Election and Foreknowledge (1 Peter 1:1-2)

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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01:01

This week on The Wrap Report, we have a little bit something special for you. We're gonna continue with the study that I was doing in First Peter.

01:09

In this episode, we're gonna deal with two issues that come under great discussion and disagreement and controversy.

01:21

That is the topic of election and foreknowledge, both of which are discussed in First Peter 1, 1 -2.

01:28

So we're gonna spend an hour digging into First Peter and looking at the issue of the doctrine of election and God's foreknowledge.

01:37

And really, what you're gonna see is we're gonna spend a lot of time on the attributes of God. Coming your way right now on The Wrap Report.

01:45

One, two, three. Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

01:53

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

02:07

All right, well, why don't we start with a word of prayer? Crazy thing to do before studying the

02:13

Bible. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, we're grateful for the fact that we can come together to study your word, to look at this book of First Peter, a book that I think is so helpful for us in our day and age right now in this country.

02:30

Just crazy times that we're in, and this is a book that could help us to deal with the issue of suffering, to deal with the issue of just having our minds fixed upon you and the perspective that Peter provides for us.

02:46

The understanding that we need to go through suffering that he provides is wonderful. It's just so rich in its teachings, lifts you up on high, and we ask,

02:57

Lord, that we would just gleam a little of what you have from your word, and that you and the personal

03:03

Holy Spirit would illuminate our minds to an understanding and application of your word at this time. In Christ's name, amen.

03:09

Well, all right. Well, I got really, really far last week. If you wanna grab that chair, then you can pull that over there if you want.

03:20

So, it's heavy, sorry. So, one of the things that, you know,

03:27

Yim's always concerned with me is that I don't go fast enough. So, that's up to you guys.

03:33

If you feel I'm going too slow, you let me know. But I just, especially with this book, it's fun to just dig in and get everything out of it, if we can.

03:42

So, but my way of trying to compensate that I may move slow is to just do lots of review and give big overviews.

03:49

So, maybe that feels like, Yim likes to move forward on things. So, I didn't get very far.

03:56

We only got to, we didn't even finish verse one last week. So, don't laugh.

04:01

There's been times where some people, not me, but other people have only gotten to one word. I mean, one of the jokes

04:10

I always have is, there's one of the Puritans that, because when the Puritans started preaching, what they would do is, several of them got together and they all decided that they would, so I can see my book.

04:21

Camera was in the way. Sorry, that's the one I wanna look at the most. But the

04:27

Puritans, they had got, a bunch of Puritans got together and all decided they would just preach different books of the

04:32

Bible and like just dig in as much as they can so that they figured when they were done, all their writings, that's like everything you need on the

04:38

Bible. And one such preacher was in the book of Job for 38 years.

04:46

Think about that. Like, okay, can we move on to another? So I won't be in First Peter for 38 years.

04:52

There's that comfort. Probably won't even be alive in 38 years. But when we look at First Peter, we mentioned last week, this really is a book, it's dealing with issues of suffering.

05:07

And it is interesting that a friend of mine sent me after last week, sent me some stuff.

05:16

He attends out at Grace Community Church. Started a, you know, I guess their Sunday evenings when they have different people preaching and they're all gonna be preaching through First Peter.

05:25

And so they kind of said the same reason that we kind of came to with, let's start with First Peter because looking at America, we're probably gonna be suffering, you know?

05:35

And so I'll read the first three verses with the hopes that we'll get there to like first three, but Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens scattered throughout

05:50

Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the

05:58

Father by the sanctifying work of the Spirit to obey Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood.

06:07

May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure. And granted, I started to, as some of you guys know with the email

06:14

I sent out, I started to start working to memorize the book of First Peter. And so, but I'm doing it out of the

06:21

ESV. I wish my Bible app that I use for that. If any of you wanna join, I know you joined.

06:27

It's called Versus, is the app. It helps you, it's just, you play different games to do memorization.

06:33

And I'm building a collection for First Peter. And so you could just work through, just remember to review, because if you don't review, we talked about that, right?

06:40

If you don't review what you memorize, you know, it's gone. You at least will, you know, we were talking about this the other night, that like when you memorize books of the

06:49

Bible, it actually does help you. You get an overview of the whole book. You get the context.

06:55

You actually start to, because to memorize it, we end up naturally building an outline. And even if you don't keep up with the memorization, like Titus, I didn't keep up with that.

07:04

But I can tell you basically the theme of Titus. I could tell you basic structure of it, where things are, because to memorize it,

07:11

I had to kind of have the big points, right? And so, but why memorize?

07:17

I'm going to say the reason memorization is going to be important is because I'm not a prophet.

07:23

And I just think that we're all going to be in jail in a couple of years. And unlike now, when you go to jail and they give you a

07:30

Bible, I think when we go to jail, they won't give us a Bible. So the only Bible we're going to have is the one that's up here, right? And so I'm trying to work at my memorization just to have it so that I have that if that ends up happening.

07:43

The book that I'm really going to try to memorize is Hebrews. Because if there was one book that, like if I only had one book of the

07:49

Bible, I think I'd want Hebrews. It just lifts Christ up so high, so. But this might be a good one if we're in jail to remember the suffering and what

07:58

Peter lays out for us. We're going to dig into some interesting things here. So if I end up giving you the

08:05

ESV at times, it's because that's what I have memorized and it's worded differently. But so just to recap as well.

08:12

So we have here, it says, to those who reside as aliens and you're scattered throughout Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia.

08:20

So the thing we mentioned last week, right? This is where we end up seeing this idea that Peter uses in two places of aliens.

08:30

It's in here in verse one, and then in two verse 11, where he talks about that this is not our home, right? And he starts off with this.

08:36

It is true in this case, they are literal aliens, right? These are, they were from Jerusalem or different areas of Judea and because of persecution had fled.

08:47

And we talked about that, that that does happen, right? I mentioned it last week, but just to remind us, there's many people when persecution comes, there's a lot of people think like as Christians were to just, we shouldn't flee, we shouldn't scatter.

09:02

But we don't see that in the New Testament. We don't see anywhere in the New Testament where the writers of the scriptures condemned these people for scattering.

09:09

In fact, that scattering spread the gospel. So, it's turned out for a good thing. But we get at the end of this where we stopped and we stopped last week on the word who are chosen because I figured if we started with that, we were not gonna end on time.

09:24

And I said, I wanna try to end on time and respect your time. So the first one that we have is this word for chosen.

09:32

And this word is the idea of where we get election from, elektos, sounds like election.

09:41

That is that doctrine that seems to be the bad doctrine that we're not supposed to talk about, right? That people like get all upset over.

09:49

So when we look at the doctrine of election, he starts off with that. So, I mean, think about this.

09:56

He's gonna talk about suffering, right? Why start off with a discussion on election?

10:02

What do you think? Maybe because elections are God's sovereignty. So like when we suffer it's

10:07

God's sovereignty, it's something he's chosen to happen to us. That's right. Because election has, actually election is tied directly to God's, to our belief and suffering.

10:20

If you look at Philippians 1 .29, this is the verse, this is the passage when I was preaching through Philippians I used to,

10:28

I don't know if any of you guys know who Fred Zasval is. He's a pastor, not too far from here, actually, a seminary professor and a author.

10:37

But he was trying to convert me or convince me, whichever you wanna use to Calvinism, when

10:42

I was still fighting it. And it was interesting with it because one issue

10:48

I had, we get into long discussions on Ephesians 2 .8 .9. Is salvation the gift or is our faith the gift?

10:56

And when you look at the Greek structure, either one could be true. I was preaching through Philippians and came to Philippians 1 .29.

11:02

And I remember having to call Fred up and say, Fred, you're right and I'm wrong. Now, so I told him, don't use

11:09

Ephesians 2 .8 .9, use Philippians 1 .29, because there's no way around this. It says, for to you it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his.

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So the suffering is tied directly to this idea that we're granted belief. And by the way, the word granted here, it's interesting, it means to pardon.

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You've been pardoned, not just to believe, but pardoned to suffer. We don't like to think of that, right?

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Especially American Christianity. This is why I think so many American Christians right now are having this crisis of faith.

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The thought in American Christianity is like everything should be comfortable. This comfortable Christianity where if I'm doing right,

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God is gonna bless me. And that's just not biblical. We don't see that in the scriptures.

12:01

We don't see where scripture says that we're not gonna suffer in this world.

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In fact, James tells us not if trials come, but when trials come. There's the expectation.

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And Peter is gonna lay that same thing out as well. So in Paul's case, in Philippians, he's gonna basically make the case to say that it was actually granted to us to suffer.

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We don't think of suffering as something God grants to us. It's not what we actually want, but it is something that actually, it grows us.

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Most of us, if we think about it, those times in our life that we had the greatest struggle are often the times in our life that we grew the most, right?

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And so what we end up seeing is that this belief that we have is it's been granted to us.

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And this is the idea of election. The idea that we see, if you look in Ephesians 1, in verse four, this is something that helps us because here in Ephesians 1, you get from three downward is one long run -on sentence that shows the

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Trinity in our salvation, how God the Father planned it and God the Son provided it.

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And then God the Spirit protected it. But then you have this when speaking of the Father in verse four, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and blameless before Him in love.

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So you have here this same idea, the same word that we have in Peter's writing here in Ephesians.

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Now, this is a passage that brings up interesting things because a lot of people end up trying to make the argument, well, see

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God, before He created time, had elected us. And that sounds really good. It sounds like what it's saying, but there's a slight problem in that.

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That makes God a being of time. There was no before time with God, right?

13:58

It's just all an eternal now for Him. And the concept of time is something that God can work within, but He's not bound by it.

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So there really wasn't a before time for God. So the question then becomes, well, why did Paul write that?

14:08

Why did God say that? Well, I think a very simple reason. What he's trying to say is before there was time,

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God knew who the elect were. I can't think of a stronger way to say, for God to say, you had nothing to do with it, right?

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I mean, we want to, and this is true today, as much as it is in the first century, people want to earn their own salvation, right?

14:30

And so we wanna add something to it. And every man -made religion is gonna do that. And what you end up seeing is there's no clearer way to say, you had nothing to do with it than to say, not only before you were born, you were elect, before your parents were born, you were, no, before there even was a universe, before God created the time -space continuum, you were elect, you were chosen.

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Kind of a mind boggling thing to think about. But what you end up with it is the thought that if God elected us before we were born, guess what?

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One thing that's gonna tell us is that we weren't elect because we were really good, which means if we're really bad and we sin, we don't lose that.

15:06

I mean, think about the doctrine of that you can lose your salvation, what that says, that God elected you before the foundation of time.

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He knew before he created time, he knew who would be saved, but then in the same way, he kind of was surprised when you did something to lose your salvation.

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Like, did he not know what you were gonna do when he elected you before you were ever born? No, of course he knew what you were gonna do, right?

15:27

So you see, when we understand the doctrine of election, there's some other doctrines that we find are either true or not true, right?

15:33

So the doctrine of election does rub people the wrong way though. And I think the reason this rubs people the wrong way is because we don't add anything to our salvation.

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I know you saw the debate I did on Apologetics Live on Calvinism with that guy, Seth. And if you watch that, the struggle

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Seth had was he wants to add something to his salvation.

15:56

He did something, he worked with God, and the two, he believed and God regenerated him, and they worked together.

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And I brought him to this passage in Philippians, it was like, but it was given to you. Your belief wasn't yours, according to that.

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It was granted to you, so it's not your belief, right? But this is the thing. Now, if you watch that debate, one of the things

16:17

I said to him is, experientially, we chose God, and that's the struggle many people have. We know what we experienced.

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We experienced that we chose God, and therefore we say, well, then that's what happened. I chose God, but theologically,

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God chose us. Which one's right? Well, both, actually. I think I shared this last week, but I would share it again, because this is, when we talk about the issues of election and Calvinism and things like this, so many people struggle with this on both sides.

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And I think there's an easy way to explain these things, that people can, most people,

16:49

Seth didn't want to agree to it, but most people. And in Seth's case, I don't think he studied theology very much, so he hasn't thought it through.

16:57

So I'll give him the benefit of doubt. But when we think about the scriptures, if I asked you who wrote 1 Peter, who wrote 1

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Peter? Peter? You sure? Who wrote 1 Peter? God, right? So we get in this struggle, like, who actually wrote it?

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Well, Peter physically wrote it, didn't he? But then we know from scripture that God worked through him so that every word that's written is

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God's word. It says God intended it. It's a doctrine, when we look at the doctrine of inspiration, this is a doctrine known as superintending.

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God superintended the words in such a way that every word the authors wrote was exactly as God intended it.

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He works through the human authors to write in such a way that even though they write with their own style, Peter writes different than John, who writes different than Moses, who writes different than Paul, and they can even write personal things.

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Paul can say to Titus, hey, bring my books, bring my cloak, it's gonna be cold this winter. Personal things. And yet that's exactly as God intended it to be written.

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The arguments that we end up seeing in scripture is that it's down even to words that are singular or plural.

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Paul makes an argument about Abraham, whether it's seed or seeds in Galatians, right?

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So down to the specific letters, it's exactly as God intended it to be.

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Who gets 100 % of the credit? God does. Even though Peter physically wrote this, he doesn't get the credit for it because it's

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God's word. Did Peter choose the words that he wanted to write? Yes. Did God choose the words that Peter was to write?

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Yes. And you go, well, how do they work together? We don't fully understand, but we end up knowing when it comes to scripture, very few people disagree with the fact that God works through the human authors in such a way that they chose to write and yet God wrote through them.

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That makes sense? Okay. We see this in another area, our sanctification. We're saved, do we do good works? See, there's hesitation after the last one because like, oh, is this a trick question?

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Do we do good works? Yeah. But what does scripture say? That it's God who does those works through us, right?

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Can we take credit for doing good works? No. Who gets 100 % of the credit? God does. So it's again, this doctrine of superintending is in play.

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God is working through us in our sanctification that when we do good works, God gets 100 % of the credit.

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He worked through us that even though we chose to do good works, God was the one working through us. Well, if we see this doctrine in inspiration, in sanctification, is it hard to now apply it to regeneration?

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And so that's how I approach the doctrine of election when it comes to these matters. I approach it with an understanding of this doctrine of superintending, that God can work through us in such a way that we think we're making decisions.

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We think we're choosing God. We're believing in God. And yet that belief is something

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God grants to us. He is working in us so that even that decision that we're making is what

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God intended to happen. Now, when you have a position like that, what it means is that I get called a heretic because I'm not a

19:45

Calvinist and I get called a heretic because I am a Calvinist. The only thing everyone agrees on is I'm a heretic. Right?

19:54

So, okay. But, you know, and this is why I usually don't use the term

19:59

Calvinism with people because I don't know what they mean by it. It was kind of funny if any of you saw the debate with Seth, because he was arguing that, well,

20:07

I'm a Calvinist. I said, I don't use that term. And it's funny because people in the chat were going, yeah, he never calls himself a

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Calvinist. Why? Because I don't know what someone else means by it. And most people have a wrong definition of it. I actually had a friend of mine who wrote a book he calls

20:19

Calvinism, you know, Harrison. But when I went through all the five points of Calvinism without using the labels, just using definitions, he's a five point

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Calvinist. He doesn't know it because he's got a wrong definition. Right? And so sometimes the terminology we use can be problematic.

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So what we end up seeing here is that Peter's going to start before he gets into the suffering, before he gets into what

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God did saving us, the first point he was going to make is that we were chosen. We were elect.

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And as we saw from Ephesians, we were elect long ago. God knew who he was going to choose.

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So let me get to some things that maybe you've heard his arguments. Maybe you're even thinking it when it comes to election.

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And then we'll see if there's any other questions. But some people have an issue with election because they think that it means if God elected you before the foundation of time, before we were born, it means that he is going to force us against our will to believe.

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Okay? That's a thing that many people think. And that's why they have such a problem with the idea of Calvinism, because they think that what it is is that God forces you to believe something.

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In fact, I know you saw the debate. That was the thing Seth kept coming back to. He kept saying, but you believe that God forces us to believe.

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And I'm like, I've never said that. He ended up giving me a time marker where he said that I did.

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And I said, if I did, I misspoke. But like two hours, the whole time I'm saying, I do not believe

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God forces us to believe. So if I did say it, I misspoke. But there's many who do struggle because,

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A, as I mentioned earlier, they think that they know what they experienced and they contributed something.

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Or they have the idea that if God elected, that it forces the decision. But one of the things, whenever we study theology, okay, and if you take my class on theology, at Striving Fraternity's YouTube channel, we have 80 lessons, all for free.

22:13

That's how we make money. A Jewish guy giving away things for free.

22:19

I mean, clearly an act of God, all right? But whenever you study theology, and if you take my class, you see over and over and over again,

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I end up saying the most important thing to do in studying theology is to know the attributes of God.

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Reason being is if you know the character of God and you know his perfections, then you don't fall into some errors.

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And we're gonna talk about that in a minute. We're gonna talk about some of them here. So one of the ones that people have when it comes to this idea with election they struggle with, that God would somehow have to force you.

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Well, let's look at two attributes of God, and we're gonna look at this again when we look at foreknowledge. God's eternality and God's omniscience.

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Okay, so who can define omniscience? All -knowing, right? He knows everything. So here's a question.

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Did God ever learn anything? You don't think about that, right? But learning requires observation. He never learned anything.

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I like to say God never had a bright idea in his life. He just knows it all. We can't understand that, right? Everything we know was learned, right?

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Either someone taught us or it's through observation. What is it like to just know everything? Okay, guys, some of us would like to just know, just to understand our wives.

23:30

It'd be nice, right? And wives are going, yeah, I don't even wanna go there. Like, no, no, I don't wanna know what's in their mind, right?

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So we cannot understand the concept of just knowing everything.

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In fact, not only does God know everything that happened, is happening, will happen, he even knows all the results of things that didn't happen.

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Jesus could say to the people when he was on the earth, if the people in Sodom and Gomorrah saw the works that you saw, they would have repented.

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And he could say something that was a complete knowledge. We can't even comprehend a knowledge like that. God actually knows the results of it.

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Think about this. Every decision we didn't make and all of the ramifications of that, right? We struggle to even think about simple things.

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Now that you think about this, he's also eternal. He's outside of time. As an eternal being, there's no idea of time with him.

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And so what you end up seeing is what I call with God, everything's the eternal now.

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Adam and Eve are in the garden. Jesus is on the cross. Abraham's offering Isaac. We're here having this study.

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Whatever happens 10 years from now, it's all the same now to him. And that's something like, again, we can't wrap our heads around.

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But if he's not bound by time, then it's like all now. And so now you put this in perspective when he's gonna say that he elects us.

24:46

Well, is this something where he's gonna force it? Well, we already saw that he works through us, but you see him not being bound by time means that he can elect us.

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And we think of it as he elected us here, but we believed here. And we think then, well, if he elected us back here, then we have no choice but to believe here.

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But see, for God, it's different. It's those two events are the same time, in a sense. There is no time, it's just now.

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And he has a complete knowledge. So when you think about that, that helps us to see some of the problems that people have.

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Because it's not that he forced us to believe because he elected us in the past. It's the past to us, but not to God.

25:21

Does that make sense? Okay, so before we get into foreknowledge, because we're gonna have issues there,

25:27

I wanna open up to just see, is there any questions with any of that when it comes to election? So you're saying

25:33

God didn't force our faith because he's outside of time.

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But what does time, how does that make a difference? If time was applied, he chose before the foundations of the world, but at time, oh, we believe, versus he's outside of time, you believe.

25:53

That shouldn't affect our volition nor his. Yeah, and that's the thing. So the issue of the fact that God's outside of time, but we're not, doesn't affect our volition, right?

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And you're right. And this is why what we tend to do, we tend to think of everything from our vantage point because it's the only point we understand, right?

26:11

I mean, what does the solar system look like from the moon? Don't know. Does it look different? Maybe not too much.

26:17

What does the solar system look like from Betelgeuse? Very different, totally different perspective. If you don't know, that star, it's a really giant sun.

26:24

But, you know, and that's why, if you ever go to the Creation Museum, go to the planetarium. Jason Lyle did like an amazing job with the planetarium where he tries to show the different perspective that you'd see at these different stars and how everything would look totally different from that vantage point.

26:39

Well, that's the same thing here. From our vantage point, we're bound by time. We kind of think like, okay,

26:44

God said he elected us before a foundation of time, but I know when I believe, right? And this is why people struggle with the fact that can

26:50

I lose my salvation? Because I know I believed, okay, my case just a few years ago, because I was only 16.

26:59

It's not like in the decades, you know, I'm sure. I'm 25, right? Okay, I'm just checking.

27:05

Okay. Well, you're 25, so. We've been married 26 years, though.

27:12

I gotta, yeah, I gotta work on this. I think we're gonna have to become 30. Yeah, okay.

27:17

So maybe it's 15 years since saved, right? But the reality is, you know,

27:23

I got saved 30 some years ago. But, you know, people struggle because, well, I sinned today, right? And so a lot of people struggle with that because it's like, well, if I sin today, could

27:31

I lose my salvation? A lot of people make that, think of that. Take a look at the book of Colossians.

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And I wanna look in chapter two, and I'm gonna read verse 13, but I wanna focus on 14, okay?

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And this is very helpful to think about, but it says, when you were dead in your transgressions and uncircumcised of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us of all our transgressions.

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Now let's look what 14 says. Having canceled out the certificate of debt, consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us, and has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

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Now think about that. When was our debt paid? When was our debt canceled? When we ask God to forgive us?

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No, at the cross. Okay, what sin have you ever committed that was before the cross?

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None. Does this say that he canceled some of them? No, he said, having canceled out the certificate of debt, they're nailed to cross all of it.

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Every sin we ever have done, will do, are doing or will do, are all future to the cross.

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How in the world could Christ have paid it at the cross? And yet somehow, okay, he paid only some of them at the cross?

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Well, that's not exactly what it's saying. He's saying it was all. It was all paid at the cross.

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So how could we lose that salvation if it was already paid? You see how sometimes when we start to take a step back on some of this stuff and just understand the theology, it helps us.

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Any other questions with election? And let me ask so I have the excuse to finish my coffee. See, that's the ploy. No, okay.

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So we'll move on to the next word that's gonna cause us problems. Okay, verse two. And Yim is just glad that I actually said verse two.

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Yeah, she was. There was the thought of just spending the whole time on election, but.

29:27

All right, so according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. Now foreknowledge, ah, yes, this is a problematic word as well for some people, okay?

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Maybe it's gonna sound like an English word, prognosis actually is the word here.

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But it is the idea of to know beforehand, okay? To recognize or to consider something beforehand.

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It's a Greek compound word that has the meaning of subsequent in sequence.

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So it's like there's a sequence of things. Now the word for and knowledge, compound.

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Knowledge is the idea of where we get Gnosticism from.

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It's the idea of knowledge, Gnosis. And so what you end up seeing here is that this becomes a problem for some people, especially those who, like we're saying, are struggling against the idea of the terms of Calvinism.

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What some will try to say here is that foreknowledge means that the fore, they recognize that foreknowledge means that he knows ahead of time, okay, is the idea.

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Some have tried to use this to say that this is in a matter of love, that God loved ahead of time.

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Now the people that hold to this also will hold to, we spoke about election. One thing

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I didn't mention about election is that there's two different main views of election, whether election is personal or corporate.

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I will take the argument that when we look at election and look at some of the verses we looked at, it's personal.

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He's mentioning personal people here in Peter, right? They're aliens. We even know what cities they live in,

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Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. So what some people try to do is say that the election is just like Israel was elect and now the church is elect.

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So it's not individual people, but groups of people. So it's like, well, this whole group of people called Israel, they're elect.

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Okay, what do you do with a guy like Nebuchadnezzar then? He's not of Israel, but yet it seems he was a believer.

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What do you do with him? Was he elect? Oh, he's a believer, but not elect. God didn't choose him. He was just, wait, what?

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Right? You see the dilemma. Well, the people that hold to that will often hold to this idea that foreknowledge means, and this is the way you'll sometimes hear it explained, that God looked down the tunnels of time, knew who would believe, and then elected them, okay?

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Now with what we said about election, when I talked about the attributes of God, do you see any problems with that idea that God would look down the tunnels of time to see who would believe, and then because of their belief, he elects them.

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What issues could be there when we think of his attributes? He wouldn't be all knowing. It also sounds like he just reacts to things.

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Correct, he wouldn't be all knowing because he had to see what we, he had to see what we were gonna do and then make a decision based on that.

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That means he observed and learned something. So he's not omniscient. He knew what we were gonna do if we did. He knew what we were gonna do before we did, but part of that's also because he's omniscient.

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That's how he knows what we're gonna do before us. The other thing is, what does looking down the tunnels of time mean? Exactly, he doesn't have any time.

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If it's all an eternal now to him, there's no looking down to the future. He doesn't look to the future, he knows the future.

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Why? Because it's the same time for him, you see? Now, so when you approach theology this way, looking at the attributes of God, why would

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I say that this idea of foreknowledge is wrong? Very simply, because a God that has to look through time is not eternal.

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A God that has to see what we would do to learn what we would do is not omniscient. That God is not the

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God of the Bible. You see how that works? Does that make sense? Because this is why, if you ever study theology, please start with the attributes of God, dig into that very, very slowly.

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Know the attributes of God before you jump off to anything else, okay? Because that is what's gonna ground all of your theology, okay?

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And that's why I would say that the foreknowledge is not the way they argue it. So then, what does it mean that we were chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the

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Father? Well, very much like we talked in Ephesians. When we talked in Ephesians, he's saying this.

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Why is he saying this? To say we have no part in it, right? In Ephesians 1 .4, I often say that that is baby talk, right?

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Some of us have had kids. When you have kids, you don't, when the child is going to play with the electrical socket, do you get in to all of the understandings of the way electricity works and the positive and negative charges that can occur?

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And if you join those together, you get electric going through your body at 120 volts, that's enough to stop your heart.

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Are you gonna explain all that or are you just gonna go, no, bad, right? Don't we do that with our kids? No, bad, we don't explain why.

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They're gonna touch the stove. No, bad, hot, right? We don't go, no, see, there's a flame up there, there's gas, those gases are ignited.

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No, right? Maybe when they're 14, no, still wait, no. 14, we're still saying no, bad.

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But what ends up happening? God speaks to us in the ways that we can understand.

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Sorry if it offends you, but we're all babies compared to him, right? His knowledge is so far beyond our knowledge that this is the only way he can communicate to us.

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So what does he communicate? He communicates in terms we would understand. We understand time. What does foreknowledge mean?

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Knowing before something. Now, it's not saying that God's bound by time and he had to know something before the event happened.

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He's trying to communicate to us something we cannot comprehend. None of us can comprehend omniscience. None of us can comprehend eternality.

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How's he gonna communicate? He's gonna use words that we can understand to know something beforehand, right?

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So he says here that we were chosen when? According to the pre -knowledge, the foreknowledge of God the

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Father. So we end up seeing that here, it's this idea of foreknowledge is that this is something God knew ahead of time.

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It doesn't mean he's bound by time. This is language he's using so we can comprehend what otherwise we'd never be able to understand.

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Does that make sense? Okay, any questions so far? Okay, now here, verse two, I love because what you see in verse two is this, just like in Ephesians, where Ephesians one, like, you know, three to,

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I think it's three to 10. It's one long, or actually three to 14. It's like 10 verses of the

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Trinity's role in salvation. Well, here it is in one verse, okay? It's beautiful because you see all the members of the

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Trinity and their role in our salvation. So you first see that we're chosen, what, the first one?

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According to the foreknowledge of the Father. This is, I said, in Ephesians, this is the Father's planning.

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Now, this is a different order because in Ephesians, it's the Father, Son, Spirit. Here, it's the Father, Spirit, Son. But we see here, according to the foreknowledge of God the

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Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, that's that protection the Spirit protects, to obey

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Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood. There's the provision of the

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Son. So you see all three members of the Trinity here involved. So looking at the idea of sanctification, does anyone know what this word means?

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To be holy? To make holy, correct. And so it is the idea that we have of being holy or consecrated.

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This, we end up calling in theology the process of sanctification, right?

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After we're regenerate, when we talk salvation, there's three elements, past, present, future. What happened at regeneration when we first, like in time, when we went from being an unbeliever to a believer, right?

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That happens at a point in time. And then there's a point called graduation. You know, if you go to college, you look forward to graduation.

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Graduation, we call glorification. It's when we die. Death for a Christian is graduation.

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We get rid of this body of sin and we're glorified. Oh boy, we look forward to that, right? And so what's in the middle?

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This process called sanctification. That's the difficult time, right? That's the time when

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God works in us to purify us and make us more like Christ. And sometimes we submit to that.

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If we're gonna be honest, sometimes we kind of fight that, right? And that's the thing that you end up seeing is that this process that the

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Spirit works in us, making us more holy, you know? And so it sounds pretty easy. I mean, it's easy to say.

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It sounds pretty simple. If you wanna be holy, just submit to the Spirit. Isn't that easy to say? How easy it's to do. I just, well,

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I'll just stick with saying it. Right, it sounds pretty easy, but it's true.

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All we have to do is submit to the Spirit and we'll be made more holy. Just kind of difficult to do sometimes. And so the

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Holy Spirit's role in this, in our salvation is that He protects us.

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It's the sanctifying work. It means that we're set apart. Think about this as we're going and talking about this earlier.

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Think about the words that are mentioned here. Because when we are suffering, any of us that have suffered through trials, what we tend to do is think, did

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I do something wrong? Did I sin? I don't know if you're like me. I remember once I got really, really sick. This was before I got married. And me and one of the other elders in our church, we both were just,

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I mean, really sick. And I used to never get sick. I get sick maybe once every five years. But this was, like I was sick for three days and it was really bad.

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And it just turned out he was the same way. And we got better. We were talking about it. And I was like, and I just confessed to him.

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Because one of the things we did in our leadership meetings, we would spend at least 30 to 45 minutes just having accountability with the other elders.

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And we would talk about our struggles that week and our sins. And I confessed that week. I said, I don't know if this is wrong.

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I was like, I know it's wrong, but like, I just, I was so sick. And I just kept thinking, Lord, did I sin somehow?

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Did I do something to deserve this? And the other elder ended up confessing, I was doing the same thing.

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But you see, that's almost natural to human beings. Why do I say that? Well, Peter's writing to a bunch of people that had to leave their homes.

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And if you remember from last week, to leave their homes meant to leave their family, to leave their jobs.

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You go to a new area where you don't know anybody. It's not like when we pick up and move in America, right?

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Where most people don't even know their neighbors in America. Here, you lived in a village. That's all you knew all your whole life.

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To leave that's a huge deal. And they had to leave that. And there's gonna be suffering that's gonna come along with it.

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Do you think there might be some people that Peter's writing to that are gonna question whether they're in sin or whether they're even saved?

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In fact, that's the whole reason James writes his book to people in the same situation who, because of persecution, had to flee.

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And he's writing to them about what genuine faith looks like. And we said last week, the reason he's doing that is because he's like trying to let them know, this is what genuine faith looks like.

40:02

Your suffering doesn't mean you lost your salvation or you're not saved. But in rabbinic Judaism at that time, that is what they would teach.

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They would teach that, and you can see this clearly in the book of Job, right? His friends are like, you must have done something really bad to have this happen.

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Why? Because that's the thinking. It's the same as what you see in the prosperity gospel.

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Prosperity gospel would teach the same thing, that if you are doing good, God's gonna bless you.

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And if you're doing bad, it means you must have sinned. You're gonna have some of that here. And this is why

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I think Peter's starting out with these key elements of our salvation, that he's trying to focus on this idea that we were elect.

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How were we elect? We were elect by the foreknowledge of God the Father. He knew it beforehand.

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When? Well, Paul told us before there was time. How could that encourage people who are suffering? It can encourage them to know that, guess what?

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My suffering is not something that surprised God. He knew this too. And he saved us anyway.

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And he reminds them here that the Holy Spirit is still working on us to make us more holy.

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That is something we have to remember when we go through suffering. We're suffering and going through trials. Yeah, we're going through trials.

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It doesn't mean God abandoned us. How many of you guys know the footprints poem, right? The guy who's walking and he looks and sees his life and he says to God, I see these times where I see us walking together and there's two footprints in the sand.

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But during the difficult times of my life, I only see one set of footprints. And that's when God says, yes, that's when I was carrying you, right?

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That's the idea that you have here. The Holy Spirit is carrying us through times like this. And then just to see if we can get to it, but I don't know if we'll finish it in the seven minutes we have left.

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I really didn't think we were gonna get to verse three, but it says to obey.

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So not only is it according to we're chosen, there's three ways we're chosen. We're chosen according to the foreknowledge of God, the

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Father. We're chosen by the sanctification of the spirit and we're chosen to obey

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Jesus Christ. There's two things with Christ, not just to obey him. We're chosen to obey Jesus Christ, but we're also chosen to be sprinkled with his blood.

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There's two components with Christ. And so the idea of to obey Christ, think about this.

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God chose us. He elected us to obey Jesus Christ. Why'd he save us?

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So that we'd obey Jesus Christ. That's the answer. Crazy to think about, right? Maybe that can help when we're struggling.

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I'm being tempted to sin. I have a sin in my life. We all have different things we struggle with.

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My greatest one, I admit, is gluttony. And it's coming back because now I started running again.

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So now I'm back at that stage where I can be a glutton and it doesn't show and that becomes a problem. So I've been struggling with this again, okay?

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Especially we just were in Boston with my daughter and she's a really good cook and she likes to experiment. And yes,

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I eat more than I should have, I admit it. But I did come back two pounds lighter. So I was like, well, that means

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I should eat more. And Yim's like, no, no, you shouldn't. So the reality is, is we each have different struggles.

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And there's times where that temptation is there. Whatever we struggle with, that temptation is there. How do we overcome that?

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It's a question I get more than anything else in counseling. When people have a life dominating sin, how do

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I overcome this? Well, here's the answer. We have to remember that we were elected to obey

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Christ. That's why God saved us. So when I'm tempted to sin, wait, God saved me to obey him.

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Am I doing that right? Is this sin going to be obeying Christ? Well, that's why he elected me. So the answer should be, well, we shouldn't sin.

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We should submit to the spirit because he saved us so that we'd obey Christ. Kind of neat to think about sometimes, huh?

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But he didn't save us just to obey Christ. We have a second reason, that we may be sprinkled. Now this is not baptism, notice.

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This is sprinkling with blood, not sprinkling with water. We are to be sprinkled with blood, with his blood.

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What's the idea of sprinkling? Does anyone know where this picture comes from? The sprinkling of blood. In the high holy day, when the priest would put the blood of the animal on the people.

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Correct. So on the high holy days, you'd have that, you'd have where the priest is gonna sprinkle the blood, okay, as an atonement.

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You're gonna have the high priest go into the holy of holies and sprinkle the blood of the goat.

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What's the idea here? The idea is that we've been sprinkled in the blood. It means that we have atonement, that our sins have been forgiven.

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They've been washed away. Strange thought to say you're being washed in blood. It is biblical, but I don't suggest.

44:37

Okay, so sometimes we as Christians speak in Christianese. I was going door to door with a friend of mine to evangelize and he knows the scriptures and he just sometimes uses the scriptural language when he shouldn't.

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We had some time, we're knocking on someone's door and they open the door and he literally says, hi, we're from Emmanuel Baptist Church and I just wanted to know if you've been sprinkled in the blood of Christ today.

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Slam. And I looked at him like, Bernie, what in the world are you saying? He's like, what, it's biblical language.

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Like, what is she thinking? What kind of question is that? Think how she thinks that.

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He's like, what? She probably thinks you're asking if she's being bathed in blood, you're some cult. I'm like, let me get the next door.

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And even if it's biblical language, doesn't mean we explain it that way. But that's the picture of it.

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It's the idea of the atonement that Christ was that sacrifice, the final sacrifice, that final lamb that would be the once for all atonement of sin.

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And so with that, we'll wrap up verse two just so that I can tell my bride that I actually did.

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But he says here, may grace and peace be yours to the fullest measure.

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And I think that the way the ESV ends up saying this is, I'm trying to go from memory, right?

46:06

But may grace and peace be multiplied to you is the ESV. And so the idea here is it's being multiplied or as we have here, the fullest measure.

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To increase to the fullest. Well, if we think about what he's just said in verses two, well, one and two, right?

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You were chosen. How were you chosen? According to the foreknowledge of God, you were chosen by the sanctifying work of the spirit.

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You were chosen to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood. So grace and peace be multiplied to you.

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With that concept, how could it not, right? How could we not see an increase if that is our focus?

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And that's what he's trying to say to these, as it says in the way the ESV has it is the elect exiles, which

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I like better than aliens who are chosen. Elect exiles, that's what we are. And so he says this, that we should have grace and peace be multiplied.

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So that's his blessing. And so with that, we're gonna stop here. I will say I did a lot of work on to verse three.

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We're gonna have some very interesting discussions surrounding regeneration and being born again, because you're gonna see that in verse three.

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And what does that mean? Some real interesting stuff there, but that will be for next week. And so with that, let's close with a word of prayer.

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Heavenly father, we're so grateful for the fact that we have your word. We have an absolute standard that we can look to and just so encouraging to our hearts.

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Lord, there's just so much depth here in your word, and we're not even touching the surface of it.

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And Lord, there's so much here for us to learn, so much to encourage us as we go through suffering, but Lord help us just to fixate in our minds, to remember that you have chosen us.

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You've chosen us according to your foreknowledge, your sanctifying work and for us to obey you and for the atonement.

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Lord, we are grateful that you planned, provided and protect our salvation. We are just grateful for you, for all things in Christ's name.

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