The Utter Sovereignty of God (Part 2)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the
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Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.
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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the
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Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.
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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. We are back on the air, glad to be on the air.
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Show 300 and something, I don't know, that's a lot of shows. Well, we will talk today about the subject of the sovereignty of God, part two.
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Last time we looked at the sovereignty of God in particular areas to try to develop from the
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Scriptures that God's sovereignty is concerned with everything. Whether it's an atom or whether it is the atmosphere,
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Jesus Christ is sovereign over all. And whether you believe that or not, it is true, but we want you to believe that because you can rest in that.
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You can relax in that. You can worship God for his sovereign reign over everything and how he's a good king and he can have complete control over his subjects and over those who have not bowed the knee to Jesus as well.
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He cannot be frustrated by anything, by anyone. There's no greater force, there's no wiser force, there's no greater person, there's no wiser person.
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God is in charge. Some people would say God is a micromanager.
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We usually say micromanager in a negative sense, but in fact that is true. He manages the microns, he manages small things, large things, and his sovereign rule extends over creation we looked at last time, secondly over all history, thirdly over circumstances of life, and fourthly the duration of life.
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I think maybe originally I got some of these from Dr. Zemeck, I'm not sure. These are broad categories, many have used categories similar, but if it's from Dr.
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Zemeck, Dr. Z, this one's for you. And so God is sovereign, and I was going to look at 11 areas in which
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God was sovereign. And I'll tip my hand and tell you this, we're eventually and ultimately leading up to the most difficult concept, and that is
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God's sovereignty over, God's sovereign over who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.
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Number five, though, as we work towards number 10 and 11, number five, you must believe that God is sovereign over the manner of death.
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I want you to experience the second blessing of the sovereign grace of God, that God is sovereign over the manner of death.
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I want you to experience that so you don't have to worry, you don't have to be anxious. I know some people actually commit suicide because they control everything in their lives, they think, and they don't have control over their death.
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So the only way they know how to control their death is to take their own life. What a sad commentary. What that shows me is that person doesn't understand the sovereignty of God.
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By the way, if you'd like to read a book that talks about the sovereignty of God, you should read Arthur Pink's The Sovereignty of God.
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You can get the abridged version or you can get the extended version, the non -abridged version, and abridged is never good really in anything.
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If you have Matthew Henry abridged, well, that's better than not having anything at all, but non -abridged is much better.
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So whenever you find something, why go, especially in theological books, go for the non -abridged.
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And so God is sovereign over the manner of death. Do you know God not only knows how you'll die and not only knows when you'll die, but this is an ordained thing.
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You must die the way God has planned for you to die. Doesn't that sound shocking? You must die the way
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God has you to die. If God has ordained for you drowning, you will not die in a car accident.
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You will not die in your sleep. If God has ordained you to die from cancer, you will not die from a heart attack.
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We know God is sovereign over the manner of death. Your life and death, the way of your life, the way of death, the type of sickness, it's all in the sovereign hand of God.
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And you don't have to go much further than John chapter 21 verses 18 and following, Jesus said, truly, truly,
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I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished.
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But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you and bring you where you do not wish to go.
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Why would Jesus say this to Peter? Now this he said, John writes, signifying of what kind of death he would glorify
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God. And when he had spoken this, he said to him, follow me. And so here we see that God is obviously sovereign over the way
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Peter would die and he's sovereign over the way you'll die. Number six, if you really want to incorporate the sovereignty of God into your mind, you need to be completely biblical, and it would be biblical to believe number six, you must believe that God is sovereign over the good acts of men,
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God's sovereign over the good things. And of course, that's an easy one to believe. If you look at God's sovereignty over good acts, you can look at Isaiah chapter 45, when
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God sovereignly takes Cyrus and calls him in chapter 44, my shepherd, and here
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God takes this man, who is not a Jewish person, and God uses him for his glory.
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And then says in Isaiah 45, I am the Lord and there is no other besides me, there is no God. I will gird you though you have not known me, that men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides me.
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I am the Lord and there is no other. The one forming light and creating darkness, causing, you like that word with God, causing well -being and creating calamity.
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I am the Lord who does all these things. And so God is sovereign over people when they do good acts.
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Ephesians chapter 2, you know this verse, you love this verse, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which
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God prepared when? Beforehand that we should walk in them.
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We believe at No Compromise Radio Ministry, at Bethlehem Bible Church, and I think I can speak for WV &E as well, that God is sovereign over the good acts of men.
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Something good happens, you can thank the person for doing it, but you also ought to thank God that he sovereignly orchestrated, don't you like that word orchestrated?
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That God orchestrates all of world history.
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Number seven, today we're doing the second part of the sovereignty of God. If you haven't listened to the first part, you missed the introduction and you missed the first few.
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So I would encourage you to go back a week and get the podcast. You can go to iTunes and pull up No Compromise Radio, or you can go to www .nocompromiseradio,
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all scrunched together, .com, capitals, smalls, whatever you want. And just go to podcast and you can pull up all the old shows, or you can go to Facebook, they're on Facebook.
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I don't know if anything's on Twitter or not, but I know they're on Facebook. And pull those shows up.
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Number seven, we've got 11 areas in which God is sovereign over, and that is not all inclusive, but 11 general categories.
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We're up to number seven, so this is seven out of 11. You must believe that God is sovereign over evil acts of men.
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Now you knew that one was coming, didn't you? We just did good acts of men, now over evil acts of men.
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Genesis 50 verse 20 is a way that we can help work through this mentally.
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As for you, you meant evil against me, Joseph said, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result to preserve many people alive.
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So there was going to be a big famine. God takes Joseph down into Egypt, makes him suffer some, rises him up through the ranks as it were, and he is now this exalted spot for the
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Egyptians. And now we have the brothers come down and they are given food, all orchestrated by God.
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When the brothers wanted to kill him, or at least most of the brothers wanted to kill Joseph, when they sold him into slavery, when they were going to put him in the prison there, the cistern or whatever it was, that was all evil.
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That was considered sinful, wicked, evil.
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You don't do that to a brother. And here it says, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.
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The Bible clearly teaches that God is sovereign over the evil acts of men. If God was not sovereign over Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, or anyone else, then
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God's not sovereign. Now you might have a hard time getting that through your theological membranes into your brain, but that is absolutely true.
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And what's the worst sin that was ever committed? If you can get your eyes and mind wrapped around the worst sin ever committed was ordained by God, then it won't be so hard for you to believe that God ordains sin,
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God's sovereign over sin. For truly in this city, Acts 4, there were gathered together against thy holy servant
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Jesus, whom thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the
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Gentiles and the peoples of Israel. All these people were together to kill Jesus. That was sin. Jesus didn't deserve to die.
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To do whatever thy hand and thy purpose predestined to occur. God is sovereign over the evil acts of men.
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And may I say to you as your radio pastor, that if somebody does something bad to you, they try to hurt you, slander you, defame you, they try to take advantage of you, something's been done to you in an evil manner,
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God is sovereign over that. God can take those things and turn them into good. And He does use those things for good and He uses them in your character and your life and making you more patient, making you more like Christ.
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He does all kinds of things, some we might know of on earth and some we won't know until we get to heaven. But you have to believe that God is sovereign over the evil acts of men, that He can take a king's heart like a channel of water and turn it whatever way
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He wishes. That's Proverbs 21. One, God is sovereign over not just the good but the evil.
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He's sovereign even over Satan. Remember Job chapter 1? Satan could only do, he could always do only what
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God has ordained him to do. That's why Luther called Satan God's hardest working servant.
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So God is sovereign over good, God is sovereign over evil. What's your other choice?
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Satan's sovereign over the evil? No, you don't want to be some kind of crazy false teacher, some prosperity gospel and now we've got the problem with Satan.
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No, God is sovereign over Satan. That should be one of our numbers here. We should make number 12, God's sovereign over Satan, but I have 11 and I'm sticking to it.
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Number eight, today we're on No Compromise Radio and we're talking about the sovereignty of God.
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I need more time. I just got an email that said 24 minutes goes by too fast. It does go by fast, believe me, but that's probably all
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I've got time for. Basically I tape shows a couple days a week and sometimes I can try to tape four to eight shows and then
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I can coast for a while and that's the plan. Sovereignty of God, number eight, you must believe that God is sovereign over the greatest world events.
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So we're going to go to greatest and then number nine I'll tell you ahead of time to telegraph it. You must believe that God is sovereign over the most trivial circumstances.
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So not just good, not just bad, not just life, not just death, but God is sovereign over the greatest events, number eight, and the most trivial circumstances, at least in our mind, trivial circumstances.
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This is another Revelation 13, eight, and all who dwell on the earth will worship him. Everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the
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Lamb who has been slain, God is controlling what will happen in the great tribulation and all on the earth will worship him and we see that no matter what event it might be from the tribulation to the second coming to the creation of the world,
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God is sovereign over those great events. He's not just sovereign over the great events, he's also sovereign over small, seemingly insignificant events.
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Proverbs 16, 33, the lot is cast into the lap, but it's every decision is from the
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Lord. Can you imagine you roll some dice down at Foxwoods Casino, which
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I'm not suggesting that you do, but you roll dice in your game of what would be a good game, life or monopoly or I don't know what game you want to play.
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This is under God's sovereign hand. Jonah chapter one, and each one said to his mate, come, let us cast lots so that we may learn on whose account this calamity has struck us.
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So they cast lots and wouldn't you know it, as luck would have it. That's not, that part's not in the text.
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And the lot fell on Jonah. God's sovereign over big things, he's sovereign over small things.
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Sovereign over great prophecies of blessing, sovereign over awful prophecies of cursing.
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Trivial things matter and trivial things are controlled by God. You could do a study sometime about, you know, how the world was changed by the length of Cleopatra's nose.
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There are all kinds of articles written on those kind of things. Small things turn history and God uses the small things under his sovereign ordained plan.
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Number ten, and now we come to the part where people begin to choke and they begin to sputter and they begin to exalt the sovereign will of man.
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I don't want you to do that. I've tried to set you up. I've even told you ahead of time that I'm going to set you up. I'm trying to get you to say yes,
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God is sovereign over creation. God's sovereign over good things, bad things, how you live, how you die, what color your skin is, what century you were born in, what your nationality is.
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God is sovereign over the weather. God is sovereign over everything about man.
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And if God is sovereign over everything about man, he's also sovereign over who goes to heaven.
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He is. He is sovereign over who goes to heaven. He's the one that chooses.
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He's the one that does that. And the good news, you are going to heaven not based on anything you did because God in his sovereign pleasure, always doing what he wants as often as he wants, he's also gracious.
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That's why we call it sovereign grace. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15 .10, by the grace of God, I am what
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I am and his grace toward me did not prove vain. If it was up to us and we were sovereign over to go to heaven or not, we would be so depraved, we are so depraved, that we would say no.
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Our stony heart would say no to God's salvation. We would join into the chorus that says, we do not want this man to reign over us,
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Luke 19. We would hear the statement, would you not come to Christ that you might have life?
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And we would say no. We would say, as it was said in Job, who is the almighty that we should serve him?
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And what would we gain if we entreat him? Yet thankfully, God saves us.
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If left to yourself, you would end up in the lake of fire because you're born as a child of wrath and you're not seeking
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God and you walk like the Gentiles walk and you had a futile mind and your mind was darkened in your understanding.
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And you would vote no to God all the time. You wouldn't want to go to hell, but you wouldn't want heaven. You wouldn't want to glorify
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God. You wouldn't want to glorify Jesus. You wouldn't want to honor him and exalt him and thank him and praise him and serve him.
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So thankfully, God's sovereign over salvation because if man was, nobody would make that choice.
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Because nobody is able to make that choice. Because everyone's born because of Adam. We're born fools.
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And the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. It's like a broken record. There's no God. There's no
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God. For those of you that don't know records, you'll have to look it up on Wiki. Romans 9 .16. Here's the hallelujah part.
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You want a hallelujah chorus? God's sovereign over who goes to heaven. So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.
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Mark this. There is a distinguishing grace, a sovereign grace that takes people to heaven.
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I don't know. You might say, I believe in free will and what about this? What about whosoever's, et cetera? Let me ask you this.
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James 1 .18. Whose will brings you to heaven? In the exercise of his will,
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God's will, he brought us forth by the word of truth so that we might be, as it were, the firstfruits among his creatures.
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You are saved. If you're a Christian, you're a Christian because God made you one. He made you born again.
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You don't bury yourself again. He made you born. He bore you again.
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John 1 .12. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name.
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That's true. I'm not saying you don't have to believe. I'm saying at the end of John 1 .12, there's a comma.
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Verse 13. Who were born, spiritually born, not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
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It was God's will. His sovereign will. We've already established that he is influenced by none.
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He receives no counsel. He doesn't try to take some kind of poll before he does things, and he has his pollsters to go out, and he gets all the lobbyists over there, and he gets all his men that tell him what he wants to hear, and then he does it.
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No. Influenced by none. His own will is what makes us born again.
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And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life, believed.
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That's the order. That's always the order. As many as have been appointed to eternal life, believed.
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You believe because God caused you to believe, and God gave you eternal life.
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Your belief didn't cause anything. God caused you to be born again. Why? So that no flesh would glorify itself.
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No flesh would glory in itself, better put. And so we have to bless God for our great salvation.
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That's what Ephesians chapter 1 says. You say, well, I don't really like this election stuff.
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Spurgeon said, well, I thought you would not, whoever dreamed you would. But it is God's choice from eternity to eternity.
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He makes people Christians. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.
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My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the
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Father's hand. Jesus is the author of our salvation. What does that mean?
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He's the finisher. What does that mean? No compromise radio ministry.
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We're talking about the sovereignty of God, and He's sovereign over your skin color, who your mother was, who your father was, and He's also sovereign over who goes to heaven.
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And so we move to finally number 11, you must believe that God is sovereign over the perdition of ungodly men.
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That is, God is sovereign over who goes to hell. Now you might want to argue about double predestination and a variety of other things, but let me read you these verses, and you can argue with the text.
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Matthew 20, verse 15, is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own?
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Now when Jesus says that, I think that gives us a good overview of this very issue.
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Now let me make it more clear when it comes to a contextual argument for the perdition of ungodly men that God is sovereign over.
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First Peter 2 .8, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word.
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That's true, that's true. And to this doom they were also appointed.
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And so people go to hell, of course, because they don't believe, but God is sovereign over that and it's been appointed. You can read in Chosen by God by R .C.
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Sproul, is an election and reprobation, would that be symmetrical or asymmetrical?
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I won't argue either of those points right now, I just will tell you that God's sovereign over that, because He's not sovereign over that,
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He's not sovereign over who goes to heaven, He's not sovereign over anything else. Proverbs 16 .4,
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the Lord has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil. And then of course the coup de grace,
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Romans 9 .22, what if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make
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His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?
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Listen to what Martin Luther said, So we believe that God is sovereign over who goes to heaven and who doesn't.
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And if you automatically default to, well, does God hate sin? Of course He hates sin. You default to, well, doesn't that make man able to do whatever he wants because he's not responsible?
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Man is responsible. Of course man's responsible. God hates sin, man's responsible, but you have to make sure in your mind, in your theological compartment that you say
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God's plan includes sin. Now while we might not say God is the author of sin, James chapter 1,
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God's plan included sin because if it didn't include sin, how could sin get in there? By a greater power than God?
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By a wiser power than God? Satan slipped sin in, Adam slipped sin in, did God not foreordain that to happen?
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Did God not foreordain Jesus, the Lamb of God, who was to take away the sin of the world?
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Of course He had to plan that. That is actually there. You say, well, what about, you know,
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I'm some kind of puppet. Well, you're not a puppet, you're not a robot, you're clay, according to Romans chapter 9.
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God works through the human will, yes. But God is sovereign over the will. And so what we've done today is we wanted to make sure we told you that God is sovereign over everything.
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And you should respond with, hallelujah, Revelation 19, for the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.
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You should stand in awe of this great, great God, Pink said in his book called The Sovereignty of God.
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Pink said you should have so much humility because God is sovereign and you're not. There are all kinds of responses.
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You can trust in God because God is worthy to be trusted in and He's sovereign over all the future.
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That would be another good practical application. And when you're hurting and when you have got pain and suffering, you can say,
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God is sovereign and He cares about me and He's loved me. And you with toes are ought to say what we believe about God is the most important thing of us.
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If you're listening to No Compromise Radio today, you need to believe that God is sovereign. And I've tried to demonstrate from Scripture that He's sovereign over creation,
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He's sovereign over hell, He's sovereign over heaven, and He's sovereign over you. And if you're not a believer today, today's the day you bow your knee to such a great
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King, a mighty King, King Jesus, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
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Repent and believe. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.
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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.
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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.