𝗚𝗘𝗡𝗢 𝗔

5 Reasons to Go to Church: 1. Worship God with Others: your faith wasn’t meant to be solo. 2. Hear Truth: you need Scripture, not just opinions. 3. Find Real Community: people who know you and grow with you. 4. Grow Spiritually: not just informed, but transformed. 5. Be Sent Out: church equips you for what God calls you to, not to run from it. Be the Church. Go to church.

God controls absolutely everything. There is no evil outside His plan; there is no evil outside His purpose. He knows everything that can be known, that is knowable. Why Does Evil Dominate the World? — John MacArthur // March 4, 2007 God controls absolutely everything. There is no evil outside His plan; there is no evil outside His purpose. He knows everything that can be known, that is knowable, He has comprehensive power to do everything that can be done, that is possible; that is what the Bible says about God. And in that perfect knowledge, and in that perfect power, and with perfect holiness, and expressing His perfect love, God ordains everything. That leads us to a third conclusion. Evil exists; God exists and this is the only God who exists; thirdly: God wills evil to exist; God wills evil to exist. It is inescapable. Turn in your Bible for a moment to Isaiah 45 - and we’re going to have to move rapidly tonight to work our way through this. But in Isaiah 45, it is important to draw your attention to – well, let’s start in verse 5, Isaiah 45:5. “I am the Lord, ... there is no other; Besides Me there is no God.“I will gird you, though you have not known Me; That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun That there is no one besides Me. I am the Lord, ... there is no other, ...” that’s fairly well established in those two verses. I am “The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these.” Go down to verse 9: “Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker - An earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth!“ Will the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you doing?’ Or the thing you are making say, ‘He has no hands’? Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’ Or to a woman, ‘To what are you giving birth?’” No pot can tell the potter what to do, no born child can tell his parents to give birth or not give birth, and nor can you question what God does - and God clearly has ordained evil. Now, at this point panic strikes the heart of Arminians -not Armenians, but Arminians - big difference - panic strikes the heart of Arminians. They become short of breath here. They start to have heart palpitations, sweaty palms, their eyes roll back, they launch into rapid heart rate. “What? God has ordained evil?” They don’t deny God’s power; they would affirm it. They don’t deny His knowledge; they would affirm it. They don’t even deny that God should be glorified in saving sinners. But the panic attack hits them because they cannot let God be held responsible for evil.If you want to drive Arminian theology - or the opposite of Reformed theology, or the opposite of Calvinism, that kind of theology that denies that God is sovereign and that regeneration is fully a work of God, that kind of theology that says man is sovereign, he’s responsible for his own life, he makes his own choices and he becomes a sinner on his own, and he believes on his own and he exercises faith on his own, and he is saved by pulling himself up by his own bootstrap - that is to accommodate the idea that is behind that whole system, and that is, we can’t make God responsible for evil.I really think that Arminian theology, for the most part, is a device to get God off the hook. And how do they do it? Well, the bottom line is, God is not responsible for evil; you are. That really doesn’t help, because why did God create creatures who would be responsible for evil, knowing what they would do? Just backs the responsibility back to Him. The popular way nowadays that people in that category, who don’t want God to be responsible for evil in the world, is to say that either He didn’t have the knowledge that evil was coming, or He doesn’t have the power to deal with it - one of the two. Either He, in His creation made everything perfect and didn’t know about evil’s future existence, and so it caught Him off guard; or He knew, but He didn’t have the power to stop it.

“While you are enjoying your pleasure, sin will destroy your soul.” — Charles Spurgeon

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