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Each week a new verse-by-verse Bible study podcast given in expository style. Join us and see the Bible come alive as we study the truths that God‘s Word has for us.
Episodes
Sunday Jan 10, 2016
Sunday Jan 10, 2016
The Bible emphatically teaches the doctrine of election, and this is a doctrine that has caused endless debates and disputes throughout the ages. People will either go off the deep end into hyper-Calvinism with this doctrine, or they avoid it like the plague because they don’t understand it. When it really is quite simple to understand. Man complicates it by assuming that God cannot know anything that man does not know. That really is the heart of the problem for man in understanding this doctrine.
However, the truth is that man’s mind is limited, and God’s mind is unlimited. Man’s capacity to know things is finite, and God’s knowledge is infinite. Man’s knowledge is bounded by the constraints of time, it encompasses what has happened in the past and what is happening right now. Man can only guess at the future.
God created the concept of time so His knowledge is unconstrained by time. He knows all things from before time began until well past the day when eternity makes time irrelevant, and He knows it all at the same time. God cannot learn anything, since by definition He already knows it all.
In today’s lesson, Peter gives us his own inspired insight into the subject. He bluntly declares that our election is based on God’s foreknowledge. Without hesitation, or qualification, Peter says that God has elected a certain company to become members of the royal family of heaven. However, God does this and never violates our own volition, or our own right to choose. God woos, He does not ravage. He does not endow His creations with wills of their own, with the power of choice and personal accountability for their behavior, and then act as though they had no such thing.
God’s election of certain members of the human family to become members of the royal family takes into account the response of each individual when confronted by the Holy Spirit with the offer of salvation. While this may sound difficult to understand, the simple truth of it is that if you want to be a part of the elect of God, then choose Christ when the Holy Spirit presents salvation to you.
Salvation boils down to one question, will you accept or reject Jesus Christ as your Lord and Master.
If you say yes, then you will become part of the elect of God, and you will spend eternity in heaven with Christ.
If you say no, then you will not be part of the elect of God, and you will spend eternity burning in the fires of Hell, forever without the light of God.
Listen to this powerful Biblical doctrine of God’s foreknowledge and how it can bless you because God knows who you are, where you are, what you are going through, and He has a plan for you. If you are believer, then God will empower you to deal with any persecution or trial that you may be going through. He knew about this before it ever occurred and He has prepared you for it, and He is with you every step of the way.
Saturday Apr 25, 2015
Saturday Apr 25, 2015
What does it mean when we say God’s sovereign will?
Does it mean that God, and God alone, determines the absolute truths about what is right and what is wrong, or does the concept of right and wrong depend on the social values established by man?
Does it mean that no matter what man does, God’s predetermined series of events, or God’s plan for the universe, will be completed? In other words, will God’s will be done, no matter the choices that man makes?
Does it mean that God can show mercy to whom He chooses to show mercy to, and wrath to whom He chooses to show wrath to? Do the actions of man determine whether they will receive God’s mercy, or God’s wrath?
God’s actions toward man are always just and righteous because God defines the meaning of the words just and righteous. If this was not the case, and man decided what was just and righteous, then God would not be the sovereign God.
Does the creation have the right to question the actions of the Creator? Can a potter make one vase cherished and special and the other vase ordinary and common? Does the potter’s creations have the right to challenge the work of the potter?
These are the questions that Paul will answer in our lesson today. Certainly the sovereignty of God is one of the more difficult concepts for a stiff-necked, willful, and arrogant, mankind to accept. But God is sovereign, God is also merciful, and we have much to be thankful for that both of these facts are true.
Listen to this podcast to learn about the sovereign will of God.
Wednesday Mar 18, 2015
Wednesday Mar 18, 2015
If someone were to tell you that God already knew whether you would go to heaven or hell before you were even born, in fact He knew it before He formed the universe, your reaction may be one of saying “Well, that’s not fair, I should get to choose.” You might also say that “If God already knows what’s going to happen, then we are just robots going about the things that God has already determined for us.”
Predestination and election are two biblical concepts that have divided theologians, churches, and religions, for centuries. How God can be sovereign with an unstoppable will, and man can have a free will is simply beyond our capacity to understand. For it is a concept difficult for man to accept that everything that God planned from the dawn of time has happened, is happening, and will happen. There have been no changes and no surprises. There are no emergency meetings in heaven between the Holy Trinity to react to something man has done. Man can try as hard as he wants, but nothing that man has done, is doing, or will do, can change the purposes, the plan, or the will of God. If man could, then man would be sovereign and not God.
Predestination is the biblical teaching that declares the sovereignty of God over man in such a way that the freedom of the human will is also preserved. It is only when we accept this truth that we can begin to completely surrender our lives to God.
Yet, it is important to emphasize that God's predestination of human events does not eliminate human choice. We cannot bypass verses such as:
Romans 10:13
13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
A simple key to the concepts of predestination and election is that if you want to be a member of the called ones, or the elect, then accept God’s calling to be one of the whosoever ones that call upon the name of the Lord. It really is that simple.
Listen to this podcast to learn what Paul really means when he tells us:
Romans 8:28
28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
KJV