GOD'S FOREKNOWLEDGE ACCORDING TO HIS SOVEREIGNTY

There is only one safeguard against error, and that is to be established in the faith and that, there has to be prayerful and diligent study and a receiving with meekness the engrafted word of Yehovah - God.

When we study the foreknowledge of Yehovah we need to remember His sovereignty over all that He has created for His own pleasure.

Scripture affirms that Yehovah has singled out ones to be recipients of His distinguishing favors, and therefore He determined to grant unto them the gift of faith. [Acts 13:48: And when the Gentiles heard it, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained unto eternal life, believed; Romans 12:3: God has dealt to each man a measure of faith.]

Notice God’s sovereignty it is His election that is the cause and our believing in the Messiah is the effect.

Before going any further we need to realize how the scriptures define God’s foreknowledge. First, we know that the word “foreknowledge” does not occur in the Old Testament, but the word “know” occurs there frequently. When the term “know” is used in connection with Yehovah, it often signifies to regard with favor, denoting not mere cognition but affection for the object in view. “I know you by name” [Exodus 33:17]. “Before I formed you in the belly I knew you [Jeremiah 1:5]. In the same manner the word “know” is used in the New Testament in the same sense as in the Old Testament. “The Lord [Yehovah] knows those that are His” [2 Timothy 2:19].

In the New Testament, the word “foreknowledge” is never used in connection with events or actions; instead, it always has reference to persons. It is persons Yehovah is said to “foreknow,” not the actions of those persons.

Prooftexts:

1. Acts 2:22-23: You men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as you yourselves also know: him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:

Note in vs. 23: Paul is not speaking of God’s foreknowledge of the act of crucifixion, but of the person crucified: Him [the Messiah] being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.

2. Romans 8:29-30: For 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. And those whom He marked out beforehand [predestined] He also called, and those whom He called He also justified [declared not guilty], and those whom He justified [declared not guilty] He also glorified.

Note the pronoun that is used here: It is not “what” He did foreknow, but “whom” He did foreknow! It is not the surrendering of their will, nor the believing of their hearts, but the persons themselves, that are here mentioned.

3. Romans 11:2: God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew.

Once more the plain reference is to persons and to persons only.

4. 1 Peter 1:1-2: Peter, an apostle of Jesus the Messiah, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, “elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father”, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus the Messiah:

Who are the “elect” according to the foreknowledge of God? The previous verse tells us: “scattered strangers” i.e. the Diaspora, the believing Jews. And, here too we see that the reference is to persons, and not their foreseen acts.

Now we understand that the word “foreknowledge” when used of God’s foreknowledge always refers to persons, foreknowing persons.

Notice: In the first two passages quoted above [1&2] show plainly and teach implicitly that God’s foreknowledge is not causative, and what lies behind it and that precedes His foreknowledge is His own sovereign decree.

“The Messiah was delivered by the [1] determined counsel and [2] foreknowledge of God” [Acts 2:23].

His counsel or decree was the ground of His foreknowledge.

When we look back at Romans 8:29, that verse opens with “for”, which tells us to look back to what immediately precedes. What does the previous word say? Vs. 28: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Thus God’s foreknowledge is based on His purpose or decree.

Psalm 2:7: I will declare the decree: Yehovah has said unto me, you are my Son; this day have I begotten you.

Psalm 148:6: He has also established them forever and ever: He has made a decree which shall not pass away.

Isaiah 28:22: Now, therefore, be you, not scoffers, lest your bonds are made strong; for a decree of destruction have I heard from the Lord, Yehovah of hosts, upon the whole earth.

Jeremiah 5:22: Do you not fear me? Says Yehovah: will you not tremble at my presence, who has placed the sand for the bound of the sea, by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it? and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it.

God foreknows what will be because He has decreed that it shall be. God marked out beforehand those whom He foreknew. (i.e. loved and elected) Christians are people who have believed through grace.

Acts 18:27-28: … when he wished to cross to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him. When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed, for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah.

Once more: In Romans 11:5, we read “a remnant according to the election of grace.” Plainly election itself is of grace, and grace is unmerited favor.

If anyone is a true believer, a true disciple of the Messiah Jesus he is so because God chose him in the Messiah before the foundation of the world.

Ephesians 1:4-6: Paul, an apostle of Jesus the Messiah by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in the Messiah Jesus: Grace is to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the lord Jesus the Messiah. Blessed be the God and Father of our lord Jesus the Messiah, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in the Messiah:

According as He has chosen us in him [Jesus] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him [Yehovah] in love: Having predestinated [marked us out beforehand] us unto the adoption of children [sons by the spirit of adoption] because of Jesus the Messiah to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, To the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He has made us accepted in the beloved.

All believers, disciples of the Messiah Jesus have believed “through grace” (Act 18:17), and that, because your election was of “grace” (Romans 11:5).

Last but not least Jesus says:

John 6:44: No man can come to me, except the Father who sent me draw him: and I will raise him up in the last day.

John 6:63-65: It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life. But there are some of you that believe not. (For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who it was that should betray him.) And he said, for this cause have I said unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it be given unto him of the Father.

All believers, disciples of the lord Messiah were drawn to him by the spirit of the only true God Yehovah. If God does not draw someone to come to His son Jesus they will not come!

So we see all these things that we have been discussing are of God and nothing of us.

Notice:

Nothing sustains our annihilation but the will and sustaining power of Yehovah. Not one of us can sustain ourselves for a single moment. We are entirely dependent on our Creator for every breath we draw. We rejoice with what the Psalmist says: You hold our being in life [Psalm 66:9]. The realization of this truth ought to make us realize our own nothingness in the presence of Yehovah in whom “We live, and move and have our being” [Acts 17:28]

Yehovah is a rock upon which we can stand and hold fast while everything around us is being torn away, changing rapidly, where moral decline is rapidly bringing us to the way mankind was acting before the flood, and before Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed. [2 Peter 2: all]