Sovereignty And Responsibility (Part 1)

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. My name is

Mike Abendroth, and it is still a little, can't say hungover, because I'm not hungover,

I don't drink, but I feel like I'm hungover. I haven't been hungover for,

I don't know, 27 years or something like that, but I think this was the feeling. So, finally broke down, went to the doctor, got some antibiotics and an inhaler, and that didn't really work, and so I went back, and so now

I'm on steroids. So, my biking's a lot better, recovery time's faster, but I think

I would fail the drug test for steroids. Anyway, mentally, I think I'm about okay.

So, you know, it's very bad taste, bad preacher etiquette to get up and say before you preach, you know,

I'm really sick. And so, when I teach men preaching class at Southern Seminary and here at the church,

Bethlehem Bible Church, I tell them, don't get up and say you're sick.

People will know, they'll know you're sick by the way you act and talk, and if you are their under shepherd, they know you and you know them.

When I talk to somebody, I can pretty much tell if they're sick or not. And basically what you're saying is, if this sermon bombs,

I have an excuse. So, just preach away, and the good news, with the word of God performing its work in those who believe,

Paul wrote to the Thessalonican Church, it does its work in spite of the messenger, not because of the messenger.

And so, for that, I'm very thankful. If you'd like to go to Israel with us,

No Compromise Radio, Bethlehem Bible Church, Amal Bible Church, nine -day tour, February 17th through the 25th, next year, 2015, three -day

Jordan extension where you go over to Moab, Petra, Mount Nebo. That was probably one of the neatest things

I did years ago when I went to Petra, and we went over to Mount Nebo after that.

And you were thinking, you know, Petra's cool and Indiana Jones and what's gonna happen in Petra in the future.

And when I got to Mount Nebo and then thought, okay, where did God bury Moses? And how many people have thought of that very thing?

How many people have searched for the bones of Moses to have some trinkets, some amulets, some iconoclastic, you know, relics?

And so, I didn't really dig. But looking down at the promised land from Mount Nebo is pretty amazing.

Made it that far, Moses did, and that's as far as he made it. So you can go with us, I think through October is the registration, and then the deadline's at the end of October.

I think something like that. So you can go to the website, nocompromisedradio .com, and there should be a link there for Israel.

I think it's in the top middle, just under the donate button. Just kidding, just kidding.

So anyway, if you'd like to email us, it is info at nocompromisedradio .com. Get quite a few good emails, or you can write me, mike at nocompromisedradio .com.

Vance Havner was an old preacher, and he was pithy and he had a way with words.

And I like a lot of what Vance Havner says. And so I just want you to know on No Compromised Radio, while we firmly believe in the five solas, while we endorse doctrines of grace, while we use

Calvinism as a shorthand theological term, it's not like I only love

Calvinists. There are Arminians that really have contributed through their writings and through their preachings.

And he has this, he has several books, and it says here in this book,

Vance Havner, Pepper and Salt. It doesn't say and, it says and.

Pepper and Salt. And this book was published with some of his pithy saints.

And he says some kind of moralistic things, at the rate America is decaying morally, we shall have to change our national symbol from an eagle to a vulture.

That's pretty good. I mean, I know moralistic. But then he has other things like this.

Most church members live so far below the standard, you'd have to backslide to be in fellowship.

Oh man. The temple of truth has never suffered so much from woodpeckers on the outside as from termites within.

Interesting. The church was meant to be a soloist, not an accompanist. This is a bomb.

And we have to stop this Vance Havner thing. I told you every Arminian's like this.

All right, what I'd like to talk about today for a little bit is sovereignty and responsibility. I know,

I know, I know. We've talked about this topic a lot at No Compromise Radio, but it so often comes up.

People are always trying to figure out sovereignty and human responsibility. Where does human responsibility begin?

Where does sovereignty end? Sovereignty never ends, right? And if you have to pick one, which one takes priority?

And I found some old notes. Now years ago, I was in a discussion with someone about this and they said, well,

I don't believe what you teach about sovereignty. I, they said, believe in free will because otherwise we would be robots.

They weren't from England or they would have said robots. And so the person was leader and influential.

And so I said, well, let me put some stuff together to try to show you what I believe.

And so I created this document back in the day. Yeah, I see it here, although I can't find it on my computer.

C forward backslash colon backslash data backslash humanres .doc.

So it was a document and I put it together to give to this person to say, this is how you frame it.

Because if you don't think through the issues, then you don't think through the

Bible. It's hard to come up with the right thinking on this topic because you'll just throw things out.

You'll just default to certain salt and pepper. You will not understand it properly.

And so it takes more than a word. It takes more than one single verse.

It takes more than pop culture, Christianity, evangelicalism, you know, nomenclature.

I don't know why I like that word, nomen, nombre. What is your nombre? And so it takes more.

That's why systematic theology is good. Now, I didn't really learn about biblical theology in seminary, so I've been studying a lot of biblical theology.

But systematic theology is a good study. And so what does the Bible teach from Genesis to Revelation in a systematized way, how both sovereignty of God, which is in the

Bible, and human responsibility are just there. Man is responsible.

Mankind is responsible. Womankind is responsible. Yet God reigns,

God rules. My sovereignty rules overall, Psalm 103. So I put this whole thing together.

And then this person read it, and they said, whosoever believes. Okay, well,

Romans 10 is in the Bible. Your emphasis on whosoever is wrong, because it's not even in the original, those believing.

But it is true, whoever it might be, whether you're

Jew or Gentile, whether you're a slave or free, male or female, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, if you believe, you will be saved, that's true.

But, and maybe this was just a slight to my work. Maybe it was just a slight to, you don't even wanna think.

Here, I put this whole paper together, and all these verses and all these quotes. So at the very least, this person would know that I was in the mainstream of Christian evangelicalism.

After all, this is New England. And here in Massachusetts, central Massachusetts, in the 1700s, early 1700s in particular, if you didn't believe in the five points of Calvinism, you were on the outside, unlike today, where pretty much three and a half, four -point

Calvinists, they're the mainstream. I know there's a resurgence. I don't mean resurgence, but there is a resurgence of reform doctrine, thankful to people like James Boyce, R .C.

Sproul, and to a lesser degree, MacArthur, although lots of influence there, good influence.

It's flipped. And so today, if you're a five -point Calvinist, you're kind of on the outs. Back in those days, you were on the ins, ins and outs, salt and pepper.

And so anyway, I did feel slighted in the sense, I did all this work. It should at least make you think that I'm orthodox.

I think people that are three and a half -point Calvinist, four -point Calvinist, and five -point Calvinist, I think you can be regenerate and be all those.

I think you can believe all those and be unregenerate, but that's another point, right? That's why we train our kids.

They grow up believing all the right stuff, and God still has to sovereignly regenerate them according to their free will.

Just kidding. So anyway, this is my notes. All that to say in this long introduction and no -compromise radio, these are my notes from Human Responsibility and Divine Sovereignty.

And so I wanna work through some of these because it's kind of like having a little find. Now I have some other notes regarding this topic and from Romans 9 and John 6, but then

I found these. There's some special little quotes in there. And I guess I could have my secretary at the church scan these and then

I could make a document. At least I could make a PDF. So I can't find this file. It's on some other old computer, some compact computer.

I can't find it on my new Macs or anything like that. So it is a very important topic.

And I think that people spend a lot of time working on this. And I think it's a good thing.

I think it will help you try to think biblically. And I think at the end of the day, the corpus of scripture, the body of scripture will then reaffirm the fact that you're gonna have to tip the scales in your mind to God's sovereign.

If I had to pick one, I have to pick that one. And then you're gonna be cured of all your, you know, I'm not a robot and all those kinds of things.

Of course, there's a tension. Of course, there are other issues in scripture that have a tension and they have tension.

You know, the God man, there's a tension there. Of course, we are finite creatures and we're thinking about the infinite.

And the only way we could think about the infinite in particular is when he decides to reveal himself and his thinking and his person and his work through scripture.

So these are not irreconcilable in the mind of God.

Probably in your own mind, they might be. But I'm gonna tell you upfront when it comes to hard doctrines, and I learned this early on and I took it to heart, that as you mature in the

Christian faith, you will allow two truths that you don't know how they can go together, but they're obviously truths in the

Bible and you don't have to force a mental closure. You just let it be.

Whisper words of wisdom. I just was listening to somebody the other day. They're like, you know, let's just agree not to put

God in a box. It's the box God. So I'm not putting

God in a box. I can't do anything to God. You go over there, you know, kind of like the charismatic saying, you demons, you get away from our church.

We have a hedge of protection around our church. You go to somebody else. What is a hedge of protection again?

Okay, that's like a Farside cartoon, Farside. By the way, at nocoradio is our

Twitter account if you'd like to follow that. So anyway, we want to embrace these.

Both of these truths are undeniable. And you're gonna see as we get into this, probably two, three, four, five, six part message on Fridays, that God doesn't attempt to explain these things fully.

There's no formal explanation. How do we figure out this conundrum?

Are these truths compatible? Is this an antinomy? You'll find when you start to read the responsibility of man to believe, to repent, to follow, to trust, to forsake.

The unbelieving man must do those. You're also gonna believe that just same context, no one can come to the

Father unless He draws them, right? That God is, sovereign man is responsible.

And sometimes people, probably Calvinist, I wish they wouldn't be, but they feel some embarrassment.

They feel like they have to kind of hide this. You know, it's this undeniable truth, but how do we figure all this stuff out?

And then they kind of, I don't wanna be embarrassed at all. I don't want you to be embarrassed. I want you to embrace, right?

I want you to embrace this. These truths do not contradict. There are no contradictions in the

Bible. In my mind, I can't figure some things out. There are seeming contradictions, but these truths complement one another.

These are both truths. They are both true truths. So I don't want this to bother you anymore.

This is don't be bothered with this topic, it's reconciliation any longer because as Spurgeon was saying,

I don't reconcile friends. If you've got two friends and they're friends with each other, you don't have to sit them down and say, hey, bub, who says bub anymore?

I think when I used to read Wolverine comics back in college, he would say, bub, some kind of adaminium clause.

Is that what he has? I don't watch the new Wolverine movies or any of those things. I just, that's a lie. I should probably tell the truth.

When I'm on an international flight, I'll watch a little bit of some of those shows without headphones.

Just kind of, you know, you're flipping through the channels. But even then, I think it took me four flights, four international flights to get through The Hobbit.

I just, I think there's a ring and shmeagle. Shmeagle, he's bad then he's good.

Oh, Arthur Pink. Many have foolishly said that it is quite impossible to show where divine sovereignty ends and creature accountability begins.

Here is where creature responsibility begins, in the sovereign ordination of the creator.

As to a sovereignty, there's not and never will be an end to it. Now, when I say

Pink, I don't mean the singer. There was a tweet the other day, a no compromise

Facebook. And I admit, I read it. I read the comments.

And if they're mad, if they're mad or mean, they're trying to get back at me, I wanna tell them something.

I wanna get after them. But I'm the one pushing people's buttons. So no, no, no, maybe

Ben does that. Maybe that's all Ben's, Josh's fault. So somebody said, there was a comment

I put on Pink and with Twitter, you know, if you go to Hootsuite, you can just post things ahead of time and say, post this tomorrow at 12 o 'clock and then post it to both

Facebook and the Twitter account. So that's what you do. You just get them all done ahead of time and then they just fly off the handle.

And so you have 140 characters on Twitter. And so I couldn't say A .W. Pink, Arthur W. Pink.

So I had to just forget the space and say Pink. So someone said, it's actually kind of cute.

She said, oh, you know that she's really coming around or I didn't know she believed these things or that's amazing.

I don't know the exact quote. And then it was not Pink the singer, it was Arthur Pink. So when

I say Pink, I do not mean anyone except Arthur Pink.

We do not deny responsibility. We certainly don't deny sovereignty.

The Bible is going to give weight. The Bible is going to show us that sovereignty of God elevates

God the creator infinitely, an infinite exaltation, a wonderful exaltation.

And we are going to see that the creature, sinful creature, sinful finite creature is going to be responsible.

And it is a humbling thing. It is an intellectually humbling thing and it is just humbling morally as well because it drives us away from ourselves.

And I'll just say this since it's no compromise style today, always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

It is prideful to elevate man's responsibility to the same sphere as sovereignty.

It is prideful to demand an answer. It is prideful to insist upon mental reconciliation.

It is prideful to insist anything like it.

This drives you to worship. This makes you think, how can God be so great? Who is like him?

When you accept both, and when you accept the priority of God over man, you're going to feel much better and you're going to think better too.

All right, let's talk about human responsibility. Again, today on No Compromise Radio, we're talking about divine responsibility and divine responsibility.

Well, he has certain responsibilities, I guess. Divine sovereignty and human responsibility.

What about human responsibility? What is that? Well, I will do something.

I want to do something. I won't do something. We have wills.

And I never want to say we don't have a will. We do have a will, and of course, the fall has made that will fallen.

We have a bondage of the will. That's Reformation theology. Adam and Eve were created with a capacity, an ability to say yes, to say no.

I will, I won't. No way, yes. Then sin enters the picture.

It affects the nature, and therefore it affects the will, although the will is not abolished.

The will still wills, but the will just wills. Sinful thing.

If you want some synonyms for responsibility, let me give you three.

And by the way, I don't see on my notes here a lot of like quotes and page footnotes and end notes.

Some do, some don't. So I just want to say ahead of time, this is all stuff that's just like collected, collated.

I'm the redactor. I don't have really any original thought in my mind.

I don't know what my original thought is. Maybe the slogan of No Compromise Radio, always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

I think, you know, that's about it as far as we go. Impressed? I didn't think so. A good accountability, a good responsibility synonym would be accountability, accountability.

Everyone here, wouldn't you agree? On earth, every creature is accountable to God, is answerable to God, and you give an account to God one day.

Every one of us will give an account to God. That's a good way to look at responsibility. The second synonym for responsibility, accountability is the first one, obligation.

You have a duty. God gives you commands and you're under those. You're accountable to divine law, and you obey, there's a reward.

You disobey, there's punishment. Conclusion, when all has been heard, is fear God and keep his commandments, because this applies to every person.

So when I talk about responsibility, accountability, obligation, and the third word is oughtness.

There's an oughtness. You ought to obey God. You ought to love God. You ought to love your neighbor.

And the standard for all this accountability, responsibility, obligation, oughtness, is, of course,

God's revealed will that is found in the Bible, right? Two wills, remember? Sovereign will of God, whatever happens in the universe,

God's sovereign, and then his revealed will found in scripture.

You can't say yes, you can't say no as an unbeliever. And the real question that I've alluded to earlier is man's free, is man's will free?

Now, here's what people typically think. You are either fully free or you're a robot.

That's basically the two options that yield confusion.

It's either one or the other. You've got fully free, totally free will, or you're an automaton robot.

Well, let's first think about this. How free is man's will? The world limits man's free will.

Habits, don't your habits have anything to do with it? Your education, customs, you want approval or disproval, you get disproval if there's something you do wrong.

Ambitions. One man said the comprehensive decree of God has man possessing a character surrounded by a certain environment, subject to certain external influences, internally moved by certain affections, desires, habits, and that in view of all these, he shall make a choice.

That the choice will be one thing and not another is certain and God who knows and controls the exact causes of each influence knows what that choice will be and in a real sense determines it.

Is there such thing in other words as moral neutrality? Fallen man is predisposed to what?

Choose righteousness? Choose good? Choose Christ?

So what we're talking about today is divine sovereignty, human responsibility, and we're just trying to set up a little bit what is the responsibility of man?

And there's somebody outside the door here and I'm just looking at him right now. I probably wanted to get in. Probably some who knows who.

So my name is Mike Abendroth. This is part one, just some introduction. You can write us at info at nocompromisedradio .com.

Follow us at Twitter account, Facebook, or let's see you in Israel. 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.

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