Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility--Final Installment

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.

Defining Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. We are continuing our series, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility. We have done several shows on this. I haven�t done it for a while, but I know right where I left off.

Divine Sovereignty, and in that little word, or big word, sovereignty is reign, R-E-I-G-N, that should help you know what sovereignty is. Sovereignty and human responsibility, there�s inside that word Ponzi, P-O-N-Z-I, that should tell you a little bit about that.

You can write me, info at nocompromiseradio .com. If you want to go to sermoncritique .com, I don�t know if it�s up yet or not, but it�s going to be up soon, and I�m going to expand this ministry a little bit, and I want to help pastors with their sermons.

So I�ve been preaching verse-by-verse expositionally for about 25 years. I teach preaching classes at the European Bible Training Institute. Several times I�ve taught the entire MDiv Ministry of Proclamation 3000 class, that�s the intro MDiv class at Southern Seminary here in the Boston Adjunct Campus, and I help out with the Doctor of Ministry students at the Master�s Seminary, mentoring them, a doctoral advisor for a few students, and I regularly watch videos of those DMIN students.

I didn�t say demon, Doctor of Ministry, and then I watch their videos and I help them with everything from smiling to pausing to asking more questions to making sure they talk about the Lord Jesus Christ in every sermon, maybe not from every text, but in every sermon.

He might not be in every microtext atomistically, A-T-O-M, but anyway, if you are a pastor that you listen and you want some help in that area, I want to help, and it will take several hours of my time, so there is a charge, but I can tell you this much, it will be cheaper than $20 ,000 for the Doctor of Ministry program.

The Fall, Human Responsibility, and the Problem of Sin

Divine responsibility, and notice I didn�t say human free will. Okay, we believe in the fall, we�re not Roman Catholic, it�s the freedom of the will that the Catholics promote. We believe in the fall, and the fall affected the total person, I almost said man, but for you ladies, the total person, holy, W-H-O-L.

Mind was affected by the fall, heart, soul, conscience, body, spirit, and will. The will was affected by the fall, therefore how can it be free, right? How can it be free will? I freely just played that.

Temptations they were something, weren�t they? That was good. You know, the other thing that temptations like to play, man, they were snappy dressers. Man, there�s some hipster emergent pastors got nothing on them.

Crazy. We�re coming to the point when we talk about sovereignty and responsibility. We�re talking about the problem of sin, and here�s the problem, where to come from. Okay, we would all say sin exists, that we�re sinners, that other people sin, that sin affects, I mean, my body�s breaking down, I see my dog, she�s getting gray.

The wages of sin is death, we see death all around us. Gracie�s texting me. We know people sin. The question really is, did God allow sin into the universe? Did He ordain it? Did He cause it? Is He the author of sin?

I mean, if God causes all things, does He cause sin? If God tells you not to sin, does He create sin? God tells you, I forbid you to trespass, yet He makes trespass. Is God holy? That�s really the question.

Well, of course, the answer is He is holy, but there�s the problem of sin, the problem of evil, as some would call it, theodicy. Now, I�ll say up front, there�s some things in life, there are some things that just cannot be fully explained.

Well, what I have to do when it comes to theological problems and conundrums are this. I just have to go with what I know and realize that I am finite, I�m not infinite in my mind, so there will be some things I can�t understand.

I mean, I can�t even understand differential equations and cellular biology and Diffie Q�s. Did I just say Diffie Q�s? See? And I�ve fallen, so my mind, you know, it�s like God is putting out truth on the FM receiver.

Right? The FM radio receiver. And I have AM because I�m created, and it�s broken because of the fall. How am I going to hear the FM? So there are, you know, analogies that break down, but I think you get my point.

So what do I have to go with? My non-negotiables. God�s holy, God�s omnipotent, and sin exists. Okay, what am I going to do? Am I going to deny that God�s holy? No. Am I going to deny that He�s omnipotent or good?

No. No. And do I deny that He has at least permitted, allowed? I mean, I know what I believe, but I�m just giving you these different options. So as people write, if God is holy, then doesn�t He prevent sin?

If He�s omnipotent, can He do what He wants and then prevents sin? If God�s holy and wants to prevent sin and sin exists, then God didn�t want to prevent it? What about another one? If you combine sin exists, nothing exists except according to the omnipotent creation of God, since God does what He wants to do, logically it would appear that God wills sin to exist and therefore would not be holy.

I mean, I don�t even know which author wrote that, but are any of these any good? Well, then let�s continue to go with what we know. Can you blame God for anybody else�s sin? That�s a good place to start.

Can you blame God for your sin? Can you blame God for Adam�s sin? Can you blame God for anybody else�s sin? No, you stay. Can you blame God for my dog�s disobedience? Is that a sin? Job 34 .10,. �Therefore, listen to me, you men of understanding.

Far be it from God to do wickedness and from the Almighty to do wrong. Genesis 18 .25,. �Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike.

Far be it from you. Shall not the judge of all the earth deal justly Deuteronomy 32 .4,. �The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are just, a God of faithfulness and without injustice. Righteousness and upright is he.

Job 34 .12,. �Surely God will not act wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice. 1 John 2 .16,. �For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world.

James 1 .13,. �Let no one say when he is tempted, �I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone. And 1 John 1 .5,. �And this is the message we have heard from him and announced to you, that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.

So, when you've got problems like this, what about sin? Then you've got to go with what you know. And what I know for certain is God is holy, and God is just, and God is righteous. John Calvin said,.

�And whence, I ask you, comes the stench of a corpse, which is both putrefied and laid open by the heat of the sun? All men see that it is stirred up by the sun's rays, yet no one for this reason says that the rays stink.

What reason is there to think that God contracts any defilement if he uses his service for his own purpose? Now, I think the thing that probably will help you the most when it comes to dealing with is God did not create Adam sinful.

If he did, all bets are off. If he did, we're in a heap of trouble. But he created Adam upright, did he not? The answer is yes, he created Adam upright. He did not create Satan as a sinful being. The dog is just looking at me like, what's going on here?

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has put eternity into man's heart so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. That's not the verse I want. Oh, in his time, in his time.

In the day of prosperity, be joyful, and in the day of adversity, consider God has made the one as well as the other so that man may not find anything that will be after him. In his time, he created men upright.

You know what? Where is that? Where is it when it says he made men upright? All right, we're going to just have to look it up because this is, you know what, you don't give a lot to NoCo Radio or to Wretched Radio, so this is the kind of stuff you get.

Now, why does it not do this? Upright. It doesn't even say it. Upright. Boy, this is riveting. U-R-I-G-H-T. Okay, Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, 1 Chronicles, Psalms, Proverbs. See, this alone I have found that God made man upright, but they have sought out many other devices or schemes.

See, I did not know that. 729, I was up there earlier because that's another verse that's close to that. So, there you have it. God made men upright. They were created holy. If God created them as sinful beings, then we could somehow blame Him.

Would you go for this verity, for this truth? Of what it's okay for God to do, something we can't do? Isn't that what Calvin said? What is fitting for man not to do is fitting for God to do? What about this statement?

God simply withheld that undeserved constraining grace with which Adam would infallibly not have fallen, which grace he was under no obligation to bestow. Isn't this interesting? A young nurse who worded things like this when there was an accident, she said the pastor would say something like this, his first words to the victim.

Remember, God had nothing to do with this. The mother's son got killed in an airplane wreck, and a good person said, it was a freak accident. There's simply no explanation. The mother responded, Sir, you may not believe God was in that plane with my son, but I do.

I have no idea why God chose this to happen, but I know that this was part of His sovereign purpose, and His hand was in total control of the plane, the weather, and my son's life. I mean, what are we going to do?

You see what's happening here? People want to try to protect God. They want to somehow defend God. And in one hand, I think that's fine. And I think He, you know, He doesn't need my help defending Him, but I want to give Him honor and bestow on Him glory.

And if someone's attacking Him, I want to stand up for Him in that regard. I mean, He doesn't need it. But I mean, can't I just let these things be there? There's this tension that I can never resolve.

For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen. I mean, I just can't solve every little issue. So, what do I end up doing? I say to myself, does God ordain everything?

Yes. Was it in God's plan to have there be sin? Yes. Does God ordain sin? Yes. I know if you're listening, you might take a gulp at that, but you have to believe it. Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through Him in your midst.

As you yourselves know, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised Him up, loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible for Him to be held by it.

So, here's the question. Did God plan the death of the Son? Did the Father plan the death of the Son? Because if you said yes, the predetermined plan of God, the definite plan of God, Acts chapter 2, then in fact, you have to know that God's plan includes sin because it was a sin, the sin, the sin of all sins to have Jesus killed, the Son killed.

It's not even, we're not even talking about a baby being killed. We're talking about the innocent Son, the eternal Son. You have to believe that God ordains sin because Jesus' death was ordained. Acts chapter 4, verse 20, 5, and following, Who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, Why did the Gentiles rage, and the people's plot in vain?

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His anointed. For truly in this city they were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you appointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

What's that statement? Well, let me read the verses just prior to it. When they were released, they went to their friends and reported that the chief priest and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them.

And so when it says to do whatever your hand and your plan predestined to take place, that was in a prayer to God. The prayer is extolling God that nothing happens without His plan, including sin. If you think author of sin means he has evil motives and he has evil desires, and he promotes sin in a vicious, malicious, evil way, then of course we know the answer.

You know I'm not the huge Edwards fan, but Edwards writes,. But if one means author in the sense of creator in a way in which it does not arise from either evil motives or evil nature, but only out of sovereign foreordination, then yes, there is a sense in which it could be true that God is the author of sin.

Now see, I don't like to talk that way, but what Edwards is trying to do is he's trying to say that God plans things. He ordains things. In the fall, what happened? Did God slam Adam down to sin, or did He just take back His restraining power?

Those are good questions. One writer said,. We as creatures are bound to hinder all the evil we can, but God is under no such obligation. Why? Because God knows how to take these things and make them work together for good.

He knows how to Romans 8 .28 things. He lets sin run its course, and it gets glorified out of it. He gets the maximum glory for having sin in the plan because of what His Son would do. W. G. T. Shedd said,.

The reason for the permission of sin was the manifestation of certain divine attributes, which could not have been manifested otherwise. That's true. You just go to Romans 9, and you find that out. Sin is completely under the authority of God.

Would you like it the other way? Do you want sin not under God's authority? I mean, see, the more you talk about it, the more you're just forced. God has permitted the fall, right? He had to. It was part of the plan, and Adam sins, and then the last Adam, he comes along, and we don't praise Adam anymore.

We praise the last Adam. Do you want Adam's righteousness or Christ's righteousness? What if you hardly sinned at all? Then what would the parable of the two debtors mean? Which one was forgiven more?

Which one loved the most? The answer, which one had been forgiven the most? Can not God even there make something good to happen? Yes. You don't blame God for sin. You blame yourself for sin. One man said, Be careful lest you blame God and finally discover that you were foreordained to be punished for blaming God for your sin.

Because God's sovereign over everything, that doesn't mean you can't plan. Proverbs 16, 9, The mind of a man plans his way, but the Lord directs his step. What are your other options? If you deny God is sovereign over sin, then he's limited, he's finite, he doesn't know what's going to happen, he's biting his fingernails.

Remember, God is a sovereign judge. This is not a democracy. The only question is, if it's in the Bible, is the Bible true or not? Say, Well, that makes me a puppet. No, it makes you a robot. No, it makes you clay, and Jesus is the potter.

Yeah, but why pray? Because God ordains all ends, and he also ordains the means. Why evangelize? See last answer. You say, Well, that's fatalism. It's not fatalism. If there's a personal God, an intelligent God, if it's a God who's unintelligent, impersonal, or not tritheistic, ah, gotcha, not Trinitarian, right?

There's already love within the Trinity, one God, three persons. God can make good even out of evil. That's probably what you should stick with. Make you rejoice. Sovereignty shouldn't get you to grind your teeth.

Revelation 19, 6, Hallelujah for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns. Calvin said it comforts him to know that he has received into God's safekeeping and entrusted the care of his angels, and that neither water nor fire nor iron can harm him except so far as it pleases God as governor to give them occasion, describing a certain situation.

Friend, God is sovereign, and that means over every molecule. That means over every sin, over everything that happened, and if you wasn't sovereign over sin, then what if anything bad ever happened to you, and you'd think, well, it just happened to me.

But God can make something good happen from it. And even health issues, right? This is all related. I mean, I'm not Mary Baker, Eddie Glover, Patterson Frye. I believe that sin has caused sickness. I'm talking about the fall of Adam, and then my own personal sin.

Is my prostate cancer chastening from God? Is it just randomness? Is it just, well, you know, I'm just another in the next long line of this? Is it ordained? Can it be used by God? And we know the answer to a lot of those questions, and so it is best just to rest in the fact that God is sovereign, man is responsible, and that everything in the plan of God will be affected.

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.