The Doctrine of God

We have a men's Bible study that meets at 6 AM on Monday mornings. I guess you could call it "The early bird gets the Word." The title of our study during these weeks has been "knowing Him and making Him known." It has been challenging and some great discussion as we are looking at a number of things in the Scriptures about God. So far we have studied:
1. God's sovereignty
2. God's self sufficiency
3. God's glory
and this past week
4. God's will

Here are the notes and these come from a number of different sources all of which are not footnoted like Dr. John Piper and Dr. Sam Storms. Anyway these are my notes for session 4 in this particular study.

The two wills of God

The Bible uses the term will of God in two main ways.
1. Sovereign will, will of decree, secret will, or will of decree
2. Moral will, will of command, revealed will

SOVEREIGN WILL
➢ Matt. 26:39 ¶ And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.”
Jesus prays for one thing but He submits to what the Father decrees for Him.

➢ Acts 2:23 this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.
➢ Acts 4:27-28 “For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur.

The events that led to the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus
➢ The betrayal by Judas - John 13:2 During supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him,
➢ Herod’s contempt – Luke 23:11 - And Herod with his soldiers, after treating Him with contempt and mocking Him, dressed Him in a gorgeous robe and sent Him back to Pilate.
➢ Pilate’s expedient trial - Luke 23:24 And Pilate pronounced sentence that their demand be granted.
➢ The response of the Jew’s - Luke 23:21 but they kept on calling out, saying, “Crucify, crucify Him!”
➢ The Gentiles soldiers treatment of Jesus - Luke 23:36 The soldiers also mocked Him, coming up to Him, offering Him sour wine,

This was the will and work of God the Father
➢ Is. 53:4 ¶ Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
➢ Is. 53:10 ¶ But the LORD was pleased
To crush Him, putting Him to grief;
If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,
He will see His offspring,
He will prolong His days,
And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.

How may we reconcile this issue of Divine Sovereignty and the free will of man?
Wayne Grudem writes “It seems better to affirm that God causes all things that happen, but that He does so in such a way that He somehow upholds our ability to make willing, and responsible choices, and these choices have real and eternal results, and for which we are held accountable.
Exactly how God combines His providential control with our willing and significant choices, Scripture does not explain to us. But rather than deny one aspect or the other (simply because we cannot explain how both can be true) we should accept both in an attempt to be faithful to the teaching of all of Scripture.

Antinomy definition: comes from Greek anti – against or opposite and nomos - law
1 : a contradiction between two apparently equally valid principles or between inferences correctly drawn from such principles
2 : a fundamental and apparently unresolvable conflict or contradiction

Isaiah 45:5-7
5 “I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides Me there is no God. I will gird
you, though you have not known Me; (By the way this is a reference to Cyrus, the King of Persia who God would raise up as an instrument to get the people of God back into Jerusalem after exiled by the Babylonians. This is predicted 150 years before it happens) 6 that men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides Me. I am the LORD, and there is no other, 7 the One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being
and creating calamity; I am the LORD Who does all these.”

Look at the spectrum:
Forms light and creates darkness
Causes well being and creates calamity

Forms light
Creates darkness
Causes well being
Creates calamity
It is very easy for us to think about God as the One who forms light and causes well being but also creating darkness and calamity we don’t think about God in this way.

Notice two observations from the Hebrew:
a. The term bara (“create”) is used in the OT exclusively with God as its subject.
It is the term used in Genesis 1:1 - In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Also it is used in Psalm 51:10 - Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
This term is never used of us creating something, other Hebrew verbs are used when we create something but God alone “bara’s” something.

Here it is used in v. 7 for the two negative aspects of God’s control –
darkness and calamity
If we wrote this most of us would write God creates light/well being and use a weaker verbs with
Darkness/calamity. But in fact God does just the opposite.
Biblical insight - God uses the strongest word “bara” to emphasize the face that He creates darkness and calamity not the weaker verb for light and well-being.

Forms (weaker verb) light
Creates (stronger verb) darkness
Causes (weaker verb) well being (strong word for peace or shalom)
Creates (stronger verb) calamity (strongest word to denote what is horrible)

b. The terms in the second couplet are the strongest Hebrew words,
respectively, for all that is good (shalom, or “peace”) and all that is bad (ra,
or “calamity,” “destruction,” “evil”).
This is the strongest Hebrew word in the Old Testament that describes all that is horrible! It is usually translated as evil in the Hebrew Bible.

So the verse is saying that God causes well-being (peace) and God creates evil.
If we feel the need to get God off the hook in His attachment to or involvement in evil then evidently God doesn’t have that same sensitivity in regard to Himself.

Critical Point:
God controls fully both light and darkness (Isa 45:7), but consider 1 John 1:5
also – “This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you , that
God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.”

God controls fully both all that is good and all that is evil (Isa 45:7), but consider
along with this also Psalm 5:4 – “For You are not a God who takes pleasure in
wickedness; no evil (ra) dwells with you.” (Note: “Evil” in Psalm 5:4 is the same
term (ra) used in Isaiah 45:7)

Conclusion: God fully controls both good and evil, yet God is wholly good
and is not evil in any respect whatsoever.

These are twin pillars that must be held by Christian people who want to:
1. Honor who God is and…
2. Understand the work of God in this world
Wouldn’t it be easy to draw the conclusion that if God controls both good and evil, then what must we conclude about God Himself…well then He must be both good and evil. WRONG!
OR
God is good and Him there is no evil so what do we conclude about His control of the world…then God has everything to do with what is good and nothing to do with what is evil. WRONG!

Either way we miss one major stream of Biblical teaching about God.
God is good and in Him there is no evil at all but God controls all that is good and all that is evil. So both of these things must be held together – God is holy, just, good but we praise God that He ultimately reigns over evil. Because we know by God reigning over this in the end He will bring about His good and wise purposes.

Biblical insight:
God does not sin when He wills that sin be.
If your brain can’t handle that or you find that category too hard to conceive and build then reject this category.
But the thing I don’t want you to ever think, and I mean ever is to think that God is a sinner because He is not!
Just simply reject my exegesis of these verses as wrong.

God is holy and just and He is light and in Him there is no darkness. Therefore when God wills darkness like at the cross He is not sinful in willing that sin happen.
What more evil act in the world could there be than the death of Jesus and it was willed by God.

God rules over all evil that happens in the world and He is not evil in the fact that He rules it.

THE WILL OF COMMAND

What God commands that you do is often not the same thing as what God decrees what you will do.

For example:
➢ Matthew 5:48 - “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. But at the same time God does not ordain that you be perfect, otherwise you would be perfect. And we know that someday God is going to do that without ever compromising your will. The moment after you die or when Jesus comes, after that you will never sin again. So why don’t you just stop sinning right now? Because God hasn’t done to you yet what He is going to do to you on that last day. Therefore His will of command that you be perfect and He has a will of decree is not the same.
➢ Matthew 7:21 - “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. So what is the will of the Father in this verse? Everything? It can’t mean everything or that would mean that everyone would go to heaven. So we can see from this verse that there are those who do the will of God and those who don’t do the will of God. So this will of God must mean something different that the sovereign will of God. This is the will of command like the ten commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. This is God telling us what we ought to do.. Thou shall not murder (will of command) and God murders the Son (will of decree).
➢ 1 Thessalonians 4:3 - For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; This is not His will of decree but rather His will of command
➢ 1 Thessalonians 5:18 - in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. What is God’s will of command in this verse? Give thanks in everything.
➢ 1 John 2:17 - The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.
➢ 1 Peter 2:15 - For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.
➢ 1 Peter 4:2 - so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.

Biblical insight:
➢ What God commands He may prevent
➢ God foreordains that which He prohibits
➢ God does not intend to bring about all that He desires, but God never fails to bring about that which He intends.
➢ God is pleased to ordain His displeasure.
1 Timothy 2:4 - who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
This verse indicates that God desires “all” men to be saved. And yet we know that “all” men are not saved. Therefore then we must conclude that God wills something more strongly than He wills for “all” men to be saved.

Will of command
Mark 1:15 - and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

Will of decree
Mark 4:11 And He was saying to them, “To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but those who are outside get everything in parables,
Mark 4:12 so that WHILE SEEING, THEY MAY SEE AND NOT PERCEIVE, AND WHILE HEARING, THEY MAY HEAR AND NOT UNDERSTAND, OTHERWISE THEY MIGHT RETURN AND BE FORGIVEN.”

Creating healthy Biblical categories in order to handle hard verses

1Kings 22:19 ¶ Micaiah said, “Therefore, hear the word of the LORD. I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left.
1Kings 22:20 “The LORD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said this while another said that.
1Kings 22:21 “Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD and said, ‘I will entice him.’
1Kings 22:22 “The LORD said to him, ‘How?’ And he said, ‘I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ Then He said, ‘You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.’
1Kings 22:23 “Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you.”

Judg. 9:23 Then God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech,

1Sam. 16:14 ¶ Now the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD terrorized him.
1Sam. 16:23 So it came about whenever the evil spirit from God came to Saul, David would take the harp and play it with his hand; and Saul would be refreshed and be well, and the evil spirit would depart from him.
1Sam. 18:10 ¶ Now it came about on the next day that an evil spirit from God came mightily upon Saul, and he raved in the midst of the house, while David was playing the harp with his hand, as usual; and a spear was in Saul’s hand.

2Sam. 17:14 Then Absalom and all the men of Israel said, “The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel.” For the LORD had ordained to thwart the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the LORD might bring calamity on Absalom.

1Chr. 21:1 ¶ Then Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel.

2Sam. 24:1 ¶ Now again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and it incited David against them to say, “Go, number Israel and Judah.”

In summary: Conclusion: God fully controls both good and evil, yet God is wholly good and is not evil in any respect whatsoever.
Someone might say that this kind of thinking breaks the mind but I say better your mind be broken than the Scriptures.