GYC Conference 2023: But If Not

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

God of the Philosophers or God of the Bible?

John Peckham

How to Know the God of Scripture and Detect the “God” of the Philosophers

My name is John Peckham, and the topic of my seminars is the God of Scripture versus the God of the Philosophers.

And in this first session, we're going to be covering the topic how to know the God of scripture and detect the God of the philosophers.

So 2 things, let me just mention, you see there on the screen on the right already, my most recent book, which is written for a general audience of a work of accessible theology, an overview of Seventh-day Adventist theology.

Anders University Press has made that available with a discount for GYC attendees.

The QR code will take you to the University Press website where you can order it directly from them.

The first printing sold out, but the second printing just came in.

So if you order directly from them, you'll be able to get it.

And then on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, this other QR code is to allow you to download a PDF of the presentation.

So everything you see on the screen, if you just go to that code, you'll find it.

I'll put the other ones up throughout the seminar.

Right now, just the first 1 is there, but you can get a PDF of the presentation that's to come.

I'll just ask you to Keep that to yourself.

It won't make much sense without my explanation anyways.

But that way, everything you see on the screen, you'll have access to already.

With that, before we dive in, let's begin with a word of prayer.

Dear Father in heaven, we praise your name this morning.

We are so grateful to you for your great love, for being the awesome God that you are.

And this morning as we dive into these seminars together, I ask for a special blessing.

I ask that the Holy Spirit will guide us, will illuminate our minds, to help us know the true God, the God of the Bible, that is you, the 1 and only God.

I want to thank you for all of the attendees here.

I pray for a special blessing on them as well.

And again, we ask that you would guide us, that you would help us, that you would teach us.

All right, so I want to start by drawing your attention to this quotation, which is very near and dear to my heart.

In Christ's object lessons, Ellen White wrote, the last rays of merciful light, the last message of mercy to be given to the world is a revelation of what?

The children of God are to manifest his glory in their own life and character there to reveal what the grace of God has done for them.

So if the last message of mercy is to reveal God's character of love, it's rather important that we know what that is, right?

It's rather important that we know who God really is, what God's love is really like.

And as you know already, many people have very largely distorted conceptions of God.

This is a picture of my son when he was under 2 years old.

But imagine that my son came to me at this age with a poorly wrapped gift.

I open it up and I find inside this gift box is the ugliest tie that I've ever seen.

Now imagine, I would never do this by the way, I don't want you to think I'm a monster, but imagine for a moment that I said to my son, Joel, this is the ugliest tie I've ever seen.

Not only do I not want this gift from you, it's valueless to me, I don't want anything from you because whatever you could give me, you're already buying with my money anyways.

You can't give me anything in the first place.

Would I say that to my son if I love him?

And if I said something like that, you would think, boy, this guy's rather cold, heartless.

Because the dominant conception of God in major prominent streams of Christian theology is that God cannot take pleasure or delight in people or creatures or be affected by anything.

That God cannot take pleasure, cannot take delight in us at all.

That he actually cannot have any emotions unless emotions are redefined to something that you wouldn't recognize as emotions.

And you're gonna ask right at the outset, well, then how can God be love, right?

Because it seems like you just eradicated it, right?

So I'm just going to start with a few texts here.

We're going to go into more depth as we go on.

I want to just ask a simple question as you look at these verses.

Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb.

Even these may forget, but I will not forget you." So what God is saying to his people here is even a woman might, It's very rare, but might forget her child.

His compassion is greater, exponentially greater than that of a mother for her young child.

And you could make a case that in human terms, That's the greatest kind of love that we know, right?

But God's love is exponentially greater than that.

Indeed, as often as I have spoken against him, I certainly still remember him.

I will surely have mercy or compassion on him, declares the Lord.

That's speaking about his covenant people.

Adma and Zeboim were the 2 smaller towns that were destroyed when Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed.

So basically he's saying, how can I bring judgment on you, my beloved?

And he says, my heart is turned over within me.

Have you ever been so upset about something it felt like your stomach churned?

Do these texts indicate that God cares about us?

Do they indicate that God has emotional responses?

That our lives actually make a difference to him?

The God of Scripture and Why It Matters, Part 1: The Sanctuary vs. Classical Theism

Father in heaven, we praise your name this morning.

We are so thankful to you for being with us already this morning and we ask again that you will continue to illuminate our minds, help us to understand what you would have us to understand about who you are and what you are like, about why that matters so much to the sanctuary doctrine and the core of our Adventist faith.

I want to thank you and pray these things in Jesus name, amen.

All right, so I want to remind you again for those of you that were here for the first session of this passage that is near and dear to my heart.

The last rays of merciful light, the last message of mercy to be given to the world is a revelation of what?

Now if the last message of mercy is a message of God's character of love, again it's very important that we understand what that character is like, right?

And that's why we're spending time together to try to understand who is the God of the Bible and why does that matter for every element of our faith and our practice.

As we have seen already, a small mistake at the beginning is a large 1 at the end.

So if we misunderstand who God is and his character, it's going to affect every other aspect of our faith and practice.

So we want to be careful to try to understand who the God of the Bible is.

And I would argue, again, that the story of the God of the Bible is the God of everything that was and is and is to come.

And how we understand who God is affects everything else.

So this second session of the 5 sessions, we're moving and we're gonna build 1 to the other, coming to some big questions that people ask.

The first thing we're gonna do In this session this morning is about the sanctuary.

Can we just leave it aside and move on with other doctrines or is it core?

And how does our view of God affect that?

Then in the third session this afternoon, we're gonna talk about big questions people ask.

If God isn't controlling everything, how does he know the future?

We're gonna ask those questions and answer those questions from the Bible that people ask.

In the fourth session that you won't want to miss, we're going to talk about the problem of evil.

How can we have confidence that God is love and God is good given the amount of horrendous suffering in the world?

And I'm going to share with you a great controversy framework directly from the Bible that you can share with anyone straight from the Bible.

And then tomorrow morning, we're going to go to the question of the Trinity and why that matters more than you ever dreamed to the rest of our faith and practice.

So now diving into the sanctuary versus classical theism.

We saw in the first session, I'm just going to reiterate some of it for anyone who might not have been here, that the God of the philosophers teaches among other things that God is timeless, meaning what?

He cannot experience any passing of time, which means God cannot do 1 thing and then do another thing.

And for that reason, he cannot change because change takes time.

In order for there to be a change, there needs to be a time 1, that something is in 1 state, and at time 2, at least at time 2, when something's in another state, so God can't change.

And if God can't change, then he can't respond to you or to me, which means he cannot have any responsive emotions.

That's the God of the philosophers that they are operating with, which affects whether there can even be anything like a sanctuary doctrine.

That has massive implications for the way God relates to the world.

Which is going to be the topic of the next session this afternoon.

And that stake in our conception of God is every other doctrine of our faith, okay?

Not only the cosmic conflict, not only time and Sabbath, not only immortality and death, not only Second Coming, but especially God's work in the atonement, in the sanctuary.

In a nutshell, if classical theism is true, there can be no real heavenly sanctuary.

There can be no actual ministry of Christ where God does 1 thing and another.

Because that takes time and it requires space and they also say God is spaceless.

So I'm going to, with apologies to Dickens, share with you a tale of 2 sanctuaries.

And I'm going to ask you a question for you to ponder.

What is the significance of the biblical sanctuary?

They're not equally viable, don't misunderstand.

1 of them is the biblical view, okay, and we're gonna walk through this and unpack this.

We're just starting here at the beginning and we will come back to this.

Option A is the traditional or classical view.

The sanctuary was a symbolic location of ritual that pointed to Christ.

Christ has come, the sanctuary has passed away, and there cannot have been or be a real heavenly sanctuary.

Because that requires space and time, a here and a now, and it's excluded by their conception of God that we talked a little bit about already in the first seminar.

Okay, we can call that the purely symbolic view.

Sanctuary is symbolic, pointed to Christ, don't need to pay any attention to it anymore, okay, for simplicity's sake.

Not my view, don't misunderstand, I reject that view.

But that's the view, that's the dominant view.

And when you go to present the sanctuary to someone, if you don't help them to first question their concept of God they're operating with, they won't even be able to hear the sanctuary doctrine.

Because it won't fit, like a square peg in a round hole.

Option B, the earthly sanctuary was a typological, you know what a type is?

It's like a symbol, but it's a true symbol.

A typological ritual system that typified or prefigured or symbolized in a real way the heavenly sanctuary that is not made with human hands.

The earthly sanctuary pointed to Christ's earthly and heavenly ministry, among other things.

The earthly sanctuary has passed away and along with it the ceremonial and ritual law that pointed to Christ.

But the heavenly sanctuary remains and was and is the true location of the plan of salvation.

This is the biblical view of the sanctuary.

And not just that it's the biblical view of the sanctuary, but how that affects every other doctrine of the Christian faith, both with the counterfeit and the Adventist understanding, which I believe is the biblical understanding.

Now, I want to share with you a couple of quotations, a few quotations.

Adventists have believed from the very beginning that the sanctuary is essentially connected to all other doctrines.

And if that's true, it's not something we can just pick and choose to leave behind.

It's not just a doctrine that you, and It's not just a doctrine you tack on after you have all the other doctrines in place.

It's actually integrally connected to the rest of our doctrines.

Look at the way Ellen White put it in the Great Controversy, page 423.

She wrote, the subject of the sanctuary was the key.

The key which unlocked the mystery of the disappointment of 1844.

It opened to view a complete system of truth.

Hold that question, we're gonna come to that in a moment.

The God of Scripture and Why It Matters, Part 2: Biblical Prophecy vs. Predestination

Dear Father in Heaven, we praise your name this afternoon.

We are so thankful to you and grateful to you for loving us and caring for us and revealing so much about yourself and your character in your word.

Now, as we go into this session together, we ask for clear minds.

We ask that the Holy Spirit will guide us and lead us into more and more truth.

Alright, so as usual I want to start off by drawing your attention to this quotation from Christ's object lessons where Ellen White writes, the last rays of merciful light, the last message of mercy to be given to the world is a revelation of his character of love.

This is central to our message and our mission, and that's why I'm spending so much time on these various aspects of the doctrine of God and the character of God in these seminar sessions.

A story is told of a youth pastor that's having a conversation with a middle schooler.

And the youth pastor is teaching them God is sovereign.

That means he controls everything that happens.

The middle school replies, so God was in control when my dog died?

That's a tough 1, New Christmas responds, but Sometimes God lets us go through hard times so that we're prepared for even more difficult things in the future.

I remember how hard it was when my dog died, but going through that helped me deal with an even more difficult time later when my grandma died.

After a long pause, the middle schooler replies, so God killed my dog to prepare me for when he's going to kill my grandma?

Now you see, it's a silly story, but you see the point, right?

And sometimes the way we explain and even think about God's providence and God's sovereignty leads to ramifications in people's mind that cause them to doubt the goodness and the character of God.

And they wonder, and they have these questions.

And we all have these questions when bad things happen, when suffering comes, where is God?

And we're going to focus on that, especially in the fourth session, the 1 just following this 1.

But in this 1, we're focusing on the question of God's providence, God's knowledge, God's power.

Does everything happen the way he wants it to happen?

Is he the God of predestination, as many of the classical philosophers believed?

And this is a core issue for so many reasons, not just the character of God, but all the things that we've seen already in the seminar about the sanctuary doctrine.

Many other doctrines are connected to this foundational question of what kind of God is the God of the Bible.

Now, many people, even some people in biblical times, seem to think that if something bad happens to someone, it must be because they deserved it, or a judgment from God, or something good happens to good people, bad things happen to bad people.

Now Jesus actually directly addresses that misunderstanding in Luke 13.

And I wanna share that with you at the outset.

Hopefully it'll be ringing in your ears as we go through this particular session together.

Luke 13, beginning verse 1, it says, there were present at that season some who told him, that is Jesus, about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.

So in other words, Pilate had had a number of worshippers killed.

And Jesus answered and said to them, Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered such things?

I tell you no, But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Did they suffer because they deserved it?

He said no, and then He also calls everyone to repent, because in the end there would be a judgment, as we talked about in the last session.

So that could be described as an instance of what we sometimes call moral evil.

That's evil that's directly traceable to something humans do to other humans, right?

But the second instance, and I think Jesus does this on purpose, the second instance is an example of what some people call natural evil.

That's evil that arises from a seemingly natural occurrence.

And so in the second 1, he says, all those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, Do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem?

I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

So he directly counters and challenges the view that Good things only happen to good people and bad things only happen to bad people.

And that God is causing these things to happen as judgment events.

There are cases in scripture where God brings judgment, but in most cases He reveals His bringing judgment.

But not every instance of hardship is an example of persecution.

If it was, Jesus himself would have to be a sinner.

John the Baptist, Jesus says there was no prophet greater than him.

And how did things end for him in this life?

But it's not because God wanted it that way.

There's a much bigger picture taking place.

And yet in the end, of course, His reward will be in the next life.

Jesus Himself, in Gethsemane, as He is facing the cross, He prays this prayer, which we will come back to a little bit later.

He prays, my Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.

Now you're probably very familiar with the last part, which is equally important.

Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.

But have you ever stopped and thought about the first part?

Jesus elsewhere says, with you all things are possible.

And out here, he's praying, Father, if it is possible.

Are all things possible for God, or are they not?

Are there some things that are impossible even for God not because he lacks power but because of other factors involved?

I'm going to build on this in the next seminar so I don't want to get too far ahead of myself.

If He makes a promise, will He ever break it?

Hebrews 6, 6 through 18 says His promises are unbreakable, and it's impossible for him to lie.

So if he makes a promise, he's always going to keep it, which entails that to the extent God makes an actual promise, his future action is gonna be more limited according to that promise that he has made.

Which means there are some things that even God can't do, not because He lacks power, but because His character constraints Him only in good ways, only because He is love.

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Series

God of the Philosophers or God of the Bible?

The Trinity of Love: How Scripture Teaches the Trinity and It Matters More than You Ever Dreamed

Transcript

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Parts

How to Know the God of Scripture and Detect the “God” of the Philosophers

1h

The God of Scripture and Why It Matters, Part 1: The Sanctuary vs. Classical Theism

58m

The God of Scripture and Why It Matters, Part 2: Biblical Prophecy vs. Predestination

1h

Theodicy of Love: God’s Love and the Problem of Evil

58m

The Trinity of Love: How Scripture Teaches the Trinity and It Matters More than You Ever Dreamed

52m

Sound Doctrine