None Greater (part 13)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Last week, because I am limited by both time and wisdom, we did not quite finish discussing

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God's attribute of omnipotence. So just for a brief review, not so brief, to put us back into context of where we were last week.

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After defining omnipotence in a number of ways, most especially what?

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Anybody? Well, I don't care. Most especially or not. What are the ways that you folks remember that we defined omnipotence?

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What's the word literally mean? All powerful, yep, so that's one, right? What's another one?

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Anybody got their worksheet from last week? Still hanging around? Susan does, she's nodding her head.

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Well, so what was another one? Yep, God is more powerful than the sum of all power in the universe.

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Why is that? Because he's the source of all that power, yep.

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So naturally, he has to be more powerful than it. One other one, and this is the one that we kind of talked about a bunch when we got into the omnipotence paradox, which is that God is able to do whatever he wills in whatever way he wills it, right?

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God is able to do whatever he wills in whatever way he wills it. And so after we talked about that, we dealt with the omnipotence paradox, which most famously is stated as, can

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God create a rock so big that he cannot lift it, right?

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Can God create a rock so big that he cannot lift us? And all of those omnipotence paradox statements were testing the limitlessness of God.

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Now, Augustine and Anselm taught us the simple answer to the paradox, which is that God is simple.

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That's the simple answer, God is simple. And so because he is simple, he never does anything that goes against any of his attributes, right?

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The answer to the question, can God create a rock so big that he cannot lift it, is no, the answer is no, because God's power is not just infinite power, but also infinite self -control.

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And it is also infinite goodness and infinite love and infinite timelessness. All of those things are within his power.

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But this led us to a more serious challenge, which we only got partway through answering last week.

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And that challenge is the so -called problem of evil, the problem of evil, okay?

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And the problem of evil was stated thusly, if God is both all good and all powerful, how does even even,

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I'm sorry, how does evil even exist in the first place, right? If God is all good and all powerful, how does evil even exist in the first place?

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Who remembers what a theodicy is? Not theodicy, a theodicy.

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Yes, Steve, Charlie, whoever you are. Yes. Yes, it's essentially the answer to this problem, right?

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It's like any, the system of thought or a philosophy or a proposal or something along those lines of to explain the existence of evil, to answer the problem of evil.

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And Augustine had the really famous one that we talked about, and it was the free will theodicy, okay, the free will theodicy, which essentially is the idea that evil came about,

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God did not create evil, but man created evil, creatures created evil, and that evil is the loss of good.

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Remember, good is a thing, good is a creation, evil is the absence of that, it's the loss of that.

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And so Adam and Eve had the free will, and instead of choosing the good, they turned away from the good, and that brought about evil.

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So picking up where we left off, we were still going through that, we said

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Isaiah, we read Isaiah 45, six and seven, and I'll read it right now for everyone. I am the

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Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness. I make well -being and create calamity.

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I am the Lord who does all these things. Now, we all,

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I think, are okay with, and all the time we think about it, we say, yeah, sure, God makes well -being, sure,

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God makes light, sure, right? Lots of nodding and agreement, we're used to talking about that.

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But Isaiah says he also create, well, actually, God, through Isaiah, says he also creates calamity, he creates darkness.

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And the Hebrew word for creation here is bara, it's bara. It is the same strong word for creation as in Genesis 1, spoken into existence, ex nihilo, okay?

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And calamity is the Hebrew word ra, which is usually translated everywhere, most everywhere else in the

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Old Testament, as evil, harmful, wicked, okay?

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God creates, he says, I create this calamity that from your point of view looks harmful, wicked, right?

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I create it, that's the key part of where we're going with this, is from our point of view, right?

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From our limited understanding. But Barrett says in None Greater, he tells us, he says,

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God's point in Isaiah is to make it crystal clear that he is the one who is in control of all things.

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Barrett's emphasis, all things, underlined. Not even the most threatening acts against his kingdom or his people like us, or the evil actions of his enemies are beyond his control.

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I am the Lord who does all these things, okay? So the question that Barrett poses is if God's control is this extensive, right?

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We've flipped the usual question around. Last time we talked about Rabbi Kushner and how he had that book, right?

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When Bad Things Happen to Good People, right? And Kushner, he had to start, for his mental place, where he was mentally, he had to start with God being good, right?

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He wanted to say God is all good, and then he had to ask whether or not he was really in control, okay?

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And Kushner came down on the, decided he wasn't. Augustine decided he was, and Augustine came up with the free will theodicy to explain it, okay?

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But here's Barrett in None Greater asking, starting on the flip side. He's starting with the all -powerful

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God. He's saying, well, let's start with saying that God is all -powerful, and now moving on to ask whether he is really good.

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If God controls evil, Barrett says, does that make him evil himself?

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Okay, so there's two important answers to that question, and that's number, where we're gonna get with number two on your worksheet.

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Two important questions to this. I'm sorry, answers to this question. If God's in control of evil, does that make him evil?

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Well, number one is that God is equally in control, while,

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I should say, God is equally in control of evil and good. We should not assume that he relates to both in the same way, okay?

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We should not assume that he relates to both in the same way, and by that, I mean, what I'm going to posit with you this morning is that God is directly,

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I'm sorry, that good is directly from God, but evil is indirect. It's ordained, but not originated.

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Ordained, but not originated. When we talk about the story of Joseph and his brothers, how many evil things happened to Joseph, right, because of the choices his brothers made, right?

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They were about to kill him, decided at the last minute to pull back from that and instead sold him into slavery, and how much of his life then kind of went downhill, right, as a result of that choice?

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But then at the, and so he spent years and years in slavery and in prison, right, and we can skip those pages and get right to the part where, you know, it all turns out okay for Joseph, but Joseph had no real guarantee that it was going to turn out okay.

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He hadn't seen the ending written down yet, but he had the faith it would.

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And when we get to the end of his story, and his brothers now have come to join him in Egypt, and he's been elevated to the level of prime minister, and now the brothers are fearful that such a powerful man is going to seek revenge on them, he says to them, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, right?

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Where did the evil originate in this story? It originated with the boys, with the brothers.

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They had the idea, they wanted to do something harmful. Did God ordain that it would happen?

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Yes, he did, because God wanted to put Joseph in such a place as we're seeing here.

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God meant it for good. He took what they wanted to do as an evil thing and turned it into a good thing.

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How about Assyria? Turn to Isaiah chapter 10 for me, please. Isaiah chapter 10.

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Now Assyria is, remember, Isaiah is writing this to the

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Northern Kingdom, and Assyria is the country that is going to come and destroy the

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Northern Kingdom, right? While the Southern Kingdom gets conquered by Babylon and gets turned into a puppet state and they go into exile in Babylon, thank you, they go into exile in Babylon and they come back eventually, the

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Northern Kingdom is just flat out wiped out. Just flat out wiped out, gone forever, okay?

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And so Assyria is that country. And why does

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God let that happen to them is because of their sin, right?

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The fact that they've turned from God. So look at Isaiah chapter 10, verse five. Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger, the staff in their hands is my fury.

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Okay, the rod of my anger, the staff in their hands is my fury. So the rod, right, the idea being that they are the ones coming to discipline, to discipline, to punish, right, the

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Northern Kingdom. But then keep going. Against a godless nation I send him and against the people of my wrath

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I command him to take, spoil, and seize plunder and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.

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But he does not so intend and his heart does not so think, but it is in his heart to destroy and to cut off nations, not a few.

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Skip down to verse 16. Therefore the Lord God of hosts will send a wasting sickness among his stout warriors.

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And under his glory a burning will be kindled like the burning of a fire. The light of Israel will become a fire and his

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Holy One a flame and it will burn and devour his thorns and briars in one day. The glory of his forest and his fruitful land, the

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Lord will destroy both soul and body. And it will be as when a sick man wastes away, the remnant of the trees of his forest will be so few that a child can write them down.

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So yeah, is God ordaining for Assyria to come and be the one to punish

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Israel? Yes. Does Assyria want to do that? Yes. It's not like God needed to motivate them, right?

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They were excited to come do wickedness. Which is why even though he's gonna ordain and use that to punish

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Israel, he also can turn around in basically the same breath and promise to punish

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Assyria too for doing that. How dare you attack Israel?

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I'm going to punish you. I'm going to completely destroy you. And history tells us that this bears out, right?

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Assyria does beat Israel, but not too long after, Assyria itself is wiped off the map as a sovereign country.

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Never to rise again, okay? So ordained, but not originated.

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Barrett calls this God's asymmetrical control of evil. He permits it.

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He is in complete control of Joseph's brothers, of natural disasters, of Assyria's generals, of Satan even.

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But he uses means, their intentions for evil to instead bring about the good that he has ordained, that he has decreed for his plan to come about.

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What's the ultimate example of this? Christ on the cross.

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Yep, absolutely, Christ on the cross. Did God ordain that Jesus would die from the foundation of the world?

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Or before the foundation of the world? Yes, yes he did. Did the

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Romans and the Jews need God to motivate them to do that? No, he did not, right?

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They were ready and willing and able to perform the wickedness.

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The cross was ordained, the predestined plan, and Peter clearly condemns the people, and all of us by extension, when he says,

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Jesus whom you crucified, right? And Jesus, in another part in Acts, one of his messages, he says,

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Jesus whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. So there we go.

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So what that means is that there are two, or a way to kind of finish the thought on this is that there are two ways of talking about God's will.

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You probably might have heard this before. One is the idea of God's moral will. Okay, and his moral will is the revealed and prescriptive will.

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It's his moral commands to humankind regarding right and wrong, good and evil. But obviously that does not always come to pass.

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He says, do not murder, but murder happens, right? He says, do not steal, but stealing happens.

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But that's his moral will, that people not murder, not steal. But then there's also

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God's sovereign will, which is his decree. And that's God's immutable, independent, and efficacious decrease in eternity considering all things.

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Decree, not decrease, woof. Tongue tied this morning. All right, any thoughts on that?

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Now that was number one. And all that was just about the idea that God is equally in control of evil and good, but we shouldn't assume that he relates to both in the same way, okay?

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Yes. I've tried to.

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I guess not. I mean, this is his explanation. This is how he then proceeds to do the explanation.

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What's the difference? Because in this sense, well, again, what

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I, maybe it's just me. How I see the difference is that, is in the presuppositions that Kushner, Augustine, whoever, they all started from the notion of, we'll start from God is all good, and then let's also prove that it's possible for him to be all powerful as well as being all good.

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Barrett, I think, starts from, I'm gonna assume that God is all powerful. He is in control of all of these things, including evil.

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So how can I explain that God can be good if he's in control of evil? Yes. Yeah, it gets very hard.

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We're shaving hairs. We're shaving multiple layers off of a single hair in our ways of trying to word this, yeah.

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Right, no, and so that's, Barrett rejects any idea of that too, right? That there's no such thing as, there's no such thing as God just sort of letting it happen, of winding it up, and just seeing what will go from here, and then reacting to it, right?

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So that, I think, is an important distinction as well, that God is not reacting to the evil, all right?

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It's not like, well, Joseph's brothers came up with this plot, and then God said, all right, well, what am I gonna do with this?

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Okay, it's the opposite. Yes, it was part of the plan.

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Yes, which is number two, thank you for the segue, which is that the second part of his thing was,

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God ordains evil, again, from our perspective, only insofar as for our good and his glory, which ultimately means it's good.

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It's good, all right? It's the thing that is happening, the ultimate outcome is for our good and his glory, as part of the all things of Romans 8 .28,

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right? Do not limit Romans 8 .28 when it says, all things work together.

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We mean it, all things, all, right? Including yourself, only for those who are to call it, right, yes, right, yeah.

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And for himself, God himself. So why is God's omnipotence good news?

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I swear we're gonna get to the rest of this tonight, so, or this morning. So number three, why is God's omnipotence good news?

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All right, we're gonna read some things. One, two, three, four, five, six. Six volunteers, that's a lot of you this morning, but I think you can do it.

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I believe in you. Who's ready to read this morning? All right,

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Ian, you can have 2 Corinthians 9 .8. Yes, sir, you can have Ephesians 3, 20 and 21.

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Daniel, you can have Romans 4, 20, 21. Yes, Mark, 2

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Timothy 1 .12. Brian, Hebrews 7 .25,

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and Trey, Jude 24. Okay, awesome, here we go. I totally forget the order in which

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I called on people, but I'll just say it, 2 Corinthians 9 .8. Who had that? What was the common thread in all of those?

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What'd you hear over and over? God is able. God is able.

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That is the good news of omnipotence. God is able.

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What's your problem that you're struggling with right now? God is able. What is the catastrophe that you're hearing about in the news right now?

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God is able. What is the worst thing that you're afraid of happening in your life?

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What keeps you up at night? What worry consumes you? God is able.

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Charnock once wrote, he said, how vain would be the eternal counsels if power did not step in to execute them.

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Without power, his mercy would be but feeble pity. His promises would be empty sound.

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His threatening's a mere scarecrow. God's power is like himself, infinite, eternal, incomprehensible.

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It can neither be checked, restrained, nor frustrated by the creature. He is able, and as a result, if he is able, that makes him also, because he is able infinitely, it makes him enough.

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It makes him all -sufficient for us. He is self -sufficient, yes, but his omnipotence also makes him all -sufficient for us.

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We've spoken during these weeks of Joseph, of Hannah, of Moses, we're about to talk about Job.

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All these people, in the face of their trial and tribulation, how were they able to remain faithful?

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Because they knew that God was powerful enough to bring about his promises. They knew he was powerful enough.

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The one who has all the power has all the control. Okay. So there is, 9 .30,

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perfect. There is one more way to state the omnipotence paradox that we haven't covered yet.

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And it's a bridge to what else we're gonna speak of this morning, and this is how it's stated.

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Is it possible for God to create someone who can keep a secret even

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God himself cannot know? Is it possible for God, yes,

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I know, you're all shaking your head. Good job, you've learned. The answer is no. But here we have our bridge.

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It's our transition to the rest of the divine omnis. Because two weeks ago, Andrew talked about omnipresence.

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Last week and so far this week, omnipotence. So what's left? What's that?

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Omniscience and, oh, that fourth one. Omnisapience, yes.

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And omnisapience means? All -wise, she passed to the husband.

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All -wise, all -wise. All right, so let's answer this question.

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Can God create someone who can outdo his omniscience? Right, no, and again, why?

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Because simplicity comes to the rescue again. God is omnipotence, he is omniscience.

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All right, I can't emphasize that enough, and Andrew and I can't emphasize that enough. Whenever we're talking about these attributes, it's not a part of God, it's not a mode that God is in, it's not that some days he's, or in some moments he's acting omnisciently, in other moments he's acting omnipotently.

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They are not qualities of his character, they are him. He is them, okay?

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So he is omnipotence, he is omniscience. And he's all of them all the time.

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Outside of time, as we talked about before. So Barrett has a great way of putting this, he calls it, he says,

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God's knowledge is an omnipotent knowledge. And God's power is an omniscient power, right?

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For God, knowledge is power. Not to turn this into a

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Saturday morning cartoon mantra, but knowledge is power, literally for God.

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Literally, because what he thinks happens. What he thinks happens.

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Our knowledge is observational, right?

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We talk about the scientific method, we talk about ways that we learn or gain knowledge.

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How do we learn? We learn by observing, by seeing, maybe by thinking.

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We observe, we analyze, we reason, maybe we contemplate.

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Sure, right? But it's all like building blocks, right? We learn one thing, then we build upon that, we learn another thing, and we build upon that, we learn another thing.

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The Latin for this is a posteriori knowledge. Posteriori, sounds like a pasta sauce, but it's not.

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Okay, a posteriori knowledge. God's knowledge, on the other hand, is not observational, it's original, it's causal.

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God observes what he already knows, not the other way around. Because he knows it, he observes it.

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The Latin for this is a priori knowledge. A priori knowledge, okay?

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So I got a whole series of really great quotes here that I just wanna read for you. They just, one after another, just so great.

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Augustine, it is all true of all God's creatures, both spiritual and corporeal, that he does not know them because they are, but that they are because he knows them.

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And here's another one. This was from a modern Christian philosopher. Everything that has any sort of being at all, besides God, is kept in existence from moment to moment by God's causal power.

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Since God's power is his knowledge, whatever is, is because it is being thought right now by God.

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So, you know, I mean, imagine. Imagine if our God was like the Greek gods.

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I like to always go back to those guys, but guys and gals, the Greek gods where he could, you know, one day be thinking of us and another day kind of forget about us.

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But what we're saying here, if it were possible for God to forget about creation, creation would just simply cease to exist, right?

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It's the fact that he keeps on thinking about us. Barrett says, all that exists only exists because God knows it to exist.

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All that exists, I know that's, wrap the duct tape around. All that exists only exists because God knows it to exist.

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So like all of our other omnipotence paradox statements, this one, is it possible for God to create someone who could keep a secret from him, is answered no, because again, the statement is entirely based on our own foolish limited understanding of the two terms of omnipotence and omniscience.

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So let's kind of further plumb there into omniscience and we'll get to omnisapiens as we go because they're closely related, all right?

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So we're gonna do the via negativa here for a little bit to define omniscience. Via negativa means what?

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The way of negation, right? We're gonna talk about what God is not or what

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God cannot do to help define omniscience. All right, Psalm 139, verse 17 and 18.

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Flip there, please. Psalm 139, verse 17 and 18.

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How precious to me are your thoughts, O God. How vast is the sum of them. If I could count them, they are more than the sand.

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I awake and I am still with you. Isaiah 44, verse six and eight, six through eight.

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Isaiah 44, six through eight. Thus sayeth the

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Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts. I am the first and I am the last besides me there is no

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God. Who is like me, let him proclaim it. Let him declare and set it before me since I appointed an ancient people.

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Let them declare what is to come and what will happen. Fear not, nor be afraid.

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I have not told you, have I not told you from old and declared it? And you are my witnesses.

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Is there a God besides me? There is no rock, I know not any. And then flip just a few pages more.

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Isaiah 46, verses nine through 10. Remember the former things of old for I am

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God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me. Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done.

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Saying my counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my purpose. What these verses teach us and many others is that God's knowledge is not limited by time.

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Is not limited by time. God knows before it happens. And we should expect this because we've already talked about God being eternal and dwelling outside of time.

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We all need to wait for something to happen before we can know it. But God knows.

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He is not limited by time. God also cannot learn anything or acquire knowledge.

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He cannot learn anything or acquire any knowledge. Romans 11, which actually is quoting something from the

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Old Testament too. But Romans 11, verse 33. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.

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How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways. For who has known the mind of the

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Lord or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that it might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things.

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To him be glory forever, amen. No one can be his counselor because a counselor would be one who's imparting advice or imparting wisdom.

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But God cannot learn anything or acquire knowledge. The same goes in Psalm 147. Psalm 147, verse five.

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Where it says, great is our Lord and abundant in power. His understanding is beyond measure.

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Right, is beyond measure. And then the third thing, so he cannot, what did

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I say? He's not limited by time, he cannot learn. And closely related to that is God does not get wrong information.

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Or need more information. Right, he's got the entire picture. He's got the big picture all the time, always.

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I'm just flipping around fast here. So I'll just say, I'll read it. Jeremiah 23, verse 24.

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In which it says, sorry, can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him, declares the

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Lord? Do I not fill heaven and earth, declares the Lord? Right, you can see there how closely it's tied to his omnipresence, right?

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This notion of like, well, God clearly can know everything and isn't going to be deceived by anyone because God is everywhere and thus can see all things at all times.

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28, 24, I'm sorry, Job, in Job 28, he also says,

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God understands the way to it and he knows its place for he looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens, okay?

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So God does not, his knowledge is not limited by time. He cannot learn and he cannot get anything wrong.

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And he cannot get any wrong information. Simplicity now, again, tells us that as God is incomprehensible, so must his knowledge and wisdom be incomprehensible, right?

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So as much as we can try to talk about just what it means to be all -knowing, we're gonna fail because it's really alien to us, a really foreign idea.

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I did not know where you were all going to sit this morning. I learned it only when we all arrived, right?

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I'm learning faces and names even still, all the time. Jerry Bridges compares

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God to a chess grandmaster, I really like this analogy, who's like far above the board and can see all, the individual pieces have no idea what's going on, but is it also not true if you're like me and have played against people who are much better than you in chess, is it not true that the wisdom of the player, the skill of your opponent is displayed more in winning in sort of that stealthy surprise way?

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If you've ever played chess, there's nothing more both amazing and deflating as to be like checkmated out of nowhere, right?

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Where you think everything's going great, you've got your pieces all set up as you wanted them, your pawns, you feel, oh,

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I've got my pawns in the middle of the board, I know I'm nerding out on you a little bit about chess right now, but you know, and I thought

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I've got all the positions covered and then out of nowhere from across the board, his bishop slides in and he says, checkmate, awesome.

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Oh, and he's only 14, great. Yes, yeah, and he's your son, yes.

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Grr, the student has become the master. Yes, but you know, it's sort of like at the end of chess, if you've obliterated the entire board, right?

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You're down to like three pieces and you've got nothing but your king in one pawn and they've got, you know, bishops, knights and brooks and everything, you're like, well, duh, right, they're gonna win.

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It's not too surprising, but that, that, vroom, out of nowhere, right, kind of checkmate, that is the one that shows the wisdom of the chess player out of the chaos of all the pieces on the board,

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Bridges says, right, it's checkmate, the opponent didn't see it coming. And Bridges says, even more so, the wisdom of God is displayed when he brings good to us and glory to himself out of the confusion and calamity rather than out of pleasant times, when it looks like God's not winning.

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And then, vroom, yes, Andrew. Go for it, yeah.

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Luke 2 .52, are you gonna make me flip there and read it? Or are you gonna read it for us?

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Yes, oh my word, you really were gonna go there? Yes, yes, yes, yes, discuss.

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Okay, yes, yes, yes, Ian, go ahead, you wanna try to answer Andrew before I do? Well, it's not that it breaks the rules because, you know,

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I think that what's true is that his human, it's what Ian just said, that his human nature, like, it didn't break the rules for his divine nature is what

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I'm trying to say. Like, his divine nature did not stop being incomprehensible, omniscient, omnipotent, all those things, right?

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And yet it, in the hypostatic union, became one with 100 % man, right, fully man, and that man nature started out as an infant that could not speak and could not even feed itself, right?

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So it had to grow, it had to develop, it had to mature. Yes, Bob.

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He made new rules, yeah, there's the rules for the human nature and there's the rules for the divine nature, yeah,

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Christine? Sure, go ahead. Is this not the cry of the ignorant sufferer that when things go bad, when life is awful, when circumstances overwhelm us, right?

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Like, see billows roll, as the old hymn says. What are we tempted to think when it's all going bad?

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What do we, what question do we look up to the heavens and cry?

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Why, right, why, God, why? Now, the book of Job, the entire book of Job is to answer that question.

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It's to answer that question, why? Job is God's own theodicy about the problem of evil.

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So let's turn to the book of Job real quick, not real quick, for the rest of the time, just after Esther.

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How long is the book of Job? 42 chapters, how many of you have read all 42?

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Come on, be honest. Okay, a lot of you, all right, fine. How many of you remember chapters like four through 38?

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Yeah, right? You kind of speed read through those parts. What happens in chapters one through three that everybody remembers, what's, right?

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That's the scenes from heaven, right? And the actual original bad things happening to Job. Right, we see, we get a picture of Satan coming, confronting

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God, challenging God about Job's faithfulness. God giving Satan the permission to do various things to Job, right?

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And then we, and then, you know, so we all know the first three chapters, but it keeps going on.

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And remember, he starts out, at least, you know, say like in chapter three, in a good frame of mind, right?

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And, or sorry, through chapter two and chapter three, and you know, and he's got the famous, naked

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I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.

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May the name of the Lord be praised, right? And also, there's also this, of course, and in all this,

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Job did not sin in what he said, right? That's chapter three, Job, okay?

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By the time he gets to chapter 30, even Job has had enough. Even Job has had enough.

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Turn to chapter 30, verse 19 to 23. And if you had sat around listening to the stuff that his friends were spewing out, you'd probably be frustrated too, his so -called friends.

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Job chapter 30, verse 19 to 23. This is

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Job talking. God has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes.

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I cry to you for help, and you do not answer me. I stand, and you only look at me.

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I'm sorry, I stand, and you only look at me. Put the tone of voice correctly, right?

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I stand, and you only look at me. You have turned cruel to me. With the might of your hand, you persecute me.

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You lift me up on the wind, you make me ride on it. And you toss me about in the roar of the storm, for I know that you will bring me to death and to the house appointed for all the living.

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And then by chapter 31, just one page over, he demands an answer.

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Chapter 31, verse 35, he says to God, oh, that I had one to hear me.

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Here is my signature. Let the almighty answer me, right?

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Here's my signature, as if he's like, writing out the letter to God. Here, Job says, why?

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Why, God, why? Right? Now, chapter 32, there's almost like an intermission to this.

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Elihu steps up, he defends God's honor against all these demands. But then comes chapter 38, and God himself answers

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Job. For three more chapters, four more chapters. And what is God, for those of you who,

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I know you remember this part, the end part of Job 2. What's God's answer to Job? How does

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God answer why? Right.

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I'm God, you're not. I'm God, you're not. What does he answer with? He answers a different W question, doesn't he?

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He doesn't answer why, he answers who, who, who.

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God never tells Job why, never. As far as we know,

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Job never found out the truth. Someone else was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write this biography.

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They got the revelation, the window into heaven, so to speak, of what happened in Job's, those early chapters,

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Job 1 and 2. God does not answer why, God answers who.

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God answers who. And the who really is about, as Ian said, it's

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God tells Job more about himself. Why?

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So that Job will understand that he can trust God's knowledge and wisdom and power.

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Right. The point of all that that he goes through, where he goes on for all those chapters to explain about how powerful he is, and about how wise he is, and about how much he knows, is so that Job understands, like you said,

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I am God and you are not. I know what I'm doing, you can trust me.

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You can trust me. What Job's experience teaches us, I say, is that God's acts are always morally good.

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And they're always for our good. That's what makes it wisdom instead of just knowledge, by the way.

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That's why we say he's omnisapient and not just omniscient. Because God has decreed both the best ends and also the best means for achieving those ends.

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You know, Romans 8 is an entire discourse on the good omnisapience of God.

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And it's, you know, of course, best summarized by 828, which we've already mentioned before, but I'll quote it now. And we know that for those who love

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God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

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All right, so the reason we can trust God is, with all of this, that all is working together is because he's omnipotent.

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And the reason we can trust God that it's for our good is because he's omnisapient.

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Who knows the famous quote about power and absolute power? You'll probably paraphrase it, it's okay.

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Go ahead, I heard a bunch of whispers, you were all close. Say it loud. Yes, right.

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Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But not so with God, because God has the actual absolute power, and he is holiness and goodness and love, like we've been saying over and over again about his simplicity.

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So those bear fruit in the exercise of his power and his wisdom. I would say it is no wonder that in his created order, the role for his people that he named for himself is heavenly father.

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Heavenly father, okay? All right.

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That brings us basically to the end. Got crowds on the outside. So we'll end there.

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Any questions, give a few moments. Did I answer all the things?

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No, I didn't, I didn't get to number seven. So I'll just tell you what I was trying to say there is nowhere is God's wisdom better displayed than in his plan of salvation.

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And if you wanna look that up, you can go read 1 Corinthians 1, 22 to 25.

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All right, let's pray. Heavenly father, Lord, may we not take that title lightly.

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In your decree, in your creation, in your order for which you have set things to occur, you created the very idea of fatherhood and set us up with earthly fathers who are flawed and fallen, but gave us the notion of that ideal father.

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And then we can look up and say that is all that we can imagine as great a father can be that is you and even more, you are our heavenly father.

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We thank you Lord for adopting us into your family. We thank you for sending your son to die on the cross on our behalf to make that adoption possible.

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If there's anyone here who does not know you as father, I pray that they would recognize in humility that they cannot do anything to save themselves, but must rest in trust in the finished work of Christ on the cross.

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That that plan of salvation was all wise and beyond any of our mortal imagining.

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Thank you, Lord, that you are all powerful and all knowing. May we trust in your goodness and in your control and in your sovereignty as we deal with the circumstances of life day by day, that we might remember that if we can trust you with something so great as our eternal life, we can also and should trust you with the small and the mundane and even the large problems of our earthly life.