God's Sovereignty in the Old Testament

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Well, again, I welcome you all.
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I'm going to invite Brother Mike to come up.
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Brother Mike is an elder here at Sovereign Grace Family Church.
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He's been many years in the Lord, and he is a wonderful Bible teacher.
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I invite you now, Brother Mike, to come and preach to us on the Sovereign of God in the Old Testament.
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Good morning.
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As an early Christian, I was desiring to teach God's people and and have an understanding of God's Word.
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And one of the men that I had got close to was a pastor teacher.
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He was also a seminary professor.
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And he said this to me, and he said, Mike, you need to do it in such a way that it's in a sixth to eighth grade level.
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And I looked at him and I said, I want you to understand that that is an insult to God's people.
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God's people are not elementary.
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God's people need to be theologically sound.
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They need to understand God's Word.
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And if we leave and get away from the elementary principles of the Bible and teach them to stretch their mind to understand God in a larger way, it will be better to go out and to proclaim the Gospel and then to understand why men and women make the decisions that they make.
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So, we will be going deep today, and you will have to stretch your mind.
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There are some things about God's sovereignty that people say you're just not able to understand.
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And I say that is incorrect, because what God has revealed in His Word, He has revealed to us to understand the deep things and the secret things that belong to God.
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But what He has revealed in His Scripture, we are to know and understand and proclaim.
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Isaiah 46, 9 and 10 says this, Remember the former things of old, long past, for I am God and there is none other like me.
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I declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been.
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And I'm saying that my purpose will be established, and I will accomplish what I will for my good pleasure.
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That is the God of the Bible.
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That is the God who created all things.
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That's the one who said, let there be light and there was light.
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And it began to burst forth out of the darkness.
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Isaiah 45, 7 says, The one forming light created darkness, causing well-being and calamity.
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This is me, the Lord.
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I do these things.
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Divine sovereignty is the primary doctrine that runs through Holy Scripture.
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The Bible teaches that God is the absolute creator of all things.
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He is the ruler over all things.
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He exercises His authority in every aspect of His creation, and over His creatures.
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He executes and administers His eternal purposes for His glory.
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God does what He pleases, when He pleases, how He pleases, whenever He pleases, to whomever He pleases.
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Exodus 4, 11 says this, and this is the Lord speaking to Moses, Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute and deaf, or makes him to see or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Then, listen to this, from Nebuchadnezzar, one of the most ruthless kings of the Babylonian Empire, who actually came in and destroyed the temple in 586 BC, and carried men and women of the Jewish nation off into captivity for 70 years for the disobedience to the Lord.
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Listen to what he says in Daniel.
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This is one of the only times in Scripture that we get to hear an unconverted man speak in declaration of the God of all creation.
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This will be in Daniel chapter 4, verses 34 through 37.
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But at the end of the period, I, Nebuchadnezzar, that period of time was where God deposed him, by the way, making him eat grass and grow fingernails like a wolf and a bear.
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He said, into that period, Nebuchadnezzar raised my eyes towards heaven.
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A reason returned to me.
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I bless the Most High and praise and honor him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion.
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His kingdom endures from generation to generation.
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All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing to him.
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He does according to his will in all of the hosts of heaven.
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And among the inhabitants of the earth, no one can ward off his hand, and no one can say to him, why have you done this to me? And at that time, my reason returned to me, and my majesty and splendor was restored to me from that glory of my kingdom.
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And my counselors and nobles began seeking me out, so I was reestablished to my sovereignty over my kingdom.
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Surpassing the greatness was added to me.
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Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt the honor and the king of heaven for all his works are true and his ways are just.
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And he is able to humble those who walk in arrogance and pride.
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That's the God of the Bible.
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I want you to understand that God is the determining factor of all things.
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He is the primary cause of everything that happens.
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He is not the author of evil, but because of his decree, evil has entered into the world.
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Nothing comes about by God's decree without his decree.
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Let me read from you the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 of God's decree.
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It says that God hath decreed in and of himself from all eternity past, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things whatsoever comes to pass.
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Yet so as there is God, neither the author of sin nor hath fellowship with that therein, nor is there violence offered to the will of his creatures, nor yet has the liberty of contingency of second causes taken away, but rather it is established.
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In which appears his wisdom, deposing all things, and power and faithfulness in accomplishing his decree.
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Although God knows whatsoever may or may not come to pass, upon all supposed conditions he does know.
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And he has decreed everything, but not according to anything foreseen.
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God has decreed whatsoever comes to pass for his good pleasure.
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Providence of God is the means on which God carries out his eternal purposes.
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Those means can be of natural causes, and those natural causes can be things that are put in place by God and placed inside his creation through natural order.
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It can also be just simply life and death, changes of seasons, rain and sun.
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And at other times there is divine intervention by God's providence where we see the parting of the Red Sea, or the parting of the Jordan River, or great miracles as prophets throwing a dead man into Elijah's tomb and the man coming back to life.
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Those are the providences of God.
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We also see miracles such as feeding 5,000.
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But we also see such things that are of God, that are decreed and done by his purposes of drowning everybody in the world but 8 souls, opening up the ground and swallowing all of Korah's rebellion.
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Natural causes, divine intervention, those are all providences of God.
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But also human agents, and those human agents act freely, meaning they are not forced against their will, nor are they coerced.
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We see those examples, and many of us know the story of Joseph in Genesis, Genesis 50, 20.
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It says that what you intended for evil, God intended for good.
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We see God working out those things to save a great salvation of people.
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We see in Acts 2, verses 23 through 24, where it says, you wicked man murdered the Son of God, but God raised him up from the dead.
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We love those passages because we see great signs of salvation for great people.
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But what about how God carries out his purposes through wicked men? How does God use wicked men without violating his righteousness and his holiness and maintaining who he is? And how does God do that in such a way that he is not culpable for their evil actions? Open your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 10.
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We're going to walk through verses 5 through 19.
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This is an oracle of God.
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I'm going to read the whole text, and then we'll back up, and we'll walk through it and make some observations.
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Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger, the staff in whose hand is my indignation.
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I send it against a godless nation and commission it against the people of my fury to capture booty, to seize plunder, to trample them down like mud in the streets.
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Yet it does not so intend, nor does it plan so in its heart, but rather its purpose is to destroy, to cut off many nations.
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For it says, are not my princes all kings? Is not Cano like Carchemish, or Hamath like Arpad, or Samaria like Damascus? As my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols, whose graven images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria, shall not I do to Jerusalem into her images, just as I have done to Samaria and all of her idols? So it will be.
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When the Lord has completed all his work on Mount Zion and Jerusalem, he will say, I will punish the fruit of this arrogant king in his heart and of the king of Assyria and the pompousness of his haughtiness.
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For he has said, by the power of my hand and by my wisdom, I did this.
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For I have an understanding and I have removed boundaries of people.
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I have plundered their treasures.
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And like a man, I brought down all their inhabitants.
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And my hand reached to the riches of all these people like a nest.
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As one gathers abandoned eggs, I gathered all the earth.
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And there was none who flapped its wing or opened its beak to chirp.
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Is the ax to boast itself over the one who chops with it? Is the saw to exalt itself over the one who wields it? That would be like a club wielding those who lift it, or like a rod lifting him who is not wood.
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Therefore, the Lord, the God of hosts, will send a wasting disease among his stout warriors.
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And under his glory, a fire will be kindled like a burning flame.
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And the light of Israel will become a fire and his holy one a flame.
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And it will burn and devour his thorns and his briars in a single day.
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And it will destroy the glory of his forest and of his fruitful garden, both soul and body.
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And it will be as when a sick man waves away the rest of the trees and his small forest will be so small in number that a child could write them down.
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To some people, that is a disturbing passage, especially as we walk through it, whose anger and kindled God is raging against.
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The first word is woe.
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Woe is an oracle of doom and judgment from God.
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We see it used just as you go up to chapter 10, verse 1, we see that same word used, woe to those who enact evil statutes.
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He has just made, God just made a woe, oracle of judgment and doom against the leaders of the nation of Israel, telling them that they have been evil and they have enacted unjust decisions.
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But then he uses that same word of oracle and doom against Assyria.
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We see that word woe used by Isaiah all through.
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I think some 48 times he uses it through his book.
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And every time he uses it, it is an oracle of doom.
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Even when speaking of himself in Isaiah 6, when he says, woe to me, I am undone.
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He qualifies what he means by that woe by saying I am ruined, meaning I should be destroyed in the presence of God.
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But this woe to Assyria, well, who was Assyria? If we don't know anything about history and who this group of people were, we are not going to know why the woe was coming to them.
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Assyria in the 8th century BC was the ruthless, ruthlessness is that a word? The most ruthless, the most brutal, the most violent, warring nation to ever be on the planet at this time.
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They were absolutely brutal.
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They marched across the East and Middle East just taking out kingdom after kingdom after kingdom.
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And the way in which they did it was by striking fear into those cities before they got to the next by doing atrocious things as taking the men of the city, popping their heads off and stacking them up at the city gate.
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They did everything from skinning men alive in front of the people to strike fear in them.
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They were brutal and barbaric.
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Not only did they do that, but they were also the inventor of the cleat, the war cleat, which would go up to their knee.
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And in the bottoms of their shoes, they would put spikes on the bottom and on the side so that as they conquered their enemy and they stomped on them, their blood and flesh would squirt up between their toes.
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They were absolutely brutal.
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But it says, woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger.
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If this is God speaking, you should go, wow, this is God's anger, but he's using an evil people.
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The rod is often used as correction or as an instrument of whacking someone.
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It says here that they're the rod of God's anger.
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And then it goes on to say that there are the staff in whose hand is his wrath or his indignation.
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God is very angry.
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God is fixing to use a pagan, God-hating, Yahweh-wanting-to-destroy nation.
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And he says, I'm sending it against a godless nation.
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Well, immediately the people hearing this would say, that's not us.
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He is speaking to the southern kingdom Judah, God's covenant people.
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He says, I'm commissioning them against the people of my fury.
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And if you go back to Isaiah chapter 5, I'll read 25 and 26, you will see where he says he commissions it.
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This is speaking of the Assyrian empire.
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Listen to how it says that God's going to commission.
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He goes, I'm going to lift up a standard and a distant nation.
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I will whistle for it from the ends of the earth and behold, it will come speedily and swiftly.
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God is going to whistle for the nation of Assyria and the warring, and like he would whistle for your dog and they're going to come.
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And what are they going to do? They're going to be the fury of God on his people.
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And what's the fury going to look like? Well, it says they're going to capture booty.
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Meaning they're going to take it.
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They're going to plunder the city.
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They're going to go through like they've done every other nation.
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They're going to enslave men.
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They're going to kill the men.
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They're going to enslave the women.
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They're going to enslave the children.
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They're going to ravish and rape their women.
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They're going to do everything that they have done to every other nation.
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They're going to do it to God's covenant people.
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And if you remember the illustration of the cleats, it says in the next part, it says that they're going to trample them down like mud in the streets.
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They're going to stomp them out.
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It says here, but it doesn't intend to do so.
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Well, what does it not intend to do? It says, nor does it plan this in his own heart, but rather its purpose is to destroy and cut off many nations.
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In the first part, we see God's plan, God's plans to use this group of people, this wicked nation.
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And he says he's going to use it for his purposes, to stomp out his people, to either correct or to punish them for their law covenant breaking offenses.
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It says that here in verse 7, it says, but they did not intend to do so.
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There were four kings, Tiglatheleser, Shalmaneser, Sargon, and Sennacherib.
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Those were the four kings of the time in which this was written.
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This was around 700, 721, something like that B.C.
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So these men, did these men say, you know what, let me be an instrument of justice for God? That's not what the text says.
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The text doesn't say, hey, they're going to be an instrument and doing this as an act of worship for God.
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What does it say? It says they didn't intend to do so.
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So what they were doing was to do what? Doing what they wanted to do to every other nation, which was go through and stomp it out.
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It says, did it plan to do so in its heart? Did Assyria plan to be a faithful servant of the Lord? Well, no, they didn't.
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They were pagan.
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It says, but rather, its purpose is to destroy and to cut off many nations.
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Look, God's purpose was to go in and for them to decimate the southern kingdom.
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But the purposes of the kings of Assyria, specifically this king would be Sennacherib at the time that it happens, his is just simply world domination.
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Everything he has done to every other nation, go in, rape, pillage, take all their plunder.
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And then how do we know that? Because he says, it says on the heart in verse 8, are not my princes like kings? Now as the Assyrian empire would go on and they would conquer lands, they would take their princes and set them up basically as kings in those provinces.
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And he says, have I not done to Calno or Carchemish? And for those of you who don't know anything or haven't looked at your map, Calno is north of Aleppo in Syria, Carchemish is near the southern border of Syria and Turkey.
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And he says, I'm going to do to you just like I did to those.
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But then he says, or like Samaria.
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Well Samaria ought to ring a bell in your mind.
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Well who was Samaria? Samaria was the capital of the northern kingdom.
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When the kingdom split between Rehoboam and Jeroboam because of the sins of Solomon, the northern kingdom constantly warred against the southern kingdom.
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So this actually, this prophecy has taken place around 721 after the destruction and the hauling away of the ten tribes in 722.
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So the southern kingdom had just saw the northern kingdom trampled down the streets.
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They had just heard the decimation of the northern kingdom.
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The very things that happened to the northern kingdom, they were coming to do to the southern kingdom.
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He says, well I'll not do to you what we did to Samaria and did to Damascus.
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He says, as my hand reached to the kingdoms of the idols.
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The word there for idols is really kind of a funny saying.
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It just means nothing of nothings.
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He's saying, hey, Samaria, who supposedly was worshipping Yahweh, and although we know that it was synchronistic in its approach to how they worshipped the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that's not how the Assyrians saw it.
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The Assyrians thought, hey, we're going to do to them the same God that you have.
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We're going to do the same thing.
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We're going to come in and we're going to crush them.
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We're going to crush the graven images, as he says in verse 10.
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He says, as those graven images, are they greater in Jerusalem than Samaria? Shall not I do to Jerusalem and her images just as I did in Samaria? He's saying, look, here it comes.
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We're going to do the same thing.
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But remember, he's doing this of his own volition.
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He's doing this because he wants world domination.
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He wants people to worship him.
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This king wants people to look at him as the monarch of the world.
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But so it will be when the Lord has completed all of his work on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, he will say, I will punish the fruit of that arrogant heart of the king of Assyria, of his pomp and his haughtiness.
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You should ask yourself, well, wait a minute.
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God's fixed to punish this man for the very same thing he commissioned him to do.
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And you're right, that is what he's fixing to do.
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But he didn't do it as a servant of the Lord.
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He did it out of the greediness and the violence and the murders of his own heart.
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It says because of his own arrogance, God will punish him.
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He said by the power, and why is he going to do it? Because he didn't say, I did this by the power of the God of all creation.
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God didn't give me the power to go in and to be an instrument of His anger and wrath toward His covenant people.
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It says here that he will do it by his own wisdom.
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That king of Assyria says he did it by his own power.
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And if you know anything about Nebuchadnezzar, why did he depose Nebuchadnezzar, who I just read earlier, because he says, look at the world that I have built.
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God is able to humble powerful kings.
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That king of Assyria will say, I have understanding.
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He didn't say that God gave him the power, that God raised him up as a king to go and do the things that he did across the Middle East.
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He says he was the one that removed those boundaries.
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He was the one that would deport people and intermix generations of nationalities to breed out nationalism and to breed out any type of boundaries in that area.
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He says, and I'm the one that plundered those treasures.
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Nobody gave me the power to do that.
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God did that on my own.
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He said that he did it like a mighty man and he brought down their inhabitants.
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Look what he says here in 14.
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And my hand reached to the riches of the peoples like a nest.
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Has anybody ever reached into a little nest and pulled out an egg? Nothing there.
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Was anybody hindered from doing that? Anybody here have chickens? You just reach in there and pull it right out.
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It does nothing.
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That's what he says.
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He says, I reached in there like abandoned eggs and gathered all of the known world and there was no one that flapped its wing or chirped its beak.
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So as he did it, there wasn't nobody that said, da, da, da, da, da, hang on, hang on.
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He just went through with it.
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No resistance.
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But then he says here in verse 15, is the ax to boast itself over the one who chops with it? Is it? Is not the ax an instrument by which someone chops wood? Does the ax do it on its own? It can't act.
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An ax doesn't have the ability to do anything.
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It's just a tool.
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Is the saw to exalt itself over the sawyer or the one who saws with it? Well, of course not.
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It's the one who wields it.
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That would be like a club wielding those who lift it.
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That would be like a baseball bat and the baseball bat going, hey, check out this guy I'm swinging with my hind end.
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It don't work that way.
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It's the one who's skilled with the ax that's able to chop the wood.
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It's the one who's skilled with the saw that's able to saw down the tree.
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It's the one who's skilled with the sword to chop or with a bat to strike a ball.
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Where does that power come from? Well, he says right here.
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It would be the Lord.
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And he said, or the rod lifting him who is not wood.
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Look, the wood doesn't have power to do anything but to be used and instruments made to be used.
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Therefore, the Lord of hosts will send a wasting disease among his stout warriors.
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Here's the judgment.
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God has said now he's going to judge them and here's the way in which he'll judge them.
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He's going to send a wasting disease, something he can't see, a little teeny virus that'll go out and kill his stout warriors.
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And under his glory, a fire will be kindled like a burning flame.
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He's going to cause that little thing he sends out that causes sickness and death and disease.
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He's going to send it and it's just going to burn.
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It's going to kindle a flame underneath it.
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But it says that flame will be light to Israel and will become a fire of his holy flame.
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Look, the destruction of that very group of people that God used to implement discipline and judgment on His people when they fall by the hand of God, it says here that that will be light to the nation of Israel.
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It says that it will devour his thorns and his briars in a single day.
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He will destroy the glory of his forest and his fruitful garden, both body and soul.
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Hey, it's saying when God does the destruction to this army and to this king, it's going to be in its totality.
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He's not going to leave anything left.
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Body and soul.
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And it will be as a sick man wastes away.
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And he says here in verse 19, and the rest of the trees of this forest will be so small in number that a child will be able to write it down.
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He's basically saying this.
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When he sends his judgment to this nation and to this people, it'll be so decimation that little old Henry will be able to count how many's left.
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And amen.
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A child will be able to take the census of this army when God's done it.
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Now, we have to ask ourselves, this is the prophecy that took place.
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This is what God intended and decreed would take place in 721.
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And He did it just like He said He would do.
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In 2 Kings 19.
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If you want to write these parallel passages down, you can.
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2 Kings 19, 2 Chronicles 32, and Isaiah 37.
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And I would ask that when you get home or when you have some time, if you would read all three of those parallel passages together, it gives you a larger-orbed view of how God used this wicked group of people to judge His people, and then how God judged that person for His arrogance.
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I'm just going to read a few passages from 2 Kings.
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2 Kings 19, 2 Chronicles 32, and then Isaiah 37.
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Now, God said in the prophecy of what He was going to do, He was going to do it for a specific purpose.
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The purpose would be when He was done with Mount Zion, and when He was done with the judgment on Jerusalem, that's when He would be finished.
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That's what God said.
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So the judgment had a purpose.
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It was carrying out a specific purpose.
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The king of the southern kingdom, Hezekiah, had made an alliance with Egypt to protect him from the coming Assyrian army.
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Do you know anything about the Old Testament? They were not to depend on anybody but God.
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They were supposed to depend on God for their protection.
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They were supposed to honor and obey the statutes.
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If you remember Deuteronomy, I think it's in chapter 27-28, there was the blessings and the cursings.
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He said, if you do this, I'll do this.
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You seek other nations and you try to do these other idolatrous things, well, this is what I'm going to do.
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He says, I'm going to haul you off into captivity, I'm going to sell your women and children as slaves, and that's exactly what was taking place.
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So, as Sennacherib is coming down from Lachish, as he is the king of Assyria, and is making his march towards Jerusalem, he sends a man, one of his generals, with a letter, Ravishka, and he sends that letter through him to Hezekiah.
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And he says this, in short, I'm not going to read the whole passage, but this will kind of bring to what's fixing to happen.
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You're doomed.
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Your men are fixing to drink their own urine and eat their own dung.
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And he begins to mock this guy.
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He says, Hezekiah, don't mislead your people, your God is not strong enough to stop me.
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He says, don't let your people be starved, don't let them be murdered, don't mislead your people.
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And then that general stands in the public square in Jerusalem and begins to speak in Hebrew, where all of these people can hear what he is saying, saying, hey, Hezekiah has deceived you, we're coming to destroy you.
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Hezekiah then takes this letter, he lays it before the Lord in the temple and prays, God, You are the God of all creation, we are Your people, we repent.
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And God hears his prayer.
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God answers his prayer.
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If you read chapter 19, verses 20-30, you see where God answers the prayer.
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Here's what happens.
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Therefore thus says the Lord concerning Assyria, this is verse 32 of chapter 19, By the same way he came, by the same way he will return, he shall come to his own city, declares the Lord.
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I will defend this city, and I will defend it for the sake of my servant David.
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Then it happened on that very night, the Lord struck the camp of Assyria, and 185,000 Assyrian soldiers were lying dead everywhere.
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So Sennacherib returned, returned to his home.
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As he returned to his home, he was worshipping in the house of his God, and he was killed by the sword in that very place.
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That's the God of the Old Testament.
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That's the sovereignty of God, using whom He wishes, how He wishes, and how He pleases.
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Was God culpable for the wicked deeds of the Assyrian king? No.
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Did God decree it? Yes He did.
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But what that king did, he did of his own fallen nature.
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Just as Joseph's brothers, out of jealousy and envy, sold their brother into slavery, they did that.
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But they did it out of envy and murderous hearts.
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This man went through and did the bidding of the Lord, but he did it not under the guise of worship and under knowing he was being used by God.
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He did it because he wanted to just have world domination.
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Is God culpable for that man's desecrating sins? Of course not.
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He did it out of his own heart.
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And God is able to use wicked men however He wants, when He wants.
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People have a problem with that passage.
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But they don't have a problem with the passage of God decreeing the very tree that grew, the man that chopped it down, and then laying the Son of God on a wooden beam, and then decreeing the every pounding of the hammer of the nail of wicked men that killed it.
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What they did to the Son of God was evil.
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It was by the decree of God.
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We go back and read, by the predetermined and foreknowledge of God, you wicked men killed the Son of God.
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But we have problems with this because we see, when I say we, as a whole the church doesn't want to deal with topics like this or deal with passages like this because we're so desiring to keep intact the will of man.
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Well, the will of man is intact.
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But that will has fallen.
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It's not free.
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It's free to do whatever He wants.
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But what He wants to do is sin like the dickens.
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Job says that men lick up sin like a dog licks up water out of a bowl.
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Now, what we do have here is a scientific term called an antimony.
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By the reading of that, you go, that looks like two laws that are in contrary to one another.
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But in actuality, those two laws work together.
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The sovereignty of God and the culpability of man are not in conflict with one another.
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I was at First Baptist downtown.
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I remember this preacher standing up and he said this, I can't reconcile the two.
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I'm like, no need.
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You don't reconcile enemies.
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They work together in God's decree.
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When you understand that God uses as second causes the sinful acts of men and the benevolent acts of men to carry out His eternal purposes, as you read your Bible, you won't have those mind-bending cramps.
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You know? Now, if the God of all creation in the Old Testament is not sovereign, we have another thing that's taken place.
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The predictive prophecy would be irrelevant.
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God was able to do what He did according to His decree and to give predictive prophecy because He is in absolute control of everything.
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As Keith prayed earlier, we know that there is no maverick molecule that's not out of the reach of God.
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There is nothing that's moving apart from the sovereign decree of God.
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There's nothing that's going on in the world that's not under the sovereign hand of God.
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When people say, well, God allowed it.
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But no, He didn't.
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God did it.
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Words have meaning.
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God didn't allow something.
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God said it would be this way.
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And I know that gets into questions of, well, how does this, you know, why is there rape and murder and all that? And those are questions that we can stretch our minds and try to understand that.
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But know this, when those things do happen, we may never know on this side of eternity why.
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And we're not to say why.
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We're supposed to look to the Scriptures and go, we know that God's working out all things to the counsel of His own will.
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And that He's doing it for His eternal glory and for the good of His people.
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That's how we're supposed to look at it.
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Can we answer every question about God's sovereignty? Well, of course not.
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But we can answer the ones that He's revealed.
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And I think we should.
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I think we should bend our mind.
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We should look to the Scriptures to try to understand God more.
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One of the first sermons Andy preached here was, do you know God? Just to let you all know a little hint.
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And he says that every time he preaches.
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Two things Andy does.
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He prays.
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He says, Lord, we love You.
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Thank You for Your Son who loved us and gave Himself for us.
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True.
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And he says, do you know God? Do you know God? This is part of knowing God.
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We want to know the good things about God and all the benevolent things.
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But do you want to know these things that go, man, sometimes that doesn't sit well.
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I read passages like this, it doesn't bother me.
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But I know people that read passages like this and as you go through the Old Testament and you see that God just deemed whole generations of people damned.
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And people go, man, I just, I don't know.
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Not everybody's wired the same way.
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I don't have a problem with God being in control of all things and what He says is absolutely fine with me.
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Not everybody has that.
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And I understand that.
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But we should not negate the things that God has done and not want to deal with those.
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Because you're going to get asked questions someday about this.
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If you do any type of evangelism on the street or at work, you're going to come across a passage of where does evil come from? Or a question of where does evil come from? Why does this happen? I mean, I don't know how many of y'all have these questions at work or in evangelism when ISIS was just going right across all the Middle East.
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How is God in control of that? Well, He's in control of all things and He's using those people for His eternal purposes.
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And He's working out all things to counsel His own will.
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And as they kill and butcher and burn the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, the blood of the martyrs is the flourish of the church.
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We need to be prepared for those types of things.
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We need to be prepared to answer those questions.
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Now, in closing, I will open it up for any question concerning this passage or something concerning it.
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No questions about eschatology or the Nephilim or nothing like that.
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Anything you want to ask concerning this, the will of man, human responsibility, this is the time for outbursts of anger, riots and demonstrations.
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Yes, sir? I just want to know where that verse in Job is.
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I'll get it for you.
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I will.
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Yes, Keith.
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I see you back there ready to swing.
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No, I have a question, a historical question.
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You mentioned the destruction of 722.
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And that the Assyrians, I know that it was the Babylonians of 586.
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What was the Assyrians' role in the kingdom between that? Do you remember? The Assyrians, some of your, I should have said this from the beginning, some of your study Bibles may say this is concerning the destruction of the northern kingdom.
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I would disagree with that not just because I'm disagreeable, but because he has said in the prophecy Samaria has already fallen.
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So the northern kingdom, the capital, if you remember, I did say the capital was Samaria.
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So that means it fell in 722.
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There's no doubt that when Sargon, you can go to Sargon's prisms if you look up the history of the Assyrian empire, he actually talks about how many chariots he had and what he did when he went through and he killed all of the northern kingdom, hauled them off into captivity, and he began to intermarry the Jewish people from the northern kingdom.
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So it wasn't until the battle with the Babylonians, and it was around 650 that the Babylonian power began to rise.
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So some of your study Bibles may say that.
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They may say this is concerning, but all you've got to do is just a plain reading of the text, how could Samaria have fallen if this was concerning in 734, which may be what one of your Bibles says.
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I don't know.
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I'm saying your Bible's wrong.
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I'm saying your commentary's wrong.
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Yes, sir? That's exactly what he did, but notice this.
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They did not destroy the holy place.
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Notice that.
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They got almost to the walls of Jerusalem clanking their swords and flaring up and clacking swords and spears and shields, and God says, no, no, I'm not going to let them destroy Jerusalem.
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If you go back to the prophecy, it said that he was going, when he got finished doing what he was doing, what his plan was concerning Mount Zion, which is that old area, which is normally what we would call Jerusalem, and Jerusalem, he would kill the king of Assyria and his army.
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And that's exactly what he did.
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They just operated on their own sinful nature.
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That's right.
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That scripture is Job 15-16, brother.
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Job 15-16? Yes, ma'am? Well, the remnant was not there yet at this point.
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Now, obviously, there was still a remnant from the northern kingdom that God preserved.
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He always preserved a group of his people.
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But in this particular case, there was no remnant because the remnant's not until they're carried off into captivity in 586 by the Babylonians.
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That's where the remnant is.
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It was to the king.
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Yes, ma'am? Well, it's hard to make an equal equivalent between a theocracy, which is what the nation of Israel was supposed to be, and where God set up a king who was supposed to lead his people and be a shepherd, and to try to equate that to a western democracy.
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It loses any type of equivalent.
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One, we're not a Christian nation.
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We have some Judeo-Christian values, and I know there are some older folks in here that may disagree, but there is no such thing as a Christian nation.
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There's no nation in the world that's Christian.
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No Christian follows God.
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No Christian, I'm sorry, no Christian nation, quote, follows God.
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Are there nations with Christian people? Sure.
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Are there nations with Christian people that pray for their leaders even when they're wicked? Yeah, that's what we're told to do.
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But even if a king or a president was to repent, it doesn't mean that God would withhold His judgment.
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We're looking at this retrospectively.
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We get to see the whole thing.
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We see God's purpose for raising up the Assyrians to be an instrument of His anger and His wrath, and it was to produce a specific desired response, which was the repentance of Hezekiah.
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Just as we read the prophecy, could Hezekiah have not repented? Well, no, because God said when he got finished, he was going to kill the Assyrian empire.
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Yes, sir.
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So what's the difference between offering and decree? Okay, God decrees whatsoever comes to pass.
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God says, okay, this is a violation of my will, but for the glory of Himself, He decrees that.
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That's the difference.
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God doesn't say, I'm going to cause someone to sin.
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God doesn't cause somebody to do anything.
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In that case, His decree is causative, meaning it will take place because He said it would.
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I'm not trying to talk out of both sides of my mouth.
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If that's not making sense, tell me.
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Well, God created man.
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Man sinned.
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So He created the ability to obey.
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He created the ability to obey.
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Now, when you get into Adam, Adam was made perfect.
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Now, there might be some of you that would disagree with me, and I'm completely fine with that.
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Adam did not have the righteousness of God.
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Adam was not righteous.
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Adam did not have the righteousness of God.
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Was he perfectly innocent? Well, of course.
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He was without sin, but he didn't have positive righteousness.
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He did not, he was not, I know the confession, I think it's one of the confessions says that he was created righteous.
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Well, he's created righteous in the sense that in all of God's creation was created good, but he didn't have the righteousness of Christ.
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So when Adam fell, Adam fell not like Eve.
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Eve fell being deceived.
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Adam willfully did it.
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That's why he's charged with the sin.
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Adam, I mean, Eve was deceived.
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He was just like, oh yeah, here, oh.
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But he did not catch God from suppressing him.
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No, because he said it would be that way, and how do we know that? Because he crucified Jesus before the foundation of the earth.
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So there had to be a fault.
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He decreed the fault.
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We are trying to compartmentalize where are we at? We're trying to compartmentalize God.
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But if we take, you know, you take it on your phone, you can take a panoramic picture right? Then you can look at your phone, and you take all those pieces, and they're put together.
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Well, that's how God is put on display through the drama of redemption.
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He's put on all of his attributes.
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If, how would we know what God's grace look like if there was never a fault? We wouldn't.
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Now, was there grace? I know this is another subject that can lead to more questions, but was there grace on Adam in the garden? I'm sure when we get to that part in Genesis, of course there was.
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But God's grace being benevolent and providing Adam with everything necessary for him to honor and obey, trust and obey in the garden, that was a gracious act of God.
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Adam didn't ask to be created, did he? God did it.
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So, but once Adam fell, grace to a fallen creature looks vastly different than a grace to a creature that was not fallen.
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That's the disposition of God, is love.
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And gracious.
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Was God gracious before the fall? You better believe it.
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Nothing was deserved to be made.
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It come out of God's graciousness.
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But it looks different on the sinful side than before the fall.