The Mystery Of God's Sovereignty And Our Free Will, Part 1

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. The reason I'm saying that to you is we have a tendency to limit God. We kind of view God as like a super version of one of us. Like, you know, I'm kind of smart and God's like, He's really smart. You know, now He's not really smart. He's all, He's all knowing. See, that's a different thing. The only way I can describe God's omniscience is to say God never learned a single thing in His existence. Just think about that. He's never learned one thing in His existence.

He always knew everything. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana.

Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. Don't you just love a mystery? Do you love mysteries?

I don't think so. No, people always say they love mysteries. You know, movie, book. But I don't think you love mysteries. What you love is when a mystery is solved at the end of the movie or the book tells you how the mystery is solved.

But what if you didn't get any answer at all? Would you love them? I mean, if you didn't solve mysteries, none of us had even heard of Agatha Christie.

You'd have never heard of her. But we all did because we say we just love mysteries. Well, the point is that we've been talking about subjects here that are mysteries out of the Word of God. They are, as Chuck Swindoll says, the subjects of the mysteries in the Word of God are inscrutable. We can't possibly get our thoughts around them.

I started a series called Put On Your Thinking Cap. And I realize for a lot of you, this is kind of a difficult thing to work through. But the first week I talked about the fact that God is unfathomable.

That's what Job said. He is unfathomable. And it's the only time that word used in the Old Testament.

And it's three Hebrew words together. Literally says God is beyond inscrutable forever. In other words, you can't figure out what God's like. Remember, he said, my thoughts aren't your thoughts. My ways aren't your ways.

As high as the heavens are above the earth, so are my thoughts and ways than yours. And yet we're always trying to figure out God. And we're saying things like, why God?

Why did you let that happen? You see, where are you when I really need you? It's interesting that we would question God from that point of view. Second week, we dealt with the will of God.

And I said, it's not a bullseye. So many Christians waste time, I believe, trying to say everything I do, I got to hit the bullseye of God's will. How do I know it's God's will? It's got to be God's will. But when we look at it in the word of God, the will of God and the word of God is almost always relational.

It's almost never vocational or locational. And that's the questions I always hear all the time from people. How do I know if God wants me to live in Topeka? I don't know. You see, that's a kind of inscrutable this week.

It's only going to get worse. And this week, I want to deal with the mystery of God's sovereignty and our free will. God is sovereign. And we have free will.

How do you deal with this? Have you thought about it? Open your Bibles to Isaiah Chapter 46. Isaiah Chapter 46. In verse eight.

Let me help you with the context. The context is that Isaiah is a prophet and he's trying to warn the country that if they don't repent, God is going to take them into captivity. He's going to allow them to be taken into the Babylonian captivity. That's what Isaiah's context is. And so God now is speaking through Isaiah. And he says in verse eight, he said, Remember this and be assured, recall it to mind, you transgressors. Remember the former things long past, for I am God.

There is no other. I am God. And there's no one like me declaring the end from the beginning. And from ancient times, things which have not been done, saying my purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure. This is God saying, you are sovereign.

I am. Do you have any idea? Everything. Everything in the past that I declared would happen in the future happens in the future. There's not a detail of life I'm not sovereign over. Then he says, calling a bird of prey from the east.

You wonder, what's that have to do with it? Well, the bird of prey is Cyrus. He's going to come and take them.

He said, calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my purpose from a far country. Truly, I've spoken. Truly, I will bring it to pass. I have planned it.

Surely I will do it. That's God's sovereignty. Doesn't matter. He said, I'm sovereign over everything forever. Now, Chuck Swindoll says this. Whoever is sovereign must have a total clear perspective. He must see the end from the beginning. He must have no match on earth or in heaven. He must entertain no fears, no ignorance and have no needs. He must have no limitations and always know what is best. He must never make a mistake. He must possess the ability to bring everything to a purposeful conclusion and an ultimate goal. He must be invincible, immutable, infinite and self-sufficient. His judgments must be unsearchable and his ways unfathomable. He must be able to create rather than invent, to direct rather than to wish, to control rather than to hope, to guide rather than to guess and to fulfill rather than to dream. Now, who qualifies for this?

You guessed it. God does and God alone. God is extraordinarily sovereign. I think we sort of know that.

But I don't think we do it justice. Turn with me to Daniel, Chapter four. Daniel, Chapter four.

I want you to get someone else's assessment of God. One of us, not God. His name's Nebuchadnezzar. He's a central figure in the Book of Daniel. He is the greatest king up to his time of all time on the earth. He's the first king archaeologists have found that calls himself the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. That's Nebuchadnezzar.

He built a 90 foot statue of himself and said, everyone has to worship me. And you know the story, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego wouldn't. And so he threw him in the furnace and all that. But this is Nebuchadnezzar. Well, Daniel has to tell Nebuchadnezzar that because of his arrogance and his stance before God, God's going to discipline him and judge him. And so he ends up going sort of mad.

And he he lives as a as a cow, so to speak, grazing in the yard type of thing. This is the great Nebuchadnezzar. Now it ends. And then now Nebuchadnezzar speaks. And so he says in verse 34, at the end of that period, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven and my reason returned to me. And I blessed the Most High and I praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion. His kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are counted as nothing. But he does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth. And no one can ward off his hand or say to him, what have you done?

Terrific. That's a description of sovereignty made by the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Nebuchadnezzar. You see this over and over again in Second Kings 19. It says, certainly you must have heard long ago. I worked it out in ancient times. I planned it and now I just bring it to pass. God's sovereignty is part of his pre-planned for everything that exists. It's kind of overwhelming.

Maybe I'll describe it this way. Before there was a creation. God intimately knew every thought and every action. That will be thought or taken for all time. Before there was a creation.

I'll take it a step further. He not only knew that, he knew every possible thought, every possible action. Now, when you start, the reason I'm saying that to you is we have a tendency to limit God. We kind of view God as like a super version of one of us. Like, you know, I'm kind of smart and God's like, he's really smart. You know, now he's not really smart. He's all he's all knowing.

See, that's a different thing. The only way I can describe God's omniscience is to say God never learned a single thing in his existence. Just think about that. He's never learned one thing in his existence. He always knew everything. This is really a big, big God. That's why he said there's me and no other.

Ken Boa writes this. God's sovereign purpose extends to all things in his creation. It is not limited by space and time. This plan is so complete that scripture declares the lot is cast into the lap. But every decision is from the Lord. Proverbs 16, 33. Consider the implications of a statement like that.

Ultimately, there is no chance in this universe because even the workings of probabilities and statistics are known by God. There are no real accidents. And God is never surprised by anything. That's what it means to be sovereign. Now, that part of it should, if you think about it well enough, give you comfort.

I don't know if it does. God is sovereign over Covid-19. You understand that? He's sovereign.

Not a shock, not a surprise. Plans already laid out. It's just rolling along like exactly God wants it to roll along. He's sovereign. He's sovereign over the elections in America. He's sovereign. OK, it's always been that way.

It'll never be any other way. He's sovereign about all the cultural upheaval in America. And what bothers me is so many Christians are such a snit over this. Really upset. You know, I just can't believe this.

Well, God's sovereign. You see, it didn't. It may have taken you as a surprise.

It didn't take him as a surprise. That's just the way this is going to be. You see, we've kind of become spoiled because we've lived so long in a place that has been such a blessing to the church.

You know, it looks like those days are coming to an end. You see, and now we're upset. But believers all over the world have gone through this for 2000 years.

So why are you so bothered by this? You see, he's the same God. It's not a surprise to him.

I'll take it a step further. God is sovereign over every diagnosis. He's sovereign. It didn't come.

I can't believe that's the diagnosis. Oh, what am I going to do now? God doesn't do that. He's sovereign. He's sovereign over every divorce. He's sovereign over every child abuse case, every crime committed. He's sovereign over every single thing. He's sovereign. Now, I didn't say he's responsible. You see, that's a different question entirely. You see, but he is sovereign over everything. See, the other side of this coin is what is human responsibility? You see, what what price do we pay? Because we are free will beings.

And how does that affect your life and mine? Turn with me to First Samuel. First Samuel, Chapter 13. First Samuel, Chapter 13.

Just an example here. And verse 13. So if you're in the numbers, this is 1313.

And it is an unlucky number for Saul. Samuel was talking to Saul and he says to Saul in verse 13, You have acted foolishly. He said, You have not kept the commandment of the Lord, your God, which he commanded you. For now, the Lord would have established. Notice he says for for now, the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. He says, I would have given you your kingdom over Israel forever. But he doesn't. You see what way what's going on here?

What happened? He said, But now your kingdom shall not endure. The Lord has sought out for himself a man after his own heart. The Lord has appointed him as ruler over his people because you have kept what the Lord commanded you. So God is sovereign over everything. Is he responsible for what's happened to Saul?

No. Who's responsible for what happened to Saul? Saul. He acted on his own free will and he chose not God. Chapter 15, verse 11, same book, it says this, I read God speaking, I regret that I made Saul king for he has turned back from following me and has not carried out my commandments. Now, what's interesting about that is God says, I regret I ever made him king.

Now, that's an anthropopathism. That's God taking on a human element of regret. But the point of it is it's all part of God's plan.

But the responsibility for Saul given up his kingdom has everything to do with Saul. That's our free will and how our free will operates. It's an interesting thing that God is so sovereign over everything. And yet he gives people like you and me a sense of our own free will and we use it. Remember the Lord's Prayer that Jesus, it's a very simple prayer. Right. But I think sometimes we overlook what he says.

He said, you know, our Father art in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. And then it says this, your will be done. What on earth?

Like what? Like it's done in heaven. Why is Jesus praying for that?

Why is he telling you and I to pray for that? You see, if you lose the balance here, wait a minute, isn't is God's will in heaven perfectly done? Yes. You see, yes. Is it perfectly done on earth?

No. Because of our will. We choose. You see, Jesus said, yeah, you need to pray about that.

Pray that your will in heaven, your will on earth will be just like your will in heaven. God sovereign over everything. There's no question about that. That's the way this works. But that ends up becoming the substance of how the mystery is. Now, God is sovereign over everything that there is completely. And you and I operate under our own free will.

So how do you handle the mystery? And there's three ways you can. The first way you could is to say, reject everything I said is untrue.

He's not really sovereign. That's all I'll reject at all. You can, but you can't say you're biblical. The Bible is really clear on this.

You know, these are facts from the word of God. I can't reject them. The second one is we can rationalize it, then analyze it and then explain it.

This one, I was a member of this club for a long time. The idea that we can do this, that we can rationalize something and then analyze it, then I explain it to you. Let me tell you how this really, really works.

That's not the case at all. The third one is accept them, accept the mystery. Can I just accept this mystery?

It's true. Again, Ken Boa, the correct approach is to learn to live with the mystery by accepting both truths involved and holding them in tension because of the authority of God's word. He said the only problem is that human understanding is sometimes deficient. And if we could raise our thoughts to the level of God's thoughts, there'd be no mysteries. But we can't.

Just hold the mystery. But to me, many people can't do that. I have to explain God to you. I know the answer and I explain it to you.

And by the way, I said I did it myself and I'm not proud of it. But the point of it is there are things you can explain. In the beginning of the church, heresy broke out and they had to deal with it. And the heresy was, who is Jesus? Who is Jesus Christ? You see, and we would say two thousand years later, because of so many different creeds and studies that we've been through, Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man.

Or we could say it this way. Jesus Christ is 100 percent God and 100 percent man. Could you explain that? Could you explain that to someone? Use use math.

You can use calculus if you want. He's 100 percent God. He's 100 percent man. Is that explainable to you? So here's what they did. The first group come out and said, no, Jesus looked like a man, but it was an illusion. It was like a projection. He really was God, but he just looked like a man. And they tried to explain it that way.

The next group come out with something more inventive. The next group come out and said this. Jesus was born a man and then he lived as a perfect man. Until he was baptized by John. When he got baptized by John, he became God. He was no longer a man.

Now he's God. And he was God for three and a half years. And then they crucified him. And when they crucified him, he was man so he could die. So he became man. And then when he was raised, he was God again.

OK, and that caused a lot of creeds to be written. I mean, you know, that's why we get the idea that you can't explain this. This is something you can't explain. Have you ever tried to explain the Trinity? Really, I mean, I used to explain it with the lamest thing possible, water. You know, this is ice and this is water and this is this. If you're talking to someone who has a brain in their head, they'll kill that. There's no logic.

And I mean, not at all. But the point is, I can't explain it. How do you know that's true? Because the Bible says the father's God. The Bible says the son is God and the Bible says the Holy Spirit is God. So and the Bible says there's only one God. So if the Bible says that, they're all God and there's only one. So we use things like the Trinity is three person ages.

I don't know what that word means. Person ages and one God had stuff like that. The reason is we can't really explain it. The cults, for example, who are always going to try to diminish Jesus Christ, they make hay on this. They talk to Christians about the Trinity and Christians have no idea how to handle it. And so Jehovah's Witnesses believe Jesus was an angel. He wasn't a man and he wasn't God.

He's just an angel. The Mormons believe that Jesus was an outwork of the physical son of God. And Jesus is the brother of Lucifer that we call the devil. He and Jesus are two brothers under the fatherhood of God. And they get people to believe it because that makes more sense than me understanding what a triune God is. See, certain things about the essence of God are not something you and I can really explain very easily. That's the point. It's inscrutable.

You see, I can understand it. And that's an important factor. So in this subject, this subject has been debated for at least 16, 1700 years. The sovereignty of God and the free will man Pelagius and in St. Augustine debated it way, way back. Then it was debated through the reformation by Calvin and Joseph Arminius. So you have Calvinism and Arminianism and basically even arguing about it for the last 500 years. And the method in which they go about their arguments are always the same.

And if you talk to someone who's going to explain it to you, they'll use these kind of arguments. The first thing is you quote only the verses to support your support your position. OK, can I find verses to support the sovereignty of God? Yeah. Can I find verses to support the free will man?

Yeah. I only quote those. Then second step, they do. They ignore the other side's verses. And the third one is they distort obvious verses that make their position even weaker.

You see, you know, they just distort them and you end up with all kinds of things. If you were an ultra Calvinist, you end up believing in limited atonement. OK. So you come to a passage like and that means Christ died only for the elect. He didn't die for everybody. He only died for them.

The elect. OK. So you see, John three, 16, for God so loved the world. Right.

He sent his son into the world. And whoever believed. Right.

So you think that's great. No, the word world there doesn't mean world. Now, I don't know in what in any language I've ever seen in any Greek text I've never seen. John knew the word for elect. He also knew the word for world. Every time he uses the word for world, except in two places, according to them, it's always the same. But they say, you know, that that's so God so loved the elect that he sent his son into the elect.

Doesn't make sense at all. And then there's first John Chapter two, when John's telling his people not to sin. He said, my little children, I'm writing this that you do not sin, but if you do sin, we have an advocate with the Father Christ Jesus, the Lord, who is a propitiation, not just for our sins, but for the sins of the whole world. No, he doesn't mean that he means just elect.

So you weaken the other position. How about Timothy and Peter both say God desires none be lost. He doesn't really mean that. He doesn't really mean that. What says it? No, doesn't mean that.

You try to change it in order to support your position. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts, or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

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