Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
The importance of understanding the Divine Decrees, Part 3.
Wednesday, January 9, 2002
ROM 10:17 “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”
The Doctrine of Divine Decrees.
The decrees of God are His eternal and immutable will regarding the future existence of all events which will happen in time and also the precise manner and order of their occurrence.
We classify the decrees as plural, but it is all one decree.
Point 2. Five characteristics of the divine decrees.
(A) The decrees are all-comprehensive.
LUK 12:6 “Are not five sparrows sold for two cents? And yet not one of them is forgotten before God.”
LUK 12:7 Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
(B) The divine decrees are eternal.
(C) God is perfect; His decrees are perfect.
Omniscience means God knew simultaneously everything that ever was or will be in their causes, conditions, successions, and relations.
(C) God is perfect; His decrees are perfect.
We tend to be relative and temporal and not realize God sees the end of what He’s doing.
(D) The decrees are unchangeable and certain.
(E) The decrees are the free choice of God in eternity past.
Having decreed this, He is bound by His infinite faithfulness and truth to complete what He has begun.
PHI 1:6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
“Free choice of God” = God, from His own sovereign volition, invented free will in angels and mankind, so both can choose for or against God.
REV 4:11 “Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for Thou didst create all things, and because of Thy will they existed, and were created.”
PRO 16:4 “The Lord has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil.”
ROM 11:36 For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.
The decrees of God are His eternal purpose according to the counsels of His own will whereby for His own glory He has foreordained whatever comes to pass.
Foreordination = the belief that God has set all events before they happen, but not to the extent that He must destroy human freedom, an important part of being created in His image.
(a) All-comprehensive
(b) Eternal
(c) Perfect
(d) Unchangeable and certain.
(e) The free choice of God in eternity past.