08-09-2020

We're going to focus on verses 28 and 29.

As I said, we've already talked about predestination throughout.

We took a trip through the whole Bible and looked at the sovereignty of God and the great verses on sovereignty of God.

That topic includes a lot of subtopics like election, which means God chose us

from before the foundation of the world, who he would save, who his children would be.

He chose them according to the pleasure of his own will, the scripture says.

Remember, you can go back, by the way, all of this is archived.

If you missed some previous sermons, it's hard to jump in right in the middle, but there's a lot of information over many

Sundays.

We've talked about this already.

Today, I wanted to focus in on this little sequence of

events that take place starting in verse 29 but predominantly in

verse 30.

We're going to go through in detail so that we fully understand the different key words in verse 30 in particular, but

one of the words that's important is in verse 29.

It's the word foreknow, so we got to start with verse 29.

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.

Moreover, whom he did predestinate, then he also called, and who he called.

I want you to notice this is the same group of people.

Basically, Jesus divided all humans into three groups, and only three.

You can use two different allegories that he used.

One was the goats and the sheep, so if you use that, it would be goats,

and then lost sheep, and then found sheep.

So those are the three types of people.

All sheep will eventually be saved and be in heaven.

No goats will ever be in heaven and will never receive Jesus because they don't want to, and they won't do it.

So you have those three groups, goats, lost sheep, saved sheep.

Then sometimes he talks about the wheat and the tares is another way to divide into two major groups,

the unsaved and the saved.

But this is talking about one of those groups, and this is the saved group, the ones who will be in heaven, the

sheep.

Notice that the same group of people starts at the beginning of verse 29, and it's the same group all

the way through to the end of verse 30.

So first, they're foreknown, this group of people, they're foreknown, they're predestinated,

and then they are called.

You see that there towards the first line of verse 30, and then they're justified in the middle of verse 30, and

then that same group of people are glorified, and that's when we're with the Lord

after this life, in the next life, right?

So you can see that it starts before the world began.

The foreknowledge and the predestination at the beginning of verse 29 happened before Genesis 1 -1,

before Jesus spoke the worlds into existence.

It's before there was anything except God, and that's when, if you use the word when, I know that's a

time word, but there was no time.

There was just God, the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and this love for one another that they had within the Godhead,

perfect peace, perfect love, perfect happiness, and all of that, that's all there

was.

And at that point, I won't use the word time because time hadn't started yet, but at that

point, we call it eternity past, which is a stupid way to say it, but it's the only way we can think because we're on a

timeline, or at least we're in time.

I don't think it's so much a line as it is a circle, but we're in it, so it's hard for us to speak

or even comprehend it.

But before time began, God foreknew who His children would be, and He predestinated who His

children would be, both.

Now, you have to understand, if it happened before time, there's no sequence.

It's not like He foreknew them first and then predestinated them, or it's not like He predestinated and then knew who they were.

It just is.

It's just they both are.

They just are.

Because God is the I Am.

It's just present tense, so there's no sequence.

It's just how it is.

He foreknew us, and He predestinated us, and that is the fact.

But that same group, it goes through and then enters time when you see the calling.

You see the calling happens in time, and then when you see the justifying, that happens

in time.

And then it includes the life and the death of Jesus Christ in time, and

then it goes out the other side.

It says that same group are then glorified.

They go into what we call eternity future, and there is time in eternity future.

There is not time in eternity past, but there is time moving forward into eternity future, not like time works

now, but like it did before the fall where things get better, and you know more and more about God

as time goes by.

You don't get older and fall apart because of the curse.

You get better, and you know God better every day, and that's how it'll be when we get on the other side of

this age.

So it starts before time began.

It comes into time with the calling and the justifying and the death of Jesus and the application of the blood to

us and the calling of the Holy Spirit, all of that, and the regeneration that takes place, and then the same group of

people that all that happens to goes right out the other side into eternity future, and that's the

glorified part.

So that's kind of where we're going into in a little bit more detail.

But before we do it, I want to talk a little bit about this interesting article

that I found.

So John Willis with the University of Victoria in Canada

and his crew made a discovery of what he thinks is the oldest

galaxies that have been discovered by humans, and this is not that old of an article back in

February of this year, right?

So I want to give you some of the words that he said about this.

He said, just as an archaeologist might seek evidence of the oldest

cities on earth, and I kind of like this because he talks about some biblical cities here in a minute, just like that,

astronomers have long sought to discover the oldest galaxy clusters in the universe,

each the cosmic equivalent of an ancient civilization like Jericho or

Ur, Ur of the Chaldeans, both of these biblical cities.

Isn't that interesting that he said that?

So just like archaeologists look for old cities that the Bible talks about,

these astronomers look for old galaxy clusters, he says.

And he says this, I've been fortunate to lead a team of astronomers in discovering

that such an example of an old galaxy cluster exists and his team

found it.

How old?

He says the light from the galaxy cluster named XLSSC -122

has taken 10 .4 billion years to travel across the universe to

us.

So by the time he and his team observed this galaxy cluster, it was 10

.4 billion years old by the time we first saw it on the earth.

Now here's what's interesting about it.

Astronomers, and I'm still quoting this article, astronomers believe that the universe itself

is 13 .7 billion years old.

So now think about it, he is seeing something that's 10 .4 billion years old and so it

almost goes back to the beginning, right?

So I'm gonna make some other, don't get ahead of me here, I'm gonna make some other comments in a minute.

I don't believe that the universe is this old, so don't don't have a heart attack, but I'm gonna show you what I do believe.

Astronomers believe that the universe itself is 13 .7 billion years old.

Of course they do because they don't read the Bible, a lot of them, all right?

Used to.

Some of the greatest scientists in the world were familiar with Scripture, not so much now.

So this is interesting.

This man says, a little math tells us that we're observing XLSSC -122

when the universe was a mere 3 .3 billion years old.

Well to these guys, that's young, that's a very early stage in the existence of the universe

from their viewpoint after the Big Bang, right?

And so they're looking at a like an ancient ancient galaxy

cluster, but at the same time it happened near the beginning of what they call the

Big Bang, what we would call the creation, right?

So look what he says, imagine our surprise, too bad Ben Russell's not on today.

He would love this, but he can, we're recording it, right?

So he can watch it.

So imagine our surprise then when each new view of this galaxy cluster revealed a

physical structure seemingly every bit as mature and developed as galaxy

clusters in our present -day universe.

Now let me interpret that a little bit.

This team is looking at something that took 10 .4 billion light years for the light to get here so

we could see it, which goes back to almost as old as they think the universe is, and yet,

which means it was formed in the early stage of the universe, and yet it was fully mature.

It looks fully mature, and he said that surprises us.

Well it does not surprise those of us who study the scripture, but here's what he said,

the situation rather like looking at a photo from your youth in which you appear much older than you are

now.

Now let your brain wrap around that a little bit.

Okay, so you see that he can't interpret the data is the problem.

He cannot interpret the data because he's looking at something, you know,

that shouldn't be as mature as it is at the time he gets to see it because it should have been

just formed, but it looked fully mature.

Now if you

understand how God created things and how he tells us in the scripture that he did it,

and I'll give you a good example because I had this debate with my wonderful friend and our petroleum engineer that I've

used forever out in Big Lake where our oil lease is, Gene Prince is his name, and I

had had a debate with him about the age of the earth, and he studied

geology and petroleum engineer, so he thought his billions years old, right, and he said how

old do you think it is David, and I said I think it's about 8 ,000 years old, and he just leaned back on the car and

said that's impossible, and because he's seen strata that appeared made him

think it's older, right.

He studied the science behind it, and so I said well Gene, let me ask you this, how old do you think

Adam was in the Bible?

Do you think he was 21?

Do you think he was 33 like the age of Jesus?

Now this was not a saved man, but he knew the Bible stories, right, so he leaned back and he said

I think he was probably 25ish, probably 25 years old, and I said but

let me ask you how old was he really, and he couldn't answer.

He didn't know where I was going.

I said he was like a few nanoseconds old.

He was a few parts of a second old, but he looked 25, and I said so

doesn't that tell us that God created him with the appearance of age, or in other words he

created him mature.

He wasn't a fetus.

He wasn't a cell.

He was a man, but he was only a few seconds old.

I said that's how God created the whole universe, and he leaned back and thought about that.

I mean he'd never thought about that.

Well what makes the story more interesting is I went up on the drilling rig.

We were drilling a new well.

I went up on the drilling rig to talk to the crew, and I wanted to witness to him, so I took my little

Bible.

I had a little Bible in the back of my pocket, a New Testament.

I took it up there, and David had about a 22 year old son out there on the lease with us.

I'm sorry Gene did, and his name was David.

His son's name was David, and David said can I go with you, and I said sure, so he follows me up.

We climb the steps up into the oil rig, and they're taking a break, so the whole crew is sitting in there,

and I said hey guys, and they knew who I was.

They knew I'm the guy that owns the well, right, so they got to listen.

They're obligated, so I said let me talk to you, show you something out of the Bible.

Oh sure, and they acted excited.

So I basically went through the Romans Road.

I showed them how to be saved.

I don't remember where I took it.

Could have been the Isaiah Road, the John Road, but probably the Romans Road.

Showed them how to be saved, and they were very kind and nice and everything, and they said okay, got to get back to work, so

that was my cue that okay, we're done.

That's all we want to hear, so I walked down the steps, and David, Gene's son's following me.

We get down to the ground, and David said could I do that, and I said what,

and he said what you just told them.

Can I do that right now?

I want to be saved.

What do I do, and it blew my mind of course, and I said well just share your heart with the Lord.

Just tell him what you want.

Tell him what you're feeling, and he prayed this beautiful prayer and asked Jesus to come in his heart and save him and so forth.

I said now, and now I just had this debate with his dad like 20 minutes earlier, and he's still leaning

against the car where we had the argument.

Wasn't really a bad argument.

We just debated.

I said go tell your dad what just happened to you.

That was fun, so I'm watching from maybe 40 yards away up on the last step

of the drilling rig, and I'm watching, and I can see Gene leaned over here like this, and his son's telling him I just got

saved or whatever he worded it.

I finally, and then he goes looks over towards me, and then he looks back down like this, and I thought this is

awesome.

Well months later, almost a year later, I'm in the office checking my mail.

I'm the only one in there because it was Christmas season, and I see a Christmas card, and I opened it.

It was from Gene Prince's wife, and she

wrote me this little Christmas card, and it said, Dear David, I

want to let you know I appreciate that you witnessed to our son, and he said we watched him, and we took him,

and we were with him when he got baptized, and we've watched his life.

Her name is Jeannie, by the way.

We need to pray for Gene's wife.

She has breast cancer years ago that's now moved into a lung, so pray for

Jeannie Prince, P -R -I -N -T -Z, if you would, and for her husband Gene, my good friend, but anyway,

she's the one that wrote me the card years ago, and she said just wanted you to know that we watched his life.

We watched him get baptized.

We watched his life, and he changed, and so several months later, Gene

and I both got saved and baptized, and I just screamed out loud in my office.

I was the only one in there, but I thought that is amazing, and so

he, you know, it's interesting, but these scientists, they don't always think it through.

They don't have the biblical information.

If they did, they could make a knowledgeable choice, but it is true that the

universe appears to be at least now 13 .7 billion years old, but it

was created in a nanosecond and already looked old.

We know that, right?

You and I know that, but isn't it interesting that this scientist looked at that and

said, how can that look that old when it was just formed, and he can't figure it out,

but God created it with maturity.

I just thought you guys would enjoy that.

I know Ben Russell will when he gets to see it.

All right, so let's review a little bit now as we move into this specific detailed

information that we want to look at in these verses.

We kind of looked at a big broad picture through the whole Bible.

Before we leave chapter 8, I've got to look at verse 29 and 30 in

detail on what these key words mean, but as we review, we

ask the question, why is it important to even understand this, and then we had some reasons, and I don't want you to read the Scripture.

This is in previous sermons.

You can go look up the archives.

I just want to give you the points.

The first one is it's important to understand that predestination is real.

Even if your preacher never preached on it, you never heard of it, it's all throughout the Bible.

It's important because we realize how special we are.

Listen, if God knew us before the foundation of the world, before he made anything, he knew us by name as

his own sheep, as his own children, we're special.

We're not just part of a group.

We're not just part of a human race that's totally fallen and deserves hell.

We are part of that race, but he plucked us out of it.

He chose to save some of that fallen race that deserved hell completely, and I

believe he did it to give us as a love gift to his son Jesus, who the Proverbs say he

loved the earth and he loved humans from the very beginning, and the

race was fallen and lost, and the Father said, well, I'm going to salvage some of them for you, son, and he did, and

Jesus said, of them I will lose nothing, but will raise it up at the end.

A hundred percent of these people, remember, this is the same group that starts here with before time began, with

foreknowledge, predestination.

They come into time, and each of us individually are called by the Holy Spirit, regenerated, given

33 different gifts, including the faith of Jesus, and then we're justified, which means we're

made as if we've never sinned before the Father, and then we move out the other side and go to heaven or whatever,

wherever we are for eternity future.

That's called being glorified.

All that spans from eternity past through time out the other side to eternity future, and we're

special because we're the group that will be with him in eternity future, and so we have a

powerful individual purpose, or he wouldn't have called us.

When he called us, he gave us a purpose, so we see that.

Secondly, we see this is important doctrine because we see we're in position of God being for us,

and yet all of the peoples of the world with all the false religions of the world have built systems of

trying to climb a stairway to heaven and do good works to get to God, and they find themselves

falling short in God being.

I mean, if you study the gods of the Greeks and the Romans and the Vikings,

you will see that they felt that those gods sort of played with human beings, and yet they had wrath.

They were wrathful, and you had to be careful not to get on the wrong side, and that's how they viewed God.

Our Bible teaches us as God reveals himself to us that toward us, toward the

called, he is not in a wrathful position because he has been propitiated, which means

satisfied that the sin debt has been paid in full by Jesus on our behalf,

and it was all the Father's plan from before the beginning, and so he's in a position of being for us.

It's important to know that, all right?

Number three, because we own all things.

Look at down there, verse 31.

What shall we then say to these things?

If God be for us, who can be against us?

He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us, how shall he not with him

also freely give us all things?

We own all things, and the fourth thing is because we're made righteous in the Father's eyes, and it's through this

predestination of everything in God's plan, including the death of Jesus on

our behalf as our substitute.

It's the only way we could be made right.

He puts the robes of righteousness on us, as the scripture from Isaiah that Charlotte wanted me to read said earlier,

and we're without condemnation because of this.

We have an intercessor, Jesus Christ the righteous, because of all this.

None of this is possible without predestination, and because we are eternally secure.

Eternal security of the believer is not possible without foreknowledge, predestination, and election.

Totally impossible, and it's all based on that scripturally and throughout time.

Just go back and read what your brothers and sisters of Christ for 2 ,000 years have said about these things.

They all base it on predestination and election, as far as anyone who ever

believed eternal security, all the way back to the Roman Catholic Father Augustine, who believed in eternal

security, unlike the modern Catholic, but we Protestants have problems too.

90 of Protestants don't believe in eternal security, probably only 5%, whereas you go back to 16, 17

hundreds, 95 believed in it.

Why has it changed?

Because we've got too many false preachers now.

Jesus said we would though, so that's exciting.

It's fulfilled prophecy.

We're moving towards his coming, aren't we?

All right, so anyway, beautiful, and the sixth reason is because we are more than

conquerors.

Why?

Because God's on our side.

We're his children.

We're children of the King.

How can you not be a conqueror?

And then, you know, you can look, you can think, when you look at this

last passage, this goes all the way down to the last two verses in Romans 8, and this is, I'm reviewing because we've already

covered the entire chapter.

Verse 39 is the last verse, and those last verses name

everything in the universe, and it says none of that can move us away or outside of the

love of God.

It names everything.

If you read it, you can't, there's nothing's left out.

Everything that God ever created, none of that can ever move you away or separate you from the love of God, which is in

Christ Jesus Christ.

So if you've been called, and your eyes opened, and you looked up, and you saw your shepherd, and say, I want

you, and you've received him as your personal Lord and Savior, because the Holy Spirit regenerated you and opened your eyes, if that's

happened to you, nothing can separate you from the love of God.

You are special.

You are secure.

You have a purpose given to you by Almighty God before the world began.

You're therefore powerful in this world, and will be used mightily by God, because he has a specific

purpose for you.

So there's your seventh point, because you're loved by the author of the universe.

The entire foundation, by the way, for our Tradeway folks, and our church folks too, in case you haven't heard this,

the entire foundation of the Western economic and military might, and the freedom that we have, was

built upon a thing called in Baylor MBA program, when I went to college, the

Protestant ethic, which came from John Calvin, and the Protestantism, and the true

belief in the every word, every jot and tittle of the Bible.

Individualism was taught by these folks, not collectivism, which is communism, not the

individual.

God makes you an individual that's important.

You don't need to be working with the group so much, like the liberals think.

What did Mrs. Clinton say?

It takes a, not a community, takes a what?

Takes a whole group of people to raise your kid?

No, it doesn't.

It takes a family, right?

So she's wrong on that, but we know that if we study the scripture, all right?

So yeah, village.

Thanks, Jeff.

Jeffrey said it takes a village.

I drew a blank on it.

It tells how much I care about her quotes, right?

But hard work, strong moral center, honesty, integrity, capitalism, all of that was part of the

Protestant ethic, and it all comes from the scripture.

So there's a little bit of review all the way to the end of the chapter.

So we're basically done with Romans chapter 8, but

we are actually going to take a good look at these words in these two verses

before we're totally finished, and hopefully we'll finish that today, all right?

So let's look at this verse 29.

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.

And so this happens before time began, before anything physical existed, and that would

include you can't have physicality without time.

You didn't have time.

You didn't have anything physical.

You just had God, and in that mode of existence, God foreknew who would be his

children, and he predestinated that they would be his children, etc., and that they would do good works and all

these things.

And then you know the verse 30 goes on out into time where the calling takes place, where the Holy Spirit awakens

you one at a time, us one at a time, while we were yet in our sins, hath he

quickened us, brought us to life.

That's regeneration.

That is the great cause of salvation.

Everything else is an effect.

There's only one cause, and it's the Holy Spirit calling and regenerating you, and it gives you 33

different gifts, such as the faith of Christ so that you believe and all that.

All those are effects.

I know it hasn't been taught that way to you, but that's what the Bible teaches.

And so all of that happens in time, and then it says that same group is eventually glorified, and what's interesting in the

Greek, it's in the present tense, which means the Father already sees you as if you're glorified.

He sees you as perfect, and I left out the justified part.

That happens in time, but that means he sees you as perfect, just as if you've never sinned.

He sees you as completely righteousness because you have the righteousness of Christ.

The robes of righteousness have been put on you.

As the old black preacher said one time, we're all dressed up in Jesus, right?

So that's how the Father sees us, and so let's go back, though,

before we get to the end time part, and let's look at this before time part.

Two key words, foreknowledge, predestination.

There's a lot of misunderstanding on foreknowledge and predestination, and

particularly foreknowledge, and we'll look into that a little bit, but let's first look at the scope of predestination

and election.

Okay, one idea is that people will say that

God, yes, they'll say, yeah, I believe in predestination, but I think all it means is he predestinated that those who accept

Christ will do good works.

They'll live a good life.

That's all it means.

It doesn't mean he chose them or anything like that, and they'll try to argue that, and they'll try to point out here

that in the first part of verse 29, it says, for whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be

conformed to the image of his Son, and I say that's just talking about good works.

You'll be made more like Jesus, and that's all that God predestinated, and it doesn't mean he chose you.

You chose him.

That's what they'll teach.

That's called Arminianism, that salvation is by man choosing God.

I'll tell you, friends, you hadn't thought that through.

If you haven't, you'll figure out when you do think it through that that's no different than paganism.

That's no different than witchcraft, animism, worshipping the rocks and the trees.

It's no different than Buddhism.

It's no different than Hinduism.

It's no different than Islam, or Judaism.

All of those are based on us doing something to try to please God so he'll

accept us, because he's wrathful like the Greeks and the Romans thought, and so he'll accept us into heaven.

Problem is, our righteousnesses are as filthy rags to God before his holiness.

He'll never accept our righteousness.

You'll never get to heaven with that system of works, and all the religions of the world except biblical Christianity

miss that, and it's a deadly miss, because if you believe that, if you

believe that you're saved even by Jesus plus some stuff you do, you're in trouble, because the

Apostle Paul said very clearly that if you believe that you're saved by Jesus

plus works that you do, then you have fallen from grace.

You don't even have grace is what he meant by that.

You don't have grace, and Jesus Christ will avail you nothing.

Well, what happens if you have nothing positive come to you from Jesus?

Where are you going to go when you die?

You see, there's a problem when you don't understand grace, and too many preachers

don't help their people understand grace, but fortunately, we can understand it straight from the Scripture if our

preachers are not preaching it well today, but what's interesting is when you just read this

one verse, let alone all of the Scripture we've already looked at in past recent sermons, this

very verse doesn't say that he only predestinated us to

do good works.

It says he did two things, so let's look at the scope both in this one verse, and I'm not going to put them in the

order of the verse.

I'm going to put them in the order of importance, okay, because the first thing it says we're predestinated to

in importance is that we're predestinated unto salvation.

So look at the second part of verse 29, that he might be the firstborn among

many brethren.

Now, what do you think firstborn means?

What is a concept in the New Testament that talks about being born?

What does that bring to mind to you?

Does it bring to mind when Jesus had a talk with Nicodemus, who thought you got saved by works, the great theologians

of the Pharisees, and Jesus blew his mind when he said, you must be born again.

He said, how can that happen?

I crawl up in my mother's womb.

Jesus said, I can't believe you're a master of Israel.

You don't understand these things, but there are a lot of preachers today that don't understand, and a lot of church members don't understand

these things.

They think man plays a role in his own salvation, but here, obviously, firstborn is talking about being

born again, born into God's family.

That is salvation, not good works.

So it talks about both, is my point.

You are predestinated to be a born person, born into God's family, the birth, the

regeneration, the salvation.

You're predestinated unto that.

Ephesians backs it up.

Look what Ephesians 1 .5 says, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children.

Now, does that sound like good works, or does that sound like salvation, being adopted into God's family, being made a child of

God?

That sounds like grace.

That sounds like a birth.

Jesus said to Nicodemus, look, it's like a baby being born, Nicodemus.

How much does the baby have to do with his own birth?

And that's what blew Nicodemus' mind.

He knew exactly what Jesus was saying, is that my entire system of works that I've spent my whole

life learning among these Jews is false.

It has nothing to do with salvation of my own soul.

It blew his mind.

He had to think about that for long days and hours and days and weeks, and I hope and think probably that

Nicodemus was later saved.

But it says here clearly, you're predestinated to the adoption of children by

Jesus Christ to himself.

Jesus brings us to himself.

Is that good works?

Is that salvation?

It is the very salvation part.

So it is impossible to say that predestination is only unto the fact that he looks out, he sees who will be

saved, and he makes sure they're going to do good works.

Yeah, it includes that, but that's not what it's talking about.

It's talking about he predestinates you to get saved so that you would be saved because you didn't want to be saved,

and the Holy Spirit called you and changed your want to, then you wanted to be saved, but that was an effect of the

regeneration.

So you play no role other than receiving life like a little baby does when it's born,

goes to its mother's breast, and it's happy, thinks it's the center of the universe, and Christians think that too when we

first get saved.

Only through study of the scripture do we realize, no, this was all God's work.

This was all God's planning.

This was all God's love.

He first loved us, then we loved him back, but the love had to come from him first, and it came from

before the foundation of the world.

Wow, think about that.

All right, so he predestinated us in the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto himself, and why did he

do it?

Because he looked out and he saw how good you and I were and how bad everyone else was, or does it say according to the good pleasure of his

will?

He did it because he wanted to.

He chose who he wanted to because he wanted to.

Now don't you think it makes sense that if the church, that's all of us who are saved, right, is the bride of Christ, that

Jesus will get to choose his own bride, or at least if you look in the Old Testament sense of it, that his father

would get to choose his bride for him?

It wouldn't be the bride choosing him, would it?

So that's just how it worked in those days, in biblical days.

I know today that many times the bride chooses, right, and that's okay with me, but

you know what I'm saying.

I mean, it's a picture of how salvation works, but here we have both.

So now we have that we're predestinated and elected unto salvation first

and importance.

Why?

To the praise, if you go on here in Ephesians 1, the next one says that he

predestinated us to the adoption of children because of the good pleasure of his will, and the very next verse says to the

praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he has made us accepted in the beloved.

It is God the Father who made us.

That is, that's active from the viewpoint of God.

It's passive from our viewpoint.

He did it to us.

It's not something we did for him.

He made us accepted in Christ.

That's the beloved.

Wow, why?

So that his grace might be praised.

What is grace?

Undeserved favor, and the angels still don't understand it.

That's why it says they're studying the church right now trying to figure this out.

They watch us all the time.

Why does God love them?

They just messed up.

They sinned.

He didn't love us when we sinned.

He cast us away.

Why does he love them when they sinned?

And they keep coming back to him, though.

That doesn't make sense, and the angels are trying to figure that out, but that's what grace means by definition.

Undeserved favor.

So it's to the praise of that aspect of God is the reason that he created human beings.

Think about it.

It's why we exist, especially the church, why he saved some of a fallen race, to praise and

glorify his grace.

Isn't that awesome?

So we are first, in importance, predestinated unto salvation.

How did God do it?

He not only predestinated who would be saved, he predestinated the means of salvation.

Verse 7 talks about that over in Ephesians 1.

In whom we have redemption through Jesus' blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of

God's grace.

So it's the blood of Jesus that saves us, nothing else.

It's the blood of Jesus and the work of God.

If I say it that way, it's totally accurate.

It's the blood of Jesus plus all the work the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost did to save us, plus nothing else.

We play no role in it other than receiving it.

So the salvation is predestinated before God even made anything.

Secondly, we're predestinated unto good works and to be transformed into

Jesus' image, and you see that at the first part of the verse.

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed into the image of Christ.

That's the growth.

That's the good works.

That encompasses everything that has to do with our good works and the things we do for him, and all of that is

effect.

We do it because he saved us.

So both were predestinated.

Don't ever let a friend or someone tell you, oh, no, a predestination just means he predestinated his son to do good works.

That's nonsense.

Romans 8, 29a, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son is the proof of

be there.

Romans 1b, all right?

So we got that, all right?

Let's go on here now.

For whom he did foreknow, he did predestinate.

Moreover, whom he predestinated, he called, and you go into time there, right?

So let's think about the breadth of God's love in predestination.

The scope of it is that he predestinated us to be saved, and he

predestinated us to do good works.

Now, what's the breadth of predestination in election?

Well, it's the same as the breadth of God's love.

So it's from eternity into time and out the other side to eternity.

That's the breadth of it.

That's what predestination, election, and foreknowledge encompass,

all right?

So the breadth of God's love in predestination and election, I'd like to look at a sort of a parallel passage.

This is beautiful, though.

Think about this in Ephesians 3 .17, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.

So here is the method.

He not only predestinated who'd be saved, but how they would be saved.

Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love.

Now, he's going to talk about the love of God for us for a moment.

We were rooted and grounded.

Now, notice that's active from God's viewpoint.

It's passive to the believer.

God does this to the believer.

He loved us first.

He rooted us and grounded us in his love the day the Holy Spirit called you and opened your eyes and

opened your ears and changed your want to.

And you say, well, I didn't know he did it.

Well, if all of a sudden you wanted Jesus today, but you didn't want him yesterday, you wanted him now, and you didn't want him five

seconds ago or five minutes ago, that's the calling.

So it happened to you.

You just hadn't studied about it yet.

It happened.

And all of a sudden you love Jesus.

That happened because the Holy Spirit touched you.

That's called the effectual calling.

We'll get to that.

Maybe not today, but we'll get to it, Lord willing, by next Sunday for sure.

And that happened in time, in the time of your life on this earth, of course.

But it was predestinated before God made anything.

So look at this love that God brought to us.

Not that we brought to him.

We're not saved on the basis of him looking out and seeing us love him.

And if he did look out, which he can, he looked out and saw us love him, what he saw was his grace and his Holy Spirit

changing our want to so that we loved him.

That's what he saw.

So he saw himself saving us.

He didn't see us being good so he could save us.

That's what the Arminians want you to believe.

It's all backwards.

It's all evil.

So Christ may dwell in your heart, and he brings this love, and that

he may be able to comprehend that you, the saved one, may be able to comprehend with all the

other saved ones, the saints, what is the breadth—that's the word I want to key in on—the

length, the depth, and the height of God's love.

So there are four dimensions to God's love.

We don't have time to cover that lesson today, but we've done it before.

We're focusing on the breadth part.

What is the breadth of God's love?

Well, basically, it's the distance between the two hands of Jesus when he was nailed to the cross is one good way to look at it.

But it, like, it spans from eternity before anything existed into time

when you got called and justified, and out the other side into all eternity future where you're glorified and

with God.

That's how wide and how broad his love in the predestination election

is.

And to know the love of Christ which passes all knowledge that you might be filled with all the fullness of God.

That was Paul's prayer for his converts.

Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we

ask or think according the power that works in us.

Notice it's God's power working in us to save us.

It's not us doing stuff for God so that he'll be pleased with us.

He's not the wrathful God of the Greeks and the Romans.

Oh, he is that to the non -elect.

He is that to the goats, to the tares, but not to the sheep.

No, no, he is all love, and the breadth of it is incomprehensible to us right

now.

We can talk about it a little bit, gain a little understanding, but we don't fully understand it till we meet him face to

face.

Then we will.

Praise God we have some understanding given to us now.

So he's able to do exceedingly abundantly above anything we can think or ask in our prayer life.

It's not based on our prayer life.

You didn't get saved because you prayed some little prayer.

By the time you did that, that was an effect.

It just showed you were saved.

You thought it saved you.

The Holy Spirit saved you.

It's according to the power that works in us.

That's the Holy Ghost power of salvation working in you at the moment you got saved.

It's all in the Scripture.

It's not some denominational creed.

I wish I were more studied in those things.

All I know here is what the Bible says.

I've had some pretty solid Bible scholars, because I know them personally, my friend Terry Aycock.

He's one of the best read theologians I know.

He's read so much German theology, everything.

I told him one time, I said, man, we grew up together by the way.

I said, man, I wish I had been able in my life.

I wish I gotten saved earlier in life, gone to seminary, and studied all that stuff like you did.

He said, David, I don't know anybody that knows the Bible more than you do.

He said, I wish I knew the Bible like you know the Bible.

I just had to praise the Lord, because that's what I've studied.

I mean, I had the books, Rocky Freeman, his library, read through all the theology, kind of worked my

way around the Bible, learned what the major Bible doctrines were, and where they are, and why they exist, and all that.

Studied all that as a young man, but probably from the age of 24, but probably from the age

of 35 until now, it's basically been just study, study,

study, and meditate, and think on the Bible.

That is where you guys probably are in your life, where that's what you need.

You just need to study as an adult on your own, and let the Bible tell you what it says.

Use the ten rules of proper Bible interpretation.

You can get that if you want it.

Let Dave Huber know.

He'll get it to you.

But the breadth of God's love is amazing.

Unto him be glory to the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end.

Look at the breadth of that statement in verse 21.

World without end.

Ages without end.

Age unto age, and age unto age.

His love for us that he knew before the foundation of the world, and predestinated, and put that love on us before he even

made us, will be with us for all eternity future.

That's pretty broad.

Verse 29, in whom he did foreknow, he did predestinate.

All right.

The breadth of God's love is from eternity.

So let's look at this.

Romans 829, for whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate.

These two operations were performed by God, by no man,

by God before time.

So what did you have to do with it?

It's what determined your salvation.

What did you have to do with that?

Nothing.

Nothing.

So throw out the humanism out of your religion.

Arminianism is nothing more than religious humanism.

Throw it out.

Don't add any of it.

It's all God.

It's all Jesus and what he did for us, what the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit did for us to

accomplish, bringing us out of a totally fallen and lost race into his

propitiated love, all right, so that he can righteously and

justly forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness as he has done.

Therefore there is no sequence.

I misspelled there.

I noticed that, but it's a typo, of course.

Therefore there is no sequence.

They both exist.

Foreknowledge didn't happen first and then predestination or the other way around.

They're just both are.

Foreknowledge is.

Predestination is.

It's a fact.

It happened before time began, so there's no sequence.

Do you have that?

It's very important for you to have that.

So let's look at foreknowledge a minute.

Some have thought that it simply means that God predestinated men.

Now I'm quoting a great figure here, all right, so I was laying

there last night trying to go to sleep thinking about this sermon, and I started to put my own thoughts in

here first and then quote these great men, but my view is the same as theirs, and they

say it so much more beautifully, and I'll be absolutely honest.

I had my view before I read these, and so when I read these, I thought, oh my goodness,

this is beautiful.

I don't have a private interpretation.

Brothers and sisters have believed this hundreds of years before I did, thousands of years in the case of Augustine before

I did, all the way back almost to the time of Christ to 88 AD in the case of

some men who wrote about this and believed the scripture said this.

So I'm going to quote this one, all right.

Some have thought that it is simply means, this idea of foreknowledge, it means that God

predestinated men whose future history he foreknew.

So God looked out in time and he saw people being better than other people and believing or

maybe being more gullible so they believe this story and other people didn't, and he saw that and he saved the ones that believed.

That's what the Arminian teaches so that he can get around some of the scripture that talks about foreknowledge and predestination.

He leaves it in there, but he just ignores predestination.

He just wants to talk about foreknowledge.

It just means God knows everything and he knew who would be saved and that's all it means.

Now I'm going to finish the quote here, all right.

So the text before us cannot be so understood because the Lord

foreknows the history of every man.

Now this is probably Spurgeon.

I got a lot of good quotes.

I'm not sure, but this sounds like Spurgeon to me, who was the last

Puritan, who was a Baptist preacher in England in the 1800s.

I'm pretty sure it's him because he never went to college, never went to seminary, but he was self -taught by the time he's 21.

He's the best read man in England and he studied logic and the logic here is impeccable because look what he says.

It cannot mean what the Arminians say, that God just looked out and saw who was good and saved him or saw who believed and

saved him.

It cannot mean this because if you look at the Bible, it doesn't read that way.

That's what he's saying.

It cannot be understood that way because the Lord foreknows the history of every man, every

angel, both good angel and fallen angel, every man both lost and saved, both

goat and sheep, and every devil.

He foreknows all of that.

So far as mere prescience, which is really the same thing as foreknowledge.

Prescience is like pre -science.

In other words, it's knowledge before everyone else's knowledge.

It's kind of knowledge God has, all -knowing.

So if you're trying to think that foreknowledge means that God is omniscient, it

doesn't mean the same as omniscient, but everybody that believes like the Arminians try to make it mean the same thing.

It's different.

I'll show you that later when we have time, but if you're talking about just God knows everything, prescience,

so far as that goes, every man is foreknown.

If that's what you think it means, if you think foreknowledge means that, then he knows every man, and yet no

one will assert that all men are predestinated to be conformed to the image of Christ.

Charles Spurgeon said that.

So think about the logic.

We know that Jesus said broad is the way and many there be that go through the gates of hell, right, and narrow

and few there be that enter the gates of heaven.

So Jesus himself knows and taught us that the vast majority of the human race is

lost.

They will never be saved.

They're going to hell.

The vast majority, a remnant, the called, the elect, the remnant that God in his

grace decided to save out of that fallen race because he wanted to, because of the good pleasure of his

will, all right, those are the ones who were predestinated to be conformed to the image of

Christ, right?

Well, everyone who studies this knows, and no one, let's put it in the negative, no one believes that that's

every human.

It's just a few humans that are predestinated.

But what the Scripture says that he's referring to, it says the same group that were foreknown were also predestinated.

Therefore, foreknowledge cannot mean omniscience.

It can't just mean everybody that God knew he saved because he doesn't save everyone he knows exists, right?

So apparently foreknowledge is different than omniscience.

It doesn't mean God knows everything.

Now, God does know everything, and that's taught throughout Scripture.

Omniscience is part of the character of God.

He knows everything.

He doesn't have to think.

He just knows everything that exists and will ever exist.

He just knows it, and that's omniscience.

But foreknowledge is not the same thing as that, but Arminians want you to think it is.

So God, they think foreknowledge is God knowing who's going to get saved and who's not, and that's not what it's talking about.

And the thing that proves it is that the Bible says the same group that he foreknew is the same group he saved.

So foreknowledge is applicable only to those people, the ones that are predestinated.

That's who he foreknew.

So we got to understand, well, what does the word foreknowledge mean, then?

What does it mean?

So we're going to be looking into that.

Charles Spurgeon was pretty clear on what it doesn't mean, wasn't he?

This would be akin to saying that foreknowledge equals omniscience.

In other words, God knows everything.

If you were an Arminian and you believe the way they're wanting you to believe, it would make them the same, but they're not the

same.

Spurgeon's impeccable logic has proven it cannot be the same.

So then what is it?

What is foreknowledge?

I know we're getting a little bit into lunchtime almost here, so I won't go too much longer.

Well, there are two things concerning foreknowledge of God about which many are in ignorance.

Now, I'm going to quote Arthur Pink.

He's one of my favorite theologians to read, and he comes up all the way into the early 1900s.

My son Ben loves Arthur Pink.

He studied the whole life, and he's taught me.

Ben has taught me all about the life of Arthur Pink, but he wrote a classic book

called The Sovereignty of God.

You should read that.

You can get it on Amazon.

He's written so many amazing books.

He wrote a book this thick on it, on the book of John in the New Testament.

That thick.

It's beautiful.

It's worth reading every page of it.

But anyway, Arthur Pink is an amazing man of God, and he said this, there are two things concerning the foreknowledge

of God about which many are in ignorance.

The meaning of the term and its scriptural scope.

Most people are totally ignorant about it, and he's talking about church members and pastors.

Because this ignorance is so widespread, he says, it is an easy matter for preachers and

teachers, false preachers and teachers, to palm off perversions of this subject even

upon the people of God.

Why?

Because the people of God are ignorant about it.

There is only one safeguard against this error, and that is to be established

in the faith.

And for that, there has to be prayerful and diligent Bible study, Pink says.

Otherwise, you'll believe a lie, right?

And a receiving with meekness the engrafted Word of God is the only thing that prevents us from being led astray

by false teachers, he says.

Only then are we fortified against the attacks of those who would assail us with false doctrine about the

meaning of the word foreknowledge.

It's everywhere.

When the solemn and blessed subject of divine foreordination is expounded, when

God's eternal choice of certain ones to be conformed to the image of His Son Jesus is set

forth, the enemy sends along some man, some false teacher, to

argue that election is based upon the foreknowledge of God.

And this foreknowledge that they teach, that's why he puts it in quotes, is interpreted to mean that

God foresaw certain ones would be more pliable than others, that

they would respond more readily to the strivings of the Spirit, and that because God knew they would believe,

He accordingly predestinated and chose them into salvation.

That's the Arminian viewpoint.

Pink says this, but such a statement is radically wrong.

Okay.

I mean, preachers don't talk like this now, do they?

Radically wrong.

It repudiates the truth of total depravity.

He's giving you the reasons why it can't be their way.

Number one, they're saying God looks out and sees people choosing Jesus when the doctrine of total

depravity teaches no man seeketh the Lord, not one.

We've all gone our own way.

We've all gone astray.

That's what it teaches.

So it forsakes that doctrine.

You'd have to eliminate that doctrine to believe their viewpoint.

Secondly, it argues that there is something good in some men, so it totally eliminates the

doctrine of total depravity.

They have to eliminate that to believe the way they do.

Secondly, it takes away from the independency of God, for it makes His decrees rest upon what

He discovers creatures doing.

So He looks out and sees His creatures, what they're doing, and then does what He has to do because He saw them doing it.

That's not a sovereign God.

That makes man the God, the sovereign, and Pink understands this.

It completely turns things upside down, for in saying that God foresaw

certain sinners would believe in Christ and that because of this He predestinated them into salvation is the

very reverse of the truth.

See, this is what false preachers do.

They totally turn it around backwards.

We've heard it so much that what we see here in Scripture seems a little confusing because we've just heard it the other way so long.

Scripture affirms that God in His high sovereignty singled out certain ones to be

recipients of His distinguishing favors, and He quotes Acts 13, 48, which is right

here, and when the Gentiles heard this, this was when Peter was preaching to say 5 ,000 people in Jerusalem,

when the Gentiles that were in the crowd heard this, they were glad and glorified the Word of the Lord, and

look at this, as many as were ordained to eternal life are the ones that believed,

and Pink quotes this verse saying, look, it's God who chose.

God had ordained who would believe out of that crowd, and that's the ones that believe.

The rest of them couldn't see it, so He wasn't looking and seeing who would do it.

He was determining who would do it.

That's what the Scripture teaches, and Pink quotes it beautifully, and therefore God determined

to bestow upon them the gift of faith.

So it was God's purpose that caused those particular individuals in that crowd to be able to believe

and receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

Now don't get Pink wrong, and don't get me wrong.

There won't be anybody in heaven who hasn't personally received Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, at least on this side of the

cross through this age.

That's how it'll be, and in the Old Testament, they were looking forward at the Messiah.

They had to believe in the Messiah to be saved, so it's basically the same, but only the Holy Spirit can

cause a fallen creature to have that belief, and that's what's not taught much in the modern church.

False theology makes God's foreknowledge of our believing the cause of his

election and salvation, whereas God's election is really the cause.

God's choosing in four nations is actually the cause, and our believing in Christ is the effect.

Now where is that taught nowadays?

Where do you see in our Baptist churches, and this is one reason we took Baptist off our sign.

We're just part Meadows Church now because I was a Baptist like Spurgeon, but I'm not a Baptist like today for the most part, because

95 of them believe that by me choosing to believe in Jesus is what causes

my salvation.

Arthur Pink says no.

It's God's election and the Holy Spirit's calling that causes our salvation.

The belief is an effect of that.

Absolutely true.

Look at Acts 13, 48.

Let's look at it again.

And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord, so they had to have the Bible, they had to have the gospel,

didn't they?

And as many as were ordained, now that word means foreordained, predetermined before time began,

as many as were ordained to eternal life by God before time began, those are the ones who believed.

So tell me which group is right, the Calvinists or the Arminians?

Well, I'm not a Calvinist.

I'm an Augustinian, you know, but you know what I'm saying.

It wasn't Calvin who invented this.

It wasn't Arthur Pink who invented it.

Many believers have believed it all the way back to the time of Jesus Christ who taught it too.

Okay, so here, proceeding further with our discussion of this

much misunderstood theme, Pink says, let us pause and define our terms.

What is meant by foreknowledge?

To know beforehand is the ready reply of many.

You look it up in Webster's, it means just like omniscience, like God just knows everything, and Pink agrees.

That's what most people think.

To know beforehand is the ready reply of most people.

But we must not jump at that conclusion,

nor must we turn to Webster's Dictionary as the final court of appeal, for it is not a matter of

etymology of the term employed.

What is needed is to find out how the word is used in the Scripture.

That is a wonderful rule for Bible interpretation.

Don't always go to what the world says a word means.

Go and see how that word is used in context after context after context in the Bible, and you'll figure out what God means by it.

The Holy Spirit's usage of an expression always defines its meaning and scope for the Christian.

It is failure to apply this simple rule which is responsible for so much confusion and

error on this topic.

The fact is that foreknowledge is never used in Scripture in connection with events or

actions.

It doesn't mean he looked out and saw what would happen.

It's not the same as omniscience.

It never is used in a passage of Scripture in connection with events or actions.

Instead, it is always a reference to a person.

It is persons God has said to foreknow, not the actions of those persons, Arthur

W. Pink.

Now, we're running out of time, but come back same time next week, the Lord willing, and I'm

going to show you if he's right or not straight from Scripture.

All right?

So, Dave, I think we're out of time.

I'm going to leave it right there with the beautiful quotes by Arthur Pink.

Get us thinking.

It may cause us to go out and study a little bit, but it's not like people say, well, he looked out and saw who'd be

saved and so he chose them.

That's not what foreknowledge means.

It's never about what he sees actions happening by people.

It's about the people themselves, and it's going to have an amazing meaning when we get time to complete this, hopefully next

Sunday.

Dave?