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Our Father in Heaven, You are great, and You do great and wondrous things. I was just reflecting this morning upon the scripture You've given us, as the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so is the Lord round about His people.
Lord, we're grateful that You are our strength and shield. Lord, that since You are on our side, we will not fear. What can man do unto us? Lord, no one can stop Your hand. No one can cause Your plans to be thwarted.
And Lord, we are resting in You this morning. We are grateful to be called the people of God, and all the work that You've done for us in our behalf, on the cross of Christ, Lord, for the substitutionary sacrifice, that our sins being laid upon Christ Your Son, and that He paid the price which we owed, Him not owing anything at all, with a great love wherewith He hath loved us.
Christ died for His enemies. Christ died for the ungodly. Christ died for those who were wicked and fleeing from You. How grateful we are for Your care for us. How grateful we are that You have made us Your people, and that we are children of God through faith in Jesus Christ Your Son.
Please, Lord, this morning, as we look at Your Word, please open up our hearts, and may we be encouraged, may we be strengthened, may we be even warned this morning. For the glory of Christ we pray, and in His name.
Amen. This morning I would like to kind of continue on some of the studies Pastor Steve has been undergoing when it comes to theology, the study of God, Christology of Christ, soteriology, the study of salvation.
And this morning, in particular, one of the attributes of God that I would like to consider is the knowledge of God. And if you would please turn with me to Psalm 147. Psalm 147. Psalm 147, verse 1, I'm reading from the King James.
Praise the Lord, for it is good to sing praises unto our God, for it is pleasant and praise is comely. The Lord does build up Jerusalem. He gathers together the outcasts of Israel. He heals the broken in heart and binds up their wounds.
He tells the number of the stars. He calls them all by their names. That's not what I'm going to be looking at, but that certainly speaks something of the ability and the power and the knowledge of God.
But notice verse 5. Great is our Lord, and of great power His understanding is infinite. And when I look at this morning, when we consider this morning the knowledge of God, let me just ask you some questions.
How much does God know? How much does God know? Because what we're going to be looking at is we're going to look at this morning a false doctrine, one that you may have heard me touch on before, and there are new folks here, and I wanted to kind of give you the warning to watch out for this type of teaching.
And it's important for us to see what the Scriptures say about the Lord. But first, before I get there, I thought I would just ask you, what is it that God knows? Somebody? Bruce? God knows everything.
Everything. Everything. Okay, perfect knowledge of everything, knows everything in the past, knows everything in the future. And I will add to that, He knows everything in the present, and He knows it all at once.
Yes, did somebody else have a hand? Charlie? He has never learned anything. You and I learn things. God does not learn anything. Okay, so if we were to look at just that part, how much does God know? What word, and it's already been tipped off to us here in the reading, what word would we say about the knowledge, this attribute of God, the knowledge of God, a word beginning with the letter I?
Infinite. Infinite, okay. The knowledge of God is infinite. Now, I'm going to be looking at, and I'm going to try to pull from you two other words, three altogether. Words that begin with the letter I.
And let me see if I can fashion a question that would go along these lines. Have we ever made a mistake when it comes to recalling information? Have you ever done that? Okay. I mean, it doesn't really bother you when you just think you got it nailed, you know, right down, and you just put your foot down and say, I know I got it.
And then somebody comes and says, Dave, just let me show you this here. Not quite right. Our knowledge then is not infinite, of course. It's finite. But it's also, and if I thought of the opposite of our knowledge, what about the knowledge of God?
It is what? What do you think that word is? Well, immutable is not changing. Infallible is the word I was looking for. Yes, very good. If there were Sunday school candies to hand out, like with the kids or something, if they still do that, you would certainly get one.
Infallible. When it comes to the knowledge of God, he never makes a mistake. He knows, as Bruce says, all things at one, there is no time with the Lord, but God knows all things and he never makes a mistake when it comes to his knowledge.
And then the third question, let me try to put it this way. When it comes to us having knowledge, sometimes that knowledge that we get or what it is that we're going to do with what we come to find out, it has to do with other people.
There is a word that I'm looking for when it comes to God's knowledge. Steve. Independent. Independent. Yes, a candy for that man also. Independent. God's knowledge is independent of us, the creatures.
Steve. Am I sorry? Independent. All right. You can tell I'm three lines ahead. Independent. Independent. I used to do pretty good the spelling bees too in school, although it was scary to get up in front of the class and have to do that.
How am I doing? Okay? Doing okay there? Independent. God's knowledge is independent of his creatures. And at that point, I'm going to read you a statement about the false teaching that we're going to look at, the false theology from one of their writers, one of their proponents.
Listen to this statement. I know it's going to be a little bit of a tough one. It's a little deep. God's intentions are not absolute or invariant. He does not unilaterally or irrevocably decide what to do.
When God deliberates, he eventually takes a variety of things into account, including human attitudes and responses. Did you get that? When God deliberates about what he's going to do, he takes many things into account.
He looks around. He sees what's going on in the universe, and those things that he takes into account include human attitudes and responses, what we as creatures do. Once he formulates his plans, they are still open, and that's the key word, to revision.
God's plans are open to revision. That means they can change. And, of course, what I'm going to look at with you this morning is a study of a false teaching, of open theism or open theology. And in this teaching, open theists believe that much, if not all, of the future is open.
It's not set. It's not defined. It's not definite. It's not predetermined. And, of course, when we think about that, immediately we as believers, we as those who have read the scriptures, we have those who, you've got verses going through your mind, right?
Anybody shaking their head? Do you have any verses that speak to the fact that things are determined, that things are ordained? You think of the words foreordained or predetermined or predestined. We think of those words in the scriptures.
But these folks come to a place where they say that things are open. The future is open because it can be shaped by the choices of men, or men, women, and children, by the responses of the creature. So, really, what God knows is dependent upon, first, what we do first.
And you'll see this kind of unfold. Some of the proponents, well, let me give you some other names of this in case you're in your reading, or if you ever hear this, open theism, openness theology. You'll also hear it as presentism, relational theism, the risk model, or the fellowship model.
Those are some words that you might hear that would define this. And some of the proponents of this are Clark Pinnock. He's the leading spokesman, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger.
Now, what do they want to present, or what is it that they're doing? Well, open theists want to present, and really, I just boil it down to this, they want to present a user-friendly God. They want to present a God that we can understand.
They want to present a God that we can put in a box and kind of get a grasp upon. And, of course, the scriptures tell us that God's ways are above our ways, that his thoughts are above our thoughts. There is no wisdom, the proverb tells us.
There is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against the Lord. Paul, when he is writing in the book of Romans, and he's speaking of the great works of God, you'll remember at the end of chapter 11, what does he do?
He just kind of goes off in doxology, and he says, Oh, the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counselor, or who hath first given to him, that it shall not be recompensed unto him again.
For of him, and through him, and to him are all things. I mean, the depths of the riches, we can't fathom God's infinite knowledge. We just can't. And yet, these folks are trying to peg God down so they can understand him, in their own thinking, and in their own ways.
What else do they do? They try to explain away man's responsibility, of course, and what they are saying is, how can human beings be held accountable for their choices, if another being, or God, predetermines these choices?
How can they be responsible? Another way to put it is, I'll let you fill in, somebody fill in the blank. If God already determined everything, how can we be held responsible? It just wouldn't be fair.
And isn't that the drum that we hear beaten all the time? Whenever somebody tries to explain away God, and tries to justify their position, and the way that they want to live, one of the things that they do is they bring out this bogus argument of, that God would just not be fair if he did it that way.
And of course, Lewis, maybe, did you have your hand up? Okay, I saw out of the corner of my eye your hand go up, and I was going to say something, but I thought maybe I'll give Lewis an opportunity to say that.
The idea isn't that, I mean, since when, when we read the scriptures, does it say that God needs to be fair? He's just, and he's holy, and he's right. And really, that fairness comes in whose definition?
It's man's definition. It's what we think is fair, but it's outside of the thinking of scripture. Another thing that they're driven by, the folks that push this doctrine, is somehow, in some way, shape, or form, they want to explain away evil.
I mean, the thinking that they have is, and we'll see, I'll read some actual examples, but when it came to 9 -11, or the Holocaust, or any disaster, or any child abuse, or divorce, or death, or caused by drunk drivers, God did not plan that.
That wasn't actually God's will. It just happened, and then God had to respond to it. And their wording that they use when it comes to any evil, and I think if I get to that later, they will say that anything like that is just plain pointless.
I know that in one of the cases of one of these men, I can't remember who it was, if it was Sanders or Pinnock, and I think I have it in my notes here, one of them had a brother who died in a tragic car accident.
And rather than go to the scriptures and rest in the providence of God, and in the sure mercies of the Lord, and knowing that God does not make any mistakes, and that everything that God, our God is good, doesn't the scripture say that our God is good?
Rather than going there, somehow you've got to explain this thing away. And so what they say is, is that it was just pointless. What is wrong with that? Somebody tell me, what is wrong with that, as a believer?
When you say that what happens is absolutely pointless, there's no purpose behind it, what's wrong with that, Charlie? Certainly. If it's all pointless, then there is no plan, there is no sovereign God behind it.
And what does that do for us, as creatures living here below? What does it absolutely destroy? Any security. Yeah, as Lewis said, the props are pulled out from underneath you. I can remember in the tragic instances that, in the serious things that have come in our family, one of the most reassuring things about it all is, is that I go right back to the scriptures and see that God is good.
That God has ordained all things. That our God is a sovereign God. There is nothing, as Pastor Mike, I learned here, he said years ago, there are no rogue molecules in the universe. But in this type of teaching, God is not in control.
To them, here's a quote, things do not always turn out as God expected or desired. Did you hear that? Things do not always turn out as God expected or desired. Here's another thinking of this. God took a risk in allowing these types of events, these tragic events to take place.
God could have intervened and prevented these horrific things, but he values man's freedom over everything else. He values man's freedom. What's wrong with that statement right there? Yes, Mike. Well, that is true too because, well, let me see if I can find it in my notes here.
Open theists say that God the Father had no knowledge. See, they are saying that he is finite when it comes to knowledge. He doesn't have all knowledge. And they say God the Father had no knowledge that his son, Jesus Christ, would end up being crucified.
And at that particular moment, when God the Father looks down from heaven and sees his son hanging on the cross, John Sanders put it in language somewhat like this, oops, I guess we have to switch to plan B.
Because you see, to these open theists, God is completely surprised by any large number of events that happen in the world. God can be surprised because he doesn't know them, because it's open in the future.
He doesn't know what's going to take place. See, he needs to give you and me, every free agent, the opportunity to make choices. And free willism, of course, crams in here. And God needs to give us an opportunity because it wouldn't be fair.
And therefore, he needs to make sure that we can choose. And he waits for us to choose or to think or to act. And then he'll respond to what we do. And therefore, the future is open, open theism. And really, they don't see that they have portrayed God as a poor, impotent deity who is described by them as a finite God who had no way of knowing at the time that when Jesus was dying that if any one human being would accept his son as savior.
Steve? Right. Yeah. Another translation. That's right. Acts 2, the predetermined plan and the foreknowledge of God, Jesus was crucified by the wicked hands of men. And the other thing to see was when I made that statement, when I first read it, said that God values that the freedom of man, man's freedom over everything else.
There's a phrase in scripture that just rings to me. What is it that God values more than anything else? His glory, his namesake, the glory of his name. That's more important than the freedom and the choice of mankind.
Bruce? Well, here's what they do. In scripture, because we're finite and God is infinite, and God is communicating truth about himself to us, and for us to be able to understand and be able to get it, God in his wisdom incorporated or used language of accommodation, language to help us to be able to understand him.
Metaphor, so metaphorical words. And one of the ones that he uses, I know this is a big term, is anthropopathic words or phrases in the scriptures where you attribute feelings, you attribute these characteristics of man to God.
So what they do is they go in the scripture where it says that God relents or that God feels or that God comes to know or God changes his mind. What they'll do is they'll go to those verses and see the Bible says that God relents, that God does change, that God does feel, that God is surprised.
And an example would be in the Garden of Eden. If you'll remember, after Adam and Eve had sinned, God comes to, and this is not the best example, but God comes to Adam and he says, where are you? And what they say is because God is like us, he doesn't know everything, he doesn't know where Adam and Eve are, and therefore he has a finite knowledge.
Or you take the example like in Jonah, where Jonah goes and preaches and the people repent and it says that God changed his mind about what he was going to do. They say, see, God changes his mind. But what they don't do is they take the anthropopathic phrases in the scriptures like that where these characteristics or these feelings are attributed and their hermeneutic is literal.
When it goes to where we would look at that and we would say, well, it's not God changing because everything has been set before time. He doesn't change his mind. It's just that we're seeing through the wording that is used that God is unfolding his history before us in a way that it can make sense to us.
But God is immutable. God doesn't change. One decree, it's all set from before the foundation of the world. And when it comes to the hermeneutic that they have, they don't go all the way when it comes to the anthropomorphisms of God, where you attribute the human characteristics of hands, eyes, hearing to God.
They don't take those literally. They don't go all the way so their hermeneutic is messed up. And that's how they do it, Bruce. They chop and cut that way, Bruce. I mean, Louis. Yeah, that's right. You're doing a good job.
You ought to come up here and finish. But actually, yes, he did. Louis did bring out one of the verses too. Abraham sacrificed. God asked him to sacrifice his son on the mount. And he's raised the knife up to plunge it into his son's body.
And the angel of the Lord appears and says, stop. And the message comes to Abraham, now I know that you are, and I can't remember the exact phrasing of it, but I know that you will obey me or that you fear me.
And what it is, it's not that God at that point was like surprised and he came to that knowledge. God knew it before Abraham was ever born. And, again, it's a hermeneutic that is totally on its head and backwards, Mike.
Well, really, ultimately, yes, if you look at this type of teaching, what is it? Anytime you take the attributes of God and diminish them, you take away from the glory and you take away from the power and you take away of the knowledge of God.
You say that God does not know all things. What is that? Blasphemy, is it not? And if you believe in that type of God, that is what? Idolatry, because you've got a God of your imagination who is not the God of the Scriptures, and you're on shaky, sinking ground, like a movie watching God, like what's going to happen next?
Do they have a plan? Well, they would hold to, many of them would hold to repentance, faith, trusting in Christ, they hold to that. But this whole notion of God is so much of a mess. And your question was, what do they do?
How can you manipulate God? Well, what you do, ultimately, is your choices, your decisions, your actions will... God is dependent upon you. So when you, as a free moral agent, act and live, you can go about with the confidence that you know that you are controlling God, and God is responding to you.
And your prayers will actually change God's mind. That's what they will teach. So that's how you do it, through your actions and through your prayers, you are the one... And it's like the idea that we have here is that God has this...
He's like this football coach, and he's got it all laid out. You know, if... Well, here's an example. When it comes to the birth of Christ, if Mary had declined, and that would have been to assume her role to be, to bear in her body the Lord Jesus, if Mary had declined, then God would have sought some other avenues.
After all, this is a quote, after all, it is doubtful that there was only one maiden in all of Israel through whom God could work. God is resourceful in finding people and then equipping them with the elements necessary for accomplishing His purposes.
And we shake our heads, and we say, how could people come to this? Well, that's exactly why I wanted to teach the class this morning. If you hear this, if you see this, run from it. Don't embrace this.
This is heresy. This is blasphemy when it comes to who God is, because it's not that God could have had plan A, and He's very resourceful. He can act real quick, and He's got a great playbook. He is the universe coach.
And if Mary hadn't chosen, then there would have been some Martha or some Julie or somebody else who would have done that. If it just comes to any single thing, if it hadn't have gone that way, He can respond and He can react.
He's a great chess player. You ever see those times when chess players play? I don't even know how they can actually think that quickly, but they've got the plans. Steve mentioned this, Pastor Steve. So studied that when somebody moves, you ever see when they have that clock and they hit the clock?
Move a piece. They're just mechanically going through the things that they've studied, and God is better than that. I mean, He's got an infinite number of plans, and if plan B doesn't work, He's got C, D, E, and F.
And that flies in the face of our God who is in the heavens, and He does as He pleases. It flies in the face of so many scriptures. Let me just read, just for the sake of time, let me just read a couple of these that I have here.
If you're jotting down notes, you may want to take these. Psalm 147, which we read this morning, that God's understanding is infinite. In Psalm 44, 21, God knows the secrets of the heart. How about Isaiah 48, verses 3, 5, and 6?
Isaiah 48, 3, 5, and 6. I have declared the former things from the beginning, and they went forth out of my mouth. This is God speaking, and I showed them. I did them suddenly, and it came to pass. I, even from the beginning, declared it to you.
Before it came to pass, I showed it to you. I have showed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst not know them. How about Isaiah 42, verse 9? Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare.
Before they spring forth, I tell you of them. Steve brought out the verse in Acts, chapter 2, where it talks about according to the predetermined counsel of God, the plan of God. How about, when was Jesus Christ slain?
He was the lamb slain before the foundation of the world. God has a set plan. He knows exactly. Listen to this in 2 Timothy 1 .9. God has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which he just found out at the time when we believed in him.
No. God has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity. There it is. It's from all eternity, the decree of God.
It's set. God is immutable. It is not going to change. He knows exactly. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. And it has nothing to do, as I think Lewis may have brought it up earlier, the lot is cast in the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.
We think in one way, but, you know, no matter what, God's will is going to, I mean, they actually come to the place where they say that God's will does not get accomplished because he purposed to do it this way, plan A, but because we changed, because we didn't go the direction that he had kind of determined or thought we would go in, we went a different way.
He had to respond and react, and he does it very quickly, and he does it very well. Charlie. I think that's it. I think it's because we could not fully grasp a finite God. We can't understand. I mean, sometimes are you ever not just stopped in your tracks when you think that God knows all things at once and everything about my life and the whole future and even my future?
If you're a believer in Christ, how joyous it is to know that God came and saved you. Jesus Christ died for you. The Spirit of God regenerated you, and your sins are all forgiven, and you are in Christ, and no one can reverse that.
You are kept by the power of God through faith in Christ. You have everlasting life. You're safe and secure in the arms of Christ, and that can never be undone. But just the opposite is true for those of us that we know and love, our family, our friends, the people that we work with, that humanly speaking, as we can see, that there is no work of God in their lives.
They are graceless. They are hopeless. They are Christless. They're going to go off into a horrible damnation and condemnation because they've rejected Christ. And in your mind, you know God says, as Lewis brought out in Romans 9, that there are those that it's not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that shows mercy.
It's all in the hand of the Lord, and it's set, and it's determined ahead of time. And the response to that, and in your explanation, Charlie, you brought it out that kind of like in a Calvinistic Armenian type of contrast or the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man, but this goes way beyond that.
This is a deliberate attack upon the nature and the character of God. This is a taking away or a pulling away of the attributes of God. And when you take them away from God, where are they going to go in this type of thinking?
They go to man. God doesn't know everything, so he is finite in his knowledge, and he's dependent upon us when it comes to us. And it's pride. Or it is some tragic thing happened like in the lives of some of these men, and the only explanation they have is it couldn't be the way that the Bible says it, so I've got to think about a way that this is going to happen.
I've got to take the scriptures and make it say what I want it to say so that I can somehow deal with this horrific thing that happened to me rather than just bowing the knee and saying that God never makes a mistake, that he is always right, I can completely trust him, and he knows exactly everything that's going to happen in eternity past, present, and in eternity future.
He knows it all. Louis. Lucifer, I will ascend. He is. Yeah, haphazard, no purpose. And for the lost, that's true. And then for us, it bolsters our faith. It undergirds our hope. We have a God who is in complete control, knows the beginning from the end, and it's going to work out exactly the way that he planned, and it is beyond us.
I mean, that is a God that we fall before, and we worship, and we adore, and we are in awe of. I know for those of you that love Isaiah, do you remember when there is this in a tone God is saying to other prophets or people that tout to be prophetic and able?
What does he say to them? He's saying, bring forth your arguments, or show me what's going to happen in the future. Let's see you do it. And the reason why God can do that is because he knows all of that, but they can't, and they don't, and they're false prophets.
Here's one of their statements. Also, I didn't read this earlier. When it came in Bethlehem, the massacre of the babies, the killing of the babies at the time of Christ to try with Satan's attempt to rid the world of Christ, here's a quote.
The Bethlehem massacre was not the will of God and was not planned beforehand by God. Instead, it reveals that the will of God in its fullness may not be fulfilled in all situations. God is fallible. That is just heresy.
It's awful. It is so opposed to the God of Scripture. Lewis. Isaiah 41 .21. You tell us what's going to come. That's what God is saying to them so that we can know that you're God. And, of course, they're not going to be able to do it because there's only one who can do that, and that is the God of gods, the King of kings, the Lord of lords.
Also, let me make this statement. A scriptural proof, I was thinking about this this morning, a scriptural proof that God has decreed or set all future events and knows exactly what will take place is found when we study what in the Scriptures?
What is it? What is it that when we look in the Scriptures and we see things, I'll tip it a little bit, give you a little clue, Old Testament, when we look in there, what is it that we can study in there that tells us that God knows and has set and everything will come to pass according to as he has said?
Steve? Well, that's a good example, yes, of it. I'm thinking of a word that begins with a P, ends with a Y, has an R-O-P-H-E-C in the middle. Prophecy, right? Prophecy. When we see that God says and, I mean, they actually say, I wonder if I have that quote, but they actually say that there is no place in the Scriptures where it talks about, it predicts in the Scriptures the crucifixion of Christ.
There's no place where it says that. Oh, we got to go back in the Old Testament, we can see in Psalm 22, the description of the crucifixion. We see in Isaiah chapter 53, the prophecy in there. We see the set time of his birth, the place of his birth.
This wasn't something that God, well, where are Mary and Joseph? Where is that donkey going to go? I got to wait for the donkey to get where it's going to go, and then I have knowledge of where he's going to be born.
No, hundreds of years before, it says exactly where he's going to be born. Do you see the foolishness and the fallacy of this type of teaching? Yes, question or comment? True. In this teaching, I'm not saying that God is the author of sin.
No. No. Charlie? Well, so we can finish the class, that's a whole other class, and we can talk about it afterwards. Pradeep? He does. No argument there. Man is held accountable, yes, for his sin when he chooses to sin.
And God knew before the world ever was that sin would enter into the world. He knew that, but he was not the author of that sin. The total responsibility for that is on man's shoulders. Yes. Yes. Pradeep?
Beyond his knowledge. Is it important? Absolutely. And this is no trivial matter. It's a very major controversy because theology is the study of God, and it deals with the way that we know and understand God.
Eternal life is spoken of as knowing God, John 17 .3. In closing, we ought to know the God of the Scriptures. We need to know the God of the Scriptures. If our ideas about God are wrong, then everything we do in relation to God will be wrong.
What we believe about the nature, the attributes, the characteristics of God will affect the way we live our Christian lives and will influence our beliefs, our worship, our evangelism, prayer, interpretation of Scripture, teaching, preaching, and the handling of prophecy in our view of God.
Open theism is a blatant idolatry and willful violation of the first commandment where we are told, Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Interestingly, these three points that our God, when it comes to his knowledge, is infinite, infallible, and it's independent.
I think the statement actually goes like this in the London Baptist Confession of Faith, 1689. In God's sight, all things are open and manifest. His knowledge is infinite. It is infallible. It is independent upon the creature, so as nothing to him is contingent or uncertain.
When it comes to God, nothing is contingent. To us it is when it comes to our knowledge. And when it comes to us, things are uncertain to us until we find out more. But God knows all from the beginning until the end.
Steve, last comment? Let's pray. Father, your way is our past finding out. Sometimes when we consider things like this, we just have things go through our mind and it causes us just to stop in our tracks and to be still.
And we just declare that you are God, that your ways are above our ways, that your thoughts and, Lord, as the psalmist said, your footsteps are in the sea. And we just don't know all there is to know about you, and we're grateful for that because we can bow before you and we can worship you and we can give you praise and adoration and just be in awe and be quiet before you to know that you are God and there is none else like you.
As we continue through this day today, we ask that you would bring these things to our remembrance, that we would have prepared hearts for worship, that we would sing, that we would give, that we would listen, that we would minister in the name of Jesus Christ and for the glory of our great God and King.
We'll ask this for the glory of Christ and in his name. Amen.