Common Objections to Calvinism Pt4

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Here's your host with today's lesson, Pastor Keith Foskey.

And welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

Today is August the 20th, 2020.

If you're following along in our daily Bible reading, you're going to be reading Acts chapter 21.

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So we are in part four of Common Objections to Calvinism.

We've already looked at the question of evangelism, if God is sovereign, why do we evangelize? The question of free will.

We've looked at the question of doesn't God want to save everyone? And today's episode is going to piggyback off that because today's episode is going to follow up with, well, if God doesn't want to save everyone, doesn't that make him evil? And if you remember on Tuesday, if you're a regular listener, on Tuesday we listened to, we interacted with Dr.

J.

Vernon McGee.

And Dr.

McGee made it clear that his position is that if you, if God is not planning to save, if not desiring to save everyone, then that would make him a monster and ultimately that that would make him evil.

And I've heard this many different ways in many different contexts.

People will say that if God predestines the way that Calvinists say, then that would make him a monster.

If original sin is true and that people are born unable to come to God unless God first does something and God doesn't do that thing for everyone equally, then God is a moral monster.

And oftentimes it's, people aren't willing to maybe say it just that way.

Sometimes they just say, well, God's just not fair.

If God doesn't give everyone equal opportunity to come to him, then that's not fair.

But the immediate response to that is, well, what about the people who never hear? And oftentimes there's some gymnastics that happen at that point because people start jumping around.

Well, if they don't hear, maybe they have another way.

Maybe they're only responsible for what they have heard.

And therefore maybe there's another option for them to be saved.

Maybe they can be saved by being good or something like that.

But oftentimes that's where the wheels fall off the cart for people.

Because to say that all men have an equal opportunity to hear the gospel, when I know this, as a person who grew up in the United States, I had many thousands of times over, did I hear a presentation of the gospel when my counterpart in many other areas of the world never have had the opportunity.

There are people in the world right now who've never heard the gospel.

And so we have to consider that right away where you were born, which is obviously chosen by God.

God is one who chooses where you're born.

He chooses your parents, chooses who you're born to.

All of those things are chosen by God.

And if all of those things are chosen by God, and that's a part of what he uses to draw you to himself, then that in itself is an aspect of his predestining grace.

I am who I am because of all of the things that God has decreed to be a part of my life.

Even things that were awful in my life that I wished at the time had not happened, all of those things have functioned to bring me to where I am today.

So the concept that God is trying to save everybody the same, and if he isn't trying to save everybody the same, then he's evil, right away I think that falls apart because you can simply mirror that back and say, okay, Mr.

Arminian or Mrs.

Arminian, you believe God's trying to save everybody the same way.

Do you think that there has been equal opportunity between your son who is growing up in your house, who gets to hear the gospel from you, who gets to hear the gospel church, and the child of a Chinese person in communist China right now who cannot hear the gospel for the sake of the state making it almost impossible unless he is a part of an underground church.

Many children in China never hear the gospel because the state does not want them to hear the gospel.

And so you're saying that there's equality there? It's foolish to think that way.

So everybody doesn't have the equal opportunity.

That right away, that goes out the window.

But then we ask the question, well, does that make God evil? If everybody doesn't have equal opportunity, does that make God an evil God? And I don't remember who it was, but years and years ago, I heard an argument from a non-Calvinist on this issue.

And I couldn't find the audio file to pull up or else we would have listened to the audio file.

But he made this argument.

And I wanna share it with you because on first listen, you might think, well, that's a pretty good argument because he was arguing that if God doesn't put out the same amount of effort to save everyone, if God doesn't try to save everyone the same, then God is a monster.

This is the argument that he made.

He said, imagine you have three boys who go into a man's property and there's posted signs that say no trespassing.

And the three boys go into the man's property anyway, and they all see that he has a lake and the lake is open, no one's around.

So they're going to swim in his lake, even though there are signs that say no trespassing.

And so all three boys go into the lake and begin to swim.

And as the day goes on and they all get tired, they realize they have drifted far away from the bank and now they are all starting to drown.

And all three boys are drowning.

And the farmer, the man who owns the property comes and he sees them drowning.

And he says, I'm only gonna save one of you because you're all trespassers, but I'm good and I'm gonna save one of you.

And he throws a life ring and he saves one of the boys and the other two drown.

And this was the argument from this other preacher.

He said, see, we wouldn't say that's a good farmer.

We would say that that man is evil because he let those other two boys drown.

And if he was a good man, he would have saved all three of them.

Therefore, and this is where the argument goes, therefore, if God were good, he would throw a life ring to everyone and everyone would have the opportunity to grab that life ring and be saved.

So I wanna stop right here and just say, on its face, sounds like a reasonable argument.

But when you investigate just a little bit, you realize that this is in no way an analogy for God and for us.

Because in this analogy, the three boys, the three scamps, the three little young boys who ignored the no trespassing signs, they're supposed to be simulating man who is a sinner against God's holy and divine commandments.

And so we are, right off the bat, you realize that the boys don't really represent what man is.

Man is a sinner and man is a wretched sinner.

You know, amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

You think those three boys who simply ignored a no trespassing sign really qualify as analogs to the evil heart of men? And the willingness and wretchedness of, willingness of men to be wretched to one another? That's, first of all, so that analog breaks down.

And secondly, the analog of the farmer and the life ring, the farmer throwing out the life ring, giving the boys, only one of them an opportunity to be saved, he doesn't throw a life ring to the other two.

This, again, makes God very weak as the one who's tossing out a life ring, hoping the boy will grab it, but holding it back from the other two, and they're desperately wanting to grab it, but he's not offering it to them.

Again, the whole thing falls apart because we do not desire God.

The Bible says no one seeks for God, that's Romans chapter three, and it says that our desire is for sin, and we love darkness, we hate the light, and so there is no comparison.

This analogy is bad, it's just B-A-D, bad, it's no good.

But I do have an analogy, and I credit Dr.

White again for years ago, hearing him talk about this, and in fact, it may have been on the dividing line that I heard the original argument of the person who gave that story about the three boys and the swimming and drowning.

But here is what I consider to be a much better representation of how we ought to understand God making a choice.

Imagine a king who goes away on a journey and leaves his kingdom under the authority of his subjects, and he says, okay, here's what I want.

I want you to take care of the kingdom, I want you to guard the king's goods, I want you to protect the king's castle, I want you to take dominion over the king's realm, and I want you to do what's right, and when I return, there will be blessing.

So the king goes away.

While the king is away, the subjects destroy the kingdom.

They kill the king's son, they destroy the king's goods, and they vandalize the king's palace.

When the king returns and sees what has happened, and the king says, everyone in this kingdom has participated in treason.

Everyone in this kingdom has participated in destroying what I love, my kingdom, that which represents my rule.

And therefore, I have the right to destroy every single one of these subjects, but I am not going to do that.

I am going to choose to be gracious to some of them, and he sends his soldiers in to take those whom he chooses out before he levels destruction upon his enemies.

Now, right away, you can see that's a much different scenario than a farmer and three young, innocent boys.

That it doesn't even compare, and it shouldn't compare, because it's two vastly different stories, but it's two different ways of looking at God.

Is God a mean, is God a mean man who owns a piece of property, who lets little boys drown because they violated his no trespassing sign? And they're basically innocent, they just did this one little thing, and God's gonna be this mean farmer who's mean to these boys.

No, that's not a picture of God.

Picture of God is a king who sees his kingdom has been destroyed, and yet he is still so good that he will not allow all of those who have destroyed his kingdom, all of those who have sinned against him to be punished.

He chooses to save some because he is good.

And see, that's the thing.

If you're a Christian, God chose to save you, and you didn't deserve it.

God chose to save you, and you deserved his wrath.

You deserve to be among those who go to hell, but God plucked you out, not because of any good that you had done, but because he is good and is being good toward you.

You see, the idea, the question of does election make God evil? No, it shows he is good because he doesn't have to save anyone, but he chooses to save.

And if you are saved, if you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, it's because God chose to save you, and you should be thankful that he chose you because he didn't have to.

So again, that is my answer to the question, does election and predestination make God evil? The answer is absolutely not.

Demonstrates his gracious goodness.

So I hope that this has been helpful for you today, and this is the fourth in a series on common objections to Calvinism.

And I do pray and hope that these daily lessons are reaching you well, and they're helping you to understand better the doctrines of grace.

Again, I wanna thank you for listening to Coffee with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.

Thank you for joining in for today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.

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