God's sovereign will: God's determinations in history

This is a handout here that everybody have a hold of that. Let's go ahead and get that to you here. You're kibbered? All right, you're there? He doesn't memorize all the time anyway, so. Okay. Okay. Well, let's see. We looked at, after our introductory week, last week we looked at God's character as the foundation for God's will. And we want to look at the next step in that, and that is basically God's determinations in history.

These are again part of the set of things that are fixed. Things that are God's sovereign will. that we won't be thwarting and, matter of fact, nobody will. Even somebody who might wish to do so will not thwart God's will in these things. So this is a part of the backdrop so that we understand the nature of God's will and how it works out here on planet Earth.

And I think one thing to get a sense of here is that history has purpose. By history, I don't mean just the things that are past, but the things that are yet to come that will become history. That all of time has a purpose. It's one difficulty that someone who has a completely materialistic viewpoint has a tough time coming up with. There's really no purpose unless you invent one. You have to just kind of come up with one. But the believer in seeing what's laid out in Scripture sees that God has a purpose for everything that's going on. Everything that has gone on, everything that is going on, everything that will go on.

And so these sovereign determinations that God makes are not just because God's downright stubborn. God isn't just saying, well, this is what I want to have happen, so that's what's going to happen, and that's the way it is, right? That's not the way God's working. He is working with purpose in everything and He makes determinations based on those purposes and those purposes are all fixed in His will. All fixed in His character.

Let's take a look at Ephesians 1, 9 and 10. Somebody take a look at that one for us here. What did he say, 9? 9 and 10. Ephesians 1, 9 and 10. 9 says, He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His kind intention which He proposed in Him, with a view to an administration suitable to be the fullest of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in heaven, Heavens and things on the earth in Him. So here we have mention of God's will.

What does He say all things? What does all things include? Just the stuff in Israel? Just the stuff at Holly Hills? No. All things means all things. And what's everything summed up in? What's everything brought together in? What's the focal point of all of history? that it says there.

Purposed in Him? In Him. I asked a trick question because I said, what? It's really who, isn't it? Christ is the focal point for everything that has taken place, that is taking place, that will take place. He is the focal point toward which history moves. So that's a key perspective here. This morning, We'll be looking at Colossians 1. We started, and this was at the end of March, we've taken a little hiatus here with Palm Sunday and Resurrection Sunday.

We started in Colossians 1.15. We'll proceed today in the main service in Colossians 16 and 17. We'll go through verse 18 next week.

But we'll eventually go through this section of, excuse me, Colossians 1.15 through 20. that says everything that is going on in the physical realm, in the spiritual realm, from creation to the end, it all has its purpose in Christ.

Christ is the originator, Christ is the end towards which all things move. And so this perspective is critical because that tells us, alright, here I am stumbling around on planet Earth, what's going on? What's happening? This is the big picture. The big picture is everything is summed up in Christ. Everything is summed up in Christ. And as we look a little farther on here, everything is summed up in Christ and we have an eternally established relationship with Him. Everything.

You have on your handout this one, and this is kind of the big version of it, this Deuteronomy on one side, and Israel's future on the other side. Okay, on your hand up. And what this is, we're not going to go into it in immense detail, but what's real interesting, Deuteronomy was a book written by Moses about 1400 BC. It was the last book that he wrote. As a matter of fact, the last chapter of it was finished by somebody else, because it records that he died. it doesn't say so, my guess is Joshua since Joshua was kind of the fellow who took the reins but nonetheless Moses recorded the vast majority except for the very end of it and what you see from chapter 26 through into chapter 31 are indications of what will take place in Israel's future Now this isn't the only place that these things are told. We certainly have other things everywhere from the book of Daniel into the New Testament, the book of Revelation.

Lots of things are laid out. But what's interesting is here, if we were a clock back, this is 3,400 years ago. It said what's going to happen. And one of the things that it said is Israel is to be scattered among the nations. Well that didn't fully take place until about the time of the New Testament, right?

70 A.D. was when the Romans came in and they went and booted the Jews finally out of Israel. So they're scattered among the nations. And they'd be few in number among the nations. That is, they'll be a minority everywhere they are. And in Deuteronomy 30, 3-10, Israel gathered and brought back to the land.

Well, guess what? That's happened. Okay? It's happened. As a matter of fact, charts that I showed when we were going through Revelation a couple years back is just a bar chart. Here's the growth of the number of Jews and coming back to Israel and coming back to Jerusalem. And even though we hear about a lot of that happening in more recent decades, the bar chart starts back in the 1800s where they started having a census taken and added the number of Jews and non-Jews that were there. The numbers have been just climbing and it's very evident something radical is happening here.

That's this, okay? That's this. And then finally, Israel will repent in her tribulation, you see in the last reference there. But this is interesting. This is 3,400 years ago. And to think about this, we've got this, you know, here's this future laid out.

What other people on planet Earth can you think of that have stayed together after almost 2,000 years of wandering? and still identifiable as a people, enough to know, hey, I want to go back to that land. I mean, there isn't any such thing. We don't have any other example of a nation like that. This is extraordinary. This is extraordinary. Then, as you look at the picture here, here is Israel. Why is this going to happen? Why is this taking place? Why is Israel being brought back to the land?

Yeah, there you go. See, these things are God's sovereign will. God says, this is how it's going to happen. This is what's going to take place. And so He's laid it out. He has a plan for these people. He has also, and we won't go into the details today, but He has made promises to these people. And He's going to keep them.

It isn't God saying, Okay, this is what's going to happen. I sure hope I can pull it off. We'll give it our best. We'll give it the old college try. That's not God's approach here. God is saying, this is the outline of what's going to happen with you in the centuries to come. In the millennia to come. And most certainly it will come to pass. Most certainly.

If I was Hamas, I'd be pretty discouraged. I'm sorry, what? I say if I was Hamas, I'd be pretty discouraged. Well, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I suspect that they don't respect Deuteronomy terribly. But you know, it's interesting. We talk about a seven-year tribulation and then the reign of the Messiah after that time. Orthodox Jews, through the centuries, have believed in a seven-year tribulation and the Messiah reigning after that tribulation period.

I mean, just that. And they believe that on the basis of just the Old Testament prophecies. They see this, you know, laid out here in Deuteronomy that Moses laid out and that's what's happening. And it's interesting, you've got people, you've got people that are skeptics and they don't, you know, all this is all just a cosmic accident, you know.

Give me a break, you know. This just doesn't happen by accident that you have something written 3,400 years ago and it comes to pass and gets orchestrated through international events. that doesn't come to pass. They are still looking to the Messiah to come and that's the difference if you were to say well they believe in a seven year tribulation they believe in the Messiah coming to reign what's different they believe that that's the first coming yeah and so yes there is a distinction but but they take the Old Testament scriptures they see you know literally the reformed and conservative Jews do not But the Orthodox Jews take it literally, and they're still looking for the seven-year reign. I've got a book at home called The Messiah Texts, and it just spells out they're looking for a seven-year period of horrible times, followed by the Messiah coming, who will reign for, and it doesn't say a thousand years, because that's in Revelation, which is New Testament. They just say ruling for a long, long time. But you're right. They're looking for the first coming of the Messiah, not recognizing the first coming has already come to pass.

Now, this is Israel, but I think it's key just because we've got enough historical background and clock on this thing that we can look at it and say, you know, here's something God sovereignly determined was going to happen 3,400 years ago, and it's happening. I mean, you can look at the population of the Jews, and here we've got Israel recreated as a nation. I think we're coming up in a couple weeks on the anniversary of that establishment of Israel as a nation.

And so it's a testimony to God's sovereign determinations in history. God has made promises to these people and he will keep them. Not God's best effort, not God's best guess, not God saying, boy, I sure hope I can pull it off, but a sovereign determination in history. It will come to pass.

Let's flip over to the back side of this thing here. This gets back to Bob's question here. What we call the first coming, here we see Christ coming, as Paul puts it in Galatians, born of a woman, crucified, buried, raised, ascended and seated, and that's the first coming. Interposed, and the Jews of course don't wish to recognize it, is the church age. That's where we are now.

The next event is the Rapture. What's interesting to think about if you work through the math real quickly is the Rapture could happen at any time. The Tribulation is seven years long. It means that if this is 2004, by 2011 we could be entering the Millennium.

It could be that close. It could be farther away. The rapture is an event for which we do not have a particular sign saying, okay, get ready, it's 30 seconds. There's nothing telling us, get ready for that. It's an any moment thing. It's imminent. The rapture is imminent.

So what we see laid out here, these are things scripture does not give us every detail of what's going to happen in human history, does it? But it lays out key things, especially things that human beings on their own could not project. I would venture to say that any secular historian, history professor of world history, if you were to say, okay, what's going to happen in the next thousand or so years? he wouldn't put down these things. These are things that are known because they're revealed.

So for the church, what is the next event historically is going to be the rapture. So through the church age, we have the church interposed, the rapture is going to be the next event, again like what God promised to Israel and Israel's returning as a nation.

This is not because Man's going to pull it off. It's not because God says, boy, I sure hope I can make it happen, but because it's God's sovereign determination of what will take place in history. The tribulation is a sovereign determination of what will take place. The second coming of Christ with ourselves, with the angels, with ourselves, and with the resurrected Old Testament saints, at His second coming is a sovereign determination of God in history. That's not something God's going to flex on.

Now, why do we bother to look at these things? Why does this matter? Does it make any difference that we know this stuff? We have that hope. Ah, okay. Yeah, as believers we have a hope. And the way Paul puts it is is those who have died in the Lord, those who are the Lord's in death, will be raised. The rapture is not just for those who are alive. The rapture is for all of the church age. All who put their trust in Christ, whether having died or whether alive. All will be raptured. All will be taken up to be with the Lord.

And it's a certain hope. It's not an I hope so hope. It's a certain hope. And again, why? It's because God isn't saying, boy, this is my best guess, or it'd sure be nice if I can pull it off. We'll see how it goes. It's a certain hope. It's a certainty. It's fixed determination by God. God, who is unchangeable in nature, has determined, unchangeably, that this will come to pass. Now, but we ask the question, why is this good for us to know? First of all, there's a certain hope. There's that.

Another reason is so that we don't pray about what's already fixed. Should we pray, Lord, I sure pray that there won't be any tribulation. Is there any good in praying that? No. Yeah, that's right. If we're asking what should we pray about, there's no sense in asking for what God has already determined will be.

Those things are fixed in place and are not a might be, might not be kind of thing. So we can pray effectively by not praying for things that we know are already fixed. God's nature is fixed. There's no sense in our asking him to change himself. What God has determined to take place is fixed. There's no sense in our praying, Lord, it'd sure be nice if this didn't happen. If God has said that it will take place, it will take place. And it's within His character and His sovereign determination that those things will happen.

Yeah. Oh, I love rabbits. Yes Yes That's right because they're not a part of the church That's correct, that's correct We have a colored chart. It looks like a wiring diagram for the space shuttle. And we could certainly get some more for folks. It shows all the different events of, you know, here's the first coming and the second coming and this group of people goes here and here's this. Anyway, it's a nice multicolored chart that takes a while to sort your way through on it.

Nonetheless, if you think about it, here are those who are saved but have died, and they're taken up at the rapture. Those who are alive are then taken up at the same time. And then at the second coming will be Christ, and angels, and ourselves, all those of the church age, and Old Testament saints, all coming with the Lord.

And then for what Scripture reveals, elsewise you see it as a long period of time, but Revelation chapter 26 times says a thousand years explicitly. A thousand years, and at the end of that, the White Throne Judgment. The White Throne Judgment being the judgment of all the unsaved dead prior to that time. And these are all fixed determinations. Christ will come the second time. When he comes, he will come with the saints, with the Old Testament saints, the church-age saints, and with his angels. There will be a thousand-year reign of Christ on the earth.

What's interesting is we don't see some long list of, here's going to be your job description as the church. Isn't that interesting? What we do see, it's real interesting, is in the heavenly scenes in Revelation, of which there's about 150 verses that cover the heavenly scene in Revelation, those descriptions show the church focusing on the Lord. And so as we look into the millennium and say, what are we going to be doing? I think our focus will still be upon the Lord. There's no indications we've got some long to-do list.

Are we supposed to rule with Him? We'll rule with Him, but what's real interesting, our primary focus will still be on the Lord Himself. To be absorbed with Him and not so much... There's nothing that lists a whole bunch of details of here's your job description here on planet Earth. We'll be with Him. We will rule with Him. Our focus will be upon Him.

So here we see this picture in terms of what's sovereign. Now, let's start to make this personal. Turn with me in your Bibles. Let's look at Romans 8, 28 and 29. These are verses that frequently are not quoted together, but need to be in order for people to get the right perspective. Somebody read that for us? Romans 8, 28, and 29.

Yeah. Yep. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him. who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers."

Okay. People like to quote, you know, for all things work together for good. People like to quote that. But the key in looking at this is this conforming process. Okay? I'll talk to folks who are going through this kind of a tough time in that. But it's key as we look at these verses here to get the idea, what is the all things work together for good? You might look at some event and say, well, that doesn't seem very good to me. The good is the conforming. For those who are believers, the good is the conforming, and that conforming being It is not God's best effort. It is not God saying, boy, I sure hope it happens. It sure would be nice if it pulled off that way. Or it's not a percentage deal. Well, 60% of them got conformed. The rest, who knows? So what is this? This is God's sovereign determination, not for nations like Israel, not for planet earth or even the church as a whole, but specifically for each individual.

All those individual things in your life work together for good. And that good is that being conformed to the image of the sun. We might go through this or that kind of a tough time here on planet Earth. Different things happen. I don't know about you, but over about a half century or so, it seems like there's more and more things that my body crops up where my body isn't cooperating. Well, what good is that? The good is this good. It's a conforming process. We in character are being conformed to the image of the Son. That's the process that's taking place. That's the good that's being worked. As we get into some difficult events and more tough things can come along.

I've shared before, about a dozen years ago, I came down with Lyme disease. Only it took them a number of months to determine what it was. Meanwhile, Nancy had a tough time with this because they were saying, well, we're testing you for this, we're testing you for that. And I think, well, we think you might have cancer on your spinal cord. We think you might have brain cancer. We think, you know, you've got, you know, a cancer up in the upper part of the lung. I think you might have multiple sclerosis.

And so there's all these different things. And so going in and out of MRIs, weird, all kinds of really strange bone scans and everything else, just test after test after test after test, varying theories. And of course, when it's all done, you're like, boy, I might have had 100 different things wrong with me here by the time they're through testing. Say they're testing for this. And largely what they're doing is trying to rule things out, you know, it's not this, it's not that, you know.

And so finally after a number of months and going to a specialist, well, you got Lyme disease, so here's your course of antibiotics. But in the midst of that, I mean, there were lots of severe consequences. It felt like somebody, you know, run over my arm, my left arm with a truck and then backed up. And it hurt like crazy and it was a matter of going for weeks without any decent sleep just because it was so painful.

But you know, going through that, you look at that and you say, well look, is that good? Oh man, you've got to be kidding me. This hurts like crazy. And is that supposed to be good? Well, the good isn't because boy this feels good. That's not the point. The good is a conforming process. The good that's happening is on a spiritual level, not because this feels good. And that's key. That's important to understand.

There have been times, you know, I'll share something with Hal about somebody going through a tough time and he'll say, isn't it wonderful? And at first you think, boy, Hal is some kind of a sadist or something. But his point is just a recognition of God is doing something at a spiritual level here in this conforming process. And at a straight physical level, you've got to look at it and say, no, that's not very good. I'm not enjoying this a whole lot.

But, spiritually there's something going on and that good is something that is determined. Did you see this word in here? According to his purpose. That's consistent with his purpose. At the end of verse 28. Consistent with his purpose. And that's, I think, the key. If we look at all things work together for good as some sort of a strange way of saying everything feels good or looks good or... No. It doesn't work that way.

But consistent with his purpose, and what is that? Now, here you see this word predestined pop up, and a lot of people think, oh man, I'm caught in this big cosmic machinery, and so everything is just stuck in this predestination. But look at what the predestining is for. Predestined to be what? Conformity.

So that is part of God's sovereign determination. Now let me ask you this. If that's God's sovereign determination, are you and I going to thwart that? No. The truth is we may, in some particular event here or there, we may or may not be understanding and seeing what God's doing.

But the truth is, ultimately, every believer will be conformed to the image of the Son. No exceptions. You're not going to walk through heaven's gates and say, toasted that one, you know? Well, about 60% of them are okay. No, this is a 100% deal. Every believer, the predestination is not there to make everything that you do as if you're an automaton. The predestination is in the direction of your being conformed.

See? Key, huh? Key thing. And it's good. It's a good thing. Even though the individual thing you'll look at, I mean, we've shared things in this room since we've started here. Some of them have been tough times. Our own family and people we know, maybe even ourselves. In none of those things would you say, hey, you know, this is going to happen to you. Want to sign up?

No. But nonetheless, God is making good of it, and the good is that conforming. process. And that is a good thing. And it's predestined, God's sovereign determination, that that conforming will come to pass. Richard? Can you say something like this? If it's God's will, it will be done.

There's no question about it, but the thing is that people have a tendency to, and all of us are appalling to this, that we have these creepy doubts that come in and say, do this or do that, and it will alleviate some of it, you know. Sure. And the thing is that it's not alleviated completely. And the thing is, too, that you have to look at it. God's will is in every aspect of life. I mean, which way you look at it. Sure. And the thing is that these Old Testament Christians, they said that they were Christians, but the thing is that they weren't exercising God's will. They were doing it their will. The Old Testament Saints, yeah. The old way of doing things instead of the new way.

And the thing is too that we fall into that trap today. So we have to be actually ever so careful. Is our conformity slipping or what? Let's ask this question. We are predestined to be conformed to the image of the sun. So then it's predetermined, it's predestined that that's going to happen. How do we handle it? We say, well, I guess God's going to do what He's going to do and just kind of float along with it? Or what's our part in this? We're not out there to test them. Okay. We figure if He says it, it's so. Okay.

But then does it make any difference what decisions I make? Does it make any difference how I pray or how I live or anything else? Okay, you're saying it makes a difference. Can you tell us what difference does it make? Well, I guess you can make wrong choices. You're probably going to go through a certain period of time where you hope you will get straightened out, but it's tougher along the way.

Okay, so we can make decisions that have consequences now, or at least here on planet Earth, We can make decisions that have consequences now. And those poor decisions, bad decisions, will those also result in our being conformed? Yes. Yes. So what happens, we can make bad decisions. Those bad decisions will end up still ultimately in our being conformed. So there is a decision to be made on our part. It is not God's will that we make those bad decisions, but God's ultimate will, God's sovereign will, will not be thwarted. Isn't that interesting? So God gives us the latitude to make a bad decision, but that bad decision will not thwart God's sovereign will. And we'll go more into detail later about what's a bad decision and what's a good decision.

But I think that's a key thing that's real interesting to look at. In one sense it's comforting in that I might be concerned that I'm going to somehow blow it and make a bad decision that is going to totally catapult me out of God's will. I may in each individual decision make a good or a bad decision, but ultimately as a believer I have this comfort that I am predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son. And that will be something that comes to pass, good decision or bad decision. No, so should I not be concerned whether I make a bad decision? Okay, I should be concerned. Okay, now why should I be concerned?

Okay, yeah, we may suffer and the suffering is not God's designation. The suffering is our own decision. Okay, and I think what we want to do is we want to look at that. What suffering is God's determination that He will use, and it's His sovereign will that that will come to pass, versus just simply consequences of my poor decisions. And the Lord is not asking that we suffer based on our poor decisions. The Lord does give us the latitude to make those kinds of choices, but it is not His sovereign will, not His determination that we make those bad decisions. But those are within the realm of choice that we have.

The more we know about the Word, the less chance we have of making bad decisions based on God's will that we understand. That's right. That's why as we look at the subject of God's will, we don't just say, well God makes all choices, so we'll put this on the shelf and just talk the rest of the time.

We want to zero in on this thing. That's why I use the target. We've got God's sovereign will. Now let's get closer to the bullseye. Here's God's moral will, and then God's individual will. Look at that. We want to zero in on what God specifically has for each believer. We're starting from the outside, looking at what is God sovereignly determined. Last week we looked at God's unchangeable character. This week we look at the things that God has determined to be fixed in history.

The next three weeks we'll be looking at our position in Christ. The truth is that will be hitting the high spots. We had a Who You Are in Christ elective that took six months and at times the teachers felt that was hitting the high spots. So we're going to be hitting them fast but I don't want to bypass them entirely either because we have a position in Christ that once you're a believer Once you're a believer, that position is fixed and irreversible, untouchable in the heavens. And we need to know what that position is. We need to understand what that position is. And so we'll spend the next three weeks taking a look at that position that we have in Christ and reviewing that. Then step into the areas where we have an explicit choice to be made. Questions? Exasperations? Consternations? Magnificent bafflings?

Okay, let's pray. Lord, thank you that we can depend upon your very character, who you are, and that you have made sovereign determinations and promises to those of Israel, to those of the Church, To those of the nations, you've made these promises and sovereign determinations based on your purpose and based on your character. And we thank you for that. And we thank you that we can depend upon all of who you are, all of who you've made us in you. And we look forward to exploring those in the weeks ahead. And we just thank you for these things, in Jesus' name.