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[0:00] Well, we take up this morning the glorious topic of what has been called the doctrines of grace.

[0:10] ! That is how it is that God saves sinners. And these truths are to the saints of God of sweetest savor.

[0:24] They furnish a display of the glory of God arrayed in its most ravishing vestment and vesture. To view these unfolding is to cry out with the apostle, Oh, the depths of the riches!

[0:40] And while we might begin our view from any number of its gleaming facets, I think it fruitful first to frame these truths of God's gracious work of salvation in the wider view of His supreme sovereignty.

[1:00] That is, God's all-encompassing rule and governance over all and in all, the vast realm of His creation.

[1:12] All that was, is, and is to come is ruled by the scepter of His pleasure and follows infallibly the dictates of His will.

[1:27] And here the setting fits the gem it holds, His general sovereignty, His sovereignty and salvation. The frame, almost as much as the portrait it encloses, is a wonder to behold.

[1:43] So we shall proceed by unfolding this glorious truth of God's all-encompassing sovereignty as witnessed in the scriptures. And like travelers upon a scenic path, who on occasion cannot but pause on some outlook to take in the rapturous vista and burst forth in wonder and praise, we'll sprinkle our path with some reactions of fellow travelers who behold these truths like sparkling stars in the firmament.

[2:15] So, embarking, let us entrust ourselves to our sure guide. Let's pray. Come Holy Spirit and soften our hearts as we open Your Word.

[2:30] Settle our convictions and so strengthen our comfort and deepen our joy that Christ, the Alpha and Omega, might be exalted. Amen.

[2:41] Amen. So one, Scripture's witness and saints' wonder. To enter Scripture is to inhabit a world in which God reigns and His purposes prevail.

[3:01] Where all reflects the unfolding of His will. The unwavering conviction is woven through Scripture's fabric from beginning to end.

[3:14] For from Him are all things, writes the Apostle in Romans 11. That is to say, all things find their ultimate source in God.

[3:32] All things issue ultimately from His will and good pleasure. God, we are told, works all things after the counsel of His own will.

[3:46] Ephesians 1, 11. All things? I mean, as in every single thing? Yes. Consider things first in the realm of inanimate nature.

[4:01] Now, no Hebrew worshiper of Yahweh would ever say, hey, look, it happened to rain. for all knew that God sends the rain and that the snows fall by His command.

[4:17] As Elihu testifies, for the snow, he says, falls on the earth. Likewise, the downpour is His mighty downpour.

[4:30] Job 37, 6. By the breath of God, the ice is given and the broad waters are frozen fast. He, God, loads the thick clouds with moisture.

[4:42] The clouds scatter His lightning. They turn around and around by His guidance to accomplish all that He commands them on the face of the inhabitable world.

[4:56] Job 37, 10 through 12. The forces of nature in their observed regularities are not operating simply out of some law intrinsic to them.

[5:10] They move by the command of the Most High. The sun, the moon, the stars act in accordance with, as Scripture says, a fixed order that God has established by His own covenant.

[5:25] The Lord of hosts has established it. Jeremiah 31, 35, 33, 20, and on and on throughout the Scriptures. Thus it is in the realm of inanimate nature.

[5:39] So also in the realm of animate nature. Isaiah 46, 11 says, He, God, calls the bird of prey from the east. Even the two for a penny sparrows, Jesus reminds us, that not one will fall to the ground without your Father's will.

[6:00] Matthew 10, 29. And remember the story of Jonah. God appointed the great fish, 117, and appointed the worm to eat the shade-giving gourd which God had appointed to grow and spring up.

[6:19] Such appointment also orders the rise and fall of nations. All the intricacies of the flux of national territory, which imperial power prevails and which people is consumed.

[6:33] God, quote, determined their appointed times and their boundaries of their habitation. Acts 17, 26. And from the great surges of geopolitical realms to the most trivial, seemingly random events, nothing springs!

[6:51] Nothing springs from chance. Even the numbers we roll on a die, God's wisdom determines. Proverbs 16, 33.

[7:03] The lot is cast into the lap, but the decision is wholly from the Lord. It was not random that Achan, Saul, Jonah, Matthias drew the short straw.

[7:18] It reflected God's determination. And this reality of God's ordaining all things encompasses all human choices also.

[7:33] Proverbs 16, 9. The heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. Proverbs 20, 24. A man's steps are ordered by the Lord.

[7:46] I know, O Lord, says the prophet Jeremiah, that the way of a man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps. Jeremiah 10, 23.

[7:59] Now, the heart in Scripture means the affectional, volitional center from which spring our attractions, our aversions, all of our choices.

[8:12] The heart determines what we desire and abhor, and hence is the seat of all action. And it is precisely here that God exercises sovereignty.

[8:29] Psalms 33, 14 through 15 tells us, God looks down from his throne, quote, on all the inhabitants of the earth and fashions the hearts of them all.

[8:43] Why, even the one who you would think to have maximal autonomy, to make unconstrained choices, a king. Of such an emblem of independence and power, we are told the king's heart is as a stream of water in the hand of the Lord.

[9:06] He, the Lord, turns it whatever way he will. Proverbs 21, 1. Again, this is throughout scripture, Ezra 6, 22, the Lord turned the heart of the king of Assyria.

[9:20] Again and again, we could multiply examples. And of course, the king is simply a paradigm case of what is true of all. Many are the plans of a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord, it will stand.

[9:37] Proverbs 19, 21. So utterly does God control the hearts of mankind that he can tell the Israelites that if they obediently appear before him in the sanctuary of Jerusalem, leaving their lands unprotected and vulnerable to looting and conquest, he would preserve them.

[10:00] And how would God accomplish this? By making it such that their enemies would not eye their land with envy. and seek to seize it in this golden opportunity.

[10:13] He would displace covetousness with contentment and malice with goodwill in their enemies' hearts.

[10:24] Exodus 34, 23 and 24. John Calvin writes in his commentary on this verse, this was a remarkable proof of God's providence.

[10:36] Another word for sovereignty basically. for how could it be that their enemies, who were ever watching for opportunities of plunder, should remain quiet when they knew that all the men were gone from home?

[10:51] The only answer is that God restrained their cupidity and by his secret power bridled their lusts so that they dared not move.

[11:02] Here, therefore, we see how the Lord holds the hearts of men in his hand and bends them according to his will. Stephen Charnock, the author of that great, The Existence and Attributes of God, echoes this conviction.

[11:18] He writes, God is present in every motion, yet distinct from every creature. He orders all, directs all, and none can move a hand or tongue without his permission.

[11:36] So, the uniform testimony of Scripture is that all things are ordered and governed by the sovereign will of God, from the movement of the spheres in their vaults above to the hidden impulses of the human heart within.

[11:55] It is truly an awesome truth. I believe, proclaimed Spurgeon, that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes.

[12:15] That every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit as well as the sun in the heavens. That the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their courses.

[12:31] the creeping of an aphid over the rosebud is as much fixed as the march of the devastating pestilence. The fall of seer leaves from a poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche.

[12:52] Jonathan Edwards agrees and asserts the same degree of minute granularity to God's sovereign decrees.

[13:03] He writes, not one mote of dust errs from the path that God has appointed it. Whoa, whoa, okay, but what if that mote of dust goes in your eye?

[13:25] And Spurgeon mentions, as you know, that part of God's sovereign disposals involves pestilence and avalanche. Are you saying that God decrees even the bad things?

[13:41] The Chicago fire, the Lisbon earthquake, the collapse of the Twin Towers? Unflinchingly, Alex, you have plenty of room anywhere you want. Unflinchingly, the scriptures do not taper God's sovereign will, even a whisker's breadth, when it concerns such calamities.

[14:06] Does evil befall a city unless the Lord has done it? declares Amos the prophet, 3, 6. I am the Lord and there is no other.

[14:19] I form light, I create darkness, I make welfare, and I create woe. I am the Lord who does all these things.

[14:32] Isaiah 45, 7. Wait a minute, you protest. There's a lot of carnage that comes from evil. I mean, think of Gaza.

[14:42] Babies and small children were won with hunger. Yes, the scriptures are no stranger to that reality. Jeremiah writes with horror and sorrow.

[14:56] My eyes are spent with weeping. My soul is in tumult. My heart is poured out in grief because infants and babies faint in the streets of the city.

[15:09] Lamentations 2, 11. Yet he knows even here God is supremely sovereign. He continues, who has commanded and it came to pass unless the Lord has ordained it.

[15:29] Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and evil come? Lamentations 3, 37 and 38. But let's go straight to the limit case.

[15:44] What would you say has been the most utterly horrendous evil ever perpetrated on this earth? The Holocaust? Ethnic cleansing?

[15:57] The wholesale commercial slaughter of babies in the womb? God sends his son to seek and save us and we hate him and kill him.

[16:23] Away with him. Crucify him. our evil does not extend beyond that. But did God's sovereignty determine it to be so?

[16:37] Yes. And Peter, as Peter told the Jerusalem crowd, this man, Jesus, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to the cross.

[16:54] Acts 2, 23. Not even evil is exempt from the grip of God's sovereign sway.

[17:05] His governance is all comprehensive. For from him are all things. Romans 11. He works all things after the counsel of his own will.

[17:21] None of the trials and sufferings that befall fall outside God's reign. All events are under the control of providence or sovereignty, writes Spurgeon.

[17:37] Consequently, all of the trials of our outward life are traceable at once to the great first cause. out of the golden gate of God's ordinance, the armies of trial march forth in array, clad in their iron armor and armed with weapons of war.

[18:05] Or as Thomas Watson tersely puts it, whoever brings an affliction, it is God who sends it.

[18:21] So there's scripture's witness and saints wonder. Persisting puzzles properly pondered. Now, in the presence of this truth of God's all encompassing sovereignty, scripturally revealed, worshipping minds have wondered, how could these things be so?

[18:47] For by very natural, for some very natural puzzles appear for the thoughtful who seek to bring together in harmony the truth of God's sovereignty with other verities to which scripture bears witness.

[19:04] It's good to have an integration instinct. They are perhaps percolating in your minds already. two perhaps are most prominent and pressing and deserving of passing at least comment.

[19:22] First, if God is sovereign over all, how is he not implicated in evil? And, second, if God is sovereign over us, how have we the freedom for moral agency?

[19:44] Now, there is a right way to raise these questions and a wrong way. The right way is that of Mary at the angel's revelation that she would bear a son, God's Messiah.

[19:56] How can these things be? It was asked out of a heart of faith and submission. There was no rejecting disbelief.

[20:06] not so with Zachariah. His words were exactly the same as Mary's, but not his heart, for his was an unbelieving heart for which he was rebuked.

[20:18] So, let us proceed in our puzzles with the submissive humble heart of Mary. So, first, if all comes about at God's decree, how is he not implicated in evil?

[20:37] How are we to think of God's ordaining evil? Surely this is out of character with a good and holy God who is light and in whom there is no darkness, 1 John 1.5.

[20:53] The scriptures have not one whisker of ambiguity as to God's utter unblemished goodness. He is never the accomplice to evil.

[21:08] As Moses sang to the assembled Israel in Deuteronomy 32, 3, and 4, ascribe greatness to our God the Rock. His work is perfect and all his ways are just.

[21:21] A God of faithfulness without iniquity, just and upright is he. Or the prophet Habakkuk in 1.13.

[21:32] You, God, are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look upon wrong. In the sense of look with complacency, that's okay, no problem.

[21:46] The sixth-wing cherubim who, covering their eyes in God's presence, call to each other perpetually, holy, holy, holy, Isaiah 6.

[21:57] The assembled host of heavens swell with the chorus, Revelation 15.3, great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God Almighty, just and true are all of your ways.

[22:14] So, in light of this brilliant splendor of unadulterated goodness and unsullied uprightness, we naturally find ourselves arrested to read, is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and evil come?

[22:31] And I form light and I create darkness, I make well-being and I create calamity, I am the Lord who does all these things, Isaiah 45.7. How are we to understand these statements?

[22:45] I don't know, I'll see it at no price. Well, the beginning of wisdom here, I believe, is to recognize a vital distinction.

[22:59] It's indicated in the remarkable utterance of Joseph recorded in Genesis 50.20. Referring to his brothers selling him into slavery and his ending up in Egypt, he states, you intended it for evil, but God intended it for good.

[23:18] So, notice how in Joseph's mind, the action was brought about both by his brothers and by God. But, and this is vital, the differentiated actors had different motives and purposes in and for the action.

[23:42] The brothers intended it for evil, God intended it for good. Now, this duality is instructive in guiding our thinking. In each action, we must see a dual reference.

[24:00] There is an intention with respect to the creature, the created ones, who is acting, whoever the created one is acting, Satan, villains, sinners, often perfidious, which may or may not prevail.

[24:19] But, there is also an intention of the creator, whose intentions and purposes will always obtain. His intentions are always and necessarily good and holy and glorious, reflecting his character.

[24:40] As Jonathan Edwards writes, it's a little archaic grammar, but you'll get the point. Men will, sorry, men do will sin as sin.

[24:58] And so are the authors and actors of it. They love it as sin and for the evil ends and purposes. God don't will sin as sin or for the sake of anything evil.

[25:19] Though it be his pleasure so to order things that he permitting sin will come to pass, he doeth it for the sake of the great good that by his disposal shall be the consequence.

[25:35] Now that's Edwards, it's a little bit dense. Maybe I'll just read it again because this is really really helpful distinction to have.

[25:46] Men do will sin as sin and so are the authors and actors of it. They love it as sin and for evil ends and purposes.

[25:58] But God doesn't don't will sin as sin or for the sake of anything evil. Though it be his pleasure so to order things that he permitting sin will come to pass for the sake of the great good that by his disposal shall be the consequence.

[26:17] Get that? Very helpful. Very helpful. It's from his Freedom of the Will, page 408 and 9. Long book, but worth it. Now what can make some of the language about this jarring is that the outcomes of these dual intended acts, Joseph being sold as a slave and sent to Egypt, are described from the vantage point of our experience of them.

[26:49] We experience them as evil and they are rightly so described. Joseph being sold by his brothers was evil. They intended it for evil and Joseph experienced it as evil.

[27:03] So it makes sense that we would call it evil. As indeed it is. What else would we call it? And what other vantage point would we have to describe it than our own?

[27:16] And we see and experience it as affliction, calamity, and evil. But God is in it and so we may and must say does fire consume a city and do not I God do it?

[27:36] God is in it and ordains it but in his case for good.

[27:55] See the coming together of the dual actors think of it this way I I'm trying to remember which Puritan he talks about God uses Satan as his drudge imagine Satan there it says I hate God's elect I am going to destroy them so he takes the flail and he goes after God's professed people with a flail and he's just flailing away and aiming to destroy them and we feel the harsh we're under the flail Satan is flail but in doing so he just manages to achieve God's purpose which is separating the grain from the chaff and purifying the wheat so Satan the drudge is just going away just hammering trying to destroy and that's his evil intent and it's evil and we experience it as evil oh my goodness I'm being battered I'm being battered I'm under the but

[28:57] God is achieving his good purpose of refining and purifying and winnowing the wheat from the chaff so these things come together so there's our first puzzle hopefully a little bit illuminated our second puzzle is if God's sovereign decree ordains all things including human actions how can we rightly be accountable for them well let's take for guidance in this puzzle the biblical case of God's ordaining the Assyrian empire to scourge apostate Israel for her disobedience God describes Assyria as vividly Isaiah 10 5 the rod of my anger the axe with which I hew the saw I wield that is

[29:59] God manipulates Assyria as one would an inanimate tool deploying them for his errand of judgment so you can see oh how can he hold that if he's just how that as he writes against a godless nation I send him Assyria against the people of my wrath I command him to take and to seize and to plunder and to tread them down like the mire in the streets but and this is the critical point to recognize God does not need to sow evil into the Assyrian hearts for them to act in this role their hearts are already remorseless cruel grasping already with the disposition to enact cruel rapacious villainies

[31:06] God need not teach the Assyrians new tricks to use them cruelly neither get them to act contrary to their habituated evil they are self made accomplished experts in evil as the next verse testifies of the Assyrians verse seven it is in their heart to destroy do you see that and so after using Assyria to accomplish his purpose of disciplining his wayward people God turns and judges the Assyrians for their pride and cruelty when I or sorry when the Lord has finished his work on Mount Zion disciplining his people he the Hebrew says I I the Lord will punish the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria verse 12 and

[32:07] God rightly judges wicked hearts that sin willingly it's no excuse for their sin that God used them to accomplish his purpose in our sin we make real choices and are accountable for them God need not introduce sin into our actions like some sort of exogenous seed our sin is native to our own hearts and home grown when we sin we sin heartily our whole hearts are in our sin and I think we know in our honest moments that our choices are authentically our own and to seek to wriggle out of responsibility by blaming God's sovereignty that's mere evasion and will not stand in the judgment now there is no doubt much mystery here and how could it not be so for we can merely grasp the fringes of his ways and how indeed should we expect otherwise for how are we to apprehend let alone comprehend the way of an infinite person relating to finite persons the creator with his image bearing creatures if there were no mystery here it would not only be surprising

[33:50] I think it would probably be suspicious the regenerate heart shall respond in a resting rejoicing at the supreme sovereignty and all governance of God!

[34:07] It is perhaps the mark of the unregenerate if the response is one of rankling and rejection! John Paul Sartre writes how as a little boy he hated the very thought of God as one whose very being must impinge upon his own absolute sovereignty and utter freedom to be the supreme dictator of his life as he later expressed it in a syllogism if God exists I am not free but I am free therefore God cannot exist such is the common corrupted heart human instinct which imagines itself enthroned and carrying the sovereign scepter in its mock majesty we vainly imagine it so for we fancy ourselves the center of all with all else orbiting around us

[35:13] I'm reminded of an incident recounted in naval lore one dark night a battleship is plowing through the open sea at full speed ahead when a light appeared approaching dead ahead the admiral signaled Change your course ten degrees to the north only to receive back the signal you change your course ten degrees to the north taken aback the commander signaled I am an admiral in his majesty's royal navy change your course ten degrees only to receive back the signal I'm an able bodied seaman in his majesty's navy you change your course now irate at the impertinence the admiral signaled I am a battleship you change your course ten degrees to the north back came the signal no you change your course ten degrees to the north I am a lighthouse some realities one uniquely in virtue of what it is and cannot but be the supreme reality it or let us say he does not adjust to us we adjust to him it could not be otherwise that supreme reality the all governing mighty

[36:43] God is the sovereign ruler of his creation and he works all things according to his will and that God works all things according that sorry and that God works all things according to his will anchors the assurance that all things he infallibly works together for the good of those who love him as Jonathan Edwards writes every atom in the universe is managed by Christ so as to be most to the advantage of the Christian isn't that wonderful think about that every atom in the universe is managed by Christ so as to be most to the advantage of the Christian and the good in the all things for good here referenced in the scripture Romans 8 28 is the good of the salvation of his people and how this saving good unfolds for his people is encompassed in the doctrines of grace to which we shall return next week

[37:57] Lord willing when we shall see that all of God's sovereign ways end in saints celestial joys all of God's sovereign ways end in saints celestial joys let's pray Lord these truths are highly exalted and deeply mysterious that we have dealt with here we ask Lord for your Holy Spirit to render them unto us such that our hearts will become holier which is your greatest pleasure and that our lives too would become holier which is your greatest honor and we ask it for the glory sake of Christ amen I think team we have probably a few minutes for any questions or comments that you have

[38:57] I tried to go as long as I possibly could to avert the hazard of this but alas here we are I got excited and spoke quickly so if anyone has any comments I be happy to try or I I pled with Nick to be in the back just in case I come up!

[39:18] Matt already fled so I don't know if it's as much a question how would you describe you talked about how even the particle of dust is in control and I don't think any of us doubt that but eons ago God set these things in motion and said there are things like gravity and extremes to control the dust particle and rain and snow and ice melt so how would you kind of yeah yeah yeah so you're right Chris it is the fashion to think about these dynamics of nature we describe them as laws because we see the consistency of their relation and operation the dynamics and it's very tempted to imagine that their nature and power and dispositions are something that is simply intrinsic to them but

[40:33] I don't think that this is the way the scripture talks about these things and I don't think that it's just metaphorical language I do think that God does directly ordain all things so the scripture thinks about these things as covenant relationships so imagine God having a covenant relationship with every atom in the universe as Jonathan Edwards talks about what is a covenant relationship it's where there is one that commands and one that obeys that's a covenant relationship so I think the Bible thinks about this as actually a relationship of command and obedience so that's a little different isn't it now things on the surface might look the same way say you imagine the guard in front of the tomb of the unknown soldier and you see what seems to be he's marching to the north and then spins around and marches to the south and then spins around and you might describe it and you've worked out a formula and you might think well this is governed by a law here it's absolutely consistent and you might think that mechanistically that that is simply expressing the nature and character of that soldier that is just governed by a law and you could be forgiven for thinking that way and that's a good description but actually you'd be wrong he was actually doing that order in response to a command he was under command same sort of motion you know you're not going to see the difference when your telescope or your microscope but there is a real difference so that's how

[42:18] I think of it I do not think that there is any efficacy any sort of autonomous efficacy in anything apart from God sustaining so except the Lord build a house they that labor labor in vain who build it except the Lord keep a city and except you keep a pilot light lit in my furnace it will not light so does that help Chris yeah yes yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah huh yeah the most violent thing that ever happened in the universe when man first disobeyed God.

[43:43] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything followed. Yes, interesting. I see that in terms of the consequentiality of that act. Absolutely, absolutely disastrous and devastating.

[43:58] And yeah, one could argue. I mean, maybe it's a little bit like, you know, the little kid grabs a toothpaste, you know, interested in measuring things. Well, I wonder how long the worm is inside the little toothpaste tube, you know, all of the house.

[44:09] It's really, and you know, it took a little effort to get the thing out. But boy, to get it back into the tube, that's, maybe that's even a little bit harder too.

[44:20] And, you know, so is redemption greater than the fall in terms of its consequentiality? I don't know, we can debate that. But I see your point. You can't speak about the covenant of redemption.

[44:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will. I will. I will. That's coming up. Yeah, that's coming up. Yeah, Tyler. Just to come for this, one of my favorite quotes from John Newton, who I love, is he said, isn't it a comfort to know that hands that look pierced for you are the same hands that God always does?

[44:48] And the idea that, like, even in our own lives, we have these chance encounters where, like, maybe there's like these random events, like we met someone who introduced us, someone that shared a gospel with us.

[45:02] And, you know, I can think of my own life or something like that. Yeah. I think that's kind of like God is providentially putting these things in our lives that, for us, it just seems like, oh, it's some guy around the street.

[45:14] And he invited me to a Bible study or something like that. And, but all these things are like God bringing his people to himself. And it is kind of a, it's a comfort to know, not only the good and the bad, but these things that God is working on a lot.

[45:29] Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I think I, when I think of these issues, I think more about underneath everything is the character and person of God.

[45:40] And his, his original intention was to create creation and to be like that, you know, to join this group of his life.

[45:51] To give, just simply be a reflection of who he is. And I think that underneath all of the problems of creation is this fundamental purpose in the God that I think the end seems to be, what is his intention when I have an internal family as well to reflect back, to enjoy the things that I want to share with him?

[46:16] So I think that helps round out this issue of evil entering what was good. And his intention is always to be accomplished, but that sin will be repeated and his original purpose is good to be repeated.

[46:31] His sovereignty. Yes. Yes. Amen. Amen. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Just to complicate what Ralph said a little bit, how do we account for God's sovereignty in the fall of the man?

[46:46] You know, I feel like, you know, there's solutions that are pretty glib, right? Like, like for a while I was like, oh yeah, Felix Coulter, that pretty much covered it.

[46:57] And I'm like, ah, there's a problem with that too. You know, like, you know what I'm saying? No, I've never thought of that problem before. Say more.

[47:07] No, no, no, no. I'm dead. Yeah. What was he doing in the garden? I know, I know, I know what you're saying. Yeah. Um, uh, uh, I, I, I think that that's, uh, one of the most difficult, difficult problems to, to solve.

[47:26] Uh, you just, um, uh, and, and, and I wonder if part of it, and this, this won't answer it and it's going to take longer than we would have to do a decent job on that.

[47:39] But, but one of the interesting things when we're trying to account for the origin of sin and the way we think of an account means, um, you need to offer a rational explanation for this thing.

[47:59] That's what we think. Well, that's what we mean when we say an account, give a satisfying account, give a rational explanation, which is a little bit difficult. Is it not? When scripture among its themes is the, the ultimate irrationality of evil.

[48:18] So that, you know, that, that, that kind of puts us trying to swim against a current that's pretty, pretty fierce. So, um, it's, I, I wonder if there's ever going to be an account that we could render here below that is going to be satisfying to us.

[48:40] Uh, you know, I feel like, as, uh, the woman of Samaria told you, the well is deep and you have nothing to draw with, you know, the well is deep here and I have very little to draw with.

[48:52] Uh, uh, so, but yes, it's, it's worth raising that and we might do a whole series sometime on that very question. Yes, yes, yes.

[49:14] Yes. Yes. Yes.

[49:26] Yeah. Yeah. And, and then, and what you said about, you know, well, the most violent thing, right? Uh, why did that things happen to good people? Well, that only happened once and he volunteered.

[49:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So if, well, how will God not along with his only son give us all things, we have to trust him. Yeah. No matter, it doesn't matter why so much to me anymore, why the tree is there, where it comes from, as long as that has been on my side.

[49:55] On my side? Yes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good, Josh. Yeah. Deuteronomy 24, 24. The secret of the Lord remains with the Lord. What he has revealed.

[50:06] That is for us, our children and our children's children. And what he has revealed is what is to make us wise unto salvation. And that's where we're going to turn from here. We should probably close at this point. Thank you, team.

[50:17] Lord willing, we'll see you next week where we will pick up with, um, uh, uh, uh, a beginning before we had our beginning talking about God's everlasting or his eternal ancient choice.

[50:33] Uh, so see you next week if you're able to make it. Thanks. Uh, do we want to order these? I just want everyone to move into the hallway so we have to reset this room up for children's church. So feel free, we've got a few minutes at those of our start and you guys can just get out of the hallway or we'll rearrange this room for what's happening again.

[50:47] Thanks. Ah. Thank you.

[51:21]  Thank you.