Bill Fitzhenry's Thoughts For Today…

“This Book of Proverbs is so called, because it consists of wise and weighty sentences: regulating the morals of men: and directing them to wisdom and virtue. And these sentences are also called PARABLES, because great truths are often couched in them under certain figures and similitudes.” quote

Reading through the 31 chapters of Proverbs each month can give us an understanding of how to serve God.

Proverbs 16:4, 9, 11, 33 ESV

⁴ The LORD has made everything for its purpose,
even the wicked for the day of trouble.

⁹ The heart of man plans his way,
but the LORD establishes his steps.

¹¹ A just balance and scales are the LORD’s;
all the weights in the bag are his work.

³³ The lot is cast into the lap,
but its every decision is from the LORD.

The writer, in Vs 4, confronts us with God’s purpose in His creation. It is inclusive, “The Lord has made everything.” The dark side is acknowledged by an “even” and is described by “the wicked”. There are different ways of translating, understanding, and defining “the wicked for the day of trouble.” However this is done does not change the fact of the absolute purpose of God. The writer has brought the reader of Proverbs to the fact of absolute predestination without the slightest inclination of an apology.

There are three reasons we must believe in absolute predestination:

1. God is creator, sustainer, and disposer of all things. This is a truth so often repeated that it needs no reference.

2. The attributes of God, as they are revealed in Scriptures, allow for no less than absolute predestination.

3. The Scriptures are so replete with statements of God’s sovereign purpose no less plain than Proverbs 16:4 that to fail to believe this is to fail to know the God of Scripture.

There are two particular places where those we must include under the mantle of Christians take serious offense with God’s sovereign all-inclusive purpose. One is “evil in the city”. They deny that God can in any way be the author of the bad things such as illness, disaster, cruelty, and anything that is personally destructive of or restricts personal freedom.

The other is a personal sovereign election. The rejection of this Scriptural truth as extension of absolute predestination takes us outside of a Sovereign God and leaves us with a sovereign man as the author of his relationship with God..

Romans 8:28-30 KJV

²⁸And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

²⁹For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

³⁰Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

What begins with “his purpose” in Vs 28 centers in “predestined” in Vs 29, and finishes with “called” or elected in Vs 30. When anything less is said about these verses (Romans 8:28-30) it is to fail to be truthful in either content or intent.