoever will believe.
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The believer will not perish.
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Not everybody.
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John 3.16 is not universal.
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In fact, as universal as God so loved the world might be, the last half of the verse, and you may have heard me say this before, but there is the Keith Standard version of John 3.16, as God loved the world so much he decided to save some.
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Because there is nothing in the passage that promotes universalism.
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And so the question then becomes, well, how does a person become saved or lost? Many people say, well, it is by their free choice whether they are saved or lost.
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I will say this, I do believe men make choices, but the Bible teaches very clearly that apart from God's grace, the only thing men will choose is rebellion.
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That is it.
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And I can take you from text to text to text to prove that point.
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Romans 3, most specifically says that there is none good, no not one.
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There is none who understands.
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There is none who seeks after God.
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None who seeks after God.
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No, not one.
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And so the question then is, God becomes the seeker.
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God becomes the, I always hated this term, the hound of heaven.
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He who seeks after, I just don't like comparing God to a dog, but you understand the reference is that God is the one who goes after us.
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He seeks after us.
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He finds us.
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He saves us.
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And you say, why would he do that for me and not for my neighbor? And I don't know the answer to that.
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But I will tell you this, when I look at myself and I look at my neighbor and I say I am saved and my neighbor isn't, never once should I ever come to the conclusion it was because I was smarter than him, I was more spiritually sensitive to him, I was more open to God than he is.
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No, it is grace and grace alone that puts me in the position of being saved and no man in the world gets any unfairness from God.
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Because all of us deserve punishment.
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And if God has so chosen to be gracious and save some, he has no requirement to be gracious to all.
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It's like the governor who calls the prison to set free the inmate who is facing the electric chair and he grants him a stay of execution.
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He has no responsibility to grant that same stay to everyone on death row.
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He chooses to have mercy upon whom he will have mercy.
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And there is no responsibility to give that mercy to all.
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And this is why it says he will have mercy upon whom he has mercy.
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Now, the picture, I want to, go ahead, brother.
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If you adopt one child and arrest.
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Exactly.
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That's a good, yeah, that's a good, and I look at it even, again, I always hate that I feel like I'm repeating myself, but repetition is the mother of good learning.
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So maybe we'll, maybe, maybe by repeating it, you'll remember it better.
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But if you imagine a king going away to battle.
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And while he is away, his subjects ransack his kingdom, destroy his palace, rape his wife, vandalize his belongings.
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And murder his children.
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And the king returns from battle to find his kingdom in ashes and smoke.
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And he looks upon the vandals and chooses to have mercy on some.
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You would wonder why.
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You would wonder why he did not bring justice upon them all.
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It's the goodness of the king.
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That is us.
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We were given God's good world.
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We have flaunted his law.
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We have arrested his son and hung him on a cross.
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We are sinners through and through.
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And the fact that God has mercy on any is his own goodness.
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So, should we have an issue with the last sentence? None at all.
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It is the truth.
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And God has demonstrated both of those things.
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He's demonstrated his grace and he's demonstrated his justice.
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And no one, no one has received injustice from God.
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I have a few minutes.
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Does anybody have any questions? In the appendix that was written by Benjamin Cox, it deals with the subjects of the articles that we're talking about and it gives more context and understanding to it.
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So I was thinking, you said the confessor doesn't mention James One.
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But the appendix does? But the appendix does.
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So as you read through the articles, if it references an appendix on a page, go read the appendix because that's why they inserted the appendix, to give greater clarity to what the articles were saying.
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Awesome, thank you.
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You had your appendix to read.
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Actually, I had it done twice.
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It actually grew back and I had to take it out a second time.
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I still have an appendix, but no gallbladder.
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But, that is interesting.
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I knew I wasn't going to have time to get through all this, so I didn't include that, but thank you brother.
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That was a good point.
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And I promise you, I brought all the scriptures.
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I was going to read them all, but hopefully what I've said tonight has been clear.
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And I did reference a lot of scripture.
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Okay.
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The term there is chargeable.
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Chargeable often.
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So the question is not whether it was part of God's decree, but whether the guilt is laid upon him.
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The guilt is laid upon Adam.
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Yes.
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We could say, when we talk about the subject of guilt, we are all guilty because of Adam's sin.
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That's something the confession will deal with later.
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But yes, we are all guilty because of Adam's sins.
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We're born sinners.
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But we are also guilty because of our own will to sin.
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We desire and do sin.
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And so, there is a big question mark over how God deals with individuals regarding their own sin versus Adam's sin.
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We know that we are guilty because of Adam's sin.
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But yet, the scripture talks about different levels of guilt.
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It talks about certain cities where Jesus said, you're going to be more guilty than this city.
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If they would have saw what I did there, they would have repented.
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And yet, you're going to be more guilty than them.
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And so, that draws us into a conversation about hell and whether or not there's going to be equal punishments.
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And some people believe there are going to be different punishments in hell and everything.
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But what we do in time does matter.
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We can't simply say, well, Adam's sin makes us all equally guilty.
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I do think that there is a sense in which we are responsible for our own sin as well.
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Which is the article we'll look at next week in the fall.
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Yeah.
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Because fall is the next article.
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But if I could, I would say this.
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As much as we can only understand what we gather in the Trinity, so many degrees of God, who has had the mind of the Lord? He alone dwells in immortality.
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That I don't think we can ever, regardless of the words we use, regardless of the examples that we use, I don't think we're ever going to be able to, at least on this side of eternity, I don't think on the other side of eternity either, that we're going to be able to truly understand because God is the great other.
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So I think we can get into conversations about words, and I think we should, but I don't think we're ever going to get to the point of saying, I got it.
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But I do want to, go ahead.
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Yeah, I mean, words still mean something.
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Words were chosen here.
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I don't think God is the author of sin, but it's hard to understand.
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Can I read something to you? I would ask for an extra two minutes because I have a whole list of quotes here.
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They were really good, and I didn't get to any one of them.
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I brought all these notes.
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I never have time.
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But I want to read to you from James Boyce.
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This is the first president of the Southern Baptist Seminary, and he wrote the Abstract of Systematic Theology and actually wrote the Abstract of Principles.
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He was a theologian.
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This is not James Montgomery Boyce.
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James Montgomery Boyce lived in the 20th century.
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This man lived in the 19th century.
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So this is the older, actually, maybe 18th century.
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But anyhow, James Pettigrew Boyce.
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And speaking of the decree, because you asked about defining the term.
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He says, 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.
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Plan will sometimes still be more suitable.
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The mere use of these words will remove from many some difficulties and prejudices which make them unwilling to accept this doctrine.
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So everybody says God has a plan.
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Everybody says God has a purpose.
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Well, that's what we're saying when we say God has a decree.
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The question is how meticulous and expansive is his plan and purpose? Well, he goes on.
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He says, they perceive that in the creation, preservation, and government of the world, God must have a plan and that that plan must have been just, wise, and holy, tending both to his own glory and 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 is the plan, 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 having such a plan.
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So when we talk about the decree of God, we could simply say it is God's plan from beginning to end.
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And show justice.
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And in that plan, he makes room for the actions of agents.
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And I like the term, I don't like the term free will.
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We'll talk about why later because I believe the will is bound.
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But I don't have a problem with the term free agent and I'm not talking about baseball.
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An agent is a person who makes legitimate choices.
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A person who wills.
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And we are making legitimate choices according to our desires.
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And Jonathan Edwards wrote one of the greatest books ever written on the subject was the Freedom of the Will.
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And he described the difference between us as agents and God as the sovereign.
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And obviously I don't have time to go through it tonight.
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But that is a very helpful way of understanding the difference.
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So if I could commend anything to your reading other than scripture, it would be to look up Jonathan Edwards' Freedom of the Will.
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Alright.
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Now we're going to conclude with prayer.
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Does anyone have anything that you would like for us to pray about? And I'm going to close us in prayer.
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But I'll pray for anything that anyone has need.
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Yes.
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There's a young girl named Heather Ellis.
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She has cancer and the last treatment didn't have any good effect physically on her.
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And she's just written tonight how she's going to have to have this other treatment that she says she's heard it's the hardest one to go through.
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And I just feel for her so much.
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She's thinking, what if I do come out of this? The side effects maybe I can never have children.
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You know, right now her brain is going like this.
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How old is she? She's about 20.
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Oh heavens.
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Sorry to hear that.
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Anyone else? Yes, Jimmy Stoniker is my uncle.
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And he has a very bad case of COVID.
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So we need to pray for him.
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Darian? Oh goodness.
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What's her name? Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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What's Rachel's last name? Hurley.
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Vody Bokum had to go back for a major surgery.
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He had already had surgery.
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And so we need to pray for him.
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Yes, had to go back.
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Anyone else? Let me lead us to the throne.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I ask Lord that even now that you would help us to understand the truths that we've discussed.
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Lord, we've dived into two very deep pools tonight.
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And we may feel like it's hard to come up for air.
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And yet we know that these things are confirmed in your word.
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And so we pray that we would submit ourselves to the scripture.
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Never putting ourselves above it.
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Never putting ourselves beside it.
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But always putting ourselves underneath the word.
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I pray Lord tonight for Heather Ellis and for her cancer.
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God that you would be merciful to her.
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Lord, her desire for children is such a noble and wonderful thing.
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Pray for her healing and strength.
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Pray that she Lord knows you and find her comfort in you.
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Pray Lord for Jimmy and for COVID and his pneumonia.
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Lord, I pray that you would please be with him.
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Help him to breathe.
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Help him to come through this.
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Pray for Rachel Hurley and her disease that she's dealing with.
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Lord, I pray for Darian's family as they seek to minister to her.
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We pray also for Darian herself.
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Lord, that you would give her comfort in her anxiety.
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And this fear that is waking her up at night.
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Lord, I pray that you would give her peace and comfort in that.
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And Father, I pray for Bodie.
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His ministry is so helpful and useful and wonderful.
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Lord, I pray that you would give him many more years to serve you.
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But Lord, whatever your will is, we pray that he and his family, his church, and his many people who love him would be comforted and trust in you.
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Lord, we have proclaimed tonight that you are the great three in one.
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That you are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
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And that you have decreed before time all that will be.
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So Lord, let us rest in the comfort of that decree.
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In Jesus' name.
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Amen.