07-19-2020

Park Meadows Church

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All right. Thank you, Dave. Yes, sir. Thank you, Ben, for helping out in the back and Bill, for our great

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Sunday school lesson today, and I thank myself for the beautiful special music.

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Actually, I did have to practice to learn how to just play that with software and make it work, but Ben helped me, so amazing song.

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Amazing song. Well, I want to pick it up here today where we left off last time, and we're going verse by verse through the book of Romans.

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I want to welcome all of our church family. It'll be nice someday to be back together.

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I think we made the right call not to be there physically though. As a matter of fact,

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I'm pretty sure the last two weeks I've actually had this virus in Charlotte too, and our family's been praying for us.

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I actually drove over to Waco to get a test, which I didn't want to do, didn't want to be any part of that.

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Sure enough, they did the test. They said, well, you get this back in six to eight days maybe, still don't have it back, so I'm practically well now.

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Does no good to get tested, I guess. But anyway, just profound tiredness.

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In fact, last Sunday when I preached, that was before I went and got the test, but I just felt weak the whole time, wondered if I was going to get through it.

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Then the Lord, once you start preaching, the Lord gives you this energy. It's amazing. I forgot about it, and then crashed that afternoon.

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But it's been interesting. I'll probably write something about my experience and put it out there, but there have been some of my students out in the

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New York area in particular that had a far worse case than me. I had the benign case, just profound tiredness and puffy, scratchy throat, and finally, the last two or three days, started getting some pains in my chest and itchy lungs and stuff.

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Then last night, that went away for the first time, and this morning I woke up. If I have a good day tomorrow,

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I'm going to proclaim today as my first day of being over it. Thanks for my family's prayers.

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I didn't tell any of you guys about it because for one thing, I wasn't sure that's what it is, and I'm still not really, but I hope it is what it is because I felt so bad.

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I don't want it to be something else, right? But I've got a lot of thoughts about this virus.

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I've got 15 pages written on it already. I'm going to probably have 30 or 40 pages written on it.

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By the time I put something out, folks to read, it'll just be my viewpoint, but a lot of my family won't even agree with me probably, but that's all right, just my viewpoint.

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But I've done a lot of studies and research on this thing, and we may even have a trade way meeting with myself,

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Myron Golden, and my doctor in Dallas, Dr. McWhorter, who has written a paper on what to do if you catch it, and I followed his guidelines, and Brother Myron's, Myron Golden, my great businessman preacher friend, also studied nutrition and is quite authoritative on that.

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So he thinks he had the coronavirus, the new coronavirus back maybe a couple of months ago after he got home from a trip to Israel.

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And so I just took exactly the same stuff he took, and so we're going to make that available to everybody.

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I'll tell you my opinion, and I'll back it up with research, but I don't believe that they got it right on how it works.

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I think it's more like a common cold, and it just, it's in the air. If you're in a room with people that have it, a mask isn't going to work because the size of the pores and the mask is about the size of a tennis racket.

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Picture the little holes in the tennis racket compared to maybe the head of a pin would be the size of the virus.

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It just goes right through it. And I know it can stop some of the droplets, but I'm not convinced it's carried in the droplets.

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I think it's, I mean, I know it is, but I think it's also just so fine that if someone is in the room with you breathing,

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I think it's going to be in that room. So it's much easier to catch than they told us that it was.

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And then they got us all wearing masks, which I don't think help at all. Maybe they help a little, but certainly shouldn't infringe on our freedom and force us to wear them is ridiculous.

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That's just my opinion. Not everyone agrees with me. And even in my own family, they won't all agree with me and that's fine.

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But the thing is, I'm reading more and more about one of the greatest things you can do is lose weight and start a healthy diet and stay fit and take a lot of great nutrients, especially vitamin

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D, vitamin C, and a lot of other stuff we can tell you about.

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But it's working for me and my wife and I'm feeling so much better today.

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So I hope maybe the information will be a help to everyone because I think by the time we get into fall and winter, a lot of you guys listening will have had this.

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And so get ready for it, get fit. And Katie, my daughter and I were talking about how the

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Lord brought us to a marketing convention for our company. But this woman spoke who was a weight loss expert and she wrote a book called

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Code Red. And we liked her so much, Katie decided to do her plan.

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And since Katie was doing it, I decided to do it. Katie lost 55 something pounds. I lost 45 pounds in just a few months.

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And all of that happened right before this thing hit and got us ready for it. We were just talking about how the Lord's sovereignty is so amazing and how he works that way.

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So maybe this information will be a benefit to the rest of you. So I better get to preaching, hadn't I? Well, it's interesting because the sermon that we find ourselves in in the middle of Romans 8, we've been going verse by verse through Romans 8.

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We find ourselves in verses 29 through 39 and it's on the sovereignty of God.

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How about that? Well, in the last episode or so, we've asked the question about this ancient doctrine of predestination, is it

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Calvinism? And I think if you've been with us, the answer clearly is no, that's not what it is that we're talking about.

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And all of these sermons are archived. If you go to parkmeadowschurch .com, you have to add the word church at the end or else you'll get

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Park Meadows and Waxhatchee won't have my sermons. So it's parkmeadowschurch .com.

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All of these messages are archived there for you. But I'll review just a little bit.

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And we're in this beautiful passage here where it says, for whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

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We have this word predestinate, this concept, this doctrine of predestination.

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One of the most marvelous places in the Bible that it's talked about is here in Romans 8, but it's once you see that it's true, that God is sovereign to the extent of more detail than you can ever imagine.

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In fact, every detail, then all of a sudden you'll find it on every page of the scriptures once your eyes are open to it.

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And I don't care anymore about winning an argument or converting you to my belief on anything.

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All I wanna do is get you to study. If I can do that, then I win. You win, the Lord wins, right?

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That's, we need to be in the word. And so that is my goal today.

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Now, in answering just a little bit of review and answering rather this great idea of predestination and election and so forth is

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Calvinism. Well, if you go back to St. Augustine, who is the

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Bishop of Hippo from 396 to 430, he taught irresistible grace, the depravity of man.

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He taught that we're saved by the free grace of God, and it's a free gift, and by the calling and regeneration of the

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Holy Spirit, and that's what caused salvation. Everything else was in effect. St. Augustine taught that, and he taught eternal security and taught all of that 1 ,155 years before John Calvin was ever born.

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So this is not Calvinism. In fact, sometimes when people ask me if I'm a Calvinist, I'll tell them, no, I'm an Augustinian, and they have no clue what

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I mean by that. I do it just to see their face when I say it. But if you go back before Augustine, Tertullian, around 200

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AD, which is 1 ,300 years before John Calvin taught the same doctrines, and if you go back before him all the way back to 88

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AD, St. Clement of Rome, who actually heard the apostles preach, that's how far back this man goes.

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He taught the same doctrines 1 ,408 years before John Calvin was born, and then you go back to the apostle

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Paul, who lived from 5 to 64 AD. He taught the same doctrines. You see it right there.

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This is Paul's teaching for whom he did foreknow them. He also did predestinate 1 ,474 years before John Calvin was born, and then you go back before Paul, you get to Jesus Christ to around 32

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AD, 1 ,477 years before John Calvin said this, and this is my father's will, which hath sent me that of all which he hath given me,

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I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. No man can come to me except the father which hath sent him, draw him, and I will raise him up the last day.

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So it's Christianity, ladies and gentlemen, and this is some of the things we've already talked. Now, I'd have people all through my life ask me, we don't necessarily have the word

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Baptist on our sign anymore, because we're more like Spurgeon was 150 -something years ago.

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We're not so much like modern Baptists, so we took that off. It's Park Meadows Church now, but I grew up Baptist, and I've had people say, well, you're not

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Baptistic, Brother David, if you're a Calvinist, and so last time, I believe it was, maybe time before last, and you can go back, check the archives, and watch that one if you didn't see it, but I talked about over 17 of the greatest

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Baptist preachers, founders of seminaries, founders of the greatest mission boards in the world, the missions in India, the first missions in India and China and so forth, were

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Baptist preachers who were Calvinistic, all right? So that's not true to say it's not

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Baptistic, all right? And this includes the prince of preachers, Charles Spurgeon, who was a particular

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Baptist, which if you study the history of that, it means that he believed that Jesus died only for the elect, not for every human, and I believe that as well.

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It makes no logical sense to say on the one hand that only his blood saves us, and then on the other hand, and that we're not saved by works, and on the other hand, say that he died for everyone, because if both are true, then everyone will be in heaven, and Jesus said that's not the case.

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So he died for his own is the best biblical way to say it, and we'll see scripture about that later today,

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Lord willing, if we get to it, but he preached to over 10 million people in the 1800s.

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Now to do that, you know he had to preach about 10 times a week, because he only lived to be 50 something, and here's one of the things he said about the doctrine of predestination election.

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He said, whatever may be said about the doctrine of election, it is written in the word of God as with an iron pin.

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There is no getting rid of it. There it stands. All right, he also said this, that doctrine, which is called

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Calvinism, did not spring from Calvin. Well, another preacher named

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David Mitchell said that too, right, two Sundays ago, but long before I lived on this earth,

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Charles Spurgeon said it did not spring from Calvin. We believe that it sprang from the greatest, from the great founder of all truth, that would be

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God, by the way. So then we talked about this topic, that the

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Bible does not teach that predestination is according to foreknowledge, and we went into great detail on how, why it doesn't teach that, even though there's one verse that sounds like it says that.

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It's not important what the Bible says, it's important what the Bible means, and if you want to go back and check that in the archives,

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I think you'd find that an interesting lesson. It's 1 Peter 1, 1 through 2 is the verse that's commonly used.

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Yeah, loosed. People that don't want to believe God is in control, they love to try to use this verse to teach that, well,

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God didn't predetermine anything, he just knew everything. Makes no sense. It's like the great

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Spurgeon said, he said, you know, those people who believe that God just looked out in the future, and he saw who would be good, and who would believe, and he chose them, he said that's ridiculous, because when

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God did look out into the future, what God saw was God's grace being put on that person, and regenerating that person, and changing the person so that the person could respond by being a

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Christian, and believing, and all that. So, Spurgeon had it down, and 95 % of the

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Baptists in the 16, 17, I should say 17 and 1800s, believed that way.

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Only 5 % didn't. Now that's switched. I wonder why. Maybe it's because Jesus said in the end times, we'll have many false teachers, right?

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That's what I think. So, I don't know. I always loved the story of when we first had the

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Davises moved to our church, and Paul runs our school, and Glenda plays the piano.

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Sometimes on here, you've heard her, she's just unbelievable. I get to listen to her before I preach every Sunday, and she's such a godly woman, but I remember they came to us from an independent

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Baptist background, and they're Armenians. They don't believe these things, and so I told them when they came, here are some things a little different than what you're used to, and Brother Paul just said, look,

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David, all we care about is the truth. As long as you preach Bible, we're in, something like that, and I remember one time, maybe a few weeks into them being in Corsicana, I preached a sermon.

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It had some of this, and it wasn't preaching on this, but it had some of this in the sermon, and Glenda comes down at the front, says,

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Brother David, very meekly, she says, Brother David, I don't disagree with you at all. I'm just confused, and I said, well,

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Glenda, I just went verse by verse through this passage. I believe it was in Ephesians chapter one, verse by verse through it, just read it.

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I didn't preach doctrine, or I just read the scripture. I said, what was confusing in that passage?

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She said, nothing, and I said, so why are you confused? And she said, I don't know, and I said, could

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I take a guess at it? And she said, yes, and I said, could it be that you've heard so much wrong preaching in your life that when you hear the truth in scripture, it confuses you?

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She said, that's it, and she walked away, and she's been growing and flourishing because she's in the word, and so I do think that's it, and I think, you know, once you see these, there's so many, there are people that have moved to Corsica, to go to church with us, because they learn these things at a tradeway stock market meeting, as they heard me just mention some things they'd never heard in their church, and it changed their lives, the scriptures on this doctrine, predestination changed their lives, and some have said, for the first time, the whole

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Bible fits together, whereas I used to have parts I had to just leave out, it's amazing, it'll change your life once you see it, because the only alternative of having

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God in control is having man in control, and that doesn't work, but every great denomination goes through that cycle, all of them, the first to do it was the

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Roman church, the church Paul wrote the book of Romans to, which is one of the strongest churches in the world, by 350

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AD had already turned the corner and was Arminian, and believed that man had a part in his own salvation, and it's downhill from there, but the

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Baptists are going through it now, every great group has gone through it, and what God does is he just pulls a remnant of believers out of those institutions, because once Jesus removes the candlestick, it's just an institution with people in it, it's not a church with God's presence in it anymore, and so the believers will leave and start another small little insignificant church somewhere and teach the truth again,

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God's been doing that for 2000 years, the Catholics don't understand it, they complain and say, well, the

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Protestants can't be real because they're so splintered, and what they don't understand is they were the first church to splinter, the

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Roman Catholic church was the first church to splinter, they don't all agree with each other now, half of them don't like the new

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Pope at all if they tell you the truth about it, I have many friends that are Roman Catholics and friends that are believers, who are

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Roman Catholics and we talk all the time about these things, and so the thing is,

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God has been bringing remnants out of every church for 2000 years, once the candlestick is removed from the church,

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Martin Luther, all he did was notice that it happened to the Catholic church at large in his day, candlestick was removed, so he left, he didn't wanna leave, he wanted to bring the doctrines of Augustine back and they wouldn't do it, so he had to leave, well, anyway, enough for church history, right?

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So, why is it important? Last time we talked about these reasons why it's so important to understand this doctrine of predestination, number one, because it shows us how special we are, how

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God knew us by name before the foundation of the world, before he made anything, he knew you were his and that he would save you and that you were gonna be called by his

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Holy Spirit and saved because you were always his, now, how special is that?

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It makes you an individual, special as an individual, not as a group, as an individual.

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One thing, if you wanna call it Calvinism, one thing Calvinism is known for is that God looks at the individual and it focuses on the individual, not on groups and I'm gonna talk about that maybe in a minute if we have time too, but it shows that you have a powerful individual purpose, number two, because we are in a position of God being for us and if God's for us, who can be against us?

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And we looked at the scripture on all these, by the way, so check the archives in the last couple of Sundays. Number three, because we own everything.

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If he would give us his own son, what would he withhold from us? So we own everything. Number four, because we're made righteous in the father's eyes, we're without condemnation, we have an intercessor,

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Jesus Christ, in real time and can't get better than that.

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So we have positional righteousness because of what Jesus did for us on the cross and what he gave us the moment he saved us.

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He gave us his righteousness and his faith and we have him interceding for us when we do get in the flesh.

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He intercedes and says, they're saved. Doesn't, all of that stands on the doctrine of predestination.

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Without that, if you remove that, you remove eternal security. People don't know that because they don't think logically anymore. So we have a whole bunch of Baptists nowadays that wanna believe once saved, always saved, but no, no, no,

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God, I don't believe in predestination. Well, you can't have it both ways. If you don't believe in predestination, like your

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Church of Christ friends don't believe in that or your Catholic friends, your Methodist friends, your Pentecostal friends, some of them, they don't believe in eternal security, but they also, you will find, do not believe in election and predestination because without it, they're more logical.

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They understand without that, you could lose your salvation. So they're more logical than Baptists who don't believe these great doctrines that we're talking about today.

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So I have a little tolerance and not much time for Baptist brethren who don't see these things and won't even look at the

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Scriptures about them. I just don't have time for that much anymore. Fifth, because we are secure and positionally innocent, eternally secure, positionally we're innocent before the

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Father because of this great doctrine and because we are more than conquerors.

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To be a conqueror means to be successful. That has business applications over on the tradeway side.

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Oh, and I forgot to welcome all of our tradeway friends, by the way, but we're counting you as family already because I'm starting to see the group that's showing up every time.

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You're just part of the family. All right, so in Romans 8, 37, it says, "'Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors "'through him that loved us.'"

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We're more than successful. Just know that. I mean, if you understand positionally that you're a successful person, you're a conqueror over everything the

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Lord wants you to conquer, man, then in real life, experientially, you become that way. And then number seven, "'Because you are loved by the author of the universe, "'you are therefore powerful in this world "'and will be used mightily by God.'"

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So there are seven reasons why this old ancient doctrine is so powerful and so important.

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Now, that verse, those verses 38 and 39 prove point number seven.

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I mean, when you look at that, I'm persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, or things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God.

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Well, can you think of anything left out from that group of nouns? It includes everything that exists.

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None of those things can separate us from the love of God, which shows that we are special. We have a purpose given to us by Almighty God before the world began.

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It's immensely and enormously important to understand and believe these great doctrines.

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In all of one's life, in your business world, everything, if you understand

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God is in control and has a purpose for you that's preordained, and that you just need to prove

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His perfect will in your life by taking steps, studying the scriptures, walking in prayer, walking with Him and taking a step, having the entrepreneurial spirit, being willing to take some risk.

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All of that is in scripture and has to do with this great doctrine. The entire foundation of the

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Western economic and military might and everything that we have in the West, including the freedom that we have, is built on what's called the

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Protestant ethic, which came from John Calvin, and it used to be taught in the business schools in the 70s when

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I went to school. We had a whole week on the Protestant ethic and how the entire economy of the

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West was built on it and included individualism, not collectivism, not working in a group.

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And now in our public schools, we put all the kids in a group to do the homework. That is so bad, that is so bad because the brightest, hardest worker will do all the work and everyone else will get the

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A, right? That's just so bad. Anti -scripture, it goes totally against the Calvinistic Protestant ethic, and that's why our country is doomed to be mediocre at best and destroyed one day at worst, at worst, all right, in the worst,

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I should say. So it also, the Protestant ethic included hard work, strong moral center.

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In other words, you have to have core beliefs that you stand by and that nothing changes that.

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Honesty, integrity, and capitalism is taught throughout scripture. All of that's important too in this study.

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Now, that brings us to where we are now. We want, you know, once you see this great doctrine of the sovereignty of God, you see it on every page of the

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Bible. And so I want to take us through some other portions of scripture this morning, and we will come back to our passage in Romans 8 because the next verse where it talks, it takes it all the way from before time began, what we would call eternity passed, which is a funny word if you think about it because passed is a time word, but there's no time there.

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But anyway, you go back to eternity before anything started, before anything existed, before God spoke the worlds into existence.

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And there you see God knowing who were his children and predestinating who would become his children.

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And it didn't happen in sequence. Check out the archive and listen to the past sermons, last two, three

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Sundays, you'll see that it does not happen in sequence, it just is. It's in the aorist in Greek, it's without regard to time, it just is.

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He knew and predestinated who his children would be. Talked about that last time, but as you look into that in the passage in Romans, in Romans chapter eight, it gives the sequence.

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It says whom he foreknew, he also predestinated, and yet it's not in time sequence, it's just an academic sequence.

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We can study it this way, but it all happened at once. So you have the foreknowledge and the predestination before Genesis 1, 1, and then time begins, and then our lifetime comes.

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We're born into this world in our generation, and you have the calling of the Holy Spirit.

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And it says those who he foreknew, he also predestinated, who he predestinated, he called. That's when the

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Holy Spirit wakes you up, opens your eyes, your ears, your mind, your will.

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He causes you to look at Christ as your shepherd for the first time, and he regenerates you before you did anything, and that is the great cause of salvation.

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While we were yet in our sins, he quickened us. Everything else is an effect, and as the great

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Charles Spurgeon said, an effect can never be the cause of the cause, so you're not saved by that stuff.

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You're saved by the work of the Holy Spirit and the finished work of Christ and the application of the blood of Jesus at that moment when the

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Holy Spirit calls you. So who he called, it says he also justified, because at the moment he applied the blood of Christ to your life, it had already been applied to the throne by Jesus himself, and in time on your spiritual birthday, when he called you, that's called the effectual calling, he sprinkled you with that blood, and you were regenerated.

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You were justified, means made just as if you had never sinned in the Father's eyes, and those who he justified, those he glorified, and it's past tense.

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The Father sees you as perfect already. We're going to get to that, but before we do that,

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I want to take a little trip out through Scripture. This great doctrine of the sovereignty of God. Let's look at a few points here.

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Look at Isaiah 46 and verse 10. All right,

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Isaiah 46, 10 says, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times, the things that are not yet done, saying my counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure,

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God says. All right, now I'm going to give you some points over here on the left side, and I made those so little,

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I do need the glasses. All right, as we see points in this passage,

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I'm going to put them over on the left side so you can start to see the points that God put. It's like my friend, Dr. Myron Golden said, you don't need poems and you don't need songs.

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You don't need all this in your sermons. He said, the sermon is in the Bible. It's already right there. All the points are there, so true.

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So the first point I see is God's omniscience, which means he knows everything and he's eternal.

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It says he declares the end from the beginning. That's foreknowledge. It's also omniscience.

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So foreknowledge, like Brother Otis taught me, it's really a human term. God doesn't need that because he's omniscient.

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He doesn't need, he's not in sequence. He's the eternal now. But for us to even think and talk about it, he gave us the word foreknowledge because to us, that's what it would look like.

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And so think about that a little bit. That's what Brother Otis taught about foreknowledge, and I think he's right.

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But he's in heaven now, so he knows if he was right or not. But God declared the end from before the beginning, actually.

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So that's omniscience and foreknowledge. And from the ancient of times, the things that weren't yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand and I will do my good pleasure.

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That part of the verse is called the complete absolute sovereignty of God.

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Everything that God has already predestined and seen to happen, and by the way, he doesn't have 15 plans and he picked the best one because when you're perfect, you have one plan because it's perfect.

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Everything that he has already foreseen and spun into action when he predestinated, foreordained it before time began even, every bit of that will stand.

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It will happen. My counsel will stand. The counsel of God happened before the foundation of the world.

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The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit met together and that counsel of wisdom predetermined, predetermined, predestinated, foreordained everything that would happen.

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Exactly God's plan. And it's a perfect plan and we're in it. And yes, it includes evil and good, joy and sadness.

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And yet it's the only plan and it's the good plan. It's the best plan. And God sees the whole picture and we don't.

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Sometimes we argue with God a little bit about those things, but we won't someday when we see the bigger picture.

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God is pleased with his will. And it is his, his will is the same as saying his pleasure.

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What he wants to do is what he does. My counsel will stand and I will do all my pleasure. The sovereignty of God could be founded on that verse if we didn't have other scripture, but we have so much other scripture.

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Look at this in Psalm 115, verse one. Not unto us,

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O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory. See, see, it's not

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Arminianism. It's not about what man can do. It's not about the role that we play in our own salvation, which by the way is to simply respond to it.

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We don't do anything to get it. We can't cause it. All we have is effects. The Holy Spirit caused it because the father and the son preordained it and said, go do that.

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Go tap that person on the shoulder and wake them up because they are mine and I've always known them. And of them,

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I shall lose nothing. Jesus said, go now and wake them up. And he did. And that's how you got saved.

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And if you're not saved yet, I don't want these things to bother you because you say, well, what do

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I have to do with it? Well, the answer is nothing other than responding to it. But I can tell you this, if you have any thoughts of concern about your soul or you think about heaven and your sin bothers you when you do it, that's a good sign because goats don't have those, only lost sheep.

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That means the Holy Spirit is on his way to your house. And when he arrives, just respond like a bride would to the groom.

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Just say, yes, I do. That's it. All right, so it's not about us.

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I wish every church group could learn this. They wouldn't have to die like every great denomination has died.

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They wouldn't have to die if they would remember it's not us, Lord, not unto us, but unto your name, give the glory for thy mercy and for thy truth's sake.

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Wherefore should the heathen say, where is now their God, right? But our

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God is in the heavens. He has done whatever he pleased.

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That's the sovereignty of God. God does what God pleases. He does not do what man wants him to do.

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He doesn't do what man concocts or schemes or thinks he can control. And you know who the first Arminian was?

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Satan, his name was Lucifer, the son of the morning. He was the archangel of heaven.

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He was created with musical instruments in his hands and they happened to be a guitar, a drum and an organ or a pipe.

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We know that doesn't mean music's bad. It just means he's an expert at it, right?

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But I mean, he was an angel. And so, and yet he fell, did he not?

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And you know why he fell? Because he thought he could change God's plan. He thought he could play a part in it, a big role and have an important part and just make it turn out different.

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And that's an Arminian. Don't be that. You want to believe that God is in control of everything.

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Don't call yourselves a Calvinist. It'll turn your friends off. Call yourselves Augustinians. That'll do the trick.

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Or how about Paulines? Or how about Christians? All right, now the next verse.

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Here's what God does. He calls a ravenous bird from the East. The man that executes my counsel comes from a far country.

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God has called pagan nations to come in and destroy Israel because of their disobedience and disperse them into different parts of the world when

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God needed to do that for their own good. And those heathen nations that didn't even know him did exactly what

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God led them to do because they serve God too. Brother Otis taught me that great truth. He said, Brother David, all people serve

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God. The lost people just don't know it and they wouldn't like it if you told them, but they're here and God put them here to put everything on the shelf that God's children need.

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So every thing, every person, every tree, every bird, every animal serves the

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Lord and works according to his sovereign will and his movement in this world. So here he'll bring a bird to feed a hungry prophet that's happened in the scripture, hasn't it?

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He'll bring a man from a foreign country to execute God's will even on his own people, if necessarily, could that happen to America?

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I think it will happen to America. Yay, why does it happen though? Because God says,

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I spoke it, that's why. I spoke it and I will also bring it to pass.

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It doesn't sound like he says it might happen. It's not left to chance, it happens.

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I will bring it to pass, why? Because I purposed it. I will also do it. So before the foundation of the world, before time again, he purposed it, he foreknew it, he predestinated and foreordained it, and then in time,

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God will bring it to pass. It's all about God, ladies and gentlemen. You say, well, Brother Dave, does that mean we don't have any responsibility?

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No, we have every responsibility the scripture gives us and God holds us responsible for it. Let me just throw this in here.

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One time, Brother Otis asked me a question. He said, Brother David, did

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Adam have to eat the fruit? Well, I had known Brother Otis for a while by the time he asked me that question.

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So I kind of knew where he was headed with it, but I already had my answer anyway, because I understood sovereignty of God before I met

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Brother Otis. God taught me that the first month of my salvation at the age of 24, studying the

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Unger's Bible Dictionary. And the scriptures that it pointed out,

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I said, well, that's what I am. I'm more Calvinistic. I'm not an Arminian. So I've always leaned that direction.

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But so I knew what he was getting at. And I said, he said, did Adam really have a, truly have a choice whether to eat the fruit or not?

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And I thought a minute and I said, no, Brother Otis, he really didn't. In reality, he didn't have a choice. And he said, what do you mean,

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Brother David? And I said, well, you had saber -toothed tigers in the garden, you had flies, you had mosquitoes, you had

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Texas buzzards in there. Why would they be there if God didn't understand man was gonna fall and there would be death and suffering and all that.

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So he really didn't have a choice. He was gonna eat the fruit. And to my joy,

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Brother Otis says, well answered, Brother David. And he said, but I have another question.

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Did God tell Adam that he would eat the fruit? And I said, well, no, Brother Otis.

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In fact, he told Adam, don't eat the fruit because the day you do, you will die.

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He said, don't eat the fruit. The day you eat it, you will die. And Brother Otis said, so Brother David.

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What actually happened was Adam did exactly what he wanted to do and God held him responsible for it.

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And you know, that whole discussion took about a minute and a half. And I don't know how many theology books

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I've read since the age of 24, over 40 something years of my life, seeking the answers for how does the sovereignty of God and the will of man fit together.

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And every time they get close to answering it, they say, but that's as far as we can go. We don't understand the rest.

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Only God knows. And they go to another topic. Frustrated me my whole life. And Brother Otis Fisher in one and a half minute gave the most beautiful answer and the only answer

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I need the rest of my life. I won't seek answers from other theologians anymore. He said it so beautifully.

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Look, everywhere you see a sovereignty of God passage, you're going to see a responsibility of man verse right with it.

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It may be the very next verse or even in the same sentence. So they're both true. And he answered it so beautifully that God's plan was for them to fall.

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It did not surprise God when they fell, God, because Jesus was slain before the foundation of the world.

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It was all God's plan for them to fall. So they were going to eat the fruit, but did they have a choice?

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Absolutely. And they chose and guess what? They did what they wanted to do. And Brother Otis taught me, we always do what we want to do.

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And God holds us responsible for it. Like he did Adam and Eve and all of us. And I said, well, Brother Otis, I don't think that's quite true.

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And he said, why? I said, because I grew up on a big ranch and my dad used to make me rake the leaves.

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And there was a lot of acreage and I hated raking the leaves. I didn't do that because I wanted to.

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And he said, Brother David. He said, I know your dad. He said, did you want the whooping you were going to get if you didn't rake the leaves?

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And I said, no. And he said, then you wanted to rake the leaves. I said, okay, you got me there. Well, anyway, it does all fit together.

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But the point is the world talks and the church, modern church talks way too much about man's part, man's responsibility.

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Yes, it's true. It's important. Our decisions are of the ultimate importance in our own lives, especially our young people.

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They make the life -changing decisions when they're in their teens. Extremely important, but we never are sovereign.

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God is sovereign. God is the one who purposes all things and brings them to pass.

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Yes, I've spoken it. I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it before time began and in time

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I will do it. So we have to understand that. And it's like brother Otis said, I believe in responsibility of man,

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David, but the older I get, the more interested I am in God. So would you mind if I teach from God's viewpoint? I said, fine, brother

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Otis. And he did for 13 years, most wonderful years of the history of our church when he was teaching our adult class.

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And now brother Bill teaches and boy, he came to us because of brother Otis. He and his whole family came to us.

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The Nichols are such wonderful people. And they had been studying with him when brother

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Otis came, they came to our church. And so they'll testify that from that time until today, we've had nothing but peace and unity and joy in our church.

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And what a great gift. All right, so we see here now that God is omniscient. He's eternal.

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He is completely sovereign. And then it speaks of his predetermined counsel and how it will always come to pass.

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And that's just two verses, right? So let's go to a New Testament verse. How about 2 Timothy 1 .9?

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Talking about Jesus Christ who has saved us and called us with a holy calling.

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That's the effectual calling I talked about earlier. The Holy Spirit has to come and save us.

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We cannot save ourselves. We don't have a desire to be saved. The Bible says none seeks the Lord, not one. We've all gone after our own way.

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So the Holy Spirit has to come and wake us up. So he saved us and he called us with a holy calling, not according to our works.

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So anything that you think you did, people used to ask, what do I have to do to get saved? We'd give them an answer.

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And that's a trick question. You say, well, you gotta repent. The Bible says the Lord brings repentance.

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You say, well, you gotta believe. The Bible says God, the Holy Spirit, gives us the gift of Jesus Christ's faith. It's his faith.

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So we didn't do that. He gave it to us and then we responded. So you say, well, we gotta do good works,

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Church of Christ. You gotta get baptized. All these other things they had. You know what I have found? The only thing that divides the church today is that they take different effects and try to make them be the cause of salvation.

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If everyone would understand that the Holy Spirit calling us was the cause, he regenerated us, that's born again.

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He borned us again, right? He rebirthed us, opened our eyes, ears, we came alive. And then of course we could do these things, but they were all effects.

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Those are things that born again people do. They don't save us. You can't ever have the effect cause the cause.

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You see? Think about that. It'll change your whole viewpoint of everything you ever heard about the Bible or God and how the plan of salvation works.

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So look, he called us with a holy calling, not according to any of the stuff we do. And don't think for a minute what you think in your mind is not a work because it takes energy.

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If you didn't eat food, you couldn't think. It's a work. So human belief is a work. Jesus said it was a work.

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They asked him, what works must we do to be saved? And he said, do this, believe on him whom he hath sent.

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So belief is how you get saved, but he grouped it in there with works.

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Well, how do we believe? It is a response to the faith of Christ that the Holy Spirit gives us as one of the 33 things he gives us at the point of salvation.

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But anyway, that's another lesson. But according to his own purpose is how he saved us, not by the works we've done, but according to his own purpose.

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That is predestination, by the way, predetermination for ordination, for knowledge, all of it wrapped into that one word.

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He saved us according to his own purpose and grace, undeserved favor, which means there's nothing we could do to earn it.

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It's undeserved. And yet people are so confused daily. They say, well, you have to repent. Well, then you would deserve it if you repented.

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Well, you got to believe. Well, then you earned it by being a believer. God looked out in time and saw you believing, so he chose you.

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No, that's backwards. You believed because he had already awakened you. You believed because he'd already saved you.

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He'd already regenerated you. Then you believed as a response, right? I mean,

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I know that'll make most of us study because it's not what you were taught growing up. Wasn't what I was taught either growing up as a

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Baptist. And the Baptist back in the 70s had it closer than most people.

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Presbyterians did a pretty good job of their theology too. But we see scripture does the best job, doesn't it?

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We're not saved by what we do. We're saved by God's purpose and by his grace. Look at this. Which was given to us in Christ Jesus when?

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Before the world began. So if this is true, and it happened before anything was created, how did you cause it?

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How did you have anything to do with it other than receiving it as a free gift? Like a, kind of like being born physically.

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Some other great man said it was similar to that. Oh, that was Jesus. He said, be born again to Nicodemus. Nicodemus couldn't figure it out because he was a religious leader.

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They believe you're saved by works, by stuff you do. Jesus said, no, it's like being born. Well, what does the baby have to do with his own birth?

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Nothing. That was Jesus's point, nothing. The parents do all the work and have the love and all that's done before the baby even gets here.

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When the baby is born, of course he thinks it's all about himself and he's part of the family and he gets all the benefits of it, but he didn't cause it.

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He just responds to it. And that's exactly how salvation works.

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So here we see that salvation is by his predetermined counsel from before the beginning of the world, right?

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All right. Now in Ephesians chapter one of all places, look at this.

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According as he has chosen us in Christ. So the first he is the father.

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He chose us in Christ, him, before the foundation of the world.

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So I ask you again, if you were chosen to be saved, chosen to be part of the family of God, chosen to be adopted into his family before he created anything, what role did you have in it as far as cause?

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None. You didn't cause it. You can't cause your children to be saved. I find that a lot of women have trouble with the sovereignty of God for this reason.

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They're thinking about their babies and they sit there and they think, well, boy, you mean I don't have,

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I can't make sure that all my kids get saved. You're not the cause of their salvation, but think about it.

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Ladies, if you were, you would have to live a perfect godly life, your whole life and never mess up and live that in front of them perfectly, even after they were adults, and then you still couldn't ensure they would get saved.

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So wouldn't it be better to leave that in a loving, all -knowing, omnipotent God's hands?

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Once you grasp that, you'll gladly turn it over to the Lord. According as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, but I will say this, if you're concerned about that, wouldn't it be logical for God if he's also predestinated the means of salvation, which is to hear and understand the gospel, to put a lot of the elect in Christian families?

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So if you got four or five kids running around there and you're a Christian mom or dad, it's logical that God would put the elect in your home so they could hear the gospel, right?

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And be saved at an early age, and so it's logical. So don't worry about those things. Leave it in a loving, all -knowing

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God's hands. Now, according as he has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.

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So here we see one thing that's predestinated is that we will grow in Christ and have good works and live a more holy life, continually more holy as we go towards meeting him.

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That is foreordained, but that's not all. Also, he predestinated us into the adoption of children.

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So also salvation is a part of predestination. So he predestinated two things.

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He predestinated or elected or chose. The word election means to choose. He chose us unto salvation.

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That's the adoption of children part found there in verse 5 and also unto holiness, which is the good works part found in verse 4.

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And as you know, Ephesians 2, 8, 9, and 10 says the same thing. Verse 10 talks about how he predetermined that we would walk in good works.

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So the good works is part of the predestination. We're predestinated also to be made children of God.

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That's the salvation part. So you have both parts. It's predetermined. You're gonna walk the walk.

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Now, we won't be perfect in it. We'll get in the flesh from time to time, but his blood and his intercession before the throne takes care of that.

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And so does 1 John 1, 9. You might wanna go back and restudy that verse you learned as a kid.

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Verse 6 says, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.

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And so now all of a sudden, we see the purpose of our existence, the purpose of why we got saved, why he saved us, the purpose of our very election and being brought into his family.

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What's the purpose of it? To bring praise and glory to one specific aspect of God's character, and that is his grace.

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You see that in the middle of verse 6, to the praise of the glory of his grace. God saved unsavable people.

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God loved unlovable people. God made perfect, totally fallen creatures and totally depraved creatures, a ruined race.

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And he saved a remnant out of that race according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise and the glory of this one aspect of God called grace.

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And grace means undeserved favor. No human has that. None of the gods of the

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Romans or the Greeks had that. Only the one true God has this thing called grace.

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It means he can save people who don't deserve it. He can love people who hated him and would have sent his son to the cross, and he will die for them too.

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And they don't deserve a bit of it. Undeserved favor is what grace means, and that is what's glorified by our salvation.

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There it is, there's the purpose. That's why, you ever ask, well, why did God even make man? Just so he'd have some company?

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No, no, that's not it. He had company. He had the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit for all eternity before time began.

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And there was full love and joy and completeness and happiness there. He didn't create us for company. He created us for the praise of the glory of his grace, that all of the angelic beings might understand grace.

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The Bible says they still study the church today and watch us and learn from us because they see us when we fall.

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They see us when we get in the flesh, and they don't understand this concept that God said he put this treasure, this salvation, this born -againness into earthen vessels, imperfect vessels.

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By his own will, he did it that way. Why? To the praise of the glory of his grace. It says that in that verse too.

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Same phrases in that passage. And that's why God did this this way. This is why it's his only plan.

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It's always been his plan for us to fall. It's always been his plan for Jesus to die in our place and to love us in spite of who we are because that is his grace and it's part of his character and it is who he is, and he wanted that on display.

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And anytime the world looks at us, they see it. Anytime the angels look at us, they see it.

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They still don't fully understand it because they had to earn their existence with God, and those who sin fell and they didn't get redemption.

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Jesus didn't die for the angelic beings. So they look at us and say, well, why are they saved? They're not perfect.

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They sin a lot. This doesn't make sense, and God says, I'm putting a part of me on display that you didn't understand.

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It's called grace, and that's the reason. And then verse nine in the same passage says, having made known unto us the mystery of his will according to the good pleasure, his good pleasure, which he has purposed in himself.

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And so now we see why did God save us? God saved us because he wanted to, period.

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It was his desire to do it. He wanted to show off his grace to all the created universe, and he did it through us.

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Now, there's a lot taught there in that one little page, and I've got so many pages. And because you're at home in the comfort of your home, we can go a little longer than we would at church, as long as I can hold out today, right?

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So let's look at another New Testament verse. Acts 13, verse 48.

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Now, this is going to show us something else about the sovereignty of God that we hadn't really covered totally yet, so let's read it.

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It says, and when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad. Now, this was when

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Peter was preaching to thousands in Jerusalem, and some of them heard him in their own language as he spoke his language, which was a miraculous gift of languages, and it authenticated that his message was from God.

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That's what the sign gifts do, is they authenticate the giver of the message, a new message from God.

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The gospel was a new message to the world. And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the

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Lord, and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.

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So tell me, out of that group of people who heard Peter preach the gospel, which one of them decided, which ones of them decided to receive

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Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior? Only the ones that were ordained to eternal life.

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Four ordination had to have happened. They had to have been chosen before the foundation of the world and belong to the

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Lord, and the Lord said of them, I will lose nothing. And as he preached to that throng of people from all over the world, and they each heard in their own language, as the

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Holy Spirit went about and chose the exact ones the father told him to go to, he tapped them on the shoulder, he woke them up, poured their chin up and said, there's your shepherd, your sheep, your hungry, he's got the food, what will you do with him?

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And then he goes to the next one, the next one, then the next one, and every one that was for ordained to be saved, believed that day.

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And that's still how it works today. So what does that show us? Number four, salvation, over there to the left.

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Salvation is by his predeterminate counsels. Our very salvation has to do with predestination and his predeterminate counsel from before the foundation of the world.

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As many as were ordained to eternal life are the ones who believed that day, and it's still the same is true today.

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So let's look at another one, Proverbs 16, nine. A man's heart devises his way, but the

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Lord directs his steps. Now let's think about that a minute. From the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament.

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Is our will important? Should we make plans? I mean, if we're just gonna do

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God's will and do his plan, do we need to even plan and have goal setting and objectives with regard to business, with regard to the seeds we're gonna plant, the harvest we're gonna hope to have, our children, how we're gonna train them, all of these things in life?

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Well, of course, man's heart is supposed to devise what he's going to do. It doesn't mean you end up doing it.

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I'll promise you testify to that. I've never seen my plan played out exactly as I planned it because God changes it along the way and closes doors and opens doors and reveals to me the perfect plan, and I get in it.

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And it's always better than my plan. And same with you too. Everyone here knows this. So the man's heart devises his way, but the

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Lord directs his steps. So you can sit and plan all you want, but God's gonna slam a door right in front of your face if he wants you to go a different direction.

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And that's a good thing. I teach people everywhere. Never look at a closed door as a negative.

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It feels like one, but it's not because to the right or to the left or behind us is gonna be an open door, and we're supposed to walk through that one.

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And that's how the Lord directs our path into his will from our plan. Isn't that cool?

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It's the method. It's how it works, all right? So we see there point number two over on the left.

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That one speaks of complete sovereignty of God that he's involved in everything we do and every step we take.

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We plan, yes, our thoughts, our plans, our will is important, extremely important.

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We answer for everything we decide to do. He holds us accountable for it, but yet our steps are gonna fit, right?

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They're gonna fall exactly where he puts them. So take a step, pray about it. Listen, Brother Otis said this.

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Take all the equipment God's given you as of this moment in life, everything he's taught you from the scripture, everything

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Christian friends have taught you, everything he's put into your hand, any power that he's given you to accomplish things, right where you are, and do the best you can do with it today.

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That is your part. That's your will. That's what you're expected to do, and you'll be held accountable for it. But listen, don't think for a minute

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God's not directing your steps into his perfect will. You're never gonna get out of God's will. It's impossible.

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That old teaching that has been taught in so many seminaries, and we've heard preachers say it, that, oh, don't get out of God's will.

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It's nonsensical. You're not the sovereign, okay? So you're not going to determine what his will was for your life.

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He will, and he will direct your steps. You're not gonna get out of God's will. Can you just displease God and sin and be chastened?

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Yeah, of course. That's all part of his will. It's part of his will. It was part of his will that this treasure was put in earthen vessels.

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Go back to that verse again and again. It will comfort your hearts. It shows you how the two fit together. He gets glory from the fact that you can't make it all happen, that you have to then admit defeat and get on your knees and pray and then see

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God make it happen. That's what it's all about. Eventually, you get to my age, it's almost like you're on a surfboard, and God is the wave, and you just ride the wave, and you just look to see what he's doing in your life.

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But when I was a young man, I thought I had to make it all happen. It's good that we passed that eventually.

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And it's in all different ages. Some young men learn that really early in life, like David Brainerd did, if you ever studied the life of David Brainerd in his 20s, died in his 20s, but a giant of the faith.

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But it took me longer. I was in my 40s when I figured this out. All right? So we see

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God's complete sovereignty in this verse over man's plans. Look at Proverbs 16, 33 in the same chapter.

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The lot is cast into the lap. Now, picture someone throwing dice into a napkin that's in someone's lap.

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Okay, that's man's will. That's man's decisions. That's man's planning.

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To man, it looks like luck, like you just throw the dice, and whatever happens,

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I win or I lose. That's man's stuff. Now, Arminianism is based on that being what causes everything in church, life, and in everything.

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It's ridiculous. Because look what the verse says. The lot is cast in the lap.

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Imagine an old Christian mom sitting in her kitchen with her apron, and she folds that apron up, and she throws a bunch of potatoes in there, and she gets up and carries it that way over to the sink and lets them go into the sink to wash them.

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It's like the apron in the lap is holding these things. All of these thoughts and plans and objectives that man has, all of that is in the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the

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Lord. Look at that, ladies and gentlemen. I had never seen that verse or understood it until I met

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Brother Otis. He brought that one to coffee one morning, and I said, wow, that's amazing. And he showed me the picture of how it works like I just did you, but yes, our plans are very important, and they're all there.

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They're all in our lap, in God's lap, but God is the one who determines how to dispose of the things that are in that lap and which ones will come to pass and which ones won't.

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It's all of the Lord. So that shows that God is sovereign over man's own purpose.

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And then in Proverb 19, 21, it says, there are many devices in man's heart.

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That's our planning, that's our humanism, that's our goals, and all the things we think we're gonna make happen. And gentlemen, as men, we think we gotta make everything happen.

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We're very susceptible to not understanding that God's in control, but we'll learn it.

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God will teach it at some point, whether young or old, you'll get it. Through the hardships of life, you finally get it, that you're not in control.

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There are many devices in a man's heart. Nevertheless, the counsel of the Lord, that is what will stand.

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So he is sovereign over man's outcomes as well.

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Wow, look at that stuff. Did you know these things were scattered all out through scripture, both Old and New Testament?

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Look at this one, Lamentations 3, verse 37. Who is he that says, who is he that can speak?

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What human can speak, and then that comes to pass, if the Lord is not really the one that commanded it?

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Now think about that one, all right? President Trump speaks something, and it comes to pass.

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And maybe he thinks that he caused that to come to pass, but the Bible says the

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Lord commanded it, or it didn't come to pass. So the Lord put that thought in his mind to do that action, and then

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God made it happen. Same with you and me. And maybe we don't rule the entire world like Donald Trump can, but we rule the world that God put us over, and we think we rule more of it than we do.

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And the things that we say can often come to pass, but they never come to pass unless the Lord commanded it, and caused us to think it first, and to say it, and bring it to pass.

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That is God's sovereignty, right? All right, secondly, out of the mouth of the most high proceeds not, this is a question, proceedeth not evil and good.

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Now this blows people's minds here, because people, you know, this thing is taught that God just loves everybody, and you know,

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God only does good, and Satan does evil. This scripture says, out of the mouth of the most high

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God proceeds evil and good. Do you know what that means, ladies and gentlemen?

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None other than the fact that good and evil events, all events originate from God's will.

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He is the sovereign. Do you really think for a moment that even Satan himself can do one evil thing without passing

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God's will, without passing God's pleasure to bring that to pass in the events of mankind?

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Does that make God evil? No, no. How can the holy and perfect one be evil?

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But does God see the whole picture of his plan and say that it is good? Yes, it is a good plan.

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And so apparently God felt that if we had evil in the world, we could understand his goodness better.

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Apparently he felt if we had sorrow and heartache in the world, we could understand joy better.

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Apparently he thought that if we understood death, we could enjoy life while we have it better.

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So apparently God's plan, even though parts of it are horrifying to us in our own lives, when we lose a loved one or whatever, or when we're ill and just wondering, you know, will we make it?

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That's not fun, but it is part of God's will. And he takes joy and pleasure in all of his will.

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And he is the reason that we have good and evil in the world. God is the reason.

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All right, now that's hard to learn. You've never been taught that probably. But when

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I say he's the reason, I do know that he delegates a lot of the evil, that's a funny word, the easel, the evil to Satan.

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He delegates much to him or to his men and women, you know, half the people in this country, half, more than half the people in our

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Congress and in our government. Satan rules them at his will, the Bible says.

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He moves them at his will. They don't know that. They think they're doing it, but they don't have, they're not sovereign either.

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They have a ruler over them as well. And so all of that though, is part of God's plan.

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The fact, listen, if you don't believe that, you do understand that the crucifixion of our

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Lord Jesus Christ on that cross was the most evil thing that ever happened in human history and God ordained it.

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So you just have to, you have to go study if you don't understand this. You've got to get deeper and know

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God better. Most people that think they know God, they're knowing some human invented God that their church created, that their denomination lets you believe in.

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And it's not even the true Jesus. And Paul taught, there's another Jesus, there's another gospel, there's another spirit that humans create.

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Those aren't the real ones, don't believe in them. We need to get to know God. And yes, to know him is a fearful thing because all of a sudden you understand things like this.

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And you know what though, it puts you in a proper awe of him where you realize he can cause anything to happen in your life.

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He determines his best for you whether you like it or not, whether you're comfortable with it or not.

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He is the sovereign. Ecclesiastes 7 .13,

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consider the work of God for who can make that thing straight, which

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God made crooked. Nobody. If God made it crooked, it's going to be crooked.

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If he makes it straight, it's going to be straight. The will of man is not going to change God's plan.

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So this shows us that the events in life are according to God's will. Even the roads we go down, we're planned by him.

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In the day of prosperity, be joyful, but in the day of adversity, consider this. All right, look, here's the thing

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I try to get people to understand. The beautiful waterfalls and the blueness of the Caribbean and the mountains and looking into our grandbabies' eyes and holding them and our spouses and every good thing that we have in this world is so wonderful, but we don't get it by itself.

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We get it with the bad things, too. The hurt, the sorrow, the disappointment, even death.

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All of that comes with it. We get the whole package because our forefathers, Adam and Eve, said that's what they wanted.

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Remember, Satan said, oh, well, if you'll eat this fruit, you can know both good and evil because all they had before that was good.

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They just had the beauty of the waterfall. They had the fruit. They had the mountains. They had all the beauty of walking with God and the coolness of the day.

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They didn't have this other stuff like death, but they wanted it and they asked for it and they got it. So yes,

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God is sovereign, but you know what? Man does what he wants to do and he's held accountable for it. And to this day, we're in the shape we are because of men,

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Adam and Eve, our parents. And we have the same nature. We come into the world with their same nature.

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And if God didn't save us, we wouldn't do one good thing. So in the day of prosperity, be joyful.

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It's so wonderful to think on positive things, think on things that are of good report. But there is a day of adversity that comes into all of our lives, more than one day.

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There are many days of adversity. Why does God allow that? I've had so many people, why does a holy good

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God allow bad things to happen to good people? I don't like that question. First of all, God says there's none good, not one.

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There's none that seek after God, that all of our righteousness are as filthy rags compared to God. So bad things don't happen to good people.

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Bad things happen to fallen people, okay? And we're fallen, but we're saved by grace.

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And bad things happen to God's son, Jesus, too. So yeah, that's just part of God's plan.

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That's why, but anyway, rabbit trail. But anyway, why is it that it says but?

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It says, enjoy the day of prosperity and the joy in life all around us and focus on those things.

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Think on these things, Philippians says. But there is a day of adversity. And when that happens, here's the reason

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God lets that happen. Brings it, he doesn't just let it, he doesn't allow stuff, he causes stuff. So he brings it into your life for a reason.

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Here's why. God also has set the one over against the other, the bad and adversity over against the good and the beauty and the joy, to the end that man should find nothing after him.

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Now you have to do a little search into the Hebrew to figure that one out in the English, and here's the answer. That little word after is akar.

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It means besides. So the reason for that is that God is saying he brings the bad and the adversity in with the joy and the beauty and the good, one set over against the other to the end that man should find nothing besides him.

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Nothing besides God. It causes us to fall in prayer at the feet of a sovereign, holy, powerful

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God who created all the universe and gave us the very breath we have at every moment and holds our molecules together at every moment.

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And this globe that we live on is held in place at every moment. Most of it's for joyful reasons, but when the adversity comes, it's so we understand that we're not in control.

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We find nothing besides him to worship, not even ourselves. So good and bad things happen so that man knows that nothing is as important as God in that man's life.

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All right, just got a couple more and we'll finish today. Isaiah 14, 25, and this is one we looked at a little earlier that I will break the

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Assyrian in my land and upon my mountains tread upon underfoot. Then shall his yoke depart from off them and his burden depart from off their shoulders.

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It's talking about how God in his sovereignty will bring a foreign nation against his own nation to correct them if it's necessary.

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This is the purpose that is purposed upon the whole earth. And this is saying, look, that's an example. That is an object lesson for those of us who live in the end times to understand that everything in the whole earth works like that.

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Everything works like verse 25. God purposes things and brings them to pass.

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God purposes these things and brings them to pass. He predetermines, predestinates them and brings them to pass in time and space.

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This is the purpose that is purposed upon the whole earth. And it's not just the big things, it's all the details of the entire earth and universe.

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And this is the hand that is stretched out upon all nations. None of these leaders are in control.

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Like I laugh when I see the leader of Germany, I see the leaders in the United States and the Fed thinking they can control the economy.

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Man can't control the economy, only God can do that. When I see the weatherman try to control the weather or the politicians worry about global warming.

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Man can't control any of these things, only God can. And to this, he stretches his hand out upon all the nations in his sovereignty and causes things to come to pass.

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For the Lord of hosts has purposed and who will disannul it? Man can't change what

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God has purposed. There's nothing you can do to change it. And God's hand is stretched out and who's gonna turn it back?

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What human? I don't care how humanistic or Arminian you are, by the way, Arminianism is humanism in the church, that's all it is.

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I don't care how far that way you go, you won't change one thing that God has planned to happen.

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And praise be his name for that truth. So God moves all the nations of the world and he rules them.

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Isaiah 43, 11. Listen, these things are good to know today. When you see the coronavirus, the new coronavirus coming around, and I believe it's so much in the air that most of our families are gonna have someone that gets it.

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So get in shape, eat well, stop eating junk. I beg you, stop eating sugar and junk and boy,

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I'm really getting off track now, aren't I? But listen, you're gonna hope that your body is strong when you get this thing.

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Isaiah 43, 11. Even I am the Lord and beside me there is no savior. So even with regard to salvation, his predetermination is there.

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It's the cause of all of it. I have declared and I have saved. He declared he would get saved and then in time he saved them.

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And I have shown when there was no strange God among you,

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I'm the only true God. Therefore you are my witnesses, saith the Lord, that I am

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God. And there we see over here on the left, these things come into play in these passages.

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Complete sovereignty, predeterminate counsel of God. Salvation is by his predeterminate counsel from the foundation of the world.

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Election is unto salvation and good works. All of that is found here in these passages.

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God is the only God and savior. Yea, before the day was, I am.

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You can go back to Genesis 1, 1. Before anything exists, Jesus is already there. He's preexistence, he's always existed as part of the

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Godhead. He's all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And there is none that can deliver out of my hand.

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I will work and who will stop it. That's what the old English word let means. That means the opposite of what it means now, by the way.

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It doesn't mean allow now, like it does now back then. It mean who can stop it. So God says, I will plan it and I will work it and no man will stop it.

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God is completely sovereign. No man can change the predeterminate will and counsel of God.

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All right, I think we pretty much have taken in all the goodness we can take from this particular passage and all these different places.

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We took a little stroll throughout the whole Bible. You know, it's interesting.

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If you were here a couple of Sundays ago and I gave some quotes from Charles Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers.

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And in his day, he made this comment, but he was speaking to people who claim to be Christians. And he said, I don't believe that a man who doesn't understand the sovereignty of God and election and embrace it,

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I don't believe that man can possibly be saved. And I thought to myself, when I read that, I thought, man, that's kind of harsh.

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Boy, now that's tough preaching there to say that. Because I've got so many friends in churches, other than these denominations that don't understand these things that I want to believe are saved.

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And I hope they are, but Spurgeon said, no, they're not. And then in my study for this message,

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I find this. Now we've already looked at Isaiah 46 this morning, verses eight through 10. So I won't read them again, but it's the one a while ago where it said declaring the end from the beginning, from the ancient of times, the things that are not yet done.

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My counsel will stand, I will do it. That one, you go down two more verses and look what God says.

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This is not Charles Spurgeon. Hearken unto me, you stout hearted. He's talking to an

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Armenian. He's talking to a human being who is so stout hearted that he thinks he controls everything or even contributes to his own salvation in any form or fashion.

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And God calls him stout hearted. And he said, hearken unto me, you stout hearted, that are far from righteousness.

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Wow. So we have a lot to pray about for our friends who don't understand these things.

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And I think God holds us accountable and responsible to be witnessing to them. Those who do not believe

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God is sovereign are not righteous, the scripture says. You can't go to heaven if you don't have positional righteousness.

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Right? And so let's just stop with that thought in mind today. I'd love to go another hour, but I'm running out of gas here.

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And the tiredness is starting to hit. So Dave, I'm gonna turn it over to you and let all of you know,