Speaker: Andy Whitehurst
00:00
Isaiah 44:28 to 45:4, God saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure, even saying to Jerusalem, thou shall be built into the temple, thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the Lord to his anointed. To Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden. To subdue nations before him, and I will lose the loins of Kings to open before him the two leaf gates, and the gates shall not be shut. I will go before thee and make the crooked places straight. I will break in pieces, the gates of brass and cut asunder the bars of iron, and I will give the the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places that thou must know that I the LORD, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel, for Jacob my servant sake and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name. I have surnamed thee though thou has not known me.
00:56
God called Cyrus by name about 150 to 200 years before these events. Why does he do this? One reason is so that Cyrus will know that He is the God of Israel. And another reason given is so that God’s people will know that he is God. Jeremiah 1:5, before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee. How is he able to know such things? Romans 8:29, for whom he did foreknow, in other words, know before hand. God has foreknowledge. He knows things beforehand. Isaiah 46:10 says, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done.
01:40
Prophecy is simply history told in advance. God is able to give us prophecy because he knows what is going to happen before they actually do. In other words, he has foreknowledge and this is why he’s able to say, before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee. Before Cyrus was brought forth he knew him. Before he formed you and I, he knew us.
02:06
My wife and I have been married for about 19 years. With that said, if I were to go 2000 miles away, and be gone for two weeks. In other words, if I were to be separated by time and distance, would I still love her even though she is not in my presence? Of course. What if I were to go back 20 years in time, with my current knowledge of her? Would I still love her even though she didn’t know me yet? Absolutely. Because in my mind, and with my knowledge of her, I have known her and we’ve been married for 19 years. Here’s my point. God had knowledge of you before you were brought forth. So He loved you before you were brought forth. Could He show His love to you before you were brought forth? No, because you are not there to see it. But he still loved you, because He knew you. Would He not love Jesus before He brought him forth some time in eternity past? He had foreknowledge of Cyrus. He had foreknowledge of you before you were brought forth, yet he loved you. Would He not have foreknowledge of his own Son and love him also, even before he brought him forth.
03:28
Brothers and sisters, this idea that God must be three to be love has so many problems with it. I want to give you just a short list of some things that I see. One, it totally destroys God’s foreknowledge by saying God doesn’t have enough foreknowledge to have known his own Son before he was brought forth. Two, it destroys His agape love. It lowers His unconditional love to a phileo or eros love at best by saying God cannot be love without someone to show that love to. Three, it teaches that Jesus couldn’t have died for those who were brought forth after the cross, because we weren’t alive yet. So he couldn’t have loved us. For when we limit God’s love, then we limit our love for others, because by beholding we are changed. So our love for others can be no greater than God’s love, which again, would be a phileo or eros love at best. And then number five, we love God because He first loved us. So if we limit God’s love, then our love response to him will be limited.
04:53
Brothers and sisters, this is exactly what the devil wants. He does not want us to know about God’s foreknowledge. He wants to destroy God’s unconditional love. He wants us to believe Jesus could not have died for us. He wants us to not have unconditional love for others, and he wants our love response to God to be limited. The only way the devil can be equal to God is to bring God down to his level. God wants you to uplift his unconditional agape love to a dying world.