"God's Purposeful Plan For You: God's Foreknowledge” Series

1. Nothing is wasted by God. He’s working all things together for the good to those that love Him, those that are called.

• Called according to HIS PURPOSE.

• What’s that purpose? Look at v29.

• A change… a TRANSFORMATION. A CONFORMATION!

As a BORN AGAIN BELIEVER, you and I are being changed day by day into the very image of Jesus Christ.

• We are NOT the old person without Jesus in our lives.

• We are new people in Christ, with a new life, new hope, new direction, a new power, and a new purpose.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NKJV) 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

Paul says something similiar in CH12:1-2:

Romans 12:2 (Phillips) “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-make you so that your attitude of mind is changed…”

AND SO THERE is this pressure for us to be conformed in all sorts of different directions, but GOD is molding us into Jesus.

• Using everything that comes into our lives, everything He sends in our lives, working them together for good.

YES: not everything that happens to us is good.

• Some of them can be very bitter and sour and hurtful.

• For a believer, all these things work together by God’s great power to come out for OUR GOOD and HIS GLORY!

SO what is God’s Plan? How do all things work together?

• How does the DIVINE PLAN of salvation work?

• How does God save us and fit us into what he’s doing?

• READ THROUGH V29-30

• These help us to understand and see God’s molding hand.

• Paul shares 5 pieces of His wonderful plan.

#1 – FOREKNOWLEDGE, #2 – PREDESTINATION, #3 – CALLING

#4 – JUSTIFICATION, & #5 – GLORIFICATION.

#1 – GOD’S FOREKNOWLEDGE (v29).

• For whom He foreknew, Paul says.

• This speaks of God’s OMNISICENCE. His knowledge of everything.

• God knows everything about everything.

• Theologically we could say, God knows all things both actual & possible, past & present & future, completely, perfectly, simultaneously, and eternally!

• We don’t have foreknowledge, but God does! WOW!

NOTE: Wouldn’t it be great to have knowledge like that?

• I mean when tough times came, we could see it all and respond accordingly. But we don’t. Only God does.

• God is ALL-KNOWING. Flip over to Hebrews 4:13

NOTHING is hidden from God, no shadows, no secrets.

• Look at Psalm 147:5 – It’s AMAZING!

• He knows everything about everything.

• His knowledge is absolute and unacquired.

• He doesn’t learn anything.

1 Samuel 2:3 (NKJV) 3 “Talk no more so very proudly; Let no arrogance come from your mouth, For the Lord is the God of knowledge; And by Him actions are weighed.

God is a God of knowledge and He never learns anything and knows everything there is to know about everything! OMNISCIENT.

I HAVE TO WARN YOU AT THIS POINT of a new twisted doctrine flowing through the church at large today…

• It’s commonly known as OPEN THEISM.

• The idea is that God is NOT OMNISCIENT and that He learns things along with us!

NOTE: A popular place an OPEN THEIST will take U is Gen 22:9:-13

• See they say, the Angel of the Lord said, NOW I KNOW.

Was God learning something here? Not in the least.

• God knew all along his plan for Isaac, we see that in CH21:1-4

• What God knew by COGNITION, He knows by DEMONSTRATION.

• Look back at Genesis 22:1, God tested Abraham.

• It was a test for Abraham & Isaac to learn, not God!

ILLUSTRATION: It would be like a 2nd Grade Math teacher sitting down with her student and said:

• “Let’s see if we can figure this problem out. OK: the square root of 64 is? Hmmmm”

• The student wrestles with it and finally comes up with the right answer and the teacher says:

• Now we know the answer is 8, even though from the moment she began to help that student, she knew all along the answer!

The false doctrine of OPEN THEISM is to be rejected.

• God is clearly & absolutely OMNISCIENT! He knows all things.

Jeremiah 17:10 (NKJV) 10 I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings.

Acts 1:24 (NKJV) 24 And they prayed and said, “You, O Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which of these two You have chosen

• God knows all things both actual & possible, past & present & future, completely, perfectly, simultaneously, and eternally!