Open Theism (pt-2)

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Why would you say that this is a heresy? What does a heresy mean? And because we sometimes we throw that term around.
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Something is a heresy. There have been all kinds of disputes in Christian circles from the time of the founding of the church, probably on the day of Pentecost, this started, where discussions have gone on about particular aspects of theology and our understanding of God and all the rest of it, but a, when you get to a heresy, we have reached a point in the development of the church history in which the body of what is orthodoxy is fairly well set.
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Not that we still don't have disputes about things, about whether we sprinkle them or dunk them or whatever, but the actual core values of Christianity are set in the body of what we call orthodoxy.
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Heresies, by their definition, try to change our fundamental bedrock view of God and Jesus Christ.
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And that's exactly what open theism is trying to do and that's why I referred to it as a heresy.
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As a heresy, again, to review, the major thesis of open theism is that God's sovereignty is limited because he has created free agents.
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And by free agent, they mean an agent that has what we would call libertarian freedom, unrestrained freedom, that these free agents, which are us, that these free agents, when we make a choice, it is not constrained by anything.
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It is not influenced by anything. And at any time, whenever I choose
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A, I could have chosen not A. And each decision is supposed to be that way.
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We call that libertarian freedom or non -causal freedom. I am, my choices are not influenced at all.
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And yet, if you think about it for longer than about 60 seconds, you will realize that that's an absurd idea.
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We are constantly, even though we are indeed free agents, we have volition.
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God created us as moral beings who can make choices and exercise their will and have to bear the consequences of those choices.
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But nonetheless, we are influenced on all sides by all of the decisions that we make.
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The second major thing of open theism is that God cannot have comprehensive knowledge of the future, that he can only have comprehensive knowledge of the past and of the present.
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But the future does not exist yet in their view. And therefore, it cannot possibly be known.
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And God, therefore, is genuinely baffled by the future. God is baffled by the future.
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God does not know what's going to happen in the future. God certainly did not decree what's going to happen in the future under this view.
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Now, they will agree that God is very fast on his feet. He's very good at making contingency plans in a hurry.
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You know, like I said, he's got a very, very good and extensive database and a very fast search engine which lets him, you know, make up plans.
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But, you know, he's got to be really quick, really quick. But his power is limited.
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And at best, prophecy is just an educated guess. They also insist that love is the supreme attribute of God, elevating that attribute over all of the other attributes that he has.
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And they insist also that God is doing his best to save mankind because he loves us so much.
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But I don't know about you, but I am really not interested in a savior who promises to work really hard and do his best to save me.
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You know, that doesn't give me a real warm feeling when I think about this.
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I want a savior that says, I have the sheep, they're in my hands, nobody takes them out of my hands, and every last one of them,
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I'm going to keep every last one of them. So, that's a little bit of review there.
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We're going to continue this week looking at a couple of things. First of all, open theism, we should say that the people that are promoting this think of themselves at least as biblical
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Christians and they base their arguments on the Bible. And their principle thing is we must, they insist that we must have a straightforward face value and literal reading of scripture.
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Well, we need to address that because us dispensationalists insist on the same thing.
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We want a straightforward face value literal reading of scripture. So, what about it? They insist that in at least some cases, passages are to be read as anthropomorphisms which is ascribing to God human characteristics and features that he doesn't have.
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God doesn't really have hands. God doesn't really have eyes but we speak of the eyes of God and the hands of God or what we call anthropopathisms which is ascribing human emotions to God.
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But we miss the fact so much of the time that God is not like us. God says, you know, my ways are higher than your ways.
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My thoughts are higher than your thoughts. You don't think like me, you're not like me.
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You're my creation, God says to us. And so, Jesus has certain, for example
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Jesus makes certain statements that said, I'm the bread of life, I'm the living water, I am the door.
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He described himself. And so, we call these things are anthropomorphisms. Jesus isn't really a door.
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He's describing some characteristic of himself. He is using what one pastor called language of accommodation because God is infinite but he has to describe himself in terms that the finite is creatures can grasp.
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And so, he in some cases talks to us using language of accommodation.
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But how do we decide which is which? And so, we're going to start off this morning by looking at a passage which is one of the proof texts that the open theist like to use.
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Genesis chapter 22, you know the story, Abraham has been told to take
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Isaac to Mount Moriah and sacrifice him there. And they go up onto the mountain and Abraham has laid
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Isaac out on the altar and he raises the knife to kill his son and God says, stop, the angel of the
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Lord stops him and starting in verse 11, and the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven and said,
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Abraham, Abraham, and he said, here am I. And he said, lay not thine hand upon the lead, neither do thou anything unto him, for now
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I know that thou fear'st God, seeing thou has not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.
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And the open theist will say, see, it clearly says, God is saying, now
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I know, which must mean that before that he didn't know that, right? Wrong.
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But how do we get this? Because this view that says that God has learned something, because he says, now
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I know, and he is basing his opinion of Abraham's faith and his character on this new knowledge that he has just acquired that he did not have before.
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Now, what's the problems with that? Well, first of all, if you say that, if you take that view, well, that even questions
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God's present knowledge of Abraham, his inner state, his spiritual state, his mental state, his psychological state.
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Although the Bible specifically states that God knows the hearts of men.
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He knows the hearts of men better than we know ourselves. First Chronicles 28 .9,
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1 Samuel 16 .7, there are just two places where the Bible specifically says that God searches the hearts,
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God knows the heart. It says in the New Testament as well, Jesus, what?
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Looked on the heart. The Pharisees are out there asking questions, but Jesus is looking at the heart, and he knows what they're really after.
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Also, why does God need a test at this point? Throughout his life,
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Abraham has repeatedly demonstrated that he trusts God.
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Now, he's had repeated failures of trust in God too. You know, we can't overlook that, but he has also repeatedly demonstrated that he trusts
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God. Abraham and Sarah waited until they were past any possibility of conceiving a child, but God had promised
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Abraham, you will have a child. And so, here is that child.
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The child of promise has now come. We have Isaac. Isaac is at least a teenager. He might even be older than that.
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And so, he's here. Abraham has demonstrated over and over again that he trusts
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God, but according to this view, God is now going to say, well, I got to check it out and see if Abraham's going to trust me, so I'm going to give him this test.
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Doesn't really fit. And plus the fact, Abraham, what has Abraham just said?
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Because Abraham, the Bible says, rose up early in the morning, got some servants, got
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Isaac, got all of the things that he needed and took off for Mount Moriah, and they travel.
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And now, what has Abraham said that very morning? He says, the boy and I are going to go up on the mountain.
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We are going to worship God and what? We will return.
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So, not I will return, we will return. So, he is trusting
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God that whatever God is going to require him to do, God is going to deal with the situation in such a way that he and Isaac will be able to come back.
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And so, if you want an expression of trust, what more can you have?
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So then, we come to the conclusion, we are forced to the conclusion that verse 12, Genesis 22, 12 cannot be the test that the open theist claim it is.
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Now, remember, in the open theist view, every decision stands on its own.
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The whole issue is non -causal freedom or libertarian freedom. So, that means every decision that I make in my life stands on its own.
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What I have done in the past is not going to influence what I'm going to do this time. And just because I acted in a certain way in the past is no indication that I'm going to act that way now because I'm unrestrained.
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I'm unrestrained. I'm dealing with non -causal liberty. And so, that's the first thing.
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So that every time I choose A, I could have chosen not A. And so,
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Abraham's actions in the past are no indication of what he's going to do this time.
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And Abraham's actions this time are no indication of what he's going to do in the future.
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So, by the very open theist definition, this test cannot accomplish what they claim it accomplishes.
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Now, Boyd, one of the principal proponents of this, he does exactly claim that.
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He insists that God, over time, learns our character and can accurately predict what an individual will do.
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For example, Jesus predicts that Peter will deny him, which he did, of course, predict.
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He also predicted that he would deny him three times, not once, not twice, but three times.
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And so, he's trying to have it both ways, but you can't do that.
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So, even though Abraham has been faithful in this test with Isaac, you can't say he's going to be faithful next time.
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Just as soon as one test is over, you need another one. And so, if we take it that Genesis 22, 12 does not, make the case that the open theist says it makes, what indeed does it tell us?
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Because you read the text, as we just did, and it does say, now I know. So, what is it telling us?
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What did happen between God and Abraham on Mount Moriah? Something happened.
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Something profound, something substantial happened between God and Abraham. So, first of all, we have
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God's immutability to look at. That is his unchanging character or his unchanging nature.
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He does not change his nature, his purpose, his will, his knowledge, his wisdom.
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None of that changes. I am the Lord. I change not.
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Therefore, are ye sons of Jacob not consumed. But God does change his relationship with his creatures.
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That changes over time. Because he interacts with us in time in the experiences of our lives.
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We call that providence. God's providence is his interacting with us.
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Because while God is eternal, God exists outside of time, we exist in time.
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And the plan of God as it applies to our lives unfolds in time. And so, we interact the plan of God in time.
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Now, I'm going to give you an example. I'm going to use myself personally. You're not supposed to do that when you're a
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Bible teacher, but I'm going to do it anyway. The Bible tells me that God knew me in eternity past.
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That's Ephesians 1, 4. He saw me in eternity past. And he set his love upon me in a particular way in eternity past.
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He said, Lewis is one of the elect in eternity past.
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And so, my election was absolutely sure in eternity past. This is before anything is created.
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And each person that's in the elect is elect from eternity past.
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And then, as time starts and everything gets created, roughly 2 ,000 years before I was born,
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Jesus died for me. He died specifically in my place.
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He had me specifically in mind when he died. And all of my sins, specifically in mind.
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And so, from eternity past, I'm one of the sheep that the father gave to the son.
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One of the sheep that Jesus refers to when he says, they're in my hands and I'm not going to lose any of them.
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The son has promised to preserve them. Nevertheless, there is a time when
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I am dead in trespasses and sins. There is a time when I am in rebellion against God.
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There is a time when I was God's enemy and under his wrath.
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And then, at some other point in time, the
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Holy Spirit regenerates and gives life.
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Regeneration is something that is done to you. You do not cooperate in this.
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You don't wake up one morning and say, you know, I think I'm going to be regenerated today. No, you are dead in trespasses and sins.
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And one of the things about being dead is, dead things do not respond, right?
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They do not respond. You can sneak down to any funeral home around with a big hat pin and sneak in and stick the pin in any of those dead bodies laying there.
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And you know what? They're not going to react. They're not going to yell. They're not going to sit up.
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Nothing. Because that's the characteristic of being dead. And so,
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I can't do anything. I'm dead. I'm not floating around in the great sea of sin, splashing around, calling out for someone to save me.
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I'm dead. I'm laying on the bottom. And so, along comes
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God as an act of his sovereign will and regenerates me and gives me new life.
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I have nothing to do with that. That's his choice. That's his choice.
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And so, but after he's done that, then there was also a time, a point in time where I act in accordance with my new nature and the fact that I am now alive and can act where I exercise my volition and I place my trust in Jesus Christ for my salvation.
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And frankly, at the time, I'm unaware of all of this that's preceded. I don't know anything about that.
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Learn about that later. But I exercise my volition and place my trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ for my salvation.
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I am not being treated as an automaton. If I was simply a robot,
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God would need to go, God would not go through all of that process. Since he knew me from eternity past, why not just stick me in heaven as soon as I was created?
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There you go. And to avoid all of this. No, no. I am a moral being.
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He created me with volition and I have to exercise that volition. And I have to exercise that volition positively towards him.
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But before I can do that, he has to work a work of grace in my life.
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But once that happens, my relationship to God changes. You know,
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I used to be an enemy. Now, I'm a son. I used to be cut off.
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Now, I'm an heir. I used to be his enemy. I now, I'm his friend. I once fled away from God's face if I thought about him at all.
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But now, I call him Abba Father. I call him Daddy. The way a little child refers to his own father, his earthly father.
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And so, God's relationship changed. God's purpose has never changed.
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God's will is immutable. It does not change. His purpose does not change.
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But the relationship between myself and him has changed at the point at which
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I exercise volition and became his child.
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So now, God, God knew my election from before the creation of the universe, but he still required a specific action on my part.
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Even though he has to empower that action, I can't take that action until he has given me the power to do that.
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But he requires that. But again, the issue, we are not automatons. And see, that's the objection that people raise when you start talking about the doctrines of election and like that is that, well, that just means we're just, we're just actors on the stage.
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We're reciting lines that have been written for us. We are taking actions that have been decreed for us in eternity past, and therefore, we're not free agents.
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But we are. And granted, I will grant you immediately that this is a difficult concept and it is not one that I think we will grasp fully until we are in heaven and maybe not there because again, it is the infinite, the problem is the infinite and the finite trying to grasp it.
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Just like we can't really understand eternity. It's easy enough to say that God exists outside of time, but we cannot really comprehend that because we are creatures of time.
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We cannot truly grasp that time itself is something that God created and that there will be a time when it, where there will be, see,
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I just did it again. There will be a point where time will cease to be. What we even talk of eternity, you know, thousands and thousands and millions and billions and billions of years except years won't exist in eternity, but that's a concept, see, that we really have trouble with.
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And so, we also have trouble with concepts like, yes, we are moral beings created by God with volition and yet, his sovereignty overrides everything.
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Now, so what does it, what does Genesis 22, 12 mean when God says, now
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I know? If you can restate this, perhaps this way, in the experience of this point in time,
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I, meaning God, am witnessing Abraham demonstrate anew in a very dramatic way that he fears me and that this pleases me greatly.
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Not that God has learned something that he did not know before.
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It was never an issue. God never sat in heaven wondering, what's Abraham going to do?
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God knows what Abraham is going to do. But nonetheless, nonetheless,
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Abraham needs to demonstrate to whom? Well, first of all, to himself and also to the angels and the rest of creation because only
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God is omniscient when not even
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Lucifer is omniscient. In the whole story of Job, Satan didn't know what was going to come out of that.
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Nobody but God knew what was going to come out of that. And so God is demonstrating something.
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Well, he's demonstrating something here. So, how do we know? How do we know?
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Yeah, the angel of the
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Lord, I won't say this absolutely every time, but in every time I can think of, when you see the reference to the angel of the
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Lord, that is a pre -incarnate manifestation of Jesus Christ.
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When it says the angel of the Lord appeared to Abraham, that is what we call a theophany.
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It is Jesus Christ appearing in human form. It's not the same as the incarnation because he hasn't been incarnated yet, but he appears multiple times through the
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Old Testament. And like I say, somebody, Nate probably, will come up with an example of where the angel of the
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Lord doesn't mean Jesus Christ, but most of the time it is. It's a pre -incarnate manifestation of Christ.
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So, when do we know? How do we know when to take something literally at face value and how do we know when it is an anthropomorphism or an anthropopathism?
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And Bruce Ware expresses it this way, and it's probably as good as anyone can. He says, a given ascription to God may rightly be understood as anthropomorphic when scripture clearly identifies
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God as transcending the very characteristics that it attributes to him elsewhere.
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Now, what does all that mean? If we state it another way, if a passage describes
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God as doing something that the Bible clearly indicates throughout its breadth that God doesn't do, you can take that as an anthropomorphism.
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For example, where it says God regrets. I regret that I have made man.
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Well, the Bible taken as a whole clearly indicates that God does not change his purpose.
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He does not change his intent. He does not change his will, that he is immutable. So, therefore, we can take a time where the
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Bible says God regretted something, that's an anthropomorphism. That's an example of language of accommodation because it indicates that God is going to change something about his relationship with a group of his creation.
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But it does not mean that God is sorry in the sense that human beings are sorry.
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You know, we say, gee, I regret doing that. You know, I regret taking the Mass Pike this morning if I had realized that there was a four -car pile up in the semi across the road.
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I would have gone down some other road. If only I had known, I would have done something different.
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When you use the word regret applying to God, it doesn't mean that. It's not that he would have acted differently had he only known or that he is sorry in the sense that we're sorry, that he would have done something different.
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When we say it applies to God, it is just he is describing to us in language of accommodation that he is going to change his relationship in some way.
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The, what's another example? I can't think of one right off the top of my head. But the whole issue, the whole issue is that God is not like a man.
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God is not like us. And one of the reasons that open theism is so dangerous and one of the reasons that I would characterize it as a heresy is that it is an attempt to change our fundamental understanding of God.
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It is an attempt, if you will, to make God like us, to reinvent God in our image.
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Now, another verse of this that is used sometimes, Numbers 23, 19 says that God does not repent and God does not lie.
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He neither repents nor he lies. First Samuel 15, 29 says essentially the same thing.
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Now, the open theist would say that a verse like Numbers 23, 19 means that God can repent.
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But in this particular case, he chooses not to, okay?
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If you're going to accept that argument, then you also have to accept the twin argument that God can lie but that he just chooses not to in a lot of times.
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And yet the Bible says over and over again, God does not lie, men lie. Numbers 23, the point of Numbers 23, 19 is that God is not like men.
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Men lie, men change their minds. God does neither of those things. And so, one other thing to look at here is that despite the fact that God does have comprehensive foreknowledge of all events so that he's never surprised,
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God has never said oops, God has never said oh -oh, nonetheless he is not prevented from expressing the appropriate response as events unfold when they actually incur in time.
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For example, Lazarus is dead, here comes
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Jesus. Jesus is coming with the express purpose of raising
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Lazarus from the dead to demonstrate his power over the grave. And he knows he's going to do that.
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He is absolutely certain that in a very few minutes, Lazarus is going to be up walking around.
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And yet, Jesus takes the time to mourn with Mary and Martha.
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He's got the time to do that. Why? Because that's what's appropriate at this time, in this setting.
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You know, if it had been you and me, we probably would have said, Mary, Martha, don't wait till you see what
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I'm going to do. Don't worry, you know, just a second here. No, no, he has time to mourn with them first, then he raises
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Lazarus from the dead. So, God is not restrained from expressing appropriate reactions, if you will, as events occur in time.
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Because again, God sees everything, but we intersect the plan of God on a timeline, one thing after another.
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So, again, the Bible uses language of accommodation to reveal God to men.
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God isn't a man. Attempts to explain him using analogies always fall short.
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Explaining the infinite to the finite is difficult at best. Another thing to think about is that God does not always reveal his purposes to men.
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And his stated intention is not necessarily his purpose. We see this several times throughout the scripture.
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Sometimes his purposes are hidden, but they always come to pass. They always come to pass.
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And sometimes he states his intentions to elicit specific reactions from his people.
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For example, he tells Jonah, go to Nineveh, proclaim 40 days and I'm going to destroy the city.
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That's his stated intention. But you know, Jonah, who's probably a pretty good theologian,
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Jonah suspects from the very beginning that God is going to be merciful.
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He sort of thinks that, you know, I'll bet God's going to be merciful in this situation, and I don't want that to happen.
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I want to see Nineveh destroyed. So what? I ain't going to go.
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Because if I go and I proclaim knowing God and how merciful he is, he's going to show mercy to those people.
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I don't want that to happen. So Jonah doesn't go. And we know the whole story.
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He winds up in the fish and all the rest of it. But what happens? He goes, he finally preaches, and what happens?
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Sure enough, the Ninevites repent and God shows mercy.
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Now, does that represent a change in God's program? Not at all. That was
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God's intent from the beginning. But don't forget that God decrees not only ends, he also decrees means.
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And not only does he decree that I'm going to show mercy to the Ninevites, he has decreed the
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Ninevites are going to repent because Jonah is going to preach to them destruction.
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It's also worth noting that 100 years after all of this, Nineveh was in fact destroyed because a new generation arose, which was even more corrupt than the generation that Jonah preached to.
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Same thing with Moses. Moses, I'm sick and tired of this stiff -necked people.
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I'm going to destroy them. We're going to start over. So what does
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Moses do? Moses prays fervently, Lord, don't destroy your people.
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If you destroy your people, it's going to be a blot against your name, Lord, don't do that.
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And so again, God repents, the scripture says. But does it mean that he changed his mind?
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No, he didn't change his mind. He didn't change his mind, but he did change his relationship to the way the people were.
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And so, but again, we are not robots. The sovereignty of God includes outcomes as well as causes.
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It includes the ways as well as the means. His foreknowledge encompasses all of the decisions that his creation will make, including those taken by unbelievers, so that he is able to say, my servant,
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Cyrus, will do thus and such and will let my people go. Not only will he let them go back to the promised land, he will pay for the trip.
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Now, Cyrus is a pagan, but God expresses he is my servant.
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Now, think of all of the freewill decisions that Cyrus is going to make.
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How can God say that Cyrus is going to do my will with all these freewill decisions out there if he does not have comprehensive foreknowledge, if he is not sovereign?
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And then finally, we'll look at one more example, it's Hezekiah. The case of Hezekiah, 2
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Kings 20, chapter 20, verse 1. God states his intention to Hezekiah, you will die and not live.
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Pretty cut and dried statement, right? What happens? Hezekiah falls on his face before God and prays.
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He pleads with him. And so there we can see God's unstated purpose.
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First, he wants to elicit Hezekiah's dependence upon him in fervent prayer.
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And so then we see God's real intention, which is to heal Hezekiah and give him 15 more years.
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And notice now, here we go again. God adds exactly 15 years, not 14 years and 8 months, not 15 years and 3 months, not a long time, 15 years.
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Now, how does God do that considering all of the thousands of freewill decisions that Hezekiah is going to make?
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How do we know that one of those freewill decisions won't be to walk out in front of a charging chariot and get run over?
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Again, God, he has to have comprehensive foreknowledge to be able to make statements like that.
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God doesn't make educated guesses. God does not make educated guesses.
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He doesn't do the best he can. You know, he says, my plans will be carried out.
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So now, looking once again at the language of accommodation, the anthropomorphism, which is again ascribing to God human features he does not actually have.
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God is a spirit. He does not have hands. He does not have eyes. But we use those phrases.
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We use those terms. And also anthropopathism, which is the idea of human emotions, the ascribing to God human emotions. God does have emotions, but he doesn't have them in the sense that human beings do or at least in the same way that human beings do.
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There is one sense that God is always, eternally, completely happy.
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He has always been completely happy. Within the
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Godhead, there is perfect fellowship. You may have heard one of the more ridiculous sermons that gets preached is that, you know,
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God was lonely. And so he created man to be his companion. Friends, God has never been lonely in all of eternity.
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There is perfect communion. There is perfect fellowship within the Godhead. But going along,
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God does react. He is shown in the scripture as having emotions and then reacting emotionally.
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But again, they don't govern his actions the way that we so often let our emotions govern our actions, don't we?
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But as the example that we've used before, repentance, when it applies to men, means that some, you're sorry.
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And you would have done something different had you only understood how this outcome was going to come out.
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And the older you get, the more of those things that you have to be sorry for. Trust me on that.
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Repentance, the word repentance applied to God is a tool. It's part of his dynamic relationship with his creation.
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Expressions of divine repentance or divine regret do not imply that God has not foreseen an outcome.
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It does not imply that he would have acted any other way than he did act.
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But events do cause a genuine divine sorrow.
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When we sin, it grieves God, it quenches the
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Holy Spirit. Even though those sins may indeed be worked into the plan of God in such a way that what we would call good comes out of it, but I can guarantee you,
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God was not pleased when David went and took Bathsheba and killed
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Uriah. Even though Solomon was going to come out of that union, and Solomon is in the royal line which is going to lead to Jesus Christ, that still does not alter the fact that what
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David did was a sin and a very grievous one that got him punished rather severely if you'll recall the story.
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And so, but God uses these tools as he works with us.
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Now, we're going to stop there. It's a little bit early, but we're going to stop there because I don't want to get into the next section at this point.
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The next Sunday, God willing, assuming we all get here in God's providence, we are going to start looking at the case for divine foreknowledge.
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Up to now, we've sort of been skimming along this a little bit and we have been talking mostly about what's wrong with the open theist view.
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So now, we want to emphasize what's right with the view of divine foreknowledge, exhaustive divine foreknowledge.
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Where we're going to go, there are nine passages in the 40s in Isaiah.
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Start in chapter 40 and go to chapter 50. Within there, there are nine passages where God very clearly talks about his exhaustive foreknowledge and makes the case.
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And we will see that God chooses. You know what
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God chooses as his criterion? If you want to claim deity, what criterion does he use?
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He says, tell me the future. You're an idol. You claim to be God. OK.
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Let's have a little test. You tell me what's going to happen in the future. That is
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God's test. That is God's criterion. If you're going to claim deity, you have to be able to do that.
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And we'll see that nine times over and over again as we go through Isaiah making this case.
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And that's another thing. When you attack the exhaustive foreknowledge of God, that doctrine, you are attacking the very bedrock that Christianity rests on.
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It is God's divine foreknowledge that is the underlying principle that holds up everything else.
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How do we know we're saved? We know we're saved because the
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Bible says, God says, we're saved. But what gives him the right to say that?
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It's the fact that he foreknows everything, that he foreknows everything is where all of these grand and glorious principles that we rest our faith on, that's where they come from.
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And so, I'm going to leave you one more time. I read this last Sunday. We'll read it again. This Sunday, Isaiah 46, 8 to 11, remember this and stand firm.
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Recall it to mind, you transgressors. Remember the former things of old, for I am
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God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning.
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See, there you go. That's the criterion. I declare the end from the beginning and from ancient times, things not yet done, saying my counsel shall stand.
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I will accomplish all my purpose, calling a bird of prey from the east. We'll talk about that next
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Sunday. The man of my counsel from a far country, I have spoken.
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I will bring it to pass. I have purpose and I will do it. Isaiah 46, 8 to 11, let's pray.
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Our heavenly father, we thank you and we praise you this morning that indeed, you do hold all things in your hand.
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The universe is upheld by your word and that nothing escapes your notice and nothing has occurred within history that is not from your divine decree and that we can rest on that, father.
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We thank you that we have this rock to stand on, this rock to anchor ourselves to.
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Be with us the rest of the day. We pray your blessing upon pastor Mike this morning as he opens the word to us.