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Clough Divine Institutions Lesson 1
Divine institution #1 - Volition
This evening we begin a new series, the divine institutions. Since this is so close to the 4th of July
you might be interested that the nation is a divine institution. This truth is not often brought today
in many fundamental Christian churches, yet during the days of the Reformation this was a crucial
dogma that the nation, not the Church, is the divine institution of civil authority. The nation, not
the Church, has the final say in society, and it is the nation, not the Church, that decides questions
and matters of civil law in society. So this doctrine of the national government as a divine
institution is double important, not only because we as Christians, if we are truly seeking God’s
will, God has said a lot about the concept of the national government as a divine institution in
history and it’s strange that every nation that has understood this concept has always been blessed
by God…not strange but it’s a very interesting empirical evidence that the Bible hits the nail on
the head when it describes certain mechanics that operate in history with regard to the national
government.
We’re going to deal with four of the divine institutions and these four institutions are going to be
dealt with in a certain order; national government is last because other things are part of the
national government. There are four basic divine institutions. The first one is human volition or
responsibility. The second one is marriage, marriage is not a Christian institution, it’s a divine
institution, I’ll show you the difference in a moment. Volition, marriage, and we’ll put sexuality in
here because of the fact that that’s included here; family, the concept of the family as the primal
unit of society, and fourth, national government. These are the four divine institutions given in
Scripture. Some are arbitrary to call them divine institutions, but we call them that for the lack of
any better term. This is what the reformists called them and this is what we call them.
What is a divine institution? A divine institution is designed features in creation that are unique to
man and have essential spiritual function. A divine institution, or divine institutions (plural), are
designed features in creation that are unique to man and have essential spiritual function. Now
let’s take that definition apart and look at it for a moment. First, it’s a designed feature. What do
we mean by that? We mean that when God created the order in human society, when he sat man
up with a history, ordained to operate in history certain ways, there are certain features about the
way man lives and the way he operates in history. And we mean by this designed feature that it is
common to all men, not just believers, all men, all men everywhere are involved in these divine
institutions. And as these times go by and we discuss each of the divine institutions I will try to
show you evidences where the unbeliever today, no matter how radical he may be, comes in the
last analysis to the point in his life where he too winds up submitting to the divine institutions. He
may not submit to Jesus Christ and the offer of salvation but most believers submit to the structure
of the divine institutions. We will study, for example, Russia’s experiment is removing divine
institution number two and divine institution number three and why it failed, and why in the end
the atheistic, materialistic regime was forced back into the mold of observing this, as though God
has put an indelible structure in man and man cannot violate that. Just as you have to eat three
meals a day, any organized society has to follow these general principles. So that’s what we mean
by designed features; they’re common to all men, not just believers.
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Secondly, we said that there are not only designed features in creation but we said that they are
designed features in creation that are unique to man. And by this we mean that these features are
shared with no animal or plant or as they say in certain areas where evolution is prominently said,
“all other animals” do not share this, and plants. We do not consider man part of the animal
kingdom; no animal or plant is involved.
The third feature of the definition is not only that it’s a design feature in creation, that it’s unique
to man, but it has essential spiritual function. These are not arbitrary things to be dropped out, to
be played with, to be toyed with, to be experimented with. All of these divine institutions in
history are very crucial and when they are destroyed, in the end man is destroyed. It seems man
can’t exist as man apart from all four of these divine institutions operating together. And so the
essential spiritual features part of the definition means that these institutions are needed to
accomplish God’s master plan for the human race. They are needed to accomplish God’s master
plan for the human race; absolutely essential to that master plan. Remember that God has a master
plan of glorification; glorification means that God is revealing His character, in and through
history.
For example, we sung “Mine eyes have seen the glory,” better known as The Battle Hymn of the
Republic, but how many of you as you read the lyrics of that song realized that the lady that wrote
that wrote that after viewing the terrific carnage and the terrific casualties of the Civil War and she
had been meditation on Revelation 20, and as she meditated and thought through, that particular
day as she wrote this hymn about the vision of the coming of Jesus Christ, and the wine press and
so on, out of her meditations of the Word of God and analyzing war she saw the Civil War as one
of the types of the great archetype of a final culminating war. That’s what she means in that song
when she says I’ve seen the Lord treading out the winepress, she means that as she looked at the
carnage of the Civil War and looked around her that told her…that was like what’s going to come
in the future when Jesus Christ comes to return. So that’s the background for that song; you can go
to a lot of these songs and see some of the backgrounds. That was back in the days when a large
number of people percentage wise in this country had a Biblical concept of thinking and they could
analyze their life in the light of the Word of God. Such songs are lost in our generation when so
few people have this background to understand.
So the divine institutions are designed features in creation that are unique to man and have
essential spiritual function.
Now we’re going to start with the first one. The first divine institution is volition and we’ll be on
volition for a number of Sunday’s, then we’ll move to the second divine institution, marriage. We
can’t move to marriage before we deal with volition because each of the succeeding divine
institutions build on the previous one. So marriage requires volition; family requires volition plus
marriage, and nations requires volition plus marriage plus family. So each of these divine
institutions are logical building blocks; you’ve got to start at the beginning and the beginning is
volition, defined in Genesis 2:16-17.
“And the LORD God commanded man,” the man, singular, “saying, Of every tree of the garden
you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in
the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Now we haven’t got time to exegete all of
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Genesis. Genesis is a difficult book, one of the most difficult books in the Word of God. But it is
not plastic; Genesis is not a book that you can read anything into that you want to. And too many
Christians today are treating Genesis as though it’s a piece of fluid plastic, that it can be molded in
any way you want to take it, and if you want to see it as poetry you see it as poetry, and if you
want to see it as teaching evolution you see it as teaching evolution. Genesis is flexible but it’s
not that flexible. There are limitations in the language and these limitations in the language have
to be respected for an intelligent exegesis.
In Genesis 1:16-17 the only acceptable interpretation is that there is a single human being there
that is being verbally addressed by Jesus Christ, His preincarnate form, second personal of the
Trinity. And God is talking to Adam, and He is giving him a command, for Adam in the Hebrew
looks like this, ADM, and the vowel is supplied. Adam, ADM, means man, the man, or the Adam.
“And the LORD God” literally and verbally spoke to this man and He gave him a commandment
and the commandment involved a choice, and therefore we have from this moment on, as firmly
established in the Word of God, confirmed page after page by the imperative mood of verbs. Verbs
of imperative moods are an address to the volition of man; man can choose and therefore we have
the precedent established.
So let’s make a little definition of volition and then let’s pass through certain pages of the Word of
God and see if this definition fits those passages of Scripture. We want to start off with definitions
each time; we gave a definition of divine institutions and now we’ll give a definition of volition.
Volition means the responsibility before God to choose different ends and means in life. Volition
means responsibility before God to choose different ends and means in life! Now let’s look at
some thigns this does not say. Volition does not say that you have the power to accomplish what
you choose. Volition says you have the responsibility before God choose, but not necessarily to
accomplish. There’s a difference. I use this symbol oftentimes of a +V and a –V as before God, in
other words, you are attracted to what you know of Him or you are repelled by what you know of
Him. Now we want to understand, that “V” is volition, and it’s this that we want to discuss in this
first unit. We did not say that volition means you have the power to accomplish something; it
means that you have the power to want to accomplish it, but not necessarily to actually accomplish
it. Let’s see this in operation.
Turn to 1 Kings 3:5, Solomon. We’re going to study some illustrations in the Bible that show that
volition doesn’t mean that you necessarily have the power to finish what you want; but you do
have the power to want to do it. There’s a difference and if you don’t master this difference you’re
going to be frustrated as a believer because many times as God calls you to want to do things that
you cannot do, you’re just physically limited, mentally limited, spiritually limited and you’re
blocked off and yet God keeps saying do you want to do it, do you want to do it, do you want to do
it, do you want to do it? The reason is that you have to distinguish between volition and blocked
off action.
In 1 Kings 3:5 there’s a dream that comes to Solomon; the dream was in Gibeon. “In Gibeon the
LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, Ask what I shall give thee.” Now
God addresses the volition of Solomon. [6] “And Solomon said, Thou has showed unto Thy
servant David, my father, great mercy, according as he walked before Thee in truth, and in
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righteousness, and in uprightness of heart with Thee; and Thou hast kept for him this great
kindness, that Thou hast given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day. [7] And now, O
LORD, my God, Thou hast made Thy servant king instead of David, my father,” or in place of,
“and I am but a little child: I know not how to go out and or come in. [8] And Thy servant is in the
midst of Thy people whom Thou hast chosen, a great people, who cannot be numbered or counted
for multitude. [9] Give, therefore, Thy servant an understanding heart to judge Thy people, that I
may discern between good and bad. For who is able to judge this Thy great people? [10] And the
speech pleased the LORD, that Solomon had asked this thing.”
Now the point to see here in discussing volition is that Solomon wanted to judge but Solomon
could not judged. Solomon desired to be the judge, but limited by his own natural ability Solomon
could not accomplish the task that he wanted to do for the Lord. Now he was right in wanting to
do it but he was limited by his physical situations from doing it, but nevertheless, verse 10, it
“pleased the LORD” that he desired to do it anyway, whether he could or not wasn’t the issue.
What the Lord was interested in was did you really genuinely desire to do it, and of course God
answered His desire over and abundantly.
Turn to Psalm 13:1 and we’ll see the same principle. This is an often perplexing thing that
happens in prayer and Psalm 13 is one of the great psalms that teaches, and when you pray for
something and it doesn’t come, what do you do? Psalm 13 is a psalm of David, and David had
prayed expressing his volition; his volition desired something, but God did not answer David’s
desire, yet David continued to desire in spite of the fact that he could not get what he desired, he
went on. His volition, in other words, kept on positive, positive, positive, positive, positive,
positive, even though he didn’t get what he wanted. “How long will you forget me, O LORD?
Forever? How long will You hide your face from me? [2] How long shall I take counsel in my
soul, sorrow in my heart every day? How long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?” And you
can sense the petition that David has made to the Lord; he’s asked that certain things happen and
he has asked in the will of God for these things. This is a time when David was running around,
he had a legitimate reason to ask this; there’s nothing illegitimate about this prayer.
This prayer is an expression of positive volition. Remember the human soul has volition, has
personal affections or we’ll express that later as emotions and so on, has a personality; it also has
mentality but it has volition. Watch the role of volition in Scripture. Here is a prayer that grew out
of a strong desire; you may have had these desires when you pray. And so David expresses the
fact that though he desired this, his desire is never fulfilled. So in Psalm 13:3 he makes another
petition, “Consider and hear me, O LORD my God; lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of
death,” and the point is here that he is in danger of physical death. [4] “Lest mine enemy say, I
have prevailed against him; and my adversaries rejoice when I am moved. [5] But…” and then all
of a sudden, as so often happens in these psalms, these psalms shift radically. You can see this if
you study the psalms and you read a lot of them, you’ll see it’s very pessimistic and then suddenly
in the middle of a verse it’s triumphant. We don’t know exactly why this occurs, we know why it
occurs but we don’t know exactly the conditions, whether God literally answered the prayer as the
man was writing the psalm. Probably not, but probably it was a style of portraying his earthly
experience in his life where in the first part of the psalm he’d express his frustration in song to you
and then he’d express the answer that God gave.
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But in Psalm 13:5 he said, “I have trusted in Thy mercy; my heart will rejoice in Thy salvation.”
And the salvation here isn’t just a vague salvation of eternity; this is salvation from the problem of
verses 1-2, this is physical salvation. Salvation in the Old Testament, remember, often has a
physical connotation, deliverance. [6] “I will sing unto the LORD, because,” and the last verb
tense in Psalm 13:6 says, “He shall have dealt bountifully with me.” In other words, the idea is
that at this point in time David looks forward…here’s David over here writing his psalm and he
says I have the confidence that I can look forward to a point, call it T, and by the time T comes
there will have before that point, T minus 1, God over here will have answered my prayer. And so
David looks forward to this time when he can look back and see God’s answer, for God at that
point “will have dealt bountifully with me.”
Now here is one of the relationships that you see immediately, the role of faith and volition.
Oftentimes faith is tested in your life by God through volition. In other words, He proves to you
from His Word, proves to you from circumstances in your life that you should pray for a certain
thing. So you go ahead and you pray for it, but nothing happens. There’s no answer to the prayer,
and yet you still have this conviction that you should pray for it. Now why does this happen? It
happens because God is exercising your volition, toughening it up, toughening it up like a muscle,
by usage, to see if you have strength of volition or not. And this is one of the signs of a mature
believer, that he can, when he has focused on the Word of God, you might say he’s got a one-track
mind, that is the will of God and come hell or high water he desires that will, period. In other
words, the volition is strengthened through delay. This is one of the reasons for delay in prayer;
it’s a method that God has for teaching His children to build up the strength of your volition. Do
you really desire it?
Now you’ve probably all had this experience where you’ll get in prayer and you’ll be convinced
that this is God’s will and you’ll pray for it. No answer. You pray for it again, no answer. And
you pray for it the third time and you begin to think well, maybe this isn’t the Lord’s will. And
then by the fourth time you’re convinced it’s not the Lord’s will, and finally by the fifth time you
don’t bother to pray any more. Now what’s happened? Either you were wrong in the first place,
of saying it was the Lord’s will, or in the second place, you were right and you have a weak
volition. In other words, you can’t stick it out and you are weak as a believer. So here’s one
function of delay time in prayer, lag time.
Turn to John 7:17 and you’ll see the role of volition in both believer and unbeliever. There’s a
principle in John 7:17. Jesus Christ has been teaching the men of His generation, and some men
have said yes Jesus, I believe the claims that You have made about Yourself, and other men have
said no, this man Jesus is a fraud, this man Jesus can’t possibly be the Messiah. Jesus Christ has
presented the evidence, and this is what Jesus Christ said after having presented the evidence. “If
any man will to do God’s will,” that’s what the “his” refers to, “he shall know of the doctrine,
whether it be of God, or whether I speak of Myself.” And what Jesus Christ is saying that a person
who does not want the knowledge, a person who is on negative volition toward God, a person that
does not want to come into a personal relationship with God is not going to be convinced though
all the evidence were presented on a table in front of him. In other words, there is a point where
evidence is useless; there’s a point that’s finally reached when a person will not believe, absolutely
will not. And often times some of you have had that experience, where you finally back the
unbeliever into a corner, and you finally get him to admit that he’s illogical, you finally show him
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that he’s wrong and that Christian is the right position and then he turns to you and he says well,
even if it is I’m not going to believe it. That’s the expression of negative volition—even if it is I’m
not going to believe it anyway. And here, of course, that’s what Jesus meant, “If you will to do
His will,” if you really want to you’ll know of it…you’ll know of it!
Now 2 Corinthians 8:12 gives us a principle that has to do with the Christian life in the area of
giving. Odd topic to be discussing the area of volition but 2 Corinthians 8:12 shows how volition
explains one of the grace principles of giving. And by the way, the principle of 2 Corinthians 8:12
applies in every area of the spiritual life, not just giving. Again let’s remind ourselves what we’re
trying to do in this verse chain. We’re trying to show that by volition we don’t mean that God asks
you to do things that you can’t do; He asks you to want to do things that are His will for you, but
you may not in a given situation be able actually to accomplish your desires. “For if there be first
a willing mind, it is accepted according to that which a man has, and not according to that which
he has not.” Do you know what that means? That means that people who don’t have money to
provide for their family are not asked by God to tithe their necessary funds and dump it into the
church plate while their families starve to death.
Now I’ve seen this go on in certain Christian churches; certain fundamental churches that should
have known better have preached so strongly on the topic of giving to incur a guilt complex unless
somebody drops a dime in the collection plate, just anything to resolve the guilt complex and so
the issue when the plate comes by or the issue in however you happen to be giving to whatever it
is, when the issue is no longer am I giving willingly before the Lord, the issue is I’m giving to get
rid of this horrible guilt complex that I’ve got. Now that’s wrong, and that’s not Biblical. Paul
says here, first “there be a willing heart,” that’s positive volition, and then it’s accepted according
to the resources that you have, not according to those which you don’t have. And one of the
principles of God’s Word is that if a man provide not for his own he is worse than an infidel and in
the context it’s talking about money. And believers and preachers who beat people over the head
to give, give, give, give, give and the act of giving deprives their families of the necessities of life,
that is anti-Biblical, it violates the grace principle, it violates the principle of volition. God wants a
willing mind and then the resources He’ll provide and if He doesn’t provide there’s a [can’t
understand word] too. But the issue is, do you want to? Do you want to? That’s the real point.
And there’s no greater issue in the Christian life than the issue of volition; everything starts with
the volition; do you want to? Not because somebody beats you over the head, not because you get
in a group and you feel out of it if you don’t go with the group. Not because somebody, some
more mature Christian comes up to you and says you should do that or something else, that’s not
the point. The point is, do you want to do it. That’s the volition acting, and that’s the role in the
spiritual life and that is something that must be learned and learned rapidly. It avoids bullying; it
avoids all sorts of activity. This is why in this church we very rarely ask people to do things. We
make the needs known and if there’s nobody that wants to do it we conclude that God isn’t leading
people in that area and we close it off, period. And we’ve come within one week of closing off
some vital functions of this church because we will not compromise that principle of volition. Do
you want to do it or not?
So this is what volition means, it’s not that you necessarily have the capability of fulfilling your
desire but do you desire? Now we said that the definition for volition was responsibility before
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God to choose different ends and means in life. A vital phrase in that definition was “before God.”
Turn to 2 Corinthians 5:10, remember this is “before God,” volition is “before God.” It’s not your
volition toward other people; it’s not your volition to Christian organizations, Lubbock Bible
Church or anything else. It’s your volition toward the Lord Jesus Christ, that’s the issue. And in 2
Corinthians 5, we explained the term “before God” because the volition of which we speak in
Scripture is a volition that is responsibility, that means judgment. The corollary to the fact that
God judges you and God is going to judge me; the corollary to that statement is that you’re
responsible enough to be judged. You wouldn’t judge a machine; you don’t judge machines. You
don’t judge animals for not making right decisions. You judge people because you believe that
people have volition and have the capacity to choose.
In 2 Corinthians 5:10 it speaks of believers judgment, “For we must all,” every believer, “appear
before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the thigns done in his body,
according to that which he has done, whether it be good or bad.” Now this is not talking about loss
of salvation, this is talking about evaluation of a believer’s production or as we have put it, the PQ
of the believer, which equals the number of opportunities that you have had divided into the
number of times that you’ve produced for the Lord, and that is the opportunities that God has
thrust your way and the percent that you’ve taken advantage of. Now that is the way and basis on
which God judges.
Now there’s another verse in Scripture that shows this fact that volition is vertical, “V” vertical,
always before God; see this volition not as horizontal before men, vertical before God. Turn to
Ephesians 6 for the doctrine of employer/employee relationship, a simple doctrine but my, how
this has to be taught today, both to the employer and to the employee; Ephesians 6:5 and
following. One of the great things in the past, I gave you this morning a quote from Edmond
Burke about the Puritan era in America. One of the great features about that era in America is that
there was a theology of work and people know why they worked. Today there is only one group
of people on earth that have a doctrine of work and that’s the communist party. The communists
major on defining work, what it is and its role and contribution, and so the result is that in
communist countries people work and they know why they are working, and so on. And yet the
Bible gives you a fantastic principle of work and part of that principle is here in Ephesians 6.
Ephesians 6:5, “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters, according to the flesh, with
fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ. [6] Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers,” watch this now; it’s not horizontal, “Not with eyeservice, as men pleasers, but as the
servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. [7] With good will doing service as to the
Lord, and not as to men. [8] Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man does, the same shall he
receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. [9] And you masters, do the same things unto
them, forbearing threatening; knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect
of persons with Him.”
Now there you have a beautifully balanced statement; you couldn’t get a better theology of work,
that volition is before God, not before men. God judges you, He knows what’s going on in your
mind, He knows your attitudes and so on and why you do things and why you don’t do other
things. And let Him be your judge; you live your life not before other Christians, you live your
life before the Lord. And so you see here in Ephesians 6, the employer who does the will of God
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from the heart as to the Lord and not to men. And when we get into divine institution number two
this is going to come out as one of the marriage principles also. But let’s leave it here as the
employer/employee relationship.
There’s a third time where we see that we are to live volitionally before the Lord, Revelation
20:11. By the way, while we’re in Revelation 20 if you want to see the verse that was used by the
authoress of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, it’s Revelation 19:15. But in Revelation 20 we have
the great throne judgment. This is when all unbelievers come before the Lord. Verse 11, “And I
saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled
away, and there was found no place for them. [12] And I saw the dead, small and great, stand
before God, and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life.
And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their
works.” Notice the animals aren’t judged, the plants aren’t judged, people are judged. There’s a
categorical separation and men are called to account for their acts and this calling to account for
their acts, the corollary of that principle is that you have responsibility before God. Volition is
responsibility before God.
Now there’s a third principle in definition of volition. Not only is it the right to choose, not
necessarily accomplish but to choose or desire before God two things, means and end. Some
people would say yes, it’s right, you have the right to choose your goals, but the Bible puts the
responsibility further and says not only do you choose your goals you choose the paths you get
there with. You not only choose point B when you’re standing at point A but you choose the road
that you take to go from point A to point B.
Turn to Numbers 20 for a classical case where a man chose the right goal but he chose the wrong
way to it. This was the sin unto death of Moses. This is a dilemma that believers often make;
Christians workers often make this. I have made this mistake. You choose the right goal that God
has for you, but you make a mistake and you choose the wrong way to get there, the wrong means
to the end. Numbers 20:1, “Then came the children of Israel, the whole congregation, into the
desert of Zin in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was
buried there. [2] And there was no water for the congregation; and they gathered themselves
together against Moses and against Aaron. [3] And the people chode with Moses,” now the word
“chode” is an old English word, we have a more picturesque word, those of you who have been in
the armed services, you can use your imagination; the word “chode” means to argue and so on, a
more intense form of arguing, complaining is a mild word, I can’t think of a good word that
translated might not offend some of you so leave it at “chode.”
“The people chode with Moses, and spoke, saying, Would God that we had died with our
brethren.” Now isn’t that sweet; they come up here to a situation where they need something—
water, they need water. They are out of the will of God at this point, they are panicked, just like a
lot of believers, something comes up and they’re in a no-water situation, no more resources,
nothing to do with it, and they start to murmur, why did God do this, why did God do that and why
did God… and go through the whole routine and come crying on the pastor’s shoulder or cry on
somebody’s shoulder, I don’t know, I think I’m out of the will of God. They weren’t out of the
will of God; they were not out of the will of God at this point, they were in the will of God. God
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led them into the situation and they have no water and so then they start griping to Moses and so
on, and from verse 4 on, you know what Moses had to face there.
And then finally Moses, in Numbers 20:7 had a little conversation with the Lord about the problem
and God says [8] “Take the rod, gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron, thy brother,
and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes,” the rock being a type of Christ, “and it shall give
forth its water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so thou shalt give the
congregation and their animals drink. [9] And Moses took the rod from before the LORD, as He
commanded him. [10] And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock,
and he said unto them, Hear now,” now up to this time Moses has selected his goal.
What is his goal? His goal is to give these people water, they need water. Millions of them need
water and that’s right; Moses so far is operating in the Lord’s will. Now he gets out; in the first
place in verse 10 he starts chewing them out. “Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out
of this rock?” And of course here Moses was doing a little addition to God’s will. God would
spank the people but Moses decided he’d get his paddle in too, and so he selected the wrong means
and [11] “Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice; and the water came
out abundantly, and the congregation drank,” and so on.” Now the goal was reached here; the goal
was selected and reached. Two things, he chose the right goal and the goal was reached and
accomplished. There’s only one problem, the next verse: [12] “And the LORD spoke unto Moses
and Aaron, Because you believed Me not, to sanctify Me in the eyes of the children of Israel,
therefore you shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.” God was
particular about the means.
And so we have this, we have Moses at point A going to point B, giving water, and he chose the
wrong path. There’s a right path and a wrong path over there, Moses chose the wrong path and
God held him responsible. And Numbers 20 is an illustration of something else; there’s a fallacy
in some Christians thinking when they say because so and so has success in accomplishing the
Lord’s will, so and so automatically is being blessed of the Lord because of the way he does it.
Not true! In other words, Moses, they could have said look, Moses is blessed of the Lord, the
Lord’s blessing him in his ministry, water came out of the rock. Was the Lord’s blessing on his
ministry at this point? No; God blessed and accomplished the task because of His grace. So don’t
misinterpret the grace of God. I’m sure God has blessed me dozens of times, hundreds of times
when I’ve been out of line and I falsely have misinterpreted and said oh God must be blessing me
now because this such and such happened. Oh no, God was blessing because of His grace, even
though I might have been in the toulies somewhere, completely way out and yet God still blesses
because of His grace. So don’t misinterpret the grace of God, always go by the Word, not by
blessings; the blessings can be misinterpreted. So here we have volition and volition means
responsibility before God to choose different ends and means in life.
Now as always I like to teach you the Bible doctrine in opposition to what you’re getting outside.
I like to teach a Bible doctrine and then give you the human viewpoint attack against that Bible
doctrine today that you are feeling, you are experiencing, if you haven’t you will. So what is the
attack that’s being made against the first divine institution, volition, today? The attack is an attack
of determinism. And these attacks should be paid attention to. Sometimes some of these attacks
are going to appear nitpicking to you but I’m following the advice of Martin Luther when he said:
“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except
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precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not
confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Wherever battle rages, there the
loyalty of the soldier is tested, and to be steady in all the battlefields besides is mere flight and
disgrace if the soldier flinches at that one point.”
And in his day he adequately grasped the point, that in his day there was a certain doctrine under
attack and Martin Luther sat down on that one point and didn’t move; the doctrine of justification
by faith and faith alone. Now he was brave and he stood at that one point. People would say
Martin, why are you so nitpicking, we can get together with the Church on this, after all, they
believe in the deity of Christ (that’s more than they do now). We can get together on the fact that
they believe there’s a salvation by a kind of grace; we can get together with the fact that they
believe that Jesus Christ accomplished a finished work on the cross for us in our great salvation,
we can get along; Martin, why do you have to be so nitpicking over this little point about being
saved by faith and faith alone. After all Martin Luther, you know that faith is accomplishing
works, you know this, isn’t it just picayune of you to debate the point that saving faith will save
independent of the works that it produces? Isn’t that kind of being a picayune point?
But look what happened in history as a result of Martin Luther’s loyalty to harping on that one
point. All of Europe came tumbling down and out of that you had a fantastic growth of freedom in
northern Europe; tremendous, because he knew that that was the doctrine for the hour, that was
exactly where Satan was attacking and that was exactly where he was not, and if he had the
attitude of a lot of Christians today he’d say well, we must all get together and after all, they
preach Christ and I preach Christ so why can’t we get together evangelistically or something else.
Or why can’t we get together and have fellowship and pray together. Now it wasn’t that Luther
was being an obstreperous type person here, sort of create his own little war. It was that he saw
that there was a fine point that was being under attack, and so he said I’m going to defend that
position.
And so we come here to volition and it may seem fine to [can’t understand word] it but I suspect
that the attack against volition is so strong in our times that it’s crippling the Christian and his
prayer life. I’ve often asked myself why it is that so often, even myself, have problems in praying,
and every time I think it through it’s because of a doctrine that has slipped in my mind and the
doctrine that has slipped in, almost unawares, it just slips in like oil, is this doctrine of
determinism. Now we will explain it in a minute but the point I’m trying to make now is that
volition is under attack in our time and to avoid this attack is to leave yourself wide open,
completely vulnerable and then wonder why you have problems in the spiritual life. Problems in
the spiritual life the more I see them, come from false ideas that are admitted into the mind
unconsciously. If I gave you this and taught you this you’d say no, no, no, no, this is absolutely
wrong, absolutely wrong! But Satan never teaches you that way, he always comes in by the back
door when you’re not looking, and that’s where the danger is. And when you feel no power in the
Christian life, ask yourself, has Satan slipped in one of his human viewpoint ideas and usually he
has.
Let’s look first at the area of determinism with regard to creation, inanimate… no, let’s put it
everything except man, and next Sunday we’ll deal with man himself, this Sunday we’ll work with
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determinism all over creation, especially physical creation, the sense of physics and so on. Now
this is a view that Satan is working overtime producing.
First let’s start with the classic statement of determinism. Determinism means that if I start out,
say with anything, any physical system, gasoline engine or anything I want to, at some original
point, and I know all there is to know about it at that point, and I know the laws that control it, I
know the laws of expansion and contraction, and heat transfer and all the rest, then I can predict
the future state of that engine, and so it’s perfectly predictable. In other words, it’s closed. Once I
have the initial condition, once I have the laws, I don’t care what happens, what you say, I can
predict what’s going to happen in the future, absolutely and completely. Do you see? It’s all
closed off, everything is closed.
Now the Bible cannot be reconciled with that position. First turn to James 5:17, it speaks of the
time when Elijah prayed and he prayed about something in nature, and Elijah didn’t have the 20th
century man’s idea of prayer where you go into your closet and contemplate your navel and this
has some sort of great psychological benefit of calming you. Prayer may have a psychological
side effect but that’s not why I pray; I can do other things that calm me too; we won’t mention
them from the pulpit but I can do all sorts of things that’ll give me great psychological calm, go to
sleep for one thing. And so prayer is not used for just that. Prayer in the Bible means you petition
about God changing something in the world.
In James 5:17, “Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we re, and he prayed earnestly that it
might not rain; and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. [18] And
he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.” And so you have
this situation of prayer develop. Now if it were true that the universe was entirely deterministic,
I’d hate to be the man that predicted the day before Elijah prayed it’s going to rain tomorrow. I’d
hate to be the man because it didn’t rain tomorrow and the reason why it didn’t rain tomorrow was
something that was utterly beyond the chemical and physical equations I would have used. It was
Elijah, and Elijah said Lord, I want it to stop raining, do something, and the Lord did something.
The Lord interfered and added another factor to this thing that makes it not a closed system any
more. And so no matter how many formulas I have and no matter how much initial study and data
I can assemble, I can’t predict the final outcome because God can manipulate.
Let’s see this again, Acts 16:26, this is Paul in jail. They’re in jail and they’re praying, notice again
the role of prayer here in interfering with the natural cause/effect chain. “And suddenly there was
a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the
doors were opened, and every one’s bands were loosed.” Now here you have an earthquake, a
natural event, but it just happens to occur when the man prays. Now isn’t that amazing. In other
words, you see cause/effect, cause/effect, cause/effect, cause/effect, cause/effect; this chain that
normally operates is apparently interfered with here in these prayers. God interferes with that
chain of cause and effect, cause and effect, cause and effect, in response to believer’s prayers.
Now I would suggest that we divide all of these interferences into two classes; there are two kinds
of miracles in the Bible. There is one which we might call the natural miracle, and there’s the
other, the supernatural miracle. Let’s distinguish between these two miracles for a moment; it’ll
help you in understanding prayer a little bit. The first kind of miracle is the natural miracle. What
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are some examples of natural miracle? Elijah’s, there wasn’t anything supernatural about the fact
that it didn’t rain; it was an interference in the natural physical laws, there was sort of an
adjustment there. There wasn’t anything radically new but it was kind of an adjustment, a
manipulation. The same thing with the earthquake; there’s nothing supernatural about the
earthquake, but there was something odd about the time it occurred and the place it occurred.
Another even greater event is that of Exodus 14 and Moses at the Red Sea, remember what
happened, the waters parted, but the Scriptures are quite naturalistic about it, it says after Moses
prayed God caused a great wind to come from the east. In other words, there’s nothing supernatural about wind, it’s just the time at which it occurred. So here is a natural miracle that is
defined by the fact that it is a natural event that occurs at a particular time. You’ve had this
happen to you, those of you who have prayed; you know how certain things just happen to happen
at certain times. And you say that’s an answer to prayer, that’s a miracle, but God hasn’t
interfered with the laws; what has happened is that God has manipulated.
Now there’s a second kind of miracle and that is a direct violation, complete violation of natural
law and that is the resurrection, resurrection in all phases, resurrection in the sense when I am born
again I receive a regenerated human spirit, that’s a violation, that’s a new creation, “If any man be
in Christ he’s a new creation,” that violates all miracles. New creation means that God has a new
creation, creation includes the physical laws and so on, and so when God says I have a new
creation He’s creating not only the material thing or the object of the creation but he’s creating the
reign, or the role, or the rule of that thing. Do you see? When Jesus Christ raised from the dead,
when His body came out of the grave, that was a radical violation of the laws of decay; complete
transformation of matter. So we have two kinds of miracles.
Now let’s go to modern physics and science and see what we can see from these. Do they give us
a hint that the Bible is right or wrong? Now I want you to see this because the Bible has to be
proved false in order to be proved true. What do I mean by that? I mean that you can’t go ahead
and say I believe the Bible come what may. That’s wrong; if the Bible can ever be proved false
then I can show you it can never be proved true. The corollary to proving something to be true is
that [can’t understand word] is there and the corollary to that is it can be proved false. For
example, what do I mean by this? Take the deity of Christ; the claim is that Jesus Christ rose from
the dead. If they found His body tomorrow, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, that would invalidate
all Christianity, just give it up, right there. That’s a crucial test. In other words, Christianity can
be falsified by the discovery of Jesus of Nazareth’s body. The whole thing comes tumbling down;
there’s a crucial test there. You have to be open to this, if you’re not and you’re going to say well
I’ll still be a believer even if they find the body of Christ, you’re not being true, you’re not being a
person after the truth. And that’s not the Biblical kind of faith; the Biblical kind of faith dares to
be tested…dares to be tested, and to run the (quote) “risk” (end quote) that it might be proved false
in the test.
All right, here we have two ways of looking at nature. One which we call this determinist way
which was featured in science for many centuries, two centuries up to the 20th century, and the
Biblical way. Now one or the other is right; which one? Unless you are an adamant fan of David
Hume, you can allow for miracles and one of the ways in which we see a suggestion, now this is
not a proof but a suggestion or a hint in modern science, that the universe is open to manipulation
at crucial points is something called Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. It’s debated and there’s
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some eminent physicists including Albert Einstein that don’t believe it or didn’t go along with it
for a long time. But I just cite this as an example of a possibility in which modern science shows
that the universe is open to manipulation, in the sense that there’s a certain innate randomness in it,
and it’s perhaps through this randomness that God is able to make the weather like He does in
those natural type miracles. Remember, we have two classes of miracles; natural miracles and
miracles that violate law and I’m suggesting that maybe these natural miracles, like stopping the
rain, healing, where people pray for that, it’s not necessarily a miracle, He speeds up the natural
processes of healing, still it’s a natural process but they’re speeded up different ways.
And so modern physics views a lot of the laws that used to be considered tight, for example, a
student goes to high school and he learns all these formulas that you predict; why, this is the
formula that you use on this thing, absolutely predictable, and then you learn when you get into
more detailed areas of physics that that’s not quite true; you deal specifically with certain
phenomenon, and so you say well 99% of the time it happens this way but we also know that 1%
of the time it doesn’t happen this way. See, the law isn’t tight; it used to be, in the 19th century the
physical laws were just like a [can’t understand word] absolutely tight, this is what happens. But
now in the 20th century that’s not true and so people who say there can’t be these things like
earthquakes occur just at the time in response to God without God radically changing the whole
universe are people living back in the 19th century.
We find it in meteorology, in the area of weather. Consider, for example, the earth’s atmosphere
and Elijah. Let’s go back to Elijah in prayer. Now if we were to look at Elijah’s problem in the
light of the way most people, unbelievers and a lot of Christians look on it, it would be absolutely
stupid to sit up here and pray that the rain is going to stop…absolutely stupid, why whoever heard
of praying and you mean God is going to manipulate those physical laws? How silly, we know the
atmosphere is determined or do we? And now it turns out that the atmosphere itself isn’t
determined. Do you know why? Because one of the things that affects the atmosphere is people;
people cause pollution. How do you predict that; you’d have to be able to predict when the people
are going to puff their cigarette, you’d have to be able to figure out how many people are smoking,
how much pollution comes out of each cigarette, when each person is going to smoke the cigarette
and where they’re going to smoke it. And in addition to that you’d have to predict when the
person wants to drive his car down the street, how many pollutants are going to come out of the
exhaust pipe and the conditions. What kind of an input is that going to make to the equation? Do
you see? In other words, the point is that the physical universe is affected by personality beyond
the domain of deterministic law.
And it turns out that in weather prediction if you take certain weather phenomena there’s a
limitation to how much you can predict, and I give you this because I think it’s pertinent to
compare to Elijah’s problem. People who say that Elijah is just stupid, why I know that if I knew
all the physical laws at this point, let’s say on May 10th Elijah prayed, all right; and he said, Lord,
don’t let it rain for 3 years. The modern person would say on May 10th if I could gather all the
weather information possible and I knew all the laws that are involved in this thing I could predict
what the weather is going to be May 10th next year and May 10th of the next year and May 10th of
the next year, and I might predict rain. See the point; in other words, it would be absolutely
determined, except for the fact that nobody can predict that. There’s an upper limit on prediction
and it looks like this: weather systems from 25,000 miles to 2,500 miles in scale can only be
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predicted with accuracy less than five days. Over five days there’s a theoretical limitation on
predicting the system; if you take a weather phenomenon at 2,500 miles to 250 miles the upper
limit on accuracy prediction is one day. You can’t predict any more than that because of the
randomness, the atmosphere is a turbulent phenomenon and there’s randomness. If you take a
weather system of 250 miles to 25 miles, say a small pack of thunderstorms, the uppermost limit
prediction is five hours, and then if you take a phenomenon that’s 25 miles to 2 and a half miles in
diameter, like a tornado, the upper limit on prediction is one hour.
You see, we’re trapped because the world around us is random and it’s opened, you could drive a
Mack truck through the holes in the creation where it’s open to God’s manipulation. So when we
read in the Bible of Elijah praying that God is going to stop it raining he means that God is going
to manipulate in and through those physical laws and there’s nothing in modern science that says
that’s impossible. That claim of the Word of God is not invalidated by anything in science today;
it is not invalidated. So therefore we can come and we can say, knowing full well that the
atmosphere, that the whole creation is open to His manipulation.
For a closing passage I’d like to take you to Deuteronomy 32:1 and I will show you of one
possible mechanism that God may use. How does God answer your prayers when you pray that
something be changed that involves…say some loved one is sick and you pray for their recovery
and God may answer that prayer by simply the processes of healing in the body may be adjusted in
their rate and so on. How does He do that? One suggestion from the Word of God, Deuteronomy
32:1, “Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth,” and
we discussed at length when we went through that that angelic forces stand behind the physical
universe and that apparently one of the mechanisms that God uses to answer your prayers when it
involves an adjustment of economic laws, physical laws or whatever is through angelic media.
For example, in the book of Revelation, how is it that during the tribulation judgments are
administered on the earth? What does Jesus called? Jesus doesn’t do it, remember He doesn’t
even get off His throne until chapter 19 so what does He do? He sits on the throne and commands
the angels to do it and so therefore in Revelation 6, in Revelation 7, in Revelation 8, 9, 10, 11, all
through the book of Revelation you have the angels ordered by God to manipulate and bring about
these changes of judgment. See, that’s the role of volition and next we’re going to deal with the
volition of man; is man determined or is man free, as different from the rest of nature.
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