Doctrines of Grace - Sovereignty & Sin

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If you will take your Bibles, please, and turn with me to the book of Acts, Acts chapter four.

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I'm going to do my best to find enough room up here on the pulpit for all of the texts that I have with me today, because we're going to move around a little bit.

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We're gonna be looking at three primary texts. I believe they're listed for you on the bulletin.

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Acts chapter four. Before we turn to the word of God, let us pray once more for his blessing upon us.

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My gracious heavenly Father, during this time, we ask that you would help us to focus upon your truth.

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As we handle that which is spiritual, we need the work of your spirit amongst us to protect us from distraction, to focus our minds.

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Lord, without your spirit, we can do nothing. So help us during this time. May you write upon our hearts by your word and your spirit.

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May you be glorified in what takes place during this time. We pray in Christ's name, amen.

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In Acts chapter four, we have a situation where the early church encounters the opposition of governing authorities, not specifically in this instance, the

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Roman governing authorities. That would come a little bit later. But in this instance, it is the religious governing authorities there in Jerusalem.

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And they have been instructed not to teach and preach in the name of Jesus. To do so would, of course, bring about the condemnation of they themselves because they were the ones that were complicit in the death of Christ.

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So they have been threatened and sent away. And we are told, beginning in verse 23, that when they were released, they went unto their own and they proclaimed to them the things that the chief priests and the elders had said.

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And as soon as they heard what the chief priests and the elders had said, which were not kind words, they were words of threat.

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They were words of condemnation. But when they heard what had been said, with one voice, with unity together, with one voice, they raised up their voice toward God and said, despotah, despotah.

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We have an English word, despot. It's not a positive word for us. But in the

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Greek language, it means a sovereign Lord, a Lord with sovereign authority and power to act.

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And so instead of using the normal word, kurios, for Lord, they use the word that would be used and understood as one who is active in the affairs of men.

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And so they say, Lord, sovereign Lord, you are the one who made heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.

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They begin with the sovereignty of God. They begin with a

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God who is the creator and maker of all things. As soon as they hear the threats, they turn to God because they know that God is the creator of all things.

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So much, my friends, of the problems that we face in our society today is while we once, as a society, believer and unbeliever, recognized that there was a creator who would judge all things, today, the vast majority, outside the church and sadly in the church, what is called the church, would never begin a prayer in this way because they no longer have, as a part of their worldview, the idea that there is a

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God who made the heavens and the earth. The early church understood.

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You begin with the sovereign Lord and then you begin with the fact that he has spoken.

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Look at verse 25, verse 25, who by means of the

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Holy Spirit spoke by our father

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David's mouth. David, who was the servant of God, and said.

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Think about what that means. They're gonna quote from the scriptures.

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They still have, as the early church, that connection to David. They don't see themselves having been cut off.

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They don't see themselves starting something that's fundamentally new. They see a continuation and a fulfillment motif.

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Our father David, God's servant, the servant of the sovereign creator of heaven and earth and everything that is in them, there's nothing outside of his sovereignty, but then they recognize that our father

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David spoke by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of David.

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We don't simply have the thoughts of mankind. This isn't the contradictory ruminations of some men from the past.

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That's not how they view scripture. Instead, they are addressing God. They recognize him as the maker.

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And then as they're going to quote from scripture, they recognize what scripture is.

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And just as Peter said that men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

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Holy Spirit, the description here is David, our father, spoke.

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His mouth moved. He was used, but by the means of the

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Holy Spirit. They recognize that scripture is from God and yet it is in the very language of man.

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Therefore, they can quote from it. And when they quote from it, they recognize that this supernatural revelation is relevant to what they themselves are experiencing right now.

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Because remember, as soon as they heard, as soon as the apostles come back and they tell their own people, this is what the chief priests and the scribes have said, as soon as that happens, they lift up their voice in prayer to the sovereign

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God and they go, aha, fulfillment of spirit -given scripture.

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And where do they go? The second Psalm. Every Jewish person knew the

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Psalter, but especially those first few. And the second Psalm, there it is.

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Why do the nations rage and the people devise empty, futile things?

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Why go here? Because that's exactly what they're seeing being fulfilled in front of them.

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They have governmental authority saying to them, be silent, no longer speak in the name of Jesus.

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And they see fulfillment from Psalm two. The nations are in an uproar and the people devise emptiness, vain things.

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And indeed, the kings of the earth, they take their stand.

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The kings take their stand in their royal robes and the rulers are gathered together against him, against the

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Lord and against his Mashiach, his anointed one, his

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Christ. They see that by the

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Holy Spirit of God, David had given revelation about what they themselves would now experience in the opposition of the enemy against them.

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And they quote. What are they quoting from? This is important.

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We all need to understand this. And we have so many visitors who come to visit us that I have to repeat things so that everyone's on the same page.

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All that means is if you're a regular, you should know this stuff like the back of your hand.

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Because one of the reasons you may have seen me walking in here, I brought a lot of Bibles with me.

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And this one especially, this is the Old Testament. This is called the

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Greek Septuagint. The only reason it's in two volumes is because if you put them together, the binding would break.

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This is the Greek Septuagint. This is the Greek translation of what we call the

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Old Testament or the Tanakh. And when we look at Genesis 50 and Isaiah 10, we're gonna look at it out of this.

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Why? Because this was the Bible of the early church. Oh yes, here in Jerusalem, they would have been able to read the

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Hebrew Old Testament. But the New Testament is not written to just Jews.

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It was written in the language of the day, Koine Greek. And this is the

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Greek translation that existed in that day of the Old Testament. And that's what they're quoting from.

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That's what they're quoting from. So keep in mind when it says against the

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Lord and against his Christos, his anointed one.

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Because in the very next verse, the church is going to play off of that term.

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It's gonna play off of that term. And unfortunately, because the terms we use in translation, we sometimes miss what is being said there.

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So how does the early church, they don't have a council.

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They don't get together and go, hmm, let's think about what the possible theological ramifications of all this is.

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This is the immediate spirit born reaction of the early church to persecution.

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They pray, they recognize God as the sovereign over all things.

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They recognize the nature of scripture as authoritative and divine in its origin.

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They bring that scripture out. They quote from it. And then we have the early church's application and interpretation of what the application of Psalm 2 is to mean to us.

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And it's startling. It is startling. For truly there were gathered together in this city against your holy, and the term there can be translated as servant or child, either one, your holy servant,

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Jesus, whom you christened. It is a term to anoint.

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Whom you anointed. Here is the very same root, Christos, the

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Mashiach, the Messiah. So in this city, truly there were gathered together against your holy servant,

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Jesus, whom you anointed. Now look at this rogues gallery.

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Both Herod and Pontius Pilate, together with the

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Gentiles and the people of Israel. Now that's quite a group.

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That's quite a group. If you're not familiar with the story, let me just make sure you understand, that group does not have a lot that holds them together in common.

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All right? Let's think about the first two, Pontius Pilate and Herod.

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Pontius Pilate and Herod. Pontius Pilate is pretty much a career politician type guy.

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He's just trying to not get in trouble. He wants to be able to get out of this armpit of the

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Roman empire and get back to Rome where he can get a better position and see his career move forward.

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He's just trying to keep the peace. Herod is crazy.

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Herod's just, he's not just a couple of sheets to the wind.

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He's not just a couple of decks short of a full, a couple of cards short of a full deck. This man's nuts.

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So there's not a whole lot that joins them together other than they have political power. Not quite the same nature of political power, but they have political power.

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And they're joined by the Gentiles, which would be the Romans, the

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Roman soldiers, the military power that was currently keeping

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Jerusalem from boiling over, wasn't gonna last much longer. It's only a matter of decades before what everybody knew was eventually gonna happen is gonna happen.

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And you have the rebellion that takes place. But you've got the Gentiles, you've got their power, their might.

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They were the most technologically advanced military force the world had ever seen.

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Sound familiar? Sound familiar? They knew it and they were proud of it.

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As well as the people of Israel. Now there was a conjunction that is startling.

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The people of Israel detested being under the boot of Rome, but when it came to coming against the anointed one, they joined together with Herod and Pontius Pilate and the

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Romans. The point is those four groups, individuals and groups, did not have a common bond.

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They were brought together in an incredibly strange union.

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And what brought them together? Well, remember, the early church is interpreting

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Psalm 2. They're seeing the nation's rage. They're seeing the people's devise a empty thing.

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And so you have verse 28. And I recognize verse 28 is startling.

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Verse 28 is hard, but we need to hear verse 28. To do whatever your hand and your purpose or will predestined to take place.

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It's not a difficult text as far as the original language is concerned.

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It's just bold. It's not expressed in a way that would allow you a way out.

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It's straightforward. The early church, without getting together and taking a vote about it, without having a council and saying, well, you know, we don't want to offend.

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We want to be careful how we say this. We know that Mrs.

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Grubermacher in the back doesn't like any discussions of predestination. So we need to be careful how we say this.

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None of that. In the prayer of the early church in the face of persecution, you have high theology of God, high theology of scripture.

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You have application to what's happening right then and there in Jerusalem. And it's all tied together by the church saying what those people did, what

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Pontius Pilate did, what Herod the loopy guy did, what the

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Romans did who were just simply doing crucifixion because they're good at that. And what the deep hatred of the

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Jewish leadership toward their own Messiah who exposed their self -righteousness and their hypocrisy.

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All of those motivations which were completely different motivations. The motivations of the

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Roman soldiers are not the motivations of the Jewish leaders, are not the motivations of Pontius Pilate.

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And who knows what the motivations of Herod were? Completely different human motivations.

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To do whatever your hand and your purpose, your will predestined to take place.

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What was the confidence of the early church? That we weren't bouncing around through some random universe.

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That the amazing thing that had just taken place, the death, burial and resurrection of Israel's Messiah was exactly as God had intended it to be.

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The people that were involved, exactly what God intended to be. The time, exactly when, where, exactly where.

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And yet, obviously you have individuals involved and they are all culpable for what they do.

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They're all culpable. Look at that group. Do you think

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God had to come along with a big old celestial gun and put it behind their backs and say, do something bad?

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Do you think he had to force them? Do you think these were just a bunch of really good guys? The Jews had wanted to kill him for a long time.

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What did the gospel of John keep saying? His time was not yet, his time was not yet. They could not belay a hand on him.

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His time was not yet. Roman soldiers, they don't care.

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They're shooting, they're doing dice down there. They don't care. They're just doing what

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Roman soldiers do. Herod, like I said, who knows?

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Pontius Pilate just trying to keep the place from blowing up. All sorts of different motivations to do whatever your hand and your will predestined to happen, to take place, to occur.

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So what do we see? We see the early church naturally, organically responding to the threats of the world around them by confessing

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God is the creator. His word is true. His word contains prophecy.

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It's taken place in our day. And we understand the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of mankind.

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And we recognize there is no conflict. We recognize that Pontius Pilate is guilty for what he did.

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We recognize Herod is guilty for what he did. The Roman soldiers and the

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Jewish leaders who are now persecuting us, they are guilty.

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They are culpable. And yet God was doing exactly what his hand and purpose had determined to take place.

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This is called compatibilism. The absolute sovereign decree of God and the responsibility of his image bearers in the world he has created are compatible truths.

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That does not mean that they are two rails of a railroad track that meet in eternity.

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That's not what they're saying. Because the reality is, if you have two rails of any railroad track that meet anywhere, the result is a crash because the train's gonna come off the tracks.

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There are two truths here. The one conditions and gives the foundation and basis of the other.

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They're both still true. And it's the basis upon which God can judge and judge justly.

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Now you might say, but this is the early church. This is early on. This is within the first few months of the experience of the church.

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Could they really be coming up with this level of understanding and interpretation? Where did they get this?

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It was a basic understanding of scripture.

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And to see that, I'm gonna forget my Greek New Testament in here when

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I do this, you just watch. To see that, let's go back to the book of Genesis.

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Now it's gonna take me a second to get there. But that'll give you plenty of time to get there as well.

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Genesis chapter 50. Genesis chapter 50.

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Now once again, I am going to be reading from the

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Greek Septuagint. So there are some subtle differences. Remember when we did Isaiah six, we saw some of the differences.

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They come from the Greek Septuagint. It's interesting to see that because again, this is the Bible of the early church.

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But what has happened? Israel has died. Joseph, of course, sold into slavery.

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You remember the whole story of what happens. He goes to Egypt. He ascends to the second position of power.

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Because he's there, he is able to save his family from the famine and save many other people alive.

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He has revealed himself. That must have caused a lot of problems in the family once Israel realized he had been deceived by his sons who had sold his other son into slavery.

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You think you got problems in your family? Think about what that was like. The day after Joseph revealed himself, what was the conversation in the car like?

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Or in that case, since there's all the kids in the big van, that one really fits with us, in the big old minibus, who was trying to sit in the absolute back seat in that family situation?

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That's a question, isn't it? But everybody knew, the brothers must have known.

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Israel's getting old. He's gonna die someday. They had to have had conversations.

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Well, he dies. He dies. And so what happens?

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Well, verse 15. So Joseph's brothers, seeing that their father had died, are now afraid.

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They said, what if Joseph should literally, in the Greek septuagint, is return, it's not return the favor, but render unto us in the way that we rendered unto him, in essence, for all of the evil which we demonstrated and showed unto him.

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Basically, it's saying, what if Joseph gets us back for what we did to him? And so they sent unto

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Joseph, saying, your father caused an oath to be sworn before his death, saying, thus you shall say to Joseph, forgive to them the unrighteousness and their sins because of the evil which they demonstrated.

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And then what's interesting, and now, receive them as your unrighteous, receive their unrighteousness as your servants, in essence, as servants of the

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God of your father. Not the God of their father, interestingly enough, but the God of your father.

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And so there is this command from Israel to Joseph to be merciful.

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It's not recorded for us that he told them these things. It does raise the question, and it's an honest question.

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Did he really say that? I mean, these are the same brothers that took his coat of many colors, his coogee of many colors, as I like to look at it.

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I see that somewhere in the Hebrew text. I think it was a coogee of many colors. And dipped it in blood and allowed him to weep and to wail.

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Man, you want hardness of heart? Can you imagine? Can you imagine what that was like?

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I can't even, I cannot. No one broke and said, no, dad, that isn't what happened.

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No, they stayed firm. Maybe they made this up,

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I don't know. But Joseph weeps while these words are being said to him.

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And so the brothers approach him, and they said in the Greek Septuagint, behold, we are your house servants.

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Not your servants as in, you know, the important people that might bear your authority to others and things like that.

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No, we're the people who put your shoes on. We're the people that'll do your laundry.

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We are your house servants. And Joseph said to them, do not fear.

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Now you're familiar with the Hebrew at this point, for am I in God's place?

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And you could render the Greek Septuagint in that way, or you could just, the most basic translation is, for I belong to God.

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I am God's servant as well. I cannot elevate myself in the way that you're fearful

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I might elevate myself. Or it could be, am I in God's place?

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Then you have verse 20. And it's interesting, in both the

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Hebrew and the Greek, there is a direct indisputable parallel in the two statements that are made.

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This cannot be disputed. There are people who will tell you otherwise. They are wrong. They are wrong.

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Here's what it says in the Greek Septuagint. You wished, you planned or devised against me for evil.

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Panera, evil. But God planned or devised concerning me for good.

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Now that's the key text. But notice it goes on, so that it might become as it is today in order that many people might be supported or kept alive.

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So Joseph has the big view. I don't know when he first got the big view, but it is interesting to me that most of the time that people get the big view, it's because they've suffered enough to be able to get the big view.

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And he did. Man, a patient man. Think about what he went through.

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How many of us are already complaining to God the second day of a trial?

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How long did Joseph endure patiently? It's those who endure for long periods of time who end up with the maturity and the ability to see the big picture.

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And the big picture Joseph does, Joseph recognizes, look, we are all alive today because God did it the way he did it.

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And it's not just our family that's alive. Because God put me where he put me.

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We have been able to save many, many people. And that was God's intention.

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That was his purpose. And so we go back to that first section.

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Joseph does not excuse their sin. He uses the term panerah, panerah.

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He knows that there was evil that has been done. Notice back in verse 17, because of the evil that they showed.

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Same word, he's not disputing it. Yes, what you did, what you plotted and devised against me, what you intended toward me was evil.

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He doesn't excuse it. He doesn't say it's not relevant. But God, and then he uses in both

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Hebrew and Greek, the exact same verb as the preceding statement.

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The author in both languages is saying you intended, you plotted, you devised, but God intended, plotted and devised for the good, for the good.

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Same event. Remember what the event was? Here comes that dreamer.

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Let's kill him, Reuben says, let's not kill him. Let's cast him in a pit. And that's what they do.

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They see him coming. Their evil had to be restrained because it was not

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God's intention that Joseph die then. The reality is they could not have killed him.

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It was God's purpose that Joseph go to Egypt. It's God's intention.

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You go, wait a minute. It is evil to sell your brother into slavery.

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Yes, it is. And God intended that to take place.

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Why? Because their motivations, ais panera, unto evil.

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God's motivation, periemu ais agatha, to the good. Same action.

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God's intention's holy, man's intention's evil. The early church knew this story.

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The early church understood what this meant. You cannot begin to deal with the stories of the patriarchs if you do not understand that God is accomplishing something in their lives.

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Remember how the servant goes to find a wife for Isaac and everything just works out exactly the way it's supposed to be?

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God can do that just as he did it in this situation. But the important thing is motivation of the one, evil, therefore proper judgment.

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Motivation of the other, good, therefore proper exaltation and glorification. One action, those brothers were held accountable before God for what they did.

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But you'll notice, even in that situation, God restrained evil.

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He kept them from killing Joseph. Don't you think

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Joseph knew? Of course he did. Of course he did. And the result was so that many people would be alive.

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Do you realize every single messianic prophecy in the Old Testament is a demonstration that God is sovereign over human affairs?

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How could there be any prophecies fulfilled if in reality, God is just simply, okay, now he just did that, so maybe

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I could do this over here. Maybe I could get, oh, oh man, that guy just died. I was gonna use him. Oh man. That's how many people have

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God running around up there, trying to put everything back together again, responding to what mankind does.

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But I hope you also see the result of that is not that mankind's decisions become irrelevant.

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Because Joseph can say to his brothers, I know what you intended. And the reason

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I can forgive you and the reason that it says that he said to them, do not fear,

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I will support you and your families. And he exhorted them.

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It's the same term in Greek that's used the Holy Spirit. He comforted them, the paraclete. He comforted them and literally in the

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Greek it says, and he spoke to their heart. Here is a man who could forgive even the treachery of his brothers because he knew the big picture.

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He knew that it was more important what God was about and what God had accomplished and God had done.

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God's purpose, man's responsibility, compatible, together, in harmony.

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The early church knew this. The early church understood this.

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Uh -oh, he's putting his Bible away. When Jeff does that, he's done. Well, no. Well, when

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Jeff does it, you don't know whether he's done or not, actually. It's just that Isaiah is in the other volume.

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Uh -oh. Isaiah chapter 10. Isaiah chapter 10.

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The early church understood the story of Joseph.

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They understood how there could be one action, just as there was in the one action of the crucifixion of the Son of God, the divine intention, purpose, and predestination of God is being fulfilled through the utilization of mankind and yet men are responsible.

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They're not standing there and they'd wanna do good stuff and God's saying, no, do bad stuff.

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That's not what's going on. Instead, most of the time, when you have these incidents in Scripture where light is shown upon this,

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God is seen as restraining the evil of men, only allowing them to do a certain amount that accomplishes his purposes.

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Mankind wants to do more. But then we have Isaiah chapter 10. I think one of the reasons this text is not one of the ones that people think of immediately is because it involves the history of Israel and let's just be honest, most of us would not want to take a test on the history of Israel, especially after the

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Israel -Judah split and well, when did the Northern Kingdom fall and who did that and who are the

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Assyrians and the Babylonians and it gets sort of murky at that point, right?

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And so when did each of the prophets minister and all that kind of stuff and I think that might be why

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Isaiah chapter 10 isn't as well -known and then you've got a bunch of place names.

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You'll notice, for example, in verses nine, you've got to Isnot Calno like Carchemish or Harmoth like Arpod or Samaria like Damascus and we're like, yeah, and Aho like Sierra Vista, what,

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I don't get it. We're not sure exactly where all these places are but I do think this is one of the clearest illustrations of how compatibilism works laid out for us.

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Now, I'm not gonna read all of Isaiah chapter 10 but beginning in verse five, woe to Assyria, the rod of my wrath and in whose hand there is anger because he says,

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I send my wrath against a lawless people. So what he's saying is,

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I'm the one bringing Assyria against Israel.

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If you remember Deuteronomy 28, 29, the curses, blessings and curses and God said, if you break my covenant, the curses are much longer than the blessings.

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Read it sometime, they're very graphic and God had been extremely patient, extremely patient but the time had come and so God brings the

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Assyrians. Now, the Assyrians are pagans. Their religious worship is horrific, they are a war -like people.

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If there is anybody in the ancient world that looked like and acted like the Klingons, it was the

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Assyrians. There's only about 12

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Trekkies in the audience, okay. That'll do better on the web, I think but they're described, did you like that one, that was good?

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Okay, thank you, I had at least one person going, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna see those Assyrians from now on with a crinkly forehead and a bat -lip and stuff like that, that's right.

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The Assyrians were a war -like people, they were merciless.

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They normally didn't take prisoners except the ones that they could ravish or use and so God describes them as the rod of his wrath and he says,

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I send them against a lawless people. Those are the people who had his law.

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You don't love his law, then you're a lawless people. You may have it, I wonder how many

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Bibles there are in the United States of America, ever thought about that?

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There's probably not a land on all of God's green earth that has more availability of the scriptures than the

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United States of America. Is this not a lawless land right now?

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I send them as the rod of my wrath. So God says, I am bringing the

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Assyrians against you. I take responsibility but, verse seven, but he, primarily the king of Assyria, but he does not plan it so, he's not planning in that way and he's not reasoning in that way in his soul but he will change his mind and will utterly destroy not a few nations.

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The Greek Septuagint really, honestly, is quite as clear as the Hebrew at this point. I'm not exactly sure why.

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But what it does say is the king of Assyria, this isn't his plan.

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This isn't his intention. He doesn't say, you know,

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I think I'm going to use my armies to serve the purposes of Yahweh in justly punishing his people.

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Never crossed his mind. He may have heard the name Yahweh but we don't know if he did or didn't.

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Doesn't matter, that wasn't his intention. He just wants to destroy nations. He wants to expand the borders of his kingdom.

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He wants more money, he wants more power. So it's not his intention.

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So God says, I'm going to do something with the Assyrians but it's not their plan. It's not their intention.

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It's not something coming from their will. But then in verse 12, so it will come about when the

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Lord has completed all of what he's doing in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem.

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He will say, I will punish the great mind of the ruler of the

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Assyrians, the great thinking, and I will bring down the glory of his eyes, literally.

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So here you've got God saying, I'm bringing the Assyrians. I'm going to punish

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Israel. I'm going to do what I've said I'm going to do. But when they get done, and by the way, what they were doing was trampling people like mud in the streets, blood flowing everywhere.

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This wasn't, we're going to bring economic sanctions against you. This was, we're going to tear your guts open type stuff.

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And when I'm done with all of that, I'm then going to punish the king of the

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Assyrians. Well, didn't you say you were the one sending them?

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Yep, and I'm going to punish them. Why are you going to punish them? Well, because of what filled his heart, because of what filled his heart.

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For he has said, verse 13, and then you start reading down verses 13 and 14. Me, me, me, me,

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I, I, I, I've done all this. There is no recognition on the part of this man that he is under the sovereign control of any

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God. He is exalting himself. So he's punished for what?

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What fills his heart. Joseph's brothers were held accountable for what?

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For what filled their heart. Pontius Pilate, Herod, the

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Romans, the Jews, what's their punishment based upon? What fills their heart?

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God is just, he knows the heart, but none of that changes his sovereign plan.

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He's accomplishing his divine decree. And so look at verse 15, look at verse 15.

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The ax is not glorified above the one swinging it, is it?

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And the saw is not exalted above the one it literally means to pull.

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So it's one of those saws where you probably had two people and you want one side, one, the other, you know, you'd be cutting large logs and type that.

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So you pull a saw across something. That's how you cut through it. And the question is asked, an ax and a saw can accomplish something.

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They're important, vitally important tools, but they're just tools and they require an operator.

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They require a designer and they require an operator. And this is the response of God to the

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King of Assyria, who's exalting himself. I'm doing all these things. I have all this power.

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Now you're just a saw in God's hand and you're glorifying yourself?

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No, that would be like a club wielding those who lift it, like a rod lifting him who is not wood.

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We recognize that tools are just that, they're just tools. There is one who is using those tools and the absurdity of the

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King of Assyria exalting himself is the absurdity of any human being who exalts himself rather than recognizing he is simply the creature of God.

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My, when you hear people today, well, we're not hearing it right now because there's not much going on, but remember back before February of 2020 when things were somewhat normal and you would have a great athletic performance and you'd have an athlete being interviewed and you could just tell there were some who recognized that their great skills came from someplace else and they could be taken away like that.

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They're the rarity. Instead, we always see the people, I'm the best. No one can guard me.

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No one can stop me. I can strike out anyone. I can hit anyone.

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There's this arrogance. There's a part of the heart of man and that's what the

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King of Assyria was all about. That's what the King of Assyria was all about.

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So let's think about it. You have military invasion and great damage brought to the

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Northern Kingdom, wiping it out, Damascus destroyed. This is an event in history and God says,

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I brought it about. I brought it about to fulfill my own promises, Deuteronomy 28 and 29, my own purposes to demonstrate my wrath against the people with whom

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I have been greatly patient and the prophets prove that.

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The history of Israel proves that. But I used a pagan people and then

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I'm turning around and I'm gonna punish the heart of the

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King of Assyria. I'm gonna bring a wasting disease amongst his stout warriors because he was so arrogant in being used by me.

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And God is perfectly just to do that. What's the point? You have one action.

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It's a necessary action. It's a divine action. It's a part of God's decree.

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This is part of the fact. This is how God intended to bring the

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Messiah into the world. It included everything that he did with the nation of Israel, Israel and Judah.

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Follow the genealogy of Jesus. That thread is going all through all this stuff that looks to us like absolute chaos.

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It's not absolute chaos. I think one of the most beautiful things we're gonna get to see in eternity to come is how all of this, which from our perspective looks like such a mess is woven together to the glory of God.

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You know the illustration. I've used it before, but I'll use it again. You've seen those tapestries, beautiful rugs.

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On the one side, the gorgeous design, not a thread out of place, but you look at the other side and it's a complete mess.

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Knots and stuff going this way and that way. And you can barely even figure out what it is.

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It's not pretty at all. Well, I think right now we're looking up at the underside of the tapestry.

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And it doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense to us. But someday we're gonna see it in the way that it was being woven together to the glory of God.

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I think that's something we're gonna see. But what we have is the promise of scripture that in this event, you have

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God's sovereign hand bringing it about and then his just judgment, his righteous judgment of both

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Israel and Assyria. There is so little emphasis amongst us today about wanting to see

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God's judgment take place, see his holiness proven.

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Oh, we talk about justice all the time in our society now, right? But is it

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God's justice or justice as defined by man? So think with me.

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Come back with me to Acts chapter four. And think with me. Why does the church so quickly and so immediately upon hearing the opposition coming against the church, give us this beautiful example.

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Look to God, the creator of all things. Look to God, the one who made the heaven and the earth.

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Recognize that without that foundation, you have nothing. There is no answers to be found in Darwin's universe.

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Richard Dawkins has nothing to give to you but hopelessness. Abject, random hopelessness.

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Someday our sons are gonna get big enough to consume this planet. Well, that's the end of that.

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That's all you got. That's all there is. Started with the creator

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God, therefore you have a foundation for purpose, then moved directly to God has spoken.

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He didn't just create and then wander off to go on vacation someplace. Well, that was a lot of work. I'm gonna be gone for a while.

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No, he spoke by the spirit, gave a scripture. That scripture speaks prophetically about the days of the

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Messiah. And then as soon as you see the nations raging, they go, ah, yes, we saw what

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Herod did. We saw Pontius Pilate. We have to live with those

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Roman soldiers. You know, I saw that Roman soldier that actually drove the nails. I saw him walking by the marketplace just yesterday, prayed for him.

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And the very same Jewish leaders who cried out, crucify him.

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We have no king but Caesar, were the ones now threatening us and saying no more preaching the name, that name that we won't say, no more.

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And they see the sovereign hand of God and can simply say they were gathered together against your holy servant,

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Jesus, to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to take place.

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And yet so many today hate that concept, hate it with a passion.

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The early church saw it as the very foundation of their confidence to preach the gospel.

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They didn't see it as destructive. They didn't see it as destructive.

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That's why they could come to the conclusion that they did. That's why they came to the conclusion that they did.

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And that's why they boldly did what was right before God. They had the right theology.

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They understood compatibilism. They understood God is sovereign.

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His decree will take place. What he has predestined will happen. And yet what happens in time is real.

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We are not puppets. How could that be? Because Jesus himself entered into time and he was no puppet.

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God will justly judge because he knows the intentions of the heart.

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These are two truths presented to us in Scripture and you simply have to deny one of those truths to get around the reality of what

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Scripture teaches at this point. Now, if you're still with me at all, it looks like most of you are.

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I haven't heard any snoring. That's always extremely difficult. Maybe the fans are covering it over.

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That's one advantage of having the fans, I suppose. But I promised on Facebook, I don't know if any of you saw it, a little golden nugget, a little something you can take with you.

01:00:02

And it's in verse 20 of Isaiah chapter 10. Isaiah chapter 10, after all this discussion of Assyria and the destruction and everything else, you have this phrase, and it will happen in that day that literally the

01:00:30

Septuagint says, I will not add to the remnant of Israel.

01:00:41

Now, I was looking at it and it struck me. I saw that. And I went, that's interesting because normally it says, it talks about those of the house of Jacob who have escaped, but the term there is sozo.

01:01:00

Sozo in Greek means saved. It's where we get soteriology, study of salvation.

01:01:07

But what caught my eye was the remnant of Israel because the root there,

01:01:14

I recognized from its use elsewhere. And where would it be used elsewhere?

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Let me find, I've got too many Bibles up here right now, but where is it used elsewhere? Well, turn with me real quick.

01:01:29

We'll be brief. I'm not gonna mislead you like some other people do and say, we've got three more points after this, but Romans chapter 11.

01:01:44

Romans chapter 11. And there you have, after the summary of Romans 8,

01:02:01

Romans 9, 10, the gospel going out to the Gentiles, you have a discussion in verse four.

01:02:16

Remember you have Elijah. Elijah's complained to God, oh God, your people are terrible and horrible and I'm the only one left and they're seeking my life.

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And this is Elijah's pity party. And the divine response to him is,

01:02:33

I have kept for myself 7 ,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. It's an important story because it was

01:02:41

God who reserved for himself. God doesn't say, I am so fortunate that there are 7 ,000 really righteous men who have not bowed the knee to Baal, aren't

01:02:52

I lucky? No, God says, I've reserved for myself 7 ,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal.

01:03:02

And then notice the application. In the same way then, there is also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God's grace.

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It's literally, it's the remnant, there is now the sign remnant chosen by grace.

01:03:29

Chosen by grace. And when you look at the language, that lima, that remnant in Romans 11, five is connected back to 700 years earlier.

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God was already in grace, keeping a remnant for himself, a remnant for himself.

01:04:02

God has never been in danger of having this whole thing fall apart.

01:04:09

You know, there are theologies that say that God faces that danger, that if you and I don't cooperate with God, this whole thing just may come to failure.

01:04:20

Maybe I have to start all over again, I don't know. There are people actually teaching that. That's not the

01:04:25

God of the Bible. By his grace, he has always kept a remnant.

01:04:35

And no matter how much apostasy we see around us, no matter how much from our extremely limited vantage point things look really, really bad,

01:04:48

God is still in control. God is still in charge. We may not see how there is a way out.

01:04:59

Elijah didn't see the way out. I'm the only one left, God. And God says, no,

01:05:06

Elijah. You may not have their telephone numbers and addresses. They may not be in your contact list on your iPhone.

01:05:14

But I've reserved for myself 7 ,000. In Romans chapter 11, the point is, has

01:05:24

God completely abandoned Israel? No, look at me. I am one of those that have been. There has always been that remnant of grace all the way down through the history of Israel.

01:05:36

There was when I destroyed them by the Assyrians, I kept a remnant.

01:05:43

Today, the Jews may be standing against the Christ. And crucifying

01:05:48

Him, I've kept a remnant. Our God can always keep

01:05:55

His remnant. Now, that does not mean that remnant is always small.

01:06:03

Because the promise of Scripture is like the sand of the sea. But there may be times in the experience of the church, we look around, we go, we seem to be in a small minority.

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It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Our God is sovereign.

01:06:26

He has woven together the beautiful fabric of time. We have heard about the sovereignty of God.

01:06:36

It's true. It's indisputable from the page of the Scripture. We clearly have that God will judge the thoughts and intents of the heart.

01:06:48

Well, how can He do that? Scripture tells us that He does, and He does so justly.

01:06:55

And the only way to get around that is to take these texts and to not hear what they're saying.

01:07:02

Well, isn't one truth more important than another truth? Well, there are truths that are more foundational to other truths.

01:07:12

But because this truth depends upon this truth, does that make this less true? No. God being the creator, the maker of all things, accomplishing

01:07:23

His purpose is foundational to our understanding of who we are as His creatures.

01:07:29

So creation comes before what the creatures can do. That's a more foundational truth. In the same way, the fact that God is accomplishing

01:07:38

His purpose, foundational truth. It doesn't make it any less true that when

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God judges Herod, when God judges Pontius Pilate, He does so justly, properly.

01:07:56

They will even have to confess, yes, you kept me from doing even more evil than I did.

01:08:04

You restrained me. If you take from God that right and that power to set up your idol of free will, you no longer have the

01:08:16

Yahweh of Scripture. Whatever you've got, I don't know what you wanna name Him, just don't call

01:08:22

Him the God of Scripture. You must allow these truths to stand together, to honor the entirety of what

01:08:32

Scripture teaches. So as we look at the doctrines of grace, yes, we will look at objections later on.

01:08:42

But one of the first things that people will say is, you think we're a bunch of robots, puppets on a string, right?

01:08:52

Can you look at any one of these texts and really come to the conclusion that Joseph's brothers and Joseph himself were just puppets on a string?

01:09:05

Think about the depth of the character of God that was revealed to Joseph by what he experienced and what he went through.

01:09:16

Think about what we can learn from looking at that. Think about the early church and their recognition that even

01:09:29

Rome itself, the power of Rome represented in Pontius Pilate under the firm control of God, under the firm control of God.

01:09:46

But think about what happened to Jesus. Yes, it was his intention, he gave himself. Think of all the fulfilled prophecies.

01:09:52

God is sovereignly in control. That's how that church could go out into that hostile world and proclaim

01:10:02

Jesus Christ is Lord. Just this morning, across the border in the

01:10:16

Soviet Socialist Republic of California, might be the

01:10:22

Chinese communists, whatever, California with a K. Haven't been over there for a while, have you?

01:10:38

A church announced earlier in the week, we ain't closing, we're meeting, we're singing, we're worshiping and we're gonna do it to the honor of Christ, no matter what the governor says.

01:11:01

This was a church that had back in March suspended meeting because at the time, as you remember, millions are gonna be dying.

01:11:11

It's a zombie apocalypse. They're gonna be here, the walkers are gonna be roaming the streets if we don't close.

01:11:21

Some of you are laughing, but they were saying millions were gonna die within a matter of weeks. Remember that?

01:11:27

I know, they keep changing the narrative. The goalpost moves every few hours. But they've come to the conclusion that wasn't the right thing to do.

01:11:41

Now they have about eight times the number that we have meeting. That makes a big splash.

01:11:49

So I woke up this morning to the information that they had been informed that if they were to gather, the government was gonna turn their power off.

01:11:58

Now in California right now, that's sort of like, okay, it's gonna be dark, but it doesn't mean it's gonna be 110 degrees in 13 seconds.

01:12:07

That's where we are. I don't know if any of you got to see the service.

01:12:15

The power did not go off. It's a powerful sermon that was preached. A very powerful sermon.

01:12:24

I'm thankful that that happened. I'm also thankful that we do not meet in California or the city of Tempe.

01:12:35

Because the reality is, folks, we could be facing the exact same thing. We have to have a very firm foundation for believing that what we're doing is right in God's sight.

01:12:52

And I believe, I believe that the very foundation in understanding, we begin by recognizing

01:13:04

God as our creator. Because you see, the early church also understood

01:13:11

God as the creator of Pontius Pilate and Herod and the

01:13:17

Roman Empire and the Jewish people. He has a purpose.

01:13:23

And if he calls us to do what's right in his sight, then we do it.

01:13:32

And we do it to his honor and his glory. I don't know what

01:13:37

God's decree is. I know what his revealed will is. That's found for us in scripture.

01:13:44

But he has a secret will, a decreative will. His will says, you shall not kill.

01:13:51

But his decree was, Jesus should die. So sometimes we struggle to put those two together.

01:13:58

God is bigger than we are. And his word tells us those things will fit together and they will fit together to his honor and glory.

01:14:07

And we can have absolute confidence in that. So we go out and proclaim,

01:14:13

Jesus Christ is Lord. We are not proclaiming something to people that is a self -help methodology. We are telling them, he made you.

01:14:21

He will judge you. And his gospel is a command to you.

01:14:29

Do we have a foundation for that? We do, in the doctrines of grace. God's grace does not make him weak.

01:14:38

Grace is all powerful. Grace is the means by which he accomplishes his intentions and his purposes.

01:14:45

And it's by that grace that we are gathered here this evening. Let's pray together. Our gracious heavenly father, we thank you for your word.

01:14:55

We thank you for its testimony. We thank you for its consistency and its beauty.

01:15:03

Father, as we have considered these challenging and difficult things, we would ask that you would help us to recognize your awesome majesty and our creatureliness.

01:15:23

May we with the early church recognize that you are the creator, the sustainer, the maker of all things.

01:15:31

And that your word is your speaking, and therefore we are to trust what you reveal about yourself.

01:15:39

As we've looked to your word this day, strengthen us, make us better servants of yours.

01:15:46

As we go forth this week and proclaim the lordship of Christ, bless that proclamation and drawing your people unto yourself.

01:15:56

Help us to remember, father, that in all things, you indeed are bringing about your own glory.

01:16:05

Make us to be strong, make us to be firm. We pray in Christ's name, amen.