95 - Foreknowledge: To Know Beforehand or to Lovingly Choose? Part 2 [C]

To Know Beforehand or to Lovingly Choose: Part 2
Romans 8:28-29

Now we're continuing our study in Romans 8:28 and 29 and we're focusing on understanding these important terms that are used in Scripture. Now they're not used a lot in Scripture. Terms like foreknowledge and predestination are words that are used just a few times. They represent God's plan. The most important thing to remember is that they represent God's plan. Now over the course of the history of the church there have been various positions that have been taken regarding the understanding of these concepts. There have been major battles and splits in churches and denominations over many of these things that are taught.

For some people they just go way over their head and that's fine. It's tough sometimes to try to think our way through these issues related to God's control of history and God's control of His plan, on the one hand, and human responsibility and responsible freedom of choice on the other hand. Both are true. We began the study in this section two or three lessons back. I think that a God who can allow man freedom to make decisions and yet oversee all of the circumstances in history so that, despite the chaos that is there from sin and despite the chaos that is there from evil decisions from human beings, a God who can still orchestrate the affairs of history to bring about His desired ends is greater than a God who is in control of every decision and every action and every aspect of what is going on in history.

I do not believe that God is a deterministic God in that sense. Scripture teaches that He is a personal God and He is sovereign over the universe and He has the plan that He is working out. Within that plan He allows for free will decisions but He's constructed reality in such a way that He is still able to handle the chaos that comes as a result of free agents making decisions. Now I always have to caution people by saying we're free but only in a limited sense because of sin. There are certain things that we are unable to do and sin does impact that. Ultimately when it comes to the most important issue in life, which is our salvation, there is an aspect of our responsibility that comes into play in terms of making a decision.

Even in explaining that, we have to recognize that in the division of theological camps in this area, one side, usually referred to as the Calvinist side or the Lordship side, view even the act of faith as something that has merit in and of itself. Therefore the faith that saves is not the same as the faith we use to, for example, get up in the morning and go in and, however bleary-eyed and stumbling we might be, when we hit the button on the coffee maker we have faith it's going to start. I don't know about you but at my house I hate those little breakers which they have all over the kitchen. I'm not always sure although I always have faith that when I press that button it's going to start. However, about once a week something has happened overnight when nothing's been on to pop that breaker hidden away on the countertop in the kitchen somewhere and the coffee pot doesn't turn on. I then have to find that little button and press it in and then the coffee pot comes on. But that's faith.

We have faith that when we go to start the car in the morning, that the car will start. We have faith in lots of different things. Faith, in and of itself, in contrast to the Calvinist position, doesn't have merit. Anybody can believe anything and everyone believes things. That's why at one level you have a picture used many times in Scripture of faith that is compared to eating. Jesus even talked about this in relation to himself as the Bread of Life. "He who eats my flesh…" He's not talking physically eating His flesh. He's not using a literal figure, he's talking about taking something to make it part of our own selves. Anybody can eat; anybody can drink; so it is not the act of faith itself that has merit. It is the object of faith that has merit.

The object of faith in salvation is the work of Christ on the Cross so that faith is non-meritorious. It does not bring us any credit because we believe. It is the object of belief. Our ability to understand the gospel is enhanced through the enlightenment of God the Holy Spirit who works in and through the preaching of the Word of God and the explanation of the gospel. He opens the eyes of the unbeliever, enabling them to be able to understand the gospel and then make a choice as to whether to accept or reject it.

So when we explain the issues related to God's sovereignty and human responsibility they're both true. One does not cancel the other because they, in another sense, operate in different spheres. For example, in the sphere of creation and human activity we think about cause and effect, but that is a creation sphere idea of cause and effect when everything operates on a timeline continuum and one thing causes another. You often hear Calvinist say that if God does not determine the decisions of the creature then the creature makes the ultimate determination and therefore, God simply responds and He becomes a responder to the decisions of the creation. That is a cause-effect issue. Embedded is that is an assumption that cause and effect in the realm of the Creator is identical to cause and effect in the realm of the creature. When they use the terms cause and effect they don't mean the same thing. 

One other thing that really helped me to understand some things is to realize in Genesis, chapter one, when God created the heavens and the earth, the seas and all that is in them, and all of the plant life, Adam and Eve, and all of the physical laws that operate on Planet Earth, it was absolute perfection. There was no corruption in the human race or in the animal kingdom of creation or in the inanimate aspect of creation. Yet, because of His omniscience and His foreknowledge, God embedded within the DNA structure of all living things and within the laws of physics that operate and govern everything else, a flexibility so that when Adam sinned as a result of the free exercise of his volition and set a reverberating spiritual tsunami through all of creation, it reverberated in such a way that it changed the inherent nature of creation. Everything became corrupt. Not just man dying spiritually but it impacted the animals. In the curse in Genesis the word 'curse' often brings to mind some sort of juju black magic but that's not the sense of the meaning of the word in Scripture. It's more the idea of the divine judgment on something.

God said that the serpent would be cursed more than all the beasts of the field. Note that is a term of comparison. It implies that all the beast of the field would also come under judgment but the serpent more so. In Romans 8 as we have already studied, we've seen for example in verses 20 through 22 the creation is subject to futility. It's under the bondage of corruption. The whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs until now.

So we see all of inanimate creation is depicted here as groaning and suffering because of the judgment of God on all of the universe for sin. But into every aspect, from the smallest subatomic particle to the largest galaxy of the universe, God built a flexibility into everything physical and spiritual to handle the chaos that would come when spiritual death entered the universe. That helps us to understand that God created man, the human race, in such a way that even when they made free will decisions and go completely off the rails, God's sovereignty is great enough to incorporate that chaos into His plan without losing control and without losing the ability to bring His plan to its intended end.

How He does that we don't know but we can understand that both principles of God's sovereign control and free human responsibility can take place without them being contrary to one another, especially when we understand how things function within the realm of the creator and how things function within the realm of the created are not identical. So when we extrapolate from our frame of reference within creation to the creator, we often enter into logical fallacies and irrational leaps because we're trying to compare an apple to a cactus prickly pear fruit instead of two apples. They're not the same. The realm of the creature doesn't function like the realm of the creator. They are two completely different things. There may be some similarities but they're only analogous. They're not identical or as philosophers like to call it, univocal. They are different. They are not completely opposite one another, which is another term called equivocal, which means they have nothing in common; they're analogical. But that gets into a lot of other technical vocabulary and we're not in Philosophy 201 here so I'm not going to go any further down that road.

But I hope that kind of gives you an understanding or a framework because I know we have at least three people here tonight who haven't been part of this study in the last three weeks. I want y'all to understand that I know this is a tough, tough topic and subject to encounter. It's easy if you haven't listened to the whole framework to maybe misunderstand. I hope I'm a clear teacher. In fact, one year when I was probably about twenty –one or twenty-two years of age I went to a large Bible church here in Houston just to visit and the pastor, whom I have since come to know very, very well and we actually believe pretty much the same thing, taught on this passage. I thought he was taking a very high Calvinistic position and I couldn't have been more wrong. He's never taken that position but that's what it sounded like coming out of the pulpit. It's easy to misunderstand some of the things being said sometimes.

This is a mature doctrine. Peter in 1^st Peter talks about the fact that the apostle Paul has said some things that are very difficult to understand and this is one of them. There are many other things that Paul teaches that are also difficult to understand so if this is a tough thing to understand for you, then just set it aside and think about it later. Eventually as you mature and reflect on these things, then you will gain greater insight and understanding. We're in one of the great passages of Scripture: Romans 8:28 and 29. This is a tremendous passage for understanding God's provision for us and that God is in control.

The context is dealing with suffering. There are a lot of people going through suffering. I know of people in this congregation who are going through a lot of difficult times. As a congregation, it seems right now that we are going through a period where's there's a lot of health testing that I've observed. Some people know of some and not of others but there's a lot of health testing going on right now. We need to be in prayer for one another. There are other difficulties going on in terms of financial challenges, in terms of just physical educational challenges and job challenges. We all face those things. These are all part of the adversities of life. Starting in verse 17 of this chapter, Paul shifted to introduce the topic of suffering to challenge believers to recognize that if we endure in the Christian life, if we press on toward spiritual maturity, suffering and adversity have a purpose and we will be rewarded at the judgment seat of Christ.

There are two categories of rewards covered under the concept of inheritance in these passages. One is the level that's provided for every believer as heirs of God [verse 17] and the second are joint-heirs with Christ and that's conditioned upon suffering with Him. That is going through the various levels of adversity in life and applying the word of God to those levels of adversity so we can grow and be rewarded with Him and be glorified with Him in the kingdom when we will rule and reign with Christ. All of that I covered before. That's the context.

So suffering, the suffering we go through as believers, the suffering from sin on creation, all of these things are the context. When Paul says we know that all things work together for good, the all things, in context, are talking about all of the difficulties, adversities, challenges that we face in life. God brings about something that's part of His plan in our life. This is not purposeless. There is a purpose for this. There is a plan. You and I do not perceive the plan. We don't understand how these things are working together but God does. When we get to heaven we may see how these things have all worked out and come together. But we don't know the plan. Every now and then we get little glimpses of things that happen. Every now and then we recognize that there are things going on in our life that are just sort of unusual and they're not coincidental but we have no idea where God is taking us or how He's going to use some of these circumstances.

We know God is in control. But God is not in control to the exclusion of our volition. So Romans 8:28 just basically emphasizes the fact that God is in control. God has a plan. You and I may not perceive it or understand it but God does and that's all that matters. Our responsibility is to trust Him and to remain obedient in the midst of those challenges. So Paul says in verse 28, "We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose." As I've said before Paul addresses his readers as if they're all pursuing spiritual maturity. Now he knows that there are some who haven't quite made that decision yet. There's some who won't ever make that decision. There are some who will decide to make it to the second grade. There are others who will decide to drop out at the fifth grade level. Others make it to the seventh grade and others are still going to be pursuing spiritual growth all the way to the day they die. But Paul always addresses everyone as if they are high achievers.

I understand that as a pastor. I treat everyone in the congregation as if they're all pursuing spiritual maturity. If they're not here on Tuesday and Thursday night, I assume they're all watching it at home. I know some aren't but I treat the congregation as people who are all on the same train, as it were, going to the same destiny which is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ to the maximum. I expect everybody to get on that train at some point or another. So that's who he's talking about.

These are the called. The called is a term which simply summarizes those who have responded to the invitation of the gospel to believe in Jesus Christ as Savior. If they have responded, they are the called. They are the invited ones and they have been called according to a purpose, which is God's plan for the human race. And then he's going to explain this a little more in verse 29. "For those whom He foreknew…" Verse 29 brings us back to the word called. He's going to plug the concept of being called into the stream of decision making within the plan of God.

He starts out saying that first of all in this stream of events, there's foreknowledge, second there's predestination, then there's calling, then there's justification and then there's glorification. That comes in verse 30. He says, "For whom He foreknew he also predestined…" Then here's another observation I didn't make clear last week. In a minute I'm going to go over the quotes from a couple of Calvinists who have written commentaries on Romans and their quotes are typical of the way Calvinists interpret predestination. They usually interpret foreknowledge as some sort of choosing or as a synonym for election and predestination. The problem is this verse and another verse we'll look at tonight clearly distinguish these activities.

Foreknowledge cannot be defined as being chosen or lovingly selected because that comes under the purview of the next word. We have to keep these activities distinct from one another because they're not treated as the same thing. Douglas Moo, the well-respected theologian scholar and professor of theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, has a general framework of high Calvinism that I do not agree with. Nevertheless he does say some good things on some points based on word studies and language but he falls apart here. The main thing I looked at last time was his definition of foreknowledge. He says it does not mean "to know before in the sense of intellectual knowledge or cognition or what we would call prescience." Prescience is a compound word made up of "pre" meaning before and science meaning knowledge, to know something ahead of time. He says it doesn't mean prescience but that it means to enter into relationship before or to choose or determine before. As I pointed out, that is not evident in the way the word is used.

Another writer I referred to last time was Thomas Schreiner and he said, "The idea of foreknowledge really is determined by the word knowledge." As I read through this last week I read the word "forestall." Stall is the root word but the meaning of forestall cannot be determined and is not the same as the root word, stall. We'll look at some other examples. What I mean by that is that foreknowledge cannot be determined by the meaning of its root, knowledge. This is called a root fallacy in terms of word study or a fallacy related to etymology. This is typical reasoning for the Calvinists who will shift from foreknowledge to just knowledge and go back to the Old Testament where they look at just the word know and try to derive the meaning of foreknowledge from the word know. Schreiner concludes that "foreknowledge relates to His covenantal love in which He sets His affection on those whom He has chosen."

Choosing is election or selection which is a totally different word in the context and in the process. They tend to muddy these things up. They try to take these words that are used in their sense for election and they give them such synonymous definitions that they're all really saying the same thing. That's not fair to the writers of Scripture. Palmer in his book, The Five Points of Calvinism, says, "When the Bible speaks of God knowing a particular individual, it also means He has a special regard for them, that they're the object of His affection and concern. So that again shows what I'm talking about.

Then I just gave you some definitions, "to know beforehand, or to choose something beforehand." That's the basic meaning of the word in all literature outside of the passages we are looking at. As I pointed out last time, when you have a word in Scripture that you're not sure what it means in this context, you can't assume a meaning and say that's what it means in this context where in every other context it means something else and you list this one context as the exception and it means what you want it to mean. You can't do that but that's essentially what they've done. They say the subject of the verb here is God so the word has a completely different meaning when God is the subject than when anything else or anyone else is the subject of the verb. That is another fallacy in word study. The word is going to mean the same thing regardless of who's performing the action. So I pointed that out last time and I pointed out some other dictionaries and some key verses that we went through. Acts 2:23, 1 Peter 1:2. I stopped right about here looking at 1 Peter 1:20. I went through all of these and I stopped right about here.

Let's turn in our Bibles to Acts 2:23 to begin. The way that you know the meaning of a word in Scripture is that you look at how the word is used. That's the same thing in English. When you go to Webster's Dictionary or Collins or the Oxford English Dictionary, the lexicographers, the men who are writing the lexicons, are simply studying how people use a word. That's why you will sometimes see new words enter into a dictionary or you will see new meaning enter into a dictionary. In some dictionaries you will even see words like "ain't". I remember in elementary school teachers would say that wasn't in the dictionary because it's not a word. Well, if a word enters into the language of the people often enough, it becomes a usable word and it will have a dictionary meaning. It may be improper grammar or other things may be problems but what determines meaning is not the dictionary. The dictionary is simply organizing and categorizing the way people are using a word.

Over time words change in meaning. For example, in the early 1600s when the King James Version was translated, the word charity was equivalent to what we would refer to today as unconditional love. Love that was not determined by the behavior of the object of love but was determined more by the objective character of the person who was doing something to benefit the other person. Today the word charity usually refers to some sort of benevolence type of ministry that's provided for people who are in need. It is a form of love, but charity is no longer considered a synonym for love. The word has changed its meaning over time. So the meanings that are listed in the dictionary change to reflect the usage.

When you do a word study in Scripture, which is what I try to teach pastors and students of Greek, you don't start by going to the dictionary. You start by going to a concordance or using a Bible study program to give you a listing of every place that word is used. Then you analyze that word usage in those verses to determine its characteristics, its qualifications, and the range of meaning within that word. After you have thoroughly investigated all of those verses so that you're familiar with the data, much like a crime scene investigator shows up at a crime scene on NCIS or CSI or CSI New York, or any of those other shows we like to watch, the investigators are just presented with a lot of data but they don't know what it means yet. They have to analyze each piece of data to see what they can learn from it in what is called an inductive study. Once they have analyzed all of that and come to thoroughly understand the evidence, then they begin to make associations and then come to conclusions. Then they have to check and double-check those conclusions against other facts to make sure they didn't miss something.

 That's the same thing we do in a word study. You look at all the places where it's used. You look at all the conditions. You weigh the data and then the last thing you do is check it against some of the dictionaries and some of the other sources which have extended discussions and analysis and then you may discover that you missed something. You may discover that the dictionary says this word means something and you haven't found any evidence of that. I can point out at least three examples, this word being one of them, in Arndt and Gingrich where they have introduced a category of meaning to the word that, I believe, is read into debatable passages. But if you look at how the word is used outside of those debatable passages, there's no evidence anywhere else that it has that meaning. Everywhere else where foreknowledge is used in Biblical Greek, other than about three passages in the New Testament, it always has the idea of knowing ahead of time, knowing beforehand. So you can't say that you think that in Romans 8:29, 1 Peter 1:2, and Ephesians 1, that in those passages it means God has a prior, loving relationship that He's chosen and that's the meaning of foreknowledge. Where's your evidence for that? There is none. You can't use those verses to be your evidence.

So we come to a passage like Acts 2:23, one we've studied before, and this is in the midst of Peter's sermon on the Day of Pentecost. This is the first day of the church, the day the church was born and God the Holy Spirit descended upon the eleven disciples and the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem when they were together. He hovered over them like a flame of fire and they heard a rushing wind so they were having a full sensory experience. Peter then began to explain what was going on. He does so in light of Old Testament passages but what's really important is his analysis of God's plan that we're looking at. He says, starting in verse 22, "Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, [empirical, confirmatory evidence] just as you yourselves know this Man [Him, Jesus Christ] delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God…"

In this first phrase we see the role of God in His overriding plan of human history. But who is the object of God's foreknowledge? It's Jesus Christ. Is His foreknowledge of Jesus Christ here related to salvation? No, it's not. It's related to the role that Jesus Christ would play in history. Now a little later on we're going to look at how foreknowledge is used in relation to the nation, Israel, and in relationship to the Jews. God had a plan for them within human history. God selected them for a plan and a purpose within His plan. The context is not related to individual selection of people for salvation or for justification. It has to do with God's general plan and purpose for their life.

On the one hand, there's a plan of God that His Son, Jesus Christ, would be delivered over to the authorities and He would be crucified but that doesn't negate the individual responsibility and free choice of the Jewish leadership, and not every Jewish person because many were believers in an Old Testament sense by this time of the Cross. Their leadership, the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Herodians, made their determinative choice as the representatives of the people to reject the Messianic claims of Jesus. So they had a responsibility. Peter says that on the one hand God had a plan of redemption and this was the plan and on the other hand he says, "You [accusing the audience as part of the responsibility of the Jewish leadership] you nailed Him to a Cross by the hands of godless men…" He was emphasizing their role and responsibility.

It hasn't been diminished one little bit because God had a plan to do this and they did it, they chose to do it, they went along with the plans and the rejection of the leaders so they are fully culpable in the death of Jesus Christ. "…you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death." Now the word boule simply means a will, purpose, an intent, or a plan to achieve something or to bring something about. It adds an adjective to the word purpose, "determined" which is not within the context. It doubles the meaning in order to emphasize a determinism, I think, within the passage. It is simply that He was delivered according to the plan or the purpose or the intent of God and this intent, this boule often indicates a choice, a will, a determination to do something based on reflection and deliberation. God had a plan that was well thought-out in terms of the particulars. So Christ is delivered over on the basis of this plan of God and the foreknowledge of God. The plan of God clearly took into account information available to God through His omniscience.

 Omniscience, as we'll see in a minute, includes all the knowable, everything that God knows. His knowledge is not like our knowledge. His knowledge is direct. It's intuitive. It's immediate. He does not add things to it. He does not ever acquire knowledge or lose knowledge. He immediately, directly, and intuitively knows everything in terms of all its relationships, all of its causes, all of its effects. Nothing is left out. He knows all of the actual things that will happen and all of the potential things that will happen. So, typically, in Calvinism, they will say that God elected, He chose some to salvation. Now in some systems they don't go as far as to preterism which is double predestination, that is, predestining some to eternal life and some to eternal death in the Lake of Fire. They'll just say that God elected some to salvation and He passed over the others. They were already condemned so He just didn't elect them.

Others will say He actively elected to send them to the Lake of Fire, that's what's called a "higher" form of Calvinism. Then when you ask them on what basis God chose some to eternal life, they'll say that's in the secret counsels of God. The problem is that they're excluding knowledge. Anything available to God through His omniscience is excluded because they have this weird way of talking about God's knowledge, that God can't really know something unless He's determined it. And He can't determine it if there's freedom because you can't know what's going to take place if you can't determine that it's going to take place. They get caught up, I think, in to a logical cul de sac that has to end up in determinism. Here Peter clearly says that God, in terms of His planning, takes into account information available to Him in His omniscience and His knowledge about what will take place and what might take place in human history ahead of time.

Now let's go to the next passage which is in 1^st Peter. If you don't learn anything tonight, you'll learn at least where Acts is and where 1^st Peter is. 1^st Peter is near the end of the New Testament after Hebrews, James, and then 1^st Peter. Now there's something interesting about 1^st Peter, James, and Hebrews, which we'll see in this first verse. This may be a brand new insight for some of you. I first hit this reading through a commentary and some writings by Arnold Fruchtenbaum who I respect for many, many things. When I first read this, because of my training and everything I'd heard before, I said, "I don't think that's right." Then I started doing a lot of research and reading and I went, "Oh well, I think Arnold's right here."

You have to pay attention to where the words are. What's happened in a lot of these interpretations related to these epistles is that we have a history of interpretation that's sometimes affected by bad exegesis. In 1^st Peter 5:13 Peter concludes with a greeting saying, "She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you greetings, and so does my son, Mark." He mentions Babylon and from the 2^nd century B.C. and on there has been a trend to interpret that word Babylon allegorically, that it's not referring to the literal Babylon on the Euphrates River in what is now modern Iraq but that this is just a code word for Rome. That is how numerous people have interpreted 1^st Peter, that he's writing to the churches in Rome. They say he's actually in Rome when he's writing this but the reality is Peter was an apostle to the Jews and Paul was an apostle to the Gentiles. If you haven't learned anything in our study of Acts I hope you've at least learned that much. Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles. That doesn't mean he never spoke to Jews, as we know, but that was his primary target audience. Peter is primarily responsible for taking the gospel to the Jews.

Outside of Jerusalem, the largest population of Jews in the first century was in Babylon. How did they get there? They got hauled there during the first destruction of the temple in the three deportations conducted by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of the Babylonians, 605, 597, and 586 B.C. That's when Daniel and his three friends were taken over in 605. So a huge number of Jews were taken over when Jerusalem was destroyed, the temple was destroyed and they were taken to Babylon. Until 1948 of this last century, just 66 years ago, there was always a large contingent of Jews in Iraq.

In 1948 a lot of Arabs living in the area of the West Bank fled the war that approached prior to the beginning of the War for Independence in March and April of that year. Some were forced to flee because they were in strategic, significant geographical locations and the Haganah, which is what the Jewish army was known as at the time, ran them out of their villages but the vast number of them left because they believed the propaganda of the five Arab nations that invaded Israel that the war would be short-lived and they would defeat these horrible Jews and the Zionist entity would be destroyed and they would come sweeping in and everybody could come back home. That created this so-called refugee problem of Palestinian Arabs. They chose to flee. They chose to believe the lie. They chose to leave their homes and as a result, they became refugees and they're still refugees. There were about 750,000 Arabs who were displaced.

The other part of that story is that only the Palestinian refugees are given inheritable refugee status. You have refugees from any other conflict in the world and it's limited to those individuals and their refugee status is not passed on to their descendants. Today we have about three and one half million Palestinian refugees. Now how did we get there from 750,000? Because they had babies like rabbits and those babies were given refugee status and they're put under a special UN Refugee committee that only oversees that one and only refugee problem which is the Palestinians and they give them lifetime benefits and their children lifetime benefits. If they leave and they come to Canada or the United States or Mexico or Brazil or wherever and they become successful doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs, then they continue to get their subsidy from the UN and they continue to be identified as Palestinian refugees. This is part of when they talk about the right of return and try to figure out the conflict between the Jews and the Arabs in the Middle East that's what they're talking about. It's a never-ending problem because they've created a unique standard of refugees.

At the time that happened in 1949 when those approximately 750,000 Palestinian Arabs left and were displaced—most people don't understand the other side of the story—approximately that same number of Jews were forcibly evicted from their homes in Morocco and Tunisia and Egypt and Syria and Lebanon and Iran and Iraq and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and all these other areas. So the Israeli War for Independence created two groups of refugees, the Palestinian Arabs and all these Israelis who were forced to give up all their bank accounts, all of their possessions, all of the things they owned, everything but what they could carry in a suitcase. They were forcibly deported from Iraq and Iran and all of these other Arab countries. Until 1948 you had an enormous Iraqi Jewish population and it traced all the way back to the early part of the sixth century or late seventh century B.C.  It was centered in Babylon and later it was centered in Baghdad.

This was where Peter went. Peter was an apostle to the Jews and he went to Babylon where there were Jews because he was taking the gospel to the Jewish community and so he went to the largest Jewish community. If we understand Babylon to be literal Babylon, and since we believe in literal interpretation of Scripture, we're forced to do that, it makes sense. It's historically viable. Then it changes our understanding of what happens in verse one. Peter identifies himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ to the elect. To those who are elect, to the choice ones, residents of the "dispersion" as the King James Version translates it. The Greek word is diaspora. This is a technical term which has been used since the sixth century B.C. to designate the Jews that were scattered from their promised homeland. The diaspora began in 605, 597, 586 B.C.  There was a partial return that occurred in approximately 538 B.C. and a few more that came back over the years but the ones that returned in 538 when Cyrus allowed them to return from Babylon came mostly from the area of Iran and Babylon. They didn't leave their homes in Cappadocia and in Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Egypt, and Rome and all these places where they had established communities. They came back mostly from Babylon and Iran to resettle on Ezra and Nehemiah and Zerubbabel. That was the beginning of the Second Temple Period and it became known more technically as the diaspora. So Peter is writing to the residents of the diaspora.

Who are the residents of the diaspora? Are they Gentiles or are they Jews? They're Jews. They're Jewish Christians, Jewish believers. Just like the writer of Hebrews is writing to a Jewish audience, the writer of James is writing to a Jewish audience, and so is 1^st Peter being written to a Jewish Christian audience with a Jewish-background. In Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. This is the area that is now known as Turkey. So he is writing to the elect who are first defined by their location. He's writing to these early churches, which had a primarily Jewish aspect to them, located in the area of Turkey.

The second thing he says is to give us a basis for them being called the elect. This is given in the second phrase, "according to the foreknowledge of God the Father by the sanctifying work of the Spirit." The next phrase gives the purpose of why they are the elect. The issue we need to address here is the phrase, "according to foreknowledge." What comes first? Elect or foreknowledge? Foreknowledge, because elect is on the basis of something prior and here it's foreknowledge. Foreknowledge comes before election, not after. 

The second thing we need to understand is the nuance or the idea or basic meaning of the word "according to". It's the Greek preposition kata which usually means according to a norm or a standard and we see that the preposition usually qualifies an action idea when it's used with a verbal term such as elect or making a choice. So it's going to qualify that term. Now we have a parallel verse related to the Antichrist in 2 Thessalonians 2:9, which states that the Antichrist is coming "according to the working of Satan." Now that's our parallel. What does it mean that the Antichrist will come according to the working of Satan? That means his position and his power at that future time is going to be on the basis of or because of Satan working in him. It almost has the idea of because of Satan's empowerment or Satan's enablement. So if we take that idea that we see in the parallel phrase in 2^nd Thessalonians 2:9 or a similar phrase and apply it to 1^s Peter 1:2 what we see is "according to or because of the foreknowledge of God." The foreknowledge of God is what shapes the choice. The foreknowledge of God becomes the foundation for the making of the selection which is identified in the main verbal idea of election. So according to the foreknowledge of God qualifies and gives the foundation for the verbal idea for election. This means that the ground for the action, or the reason for the action of election, is the foreknowledge of God.

 One commentator, William Kelly interprets is as "Election is grounded in or election is a result of foreknowledge." Another tries to explain it as election depends on foreknowledge. Foreknowledge is the condition. All of these explanations are trying to get at the same idea, which is that God first knew all of the knowable in His omniscience, then He knew what would take place because of His foreknowledge and then He made His choice on the basis of the information available to Him in His foreknowledge.

As we wrap up here, I was thinking about this the other day. It took me back to something that happened in Sunday School class when I was in high school. Pam and Tinker were there with me at the time. We talked about it the other day. We had a Sunday school teacher named Bill Gleason. I must have been in about the 9^th grade at the time. I don't remember anything else we ever learned in that Sunday school class but I remember this. He came into the Sunday school class and he had a large television set. Do you remember the old box sets from fifty years ago? He put that up on the table in front of them and he plugged it in and said this was a special set he had designed so that it could show what people were going to do that afternoon. As he looked at that he said he could tell what some of us were going to do. He picked a couple of kids and told them what they were going to do that afternoon. He asked them, "Am I, by my knowledge of what you're going to do this afternoon, causing you to do what you're going to do? Not at all." That illustration always stuck with me.

Foreknowledge is that God knows what's going to happen. He's not making His choice because He sees faith in you. Calvinists say that's what we're trying to say. But we're not. People may say that out of ignorance but the Scripture always says that we're saved through faith, not because of faith. The cause of our salvation is the death of Christ on the Cross. We're saved through faith. That makes faith non-meritorious. It's simply the channel. It's like the pipe or the tube through which God's salvation flows to us from the Cross. We're not saved because of that but that's the means by which the work of Christ is applied to our life. We are saved through faith.

So when we plug that in to Romans 8:28 and 29, "For whom He foreknew…" God in His foreknowledge is going to elect certain people. We're going to get into this next week. I'm going to give you a little foreshadowing here. There are three different views of God's plan of election. Over the course of my life, I've held all three. The first is the Calvinist view that God just chooses based on His character and His knowledge. That's a determinative knowledge in a Calvinist sense. That was Lewis Sperry Chafer's view. When I first read Chafer I thought, "Well, I was always taught that Chafer knew what he was talking about. I guess I'll believe what he says." I don't believe Chafer was right on that because Chafer was an ordained Southern Presbyterian and I think he was more Calvinistic than most people think. He would be called a light-to-moderate Calvinist. That was his position.

The second position is that God elects solely on the basis of his foreknowledge. Again, it interprets elect as an individual selection to salvation. I don't see elect used individually except with the plan for the Lord Jesus Christ going to the Cross. What I do see is that God has a plan for groups. He has a plan for those who are the descendants of Abraham. God has a plan for those who are in Christ. Those who trust in Jesus as their Savior are entered into union with Christ and therefore become identified with Him as the elect. We are elect corporately by virtue of our union with Christ. We'll get into that a little more as we go through some things coming up.

 ((CHART)) What we see here is that God knows all of the knowable. I should have made that circle as large as I could make it but I just wanted to get across the idea that foreknowledge is just a subset of all that God knows. Foreknowledge relates to what He knows will take place. Omniscience has to do with all the things He knows could have, might have, or would have happened under different circumstances taking place.

Thomas Edgar, who has taught Greek for many years at Capitol Bible Seminary and is a graduate of Annapolis, took his commission in the Marine Corps, went to Dallas Seminary for his Th.M. and his Th.D. Hopefully, he taught Dan Ingraham everything Edgar knows about Greek which is a lot. Edgar wrote a great paper on foreknowledge. He concludes saying, "Thus, God knows everything that will happen if He causes it, if He causes only some of it, or if He merely allows it to happen. Since He is omniscient He knows what will happen even if He allows the universe to be completely random. He knows what will happen regardless of the cause. Whether man can philosophically explain how this works is irrelevant since man has no ability to explain something that only God possesses and nothing apart from Scripture." That's a great quote. It takes a lot of time just to think and to ponder that particular quote.

Anyway, next time I'm going to come back and talk about God and contingency. Now that's another fancy term. God knows all the things that could have, would have, should have, taken place but won't. Now that's an incredible concept known as God's knowledge of contingent things. What could have, might have, should have, and would have if you had made another decision. If you'd married somebody else. If you'd gone to a different school. If you had decided to live in another state or take that other job. God knows everything that would have happened in your life. He knows all the variables. God is so great that He is able to still work out His plan and purposes no matter how you want to use your decision to mess it all up. You can't. He'll work it all out for good.