Systematic Theology (part 30)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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We've been looking at theodicy, the problem of evil, and today hopefully we will be talking a little bit about free will, the sovereignty of God and free will of man.

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And if we do cover it, I want to just look at subjects such as these, subjects that are involved in the mystery of God's providence and the mysterious interconnections of which are hard for humans to fathom, how we as believers for ourselves must look up at subjects like these and then how do we communicate subjects like these to others, maybe other believers, maybe other unbelievers.

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But because this word election brought up a different meaning to me right after I created that question,

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I thought this would be a good place for us to start as we move from theodicy to free will. So when we think of like the elections on Tuesday, we know from God's sovereign perspective that this is all ordained.

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We've been talking about this, God's decree is what comes to pass. So if I'm thinking, you know, why do we have these candidates on the ballot, what's wrong with such a question as that?

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Is such a question wrong to ask? What if some other candidate, you know, was a little smarter and made it up here instead of the ones we have here?

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Is asking such a question okay? Or maybe you can ask any question, but what do you think about asking a question such as that theologically, questioning

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God? Because if we truly understand that what has come to pass is indeed the decree of God, we would be spared from a lot of hand -wringing and heart anguish because we know that this is exactly

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God's providential will. So the challenge is always, you know, theologically I know certain truths, but when it comes to actually living it out,

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I more often than not forget that God is governing the universe in the,

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I don't even want to say best, in exactly how it ought to be governed. And many a time

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I put myself as the co -governor next to God and say, it would have been better if such and such a thing instead were to be.

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Now the problem is, you know, if I was a bystander observing in a dispassionate way everything that is happening, you know,

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I could probably be that cool and stay behind. But you know, many of you probably will be voting on Tuesday and you have a pretty hard dilemma or, you know, challenge.

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How do you vote? How do you weigh and how are you responsible for the choices you make in the grand scheme of what

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God has already ordained? And really that's where this issue of the sovereignty of God and the free will of man come to pass.

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And my goal this morning is to try to work through some of those things, how we as Christians don't just give a mental assent to the sovereignty of God, but also let that work itself out into those very choices that we make, the very real choices we make, choices that do make a difference.

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So if you chose, or let's not just you, let's say a majority of you chose to vote a different way than what you were thinking of the previous way, the election results will be different than what it would have been otherwise.

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So the choices you make are real. It's not like, you know, you're going to go there and vote something and then because it's preordained it just gets changed into something else.

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Every single one of us makes conscious choices and those choices do matter. And really that's the part that I want to push this morning is when it comes to the will of man, and free we will always use it in quotes because it's often misunderstood, when we make our responsible choices they do matter, they do quote unquote change things from a human perspective, but from God's perspective they are divinely ordained and they always come to pass.

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I'm not going to be talking about the first definition of election anymore, but before I move on to this, any thoughts on what we just started off with?

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Anything you want to comment on before we move to the other election, the election of God upon man?

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Okay. I was expecting more controversy with that statement, opening statement this morning.

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All right, so last week we looked at the Westminster Confession, we looked at some of the aspects of theodicy, how when we consider the origin of evil, the execution of evil and how

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God's decree encompasses it all, and I'm going to just use some of those terms to transition into free will.

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One of the definitions we saw last week was this, it said, God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.

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And I think when you think of sovereignty of God, this is what we want to remember. Everything was freely and of his own will chosen, and it is unchangeable in the effect that everything that he has ordained will indeed come to pass.

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And then, yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor, and that's theodicy, so we need to be very careful that God does not author sin.

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And I think Carol gave me some material last week which was pretty excellent in terms of,

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I think it was from a couple of sources, one of them was from Sproul, where there is a distinction between the authorship of evil and the very fact that God ordains all things including evil that does come to pass.

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But let me finish this definition. So firstly, God is neither the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

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So this is the second half we're going to be looking at. Nor is violence offered to the will of creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

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So just as we looked at theodicy, there is evil that occurs, executed by sinful, corrupt people or by demonic hosts, and everyone who commits them is responsible for them, culpable for them, and they will be judged on the basis of what they have done, and yet in God's ordained will they are intended to bring about what

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God intends for good at the very end. So these are not aberrations in God's will, but they are part of God's will.

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And likewise now when we think about the sovereignty of God, I want to think of three elements. The first we want to think about is election, when it comes to election unto salvation, how

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God predestines, how God chooses in eternity past who he will redeem through the work of Jesus Christ.

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Then I want to think about maybe a subset of these choices that people make that are sinful and yet how

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God decrees and ordains those things that come to pass. And then the last thing is just the everyday choices we make.

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And I think it's easier for us to work our way from the third one, which is are we free creatures, are the choices, the rational choices, the moral choices, the choices we make actually our own, or are we, there are two extremes to avoid.

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One is fatalism, where we really have no choice, we are forced to make those choices that fate or some other higher power has forced us to do, so we are just not free in the choices we make.

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And on the other hand, maybe we are just, the materialist person would say we are like a behavior and behaviorism, where this is just predetermined by your chemicals and your molecules and things like that.

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These are just materialistically working itself out. And then right in the middle we have determinism, and determinism is used differently by different camps.

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But what we would say is there is a way in which God ordains these things, but we are still free.

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Now, I was trying to look at some of the more Christian philosophical definitions of how these things work, and I said, you know,

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I don't think that's worth for us to dive into, but I think it is helpful for us to just ask ourselves the question, because we are normally used to considering election as the sovereign choice of God in choosing us, and we know that it is monergistic, meaning we really have no choice, no part in that transaction.

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And I want us to also be able to consider the other side, which is in the actual choices we make.

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Are we actually free or not? So let me maybe begin with a question. Maybe we'll, let me just ask you this, and then that will help us springboard into thinking deeper into the subject.

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So, if the choices that you made this morning to come to church, maybe the events that transpired, were those truly free, were those choices made by you fully and completely, or do you think that you were influenced in some way, shape, or form, that those choices were not really your own?

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I thought that was very good. So you just described a whole series of things that need to come together for you to be able to come here this morning, and then when you looked at the why, you looked at the motivation.

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What was it that impels you to want to go to church? Of course, that extra hour helps, like this morning, but there is something in us that we want to worship

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God, that's why there are some who are here to worship, and some who choose to do something else, because that's what they want to do.

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And because as believers, we can say that the Lord has worked in our hearts, has filled us with the love for, with his love for us, that we can love him back, and we express that love in this way, and we choose to.

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It's not that God, you know, wound us up and, you know, like clockwork, we are, we wish sometimes it was so.

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I wish I didn't have to make those choices some mornings, where the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

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But we do make those choices, and that's part of our sanctification as well.

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Those choices help exercise the gift of God that is placed in us, help us rely upon the spirit of God as we do those things.

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And many things in my life, when I have to choose, I realize I don't have the power in myself to execute those things that I intend, but I do need to rely upon God's strength in order to accomplish them.

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But, actually we moved into the second category. Let me just stay in the first one.

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So the choices that we make, those are choices that I consider, maybe in varying degrees of depth, and I am free to choose those choices that I make.

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Let me just make sure I, because we speak so much on this end of the spectrum that I think sometimes we may forget that there is a real viable choice, those choices make a difference.

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Next week we may be talking about prayer, or maybe even today, and we want to remember those things that we are made, made in God's image, made as free, rational creatures.

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We are intended to exercise them for the glory of God, and we are doing them without coercion, and that's what the

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Westminster Confession was talking about. While we want to remember God is sovereign, we don't want to somehow think we are robots or automatons or, you know, what we choose doesn't matter.

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Because I know I'm guilty of that as a Calvinist sometimes, it's like, eh, God's decree will come to pass, which is true.

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But I always remind myself of what Mordecai tells Esther, you know, yeah, that's true,

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God can raise anybody else, but will you be the agent that will bring forth

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God's decree to pass in this chosen, for this place, this time, and this way?

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So we want to always remember that our choices do matter. God has made us responsible creatures, and we must exercise them.

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Okay, I'm probably beating this dead horse too much, but maybe it's just a guilt consciousness on my part, because I sometimes forget that God has made me in His image, that He has redeemed me and He's placed me here, that I would honor

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Him with the choices that I make. Now let's shift that now to the second category.

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So now we're going to be looking at some moral choices, and I'm going to now take the, not take the

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R, I'm going to present the Arminian position so that we can actually engage with the challenges that they raise, and then be able to respond in a biblical way that keeps the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man together.

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So here is one way of presenting an Arminian position.

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In order to preserve real human freedom, in order to preserve real human freedom and real human choices that are necessary for genuine human personhood,

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God cannot cause or plan our voluntary choices. Let me read that one more time.

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In order to preserve real human freedom and real human choices, and these are necessary for genuine human personhood,

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God cannot cause or plan our voluntary choices.

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So that's a fair statement of an Arminian position, because we have sovereignty of God on one hand, we have responsibility of man on the other hand, and if you mean what you mean by sovereignty, then you've lost freedom.

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That's really the position. So how would we respond? Or would we agree with the statement? Would we disagree with the statement?

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Where would we disagree? And if so, how would we respond to something such as that? Is it too cold?

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My blood is still not moving. Thoughts?

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Agree? Does anybody agree? It's okay to disagree with me and agree with what was stated here.

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Or what part of it would we disagree with? Okay. So the end of that phrase where it says, for us to preserve genuine human personhood,

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God cannot cause or plan our voluntary choices. Now, at the face of it, does it seem to make sense?

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You remember when we started the issue on theodicy, we talked about how human relationships work, how if I'm influencing someone else to act in a certain way, what

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I do, and the kind of relationships we have. And then we analogously tried to map that into the way

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God works. In my mind, I'm thinking, here is how, like if I have my child, maybe

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I'll discipline them if they're going in the wrong way. There are certain ways in which I bring about the ends that I intend to under the household that I'm governing.

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And I somehow transpose that to God and assume that the way in which God operates must be the same.

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So in theodicy, we were able to distinguish this rather clearly because, well, we worked through the various trends to recognize that God is the primary source of all things.

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And yet there are secondary causes that are in place. So we looked at many examples. We couldn't use propositions to clearly work out all the details.

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But we said, oh, look at how God ordained things in the life of Job. Here are all the secondary causes that happened.

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But God is the primary cause. And then we looked at the life of Joseph. We said, here is all the things that the secondary agents that caused evil, free, responsible choices that the brothers made and the part of his wife made and the dungeon people made.

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And yet sovereign over it all is God who ordained all things. And we said that the connection between God and the secondary causes is mysterious to us.

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God does not coerce them. He does not force them to sin. They freely sin on their own choice. But God brings about the intended good for Joseph or Job or Israel through these events.

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And so we say there is a mystery here that we cannot understand. And we need to let God be

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God. But he far surpasses everything that we understand. And therefore, we don't want to bring our categories of thought and impose them upon God and say either

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God must be culpable of the sin that happens or God is disconnected from all this evil that comes to pass.

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So we need to be faithful to the biblical text in preserving the tension from a human perspective because we can't tie all those strands together.

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So that was theodicy. We looked at this for the last few weeks. Now when it comes to moral choices, what do you think is the fallacy or the error in that statement?

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We can recognize it is the last half that is not biblical because we've already seen plenty of texts that talk about the sovereignty of God that is sovereign over all of the human choices in order to bring about his intended end in the life of free creatures.

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But the issue of God cannot cause or plan our voluntary choices was the sticky point.

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So what would we respond, Andrew? That's a great comment. And I'm sure many of you may have heard the phrase

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God is a gentleman. They normally would apply it on the third category of salvation.

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But yes, that's my next point here. So those cases, and that's true, that is one of the ways in which the illustrative examples that we have would become that God intervenes just in order to bring about his grand scheme, what he intends to bring from Adam till the second coming.

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And there are certain things in which he intervenes, but this is not the general rule for others.

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But let's put that on hold for a moment. I think we can use this as we look at biblical data for whether this is the norm or whether this is the exception.

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But going back to God will not, and I think

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I'm going to reread the Westminster Confession again because if you just read that part of the confession, it looks very

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Arminian. Let me read this. God is neither the author of sin nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

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So that's the second half of the Westminster Confession. And if you ignore the first half of everything that was said, it'd be like, oh, that's pretty cool.

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God is a gentleman. He doesn't violate the rational creature's choices that they make.

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And everything is fine. And we need to remember that is true. The second half of what we read in the

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Westminster Confession is accurate in the sense that, and that's why I asked the first question, which seemed like, why is that such a stupid question to be talking about?

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Because end of the day, the choices we make are not violently coerced and forced by a sovereign

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God. We do make these free choices based on, let me just define, clarify what

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I mean by free when I used quote unquote. We make those free choices based upon our nature, because if I freely choose to fly by flapping my wings,

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I will not be able to execute that because I'm not built to do that. And likewise, when it comes to the various choices we make,

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I think Becky gave some great example. You know, if I want to come to church this morning, the choice that I make depends on a bunch of different things that is happening in my life.

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And I make those choices based. I am a contingent creature. I depend on other things beside myself.

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I'm not like God who sovereignly can decree and execute and will what he wants.

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I make my choices based on the environment and the circumstances and my ability that support me.

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So when I say free, that's what I mean by free. I am not forced by some dictator or by some evil ogre.

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I make those choices voluntarily. And yet there is God's decree that backs it all.

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So that's basically what we mean by a Calvinist understanding of sovereignty of God and free will of man. So bringing that now back to this statement,

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God either cannot cause or plan our voluntary choices or will not cause or plan our voluntary choices.

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How would we respond to them? I think that was Andrew's question to me.

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I'll redirect this back with a little modification. We've heard people say when it comes to election that God foreordains those who are to be saved, that God would not force someone to be saved if they didn't want to.

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So God would just present the choice of salvation. And as a gentleman, he would just wait outside while I see some head shaking.

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Thank you. And it's as if, okay, now I respect your freedom to choose.

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That's really the mindset that we bring in. Now, given what I just explained about theodicy, what do you think is the fallacy here when

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I speak the way I spoke? Maybe I should have said I'm beginning a quote because it almost seems like it was my view.

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So what does the fallacy in what I just presented as the gentleman

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God who is patiently waiting outside for? When I say fallacy, I mean in the model, the way we think that is wrong.

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And that's an excellent biblical response. Right. So we have the text of Scripture that actually defines how we are made in the very first place.

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It's not as if God's observing a bunch of neutral beings and then hoping for some of them to jump up and go to heaven and the others to jump down and fall down and then go to hell.

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Excellent. So I think what you began with was there are attributes of God that we would do injustice to if we somehow elevated this one element above everything else.

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So we will have to discard some of the things that the Scriptures talk about God and his sovereignty.

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And I think, you know, when it comes to knowledge, many of the Armenians would use the looking down and seeing what choices were made.

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So God is not surprised, you know, unless you're in there, an open theist. Then, you know, they would say even that's not possible because those choices are not yet made.

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So they want to the open theist, which is a heretical position. They would take the freedom even further than the

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Armenian would. And Armenians would be our brothers and sisters in Christ, just disagreeing on this theological position.

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But the open theist would say that since those choices are not yet made, those are not actually there for God to see, because to preserve this genuine freedom.

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You cannot say that those what those events are and the consequences of what will happen can be even foreseen, not just for known.

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I hope you know the difference when you say foreseen. That's what the Armenian is thinking. When we talk about foreknowledge, they think foreseen.

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So God sees he's outside of time in some sense. And which is true. And therefore, he can see what happens.

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Whereas when we talk about foreknown, the Bible always talks about God's knowledge of the person, the intimate knowledge of the person and his choice of the person in election in particular that we talk about.

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But as we've talked in theodicy, we are talking about the decree of God, that it is not just a knowledge, but God's active role in ordaining and bringing to pass what he has intended.

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Not just, again, going back to the general example of how mankind will ultimately be restored or at least those who are saved or who choose to be saved, but rather for every single person, every atom in this cosmos, everything would come to pass exactly as he has decreed it to be.

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And I think what Carol was saying, if you just bring this, bring that back here, because of that example of the potter and the clay, we talked about free will.

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We we defined it as constrained by the nature that we that we have.

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And we know that biblically all of us inherit the fall of inherit the corruption that comes from the fall of Adam.

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And none of us is capable of responding to this ideal gentleman

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God picture that we have, because if God were to wait, no one would respond. And God needs to transform our nature in order that with a regenerate heart, we would appreciate the beauty of our

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God, the grace of our God, the love of our God, that he would send Jesus Christ to die on our behalf.

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And the Armenians position actually presumes. And again, I'm sorry,

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I'm muddying up these three categories, but hopefully you can put them in the right buckets when we talk about election, that somehow my freedom extends to the ability to recognize my own sin or appreciate the grace of God that is extended universally, according to the

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Armenian, and then grab a hold of something on my own effort.

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And really that that's where this preservation of freedom becomes so important for the Armenian that they need to make that one step, some step.

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Maybe it's my faith that I generate. Maybe it is some act that is that disconnects

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God from his sovereign role, thereby maybe preserving him from, you know, and actually, let me ask you this.

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What do you think the Armenian? I was an Armenian for many, many years. Why do you think I, as an Armenian, was so passionate about letting my choice be free?

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What does it protect God from in my mind, you think? OK, so your God is the cause of reprobation. That is one fear.

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OK, then, you know, God is, you know, hell, eternity and eternal suffering. And God is the one who ordains that.

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I don't want that, Gary. OK, that goes back to the gentleman God, God making me do something I don't want to do. What do you think people don't like when they hear the term election?

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Not the Tuesday election, the sovereign election.

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Unfair. Yes. How can God play favoritism with the one and not the other? You know, and again, it's always this mental model.

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Here is how I'm used to operating in a classroom or in something else. And I think and then

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I try to move this here and then it seems like God picking someone. I think

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Andrew's daughter has just said that beautifully, choosing someone. And it seems to be unfair.

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Maybe we shouldn't go and vote on Election Day because that would be unfair to the other person. But OK, scratch that.

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But the but the but the motivations of the Armenian are genuinely to preserve. When you think about the odyssey to somehow protect

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God from the semblance of any connections with evil, rather than letting the mystery of how

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God operates with secondary causes remain unknown. We want to go back to Deuteronomy when God says the secret things belong to God.

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And our view of God ought to be, you know, that makes

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God so much more grander because I can work out a lot of things in my life.

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I can plan these things and get these things to pass. But God brings about things to pass in a way that just surpasses my comprehension.

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And because the Bible is says he is sovereign and he is and we are responsible.

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I just say I don't understand it, but I just say, amen. You know, God is greater than the way that I can understand these operations.

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And we'll rest at that. But on the other hand, when we try to protect

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God from something he doesn't need protecting, we end up creating theologies that are more restrictive.

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We take some aspects of the doctrines that are true about God and, for example, the freedom of our choices.

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And then we end up discarding other elements like Charlie, you were you were talking about.

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And I think that's the danger we want to be always watching for when we think about the freedom of our choices and the responsibility of God.

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I think there have been others who have actually even said when you talk about foreknowledge, if God already knows. And I think that's what's the impetus of the open these movement is if God foreknows, if the choice that I'm going to make today, whether I'm going to come to church or not, is foreknown by God, then in some way, maybe

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I am not free to make that choice because kind of God knows that already. And we need to be very careful to guard our mind and our thoughts in trying to.

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Once again, just put this analogous picture and make them what they call. I think it's univocal, right?

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Like whatever we do in this sphere is the same as what happens in God's sphere.

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So when we talk about the way we operate, it's the same thing in which God operates. Amen. So and that's the and that's the distinction we want to constantly bear in mind.

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He is the creator. We are creatures. We do bear the image of God and therefore we have the freedom to choose and act as rational beings.

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And yet we are under him. He alone is autonomous. We are contingent creatures that act in the universe that God is fully sovereign on.

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Yes. And then that was well put. Just time and eternity. You know, these this is a category.

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We are creatures of time. We can only consider and understand things in categories of time. So when we try to understand those scriptures that talk about God's operation in eternity or outside of time.

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We have very limited capacity to comprehend it. We can. I think the description you just gave is a beautiful way of saying, you know, here is how it could be in terms of how

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God does things. And we need we need to recognize since there is two categorical.

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There is a categorical difference in the way in which we think and how God operates. We need to be humble as creatures before our omniscient, timeless

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God and the way in which he functions. And not attempt to restrict the

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God of eternity into the boundaries of our time, space, thinking the way we are used to.

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So when you look at Romans 9 to 11, we need to not say, oh, unfair. Hopefully nobody says that if you're a believer, even an

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Arminian, you know, can say I can understand it as an Arminian. My theology doesn't allow for Romans 9, but we need to say that God be

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God and he is the one who sovereignly decrees. And again, just to comment on Romans 9,

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Jacob and Esau, Esau didn't say, oh, too bad.

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God chose an eternity past. I'm going to just forsake my birthright. No, he had no idea what God had decreed or what

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God's choice of Jacob. And yet Esau does what Esau does. And Jacob was not the great, holy and awesome guy.

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He was his own sinner who is redeemed by the grace of God and God sovereignly elects.

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And we need to be conscious that God's operations are different than the way we understand them. Any other thoughts on this?

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Yes. Presuming to know the mind of God or know God in a way that contradicts the scripture that tells that where God tells who he is.

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Excellent. Let me maybe make a few more comments and then I'll actually, you know, I want to pick on what you just said.

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Build on what you just said. Dangerous thing to be saying to Pastor Bob.

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When we talk about science. So how does how do we as humans approach science?

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We say, you know, we observe the empirical data of the physical universe. We come up with some theories on how we can maybe come up with some formulae.

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I was telling my daughter about Newton, Newton's law of gravitation. You observe something, you come up with some equations and they seem to fit the pattern.

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You try them on a bunch of different things and OK, it seems to work fine until you get a new piece of data that requires something maybe a little more sophisticated.

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And then your theory changes to accommodate the new data, new evidence that you have.

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So that's normally how we think of science. Sadly, the unbeliever, when he approaches God or religion, seems to think the same way.

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And as Christians, we sometimes let that seep into our thinking. So what happens? It's not just the physical universe.

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Now I'm looking at something that's maybe a little bit more. I'm considering life and death. What happens after death?

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What is the origin of all things? I'm thinking of body and soul. And I realize

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I'm not just a materialistic creature. How do I understand these things? So let me now find the various theories in the marketplace, you know, different religions, different views.

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And let's see which one best fits the data that I have that before me.

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I want the self -satisfaction of knowing that I have little systematized view of life as I can.

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And I'm going to be the sovereign lord of my, you know, where I'm going to invest all my soul dollars in.

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Right. Is it Buddhism or Hinduism or Christianity? And so when you when the unbeliever approaches it this way, you know, but for the grace of God, where God actually changes your heart and suddenly becomes a foolishness and the wisdom of God.

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What happens is Christians sometimes, you know, when we look at our systematic theology, can approach it in this kind of rationalistic way.

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There's nothing wrong with reason. We are rational creatures. But if we reduce it to a rationalistic system and say, here is the best theory that fits it.

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And my in this particular case, in order to preserve the freedom, human freedom that I value so much,

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I need to do injustice to other attributes of God. We need to be very careful to say that's presumed presuming to take the role of God rather than submitting to God's activity that that crosses those categories, crosses those fears.

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And our responsibility should be to do what God has called us to is to glorify him in the sphere we have.

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In fact, that's kind of the next question I want us to take to which the Armenian would give us. You know, one of the things they would say is choices caused by God cannot be real choices.

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And the other one is the Armenian view encourages responsible

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Christian living, while the Calvinist view encourages fatalism, which could be dangerous.

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Now, I began with a confession that there have been times when I've simply acted in such a way where, you know, when we emphasize the sovereignty of God and then lose sight of the responsibility.

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In fact, if you remember what the confession said. This is hard to read, but let me just read the last half again.

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Nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures. Really, that's the phrase that you want to keep in mind. Nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather.

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Established, it is the will of the creatures is established because of the sovereign decree of God. So when we think of again, you know, without going into this sidetrack, if you are a materialistic, materialistic or naturalistic chance ordained creature, then your will really has no meaning in and of itself.

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We have a will that actually has a value and we are rational creatures only because God has is the supreme being of all will and rationality and existence.

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And he has chosen to make us as in his image with the ability to make those choices. And in his ordained decree, he has given us a place that is different than every other creature that he has made, where we have the ability to exercise our rationality freely and of our own will.

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So this is established only because God has ordained it to be so.

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So we need to remember that's the connection. Now, when as a Calvinist, we want to be careful.

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And I think maybe that's the comment I want to just leave. We want to be careful of the responsibility that God has placed in our midst.

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Once again, I've used this word several times. We want to remember that it is

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God who wills and enables us to do what he has ordained in our lives.

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But we are the ones who must work out our salvation with fear and trembling. The desires that God has placed in our heart to glorify him like we talked this morning about coming into church.

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I can't just say I sleep and then, you know, God's sovereign decree comes to pass. And that is, once again, taking both sides of the equation or of the truth that is given and taking one and discarding the other.

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Or if on the Arminian side, it will be taking this and discarding the other. We want to be faithful to all that God has said.

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And the sovereignty of God should actually just evoke such a love for our. For the

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God who governs this universe, governs my life into such minute detail that I would respond to him in love with all of my being.

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That I would actually exercise the freedom that he has given me. So when it comes to prayer, actually, that's what

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I wanted to close with. We are out of time. So one thing, I don't know what you think about the election on Tuesday.

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But would you pray? Because I think, you know, that would please God. Nothing is going to change in God's decree.

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Because the people who are on the ballot are exactly the people God intended for us to have as a nation at this point in time.

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And we want to rejoice in the fact that God is Lord over the election.

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And yet we don't want to have that fatalistic view of saying, well, God will figure it out. Well, he will.

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We want to be responsible in the way we care for our nation, care for the people, care for even, why did

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I say even? For those who are on the ballots and pray for. OK, you just see where my heart is.

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OK, I need the grace of God daily. All right. Let's before we close, any comments or thoughts?

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Amen. End of the day, it's not about a Calvinist or an Armenian. It's about being faithful to God. And the scriptures that are given that reveal the will of God in our lives, that we would be faithful to them.

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Thank you. Let's let's pray. A loving and gracious father. We thank you, Lord, that you've revealed yourself to us as the

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Lord of this universe, the Lord of each of our lives. We pray this morning as we worship you, that you would open our eyes to your grandeur, to your.

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Sovereignty that we, O Lord, would as creatures humbly bow down and follow you with joy and gladness in Christ, may we pray.