Sermon: If God is Sovereign, What About Free Will?

This evening we're gonna continue the series that we've been doing this fall of uh, answering some of the 10 hard questions of the Christian faith. Uh, we've tackled this different ways, different ones of us that are doing it, uh, different uh, topics as we've addressed them, uh, tonight. Less of a sermon, more of kind of a theological talk, um, as we think about this together, but want to think about God's sovereignty and our free will or

man's free will together. So let me pray for us before we open this complex topic together.

Our Father, we are thankful that this is your world. We're thankful that you have created us as your image bearers in this world, thankful that those of us, many of us in this room have received your saving grace and truly know you as father. We're thankful that as your father you speak to us by your word. Speak to us truth, that you desire us to worship you with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. We pray this evening even as we seek to tackle a difficult topic,

that you would help us maybe even tonight to be renewed in an understanding, to be pricked in a new understanding, to find that we are rejoicing in a greater understanding That we would give praise to you as a result. In Christ's name, amen. I want you to thank with me about four of the more high points in biblical redemptive history, uh, that we see and each of them reflects this topic. God's sovereignty and man's free will or

man's, uh, responsibility would be another way of stating it. Uh, Moses and Pharaoh in Egypt, in the Exodus, if you remember, God will send Moses down to Egypt. Any commands, Moses, he says, look, I'm sending you down. You're going to be a redeemer, you're going to lead my people out of Egypt and you are going to cry out to Pharaoh. And then he says, but Pharaoh will not let my people go. He prophesies that to Moses. He tells this to Moses proclaims it to Moses and Pharaoh

of course does not. And then Pharaoh is held responsible for not letting God's people go. You think about Judas who betrays Jesus, you will have Judas with Christ at uh, that last supper and Jesus will speak about how one is going to betray him. He says it would be better for that person who've never been born.

It has been prophesied that he will be betrayed. He has stated that it will be the case and Judas betrays Jesus and he's held responsible. Third, at the same dinner, Jesus will inform Peter that before the rooster crows, you'll deny me three times he tells Peter this is going to happen. Peter says, not, I Lord, I would never do such a thing. And of course before the rooster crows in the morning, he has denied him three times it was told, it was appointed,

it was decreed and yet Peter was held responsible or most pointedly, you think of the crucifixion, Jesus will foretell his death time and again in the gospels, as the gospels move forward, he will make it more and more explicit that he will be put to death. It's been appointed but we could even go back before that. We could go hundreds of years before that and say that in the suffering servant uh, Psalm of Isaiah, that in Isaiah 53 it's prophesied that there'd be this one that would come to

redeem mankind that is going to suffer and is going to die. Or we could even go back thousands of years before that and we could go all the way back to Genesis three 15 in the Garden of Eden and this prophecy that there would be this one to come.

And yet it was established by the sovereign God and his eternal decree. Want you to hear in Acts two that great day at Pentecost, many of you know this passage. Well Peter is preaching to the Jews as they're gathered and he preaches to the men of his Israel and he says this, 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 this, Jesus

delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. He's clear God has ordained this. This has been decreed by God and yet he goes on to say this, you speaking to the Jews you crucified and killed by the hands of lawlessness. In each of these examples, we have it established by the sovereignty of God and yet each is held responsible for what they did. Sovereignty and free will

we wanna do is look at this in three parts this evening. The first is I, I want us to establish that God is sovereign. That that may be something you think, ah, do we really need to touch that we we do. 'cause it gets questioned in every generation, especially when you're dealing with this subject, it gets questioned. So I just want to look at that and not spend a lot of time on that this evening, but I wanna look at that the fact that God is sovereign because the entire

Bible points to this truth that God is sovereign and I wanna look at it in two realities. This biblical doctrine tonight that God is sovereign and that he rules overall first and second, that there is no God like this God, the first that he rules overall the scriptures, they they couldn't be more clear. We hear this refrained over and over throughout the scriptures just as an example, Psalm 1 0 3 19, the Lord has established just throne in the heavens and his kingdom rules

overall, Overall. That famous quote by Abraham Kuper is very true. There is not a square inch in the whole creation over which cries to his sovereign overall does not cry. Mine all is his and he rules over overall. As Martin Luther said, even the devil is God's devil. He rules over all it's that famous Psalm two pictures. You have all the nations of the earth gathering together and they are plotting against God and they are seeking to undo him.

And it is fascinating that Psalm two, it says the Lord God sits enthroned above. What is it He rules over all and he laughs and the psalmist says it's a laugh of derision. Why is it a laugh of derision? Because it's so silly. He's sovereign. He Rules over all they can plot all they want. Nothing changes that nothing can undo, that nothing can unseat him. Not the plotting of men, not the rebellion of angels nor anything in heaven on earth or under the earth.

He rules and he rules over all forever the constant testimony of scripture. This means secondly that there is no God like our God. Again, we could look at scripture after scripture and see that he creates all, he sustains all he judges all he brings all things to their final conclusion. He knows all he sees all there is no God, not the God of the nations, not the God of our imaginations, not the gods of the modern day that is like our God.

Just wanna read to you tonight from Isaiah

and where Isaiah is tackling this. Isaiah chapter 40,

he says this, just wanna read to you verses nine through 25. We could keep going but I want you to hear this refrain. There's no God like this. God Go on up to a high mountain O Zion Herold of good news. Lift up your voice with strength of Jerusalem herald of good news. Lift it up. Fear not say to the cities of Judah, behold your God, behold the Lord God comes with might and his arm rules for him. Behold his reward is with him and his recompense before him.

He will tend his flock like a shepherd. He will gather his lambs and his arms. He will carry them in his bosom and gently lead those that are young are with young who measured the waters, the hollow of his hand and marked up the heavens with the span, enclosed the dust of the earth and a measure and weighed the mountains and scales in the hills in a balance who has measured the spirit of the Lord or what man shows him his counsel,

whom did he consult and who made him understand who taught him the path of justice and taught him knowledge and showed him the way of understanding. Behold the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as the dust on the scales. Behold he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. Lebanon would not suffice for fuel nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering. All the nations are as nothing before him. They're accounted by him as less than nothing an emptiness To

whom then will you liken God or what likeness compares with him An idol

craftsman casts it and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for its silver chains. He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot. He seeks out a skillful craftman to set up an idol that will not move. Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth and its

inhabitants are like grasshoppers, stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwell in, brings princes to nothing and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. Scarcely are they planted scarcely so and scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth when he blows on them and they wither and the tempest carries them off like stubble. To whom then will you compare me that I should be like him

says the holy one And the answer's none. It's none like him. This is why you get to the end of the book of job and he is leading job through question after question after question. He is showing him thing after thing after thing and finally gets to the end and what does job do? He just humbles himself and and he puts his hands over his mouth. He's led to the conclusion that there is none like this. God, he knows all he sees, all he governs, all he sustains, all he judges,

all he forms all. There's none like him.

God is sovereign and he establishes all. However, I wanna be clear what we're speaking about when we talk about the sovereignty of God, what we're not speaking about fatalism in that he establishes all fatalism. As one encyclopedia stated, it said that it asserts an abstract necessity without regard to causal antecedents and thus as diametrically opposed predestination which causes an effects ends and means are determined in relation to one another.

That is fatalism ignores and it dismisses means meaning that there is nothing that leads to something else. It's just this happens because it happens. This happens because it was supposed to happen that that's not biblical doctrine. Lemme try to work this out with you. Think through this. Uh, tonight before I came I had an egg sandwich.

Now I ate that egg sandwich for dinner but there were all kinds of means that led me to eat that egg sandwich. On Monday I went to the grocery store and I picked up bread and I picked up eggs. I brought those eggs and I brought that bread home. I put those eggs in my refrigerator and I put that bread out on the countertop and I got up from my pastoral nap this afternoon. I rolled out of bed, I walked to the kitchen, I found the bread, I found the eggs,

hooked up the egg. I put it on my bread with a little pickle and a little bit of mustard, little cheddar cheese and then I ate the fried egg sandwich. There were means that got to the end means that were used to get me to the end of eating the egg sandwich. Predestination or God's willing ordaining all, all things as sovereign over all of the universe. He does not ignore means in establishing what he establishes. Fatalism says what we do or don't do doesn't really matter.

What's going to happen is going to happen, but that's not the biblical doctrine of God's sovereignty. As Charles Hodge said, God has not given it either to necessity or to chance or to the caprice of man or to the malice of Satan to control the sequence of events and all their issues but has kept the reins of government in his own hands and he ordains the means even as he ordains the end. So we ordained that those eggs would be in the grocery store ordained that I

would wake up from my nap today we ordained that I could walk to the kitchen. We ordained all of those means to that end. So it matters. The means matter. It matters that I share the gospel. It matters that I pray. It matters that I spent time preparing before I showed up and started speaking tonight because he uses those means to the end. He has established he ordains the end. He ordains the means. Second when examine the freedom of man in light of God's sovereignty.

If God is sovereign, doesn't this mean that man is coerced? If God establishes all things

and the answer is not at all man was created free, we were created with what I think is a better term free agency. We have free agency. This is part of what it means to be a person and thus why we're held responsible for our actions. Now there's mystery here. God ordains all and yet we're not mere machines. We make choices. We have to say that we aren't completely sure how all this goes together. No one can work this out completely this side of glory.

I grant that every theologian must grant that no matter where they stand on these issues. But what I know is that divine sovereignty is taught in the scriptures and man's free agency is taught in the sss. Both are taught and answering. Every question isn't possible. It's not possible for sure tonight it's not possible. This side of eternity. Lorraine Ner reformed theologian who wrote one of the classic works on predestination or God's sovereignty over all things said,

he said he meaning God has made no attempt to give us a formal explanation of these things and our limited human knowledge is not able fully to solve the problem. De Carson hopefully adds this little longer quote but hang in there, listen to it. He said the sovereignty responsibility, tension is not a problem to be solved. Rather it's a framework to be explored to recognize this is already a major advance for it rejects those easy solutions which impose

alien philosophical constructions upon the biblical data or which dismiss those elements of the biblical data and not conducive to the investigator system to explore the tension as to explore the nature of God and his ways with men. This is the key. Yet although we must not too readily adopt simplistic solutions, neither must we too easily succumb to the viewpoint that the tension is intrinsically illogical to admit. We do not possess enough pieces of the puzzle to complete the picture as a

farry from saying that the pieces belong to quite different puzzles and therefore could not be related to each other even if we were given the rest of them. We don't know it all. We don't know it all and I can can't cover it all tonight,

but his divine sovereignty, true human free agency is true. Try and think about those together tonight. The Westminster standards stated unequivocally and I think some of the best language that has come down to us through the years on this issue says this, God has freely and unchangeable, ordained whatsoever comes to pass divine sovereignty. Then they immediately say this yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin,

nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures nor is liberty or contingency of second causes taken away but rather established God ordains all yet he doesn't take away secondary causes as we just spoke about. He also doesn't do violence to the will of the creature. That is he created us as men and men by our very nature meaning mankind. Mankind by our very nature have been created with free agency. We have a sort of liberty

and yet he exercises his divine sovereignty in a way that does not take away our liberty. It doesn't violate our freedom. We always, always choose what we choose to do Always And And because we always choose, we are always held responsible for our free choices. We Always choose and I always choose willingly.

I make no mistake. It is out of necessity that I choose what I choose but it's not out of compulsion. There's a big difference if it's out of compulsion or to go back to the word that we used earlier. If it is out of coercion then we have no responsibility. As Calvin said, man acts wickedly by will but not by compulsion. I always choose what I choose. I will it. Nothing forces me to choose this or to choose that or not to choose this or to

not to choose that. That would be compulsion. I always make a free choice from my available options. I choose as Isaiah Hodge said, the matter of free will underlies everything. Everything is gone if free will is gone. But notice that I exercise my free agency according to my available choices.

This rubric from the scriptures has been the most helpful thing for me in this regard over the years began with Augustine Thomas Boston. A puritan will will uh tweak it a little bit and will make it more popular but it's what we call the fourfold state of man fourfold state of man. There are four different states of man and Augustine did in Latin. It's beautiful in Latin. It's uh uh passe, pari, non-pace pari and it all works in Latin.

It gets a little muddled English but this is it in English. You think about the fourfold state of man, there are different four states of mankind. The first is man in the garden. You have Adam in the eve in the garden before the fall created man and Augustine said this, there's two things that are true about them. They were able to sin, able to sin and they were able not to sin, able to sin, able not to sin. They had two choices

of course Adam chooses to sin. We then move to the second stage of man, which is fallen man. Now Genesis three and all following now fallen man if you take those two things, is he able to sin? Yeah, I'm living proof able to sin. Is he able not to sin? No, he's not able not to sin. He's able to sin. He's not able not to sin. He in essence has one choice. Fallen man will always choose from his available options. He's got one choice.

He will always choose wickedness and evil because he will never de seek to do anything to the glory of God. He can't, He won't. Now when we talk about that, we have to make it clear that he has natural ability to do so. He has the mind to do it. He has the faculties, he has natural ability to do it. He has that from creation but he doesn't have the moral ability 'cause he's fallen able to sin, not able not to sin. But then God sends a savior into the world,

the Lord Jesus Christ and he lives and he dies for fallen men and we are made new creations as we come to faith in Christ and his grace is poured out upon us. And now are we able to sin? Oh yeah, able to sin. Are we able not to sin? Yes, you're able not to sin, you're able to do good because grace is flooded into your life. You have two options. Every single moment in my life I have two options. I can whether I eat or drink or whatever I do due to the glory of God able not

to sin or I can do to the glory of Jason able to sin. Then there is the fourth state of man and what is that? This glorified man. Glorified man able to sin. No, not able to sin And this is where it gets messed up in English. Doesn't quite work but something like not not, not able not to sin, I don't know however you say that, but has one available option for all of eternity. Not able to sin.

We always choose or option. We choose from the available options that we have and we always choose what most delights us. Jonathan Edwards used to say it this way, he would say, you and I always choose what we find the most lovely and will give us the least amount of pain. And if you think through your life that's the case. You always choose this because this thing is more beautiful to you, more lovely to you and it promises the least amount of pain.

Now as a Christian you have delayed gratification. You can look and you say, oh man, that promises a lot of, a lot of good right now that seems awfully lovely. Ah, but it's going to cause some pain and there's something even more lovely seeking the glory of God and storing my treasures in heaven. How is it that you come to save faith in Christ? What happens? He shines the light of the beauty of Christ into your soul. Do you freely choose Christ? Absolutely

You freely choose Christ but once he reveals Christ to you, it's your only option. You've Seen his beauty, you can't help but be drawn to him. That's efficacious grace.

We always choose what most delights us, what we find the most pleasing and beautiful. So do we believe that man has free will yet free will? Yes, absolutely, but not the kind of free will that some mean a kind of libertarian free will that is that man by virtue of being a man has total ability within himself to will good or to will evil towards God. There's one proponent of the libertarianism that defined it this way.

He said it's the belief that the human will has an inherent power to choose with equal ease between alternatives. This belief does not claim that there are no influences that might affect the will, but it does insist that normally the will can overcome these factors and choose in spite of them. Ultimately the will is free from any necessary causation. In other words, it is autonomous and that's the problem.

You're not autonomous now you you were created as dependent beings. So there cannot be this libertarian free will that can't exist under a sovereign God. It's an impossibility.

Do not have libertarian free wills. However, we mean that man has free will and that he voluntarily chooses all that he chooses. And the answer of course is yes, we have free will. So let's do a few case studies just just to press this home and to think through this a little bit together. Our men and women in glory, are they free?

Do they have free wills or are they devoid of freedom? If they are devoid of freedom, then every single one of us would recognize that somehow they are subhuman because part of being human is that you have a will. So it must be that they have a will and it must be that they choose and yet will they ever choose to sin a gun's God will they ever choose to abandon God? The answer is yes they can. Then heaven is not secure.

Yours am my everlasting salvation is not so everlasting, but you see that's not the case. They have wills and they freely choose to abide in God and worship God and they desire to do so and they freely exercise that will for all of eternity because they can do no other, but they freely exercise It. Does the CH devil choose to do evil and all would say yes? Does he choose to always do evil again? Everybody would say yes.

Is there a day that the devil could or might repent and do good and all rightfully say no, he's responsible and he's culpable for his choice of evil. Is he freely choosing evil? Yes. Will he always choose it? Yes. Or maybe a case study we could even more clearly agree upon God. God is not like Allah. This is one of the great divisions between us and Islam. Allah is Muslims, uh uh, ascribed to him. He is capricious but God is not capricious.

That is he isn't free to do whatever he wants. That's true of Allah, not true of God. God can never do that which is out of accord with this person. All of his attributes are who he is. He must do all things in conformity to who he is and he cannot do other. He is loved. He's just, he's good. So does God do good? Yes. Does God always do good? Yes, he cannot do other. Now here's the kicker, is God free. You better believe he's free,

But he always does good. He's the freest. Being there is

nothing forces him, nothing cajoles him. Nothing acts upon him, but he always chooses to go to good and it's his only choice because he can't do evil. We believe in freedom but not libertarianism.

We accept it with people in glory and with the devil and with God. So we're accepted about ourselves. Third, we understand man's freedom in relation to God's sovereignty. Think about it in this way. If we lose God to maintain human freedom, then we've lost all.

Say that again. If we lose God to maintain human freedom, then we have lost all. God cannot be diminished or reduced to make way for human choice of freedom. So those who argue for God, for example, for ordaining whatsoever comes to come to pass by the fact that he has foreknowledge of whatsoever comes to pass or diminishing who God is in his sovereignty. We cannot diminish who God is, the sake of human freedom. The Story goes or the illustration goes is that God with his omniscience.

And so you think of it kind of like binoculars with his omniscient binoculars. He looks down the corridors of time and as he looks down the quarters of time he sees that Jason will choose to pick up this Bible this evening because he sees that I was going to pick up this Bible this evening. Then he therefore for Danes that I will pick up this Bible this evening. Or he looked down the corridors of time and he saw that Jason Opolis at Eastern

Illinois University and his freshman year of college would sit underneath the word preach and would choose to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so because he saw that with his omniscient binoculars looking down the quarters of time he ordained that Jason would believe on him and be saved his freshman year of college. Here's the issue. We reduce God to a being that looks down the quarters of time and wills based upon what he sees

than worse sovereign, not him just flipped it, but there's an even greater problem for those that have and do hold this view if God foreknows some future event, It is as certain as if he ordained that future event as theologians have pointed out through the years. It's a contradiction of logic to say that God foreknows as certain something that by its very nature is uncertain, not possible. We only have two options here.

Either future events are certain and so God knows them or they are uncertain and God thus does not know them. You can't separate for foreknowledge from for nation. They are two sides of the same coin. They go hand in hand.

Let me answer just a few concerns. Well, this makes the good or the bad that we choose to do. It makes it seem like it is equally fine and okay to do.

I want to remember and what theologians have asserted over and over through the years and what we can make a biblical case for is that we must remember that God's relation to the good that happens and the bad that happens, that it's not symmetrical, it's asymmetrical.

Summarize Da Carson. The Bible presents a kind of asymmetry. The negative side is that my sinful actions cannot escape God's sovereignty and yet the Bible is clear that I cannot shift the blame to God. They're my choices, my responsibility. However, on the positive side, whatever good I do, I must recognize that this choice to do good is only by God's grace. Yet God does not force me to choose this good. God's actions remain sufficiently indirect,

that it preserves my genuine responsibility for it so that in fact I even receive rewards in glory for it. There's an asymmetry there. Second, doesn't the Bible say God changes his mind or repents his decisions based upon man's actions? There are various passages that we could turn to throughout the scriptures that are wrestling with this very idea and where this kind of language is used. I can think of a half dozen or so think of Hezekiah when he

prophesied that he is going to die and then he prays to God and God relents changes his mind and gives Hezekiah more days happening there. Theologians have long distinguished between different wills of God. There are various formulations. You have prescriptive and determinative wills. You have his permissive and decretive wills, his antecedent in consequent wills, his secret and revealed wills and that's often what we're seeing,

what we're seeing that which was secret becoming revealed. That may be the easiest way to think about it. At the very least there is what we would call his effective will and his efficacious will. His effective will is his disposition. That is what he desires overall and everybody has to make this distinction no matter where you fall on the plane of God's sovereignty and man's free agency or free will because for example two Peter three, nine, Peter says,

God is not willing that any should perish, but you see if that is his efficacious, will we have a problem with understanding that passage because if it is his efficacious will, then every single person on the face of the earth has to be saved. There can't be any of that perish. No. There are two different wills that are revealed and respect there. That is his effective will. That is his disposition. His effective will is that nun should perish.

He doesn't so much change his mind. We call anthropomorphic language that the scriptures used to help you and I to understand, but rather we're seen a different will. What was hidden is now revealed.

So why would people deny God's sovereignty to maintain free will?

I think for two reasons primarily.

One, we want to know that what we do in this world matters. And if you have a view that God is sovereign and predestines all things, predetermines all things, there is an argument that is made that ah, that that that makes us robots and it makes what you and I do to does it really matter what I do today? Does it really matter what I do tonight or what I do tomorrow or whether I pray, whether I share the gospel, whether I seek my own sanctification?

We want to know that what we do in this world matters.

I would argue my friends that knowing that we serve a sovereign God makes all that we do actually matter.

When you know your salvation is all of grace,

then all of a sudden you want to do everything in Thanksgiving day, you want every part of your life to be yielded to Him. You know it's all of grace. And then you come to that realization that he chooses to use you and I in ministering to others and working out his plan of salvation in this world and drawing people to himself that what he does by his sovereign power, he gives you and I the privilege of participating in

actually courage you and I to be invested in today. I think the second reason is because by nature we desire to be independent. No one wants to be controlled. The quickest way to anger someone in our world is to tell them you must do something. You have a little kid all the time. Tell an older kid, you're not the boss of me here all the time,

but here's the folly of maintaining a libertarian freedom at the cost of God's sovereignty that we actually think we are in better hands depending on ourselves and trusting in God. That's the height of folly.

Lastly, doesn't this just make us the fruit of fate or fortune or destiny? No. This is what I especially want you to understand. This is so drastically different from having an understanding of fate or destiny or chance or karma or whatever it may be Because the God who pre ordains all things who, Dustin, all things that God is a personal being, he's a person and this personal being is behind all that occurs. He doesn't rule over all things unconsciously that that's the point of Psalm

1 21, that we have a God that doesn't slumber or sleep. He never does anything unconsciously things don't just happen. He consciously wills them to happen and he does so as a personal being, always seeking his glory, the good of his people Always When all Theo theologians said, it is a difference between the remark of the stoic Marcus Aurelius who said, if the Gods care not for me or my children, there is reason for it.

A passionate cry of job. Though he slay me, yet I will trust in him. He's A personal being.

I'm just gonna close by reading this story from Bebe Warfield. It thought was beautiful this week reading it, so I'm gonna read it to you just to close. There's a story of a little Dutch boy, which embodies very fairly the difference between God and fate. This little boy's home was on a d**e in Holland near a grand windmill whose long arms swept so close to the ground as to endanger those who carelessly stray under them.

He was very fond of playing precisely under this mill. His anxious parents had forbidden him to go near it and when a stubborn will did not give way had sought to frighten him away from it by arousing his imagination to the terrors of being struck by the arms and carried up into the air to have life beaten out of him by their ceaseless strokes. One day needless of their warning, he stray again under the dangerous arms and was soon

absorbed in his play. They're forgetful of everything but his greatest pleasure. Perhaps He was half conscious of a breeze, springing up somewhere in the depth of his soul. He may have been obscurely aware of the danger with which he had been threatened. At any rate, suddenly as he played was violently smitten from behind, found himself swung all at once with his head downward up into the air, and then the blows came swift and hard.

Oh, what a sinking of the heart. Oh, what a horror of great darkness. It had come then and he was gone and is terrified writhing. He twisted himself about and looking up, saw the immeasurable expanse of the brazen heavens above him but his father's face. And once he realized with a great revulsion that he was not caught in the mill, but was only receiving the threatened punishment of his disobedience melted into tears, not of pain, but of relief and joy. In that moment,

he understood the difference between falling into the grinding power of a machine and into the loving hands of a father. That's the difference between fate and predestination. All the language of men cannot tell the immensity of this difference. Sovereign God, ordains and predestines all things, and he does so as a personal being, a father who loves you And does so for your good as a doctrine to rejoice. Let's pray. Father, we are thankful

you are a God sovereign care.

You do not do violence or persons and that you safeguard us yet with your sovereign will and sovereign power, truly there is no God like you. Results you in glorify you tonight in Christ's name. Amen.