Common Objections to Calvinism Pt1

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

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This program is dedicated to helping you better understand the Word of God and the doctrines of grace.

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The Bible tells us, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

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Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to study along.

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

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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

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Today is August the 17th, 2020 and if you're following along in our daily Bible reading, you're going to be reading today from Acts chapter 18.

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And again, if you'd like to be a part of our daily Bible reading, my encouragement for you would be to go to sgfcjacks.org, download our daily Bible reading sheet.

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We're reading through the New Testament in 2020, one chapter a day, every day, every weekday and you get the weekends off as an opportunity to catch up on any misreading.

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And also we would encourage you, if you have an opportunity and you're in the Jacksville area, to come visit us at Sovereign Grace Family Church this coming Lord's Day morning.

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We have Sunday school at 930 and worship at 1030.

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Now the last couple weeks I have been talking about my own personal journey to Calvinism and how our church became a Calvinistic church.

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And this week what I want to do is I want to set aside some time to talk about the five most common objections to Calvinism.

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The five most common objections to Calvinism.

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So what I'm going to do is I am going to give you one per day.

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And this last week's Coffee with the Calvinists last week went a little long each day, some of them over 20 minutes, and I usually like to keep this around 10 to 15 minutes.

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So we'll see how I do this week.

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We'll see if this continues to be a trend.

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But we're going to look at today the objection of Calvinism kills evangelism.

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I don't know if you've ever heard someone say that.

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I know that I have heard that argument consistently over the years.

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People will say, well if God predestines those whom he wants and he passes over those whom he doesn't, then it stands to reason that my efforts in evangelism are really going to be without any real purpose.

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And this particular argument leads to an extreme called hyper-Calvinism.

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There are those who are known as hyper-Calvinists who do not believe that we are required to be active in evangelism, and they don't preach on evangelism, they don't teach on evangelism, they don't encourage evangelism.

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And I'll give you an example of how this happened in my own life.

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There was a time when our church was doing an evangelism booth at the fair.

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We do that every year, we've done that every year for the past several years at the Northeast Florida Fair in Callahan, Florida.

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And as I was at the fair, a gentleman came up to me and he said, you're reformed or you're Calvinistic.

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He could tell by the name, Sovereign Grace Family Church.

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He could tell that we were Calvinists.

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And I said, yes sir, we are Calvinists.

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And he said, well if you're Calvinists, then you shouldn't be doing this.

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And I said, shouldn't be doing what? And he said, well you shouldn't be out here trying to convince people to believe God's going to save who he is going to save.

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And he's going to do that with or without your participation.

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And I said, well sir, I am going to go ahead and disagree with you on several points.

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But the first most obvious point is that you are denying a command from Almighty God.

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If all I had was Matthew 28, which is the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, to go and make disciples, if that was the only command I had, and I didn't have any other explanation, that would be enough.

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Because as a believer in Jesus Christ, Jesus is the captain of my soul.

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He is the commander of my life.

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And when the commander of my life puts a requirement upon me, I don't have to understand it.

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I have to do it.

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I don't have the option to simply say, well God's going to save who he's going to save, so I'm not going to do any participation in evangelism.

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So right away, if someone says, why do you evangelize if you believe in the sovereignty of God? I would say, well the first reason, right out of the gate, is I am commanded to.

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I am given that command by my commander in chief, Jesus Christ, the captain of my soul.

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And therefore, I don't really have the option, if I believe that he is the ruler, the king, the sovereign of my soul, I don't have the option to say no.

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But I want to take a step further, because the insidious part of this question, the insidious assumption behind this question, is that because God has predestined some to life, that my evangelistic efforts serve no purpose.

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And I would say that is also untrue.

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Because the Bible says that there is required for men to be saved, to hear the word that they may believe the word.

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If you have your Bible, you can turn with me to Romans chapter 10, and if you go to Romans chapter 10, you will see there a statement made by the Apostle Paul.

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And as I turn, give me just a moment.

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He says, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

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Some people would say that's anti-Calvinistic, but I would say it's not, because we would believe that the only persons who do call on the name of the Lord are those who the Lord has given the ability.

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No one would call upon the name of the Lord in genuine faith, apart from the giving of new life.

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We talked about that in our discussion a few weeks ago about God giving the gift of regeneration.

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But he goes on to say this, verse 14, how then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news? So this passage asks an important question, how can they believe if they've never heard? And the assumption of the Hyper-Calvinist, I think, is that God will ensure that they do hear.

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And I would agree with that, at least in the idea that God is going to ensure that his elect hear the gospel, I would say that that's true, but that does not alleviate me from my participation in evangelism.

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In fact, that inspires me towards participation in evangelism.

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Because think about it, if I believe that God has given to some men the gift of regeneration and hearing the word of God is when that regenerating heart is going to come alive and they're going to believe, then that's all the more reason to go and share the gospel.

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Because if I didn't believe that God was active in the salvation of a heart, then I would think it was all up to me.

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And if I thought that it was all up to me, that would be entirely oppressive on my soul, for me to think for a second that the hearts of men rest in my ability to be convincing.

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If I believe that it rested in me, and this is a lot of people I think are afraid to be evangelistic because they're afraid that somehow they're going to mess up, I think they're afraid somehow they're not going to be able to answer the question or they're somehow going to be able to overcome an objection and somehow they're going to be a hindrance to a person coming to the gospel.

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Nothing could be further from the truth.

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You really can't be the cause of someone's failure in that respect because ultimately it's not your ability to win them that is going to save them, it's God opening up their heart to believe.

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And as long as you are proclaiming the truth, God is going to use that however he sees fit.

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To the person he is saving, that truth is going to be life-giving, it's like life-giving water that they're going to drink and it's going to change them.

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To the person who is not saved and not going to be saved for whatever reason, they are going to reject that truth.

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I remember years ago, an Armenian preacher, he said, you give me five minutes with anybody and I can talk them into believing in Jesus.

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And I remember thinking, at the time I wasn't a Calvinist, at the time I was still in seminary, this was before I became a Calvinist, and I remember thinking, wow, what arrogance that a person could say, give me five minutes with anybody and I can talk them into believing in Jesus.

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Because what this guy had, this guy had Jesus as a car sales pitch.

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He looked at Jesus as a commodity that he could convince someone to purchase, to believe in him.

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And again, his purchase price was really easy, just bow your head and repeat after me.

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Nothing about discipleship, nothing about repentance, nothing about taking up your cross.

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And that's again what made him so, if you want to say successful, because his evangelism technique was not a biblical evangelism technique.

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And his understanding of what evangelism is was not a biblical understanding.

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And therein lies the real heart of this issue.

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You see, the Armenian would say Calvinism kills evangelism because Calvinism does kill Armenian evangelism.

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Because Armenian evangelism is not about preaching the truth, knowing that God is going to open the heart to believe the truth.

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But Armenian evangelism is often about manipulating someone to believe just enough so that we can say this person has gotten his heavenly ticket punched.

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Now again, I know I'm painting with a broad brush, somebody may take offense to that and say I'm being ugly.

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I'm not trying to be ugly, I'm just trying to make this point.

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I have seen what Armenian evangelism has become in the churches.

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And when we have relegated evangelism to bow your heads, close your eyes, don't look around because it would be a shame if anybody saw you following Jesus.

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Close your eyes, bow your head, don't look around.

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And if you want to trust in Jesus, you slip your hand up very quickly and I see that hand.

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And I see that hand.

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I've been here, I've been there, I've been in situations where I've seen past.

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I saw that done at a funeral once.

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And you know what I did? I opened my eyes and looked around.

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He's not my daddy.

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You know, if he tells me to close my eyes and not look around, I don't have to listen to him.

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And I looked around and you know, there weren't no hands going up.

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But he kept saying, I see that hand.

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I see that hand.

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Because he wanted to inspire the audience to believe he was being successful.

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So I will say this, Calvinism does kill Arminian evangelism because Arminian evangelism is often not biblical evangelism.

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Biblical evangelism is we preach the gospel and we trust God with the results.

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We preach the gospel, we preach the truth, and we trust that God is going to use that for his glory.

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If someone hears it and believes it, we don't say, wow, look how good of an evangelist I am.

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We say, wow, look how good of a God who saved that soul.

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If somebody hears it and they don't believe it, we say, I'm not surprised that he didn't believe it because he's still dead in his trespasses and sins.

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But I'm going to pray for that man because God may still yet open his heart to believe.

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It may not have been this time, but God may still open his heart to believe.

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And that's how I'm going to end today.

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Remember this, even though Arminians deny predestination, even though Arminians deny election, everybody prays like a Calvinist.

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Because before the Arminian goes to do evangelism, he often says, let's pray for the people we're going to meet.

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And he prays like this, God open their heart to believe.

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Well guess what? If the Arminian gospel, if their message about free will and God's prescient grace or prevenient grace and all those things, if those things are true, then God's already done all that he's going to do.

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It's up to the person.

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But you see, when they pray, God open their heart, make their heart pliable, make their heart willing to receive.

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They're praying like a Calvinist.

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Oh, and one last thing.

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When somebody tells you Calvinism kills evangelism, remember this, some of the greatest evangelists in history have been Calvinistic.

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Some of the greatest missionaries in history have been Calvinists.

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Think about George Whitefield, preached the gospel to thousands, was instrumental in the great awakening, and yet George Whitefield was a Calvinist.

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Calvinism does not kill evangelism, Calvinism inspires evangelism because it reminds us that God does have those he's going to save in every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

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And it is our job to go to those people and give them the good news that they might be able to believe by the power of the Holy Spirit of God.

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Well that was our episode today of Coffee with a Calvinist.

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I hope this has been an encouragement to you.

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Again, I thank you for listening and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

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Tomorrow we're going to look at the second most common objection to Calvinism and I hope that you are with us.

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May God bless you.

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I'm Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.

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

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Keep in mind, we have a new lesson available every weekday morning at 6.30am on YouTube and Facebook.

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If you enjoyed this lesson, please take a moment to respond by hitting the like button, leaving a comment, and subscribing to the channel.

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On behalf of Pastor Foskey, thank you for listening.

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May God bless you.