Systematic Theology (part 47)

A loving and gracious Father, Lord, what a joy it is to know that you who created all things, you provide for us. You uphold and sustain this universe by the word of your power. Help us, Father, as we look at these texts, as we engage with questions that our minds can't fully understand.

Give us the humility to recognize that we don't have all the answers, and yet we can trust in you, our good and great God. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Okay, so if you look at your handout on the first page, which is not numbered, you have a definition of providence right on the top.

God is continually involved with all created things so that, number one, he keeps them existing and maintaining the properties with which he created them. So that's the sustenance. The second part is he cooperates with created things in every action, directing their destructive properties to cause them to act as they do, and then he directs them to fulfill their purposes.

Again, I saw a few people enter, so if you don't have a handout, please raise your hand. We have people who can get them to you. So, all right, so we have a few handouts. They'll find you. If you keep your hand up, they'll find you eventually.

All right, so while the handouts are coming out, I just want to remind what we've covered so far. Last week we looked at preservation, and then in concurrence we looked at up until .7 in your handout.

So I think we still need a few handouts, right? Everyone's got the handouts? I don't think we have some here. We need some. If you're out of handouts, I think you can distribute it. So I need my handout people on the lookout.

Okay, there's one more here, and we can make more copies if we need to. So actually, before I look at this material, I want to ask a question, and I'm looking for Frank, and I don't see Frank, although I know we have a few other mechanically skilled people here.

Providence, Human Knowledge, and the Differential Illustration

How many people here know what a differential is? Okay, oh, wow, look at the number of hands go up. How many of you can explain how a differential works in maybe 30 seconds or less? Okay, oh, wow, I got one hand there, brave man.

Now, can you explain for us, Charlie, not how it works, but why we have a differential? What's the purpose of a differential? Torque force in a perpendicular plane. How do the rest of you who didn't raise your hand just love that?

It just rolls off your tongue, doesn't it? Torque force in a perpendicular plane, torque one way to another way, so from your engine to your wheels. So there's a rotation that just changes direction. But there is one more thing that a differential does, doesn't it?

That's very unique when you're with your wheels. What else does a differential do? Why do we have a differential in addition to this? Yes, and actually even just turns. So when you turn your car, one of your wheels goes a little faster than the other because it travels more distance.

Now I know when you woke up this morning, turned on your car and drove down, you weren't thinking of how exactly the speed of your wheels change while you navigate at the turn of the highway or into the parking lot here without slipping and sliding.

Now there is this little device there that's called the differential that does something pretty fascinating. It's a device created by man with the wisdom that God has given him, and it is hard for many other men, myself included, although I watched a YouTube video this week, to fully understand how this mechanism works.

I kind of know why this mechanism exists now that I've read it up. I wouldn't have known it before, but I don't exactly understand how. I can see a conceptual diagram, but if you opened up a differential, I'd be like, OK, thank you very much.

How much do I pay to get it fixed? So except I know some of you probably could do those things. And I give this example because even in a simple, well, not simple for all of us, but in something that humans have made, some other humans can't grasp how these things work.

It's a simple mechanistic system that even when you take apart, not all of us have the ability to comprehend it. And I bring this example just to kind of bring us all to a state of humility as we open up the subject of God's providence.

Because if we have a trouble understanding the things that man has made and understanding how it works, even when we may understand why, even the why part of it, the turn is one of them that is, I think, more complex differentials for the slip.

And then after a point, I don't want to know. I just want my car to go, reach the end. Because between the time you turn your car to the point where you actually park your car, there's so many things.

I guess now there's programs generated on the fly by the company I work for apparently does it. I'm learning new things about the company I work for. There's a program that is being created and executed while I'm actually driving.

And I don't want to, I hope they do a good job with it. But that's as far as I want to know. So there is the how part of it, even in human creation is hard for us to understand. And the why part of it, to some degree, we may get, and that's all I want to leave here.

And then if you look at the first seven points in concurrence, actually the preservation, God makes things with properties. So this bottle, plastic, H2O with whatever else is in it, he maintains a property so that this plastic doesn't dissolve while I have it in my hand and the water slips, or the water doesn't change into arsenic and I die when I drink this water.

So the properties that God makes with it, it retains it. And last week we looked at how we have the physical universe that we understand the laws and the properties that it is made up of. But we looked at the scriptural text to say that these things exist in the way they do.

They maintain their properties because God is the one who upholds the universe by the word of his power. He carries it forth from its beginning to its end. And then we looked at these examples of inanimate creation, the sun rising, animals, birds looking for food, seemingly chance events, you roll a die, but God is the one who causes its outcome.

And then number five, and that's where I'm trying to get a fix on, is events fully caused by God and fully caused by the creature as well. We have things we see and observe and try to understand how these things operate.

Like the birds, they have a certain instinct that they do, the sun, we understand how it rotates and we try to explain them as much as we can in the physical universe or in the animate creation. But the Bible also says that God ordains and sustains and operates this universe.

There's nothing that happens outside of his divine providence. And we left this by saying, how exactly God makes each of these things happen fully. Point number five, all of these things are fully caused by the creation with the properties that have been endured to them.

And we see God is also fully operative in making them happen. How they both happen together is something we do not understand. We just take God at his word when the Bible says, he makes the sun rise on the good and the evil.

He is the one who makes these things happen. But in a mechanical world, we try to look for input and output. But in this providence of God, we just say there are two things that fully cause things to happen, whether it is a physical world or the animal kingdom or what we're going to talk about today, man and his choices.

And we also have God who is fully operational behind it. So with that, we are going to start with point number eight, but I'm going to skip point eight for a moment because that's a little more challenging than another subject.

There is another subject in your handout that I want to touch upon before we come to that. And that is the question of choices. How many choices do you think you made this week between last Sunday and this Sunday that was fully and completely your choice?

You didn't do it because your mom told you to do or you just said, you know what, today I'm going to choose this thing. Take a guess. How many choices do you think you made? 5 ,000. That's a good. You probably just made a choice right now, you know, to say, should I actually answer that question or should I not?

And the thing is, we make choices all the time, either consciously or unconsciously. And the thing is, we are made in God's image. We have the capacity to make those choices. We make those choices, not like some puppet, not like some in a fatalistic story where, you know, we just do whatever it is that we are meant to do without rationally or as persons.

That's part of what it defines to be a person is to be able to make those kind of choices. So the Bible is very clear, you know, choose this day whom you will serve. There are choices that we actually do make.

And I know here in a Calvinistic church, the moment I say the choices you make, a lot of flags should be going up and it's good because you're going to be looking at it in the second half of our slide handout.

I'm a little sleep deprived. But if you look at choices, we make those choices freely. We have the ability to make those choices. Now on the stack of all the things that we've been talking about, if we add this function of humans making free choices, uncoerced choices, decisions that we choose to on the basis of whatever we think is good, and then you have on this side that God actually ordains everything and ordains, you know, there are some people who have a trouble.

If I make a choice and God knows the result of my choice, then I'm already having trouble trying to understand how my choice was actually kind of free of its own. If God knows at this point in time, I'm going to, I can't think of a good example.

Let's think of some big choices we've made, right? Actually let's leave the examples because the examples will help illustrate. If I'm going to turn this page or not, I'm thinking about it and I decide not to turn the page and two seconds before God already knows that I'm not going to turn the page.

There seems to be something intuitively scary for me, you know, that it seems like that there is some determinism happening here if God knows. Now let's pack this up one step further. It's not just God knowing, but God ordaining.

He ordains everything that comes to pass. He's not just a passive recipient, just observing and saying, you know, maybe I can see through the span of time, beginning of eternity to end of eternity at the same time.

And so we could kind of get away from this choice thing a little bit, you know, wiggle away from it. But then if you say God actually ordains, I think not one rogue atom in the universe, every single thing is ordained by God.

Then you actually have a much more challenging problem. You know, you have free choices that I make on the basis of what I want, what I like, what's laid before me, and you have God actually bringing to pass what it is that he wills in my life or in the universe as a whole.

So once again, let's go back to this issue of fully, point number five, fully caused by the creature, fully caused by God. And this is where things get a little challenging when we say my free choice is fully caused by me, and it is also fully caused by God.

So while that problem settles in your mind, I want to give you a few terminology to help you grapple with this. There are three different ways in which we define this. On the one hand, we have something called libertarianism, libertarianism, I'm not talking about the political system.

This is just a way in which we think of how we make our choices. Libertarianism says that I'm fully and completely free. Actually if you just go down, let me read point number 10 and then I'll be able to explain this.

Are we free? Do we have free will? And the point there is scripture nowhere says that we are free in the sense of being outside of God's control. And that's really what libertarian free will is. Libertarian free will says that you might acknowledge God, but you say God doesn't, I cannot do the things that I want.

God is not involved in those choices that I make. I'm completely free. I could choose A, or I could choose not to do A, and the outcome is fully dependent upon this little sovereign, I determine the outcome and I could have chosen either of these outcomes to come.

That's libertarianism. And on the other hand, you have what is called determinism and a determinism says that every outcome is actually determined, predetermined by God's ordination. And there is another element to this.

I'm going to leave that for a moment. And right in the middle, you have something called compatibilism. And compatibilism says that I can make my free choices and God also ordains and brings to pass whatever he freely chooses.

And these two things work together in a way that I may not fully understand. There is a hard compatibilist, and a hard compatibilist says that for my choice to be real, I need determinism. I need for a causal chain of events from beginning to the end.

And the reason a hard compatibilist would say this is because if things are random, then my choice actually has no meaning. If there is no, if my choice is just I flipped a coin and decided to turn the page, then that's really not a choice of agency of a person, but rather I want the choice to be there was a good reason why I thought this page needs to be turned because there is some content on the other side I wanted to see.

And now there is a causal chain of events that lead for me to come to this point where I say, oh, there is something I want to communicate, and that content that I communicate is on the other side, and that is what is leading me.

And then you can just walk up the chain of events. Why is the content on the other side? Because I printed it on the other side, and you need to change it. So there is a series of events that actually come to this, and there is a rational reason why I choose what I choose.

And that's a hard compatibilist, and a soft compatibilist would say, I don't really care whether there is a causal chain of events or not. I just know that God is sovereign, and I'm free, and they kind of work together.

And whether God is sovereign may be a little damaged by a soft compatibilist because an Arminian could probably sign off with a soft compatibilism. God doesn't necessarily ordain everything, but there is some way in which God and I cooperate in this process.

Let me stop there. I think I used a lot of big words early in the morning. Any questions on what I just said? Libertarianism, compatibilism, and determinism. Now determinism, there's two sides to this, and I want to make sure that part of it is very, very, very clear.

For a compatibilist, we can have a deterministic universe where God ordains everything. And the compatibilist would say this. Let me, you know, for a libertarian, I said I could choose A or I could choose not A.

For a compatibilist, while I'm in the process of making that decision, like right now whether I should turn the page or not, I go through those reasons and say, is the content on the other side really necessary for me to read before I communicate, or do I have enough of it in my head?

And while I'm making that choice, it is very real. Nobody is saying, do not open, turn the page over, do not, you know, if I turn the page over, I will upset God's well-planned universe by my, you know, this random atom.

I freely and completely choose because God's secret will of what is ordained that will come to pass is not constraining me in my choices. I choose those choices freely, so I choose A, but I could not have chosen not A because God had ordained for A to come to pass, except that while I go through time, I choose freely on the basis of what I know, what I want, what I will freely.

And this is where, you remember, I started this whole thing with there are some things that creatures do freely, and there are some things that God ordains, and just like in the differential, we don't really know how these things work together.

I want us to be very careful because the Bible says we are free creatures made in God's image and able to make choices. The Bible says God runs all things according to the counsel of his will. And we need to be, say yes and yes, and I don't know how.

Now while we go through these things, some of the why parts of it we may start to understand a little bit more. And the way we want to think of it is think of the big choices you make, and normally in those big choices you'd be like, I am so glad God ordained those choices, right?

Who you were going to marry. I know some of you are very happy because you recently made those choices. And you're like, I'm so glad God ordained for this really cool guy or this gal to be my spouse. And I got to go discover this wonderful plan that God had for me and get to know this person and so forth.

And then when you think, well, do you agree with me? I'm talking too much. Does it make sense? Okay, thank you. I haven't lost all of you just yet. We're going to go to the problem of evil as well. So it'll be a lot more fun when we get there.

But if you think of the smaller choices, right? What did you eat for breakfast this morning? I was going to eat cereal until I realized there was no milk and that we had to eat pancakes. I had to eat pancakes with chocolates in them.

In this particular case, I could still be thankful for God's choice of my breakfast because I was pleased with the outcome. Now, your basketball team that wins today's game, is that a game today? Does God really care about which team actually wins?

Why does he have to ordain the outcome of the game? It's fixed. How is this? And really, I grew up as an Arminian, and this was one of those classic questions, which side of the butter should I toast?

Toast should I butter? It's like, does God really care? And the question is really not, and what's happening here is I'm trying to figure out what the how of this can happen and the why. On the smaller question, why?

Why does God even care about what happens or what the outcome is? And so I kind of get really all tied up in a knot over here, and I say, maybe there are some things. Some things God's sovereign and ordains and other things.

He just kind of lets go. So let me leave that there. Hopefully, I've caused more confusion in your minds than solutions, but I want to leave these two as challenging as they can so that you can say, I know this is true.

I know this is true. I just don't know how this is true or sometimes even why God does the things he does. Now, the rest of your points under point number 10, we are free in the greatest sense that any creature of God could be free.

We make willing choices, choices that have real effects. So that's the part where we struggle with. So if I say these two things, we make willing choices and choices that have real effects. Does my choice change the course of events that would otherwise not have changed?

Actually, last week, Joni, you gave me a good example of God's providence. Here is this kid in school. Doesn't look like their life is going to it's heading down the wrong path, not willing to change.

Prayer of a very godly teacher next year comes back. Student is very different. What happened? Did that prayer actually affect a change in the life of this individual who was not willing to make that free choices?

That that person now made those choices that were seemingly impossible from a human perspective. Did something change in the course of event because this teacher prayed? Because sometimes we can just talk so much about the sovereignty of God that we don't talk about determinism, but we talk about fatalism.

So Calvinists, you need to be very careful that we are not fatalist. A fatalist says that my my choices, my free so-called free choices don't really are not free, nor are they causing any impact in the world in which I live today.

I just am this. Last week we looked at this author of a storybook and a character in a storybook. The author is written. The character just does, and it's just like a puppet show. You know, I'm just kind of going through the motion.

It's a mechanistic universe. All the causes have just kind of determined these things, and I'm not really making any change. I'm just kind of going through this causal line without having any meaningful impact in the life that I live today.

And what and a Christian would strongly disagree with this idea of fatalism because fatalism has two things. One is that my my choices don't impact the world that I live in. There are that I my presence here is just, you know.

Perfunctory, it is not really real and meaningful. And it also discounts the personality of the God who ordains all things. This is not just a mechanistic universe. It is a God who who is a who's in his character is good, who is loving, who interacts with the people that he has made and works with them.

Once again, I wanted to just keep these two things in mind. This is who God is. This is who we are and how we live and how they both work together. We do not know. And why some of these times we will understand.

And one of the little bits of the how we can maybe fathom a little bit is God didn't just make us. He one of those things in Providence is he cooperates with us. He works with us. He ordains not just the ends of my choices.

He ordains even the means of those choices. So we're going to look at a bunch of verses here to to draw this out, especially as we get into the problem of evil. But the point of all of this is we want to be faithful to the Bible when it talks about who God is.

And we want to live our life with great confidence going through this. So let me let me stop here one more time. Any questions on what we've covered? Something that doesn't make sense. And, you know, when I and I think I want us to remember this idea of our relationship to God as a child to the parent.

And there are sometimes we ask things that are not wise. And sometimes there are things that the parent would let the child do and learn for itself. Oh, you know, if I do this, I'm going to trip and fall.

And then I learn not to do that again. There are things in which God bends down. I think you said that was a humbling part of it, that God would actually hear this little baby asking this wise and great king for something that from a human perspective may seem silly, almost like, God, can you just do whatever you think?

I know it is best. But there is a way in which God interacts with free agents, free, not in the libertarian sense, but with agents in in growing them, in saving them, in conforming them to the image of Christ.

And so when we just think of how grander God is, the purposes of God that are worked out in each of our lives, we realize it is not just, you know, some objective. I got my goal for today. But rather, how does God transform the lives of people, free people, according to his wisdom and the answers prayers, which we'd be like, why?

Why does God even condescend to hear and answer? That was a great point. So if you turn your page over, we're going to look, look at a few things and then we'll come back to the problem of evil. So the right on the top of your sheet, you have government.

Biblical Texts on Divine Government and the Will of God

This is not human government, but this is divine government. Think of it as the kingdom of God. Let's look at a few verses and we'll we'll briefly touch on this. Can I have someone read some 103 19? Just raise your hand.

Thank you, Daniel, 435. Thank you, Brad. Romans 1136. Thank you, Anthony. Ephesians 111. Back there. Thank you. Philippians to 11 and 10 and 11. Corey. And then last Romans 828. Whoever can say it from memory.

No one for 828. Thank you, Larry. All right, let's let's begin with Psalm 103 19. His throne is in the heavens and his sovereignty is over all. And these are like one of those categories of some 103. Those of you who know it, you know, it is one of those real encouraging Psalms.

Just talking about how God rules over every single thing in the universe. Daniel 435. None can stay his hand saying, what have you done? This is God among the hosts of heaven. This is the angelic beings among the three humans and all of creation here on earth.

And it's his will that comes to pass. God ordained some things and brings it to pass. And nobody can say, I have libertarian free will. You know, you can do this. It is God who accomplishes what he wants.

Romans 1136 from from him and to him and through him. And again, it just gives you this comprehensive idea of the sovereignty of God from him. He's the one who ordains to him. It's his goals, what he wants to accomplish.

And through him, he's involved intimately in all of those creation choices that are made in this particular case of human free will. Ephesians 111. And as you know, Ephesians one grand passage, father, son, and the spirit involved in salvation.

And here he is the one who predestined and does all things according to the counsel of his will. And actually, that's the next point there in the will of God. His will is what he determines and makes to come to pass.

Philippians 210 to 11. Excellent. And if you just look back at Colossians one, 16 and 17 in terms of what it is that Christ has done in terms of governing the universe. And then here in Philippines, too, that God's will.

And this will connect directly with the problem of evil that we look back. We will look in a moment. He is Lord. He is the sovereign overall. And Romans 828. And we can continue reading in 39. Here is this.

Purpose of God. And here is the why of God. When it comes to believers, there is a goodness that works itself out in God's providence. There is a telios, an end, a goal in the life of each and every believer here.

And that's not promised to unbelievers. In fact, the student that we talked about don't know if it's a believer or not. But God gives common grace even to the unbelievers. But he promises good as he transformed the life of believers, even through the problem of evil that we're going to see in a moment.

He accomplishes those good because his will is all-encompassing. He's not just like this parent who knows how this child needs to grow and provides those challenges. Even those trials allows them to come in.

He's not just like this doctor who does these painful surgeries in order to take out, incise out the cancer or the disease. He is all of these things in the human plane. We can understand the why or maybe even the how to some degree.

But infinitely more, we have the God of the universe who is working on sinful man like you and I. And the humility that was just talked about, I want us to keep in mind because many a time when we come to the problem of evil, I come about it thinking, I ought to know how.

I ought to know why. Because I'm the character that is going through this circumstance or someone or one of my friends or these people that I care deeply about. And we need to come about it with a state of humility, realizing that we are not in the plane of neutrality to say, I am qualified even to understand how or to know why these things happen.

I come into this circumstance with the understanding that my God is sovereign. He is good. He is all powerful. He does everything according to the counsel of will for his good purposes. And I want to understand to the degree that God has revealed to me what the place of evil is in this good universe that God has created.

So I just want you to keep that in mind. So the next point right there, will of God. There are two things. The moral will revealed will. There's more names to this, which is this is what God has declared to us.

You open the Bible. This is what God wants you to do. These are the good things that God has ordained. And then there is a providential government of the secret will. And again, you go to Deuteronomy.

You know, there is this revealed and those things that are hidden, though hidden things belong to God, and he brings them to pass. How do you know God's revealed? Well, it comes to pass. Bible would be.

That's true. Historically, you can look back and see what God has ordained. Bible would be God's revealed will. This is what God has called you to do. This is what God says is good. And actually, if you look at prophecies as well, it reveals some of what God is going to bring to pass.

But when you talk about the secret will, like the simple thing like turning my page, you know, it happens. And then I know what God did for it to come to pass, because this is what has come to be. And there is one more element.

Charlie and I talked about it last week. The scroll. Can you remind me the name again, Charlie? Visceral will. And I think that's. Can you just define it for me? And then I'll make a note. And as I've been reading what Sproul wrote on it, it was this.

You have the revealed will of God, you know, the high standard and the goodness and the purposes of God in accomplishing everything. And then you have all these problems, especially the problem of evil and other things that come in the secret will of God or the ordained will of God.

And then this visceral will. I know he used another name for it, too. And seems to somehow look at, you know, what is the. The desire is not willing. God is not willing for any to perish, but he does not take pleasure in the.

Destruction of the wicked. So you have hell. And then you know that this one talks about some something that is more, you know, the emotional or the. It tries to reconcile the character of God and the purposes of God in a way that I think.

Does justice to some of the text of scripture. But I think, you know, generally everybody agrees to these two two wills that we have. And also, let me just talk on the decrease of God. Decrease of God are if you look at what?

Oh, yes. I've only seen Sproul talk about this. I don't know if anyone's seen anyone else use this. The generally, if you look at any systematic theology, typically you will see the revealed will and the secret will.

They have different names for it. But the visceral will, I've seen only Sproul use it. And I there are biblical texts that seem to justify this. But I think. When we think of will, we say this is what God wants.

So when I say revealed will, God wants holiness in the life of his believers. When we look at secret will, God willed Judas or the man of perdition to betray Jesus. Now, does God want holiness? I'm sorry.

I'm kind of going back and forth. Does God want holiness in the life of Judas? And so what happens for us is we see two things that we can't tie together. Once again, the how or the why comes in the middle.

And the visceral will seems to somehow bridge the gap. That's the way I see Sproul putting it. I don't see anyone else use that. And I think we want to leave it at the oughtness. And the reason we even bring it up here today is because of this text like the one that we just mentioned.

There are things that, verses there. This is not human attempts. These are verses there that try to talk about the desires of God in an anthropomorphic sense. And so I think, but this is not a major presentation in theology.

All right. Let me actually also read the next section, and then we'll go to the problem of evil. The importance of human action. We are still responsible for our actions. I haven't read all the verses there.

Our actions have real results and do change the course of events. We just talked about prayer being one of those types of things, and you have the verses from James and John. And the conclusion is we must act.

We do have free agency, and we are expected to act. You know, it's not the let go and let God. I'm just going to, I'm a Christian. I'm just going to float coast along because God will bring about what he intends in my life.

That would be a sinful way of denying the responsibility that God has given. Anyone else need handouts? I think I don't know if you have any more left. Just raise your hand and you might get one if you need one.

All right. So with that, let's turn now back one page, the previous site to the problem of evil. So in the problem of evil, I have a whole bunch of verses here. I'll probably let you read this, but I want to engage with questions rather than look at all of these texts.

When you look at agency, we saw human responsibility on this side and God's sovereignty on this side. And then that they are both 100 true. In fact, I was teaching a class this and many of the Christians that said, you know, I think God does 50 and we do 50 and together they add up to 100%.

That's not what the Bible is saying. The Bible is saying we 100 choose and do those things that God has ordained, that God is also 100 ordained. So they are both true simultaneously. We just don't know how.

All right. So with that in mind, let's look at the problem of evil. There is another. What is that thing in the gear that stops things? There is a cog in the wheel or gear. So what's happening here is here when it comes to choices, we could somehow put them together because we could say, you know, I make these choices, you know, things like turning my page or eating my breakfast or getting married, simple things like that.

And then we can somehow see God's hand providentially underneath, you know, underneath that is everlasting arms. He actually accomplishes all things through these free and willing choices. But the problem of evil makes it a little more complex because my choices have either a godly consequence or an ungodly consequence.