Speaker 1 0:41

[inaudible]

Speaker 2 0:43

Well , Hey, good morning. And welcome if you're with us online, I'm glad that you're here. Happy father's day. I'm assuming all your dads are barbecuing that aren't here and you're watching because church is important to you and that's good, man. I'll tell you what dads, you have massive influence. Don't give that away. Take that opportunity. It's a day. If you are a dad, take that opportunity. Don't miss that opportunity up to shake it all off and say two things to those around you, because it's that important. I love you is really good, but a bigger, more powerful one is I'm proud of you and call it out and name it and give respect. Because I know as a man and us men, like the love stuff is cool, but we want to feel respected. And so when another man gives a younger man or someone around them, respect, man, the cashew just put in the bank. So don't miss that opportunity. Drop the pride, the ego, the dude stuff, and lean in all the way and be a good dad. And for those of you who know that don't have a dad that's here around right now, stepping on their behalf step right into that season and give the same thing to somebody else. So dad's pops . I see you. I love you. I'm thankful for you. And I hope you're proud of me. So , um , so today we're asking this big question, we're asking the question. If God knows the future, how can we really have choice or this free choice? If the scripture is already written, if the script is already written ahead of time, if we , we are, we just determining our part in this? And if that's the case, how can God hold us accountable for the choices that we make? Because he's really already choosing the choices that we make. It all becomes quite this, fill out philosophical conundrum. When we look into it and we're going to work through that today. And there's some stuff in Jeremiah, we're going to pull out of as we've been walking through that. But first of all, we're going to start out by pointing a verse. This is one of the favorites within the Christian quiche culture. It's this one, Jeremiah 29, 11 verse 11 for I know plans I have for you declares the Lord plans to prosper you and not to harm you plans to give you hope a future that we've seen this in pictures. You've seen it in jewelry. Some of you have it tattooed on your body. You're seeing tattoos. We love that verse. I mean, all right , Christians love that verse. It's like the thing we give away to graduates and you know , it sits on our desk and on our wall. And it's all predicated on this. The idea that if God has a plan for our future, it will come about. Now this challenges , the whole idea, this whole concept of free choice. But if you believe in free choice, just because God has a plan for your future, it doesn't necessarily mean that it will come about because when God says I have a plan for you future, he's offering you something. He's , he's giving you a proposal. So what if you, who's not the follow his plan. Can you do that? Or does anything you do actually then become his plan? How does that all work out? Let me just say this to you. The entire Bible and all of his scriptures is predicated on the fact that we don't always follow God's plan. If we always followed God's plan and be a very short book. In fact, it'd probably be more like a pamphlet because the whole plot, the whole plot line of scripture, this whole, this whole scope and sequence is that God actually has a plan for Israel to start with. And Israel keeps walking away and we see this through Jeremiah, he's giving this message has come as a messenger to say, Hey, Israel, you keep walking away from God's plan. Then the church and the new Testament, continually God having a plan that we all keep walking away from. So to just put this piece of scripture up on a poster, have it tattooed on you saying, God has a plan for your life. It could be a really hopeful verse, or if you're someone who's stubborn and you keep walking away, it could just be a really sad reminder of how far you're straying . Even in Jeremiah, we see that in this poetry, he knows that they're about to go into exile. So it doesn't sound that prosperous. And they're not going to be harmed that if you read this and who it was written to and how it goes, he's saying, Hey, you're getting ready to go. And exhale . I don't know for how long, but what ends up happening is actually going to exile into Babylon for 70 years. Then the plan begins to come about because of their decisions. And so we want to look at the concept of plan, purpose, and then where we fit in as free choice agents and how that goes. It's kind of where we're headed today. So if God knows the future, do we have free choice? Let me give you an answer in one sentence. It's this knowing what someone will do is not the same as causing men to act that way for God is not controlling history here in his friends. He's redeeming it. Knowing what someone will do. That's not the same as causing them to act that way for God's not controlling history. He is redeeming it. That is not, he's not forcing history to move in a certain direction in all detail. But what he's bringing out is he's bringing up good out of all things in all times. So does God know the future then? Yes, absolutely. There's two ways that he knows the future and there might be more, but here are just two ways that he knows sure. One is causally Causely . He knows much about the sure, because there's many things he's going to do in the future. And he knows what he is going to do or what's because , and there's also relationally, relationally. He knows each of us intimately and infinitely so he can predict our choices, actor accurately. And I'm gonna talk about some examples from scripture about how God knows the future and knowing the future doesn't necessarily actually cause the future casually. He can say certain things gonna happen and they're going to happen because he'll bring them about right. But you know, all of us can do that to a certain degree. We can cause something to happen. You can say tomorrow, I'm going to do this and then you do it. And then you just predicted the future and then the future. But can you give me another example and ask you all to stand up, go ahead. Some of you guys can stand up now, say this, you ready for this? I love in and out. Ready? That's great. You can have seat. Perfect. So I just want to let you know that I prophesied this this week that most of you would stand up today and say, I love in and out. I'm going to show you. I put on a slide. I predict people will stand up and say, I love in and out on father's day, June 20th, 21. Now how did I know the future? I knew the future because I knew what I was going to do in the future. And that didn't mean I forcefully coerced you, or you seized to be free agents about your choice. You chose to participate with my choice for what we were going to do. And some of you didn't stand. I saw you. You chose not to. So you chose to opt out, right? It doesn't override your free choice. You opt in or you opt out relationally. And God knows the future regularly on scripture. He says that he knows our hearts. He he's known us since we were in the womb. He knows all the details, our lives . It even says he knows the numbers of hairs on our head. And so we also get to make relational choices. We get to make predictive choices about what we're going to do, like a plan for the summer. We're today, casual choices. I say that this will happen because I will do it. And then I do it. And then it happens. It's what we do. God does that. But he just does this on an infinite scale. And so we also make predictions about the future. We know people well enough in your life that we can actually predict the things that they're going to do. Right? You can actually predict the things that they're going to do of the things that they're going to choose. Like what ice cream, they would choose that they're sitting there at 31 flavors, right? You can know them well enough to know what they like. You can predict the future based on your relational knowledge. And God does this, but he also just does this infinitely in a larger scale. If you know anything about me or if you're around me for a period of time, in a closer way, there's a bunch of stuff that you would be able to then predict about me, what it would say or what I would do. Or you would know that I'm going to try to scare you. At some point, you would know that there's ever pizza in front of me. I'm going to eat it because pizza is like my favorite. Right? And you don't even have to know me that well, but you can just predict that you put a slice of pizza in front of me. I'm not going to just let it sit there. Just go to waste. You know, someone like a spouse or a friend or someone that's been close to you or even workmates what they like or what they don't. And these are things that you would get to know. And you could predict them with a fairly regular accuracy because you know them intimately and God knows all of us intimately and infinitely to the point where he even knows us more. A lot of times than we even know ourselves. So the question that people ask then is a , that God knows the future. Why do we even have to live it out? Like, what do we have to go through this? He already knows how the novel ends. Why go on another day? He knows it all. Let's just give up. But you know what? Here's the deal experiencing something is different than intellectually knowing something. If I know my wife is a good kisser, I don't say, well, I know that let's check that one off the list. Right? And I don't need to experience that anymore. Let's move on to the next thing. No way. Are you kidding me? Because I know it. I want to experience it more. Right? Happy father's day. My son's in here. I'm embarrassed. And right now he's like, oh my gosh, you guys kiss . I want to experience it even more. Right? Been on a roller coaster before. You're like, nah, that's a roller coaster. Been there, done that, right? No way. What do we do? We get back in line. We're like on that again, it's the same exact track goes the same as that direction. You see, God may know things about the future, but that doesn't mean it's passe to him. He actually wants to engage with all of us and live it out and experience what it's like to be friends with. You bring out good out of things. Even in bad situations in our lives. The entire biblical narrative is based on the premise that God may know the future. But at the same time, we are definitely free to choose things. Being made in his image, in his likeness, being partners, in making decisions to make history come about , we still have wills and affects that the world around us and to actually affect other people. And so we read things in scripture, like in Matthew 23, it says this verse 37, this is Jesus talking to the Pharisees. He says, how often have I longed to gather your children together? As a hen gathers her chicks under her wings and you were not willing. And Luke seven, but the Pharisees and experts of the law, we see what they're actually rejected. God's purpose for themselves. And he had a plan for their life. He says, I know the plans I have for you says the Lord a good plan, but they chose to reject it. In Genesis six, you see the story of Noah where God regretted. It said that he made human beings on the earth and his heart was deeply troubled or some translations. Actually it was deeply grieved. And so his heart was filled with grief. If everything that we did was because God was meticulously controlling, we were simply simply acting out all of his choices. Then why would his heartbeat or grieving and sad because we weren't willing to partner with him and live this life together. He would have just simply said, oh yeah, everything is going according to plan. But God has a plan. Part of his plan was actually to make us image bears who can make choices to walk away from his plan . We get that choice. He's allowed for that. But he grieves when we do walk away from his goodness, the entire biblical marriage is God chasing down, wanting good for you and me and his people throughout the entire narrative that continues to go. We're part of his story. And so when someone say, but wait a second, doesn't sometimes in scripture, God override this whole idea of free choice. Doesn't he sometimes step in, at least sometimes in scripture, it seems like God makes choices of who will be healed or not healed or something or what catastrophe will be fall or what judgment or punishment is going to take place or arrest someone in their life. And it's going to choose a different path for them. Absolutely, absolutely. God chooses to override or intervene at places and times in people's lives because that's what free agents do. God is simply an infinite version of that. But you do that. Also. I do that also. It doesn't necessarily remove there's free will, but it does have a greater power over them. For instance, human beings that override other people's free will will at sometime you can graph it out this way. We have a freedom and we have the power to affect our world, including the lives of the people around us. We actually have been given that freedom to affect the people around us, based on our choices. It's both, you see it play out in both sinful and non sinful ways. Our freedom allows us to affect the lives of others. Anytime there is an abuser or a murderer, they obviously are. You serve being the freedom of someone else. They're using their freedom to override the freedom of someone else's and you see it to be true in this free group of people. We have a freedom to actually negatively affect one another. And we also use that freedom and sinful ways to override another person's freedom. We can also use this in positive ways. You see this done in a lot of different positive ways. A teacher, for an example, a teacher overrides much of the freedom of his or her class, a parent. If you're a parent overrides the freedom of their children, it doesn't mean that their children are no longer have a free will and they can't do anything anymore. This has dealt quite honestly. And really frankly, in scripture, you see this in the old Testament in Deuteronomy 30 says this day, I call the heavens and the earth as witness against you. That I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses now choose life so that you and your children may live. And that you may love the Lord. Your God listened to his voice and hold fast to him. Very honestly, there's a choice. Clearly laid out that the choices that you make will actually affect others, for instance, your descendants and the choices we make. Here's a simple example, the choices we make in this generation generation, do you believe that it's actually going to have an effect on the right? You have children or not even directly, the choices that you make that I make will affect the generation and the choices that the generation have affected us. All the previous generations decisions made an effect in the life that we live today for good and for bad, right? And to be completely free means we have an effect, not only on our own life, but the lives of others and then the world around us. And God, of course, it's a free agent. He's the greatest of all free agents. And so we shouldn't be surprised when he has an effect on us, but that doesn't present for prevent us from being freewill agents ourselves. We can see how this works out. And Jeremiah we've been going through the book of Jeremiah, which is filled full of poems. Jeremiah was a , a young man who was appointed by God and God said, Hey, I'm gonna have you deliver a very difficult message to my people who are straying away. This is Israel, and he's letting them know, Hey, you need to turn away. You're not walking the walk. You're just talking the talk. And it's just a sham. And you started doing your own things and you're deviating and you're not doing this life with God. And they were hurting him. They were hurting each other and hurting other people. And so he, his job was to go and to let them know, Hey, this isn't going to work out. There's going to be destruction. That's going to come upon us. If we don't fix what we're doing or turn our ways. And so we've been walking through what this looks like, this loss and calling and conviction and redemptive aspects of this. And what we do is we find ourselves today in Jeremiah 18. And this is another poem or another moment that I think is really set up for this idea that God is just puppeteering and controlling it. All right? You would think walking into this, he's going to use an example of a Potter in clay, right? And this representation of God being the Potter and being in control over. And so you would think like, Hey, this is perfectly set up to show I'm in control of everything. And this is how everything's going to go. And this is how it's going to happen. So let's go ahead and hop in and read here Jeremiah 18 one through nine. So this is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, go down to the Potter's house. And there , I will give you my message. So I, this is Jeremiah went down to the Potter's house and I saw him working at the wheel, but the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands. So the Potter formed it into another, shaping it, as it seemed best to, to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me. He said, can I not do with you Israel as this Potter does declares the Lord like clay in the hand of a Potter. So are you in my hand, Israel, if at any time I announced that a nation, a kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed. And if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on a disaster that I've planned. And if at another time I announced that a nation or kingdom is to be built up is to be built up and planted. And if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider good that I intended for it. Do you see a reflection of this in the new Testament? Paul writes in Romans nine about the Potter and the clay, and many people read this harsh determinism into that. When I would see just the opposite that this is the foundational passage for that. And I think that the message of the Potter and the clay is that I have complete authority to do whatever I want. If I want to just determine your life, I could, I have the authority that the Potter has over the clay, but actually I don't want to use that authority to overpower you. I want to bring out the best in you that as it shifts and makes its own decisions as a piece of clay, that I want to bring out the best in you, that I'm going to come along side of you and help form it into something beautiful again. And I want to do this collaboratively. He has all authority, but he uses his authority to create a content next for relationship and justice , because that's the case. It could be that God has all knowledge of the future, but he chooses limit or withhold so that he can work within us to take a ride with us. But he actually chooses to limit his knowledge or even withhold some of his knowledge about the decisions we're making. So he can actually come alongside of us and go on the ride with us. There's this fascinating passage where Abraham you've maybe heard this Abraham and Isaac, and it's this crazy thing. He asked him to go sacrifice his son, Isaac. And literally Isaac has no idea what's going on. And you know, it makes them Kerry had the wood and like participate in what's about to happen. And just as he's preparing to actually sacrifice his son, a Ram gets stuck in a Bush right next to him that he could use for sacrifice and an angel of the Lord. It says, then it shows up and says to him, because now I know that you fear God, there's no longer the sacrifice of your son that's needed. And you go, why ? What? Because now that you know that you fear God, now that you know, I fear God, what I thought, God knows everything. God doesn't know that already. And we see when we look at it that there's some sense that God either withholds his knowledge or limits it and says, even though I may know something intellectually, I want to know it experientially. And I'm going to take a ride with you. God's commitment to not control everything that happens. Just why we will hurt ourselves, which is why we hurt others. And others hurt us. But this is so important friends. His commitment is to bring good

Speaker 3 24:15

Out of it. See we screw up

Speaker 2 24:20

And he uses our screw ups to bless us. That's called grace. And then what do we do? We screw up again. Right? And what does he do? He blesses us again, let me screw up some more. And he blesses us some more. And then at some point it dawns on all of us. God really is as beautiful and loving and gracious. As I've been told, he really does love me that much. May I just say at this moment that when that dawns on you, that will be your moment of greatest choice in your life. You'll have a moment to respond to grace and your choice will head in one of two directions. You may say, wow , I keep screwing up and God keeps turning into a blessing. I learned the secret to life. I get to live, right? I've learned the secret that I keep screwing up and God keeps blessing me here. However, I just want to keep abusing whatever. And whoever I want to , I want to be as hateful or spiteful or self-centered as I want. And you actually then deviate from God's plan because you think grace is there to be abused and some make that choice. But friends, grace is intended to reveal the heart of God to give you an opportunity, to be wooed by love. And to say you, you mean you're going to love me me no matter what I want to get closer to you. And you're going to have a moment where you have the opportunity to just fall in love with Jesus

Speaker 3 26:13

And grace becomes

Speaker 2 26:14

That, which convicts and calls and woos and loves us and makes us want to get closer to Jesus and to live better lives because it's not the threat of punishment. It's the beauty of grace that changed our hearts. That's your moment of choice. And we have that moment right now. You're that moment right now. So when I asked him to get your phones, or you can take out your notes and you can write this down, this is something for you to take next steps with, or have conversations with the car, the way home. Here's some questions. How can you have an effect, not only on your own life, but on the lives of others and on the world around us. How can you as a free choice, agent have an effect on not only your own life, but on the lives of others, because of your choices and even on the world around

Speaker 3 27:19

Us or this,

Speaker 2 27:21

How are you experiencing life with God? And not just intellectually knowing something about him? Are you experiencing his grace? How are you doing life with him? Where's it just, I intellectually know something about him or what are you experiencing? And lastly, how are you responding to grace right now in your life? Are you abusing it? Are you using it? Are you saying, oh, this is great. You're going to do what I want to do. Thank God for grace. It's good. I figured out that key. I'm going to take that badge on. I'm going to put that bracelet on or are you leaning all the way in being wooed by the love of God and leaning in and saying, I have free choice right now. I need a partner. I need hope

Speaker 3 28:15

I need a friend and somebody to talk to you. I need somebody. That's proud of me. Somebody who loves me.

Speaker 2 28:27

We're going to stand right now and respond and worship and so on and invite you to do so.