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- I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Isaiah.
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- I'm going to be in the book of Isaiah, chapter 45.
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- Charles Spurgeon was called the Prince of Preachers.
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- He had an amazing ability to address the issues of his day with tremendous scriptural clarity.
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- Even today, when it's impossible to hear Spurgeon, you can read his sermons and still get a sense of the way in which God used him in his community and, of course, in his church.
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- On one occasion, there were two terrible railroad accidents which occurred in Spurgeon's country.
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- They were tremendous catastrophes and many people died.
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- And afterward, when the news hit home for everyone in his town, everyone in his area, the masses were disturbed.
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- They felt they were afraid.
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- It was such a shock that so many people had died in such a tremendous tragedy.
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- And many of them were looking to the church for answers, for comfort.
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- It was one of those times, similar to after 9-11 here in the United States, the Sunday following 9-11, the churches were filled.
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- Because people come to the church looking for answers, looking for reasons to have hope in tremendous difficulty.
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- So on September 8, 1861, Charles Spurgeon took to his pulpit with a message on the sovereign purpose of God in all things.
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- That was what he preached on.
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- After a tremendous catastrophe, after a tremendously terrible event, he took to the pulpit and he preached on the sovereign purpose of God.
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- Well, in the tradition of Spurgeon, this morning I want to address an important issue in our day.
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- It's not a train wreck, but I would argue that its importance is no less worthy of our attention.
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- As you know, Tuesday is a very important day in our nation.
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- And some of you may be looking at the name of the sermon and thinking, hey, wait a minute, I think I've heard this before.
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- Well, that's true.
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- God Will Still Be On His Throne Wednesday was the title of the sermon I did four years ago today when we were facing, at that time, a pivotal election in our nation.
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- And I went back and I said, you know what? Every four years ain't so bad.
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- I know some pastors who repeat them every four weeks.
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- So I'm going to be preaching the message that I preached four years ago today for the purpose of re-encouraging you.
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- Because, beloved, there is a lot of discouragement out there when it comes to our political system.
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- I mean, you don't have to spend very much time watching your television or picking up your newspaper or going to your mailbox before you are inundated with ads which are no longer intended to inspire and encourage voting, but rather they are intended to slander, to degradate, to destroy characters, to destroy integrity.
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- And we are in a time in our nation which is very sad.
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- And again, as I said, it's not a train wreck, but it's getting pretty close in the behavior of many.
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- And I've heard folks from both sides.
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- And amazingly enough, I do have friends that are not on my political side.
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- I know some people, they just don't have friends that don't share their same political views.
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- I have friends, I have family that don't have the same views that I have on things.
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- I work in public schools every once in a while when I substitute teach.
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- And I'm in with all kinds of people, students and teachers who share a multitude of varied views on subjects.
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- And one of the things that I keep hearing, one of the common things that keep coming up are people who will say this, they will say, you know what, I'm scared of what's going to happen on the election.
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- I'm scared of what's going to happen on Tuesday.
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- Now, while I share the concerns of many of you, because some of you may have even said that, I share concerns about the State of the Union, I share concerns about the direction of our nation, and particularly the social conscience of our nation, which is drenched in the blood of millions of unborn babies, and drenched in the debauchery of homosexuality, which has destroyed many of the understanding of how the family is supposed to operate.
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- I am with you, and concerned, and have probably even said myself, I'm a little scared about how the election is going to turn out.
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- So I'm not putting myself up on a pedestal.
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- But there is something I want to make clear to you, and something that I want to try to give to you this morning as an encouragement, that even though, yes, it's fearful time, we still serve a sovereign God.
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- And God is never out of control, no matter who is in the Oval Office.
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- God is never out of control, no matter who is the President.
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- And God is forever working all things for the good of those who love Him, and are called according to His purpose.
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- And as Christians, though we might have concern about our nation, we must never think that God has somehow lost His sovereignty.
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- Because when that happens, beloved, we lose our hope.
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- So with this in mind, I want to speak to you today on the subject of the sovereignty of God from Isaiah chapter 45.
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- And my hope is that this text will again inspire you.
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- I believe it helped last time.
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- And I hope that it will help again.
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- Because no matter who wins the presidency on Tuesday, God will still be on His throne on Wednesday.
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- So let's stand and hear God's Word.
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- Isaiah 45, and we're going to look at the whole chapter, but to open today, we're going to look at just verse 18.
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- Verse 18 is the theme.
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- Isaiah 45, 18, For thus says the Lord who created the heavens, He is God who formed the earth and made it.
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- He established it.
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- He did not create it empty.
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- He formed it to be inhabited.
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- I am the Lord and there is no other.
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- Father, as we look today at this text in Isaiah, as we look at this passage together, I pray first and foremost that You would keep me from error.
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- Help me to be driven to the truth and to preach the truth.
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- And I pray, Lord, for the congregation, for the hearts of all the people.
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- I pray that You would encourage their hearts to be open to what Your Word says.
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- And again, keep them protected, Lord.
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- That we believe the truth, that we hold to the truth, and that we trust in the truth.
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- And this is our prayer in Jesus' name.
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- Amen.
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- A group of pastors was recently surveyed in a seminary class, and they were asked, Which of God's attributes brings you the most comfort and peace? If you think of all of the attributes of God, which one gives you the most comfort and peace? The people doing the survey would have probably thought that it would have been the love of God that would have given the most comfort and peace.
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- Some of them thought that it might have been the grace of God, which would have been that which inspired the most comfort and peace.
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- However, when this group of seminarians, this group of potential pastors were surveyed, with almost uniformed agreement, they said that that which gave them the most comfort and peace was the sovereignty of God.
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- Again, that might shock some of you.
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- But these pastors chose the sovereignty of God because though the world may tip, though the world may tumble and seem out of control, from our vantage point, the doctrine of the sovereignty of God allows us to rest assured that in the end, God will not only make it right, God will make it in accord with what He desired from the beginning.
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- God is in control.
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- The biblical doctrine of the sovereignty of God is one that has caused great confusion in the history of the church.
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- And as I said, for some, it is a place of rest and peace, and yet for others, it is a point of great contention and fear as people grapple with the ideas of how can God be sovereign and yet the world seems so out of control.
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- And that causes a lot of people to have many questions.
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- It causes a lot of people to stumble.
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- It causes a lot of people to pull and push away from that teaching because they hear the teaching that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love Him, and yet they look into the world and they see so much badness and they wonder how can those two things be equally true.
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- There are even those who have sought to deny the Bible's teaching about the sovereignty of God and say that God is simply not sovereign.
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- There are entire movements that teach that God is really not in control of the world, that God is a spectator, but not actively involved.
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- I've mentioned before to you, and I think some of you are familiar with the term open theism, but some of you may not be.
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- Open theism is a movement which teaches essentially that God has a good idea of what is going to happen in the future, but that He does not have certainty because everything is in flux, including God.
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- And the idea of open theism is that God Himself is learning.
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- God Himself is...
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- As we are in 2012 right now, so is God.
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- And He's moving along in time as we are.
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- And God is also in time.
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- You see, that's a totally different view than the view that the Bible gives.
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- The Bible gives a view of God that God is not in time, that time was created.
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- It says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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- That indicates that at the beginning, God was already there.
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- It also has a picture of the end when time will be no more and God is still there, and God has not changed in any of that time.
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- And God was before and God was after.
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- God lives outside of time.
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- But yet the open theist, in an attempt to try to dethrone God from His sovereignty because they have trouble making those things connect in their mind, they dethrone God from His sovereignty and they put Him in the same situation that we're in.
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- He's simply growing and learning and moving along as we are.
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- Again, the truth of the matter is that the God of the open theist is not the God of the Bible.
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- So, what would be the greatest way in which God could show us that He is utterly and sovereignly governing the affairs of the world? If somebody said, I'm an open theist and I don't believe God is sovereign, where could we go in the Bible and show them that God is sovereign, God is ruling, God is governing, and God is not just spectating the world.
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- He, in fact, is sovereign over it.
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- Well, my answer would be, we should go to the prophets.
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- Go to the writings of the prophets.
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- The spoken word of prophecy is the most obvious way we can see the sovereignty of God on display.
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- And the reason is this.
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- Prophecy, as we will see today when we look at Isaiah 45, is not just God foreseeing future events.
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- People think that's what prophecy means.
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- People think prophecy, from God's perspective, is God seeing what men are going to do and predicting it.
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- That is not what prophecy is.
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- Prophecy is an announcement of what God is going to do.
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- It is not an announcement of what He is going to see men do.
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- Prophecy is what He is going to do.
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- I am telling you this is going to happen because I am going to do it.
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- Because I am God and there is no other.
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- And it's a proof that God is not just a spectator of history, but is, in fact, a sovereign ruler.
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- And I can find no greater place to show this than the prophecy of Isaiah concerning the coming of Cyrus, who was the king of Persia.
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- Our text today outlines the promise of the coming king and the work he will do on behalf of his people, Israel.
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- Isaiah has already prophesied that the people of Israel will be taken into captivity by the Babylonian armies.
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- Now he shows that Cyrus will overthrow the armies of Babylon and set the people of Israel free.
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- Now here is the amazing thing.
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- Here is the thing people miss.
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- And if you don't understand the context of when Isaiah was written and the history of when it was written, you would miss this completely.
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- But this prophecy is given 100 years prior to Cyrus ever coming.
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- It is also given 100 years prior to the Jews ever being captive.
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- Think about that.
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- Think about the fact that the prophecy of the Jewish people's captivity being released is prophesied before they even go into captivity.
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- So Isaiah is prophesying a release before they're even captive.
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- Isn't that an amazing thought? That if you think about it, it's one thing for you to be in captivity and for a prophet to prophesy release.
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- But he's prophesying release before they're even captive.
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- And he's telling who will do the releasing 150 years before that will be fulfilled.
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- It's 100 years before the captivity.
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- 140 years before this fulfilling prophecy will actually take place.
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- Cyrus wasn't even born.
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- The man who this is prophesied about when this was written wasn't even born yet.
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- It shows, number one, the amazing specificity of the prophecy.
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- But it also shows that God is not just up there wondering what's going to happen.
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- So the open theists are way off the reservation.
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- And it shows, as we will see, that God isn't just saying this is what Cyrus will do.
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- But God is saying I'm going to send him to do this.
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- God is active in this situation.
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- Some people say, well, of course God knew.
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- Beloved, it's more about God knowing.
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- It's about God doing.
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- That's what prophecy is.
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- God is going to do this through Cyrus.
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- So let's look.
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- We're going to look at three things from this text.
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- We're going to look at God's sovereignty displayed.
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- We're going to look at God's sovereignty decried.
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- And then we're going to look at God's sovereignty demonstrated.
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- But let's begin in Isaiah 45, verse 1.
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- And we're going to look at God's sovereignty displayed.
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- I'm going to read through verse 8.
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- It says, Thus says the Lord to his anointed to Cyrus.
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- Notice the name.
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- It's in the text.
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- I already said this is before Cyrus was born.
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- This is written.
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- We have this on history as well as in the text.
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- It's before Cyrus was born.
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- But we know historically this was written before Cyrus was born.
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- Thus says the Lord to his anointed to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him and to loosen the belt of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed.
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- I will go before you and level the exalted places.
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- I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron.
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- I will give you the treasure of darkness and the hordes in secret places that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name.
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- I call you by your name.
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- For the sake of my servant Jacob and Israel, my chosen, I call you by name.
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- I name you, though you do not know me.
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- Cyrus didn't know God, but God knew him.
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- I am the Lord and there is no other.
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- Besides me, there is no God.
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- I equip you, though you do not know me.
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- That people may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none besides me.
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- I am the Lord and there is no other.
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- I form light and create darkness.
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- I make well-being and create calamity.
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- I am the Lord who does all these things.
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- Shower, O heavens, from above and let the clouds rain down from righteousness.
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- Let rain down righteousness.
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- Let the earth open, that salvation and righteousness may bear fruit.
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- Let the earth cause them both to sprout.
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- I, the Lord, have created it.
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- Please note what is being said here.
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- God is going to raise up Cyrus, his anointed.
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- Literally, the word is Messiah in Hebrew.
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- He is a picture of Christ.
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- He is being raised up to save his people.
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- He will be given the power to overthrow the Babylonians.
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- He will be given the anointing of God to do this grand work of salvation.
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- But why is this happening? Well, according to the text, it is to show that God is the only sovereign ruler of the universe.
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- To show that He is God and there is no other.
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- It is in essence to display His sovereign power.
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- He elaborates this truth by focusing on certain things that only a sovereign ruler can do.
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- He shows that He alone is the one who will raise Cyrus up.
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- Look at the personal pronouns.
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- I will go before you.
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- I will break you in pieces.
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- I will break you in pieces.
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- I will give you treasures.
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- It is I, the Lord, who call you by name, though you do not know Me.
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- In each case, God is demonstrating, I am the one in control.
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- I am the one doing this.
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- You, Cyrus, are just a tool.
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- You are just the one that I have chosen to do this through, but it is Me who is doing it.
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- In each case, God's control is being pronounced.
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- No one can read this and say God is just a spectator watching what Cyrus does through Cyrus' power.
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- No, that would be ridiculous from the text.
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- The text demonstrates that God is doing this through Cyrus.
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- He is disallowing such a notion, proving that He is not watching this happen.
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- He is making this happen.
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- He is sovereign.
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- He also shows that He alone is the one who will control the ultimate outcome.
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- He says, I form light and create darkness.
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- I will make well and create calamity.
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- Both of these denote the outcome of all things belonging to God.
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- This is something we forget as people.
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- We forget God's sovereignty over all things.
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- We begin to put trust where it does not belong and we begin to put faith in things in which it does not belong.
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- We start to believe in our own selves too much or we start to believe in others too much or we start to believe in people in power too much and we forget that the one who really is in control of it all is God.
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- And though we will fail, though our friends will fail, though our government will fail us, God is not going to fail.
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- He is sovereign and He is in control.
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- Now, I have to make a quick caveat because some of you have a King James Bible and it says in the ESV, it says, I make well and create calamity, but in the King James Bible, it says, I make peace and create evil.
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- And that has caused some people to have trouble because they think, wait a minute, God is unable to do that which is evil.
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- How can He then create evil if this text is literally saying that God creates evil? And what you need to understand about this particular text, when it talks about the word evil, it is better to be translated as calamity or difficulty or strife.
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- These are things God does bring for a reason.
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- He brings them sometimes as judgments.
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- He brings them sometimes as learning experiences.
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- God does do these things.
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- But the reality is God cannot do that which is evil.
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- Do you know why, though, God can't do that which is evil? Because the definition of evil is anything that is opposed to the will of God.
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- As such, God can only do what is in His will.
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- Ipso facto, God cannot do that which is evil because everything that God wills is in accord with His own righteousness.
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- What is evil then? Evil is anything which is in opposite of that righteousness.
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- God cannot do that which is evil.
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- However, God can bring about things which we do not like.
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- That does not make them evil.
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- God can sovereignly see to it that difficult things happen.
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- That does not mean that those things are necessarily evil because God has a purpose in them.
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- It's just important when you see this text, if you see He says, I make well and create calamity, or if you see it says, I make peace and create evil, if you think God is the author of evil, then that can mess up your theology a little bit.
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- I just wanted to clarify that for you.
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- God cannot do that which is evil because God cannot go against His own will.
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- And His will is always righteous.
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- Alright, so I just wanted to make that clear.
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- So God has displayed His sovereignty.
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- He said Cyrus is coming.
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- I am going to do these things through Cyrus.
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- And what is the response of the people? We see in verse 9, the prophet begins to automatically decry the response of the people.
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- Look at verse 9.
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- Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots, does the clay say to him who forms it, what are you making, or your work has no handles.
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- Woe to him who says to a father, what are you begetting? Or to a mother, with what are you in labor? As I stated earlier, upon hearing about the sovereignty of God, people often turn their face away in disgust.
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- How can God be sovereign and the world be so terrible? How can God be sovereign? There be so much death, destruction, war and famine.
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- But please note the warning of verses 9 and 10.
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- What does verses 9 and 10 say? Woe.
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- By the way, we have tremendously lost the power of the word woe.
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- Woe in the Bible is not the way we use woe today.
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- Typically today we say, oh, woe is me.
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- It has no real significance, no real power.
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- Oh, woe is me.
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- When the Bible says woe to you, woe is a pronouncement of judgment.
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- It is a pronouncement of God's judgment.
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- And this is what the prophet says.
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- Woe to him who strives with Him who formed him.
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- This is ultimately saying, woe to him who tries to fight against God.
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- Woe to him who balks at God's sovereignty.
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- Woe to him who says, God, you're not doing this right.
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- Ever heard of somebody do that? Shout at God.
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- God, what are you doing? Or do you not know what you're doing? You're not doing this right.
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- Who are you to balk at God? Is what the prophet is here saying.
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- I love the analogy.
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- He said you're a pot among earthen pots.
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- You are animated clay.
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- And you're arguing with the one who made you.
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- It's very similar to what Paul says in Romans 9.
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- He's quoting.
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- And what did Paul say? Who are you, oh man, to answer back to God? Will not the one who was formed say to him who formed it, why have you made me like this? Who do you think you are to look at God and say, God, you're not right? Really? Woe indeed to such a person.
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- And that's the message of the prophet.
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- We have no right to question God.
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- We have no right to question His sovereignty.
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- And as Americans, we don't like that.
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- We like to be able to have our say.
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- As Americans, we're brought up that way.
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- We're brought up.
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- Everything's democratic.
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- Everybody gets a say.
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- But when it comes to God, there's no voting.
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- You didn't vote God in.
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- You can't impeach God.
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- God's God.
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- And our vote doesn't count with God.
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- Does that mean we shouldn't vote on election day? No, we vote on election day because we're part of the process God uses in bringing about His will.
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- It's the same reason why we evangelize.
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- I don't evangelize because I think I can change someone's heart.
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- I evangelize because I believe God will use me in the process of bringing about the salvation of the soul of another person.
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- I am part of the process.
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- So I am participating in the process at God's command.
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- Go ye into all the world and share the Gospel with everyone you meet.
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- That's my job.
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- So too, as a citizen of this nation, I have the right to vote.
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- I will exercise.
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- I already did.
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- I didn't want the baby to come and keep us from voting.
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- So we went ahead and did it.
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- And it works out.
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- We're part of the process.
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- But don't ever in a million years think that God is out of control.
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- And if it doesn't go the way you think it ought to, don't throw your hands up and say to God, What are you doing, God? As if He doesn't know.
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- It's hard.
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- But the prophet is here saying, You are a pot with no handles.
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- What does that mean? Go back to the text of Ecclesiastes.
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- It's interesting where he says this.
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- He says, You're a pot among earthen pots.
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- First of all, you're clay.
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- Just like everybody else is clay.
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- You're animated clay.
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- God gave you a spirit.
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- You're walking around.
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- And does the clay say to him who forms it, What are you making? Or your work has no handles.
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- Imagine a pot that a potter made on his potter's wheel.
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- And he didn't put handles on it.
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- And the pot looking up to the potter and saying, Hey, I'm missing my handles.
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- You didn't make me right.
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- First of all, clay can't talk.
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- So obviously, this is an illustration.
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- But how foolish would it be for the pot to look up at the potter and say, Hey, where's my handles? Because the potter may look at the pot and say, I didn't make you to have handles.
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- I didn't make you that way.
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- I didn't make you for that purpose.
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- I made you for another purpose.
- 31:32
- And you're not supposed to have handles.
- 31:33
- Who do you think you are? The pot talking to the potter as if the potter didn't know what he was doing.
- 31:40
- It's the same with God.
- 31:42
- When we look up at God, the one who created the world, who sustains the world by a sovereign power, we say, God, you don't know what you're doing.
- 31:48
- As if we know better than the potter.
- 31:54
- See, this is the point that the prophet is making.
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- Woe to you who think you know better than God.
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- We don't like to hear that, but it's true.
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- Well, I see our nation is in decline.
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- I see so many bad things happening.
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- I can't imagine what will happen if it continues to get worse.
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- God will still be in control if it continues to get worse.
- 32:22
- I can't imagine what would happen if all of the social structures that I grew up with began to crumble.
- 32:27
- God will still be in control if that happens.
- 32:31
- And God will continue to have a purpose for it.
- 32:33
- I won't like it! Well, neither will I.
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- Get over it.
- 32:38
- God will still be in control.
- 32:41
- Pastor, I don't like what you're saying.
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- Okay.
- 32:46
- That's how much you're going to get.
- 32:47
- Okay.
- 32:48
- Because it doesn't matter what you like.
- 32:50
- It doesn't matter what I like.
- 32:52
- What matters is God is sovereign.
- 32:54
- And if you get nothing else from this sermon, if I had to say it 50 times during this sermon, know this, God is still going to be in control no matter what.
- 33:03
- And if you can come to that in your heart, everything else you will realize becomes less important.
- 33:16
- Because if God is in control and our eternal destiny is set by Him, everything in this world that happens, no matter how tough, will eventually go away.
- 33:34
- And we will be with God.
- 33:39
- Beloved, the reality of this, the reason why I talk about this passage is God is showing us something here about how He operates.
- 33:49
- It's never or rarely how we think He ought to.
- 33:55
- Number one, the people of Israel didn't want to go into captivity.
- 33:59
- They don't even think that's even on the radar.
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- You know what happened to prophets when they prophesied the captivity of Israel? They were thrown into pits and they were hung up by their arms and they were chastised and they were treated poorly.
- 34:12
- Jeremiah was one such man.
- 34:16
- But the reality is, he was speaking the truth.
- 34:19
- And the truth is, God has a plan.
- 34:21
- He is working out His plan.
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- It might not be the plan we like.
- 34:26
- It may not be the plan we want.
- 34:28
- But guess what? God is the One making the plan, not us.
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- So we can do one of two things.
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- We can argue about not having handles.
- 34:44
- Or we can say God is in control.
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- I will trust in Him no matter what.
- 34:53
- So what's it going to be? What's going to be our attitude? Is our attitude towards our God going to be, God, where are My handles? Or is it going to be, God, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven? May it be that no matter how things go on Tuesday, we remember God will still be on His throne on Wednesday.
- 35:38
- Our Father and our God, we thank You for this text.
- 35:42
- We thank You for the reminder of Your sovereignty and the reminder, O Lord, of the reality of Your control.
- 35:53
- And Lord God, we do pray for a favorable outcome.
- 35:55
- We do pray that our nation will get back going towards the roots that were founded on men who had a better understanding of Your Word and a fidelity to it.
- 36:12
- But Lord, let us not lose hope no matter what the outcome.
- 36:21
- Let us not lose strength and conviction and courage no matter what the outcome.
- 36:33
- For Lord, You are God.
- 36:34
- There is no other.
- 36:38
- You are God and there is none like You.
- 36:41
- And we cannot say unto You, Lord, why have You done it this way? For Lord, You are the King of the universe.
- 36:51
- You don't watch things happen.
- 36:53
- You make things happen.
- 36:56
- And we know that whether it comes for our blessing or for our judgment, Lord, You are always sovereign.
- 37:08
- And we can always trust in You.
- 37:12
- In Jesus' name we pray and for His sake, Amen.