None Greater (part 8)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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So this morning I thought I'd do something a little fun for a review We're going to do a little review quiz

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Hope you're ready But this week how I'm going to do this is I'm going to recite the question

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That Barrett asks as the title of each chapter So if you've actually been reading the book you might have seen that the each chapter title is a question that is then answered by one of God's attributes right so I'm going to Ask the question and You can raise your hand and you can reply with yes, or no what what the answer is to the question because they're all yes

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Or no questions, and then name the attribute that is the reason for why it's yes, or no, okay?

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Ready it's not too hard. I promise there's only four For all the weeks we've been doing this we've actually gotten only through four of them so Andrew and I are we're on Standard BBC pace right yeah, okay?

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Can we know number one can we know the essence of God? Can we know the essence of God yes, or no?

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What's the attribute no?

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But I appreciate that you still went out on a limb for us there Raleigh. Thank you. Yes, Janet.

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No very good Whoo all right? What what's the attribute?

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Why can we not know the essence of God? Yes, Janet Yes incomprehensibility

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That's the biggest word from this morning, so It's all downhill from here. Okay incomprehensibility right we cannot know the essence of God.

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Why can't we know the essence of God? Yes Why are we stupid though at least relative to God right?

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We're finite. He's not almost by definition Anything that is finite cannot possibly comfort fully comprehend something that is infinite right so And since God is the only infinite one.

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He is the only one who can comprehend himself Okay, all right number two does

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God depend on you Yes, or no No Taylor says no why

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Taylor, what's the attribute? It's the Latin word

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Probably Yes, a seedy but close enough We'll take it a seedy a seedy

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From himself is what that Latin term means from himself God doesn't depend on you

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God doesn't depend on anything Anything at all

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Right he is totally self -sufficient totally self -existent Totally self -attesting all right number three is

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God made up of parts No very good Rowley why simple yes simplicity

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Simplicity that's Dave Smith's favorite attribute so far All right, and then last number four and that's also again this week

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It was last week, and it's gonna be again this week does God change No Yes, why not?

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Immutability Immutability and that was last week immutability and as promised

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Last week we're going to further plumb the depths of that attribute today Now if you remember or if you have your worksheet from last week if you still kept it in your bag

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You'll know that When when we speak of God not changing

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What about him does not change what about him does not change we went through a whole list from Packer J .I.

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Packer although there's a similar list that Barrett has in the book. What about God does not change first off He doesn't grow or age

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Right and we said that's his life is not changing. He does not grow or age He also his attitude his heart his temperament

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They are the same today as they were anytime The same as they were in Bible times, especially we were focused on but really it's true that anytime

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He is the same. That's his character not changing Also his promises his demands his statements of purpose his words of warning all

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Remain valid because his truth his word does not change another one was that he doesn't try anything new

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He doesn't pilot anything He he deals with his creatures as he always has dealt with them

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Because his ways do not change His ways are immutable and then last and this is when we're gonna be really crucial to our further discussion this week is

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His purpose doesn't change because what he planned from the beginning That is what he has done

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Is doing and is always going to do and will do His purposes do not change

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Now we could state it. In fact, if I remember right as I was calling out and asking folks to do the worksheet

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By the way, there are worksheets on the stools again this week if you didn't pick one up on the way in We we can state that it's that his plans do not change right purposes plans

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Very similar synonyms, right that his plans do not change and and because God has had the same plan for history

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And the same plan for salvation The same plan for how he's going to deal with us and how he deals with us now now we

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Live in time Right, we live in time and so in time we see a progression

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We see steps of that plan as they unfold. We see for example, we could say that the calling of Abraham was step one

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That Exodus was step two that the Davidic Covenant Might have been step three that you know, the incarnation of Jesus is step four.

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I mean don't quote me on this I'm not trying to lay out a new theology of what the steps exactly are

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But there's a sequence there right of steps that we're experiencing in time, but that doesn't mean

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That God is changing as the plan goes or changing the plan as the plan goes from step two to step three right in eternity past the plan

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But we experience the plan as it unfolds The plan is still the plan

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All right, so we're gonna get into that quite a bit as we go through because today

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I promised that while last week we Sort of focused on the joys to really understand immutability and what it means to us especially as Christian believers

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Why immutability is such a source of rejoicing for us of thankfulness for us?

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This week we're gonna talk about questions about immutability Challenges to it

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To figure out the things that you might hear or apologetics basically around immutability

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Now what analogy did we spend our most of our time on last week? We read a lot of verses about the the analogy that the

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Bible uses to explain God's immutability more than any other That he's a rock

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Right as he's a rock and what about a rock? Lines up with immutability

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What were the things what are the good parts of the analogy We thought of we were thinking about what rocks are like right?

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What is God like? How is he like a rock? Well? How is his immutability like a rock a rock is hard to change yes

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Unmoving right right yeah, they live in an area with big rocks.

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They didn't have John Deere tractors It was also a very arid place, so there wasn't really even a lot of erosion going on Right so to them rocks

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Especially seemed to exist. They certainly outlasted a generation Right so for multiple generations the rock was still there the same rock

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Right exceeding the lifespan of the people the rock itself not really changing what else?

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about the rock with his immutability Yes, Janet Right yes a safety because David very often would say like my rock and my fortress right all in one sentence as we read a lot of those different psalm examples that the that as a rock that he's in the

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Key spending these time in these caves all the time, and so he's just got this Poetically on his mind, and he brings it out in the notion that Rock is strength and not just any kind of strength, but like a constant

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Unyielding strength you can't you can't especially back then since like we said what they don't have the

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John Deere tractors You couldn't overcome a rock right yes, Andrew.

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That's right. Yeah a Little bit of wood, but yeah, mostly rock yep Build it out of brick.

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Yeah, so those are the good parts of the analogy, but here Here's where we're gonna pick up this week, and it's question number one on your worksheet

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Because as Barrett tells us in chapter 6 the metaphor of a rock can only be pushed so far

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The metaphor of a rock can only be pushed so far We mentioned a little bit last week of course that there are

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We already know that in real life real rocks Do change a little bit?

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Right even though they seem like they're not changing if we go down even down to say a place like purgatory chasm where the rocks are huge and They they seem like they've been there forever with our modern instrumentation

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We can go down there. We can measure very accurately and we can we can detect

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The slight changes in the shape and the sizes of the rock over time as erosion wind and water do their work

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Right on the rocks, and I can take a rock with a strong enough hammer or a strong enough tool, and I can split

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Rocks I can shape rocks. We can put them in tumblers and smooth them out right all that kind of stuff so There's so we talked about that but Today what also is bad about rocks

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And it gets to our first question is that if we pushed the analogy too far about God as a rock we might

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Start to think that if God is immutable then he must be he needs to be in order to be immutable totally inert totally static

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Immobile even dead like a rock just totally Completely unchanging so that's the first question.

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We're going to ask today about immutability, which is is God rigidly immobile

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Because I mean taken to an extreme. I Myself right here. I am changing ever so much every time

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I open my mouth and shut my mouth or By moving over here. I have changed right

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Or really by any other kind of expending of energy Right my body is changing my my my person is changing in some way

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But Stop and think for a moment does the Bible Ever give you any kind of hint that God is not doing anything

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Do you ever get the sense reading your Bible that God is not doing anything right now?

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No, right in fact quite the opposite opposite the whole point of the Bible the great overarching narrative is

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That God is very busy all the time Executing his plans according to his purposes

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So when God tells us in the Bible, I am the Lord I change not in Malachi We once again have to recognize that when he uses words like that.

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He's condescending to us Remember the little kind of silly term that we said that even

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Calvin used about God Condescending to us in his communication. Yeah, God lisping to us

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God talking baby talk to us Right. It's divine baby. Talk.

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So he has to use those words because it's the only words we can understand We even have a hope of understanding getting back to the whole incomprehensibility part of things

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So I am the Lord I change not if we're honest about what we read in the Bible We know that God is the opposite Really of rigidly immobile.

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He's always doing he's always creating. He's Shepherding he's ordaining.

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He's protecting he's Steering the hearts of rulers. He's saving souls

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Doing doing doing doing doing now the a -team one member of the a -team in particular

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Aquinas He has a Latin term for this. This class is just full of the Latin terms

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He has a Latin term for this it is called actus purus That's on your worksheet actus purus spelled like it sounds it translates to Pure act

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Pure act God is pure act. He is actus purus now

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Aquinas says this because God must be pure his arguments and remember

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Aquinas is very big on logical arguments to prove his point

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God must be pure act Because stuff is happening right now.

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He didn't use those words because Stuff is happening right now if immutability meant

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Immobility then God we might be able to say that God is uncaused and unmoved

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But if he was immobile, he would not be the first cause or the first mover

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Right. Remember that's the the pair of words goes together. We say the uncaused first cause

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The unmoved first mover Right. It's not just that he's unmoved.

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It's also that he does the first moving He moves

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From himself Which is you know from himself he moves which is a seedy going back to that And of course that means that he moves all else

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He is the source of the movement And so Aquinas his argument is essentially because you can look around and see things moving

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There has to be a source of all that movement all that energy and that is God and so God can't possibly be rigidly immobile that can't be what immutability means because if there was no source to then there would be no source to the movement and There it would be impossible for anything to be moving

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We would be as rigidly immobile as God himself is we wouldn't even really be here Okay, so that's pure act actus purus

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One of my favorite word pictures and all the Bible is right in the beginning in the second verse of Genesis 1

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Where it says in the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters

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And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters, and I think a lot of people Blast right past that right we got

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Genesis 1 1 we all know that it's In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth right

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And the earth was out form and void like we can all recite that part And then we get and then the next part where we think the actions happening we go let there be light right

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But there's something happening there in verse 2 that we're we're blasting right past God the

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Spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters. Do you know that that word hovering in the

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Hebrew? It is the word for quivering shaking Vibrating and the science nerds should start to be picking up on where I'm going with this

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Vibrating God was a vibrating over that primordial Cosmic waters that he had just created that next verse when he says let there be light if you know anything about light really about all the electromagnetic spectrum all of energy for that matter, which

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I Posit is encompassed by the word light here when he says it creates light.

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He's creating all of energy You know that it is waves The word picture is this is the

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Spirit of God? vibrating over the primordial waters and making waves

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He is the unmoved first mover energizing his creation all right, so that's

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The proof as best I can lay it out for you of why immutability does not mean that he is just rigidly immobile

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Okay, so the answer obviously on your worksheet is no what

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I'm gonna go back Any questions or comments on that before we move on you excited for all the other questions?

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Yes, Janet. I Mean move on to question. Yes You know

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I forgot to keep a sheet with me, so I've got to hang on one of you out there has my original copy

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B God is the source of all movement and all energy

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All right number three well. It's the second question, but it's number three on your worksheet is

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God affected by anything Is God affected by anything well if we misunderstand the attribute of immutability?

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we might start to think of God as if he were a Computer this infallible computer that's sort of completely devoid of any feeling or emotion as we understand them that he's

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Like because he's a being that just sort of foresees all things and decrees all things

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But is not affected by those things in any way shape or form Okay And I just gave it away at the very beginning when

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I said when we misunderstand this attribute Okay, so the answer to this is yes, he is affected by things

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Boyce points out sorry Jumped ahead of my notes James Montgomery Boyce He he

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In one of his systematic theology books he he points out that the ancient Greek for the ancient

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Greek philosophers Okay, the the Plato school of philosophers. They had this idea of an immutability for their

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God, too Because this the platonic philosophers. They didn't they had rejected those old

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Greek mythological gods that we all know from the stories Okay, and they they had come up with their own sort of oneness of a

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God little G God, but of a gun and they even called him the logos right which is where John got the

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Greek term to use in John 1 They called him the logos that was their conception of a monotheistic

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God a philosopher's God Okay, but to the philosophers

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All right as they tried to reason this all out their God was and this is the

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Greek word apatheia He was apatheia, can can you guess what

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English term we get from that apathetic that's right apathetic

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To them he was apathetic. He was totally unaffected by anything He was it was honestly this platonic

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Oneness God he was sort of the it was sort of the first idea of the deist Sort of God conception of God where I'm gonna wind

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I'm gonna create the universe I'm gonna wind it up like a clock and then I'm just gonna let it go and not pay attention anymore

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Right being apathetic to it. That's the same the deists would say the same kind of thing for God apathetic but our

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God the true God he is not apathetic and I will bring to you as proof to start

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Isaiah 40 and Isaiah 43 can somebody read for me? Isaiah 40 verse 11

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Anybody what's afraid to volunteer for things today? Anitra made eye contact. Oh But she's still digging for her

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Bible. All right Yes, mr. Cooley. Thank you, sir. Isaiah 40 11. Yeah Does that sound like an apathetic

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God to you? Yes Thank you. Yes and gently lead those that are with him.

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Does that sound like an apathetic apathetic God to you? One who's shepherding and gently leading

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No, right. How about Isaiah 43? I Say a 43 verse 2

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I will be with you. I'll be with you as you go through These challenges of life.

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I noticed the challenges of life you are going through and I will be with you Right, he notices he cares

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Lastly Psalm 34 verse 15 Psalm 34 verse 15

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One of my favorite Psalms the eye of the Lord is sorry read it again his eye is on us his ear is on us

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He's never ignoring us never dismissing us Ultimately, this is the answer that Boyce puts in in this to fill in the blanks here on question number three

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God Notices and is affected by the obedience plight or sin of his creatures

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So he's not devoid of any kind of feeling Towards us at least feeling as we understand it

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Might not be the same kinds of emotions that we experience But in his divine baby talk to us, he uses emotion emotion words to describe his disposition towards us

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All right, that's question number three. All right next Does God change his mind?

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Does God change his mind? This is a biggie -biggie Right.

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Does God change his mind? Genesis chapter 6 turn there with me, please

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There's a few examples like this But we'll start with Genesis chapter 6.

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It's one that I think a lot of you One of the more famous ones because it's part of the story of Noah and the flood and so a lot of people read it

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This is in the the prelude To that story of the flood. Well, actually let's go back to verse 5

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The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually and The Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart

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The Lord regretted right? If you have an old translation

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KJV and some of the other older English translations instead of the word regret they used the word anybody know

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Repent they used the word repent that the

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Lord repented of making of having made man Exodus 32 another another rather Famous passage

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One that's read quite often because it's part of the story of the golden calf at the base of Mount Sinai Exodus 32 verse starting in verse 9 and the

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Lord said to Moses I have seen this people and behold it is a stiff -necked people now Therefore let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them in order that I may make a great nation of you

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But Moses implored the Lord his God and said Oh Lord Why does your wrath burn hot against your people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty?

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hand Why should the Egyptians say with evil intensity bring them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth

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Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people Remember, I Abraham Isaac and Israel your servants to whom you swore by your own self and said to them

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I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring and they shall inherit it forever

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And here it is verse 14 and the Lord Relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people and again in the

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KJV it uses the word repent Right.

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Yes He changed his mind see we're all over the place.

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Okay. Ah Man so does that mean God changes his mind?

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Yes Taylor. I will Yes Taylor pretty well nailed it on the head, but we'll keep going with that.

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We're gonna expand on that explanation But I it's it's what I said at the beginning right about purposes and God's plans we have gone from step two to step three on the plan right or step six to step seven and In the divine baby talk is

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Repented relented regret changed his mind so that we as I look

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I like your term chronologically limited creatures temporarily limited foot people temporarily challenged

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Can understand There are many more examples Turn to 1st

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Samuel 5. I'm sorry. It's 1st Samuel 15. We're gonna spend some time in there, but we won't read it quite yet But you can prep yourselves getting at 1st

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Samuel 15. There's 1st Samuel 15. There's 2nd Samuel 24 There's Jonah Chapter 3 after he's gone to preach to the

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Ninevites and he says I knew it Lord. I knew you would relent from destroying them

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Right from this disaster but interestingly All of these examples are in the

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Old Testament They're all in the Old Testament, that's on your sheet, and they're translating a

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Hebrew word Knock them knock him

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Get the Hebrew pronunciation really going. Thank you Andrew. Thank you And it's it's a it's a that word

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Has a well let me get to before I get to the part about the Anthropomorphic thing, but like I said the KJV and some older translations they turned that Not him into a

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English word repent right or in the moderns regret relent change your mind

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But there's another Hebrew word also translated repent and that word is to Shuba or just shoe

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Okay, and those words are more literally return or Turn around Okay now right off the bat that should be ringing a bell right for our

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Christian mindset for the New Testament mindset because that's the picture that we very often hear for the definition of Repentance right that to repent of your sin means to means to truly biblically repent from your sin means to turn around Face the other way go the other direction

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Run away from the sin and towards righteousness, right? That's the turnaround kind of thing But the thing about that Hebrew word is that it's used in both of for return shoove

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Is it's used both in moral and non -moral contexts. There's plenty of times in the Old Testament where it's just used for like Literally turning around right in the in the story of a history saying like we were going one way and now we're turning to go a different Direction it's also used like in Genesis 319

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Where we talk about Adam's body returning to the earth Okay And and I wish that I could go deeper here, but I I just don't know

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Greek or Hebrew so I this is this is the furthest I could get but So I can't really speak with any real authority on this, but I do want to go this far and say that Knock them and knock him and this is the anthropomorphic picture part

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It seems to have a sense of to breathe strongly To be sorry to pity or to regret right which is why the

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ESV translators Most times when they see that word they translated it into regret

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Regret and that breathes strongly one. You know, it's very interesting because it's sort of the anthropomorphic Sigh it's not a turning or a change that shoove.

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It's just Charnock Theologian he he said that One of the

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Reformers he said that the scriptural language of describing God as changing or repenting Just as Taylor told us can easily be explained as an accommodation to our limited human language

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God's repentance can't possibly have anything in common with our own repentance Because our repentance stems from sort of like a want of foresight

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Right, we have an ignorance Charnock says of what would succeed or a defect in the examination of the occurrences which might fall within consideration

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Essentially, we can't predict the future. We don't know what might come about repentance for God is only a change of outward conduct he says according to his infallible foresight in immutable will

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And scripture has to express these things in a human way by making out something marking out something in God that has a resemblance with something in us and And just to bring it home you really here on how clear the

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Bible is on the idea of God ever Possibly changing his mind is is here in 1st.

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Samuel 15 that I had you turn to Now in 1st. Samuel 15 11 Right in 1st.

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Samuel 15 11 who can read that verse for me? Okay, I regret that I've made Saul King So there's regret again, but in the very same chapter

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Down in verse 29 Samuel tell Saul's this and Also the glory of Israel just a name for God there and the also the glory of Israel will not lie or have regret

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For he is not a man that he should have regret Right, it's only 14 verses later

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That'd be a really bad contradiction for Samuel to write the book like that, right? So clearly he has two different things in mind when he's writing verse 11 versus verse 29

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Nope, they're the same word, but it's the same word again just because he it's it's not him But it's got enough richness of meaning

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That it's got two different meanings that we can say that there's a distinction between God who can regret things

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But regret them with foreknowledge of them Okay, and us humans who most often regret something because we don't have knowledge of the future.

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I Might regret taking the highway for example Because I didn't know there was going to be a lot of traffic on the highway and now

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I'm late and I regret Regret it instead of taking route 9. I took the pike Right Or I could regret eating the scallops

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The end period I could regret eating the scallops because they gave me food poisoning I did not foreknow that the scallops were not cooked enough to give me food poisoning, but They did and now

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I regret it, right and I've never eaten scallops since but that's Minor personal note, okay

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One commentator said God may be capable of looking back on the very act of bringing something about and Lamenting that act that's the sigh right lamenting that act in one regard, but still affirming it as best in another regard for God to say

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I Feel sorrow that I made Saul King is not the same as saying

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I would not make him King if I could do it again Yes, Andrew, it is exactly like the feeling we have when we have to discipline our child.

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Yep, that's I yes You know, you don't like it

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There's a there's a sense of sorrow over the fact of it, but you know, it's the right thing to do and you do it

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Yes, Charlie. I mean many of the Obedience promises the covenantal promises of Israel are if then's right

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Obey your parents that it may go well with you That your days may be long. So the answer to be there is 1st

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Samuel 15 If you didn't get that already All right

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We are rapidly running out of time and we still have a huge one to get to so I'm gonna go very fast past the next

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Question, but we'll just touch on it briefly. Why do we bother to pray if we can't change

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God's mind? All right, we can dismiss this question rather quickly by simply stating what

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Because he told us to thank you all bless you. I love you folks Okay, the end let's move along But yeah, basically that right because God commands us to pray

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Because God commands us to pray Charnock said prayer

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Doth not desire any change in God But is offered to God that he would confer those things which he has

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Immutably willed to communicate or to share that's the when he says communicate he means to share with us

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But he willed them not without prayer as the means of bestowing them. Yes, exactly

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Yeah, and I had that in my notes because that's my personal experience and it's yours and it surely is all of you at one time or another that in them as we pray or in the middle of your prayers even you get the sense of a turning of your own mind and your own will on the subject you're praying about and and Prayer often changes my mind to be

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I trust more in line with God's mind on the subject So if there's anyone changing it's me in the prayer.

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All right, so flip over the worksheet with our last bit of time here We're gonna answer this last question.

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Did God the Son change at the incarnation? the Josh Bertrand special Josh has been asking me this question since we started this book

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Did God the Son change at the incarnation? Yes or no? Anybody want to guess?

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Okay. I'm hearing some no's in his divine nature. No Yeah, what's that what's that Charlie We need to define what changed.

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There you go. Yes. It's sort of a trick question. It's not yes or no It's gonna go further than that, but here we go

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John 1 14 says very clearly and the word became flesh

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Right, then the word became flesh and dwelt among us. So doesn't that indicate change?

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That's what the objectors will say Doesn't that indicate change? And in fact, there are dangerously a lot of Theologians today who are

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Going down a very dangerous anti -trinitarian path with this by trying to throw out immutability on just on this basis of incarnation

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Okay, and they don't realize I don't think they realize quite the implications of what they're doing By trying to say that no, it's okay.

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God does God can in fact change in this one case Because the word

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I mean their point is the word the second person the Trinity. He was Trinity he was once not flesh and now is flesh and In fact will forevermore be the

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God -man. Okay, so There are two ways to tackle this First off one way is to talk about God's relationship with time and it's the one that we've

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Mentioned several times already this morning. Okay God's relationship with time because remember he

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Created time he dwells outside of time. He is not subject to time in any way shape or form

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Only insofar as he chooses to interact with it So theologians can say things like this they can say

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God's eternal generation and eternal spiration, which are the Spiration which are the two terms for the relationship between the father and the son eternal generation and the relationship between the father son

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And the spirit eternal Spiration right that we say that Christ is begotten of the father and the spirit proceeds from the father and the son right in the creeds

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Okay, so that's the shorthand eternal generation eternal spiration are an immutable eternal generation and an immutable eternal spiration just as God's eternal willing or eternal knowing and eternal loving are an immutable willing an immutable knowing an

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Immutable loving okay, because they're outside of time because God is outside of time

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James Anderson. Who's a Professor at Reformed Theological Seminary. He gets a little nerdy with talking about God and his relationship with time

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He uses he says it like this he says God's actions take effect in time and space but God acts from the timeless eternity so at one time t1

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Abraham is not in covenant with God, but then at a subsequent time t2

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Abraham is in covenant with God Did God? Change the intrinsically change between t1 and t2 not from his eternal standpoint.

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He's outside of t1 and t2 it's timelessly true that God is not related by covenant with respect to Abraham at t1 and Related by covenant with Abraham with respect to Abraham at t2, but it's timelessly true because he's

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Outside of all of that Abraham is the one who's conditioned by time in this thought experiment not

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God From Abraham's standpoint. It makes perfect sense to say

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God entered into a covenant with me, but not for God So, how does this how do you think this applies to the incarnation?

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How does that apply t1 and t2? This idea right and you're you're in the temporal instead.

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Yep. Yep. You can't use the if -then and the when statements for God Jesus becoming human is really kind of a loose way of speaking because one it's one conditioned by our

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Temporal perspective. Yeah, it's timeless true Anderson says That God the

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Son is not related by incarnation with respect to creation before T1 4

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BC the virgin birth and with respect to creation after and is related by incarnation with respect to creation after 4

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BC because just like we said Abraham was conditioned by time the creation all creation is conditioned by time not

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God Okay, what most classic commentators the second way to tackle this is what they want to do here is they want to draw a distinction?

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We said it already between The divine nature and the human nature which were united in Christ at the incarnation

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They want to say things like Matheson says that the divine nature Retained its attribute of immutability and the human nature united to the divine nature was mutable

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That's on your worksheet that's be the divine nature retained its attribute of immutability and The human nature united to the divine nature was mutable

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Calvin and Charnock to they they they both argue the same thing this notion that When the two natures were united at the incarnation

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That they did not mix Right, that's one of the heresies that the council statements always have to go to they did not mix they did not

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Affect each other he's fully God and fully man All right, and so the entire properties of each nature remain entire

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Calvin says which means the divine nature remains infallible immutable infallible to but yeah

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Just to be clear immutable Okay Whereas the human nature clearly changes, right?

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He starts as a baby and he turns into a 33 year old man like he not instantly, but I But he grows in wisdom and stature right as a person the

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Council of Chalcedon Answered to see affirmed it this way that Christ Son Lord only begotten

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Acknowledged in two natures which undergo no confusion no change no division

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No separation at no point was the difference between the natures taken away

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Through the Union and one thing one of those differences would be immutability versus mutability, right? At no point was the difference between the natures taken away through the

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Union But rather the property of both natures is preserved and comes together into a single person and a single substance

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Subsistent being I can't really give you an analogy for this because none really exists there is nothing else like the

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Incarnation in all that God has made or revealed to us and rightly, so the

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Bible Just states these both of these truths without apology in Hebrews 13 8

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Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever and Also 1st

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John 1 1 2 2 that which was from the beginning the life was made manifest So perhaps it's it's best here to recall that You know what?

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We've been talking about again Last week and some this week that when we talk of God's immutability

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And we said it when I first introduced this question. We have to be careful to specify what about him is not changing

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Right. It's not that he's immobile It's not that he's unaffected

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His character his purposes his ways his truth his disposition towards us.

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Those are the things that are not changing It does not mean That he's immobile that you know, it does not mean that his purposes do not unfold within time

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The Incarnation was a step in the eternal immutable plan of God for our salvation

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Okay, all right Well that completes the worksheet and pretty much completes our time for the day

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Does anybody have any questions that I probably cannot answer, but I will try I'll let

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Andrew try to answer them next week when he reviews Okay, all right

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Well, thank you very much this morning. I know that was a little bit mind -bending but It's important to make sure we understand it and acknowledge it and Because it is really easy in an apologetic conversation to get way off the rails with immutability and Misunderstanding and it can cause a

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Lot of misunderstanding then that you know really affects how you perceive your relationship to God when in fact

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You know what you perceive and make a shipwreck of you, but it Certainly does not change

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God Obviously as we've been talking but You know

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You we need to be able to anchor ourselves in the right way of thinking because as we said last week, right?

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all the benefits of immutability that God is Because God does not change we can have confidence in him.

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We can have trust in him He can be our the true anchor of our souls The greatest truth,

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I think I've ever learned outside of the the gospel itself is

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That there is nothing I can do to make God love me more And nothing

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I can do to make God love me less because his love is immutable and perfect All right, let's pray

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Heavenly Father. I thank you so much For what you have done for us

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That in eternity past You laid out this great plan of salvation in ways that we cannot even understand in ways that we

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Try to talk about and fail because we can only use these temporal based words for it

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But we have seen it unfold In the incarnation of your son that he came

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As the perfect god man to live the perfect life that we could not live And to die as the innocent sacrifice on our behalf for our sins and that great

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Double imputation exchange of our sins placed on him and his righteousness placed on us

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Lord, we could never have Even come close to imagining such a great plan And we thank you that you have done it all and we give you all the glory for it

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Lord, will you help us to anchor our minds? in the immutability of you

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That we know that we can trust you that even when everything around us is swirling and falling apart and changing constantly

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You truly are the one Who does not change? And may we rest in that timeless truth in jesus name.