Electing Grace (Part 1)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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

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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."

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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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

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.

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My name's Mike Abendroth, and it has been fairly crazy around here in my life, traveling to Indianapolis to speak at a men's conference, traveling to Nebraska to speak at a conference,

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Virginia to speak at a conference, Wretched Radio is here having a conference here at Bethlehem Bible Church.

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So, it's been pretty crazy, so it feels good. It feels nice to just sit and have the local flavor of ministry here.

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By the way, when you say the word feel, mean feel, and when you say the word think, mean think.

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In other words, if you're thinking about something, don't say, I feel. Say, I think. So anyway, that's just for free today on No Compromise Radio.

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I know you listen for little tidbits, little extras. We have a theme usually for the day, and then we throw in some bits of free advice, free moralistic teachings on Bethlehem Bible Church's No Compromise Radio ministry.

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If you don't have a church and you live in the Worcester area, you would want to come to Bethlehem Bible Church.

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We have many visitors who come, and I'll go up and say hi to them. Hi, my name is Mike Abendroth, and they'll say hello.

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And usually when I see a certain kind of smile or grimace, depending on the person, I think, oh yeah, they listen to No Compromise Radio.

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So the good news is you know what you're getting into before you show up. Although I do want to say this, disclaimer alert, although I am not trying to fake anything on No Compromise Radio, I do have an agenda that fits in the theme.

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The theme is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order, and it is No Compromise Radio ministry, so I'm probably tougher at times, probably more direct, probably more blunt than I am in other areas of my life.

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That is to say, I try not to be no compromise when I'm around my kids, around my wife.

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Sometimes when you teach the Bible from the pulpit on Sundays, there's time to comfort, there's a time to confront.

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But if you only know me based on the radio show, you probably don't really know me that much.

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I guess maybe Tuesday's help, because it's LaughFest with Steve and I. Even now

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I'm sitting here laughing, I'm in my own study, and who's hearing me laughing?

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Sometimes I just imagine the audience out there, and it's just amazing when you think about it, who listens?

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And now we've got podcasts around the world, and anyway, if you need a local church,

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Bethlehem Bible Church, just north of Worcester, and we're in West Boylston now, we'll be moving to Boylston soon enough, and today we're going to talk about election.

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We're not going to talk about election as in who will win the Republican nomination.

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That's semi -interesting to me, who the next president will be, but you ought to read the book

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Secular Faith by D .G. Hart. I think that will be good for you, especially if you're super political, and you're post -millennial, and you are, what else, political, post -millennial, and Pythagorean.

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By the way, my kids, when my daughter, who's in fifth grade, says,

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Daddy, help me with my algebra, I can do that. Help me with my geometry, I can do that.

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But when my 10th grader and my 12th grader ask me, can you help me with my math? The default is no.

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They'll say, can you help me with my m, no. Once I hear the m, no.

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So let's talk about election, that is, how God chooses people, that God does choose people.

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And I would like to say from the start that some people don't like election, the doctrine where God sovereignly chooses some individuals for salvation before eternity, before time began, that is to say in eternity past.

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God selects, God chooses. Initially when you talk about this doctrine of God's unconditional election,

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God freely choosing, Hosea chapter 14, I have loved you freely.

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God with His own free will chooses people. Now initially people, they don't like it, but here's what

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I want to say to you before we start today. Do you like to choose things? When it comes to your life, do you like to choose?

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So let's think about some things that you like to choose. Do you like to, did you like to choose your spouse?

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Now maybe you're from an Eastern culture, an Indian culture, Pakistani or something where your family will choose your spouse for you.

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But even these days, they'll probably ask you, do you confirm that choice? But if you live in a place where there's love marriage, which is pretty much most of the

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Western world now, you get to choose your spouse. Are you glad for that? Do you think people are mad that you get to do that?

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Do you think that's unfair that you get to choose your spouse? Well how about your workplace?

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Now you probably think that you're a slave at work now and you're stuck in corporate America, but you could have said no to that job.

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I think you freely chose that job. Now maybe you're an apprentice, maybe your father forced you to work for this company or you have to force to work for your dad's business.

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So there might be a few exceptions, but even with those people, would you like to choose a different job or would you say, you know what,

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I don't want to have that freedom to choose. I don't want any freedom to choose. We live in a society where there's a, there's a, a right to choice that's being promoted.

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People want to choose for themselves what to do. Now of course in that particular case, it's horrible because babies inside of a woman aren't part of their own body.

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There's different DNA, different gender. If you have a baby boy inside of you, you mean to tell me your body now has components of a male body, but people like to choose.

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That's my point. When you are playing basketball, a pickup game of basketball or a pickup game of football or soccer, do you like to choose?

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Do you like to choose who the captain's going to be? Choose who's going to be on your team? Do you say to NFL football teams on draft day and that's bad that you would get to choose someone?

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Friends, we live in a choosing society. I almost threw in the old ad choosing mothers, choose

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Jif. Remember that peanut butter commercial choosing mothers, choose Jif. Actually when I was a kid growing up,

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I went to master's elementary school in Omaha, Nebraska and I went to master's seminary too, but I went to master's elementary school and I just drove by that the other day.

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I was in Nebraska for a men's conference, a pastor's conference rather, the gospel network. And I drove past my old school.

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I drove past my old home. I think my old home had something like 1200 square feet. When you're a kid, you think it's big, but I drove by that and I thought, wow,

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I've either grown or the house has shrunk or something. I don't know. But anyway, how does this relate to master's school, master's elementary?

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Well, we're talking about choosing. We're talking about schools. Maybe that's maybe that school choice where you think, you know what,

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I'd like to be able to choose. But we live in a society where people choose, oh, I know. We would say if we wanted to fight someone, we would say, choose.

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And the other person would say, accept. And we had signals. So if you wanted to fight some kid who was in your class, you want to fight him after class, you raised up your pinky and that was,

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I want to fight you. And if the other kid raised up his index finger, that was, I accept the fight afterwards.

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See at the playground, choose, accept. We live in a society dominated by choice.

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Now here's my question. What you like in yourself, the ability to choose, the desire to choose.

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Why don't you like that in God? So what you want to do and what you'd like to do and pretty much what you get to do, lots of choices in life, what to eat, what kind of coffee to drink.

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Can you imagine of your own free agency, you go and pick Dunkin' Donuts when you could be having

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Pete's coffee, you'd be having Turkish coffee. You could have a Dopio espresso Campana. You freely choose

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Dunkin' Donuts. That's crazy to me, but your nature won't allow anything else.

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That's one of my hugest pet peeves in life is to walk into a Dunkin' Donuts and see someone who obviously needs to control their calorie count and they order an extra large coffee, which by the way, there's no calories in coffee.

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And then they get like extra whipping cream, heavy whipping cream, and then sugar, extra sugar.

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So what we do in New England is they've got codes now for Dunkin' Donuts. And so if you say extra, extra,

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I'd like a coffee, large coffee, extra, extra. I don't think I knew it before I got here, and I think this is correct.

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I think you get extra cream and extra sugar. So you're like, I'll have a coffee with five splendors.

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Five splendors. Oh man, it's crazy. But people choose based on their nature.

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People choose. They have free agency to choose whatever they'd like to choose and they like choosing.

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That's my point. So why do you think you like to choose? I'll tell you why you like to choose.

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Even if you don't want to know, I choose to tell you. Because you are an image bearer.

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You are made, according to the Bible, in the likeness and image of God. Now there are some attributes or characteristics or perfections of God that you can't be.

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That you can't emulate. That you can't try to flesh out in your life based on who you are in Christ.

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Some things you can't be. You can't be immutable without change. You can't be omnipotent, all -powerful.

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You can't be omniscient, knowing everything. You can't be omnipresent everywhere at the same time.

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But there are some attributes which we call not incommunicable, but communicable.

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That is to say that we can, at a very small scale I know, based on our finiteness, based on our fallenness, but we can still reflect some of these attributes.

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You can't reflect omnipresence, but you could reflect holiness, you could reflect kindness, you could reflect love, and some of those things.

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And so when it comes to communicable attributes of God, incommunicable attributes of God, we are kind of like, we act like God in this particular case as image bearers.

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I want you to know that even though it's restricted, even though it's limited, even though it's not exclusive and total, you want to be a little sovereign because God is sovereign.

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God's sovereignty has rubbed off on his creatures, that is to say, humans.

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I don't mean monkeys, but if you watch The New Planet of the Apes, you can see Caesar wants to be sovereign as well.

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Did you like that movie? I saw the other day, oh, this is interesting, the other day on YouTube news kind of thing, there was a guy in Brazil, could only happen in Brazil, I'm sorry

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Nyada, but it could only happen in Brazil. No it happens other places too, it happens,

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I think it happened in Tokyo too. Some guy jumped in the monkey cage area that was at the zoo.

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So instead of in cages now, they have the big open areas and then you have to climb over a fence and then you have to go across the pool, you know, jump down and then there's some kind of water barrier too.

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So he jumped down in, he swam across the little barrier, walked across the water barrier, and then he started kind of putting his hand out towards, they weren't gorillas, but they were some kind of monkey cheetah kind of thing.

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And the monkeys started to bite him, attack him.

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And his arm was bleeding profusely and then he staggered back through the water and then they pulled him up.

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It was crazy. But as image bearers, we like to act like little sovereigns. And when

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I used to play Yankees and Confederates in the sandbox, remember when kids used to play in sandboxes and they'd have to actually create things and do things versus having their thumbs getting carpal thumble because of all the texting and playing games on the iGadgets.

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I was the one who chose what team. And since I lived in Nebraska and I knew who won,

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I was always a Yankee. And I was a Yankee, a particular guy, and I was the victor and I killed the last guy and won.

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And I was a little sovereign. So why do you like in God, in yourself, what you don't like in God?

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Sovereignty of God in who goes to heaven and who doesn't. You say, well, I don't even want to know about election.

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Well, you mean to tell me Ephesians chapter one, Paul somehow made a mistake of writing the letter and then there was a mistake in putting it in the canon.

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That's the first point I want to make today. The second point actually, after the image bearer issue, is when

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Paul writes, inspired by the spirit, Ephesians one, blessed be the

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God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love.

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He predestined us for adoption as sons through Christ Jesus, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved.

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God obviously wants you to know about election. He chose, he predestined, Ephesians.

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It doesn't take you very long to read the Bible to figure out what, to figure out this. There's a lot of stuff about God choosing an election in the

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Bible. Listen to what Calvin said, for anyone will seek to know.

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If anyone will seek to know more than what God has revealed, he shall be overwhelmed with the immeasurable brightness of inaccessible light.

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But we must bear in mind the distinction between the secret counsel of God and his will made known in Scripture.

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When you want to go beyond Scripture, in other words, you're not going to be able to figure things out because God's ways are too high.

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God is incomprehensible. And the only way we can comprehend him is when he reveals his nature to us in his person, his plan, his son in the

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Bible. So we can know about God through the Bible, but beyond that, we don't get to know about him.

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Now, when the Bible tells us that God chose us, then we better take that to heart because God wants us to know that.

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Paul is writing to the churches, to the church of Ephesus most likely, and other churches.

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We think it was a circular letter, and it was a letter that would go around other churches.

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And if this is something for only seminary discussion rooms, if this is the doctrine of election is something that you shouldn't talk about with people initially because it will divide.

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What was Paul doing? He says, I'm going to praise God. Twenty, twenty -five years later after Damascus Road, Paul had not gotten over the glory of Christ Jesus, his splendor, his majesty, his greatness.

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And so then he says, I'm going to bless the Father. I'm going to bless God who's just so richly blessed us.

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And I'm going to praise God the Father for election, praise the Son for redemption, praise the Spirit for sealing.

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And before he praises the Son for redemption, he praises the Father for choosing. Now Paul knew what he was doing.

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He was driven along by the Spirit of God to write the book of Ephesians. And so I want you to know that this is not for second -level

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Christians. This is not for seminary Christians. This is for brand -new Christians.

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You need to teach brand -new Christians about God, His nature, and the nature of His salvation.

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To me that's simple. You say, well, it's going to cause confusion. Really? It's going to cause confusion.

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Isn't it simple? People like to choose. People like to choose because they reflect

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God at choosing. And God does choose. God chose the elect angels, 1

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Timothy 5. God chose Israel, Deuteronomy 7. God chose Levitical priests,

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Deuteronomy 18. God chose Jeremiah, the prophet Jeremiah 1. And God chooses believers.

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God picks and chooses all the time. He chooses Jacob. He doesn't choose Esau. God picks and chooses people all the time.

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It's just part of the warp and woof of Scripture.

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It's just part of it. It permeates everything. God choosing to do things.

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And so you need to know about election. And every time you see the word election, or choose, or predestined, or foreknown in the

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Bible, foreordained, you ought to stop and think, why is that there? And what is it?

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And is it some man -centered God knew ahead of time, therefore did it? Or God knows what's going to happen in the future because He has it planned, ordained.

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He knows. You know, God knows everybody who's going to go to heaven. You know, God knows everybody for whom

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Christ died. He's got it all figured out. This is not some evolving universe, some plan

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B, plan C, if -then, flowchart universe. God has one single decree.

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Matter of fact, there's a good book about God's single decree as a king. You ought to get that book. I think you can go to our website and buy that book.

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You say, well, you know what, it might be everywhere, but I don't believe it. Let me give you the third point today on No Compromise Radio regarding the doctrine of unconditional selection.

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Election. God choosing some, passing over others. The eternal act of God whereby

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He, in His sovereign good pleasure and on account of no foreseen merit in them, chooses a certain number of men to be the recipients of special grace and of eternal salvation.

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I think Paul Enns wrote that. Somebody wrote it. I didn't write it, but it sure sounds good. Let me tell you something else.

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If you're a Christian, you believe in election. Now, this goes with my last point, but you do believe in election because it is clearly taught in the

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Bible. It's not a matter of do I believe it or don't. It's what I believe about it because it's everywhere in the scripture.

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So, you either give it a biblical definition or a man -centered definition. Those are your only options.

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You can't get rid of the word elect, choose, select, election, foreordination, foreknown, foreknowledge, foreordination.

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You can't get rid of those words. I guess you can. I'd like to know what the message translation does with that.

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But they are there. Ephesians 1, back to that again. God chooses for Himself. It's a middle verb, middle tense.

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Chooses for Himself. God alone does the choosing.

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He calls out. There's a large mass, and He calls out.

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Let me give you another point. I think it's the fourth point for today on No Compromise Radio.

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No one deserves to be chosen. No one deserves to be chosen. So, it's called a gracious selection, a gracious act, a gracious choosing.

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But no one deserves it. So, if you think everybody deserves to be chosen, but some aren't, then you've got a

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Herculean problem. You've got a massive problem. But if you realize, based on depravity and the fall, no one deserves to be chosen, then when some are given favor by God and granted special favor, then you say to yourself, oh, that's not so bad.

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When you think you deserve to be chosen, then it's no longer a gracious choice, is it?

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It's a deserved choice. It's a merited choice. It's a works -based choice. And a works -based system will not work with the

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Bible knowledge. So, when you think about what you deserve, what everybody deserves, then it makes it easier to digest this strong truth of election.

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All the angels were created, one -third sinned, God offered no plan of redemption.

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He could have, but He didn't. They all got what they deserved. And we all would say, on that day,

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God judges these fallen angels, they get what they deserved. And so everybody should get what they deserved, but God is gracious,

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God is kind, God is merciful, God is by nature a saving God. He's a strong deliverer.

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He's a strong delivering God. Well, what else do we have here on No Compromise Radio about election?

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Oh, let me give you this one. Without election, I think this is a point for, no one would be saved.

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No one would be saved without election. Because men would follow the desires of their wicked hearts.

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They would be slaves to sin, and they, with their own free agency, would be free to do what they wanted to do, and that is not believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ. They need grace. They need God's initiating grace, initiation coming back from Ephesians 1, where it's in eternity past.

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God initiates, man responds. Not the other way around. If you've got some silly notion in your brain today that God saved you because God was waiting for you and God needed for you to let

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Him save you, you forgot about eternity past. The triune God, the Father choosing in eternity past, then the

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Son going to die for those same Son, same sum, and then the Spirit of God in time quickening those same sum.

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It's the economy of the Godhead. It's the Godhead who works in perfect symmetrical agreement, same essence, one

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God. The Father chooses some, not all. Jesus dies for the same sum, not all, and the Spirit of God quickens the same sum, not all.

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Without election, no one would be saved. Men and women are dead in trespasses and sins, and people would hear the gospel, but no one would ever come to faith and repentance without God doing the work, and God's works began in eternity past.

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So if you're a Christian today, it's because God elected you. And by the way, if you're not a

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Christian and you want to be saved, election is not a barrier for you at the moment.

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Here's what I mean by that. If you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ right now, you will be saved.

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So why don't you settle it? How do you know if you're elect or not? Here's what the point is. Believe. Believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Because as time goes on, we don't know who is elect and who isn't, so we preach the gospel to everyone, and God, in His right timing, takes the preached gospel and quickens people.

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So if you'd like to know if you're elect or not today, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. And then you can look back and say,

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I see what God has done for me, and He did it here in time, He did it at Calvary, and He did it in eternity past.

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God, you are awesome. God, you're incredible. God, I want to boast in you and praise you.

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Praise the Lord Jesus Christ. No Compromise Radio. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.