They Have Provoked The Holy One – Part 2c

We’ve looked thus far at 11 characteristics of the counsel of God:^[1]

1. They are Great – High in status, formally great.
2. They are Wonderful – astounding, causing amazement and boggling the mind.
3. They are Immutable – they will stand forever, never to be altered.
4. They are Sovereign – they demonstrate the absolute control of God over His creation.
5. They are Eternal – they extend from now into eternity future.
6. They are Faithful and True - demonstrate God’s faithfulness and truth to His Word.
7. They Cannot Be Frustrated & Shall Be Performed – There is nothing that men can do to prevent God from Doing As He Had Decreed.
8. The Scriptures tells that even the sufferings and death of Christ were according to these counsels – Christ was crucified from before the foundation of the world.
9. Saints are called and saved according to the counsels of God – The root of salvation rests, not in the mind and will of man, but in the determination counsel of God established before time began.
10. We see that the union of all saints in Christ, is according to these same counsels of God – the relationship of believers together, as a church is rooted in these same counsels.
11. Ultimately, all of the Works of God are according to the Counsels of God – in fact, all of his works are according to these self-same counsels of God.

We’ve seen that the counsels of God are the basis for virtually all that we experience as people.  But the Bible has more to say to us that just to declare these truths.  It talks a great deal about what we are supposed, as believers, to do with those truths once we know and understand something about them.

Twelfth, the Scriptures tell us that these truths should be declared by ministers of the Gospel.  Luke, referring to his preaching, said in Ac 20:27:

27 For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God.

“The whole counsel of God” refers to the entire plan and purpose of God for man’s salvation in all its fullness, culminating in His Son Jesus Christ: divine truths of creation, election, redemption, justification, adoption, conversion, sanctification, holy living, and glorification. Paul strongly condemned those who adulterate the truth of Scripture (2 Cor. 2:17, 2 Tim. 4:3, cf. Rev. 22:18).^<2>  He did not suppress any truths of the gospel but preached the full gospel to Jew and Gentile. He always used tact and discretion but never compromised the good news.

This is the responsibility of all ministers of the Gospel, formal ministers especially, but certainly this truth applies to all believers as we preach and teach the Gospel to all men.

Thirteenth, we are to attend to these Counsels.  God, of course, does not speak for nothing.  Nor does He speak merely for ornamentation or for the sake of effect.  He intends that men not only pay attention to what He says, but that they take action on them, obeying and implementing them in their lives.

Jeremiah 49:20 says:

²⁰ Therefore hear the counsel of the Lord that He has taken against Edom, And His purposes that He has proposed against the inhabitants of Teman…

“Hear”  specifically refers to use the perception of hearing with the ears specifically to process information ^[3].  The verb is in the imperative and thus is a command.  We MUST hear these commands, we are commanded to do so, it is a responsibility of believers to hear the commands of God and act on them.  It is not something we SHOULD do, it is something we MUST, we are OBLIGATED to do.

As in the prior verse, Jeremiah, speaking to a disobedient people, says in 50:45:

Therefore hear the counsel of the Lord that He has taken against Babylon, And His purposes that He has proposed against the land of the Chaldeans:

As in 49:20, he uses the same word, in the same form.  We are commanded to hear the counsel of the Lord, that is the advice, counsel, i.e., the act. of telling someone what they should do based on a plan or scheme ^[4]. He also uses the word “purposes” speaking of a thought, i.e., the content of reasoning and thinking ^[5].  The point being that the counsel that He has communicated is the content of the plan God has thought through and developed in His mind.

The implication of this is tremendous!  Why in the world would anyone, ANYONE wish to cast aside the plan thought through by the God of the universe?  The overwhelming truth in all of this is that this is not just a matter of authority, but also a matter of wisdom and submission.  It simply does not make any sense for men to cast aside the counsel of, the fruit of the machinations of His mind.  The rest of Bible makes clear the reason for casting that counsel aside is not because men come up with better  ideas, but because sin compels them to do so.

Fourteenth, portions of God’s counsels are secret and, like it or not, cannot and are not to be searched into.  What we mean by this is that though God has revealed much in His Word, He has not revealed all.  This is true in two regards. 

• First, we are not capable of understanding all that His mind thinks.
• Second it is not time for all of His counsels to take place.
• Third, there are surely matters that He has reserved for only He to know, He is not responsible to tell His children all things.

Deuteronomy 29:29 says:

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”

It is clear from this that God, Who is certainly capable of revealing anything that He desires to reveal, has reserved some of that information, some of that plan for Himself.  That which is revealed included the law with its promises and threats; consequently, that which is hidden only can refer to the specific way in which God will carry out His will in the future, which is revealed in His Word and completed in His great work of salvation, in spite of the apostasy of His people.^[2]

Matthew 24:36, for instance, tells us of a portion of the plan of God that is surely set in stone in all  of its aspects, but is reserved for His knowledge alone.

“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.

Whereas the disciples wanted to know the time and date of His return, but the emphasis of the passage is not that information, but on faithfulness, watchfulness, stewardship, expectancy, and preparedness.^[2] It is important to note that this statement is true to this day.  Any attempts to know the “day of hour” even as we get closer and closer to the time of the end, are effectively stopped by it. 

Similarly, at the time of the ascension, the disciples inquired about the time of Christ’s return.  Christ’s reply in Acts 1:7 was even more direct and to the point:

And He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.

Even at this point, the apostles still believed the earthly form of the kingdom of Messiah would soon be re-established (cf. Luke 19:11; 24:21). They also knew that Ezek. 36 and Joel 2 connected the coming of the kingdom with the outpouring of the Spirit whom Jesus had promised.  But this verse shows that the apostles’ expectation of a literal, earthly kingdom mirrored what Christ taught and what the OT predicted. Otherwise, He would have corrected them about such a crucial aspect of His teaching. times or seasons. These two words refer to features, eras, and events that will be part of His earthly kingdom reign, which will begin at the second coming (Matt. 25:21–34). The exact time of His return, however, remains unrevealed.^[2]  It remains the province of God the Father and He alone.

The essence of the matter is that God has revealed information to us and we are responsible to act on that information.  But there is also information that He has reserved for His own and we are not only NOT responsible for that knowledge, but we are responsible to leave that knowledge with Him.

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^[1]Torrey, R. (1995, c1897). The New Topical TextBook : A scriptural text book for the use of ministers, teachers, and all Christian workers. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos research Systems, Inc.

^[2]MacArthur, J. J. (1997, c1997). The MacArthur Study Bible (electronic ed.) (Ac 20:27). Nashville: Word Pub.

^[3] Swanson, J. (1997). Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains : Hebrew (Old Testament) (electronic ed.) (DBLH 9048, #1). Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

^{[4] [5] Ibid.}