If God Has Decreed the Next President, Why Should Christians Vote?

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If God's already decreed who's going to be the president, why should Christians even bother voting?

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That's what we're going to talk about today on your Calvinist podcast which begins right now It's your

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Calvinist Podcast with Keith Bobblestein Beards and bowties, laughs till sunrise

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It's your Calvinist Podcast with Keith Foskey He's not like most

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Calvinists, he's nice Your Calvinist Podcast is filmed before a live studio audience

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And welcome back to Your Calvinist Podcast. My name is Keith Foskey and I am your

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Calvinist. I want to thank you for joining me today and we're going to get to our topic in just a moment

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And today's podcast is going to be a little bit different because I am going to actually play some audio from a recent lesson that I gave at Beryl Baptist Church when

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I was there giving a conference on the sovereignty of God Last week I gave four messages on the sovereignty of God I talked about the sovereignty of God over the nations, the sovereignty of God over our circumstances, the sovereignty of God over prayer, and the sovereignty of God over salvation

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Did that over four days and I was so encouraged by the welcome that I received at the church

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Pastor Wade and his elders were such an encouragement to me and I want to continue to thank them for the blessing that it was to be among them

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Well while I was there I gave the people an opportunity to ask questions about my messages and during the

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Sunday school hour I answered their questions And so today I want to play the question and answer period that we did during the

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Sunday school class We had three major questions all dealing with the question of okay if God is sovereign or since God is sovereign because we know that he is

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How does that affect our choices and how do our choices affect what's going to happen?

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Do they affect what's going to happen? And so I spent about a 40 to 45 minute lesson answering those questions and I thought it would be an encouragement to let you listen to that today for the podcast

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And I wanted to also mention that we've got a lot going on here in Florida I'm recording this on Tuesday, October the 8th and in just a few days, by tomorrow night or Thursday Hurricane Milton is going to be hitting

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Florida it looks like and I have no idea what level of devastation we are going to see but we have a good idea that the people down in Tampa and the

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St. Petersburg area are going to be taking the brunt of this storm and it does seem to be a very severe storm

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So I want to ask you to pray for that area I know we're already praying for the Carolinas and all of the things that are going on there because of Hurricane Helene Seems to be just a massive amount of devastation and lives lost up there and it looks like we're about to see some more devastation in South Florida So we want to pray for them, praying for specific pastors

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I want to ask that you pray for Pastor Jonathan Bush of Southside Baptist Church in Winter Haven I preached down there last month, his church is right in the path of the storm

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I want to pray for Pastor Steve Kreloff, who is down in that area Pastor Travis Van Meter, who is also down there

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Pastor Tucker, who is down there, I preached at his church and of course the

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Founders Ministries, which is Pastor Tom Askell, his church is down there So all of these churches, all the people surrounding them,

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I want to pray for them ask God to be merciful on them and just ask you to join with us in prayer over this situation that this storm would break apart, would not have the impact that we know that it is possible to have

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So again, those are just some things I wanted to bring up I'm going to be bringing the audio in from my lesson here in just a moment

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But before I do that, I have just a couple things I want to remind you of One, we are a ministry of Sovereign Grace Family Church So if you're in the

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Jacksville area, come visit us at sgfcjacks .org You can learn all about the church If you are interested in getting the smallest

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Bible, printed Bible, on the market you can go to tinybibles .com They are a partner with the show And right now, they've also produced a tiny

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Gospel of John It's small enough to fit just about anywhere, take just about anywhere And this one is readable without an eyepiece

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The tiny Bible, you need an eyepiece, but the tiny Gospel of John, you don't I can just open it up and read it I want to also mention, too, that we are now doing a new weekly show called

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Friday Night Live It comes every Friday night, and we're doing it around 9 .30 The only thing that will keep us from doing it is if the weather is so bad, we don't have internet

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If that's the case, then we won't do live But that show is answering emails from you So if you have an email question that you'd like me to answer on a live show you can send it to keithfoskey .com

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Just go to the website, there's a place to send me an email right there And I look forward to hearing your questions and hopefully answering them on an upcoming

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Friday Night Live show Alright guys, thank you for watching And now, on to the lesson Every Thursday morning,

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I go to a men's recovery ministry It's called

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Set Free And it's men who are coming off of drugs and alcohol Some of them coming out of prison

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And it's an old motel that's been converted into a living facility for these men And they go there, and they have to commit to 150 days of discipleship

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And so they call that Phase 1 It's six months, basically, almost five months or so of them having to go and do that So every

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Thursday morning, I sit in a classroom similar to this With a bunch of men who are sometimes a little rough around the edges

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And oftentimes I can't get through a sentence Before a hand goes up and they want to ask a new question

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Because a lot of times these guys are so hungry to ask questions And want to know the answers to their questions

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So I am used to answering questions on the fly And I enjoy doing that And part of my ministry, as Brother Wade knows, every

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Friday night I do a show called Friday Night Live Where I go on to my YouTube channel

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And I answer questions that people send in via email And while I'm answering those questions, people are typing in questions

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Just like you guys were on the other night, typing in, hello Because it's live, people can write in questions

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So again, I enjoy this opportunity to minister to you And it is something that I think is important Because it's easy to stand on a dais

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And proclaim something is the truth And then just leave, to drop a bomb

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And then be like, alright, I know you've got a thousand questions But I'm out,

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I'm heading back to Jacksonville So I'm thankful that Brother Wade has given me the opportunity to do this

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I do want to also say one other preliminary thing Before we read the questions, and that is I know that we have to do this now

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Because of time and the way everything fell I really wish we were able to do this after the sermon this morning

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Because some of what I'm going to say at the sermon Will relate to the questions that have been asked

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Because some of it deals with the idea of God's sovereignty and our salvation And that's the very subject

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I'm going to be preaching on in an hour So if I say in the midst of this

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Well hey, I'm going to explore this more fully I will be, but I'll do my best to still give a profitable answer

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During our time here The three questions that were given all, I would say all fall

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Into the same category Because they all fall into the category of Well if the sovereignty of God is true

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How do my actions play into The plan of God?

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If God has already determined what's going to happen If He's already determined what the future is going to be

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How then do my actions play in? That's boiling everything down to a simple question

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But I'm going to now read the three questions to you And I think you'll see how those three questions relate to that More broad question

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The first question was this If the rise and fall of nations are predetermined by God Elections included

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How do human responsibility and free will fit in? Why vote? That's a great question

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And so we're going to address that one Number two, when I hear preachers say things

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Like I had no part in my salvation, that salvation is all of God I get confused because I called out to Him to save me

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Did I not have a role in my salvation? Again it comes back to the question of What's my participation?

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All of these again I think fall within the framework Question number three

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It seems to me that the teaching of God's sovereignty Especially when it comes to salvation

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Is controversial and divisive What is the prophet then to talk or preach on such things?

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That's a great question And I look forward to answering that at the end As our third question

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Because I think my answer may surprise you So let's begin back up at number one

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If the rise and fall of nations are predetermined by God Elections included How do human responsibility and free will fit in?

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Why vote? Come on in, have a seat buddy I was going to say

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You want to share? Good morning

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May I use your white board? I was going to put it on Okay, so I want to address first of all

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The idea of the freedom of the will Because that's at the heart of the question

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If you remember it says How do human responsibility and free will fit into God's determining of the future

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And right away I think it's important that we identify What we mean by this term

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Most people will use this term in a very generic sense And they will say okay

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I believe in free will Meaning that they believe in the ability to make choices

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And if that's all we mean Is that people have the ability to make choices You had the choice to come here this morning or not

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You had the choice to go to Dunkin Donut this morning or not You had the choice to be late and you were So So all of these things are choices that we make

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And no matter where you fall On the theological spectrum And the theological spectrum tends to be divided

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By different words There are you know you'll hear the phrase Arminian and Calvinistic or you'll hear the term reformed

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And you'll hear the term even now there's a new one Provisionist and there's all these different words people use

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And it's just words to try to identify camps Or thoughts or schools of ideas

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And so everybody Whether you're Calvinist or Arminian Provisionist or whatever

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Everyone would say that men have the ability To make choices We all make choices and those choices are legitimate choices

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That affect our lives If I choose to exercise and eat more healthy

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I might lose a little weight If I choose not to I might continue to look like I look Now that was a little negative but you know

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There are things I can do to change my life And I can make choices

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And those choices do affect my life But there are certain things that I had no choice in I had no choice

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That I was going to be born in Jacksonville Florida On April 2nd 1980 I had no choice that nine months earlier

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My parents were going to come together And procreate to bring about my birth

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On April 2nd 1980 And I like to point that part out because Most people who believe the

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Bible Will say well God ordains The birth of children

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We'll say the birth of a child is ordained of God Not an accident This child is here by the miraculous purpose and will of God God is the one who brings about The birth of a child

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I mean didn't we just read that last night What was it Psalm 139 He formed us in the womb

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He established us created us all those things But was there not a physical act that was required

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Between two people And was that physical act not necessary In every aspect of a person's birth

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For every birth that's happened in the last However many thousand years the earth has been here I'm a young earth guy so I can say that If you think it's a billion

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But for however long the earth has been here every birth that's ever come about Has come about by two people coming together

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And entering into a physical relationship And you say well why are you bringing that up Well this is the way

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I explain evangelism Because people ask the question well if God is sovereign Over somebody's salvation why should

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I have to share the gospel Well if God was sovereign over my birth why did my parents have to have sex It was a part of the process

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Of bringing about what God had planned It was a means to an end

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And it is part of the necessary means Of bringing about God's will

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And my parents participated by their choice and action In that while at the same time being

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Under the sovereign authority of God because he had planned from the foundation of the world That I was going to be born on April 2nd 1980

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And this is where we hold that intention And it's like when you take a rubber band

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And you pull a rubber band apart And you hold it out on both ends

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The tension is not at the ends the tension is in the middle If you let go on this end it's going to smack that side

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If you let go on this side it's going to smack that side The tension is in the middle and so I can say man has the ability to make choices

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God is still sovereign And there is a tension in the middle that I have to deal with Because the

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Bible teaches both The Bible teaches that both man is able to make choices

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And God is sovereign In bringing about his will Nothing can thwart his will he does what he will

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In the heavens and on the earth and under the earth He is sovereign over all those things so we can trust that But at the same time we say men make

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And I like this phrase I say men make

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Choices as moral Agents Rather than the idea of free will

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When people say do you believe in free will I say well I actually believe in something called moral agency

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You say well what's the difference Are you just being fancy pants with your words Why do you have to make it more difficult than it is

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I'm not I'm trying to make a point Because in the issue of free will we have a word that is

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Problem and the word is free Because if you read what the

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Bible says About the human condition Ever since the fall There's one thing that is very clear

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And that is men are not free We are the language

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That's used is multifaceted But the key words that are used is slavery

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And deadness Jesus said he who Sins is a what slave to sin

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So the term slavery is used by Jesus Paul says you were dead

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In trespasses and sins Now that doesn't mean you were absolutely incapable of making choices

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Sometimes I think those on the reform side Or maybe my camp if you will

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Those who would fall more into that side I think sometimes we over express the deadness To the point that we say man can do nothing

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Make no choice and we compare ourselves to Lazarus in the tomb And there's a certain spiritual benefit to understanding ourselves

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As being dead in sin and being unable to do certain things But it doesn't mean we can't do anything We can have thoughts we can make choices and we do

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In fact This is why we do apologetics

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And evangelism Apologetics is defending the faith And evangelism is sharing the faith

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And it often goes together because if I share the faith with somebody And they want to argue then I have to defend the faith

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So now apologetics and evangelism go together And so when we talk about deadness

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Why would I do evangelism and apologetics If a guy has no ability to even think

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If he's so dead he can't even think at all And so There are things

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There are ways that I can Overcome certain objections

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To a person who is objecting to the faith For instance when a person has an

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Intellectual objection Well I don't know if I believe in God because I can't see him Or I don't know if I believe in God I believe in evolution

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I don't know if I believe in God I believe in the Big Bang whatever whatever Those are intellectual objections

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And I can say to that person Okay well here's my answer to the evolution question I don't think it answers the question of where we came from It doesn't make sense mathematically, biologically or even evolutionarily

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It doesn't work in the time frame and all these different things I can make that argument and I'm overcoming his intellectual objections

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Or he might have a moral objection He might say I can't believe in God because My wife was injured or I can't believe in God because My child was born sick or I can't believe in God because of the

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Hurricane that hit the Carolinas I can't believe in God because of these things That's a moral objection that I can help him overcome

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By simply pointing to God's goodness in Scripture and talking to him about the truth And how God uses the bad things of this world to bring about His will

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I can overcome those moral objections But what I cannot do For a man who is dead in sin is

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I cannot give him life I can't do that I can overcome his objections and I should

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I should give him no reason To be able to continue to stand against the truth

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And that's why I study apologetics That's why I preach the way I do. I tend to preach like an apologist I'm always giving a defense of what

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I believe because it's just the way God made me And I can do that but I cannot Reach into his soul, take out the heart of stone

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And put in a heart of flesh And by the way that's the analogy that the Old Testament gives us

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It says God is going to take out the heart of stone And He's going to put in a heart of flesh. What's the difference? The heart of stone doesn't beat, it's dead

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But the heart of flesh beats and it's alive So God is going to give life to the dead soul

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So I can bring a person to the point But I cannot give them life

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And neither can they They can't give themselves life God is the only one who can take the dead heart

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And replace it with a living heart In fact I want to show you a scripture, this one I think is very helpful

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If you have your Bibles turn to John Chapter 1 I'm going to be preaching through the gospel of John As soon as I finish 2

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Corinthians at our church And I'm looking forward to preaching I preached through Luke and I preached through Mark To a portion of Matthew but I've never preached through John So I'm excited about this opportunity

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Alright, so in John chapter 1 Verse 11 It says

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He came to his own And his own did not receive him

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But as many as received him To them he gave the right

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And the word right there if you have a New King James it has a little superscript above it It's actually the word power, he gave them the power

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To become children Of God to those who believe in his name

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Who were born, this is the key Verse 13 Who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh

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Nor of the will of man But of God The new birth he says is not

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From three things He says first it is not of blood

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By that it means You are not born again because your mom or daddy

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Were born again In fact this is a passage I use when I'm debating my Presbyterian friends And I wore my

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Presbyterian bow tie today Presbyterians believe that a child

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Born into a Christian family is brought into the covenant By virtue of having at least one believing parent

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And that they are made part of the new covenant by birth And that's why they baptize them at birth

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Now they still believe a person has to believe They still believe a person has to come to faith to be saved

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But they believe they enter into the covenant by birth But this text says that's not the case

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You don't enter into the new covenant You are not born again by blood So that's number one, it's not by blood

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But notice the second thing it says Nor of the will of the flesh

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This I believe is referring to the will of the individual Again going back up to this word here

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It is not being born again By my will I can't will myself to have new life

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The new birth doesn't come by my mom and daddy And it don't come by me

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And the third one it says nor of the will of man And you say well what's the difference between the will of flesh and the will of man

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Well the answer is this one is referring to other people Well I can't will you again as much as I would want to You know what

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I mean And I pray and hope that you are saved but if you're not I can't make you saved I can't change your heart

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I can't go and take out your heart of stone and put in a heart of flesh So the three ways that you're not born again

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Is you're not born again by blood Meaning by your birth You're not born again by your will meaning your own choice

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And you're not born again by the choices of others But you are born again by what? By God But consider this it still has a result

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And what is the result? You believe The new birth results in receiving

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Christ How do you know the difference between someone who is born again and someone who is not? They believe in Jesus Notice again going back to the text it says to as many as received him

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And to them he gave the power to become the children of God Who were born not of the will of flesh not of the will of man

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But of God they were born that's what brought about Their willingness to receive Christ You would not receive

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Christ If he did not give you that ability Jesus Christ says in John chapter 6

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One of the most important passages on this subject Jesus is talking to a group that had

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Followed him because he had fed them And they wanted to be fed again

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And Jesus told them He said you don't come to me because you believe you come because you have your bellies full

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I mean that's not exactly that's the key standard version But that's basically what he said I like that version sometimes

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The KSV key standard version But Jesus said you come to me

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To have your bellies full you come because of what I can give you But all the father gives me will come to me

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And the one who comes to me I will in no way cast out I've always loved that passage And I believe that's

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John 6 27 or 30 I have to go back and look But that passage right there to me

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Fully satisfies the issue of sovereignty and freedom Because hear it again All the father comes to me

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Excuse me all the father gives me will come to me That's sovereignty all the father gives me will come to me

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That's sovereignty and the one who comes to me I will not cast out That's the will of the man he's coming

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Nobody is coming unwillingly In fact the old testament there's a passage where it says

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They will be made willing in the day of my power God is the one who makes us willing We who were unwilling we who didn't desire

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We who were dead in our trespasses and sin didn't want to come God overcame that and gave us the desire

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To come So when we talk about salvation I'm going to preach on this again in a little while When we talk about free will we have to understand our will is limited by sin

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Slavery and deadness God by his mercy overcomes that and gives us the ability to come

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Now you might be saying you didn't answer the question about voting I wanted to address the issue of free will because I think it's important Now let's talk about the issue of voting

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And the issue of participation Because God is sovereign does that mean I shouldn't participate

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In elections or any of that Because God is going to do what he's going to do anyway No and here's why we should participate

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Because we are the means by which God is bringing about his will

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For instance let's say I see a person Sitting on the side of the road and they are hungry

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If I took the hyper -Calvinistic approach Which is not good and I'm not a hyper -Calvinist even though I had coffee

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This morning But if I take a hyper -Calvinist approach I say

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God's going to feed that man regardless of what I do So I don't care that would be wrong and that would be a fatalistic

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Understanding Which the Bible does not provide us We do not have a fatalism We would see that man and his need and we would say

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God has placed me in this moment To take care of that man

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And therefore I am the means By which God is going to bring about his will

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And so I submit to the Lord and I do what the Lord has called me to do Just like he calls us all to love people

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So when it comes to voting and it comes to the rise and the fall of nations I am fully convinced

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Remember the rubber band I am fully convinced that God already knows

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On November 2nd who is going to be the next president I know who I hope it ain't

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But I'm convinced that God already knows Who it's going to be and I'm also convinced

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That he's going to use His people to bring about his will One way or another he's going to use

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And sometimes you know what God does do this is the hard part Sometimes God uses wicked people

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To judge his people If you read the Old Testament man you'll see where God brings in the

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Babylonians God brings in the different people from the different lands Canaanites and other people To bring judgment on God's people

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And I will quote Calvin don't hold it against me But Calvin did say this he said when God wants to judge a nation

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He gives them wicked rulers And I hate sometimes to think that that may be Because we have certainly had to deal with wickedness

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In the leadership And I shudder

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For what my kids are going to have to deal with Now I'm optimistic That God is not going to fail

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The gates of hell will not prevail against the church But that don't mean that this nation will always stand

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I mean I'm a patriot and I love America My son serves in the United States Air Force Has for the last five years and won't do it until he retires

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I support him and I'm thankful to God For the many men who served the Lord And served it in areas of the military

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In fact and this is totally off the subject but just real quick If you study Baptist history One of the things that separated the

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Baptists from the Anabaptists Which were the ones who came out of Out of Switzerland during the time of the

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Reformation They were students of Ulrich Zwingli And they rose up Conrad Grebels and many of them rose up and created the

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Anabaptist movement That's now the Amish and the Hutterites and people like that That's the Anabaptists What separated the

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Baptists was Baptists did not Deny the responsibility of Christians serving in the government

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To the Amish and the Hutterites and the Quakers They won't serve in the government But the Baptists said you can rightfully serve

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And you can serve to the glory of God Even in the military and that was a big distinction

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In fact our church holds to the first Confession it was written in 1644

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It was edited in 1646 We hold to the 1646 version

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And the last 4 or 5 articles It's 52 articles The last 4 or 5 articles say that it is within the realm

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Of God's mercy that a Christian can serve As a magistrate

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Meaning a police officer A governor, a mayor or even a military man

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And so that's just an interesting little bit of Baptist history That was a distinction between us

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And our Anabaptist cousins And I do think we have a cousin like relationship So going back to the question

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If the rise and fall of nations are predetermined by God How do human responsibility and free will fit in?

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Because God is using the means of His people To bring about His will

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Whether it is His will to bring us blessing Or judgment for a season Whereby He will raise up again for His purpose

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Men during judgment to remind us of His goodness Think about the time when Israel was in captivity

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That's when you had men like Jeremiah That's when you had men like Ezekiel and Daniel Who during the time of captivity stood for God We may end up there again

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We may have to go through this again Did I mention to you guys

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About the movie about the Russian missionary? Was that here? My wife and I were watching a movie

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And it was about a Russian pastor missionary Who was during the time where the

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Soviet Union Was doing a lot of things And it was opposing religious freedom

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And there was a man who came to this small town Where this pastor was serving And everybody come to the town square to hear him

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And basically he was standing up in the town square Saying all religious freedom is gone His wife said to him

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Someone must say something And the pastor looked at his wife and said If I say something you will not have a husband

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And she said I would rather have no husband Than have a husband who is a coward

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And I thought And I think first of all

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Thank God for a godly wife Thank God for a godly wife

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To remind him that it is better to be a dead man Than a coward And we may have that God does not promise us

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God does not promise us a smooth sail God does not promise us that America will always stand

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I pray that it does I pray that God will save us I pray that God will bring us good leaders I pray that God will sanctify us

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But sometimes sanctification comes through fire So that is how

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I believe human freedom and human responsibility Fit into voting I do believe he uses us as part of his plan

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But he still has a plan So hopefully that makes sense Second question based on the same concept

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When I hear preachers say things like I had no part in my salvation That salvation is all of God I get confused because I called out to him to save me

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Did I not have a role in my salvation Yes you did And that is what I want to be crystal clear

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Especially based on what I am about to preach When we say I am sure

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I have said this before I had no part in my salvation What that means is in the instigation of my salvation

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Not in my response I do respond to the gospel But I respond to the gospel having been enabled to respond

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In a way that I could not before Because my heart did not want to I love this phrase

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My old professor used to say When God saved me he gave me a new wanna

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And wanna is literally just Wanna Because when

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I was unsaved I wanted to do a lot of things But now that I am saved I want to serve Christ My desire changed

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But I did not change it God changed my heart

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And out of that I believed Out of that followed him

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Out of that I desired to become a pastor I believe God called me into that I did respond

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So don't ever think that reformed teaching Or whatever you want to call it Don't ever think that what that is saying is you had nothing involved

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You did you were the object of God's choice You were the object of his regeneration You were the object of his strength and power

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You then responded because of his grace and mercy in your life So you can thank him

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Because without him you wouldn't have wanted to But you can also say yes

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I believed Faith And you'll hear me say this because it's in my sermon

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Faith is a gift I can argue that exegetically

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From certain passages In fact I really believe Ephesians 2, 8, 9

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Say that clearly For by grace are ye saved through faith

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And that is not of yourself it is a gift of God not of works If you go into the original language

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You will notice in the original language that they have What are known as genders Not genders like You know all the silly genders we have today

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But you have the masculine the feminine Gender like they have often in languages like Spanish And things like that you'll hear

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And we even have it in our language his and her That's masculine feminine genders

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Well in the Greek language We look at pronouns and we find

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How the pronoun connects to what's known as the antecedent And how that antecedent is affected by the pronoun

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Or how it ties back into the pronoun And so when that phrase says for by grace

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Are ye saved through faith And that is not of yourselves It is the gift of God not of works

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The word that points back to something And some people will say well it's grace because grace is a gift

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That's the gift but it doesn't add up With the genders

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Faith doesn't either because that is actually A neuter but what it is

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Applying to is it's applying to all For by grace are you saved through faith And that all of that is not of you

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You didn't provide the grace And the faith that you did provide

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Was a gift from God not something that you produced But something God produced in you

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Faith is a gift I believe because God gave me Jesus said in John 6 44 no man

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Can come to me unless the father Who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day

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And in the same chapter just a few verses later He says no one can come unless it be granted by my father

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What's got to be granted the ability to come The faith the desire Think about Romans chapter 3 when

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Paul Is finishing this great crescendo of explanation about sin He starts in chapter 1 talking about the deadness of sin that all men are in And then in chapter 2 he talks about the

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Jews and how they had the law But they didn't do what the law required and showed themselves to be even greater sinners Because they didn't do what the law required and he gets to chapter 3 and he says

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What shall we say are the Jews any better than the Greeks no we're all under sin For there's none good not even one there's none who understands

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There's none who seeks after God None who seeks after God You know a lot of churches call themselves

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Seeker sensitive because they say We want to open ourselves up to the seekers

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But the Bible says none seek after God It's God who seeks after us Men will seek the blessings of God Men will seek what only

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God can provide Heaven but as the one great preacher said

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Everybody wants heaven without God And they want salvation without holiness They want what

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God can provide without God himself If you desire God it's because God gave you the ability to desire him

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Because by nature you would not have By nature you would not want to come But because you do want to come you can say praise the

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Lord And that's why we would Simplify it by saying salvation is all of God Because even the desire to come

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Comes from God even the want Comes from God and so that's why we would say it's all of God But we're not diminishing the fact that yes of course you did come

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Yes of course you did believe in the same way that Lazarus Walked out of the tomb you walked the aisle

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Or just came to Christ or were baptized Whatever you did the moment you were saved Whatever action you took it was on The response of what

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God had done Is this making sense? Alright I don't know how much time I have I think

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I'm at five minutes Alright well I'm doing alright I got two questions

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Well the last one won't take me long And I haven't had a chance to answer any other questions Okay well I'll do my best

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I like this last question whoever took this question you get a gold star Because it's a good one well they're all three good

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But this one here is important It says it seems to me

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That the teaching of God's sovereignty Especially when it comes to salvation Is controversial and divisive

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What is the profit then to talk or preach on such things? That's a good question and I want to first answer

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By saying When Calvin addresses this subject

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In his commentaries And in his institutes He does address by saying

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That this is one of those doctrines Particularly the doctrine of electing salvation

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This is one of those doctrines that should be Taught with a soft hand

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That should not be merely Proclaimed and slammed against the people of God Because it is so hard to understand and sometimes it can be

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Divisive and create such confusion He says and he's being pastoral You don't think about pastoral heart of Calvin But he was a pastor he was a pastor of the whole city

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And he said this must be taught with a soft hand It must be taught in a loving way

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Because it is so apt to misunderstanding And misapplication Think of hard shell

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Baptist hyper Calvinist Who get to the point where they don't even evangelize Because God's going to save who

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He's going to save anyway I remember years ago we had our booth Every year we used to put out a booth at the

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County Fair, Northeast Florida Fair is huge Thousands and thousands of people come we'd put out a booth and we'd hand out tracts

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Have gospel conversations and this old boy would come walking by And he looked at the title, the name of our church,

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Sovereign Grace And he walked over to me and he said I want to know why you think this is necessary And I said well the

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Bible commands us to go And preach the gospel to every creature And he said well and he pointed to a kid

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He said if God wants to save that kid He's going to do it with or without you And I said hyper

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Calvinist And I kind of laughed And he wanted to argue and he tried to argue for a couple minutes

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I said look you can sit here and argue I'm going to go share the gospel You can sit here and argue I'm going to go proclaim

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Christ And let God do what He's going to do I do know there is a negative

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Far afield view that I do not endorse I think is dangerous because it does destroy evangelism

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It does destroy the heart of trusting in God In the sense we still have our responsibility

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We are called to be responsible God is sovereign holding those two things in tension So why still preach it if it's so controversial

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Well I sort of just answered it One because it's taught so wrong in so many churches

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I think it's worth clearing up the misunderstandings If there is something that is divisive

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In general it's divisive because it's been misunderstood And so it's important to be able to have moments like this

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Where we can dig a little deeper Within the context of brotherly love and affection

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Answer questions that people have And do so in a loving way Not with a hammer or a heavy hand

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But rather with an open heart and say here's what the Bible teaches Let's talk about it, let's ask questions about it

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Let's dig a little deeper And we should not be afraid of those things that are controversial

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Because it's the unwillingness to address controversy That has got us into the mess that we are in In so many churches that won't call out sin anymore

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Because the same argument And again I'm not saying the person who asked this would ever think this But the same argument sometimes is applied to people who would say

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Well why should we talk about homosexuality I mean isn't it controversial, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't address it

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But we have to Because we have to clear up the confusion We have to address the issue, right

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We have to address a hard issue because it is hard But we do it in a loving way

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Even if we are dealing with something as hard as what I just mentioned That's a hard subject, especially if you have family members

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Who are caught up in that lifestyle of sin and you want to love them well But you also want to tell them the truth, that's hard So you have to do it in a way, and that's what we hear

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This is the training ground for out there A lot of churches I go to On your way out of the church it will have a sign

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It will say something like you're entering the mission field or something like that Because that's what we're doing We come here to be trained so that we can go out into the world

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And be a light in the world We come here to sometimes lick each other's wounds

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And help each other and build each other up Because we have gotten beat up by the world This is why gathering every week is so important, not just for worship

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And not just to glorify God, but because the world is beating on us all week long We at least need once a week where we can just come together

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And love on one another and be encouraged So it is controversial

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But I think at the same time If it's handled with love and with a care

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For the person's heart who is asking the questions We can remain brothers and sisters

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Even in slight disagreement Some of my best friends in the ministry Are men

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I disagree with very much on certain doctrines In fact, one of my closest ministerial friends

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Is a Presbyterian pastor My wife, two years ago she had my baby My sixth child,

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Thea And after she had him she went through a time of postpartum depression That was terribly difficult

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Well my friend's wife had a child at the exact same time And she went through a postpartum depression

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They were both 42 years old It was amazing how they were both pastor's wives They both had a baby, same age, both had postpartum depression

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But God brought them together Because they would literally call each other every day just to cry

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And encourage one another And that brought me and this brother together And me and this brother now have a love for each other

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And for our wives who are now best of friends Because sometimes trauma creates a best of friend

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Has brought them together And yet I say to this man all the time When are you going to stop baptizing babies?

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Because we disagree I'm a Calvinistic Baptist He is a Presbyterian Reformed all the way

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Covenant Theologian And I love him and I know when we get to glory

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We're going to be together And I'll end with this There were two men in history

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Very famous men George Whitfield and John Wesley And if you know who

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John Wesley is He's the one who was the founder of the Methodist Church The Methodist Church started strong Has really gone far afield now

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But it started strong George Whitfield was one of the most powerful preachers in American history

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He would preach on the frontier He would go out and he would preach to crowds of thousands of people With no artificial amplification of his voice

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But he would go and he preached to thousands and thousands of people Were saved under his ministry George Whitfield was

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Calvinistic John Wesley was Arminian They loved each other

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They actually lived in the same house for a while There's a story about George Whitfield He comes home one night

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John Wesley is praying on his bed And Whitfield comes and he goes

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Thank you oh Lord that you have done what only you can do And that you've saved those who you were going to save And may God be with me now as I go to sleep

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And he lay down And old Wesley raised his head off the bed and he says I can't believe how your Calvinism has led you to such a short prayer

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And he went back to praying Well a few hours later Whitfield woke up and he noticed his head was still down And he walked over and he was asleep

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And he goes oh how your Arminianism has led you to such weak prayers But the point is

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When Whitfield was asked by one of his Friends Do you think you're going to see

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Wesley in heaven because of their disagreement over this issue Do you think you're going to see him in heaven Whitfield said no

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He said because he'll be so much closer to Jesus than I will So he thought so much

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Even though they disagreed on this issue And I want to leave you with that If I say something today in my sermon that we disagree on Understand I'm not saying that people who disagree with me

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Are necessarily heretics or anything like that We can disagree on this issue But we should try our best to be as faithful to Scripture as we can

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As God opens our heart to understand it And as long as we do that and we're charitable with those who disagree

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In areas where we can disagree Then I think we're doing alright Is that helpful? Oh good