Class 06b - Textbook Discussion

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00:02
We have come to our second part of this, of tonight.
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And we're going to look at the book and discuss, you know, for the last 15 minutes or so, we're just going to discuss the textbook.
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But keep in mind, if you will, that everything we just talked about for the last hour really was what the textbook reading was on.
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But you'll notice that it was two chapters on the subject.
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Do you remember how he broke the chapters down, chapters 7 and 8? Yeah, basically, the first chapter, chapter 7, was questions, principles, and blind alleys.
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Basically, you know, people taking you off course and going, you know, into certain things.
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So we have the different defenses.
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He talked about the free will defense.
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He talked about the character building defense, which is, I think, similar to one that we brought up earlier.
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The character building defense was the idea that God made the world the way it is because he wanted to, that was the only way to build our character was in putting us through evil.
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You know, that's one of the arguments people come up with, right? And you know, we get to, you know, to the end of chapter 7, and we have this paragraph.
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He says, scripture does, as we will see, rebuke people who raise the problem of evil in certain ways.
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And scripture is not entirely averse to some types of ad hominem response, that being responding by blaming God, essentially.
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But its typical responses are rather different from the one presently under discussion.
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We must hasten, then, to discover positively what the scripture says.
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And that's what we've tried to do in our last hour.
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So we get to this, essentially, chapter 7 gives us the responses that he doesn't think are biblical, the free will response and these different responses.
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Then you get to chapter 8, and he tries to provide a biblical response.
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And you'll notice that, I don't know if you're looking at your book, I know you have your summary page, but if you would, with the book, help look at chapter 8 and the first page.
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He shows his tri-perspectival thing that he uses, that pyramid that he always uses.
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He says there's the normative defense, God sets the standards.
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There's the situational defense, there's a greater good at work.
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And then there is the existential defense, and that is the new heart, which is able to see the greater good.
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The new heart is actually how we recognize what God is doing.
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So let me ask you a question.
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If I said to you that God is going to work all things out for good, is that true? How do we know that's true? Because the Bible says so, right? In Romans 8, 28, God causes all things to work together for good to those who love them and are called to good according to his purpose.
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Right away, we have to consider at least one truth from that text that's often unsaid.
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It doesn't say God works everything out for good for everybody.
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It says God works all things for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.
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So one of the things when we talk about the greater good or the good that God's working out, we have to clearly remind ourselves that not for everybody.
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God is working toward a good for his elect, those who love him and those whom he has called according to his purpose.
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And therein, people begin to get upset.
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Well, God doesn't choose everybody.
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He should choose everybody.
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I mean, how many people have you heard say, they won't say it that way, but they say, I don't see why God would let anybody go to hell.
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That's the other way of saying God should choose everybody, should choose to take everybody to heaven.
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But really, if we were dealing in the arena of should, we're going back to the arena of justice.
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What does justice demand for sin? Punishment.
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So what should God do? If we're only speaking of justice, God should allow all of us to go to hell.
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He should consign everybody to hell.
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I remember, I don't remember if it was Sproul or MacArthur, but one of them became pretty famous for saying that.
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Don't ask God for fairness.
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Because if you got what was fair, you would go to hell.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, exactly.
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We don't ask God for justice.
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We ask God for mercy.
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You've all seen my, I think in the systematic theology class where I talked about the difference between justice, injustice, and non-justice, right? Justice is what we deserve.
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Injustice is given to no one, because everyone is either given justice or justice is withheld.
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And what do we call it when justice is withheld? Mercy.
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But no one receives injustice.
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Injustice means they're getting something they didn't deserve, right? You didn't do anything wrong, Jackie, you still got punished.
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That's not the realm in which God operates.
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Every man, every woman, every person in hell is there justly.
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It's tough, difficult.
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It is.
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It's tough when you see your children loving the world, loving sin, and it's heartbreaking.
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I had a, in fact, I had a mother here at the church, this, she was not a member, but she was a lady who was visiting us.
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This was back in the, this was back in the aughts, so it was before 2010, I think it was like 08, 09, and she, she said, I can't accept what you're saying about God's election, as I was talking about Calvinism and stuff.
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She said, I can't accept that, because what you're telling me is that I have no ability to bring my son to faith if God hasn't chosen him.
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And that's the argument, right? Well, and then my response is, you know, I was young, but I was still, you know, I was, I wasn't uncaring.
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I said, I said, well, even in your own position, if you don't believe God chose, do you believe you can make your son a believer? See, because that's the whole thing.
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I said, and this is where I really ended with her.
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I said, who would you rather your son's salvation be in, your hands or God's? Would you rather the salvation of your child be in your hands or God's hands? So really it comes down to, you know, who do you trust? The conversation really went off the rails at that point.
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She was not interested in really hearing a lot of what I had to say, but it was, it was more to the, more to the point of, she began to, well, you know, it's, you know, I think he has a choice and I'm going to help him make the right choice.
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It's kind of, I think it was the way that she responded.
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So moving through chapter eight, we see the first point there on, after the paragraph says, God is, God is the standard for his actions.
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Scripture never assumes that God owes us an explanation for what he does.
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I love that statement.
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Scripture never assumes that God owes us an explanation.
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I'm assuming that most of you have at least some understanding of Calvinism because you're here and if you don't, buckle up.
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But one of the passages that often makes people Calvinistic is Romans chapter nine.
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Even though the Arminian would say we've misunderstood it and the provisionalists, which are the new Arminians, they call themselves provisionalists now, they're not Arminians anymore, they would argue that they, that we've misunderstood Romans nine.
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But what's the, what's the point of Romans nine? The point of Romans nine is that God does not require us to approve of what he does.
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Will the thing say to him who made it, why have you made me thus? Will the potter, will the pot say to the potter, why have you made me this way? Who are you, oh man, to answer back to God? In fact, that verse begins in the Greek with the word man, to point out the creatureliness of the listener, man, who are you to answer back to God? See, that's the part that is tough.
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But some of you have already tonight mentioned Job and you kind of outran me, but that's okay.
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But that really is where we do find ourselves.
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We find ourselves, as I said, at a certain point having to say, because I am not God, I cannot always understand why the world is as it is.
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I cannot understand why children get raped.
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I cannot understand why entire cities get swallowed up by the earth literally falling out from underneath their feet.
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Have you seen those pictures of some of those cities in South America where like a whole mile worth of earth just crushes and the cities fall in? It's amazing.
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It's terrible.
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Terrible things.
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You know, there was a sinkhole, drops whole buildings inside.
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But that doesn't allow me, the creature, to say to the creator, you're doing it wrong.
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Because that's what this argument is based on.
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I get to say to the creator, you're wrong.
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I know better than you.
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You've all heard this analogy, but maybe some of you haven't.
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One of my favorite analogies when it comes to God's sovereignty is the analogy of the rug store where the man and his wife went to look for a rug and he went to this store that has ornate and beautiful rugs that are handmade and he walks in and they're hanging from the ceiling, very elegant, nice, beautiful rugs that are hanging from clips in the ceiling.
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And as you walk through, it's almost like an art gallery of rugs.
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You'll walk around and you'll see all of these hand-woven rugs and he comes to this one rug and it is ugly.
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All the others are beautiful.
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Some of the most beautiful art that he's ever seen.
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He gets to one rug and it's absolutely horrid.
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The stitching is off.
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The patterns are corrupted.
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There's nothing about the rug that would make it at all pleasant to the eye.
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And he says to the owner of the shop, he says, I've looked around and all of your rugs are beautiful except for this one.
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Why is it that this rug is so ugly? And he said, because you're looking at it from the wrong side.
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He turned it around and it was beautiful.
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But from his perspective, because he didn't know he was looking at it from the back, he could not see the beauty in the rug.
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So now take a step back and think of history of the world.
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We only see the parts that we can see from our creaturely vantage point.
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We cannot see the beauty that God will reveal.
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What does he say? The present suffering that we now experience cannot be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us.
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That's the answer.
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It's not always an answer that everybody likes, but it is the answer to the question.
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God is at work.
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And he will cause all things to work together for good.
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Even the things that we might not understand.
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All right, well, we are at eight o'clock.
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I would like to go ahead and close with that.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for this opportunity to be together.
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Thank you for this class.
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I pray that it has been fruitful tonight in helping us to dive deeper into questions than maybe we ever have.
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But Lord, help this never be something that would lead us to unbelief, but to a firmer faith that you are causing all things to work together for good.
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You are, in fact, all good.
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And you are, in fact, all powerful.
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And the Bible never seeks to justify that statement.
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It simply declares that statement.
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You are God.
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And there is none like you.
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And none can say unto you, why have you done this? Lord, help us to trust you more.
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In Jesus' name, amen.