Last time in episode 233, you gave us a brief summary of events during your three-week trip to Ethiopia and the UAE. And knowing you, Pastor John, I presume you returned with some fresh theological thoughts simmering in your mind as well. So is there anything theologically you want to share with us from your trip?

One of the things that keeps simmering, Tony, since I got back, and it probably is the most significant theological, missiological insight that I got in the trip, which was like an education for me, came out of a lecture I was giving on the sovereignty of God. And when I was done, I mean, I really stressed God's absolute sovereignty over all things.

He controls all things for the good of His people and the glory of His name. And a question raised his hand, and he said, "Now, that sounds a lot like the Muslim view of God's sovereignty." And you hear here in the UAE, "If God wills, if God wills, if God wills," all the time.

And in the Muslim view, God can do anything He wants, and they actually use the name "Capricious" for God. I was standing in the second biggest mosque in the world in front of the biggest wall of the 100 names of God under the biggest chandelier of its kind, standing on the biggest hand-woven carpet.

This is all the way they describe it when you're there. And one of those names at the top, my friend Mike was there explaining them to me. He's just pointing out name after name written in Arabic, and he said, "That one up there is usually translated 'Capricious,' which means God is free.

He can do anything He wants." Now here's what I realized as I tried to think through, what's the difference between my view of the biblical sovereignty of God and the Muslim view of God as Capricious? Other names of God that they have on that wall are wise and just and kind and compassionate.

And I thought to myself, "You know, the name 'Capricious' virtually cancels out those, because if God can do anything He wants," meaning if you're standing before Him and He can just flick you off to hell or flick you off to heaven capriciously, without reference to His kindness, without reference to His justice, without reference to His compassion, then what good are those names?

They're meaningless if there's this overarching sense of capriciousness. And I think that really on the street governs a lot of what Muslims feel. They know that God is like that, and therefore, "Okay, sara, sara, in the end of the day I'll do the best I can with my five acts of devotion, but He can do with me whatever He wants at the end of the day, and I may go to heaven, I may go to hell." So here's the new insight.

At the center of our religion, at the center of Christianity, is Romans 3, 25, which goes like this, "God put Christ forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith." This was to show God's righteousness or justice, because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins.

Now right there is the center of our faith. God sent Christ, and He sent Him to die in order to be a propitiation, that is, to remove His own wrath. God loved us by removing His own wrath from us by having Jesus in His blood absorb the wrath which was owing to our sin.

There's the heart of the Christian gospel. And He says the reason He did it was to show His justice or His righteousness. Why did He need to show His justice and righteousness? It says, end of verse 25, "Because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins." Now think that through and what it means for God's sovereignty.

God had been passing over sins, so He had been forgiving Abraham and forgiving David, his adultery and his murder of Uriah. He'd just been passing over these sins. Now what did that look like? Well Paul said it looked like He was unjust, because it looked like He was accepting the belittling of His glory, which is what sin is.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So here is God acting as if the belittling and the dishonoring of His glory didn't matter. And that's unjust of God. That's unrighteous of Him to treat the infinitely valuable glory of God as though it were not valuable.

And therefore God, in order to vindicate His righteousness and demonstrate His just allegiance to the value of His glory, sends His Son to fix that. Now that is something that in Islam would never be necessary, because God doesn't have to do anything to fix anything. God is free to take a person like David, say, "I'll just let your murder of Uriah and your rape of Bathsheba, we'll just let it go.

I'm free to do that." Well, what I realize now is that the sovereignty of God as the Bible presents it is that it is in the constellation of other attributes of God. His justice and His mercy and His grace and His wisdom, so that when God passes over a rape and a murder, something's got to give, something's got to be done in the universe, not just to say, "Well, God is capricious, He can do what He wants," but rather, "God is just and He is holy and He doesn't let sin be swept under the rug of the universe, and therefore what will He do?

He will send His own Son into the world in order to demonstrate the righteousness of God." So, the upshot is that Christian views of God's sovereignty and Muslim views of God's sovereignty are profoundly different, because in the Christian view, His sovereignty is being guided and shaped by the other attributes from within God.

Muslims tend to feel like if God has to yield to some sense of justice or some sense of righteousness or mercy or compassion, then He's limited. But the answer is He's not limited, because those attributes are not outside of Him, govern Him like controllers from another source. They are inside of Him.

They're who He is. And so it was a great illumination to me that right at the center of our faith is an act of God that shows how His sovereignty coheres with His righteousness, and I think this is one of the reasons why Muslims find the gospel, the substitutionary death of Christ, so difficult to understand.

It's not just that in their tradition Christ didn't die and didn't rise from the dead. I think all of that is quite secondary to the fact that given their view of God, such a thing is preposterous, that God, being as free as He is, would never need to send His Son into the world to die in order to vindicate His righteousness.

Very interesting, and much in here to think about. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. And with Christmas fast approaching, we have received a pile of email questions about Santa Claus. Is he harmless fun, or is he a Christmastime disruption? We'll ask Pastor John that tomorrow.

Until then, please email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. And please visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper, all free of charge. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening. 1 Desiring God is a book by John Piper, a book by John Piper.

It has been published by The New York Times in 1912. It is a book by John Piper. It is a book by John Piper. It is a book by John Piper. It is a book by John Piper. It is a book by John Piper. It is a book by John Piper.

It is a book by John Piper.