Free to Have Salvation.

 "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate. Being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will." Rom 8:29 

Just a few words on "foreknowledge." Sometimes the position is taken that God did not know what man was coming to when He made him, and if He did know, then He ought not to have made him at all or He ought to have stopped him from going in the way he has gone.

God does know, and He foreknows, and He knows the end from the beginning. "Known unto God from the beginning are all his works." Act_15:18  

God has not changed a hair's breadth from the plan which He knew before the world began. And there is no power in all the universe that could make Him change.

"Did God know that Adam was going to sin, and does He know whether we will be saved or not?" Yes, He knows all about it--who will be saved and who will be lost. "Then how can it be that we are free?"

I do not know, and it does not make any difference. I know from His word that I am perfectly free to have salvation and to have it when I want it. I know at the same time that God knows whether I will take it or not. I cannot understand how these two things can be, but God knows and He is not unjust, so it is all right. There is not an angel in heaven who knows how it can be, but they know that it is so.

Notice the absurdity of the statement that God can know if He wants to but that He does not want to know some things and therefore does not exercise His power to know. Some say that if He did know, He would be responsible for our being saved or lost, so He does not exercise His power to know and therefore releases Himself from that responsibility. That is bringing a fearful charge against God. It really throws all the responsibility of man's ruin upon God and charges Him with trying to shirk it. If He chooses not to know certain things, how is it possible for Him to know what He wants to know and what He does not want to know?

The very statement that He wills not to know certain things proves that He must know them in order to know that He does not want to know them, and this is an utter absurdity. That He wills not to know the things that He does know is a self-evident absurdity. Such an idea as that must necessarily be based on the supposition that God knows that He does know by studying. But God does not have to count and calculate and figure to arrive at conclusions. He is God, and knowledge is in Him and begins and ends in Him.

God is the High and Holy One "that inhabiteth eternity." Isa_57:15   

He dwells in eternity. What is eternity? It is something that has neither beginning nor ending. It may be represented by a circle, at every point of which God dwells at the same time. He is self-existent. That is, the millions of ages that have been in the past and the millions that are to be in the future are all "just now" with God. Past, present, and future are all present with God. He lives in an eternal now. We cannot understand how that can be but that does not matter; He says it is so, and we believe Him.

That He is the eternal God, constitutes the strength of the fact that He is our refuge. It is the eternal God who has had charge of our ways in the past, and we have confidence in His leading. If He had not known the past and the future, how could I have known whether He was leading me right or not? Job says, "He knoweth the way that I take."

He leads us in the way that we should go and looked over the ages and He saw just who would have the inheritance and He is preparing it for him. What would you think of a man, to put the thing on a very low plane, who got a lot of stones together and commenced to build a house. You ask him what kind of house he is going to build. "Why," he says, "I don't know. I am going to put these stones and timbers together and then see what kind of house will come of it." Such talk as that would be foolishness. Before a man starts in to build a house, he knows just how it is coming out; he knows exactly how it will look when it is finished. When God laid His plans in ages past, don't you think that He knew what kind of earth he was going to have? He knew what kind of earth it was going to be and He had a purpose in making it. He created it to be inhabited.

Not only did He know what kind of place it was going to be, but He knew what kind of men were going to dwell in it. He knew every man who would dwell in it and He had every one of them named. Those men whom God saw that He would have to inhabit the earth, when He laid His plans for it in ages past, were to be good and holy men, and that same earth, when this little experiment of sin is worked out, will be inhabited by just exactly the persons that God saw would inhabit it and they will have the names that He gave them in ages past.

In Revelation 2:17 we read, "And I will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it." Now it is not to be supposed that over in the kingdom of God we will not know each other's names, to be able to pronounce them. In the Bible every name signified something. Jacob was the "supplanter"; Israel the "prince of God"; Abraham, the "father of many nations"; Sarai, a "contentious woman"; and Sarah, a "princess." The name signified the character of the individual.

Now while all the redeemed are to have the perfect character of God, yet that character is so perfect and so broad that there is room for each to have a distinct character. Why is it that no one will be able to understand the name of any one else? Because no two persons will have had the same experience in developing character. No two persons have been led in the same way and have had the same experience or trials. "The heart knoweth its own business and the stranger meddleth not therewith."

In Exodus 33:17 the Lord said to Moses, "Thou hast found grace in my sight and I know thee by name." Moses was wonderfully near to the Lord at that time. He walked with God and endured continually "as seeing Him who is invisible." Day by day his character was moulded by the Almighty and had it not been for one sin he would have been translated without seeing death. He was meek above all men, and God knew him by that name which was written in the book.

Man fell, but every man who lived directly after the fall could have accepted the proffered salvation if he had wished and could have been one of those persons who would people the earth--one of those persons whom God saw when he laid the plans for the earth and for its inhabitants. If that had been so, the earth would have been filled and the work closed up long ago. Would that have been unjust to us, for in that case we would have been unborn and therefore left out? No, it would have been no more unjust than it will be unjust to close the work in a few years from now, and leave out possible nations yet unborn.

Now God foreknew us in Christ and in Him in the beginning we were predestinated to just such a place in the earth in its state of purity as God wants us to have. I am so thankful that we may have Christ if we will and if we will believe Him and trust in Him, we know that we are predestinated to a place in His kingdom. God hath "predestinated us according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will." Cannot you see that all things work together for good to them that love God?

How do I know that I am a child of God? He loved me and He bought me and I gave myself to Him and therefore I am His. Now I am in Christ, and it matters not what happens to me. There is not a bad thing that can come upon me, for everything that does come, God will work it for my good, and not only will He do it, but He does do it. He does it that He may develop my character and fit me for what He is preparing for me.

Now, Satan concocts some wicked scheme against me--influences some man or government to do something against me, that is calculated to destroy me. Well, that is all right, for God takes those very wicked schemes and out of them He brings good for me. Satan works those wicked schemes to accomplish my ruin, but God takes his schemes and by them carries me along to the desired haven. Therefore the Christian has no business to be complaining.

There is no one who would think of complaining when he was having a good time. But the Christian is having a good time all the time, for all things work together for good to him. These bad things good, that are concocted against us? Yes, for although they are bad when they start and are designed to ruin us, yet by the time they get to us, God transforms them into good. When we look at things in this way, we can praise God no matter what happens.

There was Joseph, his brethren sent him down to Egypt. They did it with no other intention than to destroy him. They first tried to kill him and then when they sold him for a slave, they thought that he would not live long down there as a slave and that they would get rid of him that way. And yet we are told by the psalmist that, "God sent a man to Egypt." Those brethren of his were working out the evil of their hearts and at the same time God sent him down according to His will. We cannot understand how this can be, but we know that it was so.

Caiaphas, that wicked old high priest, asked if it were not better that one man die than that the whole nation perish. There was the sentiment of the worldly-wise scheming politician. Yet at the same time in those very words God was speaking a prophecy. There is not a wicked person, not even the devil himself, but God just takes him and his wickedness as it comes and makes it work out His own eternal purpose. There is a world of comfort in the thought that that is the kind of God that we serve.

So it is that those whom He predestinated He called and whom He called He justified and whom He justified, them He also glorified. Christ says, "and the glory which thou gavest me I have given them: that they may be one, even as we are one." John 17:22. Yes, the Lord does give grace and glory and we have the glory now, only it is in the form of grace. "He will beautify the meek with salvation." Psa_149:4  He has given unto us the riches of His glory and His grace. By and by He will show us the exceeding riches of His grace with the glory that is to be revealed.

"What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?" Rom_8:31 

1891 GC Sermon #13 E.J. Waggoner