In this Bible and Business podcast, you’ll learn why the divine council from Psalm 82 is so important to our roles as Christian business owners. This is the second of a seven part series taken from Chapter 1 in the book “A Christian Theology of Business Ownership”. You can download the slides and read the companion blog post at www.bibleandbusiness.com. The video podcast is also available at the Bible and Business YouTube Channel. The companion blog post is here.
[00:00:04.440] – Bill English
And welcome. I am Bill English, the publisher here at Bible and Business. I want to welcome you to this episode. This is the second of a seven-part series on the theological context of business ownership. Today’s topic is is going to be the Divine Council.
[00:00:20.940] – Bill English
The seven part series is really a summary of the first chapter in my book, a Christian Theology of Business Ownership. I encourage you to go out to Bible and Business.com and download the slides for this video or this podcast. If you are meeting with other people, such as other business owners or maybe running a Sunday school class, something like that, but also out of Bible and Business, you can find articles and tools you can learn about online Christian business owner events that you can attend, which I run free of charge. And you can also participate in our surveys if you’d like. And for today’s episode, I would very much like to thank Dr.
[00:01:06.690] – Bill English
Michael Heiser for his work. I learned about the divine counsel from him at his site, the Naked Bible Podcast. And by reading his books, I highly encourage you to consume his podcasts as well as his books. For this presentation, I want you to know that I’m standing on the shoulders of Dr. Michael Heiser.
[00:01:32.140] – Bill English
So here’s the core idea for today’s lesson, and that is this that God has a council of divine beings who carry out his decisions. Now let’s take a look at some of the scripture verses that relate to this. First of all, Psalm 89, verses five through seven. Let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord, your faithfulness and the assembly of the holy ones. For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord?
[00:02:00.700] – Bill English
Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord? A God greatly to be feared in the counsel of the holy ones, and an awesome above all who are around Him. What do we see here in this verse is that God is incomparable compared to the other holy ones, and that there is a council of these holy beings that are around God, and yet God is incomparable. Let’s also read Psalm 82, verse one. And then verses six and seven.
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God has taken his place in the Divine council. In the midst of the gods, he holds judgment. I said, you are God’s, Son of the Most High, all of you. Nevertheless, like men, you shall perish and die and fall like any prince.
[00:02:52.910] – Bill English
So who are these beings, these members of the Divine Council? Well, they are described as sons of God in the Book of Job, and they were with him when he created the world in his council. They are decision makers. And a good example of that is in one Kings 22, verses 1328, they participate in God’s rule. Now look, they are not angels.
[00:03:17.760] – Bill English
They are above the angels, and they are divine beings that are created by God and they form his counsel. And they carry out his directives and his decisions. Here’s a quote from Dr. Michael it’s important to note that while God works with his counsel, he is alone in his attributes and sovereignty. I’m going to stop right there.
[00:03:41.230] – Bill English
You remember that I just said that God is incomparable, he is far above the others, right, Dr. Michael? Heiser is talking about that here. Now, I’m resuming with this quote. He is above these council members in every way.
[00:03:56.940] – Bill English
Consider Deuteronomy, chapter four, verses 35 and 39 to you. It was shown that you might know that the Lord is God. There is no other besides Him. Know therefore today and lay it on your heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. There is no other.
[00:04:18.260] – Bill English
God is so completely other that he is incomprehensible to us unless he makes accommodations for us as he discloses Himself to us, such as becoming a man who walked on this earth. Even though God rules through his divine counsel, he is clearly incomparable and far above any spiritual being which he created in his counsel. I would encourage you at this point, if you’re at all skeptical about God’s divine counsel, that you take a break from this video and go over to the Naked Bible podcast and go to the section called now. Start here and look at the two videos that Dr. Heiser has there.
[00:05:01.950] – Bill English
And then come back and let’s finish. But with the council, there was a point in time when man became so sinful after the flood. This is I’m really in Genesis eleven right now. After the Flood, man became so sinful that God just decided to give up all these nations. He decided to divide them based on language, to give them up, and then in chapter twelve, to take Abraham and begin to build his own people, his own nation, through a person who is still faithful to Him.
[00:05:39.430] – Bill English
And that was Abraham. So in this case. When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance. By that what I mean is that when God came along and at the Tower of Babel dispersed the people across the earth based on their languages. They really became independent nations and he gave those nations their inheritance.
[00:06:00.570] – Bill English
So to speak. And he divided mankind and he fixed the borders of the people according to the number of the sons of God. So the sons of God, remember, are the divine council members. And so God came along and he fixed the borders of those people according to the numbers of the sons of God. In other words, he gave each council member a people, and each council member was given a people to reign.
[00:06:26.710] – Bill English
Which is why, by the way, you might wonder why there’s so many nations that hated Israel. Because Israel were God’s people and the nations belonged to the other council members, some of whom, quite frankly, had rebelled against God. At this point in Genesis eleven, and they no longer sought the face of God or they were still obedient to them because they have to be, but they were evil in their hearts. And this is a real quandary. And we see this back in one Kings, where God is saying to this council, ahab has got to go, Abe’s got to die.
[00:07:04.920] – Bill English
And it isn’t a question of whether Ahab is going to die or not. The only question is how is he going to die? And so you have these different spirits that come up and they say to God, well, I can do this or I can do that, but the one spirit says, you know what, I’m going to go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouths of his advisors, and Ahab will believe him, and then that way we’ll be able to kill him. God says, Great idea, go do it. Right?
[00:07:29.260] – Bill English
So it’s clear in the Old Testament that God can work through evil spirits as well as holy spirits, right? And so some of the nations have been given over to evil spirits who are still members of God’s council. Now, how that all works I can’t explain, but what I can say is that the Bible teaches these things. And I would say that it’s better to accept the Bible for how it is than try to explain parts of it away. So God divides the nations, he divides them based on language at the Tower of Babel, and he confuses their language.
[00:08:05.590] – Bill English
And that’s why in chapter twelve, we see that God calls Abraham to be the father of his own people. And through that, later on, Jesus Christ comes through the lineage of Abraham and saves us all from our sin if we simply believe in Him, right? And so, through Christ’s, atonement anyone who accepts Christ enters the family of God. In the Old Testament, the family of God was basically a blood lineage. But in the New Testament, in spiritual Israel, because the Gentiles are grafted in, it really becomes anybody who accepts Christ enters the family of God.
[00:08:44.770] – Bill English
And that was started through Abraham. And so as members of his family, those of us who have accepted Christ as Savior and Lord, and those of us who live in a covenant relationship with Him, and we’re going to get to covenants in the next video. We have the promise that we will reign with Him in eternity. Hence, this means that in eternity we will be made part of his divine counsel. And I get part of that, and it’s not here on the slide, but I get part of that from the notion that today we’re a little lower than the angels, but in eternity we will be judging the angels.
[00:09:20.910] – Bill English
In other words, we’ll be above them. God will transform us to be above them. And we are already told that we’re going to reign with Christ. And so it makes sense that we would be made part of His Divine Counsel in eternity. So, two lessons, the one from the previous episode.
[00:09:39.390] – Bill English
In eternity we will reign with Christ on Earth. The core lesson out of all this today is in eternity we will reign as part of God’s Divine Council. So just remember, as a business owner, when you are starting a business, running a business, growing a business, making a decision, depending on God for wisdom, depending on God for direction, all of that is preparatory work towards reigning with Christ in eternity and being a part of His Divine Council. I’m Bill English, the publisher of Bible and business. I want to thank you for being with me today.
[00:10:20.590] – Bill English
And next week we are going to talk about covenants and a covenant relationship with Christ. This is an important episode, you don’t want to miss it. I want to thank you for joining me, and I hope you go out and make it a great day. Take care.