Is Calvinism True?

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When the Scribes and Pharisees asked our Lord about the greatest commandment, He replied, You shall love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.

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So why do we hear some of today's most prominent pastors saying things like this? It had everything to do with how we talk about the

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Bible, and specifically, or along with that, what we point to as the foundation of faith, which for most

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Christians, unfortunately, is the Bible. We need to do better.

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We need to love God with all our hearts, and stand unashamedly on the rock of His Word. We need to love the

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Lord with all of our souls, and respond to the worldview issues of our day with the wisdom and discernment that comes only from Him.

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We need to love the Lord with our minds, and understand the calling of God's people in every area of life in God's world.

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We need to love the Lord our God with all our strength, and face the work of building a life -giving,

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God -honoring culture. Join us for 10 days at the Runner Academy for Cultural Leadership, as we consider how the

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Gospel influences all of life and culture, and the role that we have to play in applying foundational

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Christian thinking to every area of life. This is

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The Academy. I am Eli Ayala of Revealed Apologetics, and I will be bringing a six -part series on presuppositional apologetics.

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What is this called, The Apology Academy? It's just called The Academy. Okay. What's up, everybody?

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My name is Pastor Jeff Durbin, and you're watching Collision Today. I'm going to be interacting with an atheist on TikTok.

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So here we go. Unsupervised and unhinged. Welcome back to Cultish the

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Aftermath. Hey, everybody.

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Welcome back to another episode of Ask Me Anything. You are watching Apologia Radio's After Show exclusively for all access.

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I would say if the authorities didn't want us involved in the public square, they ought not to have crucified

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Jesus in the public square. Use humanistic principles. It's the same idea. Well, I would say, David, I would say that. Same answer.

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I would say, what's the problem with stardust bumping into stardust? In the cosmic picture, no, there's no problem.

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In the cosmic picture, it won't matter. No, Mr.

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President, you are not protecting reproductive freedom. You are authorizing the destruction of freedom for 1 million little human beings every year.

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I'm sorry, my friends, but I am tired of seeing Jesus presented as a weak beggar.

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He is a powerful savior, and the gospel is not a suggestion.

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It is a command. Well, Ramola, don't you sympathize with that?

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I sympathize with every single human heart wishing to know the one true and living God, but I believe there's only one way that that can happen through Jesus Christ, and the gospel is about repenting of sin, not celebrating it.

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An amazing adventure.

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We will explore the spiritual abyss. You have not experienced this before.

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You're gonna love it. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.

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And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

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For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise

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Him up on the last day. That's John chapter 6, everybody, one of my favorites.

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My favorite gospel is the gospel, according to John. My very favorite, and that's one of my favorite sections from John.

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Zachary Conover. Hey, everyone. Director of Communications with End Abortion Now. We are grateful to be with you today.

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Today we are talking. We really want to talk primarily today about the sovereignty of God. Yeah. What a big one.

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The grace of God. Small, small topic. Little topic. Created no small controversy. Yeah, man.

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So we're going to talk today about the doctrines of grace. And we're not going to, by any means, be able to talk fully and exhaustively about this subject today.

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But for me, I want to talk about this subject because, honestly, I want to speak to my own heart about these things.

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Amen to that. I wanted to speak to my own heart about the truth surrounding the sovereignty of God.

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This is for us. Yeah, the grace of God. You guys are really just flies on the wall right here because this is really us just speaking to our own hearts here about the grace of God and salvation,

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God's goodness to unworthy sinners like us. And so that's really what the doctrines of grace are all about. You know it as TULIP, the doctrines of grace, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints.

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We're going to just have a conversation about it today. But before we do, before we do, I couldn't help but pull this up because I don't think a lot of people saw it.

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Cultish, one of our shows on our platform, Cultish, if you haven't seen it yet, I hope you go check it out.

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Cultish is putting out some great, great stuff, blessing a lot of people. Cultish has a new thing they're doing right now, the

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Cultish Water Cooler Live. And it's on their own separate

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YouTube channel. And they had a great discussion. It was like the first time they did it.

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And they actually have call -in capabilities where you can call and leave a message and they'll answer your questions.

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And so I just wanted to play this. They had one person call in. And, well, let me just say this.

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I was, I was over there in my office. Jerry's right here. He's like, Jeff. I was like, what? So I come over, it's late.

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It's late. I think it was like seven 30 at night or something like that. I was ready to go home. I'm tired. And he's like, he's like, yeah, he's like, he's like, hey, we're trying to do like a live thing right now, but like nobody's called in like really to leave messages.

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Like not enough. He goes, can you just call in and leave a message for us? Yeah. And like,

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I was like right now he's like, yeah. And I was like, okay. So I ran to the back. I just spit out this thing real fast. And this is what, this is, this is what they went live with.

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So this is a Mortimer calling into cultish, their voicemail line.

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Yep. Hello.

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Hello. And over there. Hello. Hello.

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Am I on? Hi. This is Joe. This is water. Water. Right.

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You have to forgive me. I'm a little kid. And I can't see it. So good. I'm a long time listener.

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Long time listener. I live in Florida. I live in Florida. And I've got a question for you.

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I was, I was at the bus stop the other day. And I, you know, it's hot.

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It's real hot. And then I had a subway sandwich on me and there's a young fellow walked up to me and told me he wanted to trade my subway sandwich for some

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EMT. He said, DMT. So I, I took the deal and I went home and I took some of this bad

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DMT and I got questions. I got, I got questions.

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I, I, I took this, I took this DMT and I sat back in my recliner with my kitty cat and all of a sudden things started getting fuzzy and weird and a little out of whack.

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It was, it was kind of interesting. It's so, and then

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I went to another plane and there's like another realm and as soon as it hit me and I saw all unimaginable colors and I saw old friends and I saw purples and vivid different colors of rainbows and Joe Biden was there, believe it or not.

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And the aliens and all kinds of weird little critters. And I just want to know, is that biblical?

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That's all. Long time listener. Great job. Is that biblical? Great job. That could be its own show.

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Just story time with Mortimer because the story is like the aspect you pull people into this narrative.

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That's so funny. I've thought about doing that, like creating a character show with a fun show, just doing different stories with Mortimer and stuff.

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And uh, so yeah, that was sort of last minute, but cult is your show. The water cooler is on their channel. You guys can call into that if you guys haven't listened to cultures, they're doing some great, great stuff and I love those guys.

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So that was Mortimer. I haven't done Mortimer in a while. We used to do them all the time. An apology or radio. I remember when you were getting all those scam calls and you would just answer with as more as Mortimer and the just listening to the pause on the other end of the line from people trying to make heads or tails.

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The games you can play with scammers has Mortimer. I mean, they're amazing.

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Like I had a scammer call me and I knew the scams that are already had that call several times and it's where they tell you they're like working with a law enforcement agency and a rented vehicle in my name was found in Texas with like a 10 pounds of cocaine and there's blood in it and uh, there's a police investigation that's, and somehow they turned this into, they're going to ask you for money.

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You got to pay money and whatever to get the warrant off you or whatever. So I already knew the scam was coming and I was as Mortimer, right?

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So like I let him get through the whole thing. Like we found the vehicle. I've already heard this before. He found the vehicle. Cocaine. I'm like,

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I'm like in my head going, okay. And the person in blood or whatever. And then I was like, okay, I gotta,

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I gotta, I gotta confess something. The Coke is mine and I killed a man in El Paso and I was like,

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I've been wanting to get off my chest. I killed a guy and the Coke is mine. Wow.

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And I was like, I just want to thank you for, for, for, for letting me get this off my chest and, and, and come and get me.

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Come, come and get me. Say to that. And they were just like stunned and they were like, uh, and they just hung up. I was like the, the bot,

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I was like, I could tell you what a body is. You confess to it. I confess to it. I was like, I did it.

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Yeah, I did it. Um, I, what else? You see, the best thing for me is like when you mess with a scammer and you, you prolong the time and they're on the call with you, you stop them from scamming some innocent.

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It's a labor of love. Old person. Exactly. Wasting their time is actually a good thing. It's a, it's a very, it's a, it's a, it's very much a labor of love.

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Um, public service. That's right. So we're going to talk today about the doctrines of grace. Now I think it's important to start this conversation off by asking the question, what's the standard are we, that we're going to use to answer the question about the nature of man?

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Uh, the graciousness of God's grace, the sovereignty of God and election. Because if we're all honest, we come to this conversation with traditions and it's, it's something that, uh, you can look it up right now, actually, um, uh, on YouTube or after the show today.

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If you go to YouTube, Dave Hunt, um, wrote a book. What? I think he wrote a book.

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It was called what love is this? And, um, he wrote a book against Calvinism, but he had had a radio show episode that he did with Dr.

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James White on Calvinism. And in that, in that show, uh, and again, you go, just look up Dave Hunt, James White radio show.

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You'll, you'll listen to the entire thing. It's very, very, um, good to listen to that in that show.

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Uh, Dave says something like, I don't have any traditions, James. I remember that.

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Yeah. Right. I don't have any traditions, James. And one of the things that's always stuck out to me is how James has responded to that since then.

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And he, and it's essentially the person who thinks they have no traditions is the one who is enslaved to them because they can't see them.

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Can't see them. They're not even blind to them. They're not even looking. They're not looking. Yeah. And so all of us have traditions and traditions can be good.

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Like the tradition, uh, from Nicaea council, Nicaea creeds, those sorts of things.

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Great traditions. Great traditions. But the question is, why are they good traditions? Because the church pulls rank and says, this is the way things are because I say, or why is what, why are the formulations of the

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Trinity such good traditions? Well, because they're consistent with the scriptures like the Bible teaches the

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Trinity. That's where we get it from. And so when we have creeds and confessions that are consistent with what the

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Bible expresses, those are good traditions. We're not down on traditions like an apology of church where we hold essentially to 1689

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London Baptist confession of faith. We think it's a great confession of faith. We do a catechism every Lord's day based upon the confession of faith.

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We're memorizing questions, answers and scriptures together. We think that's a good tradition. Westminster confession of faith is awesome.

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It's amazing. Um, as we, that's a tradition, but it's a, we would say biblical tradition in many respects.

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We disagree with, of course, our Presbyterian brethren on baptismal mode and the aspects of our worship service itself, the liturgical tradition, the confession of sin, the communion, right?

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All of that, of course, is tradition, biblically grounded, of course, but the singing, the praying, the speaking the word to one another, the singing, the word to one another, like all of those, you could contend or tradition.

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Right. Even within that. Yeah. So we're not down on tradition as though Christians can't have traditions, but you must be willing to test your traditions to see if they're actually biblical.

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And the reason why I started this conversation this way is it goes back to what I said at the beginning of the episode. My favorite gospel is the gospel of John.

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This is very personal. Yeah. But in my experiences, when I first heard the gospel, it was actually from Billy Graham.

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I was late at night. I'd finished teaching karate. I think I was just barely 16 years old.

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It's late. I'm the only person up. I sat in front of the TV. I think I was eating spaghetti. I even remember what

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I was eating. And I was, and Billy Graham came on one of the channels and I listened to him talking about Christ and his atonement and repentance and faith in him as the first time

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I heard the gospel for eternal life through what Christ accomplished. So there's a 1 -800 number that came up and I just ran over to the phone.

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I remember distinctly the whole thing, like, oh my goodness. And then like go into the phone, picking it up, calling 1 -800 number and I gave my address and they send you like a small kit and it's just Bible memorization cards, verses on cards.

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And they just sent the gospel of John. And I remember that I read the gospel of John every day for like the longest time.

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It's over and over and over and over. I just fell in love. This is to me, like he's telling me that he loves me, that he has eternal life for me and he's never going to lose me.

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And so when I bring up the issue of tradition, my first contact with Christianity and the

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Bible was in the gospel of John. And so that's what I digested. And the fact that Jesus was never going to lose me,

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I learned from John. That eternal life was a real thing that I would never be forsaken and that he would keep me forever.

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I learned that from John and that through faith in him, I'd have eternal life. I learned that through John and that's where I got it.

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And then I started, I finally went to church for the first time. And what did

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I start getting? But man has a free will and I started getting all these other things I was taught in church.

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Things you weren't getting from John. Right. So for me, I just want to express this, this is very personal for me.

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For me, I was buried in John. I believed all those things from John, but then I started to pick up the lingo of the

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Christian community that I was in about man has a free will and God's not going to mess with his free will and all this stuff.

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And so I sort of had like two lanes of teaching that I was getting. I was getting from the word and then

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I was getting the tradition from the culture around me at the time. And so I got to a point where I started to really struggle because there was a tension in my own mind between what

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I was reading in John about God choosing a people, giving them to Christ, him never losing them, him promising to raise them up, him never forsaking them, all that stuff.

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It's right there in John. You're a slave to your sin. The son must set you free.

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But now I have this tension from what I'm reading in John, what I believe from John, what I'm saying about John, and then this other system that is clashing with it.

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And I did a deep dive into Calvinism mostly because I was so sick of the tension in my head.

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Yeah. And when I officially came to the point where I finally said the doctrines of grace are biblical, that's why

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I believe them. It was after a long time of study and tension of like, why is this tension going on inside me?

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Why am I contradicting myself or saying one thing and saying another thing? And it wasn't until I was able to actually test my traditions to say, are they biblical?

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Like is what I'm saying about the nature of man and the grace of God and the power of God and salvation, is that biblical?

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Am I getting that from the text or did I get it from somewhere else? Is it a tradition that I've adopted that's not true?

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And it was when I was willing to be humble to say I could be wrong and just let the text speak that my mind changed.

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And the text was like floodgates, it was like, it was overwhelming text. I was like, how did I not see this?

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Because it's on every page virtually. And it was a refreshing thing that shrunk me and mankind and made

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God enormous and beautiful and powerful.

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And so I think for me, that was one of the experiences that most impacted me about my acceptance of the doctrines of grace is that it really put

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God in his proper place in my mind that he's the sovereign, holy God and I'm the broken, sinful creature.

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I have nothing. He has everything. He has all power and his grace is something that he gives freely and I don't deserve any of this.

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There's nothing in me that attracted him to me in terms of my works and my will.

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And it made God look very big to me and made me feel very small and that felt very biblical.

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Yeah. And at the bottom of all that I feel like is we have to come to a place where we let

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God be God, you know, and in the sense of hearing him speak and allowing his word to transform us from the inside out.

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It has to come from outside of ourselves, obviously. You mentioned humility.

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Our minds, our hearts, every part of us has to be completely made subject to what he says.

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He is those things. He is Lord. He is sovereign. You know, he's completely independent of us, you know, he oversees and orchestrates and ordains all according to his perfect plan and decree and his will and nothing can stand in his way or overcome him or thwart his purposes in the world.

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Like that's all God's sovereignty. But what we all need is to sit in that.

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We need to sit in those truths, myself included, even more. Like it needs to be the song constantly playing in our heads because if he is given his proper place according to what he says about himself, we'll see ourselves how we need to and we'll see the world by extension of that, how we ought to and our place in it.

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And so, yeah, I think we would all do well to meditate on the sovereignty of God.

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That's right. So it's interesting because this today, the show we're doing today, a short show, just talking about this very personally and getting into the scriptures, it isn't about the subject of church history and whether the doctrines of grace are found in church history.

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The answer is yes, of course they are. But you see consistencies and inconsistencies throughout church history.

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You see the, and I've mentioned this many times before, you see the church at many times having this amazing, amazing connection to the rule of faith, the scriptures, and getting it right with like the

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Trinity, the nature of Christ, the atonement, like the resurrection of Christ, you know, just this amazing essential unity and they're just nailing it where they were faced with controversy.

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But we have to consider the church is really, in many ways, in its infancy. It's not that long ago.

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It's 2000 years, that seems huge. But 2000 years, in 2000 years, there were times in history, in the history of the church where they were dealing with particular doctrinal battles, but not all doctrinal battles.

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We tend to think with history behind us, like all of this was their context.

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They were all managing all this. It's not the truth. There were times in church history where they were zeroing in and focusing in on a particular issue and that was the big fight, like the nature of God, the

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Trinity, like that's the huge thing. Arianism. Deity of Christ. Deity of Christ, Sabellianism, you know, all that stuff,

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Marcionites. And you've got particular areas. And then you get into like something like Pelagianism where it's really dealing with the nature of the fall and the nature of man and original sin.

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What is man capable of? Yeah. What is he not capable of? But even with that issue, they weren't dealing with all of the things connected to the nature of man and the fall and everything else, but when

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Augustine is dealing with the grace of God and the power of God and salvation, you're like, monergism.

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That's straight Calvinism. And that's why Augustine is hard for some people because the reformed people can use

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Augustine and say, look, he's saying what we're saying. And then also there's points in Augustine's teaching where the

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Catholics go, see, he's teaching what we're teaching because he's a mixed bag, because he's a fallible, uninspired man.

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So the topic today isn't about like church history and like where you can find points of contact where you see the doctrines of grace in the teaching of the fathers here or there, whenever there was something that came up where they addressed a passage or whatever.

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Augustine is a monergist and all that stuff. That's not what we're dealing with today. We're dealing with the fact that during the time of the

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Reformation, the issue of the nature of man and the grace of God was front and center because of the perversions of Rome that had accumulated over time and eventually came to a climax.

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And so those perversions were related directly to the nature of man and the fall, the sovereignty of God and salvation, the grace of God and salvation, the power of God to save, the atonement itself, what does it accomplish?

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And so that's why during the time of the Reformation, you see everyone's zeroing in on this issue to the degree that then you get to the

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Senate of Dort, where now there's even further disputes with like the followers of Jacob Arminius versus those who were descendants from Calvin, because now everybody's zeroing in, getting down, pinning down, what does the text of scripture say about this?

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What's the rule of faith say? And so when you get to the issue of the doctrines of grace, Calvinists didn't invent it, right?

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And the fact that it's called Calvinism and Arminianism, that dispute with the Senate of Dort and doctrines of grace, it's just shorthand.

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Calvinism has nothing to do with a man named John Calvin. It's the texts and the issues that are related to that, that that's the issue of Calvinism, Arminianism.

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But this issue comes to a head because this becomes the big dispute. How gracious is

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God's grace? And can the grace of God in salvation be in any way compelled?

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Right. How sovereign is God? Kind of sovereign, mostly sovereign, totally sovereign.

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So I wanted to say, again, if you're thinking today you're going to get an entire episode, we're going to exhaust every detail of this.

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I think you'll be, I think you'll be discouraged. You'll need a lot more time, that's for sure.

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But I think you'll be hopefully blessed by today, what we're going to talk about. So I want to say this, when you talk about the doctrines of grace, they were a response to the protest, the remonstrance of the followers of Jacob Arminius.

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So when you look at the five points, it's not like the Calvinists simply just made those up and wanted to just spin those off and teach those.

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They were responding to a formal protest of, we disagree with these teachings.

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And so the nature of man, total depravity, they meant total inability. How dead is a man in his sin?

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Is he spiritually sick or is he dead? Is he unable to come to God, like Jesus says?

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Is he non -God seeking, like Paul quotes from the Old Testament in Romans chapter three?

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Dead in his trespasses and sins, a child of wrath. And in terms of God choosing, because scripture teaches the

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God predestines, scripture teaches election, scripture teaches that God chooses. There's no way out of that.

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That's why, why would anybody want to get out of it? The Bible teaches it. The question is, on what basis does God choose to save?

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Is it on the basis of foreseen faith? Like he looks through the corridors of time to see who will actually trust in him and he chooses them based upon their choice of him?

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Without it being God learns stuff and that doesn't work. And how does a dead person have faith and believe?

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That's interesting. Like who's doing that on their own as a sinful fallen person? So the question of election, like on what basis does

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God choose to save somebody? Is it something in themselves? Is it a foreseen faith? And then the question of the atonement is a big one.

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Did Jesus die for anyone in particular? Like that was the main point. Like was

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Jesus' death something that accomplished what God set out to do?

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Was it personal? Was the atonement for this sort of faceless crowd, nameless group?

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Or is your name written on his hand from eternity past? When Jesus says it's finished, was it?

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Was it an accomplished redemption that was able to perfect forever those who draw near to God through him? Was it personal?

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Yeah. Can you say he died for me? He died for me. Or was it general to make people save a bull?

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What does the Bible teach about the atonement and what it accomplishes? Irresistible grace just had to do with the power of God in salvation.

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The effectual nature of his calling. The effectual calling of God. Some of the terminology like, I don't like tulip, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement.

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I prefer to... What were they getting at was definite redemption. Limited atonement just meant that what he accomplished, it was definite.

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It was a complete, perfect redemption, and it was not general. It was precise.

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It was for people, and it accomplishes its purpose. But in the irresistible grace, it's effectual calling, meaning that when

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God wants to save a sinner, can he be stopped? When it pleases God to save somebody, can he do it or will he be thwarted?

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Or does the power of God and the grace of God have the ability to raise a dead person to life so that they see

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Jesus and love Jesus? Yeah. Generation. It's just the gifts. Like scripture teaches repentance is a gift of God, faith is a gift from God.

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Is that true? And then when it comes to perseverance of the saints, it just means that the saints who are saved will persevere because God causes them to.

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He will finish what he started in them. And that's... The son won't lose any that the father has given him.

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Exactly. He that began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. It's verses like that.

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But you know, it's important though, and it was James that suggested this years ago and I was like, you know what?

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I'm so glad you bring that up because that kind of is the overriding thing. And he said it should be stulip.

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Yeah. Sovereignty. Stulip. Sovereignty at the beginning. Because really that needs to be at the beginning.

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Sovereignty of God needs to be before the T because that... And you can argue all day long about, well, these texts do say that like, yeah, the texts do teach that.

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And there's no way out of that. But where's your starting point? Does he have the power to do it? That's what separates.

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If you want to know, I mean, the difference between reformed theology and other systems is where's the starting point?

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Starting points with God. And from there, we reason from God downward.

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Not project ourselves, our own thoughts and our own imaginations upon him as to what we believe him to be capable of.

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Or he's free, but he's not this free. He can't be this free. When scripture presents a

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God who is utterly free. Under no compulsion to do anything at all, much less save a fallen creature.

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But he's utterly free to do as he pleases. There you go. So our God is in the heavens.

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He does how he pleases. Did you know that I was going to go with that? Were you playing with that? I had a couple texts pulled up, but that one just popped up into my head, like, is he free?

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Does he do what he pleases? Psalm 135 .6. I was just with my family this morning. We're going through the pleasures of God, which every

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Christian needs to need to do. The pleasures of God will bless your life. Bless my life tremendously as a young man.

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So this was like the end verse of the section we were in today as a family. And it's

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Psalm 135 .6. It says, whatever the Lord pleases, he does in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps.

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Well, that's everywhere. Yeah. And the point is, is the God of the Bible is presented to us not like us.

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He is a God who is self -sufficient. He needs nobody, nothing.

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He has been eternally existent as three co -equal, co -eternal persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

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The reason I bring that up is there's never been a time where God hasn't been happy. Right. He's the happy God. He's had that fellowship of the community of the divine persons for ultimate delight in himself.

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Right. He's not trying to make up a felt need within himself by creating or saving you. He doesn't need us.

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Yeah. He didn't need us to be happy. He's called the happy God in scripture. The blessed God is the happy God. He's the happy God.

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He has had perfect unity, fellowship, relationship, Father, Son, Holy Spirit for all eternity before he ever created us.

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And so God doesn't need us. He's not dependent upon us and he's not thwarted by his creatures in any way.

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The biggest one right there, I think. Right. I mean, it's just so impactful. And so here's the point is like, and by the way, this is, we're going to have to do engage in some proof texting here in terms of like, well, here's some verses, but here's the point.

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These proof texts are all in context and they're consistent with the rest of the testimony of scripture about God's character, about his sovereignty, about his will.

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But our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases. He does in heaven and in earth, in the seas and at all deeps, ever.

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So here's my point. That's a sovereign God who when something is his will or his pleasure, he does it.

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If he wants to save a sinner, he does it. Nothing can stop him.

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He does according to his will. Psalm 115 .3, our God is in the heavens.

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He does whatever he pleases. Isaiah 46 .10, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times, things which have not been done, saying my purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure.

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And I'll just say something and let you speak to this. That comes in the trial of the false gods where an

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Isaiah God is denouncing the false gods of men. And basically one of the contrasts that he makes between him and all the false gods is that these false gods are mute.

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They're blind. They don't speak. They have no real life. They can't tell you the future because they don't control it.

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God's argument with the false gods is that I declare the end from the beginning.

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My purposes will stand. These false gods have no power, no control, no sovereignty. It's my will that will stand because I declare the end from the beginning.

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That whole line, my decree. And from ancient times, things not yet done.

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Even before that, Isaiah 14, for the

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Lord of hosts has planned and who can frustrate it and as for his stretched out hand, who can turn it back?

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You know, Job gets to the end of that onslaught of questions at the end of the book of Job and what's he left with?

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What's one of the final things he says? I know that you can do all things and no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

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No purpose. After coming to the end of that whole heartbreaking, devastating debacle and then getting put on trial by God, he's left with, of course,

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I repent in dust and ashes, but God's sovereignty is the final straw. I know that you can do all things and no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

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Everything that you decree will happen. Everything that you foreordain to happen, which of course doesn't eliminate human responsibility in any way, but it does highlight the fact that everything that exists,

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God is the owner and ultimate disposer of, including my life, like he's free to do with me what he pleases to do.

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Right. Even for me, like not just the things that he made like in the world, but he's free to dispose of me how he pleases.

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Grace or justice. Or yes, to highlight one or more of his attributes.

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You know, he will. And I think what really drives this home, his sovereignty, is that his love for you, his purpose in saving you is really secondary to the ultimate thing, which is the glory of his own name, right?

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His self -glorification in the divine triune

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Godhead is why is God doing what he's doing? Why did he send the

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Son? Why did the Father and the Son send the Spirit? For his glory. Why is he doing everything in the world that he's doing?

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Why did he create all things? Why is he in the process of redeeming all things? And who's going to get the praise when it's all said and done?

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It's for his glory. For his glory. Your salvation is not for you, ultimately.

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It's to the praise of the glory of his grace, Ephesians chapter one. He does it for his pleasure.

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He does it because he wants to. Nobody's compelling him. He's not under compulsion and he's not suffering under our demands.

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He's the sovereign. So Daniel 4 .35 says, all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, but he does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and no one can ward off his hand or say to him, what have you done?

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That's a powerful God. Yeah. Yeah. Same idea there, President. Yeah. And I'm sure you have more.

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There's some. Go ahead. You got some. Ephesians one. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

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Yes. Luke 1 .37, for nothing will be impossible with God.

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It's the verses that we all go, yay, and amen to that verse. And then we. It's kind of a Christian cliche almost.

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It becomes a cliche where we'll say that's true, but then we don't actually believe it with our soteriology.

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We're like, well, you know, God can't mess with his free will. Like, you know,

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God can really just want so badly to save him, but he just can't. Why? Because he's got all these restrictions of the will of man and like man's ability to thwart his purposes.

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Like nothing's impossible with him. Right. Nothing's impossible. Lamentations 3 .37,

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who has spoken and it came to pass unless the Lord has commanded it. Is it not from the mouth of the most high that good and bad come?

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Or Acts 4 .27, for truly in this city they were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus whom you anointed both

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Herod and Pontius Pilate along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

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So even the plan of redemption, the murder of Jesus, the murder of Jesus, God is sovereign. Talk about that.

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Because that's a key one. Because we talk about the sovereignty of God with the will of man, good and evil.

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That's what trips people up, but scripture deals with it. It holds it together without eliminating the will and responsibility of man.

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Because you read that text and you have different characters present there. You have Herod, you have

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Pontius Pilate, you have the Gentiles along with the people of Israel. Those are all different parties.

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Those are all different groups. Those are all different motivations. Those are all different people making different choices.

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And then over the top of that, underneath the blanket of God's overruling power, he takes all of that, allows it to play out of course, but his hand is upon it to accomplish exactly what he intended to occur.

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And you see the same idea at present in the story of Joseph, the narrative in Genesis 50. Joseph says to his brothers, you know, you meant this for evil against me, but God meant it for good.

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And what was the, what was, what was, this is good to talk about this, flesh this out for everybody, because that's a key issue of the sovereignty of God, even over the evil that happens in the world.

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What kind of evil was meant, was in the life of Joseph and his experience that they did, that God had decreed to allow for his purposes, which were good.

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What kind of evil things? So there was malice in their hearts towards him.

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They disrobed him, threw him in a pit. And then his brother, one of them, I think it was

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Reuben comes to a sense and said, wait, no, let's, let's not kill him. So even the restraining hand of God upon his heart, that moment, his emotions is just like, you know what?

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No, let's not do this. He's our brother. Yeah. Let's sell him into slavery. Even the restraint. Again, that's maybe what's not talked about enough with the sovereignty of God is actually his restraint of man, not just rushing headlong into evil, but God actually holding man back from the evil that he could demonstrate, the evil, the lengths of depravity that he could sink into God, holding him back from that, restraining his hand so that Joseph would survive, go on to be mistreated, put in prison, put in a dungeon, and then end up as the second most powerful man in Egypt.

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So that the seed of the Messiah could be preserved in the preservation of the people of Israel and Joseph's lineage.

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He says, God's in here to preserve many people alive. Yes. And so he doesn't just save his people, but Egypt as well.

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There's blessings even in all that. They benefited from that. Because Joseph was there. And from that salvation comes, you know, in Genesis 49, the lion of the tribe of Judah, right?

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Jesus. And so I say that to bring it back to Acts 4 .27, because what do we have in Acts 4 .27?

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The apostles marveling at the reality that the nations, the rulers of this earth took counsel together.

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They conspired against the Lord and against his anointed. And he applies that to this passage, Acts 4, where he's saying,

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Herod, Pontius Pilate, the nation of Israel, the Gentiles, everybody had different motivations, all these conspiring forces working together.

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And what did that accomplish? What they meant for evil, God meant for the ultimate good, which was the murder of Jesus on the cross so that God would preserve his people.

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It's a beautiful story, but it's his overarching purpose. And I think the important thing about that particular reference that you bring up is all those people that you mentioned that have all those different motivations gathered together against Jesus, they wanted to kill

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Jesus. Yeah. They weren't being made to do it. And a matter of fact, you mentioned the restraining hand of God.

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It says the peoples of Israel, they were involved in having the

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Messiah crucified. I mean, they say, crucify him, crucify him. We have no king but Caesar, blah, blah, blah. His blood be on us and our children.

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His blood be on us and our children. They just asked for it. But you mentioned the restraining hand of God, there the hand of God wasn't restrained.

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They were able to get the son of man because Jesus says, I'm going willingly. No one takes my life from me.

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I lay it down on my own accord. This is why I came. But before that in the life and ministry of Jesus, you see the instances where they were trying to kill him.

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They pick up stones to kill him. There's time where he even has escapes from their midst because they want him dead. They are desperate to take his life before the crucifixion.

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And each and every single time, the sovereign hand of God stops them. Doesn't allow it.

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Why? Because Jesus says, it's not my time. No one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord.

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It's when I say, you will be permitted to do evil to me when I say, when it's my time, my purpose.

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And that's exactly what took place in the life of Jesus is that God restrains their evil, holds them back.

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And then he goes, okay, for my purpose, I'll unleash it now. Now you can do it for my purpose.

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But the point is, is those covenant breaking Jews, because the followers of Jesus are all

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Jewish, right? The authors of the New Testament, they're Jewish. But those covenant breaking Jews that killed Jesus, they really wanted him dead long before the crucifixion.

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They hated Jesus. They conspire and pull together false witnesses against him in court. How awful is that?

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Like to literally go, hey, will you lie in court against this guy? These guys are desperate. We hate him so badly.

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I mean, everybody should be looking around going, this is getting kind of nuts, guys. Like we're supposed to be Torah abiding

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Jews here and you're pulling together false witnesses. Malice. You're supposed to be leaders. But one more interesting thing.

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Think about this. Have you thought about this? Because this is compelling to me. So you have the example of like the restraining hand of God.

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In the story of Joseph that you just brought up, where like Reuben comes to his senses and goes, let's not kill him.

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He's our own flesh. Like he's our brother. And God restrains, but he only restrains like to get Joseph into slavery.

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He's like, restrain him so I can get him into slavery where now the wife is going to say that he tries to rape her and he'll be thrown into a dungeon.

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It just gets worse from there. But you see the restraining hand of God and then that Joseph says like, you meant evil against me.

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God meant it for good. But have you ever thought about this? That in the conflict with Pharaoh, Pharaoh's told to let my people go.

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And he says like, who's this? Who's Yahweh? Who's Yahweh? That I should listen to him kind of a thing.

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And what's interesting is that now the plagues start coming in and they're like demonstrating that God's a true

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God and the Egyptian gods are all false gods. That he's sovereign, which is another way of expressing his rulership.

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Right. Right. He's king. Yeah. The frog God. Pharaoh's not God. Pharaoh's not the king. All the Egyptian frog God stuff is not keeping the frogs out.

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The God over the waters can't stop the blood, all that stuff. But here's an interesting thought. There's a restraining hand of God where God restrains people from the evil that they really want to do.

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Right? No, he's like, no, you're not going to do that. Only for my purposes. And then there's a moment where actually it says

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God hardens Pharaoh's heart. Yeah. And you're like, but Pharaoh is already kind of hard, right?

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He's already a pagan. He's already like enslaving the people of God. He's already saying no. And then it says that God actually adds a judicial hardening to Pharaoh.

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He hardens his heart so that God would display his power over the

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Egyptian gods. But it's interesting because in a moment like that, Pharaoh is such a defiant, rebellious creature set on even saving his own skin that with the plagues of Egypt coming in, he would have let

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Israel go to save his own skin. But God hardens his heart so he'll continue to be stubborn so that God can display his glory.

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And so even if Pharaoh would have tried to save his own skin, God's like, no, you're going to be,

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I'm going to unleash you. I'm going to make you, I'm going to make you as hard as you need to be for my purposes and my power.

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So there's times where God will actually harden someone's heart against their own self -preservation because he's like,

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I'm going to display my power and glory over your sinful rebellion. I'm going to let it get as bad as it really is.

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I'm going to harden you judicially so that my power will be shown in you. How offensive to the sensibilities of natural man.

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I mean, it is, it's offensive. And I think if people don't like a God, no, no, a

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God who actually hardens people. I mean, that is a

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God that of course, unbelievers should rightly fear, right? But the people of God ought to fear in a most healthy way.

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Um, and I think that the text that highlights how that brings it out the best is the, that famous one in Romans nine, right?

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Who are you? Oh man, to answer back to God, right? So why is God doing this?

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Why does he harden whom he will, wills, and why does he mercy whom he wills, um, you know, and then why does he still find faults, but who are you, you know, man shall, shall the

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Potter or shall the, shall the pot regard the Potter as, you know, I can do this better, which is what he says elsewhere in the prophets to an

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Isaiah, right? Shall the pot say, why did you form me this way? Um, you know, why the handles, why did you give this to me?

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It's like, it's, it's a creation talking back to its creator. Who are you?

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Has the Potter no right, uh, you know, over the same lump of clay to make one vessel for honorable use and another one for dishonorable use.

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Like what if God actually wants to make his wrath and justice known. And so he prepares vessels for destruction and actually hardens them to the praise of his justice.

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And then towards those whom he, uh, chooses in this regard that he prepared for glory, shall he not show them mercy on these vessels?

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Yes. I mean, those are the texts that, that really separate the men from the boys,

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I mean, theologically speaking. I mean, in the sense of like, this is, this is truly a free

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God and you can ask, well, how did I become the lump that was the honorably used vessel?

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The mercied one. Right. How did I become that? You know, what did I do to deserve that? And the answer is, that's the point.

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Because he loved you. It's grace. Yeah. He loved you because he loved you. Yeah. You know?

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He chose to set his love on you. Yeah. And what is amazing is that most Christians understand this instinctively. Like if they get past the personal salvation issue of like how sovereign is

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God over my salvation and other salvation and how gracious is God's grace. If they can put that aside for a moment and say like,

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God chooses to just set his love and grace on a certain people, but not another or a certain person or another, instinctively we all understand this.

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We all instinctively understand it because we all understand God's relationship to Israel, that he chose Israel.

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Yeah. As his bride. Yeah. Out of all the other nations. And he says, it's not because you were more numerous. Right. It's not because of any of those reasons.

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He says, it's because I love you. Yeah. And so that instinctively, we all go, yeah, he chose

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Israel. Those were his chosen people. Why? Well, there was nothing in them. He just chose to love them. Yeah. Right.

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Now that's exactly how he does it. He does it with sinful people. He does exactly the same thing. And if you ask, well, why me,

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God? He's going to give you the same answer he gave Israel. Because I love you. Because I loved you. If someone were to say to that though, well, that sounds arbitrary to me.

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Upon what objective basis does God choose one or the other? Because we would say, well, election is unconditional in the sense that it's not based on anything

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I did to deserve it. You know, are we then saying that it's arbitrary? Like is

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God just kind of going, oh, I like this one. Right. You know? Right. And that's obviously something to wrestle with.

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Yeah. And the way that scripture describes this, and again, man, we'll probably just do a couple shows on this.

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This is getting... I know. That was a big question. No, I think this is getting good because the way that it's described in scriptures is always connected to God's grace, his unmerited favor, and his mercy and his love.

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And so somebody could say arbitrary, but that's not the right category.

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The category is mercy. The category is grace. The category is justice.

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So when someone says arbitrary, it's like, well, you're talking about an infinite, all -knowing, all -powerful, merciful

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God. I don't think arbitrary is the right category because scripture just defines it as mercy, grace, love.

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You're intimating in a way that this is not an intentional type of love that he's showing. Right. It's actually cavalier or flippant.

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That's the point, yeah. Or as the song says, reckless, right? Yeah. The reckless love of God.

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Reckless love. Right? If there's anything that's a more contradiction in terms, it's really that God's love isn't careless.

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It's not reckless. It's not flippant. It's very intentional, right?

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I love how he describes a relationship with his people as a marriage. It's a husband taking a bride to himself.

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Husbands understand what it means to have a unique love for their bride that they don't have for another woman.

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We understand that. And yet God is the one who defines the nature of that relationship with his people in that category, in that way.

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So that we and our finite imaginations can see that God loves people, right?

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He loves the human race in a sense, but he has a particular kind of love for his bride.

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Yeah. There's a particular love. That's right. That he has for his people. Right. It's a special covenantal love, you might say.

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Right. God is loving to every unbeliever he's giving breath to right now, who's living in rebellion against him.

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He is loving to everybody. He's causing the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. But he has a special salvific love for his chosen, his elect people.

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And that just can't be contradicted. That's what the scriptures plainly teach. And when you think about God choosing and God saving,

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God preserving or causing to persevere a people, you have entire discourses where this is talked about in scripture.

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Not like potshot proof texts situation. Extended discussions.

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Descriptive. This is why I'm here. This is what the father wants for me. This is what I'm going to accomplish. So that section, and we'll end the show with this today.

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That section. I realize time is flying by. Yeah. I know we could really good. We need to. We'll probably do more guys.

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So it says in John 6 35, Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life.

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Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. And whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you've seen me and yet do not believe all that the father gives me will come to me.

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And whoever comes to me, I will never cast out for. I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

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And this is the will of him who sent me that I should lose nothing. There's perseverance of the saints of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day for this is the will of my father, that everyone who looks on the sun and believes in him should have eternal life.

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And I will raise him up on the last day. So the Jews grumbled about him because he said,

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I'm the bread that came down from heaven. They said, is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know, how does he now say

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I've come down from heaven? Jesus answered them, do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me.

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There's total depravity, total inability. No one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day.

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There's irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints. So if you wanted to say like, well, what, what are the doctrines of grace?

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Read John six. Yeah. You'll get them all. John six, right there. John six, read also

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John 10. Jesus talked about being a good shepherd, laying his life down for the sheep. Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold, them I must also bring.

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The reason you don't believe me is, hear me, because you're not my sheep. My sheep hear my voice and they follow me.

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If you want to really get a discourse expression of the doctrines of grace, read

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John six and John 10. Yeah, that's it. I'll just point you there, underline, circle, highlight, just look at the text, let the text speak for itself.

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Allow, we need to all be willing to allow our traditions to fall by the wayside. Have you been corrected in your theology over the last 10 years in areas?

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Oh my goodness. I mean, just this issue alone, like coming to,

56:32

I didn't even know what reformed theology was. I didn't even know what that tag meant, but you know, seeing it in the word, you have to, you have to be willing to let scripture determine your beliefs.

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If you're a Christian. Isn't it refreshing when you're corrected by the word of God and you see this consistent story that God gives.

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It's refreshing. It's not, it can be, it can be painful to have your traditions challenged, but it's refreshing when you come on the other side of something, you have your, your tradition challenge and you go, oh my goodness,

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God is much better and bigger than I even imagined. Yeah. And he loves me. Yeah. You know, my father loves me.

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He wants me to understand what it means to know him. Right. And who he is. Right. All right.

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So there you go. We wanted to talk about the doctrines of grace today. We got to the S in Stulip, sovereignty of God, but we wanted to do this sort of loose today and, and, and freely and just make this very personal and intimate.

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We could do much more and we need to do a couple episodes more on the doctrines of grace. We haven't done it for some time.

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And that was the sovereignty of God today, mostly, mostly. And so we thank you guys so much for being a part of this ministry with us.

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If you haven't done so yet, go sign up for all access at apologiastudios .com. Get all the additional content, partner with us in this ministry.

57:48

Don't forget to pray for EAN and abortion now. We have a lot going on right now. New states coming up to put bills of equal protection and we need your help in.

57:56

Abortion is not over in our country. It's actually growing. The numbers are getting higher. And so join together with us as we try to put legislation in to provide equal protection for our pre -born neighbors.

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So much is happening. We need you to support us, be with us in this fight, especially in the states where we come to testify before a legislature or working on bills, either we put in or somebody else puts in.

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We're supporting them. We need your help in those states. We'll announce it as we're coming. Please join us as we show up, but we need your help.

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We also need your financial support at endabortionnow .com. And I think that's about it for today.