Dale Partridge - June 29, 2024


Romans 9： 14-18： The Doctrine of Election Explained with Dale Partridge


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45 minutes

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113.35593

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5,117

Sentence count

365

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9

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22

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Summary

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Transcript

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00:00:00.960 Open your Bibles to Romans chapter 8, excuse me, chapter 9. I'm going to be reading the
00:00:09.140 sermon text for this morning, verses 14 through 18. Hear the word of the Lord.
00:00:18.660 What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means. For he says to
00:00:27.300 Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.
00:00:34.680 So then, it depends not on human will or exhortion, but then it depends on God who has mercy.
00:00:43.480 For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose, I have raised you up, that I might show
00:00:50.500 my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. So then he has
00:00:57.080 mercy on whomever he wills and he hardens whomever he wills. This is the word of the Lord.
00:01:04.560 A friend recently showed me a graphic and it was titled
00:01:10.960 How I Became a Calvinist. It's a little internet graphic that we see in social media
00:01:18.060 and it had a pie chart, and on the pie chart, 95% of it was blue, and a little sliver of
00:01:25.820 it was orange, and the orange section said books and videos from other Calvinists, so
00:01:34.540 how I became a Calvinist, 5% was from books and videos from other Calvinists, and then
00:01:41.480 And the 95% section was labeled, I read Romans 9.
00:01:47.620 And I think that's an accurate representation for most people.
00:01:51.260 Years ago when I was working through this same doctrine, I watched several documentaries,
00:01:57.540 I read Chosen by God by R.C. Sproul, I Consumed Everything by John Piper, but it wasn't until
00:02:05.420 I had an exegetical sermon series that I listened to through Romans 9 that really allowed my soul
00:02:15.420 and mind to make an official shift. It was very helpful. Romans 9 is where Arminianism or the
00:02:25.600 idea of free will goes to die. R.C. Sproul once said, salvation is based on free will,
00:02:32.880 the free will of a sovereign God. Now, if you've been following along, this is my third
00:02:39.580 sermon in Romans chapter 9. In my first sermon, we learned about Paul's example for being broken
00:02:49.220 for the unconverted. We saw how Paul was broken for his own people, that even though they hated 0.96
00:02:57.800 Paul and persecuted Paul, he was sorrowful for them. More than that, the Jews had these nine 0.97
00:03:07.240 incredible covenantal advantages. The priesthood, the law, the prophets, the fathers, the temple,
00:03:15.120 the Torah. I mean, they had it all. They had an entire heritage that pointed them to and prepared
00:03:22.360 them for the Messiah, yet the vast majority of them still didn't believe.
00:03:32.040 Last week I said this is evidence that information alone is insufficient to save.
00:03:41.380 It's not about transferring information to save a soul.
00:03:45.860 Information is a part of it.
00:03:47.620 Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.
00:03:52.360 This can actually be confirmed in Paul and Jesus
00:03:55.640 and the other apostles' lives and writings and ministry.
00:03:59.560 They are our model for evangelism.
00:04:03.800 They're the ones we look to.
00:04:07.360 And they were still met with rejection of the gospel.
00:04:11.920 Think about Jesus proclaiming the gospel and rejecting it.
00:04:19.100 I mean, they had faultless teachings, miraculous signs, and they were still not converted.
00:04:29.120 What do you do with that?
00:04:32.560 Salvation clearly requires not just information, but Holy Spirit transformation.
00:04:42.060 Something needs to happen.
00:04:44.880 God must do something.
00:04:46.720 Unless he does, the gospel message falls flat.
00:04:52.880 So we cannot intellectually persuade someone into the kingdom of God.
00:04:58.060 That's a fact.
00:05:00.140 Every parent knows that. 0.94
00:05:03.340 We cannot cause a person to be born again.
00:05:07.900 Without God resurrecting the soul or granting them repentance and faith,
00:05:12.320 ears to hear, eyes to see, or life to comprehend.
00:05:20.580 Your information is as effective as you preaching in a graveyard.
00:05:27.660 No one will hear anything unless the Lord opens the ears,
00:05:32.720 opens the eyes, and brings the dead to life.
00:05:39.500 Paul says in 1 Corinthians, you guys might know this passage,
00:05:41.960 it says, I planted and Apollos watered, but God brings the increase. God does it. Any growth,
00:05:53.140 it's done by God. This is important because Romans 8, which we just got done preaching through over
00:06:01.060 the last several months, it's presented this total sovereignty of salvation over God's people.
00:06:09.900 And so Romans 8, 28 through 30, we know that God causes all things to work together for
00:06:15.360 those who love him and are called according to his purpose, and those whom he foreknew
00:06:19.820 he predestined, those whom he predestined he called, and those he called he justified,
00:06:22.900 those he justified he glorified.
00:06:28.160 God has total control over the salvation of his people.
00:06:34.260 The glaring question becomes, if God controls the salvation of his people, 0.57
00:06:42.600 then why have the vast majority of the Jews rejected the Messiah?
00:06:49.140 That's the glaring question.
00:06:52.320 Did the word of God fail to accomplish its purpose?
00:06:58.560 Isaiah 55, 11 says,
00:07:00.240 my word shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish what I purpose.
00:07:08.940 So Paul offered an exact answer to this question. If you look down in your Bibles,
00:07:17.600 9, 6 through 7, it says, but it is not as though the word of God has failed,
00:07:24.140 for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham
00:07:29.600 because they are his offspring.
00:07:32.480 In other words, Paul drops this massive theological bomb
00:07:36.540 on the Jews, especially.
00:07:40.960 Not everyone that's in the covenant is of the covenant.
00:07:44.960 Not everyone who is circumcised is sanctified.
00:07:49.060 Not everyone who was in the visible people of God 0.93
00:07:52.200 is in the genuine people of God. 0.96
00:07:54.960 Not everyone who is Israel is elect.
00:07:59.600 This is a shocking message for a Jewish community. 0.72
00:08:02.280 I mean, massively shocking. 1.00
00:08:04.660 In other words, there's a group within a group.
00:08:08.380 There's a group within a group.
00:08:11.120 There is, this is true of the Old Testament, this is true of the New Testament,
00:08:15.260 there are goats mixed with sheep.
00:08:17.140 There are tares mixed with the wheat.
00:08:20.680 In verses 6 through 10, Paul defended this claim by offering two Old Testament examples
00:08:27.160 of election.
00:08:29.980 It's now the thing that makes it unique
00:08:31.620 is that it's election within the covenant.
00:08:35.260 The election of Isaac and not Ishmael.
00:08:38.240 The election of Jacob and not Esau. 0.91
00:08:43.060 All four boys are in the covenant.
00:08:47.160 But only two of them are elected to salvation.
00:08:51.620 But what made this divine election so shocking
00:08:53.780 is that it's not based on anything that these boys did.
00:08:57.160 or would do.
00:09:00.200 Romans 9, 11-13 says,
00:09:02.200 Though they were not yet born,
00:09:04.740 and had done nothing,
00:09:06.420 had done nothing,
00:09:09.680 either good or bad,
00:09:11.540 in order that God's purpose of election might continue,
00:09:13.460 not because of works, but because of him who calls.
00:09:16.020 She was told, the older will serve the younger,
00:09:18.840 as it is written, Jacob I have loved,
00:09:21.700 but Esau I have hated.
00:09:23.020 so God's election is not based on human actions or foreseen faith
00:09:32.360 it's not based on individual merits it's based on God's sovereign will
00:09:42.360 now today's passage if you remember from last week or come oh I guess it was two weeks ago now
00:09:47.400 we're coming off the heels of this surprising statement
00:09:54.520 that God loved Jacob and hated Esau.
00:10:03.860 We struggle with this in human relationships.
00:10:07.080 We struggle with this idea
00:10:13.080 because our feelings toward others depend on their actions.
00:10:16.080 Does that make sense?
00:10:19.600 But here, God's choice or his love or his hatred for a particular person is made without regard to their actions.
00:10:31.700 And this offends our sensibilities.
00:10:34.100 It offends our humanness.
00:10:37.500 How can justice be served if divine decisions are detached from human actions?
00:10:44.120 how can that make sense
00:10:46.900 Robert Haldane says
00:10:49.780 millions have asked the question
00:10:51.500 is it just
00:10:53.680 for God to love
00:10:54.880 one who has done no good
00:10:57.000 and hate one who has done
00:10:59.860 no evil
00:11:00.340 that's the question we're dealing with
00:11:03.640 Paul anticipates this exact question in the next verse
00:11:07.900 14 and 15
00:11:09.580 what should we say then
00:11:10.360 what should we say
00:11:13.020 is there any injustice on God's part? By no means. For he says to Moses,
00:11:21.660 I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have
00:11:26.500 compassion. All right, pay attention with me for a second. The anticipated response here
00:11:35.000 confirms the meaning of the previous verse.
00:11:41.960 What I mean by that is that if Paul didn't truly mean
00:11:44.660 that God elects people without regard to their actions or forcing actions,
00:11:49.660 there would be no reason for such a strong objection.
00:11:53.020 I'll explain it again.
00:11:54.560 If Paul really meant that God looks down the corridor of time
00:11:59.860 and sees who will have faith in him
00:12:03.120 and then goes back and bases his election on that faith,
00:12:08.900 then there would really be no trouble with our human sensibilities.
00:12:14.860 We wouldn't be offended.
00:12:16.020 That makes sense.
00:12:16.680 That makes logical sense.
00:12:21.960 But that's not what's happening here.
00:12:24.880 Paul's anticipating objections.
00:12:27.260 He's anticipating the offensive thing.
00:12:33.120 That God elects without reference to human actions or forcing actions.
00:12:37.580 He's anticipating that.
00:12:39.960 He means that God sovereignly decides who he will give mercy to and who he will give justice to.
00:12:49.820 He actually means that.
00:12:52.540 Now again, humanity's struggle with this passage is rooted in an incorrect biblical anthropology.
00:12:56.860 theology. When we don't know who we are, according to the Bible, we'll see God's dealing with
00:13:07.540 us through a distorted lens. All humanity is born of Adam. We're all born sinners. All
00:13:19.760 of us deserve to be hated by God. All of us deserve God's wrath. 0.99
00:13:26.860 I like Spurgeon's quote,
00:13:30.180 I'm not shocked that God hated Esau.
00:13:33.520 I'm shocked that God loved Jacob. 1.00
00:13:37.900 That's the posture that we should have.
00:13:42.780 So the question, is there any injustice on God's part
00:13:45.300 for showing mercy to Jacob and justice to Esau?
00:13:53.080 What does Paul say?
00:13:55.220 By no means.
00:13:57.840 And that's the key to understanding election.
00:14:01.940 None of us deserve to be saved.
00:14:07.880 In verse 15, if you look down, Paul gives the grounds for why there is no injustice on God's part.
00:14:16.640 And he leverages the testimony of Scripture.
00:14:19.160 He says, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.
00:14:22.840 And I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
00:14:26.860 So God bestows mercy and pleasure upon who he pleases.
00:14:35.620 And this is why we call this doctrine unconditional election.
00:14:39.580 There are no conditions and no understanding for why God chooses a particular person.
00:14:47.760 We don't know why.
00:14:49.780 Why did God choose you and not your brother or sister or neighbor or friend?
00:14:53.200 Why did God extend mercy to you and justice to him?
00:15:02.360 There's a mystery because you both deserve justice.
00:15:09.240 In the next verse, Paul offers a concluding statement.
00:15:11.620 In verse 16, he says, so then it, now the object of that pronoun is election.
00:15:20.600 So then election depends not on human will or exertion,
00:15:24.760 but on God who has mercy.
00:15:30.560 That phrase right there should be sufficient
00:15:33.380 to eliminate this entire argument about free will.
00:15:43.060 So then it depends not on human will.
00:15:46.980 Shouldn't that be enough?
00:15:49.900 It's not on human will, but on God.
00:15:57.180 You do not choose God, but God chooses you.
00:16:00.300 You do not choose me, but I chose you, is what Jesus said.
00:16:03.360 We love because he first loved us.
00:16:06.580 The scripture references are numerous.
00:16:12.620 If you were a believer, there was a time where you did not love God, but God loved you.
00:16:17.420 There was a time where you did not choose God, but God chose you.
00:16:26.800 To assign the decisive cause of your redemption to yourself
00:16:34.040 is to rob God of the honor for your election. 0.99
00:16:40.380 I always talk about these very stupid baptism shirts that say, I have decided. 0.99
00:16:52.760 The whole world's watching you and you're not giving glory to God. You're giving glory to 1.00
00:16:58.360 yourself. The shirt should say, God saved me. Every church in America needs to change their
00:17:05.840 baptism church to say that. God saved me. It's a shift from self to the Savior.
00:17:14.960 Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that we don't have a will. We have a will. It's just never free.
00:17:21.000 It's either enslaved to sin or enslaved to Christ. Now, what we do have, well, let me explain this.
00:17:29.720 Your will is your highest desire.
00:17:34.980 Don't know what your will is.
00:17:36.820 It's your highest desire.
00:17:39.160 Now, when you're spiritually dead,
00:17:44.220 your highest desire is sin and self.
00:17:48.060 You're separated from the source of life, which is God.
00:17:52.240 That is your nature.
00:17:56.340 That's how you're born into this world.
00:17:58.940 In that nature, you are free to sin.
00:18:03.640 You have free will, we call it free agency, to sin.
00:18:09.940 What you are not free to do is change your nature.
00:18:17.980 You are not free to go from dead to living,
00:18:22.600 from deaf to hearing, from blind to seeing.
00:18:26.220 you have to have a divine work of God
00:18:31.000 for those things to occur
00:18:33.220 that's the whole lesson of Christ's miracles
00:18:37.120 you cannot change your nature
00:18:41.200 without divine intervention
00:18:43.060 you need Christ
00:18:45.380 to see
00:18:47.340 you need Christ
00:18:49.460 to hear
00:18:50.680 you need Christ
00:18:52.660 to live
00:18:54.880 You need Christ to walk.
00:19:02.560 Which is why Paul says,
00:19:04.480 so then it depends not on human will,
00:19:06.900 but on God.
00:19:10.800 In the next verse, Paul offers an additional example
00:19:13.160 from Scripture if you looked at verse 17.
00:19:17.600 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh,
00:19:19.680 for this very purpose I have raised you up,
00:19:21.500 that I might show my power in you
00:19:24.400 and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
00:19:30.200 Pharaoh was an absolute monarch.
00:19:35.440 Maybe call him a dictator or a tyrant.
00:19:39.200 If there was anyone in history who could argue
00:19:41.420 to say that they had free will, it would be Pharaoh.
00:19:46.720 But God, in the narrative of the 10 plagues,
00:19:50.920 if you've read Exodus 7-14, demonstrates how his will controls even the most willful individuals in history.
00:20:05.860 Interestingly, by God's providence, I was reading, I started reading the Bible about a month and a half ago,
00:20:11.420 and I was in 7-14 this week.
00:20:14.980 God timed it perfectly.
00:20:16.100 perfectly for a message that I get to deliver without any breath in my lungs right now.
00:20:26.560 I underlined 12 instances where God hardened the heart of Pharaoh.
00:20:31.100 There might have been more, but I underlined 12 of them.
00:20:34.340 I remember thinking to myself, without God hardening the heart of Pharaoh,
00:20:38.740 the sheer miraculous nature of those plagues
00:20:42.460 would make Pharaoh submit
00:20:45.960 at least intellectually
00:20:47.340 but he doesn't
00:20:50.220 because God continues to harden him
00:20:54.460 Exodus 10
00:20:58.020 you guys want to turn there real quick
00:20:59.800 Exodus 10
00:21:01.200 I'll give you a second
00:21:03.520 Exodus 10, 1 through 2, tells us why God sovereignly controlled Pharaoh.
00:21:29.940 He gives us three reasons.
00:21:31.420 You'll see them here.
00:21:33.520 It says, then the Lord said to Moses, go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart.
00:21:41.320 You could even change that to, I have conformed his will and the heart of his servants.
00:21:49.200 Here's the first purpose.
00:21:50.680 You see the word that?
00:21:53.300 When you ever see the word that or so that or in order that, that's a purpose clause.
00:21:57.260 for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his serpents
00:22:03.520 that I may show these signs of mine among them.
00:22:08.040 Pharaoh would have given out, honestly.
00:22:09.560 If God didn't harden his heart,
00:22:11.760 three plagues in, he would have given up.
00:22:14.720 But God continues to harden his heart,
00:22:18.380 essentially to flex his power in a great way.
00:22:22.480 Look at the second purpose clause,
00:22:24.240 that I might show these signs of mine among them.
00:22:27.260 And that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your grandson 1.00
00:22:33.660 how I have dealt harshly with the Egyptians 1.00
00:22:37.100 and the signs which I have done among them. 1.00
00:22:40.760 Last one, that you may know that I am the Lord.
00:22:48.340 It's amazing.
00:22:51.300 God controlled the will of the most willful human being on earth.
00:22:58.120 It's basically what's being taught here.
00:23:01.280 And he did that to demonstrate his sovereignty over the height of humanity.
00:23:07.400 In fact, if you look back, every one of those plagues corresponds to an Egyptian god.
00:23:14.520 I wish I could preach that message right now, but I can't. 0.79
00:23:17.400 But every plague is showing him destroy one of the Egyptian gods. 1.00
00:23:21.740 Now, if God only claimed that he controlled the ants and insects of the world, it'd be fair for
00:23:31.960 us to go, well, he doesn't control superior beings like humans, okay? But when God claims
00:23:38.280 to control the most powerful person in the world, it would be foolish to assume that he doesn't
00:23:46.580 control you.
00:23:50.200 That makes sense, right?
00:23:53.120 If God controls stars and kings and prophets and apostles and weather and
00:23:57.900 world events, then it's only logical that he controls governors and mayors
00:24:06.220 and fathers and mothers and local city day-to-day realities. 0.64
00:24:13.060 Sadly, many Christians will allow God to be sovereign over everything 0.81
00:24:16.100 but their will. 0.99
00:24:19.840 Everything but their will.
00:24:25.240 The idea of free will
00:24:27.060 is a blasphemous idea.
00:24:32.380 It's an unthinking idea.
00:24:36.420 It truly does need to be eliminated from the church.
00:24:39.780 You have free agency.
00:24:41.880 If you're spiritually dead, you're free to sin.
00:24:46.100 If you're spiritually alive, you're free to obey Christ.
00:24:50.840 But you are not free to resurrect yourself.
00:24:54.480 You are not free to born yourself again.
00:24:59.360 You are not free to elect yourself to glory.
00:25:05.140 God must do those things for you.
00:25:10.260 You have no involvement.
00:25:12.000 How much involvement did you have in your natural birth?
00:25:13.880 How much involvement did you have in coming into this world?
00:25:18.500 None.
00:25:20.100 Why is it so shocking that Jesus uses that exact metaphor for spiritual life?
00:25:25.480 You have no involvement.
00:25:28.700 And when you have no involvement,
00:25:31.600 you can start to notice the extreme mercy and grace extended to you.
00:25:41.660 That you didn't do any of it.
00:25:43.880 But that God brought you to life when you would prefer to be dead.
00:25:51.460 It changes your gratitude.
00:25:55.040 When you realize that you're saved not because you were intellectually persuaded
00:26:02.740 and of your own free will made a decision to submit your life to Christ.
00:26:08.680 No, no.
00:26:10.380 That is not the narrative of the Bible.
00:26:12.140 the narrative of the Bible
00:26:14.920 is that God came and gave you
00:26:17.140 life
00:26:17.860 you were able
00:26:21.060 to hear and see for the very
00:26:23.000 first time
00:26:23.640 you were able to understand
00:26:26.020 what other people all around you for some
00:26:28.960 reason didn't understand
00:26:30.180 you were able to repent
00:26:32.780 you were able to trust
00:26:34.660 you were able to have faith
00:26:36.700 and then in our sinful nature
00:26:41.700 somehow we can say, it's because of me.
00:26:47.220 Free will is a blasphemous idea.
00:26:51.680 It robs God of worship.
00:26:57.740 The next verse, Paul offers a conclusion in verse 18.
00:27:00.400 It says, so then, he has mercy on whomever he wills,
00:27:06.660 and he hardens whomever he wills.
00:27:10.840 Just think about that statement for a second.
00:27:17.000 Just read it.
00:27:20.660 He has mercy on whomever he wills,
00:27:24.800 and he hardens whomever he wills.
00:27:28.920 The Arminians love the whosoever believes in John 3.16,
00:27:36.040 but they do not even think about the whomever he hardens in Romans 9, 18.
00:27:47.300 What do you do with it?
00:27:49.780 There are only two ways in which God interacts with humanity.
00:27:54.160 He either extends mercy or he extends hardening.
00:28:01.100 we live in a generation that wants to soften the doctrine of election
00:28:06.660 we want to believe that God either extends mercy or just does nothing
00:28:12.880 he just extends mercy or just leaves everybody else to justice but but there's really nothing
00:28:19.840 done there the scriptures just don't teach that
00:28:25.700 It says that God hardens heart in Exodus 7-14, Joshua 11-20, Isaiah 6-9-10.
00:28:38.980 It says that God blinds the minds of particular people, Matthew 13-10-15, Mark 4-11-12, 2 Corinthians 4-3-4.
00:28:49.660 It says that God prevents belief in John 12-39-40.
00:28:55.700 Romans 11, 7 through 8, 2 Thessalonians 2, 11 through 12.
00:29:01.260 It says that God predestines disobedience to his word.
00:29:07.540 1 Peter 2, 8, Jude 1, 4, Proverbs 16, 4.
00:29:17.540 You either get to submit to scripture
00:29:19.800 or make up your own theology.
00:29:25.700 But if you submit to Scripture, you will find no way out of the doctrines we call Calvinism.
00:29:33.320 I like John MacArthur's statement.
00:29:35.580 I became a Calvinist because the Bible gave me no other option.
00:29:40.540 If I wrote the story, I'd write it differently. 1.00
00:29:42.900 But I'm an idiot. 1.00
00:29:44.920 Okay? 1.00
00:29:45.500 God wrote this perfect story.
00:29:47.840 He wrote a perfect story.
00:29:48.880 It is incredibly difficult for us to understand
00:29:55.140 God's sovereignty over salvation
00:29:57.400 and how that interacts with our responsibility.
00:30:02.820 Romans 9 is going to continue to challenge us.
00:30:05.940 We're going to bump into some passages that are harder than this.
00:30:13.140 But my experience is that typically
00:30:15.800 the hard thing to understand
00:30:19.420 is generally the right thing to understand.
00:30:23.500 God's economy is opposite of human economy.
00:30:27.400 Up is down, down is up,
00:30:29.500 last is first, first is last,
00:30:32.240 weak is strong, strong is weak.
00:30:37.280 As high as the heavens are above the earth,
00:30:39.720 so are my ways higher than your ways
00:30:41.440 and my thoughts higher than your thoughts, says the Lord.
00:30:45.800 there are so many elements of theology that you have to go,
00:30:51.120 Lord, I don't, I can't fathom the immeasurable riches of your mercy and grace.
00:30:59.560 How unsearchable are your ways?
00:31:02.180 It's the reason the apostles spoke these things.
00:31:07.800 But I'll tell you what, if you're going to err on one side,
00:31:10.880 are you going to err on the side that I did it?
00:31:13.400 or are you going to err on the side of, he did it?
00:31:20.060 Many of you don't have the time to do the theological study
00:31:25.440 to arrive at a confident conclusion about this matter.
00:31:31.740 Until then, have a soft heart.
00:31:37.260 Err on the side of, he did it.
00:31:39.700 My Bible, which I don't have with me today, I forgot it at home on accident,
00:31:47.440 but on the cover I point to the scripture, Romans 11, 36,
00:31:51.460 For from him and through him and to him are all things.
00:31:54.900 To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
00:31:58.280 For from him and through him and to him are all things.
00:32:03.500 would that include your faith
00:32:08.820 and repentance and obedience and salvation
00:32:10.600 I don't know, is that included in all
00:32:12.560 especially when it's talking about
00:32:14.880 Christ
00:32:15.300 we get to rest
00:32:19.240 in the magnificence
00:32:23.260 of Christ's sovereignty
00:32:25.740 now scripture also speaks about people who harden
00:32:31.020 their own hearts and
00:32:31.920 closed their own eyes and their own ears and willfully disobeyed the word of God.
00:32:36.800 This is really the intersection of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility.
00:32:42.200 There's three mysteries in the Bible, okay?
00:32:44.820 Three great mysteries.
00:32:46.960 The intersection between God's sovereignty and man's responsibility,
00:32:50.700 the Trinity, and the hypostatic union.
00:32:54.040 How that Jesus is fully God and fully man.
00:32:57.420 theologians will study themselves raw only to end at a black door you cannot open on those three
00:33:08.540 issues they're mysteries incomprehensible you'll never grasp the trinity
00:33:13.640 the athanasius creed is the best shot we have so far at the trinity
00:33:23.360 You know, the early church councils dealt with the hypostatic union.
00:33:30.900 The Synod of Dort in 1618 dealt with God's sovereignty and man's responsibility.
00:33:37.520 It's where we get the doctrines of grace.
00:33:44.700 Romans 11.33 says that phrase that I mentioned here,
00:33:48.460 Oh, the depth of the riches, both of wisdom and knowledge of God.
00:33:54.100 How unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable his ways.
00:33:59.820 Unsearchable are his judgments.
00:34:03.840 He determines who he saves.
00:34:06.820 He determines who he hardens.
00:34:09.680 For some reason, God determined to save you.
00:34:15.980 You're here.
00:34:18.460 your neighbors, your friends, your family,
00:34:21.940 but they're not.
00:34:24.580 I often look at someone who's unconverted
00:34:28.760 and I say, why me?
00:34:33.700 Why'd you choose me?
00:34:38.420 I was a drug dealer.
00:34:42.500 I was a terrible child. 1.00
00:34:45.500 I wasn't brought up in a Christian home. 1.00
00:34:48.460 Why me?
00:34:51.680 I know people that were in the church when I was a kid who are now apostate.
00:35:01.260 The gospel can feel scandalous.
00:35:06.260 A gospel that saves Jeffrey Dahmer and sends Mother Teresa to hell.
00:35:16.420 What? 0.98
00:35:18.460 a moralist, and a cannibalist.
00:35:27.340 Such were some of you.
00:35:32.700 And so we need to experience the grace and mercy of the Lord
00:35:36.340 in a great way, recognizing that he extended mercy to you.
00:35:42.260 If you can't personalize the gospel
00:35:44.300 because God didn't write your name in his book of life
00:35:47.620 before the foundation of the world, as scripture says.
00:35:51.180 Jesus says, I call my sheep by name.
00:35:56.960 If you don't personalize the gospel,
00:36:00.420 you'll never feel the mercy and the compassion.
00:36:06.920 You'll never understand grace.
00:36:09.320 You'll never extend grace to anyone else
00:36:11.760 because you've never actually experienced it from Christ.
00:36:17.620 you cannot offer to people what you have not experienced.
00:36:25.080 And when you see the grace of God hit you
00:36:29.460 because you did nothing, yet God saved you,
00:36:34.360 it changes the way you parent.
00:36:36.400 It changes the way you react with your spouse.
00:36:41.020 It allows you a reservoir of mercy and grace
00:36:44.800 that you cannot have without that view of the gospel.
00:36:52.260 I know because I lived both sides.
00:36:54.600 I was a passionate Arminian.
00:36:59.260 I wrote a chapter in a book I wrote years ago
00:37:01.700 defending Arminianism and objecting to everything about Calvinism.
00:37:11.040 When I came to the doctrines of grace,
00:37:13.520 I felt like I was born again, again.
00:37:16.060 I don't even know.
00:37:16.920 Maybe that's the first time I was born again.
00:37:18.380 I don't know.
00:37:19.460 It was that profound.
00:37:25.440 And so I want to encourage you guys
00:37:27.140 to grasp that God controls redemption through election.
00:37:38.300 Election is the first step.
00:37:39.700 I want to write a book one day called
00:37:41.000 From Election to Glory.
00:37:43.520 that shows God's sovereignty from start to finish, from A to Z.
00:37:50.100 But God controls your redemption through election.
00:37:53.180 Do you actually believe?
00:37:54.700 You do, but you couldn't have believed had God not elected you
00:37:57.800 and called you and made you alive.
00:38:00.680 You're involved.
00:38:02.280 You're not a robot.
00:38:03.480 You're doing things.
00:38:05.380 God just permits you and allows you by changing you.
00:38:09.100 He acts first.
00:38:11.540 first. He acts first. Your faith is because of his mercy. Your obedience is because of
00:38:19.220 his compassion. Your hope is because of his love. Your salvation is because of his election.
00:38:26.040 You need to grasp these truths. The truth is we should never complain about God violating
00:38:35.560 our wills. It always, again, it shocks me, boggles my mind when someone fights for free
00:38:42.040 will, but then prays, Lord, not my will be done, but yours. What? I want my free will,
00:38:52.520 but then I'm going to go in the corner and say, oh Lord, not my will, but yours be done.
00:38:57.060 or when someone that believes that they have free will
00:39:03.480 prays for God to save their sister.
00:39:07.640 Oh, Lord, save my sister.
00:39:10.360 Wait a second.
00:39:11.520 Are you asking God to violate the free will of your sister
00:39:14.160 and save her?
00:39:15.600 Because she doesn't want to be saved.
00:39:20.660 No, the truth is we all pray like Calvinists
00:39:22.740 because we know that God is sovereign over salvation.
00:39:27.060 It's our individualism and our pride that gets in the way.
00:39:32.820 Either God is sovereign over salvation or man is.
00:39:39.000 Imagine the idea that God is in heaven going,
00:39:45.300 oh, man, I hope he chooses me.
00:39:49.640 I'm going to throw another evangelist at him.
00:39:51.940 Oh, that one wasn't that good.
00:39:53.080 I'm going to give him another one.
00:39:53.980 Maybe, ah, dang it, wish we could have got him.
00:40:00.680 Imagine that narrative of the Bible.
00:40:03.100 Imagine trying to control the world and all its events,
00:40:08.420 but you can't change the hearts of men.
00:40:16.580 It's inconsistent, utterly.
00:40:19.360 the greatest theologians that have probably ever lived
00:40:24.200 came out of the Reformation era.
00:40:29.440 Everybody finally had a Bible, right?
00:40:32.700 Everybody finally, you think about it, for 1,500 years,
00:40:36.120 there was no Bible for you to get your theological clarity.
00:40:43.200 If you were a theologian with a Bible,
00:40:45.080 you might know one or two other theologians
00:40:49.520 who also had a Bible
00:40:50.700 and you might be able to have a little bit of theological discourse
00:40:53.840 to figure out your doctrines
00:40:55.100 but all of a sudden
00:40:56.980 the Gutenberg Press comes along
00:41:00.680 and everybody's got a Bible
00:41:04.040 and the theological discourse goes through the roof
00:41:07.000 and the Westminster Confession is written
00:41:11.640 and the 1689 is written
00:41:14.220 and the Puritans start writing
00:41:17.600 and they write the most beautiful, rich content
00:41:22.460 that has probably ever been written in the church.
00:41:28.000 Every one of them are Calvinists.
00:41:32.240 When you get down to the reality,
00:41:35.900 they're the type of men that'll write 700 page books
00:41:39.600 on three verses of scripture
00:41:41.260 who know Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek.
00:41:47.940 We can't even fathom the level of scholasticism in this generation. 0.58
00:41:57.340 It's something, it's church history, it's not scripture,
00:42:00.640 but church history is important.
00:42:04.100 When you see that Augustine, the early church fathers,
00:42:08.980 When you see Jerome and great thinkers of the Middle Ages, William Tyndale and the Oxford
00:42:19.900 Martyrs, people dying from Bloody Mary, when you see Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and
00:42:27.400 Knox and John Newton who wrote Amazing Grace, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, Martin
00:42:35.480 Lloyd-Jones, R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur, Votie Bauckham, Paul Washer, when you start
00:42:44.080 to list the men, the pastors, the theologians who have been blessed not just with beautiful
00:42:52.320 books and great minds, but incredible legacies, legacies that are continuing to produce fruit
00:42:58.200 decades, centuries after their death.
00:43:02.560 It's compelling.
00:43:04.500 It's compelling.
00:43:08.440 And so when we come to see properly God's sovereignty
00:43:11.780 over our redemption in our lives,
00:43:13.500 we will appreciate his mercy and grace.
00:43:16.860 And from that place of blessing,
00:43:18.460 we will see his grace animate,
00:43:21.660 animate our behavior.
00:43:25.520 It'll animate your parenting.
00:43:27.700 It'll animate your obedience, and it'll animate your worship.
00:43:36.740 There's nothing more potent to animate your love for God
00:43:43.040 as understanding that God, before the foundation of the world, chose you.
00:43:52.320 He set his love upon you.
00:43:54.640 Let's rest in that truth this week.
00:43:56.980 Amen?
00:43:58.060 Let's pray.
00:44:01.740 Father, we thank you, Lord,
00:44:05.840 for the blessing of election.
00:44:13.220 Lord, for the mercy and compassion
00:44:15.920 that you have extended to us
00:44:18.320 as so many have been hardened
00:44:21.900 and so many have been passed over.
00:44:25.140 So many have been left to justice
00:44:26.940 as we should have been left to justice.
00:44:31.580 Lord, I pray that these truths would sink in
00:44:35.160 to the hearts and souls and minds of this congregation.
00:44:39.600 Lord, that we would be a people that is full of grace,
00:44:42.640 that we would extend grace to one another,
00:44:45.900 that we would extend grace to our children,
00:44:48.180 to our spouses, to our parents.
00:44:50.060 Father I pray that you would do a work in this church
00:44:54.420 that you would continue to guide and shepherd us
00:44:58.580 with a highlight and a banner of grace
00:45:02.440 over our lives
00:45:03.780 we ask these things in Jesus name
00:45:06.800 Amen