The Sovereignty of God – Douglas Wilson | Reformed Basics #1

[Music] christians of course believe in god the idea of an atheistic christian would be nonsensical incoherent and contradictory as a consequence not many people go that route however much they might want to but because we live in a world where sin has a lot of influence even within the church there have been many attempts by professing christians to back away from a really robust belief in god provided they can figure out a way to do it without seeming too obviously silly over the years the most effective way of accomplishing this has been to define god in such a way that enables people to continue to use the word god but to define it in such a way is to get away from some of the scarier implications of a god who is actually you know like god the absolute nature of the god of scripture is unsettling to us and this is why we want to scoot away from it at the same time the name christian is still attractive for all kinds of reasons and we would like to hang on to that if we can the temptation is therefore to redefine both terms god and christian which can be accomplished simply by redefining the first term god but it goes the other way also because true knowledge of the true god is what makes a true christian we can remedy this problem by considering what scripture teaches about the godness of god [Music] the most common way of accomplishing our desired theological downgrade is to quietly assume that god is the greatest of all beings inside a system of quote-unquote all that exists picture all things as a great ocean of being containing everything from chickadees to cherubim if something exists at all then it exists somewhere inside this ocean of being what this does is create a framework for people to start assuming that god is the greatest of the quote-unquote whales within this ocean and then they try to generate any appropriate feelings of religious humility by assuming that we are small and insignificant compared to that whale being something like the minnows or perhaps the krill the false assumption here is that there's something called reality which somehow contains god along with all other things god plus everything else gives us the universe he is simply the biggest item in the box this error is the upstream cause of a host of other errors as we will see shortly we will come back to that in a moment [Music] now of course this downgrade approach only works as a quiet assumption it wouldn't fare too well as an open argument one of the foundational doctrines of the christian faith is that god is the creator of all things and that would have to include that great ocean of being now if god created everything that exists then he obviously did not do it from anywhere from within what exists because as should be obvious it didn't exist yet we should not presuppose that god was somehow contained by something that he had not yet created the scriptures are very plain on this in the beginning god created the heaven and the earth genesis 1 1 all things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made john 1 3 hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son whom he hath appointed heir of all things by whom also he made the worlds hebrews 1 2 o come let us worship and bow down let us kneel before the lord our maker psalm 95 6 this doctrine is called creatio ex nihilo creation from nothing god is himself eternal and there was never a time when he was not there was never a time when he came into being he is self-existent and not dependent on anything or anyone else for his position but there was a time when the chickadees and cherubim came into existence there was a time when the material universe did not exist at all this means that when god spoke the initial words of creation let there be light a profound division came into existence this is what theologian peter jones calls twoism when god spoke those inaugural words we now had two realities the eternal reality of god and the temporal material reality of not god and the inaugural words were the inaugurating words of creation there were no inaugural words for the eternal god he reveals himself to us as the great i am always and everywhere the only i am now the distance between these two realities is necessarily an infinite distance and we call it the creator creature divide it is really necessary to understand this if we are to understand the biblical explanation of how god's sovereignty fits together with human freedom and responsibility to state it again plainly without grasping the implications of the creator creature divide there will be no way for us to understand how the sovereignty of god is consistent with the moral responsibility of finite creatures like ourselves [Music] take two individuals who are indisputably within the system let us call them smith and jones suppose further that smith is bigger taller and stronger than jones and so he decides one day to start pushing jones around because they are both inside the system both living inside the same reality there's no way for smith to act freely on jones pushing him from behind say without that action being simultaneously a removal of freedom from jones it is like one billiard ball displacing another the more smith acts freely on jones in this way the less free jones feels if smith and jones are attempting to occupy the same space the more freedom the one has the less freedom the other does if smith is free to push jones down jones loses his freedom of standing up now this is where our background assumptions in our definition of god are so important if we assume that god is within the system this simply turns him into a cosmic bully it turns smith into zeus he becomes the biggest baddest and strongest smith possible but in his treatment of jones he remains a bully or to revert to our other image making one of the billiard balls much bigger doesn't give the smaller one any additional liberty in short by neglecting the creator creature distinction we create a situation where other christians hear us talking about the quote-unquote sovereignty of god and all they can imagine is a muscle-bound god bullying all of us and if their background assumption were correct i.e that god were somehow contained by the system that would be a true problem god would be a bully [Music] let us take the famous soliloquy from hamlet where hamlet is deciding whether to be or not to be suppose we asked an odd question about the speech and suppose that the question was this what percentage of the speech was hamlet and what percentage of the speech came from shakespeare to be or not to be that is the question whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against the sea of troubles and by opposing end them try as we might we are not going to be able to carve this speech up and assign different percentages of responsibility we won't ever be able to say that it was 70 30 hamlet shakespeare or 99 1 the other way considered on one level it's all shakespeare and considered on another level it is entirely hamlet put bluntly it is 100 100. in the realm of authorship it is all shakespeare and within the play considering the actions of the characters it is all hamlet it is a lesser example of a creator creature divide now someone is going to object to the illustration saying that it does not meet the problems inherent in the case the reason beneath this objection is that we are three-dimensional living beings with hopes dreams and aspirations and hamlet is a two-dimension character out of a play entirely fictional the analogy fails or so does claimed there are two responses to this the first is to acknowledge the analogy does fail but not the way the objector thinks in all the years that i've been using this illustration no one has ever raised his hand in order to object the analogy is weak because god is infinitely greater than shakespeare no what catches our interest is how much greater than hamlet we are our zeal is for our own glory and not god's glory and this is why the analogy works god is so much greater than shakespeare that he can write a play that has three-dimensional characters in it up to and including their ability to make free and responsible decisions even though they were decisions that he wrote into the play the second response is that as analogies go it is perfectly scriptural then the word of the lord came to me saying o house of israel cannot i do with you as this potter saith the lord behold is the clay is in the potter's hand so are ye in mine hand o house of israel jeremiah 18 5-6 if we have our feathers ruffled by being compared to a two-dimensional literary figure then what about being compared to a clay pot we are greater than hamlet certainly but we are much greater than a clay pot and god is greater than both a playwright and a potter [Music] suppose a man walks into an ice cream store one with multiple flavors behind the counter if someone were to ask me if i believed that god foreordained the particular flavor he would pick and that god foreordained it before all worlds my answer would be yes he was going to pick the cookie dough and that's all there is to it actually that's not all there is to it god did not just ordain that he would pick the cookie dough he ordained that he would pick the cookie dough freely he would pick the cookie dough because that is what he wanted to do the freedom is every bit as ordained as the flavor of the ice cream the reason this stumbles us is because we are picturing a puppet with strings being pulled by the puppet master but realize the puppet and puppet master are both within the same system that is the background assumption that makes the problem the apostle paul poses for us so difficult therefore happy mercy on whom he will have mercy and whom he will he hardeneth thou wilt say then unto me why doth he yet find fault for who hath resisted his will that's romans 9 18-19 the apostle paul has apparently been through more than one of these question and answer sessions he can anticipate the questions quote one of you will say to me close quote and note this is precisely the question he asks why does god blame us for doing what he determined we would in fact do the puppet master picked up the rods and strings and then in stern voice commanded the puppet not to walk across the stage he thereupon makes the puppet walk across the stage and the entire farce culminates with him flying into a rage bad puppet he cries wicked puppet and he smashes it to bits you would not be an unusual person if you thought to yourself my sympathies are kind of with the puppet but your mental voice kind of trails off lest the puppeteer hear you so the question seems to us to be a reasonable one why does the puppet master find fault with the puppet for doing what the puppet master made him do it is worth noting that paul answers this question by appealing to the passage from jeremiah that i cited earlier nay but o man who art thou that replies against god shall the thing form say to him that formed it why hast thou made me thus hath not the potter power over the clay of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor that's romans 9 20 and 21 the reason these illustrations break down is they cannot fully capture the idea of the creator creature divide they capture something of the sovereignty involved but both the potter and the pot are inside the same room the playwright and the play are both within the same world although they in a fashion point to the kind of distance that exists between god and us [Music] the picture is complicated for us somewhat because we have to keep track of two different kinds of liberty the first is a creaturely liberty the freedom to go right or left adam had this kind of liberty before the fall and he had it after the fall you exercise this kind of liberty countless times every day with every decision you make left or right chocolate or vanilla this playlist or that one the second kind of liberty moral liberty the freedom to do the right thing is a liberty that we lost in the fall we don't have to reconcile the sovereignty of god with this kind of liberty because we actually don't have this kind of liberty the scriptures describe us as spiritually dead in ephesians 2 1-2 we are spiritual slaves romans 6 20. we have no liberty in this realm when god intervenes in our lives to save us this is not an instance where we have to harmonize his actions with our liberty his actions are what bring us into a moral liberty that we did not have before to illustrate the two different kinds of liberty if an unregenerate man is walking around in a liquor store deciding how he's going to get drunk that night he's exercising his creaturely liberty he is free to choose vodka or gin or bourbon or another liquor store this is the left left-right kind of liberty what he is not free to do is to choose righteousness whatever he decides to do apart from christ it will be sinful even if he decides not to get drunk that night apart from christ his decision will be a self-righteous one he does not have any moral freedom unless and until christ saves him the doctrine of god's sovereignty has to be understood at both of these levels when it comes to creaturely liberty part of our quote-unquote calvinism is to insist that god's sovereignty is fully consistent with our freedom as responsible agents the great preacher charles spurgeon once responded when asked how he reconciled god's sovereignty with human responsibility that he did not he never reconciled friends there is no tension between the authority of the creator and the freedom of the creature notice how the westminster confession of faith puts it god from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will freely and unchangeably ordained whatsoever comes to pass yet so is thereby neither is god the author of sin nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away but rather established westminster confession of faith three one god ordains everything and yet he does so in a way that establishes the liberty of his creatures and when those creatures impudently threw away their moral liberty by disobeying him he graciously determined to restore that liberty by sending his son to die on the cross so that we might be forgiven and restored to our former condition there we do not harmonize his sovereignty with our freedom rather we thank him because his sovereignty brought us our freedom back [Music] one when people try to avoid a robust definition of god what is it they are trying to avoid they are trying to avoid the scarier implications of an absolute being like the god of the bible two what does it mean to picture god as being somehow within the system it means that we envision one basic reality and that god is the biggest entity within that reality three what is the basic beginning doctrine about the god of the bible it is that he is the creator of heaven and earth four what do we mean when we say that there are two realities we mean there are two kinds of reality the first is eternal and uncreated god and the second is temporal and created not god five how great is the difference between these two realities the difference is an infinite one six if god were contained within our reality what would this do to the doctrine of the sovereignty of god it would mean that if god exercised his power toward one of us his exercise of his freedom would displace ours seven can a different kind of illustration be used yes a playwright and a character in one of his plays are both performing the same actions but on completely different levels shakespeare and hamlet are both responsible for the same speech but not in the same way it is not a 99 1 thing or 50 50 it is 100 100. eight does this illustration have any limitations yes god is much greater than shakespeare and so this removes all the difficulties nine does the illustration have anything in common with any biblical illustrations yes a playwright has authority over his play just as the potter has authority over his clay 10. does god ordain our free choices yes he does that is why they are free he ordains not only the content of our choices but also the fact that they were made freely eleven why does the illustration of the puppet master and the puppet bother us because we have forgotten that both puppeteer and puppet are operating within the same system which means that the authority of the puppeteer is coercive it is not that way with god 12. what are the two kinds of liberty we have creaturely liberty which is the freedom to go left or right god ordains which way we will go but he also determined that we would do so freely the other kind of liberty is moral liberty which we do not have until the holy spirit regenerates us you

Channel: Christ Kirk

Views: 8,578

Rating: 4.9213481 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 2_ciGCkgKH8

Length: 18min 16sec (1096 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 14 2020