Systematic Theology (part 4) - Doctrine Of God

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Today is part 1b of our systematic theology class.

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We're still talking about the doctrine of God, or when you're in systematic theology what that means is theology proper.

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Now to briefly review, when we were talking about the doctrine of God, the reason we started there is because of course it's very important to know

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God. John 17 3 tells us that this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true

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God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. So if you're going to have eternal life, if you're going to be able to know and experience eternal life, you need to know the only true

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God. So of course it's extremely important for us to understand and know him. We talked quite a bit about the being of God, about who and what he is, that he is the none greater, of course, as we remember from our previous class a few summers ago.

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And we also talked about the existence of God, right? We went through all the various different quote -unquote rational arguments for the existence of God, and then we finished up with going through the names of God, the names of God.

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And I'll park there for a quick second just to remind us all about the names of God. So there are both

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Old Testament and New Testament names, and we filled out the table on the worksheet from last week that had, you know, the rows were the different meanings of the names, and then we had the

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Old Testament and the New Testament version for it, right? The generic word for God in the

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Old Testament was El, right? That's why so many of the

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Old Testament names have El at the end, right? Gabriel, Israel, Michael, right, exactly, right?

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And so, because all of those names meant something of God, or God something or other, right?

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And so the generic word is El, although there's also plenty of circumstances in the

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Old Testament where they use the plural version, right? And that is Elohim, most famously in Genesis 1, all the times where we refer to God, or God is referred to,

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I should say, in Genesis 1, he's referred to in the plural. And just to remind you that while most likely, especially with the

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Hebrew writers, and certainly the people who were, the Hebrews who were reading the Old Testament originally, when they saw that, they probably more had in mind the royal we, right, that yes, we were talking about God in the plural, but what we really were saying is just the same way that kings and queens refer to themselves as, we are, you know, pleased to offer to our subjects a tax break of, you know, 0 .01

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% this quarter, right, kind of thing. But through the lens of the

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New Testament, we can look back at that and we can also see in the fact that God uses the plural form for himself, a hint of the

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Trinity, right? That God is, and God can talk to himself, right, throughout

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Genesis 1 and 2. And then in the New Testament, right, the generic word for God is theos, which is where we get theology from, right, so theos.

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Similarly, in the Old Testament, the word for Lord, which was used for God in plenty of places, is adonai,

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Lord and ruler, and in the New Testament, it's kurios, okay, k -u -r -i -o -s.

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Very interestingly, in the New Testament, kurios is used interchangeably for both the Father and the

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Son. Jesus is very often referred to as kurios Christ, right, the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and not just, this is not exclusive to the Father. The mountain in the

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Old Testament is shaddai, God the mountain, the one who overpowers, and then

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Father, right, in the New Testament is pater, we get the English word paternal.

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Now we said salvation, right? What is the word for salvation, the name of God that means salvation in both

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Old and New Testaments? In the Old Testament, well, in the New Testament, it's

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Jesus, right, because in the Old Testament, it was Yeshua, right,

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Joshua, Yeshua, and in fact, Jesus, if that's not obvious, that, you know, it's just like we name our babies

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David and Michael and all those kind of Old Testament names, that for Jesus to be named

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Jesus was just simply the, not simply, I shouldn't say it that way, but was the modern of that time, right, version of Joshua.

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There were lots of people in his day that were named Jesus. It was not an uncommon name, because it just meant, it was the way that you would name your kid

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Joshua, right, Yeshua, right. And we, of course, also started with the big one, the big name, it's not on the table, but it is in Exodus, right,

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Exodus 34, and it's Yahweh, right,

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Yahweh, I am. Now one name that I did not talk about last week, and someone asked, why did

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I not talk about it? Anybody know? Which, which name did I not bring up? Any guesses?

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No, that's the Old Testament name, Jehovah. Why did I not talk about Jehovah?

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Isn't Jehovah, like, his name? Because it's, thank you, Brian, yes, it's not just sort of made up, it is made up, okay.

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So Jehovah, here's the thing about Jehovah, it's, it's, it is a made up, it's sort of a made up name.

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And what do I mean by that? Well, in, between the times of the writings of the

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Old Testament and the time of Jesus' earthly ministry, when he was, came down, incarnation, and born, and relived, there arose a superstition,

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I would really call it, amongst Judaism, to not say

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God's name, Yahweh, out loud. Because the Old Testament so often speaks of being very careful about not using

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God's name in vain, and whatnot, that they were, they got super afraid to pronounce it out loud.

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All right? And in the, so in the scrolls, right, that they would read from every day in their worship services, while the

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Tetragrammon, which is the four Hebrew letters that represent Yahweh, right, were written there, they would not use the, what the, what the scribes started doing to remind you to not say that name out loud, is they started using the vowel points, for those of you who don't understand

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Hebrew, I don't either, but, so you're in fine company, but like all the little, like, you know, points and dots and apostrophes and things, those are the vowels, okay, in Hebrew, and so they would use the vowel points for Adonai, amongst the

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Tetragrammon, instead of using Yahweh's vowels, okay? And so thus, you would, you were supposed to see those vowels as you were reading, and your brain would go, oh right, don't say

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Yahweh, say Adonai, right? And so that's what they would say out loud, as they read the New Testament, and we, the

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Old Testament, and that, we then carry forward that tradition superstition, in that all of our

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English Bibles then started translating Yahweh as Lord, right, except with capital

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L -O -R -D, to give us that kind of clue, hint, in the same way that there was the four letters of the

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Tetragrammon, but the vowel points, Tyndale and others, when they started translating into English, they just said, well, we'll just do

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Lord, all in capitals, and that'll be our way of pointing it out. So Jehovah is what happens when you take the consonants of Yahweh, and the vowels of Adonai, and you put them together into one word, you get

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Jehovah, okay? Because remember, I and J are kind of interchangeable, and Y and I, they're all the same sound, okay?

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So I already said Yeshua, right, and Joshua, and Jehovah, so it's really probably like Yehovah, if you're trying to say it really well in Hebrew.

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So, here's the thing, to the point where I say, like, so there's not really a word in the

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Old Testament where it says Jehovah. That being said, it is such a common and well -understood term as a name for God, that I don't really think it does a disservice to use it, right?

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But at the same time, it's not, precisely speaking, a biblical name.

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So, yeah, correct, right.

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So it's, in a lot of ways, there are even some scholars who have tried to argue it out that, well, maybe that really is the correct, you know, that Jehovah could possibly be the correct transliteration, right?

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Because even, to your point, we're not even, we can't even really 100 % for sure say that Yahweh is the most correct pronunciation, because they stopped putting the vowels for Yahweh, so we don't really know what are the right vowels in between those consonants.

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Our best, it's really kind of like, at this point, our best guess of scholarly work.

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So, all right. But in the same way, whether you're using the term Jehovah or you're using Yahweh, what does that name mean?

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I am. I am that I am, as he told Moses from the burning bush, right? So it is the name of a seity.

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It is the name of God's self -existence, self -sufficiency. And I love the fact that in Exodus 34, when he is basically saying, the

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Lord, the Lord, right, to Moses, that's how we translate it in English, where we say,

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I'm trying to find it in my notes, my notes from last week here, so I can just read it to you. Well, it's

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Exodus 30. Who can turn Exodus 34 for me and just read it? Exodus 34, 6 and 7, right?

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So that is God's, if you asked God, if you could ask

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God, could you give me a summary statement of the doctrine of God? You know, systematic theology class taught by the father.

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There's God's succinct statement of himself. This is who I am and what I am like. And there's plenty of wonderful, awesome truths in there that he's merciful and gracious and slow to anger.

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And he's got justice and he's forgiving and so on, right? And I made much even of the order.

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And I said, well, what's the very first thing God wants you to know about him? Well, the very first thing he wants you to know is

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Yahweh, Yahweh. He repeats it for emphasis. I am,

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I am. That's what he wants you to know more than anything else about himself. He is the self -sufficient one.

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All right. So that's the names. Now, this morning, I want to move on to attributes, but I'm not going to go through all of God's attributes.

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If you open your chapter in Berkhoff or teens, if you look in the

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Knowing God book that you have that you'll see in the Doctrine of God chapter, there's that's the chapter in which they go through all of God's attributes.

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All right. But we have been doing that a lot in this church lately. So I just want to kind of skip past that.

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And we're going to trust that most of you are pretty familiar when it comes to what are the attributes of God right now.

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But what I want to do want to talk about this morning is categorizing those attributes.

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Categorizing them. Because we've even danced around a little bit as I've been talking about the divine names, and we keep landing on how even some of these names reveal some of those attributes, right?

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Aseity, omnipotence with Shaddai, eternality. Okay. So first off,

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I want to make the point out that the word attributes is not even an ideal word to use, right?

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Because in verb form, to attribute means to what? To ascribe, right?

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We'll just use another big word for it. Give me the five -year -old, the kindergarten definition. What does it mean to attribute something?

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To give credit, to apply, right? To take something that's outside of it and sort of assign it.

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To name it and give it, right? Does it's to assign it or to acknowledge it? To acknowledge it.

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Well, same sort of kind of thing. But the point is, the reason Berkhoff and others don't really like it, if you want to get into the technicalities of don't like using the word attributes for God, is that these things are not external to him.

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They are not even some principle outside of him that then you say, oh, well, he's like that, right?

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The attributes of God are truly him, right?

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Which is why Berkhoff, if he had his druthers, says that he would rather we all use the word properties of God or even virtues of God.

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But he gives up partway through the chapter and says, well, I'm just going to go ahead and keep saying attributes because I know that's what all of you use and it is what it is, okay?

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By the way, he even has a little bit of scriptural support for using virtues because 1

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Peter 2 .9, which talks about the attributes of God, uses the word excellencies or virtues.

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It's erete in Greek, and so virtues might be a really good word for it.

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All right. But so that's the answer to number seven, why he doesn't like using the word attribute, because that implies this idea that these are some kind of external principle, that God is just simply being like that thing, whereas he is the very definition of those things, all right?

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The reason you even know what forgiveness is or love is or grace is or holiness is or justice is, he is the definition of those things.

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He is the originator, the source, the author of those things, right? There is not some principle of, you know, this is what loving is like and God is like that.

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It's the other way around. Because God is like that, that is love. All right.

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Now, most theologians then attempt to do some kind of categorization, and that's the table in number eight in your handout, right?

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The categorization of the attributes, and most of them split it into two categories or two general classes, all right?

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And here's the—I'm giving you the five most prominent categorizings or classifications, so to speak, and so we'll just fill them in here, right?

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First up, number one, is natural and moral attributes, his natural attributes and his moral attributes, right?

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So the natural ones are the ones that are belonging to himself, his sort of constitutional nature.

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Again, you know, the things that he is, right? But these are more things that are very specific to God, whereas then there's the moral ones, which are just the idea of these are the ones that belong to him as a moral being, okay?

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And we are all moral beings, so there's a bit of a sense of, like, the ones that belong only to God and the ones that could potentially belong to others.

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Now, a good objection to using this as the categorization is that all of the, quote unquote, moral attributes are just as truly natural to God as the others, and so they don't really like the terminology.

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Berkhoff doesn't like the terminology. So I just mean that we are capable of moral understanding and of making moral choices and awareness of morality.

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Capacity, yes. I don't mean that we are, when I say moral, I don't mean that we are all on the positive side of moral, but rather, what's that?

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Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, all right. Number two, categorization.

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It's like, all right, well, that's not a great one, so let's try a different one. How about absolute and relative? So we've got absolute attributes, and those would be belonging to the essence of God, is what the folks who like this categorization the most.

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And then there's the relative attributes, which are those that are belonging to that which is in relation to his creation.

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But then the objection comes, well, wait a minute. God never changes, and God has had all these attributes for all of eternity, both before and after creation.

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So if he had all these attributes in an eternity past, how can anything be truly relative to creation?

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So that's a good point. By the way, I'm not even going to spend time on trying to break it down for you, each one of where these all sort out, because we don't have enough time.

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We're just moving along. We're going to finally land on the one we like the best. Surprise.

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OK, next up is intransitive and transitive attributes. That's row three, intransitive and transitive.

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Now, the intransitive attributes are those which do not go forth, those that do not operate outside of the divine essence.

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But rather remain eminent to him. OK, those would be the ones

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I will give an example here. We're talking about simplicity or his eternality.

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Whereas the transitive ones are the ones that produce effects external to God.

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OK, so his omnipotence, his all powerfulness that produces the fact that he is omnipotent produces an effect external to him, right?

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He acts upon something with his power, right? So that makes it a transitive one.

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And I, this one is a lot closer, and Burkoff likes this one more, and I like this one more too.

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His objection to this, though, is that if any attribute were truly imminent, how could we have any knowledge of it, right?

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If it produced no external effect, how would we have any idea that it exists at all? That's Burkoff's argument.

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Although my response to Burkoff, if I could bring him here, would be, I would say, because God revealed them to us.

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That's my sort of simple response to that. That there are certain things that God has revealed to us in his scripture, and maybe we wouldn't have any knowledge of them whatsoever if it weren't for the fact that they were revealed to us.

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So I actually really like this classification, and I find it as useful as the next two, which are the most popular ones, which verse four, verse four, row four, incommunicable and communicable attributes.

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And that, yeah, that's the one that everybody knows, right? Incommunicable and communicable. I almost don't want to use this just because I keep tripping over the word.

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It's too long. But incommunicable are those attributes which can rightly be said as belonging only to God, and the communicable ones are the ones which

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God has designed and gifted us to be able to express in limited measure, okay?

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God is love, but we can be loving, and so love is a communicable attribute. All right, the fifth is the one that actually is suggested by the

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Westminster Catechism. All right, and because the

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Westminster, who, does anybody know the Westminster Catechism, what the word, what it says?

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Anybody? No Presbyterians in the house today? It says that God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, right?

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In his person, with goodness, wisdom, power, holiness, and justice, and truth, right?

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And so there is in that, so this, while it doesn't actually say the two terms, you get this notion of essential attributes and personal attributes.

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That the essential ones, as Ferguson says, is they've been expressed and experienced in their most intense and dynamic form among the three persons of the

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Trinity, okay? That's how Ferguson puts it. So the essential attributes are the ones that have been, are most intense among the three persons of the

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Trinity. The idea that God, and that's the first half of the Catechism answer, that God is a spirit, that he is infinite, that he is eternal, that he is unchangeable, okay?

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All these things are intense within the Trinity, whereas, and how they are expressed, and how we understand them.

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Whereas the personal are those which express his personality. Those that express, or another way to put it more poetically would be to say, those that show us

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God's heart, his goodness, his wisdom, his power, his holiness, his justice, his goodness, of course, his truth.

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All right. Any questions about how we categorize attributes? Like I said, I'm not going to really go through the definitions of them all.

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If you'd like to, all of our lessons from None Greater and Simple Eternity are online.

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You can go watch. It'll take you about, I don't know, a year. Yes, Dave.

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Yes, yes. It's already contradicting simplicity. You're already on dangerous ground. Yes. I completely agree with you.

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But, yeah, right.

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Right, exactly right. Yes. Because, as we are, to remind everyone, simplicity, what simplicity tells us is, is

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God is all, has no parts, right? He is all things of himself all the time. He's not like sometimes in loving mode, and sometimes in justice mode.

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Pastor Cooley, is that related to the eminent and economic Trinity? Pass. Yes.

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I don't know. I don't really have a good answer for you. Yeah, yeah.

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Of all those different ones, yeah. It is not a clean, not a clean simple mapping where I can say like, oh, eminent is on the left and economic is on the right.

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Yeah. Probably the closest one to that is the essential versus personal attributes thing from the

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Westminster Catechism, Row 5. But, okay. Yes. Last one, Dave. Yes.

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Yeah, I think so. Right. Right. I absolutely think so. And I think depending on the context in which you're trying to study or make the argument of whatever it is that you're trying to argue, whatnot,

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I think you can use. Certainly, I would say 3 through 5 are good, are really good.

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But 1 and 2 are fine. Like, I mean, very smart, good theologians have used them.

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So I can't say no. I'm not going to quibble with you if you want to use those for your Sunday school lessons.

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Okay. All right. So there you go. So there's just a bit about the categorization and the attributes.

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All right. Next, I want to talk about decrees of God. The decrees of God.

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What's a decree? I didn't even put this in my notes, but I just realized

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I didn't really. I should maybe just pause for a second and explain. What's a decree? What does it mean to decree something?

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Brian, to proclaim a law, to proclaim a command?

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Yeah, I think these are both really good. Yeah, Dave? Yeah, to declare what will be or what must be, right?

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Yes, it's very, it definitely has a sense of, there's a guy who's in charge and he is making a decree.

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Yes, Andrew, once again, looking at my notes. All right. So, but yes, and Berghoff is with Pink on that one.

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Berghoff emphasizes, that's number 9. Berghoff emphasizes that we should talk about the decree of God, when we're talking about God's decree.

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Even though, again, most systematic theology books will say the decrees of God, that we really should talk about decree in the singular.

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All right. Why? Why should we talk about the decree of the singular? Well, let me expand upon Andrew's comment.

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First off, when we're talking about the decree of God, we are talking about the plan.

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All right. This is the plan, to put it very simply. This is, this is the plan.

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This is what, how it's going to be, as combining Dave's answer as well. This is God's plan for what will be and what must come to pass.

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All right. The plan for time and history was established before time began.

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Okay. And it was established as a singular act. Why? Well, we can, we can tell this from Scripture.

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There's certainly plenty of places where Scripture talks about the idea of God having planned everything from the beginning, that we're chosen from both the foundations, before the foundations of the world, that Jesus was the

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Lamb of God from before the foundation of the world, right? There's plenty of things that sort of allude to and show us that this plan, the whole plan for all of history has all been set in stone, written in his book from, from the very beginning.

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But just from who God is and what he's like, I think we can just extrapolate on it as well.

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God is, God's knowledge, right? He is omniscient. His knowledge is all comprehensive.

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Nothing has ever occurred to God. He's never learned.

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He never has, he never gains new information that he didn't have before. He does not need to wait for history to unfold three steps and then go like, okay, well, since we're here, now let's talk about what we'll do next, right?

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He doesn't need any of that. He already knows. And so that means that his plan is, as you can imagine, comprehensive.

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His knowledge is comprehensive. So his plan is comprehensive, right? And if he's got a comprehensive plan, what on earth would you need more than one for?

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Right? It's comprehensive in the truest sense of that word. He's got one plan, one decree.

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It is also immutable because God is immutable. And if it's

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God's plan, it's not going to change. Since God cannot learn, he does not need to change his decree,

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Burkoff says, because of a mistake or of ignorance, nor because of an inability to carry it out.

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I do this all the time, right? With my plans. We have a rule in Ell's household now that we simply do not tell the kids the plan.

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Okay? Because the plan never lasts beyond about 30 minutes after waking up in the morning.

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Mostly because of the kids. That's correct. Yes. Yes. I owe you two a dollar. But yes.

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So, you know, we make plans and then something frustrates those plans.

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Oh, turns out it's raining today, right? The weatherman was so, so wrong. Or, you know, or one of those kids woke up and they're sick.

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Or, you know, whatever, right? It turns out that there's a huge accident on the turnpike and we're going to be late.

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What if we go somewhere? Right. Okay. So rather than disappoint the children that the plan that they thought they were going to have now has to change, we just don't tell them the plan.

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Everything's a big surprise, right? Okay. God, on the other hand, does tell us the plan.

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But and the reason he can tell us the plan is because it can't change.

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Nothing can frustrate it. And he never will have it. He will never lack for ability to carry it out.

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Yes. Yeah.

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So, in fact, we talked about this a couple of years ago when we did None Greater, because that is one of the most common objections to the idea of God's immutability.

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And the answer to that is that every time the Bible used those words and that terminology, it was a language of accommodation.

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It was a language of anthropomorphism. God was explaining to us what was happening in the unfolding of his plan in a way that we as humans would understand.

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But it is not intended to be a statement of his own attribute, right?

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So, to put it another way, the... I don't know.

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How many different ways can we try to put this? Right. God never repents. Right.

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There's actually even a... There's a chapter in Samuel, 1 Samuel, where in the same chapter, it both says that God repented of making

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Saul king, and then, like, seconds later, right, a few verses later,

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God says to Samuel, I am the Lord. I do not repent. Like, I'm, you know, I'm not like a man.

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I never repent. Paraphrasing. So, it's almost like a contradiction, right, within the very same chapter.

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And I think that the second one is the true answer. He does never repent, but rather what we witness through our lens of time is a picture where it looks like God is changing direction, but it has always been the plan for that directional change.

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So, I guess, in a way, what you're saying about thinking about the Big P Plan, right, has never changed.

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Yeah. Well, let me get into that a little bit more.

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I would say no, but let me try to explain why. That's going to come up a little bit more as we get into Providence, too.

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All right. But let me just say this. The decree was set down outside of time.

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All right. It was set down outside of time, and God does not change his mind or change at all.

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So, there's really only the one decree that went forth. Okay. Now, it is also important to know, and this kind of gets to what you're at, it's going to help to answer your statement, is that the decree to act,

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God's decree, the decree to act is not the act itself.

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All right. It's kind of splitting hairs, but just to make sure we're clear on that. There's the decree, but the decree that God made is not his actions.

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It's not his executing the decree. It is just, it's the plan. Okay. It is the decree.

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So, then there are, you know, when we talk about things like creation and providence and redemption, these are the actions.

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These are God's executing of the plan. And by and large, by the way, that's how theologians then split up the execution, those three categories, creation, providence, and redemption.

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All right. So, there are, you know, the divine decree is founded in wisdom.

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It's eternal. It's efficacious in that, you know, the plan, it's going to happen.

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Right. It will come to pass. Proverbs 19 .21, it is the purpose of Yahweh that will stand.

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And Isaiah 46 .10, that declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times to things not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my purpose.

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Now, it is also true, I'm going to assert that the decree of God is unconditional. Okay. Which means that it is not dependent on anything.

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There are no if -thens in the decree. Does God put if -thens to us?

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Absolutely. Jonathan, give us an example. Right.

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Right. He promises Israel, right? If you obey, if you follow my ways, then I will bless you.

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Then the rains will come. Right. What did promise he give to children? He says, you know, honor your father and your mother that it may go well with you.

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That your days may be long. Right. Sorry, that your days may be long and it may go well with you. Right.

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So, there's if -thens there and the if -thens are in the execution of the plan, but it's the plan.

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Right. The change is all in us. Right. And that, and our reactions to him and reactions to what he is doing.

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And right. The same thing is happening. The plan is the plan all the way along. And we just see it only on the other side of time.

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You can't. Yep. Number 10. So, one of the objections to the doctrine of the decree of God is the idea of fatalism.

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Right. It's like, well, God's already said what's going to come to pass. It's going to come to pass no matter what I do.

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Right. Yeah, you're right, but. All right. One, just remember that A, the decree, right, is not a rule of action.

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All right. It's not a rule of action. It is the plan. There is a rule of action and that is the law.

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And as Berkhoff says, the law puts men under obligation to employ a means. All right.

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The means which God has ordained. To get kind of mind blowing here, understand that God had a plan and part of his plan is to give us a law that we will obey that law, that when we obey that law and we do the things that he plans for us to do by obeying that law, then certain things will come to pass.

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Because we're doing what he planned. And so the means, one of the means is the law.

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Another means is the gospel. And B, that the decree includes not just the means, but also the ends.

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Or I should say not just the ends, right, but also the means. Okay. Not just the ends.

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It isn't just this is the last state where we're trying to get to. The plan is all the steps along the way and how it's going to be accomplished and who is going to accomplish it.

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A great example of this is in Acts 27 when Paul and all the Roman soldiers are on the boat in the storm off the coast of Malta.

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Right. And Paul says to them, everyone who stays in this boat will survive.

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Okay. That's the ends. Yes, everyone who stays in the boat will survive, but they have to stay in the boat.

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Now, no one in this situation jumped off the boat to prove the point. But that would have been the point, right?

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That's the ends. God has decreed are decreed as a result of means.

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That's why Paul can write to the Philippians. What seems like a really almost contradictory statement. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed.

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So now not only in my presence, but much more in my absence. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

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But then verse 13, for it is God who works in you. Both to will and to work his good pleasure.

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Yeah. Yeah. Even the will.

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It's not even just God's work, right? It's both to will for his good pleasure, right?

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Even the will is coming from God. Right. And then lastly, we'll do question 11 today.

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It's the last thing we'll have time for today, which is the idea about the occurrence of evil. Right. That the doctrine of the decree of God would mean that God is the author of evil.

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That's one of the objections. But that misunderstands also some very key things in that the decree of God, its nature is permissive.

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Okay. It's permissive. Theologians talk of God's permissive agency is the full term that they use.

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So here's the thing. Strong, one of the theologians, he says, No decree of God reads, you shall sin.

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All right. One, because no decree is addressed specifically to you. Sorry. But two, no decree with respect to you says you shall.

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And because that's the law, not the decree. And three, God cannot cause sin or decree to cause it.

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He simply decrees to create and himself to act. Ready? Try to pay it and follow along with us.

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In such a way that you will of your own free choice commit sin.

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God determines upon his own acts for seeing what the results will be in the free acts of his creatures.

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And so he determines those results to get scriptural with it.

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The Psalms speak of God giving wicked men that which they crave. And Paul preaches and acts that God allowed all the nations to allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways.

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They wanted it. He allowed it to happen. All right. So within the plan, there is this permissive agency for the creatures to make these free choices in which they are going to choose to sin.

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But because God is on top of it. To be very colloquial about it.

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And the plan is the plan. God can use even that for good. Right.

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And that is Joseph's famous comfort to his brothers. And if you saw my email yesterday and you listened to Ferguson's episode of Things Unseen, it was specifically about Joseph and his brothers.

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You meant evil against me, he tells his brothers. But God meant it for good.

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You sold me into slavery. You were just trying to get rid of me. You lied to my father, told him

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I was dead. You put him through misery. You put me through torture for all these years. You didn't even know what was going to happen, how bad it was going to be.

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I was going to end up in jail for so long for 14 years. Right.

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Joseph suffered. But God meant it for good. And Ferguson, by the way, makes a big deal out of the matching pair of numbers that I'd never noticed before.

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And I was so encouraged by it because we can read through the entire story of Joseph in about an hour if you're just reading through Genesis.

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Right. But that is 28 years of Joseph's life that you're whipping through.

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He spends 14 years in preparation mode for 14 years as prime minister, seven years of plenty and then seven years of famine.

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Sometimes providence, right? God's working, which we'll obviously have to get into next time.

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And by next time, I mean two times from now. But that sometimes providence is slow.

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But let's not accuse God of slowness because to him, 14 years is a blip, a blink.

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Right. But we think to ourselves like, oh, surely to be trained up to for some service to God, you can a couple hours just send me to a seminar.

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Right. And I'm ready to go. But no, Joseph, it took 14 years to mold and shape him to be ready for the mission that God had for him.

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Right. And we see it not just in how great of a prime minister he was, but also in how he dealt with his brothers and his father and how he restored his family.

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And we'll get into a lot more on that when we talk about providence. All right. So that's that for this week. Next week,

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Dave Smith is going to join the crew, the cohort of your teachers, and he is going to talk about the doctrine of man.

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And then when I come back a week after that, we will maybe finally get to providence then.

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All right. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you so much, Lord, that your counsel shall stand, that we can rest in knowing that whatever happens as Romans 828 tells us, that all things are working together for the good of them that love you.

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And that is us. And we don't love you of our own honor on our own.

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We did not work up that love, but rather you loved us first. And now we love you back in response.

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That even our love is generated and caused by you, empowered by you, that you have willed it to happen.

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And Lord, whenever these circumstances come into our life, may we rest in the knowledge that they are, that you have decreed the ends from the beginning, that nothing, no matter how sudden, no matter how surprising to us, nothing is a surprise to you.

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At no point are you caught off guard, Lord. And you are constantly upholding, preserving, and working out the execution of your plan, that in the end, you will have the glory.

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And in the end, we will dwell forever in heaven with you in joyous eternality.