All right, so we have been going through the Westminster Confession of Faith. I think we did nine lessons in chapter two, and we did a few lessons before that, a couple of beginning lessons, and then one or two on chapter one. And now finally, we have come to chapter three. So chapter three of the Westminster Confession of Faith is entitled, Of God's Eternal Decree. And we're just going to be looking at paragraph one tonight. There are, let's see, eight paragraphs to chapter three. They won't all get their own night, but we are starting just with paragraph one. So I'll read for us. God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass. Yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty of contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. So the doctrine laid out here in the beginning of chapter three of the Westminster Confession of Faith is perhaps, I think, one of the most hated doctrines by the natural man. One of the most debated doctrines among believers and unbelievers, and one of the most amazing and comforting doctrines in all of God's word. And the doctrine in its most basic formulation, if we were to boil it down even further from this chapter three, paragraph one, and put it in a little modern words, it's basically God is in complete control of everything that happens. Everything that happens, God has ordained it to happen. And this bothers people, and it scares people. In our flesh, we naturally want to be in control. We want to be the boss. We don't want someone else to be in charge of our lives, making decisions for us and allegedly depriving us of our freedom to make up our own minds. But the Westminster divines actually end this chapter in paragraph eight by saying that this doctrine of God's eternal decree serves not as an irritation to us, but serves as an abundant consolation to all who sincerely obey the gospel. That's what they say. This is an abundant consolation, abundant comfort or peace to us who sincerely obey the gospel. Should not terrify God's children, it should give us comfort. And when we get to that last paragraph, we'll talk more about why this should give us great comfort. And I think that'll be a really good lesson for us to dig into. But for right now, I just want us to dial in on these beginning phrases and statements laid out in paragraph one. Like I said, this is a doctrine that's hotly debated. and often misunderstood. So when we come to a teaching like this, or really any teaching, we should ask like we talked about this past Lord's Day, what does the scripture say? We need to be Berean. Remember the Bereans were our example. The Bereans eagerly and humbly received the teaching of the apostles. So we should also eagerly and humbly receive the teaching of our fathers in the faith. But that doesn't mean we receive it blindly. and we put our minds on the shelf. God wants us to love him with our minds. And he also is jealous that his truth be preserved. He doesn't want us to be carried away by every wind and wave of doctrine. So we should eagerly receive the teaching that we have here before us, but also examine the scriptures to ensure that everything the divines are telling us is true, because they were not infallible men. and there are even small and minor points of the confession of faith that i would probably say i would say it a little differently so they're not not every single word is god's word in here but it's very close and we should receive this with eagerness uh we never want to have our confession as something that we always have to qualify. Oh, what confession of faith does your church subscribe to? Well, we subscribe to the Westminster, but you know, we don't actually believe everything in it. We don't want to say that. We want to be able to say, yes, we affirm the Westminster confession of faith, but we don't ever want that to be a substitute for scripture. It's our subordinate standard. Scripture is our number one standard. So, are the divines telling us the truth here in paragraph one of chapter three? What do they give to show that they are giving us a biblical doctrine, not just something they've made up out of their own heads? Well, the first four proof texts they cite are Ephesians 1.1, Romans 11.33, Hebrews 6, 17, and Romans 9, verses 15 and 18. And we'll just look at each of those briefly and see what God's word has to tell us about this wonderful and beautiful doctrine. And they could have put many more proof texts here to establish this. There are certain doctrines in the Westminster Confession of Faith and in just theology in general, that there are not an abundant amount of proof texts for. There are certain doctrines that either come through synthesizing only that we can't get it from one isolated text. And there are certain doctrines that really, as far as our limited sin-marred minds and brains can see, don't even pop up in some of the books of the Bible. There might only be, you know, a few books of the Bible where we see hints at certain doctrines. But this doctrine of God's absolute sovereignty and his intimate and powerful execution of his will is everywhere. I mean, it is absolutely everywhere. All 66 books of the Bible, we can see this either screamed loudly or hinted at more softly. So let's start by looking at these proof texts here. Ephesians 1.11, speaking of Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul says this. He says, and this is in the middle of one really long run on sentence that Paul is doing, just enumerating the way that God has lovingly worked out his purposes for his children. But he says in Ephesians 1.11, in whom we also have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. So in Christ, we have obtained an inheritance. We have been predestined and we've been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to his own will. It's a lot of different ways of Paul saying, God is in charge and he has secured our salvation. And so he's planned it and he's gonna execute it. And until it's totally executed, Paul will say in a couple of verses, he's even given us guarantees along the way that he's gonna execute this promise. So that's pretty clear. God works all things, all things. according to the counsel of his own will, not according to the counsel of other people's wills. When we try to make a plan and try to execute a plan, we are actually told by scripture, you need to consult other people too. Don't do this in just the counsel of your own mind alone. But God doesn't have to consult anyone else. He is most free. God's not influenced by anyone else. He's not led into certain decisions by anyone else. And so he freely ordained everything that has come to pass or will come to pass. And if you have a question, just throw your hand up and ask if something comes up. And we'll have questions at the end, of course. The next verse that the divine cite to prove this doctrine of God's sovereignty in executing his will is Romans 11, 33. Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. So if you remember back to, all those lessons we had on chapter two of God and the Holy Trinity, we learned that God is most wise, that his knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent of the creature. So obviously whatever God ordains, which is everything, would be ordered by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will. And we could add here God's statement through the prophet Isaiah that as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. We don't know all the reasons why God ordained some things and not others. And sometimes we wonder, I think all of us, all mature Christians at some point wonder, I wonder why God chose this providence for me, or why these people are suffering so much, or sometimes why are these people blessed so much? We wonder. Why was I chosen to be saved? We have these questions. We don't always know the answers. In fact, I think most of the time, most of the time, we do not know the reasons why he ordains what he ordains. We know the general reasons for his own glory and the good of his people, but we don't know why he made what decisions he did. That doesn't mean he doesn't have reasons. Some people have wrongly interpreted the fact, and I think all of us can slip into this if we're not careful, wrongly interpreted the fact that God makes decrees without respect to anything. And he just, he makes them arbitrary. He has no reasons for doing what he does. That's how some people have interpreted the doctrine of God's sovereignty. But God has reasons. He has completely sufficient reasons. He has perfect reasons. He has plentiful reasons for doing everything that he does. And sometimes he may choose to share those reasons with his creatures. But I think mostly he just keeps them to himself. His ways are past finding out. His judgments are unsearchable. Next week, God willing, we'll dial more specifically into the doctrine of unconditional election to salvation. God has predestinated some to salvation and he has foreordained others to everlasting wrath or to reprobation or to eternal death. But the doctrine of unconditional election unto life, that God has freely chosen to save people apart from anything within them, that's a precious doctrine in scripture. It's a doctrine that our Reformed forefathers have fought and jealously guarded against false interpretation. They fought for the purity of this doctrine. And I don't want to spoil all the fun for next week. But when we think about a doctrine like that, and we think about the words that are usually used by Calvinists, unconditional election, God choosing to save his people, irrespective of anything lovable or special about us, and apart from any foreseen good work, that we would perform or any foreseen faith that we would have, we can slip into this thinking too. Oh, it's unconditional. Therefore, his election must be totally arbitrary. It must be for no reason at all. That's not true. Unconditional election teaches us that God has elected us for very, very good reasons. but they were all reasons within himself and according to his own inscrutable will. When the divines and when Paul in Ephesians 1 and other places says that God decrees things according to the counsel of his own will, that means he consults the most perfect counsel. will that could ever be consulted. He's the smartest, most knowledgeable, most wise, most powerful being that could ever exist. He doesn't just make these decisions arbitrarily. He consults himself and makes them with perfect wisdom and executes them perfectly. So we could say with Paul, oh, the depth of the rich is both of the wisdom and knowledge of God in his eternal decree. Our next proof text is Hebrews 6.17. Here we read, wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath. So who remembers from our discussion of the attributes of God what immutability means? God does not change. To be immutable means unchangeable. Not just changeless. Something could be changeless, meaning it doesn't undergo any change, but it's even more powerful than that. It means unable to be changed. God cannot change. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. And if God cannot change, And if he knows the end from the beginning, and if he needs no counselor to advise him but determines everything perfectly, then that tells us that his decrees are unchangeable and immutable as well. If God were to change his decision about something, then that would mean that his decision must have been deficient the first time. He must have made a mistake. Maybe he lacked some knowledge or he didn't like what he decided at first, or maybe he discovered a better way. Or maybe we could say, okay, well, maybe his decision wasn't deficient at first, But if he still changed it and chose to go another way, then that would mean he was failing to keep his word, or he did something less than best the first time. No matter how we figure it, if God were to change his mind and his decrees, then that would mean he would not be a perfectly holy and just being. God does not change his mind. Scripture says that abundantly clearly. We change our minds all the time. Sometimes in almost the same breath we make one decision, we already start to change our minds and we will revert it back. Could be something super serious or it could be something minor. Who's ever been in a restaurant and the waitress says, what do you want to drink? You say, I want tea, you know, and then keeps going around the table and someone wants Coke and you think, oh goodness. Coke sounds really good. You say, actually, can I change that to a Coke? We've all done something like that. We change our minds all the time. God doesn't ever change his mind. Never changes his mind about anything because he knows everything perfectly. And he always, always, always does the right thing. So God doesn't change. And we understand, I think we established really well in chapter two, that God does not change in his being. He's never gonna change into someone else or be someone else or have a different character, but he doesn't change in his decisions and his decrees either. God's word says that God is not a man that he should lie nor a son of man that he should repent. Hath he said and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken and shall he not make it good? We don't even have an answer here because it's a rhetorical question. Of course, God didn't say something and not do it. Of course, God didn't promise something or speak something and not make it good. Now there are times in scripture where it seems to us like God changes his mind or his plans. And we went through that a good bit also. Like God had Jonah preach to Nineveh a specific message, in 40 days you will be destroyed. They were never destroyed. Did God change his mind? Of course he not. That was the means that he used to get them to repent. Or we also see that God regretted, for instance, that he made Saul king. But these and other instances, they're not examples of God actually changing himself or his decrees. They're examples of a few different things. One is of God using accommodation. That's God speaking in a way that we can understand. He's lowering him. He's coming down to our level. Remember when all the people of the earth gathered together in the plain of Shinar and they built the tower of Babel to ascend up to heaven and God had to come down to them, even though they built a tower up to heaven, he had to come down to their level. And then that time he didn't come down to clarify things. He came down to confuse things. But in Christ, God has come down and he clarifies things for us. He reveals mysteries to us. And sometimes throughout the Bible, we do see God coming down and revealing, but he does it in a way that's like talking to a little child. John Calvin says that God kind of does like baby talk to us sometimes. He uses accommodation. He speaks in a way that he made us to understand. So it might say God regretted. It doesn't mean he would do his decision differently. He wouldn't not make Saul king. It just, it was grieving to God's heart that Saul had made some of the wicked decisions he had made. But if God were to go back and do it again, he would do the same thing again. Because he's perfect and he always makes the right decisions. God's plan from all eternity was to make man. It was to send the flood, even though he regretted that he made man. It was to make Saul king. It was to save Nineveh. He was never going to destroy Nineveh because he had ordained their repentance from eternity past. It was to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, regardless of the conversation he had with Abraham. All these things and all these other instances where it seems like perhaps God is changing, that's only an appearance to us. And that's not a cop-out, but one of the most basic rules of Bible interpretation. If you ever get to a confusing passage or a passage that seems hard to understand, you always interpret the difficult passages with the easier passages. And the passages that... unique isolated incidents that come up with a huge swath of things that happen all the time. Use the easy things that happen all the time that we can understand to interpret the difficult one-off scenarios that we're like, oh, what do we do with this passage? You use the Bible to interpret the Bible. There's no contradiction there. So one of the easier doctrines to understand, believe it or not, is God does not change either himself or his purposes or his decrees. And then we can apply that truth to all these situations. And the last proof text that the divine cite for this first statement in paragraph one of chapter three is Romans 9, 15, and 18. I'm just gonna read verse 15 and then verse 18, really just restates itself here. Paul says, for he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will, he hardeneth. It's not anything within the creature that makes God merciful to us. It is all completely of God's independent, free, and sovereign will. If God only had mercy on those people that deserved mercy, who do you think would receive it? No one would receive it, zero people, no one. So this doctrine of God's sovereignty should be a cause of our rejoicing. I wanna go on from that first kind of phrase that he ordains whatsoever comes to pass and look at what's next for us. I'm just gonna read the paragraph again, because it's short and it's helpful. God, from all eternity, did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, ordain whatsoever comes to pass. Yet so, as 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. A lot of words. So first, God ordains everything. But second, even though God ordains everything and we can look around and realize out in the world out there and in our own hearts, a lot of sin is still going on. Nevertheless, God is not the author of sin. And how do we get that? God ordains everything, but he's not the author of sin. There's some important things going on that we have to reckon with. First, God has revealed very clearly in his word that he hates sin, that he cannot sin, that he will not sin, that sin cannot even be in his presence because he is so perfectly holy. He's told us in his law, in fact, what certain sins are, and he will not break his own law. God will never ever break His own law because He will never violate His own holiness. And His law, all of God's law, is a revelation of who He is, of His character, of His holiness, and a reflection to us of what God is like. And so to break His law would be to go against His nature as God. It's impossible for God to do. There's a lot of impossible things for God to do, even though He's all-powerful. And He won't break His law, so He won't sin. But God has ordained that sinners would freely and without compulsion commit sins in order to show his glory and grace all the more. If a man commits a sin, every single sin that's committed, there's only a couple, two directions this can go. If a man commits a sin, God will either forgive him, resulting in the praise to God's glorious grace, or God will punish him, resulting in praise to God for his glorious justice. all of it to God's glory and all of it to the good of God's chosen people. God will use the sins freely committed by sinful men to turn not only for his own glory, but for the good of the world, in fact. Remember how one classic example of this is how Joseph's brothers treated him so shamefully. They considered killing him, remember, because he was the favorite one and he had a special cloak and they didn't like him. Ultimately, they decided to sell him as a slave to the Ishmaelite traders. And they did this out of the evil within their own hearts. They hated him. But what does Joseph say many years later to these same brothers? Does anyone wanna share? God meant it for good. Yes. What else does he say? He says, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. You sinned. The sin came from you. You did this wicked thing, but God also planned this. And guess what? God's plan was a good plan because his plan was to save his people. Through your wicked act, God planned something good. It's amazing. It's a perfect example there of what we're talking about. The greatest example though, what do you think is the greatest example of God using wickedness for good in the whole world? That's right, that's right. Jesus's death for us, perfect example. God uses sinful men to accomplish his perfect, gracious, loving, merciful purposes in Christ. At Pentecost, Peter says this, men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did through him in your midst. As you yourselves know, him being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands. and have crucified and put to death. So God planned and determined absolutely, according to the counsel of his will, the death of Jesus, but it was done by lawless men and God was not the author of sin. Judas likewise, it was determined beforehand that Judas should betray Christ and hand him over to the authorities. But who was it that entered into Judas that filled Judas's heart to commit the sin? Was it God the Holy Spirit? No, it was Satan. Jesus said that Satan had entered Judas to commit this sin and Judas and Satan will be responsible for that on the final day. God did not force Judas to sin, the guilt lies with the sinner. God does not cause immediately and directly as the author of sin, he does not cause his creation to sin. Yet again, he does ordain that the free actions of sinners, the free wicked actions of sinners would work toward good. You don't have to make a sinner sin. If anyone's not convinced of this, just, you know, go leave a wallet out on the pavement or have children. I mean, you can do so many things. You don't have to make a sinner sin. You don't have to send your children to sin camp so they learn how to sin. It is just within our nature we are going to sin. God isn't in heaven designing out specific wicked acts for the reprobate to commit in wickedness that they otherwise wouldn't commit. He's not adding on to their evil. No, he's actually restraining a lot of their evil. They would be way worse. We would all be way worse were it not for the grace of God. We are free to act according to our nature. But if our nature is evil, we can only bring forth evil actions. Like Jesus says, can a fig tree produce thorns? Or a thorn bush produce figs? Obviously the answer is no, no. Fig tree can only produce figs. Thorn bush can only produce thorns. We can only act according to our nature. As one of my old pastors used to say, whatever's in the well is what's coming up in the bucket. If you've got a well of fresh water, you're gonna pull up fresh water. If you've got a well of contaminated water, you can't pull fresh water out of that well. It's not possible. So he's not making these contaminated wells contaminated when the water gets drawn up. They're drawing up this wicked water from their own hearts. We sin because we want to sin, because it's our nature to sin. We sin, we fall to temptation, we obey the leading of Satan because we love the world and we have no righteousness on our own apart from Christ to resist these influences. On the other hand though, if we do things righteously, that's not. from within our own power. It's because God, Paul specifically tells us in Ephesians 2, has planned good works for us from all eternity that we should walk in them. We are his workmanship. It's because he has changed our heart and given us the gift of his holiness and filled us with his spirit. So if we do good, we owe it all to him. We're supposed to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, amen. But why and how can we do that? Because it's God who works within us to will and to do according to his good pleasure. So if we do something good, all praise to God, but if we sin, we can't blame him for that. We have to only blame ourselves. Charles Spurgeon said, and I think many people have said this since, salvation's all of grace, damnation's all of sin. Salvation's all of Christ, damnation is all of man. Of course, God damns us, but not arbitrarily because of our sin. So can we understand comprehensively how God's sovereignty and man's responsibility work together or how God ordains whatsoever yet comes to pass, yet he is not the author of sin. Can we understand that comprehensively? No, we cannot. We cannot systematize everything perfectly for our very limited and finite and sin infected minds to understand. But just like the doctrine of the Trinity, this doctrine of God's eternal decree is not against reason. It's just above our own ability to reason. Not against reason, it's just above human reason. John Gerstner, who was R.C. Sproul's teacher, had a massive influence on R.C. Sproul becoming the man that he was. He said that the so-called problem, so-called problem, of God's sovereignty and holiness alongside man's responsibility and sinfulness is an optical illusion. When you look at an optical illusion, it looks like something that it's not. When we look in our flesh at God's sovereignty and man's responsibility here together, it looks impossible. It's an optical illusion, it's not. It works in perfect harmony with each other. We just can't see the whole picture right now. I hope, I mean, we will see the whole picture in glory, maybe just piece by piece forever and ever and ever, or maybe all at once God will reveal to us, ah, this is how this happened and you weren't the author of sin, but you accomplished your wonderful purposes. It's just an optical illusion though. It's not a real problem. It's a mystery, sovereignty and human responsibility, but not a problem, not a contradiction. It doesn't mean it's not true. It's not something we should buck against. We can't explain or understand a lot of things that we nevertheless accept as true without any problem whatsoever. I mean, we could just name a million things that either no one understands or we specifically ourselves don't understand. We just accept things to be true. And when we run into something like this, that's the attitude we should have. Not blind faith, remember, but humbly and eagerly receiving the teaching, examining the scriptures to determine if it's true. When we get into a confusing problem, two things to do. One, study it further. Just because we know we'll never have comprehensive knowledge of this doesn't mean we should just put it on the shelf and forget about it and not study it. No, actually the opposite. We should keep striving. Like, probably not a great example, but I think about that poem from Alfred Lord Tennyson. He says, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Don't ever stop looking for God, because we're never gonna understand the Trinity 100%, but maybe we can go from 5% to 6%. And what a wonderful, glorious percent that might be that we can unlock if we delve deeper into his scriptures. That's number one. Keep studying when you get to a doctrine that seems impossible. And then number two, study, yes, but also sit back and wonder. Doctrines like God's perfect sovereignty to plan and execute everything that happens for our good, for his glory, and remaining unstained from sin is something that should cause us to marvel and wonder and worship him. Every little mote of dust that dances in the sun. When you're standing next to a sun-filled window in a room in like a library or something, you see all that dust. Every single little atom of dust dances according to his will and plan. There are no, as R.C. Sproul says, maverick molecules that go off and do their own thing. Nothing. They're all like that song we sing. The moon and stars obey. Everything obeys. Everything does what it was sent to do. We don't obey the moral, prescribed will, but everything follows the decreed will of God. Every little mote of dust, every single molecule even, of every element that we don't even know exists. On every planet 90 billion light years away, which I looked up, the known observable universe even goes farther than that. I don't even know how to understand how to, Conceptual is that in my brain, every single thing on all those places, God ordains all of it. Jesus says that all the heads, all the hairs on our head are numbered and not one of them falls to the ground without the will of our heavenly father. Yet he's truly not complicit in the sin of his creatures either. The divines also say here that not only is God not the author of sin, but that violence is not offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. These statements are related closely to God not being the author of sin. Sinners, as we have already talked about, sin freely, but also we see here that the liberty or contingency of second causes is not taken away, but rather established. We don't normally speak in words like that. We don't walk around talking about second causes and contingency. But does anyone know what a second cause is? If you don't, that's okay. A second cause is like an intermediate step to something, an intermediary cause, a cause that also has a cause. It's not the ultimate cause of all things, but it's a cause that has a cause, for example, Proverbs 16, 33 says, the lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord. So when a man would cast lots, which don't read into the analogy too far, because that's not part of what we do today in the church, but it's similar in a way, the fiscal action would be similar to like throwing dice today or tossing a coin up in the air today. When a man throws dice, It's the man who throws the dice. God doesn't throw the dice. Now God's the ultimate cause of all things. God's determined exactly how the dice would land. He's determined what would show right there and the results that would come because of how these dice land. But the man throws the dice, the die itself falls one way or another because of how the man threw it and because of the wind in the room and because of the surface it lands on. Is it smooth? Is it bumpy? But ultimately God planned and ordained exactly how that would happen. This doesn't mean, though, the divines say that the man acted as a robot, that he didn't have freedom, or that the dice themselves didn't have a role. The construction of those dice had a role in how they would land. They, in fact, the man and the dice and the table, everything had an essential role. They were real causes, but they were secondary causes. Their role was established by God, not made void. established, not made void. The second cause was necessary. The man was necessary to have the dice thrown. Now, God could have ordained it differently, but he ordained that the man would throw the dice that was necessary. Why? Because God has not only ordained the end of a matter, but he's ordained the means to. God doesn't just sit in heaven and say, this is how it's all gonna fall out. and then it's all done. No, he ordains thousands upon thousands of years and billions upon billions of people and trillions perhaps of circumstances and all these other things as means to how to accomplish his perfect, holy, and sovereign will. You got to church tonight by driving in a car or riding in a car. You caused yourself to get here. God didn't zap you from one place to another. He could do that. But he didn't do that. Those were real free actions you committed. You chose to get in the car, you chose to come. You weren't a robot. But of course you were not the ultimate cause or the root of all things. You didn't build your car. You didn't give yourself life. You didn't ordain where you would live. You were not the ultimate cause of anything, but you were a second cause. So God ordains the means too. We've talked about this a good bit in our sermons lately regarding salvation. And we'll get into this more in the next week or two. God, of course, ordains. This is a little taste test for the next week. God ordains who will be saved. There's a fixed number. But this fixed number of people won't be saved without faith. And they can't have faith, God's word tells us, without hearing the word of God. And they can't hear the word of God, God tells us, without someone preaching. God ordains the means. And these means have real liberty and power. The preacher must obey the call to go preach. He must say, here I am, Lord, send me. He must study to show himself approved to God. That's an action he has to commit freely, he has to study. God doesn't pour the scripture knowledge directly into his mind and heart, usually. He could, but that's not how he ordinarily operates. The preacher must travel to the place where he will minister at. How beautiful are the feet of those who bring the glad tidings on the mountains. We see in Isaiah and in Romans 10, who bring glad tidings of good things. He must open his mouth and declare the mystery of the gospel. The preacher does these things freely, of course, but he never does them independently of God's sovereign plan. God is the ultimate cause of everything that comes to pass. God ordains everything in your life, but you have a very important role in these plans and decrees. He's chosen not to accomplish many of his purposes without the use of means. God has chosen weak vessels like us to execute his perfect divine decrees. Yeah, he's never the author of our sins. I think that's a good place for us to stop for tonight. What questions do we have about that fire hydrant lesson that we just received about God's eternal decree? And it's okay if no one has a question, but please don't hesitate if you have a thought or a question. I'll just say it's one of my favorite parts of the entire confession. Yeah, isn't it? It's exciting. So many things in life and in theology trace back to this passage, this doctrine. Absolutely right. Yeah, I'm excited to get to the salvation and why it's a comfort and things like that. Yes, that's a good question. Well, He created us in His image. And we don't know exactly what all it means to be created in God's image. There's some mystery there. But I think one of the things is we have a free agency to do as we please, according to our nature. And Adam did not have an imperishable nature. He was not God, but he had a totally uncorrupted, not incorruptible, but a totally uncorrupted nature. And God put him in the garden and specifically gave him options of things to do. And Adam freely chose to sin. God did not come into Adam and make him sin like, you know, Satan comes into Judas and makes him sin or other examples. And so Adam freely sinned. God did not create us as sinners. In fact, It's possible, though not entirely clear, so you don't want to speculate too much, that if Adam had never sinned, he would have exited this, what our reformers called, period of probation in the garden, and essentially been translated, just like Enoch was, and just like the last generation will be, into an eternal state, and not always forever living in the state of possibly sinning. Now, that's somewhat speculative, but God didn't create us as sinners, is the point. He created us as human beings made in his image. He didn't create us as sinners. We fell into sin freely. And so now, just like I said, we have to obey our nature. We can't not sin. And so there's a bunch of people that are all sinning and God has still shown us grace in that not only has he saved a bunch of us, he's gathered us out of this mass of sinners, but he's also curbed the sinfulness even of the reprobate. He's made them not as terrible as they could be on their own. So God is the author of a very good creation, remember, He created it, it was good. He created it, it was good. And lo, he created man and woman, and he looked at it, all his creation he had made, and it was very good. It was very good. We disobeyed and messed it up. And then he is restrained, restrained, restrained, and actually God's word says that the final enemy to be defeated is death. Right now, he's defeating sin and death by Christ's conquering of the nations, and eventually there will be no more sin. Now, that might have skirted your question, so feel free to push back or ask a follow-up. But the key, I think, for us to know is he didn't create us as sinners. We freely chose sin, and now he's even redeeming us out of our sinfulness that we plunged ourself into. Can I say one thing about that? Please, yeah. That end of the passage, it talks about that the liberty of the creatures is not in any way infringed upon. And I think it's helpful to meditate on and think about that God, it's mysterious and wonderful. It's miraculous to us. We can't grasp it, but that he does create man, men, that we make real free choices. We really choose, we really do. James kept saying according to his nature, right? The sinner isn't coerced to sin. The sinner chooses a real free choice to sin, right? And so God is not the author of his sin. He's the author of creating that creature, He created that creature, but he's not the one who is choosing to sin. And he's not forcing the man to sin. The man is choosing in his own free will to sin, and he's acting according to his nature. That's up to me. I'm just at least that little part of it in response to your question. The miracle is that God can create this amazing free world where we make all these free choices. I'm going to raise my arm. I'm going to put it down. And we can do these things. And he's created this incredible reality that we're all fashioned, that we all live in. And yet he is over and above it and has ordained all of it according to his purpose and for his own glory. But it's the man. 100% the man who chooses to sin, right? It's not 99% man and 1% God adjusting him just a little bit. It's the man making a real free choice to sin according to his nature. God fashioned the creature. The creature is capable of sinning. And he does sin. But that doesn't make God the author of sin. It makes him the author of creating that creature. But that creature is a real creature with a real free ability to make decisions and choose. And he does so according to his nature. That's good. That's helpful. This may be more of a question for you directly, but define this one more time, and then I'll ask the question. OK. Oh, you're fine. I hope I can define it. Define second causes again. Yeah, a second cause is not an ultimate cause. So like, you know, if I go hunting and I kill a deer, the gun was a second cause, but the gun can't be culpable. This is the problem with like gun laws, you know. Well, the gun didn't shoot anyone. Yeah, but if I didn't have the gun, I couldn't have done it. And I'm a second cause because God has ordained this from the beginning. And the bullet's a second cause. So a second cause is a cause that has a cause. So the question is, what are your thoughts on the idea of divine immobility? That everything ultimately is a second cause in itself except God. God is the first cause of everything. I would say generally I would agree with that, that there is nothing that is uncaused except for God. Yes, yes. So I would agree with that. I'm not super familiar with that term. But I think as you've stated it, it makes sense. John, what would you say? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Our will is bound to our nature, but Yes, we're not robots or puppets. I mean, God is super clear that we have absolute responsibility for everything we do and that we have, it's not actually a great one-to-one analogy, so don't press it too far, but one way that might help you kind of unpack the general idea is every single word of scripture is God's words, every single word, but we can see that Paul writes one way, that Luke writes one way, that David writes one way and that they're their experiences and their thoughts and it's a real lived experience for them and the way they choose words and things. God didn't dictate the words like they were a typewriter, but he still inspired every single word. Not a perfect analogy. You dig too far into that, it can kind of get messed up because our lives aren't like scripture in the same way. But you see how that works? That there's this divine sovereignty and this human agency, and they work together perfectly. I'm not brave enough to do it, but I was listening to John Gerstner on this. I've listened to him a couple times on this topic. But he said one time when he was teaching a class, he took the chalk and went up to the chalkboard. He said, this is what we're gonna do for the whole class. You're gonna tell me why God's sovereignty and man's responsibility can't work together. And I'll put every reason up on the chalkboard. And the story he tells is he never got a reason to put up there. Because by the time someone would say something, someone else would say why that was wrong. Or someone would pull out a scripture as to why that was wrong. And so he never, never read anything on the chalkboard, because it's an optical illusion, so. Anything else? Other questions? One fun thing we'll get to next week, hopefully, is the difference between predestination and foreordination. That's gonna be a fun one, just whet your appetite. The liberty and the responsibility go together. God wouldn't judge men for their sins if they weren't responsible and free to make a choice. Man has liberty, real liberty. He's created liberty. He's a creature, but he has real liberty. And therefore, on that basis, he is responsible and subject to judgment. And that's kind of an anchor in this whole discussion. Absolutely. I would, and I'm sure you'd agree, but In case anyone, to be clear, we do have liberty, but that doesn't mean we have ability to do right things on our own. We have liberty to make our choices, but we don't have an ability to be righteous because we sacrifice that in the garden. In Adam's fall, we send all. Romans five, we send an Adam. We gave that right away to have ability to do good things. And even though that ability to do good was in Adam, in himself, it was still from God, because he was created in God's image. It wasn't independent of God. We can never have righteousness independent of God. We just have to have it, alien righteousness, extra nos, is what theologians say, outside of ourselves. We have to have the righteousness. Now, once we receive the righteousness, it does come within us. It's a real reality. But yeah, we can't choose to do good, even though we can choose to do. We just choose to sin. That's what we keep choosing over and over. Even the good things that unbelievers do have no eternal merit because there's something rotten at the core, even though they help little old ladies across the street or whatever it is.