The Decrees of God - Part 4

Divine Wisdom

It is the part of wisdom to proceed in every undertaking according to a plan.  The greater the undertaking, the more needful a plan.  I am working on this every day of my life, I find it pops up in the strangest times and places.  I find listening to the Spirit of God in all things is as necessary as breathing.  So I must write this to let you know I am growing in wisdom. 

I must say wisdom, moreover, shows itself in a careful provision for all possible circumstances and emergencies that can arise in the execution of its plan.  Many such circumstances and emergencies are not contemplated and not provided for in the plan of men, is due only to the limitations of human wisdom.  It belongs to infinite wisdom, therefore, not only to have a plan, but to embrace all, even the minutest details, in the plan of the universe.

From the divine immutability, what God does, He always purposed to do.  Unlike us, with Him there is no increase of knowledge or power, such as characterizes finite beings.  It follows that under any given circumstances, He permits or does, He must have eternally decreed to permit or do.  To suppose that God has a multitude of plans, which changes with the exigencies of the situation, is to make Him infinitely dependent upon the varying wills of his creatures, and to deny to Him one necessary element of perfection, namely, immutability.

Divine Benevolence

The events of the universe, if not determined by the divine decrees, must be determined either by chance or by the wills of creatures.  It is contrary to any proper conception of the divine benevolence to suppose that God permits the course of nature and of history, and the ends to which both these are moving, to be determined for myriads of sentient beings by any other force or will than his own.  Both reason and revelation, therefore compel us to accept the doctrine of what God did from all eternity, by the most just and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably to ordain comes to pass.

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Artesian Well Church
6031 Linden Avenue

Long Beach, Ca

Talk to you soon,

Pastor Norman