Acts 4:24-28. And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is: Who by the mouth of they servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ. For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together. For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determine before to be done.
How strangely this doctrine of predestination comes in just there! They are singing of the wickedness of men, and the triumph which God gets over it, and so this in the very sum and substance of the song, that when wicked men think that God’s decrees will be for ever put away by the destruction of his Son, they themselves are then actually doing what God had "determined before to be done." The wildest discord makes harmony in the ear of God. Man may be in rebellion against the Most High, but he is still abjectly the slave of God’s predestination, and let man sin with his free will, even to the very extremest length of folly, yet even then God hath a bit in his mouth and a bridle upon his jaws, and knows how to rule and govern him according to his own good pleasure. The ferocity of kings and priests doth but fulfill the counsel of God.
Acts 4:24-28. And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is: Who by the mouth of they servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ. For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together. For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determine before to be done.
How strangely this doctrine of predestination comes in just there! They are singing of the wickedness of men, and the triumph which God gets over it, and so this in the very sum and substance of the song, that when wicked men think that God’s decrees will be for ever put away by the destruction of his Son, they themselves are then actually doing what God had "determined before to be done." The wildest discord makes harmony in the ear of God. Man may be in rebellion against the Most High, but he is still abjectly the slave of God’s predestination, and let man sin with his free will, even to the very extremest length of folly, yet even then God hath a bit in his mouth and a bridle upon his jaws, and knows how to rule and govern him according to his own good pleasure. The ferocity of kings and priests doth but fulfill the counsel of God.