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243.
Nsnoise.
Most were here for the morning reading, but.
Thought we were in First Corinthians 2.
It'd be nice to go on with it, wouldn't it?
I agree. Where should we start with with verse 7 be OK? I know we talked about verses 7:00 and 8:00, but there might be another thought or two that we could bring out before going on. That sounds all right.
1St 7 then.
First Corinthians chapter 2 verse seven. But we speak the wisdom of God and a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory, which none of the Princess of this world knew.
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For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. So, as it is written, I hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.
But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yeah, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the sphere of man which is in him?
Even so, the things of God knoweth no man but the spear of God.
Now we have received not the sphere of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God, which things also we speak not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth.
But which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him.
Neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judge of all things, yet he himself is judge of no man, for who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him?
But we have the mind of Christ.
We already spoke a little about thee.
Wisdom of God in a mystery. That word mystery, of course, generally in the New Testament, doesn't imply something that's mysterious or hard to understand, but rather it's the sun. It's the sense of a secret.
Something that isn't made known to all or not necessarily at a certain time, but then is made known at another time and perhaps to different people. And so we talked a bit this morning about that hidden wisdom, which in this case, I believe emphasizes the fact that God was going to bring fallen man into blessing through the death and resurrection, of course, of his beloved Son.
But then it says, and this is something that perhaps we would wonder about, it says at the end of verse 7, which God ordained before the world.
Unto our glory.
If we had been writing it, at least I I would probably have said unto the glory of Christ. Isn't he the one that is supposed to have all the glory?
Indeed he is, but it brings in our glory here, I would suggest because.
That hidden wisdom had in mind not merely the glory of Christ.
But the association with of you and me with him.
He is glorified. We are glorified with Him.
A wonderful truth, and I speak for myself. I don't think it has enough of a grip on my soul the way it should. Do. I realize that I am heirs of God, an heir of God and a joint heir with Christ.
People squabble over inheritances in this world, and the world has a saying that you don't really know someone until you have to share an inheritance with them.
And that's sadly true.
But you and I are going to share an inheritance with Christ, and there will not be any squabbling over it, will there? That inheritance is so vast, and you and I will realize that we don't deserve one bit of it. It's his inheritance, but he's won at force, and he shares it with us. And so there is a glory that Christ will share with his Saints.
And I believe that's what's referred to here, not intended to put the focus on us, but rather to make us realize the wonderful position into which that hidden wisdom has brought us.
That's what the Lord was referring to in John 17.
20 Two.
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On 17/22 of the glory the God gave us to me, I have given to them.
I believe so, yes. Uh, I have taken it that way.
In one sense it's future, and I believe the Lord is in one sense referring to future glory here. But there's another thought connected with that verse in John 17 and I would suggest it ties in with our chapter.
There was a glory, a moral glory, that the Lord Jesus exhibited in this world as a man who walked in all the humility that.
He was brought into by virtue of coming into this world as the perfect dependent man, coming right down to where we were and submitting to all the things that sin had brought in.
He submitted to all of those things from without, and yet He walked in all of the dignity as to who he was as the Son of God. And I, I would just suggest that that thought is there too, that you and I can share in that there is a wonderful glory in seeing a believer walk through this world.
Not resenting the slights and the persecution and everything that comes with walking a faithful Christian pathway and yet at the same time walking in all the dignity that he has as being a son of God. And I use that word son in the proper sense of the the word, the maturity. We are sons of God and brought into that position and to walk in all that dignity.
But without pride gives a moral glory that this world really can't understand. And yet. And yet it's there. How often that has been exhibited in this world by.
Dear believers, who in the face of untold persecution and death.
Have walked in calmness and dignity.
We see the Lord's, I don't want to enlarge on it too much, but we see the Lord Jesus in front of Pilate.
Here was a man that had been subjected to Roman scourgey.
And there he stands in front of Pilate, beaten and bruised by the Jewish leaders and all that they could do.
Given that awful Roman scourging, and we know what that entailed. And then he stands there before Pilate, and who was afraid?
Pilot. Every time the Lord opened his mouth, he, as it were, knocked the pilot off ballots.
Well, remember. And again, you don't wanna tell too many stories, but remembering how?
They tried to pursue it. Well, go back a bit. Yawn. Huss, the Bohemian martyr who was one of the forerunners of the Reformation, stood there before the Council of Constance, and he was there condemned to death because the the Emperor of Germany had broken his word. He guaranteed him a safe conduct.
And then the Church, the Catholic Church, persuaded him that he didn't have to keep his word to a heretic.
And he broke his word, and John Huss stood there in all the dignity of who he was as a son of God.
And quietly reminded the Emperor he knew he was going to be burned at the stake. Quietly reminded him.
That he had broken his word, and the Emperor sat there and blushed to the roots of his hair.
Quailed before him, couldn't look him in the eye. He was so afraid of this man that obviously had a moral power.
And 100 years later, they tried to do the same thing to Martin Luther. They tried to persuade the German emperor, guarantee him a seek conduct and then break your word. You don't have to keep your word. Oh, he said, no way.
I remember what happened to Cigars Fund, and it's not going to happen to me. No way. He was afraid. And I don't say that we should go about trying to make other people afraid. That's not the thought. But.
There is a wonderful dignity that the believer walks in in spite of being despised and rejected. Why?
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Because he has the conscious knowledge of who he is before God.
I have a thought to hear of something for their conscience and.
The way he says is about the glory.
Before or day before the world unto our glory, this is what.
Has been done for us. But this isn't what the Corinthians were speaking. I think in the context in the end of the last chapter he had in verse 39 that no flesh should glory in his presence.
Then he brings in verse 30 what they have in Christ Jesus, but of him are ye in Christ Jesus of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, that according as it is written, He the glorious, let him glory in the Lord. So the problem was, as I understand it here they were puffed up because that in chapter 5 they were according to the wisdom of this world, striving with one another.
And it made tremendous problems in the assembly. So it seems to me that in part, the apostles reminding them that they've been brought by God's grace into a glory that absolutely eclipses anything they may strive for as men.
So it is for us. Isn't it Good to get a hold of it?
Yes, that's excellent. Our glory is to share with Christ in the coming day, and it eclipses any glory that we can ever have in this world, doesn't it?
Well, verse 9 brings out an Old Testament verse that's from.
The end of Isaiah chapter 64.
And in its original context, I believe it would refer to future blessing for Israel, millennial blessing, which will indeed be wonderful.
But as often happens in the New Testament, the Spirit of God takes a verse from the Old Testament and enlarges upon it in a way that you never could have gotten simply by knowing Old Testament truth.
And brings it out. And sometimes I would suggest this verse is misused.
I have not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man.
The things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
I respect those who take this as referring to a future day and say, would it be wonderful? It's just beyond our understanding the glory that we are going to experience in that day. No doubt it is. But what's the next verse say?
God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit.
He wants us to live in the enjoyment of them now and how blessed that is.
I well remember being at a Bible conference many years ago and a brother was so much enjoying this, he just burst out and he said, brethren, what a blessed path it is. And it is, isn't it, If we can live in the enjoyment of coming glory now.
Yes, it has to be by faith. We don't see it with the naked eye and.
I don't think any of us here would stand up and say I have enough of an understanding of it, but that there won't be any surprises when the Lord comes. I'm already enjoying the fullness of it. No, no, Paul could say. Having a desired and to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better, far better.
Because even the best of faith in this world doesn't begin to appropriate the fullness of blessing.
But the thought is that by the power of the Spirit.
God wants to give you and me far more of the enjoyment of coming glory than there is in man's natural wisdom to detract from it.
Is that right, Rob? Amen.
And I think you're right too, that we don't really enter into it. And as it says here, it hasn't really entered into our hearts, our minds, what God has in his heart for us. Hmm, we have some idea from some of the verses and the ideas you've entered into. But to really understand what we possess right now and, and what God thought was for, for myself, I've just been absolutely amazed with the concept that my skin can be forgiven.
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That which is absolutely impossible for me to do.
God in Christ is done.
And and once that opens the door for is amazing. It's just.
Beyond what I can grasp.
Sometimes I have wondered whether I'll get bored in eternity.
I just can't imagine that.
10,000 years of happiness and joy, let alone 10 million or 10 billion. And and yet this is part of the answer. I think that God and His infinite being has that which can thrill my heart throughout all eternity.
And as much as I can enter into it and understand that I can sort of feel and taste it a little bit now knowing that, uh, his heart is so full.
One brother explained it to us like this quite a few years ago.
He said if you live where there's snow, they've never yet found two snowflakes alike in all the snowflakes that have ever fallen. If you live where there isn't snow, they've never yet found two grains of sand that are alike, They're all different, he said. Those are little illustrations right in our world of the infinite glories of Christ that will take all eternity.
And will never exhaust them. As you say, Rob, you and I can't wrap our mind around that because we have minds that are bounded by time and something that's infinite. We can appreciate the concept, but our mind won't wrap around it, will it?
Can't, can't think of anything like that. But who is revealing this to us? A person of the Godhead. The Spirit is a person of the Godhead.
And He is here on earth right now for, among other reasons, to reveal to us.
The glories of Christ and all the glory that God has.
For us as a result of his work on Calvary's cross.
The Robert I was, I've often had the same thought as you had that you just expressed. I was talking to a brother in Montreal a couple weeks ago about that and how that everything that we have and enjoy, we get tired of.
And he says.
Except for my wife's cooking. He'll never get tired of his wife's cooking.
And I thought that is the key because there is a renewed hunger, uh.
I mean, we can enjoy our meal, but there's a renewed hunger that we have. And I thought that's what we press. We'll have an eternity, a renewed hunger that.
We just continue to enjoy these things on and off.
Very good. Now we have.
So much here we have that that which we enjoy for the village is bringing out that they didn't have back in the Old Testament times.
And there'll be so much more that we enjoy.
Uh, in that coming eternity, I might say.
And there'll be some things I think that we will perhaps never enter into. Let's think especially of of what we have in the Revelation, where it speaks of a name that no man knows for himself. Name suggests something about him.
There's something that.
Nobody knows about the Lord Jesus but Himself, and perhaps we'll never know what that something is, but there will be enough to occupy us for all eternity.
And here mentions it's an unusual expression, but it says at the end of verse 10, the Spirit searcheth all things, yeah, the deep things of God.
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Deep things of God.
Sometimes, and I must admit that I occasionally had the problem when I was younger.
I didn't appreciate hearing my brethren sometimes talking about perhaps the deep things of God and they would bring out things that went over my head. But that's not the right approach, is it?
I can still remember being at a camp.
Where they were playing baseball, and as generally happens, those that were playing baseball got a pretty good idea when they saw who was coming up to bat what he, or sometimes she was capable of.
And every now and then there would be a call. Go out, heavy hitter, move back, move back.
I never yet saw the players in the outfield just throw down their glove and say forget it, that ball will go way over my head, no hope for reaching it. They moved back as far as they could and good many years ago now. But I can remember one young man who was so anxious to catch the ball that he ran backwards and he caught it too. But he was about 6 inches, 6 inches into the lake when he caught it.
Never mind, he got the fly and that's what counted.
Well, I say to my own heart, as I say to each one, if we hear some dear brethren ministering the deep things of God, yes, we may occasionally miss the fly.
But don't hesitate to move back. Don't hesitate to reach for it, because maybe the next time it comes over, you'll get it and.
These things do not come through the natural intellect. They don't come through the natural intellect. They come because I am willing to allow the Spirit of God to work and I'm willing to deal with those things that get in the way.
Pardon, I keep saying that too often, but anyway, this is a personal illustration. I remember when I was going to university and I was.
Starting out trying to read our written ministry.
And maybe I started out on the wrong end of it, but I started reading J&D synopsis and things like that and sometimes it was over my head.
And sometimes in desperation, when I got home on a weekend, I'd go to my father with the book.
English wasn't his mother tongue and he had a grade school education, never even went to high school.
And I'd read him the passage.
Oh yes son, no problem. And he just spit it right out. Tell me exactly what it meant.
Yes. Why? Because if I can say it, my father's been with the Lord for a while. There was a heart for it, and a willingness to dig for, and a willingness to make it his own and walk in the good of it. And he could grasp it far easier than I, who was in college. I knew the English language way better than he did. He had a thick accent the rest of his life, but he could grasp things wide because it was coming through the conscience in the heart.
Not so much the intellect.
And I just say that because.
These things are not something that God makes difficult for us, but it's rather if the heart is right and the conscience is clear.
Those things, I believe, have come through to us, and God delights to minister them to us. Yes, God appreciates making us work for things. We value them a bit if we work for them.
But He doesn't deliberately make it hard for us. But sometimes the deep things take a little time and spiritual energy to grasp. In Acts chapter 4 and verse 13, it says when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled. They took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus.
Lord Jesus went back to heaven and one of the things that he did when he went back to heaven is requested his Father to send the Holy Spirit down to take his place as the helper as apparently.
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And to be the teacher and he is been sent into this world for the believers to help us to know and understand the, uh, wonderful things, the Lord Jesus Christ to bring things back to mind. And so that's his role. Now there's an interesting verse in Romans chapter 8.
In verse 16 it says the sphere itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.
If children, then heirs and heirs of God joint heirs with Christ.
If so, be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together. And so once you.
Accept the Lord Jesus as your Lord and Savior.
God sends his Holy Spirit inside us, and then he starts to teach us and He actually communicates with us.
Through this book, we communicate back through prayer, but uh, that's one aspect of the, of what the Spirit of God does. But what we have in our chapter here is, is an incredible thing that, that same spirit that indwells me and you if you're a believer.
Understands everything there is no about God, every thought, every motive. Sometimes I am thinking something and I try to express it just in a natural way and I just have trouble getting the the words out. I know inside me my spirit knows what I want to try and communicate what I want to try and say, but the people on the listening end of what I have to say don't know what I'm saying, don't know what I'm meaning. But the spirit of God doesn't have that problem and he has the ability to teach us and one of the.
Beautiful things about being a Christian and having the Spirit of God indwelling you is the ability to get down on your knees, have your Bible open, and tell the Lord. I don't understand what this verse means.
You don't always get the answer that very moment. Sometimes you do.
Sometimes six months later, you'll be sitting in a reading meeting and you'll get the answer your question. The Spirit of God will teach you in that instant exactly what it meant. Or maybe in your private reading two years later, the Spirit of God will teach you. The light will come on and you'll understand. And you know, it may bring tears of joy to your eyes just to think that God has gifted you with this understanding by his Spirit. And these things are beautiful things they're talking earlier today about.
Treasuring up answers to prayer to build confidence, and this is part of what the Spirit of God does for us, is communicate these things of God and help us to learn it and understand it, not just through our mind as it was, but as we said, through our heart and conscience.
The Lord Jesus said twice to his disciples.
Call John 14 on 26th.
At the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, and the Father would send in my name He.
All things not just is not only the deep sense that Joe is thinking fish.
All things that is the 16th chapter, he will advise you in all truth.
Everything that we, everything that.
God wants us to know.
Who has gone And Wilkinson?
He talked to us by the Spirit of God, not by our any intellectual. I think we have.
I understand it right, there's a difference here.
The 1St 10 is talking about Revelation.
I think that's the case, that this is what God revealed by the Spirit, and this came through the apostles who revealed Word of God. And the deep things of God are what we have in the Bible, which are very, very deep.
However, would her brethren have been saying, I believe is fully brought out in verse 12. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
So however deep they may have been that the Spirit of God gave our revelation that got recorded in the Word of God, that same Spirit within each one of us is able to take that and make it good to us.
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And so as far as the Spirit is concerned on his part, there's nothing too deep for any one of us. There may be other hindrances, and we get that at the end of the chapter and the beginning of the next, but the Spirit of God is both a giver and revelation, and both the one and also the one that helps to receive that which was given.
Well, we can all understand this in natural terms.
Verse 11 What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?
You don't know my thoughts, I don't know your thoughts unless you choose to communicate them. Sometimes we can give a bit of a guess as to what someone's thinking, but it's a dangerous thing to do sometimes because very often we can be wrong and a lot of damage has been done by people.
Thinking they know what someone else is thinking and then making a wrong judgment based on what they think is going through their mind.
But it's the same with God. And as Tim has brought out, we can't know anything beyond ourselves in the things of God unless God gives us divine revelation. Man says I don't need divine revelation.
And then his mind goes to work. And there's almost no limit to the ridiculous lengths to which man's mind can go when he tries to operate in the moral and spiritual sphere without divine revelation.
And all you have to do is look at the false religions in this world to realize that how ridiculous man's mind becomes.
And ultimately, this chapter, I suggest, is a warning.
Even to the believer about using his mind in the things of God outside of Revelation.
Yes, there's nothing wrong with having a good mind, and a good mind can be a help in one sense in taking in the scriptures. But then the light that we should get from those scriptures, as we've already had, comes through the heart and the conscience. And as someone has said, the more brilliant the man's mind, the more likely he is to go wrong if he sidesteps divine revelation.
An old brother used to use this, uh, illustration to us, he said if you had a rifle with the sights that were altered so that they were off.
He said who would be most likely to miss the target, the good marksman or the bad one?
Well, the answer is the good marksman. The bad marksman might hit it by accident, but the good marksman will miss every time because he'll line everything up perfectly. But then, if the sights are off, you'll always miss. And so the most brilliant mind of man without divine revelation makes an utter fool of itself when it goes beyond what can be seen and when we're talking about moral and spiritual things.
They can only be known by divine revelation, and that's where man's mind has to end. But then even the divine revelation of the Word of God.
It's interpreted by the Spirit of God, and the worst things can happen when man's mind picks up even the Word of God.
And tries to go at it without the guidance and leading of the Spirit of God.
In that context, and I don't.
Suppose it hurts to spend another moment on it. Turn to the Second Epistle of John, because, sad to say, this has been unfortunately all too common an occurrence among dear believers. Second Epistle of John, verse 9.
It says, Whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God, And that word transgressa is better translated.
Goes forward or progresses. There is a danger in divine things.
Of the human mind presuming to go beyond divine revelation.
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And when we seek to do that and to try and reach out in speculation, in the things that have not been revealed, then invariably error comes in, and very often serious error. And as another has pointed out, the spirit of heresy is not necessarily the teaching of bad doctrine. The spirit of heresy is the mind at work in the things of God.
And so you may hear something and it just doesn't sound quite right and yet you can't put a finger on specific doctrinal error in it or something like that, but.
If the human mind is used in the things of God, it will not handle things the way the Spirit of God does. And immediately in a believer walking with the Lord, a spiritual believer.
A bell start to go off and without wanting to go ahead. That's what it means in verse 15. He that is spiritual judgeth or discerneth all things doesn't mean he knows everything but in walking with the Lord to use us an expression the bells start to go off when someone starts to take up the word of God, even a true believer, but take it up.
In natural and human wisdom and using it intellectually without being guided by the Spirit of God.
Yes, it often and usually does eventually lead to doctrinal error, but it doesn't start out like that. It's the human mind at work instead of allowing the Spirit of God to search the deep things of God for us and reveal them to us.
Impossible with the human mind to understand.
Get around.
For example the.
Cruise of sovereignty and responsibility.
It's it's impossible for the human mind to us to explain that and get around it.
When, as Phil said, when we start to try the new document, things are intelligent. We're only going to get ourselves here.
I'd like to talk a little bit about the concept of Revelation. As it says in verse 10, God hath revealed.
At the risk of being a little bit too simple, let me just compare the theory of evolution and what, uh, God has done in Revelation. So.
Man in the theory of evolution tries to figure out from current situation and from whatever evidence he has, what happened back in the beginning.
And he's just trying to draw lines back and extrapolate. Guess what happens based on what he sees today.
The difference between that and Revelation is.
God was there and he did it, and he simply tells us how it was in the beginning. God created the heaven and the earth. There's no way I can prove that. The question is, do I believe God when he says I did it?
And that's what he's doing is he's giving a revelation. He says, I created it all. I gave it to you, I put you in here. And it's not a question of proving it. It's a question of, I revealed it to you. I told you I was there. This is what I did. And that's really the only way you can know anything about these things because God has to reveal them. We can't guess it or figure it out. And so, uh, just very simply to understand that concept that these are things God knows.
And he shared with us that's what revelation is. And that's really the only way you can know it, because God shared it on the subject of revelation is something we need to be very careful about, isn't it?
We have it here.
There's much today that claims to be revelation from God book out now called Jesus calling. It's been out for a while and a lot of other things like that that are claiming to be fresh revelations from God and they're not Colossians. Chapter one, the apostle Paul says it was given unto him to fill up the word of God. And so we have it here complete now and we have the Spirit of God to teach us what it means through this world through this book and all those other things that come in we need to reject.
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And occupy ourselves with only what we have here.
And that's what we get in verse 12, don't we?
It's the spirit of the world that says.
My mind is good enough to start figuring out those things.
And the spirit of the world can overtake a believer, can't it? Sad to say, it can't. We live, we move in this world.
And the spirit of the world can overtake us where we say I have a good mind, I can understand things. And man has discovered many things. And the discoveries and technology of the modern world is nothing short of amazing things that man has been able to discover. But as one brother used to comment to us years ago, he said.
Man is a discoverer. He is never a creator. And as Rob has brought out, when the Creator speaks and says this is the way it is, how foolish of man to say I'd rather reject divine revelation and figure it out for myself to the best of my ability. And of course.
Then there are just as many opinions in some cases as there are people well.
That's the spirit of the world. But Paul says we have not received the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God, that we may might know the things that are.
Freely given to us of God. There's both a wonderful blessing there and yet at the same time a warning and a guard. If God hasn't chosen freely to give us those things, I don't need to know it. And that verse was read to us this morning where it's in second Peter in Christ. And notice it says in that verse in Christ.
Not in the Word of God, and I'll mention that in a moment. We have all things that pertain unto life and godliness. Why doesn't it say in the word of God? Because I can misuse the word of God.
And many have. And we have seen it all throughout the Christian profession where men have used the Word of God in the wrong way and they have tried to prove all kinds of serious error, supposedly backing it up with Scripture.
Why is that? Oh, because it's not the Spirit of God using the Word of God. But then where do we find that wisdom ultimately, in its entirety? We find it in Christ and in walking with Him. And if Christ is before me, in Him, well, of all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and in knowing Him, the Spirit of God is able to minister Christ to my soul.
And everything else falls into place, doesn't it?
So on the one hand, we have all those things freely given to us of God, so many things that there will be an eternity enjoying them.
But if God hasn't chosen freely to give them to us, I don't need to spend my time speculating on them or trying to figure out something that God hasn't revealed to me. Or as, uh, Brother Robert was, bringing out Robert Muir, That is. I don't need to spend my days trying to wrap my mind around the Trinity. It's beyond my understanding.
And many things are in Scripture. Can I understand the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man?
Can I bring them together in the human mind? No, I can't, and the man that tries to do it or the woman either will end up in error going on the one side or the other. And the same for many other truths in the Word of God.
I have to accept them by faith and live in the enjoyment of them. But I have to say that is ultimately beyond my understanding because it is the truth of God.
340.
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5.
Years old and.