I'm going to ask you to open your Bibles to Isaiah 46. The main theme and work of our associational meetings this past week was on chapter 3 of our confession and the decree. You may want to go ahead and not only open to Isaiah 46, but you can open your confession. If you don't have one with you, look in the back of your hymnal and you'll see a copy of the confession there. Chapter 3. In our last elders meeting, we decided we would look at some things on the decree of God, the Lord's Day, after our associational meetings, since they had been a part of our associational meetings. then we'll take a little break from Hebrews as well and we're going to do some things on the Reformation for a few weeks and then come back to Hebrews later in November. So this is kind of a part of that moving forward. Isaiah chapter 46 beginning with verse 8. Now remember this is the word of the Lord in Isaiah 46 through the prophet Isaiah and he's speaking to the wayward people and he says in verse 8 through his prophet, remember this and be assured. Recall it to mind you transgressors. Remember the former things long past. For I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is 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. calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my purpose from a far country. Truly, I have spoken. Truly, I will bring it to pass. I have planned it. Surely, I will do it. This is an overarching theme and idea of chapter three of our confession. The prophet here is speaking plainly about who God is and all of his sovereignty. He's not just sovereign over something that occurred. He's sovereign over something that he purposed. And there's a big difference. There's times we can manage situations that occur. They happen before us. manage them and we become in control of that situation and we get involved in it and we're able to work in it in a way that it looks as though, oh, they controlled that very well. Well, there's a difference between managing something that occurred or controlling something that occurred and being sovereign and in control over that which you purposed. The chapter on the decree is giving a context to the very idea of the purpose and will of God. The purpose and will of God. Now, specifically this morning, the message, I'm gonna deal with chapters, chapter three, paragraph six and seven. That will be my emphasis. But what I want to do this morning is give a little bit of background and outline for the first five paragraphs. Now, that means I'm gonna skip a lot of things, is what that means. I'm gonna give you a big overview, okay? But I want you to see the context of this biblically, first and foremost, is this idea, and our confession states this as one of the verses here, in Isaiah 46, verses eight through 11. God says through his prophet, remember this and be assured. Now the word here be assured is not just a word of comfort. Be assured of this for your own comfort. Here he's saying be assured of this that you know it will happen. You know who's in control. Be assured in it that you know nothing else will happen but what I have planned and purposed. That's what God's saying. says recall it to mind and he's saying this to the transgressors he's saying to the transgressor you need to get this in your mind what's going to take place you need to understand this is assured remember the former things long past whatever those are according the nation of Israel according to what happened in ancient times For I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is no one like me. Before he ever gets to the idea of the purpose and will or the idea of decree, he's stating I am the one being and from me comes everything. I am the one being and there is no one like me. I am God. I am Jehovah. I am sovereign. I am perfect. I am holy. There is no one like me. And there is no other God but me. So whatever I'm about to say about my purpose and my will, you understand, it cannot be thwarted, it cannot be changed, it cannot be meddled with. There's no tweaking to the decree of God. You know, sometimes we make plans and after we see that the plan isn't quite gonna work out, we try to tweak it a little bit, you know, we wanna add a little bit here, take a little bit away there. that's not gonna kind of work like I thought it would and we want to just shift things a little bit and we want to pre our you know put this over here oh let me put this beforehand let me put this after let me do no there's no doing that with the decree of God God says declaring verse 10 the end from the beginning the idea of the declaration here is speaking of the very purpose will of God being declared God has made it known in and of himself what his will and purpose is. And then there are portions of that will and purpose that he has declared to those that he created. But in and of himself, he knows all of his purpose and will. But he has not declared everything of his purpose and will to all people at all times for various reasons. who can know the mind of the Lord, as the scripture says, who could understand those things. He says, declaring the end from the beginning and from the ancient times things which have not been done. He says, you can look at the past and you can tell I'm God and I'm in control. I'm using my prophet in the present to tell you I'm in control. And now I'm going to use my prophet even to declare things which have not been done. You have to have the picture of God's sovereignty in your mind here. We can declare things and say, well, I'm going to do this, but they don't always get done exactly like we say they're going to get done. We may get the end result that we wanted, but it may not have been in the way we ordered it and purposed it, because there was all kind of mitigating factors and all kind of circumstances that came about. But God is saying through his prophet here, I'm going to declare to you things which have not been done, saying, My purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure. Now there's a matter-of-fact statement there that's holistic. There's not one thing that's outside the sovereignty of God. This morning for our worship we'll even include the doctrine of salvation on that and we'll have scriptures read in the context of God's sovereignty even over salvation. And here in Isaiah, he's giving a point blank statement to say my purpose will be established in all things. Salvation's a part of that, but it's only one piece and one part of that. God says my purpose will be established in all things. All right, that means things that we read in the news that cause us to have some concern or fear. God's purpose is gonna be established in all of that. Things that we read about in foreign countries. God's purpose is going to be established in all that. He's the Lord of all the earth. All of the happenings. He's even Lord of all the things that we don't know. Sometimes it's hard for us to really fathom there are so many things happening all at once, all across this cosmos, this universe, things that we don't know. He's Lord of all those. He has a purpose in all of those and all of those things will be established. He even has a will for those things. The one will in God will be established and will be worked out in all of those things. How the stars move. When one star dies, he has a purpose in all of that. Meteorites, he has a purpose in all of that. Through Isaiah, he's giving us, in just a few short words, something declarative about his very being, that in no way will he be thwarted. He will not be stopped. Doesn't matter what the ruler is or who the ruler is or how much power they have on this earth, they will not stop the unchangeable purpose and will of God. So here specifically in these verses he says, calling a bird of prey, verse 11, from the east, the man of my purpose from a far country. Truly I have spoken, truly I will bring it to pass. All the issues of Babylon, all the issues of the day of Babylon, they're being dealt with and God is dealing with all of that in its context. And the rising and the falling of the nations is what he's speaking of here, all of that. He says, I have a purpose and I will bring it to pass. And he says, I have planned it, surely I will do it. So you're seeing the two factors in the decree, the plan and the accomplishment of the plan, the purpose and the will. It gives us a little bit of a biblical background to see why our confessional writers have taken these ideas so seriously in putting our confession together. Because in paragraph one of chapter three of our confession, it says, God hath decreed in himself from all eternity, all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things whatsoever comes to pass. Okay? Well firstly this morning God's decree is his plan in and of himself. God's decree is his plan in and of himself. Now just briefly what is a decree? What is a decree? And just a common everyday English idea what is a decree? Alright, it is a statement, but it's a little bit, huh? Okay, it does have fact to it, but it's even a little bit more than that. It's an order. Alright, it's an order, it's a statement of order, and it has authority. Okay? Most of the time, when you go to some of your dictionaries, it'll say something like, it is an order or command that a matter must occur. And sometimes it adds the phrase, by force of law. Okay, that's kind of a general sense. So you have this statement that's made, it's an order in and of itself, and it has the authority, the backing of the one who made it. You'll see some of the dictionaries use illustrations like there's been a huge storm that wiped out homes and afterwards the government makes a decree that all homes must be built to this code. know and so now it has the backing of the government to say you have to build a home to this code in these storm stricken areas or whatever you see the the basic idea of a decree well here they're even taking this a step further in the confession and giving it the background of God's decree God's decree according to one author is his eternal plan whereby according to his decorative will for his glory he foreordained everything that comes to pass everything that comes to pass so this is God's eternal plan whereby according to his will of decree his will of purpose The idea of decree has a purpose behind it. Anytime you make an order, well, I won't say anytime, most of the time as humans when we make good orders, good commands, we have a good purpose behind them. Now we know there's all kind of laws on the books that have been made by decree that really had no good purpose. Or maybe they no longer have a good purpose. Somebody was telling me the other day that there's still a law on the books in Athens, Georgia that after a certain time you can't go through the town hooting like an owl. I don't know why that is. Some of y'all can go read on that. You know, but there are laws like that that at the time had some kind of purpose behind them when they were made, may not have that purpose any longer. And so, you know, but there's a purpose there. The idea of this, the idea of decree is there's a purpose behind the decree. There's the will and there's the purpose. And then there's the activity of putting that decree forward in and of itself, the act of God. And so God's decree, his will of purpose, is his plan in and of himself is what the confession teaches. This directly goes back to chapter two of the confession. Chapter two sets up the very doctrine of God, tells us who God is. Now the decree is set up according to the being of God. Do you want an arbitrary person making a decree for all of the cosmos? How many of you want me making all of the decree for the purpose of the whole cosmos? Raise your hand. Please don't raise your hand. No, you don't want me to do that. Many of you have known me long enough. You like me, but you're thinking, nah, I don't really want him in charge of everything. A few things will allow him to be in charge of, but not everything, okay? God, His decree is in and of Himself. Whoever He is in His being, perfect, holy, most wise, most just, most gracious, all those things that go back to chapter two, when you read chapter two of the confession, they're saying all of the being of God is put into the context of His purpose and His will. Secondly, God's decree is the revelation of God's complete sovereignty over all things. God's decree is the revelation of God's complete sovereignty over all things. It says God had decreed in himself from all eternity by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will freely and unchangeably all things whatsoever come to pass complete sovereignty over everything whatever comes to pass and then the confession wants us to understand parenthetically it says yet so as there is yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin nor hath fellowship with any therein." So under that, number two would say that his sovereignty over all things includes sin and evil. His sovereignty over all things includes sin and evil. And it excludes God being the author of sin. includes his sovereignty over all things even sin and evil and it excludes even God being the author of sin and God sinning himself. God does not sin nor can he be the author of sin. Does the scripture teach that God is not the author of sin? It plainly states that somewhere right? Where is that? Anybody remember? It's in the book of James, right? So we have a declaration given to us that God is not the author of sin. And the confession is stating that to us. And it's saying, here's the parenthesis. Here's the sovereignty. He's sovereign over it all. He has purposed it all. He has a will for it all. Even sin and evil, He has a will for it. He has a purpose for it. Yet in all of that, he's not the author of sin, nor has God himself ever sinned. The idea of fellowshipping with any therein is meaning that he's not taking part in the sin himself. And that goes to this next statement of the confession, nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away but rather established. In all of God's sovereignty, in all of God's sovereignty, he doesn't do violence to the will of the creature. Now you and I can't fully understand every piece of that, but here's a way to think about it just a little bit in briefness. God orders all these things according to his purpose and will. And he even orders the creature and the creature's being and nature. And yet that very being and nature of that creature is not thwarted by God. Adam and Eve were created in the garden and they had the ability to do what? They had the ability to obey God and not sin. They also had the ability to do what? So they had both. They had an actual true free will. Everybody wants to talk about free will. Adam and Eve had a true free will in the garden. They had the ability to obey God and not sin, and they had the ability to disobey God and sin. There was no violence on their nature, yet God ordered and purposed the fall of Adam and Eve. God didn't actually do the sin. He's sovereign over it. He ordered it. He purposed it. His will worked out in it, and yet at the same time, did God sin or did Adam sin? Adam sinned. You say, well, what in the world, that means that God sinned. No, no, no, no. It doesn't mean that God sinned. God can order something and not sin. God can purpose something and not sin and still have in his purpose the will given to the creature and that creature act in accordance with his or her will. Once Adam and Eve fell, what happened to the nature of humanity? It fell as well. of us fallen. So what is the basic nature of the human who's born in the Adamic race throughout all time in history? It's a sin nature. That's right. It's a sin nature. So when sinners sin, what are they doing? They're doing what they want to do. See, that's part of the problem we have with the doctrine of depravity is people don't understand when you are a sinner by nature and you sin, you are doing what you want to do. To do anything other than sin would be going against your very nature. God is not The one who is the author of sin or who does the sinning, he is the one that created beings and gave them the ability to act according to their created natures. And in the created nature, Adam and Eve had ability to do both, obey or disobey. And they chose to disobey, and the choice to disobey had consequences. and it had consequences on the whole of the human race. And those consequences now put the human race in a sense where they no longer had the ability to do what? Obey God in and of themselves. They now have the ability to sin by nature and that is what they choose to do and what they also what? What they want to do. God's not going against the creature by making them sin. Even though that sin is ordered and purposed according to his will, he's not going against their nature because the sinner wants to sin. The problem we have is not recognizing how deep our sin is. I don't have time to go through all the scripture on the depth of our sin, but what are just a few places that the scripture tells us how deep our sin is in our natures? what's it say Jeremiah 17 9 all right the heart is deceitful desperately wicked who can know it that's pretty bad right it's desperately wicked that puts a whole nother context on who can know the mind of the Lord We couldn't face it. We couldn't face the own wickedness of our hearts. Boy, we just like to whitewash our sin, don't we? And then we want a God who's not really in control. And if God's not really in control, and our sin nature is way worse than we understand, then what are we gonna be left with? Chaos. And that's what sin loves, is rebellion and chaos. And God says, no, I have an order and purpose even in the context of sin. I'm not the author of sin. I've never sinned, yet I have ordered and purposed it all, that even though creatures who, I gave them ability, to obey or disobey. And those creatures decided to obey and consequences came with it and those consequences have followed all the way along. But you know what? I'm so merciful, so gracious that I even ordered that although I would never violate their will in their sin nature, I've ordered and purposed all of their sin in such a way that I will still save a people for myself and I will never lose one of them. If God... Oh yes. Oh yes. Oh yes. Yeah, but without regeneration you don't have a change of will. But who changes your will? Amen. You don't change your own will and one day wake up and go, look what I did for myself. God regenerates that dead soul, enlivens it, enables it to believe. And the will is changed. I now desire the things of the Lord, whereas once I didn't. But it's not a complete holistic work that now I'm perfect, right? Because I'm still in battle with remaining flesh, okay? Alright, so you see the idea. Sorry, I got to move on because I really want to finish paragraph one. That's really important to me. could spend a lot of time on these things. This chapter, I hope, I have loved this chapter for 20 or so years. I love this chapter of the Confession. It is so, strangely enough, it is so comforting to the human soul. I hope I can convey that in paragraph six and seven to you all this morning. The writers go on here to say God doesn't do violence to the will of the creature, nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away. All these second causes, they have their liberty, they are still the contingency. In one sense, we could say the hurricane was caused by God. We can say that, right? But there was a lot of second causes, a lot of contingency that went on that God was in control of, yet it was working according to its own purpose. I mean, not its own purpose, its own ability in its context. All those storms got together and did all of those things and formed just like they're supposed to in the Caribbean. That's what they do. There's all the science and the nature behind it. But who's ultimately the first cause? God is. He didn't do violence to anything, even in nature, nor does He do it to the will of man. Rather, the sovereignty of God, in His decree, establishes these truths. If God didn't have an order and a purpose, how could we know there could be any second causes that would actually do anything like they're supposed to do? Think about that for a minute. There would be no scientific order if God was not sovereign. You couldn't be sure that water would do what you think it's going to do if God was not the first cause of all things and had an order to it all. It says, in which appears his wisdom in disposing all things and power and faithfulness in accomplishing his decree. Would you rather have the wisdom of God disposing all things or a little bit of the wisdom of God and a whole lot of the wisdom of man disposing all things? Have you seen how well we as humans handle all of this? How does a local municipality of a very small Georgia county somehow lose a little over a million dollars that they can't account for? I mean, a million dollars, that's a lot of money. Let me ask you, would you know if you lost a million dollars? But somehow a small Georgia county with 25,000 or so people in it has a local government that somehow loses a little over a million dollars. We can't account for that. We don't know what happened. Now either they're just really, excuse my language here, but they're just really stupid. there's some shady stuff going on or a little bit of both or there's a little naivety mixed in or maybe somebody just turned a blind eye. I don't think we want humanity and humanity's wisdom in control of disposing all things do we? So the confession teaches us that the scripture says, you know what, ultimately God is the one who in his wisdom, because the confession's already said he's most wise. In which appears his wisdom in disposing all things and power Not only does the decree have the wisdom of God behind it, which is pretty comforting if you want to know the truth, I'd much rather have God's wisdom behind all things. But it also has his power. He is all powerful. Does the scripture teach that God's all powerful? Did the confession invent something new here? That means all powerful. There is not anything that can stop God according to his will and purpose. If God has willed it and he has a purpose in it according to his will, it will what? Happen. And who's going to stop it? No one. No one. But then they add this. which appears his wisdom and disposing all things and power and faithfulness in accomplishing his decree." God is faithful to accomplish what he ordered and purposed. Now why is that important that he's faithful to do that? He's a faithful to accomplish it all, even the steps in between. Take those two things from the end of paragraph one and keep those in your brain and it will lead you into a better understanding of paragraph six and seven. Because chapter two, paragraph, the last one ends with this. Speaking of God, which doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion with God and comfortable dependence on him? And it starts next with the decree, and it tells us God is faithful in accomplishing his decree. And then paragraph six and seven are gonna give us even more comfort in the context of our salvation and the decree. It's good stuff, I'm telling you. All right, we'll close there. I'm actually gonna close on time today, maybe. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you're merciful to us in so many ways. Your kindness is far beyond what we could ever imagine. Your grace is more than anything we've ever deserved. Will you be merciful to us in our fellowship before worship and then bring us back in here for a time that we would worship in glory in you alone, giving honor and glory to your holy name and all that we do in our time of worship. It's in Christ's name we pray.