Questions and Answers – Sunday Evening Service at Orange Park Bible Church
Question #1: What is the relationship between and where do the following two meet: God's Sovereignty and Man's Responsibility?
Restated: Does the Doctrine of Divine Sovereignty and Providence eliminate human responsibility?
John MacArthur calls this question “The Big Hurdle.”
Here is a link to a message I listened to this week that helped me greatly:
The Scripture often places these two truths side by side.
Isaiah 10:5-6 – Assyria is the instrument of Divine judgment.
Isaiah 10:7 – Assyria’s purpose is not to carry out Divine judgment. It is in the heart of wicked Assyria to destroy, but not for God’s purposes.
Isaiah 10:12 – If this is the work of God, how is Assyria responsible?
Isaiah 10:15 – If God wields the axe handle, how is the axe head held responsible?
John 3:1-8, 27 compared to Job 3:15-16, 18
Answer: There is a reason that you have not been given a reasonable, satisfactory answer to this dilemma. There is not one. Here are a few things to consider and a Biblical response.
A Few Things to Consider:
If you walk away from questions like this one, the Triune God, the Hypostatic Union; the Eternal Existence of God; Abiding in time and one day being as a thousand years to God – it is not that “you don’t get it” – you actually “got it” just right. If we do not walk away from the deep things of God scratching our heads, we were probably not “getting it.”
The purpose of theology is doxology. Is your desire for God to know God, worship God, enjoy God or is this question a means through which God must justify Himself to you before you will worship Him? Will you walk away saying, “That is not good enough for me.” Read Romans 11:33-36; Job 38-40; Isaiah 40:13; Deuteronomy 29:29.
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12). Think of the examples: Noah; Abraham; Joseph; Disciples and Jesus’ death.
The Puritan John Flavel once wrote, “The reason men do not understand the providence of God is because the word can only be understood when read backwards.”
A Biblical Response:
Divine Sovereignty: Romans 9:6, 14, 19-23; 10:6-7
Personal Responsibility: Romans 10:9-10
My Duty: Romans 10:14-17
"...we allow that man has choice and that it is self-determined, so that if he does anything evil, it should be imputed to him and to his own voluntary choosing. We do away with coercion and force, because this contradicts the nature of the will and cannot coexist with it. We deny that choice is free, because through man's innate wickedness it is of necessity driven to what is evil and cannot seek anything but evil. And from this it is possible to deduce what a great difference there is between necessity and coercion. For we do not say that man is dragged unwillingly into sinning, but that because his will is corrupt he is held captive under the yoke of sin and therefore of necessity will in an evil way. For where there is bondage, there is necessity. But it makes a great difference whether the bondage is voluntary or coerced. We locate the necessity to sin precisely in corruption of the will, from which follows that it is self-determined."
- John Calvin from Bondage and Liberation of the Will, pg. 69-70
Question #2: How can someone practically live by faith and in total dependence on God without having a fatalist mentality?
Answer: I would never advise one to do such a thing! Something must control the outcome of all things. There is no such thing as “chance.” Either we determine the outcome or God determines the outcome. Therefore, I walk with much confidence knowing that God controls the outcome of all things.
The doctrine of providence teaches Christians that they are never in the grip of blind forces (fortune, chance, luck, fate); all that happens to them is divinely planned, and each event comes as a new summons to trust, obey, and rejoice, knowing that all is for one's spiritual and eternal good (Rom. 8:28-29).
The Bible clearly teaches God's providential control (1) over the universe at large, Ps. 103:19; Dan. 4:35; Eph. 1:11; (2) over the physical world, Job 37; Pss. 104:14; 135:6; Matt. 5:45; (3) over the brute creation, Ps. 104:21, 28; Matt. 6:26; 10:29; (4) over the affairs of nations, Job 12:23; Pss. 22:28; 66:7; Acts 17:26; (5) over man's birth and lot in life, 1 Sam. 16:1; Ps. 139:16; Isa. 45:5; Gal. 1:15-16; (6) over the outward successes and failures of men's lives, Ps. 75:6, 7; Luke 1:52; (7) over things seemingly accidental or insignificant, Prov. 16:33; Matt. 10:30; (8) in the protection of the righteous, Pss. 4:8; 5:12; 63:8; 121:3; Rom. 8:28; (9) in supplying the wants of God's people, Gen. 22:8, 14; Deut. 8:3; Phil. 4:19; (10) in giving answers to prayer, 1 Sam. 1:19; Isa. 20:5, 6; 2 Chron. 33:13; Ps. 65:2; Matt. 7:7; Luke 18:7, 8; and (11) in the exposure and punishment of the wicked, Pss. 7:12-13; 11:6. (L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 4th ed.).
The Puritan John Flavel once wrote, “The reason men do not understand the providence of God is because the word can only be understood when read backwards.”
Question #3: Can man change God's mind?
Answer: No. At first glance this question seems ridiculously easy. Of course God does not change His mind. The Bible explicitly says He does not:
- "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD" (Pro. 16:33).
- “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11:33-36).
- "God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?" (Numbers 23:19).
- “And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man that He should change His mind” (1 Samuel 15:29).
Open Theism teaches that God does not know all things, is constantly learning, and is subject to changing His mind when presented with information He did not previously have.
For the sake of argument though, let’s try to imagine God literally changing His mind. I want to explain how this concept is inseparably linked with God's omniscience because for God to change His mind, He would need to make a decision and then be given new information He did not have before, so that He could either see the error of His ways, or choose a better course of action. It is important we see this. For God to change His mind, it would mean that God is learning new material as each day unfolds, and because you and I make that information known to God, or He sees that plan A is not working too well, because He is now armed with new information, He can make a better decision than the one He did previously. However, this idea would totally undermine God's exhaustive knowledge of future events (His omniscience) one of the very attributes of God. Such a thought is unthinkable (Ligon Duncan).
However, it is not as simple as “no” with a few accompanying verses. How about verses like the following:
“So the Lord changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people” (Exodus 32:14).
Having now laid a foundation upon which we can build, I wish now to point you to an excellent article by Dr. Ligon Duncan on the subject:
You might want to turn Exodus 32 before you and just remember the context. This is right in the context of the golden calf. The people of God have already violated the first and second commandments before Moses can even get down from the mountain, and in the context of this, God threatens to destroy his people, and Moses intercedes. He intercedes and he says, “Don’t destroy this people. Don’t destroy this people that you brought out of the land of Egypt into the wilderness, because if you destroy this people, the nations are going to mock and say, “What did he do but just bring this people out in the wilderness to destroy them. So Moses fervently intercedes with God.
Now what is Moses trying to teach us there the following things? One, that his influence conditions the compassion of God. Is Moses trying to teach us that his influence conditioned the compassion of God? God’s compassion had just come to the end of the rope—he’d had it, “that’s it, I’m going to fry them”—and Moses in the greatness and generosity of his heart talked God out of it. Is that what he’s trying to teach?
Is he trying to teach us here that God changes his mind, that he reverses his intentions? Is he trying to teach us here the principle that God’s people have influence by their prayers on evoking the future actions of God?
So what’s happening here? God is training Moses to have a heart for his people like he already does, because Moses is the mediator. Moses is the mediator, and he’s got to have a heart for his people if he’s going to intercede for them, if he’s going to mediate for them. And so in Exodus 32, he’s training Moses to be a mediator. The whole passage is about Moses being a mediator. It’s not about God changing his mind. It’s not about God having Moses exercise some influence on him.
Now we Calvinists, we Reformational Christians, happen to think that that’s incorrect. God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility are not in contradiction. We may not be able to explain fully how those things work together, but they are not contradictory. And so the fact of the matter is, God often uses the prayers of his people as the instrument for the accomplishment of his will. But in that case, prayer functions—as C.H. Spurgeon once said—like a carrier pigeon.
You know, the carrier pigeon is sent from home base with its message out to the place where the message is to be taken, and then it comes back home to the place from which it was sent. And, Spurgeon says, prayer is just like that. Prayer begins in the heart of God and lights in the heart of his people, who send it back to him where it returns from whence it came. And so God uses the prayers lifted up for the accomplishment of his will, but it is his heart where the origins of those prayers lie and they are sent out to ours. Do our prayers affect the plans of God? Not by themselves, but they may be the instrument which God has ordained from the foundation of the world to accomplish his will.
Question #4: Is there symbolism in all of God's Old Testament laws? Do all of God's laws, even those that are void through the New Covenant, have significance for me today?
Answer: No, you should not read “thou shalt not eat shellfish” and wonder if there is some practical daily theological significance (necessarily).
Question #5: Is speaking in tongues Biblical? Please elaborate in relation to modern occurrences.
Two different views:
Answer: If you were to believe with Carson, you must also conclude that 99% of what you see today in the arena of “Spiritual Gifts” or “Charismatic Movement” is false teaching by wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Question #6: Is drinking alcohol sinful?
Answer: When all is said and done, we must distinguish the use of wine from its abuse. Sometimes in Scripture gluttonous partaking of food is paralleled with immoderate drinking of wine (Deut. 21:20; Prov. 23:21). But food is not universally prohibited! Sometimes in Scripture sexual perversion is paralleled with drunkenness (Rom. 13:13; I Pet. 4:3). But all sexual activity is not condemned! Wealth often becomes a snare to the sinner (I Tim. 6:9-11), but the Scripture does not universally decry its acquisition (Job 42:10-17)! Each of these factors in life is intended by God to be a blessing for man, when used according to His righteous Law.
It would seem abundantly clear, then, that the Scriptures do allow the moderate partaking of alcoholic beverages. There is no hesitancy in Scripture in commending wine, nor embarrassment in portraying its consumption among the righteous of Biblical days. Wine is set before the saints as blessing and gladness (Deut. 14:26; Ps. 104:14-15), even though it may be to the immoderate and wicked, a mocker and curse (Prov. 20:1; 23:29ff.).
Question #7: Outside of the Bible, what has been the single most influential book you have read?
Answer: It is a three-way tie.
John Calvin’s Institutes
John Piper’s The Pleasures of God
A.W. Pink’s Our Accountability to God
Question#8: Who are the 24 Elders in the Book of Revelation?
Answer: There is no answer.
“Who are the twenty-four elders?”
By Rev. Bill Lee-Warner & Rev. Charles Cooper
There are 175 references to "elders" in the Bible. One hundred and sixteen of those references are in the Old Testament leaving fifty-nine in the New Testament. The vast majority of the references in both testaments refer to the elders of Israel, the elders of the congregation of Israel (i.e. the leaders of the people).
In the New Testament, the gospels and Acts have a similar meaning. Beginning with Acts 11:30 and jumping to 1 Timothy 5:17, the primary usage of the term refers to the leaders of a local church. In the book of Revelation there are eleven references, each of which refer to the twenty-four elders that surround the throne of God.
Much speculation has arisen as to who these twenty-four elders are: (1) a leader from each of the 12 tribes of Israel plus each of the 12 apostles, (2) twenty-four godly men from throughout biblical history and, (3) a special class of angels.
The best identification seems to be that the twenty-four elders are a special group of beings that are always in view when the throne of God is in view. What they do, other than worship God, we do not know. Why they are there, we do not know. Who they are, we are never told, other than that they are elders and from common usage throughout the Bible, they function in some capacity as spiritual leaders.
Perhaps we should leave their identification as it is given in the Scripture: unidentified.
