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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.
Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.
Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Whack, I just hit the microphone. We are sitting in our studios today at Bethlehem Bible Church. It's pouring rain outside again. You can tell I tape a lot of shows on pouring days.
Today, we want to talk again about biblical topics, provocative topics, always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. And today we're going to talk about Calvinism again because I'm teaching the class at Bethlehem Bible Church, which is all online, the theology, history and theology of Calvinism, the sovereignty of God over everything, including heaven and hell.
Now, before we get into today's quiz, I'd like to say that on November 5th, we'll have Rick Phillips here doing a conference. The 5th, November 5th, Friday night is going to be the Masculine Mandate, biblical masculinity.
And that will be for men only that Friday night. He's got a book out called Masculine Mandate. He is James Boyce's, trained under Boyce and was his associate before he went and became the senior minister of second press in Greenville.
And so Saturday, the next day will be open to everyone. We're going to talk about attacks on six day creation, attacks on the substitute atonement and attacks on men and women's roles. And so that will be Bethlehem Bible Church fall conference, more at www .bbcchurch .org.
So today quiz, actually it'd be our fourth quiz if you were in the class. And the quiz just gives us a good way to think about the topic from a bird's eye view, the proverbial bird's eye view. 16 questions plus a bonus, plus a bonus question.
I better write that down. Otherwise I'm going to forget. And you say, I don't like John Calvin. I don't like Calvinism. Calvin was a fool. Actually, I got an email the other day. Matter of fact, let's just see if I can pull that email up here on my phone.
And that email was not quite happy with me regarding my show on Calvinism. That's okay. I'm glad you're listening, like I said before, for people that don't agree with me. But listen, I'm happy. And this person left his full name and seemed respectful enough.
It says at the very end, Calvin was wrong on everything. He couldn't figure God out and it drove him crazy. So he figured out a way, which is called five-point Calvinism. Well, on a number of levels, even though the earlier parts of the email seem more lucid than that part, Calvin wasn't wrong on everything.
How about Jesus is God? Would the writer Bob disagree with that? The literal resurrection, substitutionary atonement. Just listen to the rain in the background. That is not a special effect. That is not white noise.
That is not rain, forest, white noise in the background to help me lull you to a lullaby of sleep. No, that is rain. It is poor rain. It's raining cats and dogs. So Calvin was wrong on everything. So I think the context is he was wrong on soteriology, that is salvation.
He couldn't figure God out. Well, to some degree, that's a correct statement because nobody can figure God out as a creature, as a fallen creature, as a finite creature, as a creature whose mind is tainted by sin.
No human can figure God out. God has to reveal himself to human beings. And anything you know about God is because God, by his graciousness, by his mercy, by his loving kindness, has decided to tell us both in nature and more specifically in the Bible, in Jesus's words while he was on earth and now as we have them inscripturated in the New Testament.
And so if you know anything about God, it's because God gave it to you. You never figured anything out because how can a sinful person figure anything out except he'd come up with sinful things. He'd come up with the gods that we have today, whether it's money, whether it's the gods found in the Bible, Baal and those things, nobody can figure God out.
He couldn't figure God out and it drove him crazy. Well, Bob has never read Calvin. I bet you, Bob, you have not read Calvin's Institutes. And you will see that there's a lucidity to Calvin. He doesn't act like an insane person or he wasn't driven crazy.
You'll see no kind of angst and even some kind of William Cooper-like responses. Society didn't think he was crazy. The theologians didn't think he was crazy. Even the Catholics didn't think he was crazy.
They disagreed with him vehemently, but no one accused Calvin of somehow being crazy. And he figured out a way, which is called five-point Calvinism. And so here again, we have a problem because Calvin was long dead by the time the five points of Calvinism, a rebuttal to the remonstrance, before it came out.
And so John Calvin didn't come up with the five points of Calvinism. And we just use the word Calvin as a Calvinism, as a term that is for theological shorthand purposes. If you don't ever want to use Calvinism, fine.
I rarely use it when I'm preaching just because I don't want to confuse people. It talks about the sovereignty of God over not just weather, not just over eye color, not just over when you were born, to whom you were born, et cetera, but who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.
And it's inclusive. He rules over every atom and God is sovereign. And God sovereignly initiates salvation. It is not man, it is not a cooperation. God is the initiator. God is the author. God is the starter.
God is the one who causes people to be born again, 1 Peter chapter one. So today we're going to have a quiz on Calvinism that will continue, and this is underneath the title of Unconditional Election in general, but there's a few other little humdingers that are put out there.
Question one, all men are created equal. All men are created equal. And the answer is, no, they're not created equal. Now, all men are created as image bearers of God. That is true. And in that sense, there is equality.
But we are not all created equal. We don't have the same IQ. We don't have the same parents. Some are born to rich families. Some are born to poor. Some have 100 for an IQ. Some have 200 for an IQ. There's all kinds of issues with this.
And so just because you hear it in our constitutional kind of writings, I don't even know where it's from. That shows you how stupid I am. Some kind of federalist papers. I don't know. It sounds like I know, but I don't know.
I'll admit it. But all men are not created equal. Number two, name three things, or entities, that God chooses. God chooses not just people, although that's one. So out of the three things, you've got people, you've got the nation Israel, and you've got angels.
So he chooses people individually. He chooses nations. That is to say, he chose a nation, Israel. And he chooses angels. There are elect angels and there are non-elect angels. There's an elect nation and non-elect nations.
And there is an elect people and there are non-elect people. And so God chooses. And sometimes it's easier when you think about God choosing specific people to go to heaven, passing over others. It's easier when you think about angels because you say to yourself, the angels certainly that fell got what they deserved.
And God was not unjust for not giving them a plan of redemption. Is God to be faulted for these angels that of their own volition have fallen and have no way to be redeemed? That God is not unjust if he saves some sinners and doesn't save other sinners.
Salvation is a gift and it's not deserved. It's not earned. And if you think God is obligated to give grace, then you have no idea what grace really is. God is under no obligation to give grace. That is a fact.
When you think about the nation of Israel, it also helps because God didn't choose Israel because he saw they were so warm and cuddly and full of love and love to obey. Deuteronomy 7 tells us why God, at least to some degree, chose Israel.
Deuteronomy 7, for you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession out of all the peoples who were on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples for you were the fewest of all peoples.
But because the Lord loved you, why did the Lord choose Israel? Because he loved Israel. That's why. And kept the oath which he swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
Know therefore that the Lord your God, Yahweh, he is God, the faithful God, who keeps his covenant and his lovingkindness to a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his commandments, but repays those who hate him to their faces, to destroy them.
He will not delay with them who hates him. He will repay him to his face. Therefore, you shall keep his commandment and the statutes and the judgments which I am commanding you today to do them. God chooses nations.
He didn't owe Israel anything, but he loved her and chose her. He doesn't owe the other nations the same gift. If you give a gift to one person, you don't have to give a gift to every other person. God by nature is a God who chooses and his sovereignty rules all, rules over all, Psalm 103.
So what we have is a God who elects nations, a God who elects angels, and a God who elects individual people. Romans 9 is very clear on that. So how are you doing so far? We're taking a quiz on Calvinism.
Question number three, specifically, describe unconditional election. Describe unconditional election. Well, it's interesting as we look at question number four, describe conditional election. What is the difference between election that is conditioned upon something and election that's not conditioned upon anything?
You have to believe in election if you read your Bible because you'll see the word to predestine. You'll see the word to elect. You'll see the elect there. You'll see the elect lady in Johannine writings.
It shouldn't surprise us that there is foreordination and predetermination. That shouldn't surprise us. But when people hear the words unconditional election, they think of some kind of Mohammedan fate, lack of a personal touch of God, and they think that it is similar to the sounds of fingernails scratching the chalkboard.
They don't like it. They don't want you to talk about it. They don't want to hear about God foreordaining everything after the counsel of His will, Ephesians chapter one, verse 11. They don't want to know that God is the sovereign that He is.
They have a problem with it, and we all would have a problem with it left to ourselves, yet when God changes our hearts and we see the Scriptures, we respond differently. There's a great little book that you should read.
It's called The Five Points of Calvinism by Edwin Palmer, Edwin Palmer. And this little book by Baker Books is an excellent, easy-to-read and easy-to-comprehend book on what the Bible teaches about Calvinism.
And whether you're Calvinistic or not, this would be an important book for you to read so you don't run into the ignorant kind of condemnations of Calvinism, calling five point to Calvinism, high Calvinism, hyper-Calvinism, et cetera.
Palmer says, "'God never bases His choice on what man thinks, says, does, or is. We do not know what God bases His choice on, but it is not on anything that is in man. He does not see something good in a particular man, something that He does that makes God choose him.'".
So we don't know always, we don't know the reasons why God chooses, because it would give Him the most glory, because He loved us. There are some reasons we know, but ultimately we don't know why we were chosen and other people were not chosen.
We just know that the answer, where the answer doesn't lie, and the answer doesn't lie within man at all. We do not know what God bases His choice on, but it is not on anything that is in man. And so we learned from last time, if man is so totally depraved, there can't be anything good in man anyway.
And so God would look down the course of time and not see a foreseen faith. He would see rejection, blasphemy, hard-heartedness, dead in trespasses and sins, total inability, total corruption, a pollution, a vileness, a hatred, a rebellion.
He would never see someone saying, hmm, based on the evidence that I have, I'll use my rational cognition and my island of righteousness called the will, and I decide for God. No, He will follow His nature, and His nature is corrupt, and therefore He would never choose God.
So unconditional election is God choosing based on His own free will, His own choice, who would go to heaven and who would not. No one deserves it. Not one person deserves it, and so it is right and kind and good for God to choose some.
He could have chosen none, He could have chosen all, but He chose some. And Palmer says, isn't that wonderful? Suppose that God's election to heaven was based on something that we had to be or think or do.
Who then would ever be saved? What man can stand before God and say that he has ever done one thing for a single moment that was really good in the deepest sense of the term? We are all dead in our trespasses and sins, Ephesians 2.
There is none that does good, not one, Romans 3. If God's election were based on a single good thing, that is conditional election, that is to be found in us, then no one would be elected. Then none would go to heaven, all would go to hell for no one is good.
So thank God for His unconditional election. If you are going to heaven, it is because before time God decided in the councils of the Trinity, Titus 1, to choose you, not because you were holy, but in order that you would be, Ephesians 1, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we would be holy.
If He chose us because we were holy, therefore grace wouldn't be grace because works would be added to it. And so when you want to describe unconditional election, you need to describe it from God's point of view as God is the sovereign, God is the one who decides and chooses based on His will, His plan, His initiation, it's all about God.
And that's the difference between Calvinism and Arminianism. This starts and ends with God, the godness of God, as one commentator said. And Arminianism starts from man's perspective. And man has the final say, or man cooperates with, or man responds to, and therefore that is the saving part.
Of course man responds to the saving grace of God, but that's as a response, that's not the cause. Your faith is not the cause of your salvation. Your faith is the result of your salvation, and never forget it.
Let me say that again. Your faith is the result of your salvation, not the cause of it. It doesn't make the wheels spin, God's wheels spin to say, yes, okay, now I have to save you because you believed.
So my name's Mike Ebenroth, we're on No Compromise Radio Ministry, and it is raining outside so hard that you can hear it in the background, turn up your radio. That sounds like that's some cool white noise app on my iPhone, but it is not.
I wonder if this will keep rain, 39 days to go, wouldn't that be a disaster? During the flood, by the way, the estimates were eight feet a day the water would go up, eight feet a day. What a way to go.
Now, the next question, question five on our Unconditional Election quiz. With problem passages, you know what, I don't like this one, I don't wanna do that. Let's do, let's change it. Why is it important to understand Unconditional Election?
Why is it important to understand Unconditional Election? Well, Lorraine Bettner would say on page 84 and 85 of his book, I have his book someplace here, and I know the page numbers, but I can't remember the exact quote.
Because if you don't understand Unconditional Election and the free election of God, and His free sovereign choice of people and nations and angels, then you don't understand God, sin, redemption, or anything else.
It's just the nature of God. What makes God, God? He chooses, He chooses unconditionally. And by the way, if you were God, you'd choose too. This is, we are image bearers, we like to choose. One of the main reasons why we need to understand Unconditional Election is because if you are a Christian, God chose you, not because of you, but in spite of you, and that should elicit praise.
You should be the most praise-oriented people in the world. Listen to what Palmer said, if you believe that Christ died for your sins and that you, by partial assistance of the Holy Spirit, came to this assurance, Arminianism, you will be extremely grateful to God.
But suppose in addition to being grateful to Christ for dying on the cross for you, you really realize that you never, would never have loved Jesus unless He first loved you, that you would never have chosen Him unless He had first chosen you, and by the Holy Spirit had given you your faith in Him, then you would love Him all the more.
Your humility would be greater because you know that you are not even good enough to see a good thing when it is in front of you. Your thanks would be greater for you have more for which to be thankful.
Your determination to live a better life would be greater because you have more for which to be thankful. How good, Palmer says, God is not only to forgive us our sins, but also to give us faith in Christ so that we can have the forgiveness of sins.
How good God is. If you're a Christian, Unconditional Election is meant to elicit praise. That's exactly right. It's not meant to elicit gnashing your teeth, fighting, division. Let's not talk about it until Wednesday night private studies.
You don't praise God like you should. You don't praise God like the Apostle Paul unless you praise God for His Unconditional Election. How about Ephesians chapter one? One particular sentence, which is verses three to 14, one sentence in the Greek, three to 14 are many sentences in the English language, but one, three to 14 all has one theme and that is blessings to God.
He didn't say to the churches at Ephesus and the other circular churches there, churches that would get the letter, he doesn't say, here's how you praise God, but that's basically what it is. He's going to praise God and they will listen.
They will watch as it were, and they will understand if this is how to praise God from Paul's perspective, this is apostolic praise, then we need to learn from that apostolic praise. And so does he praise God first for the Holy Spirit's work?
We thank you, Holy Spirit. Does he praise God first for the Son's great death? And it is a great death and I will not deny that. What does he praise God for first in this Trinitarian kind of praise? Every section ending with something close to the praise of the glory of His grace.
How does he praise God? Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. He has blessed us. We have tons of blessings.
We have all the blessings. And what's the first blessing that Paul praises God for? Just as He, talking about the Father, chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.
Now get these words. In love, He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself according to the kind intention of His will to the praise of the glory of His grace which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
You don't praise God unless you praise Him for election. And if you have a conditional election, if you have a foreseen faith kind of election, God sees something in you. God sees something that you do.
God sees something that you think. And therefore He says, yeah, He's a good boy. He's a boy that, a girl that believed in me. Therefore I choose Him. And it's a post-destination. It's destiny revealed versus pre-destiny versus destiny ahead of time, before time.
Then if you understand God chose you and you didn't deserve to be chosen and you think, you know, out of a hundred kids in an adoption room in Zimbabwe, my parents picked me and didn't pick the other 99.
They chose me. I mean, if you have kids that are blood kids from your own genes, from you and your wife, you've got to love the kids. And you didn't have to pick them. God picked them for you. But if you go pick an adopted kid, when that kid gets older and he says, I could have grown up in some third world country and I grew up learning the Bible and I grew up in this home with love.
I had no parents there and now I have parents. You'd be happy. You'd praise your parents. You'd take care of them and not dump them into the rest home first opportunity you got. And so same thing here, except to a much greater scale.
The praise that you have for God will go up the more you see the unconditional nature of election. Election was not conditioned upon man. It is conditioned upon the grace of God and his eternal counsels, his eternal decree, his eternal covenant, and it's all found in God.
We don't know all the reasons. We just know that the reason's not found in us. So we can at least limit that. We can say, you know, out of all the different reasons why God would choose people, let's not look at the person.
The people have nothing to do with it. And whether they're Jonathan Edwards or Mary Schleser, it's not because of who they were. It's not even because of who they were going to be. It was because God was pleased to choose them.
It is important to understand this doctrine because if you don't get it, you don't get God, you don't get sin, you don't get depravity, you don't get sovereignty of God, you don't get redemption, you don't get anything.
You get a God that has to do what you say and you get some gentleman Jesus with some feathered hair knocking at the door of people's hearts and doesn't really want to intrude too much because puppets, robots, et cetera.
God is the active one in salvation. And he has to be if men and women are totally depraved and unable to respond to God and save themselves. Why is it important to understand election? Because everything hinges on the nature of God.
And election helps us understand the nature of God revealed. Well, today we're looking at an unconditional election quiz and we're going to have to name this, guess what? Unconditional election quiz part one because part two will be next time.
And if you remember, nocompromiseradio .com, what we do is every day of the week it's a little something different. So part two won't be tomorrow. Part two will be next week. Same bat time, same bat channel.
760 WVNE and you can go to wvne .net. For us, it's nocompromiseradio, info at nocompromiseradio .com. Always biblical, always provocative.
No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.
Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE its staff or management.