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God is sovereign, omniscient and omnipotent

{# The tooltip goes through the catalogs so the separator can follow the language - CJK wants a full-width colon and no space, not ": ". #} Knowing God - Part 2

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Speaker

Rev. Daniel Avitan

Date
July 11, 2021
Time
10:00
Series
Knowing God
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Passage

Romans 11:33-36
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Transcription

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Good morning. A quick word of prayer, and then we'll get into the text. Lord, bless us as we open your word, as we meditate and dwell on your attributes, on your very essence.

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Lord, we ask that you will open our eyes to your truth. Help us to read your word in a more profound way with this truth in our hearts.

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And Lord, help us to just focus this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. It's really good to see you guys. It feels a bit more full than normal. It's very good.

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So, like George mentioned, we're in this summer series. This is week two on the attributes of God. And, you know, I'll be honest with you. It's been...

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Normally, like George mentioned, we preach through books of the Bible, and it's not like I'm flippant when I prepare for a sermon. But looking at the attributes of God has been a bit of a... It's been a bit of a tough time because I am wanting to communicate the truth of God.

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The creator of heaven and earth, the very one that spoke everything into existence. And I don't want to get it wrong.

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We come before the living God and his word, and we realize that he deserves all of the divine majesty and glory. And we come before God, of course, through Jesus, knowing him and boldly coming before the throne of grace, calling God Father.

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But he is also God. He is also a king. He is also the Lord. And that's what we're going to be looking at. George talked about God's sovereignty, but another way of understanding it is the lordship of God.

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I wouldn't waltz my way into Windsor Castle and say, you know, what up, Liz? There is this aspect where we ought to come with reverence before the living God, right?

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So that's what we're going to be taking a look at this morning. Just a bit of a story that kind of helps me understand it. So all of these attributes are so interconnected.

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We can't say of God that he is all-powerful, but say that somehow he doesn't know everything. Or that he is everywhere, but, you know, he's actually, he's not in control of all of history.

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All of these attributes are connected. To take one away is to say that God is no longer God. So here's a story. In high school, I played basketball through high school, and we had this.

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So when you play team sports, or if you've ever played, like, varsity sports in high school, you have, like, the core guys that you play with. And then there's always a couple guys that show up for one season.

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They want to get in shape. They ride the pine. They're kind of like guys you beat up in practice and never, ever play. One of those guys was this guy that I grew up with.

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I don't, I haven't talked with him since. I don't know if he would watch this, so I'll use his real name. His name was Tommy. And after a practice, we decided we were going to go to an all-you-can-eat buffet because that's what we do when we're 16 and we have allowance or extra money.

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So I ride with Tommy, and I get in his car, and he doesn't have side mirrors in his car. And he doesn't have a rearview mirror. And in fact, the seat that I'm sitting on is super wiggly.

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The seatbelt, for sure, I mean, I put it on, but I'm almost convinced it didn't work. This car rattled. There was missing knobs all over the front dash.

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And I was scared. Tommy also didn't drive the speed limit. Tommy also had a number of tickets. He was a nice guy, very reckless guy.

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Anyways, I was very nervous getting in his car. But his car, although missing a bunch of parts, was still a car. It didn't cease to be a car because it was missing its side mirrors and rearview mirror, all these different knobs.

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I mean, I'm almost, I'd be surprised if the lights worked at night. I was glad we were driving in the day. But it was still a car. It was still a complete car. We're going to be looking at the sovereignty of God.

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And we're going to be looking at three things. We're going to be looking at God's omniscience. That is his complete and perfect knowledge of all things. His omnipotence.

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That's a way of just saying that God is completely powerful. That he is in control of all things. Unlimited power and influence. And also, finally, very connected to these two is his omnipresence.

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That is God being everywhere. And unlike Tommy's car, you take one of these pieces away and God ceases to be God. He's just not God.

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You can't have God without omnipresence or omnipotence or omniscience. So it's really important that we take a look at all three of these attributes.

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And there are more. We have a whole summer series on them. But we're just looking at these three. And how we look at them as individually, individual attributes, but never forgetting that they're interconnected to one another.

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And that to put more emphasis on one than the other or neglect one at the expense of the other is to do a disservice to God.

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And then we go back to why I had a bit of a tough week struggling through some of this. Anyways, if you have your Bible, we're going to be all over the Bible today.

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I think the majority, if not all, of the scripture references will be up on the screen. It would be great if you guys had your Bible. If you use a Bible app, that's fine as well.

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We have Bibles up here you can grab. But follow along with me. So we're looking at first God's omniscience. God knows everything. There's nothing that can be known that he doesn't know.

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It's not as though God is this studious, this big, beautiful mahogany desk surrounded by books, just studying everything.

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He somehow has developed this incredible bank of knowledge. God, just simply, by virtue of him being God, he knows everything.

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There is an inability for God to forget. It's not just that he knows everything, but it's impossible for him to forget something. Every little molecule that has ever existed, every scientific law, every thought of the human heart, he knows.

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There is nothing that you can think of that God doesn't know. And not only that, but he knows it a lot better than you. In fact, he knows everything exhaustively.

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A story that might help. So my brother-in-law, out in B.C., Christine's brother, is a birder.

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I don't know if there's any birders here, but Joel is a birder, and he's an excellent birder. So Christine, the kids, we're out for a walk. I was like, hey, it was a pond.

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Hey, there's a heron. I was like, that's a blue heron, Christine. She's like, actually, it's white, and I think that's a crane. And so we were like, well, what is it? It was kind of far off.

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It wasn't like right there. So what do we do? We snap a picture. We send it to Joel, and he goes, oh, that's a great egret, actually. And so neither of us were right.

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And I have never heard of an egret in my life. It had a long neck. It looked like a fancy kettle. I don't know. But Joel is a birder par excellence.

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He's on all sorts of online forums, and nobody knows that he's like 20-something, but he's this authority in his area.

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And yet Joel will spend the rest of his life trying to knock off his bucket list, his life list of birds to see.

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And my guess is that he will end up at some weird, obscure corners of planet Earth with a camera and binoculars trying to just glimpse at, I don't know, whatever birds.

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See, I don't know birds. Joel knows them. But he's going to spend his life, and he's not going to see every single bird. He will know all about avian taxonomy, but he will not know it exhaustively.

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And he is like the expert that I know, anyways. God's not like this. He knows everything exhaustively. It's not just that he knows all of the birds.

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He knows what they've eaten that morning and what's about to eat them. God knows everything exhaustively. This might be a very comforting thing for you.

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Because for God to know everything, it means that he knows some of the brokenness that you've gone through, some of the secrets that you are embarrassed of. The shame, some of the things that you're not willing to admit because you don't want to look weak.

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He knows it all, and there is nothing that will surprise him in your life. For those that are actually, that have gone through abuse and brokenness, those that have been neglected or misunderstood, God doesn't misunderstand you.

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He knows you exhaustively. He knows your situation exhaustively. And that's a great comfort. It's a great comfort. We'll see a bit later on and then in weeks to come.

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I think Matt Usherwood is going to be speaking on God being love. But because God, again, we don't talk about his different attributes apart from one another. We know that because God knows us exhaustively, and he loves and he desires to bless and not curse, to redeem, that that's a very, very comforting thing.

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That whether in this life or the next, there is a, you will know redemption, you will know peace, because God, who knows everything, is at work in your life to redeem and restore.

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It's a wonderful, wonderful truth. He's not ambivalent. He's not ignorant of your sorrow. He sees you. He really does.

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He knows your heart. But if you're a proud person, and if you're egotistical, and you've made it a bit of a thing to step on people to go hire yourself, or you have a real history of belittling people, abusing people, neglecting people, forgetting people, this truth is less of a comfort.

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It strikes fear in our hearts, in a sense, doesn't it? Because you can hide over all sorts of different things. If you are, you have enough clout, you can force people to sign, you know, very, very abusive, non-disclosure agreements.

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If you threaten people, whether that's, you know, a hardcore threat or soft threats. You try to sweep things under the rug.

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God sees it all. He sees it all. And in the same way that God is love, he is also justice. And he will not let things go unpunished.

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And if you, if you have been hurt by somebody, and there is injustice in your life that, that, that you, you have not been hurt, you, you are seen, and God will make everything right.

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God knows all. He sees all. And it's exhaustively how he sees things. It's, it really is something of a, to strike fear in the hearts of the proud and egotistical.

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Hebrews chapter 4, verses 12 and 13, it says this. I'm just going to read off of my notes. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow.

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And here it is, discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Verse 13, and no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

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And you will give account. Not as comforting when we understand that God sees all. Last week, George, one of the passages he preached on was the story of the paralytic being lowered through the roof.

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And Jesus seeing the faith of the paralytic's friends, forgiving their sins, healing the paralytic. I just want to draw your attention to one thing here, because this is the attributes of God.

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We must remember, as George preached on last week about the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, three persons, one God, that Jesus himself knows all exhaustively.

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It says this in verse 21. I actually forgot to... Is it Mark, right? Mark chapter 3 or Mark chapter 4? Mark chapter 2? I do not know the Bible exhaustively.

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Verse 21 says, And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question Jesus, or question, saying, Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?

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Verse 22, When Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them, Why do you question in your hearts? And then he goes on. Jesus perceived in their hearts.

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It wasn't just... You can't really read this and say, Well, Jesus was great at body language. He kind of knew what they were thinking. He had a good guess. A good educated guess. He knew the hearts of them.

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Why? Because he is God. Because he is omniscient. He knows all. Psalm 139 says this, Verses 1 to 6, O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

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You know when I sit down, when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.

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Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in behind and before and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.

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It is high. I cannot attain it. God knows all. So I talked about the comforting bits. If you are a broken person, if you have gone through abuse, if you have been misunderstood, neglected, and then the proud aspect of it.

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But here is the thing. Aren't we all mixed bags? Aren't we people that have experienced hurt but also hurt people? Aren't we people that have been neglected and then go ahead and neglect others?

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Aren't we people that have been sinned against and yet sinned so grievously? Aren't we mixed bags? In the comfort of knowing that God knows all is also a great fear of ours that God knows all.

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Because we are bent people, broken people, a mixed bag, like I've said. So what do we do? God knows all.

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And I think ultimately we need to remember that the currency that, if you want to use that term, that we bring towards God is humility.

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And wherever we are in the midst of the cycle of sin and being sinned against abuse and being abused, we come humbly before God.

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And what do we do? We throw ourselves at His feet. You know all. How can I run away from you? Have mercy on me. Confess your sins and pray so that you may be healed.

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Every single Sunday, whether we do morning prayer, whether we do Holy Communion, we confess our sins together. We do. I would encourage you to confess your sins personally every day.

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Confess your sins to other people. But more than anything else, just confess your sins to God. Throw yourself at His feet, at His mercy. And remember, we don't pit one attribute against the other.

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God is rich in mercy, abounding in steadfast love. He desires to pardon. He desires to heal. He knows it all.

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Confess it. Don't hide from God. When we confess, we can be sure that He hears us. Why? Because Jesus has died, making a way, dying on the cross, being buried, rising again, so that through Him, we might have access to God.

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He hears our prayers. He hears our prayers, and He is just. And it's important for us to understand that as God is omniscient, He understands everything, that His knowledge is deeply connected and rooted in His wisdom, and in His justice, and in His love.

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It's not some, like I've mentioned, it's not just that God would just kill it on who wants to be a millionaire. I don't know if the show exists anymore, or Jeopardy. It's not a trivia type of knowledge, but it's rooted in Him as Creator, Him being the very essence of what truth is.

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We can trust that He is not going to take our confession and our lives, the knowledge of our lives that we're ashamed of, afraid of, and He's not going to abuse us with it.

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He's going to help us to order our lives according to His will, which is excellent. And this is connected, then, with God's omnipotence, because it's not just that God knows everything, but He has, then, the power over everything, the control over everything.

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And control, in many ways, sounds kind of like a yucky word to us, but it is not. Why? Because God knows everything, and He is perfect. We all of a sudden, again, I'm saying it so much, but we see how these attributes are so interconnected, and we can't talk about one without the other.

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So let's take a look at God's omnipotence, that God has complete control over all of creation, and also all of Himself. He is fully in self, it's perfect self-control, if you want to use that term, that there is no, that God relies on nothing for His own being.

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He is self-existing. That's going to be a topic in the upcoming weeks. There is nothing that is over God in terms of His control, His ability, His authority, but that doesn't mean God can just do anything.

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God is limited, but He's limited in that He can't do anything that's contrary to His will. Or His character. What does that mean? It means God can't do evil.

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He can't. God can't lie. It means God is completely consistent in every aspect of who He is. If He says something, it's going to happen.

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If He has promised something, it will come to pass. That God is trustworthy. It means that we can put our hope, ultimate hope, in God because He can only do things that are consistent with Him.

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It also means that God is rational. He is logical. Why? Because He is the creator. He created everything. And everything is good, He declared.

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It is, it is, it, it, all of creation, it works so interconnectedly. It's, it's just a beautiful thing that God has created everything that works in the way it does.

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He is a logical God. He is a rational God. It's important for us again because we're going to come across in the months and years to come, Bible studies, sermons, personal devotions, parts of Scripture that seem to contradict that.

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how is it that, that Abraham somehow has this ability to change God's mind? Or Moses for that matter?

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What of these passages where God seems to come across as petty or vengeful or irrational?

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What do we do when we come across those types of passages? Well, this is why a study, a sermon series rather, like what we're doing is excellent and important because it helps us then read the Bible properly.

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We're not going to read a passage that makes God look in a way that would negate the fact that He is God. Then it forces us to ask another question.

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Well, what is God really doing when His mind is changed by Moses? What's really going on in the story? What is God really trying to tease out?

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How is God incredibly relational in this passage? It forces us to wrestle with the passage afresh because if He's God, He is all-powerful.

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His mind can't change. He can't be manipulated. So it's really important that we go through a sermon series like this. It's going to help us to read the Bible in greater ways. But here's the thing. God is indeed all-powerful.

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Nothing happens apart from His knowledge or His will. So in Matthew 10, 29-31, this is the passage that George read.

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Jesus says, Are not two sparrows sold for a penny and not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father? But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore, you are more valuable than many sparrows.

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He knows the minutiae of creation. He's in control of it. But He's also in control of the big aspects of human history.

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Acts chapter 17, 26, it says this, And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods in the boundaries of their dwelling place that God has directed human history.

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He has. There's a whole other aspect to this where we have to ask the question, well, why is there war? Has God somehow sanctioned evil and genocide?

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These are all really important questions. And the classic thing is either God is not all-powerful or all-good or all-knowing or He's evil.

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That's kind of like the classic apologetic pushback against God being in charge of everything. And I would just say that we do have human agency in all of this.

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We're not going to get into a discussion right now about free will versus predestination. But suffice it to say that God is in charge, in authority, wills everything that happens, and yet we have agency.

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We do. Not in a libertarian type of understanding of free will, but it's important that we understand that we have our very beings, that God, He is the one who animates us, that we have agency within Him, but nevertheless, we have agency.

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So that's why Genesis chapter 50, the wonderful, beautiful, incredible story, one of my favorite stories in the Bible of Joseph being left for dead by his brother, sold into slavery, somehow, by God's incredible work, he gets up to essentially the second in command over all of Egypt, saves his people, and then at the end when his father dies, his brothers, they're like, Joseph's coming for revenge, and what does he say in Genesis 50, verse 20?

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He said, for what you intended for evil, the Lord intended for good, that even his brothers, their best efforts to kill Joseph, but really to stymie God's will, came to nothing.

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Acts 2, verse 23, I'll read this one, Acts 2, verse 23, this is the absolutely incredible sermon that Peter prays at Pentecost after the Holy Spirit comes.

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Verse 23, it says this, I'll read at verse 22, men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst as you yourselves know, verse 23, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

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In the same breath, God's plans can't get destroyed, but it's on you. You guys, you guys, you guys sent Jesus to the cross.

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It's a problem. That's a sin. Human agency at work and yet God's plans succeed everything. It's this incredible tension worth meditating on.

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In the end, it is still God who gives us agency. If you can put up the picture, I don't know if we'll end up getting up.

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Okay, so I pulled this from one of my textbooks I took from seminary and I like it. On the left, we see kind of like a, maybe, maybe an understanding, like a common understanding of free will.

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That God does his own thing, we do our own thing and there's these other kind of natural factors that influence us or it's kind of, but it's not really kind of connected. And in this scenario, God's will bumps up against our agency.

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But on the right, if we understand that in, that we have a very being in God, that God here, we have our agency within God's definite plan.

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It's not as if we have carte blanche do whatever we want. God has set up within creation like natural guardrails to our agency and yet we are still responsible for our sin and yet in this, there's nothing we can do to thwart the plan of God.

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Thanks for putting that up. And isn't this the gospel itself, a picture of God's omnipotence, where from all of, from the beginning of creation, mankind sins and God, because of his all-knowing, he knows this is going to go down, but then sets it in motion that Jesus would die on the cross for our sins and God would delight in his son dying on the cross for our sins.

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that God, he has this plan from the very beginning, by the way, it's not a plan B, it's always a plan A, and all of the junk in human history, how it goes down from genocides to natural disasters to wars to infanticide to all of this horrible things, things that happen, somehow God's plan doesn't get thwarted and Jesus himself, he dies on the cross as God foretold.

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If God wasn't all-powerful, he wouldn't be God and if he wasn't God, then all of the things that he said would come to pass would not come to pass. It would just be, it would be chance.

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It would be chance. We'd leave it to the fates. But that's not what happens. God not only knows everything, but is in control of everything, and by virtue of his goodness and his love and his justice and his mercy, he redeems and restores and he blesses and he removes the curse, he unites all of the wonderful things that we hope for.

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That's what he does. God knew that we would sin and he set in plan a motion before we even sinned to redeem us.

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And it was never thwarted. It was never thwarted. So if God's knowledge is everywhere and God's power is unending, then it would lead us to understand that God is everywhere.

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There's no place where his presence doesn't exist. So we're going to look at God's omnipresence and again, you can't take one without the other.

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So these, God's omnipresence is deeply, deeply, deeply rooted in his omniscience and his omnipotence. So simply put, if God is all-powerful in every place, in every situation, if he has knowledge of everything, then he is, by virtue of those two things, he is there, he is present.

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Psalm 139 again, verses 7 to 12, it says this, where shall I go from your spirit or where shall I flee from your presence?

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If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in the grave, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me.

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If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me by night, even the darkness is not dark to you, the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.

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God created everything. Time does not constrain him nor place. He is with you in the darkest moments of your life.

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He is there. He is not absent, although it might feel like that. He is there. He truly is everywhere because he has created all things, but God's presence isn't just talked about in scriptures as God's ubiquity is being everywhere in all places, but his presence is talked about in terms of relationship with his people.

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From the garden to the tabernacle, to the temple, to God himself coming in the form of man in the incarnation, literally tabernacling amongst us, God desires to be present with his people.

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And he is. He's present. He's present right here. He is present when you hear the word proclaimed and the Holy Spirit is active and at work in your heart.

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If you're not a Christian and you call upon Jesus to save you from your sins, he is with you in a present relational way that is good pleasure.

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It is God's good pleasure to be present with his people. This is a wonderful thing about these attributes because the times that we feel like God is distant, we know that he is present and we can cry out to him.

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Here's a thing worth considering. This idea of an omnipotent God, an omniscient God, an omnipresent God, I think this is something that all human beings desire.

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But as we, as a society, as individuals, as country, whatever, when we deny the existence of God, when we deny the very truth of the scriptures, we don't all of a sudden become irreligious.

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We just shift our religion a little bit. So all of a sudden what we do is we attribute an omniscience to other things.

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Case in point, this isn't a bash against science one bit. I think science is fantastic. We have the life we have because of scientific advancements. But scientists aren't omniscient.

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They aren't. Some are very smart. But it seems like in the past while we have put scientists on a pedestal, in a sense deifying scientists.

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And I'm not suggesting we do the opposite of kicking them to the curb and treating them with contempt. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying we have disordered views of life.

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No scientist is omniscient, all-knowing. Only God is. No politician is omnipotent.

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No person is omnipotent. No thing is omnipotent. No job promotion is omnipotent as if we would get it. Like, every roadblock would be removed, every red light would turn green, there would be nothing impossible for us.

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Nothing is omnipotent like that. Everything will rust and decay or die or come up short. And that's not, again, a diss to those things, those people, those situations.

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There's nothing wrong about getting a promotion and being excited about it. but all of those things aren't omnipotent. They aren't. All of these things, it's as if God made us to worship him.

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And he put desires that would want an omniscient God, an omnipotent God, and a God that is everywhere. It's like he fashioned our hearts to want that.

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And that stuff doesn't turn off because we disregard God. He sees you, he knows you, he has the power to save, and we ought to come humbly before him.

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We ought to, we do. Jesus is the perfect picture of God's sovereignty because he is all-knowing, he is all-powerful, and he is present everywhere.

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This is the greatest longing for our hearts, our hearts will be restless until they find the rest in God, until we put ourselves under the sovereignty, so to speak, as if God isn't sovereign unless we recognize him as sovereign, but if we put ourselves under the sovereignty, the lordship of God, we will, we will, we will not know the benefits and the beauty and the truth and the goodness that is at our fingertips.

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We will struggle with the weight of sin and death that hangs over our heads all the time. The guilty consciences that are in this room, and I say that just because I have it too, I do, I have a guilty conscience, it is like my default, I have other bad defaults, but that is a big one.

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All of the guilty consciences that could be erased because we don't understand the sovereignty of God, the lordship of God, the good rule of God, the healing that is not taking place, the wayward lives that are being lived.

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And that is not to say that as soon as you put your, you recognize the lordship of God, things become peachy, and beautiful immediately. It is a process, of course.

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But this is what we were designed for. We were designed to be ruled by God in the most loving, just, and incredible way. The end of Romans chapter 11, the big three chapter heavy weight of a portion of scripture that talks of God's sovereignty.

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The apostle Paul, he says this, and I'll just say one thing before I read this portion and then we'll wrap things up. Theology has to lead to doxology.

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What do I mean by this? Knowing God has to lead us to praise God. If we understand who God is in light of who we are, how can we not have a burden lifted and sing for joy, whether that's proverbially or literally.

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That something excites you in your heart and you praise God. That theology has to lead to doxology. And listen to Paul. After hammering some of that most thick theology in all of the scriptures, he ends Romans 11 verses 33 to 36 by saying this, Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.

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How unsearchable are his judgments. How unscrutable his ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor or who has given him or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid.

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For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. When we know God, we are moved by God when we truly know him.

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And as we grow in our knowledge of him, we continue to be moved by him. The things that we found palatable before lose its taste. We feast on God.

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That is the diet that will satisfy us. If you are a Christian whose heart has grown cold, feast on God.

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Feast on him. Feast on the fact that he is sovereign over your life, that he knows everything. He's all powerful. He is everywhere. He is with you. Feast on that. Feast on it until it warms your heart.

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If you're not a Christian, this is the life worth living. It is. And you will try to find it elsewhere. And you will try to find it elsewhere because that's the way you were created.

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But it will come up short because you are designed you are made, you are fashioned, your heart beats to know the sovereign lordship of God.

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And today is a great day to come to know him. Let's pray. heavenly father, heavenly father, we thank you that you truly are lord of all, that you are sovereign over all.

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And that means that you know everything exhaustively, that you are all powerful, that you are completely consistent, that you are everywhere, that there's no place where you don't exist, no place that can shut you out.

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And lord, there are people here this morning from all sorts of different walks, people here from all, that have had all sorts of different weeks, some good, some bad. Some people that are watching online or are here that have cold hearts towards you, where there once was warm hearts, or people that just have never known your goodness.

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Lord, would you help us to see that knowing you is the way we were meant to live, that as we engage in theology, we will engage in true doxology.

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When we know you, we will praise you. Lord, help us, especially this afternoon and the days to come, because we know that there is our flesh, there is the devil, there is the world that would want to rob us of this joy, this truth of who you are.

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Help us to feast on you daily. Help us to humbly feast on you daily. In Jesus' name. Amen.