Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles, shows us a man diligently seeking to free himself from a fate universally accepted as immoral yet prescribed and predetermined by the gods, but he is without the ability to change the predetermination of the gods. This man runs from a lion, so to speak, into the arms of a bear and performs the prophesied fate. Yet in his actions, we see the behavior of a man who would be moral, but the gods were sovereign in what he would and would not do. The gods had determined that he would be immoral and fulfill the fate they had determined for him.

Many may argue that Oedipus Rex is just a story that a Greek writer has hatched. Such a notion is simplistic and is the flaw and failure of the unlearned; it is what Solomon wrote saying, the ignorant love simplicity and fools hate knowledge. King David gives us insight into seeing that God is throughout all His creation--man is but a part of God's creation. David said there is no speech nor language where His voice is not heard. [Psa. 19:3] And in Oedipus Rex, God's voice is heard as much as Paul's reference to other Greek poets and declared that God's voice was in their words. [Acts 17:28] The great learned Apostle stated, God has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell upon the face of the earth and has determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation.

The case of Oedipus is such a situation. The gods had set the bounds and reigns of his habitation, and regardless of what he did, he had to fulfill them. This archetype--pattern throughout humanity--is also seen in Moses and many others in scripture. It is fate--the unavoidable end--that one is predetermined to inhabit. The Greeks understood this pattern in life because God had placed it in them as in all human beings. This passage indicates clearly that Paul had read Sophocles's Oedipus Rex and the writings of other Greek poets and scholars and saw God's voice in them. What Paul says is exactly what transpired in Oedipus's life.

Paul stated that all men, whether wittingly or unwittingly, seek after God in some way--their writings and thoughts happen to be one of those ways. God is not, Paul said on Mars Hill, far from each of us. "In Him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring." [Acts 17:28]

Since we are the offspring of God, we should not think that God's voice is only in those who are saved through Christ. We are all God's creation, and as a father has sons and daughters some he approves of and some he disapproves of, and yet they are all his children with the resemblances that say to any viewing world that they are his children, so are we, ALL of mankind, in God. God is throughout His creation and His fingerprints are all over this universe from the microscopic to the macrocosmic. In man is the DNA, as it were, of God, our creator.

Looking at it differently, let's use the automobile as an example. Americans love their cars. The car is a marvelous invention for locomotion. But when one examines the structure and logic of construction of the automobile, any objective and intelligent person can see the hand prints of man. It is a human invention, and humans cannot make a creation without leaving deposits of themselves. The conveniences of the car lights for aiding human weaken night vision speak to man; mirrors to allow humans to see round about themselves speak to the limitation of our sight, hence to man. And as you study the automobile or any other human invention, the same principles are true. These are human DNA deposits occurring in all human inventions. If one from another world who knew of the behavior, characteristics, and attributes of human beings as well as other creatures different from us, and that one would examine a creation or an invention by human beings, that creature could easily identify the entity made by human beings. Our finger prints are there; our creation or invention behaves in a way that corresponds to humans. So it is with man and God: human beings, in their ignorance, may rebel against God, but in their very DNA are the deposits of God--we are His creation and His fingerprints are all over us, whether we know it or not. And those finger prints says that we are His creation and His possessions.

We are His offspring; God's attributes and patterns of thought and behavior are within and throughout our being. And since this is true, we can decipher God's voice in all of creation and in the works and the thoughts of others, whether saved through Christ or not. So powerful is this notion that Paul took Greek poets and placed their writing into the New Testament as holy writ. In Acts 17: 28, where Paul said, "For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, 'For we are also his offspring,'" Dr. Scofield noted that the Apostle quoted from two Greek poets--Epimenides and Aratus. But we can also see that Paul was informed by Sophocles's Oedipus Rex, as he says that God has set the bounds of habitation of all men.

Indeed, the Acts 17 passage shows Paul was versed in Greek literature and he understood that God spoke through it as well. To further substantiate that Paul was a scholar and student of such writings as an aide in his ministry, note in 2Tim. 4:13; Paul told Timothy to bring the books and especially the parchments to him. These parchments could have been skins he wanted to write on, a cover for a written document, or a document which he had already written. What we know explicitly about parchments is that he wanted Timothy to bring them to him. It probably does not mean another book because he expressly said bring the books [observe the plural of books means more than one book].

In order to feed God's people, both sheep and the lambs, a minister must study, as commanded in 2 Tim. 2:15. The reason many Christians are going away from Christ, back to the beggarly elements of this world and their own vomit, [2 Pet. 2:22] is because the leadership (whom God said has caused his people to err) will not study with any degree of scholarship to prepare a correct meal for God's people. [Isa. 9:16-20] Resultantly, what many saints receive in many churches is mush and outright dog food. That diet has made many of God's people sick and many die from that sickness. But those who are still alive, but sick, are blinded into thinking they are being fed properly and do not know the diet they are on is killing them.

Knowing that God speaks to his people in various ways--remember Moses learned from his father in law, Jethro, a Midianite priest, how to administer a certain portion of God's law? [Ex.18:17]--we use Sophocles's Oedipus Rex, which excellently captures the idea of the sovereignty of God in the affairs of men, to delve into this discussion of Romans 9.

The sovereignty of God is His absolute right, power and morality to do whatever He wills or desires and to be blameless in His actions. A sovereign king is the absolute ruler in his kingdom and is the ultimate authority on any matter he so choices; his word is law, correct, right, moral and ethical. Likewise is the sovereignty of God--none can contest anything that God does; not its morality or its ethics; not its appropriateness or its rationale. It was Solomon who said where the word of a king is there is power. [Ecc 8:4] Therefore, I can say, where the word of God is there is absolute power.

God's sovereignty is derived from His fatherhood in creation. ALL things were made by Him and without him was not anything made that was made. [John 1:1-3] God was, is, and will be the creator [father] of all things. And the reason He has created them is for HIS pleasure. [Col. 1:16; Rev. 4:11]

We, as well as all other things, were created by God, and we were created for His pleasure. This is a concept throughout God's word, but this concept is lost on many of God's people. Instead of behaving in a way that indicates we were made for God's pleasure, we have reversed this truth and are behaving as if we were made by ourselves and for ourselves. But central to the concept of the sovereignty of God is this notion that all things were made by Him and for His pleasure. [Rev. 4]

Again, all things were created by God and therefore He owns all His creation--He has not given that ownership to another. God has said that all the silver and gold are mine, the cattle on a thousand hills are mine; all the world and those creatures and creations therein are His. [Psa. 50] All things are His and know they are His; this recognition was confirmed by Jesus when he walked the shores of Galilee: He spoke to invisible spirits, and they obeyed him; He spoke to trees, and they obeyed him; He spoke to the very elements of nature, and they obeyed Him; He spoke to the concept of little, and it obeyed him and became much; He spoke to death, and death obeyed Him, releasing its dead. All of this is evidence that they know and respond to their creator.

Since all things were created by Him and He still retains ownership, He has a right to do with them as He wills. Consider what Peter told Annias and Sapphira when they attempted to lie to God about the property they possessed. Peter asked rhetorically: When you had it, was it not all your own? Implying they could have done anything with it they desired. Furthermore, he asked, and when you sold it, was it not still yours and in your possession? When a thing is yours you have a right to do with it as you will and you are blameless. If you have a car that is paid for and it is solely owned by you, that property is yours and if you chop it up with an axe, that is your right and you are blameless. It is yours to do with it as you will, within the constraints of the law.

Again, God's creation is totally His, and He can do with it as He wills. There are no constraints of the law on God. He is the law, the law giver, and the LORD! But to be sovereign means you not only have the authority but you also have the ability to back up authority to do as you will--absolute power. For God to be absolutely powerful means that God is omniscient. One cannot be absolutely powerful if there is a gap in his knowledge and wisdom. God is omniscient, declaring the end from the beginning, from ancient times, things that are not yet done. And His counsel will stand and He will do all His pleasure. [Isa. 46:10]

Selection/Election/Predestination
Selection and election are terms that cause problems in many believers whenever they maintain a prescribed view of God that will not allow them to phantom the deep things of God. [1Cor. 10:2] It is the lamb of God who only sees that God is love [1 John 4:8] and assumes that statement represents the totality of God. Whereas God is love, that is only an attribute of God. But if one thinks that it is the sum total of God, then that one can never understand other aspects, attributes, and truths of God. God's complexity is beyond our finding out in total. [Rom.11:33] We seek after him, as Paul says to those on Mars Hill, struggling in our limited comprehension to understand Him. [Acts 17]

And because of our limited view, we take small portions of God and therefore can only grow in those small portions. Many see the God is love scripture and restrict their thinking about God; many also take the whosoever will let him come scripture and restrict their understanding of God's salvation and man's free will. Whenever one hitches himself to one scripture as the basis for an entire doctrinal belief, he limits his understanding and faith. But God cannot be limited.

The Bible indicates that there are levels of truth in God that Paul admonishes us to grow to. We are to grow in grace and of the knowledge of Christ. [2 Pet. 3:18] On the one hand God is love, but on the hand God is a consuming fire, a man of war, etc. It was Jesus who said whosoever will let him come and drink of the water of life freely; that same Jesus said, no man can come to me unless he first be drawn, and he also said, you have not chosen me, but I have chosen you. Paul elaborates on this further by saying, we were selected and chosen in Him before the beginning of the earth. [Eph.1:4]

These are not contradictions of scripture, these are complexities and levels of God's truth and understanding that the simple will never come to. For Solomon said he loves simplicity and hates knowledge. [Prov.1:22] But hanging their understanding on certain scripture they descend into confusion and unbelief, and understand not that no scripture is with any private interpretation. [2 Pet. 1:20]

For God to be love does not preclude His anger, His wrath, His justice, His vengeance, or any other aspect or attribute of God. To think that it does is to live outside of human and Godly realities. One of the most grievous errors is the result of a mistake in our understanding of the God is love scripture. Many cannot accept that a loving God would allow tragedy, war, pain, murder, and other harms upon humanity. [Isa.45:7] But these conditions are the result of sin's entry into the human family. The very idea that God would guard against all of the results of sin, the tragedy of man's fall, is a human-centered approach to scripture exegesis and not an objective or a godly one. This type of analysis places God at the disposal and ready of man. But God is the creator of man, and He created him for His own pleasure, not to be at man's ready, although He will take care of our needs. Such a perspective assumes that because God is love, He takes no pleasure in anything but the pleasure His creatures have? Such an assumption demonstrates our understanding of God is flawed.

We are the work and creation of God, and He is free to do with us as he desires. Paul and Jeremiah used the analogy of the potter who makes a vessel, one to be honored and one to be destroyed. Both are his vessels that behave at his will and whim. This is much like General Motors that makes some of its vehicles to be sold and used by customers and a certain number they make expressly to destroy through tests and destroy for other purposes. We find them blameless in so doing. Likewise, the potter may spin out a vessel for whatever reason and purpose he will.

Whereas human beings are creators and potters of their artifacts, God is the great potter of man. He creates human beings for His pleasure even as we create televisions, radios, cars, etc., for our pleasure. Paul goes on to say in Roman 9, can the vessel say to the potter, Why have you made me this way? It is the potter who gives life to his vessels at his own discretion, and but for him, the vessels would not have existence or life. And since he is the artist and the vessel is his art, it is his to do as he will.

Some artists are commissioned for special art pieces. The idea may be in the mind of another who does not have the artist's ability. So that person goes to the artist with the ideas, and the artist takes that idea and creates art. Sometimes an artist has an idea in his own mind that he will think about, prepare a sketch, and get the materials to develop the art before he starts working on the idea. In short, he plans the art before he produces it.

God Selected and planned us before the very foundation of the world. [Eph. 1] Even then He planned other vessels--human beings--for dishonor; Some of these earthen vessels [2 Cor. 4:7] for destruction and some for elevation and glory. Notice in Roman 9, Paul says that before either Esau or Jacob was born, before they could do good or evil, God had already chosen Jacob over Esau and declared that Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated. This hatred of Esau had nothing to do with what Esau had done or would do. It was simply God's selection. He made Jacob to be loved and Esau to be hated. These things were a pattern to us, but the selection of God had nothing to do with what the twin brothers had done. Note, Paul expressly said, before either one could do good or evil the selection had been made. It is not of man it is of God who gives us the will and to do his good pleasure.[Phil. 2:13]

Before there was a when or a where, a then or a there, to use an old Baptist expression, God was selecting and planning his work. He asked Job about his right to counsel Him when Job and all mankind is counseled by their own ignorance and darkness; Where wast thou when I laid the foundation of the earth? [Job 38: 4] He did it alone, by himself; the making, the selection and election were all His, based on His own counsel, for His own desire, for His own pleasure and not another's!

To see God's selection of us to be saved or not be saved as dependant upon how man acts is to render God secondary. God is primary in all things. It is from Him life flows. If God were depending on man's response to a minister's preaching and petitioning sinners to be saved or saints to grow to perfection, He would be a secondary God. But Jesus made this point clear: You have not chosen me, I have chosen you. And no man can come to me except he first be drawn. [John 6:44] It is God who works in us the will and to do His good pleasure, Paul says. [Phil. 2:13]

Paul, in Romans 9, also discusses Moses and Pharaoh, indicating that God sent Moses to Pharaoh to tell him God said let the Hebrews go. Before going, God told Moses that Pharaoh would not let them go because He, God, had hardened Pharaoh's heart so he would not do it. In short, what I am sending you to tell this man to do, he will not do because I have blocked his ability to do it. Now to the impatient and ungodly, this may all seem like a fruitless game that Moses has been dispatched to play, but what this situation demonstrates is God's sovereignty in the affairs of men and His blamelessness in whatever He does.

These two situations raise a central issue that is so troubling in this discussion of God's sovereignty: If God commanded Pharaoh to do an act then prevented him from doing that act, how then can God say that Pharaoh or anyone similarly situated is disobedient? How did Pharaoh sin, since he was without the ability to comply with the edict of God because God had disabled him so that he could not comply, hence, making Pharaoh do the actual will of God? If he does the will of God is he still a sinner?

To be continued.