All right. I'd like to start
today by reading from Jeremiah chapter 10. We'll read verses
1 through 13, but I want to concentrate specifically on verse 12. Jeremiah
starts out here by mocking idols made by men. Jeremiah chapter
10. Starting at verse 1. Hear the
word which the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel. Thus
says the Lord, Do not learn the way of the nations, and do not
be terrified by the signs of the heavens, although the nations
are terrified by them. For the customs of the peoples
are delusion, because it is wood cut from the forest, the work
of the hands of a craftsman with a cutting tool. They decorate
it with silver and with gold, they fasten it with nails and
with hammers, so that it will not totter. Like a scarecrow
in a cucumber field are they, and they cannot speak. They must
be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them, for they
can do no harm, nor can they do any good. There is none like
you, O Lord. You are great, and great is your
name and might. Who would not fear you, O King
of the nations? Indeed, it is your due. For among
all the wise men of the nations, in all their kingdoms, there
is none like you. But they are altogether stupid
and foolish in their discipline of delusion. Their idol is wood. Beaten silver is brought from
Tarshish, and gold from Ufaz. The work of a craftsman in the
hands of a goldsmith. Violet and purple are their clothing. They are all the work of skilled
men. But the Lord is the true God.
He is the living God and the everlasting King. At His wrath
the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure His indignation. Thus you shall say to them, The
gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from
the earth and from under the heavens. This is the verse I'd
like to concentrate on. It is He who made the earth by
His power, who established the world by His wisdom, And by his
understanding, he has stretched out the heavens. When he utters
his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and
he causes the clouds to ascend from the end of the earth. He
makes lightning for the rain and brings out the wind from
his storehouses." I'd like to talk today about the foreknowledge
or knowledge of God. I entitled this, God's Powerful
Knowledge. I'd like to talk about how it's
a powerful and working knowledge that God has. Like any other
theological subject, there are a number of differing views concerning
the ideas of God's omniscience, God's knowledge, God's wisdom.
It seems simple to understand omniscience as being the infinite
knowledge of all things. Even I, as a non-Christian, I
had some idea of what omniscience was in relation to God, knowledge
of all things. But there are varying views of
this in the theological realm. When the details are discussed,
the various theological stances are separated by wide and treacherous
valleys. First, an examination of three
widely held beliefs concerning God's knowledge may be beneficial
to understand the options here before us. If viewed against
the whole spectrum of belief systems on this particular topic,
these three may offer the most breadth, going from one end of
the spectrum to the other with a stop in the middle. So these
are three. The first I'd like to discuss
is open theism. Or as I discovered recently,
they like to call it openness theology. That was new for me.
John Sanders, a modern day openness theology advocate, describes
God's omniscience this way. This is a quote. We believe that
God could have known every event of the future had God decided
to create a fully determined universe. However, in our view,
God decided to create beings with indeterministic freedom,
which implies that God chose to create a universe in which
the future is not entirely knowable even for God. One might describe
open theism as the far left side of the spectrum. Clearly they
have a very wrong idea of God in that they not only do they
deny that he has all knowledge within himself, but along with
this they also deny the eternality of God. Their God can only lack
knowledge of happenings in time if he is also subjected to the
course of time himself. If he is subjected to the ebb
and flow of time, he is clearly not eternal. Implicit and necessary
to this system of theology is the fully undetermined free will
of mankind. They claim that the will of men
is so free that God cannot even know how men will choose in any
situation." To spend time talking about this any further would
be futile, but to me it provides a view of the far left, far liberal,
far heretical side of the spectrum. Now sandwiched somewhere in the
middle is plagiarism, Arminianism, free willism. And, you know,
in the spectrum, I would call this kind of the middle as far
as God's omniscience goes. And the most notable point is
that God has chosen those whom he will save based on his foreknowledge
of their acceptance or denial of him. That's common Arminianism. Their definition of foreknowledge
is that God has looked forward in time to observe what the free
will actions of the creature will be. Here they step just
beyond open theism by at least confessing that God is able to
learn of future events. According to them, God has seen
how a particular person's heart will react to the gospel and
then has planned their salvation or damnation accordingly. Just
like open theism, this system hangs on the central doctrine
of the freedom of man's will, the non-determined choices that
men make apart from God's causation. These decisions being so free,
once again, that God can only know them by looking forward
to learn of them. One might accurately say that
God's actions in the Arminian system are conditioned upon the
actions or would-be future actions of his creation, because In their
view, God looks forward and he makes decisions on salvation
or damnation based on the actions of his creation. Here's a quote
from James Arminius, from the works of James Arminius, Volume
1. Quote, To these succeeds the fourth decree. He's talking about
a series of decrees by God. To these succeeds the fourth
decree, by which God decreed to save and damn certain particular
persons. This decree has its foundation
in the foreknowledge of God, by which he knew from all eternity
those individuals who would, through his preventing grace,
believe, and through his subsequent grace, would persevere. According
to the before-described administration, of those means which are suitable
and proper for conversion to faith, and by which foreknowledge
he likewise knew those who would not believe and persevere." So
clearly, James is teaching, Mr. Arminius here is teaching that
God looks forward in his foreknowledge to find out who he's going to
save. Of course, there can be various mixing and matching of
these basic concepts. But these two systems, openness
theology, open theism, and plagiumism, Arminianism, basically the free
will theologies, at the very least share an inept and ignorant
God. Some Armenians do not fall as
far into heresy as open theists, but they linger close enough.
Both systems logically require that God is at some point ignorant,
lacking knowledge of something because such knowledge was preconditioned
on the actions of creation. And I mean, that's a logical
end to this. If you're going to precondition
knowledge on something that your creation does, there has to be
a point at which you're ignorant of that knowledge. And so they
have an inept and ignorant God, as far as I'm concerned. The
third that I'd like to talk about, one might call high grace, superlapsarianism,
hyper-Calvinism, whatever. I don't really care what we call
it, as long as it's the biblical and right view of God's omniscience.
And I would call this the far right on the spectrum. Ultimately, what matters is the
labels, not the labels, but the scriptural witness. Now, we read
from Jeremiah, and I'd like to concentrate specifically on Jeremiah
10, 12, and I'll read that again. It is he who made the earth by
his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his
understanding he has stretched out the heavens. Now, I'll expand
our search beyond this particular piece of scripture, but I believe
that even if we didn't expand our search, that all of the truth
that we need could be found within this scripture. Jeremiah has
just finished mocking the nations, ways of building idols for themselves
to worship. Jeremiah may often be called
the broken-hearted prophet. I don't know if you all heard
that, or the crying prophet. But he pulls no punches here
in rebuking the idiocy of these idolaters. The Lord is quoted
mocking the graven images which cannot even walk and must be
carried. These idols are formed by the
imagination and hands of those who worship them. I can't imagine worshipping something
that was made by my own hands. It seems absurd to me, it seems
ridiculous, and yet it seems a common practice. Jeremiah goes
on to join the Lord in rebuking them for building and decorating
the idols. What kind of God is he who must
be fastened by nails and hammers so as not to totter? And when
I read this, I was reminded of the wonderfully funny story.
And for people who say that God has no sense of humor, I think
this is one of the great stories where I think he does, was the
house of Dagon in 1 Samuel 5, when they brought the ark, they
took the ark and they brought it into the house of Dagon and
Dagon fell on his face. They put him back up and fell
on his face again. I think his hands and his head
broke off or something. But apparently they didn't use
enough nails to keep that idol from falling down. But after
calling these people stupid and foolish, Jeremiah exalts the
Lord to his proper place as a true, living, and everlasting king,
far above such laughable and ridiculous idols. A stark contrast
is drawn. On the one hand, we have ridiculous
gods who cannot stand on their own apart from being nailed down.
And on the other hand, we have a God who has created the heavens
and the earth by his wisdom. Notice in Jeremiah 10, 12, that
three possessions, I had a hard time naming these things, three
possessions, attributes, or intangibles, and I'm talking about power,
wisdom, and understanding. And I consider, you know, these
are not touchable, they're abstract, metaphysical, whatever you want
to call them. I kind of call them possessions,
attributes, intangibles. but of God are called out in
succession. And some creative act is ascribed
to each of these. First, we learn that God has
made the earth by his power. Harkening back to the first chapter
of Genesis, we are told simply that, in the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth. Here, Jeremiah adds some detail
with a more specific statement. By God's power was the earth
formed. This may come as no surprise,
for certainly God has used his creative power to form the earth
from nothing. The surprises come, I believe, as we proceed further
into the prophet's exaltation in this verse. Because, number
two, we learn that God has not only created by his power, but
he has established the world by his wisdom. Power is something
that one might normally associate with creation. I mean, it's not
odd to say that somebody has created something by their power.
Now, on the other hand, wisdom may not be something that you
would normally associate with creation. When men think about
wisdom apart from scriptural wisdom, they are imprisoned by
the inability to think beyond worldly wisdom. Brother McDaniel
pointed out last week that there is a distinctive difference between
what the world thinks is wisdom and God's wisdom. The one leads
to nothing but futile speculations and eventually eternal destruction.
While God's wisdom is so wonderful and so mighty that it is named
as a creative power by which God has established the world. And third, lest we stop there,
Jeremiah continues on to say that by God's understanding he
has stressed out the heavens. This is the third creative intangible
that we are told about in this verse. First was power, second
wisdom, and now understanding. Just by examining a single verse
of scripture, it starts to become clear that the two other systems,
open theism and Arminianism, and anything you could throw
in the middle there, are going to be found wanting in their
systems concerning God's knowledge or lack thereof. You simply cannot
fit an open theist or an Arminian's idea of knowledge into this verse,
in my opinion. It is easy to see how wisdom
and understanding are connected closely. Wisdom and understanding.
We're talking about three, power, wisdom, and understanding. Now,
it's easy to see how wisdom and understanding are connected closely,
both being associated, even in worldly terms, with knowledge.
When we talk about wisdom and we talk about understanding,
we all realize that we're talking about knowledge, even in worldly
terms. The inclusion of power in this trifecta by Jeremiah
is most interesting to me. First, we must ask if these three
things are altogether different, or if the prophet is equivocating
them in some way. To answer this, maybe we should
ask three questions. And I'd like to just read verse
12 with me one more time together. It is he who made the earth by
his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his
understanding he has stretched out the heavens. There's three
things, power, wisdom and understanding. And then there's three things,
the earth, the world and the heavens that we're dealing with. So I think three questions are
important to ask. Number one, considering this
verse, did God make the earth? Did God make the earth with his
power? That's what the verse says, but not his wisdom or his
understanding. 2. Did God establish the world
by His wisdom, but not His power or understanding? 3. Did God
stretch out the heavens by His understanding, but not His power
or wisdom? In other words, can we exclude
any one of these when considering the others, just because they
are named separately in succession? Hopefully by asking the above
questions, we may see how it would be absurd to exclude any
one of these from the others. The conclusion must be that either
A, all of these are cooperating some way in God's creative acts,
or B, they are essentially equal and can be thought of together
as a whole. One might say that God's wisdom
and understanding are his power. That God's very mind, his very
thoughts, his very word is the power by which he operates and
causes all things. Join me in a further examination
of a number of scriptures which may go to show that these conclusions
are not far from the mark. The first one is Psalm 147.5.
You can flip there or not. Psalm 147.5. And this verse ties
together strength with understanding. Strength and understanding are
tied together. Here it is. Great is our God and abundant
in strength. His understanding is infinite. So, here we have strength and
understanding tied together by the psalmist. Secondly, Isaiah
40 verse 28. Here, Isaiah is going to talk
about how the Lord does not tire by exerting His power. And why
does He not tire from exerting His power? It's because His understanding
is infinite. Again, creative power goes together
with understanding. Here's the verse, quote, Do you
not know? Have you not heard? The everlasting
God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, does not
become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable. So we have power or not becoming
tired tied together with understanding, inscrutable understanding. Next
is wisdom speaking in the Proverbs. And wisdom speaks of having understanding
and power. This is wisdom speaking from
the first person. Counsel is mine and sound wisdom. I am understanding. Power is
mine. So, wisdom, understanding, and
power are once again tied together from the standpoint of wisdom.
The next verse is from Job. Job 26, 12. And here God's power
accomplishes tasks just as his understanding does also. Job
26, 12. He quieted the sea, the Lord,
of course, he quieted the sea with his power and by his understanding,
he shattered Rahab. So power and understanding both
accomplish things. Even Paul has his hand in making
a connection between power and knowledge when he says, for I
am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for
salvation. We could go on and on. I think
there are lots of scriptures that tie these things together.
But I'd like to concentrate on Proverbs 3, 19, and 20 for the
last verse in this little collection. Proverbs 3, 19 and 20. The Lord,
by his wisdom, founded the earth. By his understanding, he established
the heavens. And by his knowledge, the deeps
are broken up and the skies drip with dew. Now, I first found
this verse and I thought it would be a great verse to go along
with these other ones because wisdom, understanding and knowledge
are all mentioned. And they're working in creative
ways, powerful ways here in this verse. But in really looking
at it, I discovered a hidden gem in this verse when we compare
it to the verse in Jeremiah. And the gem I found was that
for Proverbs, we have this quote, by wisdom founded the earth. By wisdom founded the earth.
And the earth, that's the word used. compared to Jeremiah, where
Jeremiah says, made the earth by his power. So Solomon, the writer of Proverbs,
uses wisdom to found the earth, and Jeremiah uses power to found
the earth. Is it a mistake that by inspiration
of the Holy Spirit, these words power and wisdom have been treated
as interchangeables? Did one of these biblical writers
make a mistake when one said the earth was created by God's
power and the other said that the earth was created by God's
wisdom. I, for one, don't think so. I
think things like this are done on purpose, personally. The Holy
Spirit wrote the scriptures for a reason and he wrote it exactly
as he wanted them to be. What are the alternatives that
we may consider? The alternatives to God's powerful
knowledge, God doing things by his mind. What are the alternatives? I try to think of some alternatives,
and this is what I came up with. That God has created billions
of stars. According to the scientists,
there are billions of stars, and you look out there, there's
a lot of them. But God has created billions
of stars, one at a time, using only his hands. I mean, that's
an alternative, I guess. He has employed trillions of
angels to literally and physically manipulate all the smallest atomic
particles in creation to meet his precise plans. But God has
this wonderful plan for the earth, this wonderful plan for creation.
How is he going to go about doing it? Is he going to use his own
physical hand? Is he going to employ angels
to do it? If he doesn't use his mind, how
is he going to do it? The power of God's very mind
becomes a necessity when one considers the alternatives. If
some can so easily believe that magicians and witches, for some
reason I thought of, what is it, I Dream of Jeannie, where
she goes like this and things appear. If some can so easily
believe that magicians and witches can accomplish feats with the
hidden powers of their minds, why should it be so difficult
to believe that the very God of this universe possesses wisdom
which is not dormant and knowledge that is active and very powerful? The psalmist knew that God required
nothing outside of himself in creation when he declared in
Psalm 33 6, By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and
by the breath of his mouth all their host. God's eternal knowledge
is not founded on His creation. As the open theists, as the Arminians,
as whoever wants to say, His eternal knowledge is not founded
on His creation. Rather, His creation is founded
on His knowledge. The order of these must be made
clear. One more body of scripture I'd
like to touch on is Isaiah 46, 9 through 11. Turn there if you
want to read me three verses. 46, 9 through 11. Remember the things
long past, for I am God and there is no other. I am God and there
is no one like me. Declaring, and that's an important
word I'll touch on, 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. The context of this quote from
the book of Isaiah is very similar to that of our previous text
from Jeremiah. If you examine the context, they're
very similar. The Lord through Isaiah had just
finished mocking the worship of inept idols, just like in
Jeremiah. He mocks the idols and soundly
rebukes the heathens for comparing their pitiful idols, who cannot
even move or answer, to the majestic power of the one true God. At
the height of the rebuke is a call to remember and call to mind
the sovereign power of the Lord because there is no other like
him. He declares, I think that's a
very important word, he declares the end from the beginning. Notice
that he does not observe the end from the beginning, nor does
he learn the end from the beginning. No, he declares the end from
the beginning. Notice that he says, as part
of his declaration of things not yet done, four bold statements. God's purpose will be established. God's pleasure will be accomplished. God's spoken word will come to
pass, and God will do what he has planned. In each of these
declarative statements, the Lord makes sure his audience hears
the truth that it is he who wields the power. It is the Lord who
has created. It is the Lord who causes all
things to happen according to his plan. In all four statements,
the knowledge or understanding of what God will cause to occur
are prior to and not conditioned upon anything but God himself. Purpose is prior to its establishment. Pleasure, God's pleasure, is
prior to its accomplishment. God's word is prior to the enactment
of it. And God's plans are prior to
the doing of them. Gordon Clark, whom I respect
greatly, had this to say on the subject, and this is from Predestination,
page 39 from Gordon Clark. He says, When as yet there was
nothing and only God existed, God knew all things. Obviously,
this knowledge came out of or resided in himself. He could
not have derived it from anything else, for there was nothing else.
It was really self-knowledge. For his knowledge of the universe
was his knowledge of his own intentions, his own mind, his
own purposes and decisions." That's from Gordon Clark. Now,
I was trying to think of objections, and I've heard this before when
discussing God's omniscience and how much he really does know.
And I've heard a person bring up before, what about God not
knowing where Adam was in the garden? You know, God asked Adam,
where are you? And my answer is that the Bible
often used anthropomorphic language, which is, you know, ascribing
human actions or human form to God in reference to the doings
of God. And not only this, but God often says or does things
to elicit some specific responses from creation in time. You know,
he knew where Adam was. He was asking that question for
the benefit of us in the Bible for the benefit of Adam having
to answer the question. I think there are many reasons
why God asks that particular question and does things similar
to that that do not include the ignorance of God. This in no way discounts, this
argument in no way discounts the truth that God has planned
all things prior to their timely actions. Nor does it nullify
that he hath caused all things by his great and powerful mind.
Why do the ideas of men concerning God's omniscience and foreknowledge
differ so greatly? So why are all these ideas? I mean, why can't people just
open the Bible and examine the word? Well, I believe it is because
an honest examination of the word of revelation from God,
without that, men are left to design a god of their own imaginations,
from their own minds. All that they have to tap into
without divine revelation is their own flawed idea of what
knowledge is. So if you discount the Bible,
if you don't have the Bible, if you don't have divine revelation,
where are you going to come up with these ideas about how much
God knows God's knowledge from your own mind? And apart from
God, men can know no truth. And men certainly cannot predestine
truth by planning it in their minds. So why would they think
to attribute this to God if they can't come up with this idea
themselves? Imagine the absurdity of us to say that we are going
to do such and such on some date weeks from now without the implied
understanding that this event may not occur as we have planned.
I don't know about you, but I may plan these. I may contingency
plans. And we plan things based on the
actions of others outside of our control. We plan things based
on natural events outside of our control. And so this is from
a man's point of view. This is the this is the view
that we have. This is the idea of knowledge
that we have. It's something that we learn.
It's something that comes upon us and enters our mind and stays
there or goes. But it's not something that's
always been there. The common theme. in all human
plans is that the fulfillment of them is not within our control.
Maybe this is why the idolatrous ideas of God have such a limited
view of his knowledge. The Opantheists, for example,
make this mistake, as do the Armenians, who both must maintain
a lower view of God's eternal and powerful knowledge to fit
their free will systems. God's power is neutered to the
point that it may be conditioned on the actions of God's own creation. And this is really necessitated
by these free will systems. They have to come up with some
kind of system of theology where they can maintain a free will
and in order to logically make it work, at least logically to
them, they have to neuter God's knowledge in order to make it
work. Men obtain knowledge by learning from external sources.
I read books, I'll surf the internet, whatever. I learn knowledge by
external sources. Why wouldn't they create a God
of their imaginations who operates in the same way? While this may
seem like an impractical topic with little application to daily
life, I might point out at least two practical applications. Number
one, I think there are many, but number one, the praise of
our very powerful God. I think that's a very practical
application. And number two is the comfort of the saints. We
may exalt our God, number one, we may exalt our God above all
the other gods imagined by men. Our God does not have knowledge
which he has learned by observation. He is so massively powerful and
sovereign that in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge. It is no accident that just after rebuking the
people in both books of Jeremiah and Isaiah, that God's powerful
knowledge is proclaimed to show his power as opposed to the weakness
of the gods put up in his place. Their substance can do nothing
while God's mind creates worlds and causes all things. I don't
know about you, but if I'm going to rebuke somebody, I want to
follow up my rebuke with the best argument that I have. You
know, I want to make sure that They know why I'm rebuking them
and then some supporting evidence to go along with the rebuke.
And in both the cases of Jeremiah and Isaiah that we pointed out,
they follow up the rebuke with an exaltation of God's powerful
knowledge. And so this must take a high
place in, at least in scripture, of identifying and exalting God's
knowledge. And number two, for the practical
applications, we may remember that under duress, when we are
under duress, that God has purposed all things. A Christian will
find comfort in this, especially when the going gets rough. I
can hardly think of better assurance and peace in life than knowing
that God has planned all things, and that his very understanding
of his own plan is sufficient cause for it to take place exactly
as purposed. God even planned to be pleased
by the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord's death
was no accident, no contingency plan. His death was known from
the foundation of the world, and because it was known, it
was planned, and we can be assured that it did happen such that
God was, is, and will forever be pleased by the Lord's work
in our stead. In closing, please think about
how God can be infinitely powerful, If he is regulated by external
forces, even external means of obtaining knowledge, all of God's
knowledge and truth must be found within himself from all eternity. Or we have a God who was at some
point ignorant of something. How can God operate the way he
does, shaping all things, whether natural or spiritual, without
having purposeful, powerful, working knowledge? Thank you
all for listening. Father Schlosser, if you'd like
to dismiss us today. I have a father, a cousin, and
a brother. We've done many things, including
many blessings. Thank you for this day of worship,
fellowship, and humility. Father, thank you for the son
Jesus Christ, his firstborn, and our salvation. Father, by
Thy grace, we become more and more aware of our limitations
and weaknesses. Forgive us for being short-eyed
with our thoughts. We pray for the classroom, parish, and church.
We pray for those of us who are not on trial. Be with them, for
we ask these things of You, Lord, in Christ.