The Doctrines of Grace

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

So as I indicated at the onset of today, at the outset of the day, today we're going to shift our focus a little bit.

You'll remember that we've been in the Book of Jonah for the last three weeks now. We're going to hit pause on that, at least for this

Reformation Sunday, and focus on something that's Reformation -themed. Some of the awesome doctrines that have been rediscovered or that were rediscovered following the

Protestant Reformation. And as I recounted just at the beginning, it was on October 31st, 1517, 505 years tomorrow, that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the castle church door in Wittenberg, Germany.

And this is really what set off the beginning of the Protestant Reformation as we know it.

And if you remember, all the way back to last year's Reformation Day, we focused on the understanding of what the

Reformers called the Five Solas. So something that was taught in direct opposition to the

Roman Catholic Church. And maybe there's a point, if anyone here can name one of those Five Solas. Can anyone muster up a guess?

Yes. Sola Scriptura. Anything else? Sola Fide. Sola Gratia.

Solus Christus. And Soli Deo Gloria. And the idea of that was this, that these

Reformers came out of or began the Reformation as it were, and they discovered again the biblical idea of salvation.

That salvation, forgiveness for sin, justification before a holy God, was available by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, according to the scriptures alone.

And in the years that followed, there were many battles that had to be won in order to continue the

Reformation. As a matter of fact, if you remember last year, the title of that sermon was Semper Reformanda, meaning reformed and always reforming.

The Reformation had to continue. And so today, we're not going to look at 1517 and Martin Luther and the

Solas, but we're going to travel a hundred years ahead. We're going to transport ourselves to the early 1600s, the early 17th century.

And it was during this time that another one of those battles had to be waged to bring the church, the visible church, back into conformity with God's word, rather than the traditions of men.

And so, almost a hundred years, I'm going to give us a bit of a history lesson here. Almost a hundred years after Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the castle church door, this time in the

Netherlands, there was another document that stirred up controversy in the church.

You see, there was a man named Jacobus Arminius, and he was a Dutch theologian who believed very strongly that men had full, sovereign free will and that God did not interfere with that free will.

Now, Jacobus Arminius was at odds with the culture around him as he was surrounded mostly by Dutch Reformed Christians.

They believed that God was sovereign in all things. But shortly after Jacobus Arminius died in 1609, a group of his followers came together and they put together a document that they called the

Remonstrance. And it means a strong protestation or a strong protest.

And the Remonstrance put together five articles that they really wanted to contest against the

Reformed Christians of their day. And these five articles, and you'll recognize this if you're familiar at all with Reformed theology, went something like this.

They said, first of all, God's election, his choice as to who he will save, when he will save, how he will save, was conditional upon the exercise of man's free will.

It was a conditional election. They contested that God is not in the business of choosing men for salvation, but that he would only choose men to be saved if he saw, by his perfect foreknowledge into the future, that they themselves would come to him first.

And so God's election was conditional upon man's free will. The second article that they wrote in the

Remonstrance was this, that man was totally depraved. Now that might surprise you, but they believed in total depravity.

And yet they said that God offered some form of special grace, some would call it prevenient grace, to allow people to come to him.

The third article that they asserted was that Christ's atonement was unlimited and universal in nature, meaning that Christ died for all people, every single person, everywhere, regardless of whether or not they would ever come to him.

And so even if someone were to never believe in Christ and go to hell, there they would be in hell and they could say, with all honesty,

Christ died for my sins. The fourth point that they made was that God's effectual calling, his ability to sovereignly call people to himself and his grace were resistible, that God could issue a decree and man could say, no,

I will not. And then lastly they denied the notion of eternal security.

And what this means is that their position was that a Christian could fall from grace and lose their salvation completely.

And so if you were an Armenian Christian in 1609 or 1610, at every minute of every hour there was the very real threat that even though you were justified and you had been regenerated and Christ was sanctifying you, that very same

Christian, you could forever lose your salvation and go to hell if you were to fall away from God.

And so the remonstrance was put forward to the religious leaders and these Armenians had good protection from some of the politicians.

And so the politicians told the Reformed Christians, you cannot respond to this. You must just let this exist.

And this created no small amount of contention in the church. And so for some eight years there was debate and division in the visible church between the

Armenians and the Calvinists. And the Calvinists were not able to respond to these answers or to these questions or articles.

But eventually the Dutch Christians appealed to the political leaders of their day and they provided the opportunity to call together an international meeting, what was called at that time a synod.

And the synod was called in the city of Dordrecht or Dort in its shortened form.

And so from 1618 to 1619, for two years, this international synod met from people all around Europe and they came up with a response to the

Armenians. Now a funny story from that particular situation was that the synod at Dort thought we need to hear from the

Armenians. We want to hear what they have to say. And so they invited the Armenians to present their case.

And the Armenians knew that they would never fully convince the Reformed Christians and so they thought, well, we're going to give them our full case and then we're just going to throw a stick in the spokes.

And so for long days the Armenians would present their case and drown on about all that Armenian theology was to the point that the synod of Dort said, okay, that is enough.

We've had enough. We must continue. And so the synod of Dort put together a response to the

Armenians and that response became known as the Canons of Dort.

And the Canons of Dort was not something that was put out to provide an expansive view of Reformed doctrine but to summarize the

Bible's teaching in response to the Armenians' contentions.

And so in the end, the synod of Dort put together the Canons and it provided an answer to the

Armenians' five articles in the Remonstrance. And so these Christians put together five points that responded and summarized the teaching of God's word on the topic of election, human depravity, atonement, calling, and eternal security.

And all of which we now know could fit into a neat acrostic, tulip.

It was originally put together as ultip but that's far less memorable and so it was assembled as tulip and that is total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints.

These became known later on as the five biblical points of Calvinism or as many theologians prefer to call them, as I prefer to call them, the doctrines of grace.

Five Bible -saturated points that describe what it is that the

Bible teaches about the sovereignty of God in salvation. So that's a little bit of a history lesson.

That's the most history that we're going to look at today. But what we want to do now is this.

We're going to take some time to look through the Bible and to see why it is that these doctrines are so important.

And if they are important, are they true? Does the Bible teach the doctrines of grace or is this just something that the men, the synod at Dort, came up with?

And some of you might even be asking here, why is this even important? Can't we just move on?

Shouldn't we have just preached today through the book of Jonah? And what I would say is this, that the main contention of the reformers and what ought to be our main contention as we look at these doctrines is this, that for centuries, the

Roman Catholic Church had elevated man's role in relation to God.

Catholic theology had suppressed their view of God and inflated their view of man.

And as a result, they taught that man had free moral agency to resist God's sovereign decrees on a whim, that it was man's prerogative to choose

God and his grace on demand. It was not man who was bound by God's freedom, but God who was bound by man's freedom.

And so as a result, church tradition competed with scripture in terms of importance and authority.

Papal edicts contradicted and superseded the clear commands of God's word. And God's grace was so cheapened that it could be summoned at will by any man at any time or even sold through the purchase of indulgences.

And it was taught, if any of the kids remember from some of those old Reformation stories, as soon as a coin in the bowl rings, a soul from purgatory springs.

That's what was taught. But when the reformers rediscovered the truths of God's word, not only did they learn that righteousness was by faith alone in Christ alone, but they discovered that in the full counsel of God, this unleashed the full extent of God's majesty and supremacy over all things.

The small God of the Catholics gave way to the holy, awesome, and sovereign

God of the Bible. The reformers rediscovered the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the

God of whom it says in Psalm 115 .3 is in the heavens and he does all that he pleases.

And so when we advocate for the doctrines of grace, as I preach the doctrines of grace today,

I plan to do it not from church history, not from human tradition, but from the Bible. And the importance of it is this.

It has to do with who is God and how does he relate to us.

So we're going to begin looking at these points together. We're not going to park ourselves in any particular text, but we're actually going to bounce around.

And I want to apologize in advance. We're going to look at a number of different texts as we move along.

Some of them, just for the sake of time, I need to move swiftly through. But if you miss a reference, our sister

Amy is going to be happy. There's going to be lots of addresses, chapters, and verses provided. But if you miss any, just come to me afterwards and I'll be happy to give you a list of all of those.

And so the first doctrine that we're going to look at in this acrostic tulip is the doctrine of total depravity.

When it came to the subject of God's sovereignty and salvation, this is the only place where the Arminians and the

Reformers could agree. The only difference, of course, was that the Arminians believed in this idea of prevenient grace, this special grace that God would give to people to allow them to overcome this hurdle of their own fallenness.

So by the Arminians' estimation, man was totally depraved, and yet he had the ability to choose

God for himself. Now, if we examine the full breadth of Scripture, is this what the

Bible teaches? That we, by our own strength and will, or even by a little bit of God's help, that we can choose

God for ourselves? You know, it's really tempting for me to simply state a doctrine and then apply it and illustrate it.

But what we're going to do today is we're going to state a doctrine, we're going to look at Scripture, and for the benefit of convincing some of you, we're going to look how each of these doctrines is taught in the

Old Testament. How each of these doctrines was taught by the Lord Jesus Christ, and how each of these doctrines was taught in the

New Testament epistles. So we're going to look now at this first issue of total depravity.

And what I want to show us here is that total depravity, this idea that we are totally unable to come to God by our own strength or will, is taught all throughout the

Old Testament. But the first place I want to show us is Psalm 51 and verse 5. I'm not going to ask that you turn there, but you can write that down if you'd like and look at it later.

Psalm 51 verse 5 says this, David confessed after falling into sin with Bathsheba, he said,

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

He elaborates on this just a few chapters later in Psalm 58 and verse 3 where he says,

The wicked are estranged, when? From the moment of responsibility or moral responsibility or adulthood?

No. He says, the wicked are estranged from the tomb. They go astray from birth, speaking lies.

What David is teaching here in the Psalms is this, that he affirms that every child who is born into the world comes to us not in innocence.

As beautiful as they are and as sweet as they look, they don't come to us in innocence, but they come to us in corruption.

From their very conception, iniquity is written into their spiritual DNA. I'm just looking around, there aren't a whole lot of parents in the room, but just take it from me,

I never had to teach my children to lie. I never had to teach my children to hit each other.

From the earliest moment in their lives, I remember even my son as a little boy holding him, and he could not walk, he could not talk, but he would stretch his back out in defiance against dad.

And I remember a friend of ours saying, you really need to nip that in the bud right now, even as an infant child.

And this estrangement and this corruption is not merely behavioral, but it's deeply rooted in the very depths of the human heart.

And we find that in places like Jeremiah chapter 17 and verse 9. Jeremiah 17 and 9, it says there, "...the

heart is deceitful above things, and desperately sick. Who can understand it?"

And so from these texts we see that the Bible does not teach that we are sinners because we sin outwardly, but rather we sin because to our very core, at our very core, we are sinners.

Our problem is not an environmental problem. How often have you thought, if I can only get out of this workplace, or out of this circle of unbelieving friends, or out of this city or wherever,

I would just be okay then. But the Bible teaches that our problem is not environmental. It's not work, it's not friends, it's not family, it's not the government.

Our problem is a heart problem. One Reformed Baptist brother said this, he said, "...as

the salt flavors every drop in the Atlantic Ocean, so does sin affect every atom of our nature."

Now it's not just taught, though, in the Old Testament. We also find this doctrine of total depravity taught by Jesus himself.

In John chapter 6 and verse 44, he taught this. He said, "...no one can come to me unless the

Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day."

No one can come to me. Now oftentimes when people think of total depravity, they think of this idea of absolute depravity.

That if we say that someone is totally depraved, or that all of us are totally depraved, it means that we are as bad as we could possibly be.

But I think that we can all acknowledge, and we can thank God, that not everyone in this world is as evil as Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin.

People are not as evil as they could possibly be. But what Jesus is teaching here is the essence of total depravity, and why some theologians have called it total inability.

That because of our fallenness, because of our pervasive sinfulness, we cannot come to God unless he brings us, calls us, draws us to himself.

This idea of total depravity is taught in the New Testament epistles. I'm going to give us just a few quick references.

1 Corinthians 2 .14. If we remember back to our study, as Paul was talking to the

Corinthians in chapter 2, he says this, The natural person does not accept the things of the

Spirit of God. Why is that? Because they are folly to him. And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

In the book of Romans, in chapter 3, in verse 11, as Paul is talking about the sinfulness of man, and he begins quoting from the

Old Testament, he says, No one understands. No one seeks for God. In Ephesians 2, in verse 1,

I think for those of you who know me well, you know that I like this verse, And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

Without exception, or without qualification, the Bible teaches that man is totally depraved, totally unable to come to God apart from God's effectual calling.

Prior to all of our conversions, we were all dead in our sins. We were conceived in our sin.

We were raised in sin long before we stole our first toy from a fellow toddler and hit them over the head with it.

Iniquity spoke deep within our own hearts. And we were altogether unresponsive to the gospel.

Now, if you were here last week, I was talking about Jonah 2, verses 1 -10, and you'll remember that Jonah, if you were here, was sinking to the bottom of the ocean floor.

That, in a sense, is illustrative of what it means to be totally depraved or totally unable.

And I like, there's a noted theologian named Edward Palmer, and he really paints a vivid picture of this, that when we, as men and women, were sinners, and prior to our conversion, we were not like that idea of Jonah floating to the surface of the water, and at the surface of the water, waving our arms and calling for help.

But we were like Jonah in the sense that we sunk down, but not to the bottom of the

Mediterranean Ocean. Maybe the children here can tell me, what is the deepest part of any ocean in all the world?

Does anyone know? Yes? That's a trench.

Very close. The Marianas Trench. And the Marianas Trench is 36 ,000 feet below sea level.

That's the same height that an airliner flies. It's 11 kilometers from surface to the bottom of Marianas Trench.

If you ever watch a documentary on it, not only is there not light, but any fish that you find there looks extraterrestrial.

And Edwin Palmer said that to be totally depraved is this. It's not to be floating at the surface, waving your arms, calling for help, but it is to be sinking, and to sink, and to find yourself at the very bottom of the

Marianas Trench, to the point that you have died. And I like the little detail that he adds, and a shark has eaten your heart.

That is what it means to be totally depraved. You're not swimming to the surface. You're not calling for help.

You're not reaching up. If you are to come to the surface and live, God alone must save you.

And such were all of us prior to our conversions. Now, many of you know

R .C. Sproul. You might know him because he was a pastor, or a professor, or a Bible teacher.

And we know that if you do know him, he went to be with the Lord in 2017. One of the really endearing things that R .C.

Sproul used to teach when he was alive was that he would call the doctrine of total depravity, he said he preferred the term radical corruption.

Radical corruption. And one of the reasons why he preferred this radical corruption is because when it was reduced to an acronym, what would be the initials of that word but R .C.?

And he said that it was a perfect example, or a perfect description of total depravity because it was his story.

He knew that he was not a prominent Bible teacher because of his own achievements or because of his own inherent righteousness, but he knew that it was because God had rescued him from his radical corruption.

And that radical corruption was as innate to him as even his own name. That he was characteristically corrupt until God graciously called him to himself.

And so he would often remind people of this, that just as he was R .C. Sproul, he was once radically corrupt.

Now dear saint, if you're a believer in this room today, it is not because of your free choice to come to God.

If you love God today, it is because God first loved you and delivered you from your total depravity, from your utter inability, from your radical corruption.

And let me ask you, this is going to be my application because we have so much to cover. My application today is that we would respond in praise and worship to God.

And let me ask you, can there be any better reason to praise God with all of your redeemed heart, here and now, and to consecrate yourself anew because when you were at the bottom of the

Marianas Trench, spiritually speaking, God raised you up and brought you to life.

Now the second point we find in TULIP is this, the doctrine of unconditional election.

Now, the Armenian Christians never denied God's election, that is, his choice to save sinners.

But what they said was it was conditional upon and based upon man's choice to come to Christ.

But let's again look at this. Are we elected by God based on our choice or based on the purpose of his own will?

If we look in the Old Testament, this is what we find, that Abraham, we often think of Abraham as the first Jew and that he belonged to the people of God, but Abraham himself was a pagan man who lived in Ur of the

Chaldees. We know that because at that time in Ur of the Chaldees, they did not worship Yahweh.

They did not worship the God of the Bible. They worshipped household deities and every family and every household in every region had their own gods.

But when God set his sight on Abraham, he called him to himself and he came out of the

Chaldees to the nation of Canaan and there God made promises to Abraham and there he made him write by faith in him.

And later in Deuteronomy 7, in verses 6 and 7, God told the nation of Israel, he said,

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set, hear this, set his love on you and chose you.

For you are fewest of all the people. But it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers.

God set his affection on Israel not because they were great in number but because he loved them and he had made a covenant with Abraham.

Again, we see this idea of unconditional election taught by the Lord Jesus Christ. In John 15, 16, he said to his disciples,

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.

In John 1, verse 13, when he was speaking about being born again, he said, They are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And this doctrine of unconditional election permeates the entire New Testament. I sometimes like to do this, maybe it's because I'm being a troll, but if I'm having a conversation with someone who's willing to converse about the doctrines of grace,

I like to say that I can point to unconditional election or the doctrine of election in every single book of the

Bible. Sometimes maybe it's hyperbolic and I say every single chapter of the Bible. But one of the places

I like to go is to Acts chapter 13 and verse 48. There Paul and Barnabas, they land in Antioch and Pisidia and they preach the gospel.

And what happens to those believers after they preach the gospel? But this, it says, When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the

Lord. And as many were as appointed to eternal life, as many as were elected, predestined, believed the gospel.

Now, it was in the early 1500s, there was a man named Sosinus.

And if anyone knows anything about Unitarianism, he was one of the founders or the forerunners of Unitarianism.

And when he read this particular passage in the Bible, he had disagreed with it so strongly that he retranslated this text of Scripture so that it would read like this,

As many as believed were ordained to eternal life.

Now, not only does that sound awkward, but it's totally wrong. And it ignores so many other passages.

Another passage I want to bring to our attention is 2 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 9. That God saved us and he called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus.

After we believed? No, but before the ages began.

I'm not going to go into it at length, but we just read Romans chapter 9. That is one of the pieces, the resistance of the doctrine of unconditional election, that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of him who works, but because of him who called.

He says in verse 13, She was told the older will serve the younger, as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.

And Paul anticipates this argument that's going to come from those who oppose this idea, who will say, what shall we say then?

Is there injustice on God's part? He says, by no means. And so praise be to God.

It is not a great mystery, brothers and sisters. I want to shake you up here. It is not a great mystery that God would choose some and not others, but it is a great mystery that God would choose any at all.

And that we would be part of that number. Paul wrote to the

Ephesians in chapter 1 verse 44 to 6, he said, He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purposes of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace.

Let us praise him for this, brothers and sisters. The third point that I want us to consider is limited atonement.

I was telling Sam before, I think that this is the peak of the doctrines that we are going to look at in terms of just the glory of application.

But it is also the peak as it comes to people contesting it. There are many four -point

Calvinists, and the four -point Calvinists almost always deny limited atonement.

But what I want to demonstrate to you is that limited atonement is actually one of the most beautiful doctrines in the doctrines of grace.

And I will tell you why that is. In the Old Testament, when the

Synod of Dort came and looked at this idea of an unlimited atonement, a universal atonement, some of the passages that they looked at were passages like Isaiah 53.

In Isaiah 53 verse 8 says this, Who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgressions of...

who? Was it stricken for the transgressions of the whole world? No, they noted in Isaiah 53 verse 8, it was stricken for the transgressions of my people.

In Isaiah 53 verse 12, they read this, Yet he bore the sins of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.

Not bore the sins of all, but bore the sins of many. Now some of you might say, some who might contend against this might say, but that is just a word, just for the sins of many.

It just means a lot of people, or all people. But I want you to know that this word is not inconsequential, because Jesus uses that same word in Matthew chapter 20.

In verse 28 he says, The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

John chapter 10 verse 15 says, Just as the Father knows me, and I know the

Father, and I am laying down my life for the sheep.

And then again we find it all through the New Testament. Sometimes if people ask me just to give them one verse that demonstrates a limited atonement, a partial or a specific, a particular redemption,

I'll just take them to one of my favorite passages that has to do with marriage. When Paul was speaking to the

Ephesian husbands, the husbands in Ephesus, in Ephesians chapter 5, in verse 25 he says this,

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for all women.

No. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Husbands, you ought to give thanks to God that God does not require that you go out and give yourselves sacrificially in service to all the women in the world.

He's called you to give yourself in service to one woman. That is your wife.

And in the same way, Christ consecrated himself to give himself not for the whole world, but for his bride.

In Revelation chapter 5, in verse 9, there's this glorious scene in the heavens where all of the elders fall down before the

Lamb and they sing a new song. In Revelation 5, 9 it says, By your blood you ransomed people for God from the whole world, all the world.

You ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.

God's Christ's atonement is global and yet it is particular in nature.

It's people from every one of these people groups. Now, as I noted at the onset of this doctrine, a particular, a definite atonement is infinitely more valuable than a universal atonement.

I want to convince you of this, that a particular redemption is 10 ,000 times better than a universal redemption.

And it is for this reason, because a universal redemption, if we think about it, is only a potential redemption.

A universal redemption where people can die and go to hell and still say that Christ died for their sins.

It's only potential. It doesn't definitively pay for your sins.

It only pays for sins potentially, generally. And according to this theology, when on the cross, when

Christ said, It is finished, what he really meant was this, that it is finished, maybe, and only if men activate this redemption by their sovereign wills in choosing

Christ, that that atonement lays dormant, as it were, until man activates it by his own free will.

And so in a universal atonement, while it's true that Christ died for everyone, it is equally true that Christ died for no one.

And so when Christ said, It is finished on the cross, it meant almost nothing until the first man would come and believe in him.

And if no man came and believed in him, it would be an utter waste. But this isn't the case.

Because of Christ's definite atonement, he did not die to potentially save all, but he died, brother and sister, think about this, to fully, finally, and definitively atone for the sins of all of his people.

When Christ was upon that cross, it was not for sins generically, but it was for our sins specifically that he died and became accursed on that tree.

And when he said on that cross, It is finished, in the

Greek, te telestai, it was actually finished.

It was actually finished for him. He had specifically accomplished redemption for all of his people.

And perhaps for us selfishly, perhaps even better, it was finished for us.

An eternal redemption had been accomplished and for every Christian in this room, we can say with confidence that at that very moment, 2 ,000 years ago,

Christ put away our sins forever. Then and there it was finished.

I thought about the hymn, I think it was the hymn that we sang last week, The Power of the Cross. If you don't believe this doctrine, you shouldn't sing this verse.

Oh, to see my name. Your name,

Saint. Oh, to see my name written in the wounds.

For through your suffering, I am free. Death is crushed to death.

Life is mine to live, one through your selfless love.

This is the power of Christ's specific, particular cross.

Christ's particular redemption secures forgiveness for all of his people, finally and forever.

And when we understand this, brother and sister, it will change our lives.

It will change perhaps even the very course of history. Do you believe that when

Christ was on that cross, he was dying not just for man, but he was dying for you?

That when Christ poured out his wrath upon his son, he said, this is for Susanna.

This is for Ty. This is for Steve. This is for Noah. This is for them specifically.

I have no wrath left for that man. I have no wrath left for that woman.

Now there's a story that comes, if we go all the way back to the 16th century, of two

Martins immediately following the Reformation, two Roman Catholic monks. I think we probably know who one of those monks is.

But one of the monks, these Roman Catholic monks named Martin, was a man named

Martin Basil. And around the same time that Luther became a true believer in Christ, he himself became convinced of the gospel.

But he was very, very reluctant to proclaim it. And so he wrote his confession.

Kids, imagine this for a second, if you want to think about putting together a time capsule or something like that.

He wrote his confession on a piece of parchment. And he said, O merciful Christ, I know that I can be saved only by the merit of thy blood.

Holy Jesus, I acknowledge thy sufferings for me. I love thee.

I love thee. He wrote this down on a sheet of paper. And then he removed a stone from the wall, from the chamber in the monastery that he was in.

And he wrapped it up, folded it up. He put it in the wall and then slid the brick back into the wall.

And it was discovered 100 years later. Now, he understood the gospel.

And I'm not going to say whether he was a believer or an unbeliever. But I want to put before you that there was another

Martin that understood this idea of limited atonement better. Martin Luther, when he saw, clearly from scriptures, the doctrine of justification by faith, he did not fear to confess it as the truth.

He said, My Lord has confessed me before men. I will not shrink in confessing him before kings.

And we know the world was transformed by Martin Luther, while the world remained completely unchanged by Martin Basil.

This is one of the most beautiful doctrines in all the world, that brother or sister, Christ died for you. John Flavel said,

Oh, what a complete, finished, perfect thing is the righteousness of Christ.

The searching eye of a holy and jealous God cannot find the least flaw or defect in it.

The fourth point that I want to bring before us is this. Irresistible grace. The remonstrance taught that men could reject

God's sovereign decrees. That if God decreed that this man be saved, that man could say,

Absolutely not. I will never be saved by you. But the reformers, to the contrary, said that God himself had all of the power and all of the sovereignty to effectually call men to himself.

Now, I know, Amy, I'll pick on you for a second. I know that you've wrestled with irresistible grace. And another way that we could call it is simply this, effectual calling or efficacious grace.

For the sake of time, I'm going to go back a little bit. But we see this in Psalm chapter 3 and verse 8.

Salvation belongs to the Lord. Your blessings be on your people.

Jesus said in John chapter 10 and verse 27, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.

His sheep hear, they know, they will follow. In the

New Testament, it's called the golden chain of redemption in Romans chapter 8.

In verses 29 and 30, we see how this works out. God says, For those whom he foreknew, those whom he loved, whom he set his affections upon, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

And notice this chain. And those whom he predestined, he also called.

And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified.

It's not man's prerogative to interfere with that. Those whom

God predestines, he calls, he justifies, he will glorify. In Ephesians chapter 2, when it describes all men as being dead in their trespasses and sins, later it says in verse 6, that he raises us up and seats us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

So what does this look like? I think that if all of us think back to the moment of our conversion, to some extent, we might see that this effectual calling in our own life, maybe to one extent or another, but our experience doesn't matter.

This is what God's word teaches. I remember hearing a story about a man named

John Taylor Smith. He was a military chaplain in the Royal British Army.

And one day he was preaching in a large cathedral. And he was preaching on John chapter 3 in verse 7.

And as he was preaching, he exclaimed, he repeated from the text, Ye must be born again.

You must be born again. And as he stood there, he pointed at one of the clergy, and he said, he can be a member of this church, he can serve in the church, but he must be born again if he is to see the kingdom of God.

And then he pointed to the archdeacon who was in another booth, and he said, he can serve all that he wants in the church, but he must be born again.

And if he is not born again, he will not see the kingdom of God. The next day, he received a letter from the archdeacon.

And the archdeacon said this, he said, You have found me out.

I was a clergyman for over 30 years, but I never knew anything of the joy, of that joy which the

Christians speak of. I could never understand it. Mine was a hard legal service.

I did not know what was the matter with me. But when you pointed directly at me and said,

You, even an archdeacon, and not be born again,

I realized in a moment the trouble that I was in. I never knew anything of the new birth.

He went on to say that he was a wretched and miserable man, that he had been unable to sleep all night.

And so this chaplain met with the archdeacon, and there they spoke together of the gospel, and he explained the gospel to him, and they prayed together.

And in that moment, the archdeacon understood what it meant to be effectually called by God.

He cried out to the Lord Jesus Christ and told him he would trust him forever.

It's possible to know about God. It's possible to be the member of a church.

It's possible to serve Him for 30 years. But unless you are effectually called by God, there will be no change.

Martin Luther said, This is the power of this irresistible grace and effectual calling.

Faith is a living, daring confidence in God's grace, so sure and so certain that the believer would stake his life upon it a thousand times.

Does that describe your faith? I would stake my life upon it a thousand times.

And then the fifth and final point that came out of that synod of Dort was this, the perseverance of the saints, or some call it the preservation of the saints.

The Armenians taught. I was at a conference just a few years ago where I heard someone from a very

Armenian background say that you must be born again, not just at your conversion, but every single day.

And if you are not born again this morning, you are no longer a Christian. The Armenians believed with all of their heart that they could be the most sincere of Christians, that they could trust in Jesus Christ with all of their might, that they could believe on the gospel and put all of their hope in him, all of their eggs in his basket, and then have a bad day and die at the end of that day and go to hell.

This was particularly offensive to the reformers because they taught that God presided over the perseverance of the saints, that he was the preserver of the saints.

And just one last cycle through that Old Testament, through Christ, through the New Testament, Psalm 31, 23 says this,

Love the Lord, all you his saints. The Lord preserves the faithful, but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride.

The Lord preserves his faithful people. Jesus said, and these ought to be words of encouragement and comfort to us, truly, truly,

I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.

He does not come into judgment. That is future. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

There has been a permanent, eternal change from death to life, and there is no more judgment.

In Ephesians 1, verses 13 and 14, In him also, when you heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised

Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.

I was recently reading a news article that came out of Phoenix, Arizona, about a

Catholic priest who had served as a priest in his role for 20 years, and the archdiocese in Phoenix put out a release that there were going to need to be hundreds, if not thousands, of Catholics that would have to be re -baptized because what they found was this, that this

Catholic priest, when he would take most often babies, but some adults, he would say the words,

We baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. But the

Catholic archdiocese said, No, that is not the formula. The formula is this,

I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And because it is

Christ who supersedes and essentially ordains and is active in the sacraments, it's not a community endeavor, it's not the priest, it's the priest on behalf of Christ.

And because salvation is dependent upon baptism in Roman Catholic theology, there were hundreds, if not thousands of people who had been baptized over 20 years who could have no confidence in their salvation.

Now you and I would be the first to agree they should not have confidence to begin with, but they had no confidence in their salvation.

And so these formerly saved people were now unsaved and would all have to be tracked down and re -baptized.

The priest, he even gave a bit of a blurb to the news site and he said this, he said, it saddens me to learn that I have performed invalid baptisms throughout my ministry as a priest by regularly using an incorrect formula.

This is what happens when our salvation, when our perseverance, when our preservation as Christians is dependent upon a man or is dependent upon the church or is dependent upon anyone or everyone apart from God himself.

But this is not what happens when we entrust God with our salvation. John Piper says this, he says, if you go to bed tonight as a believer in Christ, why in all of the world do you think that you will wake up a

Christian tomorrow? Is it the fact that you've been a Christian for a long time? Is it your own willpower?

He answers no. He says, Christians should have steel strong confidence that they will remain

Christians until they die but it is precisely because, or sorry, precisely not because of our strength, our willpower, our determination to believe in Christ, rather it is because God himself has sealed us with his

Holy Spirit and the only way that a Christian can wake up without faith is if God withdraws the down payment of his

Holy Spirit and this he will never do. Dear saints, if you are in this room and you are

Christians, praise God you are saved not just today and not just into the past but into eternity future.

I saved, one of the best things that Christ says on this topic, I saved for the very end.

He says, my sheep hear my voice, we read that, I know them and they follow me and he says this,

I give them eternal life and they will never perish.

No one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all.

My father is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand.

I and the father are one. So this is what came out of the

Reformation in the 1600s and out of the Synod of Dort. Really it's nothing special except that it's a summary of what the

Bible already teaches and why do we repeat it today?

I'll end with a quote from Spurgeon. We have to quote him at least once. He says this,

There is no attribute of God more comforting to his children than the doctrine of divine sovereignty.

Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe troubles, they believe that sovereignty hath ordained all of their afflictions, that sovereignty overrules them and that sovereignty will sanctify him.

He writes, There is nothing for which the children of God ought more earnestly to contend than the dominion of their master over all creation, the kingship of God over all the works of his hands, the throne of God and his right to sit upon that throne.

If you'll humor me, I'll just quote him just a moment longer. He says, On the other hand, there is no doctrine more hated by worldlings, no truth of which they have made such a football as the great, stupendous, but yet most certain doctrine of the sovereignty of the infinite

Jehovah. Man will allow God to be everywhere except upon his throne, but it is

God upon that throne that we love to preach and it is

God upon that throne in whom we love to trust. And in light of these doctrines,

I don't know if I've put you to sleep or if I've enlivened you with it. I'm questioning that myself at the moment, but is that God in whom we praise?

Dear brother and sister, is that God in whom we cast ourselves upon entrusting our salvation to him?

It is that God in whom we fear, in whom we love, in whom we give our very all.