Understanding God's Sovereignty in Election (Part 2)

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Understanding God's Sovereignty in Election (Part 3)

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Tonight, we're going to continue on in the study that we began last week on the subject of, well, it's the text, rather, of Romans 8, 28 through 39.
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That's where we began.
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And I said that last week was going to be an overview and that this week we would go back into the text and that we would begin breaking down certain aspects of the text to help us make sense of the whole of the text.
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And I want to begin by asking a question.
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How many of you have ever been to Ichetucknee Springs? Whenever you go to Ichetucknee Springs, the water is a very cold 72 degrees.
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Now, 72 degrees you don't think is very cold, but when it's water temperature, that's a very cold water temperature.
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And it's that temperature all the time, even when it's the hottest, hot time of summer.
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And I've been there in the hot summer.
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And when I get to Ichetucknee Springs, there are two ways to enter the water.
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You can enter the water one toe at a time, which is where you take your foot and you dip it in there and you let that toe get used to the water.
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And then you dip a little further and you let your ankle get used to the water and then you let your knee get used to the water and it takes some time.
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However, the smart people say the best way to handle it is to jump right in.
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Well, I only bring up that analogy because there are folks who think that when you deal with a topic as difficult as the topic we're going to address tonight, which is the topic of predestination, that it's best to go in real slow and be real timid and only deal with little surface things and not jump right in.
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However, I think the best thing to do is to jump right in and just get to it.
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Go ahead and get wet.
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And once you're there, then you can deal with all the things that go with it.
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So tonight we're just going to jump right in and we're going to go ahead and say that our topic of discussion tonight is the topic of predestination.
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The reason why that is our topic is because that is the word in the passage.
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So open your Bible and turn with me to Romans 8.
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We will look at Romans 8, 28 through 30.
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Now, some of you have heard me teach on this before.
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And for some of you, this is not new.
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However, for others, this is the first time you've heard me address this subject in this fashion.
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And so I encourage you to always have a mind that is willing to be conformed to Scripture and always be willing to listen to what the Scripture has to say.
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So particularly on issues wherein the the the stakes are so high.
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All right, Romans 8, 28.
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And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.
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For those who are called according to His purpose.
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Now, next week we're going to deal with the word called.
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But I didn't want to deal with it first.
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We're going to deal first tonight with another word.
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Verse 29.
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For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
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And those whom he predestined, he also called.
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And those whom he called, he also justified.
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And those whom he justified, he also glorified.
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Father, as we examine the text of Scripture tonight, one of the pivotal texts on the subject, Lord, which we are addressing.
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We pray that you would, first and foremost, God, open my heart and mind to a right understanding and encourage me as I teach to keep me from error.
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I pray, O God, for everyone who has come tonight to hear the word and those who are hearing the word via the live stream and those who are going to hear the word via the sermon audio.
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Lord, that you would even now prepare their hearts for what they're going to learn.
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And make it so, O God, that when we deal with a topic like this, that we are willing to be molded and conformed to you rather than forcing you to be conformed and molded to us.
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We praise you.
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We thank you.
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We give you all glory.
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In Jesus' precious name, Amen.
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All right.
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The doctrine of predestination causes many people to cringe just by hearing the word uttered.
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But as should be noted by tonight's reading of the passage, predestination, the word predestined, is not a word that is foreign to the Bible.
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In fact, it's used twice in just this short amount of verses.
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Now, based on that, I want to go ahead and address one group of people.
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Not in here, hopefully, but there are people that I have come into contact with.
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And I don't know about you, but I seem to get into a lot of conversations, not just on this topic, but on religion and Christianity in general with people.
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It might be because I'm a pastor and people know I'm a pastor, so they ask me a lot of questions.
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But it might also be that I tend to engage myself sometimes where I'm not asked to be engaged.
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I was walking out of a conference one time and this lady was behind me and she was mad at what the conference speaker had to say.
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It was actually on this topic.
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And I could hear her just get to it, get to it.
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And I had about a mile before I could get in my car.
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And she's just chipping, chipping, chipping, chipping, just going on and on and on about.
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And finally, I turned around.
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I said, but this is why he was right.
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And she was like, you know what? Not my place to do that, but at the same time, I just get tired of hearing it.
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So sometimes, you know, it's my fault that I get into so many conversations that I do.
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Same thing happens to me in a bookstore.
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I'm standing there reading a book.
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This one I tried to avoid.
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I'm reading a book on the same topic.
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It's not always this topic.
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I've had topics on the Trinity that have been conversations that have been just as volatile.
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But on this particular topic, I'm standing there reading a book and a guy comes up to me, looks at the book and looks at me and starts to.
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He looked, he was building up the courage because he wanted to ask me a question.
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And I nobody can pray as fast as me as fast as I could.
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I prayed, oh, don't let it be ugly.
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I know I'm telling you, it was just as a dollar and it was and he just it was right there in line at Lifeway.
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We had a little moment.
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I'll share that with you all later if you're interested.
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But the point of the matter is.
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The one group of people that so frustrates me.
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When we discuss the subject of predestination are the group of people that simply say it's not in the Bible, because when someone says predestination is not in the Bible, my first answer is, but the word is in the Bible.
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It's not as if the English translators have in some way distorted what the Greek writers meant to say, or the biblical writers were writing in Greek meant to say.
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The word predestined is in the Greek language, the word prohoriso.
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OK, it means pro.
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What does pro mean? It means to come before, to go before.
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We use the word proceed or processional.
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You know, something that goes beforehand.
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The word, the prefix pro, pyromicron in the Greek is pro, means to go before.
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And the word horiso is where we get the word horizon.
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What do you think of when you think of the horizon? You think of the farthest point that you can see, right? You think of when you look out at the horizon, that's the that's that's where it ends.
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OK, and the word predestination means to determine the end from the beginning.
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That's what it means.
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It means to set a destination beforehand to determine what's going to happen on one end from the other end.
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OK, so when we read that word in the Greek, that's what it means.
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And when we hear that word used in the Bible, predestination, that's what it means.
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And when someone says, I don't believe that is in the Bible.
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The first thing you just do is you open the Bible and say, well, here's the word.
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Now what? Well, here's where it gets more complicated, because most Bible believing Christians do not deny, at least those who I've talked to, that most Bible believing Christians do not deny that the word is in the Bible.
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Those who deny it's in the Bible are truly ignorant because they've just never seen it.
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And ignorant is not a bad word.
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People don't like to be called ignorant, but I say, you know what? I'm ignorant of a lot of things.
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I don't know how to fix the block of a 57 Chevy.
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I don't know how to put new windows in my house on those things.
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I'm very ignorant.
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OK, I can claim ignorance of certain things.
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And someone who says that the word predestination is not in the Bible simply doesn't know that it's there.
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However, to go further, most people don't deny the word is there because most people have at least read it.
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Those people who've read the Bible have read that that word is there.
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And what is most important is not if predestination is in the Bible.
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What is most important in the debate is the method, the method of predestination.
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That's the question people have.
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If it's there, not a debate.
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We have satisfied the debate.
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We read it.
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I can take you through three other passages where you could read it again.
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Not a question.
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The issue is how.
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How does predestination work? And we're going to tonight simply quickly address the two major schools of thought.
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Because this is not an issue that can be satisfied in a five minute conversation.
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That's why I didn't want the guy in the line at the Lifeway bookstore to be ugly.
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Because I knew we are not going to come.
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I'm not going to stand here for eight hours and give an exposition of all of the relevant texts that are necessary for this person, particularly when he's mad.
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You know, you can't have a conversation about this subject in five minutes.
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You can't have a conversation about this subject in one hour, which is why we're going to deal with it for the next few weeks.
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We're going to deal with the words for knowledge, calling and all those different things.
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It's not fair to ask somebody who believes in this.
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Give me your synopsis in five words or less.
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It's not fair.
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To do that is too cheap in Scripture because the Scripture doesn't even give us a synopsis in five words or less.
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Why should we be expected to do something that even the Scripture doesn't do? However, so that being said, bear with me.
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I'm going to go slow.
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I encourage your questions.
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However, I do encourage this as well.
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If you have a question and I say very respectfully, I will get to that.
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I'm not putting you off.
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All I'm saying is if I say, can you let me get past what I'm doing to get to the question? The reason is, is because there are questions that immediately come into our mind on the subject.
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There are questions that immediately come to the head.
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And if you have those questions, write them down.
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In a few weeks, I'm going to deal with the ten most common questions on the subject of predestination.
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That's the whole night.
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And I would almost guarantee that it'll deal with whatever questions you have, at least the most the most prominent ones in your mind.
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So please just grant me that amount of patience in the study that we are going to go slow.
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OK.
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All right.
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When we talk about the methods, there are two schools of thought.
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The first we are going to call the reformed perspective.
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All right.
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The second, we are going to call the perspective of prescience, the reformed perspective and the perspective of prescience.
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Now, there have been those who have labeled the reformed view of predestination as Calvinism and the prescient view as Arminianism.
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I don't know how many of you know the Arminian-Calvin debate.
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However, it would be just as easy for me to call this the Lutheran view, not the modern Lutheran view, but the view of Martin Luther.
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It would be just as easy for me to call this the view of St.
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Augustine.
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It would be just as easy for me to call this the view of Jonathan Edwards.
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And we could say it's Edwardian theology.
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It would be just as easy to do that.
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So ascribing it to John Calvin is somewhat unfair, at least from that perspective.
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Likewise, under the prescient view, we could say there have been people like Pelagian, the fourth century heretic.
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Not that I'm trying to stack the cards in any direction, but I did mention a heretic first.
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But Pelagius would have been a proponent of this view.
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Here's one.
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A lot of people like Wesley would have been on this side of the coin.
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You've heard of the Wesleyan Church, the Methodist Church.
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The Methodist Church would fall very squarely under this side.
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I'm trying to think of a few others.
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Who was that guy who started the, who? Charles Finney, that's what I was thinking.
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Charles Finney would fall under this side.
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So there are going to be big names on either side.
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So calling it Finneyism or Wesleyism or anything like that would be just as appropriate.
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I like to simply denote that the reformers unilaterally held here.
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And by the reformers, I'm talking about the magisterial reformers, the ones who were most known within the Protestant Reformation as having influence, such as Jonathan or excuse me, John Calvin, Martin Luther, Urich, Zwingli and so on.
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So we can say that's why we call this the reformed perspective.
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And the prescience view gets its name from the from the from what it believes.
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The prescience view gets its name from what it's actually saying.
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So let's break these down.
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If you're taking notes, I'm going to give you what this one is and what this one believes, what the two believe.
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All right.
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The reformed perspective says this.
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And if you're going to try to write this down, it might be tough, but it's kind of long.
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But I'll try to make it slow and simple.
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The reformed perspective is this.
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God has before the foundation of the world set his affection upon a remnant of humanity referred to in the Bible as the elect.
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And these will be saved because God will irresistibly draw them to himself.
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I'll say it again.
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God has before the foundation of the world set his affection upon a remnant of humanity referred in the Bible as the elect.
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And these will be saved because God will irresistibly draw them to himself.
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That is the reformed perspective.
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The prescient view or the view of prescience is that God before the foundation of the world looked down the corridor of time and saw the decisions that people would make.
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And based upon those decisions, God predestined them for heaven or hell.
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Let me say that again.
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Again, I see people writing, so I'll make sure you have this.
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God before the foundation of the world looked down the corridor of time, saw the decisions people would make.
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And based upon those decisions, God predestined them for heaven or hell.
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Now, the two things or the thing that I want you to notice in both of these is that both of them agree that this happened before the foundation of the world.
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Whether you are reformed or whether you are from the prescience perspective, the argument has never been when God did this.
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Because the Bible is very clear that God predestined before the world was ever even created.
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I've heard people make the argument.
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No, I don't believe in predestination.
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I don't believe God made a decision before I was ever born.
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That is what the Bible teaches.
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Now, how he made the decision is where the debate lasts, but that's not the debate.
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The before the foundation of the world thing, even Wesley believed that.
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Even Pelagius believed that.
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That has never been the crux of the debate.
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And when people make that the crux of the debate, it shows that they have not truly investigated the issue.
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All right.
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Now, in the church today, and I don't mean this church, but in the church at large, which one would you say is the majority report? How many of you think this one is the majority report in the churches? How many of you would say that prescience is the majority report? Absolutely.
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Prescience view is the majority report in the churches.
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I would say the pendulum is swinging, particularly in many in the Southern Baptist church, because the men who are coming out of seminary now, many of them have investigated this issue and seen that the church has left this gone to the wayside and are starting to teach it again.
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And many young ministers are teaching it, some of which are being thrown from their churches for teaching this.
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But it's still on the rise.
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I don't know how many of you read.
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I don't particularly care for it, but it's a very popular publication.
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It's the Mormons.
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What is it? Not the Watchtower.
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That's the Jehovah's Witness.
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But it's there.
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It's a newspaper that's put out.
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What am I thinking? Not Guideposts either.
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Not the Christian Science Monitor.
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Thank you.
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It's not the Mormons.
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I was wrong.
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OK, the Christian Science Monitor.
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OK, you guys, all of you heard the Christian Science Monitor.
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It's like a paper that goes out, right? A few years ago, a few years ago.
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And they're like it's like a secular paper.
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They do stories on a lot of stuff.
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It's not it's I guess the Christian Science Church owns it.
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But it's not based on their churches that they put out stories all kinds of I see stuff online all the time.
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Christian Science Monitor is writing on Obama's new tax thing or writing on the Republicans new this or whatever.
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So they write on a lot of stuff.
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Well, they wrote a report just it was a few years ago about the rise in reformed teaching in churches.
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And it was interesting because it's something that I've been dealing with now for, you know, I guess seven years.
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You know, since 2004, 2011, now six or seven years, you know.
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So it's funny that something that I've been dealing with is something I've been grappling with myself.
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Made it onto the pages of that paper saying that so many younger ministers have seen these things in Scripture, things that had been totally lost in the church and not dealt with.
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And I was just real surprised to see that.
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But the point I'm getting to is that in that report from the Christian Science Monitor, they made the point that for so long, this has not only been the majority report.
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This has been almost the only thing you could find that finding reformed teaching outside of some conservative Presbyterian churches and some, you know, some reformed Baptist churches and stuff like that.
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You weren't going to find a lot of reformed teaching and how that was changing.
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But I want to share with you how most of the people that deal with these passages, most of the time I want to paint for you a scenario of how this happens.
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And I'm not telling you how this happened from painting a scenario that I think this is what happened to me.
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OK, it didn't happen here, but it happened to me in dealing with this subject.
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All right.
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Studying the Bible.
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Because that's what we're told to do.
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We're said to read the Bible, read what it says, believe what it says and apply what it says.
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Right.
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That's our goal as Bible expositors.
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We read what it says, understand what it says, apply what it says.
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That's our job.
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So in the reading of the Bible, I would come to passages that seem to teach the reformed teaching that God is the author of salvation, that God is the one who has who has chosen before I ever made a choice.
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And you go to somebody about it, somebody above you, somebody who you think is.
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Knowledge and versed on the subject, and again, I won't say who I went to, it doesn't matter, wasn't here, wasn't our former pastor, anybody like that.
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I just want to make sure make it clear I'm not saying this happened here.
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I've spent a lot of time studying in other places and studying with different people, even though I've always been here, but I was intrigued.
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So I would go to the pastor and I would say, well, you know, here here's here's what the Bible clearly says.
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And the answer that I would receive is this is as well.
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All that means when you say when it says God's predestined, all that means is that God saw what they were going to do.
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And based upon God seeing what they were going to do, the word prescience, just to just to break it down, pre again to go before.
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And science means what knowledge it means to see or to know something beforehand.
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The pre being beforehand in science is knowledge.
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So really prescience is a fancy way of saying for knowledge.
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All right.
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It's just a fancy way of saying for knowledge.
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And the way that this would be brought up would be.
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Go to Romans 828 and you'll find your answer.
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All you got to do is Romans and it clearly says whom God foreknew he predestined.
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And that tells you right there that what God did was God looked down the corridor of time.
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God saw what people were going to do.
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And based on what he saw, he made a choice for someone or against someone based on their own decision.
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And they believe that it unlocked for them the mystery of predestination.
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And for them, it was no longer a mystery.
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For them, it was no longer.
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That was the answer.
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And even though that did not settle well with me, because first of all, in a little while, I'll show you why I don't think that's what this passage means.
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But furthermore, it didn't make sense of the other passages.
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Ephesians 1, John chapter 8, John chapter 9, John chapter 10, John chapter 17.
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There's a lot of other passages.
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And I said it doesn't square.
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So tonight we are going to ask the question.
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And I've talked.
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I don't know how far we're going to get.
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We're going to try to get it all.
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But tonight we're going to ask the question.
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Does the prescient view truly articulate Romans 8, 28 through 30? Does the prescient view agree with what Romans 8, 28 through 30 says? Because I got to tell you, when I first was introduced to Reformed theology, that's the answer I get.
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Well, yeah, God predestines, but he doesn't really predestine.
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That's hard work.
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What he does is he kind of sees what I'm going to do.
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And he looks at me and knowing what I'm going to do, because God's real smart like that.
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He saw what I was going to do.
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And based on that, God can kind of ipso facto make a decision.
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Because he saw it, but he didn't see it because it hadn't happened yet.
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But because he knows, he can do it.
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And that's the way I explain it.
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Maybe not in those words.
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I was 22 years old, 24 years old.
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I was a lot younger, so that's the way I talk.
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The point is, that's the way I explained it to myself.
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That's the way it had been explained to me.
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That's the way I explained it.
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And somebody presented this to me in a different way.
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Showed me the Reformed perspective and said, think about this.
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And when I started looking at it, I was like, maybe what I thought wasn't exactly right.
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And I came to the conclusion that the answer, and I know I have a tendency to make stuff real simple.
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And sometimes people get mad that I oversimplify things.
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But I truly believe that the answer, the answer to the whole debate lies in what you do with the word foreknowledge.
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I truly believe that wherever you land on that word, whether you think that means God simply looked down the corridor of time and saw what you were going to do.
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Or whether foreknowledge has a different meaning entirely, which we're going to talk about in a minute.
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Where you land, whichever side of that you land on.
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I don't care if you call yourself Calvinist, Arminian, Baptist, Methodist.
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I don't care if you call yourself a Wesleyan, a Jeffersonian.
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I don't care what you call yourself.
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You're either one way on foreknowledge or the other.
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And that will determine everything else.
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I believe.
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I really do.
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So I think tonight is really the linchpin.
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It's the thing that's going to hold it all together.
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OK, so that being said, we're going to look tonight at four reasons why I think this is an indefensible position.
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Prescience, I think, is indefensible.
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OK, that means I think it's wrong.
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I think that it cannot be defended from the Bible.
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Four reasons why.
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The first, and I'm going to write them up here, is the object of the verb.
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The object of the verb.
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Something very important to remember is that foreknowledge, what is that? Foreknowledge is a part of speech.
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It is a noun.
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Foreknowledge is a noun.
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What is a noun? It's a person, place, thing.
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Thank you.
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Who said that? That's your good boy.
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That's right.
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That's my boy.
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Did you say it too? Good.
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Yes.
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OK, or a concept.
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That's right.
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A person, place, thing, idea, or concept.
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Thank you.
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Very true.
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So a noun, foreknowledge is a noun.
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Is the word foreknowledge used in Romans 8, 28 through 30? Is it? It isn't.
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It isn't.
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The word that is used in Romans 8, 28 through 30 is? Forenew.
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Now, you might make the argument that this is the noun form of that.
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And I wouldn't disagree.
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The word, the word here is a verb.
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Thank you.
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All right.
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That's key.
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Because when you talk about God's foreknowledge, we talk about a thing.
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But when you talk about God foreknowing, the knowing has to have an object.
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A verb demands an object to be acted upon.
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OK? You can't have a verb out by itself.
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If you say Tommy is, is the verb, but you couldn't stop the sentence there, could you? That would be an incomplete sentence.
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If you said Tommy is, period.
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That sentence wouldn't jive.
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Your English teacher would hand it back to you and say that doesn't work, huh? Well, it could.
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OK.
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Well, Tommy exists.
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OK.
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All right.
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All right.
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All right.
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OK.
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OK.
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All right.
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I guess is can be used in that way.
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I probably used a bad example.
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OK.
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I'll back that up.
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I'll erase that from the tape.
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Nobody will ever know I said it.
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All right.
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Anyhow, the point of the matter is the verb is is acting upon something.
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It's an action.
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The person who is acting in this sentence is whom? God.
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God is the person acting.
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It says for whom he who is the who's the antecedent.
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We're doing a little boring, but it's important.
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We're doing a little kind of linguistic thing here.
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If it says for whom he foreknew, what is he? He is a pronoun.
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What is a pronoun demand? It demands an antecedent.
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It demands something that comes that it's speaking about.
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What is the antecedent of he? God.
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Because in Romans 28, it says, and we know that all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose.
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The word his goes back to God.
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So the antecedent of his is God.
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And then it says for whom he the antecedent of he is God.
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So for whom God foreknew.
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So God foreknew who? Well, that's what it says is whom he foreknew.
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So the question is, whom did he foreknew? Well, let's before you even go there, before we get there, let me ask this question.
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Where in that whole sentence do you find the interjection of the concept of anything about whom he foreknew? Where in that passage does it say anything about the quality of the persons he foreknew? Does it say they had faith? Does it say they were predisposed to belief? Does it say anything about them at all? Nothing, except that God knew them.
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And if it said there were those whom he foreknew, you could go further and say there were those whom he knew not.
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Because the object of the verb is not what they did, it's who they were.
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It says nothing to the character of the individual or to their faith.
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To say that this proves that God is foreseeing faith, you are doing what is called asagesis.
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You are reading into the text something that's not there.
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You are demanding something from the text that it does not provide.
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Do you see? Now, that doesn't prove my point.
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That simply makes this point.
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It proves the point that you cannot demand from this text the argument that faith is what is being foresawed.
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By the way, the word foreknowledge and the word foresight are two different words.
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And there is a Greek word for foresight, and it's not used here.
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The word here is prognoska.
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It means to have a knowledge beforehand.
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Or to know beforehand.
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Know being the verb.
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So the key point is that when you talk about foreknew, you have to understand that the object of foreknew is the person.
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It says nothing about what the person is, how they are, what they are.
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It simply says whom he foreknew.
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And then it goes on to the next thing.
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It says whom he foreknew, he predestined.
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Whom he predestined, he called.
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Whom he called, he justified.
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Whom he justified, he glorified.
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Who is the only person making an action in this whole section? God.
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God is the only person acting here, right? If anything is said about the action of those people being acted upon, nothing.
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So it does not prove the prescient view.
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It cannot prove the prescient view.
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Because nothing is said about whom the knowledge of or who is being known.
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Nothing is said about them.
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Now, that being said, I want to move on to the second part.
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I run out of board here because I write so big.
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Yes.
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No, I think more I would connect the whom to those who love God and are called according to his purpose.
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And I think that would connect back to that.
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I think that specifically when it says whom he foreknew, I think the whom there is in relationship to the ones that are called according to his purpose.
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Because that's the absolute preceding statement.
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But I wouldn't disagree that it would also be in line with the us and the other.
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But I would say specifically, I think it's about whom he's referring to those who are called.
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Because he just said that.
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OK.
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But I wouldn't disagree that it definitely is a connection there.
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There's a line of thought running through it.
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OK.
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All right.
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Next, we have the object of foreknew.
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The next thing I want us to look at is the definition, the definition of foreknew.
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And I want to ask this real.
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I want you to really wrap your mind around this because this is this is not difficult to understand.
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But when I ask you, it's going to sound funny.
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What does it mean to know somebody from our perspective? It can mean a number of things.
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It can mean to have a passing knowledge of someone.
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Hey, I know, Bob.
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Do you know, Bob? All right.
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Or it can have a more intimate setting.
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If I say, you know, I know Jennifer, meaning I have a knowledge of Jennifer that's passed.
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If you came up and said, I think Jennifer did that.
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And I said, no, Jennifer did that.
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I know Jennifer.
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And I know she wouldn't do that.
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Right.
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That's a that's a different.
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It's the same word, but it has it has a deeper meaning.
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Right.
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It's going there.
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It's a statement of relationship.
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And there's one other way to use the word.
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No, we don't do it much in English anymore.
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But in the very early part of the Bible, it says Adam knew Eve and they bore pain.
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All right.
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Now, that has an entirely different meaning.
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I don't think it just meant he knew her.
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And I don't think it just meant he had an intimate knowledge of her.
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I think it relates to their interaction.
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The knowledge was a we used to call it in legal terms a carnal knowledge.
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You heard that right.
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They had carnal knowledge of one another.
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Right.
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So so the word knowledge in English has multiple meanings.
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Right.
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It can it can be a passive, simple knowledge.
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It can be an intimate knowledge.
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It can even relate to the relationship.
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Now, I only bring that up because I'm going to ask this question.
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When the Bible talks about God knowing someone in what sense is that term used? Does it mean God simply knows like Bob? We know it doesn't have the fully intimate meaning of the relationship between Adam and Eve and that sort of crass physical carnal knowledge.
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But I propose to you that when the Bible says God knows an individual, that it is speaking of a salvific knowledge.
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And I don't just say that because I think that sounds good.
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I say that because I think the text of Scripture bears this out.
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You will not find anywhere in Scripture where it says God knew such and such, where it is referring to simply God having a passing knowledge of someone.
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However, you will find over and over and over in Scripture where the Bible says God knew someone where the word no is a salvific knowledge.
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For instance, Jesus said on that day, many will come unto me and they will say, Lord, Lord, did we not cast out many demons in your name and did we do not many mighty works in your name? And Jesus said, depart from me because I never knew you.
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The word knew, by the way, that is also a verb and it's in the same way as this one's being used.
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Knew, the knowledge there.
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Does that mean Jesus never knew their name? Does that mean Jesus never, I never met you, Bob, so you can't come to heaven? No.
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It means there was not a saving knowledge of this person.
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That is one place where I think the word no speaks volumes.
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But there are other places.
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In 1 Peter 1.20, I want you to hear this verse, it's very important, because it's the same idea that is here.
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Talking about Jesus in 1 Peter 1.20, Peter writes this.
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He said he, speaking of Jesus, was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the last times for your sake.
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What does it say about Jesus? Jesus was foreknown.
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Does that just mean God knew who he was going to be? God knew who he was? Or does that speak of a relationship? I think it's obvious that it speaks to the relationship.
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God, the father, does not simply know God, the son, like I know Randy or Jimmy.
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But there is an intimate knowledge there.
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Amos chapter 3.
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Oh, he went back to Old Testament.
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I go old school.
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Amos chapter 3 and verse 2.
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God is speaking to Israel.
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And he says, you only have I known of all the families of the earth.
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Therefore, I will punish you for your iniquities.
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It's a statement of judgment on the Israelites.
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But it's God's way of saying, you are my children.
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You're the ones I know.
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Same way I said, I know.
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You're the ones I know.
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As such, you will incur punishment.
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Same way if I said to my son, if we were in a grocery store and these kids are running around the grocery store and my son decides to interact with Sid running around.
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And I walk up to him and I get him by the arm and I pull my hand back and I say, all of you were bad.
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But I know you, you mine.
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Well, that's similar.
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I mean, I'm giving a very basic understanding of Amos, the Amos passage.
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But that's what God's saying.
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Because you are in a relationship with me that's different than any other relationship in the entire world.
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You have this relationship with me.
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I'm going to punish you.
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You're mine.
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And he said that to the prophet Amos.
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So we see throughout the Bible over and over this word no.
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And even for no or for no is use of God in relationship.
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Use of God to speak of the relationship.
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Now, I want to read to you something from the Nelson's Bible Dictionary.
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Now, the reason why I chose the Nelson's Bible Dictionary is because, number one, the Nelson's Bible Dictionary is not a reformed dictionary.
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It's not one that particularly leans any direction.
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I could go to any pastor's study in Jacksonville and I would likely find the Nelson's Bible Dictionary.
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It's just a simple tool.
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But I want to read to you what it says.
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If you go to the F section of the Nelson's Bible Dictionary and you pull out the Nelson and you look up for knowledge, going back to the noun.
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But again, this is the verb form of a noun.
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If you look up for knowledge, this is the entry.
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And when I first found this, I was like, yes, because it was so simple.
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I like it when things are made simple.
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I did it.
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Right.
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Here's what it says.
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For knowledge, the unique knowledge of God that enables him to know all events, including the free acts of people before they happen.
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So far, so good.
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He's in it.
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But it goes on to say this.
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God's foreknowledge is much more than foresight.
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Now, when I read that, I was like, intriguing.
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Tell me more.
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Oh, Nelson Bible study, whatever it says.
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God does not know future events and human actions because he foresees them.
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He knows them because he wills them to happen.
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And it gives a couple of verses to look up.
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Job, 14, 5, Psalm 139, 15 and 16.
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Thus, for knowledge is an act of his will.
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Isaiah 41, 4, Revelation 1, 8, 17, and then Revelation 21 and 6.
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This was in the Bible.
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This is what grabbed my heart.
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This is what the Bible goes on to say.
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In Romans 8, 29, which just happened to be the verse we're studying tonight.
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And Romans 11, 2, which we'll two years from now get to, I'm sure.
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In Romans 8, 29 and Romans 11, 2, the Apostle Paul uses the word foreknew.
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I'm sorry.
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The Apostle Paul's use of the word foreknew means chose or to set special affection on.
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This is how the translators, the dictionary said this is what the word means.
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The electing love of God, not foresight of human action, is the basis of predestination and salvation.
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The same idea is used to express the nation of Israel's special relationship with God in Acts 2, 23, Romans 11, 2, 1 Peter 1, 2, and 1 Peter 1, 20.
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Now, again, that's not a Reformed publication.
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That is just a Bible dictionary.
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But I want to make something clear.
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If I were to tell you the word foreknew is tantamount to saying chose, I don't think that I'm taking a step out of the meaning.
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But I'll go further than this.
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I want you to hear the verse interpreted both ways.
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If I were interpreting this verse from a prescient view, this is what it would have to say.
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All things work together for the good of those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose.
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For whom God saw were going to believe in him and trust in his son, Jesus Christ.
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Those he predetermined would be conformed to the image of his son, Jesus Christ.
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And whom God saw were going to believe in his son, Jesus Christ, were predestined.
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And those whom he predestined, he called.
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And those whom he called, he justified.
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And those whom he justified, he glorified.
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Now, I ask you, just on a surface level hearing, does that even go with the flow of the text? It does not.
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Because who's the person doing the action? God.
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Who's the focus? God doing the action to us.
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Nothing we are doing or have done is a part of the passage.
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I have to add that in.
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Now, hear it like this.
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All things work together for the good of those who love the Lord.
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For whom he chose, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.
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Now, I'm not changing the word.
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I'm simply giving a simpler understanding of what the word foreknew means.
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Some people have gone as far as to say when the Bible says God knows someone, it means he loves them.
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Thus, foreknowledge is forelove.
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I don't have a problem with that.
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But at the same time, I think when we begin to reflect what I just did, replacing the word foreknew with chose, some people grab a hold of that.
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They run with it.
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They say, see, he's changing the Bible.
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I'm not.
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I'm simply giving an understanding of what the word foreknew meant.
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Same way of people who do forelove.
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They're just trying to give an understanding of what the word know means.
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To know someone.
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However, be that as it may, I want to make the point that my doing that was simply to show you the difference in the two understandings.
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One understanding has to take an entirely different idea that is not anywhere seen in the text and superimpose it onto the text.
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It requires the addition of a different idea.
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The other one simply gives a better understanding of the word and the whole thing continues to flow and make perfect sense.
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All right.
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Number three.
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Well, I can do it because because here are the last two things I'm not I don't want to rush this, but I want to give me give me five minutes.
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I promise I'll finish in five minutes.
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The third thing we've already seen the object of the word foreknew, the definition of the word foreknew.
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Those two things are important.
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And to me, they kill the pressing argument.
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The wheels fall off.
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But if you want two more reasons why I would say the pressing argument dies on the table is number one or number three.
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Rather, God's foreknowledge is not passive.
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It is determinative.
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It is not passive.
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It is determinative.
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God does not know what will happen simply because he can see the future.
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God knows what will happen because he has willed it by divine decree.
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He has determined what he will not only do, but what he will allow to happen if you want to use the word allow in that respect.
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And if that be the case, if God is sovereign in that way, then to say God simply knows what's going to happen, that means that God sits outside of time watching what's happening and he's taking in knowledge as if he doesn't know.
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That's the foreknowledge view indicates that God, there was a time when God didn't know.
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Do you understand that? Foreknowledge from the prescient, Wesleyan, Arminian viewpoint means there was a time when God had a lack of knowledge and he had to learn something.
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Now take that and grab hold of it and think about it.
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That's tough.
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But you see, now you begin to deal with the actual being of God, who God is.
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God is not a being that must learn.
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God does not have to learn new information to say that God sat at the beginning of time, looked down at the quarter of time and saw what you were going to do and thus made his decision means at some point he didn't have that knowledge and he had to gain it.
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That's tough when you think of it that way, because you've just gone into a totally different view of God than what the Bible presents.
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So that's when the Bible talks about God's foreknowledge, it talks about God ordaining how the world will be.
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And we talk about ordination.
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It's tough because we start talking about difficult things and how and how bad things might be in the ordained plan of God.
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That's tough because we don't we don't we don't often want to go there.
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But I just I remind people all the time to think about the story of Joseph.
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Joseph went through the horrible, most, most horrible things we can imagine.
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His brothers hated him because his father favored him.
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So his brothers beat him, threw him in a hole, took him out of the hole, was going to kill him, decided to sell him.
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He went to Potiphar's house.
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He was doing good at Potiphar's house.
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But then Potiphar's wife thought he was too handsome.
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So she decided to try to invest in that relationship.
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He decided to not invest and run away.
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And that didn't work.
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He got thrown into jail.
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What happened to him though? He ends up second to Pharaoh, highest, most prominent position in Egypt.
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And what does he say to his brothers? Because his brothers get brought before him and his brothers are standing right before him and they're like, he's going to kill us.
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And if he had, every one of us would have said, justice is served.
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None of us would have had a problem if Joseph would have said, put them on the line, get your bows pulled tight, and let your arrows be drunk with their blood, for they are evil.
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We wouldn't have had a problem if that's the way the story would have went down, because we would have said they just got their just desserts.
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But what does Joseph say to them? He says, what you meant for evil.
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No, he didn't say God used for good.
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It says God meant for good.
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Same verb, same verb.
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What you did, God did.
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That's the key.
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It doesn't just say God took lemons and made lemonade, man.
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That ain't the way it is.
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It says what happened was your willful choice to do evil, but God had a purpose you couldn't see.
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And he purposed that to save many people alive.
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Beloved, if that's the God that's in your mind, that you wrap your mind around every night before you go to bed, that's the God of the Bible.
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That's the God that will keep you going because you know that everything's in his hand.
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You don't serve a God who's just out there wondering what's going to happen next, or even though he can see it, he doesn't really do anything about it.
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He's just out there sort of like a celestial people watcher.
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God's not a celestial people watcher.
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God's involved in bringing about his will.
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Celestial people watcher? Yeah, I like that too.
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Anyway, God's foreknowledge is not passive, it's determinative.
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Let me read you something real quick.
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This will be where I end.
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The Believer's Bible Commentary.
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The Believer's Bible Commentary, again, is not a reformed publication.
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It's not even a really good not reformed publication.
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It just is what it is.
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It's a good beginning level commentary.
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It's a whole Bible commentary, and if you've got one, continue to use it.
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I think the information is pretty good.
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It's not super deep, but it's good.
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The Believer's Bible Commentary says this, Some have tried to reconcile sovereign election and human responsibility by saying that God foreknew who would trust the Savior and that those are the ones whom he elected to be saved.
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They base this on Romans 8, 29, Whom he foreknew he also predestined in 1 Peter 1, 2, Elected according to the foreknowledge of God.
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But this overlooks the fact, Now remember, I didn't write this.
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This overlooks the fact that God's foreknowledge is determinative.
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This is just a standard book.
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It is not just that he knows in advance who will trust the Savior, But that he has predetermined this result by drawing certain individuals to himself.
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Now you may say, I don't believe that.
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But I just find it interesting that a standard Bible commentary that can be bought and sold by anybody would be so clear.
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It doesn't have a big reform sign on it.
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You know, don't buy this if you're not reformed.
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It's just a standard one.
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And like I said, I'd go to any pastor's workshop, Pastor's workshop, Pastor's office and find in his bookshelf a commentary like that.
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The final thing, and we're not going to go into it, But the final thing is not only is the object of the verb, Not only the definition of the word, Not only is God's foreknowledge determinative, not passive, But the final thing I preached on a few weeks ago, And that is faith is a gift from God.
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Remember when I preached on faith is a gift from God? I don't know how many of you missed that sermon, But if you did, go to sermon audio, pull it off, Because let me tell you this about faith being a gift from God.
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If faith is a gift from God and he's sovereign over to whom he gives and how he gives, Then we have to believe God's in control.
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Yeah, grace is a gift.
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And we're going to get to Romans 9 where it's real tough, Because Romans 9 says, He mercies whom he wills and whom he wills he hardens.
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And if God looked down the corridor of time and saw what he himself was going to give us, Then it still doesn't fix the problem, does it? The problem is still there.
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All right, I know some of you guys are ready to go and so am I, But I can preach another hour if you let me, So I'll be moving to the end.
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Let's pray.
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Father, thank you for our time together tonight.
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I pray, Lord, that as we continue this study over the next few weeks, That you just keep our eyes and hearts and minds open to the truth of the word.
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We pray that as we look next week on the subject of what it means to be called by God, And how that word shows up in Scripture so many times, And the differences in how it shows up, I just pray, O God, that you continue to keep our minds on track, Keep our hearts focused, And help us, O Lord, to always and in every way be conformed to Scripture, And not for Scripture to be conformed to us.
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In Jesus' name we pray.
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Amen.