God the Father, What We Believe, Part 4

Theology proper is the study of God the Father, a very important study because many people have to know and get right who God is. We're going to start a study into God. We're going to look at God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, starting today with the Father.

One, two, three!

Welcome to the Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Well, welcome to the Rap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rapoport, with my trusty sidekick, Bud the Wiser. How you doing, Bud?

I am doing well, Andrew. Thank you. How are you?

I am doing better than I deserve. I don't doubt that. Everyone thinks that I got that from, who's the guy that does the finances? Dave Ramsey, I guess he says that. Everyone thinks I got that from him.

I've been using that. I actually got it from the dean or the president of my seminary. Everyone just called him Chief, but E .R. Jordan would always say that. I liked it and picked it up from him. Now, we do have another podcaster that uses that, and that is Richard Story from Voice of Reason.

So people think that I've got it from him or maybe some think he got it from me, but I don't even know where he got it. But it is true. I am doing better than I deserve. It's actually a great conversation starter.

You should try it. When people ask you how you're doing, say, better than I deserve. Even when you are on the phone making service calls and you ask them how they're doing, they say, fine. They naturally say, how are you doing?

Better than I deserve. And people will be like, well, don't you deserve the best? Oh, no. No, because of my sins, I deserve hell. I deserve eternity in a lake of fire because you, like all of us, like me, have broken God's law.

But God has given me eternal life that's more than I deserve. So I can very quickly get into a gospel conversation.

I'd like to go back and change my answer now since your piety has oozed forth.

No, it really has been a great way of starting gospel conversations. So I've enjoyed it. So today what we want to do, Bud, is we're continuing our series. This is part four in our What Do We Believe series.

And we're looking at the doctrinal statement from striving for eternity. We've looked at the Holy Scriptures. We're going to enter now into the section of God. And if folks want to get to that, just go to strivingforeturning .org, go to the about, and then under about is what we believe.

And if you look at what we believe, there's seven sections there. And all you got to do is open one of them and expand that out. And you can see the one that we're dealing with is the one on God. And the one that we have here that we're going to look at is this first section is God the Father.

And there's a lot packed in here. But before we get into this, just a couple of things, Bud, if you would. Maybe Mr. John Calvin had something to say on why studying this is important. Could you help us?

I can do that. And I appreciate you asking because I mentioned it before we started. I'm like I was trying to prep. And this is what came to mind. And a lot of folks will know this from Calvin's Institutes.

Chapter one, he opens with this classic observation where he says, quote, the whole sum of our wisdom, wisdom, that is, which deserves to be called true and assured, broadly consists of two parts, knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves.

He goes on to say the purpose of the first of these, the knowledge of God, is to show not only that there is one God whom we all must worship and honor, but also that he is the fount of all truth, wisdom, goodness, righteousness, judgment, mercy, power, and holiness.

And he goes on to say no one ever attains clear knowledge of self unless he has first gazed upon the face of the Lord and then turns back to look upon himself. So this is a critically important topic.

Yeah. I mean, this is where we start. And the statement doesn't go into this. But when you look at all of your theology, it's a study of God. One of the things I find disheartening, if that's the best word to use, there are many people that do theology.

And as they're getting into different things, whether it is soteriology, the study of salvation, eschatology, the study of end times, ecclesiology, the study of the church. In each of these different areas, there's lots that could be discussed.

One of the things I don't see people do, unfortunately, is ask, how does this reflect back to God? Now, if it's theology, it all goes back to God. And one of the things that is a very good study to do if you're going to study theology is to start with studying the perfections of God, his nature, his attributes, who he is.

Because any study of theology will go back to who God is. I find that many of the things that people debate theologically can be resolved by looking at the attributes of God. Let me give a quick example why this is important.

Some people will make an argument that say, when it comes to how we get saved, they're trying to wrestle with different texts of scripture. And there's a common phrase I hear from people saying, well, when it comes to election, what God did was look down the tunnels of time, and he saw who would be saved.

And then knowing that who would be saved based on their belief, he elected them before the foundation of time. Now, that seems like a good statement that would satisfy and solve the problem of how we could have free will, and yet God elected us before the foundation of time.

However, when you look at that argument and put it in light of who God is, you have problems. Why? Well, first off, it says that God is bound by time because he had to look through time, so he's no longer eternal.

Everything's not an eternal now to him. He's a being that is dependent upon time, and he doesn't know everything because he didn't know who would be saved. He had to look through time to figure it out and then make a decision based on what someone did in their free will.

So, what you now have is a God who's not eternal and not omniscient. Is that the God of the Bible? No. So, that tells you there must be a different solution to this problem. That argument is not a good solution.

And this is the importance of understanding the perfections of God. Now, we don't get into that here, but I just want to, as a preface to our discussion today, mention that we should always go back to those perfections.

In fact, if you take our course on Systematic Theology at Striving Fraternity, go to the Striving Fraternity Academy and look at the course on Systematic Theology. What do we start with? The attributes of God.

Why? Throughout the 80 classes that we have, or about 80 classes, I'm constantly going back to those attributes because that is where we're going to see how to answer many of the theological things that we have.

Now, we will see some of these attributes in this section, both this week and probably what we'll finish up with in the next episode, because I don't know that we'll get through the whole thing in one.

But what I want us to note here is that we have to always go back to that, even if I'm not laying them all out here. If you want to see all those attributes, you can go to the Striving Fraternity, go to the store, and at our store, we have a quick reference sheet on the attributes of God.

I think it's only $2 .50 to get one. There's a bundle if you want to get all three of our reference cards. Buy two, get one free, basically. But if you get that, it's all of the attributes categorized with scripture references so you can look it up, and that'll help keep your mind straight when it comes to these things.

So I hope those things might be helpful tools for you. Now, Bud, as we get into this, before we start looking at this passage, let us just quickly have a quick word from our sponsors because we want to make sure that we honor our sponsors who are keeping this show on the we can't really say on the air because it's digital, but okay.

But the show is sponsored by MyPillow. MyPillow is a great product made right here in the United States. They have I think they're having a sale right now on their MySlippers, which are getting ready for winter, so everyone get your slippers on.

But they make way more than just pillows. They have absolutely great pillows. Love the pillows. But they have their Giza Dream bedsheets. They have their towels. I started using their bath towels. Excellent.

I love the mattress topper. I've mentioned these things to you guys. They have pajamas. They have all kinds of things. And all made here in the United States. And you can get not only great products but get discounted prices by using our promo code SFE.

It stands for Striving For Eternity. You use that promo code, you'll be able to get great discounts and keep supporting Striving For Eternity at the same time. So you can go to MyPillow .com, use promo code SFE, or if you want to call their special 1 -800 number that they have for us, 1 -800 -873 -0176.

Again, 1 -800 -873 -0176. And use promo code SFE so that they know that we sent you. Now, but if you wouldn't mind, let's start with God the Father. This is a longer paragraph. If you could read and maybe, well, you know, just try to read through this.

And I was going to say whether to include all the scripture references because there's a number of them. But it would be helpful for folks to have them if they don't have it looking, if they're not looking at it.

So could you read God the Father? I will.

OK, God the Father, the first person of the Trinity, orders and disposes all things according to his own purpose and grace. See Psalm 145, 8 and 9 and 1 Corinthians 8, 6. He is the creator of all things.

Genesis 1, 1 through 31 and Ephesians 3, 9. As the only absolute and omnipotent ruler in the universe, he is sovereign in creation, providence and redemption. Psalm 103, 19 and Romans 11, 36. His fatherhood involves both his designations within the Trinity and his relationship with mankind.

As creator, he is father to all men, Ephesians 4, 6. But he is spiritual father only to believers, Romans 8, 14 and 2 Corinthians 6, 18. He has an all-inclusive plan that he designed for his own glory and all things that come to pass, Ephesians 1, 11.

He continually upholds, directs and governs all creatures and events, 1 Chronicles 29, 11. In his sovereignty, he is neither author nor approver of sin, Habakkuk 1, 13 and John 8, 38 through 47. Nor does he abridge the accountability of moral, intelligent creatures, 1 Peter 1, 17.

He has graciously chosen from eternity past those whom he would have as his own, Ephesians 1, 4 and 6. He saves from sin all who come to him through Jesus Christ. He adopts as his own all those who come to him, and he becomes, upon adoption, father to his own, John 1, 12, Romans 8, 15, Galatians 4, 5 and Hebrews 12, 5 through 9.

Okay, so let's start with the first part of this. When we look at this, when we look at the doctrine of God, this really could be broken into three subsections. God the Father, which we call theology proper.

Then we have God the Son, which dealing with Jesus Christ, which is often called Christology, study of Christ. And then we have noumenology, which is the study of the Holy Spirit, God the Spirit. So those are the three that we could see them broken down.

I give you the theological terms so that if you hear them, you know what they are. We want you to be educated, and if you do know what they are, well, then you shouldn't mind repetition. So because we want to reach people of all spiritual walks, wherever people are, we want to help you in furthering your walk.

And so as we look at theology proper, the study of God the Father, this is typically where you'd also get into discussion of the Trinity. And we're going to discuss that as we go out throughout, especially with the Son.

But one of the things that I want to start with this that isn't so much mentioned here with the Trinity is many people think of the Trinity as a problem. You'll hear sometimes people will say that, different cults and different groups will say the Trinity is a problem.

That's a problem for them because they cannot understand that. They cannot understand the Trinity. Understood. Let me give you a simple way to work through that in case that you speak to maybe a Muslim, and they make the argument that the Trinity is a problem because they can't comprehend it.

Ask this question, and notice I'm going to get back to the attributes of God. Is God greater than our ability to understand Him? The answer is yes. What we have revealed from God, as we saw in the last episodes, is what God's revealed to us is self-revelation.

We can't go beyond that. We can't go beyond a knowledge of God from other than what He's revealed to us. But He hasn't revealed everything. There's more to God than what He's revealed. And that's what we don't understand.

So, when someone comes and says that they don't understand the Trinity, therefore it's wrong, then you know that they have a God of their own making because they can fully understand their God. And if their God is something they can't comprehend, they reject it.

So, that's a God of their own liking, their own making. The Trinity is a solution to a problem. The problem is that the Father is called God. The Son is called God. The Spirit is called God. The Father does the works that only God can do.

The Son does works only that God can do. The Spirit does works that only God can do. The Father has attributes of God. The Son has attributes of God. The Spirit has attributes of God. And yet, they're distinct from one another and separate from one another.

They could be at the same place at the same time and separate from one another. So, we could see at Jesus' baptism, you hear the voice of the Father, you see the Son standing there, and you see the Holy Spirit descending as a dove.

You're going to see that all three are involved in creation, the work of God. And by the way, in Isaiah 44, 24, God says He did that alone. So, they're all involved in creation. They're all involved in the resurrection of Christ.

They're all involved in salvation. So, you see that they have the unity, and yet there's a distinction. How do we resolve this problem? The definition of the Trinity. The Trinity resolves the dilemma of how the Father, the Son, and the Spirit all have the attributes of God, the titles of God, are called God, do the works of God.

And yet, they're separate and distinct from one another, but exist in the same could exist in the same time, same place. In other words, that ignores things like modalism, partialism, these different errors in the views.

So, I wanted to lay that as a foundation as we look into theology proper. Let's start with God the Father, the first person of the Trinity, because I wanted to give that all. That Trinity is something that people don't often think about.

Now, some will say, well, this didn't come about until the 3rd century. That is true. That's true. The word Trinity didn't exist. It's not in the Bible. But if you're going to argue that because Trinity is not in the Bible, therefore, the Trinity doesn't exist, Bible doesn't appear in the Bible.

I guess you have no Bible. There's a lot of words that are not in the Bible. Omniscience isn't in the Bible, but we know that God is omniscient because it defines it. It gives the reason of it. So, we see the Trinity taught in the Bible, but the Trinity as defined, three persons, three separate distinct persons in one Godhead, that is a definition to solve the problem of how we have these three separate distinct persons that are all one being God.

How is that? Well, that definition provides that. Okay? So, the first person in that Trinity is God the Father. That's who we're going to look at today. And the first part of this says, he orders and deposes all things according to his own purpose and grace.

Now, this is the thing. There are many who end up, right off the bat, I'm addressing issues in this statement because there are many people who will get into trying to argue for human free will being so important to God that the way they will speak is as if God is subservient due to man's free will.

That's one issue. Another issue you see, such as in Word of Faith, is they will make God subservient to man that somehow what man's desires, God so loves man that he created man that he just sits in heaven waiting for man to tell God what to do.

And when you name it and claim it, God is somehow obligated to give it. With these two areas, what you end up seeing, there's other examples, but you see that what many people do is they're making God subservient to man.

Who becomes God then? Man. What is it that we saw in Genesis 3? What is it that happened at the garden? What did the serpent say to Eve? God, you want to be like God? God's telling you not to eat of that fruit because you're going to be like God.

What was the temptation? Being like God. And that hasn't been any different throughout the centuries. Man still wants to be like God. And so that is what we end up seeing. And very subtly, but the serpent deceived Eve very subtly as well.

So the first thing that we have to do when we're going to discuss God, the first person of the Trinity, the Father, we have to realize that he orders and disposes of all things. Everything. Everything.

He is in control. I like how R .C. Sproul used to say it. There is not an Adam out of God's control. He is in control of everything. Now you'll say, so does he cause evil? Well, yeah, he's in control of everything.

He allows it. Now this will get into something that I'm sure we're going to deal with in greater detail later, but he allows people to have a will. But he's still in control of everything. We can't fully comprehend that.

It doesn't mean God causes everything. Now we tend to think in a basically you have an action reaction, right? You have every cause has to have something that caused it. So there has to be some action for that cause.

Because of that thinking, we end up thinking that somehow God can only work the way things work here on earth. God hasn't revealed everything about himself. There's a whole lot more to the universe than we can comprehend.

And so God is in control of everything because he says so. But that doesn't mean that he forces things. Okay? And that's the distinction that we have to be aware of. This is an important starting point when we speak of God the Father because much of the rest of this is going to be based on this.

That he does everything. And why does he do it? For his own purpose. So when my kids were young, bud, I used to catechize them. Basically for folks that don't know what that means. Catechism is a way of training children by asking a question and they give an answer.

And you work through it so they memorize the question and the answer. And there were many times as we were doing that and I'm teaching them theology that they would ask questions. Why did God create the universe?

And for many of those answers it would be because he wanted to. And my kids started to learn that many of the things that we can't comprehend, the answer is because God wanted to. And we don't know beyond that.

And for adults, sometimes the simple answer that we give to the kids is the ones for adults. Because God wanted to. It was for his purpose. Deuteronomy 29 .29 is one that when I teach theology comes up very often.

Because it says, and I'm trying to get there, but my Logos is not working. There we go. The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever. That we may observe all the words of the law.

So God hasn't revealed everything, but what he has revealed, that we obey. That we do. There are plenty of things that we can ask questions about. And we will. You may be asking as you're listening to Bud and I discuss these things and say, what about this?

Well, Deuteronomy 29 .29 may come into play because there's many things we just don't have an answer to.

I was thinking about the dialogue, the written correspondence between Martin Luther and Erasmus. And one of the famous lines that is so poignant and applicable where we are right now in our conversation.

That Luther wrote back to Erasmus saying that your thoughts of God are too human. And there is a book out there by J .B. Phillips, I think, called Your God is Too Small. And this is a risk that we all run into, even the most faithful.

We tend to not think big enough of God. We tend to make him more human. And in Psalm, you just quoted scripture, so let me go to one. In Psalm 50, God points this out and he's actually speaking to the wicked.

It says in Psalm 50 .16, but to the wicked, God says, and then you skip down to verse 21. It says, you thought that I was one like yourself. We've got to be really careful. And a study of theology proper of this doctrine is invaluable.

Yeah, and this becomes necessary for us in looking at this. You can look at Colossians 1, because this is more specifically referring to Christ. But we end up seeing there that he upholds everything. And Colossians 1 .19 says, For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness of him to dwell, to dwell in him.

So the idea here is when we look at Christ and the things he did, it was for the Father's good pleasure. That's what it's for. So we have to realize, and now why does this become an important starting point?

Because one of the things we know about humanity is we are always going to try to make it about us. We're going to try to focus on self, on mankind. You will see this even in the songs sung in many churches.

Many churches sing songs about us and not God. And what are we doing? Even if it's about what Jesus did on the cross for us, we're not lifting God up on high when that's what the worship is supposed to be.

We're lifting up what God did for us on high as if that's the most important thing. You're going to see this in many different ways where people start to view even theology and things like that from a man-centered view.

They focus on it because that's all we understand is man. We can't understand everything about God, but we have to constantly be reminding ourselves and redirecting ourselves back to God. So let's look at the second sentence here.

He is the creator of all things. Now, we see this in Genesis 1. The other passage that I have there is Ephesians 3, but I want to read from Isaiah 44 -24. And I will credit Mack Sleck from Karm .org with this.

When we were discussing on a show we used to do together, it's Apologetics Live, but he used to be my co-host there. We used to do that together, and someone came in arguing against the Trinity, and Matt ended up bringing this passage up.

And I never realized this passage to use it that way. I never thought about it. Sometimes maybe you do this, you read a passage of Scripture over and over, and all of a sudden a light bulb goes off when someone else uses it.

He asked the person, he took them to Colossians and said, who created everything? Well, Colossians 1 makes it clear that Jesus created everything that was created. That's what it says. And once he said that, and this was a Jehovah witness, someone that believes in Jehovah's name is more important.

Matt took him to Isaiah 44 -24, which says,. Thus says the Lord your God, Redeemer, the one who formed you from the womb. I, the Lord, and this is Yahweh or Jehovah there, I, the Lord, am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by myself, and spreading out the earth all alone.

Now notice that. Here he's saying God, the Father, or in this case Yahweh, which for Jehovah, for the Jehovah witnesses, they have a problem with that. Jehovah created all things, but Colossians makes it clear that everything that was created was created by Jesus.

And here it says he created alone. So if, as Jehovah witnesses argue, Jehovah created Michael the Archangel, who then created all things, and Michael the Archangel became Jesus, then he didn't do it all alone.

You see the dilemma they have. No, God the Father created all things. Creation is one of those things we're going to see. Father, Son, and Spirit all are active in creation. They all did it because they're God.

So he is the creator of all things. This means that anything that was created, he created. Therefore, he was what philosophers would refer to as the uncaused cause. In other words, everything that was created was created by him, but people ask the question, well, who created God?

Well, there has to be something that wasn't created. One of the things that Einstein was able to prove and science has supported is the fact that the universe had a beginning. The time-space continuum had a beginning.

Once that is true, when we look at it, there's only a couple ways we can look at the universe. It always existed. Science proves that it had a beginning. It created itself. Well, that's logically impossible because it would first have to exist to be able to create itself.

You only have one logical and scientific argument for the creation of the universe. Someone or something created it. And whatever that someone or something is has to be uncreated because it would have to be that way to be able to create everything that's created.

So, you have to have an uncaused cause or an uncreated creator, and that is God. What do we know about that uncreated creator? Well, in order to create, it has to have a mind. It has to have intelligence.

It has to be eternal because it has to be outside of time. It has to be outside time, space, matter. So, it has to be infinite in those three areas. Well, that being is what we call God. And he created all things.

Therefore, there's nothing that was created that he didn't create. And, by the way, I'll throw this in, bud. He did it in six literal 24-hour days. All right. Just for those out there. If we haven't made enough enemies yet.

I prefer six days.

The statement goes on to say, as the only absolute and omnipotent ruler of the universe, he is sovereign in creation, providence, and redemption. Now, this right here is making it clear that there are no other gods out there.

So, Mormonism is wrong when it says that, you know, there's a god of this planet and there's other, you know, beings that people who used to be human that became gods. Now, it is kind of interesting. I think the way that Mormonism got to that is they're trying to answer the question, who created God?

And their answer is, well, you have God the father or heavenly father, they would refer to him, had a god of the planet he was born on. And he got together, heavenly father got together with his wife and created all the spirit babies that fill the earth.

And see, so he was a man like us. Now, this may be blowing people's minds, but in Mormonism, they actually believe that heavenly father was a sinful man like us. So somehow Jesus Christ was perfect, but heavenly father was not.

He was a man like us on another planet who lived a good Mormon life, became a god, got this planet to rule over. He and his spirit wife created spirit babies, and they populate this, the earth. Now, if that sounds like science fiction to you, yeah, it is.

Before there was a science fiction. I mean, it's something you'd expect in a sci-fi novel, but that's what they end up teaching. And what we end up seeing with this is answering is, no, there are no other gods.

Scripture is quite clear on that. There are no other gods besides God. He's absolute, and he's all powerful in his rule. In other words, there is nothing that's going to be stronger than him. Your will, your choices are not stronger than his ability.

One of the things that people try to answer with that as well, Bud, that this answers, is people who try to say that God, because they have such an emphasis on God's giving man free will, and free will seems to be what reigns, man's choices.

And so this is, again, lifting up of man and actually lowering of God, making God somehow subservient. This is called, we talked about modalism, which is, we went to Trinity. That's when God was in three modes, modalism.

So what you have there is, they'll say that God, the Father in the Old Testament, he became Jesus Christ when he walked the earth. Now he changed modes into the spirit. Well, there's another one that sounds similar to that.

Okay. Molinism. Molinism is the idea that God is omniscient, so omniscient that what he did in eternity past, before he created the universe, he could see in his mind all the different possibilities, every possibility that every person makes.

And what he could do is know which of the, and they would call this different worlds. And so God could look at all the, every, I mean, think about all the decisions you make and how they interact with other people.

He knows how, if you change one decision in this world, what would happen in this world, if you'd made a different decision, what would happen? He understands all those outcomes. And then he, based on human free will, the choices we made, he chose the world that would give him the greatest glory.

Now, in that, what becomes the absolute ruler then? It is not God, the Father. It is our free will. By the way, the irony, I think, of Molinism, Bud, is, and we had on Apologetics Live once, we had someone come in and discuss this, and it was funny to see he never thought of this, and he got trapped.

Because the whole idea of Molinism is to answer that man's free will, we have a free will, and God can't, somehow God cannot work against our free will. But the way that he's still sovereign is that he chose this world so that within human free will, God's still sovereign.

So I asked this gentleman, in this world that God has selected, can we do anything outside of what we were going to choose? I mean, once God chose that world, can we do anything other than what we were going to choose in that world?

And he said, well, no. Because part of his whole argument is that if God is sovereign, if he's the absolute, omnipotent ruler, then he chooses everything in his mind, forces everything, and therefore everything is determinism.

That God determines everything that happens. We don't believe in determinism. I'm going to answer that in a second. But this is his answer to that. And so I asked him, I said, so we can't do anything outside of what we would choose in this world once God selects this world, correct?

He said, that's right. I said, so it's all predetermined by God. Because once he selects that world, we can't do anything else. And he's like, no, because we had free will to do other things, but not in this world.

Not in the world he selected. According to you, we cannot do anything other than what we would have chosen in this world. And he just realized he backed himself in to the very thing he was trying to deny.

You see, either side of that has determinism. When you try to say God forces everything or when you say human will in Molinism and justify God's sovereignty. No, the answer to this is simple. So simple we can't fully comprehend it.

But it goes back to what we talked about before in a sense with superintending. But in this case, what it is, is God allows us as free moral agents. I'm not saying free will. We don't have a free will.

We are a moral agent. We can make choices between things that are good and bad, but not in the sense of getting right with God. Not in the sense of giving God glory. We make choices between, for my own self-preservation, my own pride, I may choose to do something that is good compared to other moral agents.

That's different than saying that we have a freedom to choose good by God's standard or evil. We only have that ability to choose good when the Holy Spirit indwells us. And so what we want to focus on or look at with this is the fact that when we look at this, God works through his own creation in such a way that, yes, he does allow some freedom in our will in the sense where we can make choices.