Election, Part 1, What We Believe, Part 29

Elections should not be looked upon as based merely on abstract sovereignty. God is truly sovereign, but He exercises this sovereignty in harmony with His other attributes, especially

His omniscience, justice, holiness, wisdom, grace, and love.

This sovereignty will always exalt the will of God in a manner totally consistent with His characters revealed in the life of our

Lord Jesus Christ. Welcome to The Rap Report with your host,

Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the

Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and The Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member of the over 50 vetted podcasts that are out there.

So go to christianpodcastcommunity .org, check them all out. You'll even hear one called

Street Talk Theology, and that is my co -host here, Pastor Dominic.

How are you today, sir? Andrew, doing well. Thank you. It's always a pleasure to be hanging out with you behind the microphone, and I see you got a new haircut today, so it looks really well.

Well, I did it myself, so if it looks good. The guy who actually has a barbershop in church, he looked at it and, you know,

I didn't, he's like recognizing I didn't smooth it out as well as he would like. I was like, yeah, but it didn't cost me anything.

Okay, this will be embarrassing. Some of you may know this, what this is, and others you won't, but what

I would do, and for years I used to cut my hair, not my own hair, not pay for it, and I used a device called a

Flowbee. If you know what a Flowbee is, you're laughing because you're going, wait, people actually use it.

What this is, it is a device you hook up to your vacuum cleaner and it sucks your hair up and it has these razors that just cut at the same level, so you get kind of a consistent level.

The only thing is that, you know, I don't get that smooth, gradual, you know, cut on the sides that they, that barbers would do, but at least

I'm not paying for it and I'm thinking of trying to save my, as my hair has been thinning, I've had to actually go back to a barber because it was hard to do with my

Flowbee, but I'm trying to do it again. And this is exactly what everybody tuned in to the rap report this morning to find out how you cut your hair, right?

That's right. Now we're going to talk about election, the doctrine of election. And this is one that there's,

I really am puzzled with the amount of debate and discussion people have with this doctrine.

And so hopefully this episode will clarify things for folks so that there won't be as much of the debating and fighting and whatnot that goes on with this topic.

But I know that there's many who agree, disagree with the doctrine of election, some that have different definitions for the doctrine of election.

So I will ask, please give this a full listen. And we probably will do this in two parts because it is, there's a lot here.

And I think that there's a lot that people misunderstand and that's why they so hate this doctrine and, and there is, there is hatred for this doctrine.

I understand. But what I want to do is kind of walk through this slowly so that we can dig into it.

And so as usual, what we're doing right now, we're in a long series. This is our what we believe series.

So I encourage you to go back in past episodes and listen to all the series. But what this is, is we're walking through the doctrinal statement from striving for eternity.

Why are we doing this? Well, a couple of reasons. One, to show you when you read a good doctrinal statement, all that's really in there and what it says often is, is clarifying what it doesn't say.

In other words, there's a lot we're going to talk about what it doesn't mean because that's what we end up seeing.

When we look at a good doctrinal statement, it's going to point out that there's a positive and negative.

And so as if you've been following with us in the series, you've seen a lot of that. You've seen where we're saying that if it says this, it means that it's not this.

So there's a lot that's in a good doctrinal statement. If you're looking for a good church, and I was asked recently how to find a good church and going to a church and looking up the doctrinal statement nowadays is almost worthless because so many churches don't give you a great details in their doctrinal statement.

They might have a page or two of just general things. We believe in the Bible. Okay. Jehovah's Witnesses believe in the

Bible. You're not helping me. So what you want is some detail.

I saw one website that had their doctrinal statement was seven bullet points, one sentence.

That's it. That tells me absolutely nothing about what this church believes because it's so general that it fits every group.

I actually looked at their doctrinal statement and said, Roman Catholics could hold to that seven point doctrinal statement.

Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons even could have, because they would have different definitions for some of these words.

And this is the thing that we're trying to do is say, we want to understand how to identify a good doctrinal statement.

But as we're walking through this, we're also helping to discuss different theological points that we have in our doctrinal statement at Striving for Eternity.

So if you want to follow along, just go to strivingforeturning .org on the about section and click on where it says what we believe.

Andrew, let me ask you a question before we start. Why is there so much, and I know we'll probably get into this, but, or maybe we won't because we want to go through the doctrine, but why is there so much debate or pushback on the doctrine of election?

I mean, it's clear in the Bible. I mean, maybe the nuances of it, but why? Maybe you can tell the audience, why is there such a pushback on this in your mind, if I may?

Yeah. And we're going to get into it really, I think, in the second paragraph. But where I think the reason there's so much pushback, it goes back to the difference we have theologically versus experientially.

And I'll recommend again, the episode I did a few episodes back, it was a bonus episode to the doctrine of regeneration, and it's called

Superintending the Solution to the Calvinism -Arminianism Debate.

And the reason I think that's so important is because it really helps us to understand experientially, we chose

God, theologically, God chose us, and resolving that tension that so many seem to have between those two is where there's problems.

Now, in the first paragraph, we're going to deal with the passage from Ephesians, which says that God elected before the foundation of the world.

And that's hard for some people to wrap their head around because they're stuck in the experiential

I chose God. And if I chose God, which you did,

I did, but if it was based solely on me choosing God, then how could he have done that before the foundation of the world?

And so people get into that struggle. And so we will deal with that throughout this episode.

Yeah, that's a text you have to deal with. That's well said. Are you familiar with Peter Sammons? He just wrote a book on reprobation and God's sovereignty, recovering a biblical doctrine.

You had him on your podcast. I think you did a two -parter with him. I did. It was good.

I think the fold was by John McArthur, but I just, it's a tough read. That's a tough read.

Well, let's, speaking of reading, why don't you read for us this chapter we have on the doctrinal statement under the section of election.

Okay. Thank you. Election is the act of God by which, before the foundation of the world, he chose in Christ those whom he graciously regenerates, saves, and sanctifies.

Sovereign election does not contradict or negate the responsibility of man to repent and trust

Christ as Savior and Lord. Nevertheless, since sovereign grace includes the means of receiving the gift of salvation as well as the gift itself, sovereign election will result in what

God determines. All whom the Father calls to himself will come in faith, and all who come in faith the

Father will receive. The unmerited favor that God grants to totally depraved sinners is neither related to any initiative of their own part, nor to God's anticipation of what they might do by their own will, but is solely of his sovereign grace and mercy.

Election should not be looked upon as based merely on abstract sovereignty. God is truly sovereign, but he exercises this sovereignty in harmony with his other attributes, which especially is omniscience, justice, holiness, wisdom, grace, and love.

This sovereignty will always exalt the will of God in a manner totally consistent with his characters revealed in the life of our

Lord Jesus Christ. And so really some of the question, we're going to really dig into the question you asked earlier,

Pastor Dom, will be next episode, I'm sure, where we talk about the fact that the reason some people do struggle with it is that part where it says it's solely of his grace, his sovereign grace and mercy.

That's where people struggle because they go, but I chose. And so it's first going to have to be something we, as we dig into this, even though we'll dig into that far more next episode, we have to understand that the doctrine of election is something that God does.

So when we look at these doctrines, there are areas of that are for humans.

There's areas that where it's the work of God. And so election is a work of God.

Regeneration is a work of God. When we choose, this becomes the issue where so many struggle is who chose.

And so we start off by saying here, election, and the word election means to select.

It's a biblical word. So we can't say, you know, it's interesting. I had a, this is a side note, but I remember a guy who was a sinless perfectionist who hated

Calvinism, saw anyone that was Calvinistic wasn't even saved. And he told me he would,

I was working on a message on sinless perfectionism and wanted to talk to him. And he said, he wouldn't talk to me because I wouldn't consider him a brother in Christ.

I said, well, I haven't really discussed how you got saved to make that call. But by the end of the email exchange, he told me

I wasn't a brother in Christ because I'm a Calvinist. I said, well, I never said I was a Calvinist. He said, well,

I looked through your doctrinal statement and it's this section he looked up. And I said, what in this tells you

I'm a Calvinist? And he quoted for me, Ephesians one, and he quoted where it says that God elected before the foundation of the world.

And I was like, well, wait a minute, that's Ephesians. That's the Bible. Are you saying that God is a

Calvinist? He cut off communication. So this is the way the new American standard has it.

He chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before him.

And I like that reading of it because it has the idea of choosing because that's what election means. When we go to elect a president or senator or governor, what are we doing?

We're selecting, we're choosing who we would want. And so election is an act of God.

So this is not a human act. This is an act that God does by which before the foundation of the world, as we just read, he chose in Christ those whom he graciously regenerates, saves, and sanctifies.

This is the idea where as we look at this, we see that this is something that God does.

Now, why does he say he did it before the foundation of the world? Let me try to make this easy to understand because you will hear some people, when they come to the doctrine of predestination, which we see in scripture as well in Romans that God predestined us, what people say, and they come to this passage that he elected or chose before the foundation of the world, what some people do is say that God looked down the tunnels of time, he saw who was going to be saved, and he chose those people that would be saved.

Now, let me first say what the problems with that and what this doctrinal statement is clearly saying is that that's not true.

That his election was an act of God before the foundation of the world. It's not something that he did based on what we do.

Why? I've said this multiple times throughout the series, but whenever we study theology, we must make sure that the theology we believe is rooted in the nature of God.

If we have a theology that has something with the nature of God that's different than the nature we see in the

Bible, we have a problem. Let me give a for instance. The Bible is very clear that God is omniscient.

That means all -knowing. It means that God knows everything. There's nothing that he learned.

There's nothing that he saw in history and said, I didn't see that coming.

No, he knows everything. Another thing that the Bible teaches is that God is eternal.

Means there's no time for him. He's outside of time. He created the space -time mass continuum in Genesis chapter one.

When he said, let there be light, he was creating that energy. And also with that would be time.

That's a hard thing for us to wrap our heads about. How could we came to think a being that is outside of time?

Yeah, you know, you mentioned something and that's a great point. I was backing up on that and then listening to that and trying to get my thoughts together.

You know, God doesn't need foreknowledge for knowledge. He just knows. He doesn't have to look down.

And that's the thing. He doesn't have to look down the corridors of time. He just knows. And I think when you when people use that,

I don't even know what to call it, a convoluted statement or when people use that, it actually takes away from who

God is. It's like I'm going to use an old New York thing. I mean, it's crazy. I mean, if me and you, which is just an example, if me and you are going to say play the lottery, which we don't do, and if somebody tells us the number to play, we have an inside connection and we play it, we have foreknowledge.

But it's different if we just knew the number that was coming out and God just knows. He doesn't need foreknowledge for knowledge.

That's a great point because that's a huge argument to choose. So, well, let's use your example. If I had the inside track and I give you the lottery number, you learned the lottery number, right?

God didn't learn the lottery number. He knows the lottery number.

And that's the difference. And so if he's outside of time, everything's an eternal now for him.

Now, why do I spend the time to do that? Because for people who say God looked down the tunnels of time to see how men would choose, well, one, it puts him as a being that's confined by time.

He's no longer eternal because he had to look down through time. He somehow has an ability to look through time, but it's not all an eternal now to him.

But it means he had to learn what we would do. So his selection of us is based on our action.

And this is why I say so much of this is based on who chose who. This is why we spent the time going through regeneration.

And I did that special episode on superintending because the doctrine of superintending is important in understanding this.

So that you realize that this is something that God has, this is part of his nature and how he works through us.

And so the other thing that this is saying is that election is something where God has chosen those who are in Christ.

Now, this is important because what some do because of this issue of election, they don't want to believe

God chose us. They want to believe we chose God. I'm saying both are true.

But what you end up having here is that they will redefine what election is to say that what

God elected was not individual people, but he elected the nation of Israel, the church.

In other words, he elected a group, an organization that he would work through. And that avoids the personal election, and therefore we could still choose

God, and election could be true because we redefine it. No, as we look in Ephesians, he's saying he chose us.

He didn't say he chose the church. He chose us, which is the same thing you're going to see in Romans when

Paul is making the case that between, you know, Jacob and Esau, he's saying that Jacob, he loved

Esau, he hated. Those are individuals. Those are not, as some people try to say, nations. They try to say, oh, see, those are nations.

And Jacob was the selected nation. That's not what he's saying because Ephesians 1, it's making it clear, he chose us individually.

Yeah, I think I remember reading some, I think maybe N .T. Wright is one of those expositives like corporate type of election where God corporately elects.

But I think individual election is really clear in the Bible. And I know that there's a group of those type of expositors that talk more of a corporate election over against an individual election.

I don't know why they would have a problem with an individual election, because if you look at it inside a corporate election, our individuals,

I mean, I don't know. Well, the reason they're trying to is they're trying to find a way to say that we chose

God really apart from God doing a work in ourselves. We chose God, and yet God elected before the foundation of the world.

How do you resolve those? Well, I have a different way of resolving that because I asked the question, why would

God use the language that he chose us before the foundation of the world?

Have you ever thought about that? Well, let me back up now and ask you a question.

You have a child, two years old, is going to go stick a fork into an outlet, an electrical outlet.

Do you stop the child and say, let me explain how electricity works? You see, the fork is metal and it conducts electricity.

And when you stick that in the outlet, the electricity is going to run through the fork into your hand and electrify you.

Is that what you say? No, no. To the two -year -old, you just say, no, stop, bad.

And the two -year -old, in their understanding, understands what bad means, what stop means.

Because that's the level they understand. You and I cannot comprehend in any way what it is to have omniscience, to know everything and to be eternal.

So you're outside of time. So everything's an eternal now to you. We cannot comprehend that. So if God wants to communicate that this salvation had nothing to do with us and everything to do with God, the best way he could communicate it is like baby talk to you and I.

And yes, I'm calling us babies. And if you don't like it, just realize God's knowledge is infinite and ours is not.

Everything he communicates is baby talk to us. But if we think about it that way, he's communicating in a way for you and I to understand it.

What he's trying to say in there is that we had nothing to do with it. His choice was done not based on what we do, but solely upon his choice.

And that's what he's trying to communicate with that, that we have nothing to do with it. First Peter, he puts it this way.

He talks about his readers. He says, to those who reside as aliens scattered throughout Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who were chosen, how were they chosen?

According to the foreknowledge of God, the father, by the sanctifying work of the spirit to obey

Jesus and be sprinkled with his blood, may grace and peace be yours in the fullest.

So God is choosing us by his foreknowledge. Now, does that mean it's the foreknowledge in the way that Pastor Dom was just talking about that with the lotto ticket?

No, it's not that he saw what people would do and respond. No, his foreknowledge is a complete knowledge because he's omniscient.

Here's a question or something brought there. I use this and I ask people kindly and respectfully, think about Adam created sinless, could not get it right.

Let's just use that. And I'm just not trying to be facetious, but him and Eve were created by God's grace, sinless, were given a choice.

And think about it. They could not make the right choice as sinless created beings, not born, but created.

How the heck are we going to make the right choice? We're born in sin. But this is why the doctrine of superintending is so important so people can see that both are right.

God didn't choose us apart from working within us to choose him, but we can't choose him without him doing that work.

And so if you believe God's omniscient, then you understand that he knows every person who's going to be saved, not learns it, knows it.

And this is why actually some people who get so against Calvinism and so against God's sovereignty in selecting humans to be saved, what ends up happening is they see this connection.

And this is what has led to a system of theology known as open theism, where they end up teaching is that God doesn't actually know who's going to be saved.

He's just a really good guesser. God doesn't know the future. He's not omniscient.

He's good at watching how humans behave, knowing what they'll do. And from there, he just guesses.

That's how he gets prophecies right. He's good at guessing. That's not the God of the Bible. And anytime you have a theology, whether you're looking down the tunnels of time to see who's going to be saved or whether you say that God is not omniscient, either way, you don't have a biblical theology because you've now messed with the nature of God.

I know this is a little down. I mean, it's only the second line. But I just wanted to ask you a question.

You know, Spurgeon said something interesting. He said that sovereignty and responsibility is like an antinomy in the way—I know it's a scientific word—where they kind of run parallel, but they actually happen together.

But it's hard to put them together. And I know maybe I'm a little ahead of the game, but there is,

I mean, obviously there is responsibility. I know you mentioned that. And there is sovereignty. And those things are hard to put together.

I think they're both there. I think the Bible teaches both, but they're not easy to kind of put together, you know?

Well, that's why the doctrine of superintending is so important. And people don't view it this way.

And I think if more people were to look into this one doctrine, there wouldn't be as much debate.

But this is the thing. Part of what it takes is giving up some of the presuppositions we have about the other side, whether you're

Calvinist or Arminian. Either way, we all bring to it presuppositions we have of what we think is the right theology.

Every one of us thinks our theology is right, by the way. We're all wrong. We just don't know where, because if we did, we'd hopefully change.

But we are. Every one of us is wrong somewhere. And so what I'm saying is we need to take a step back and say, okay,

I need to evaluate this in light of scripture and say, maybe I don't fight so hard on the fact that I think

God chose or that man chose, whichever side you're on. I think the doctrine of superintending resolves this.

And so I do want to encourage people to go back to that episode. It's a very important episode. And you can see more in my book,

What Do We Believe?, which, by the way, if you want, we are still running the sale.

It's about ready to end, so if you haven't gotten your copies, if you're still looking for that last -minute

Christmas gift, well, we're probably not going to get it to you in time. But if you want that gift after Christmas, we are running a sale at Striving Fraternity.

Just go to strivingfraternity .org, go in the store, and you can pick up What Do We Believe? for 50 % off.

And we're doing that for as many copies as you want. We just shipped out an entire case.

And so if you want to buy a case of them, hey, we'd be happy to ship it to you. But we are doing that at 50 % off.

Just use the promo code CHRISTMAS, and that goes until the end of the year. So the other book that we're doing a sale on is

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If you want to get yourself a great pillow, products that are made here in the USA, great comfortable products, you can get yourself a

MyPillow, and use the promo code SFE. That tells them that you heard about them through us, and they keep supporting us.

So we appreciate that. Just go to MyPillow .com, and the promo code is SFE. Okay, let's get into the second paragraph here.

We're saying here, sovereign election. Now you stop there, and we're making it clear what we had just said, right?

That election is sovereign. It's a work God does. And as we said in the last paragraph,

He does it through regenerating us, saving us, and sanctifying us. Even our sanctification is part of this election process.

And so this is what God does sovereignly, because He's God. He's the sovereign.

Sovereign election does not contradict nor negate the responsibility of man to repent and trust in the

Lord and Savior. So we see these both, Romans 9,

Romans 10. In Romans 9, we have this responsibility to repent, believe on Jesus.

Sorry, that's Romans 10. Romans 9, God is sovereign. He's choosing us. We have this responsibility to confess and believe,

Romans 10, 9, and 10. And so this is the rub. And this is where Pastor Dom's question comes in that he asked earlier, right?

Why is it people have such an aversion? Because to many, what it seems like, what the doctrine of election sounds like, it sounds like we're saying that humans have no responsibility in regeneration, in their salvation.

No, that's not what we're saying. That's the whole point here. A biblical view, both are true.

God is sovereign. Man has a human responsibility. There's not one or other.

It's not an either or. And a lot of people put this in what is called an either or fallacy, or sometimes referred to as the excluded middle fallacy.

And what that is, is where people give you two choices, and those two choices are not the only options.

In other words, if I was to say, let me give you what a true dichotomy is and a false dichotomy.

A true dichotomy would be where there's only two options. In other words, I can say that right now, as we're recording,

Pastor Dom either is or is not wearing a red shirt.

Now, there's no other options there. That's a true dichotomy. He either is wearing a red shirt or he is not wearing a red shirt, unless there's a third option.

And in a false dichotomy, people would word it that Pastor Dom either is wearing a red shirt or is not wearing a red shirt, when in fact, he's not wearing a shirt at all.

Well, actually he is, folks, and it is red. But you see, if he wasn't wearing a shirt, that's a third option, because now his shirt's not red, and it's not not red, because there's no shirt at all.

And so what people do in this is they give a fallacy of the excluded middle.

There's a third option. So is it human responsibility or God's sovereignty?

The answer to that is not either or. The answer is yes, both.

It's a both and. And so there's a third option, and that third option is found in the doctrine of superintending.

That's why I keep referring back to that, because that's where you see God working through the humans such that the very choices that they selected are exactly as God intended them to be.

We see that when we talk about the inspiration of the Bible, how we got the Bible. God worked through human authors, that the words that they chose were exactly as God intended them to be, such that God gets all the credit.

We see that in our sanctification, where that process of us being made more right with God, what we end up seeing is that that process, we choose to do good works, and yet God does those works through us so that God gets all the credit.

Same in regeneration. Yeah, and the other thing, too, I know you'll hear pushback of, I've heard it and you've heard it, about then why should we preach?

The problem is we don't know who God's people are. You're saying, I know right away the pushback, because there's nothing that you're saying that people can't agree, so what they're going to say is then why preach?

Well, again, I don't want to quote Spurgeon overly, but Spurgeon said when he preaches the gospel,

God doesn't put like an E on somebody's chest that he sees, because we don't know who

God's people are. The thing is that that makes our preaching all the more ordained by God, because we don't have to dot every

I. I mean, we want to dot every I across every T when we're teaching and preaching, but it's not us.

It's not how great our sermons are and stuff like that. It's God's sovereign choice to use the foolishness of preaching to preach to a people that we don't know, and that's the great thing,

Andrew. We might have people in our family right now who we think would never be a Christian, but only by God's superintending through the spirit of grace that he can save these people through the foolishness of the preaching of the gospel.

So I think this is a blessing. It would make evangelism so much easier if they're, you know,

I just look and see, oh, there's a big E on someone's forehead. I'll evangelize to them because they're the elect. No, I had someone that once said, he goes, you know, you share the gospel, you preach the gospel like an

Arminian, but you pray like a Calvinist. He says, I can't figure you out. And I said, because when

I preach the gospel, I'm preaching to all people, and I don't know who is going to be saved because I have a finite mind.

But when I pray to God, I'm asking him to do a work in someone's heart because that's his job.

And by the way, most that don't like Calvinism, they pray like Calvinists, right? We all do.

Why? Because God, we all know God does the saving, and that's the thing here. That's what we're digging into with this, is that God is the one who saves people.

It's not you and I that can say, I wish that I could save people. I wish that I could just choose and my kids be saved or my unsaved family members.

I mean, Paul makes that argument. He wishes that he could die, that all of Israel would be saved.

I actually prayed that before reading that passage, wishing my family would be saved.

Like, I was thinking, like, I would rather go to hell for eternity knowing that all of my family would go to heaven.

But it doesn't work that way. We don't get to select for others. I know that you mentioned the term Calvinism a lot, and maybe people don't understand that the five points of Calvinism was only a rebuttal against the five points of almost

Arminianism. I have trouble saying that word. But it was a rebuttal against the complete opposite of what the doctrine of Calvinism is.

So it wasn't that it came out of the blue. It was actually a rebuttal. It's even funnier than that.

And R .C. Sproul has a book. I think it's his book, Willing to Believe. But he does a masterful job there with pointing this out.

Most people don't know that Jacob Arminius agreed with John Calvin.

See, what happened was John Calvin taught some things and his followers took it to a conclusion that went further than Calvin was willing to say.

And James Arminius came in and was trying to bring them back into what Calvin said, but his followers went further than he was saying.

And so both of them had followers that went further than they were willing to go.

So Arminius and Calvin actually agreed quite a bit. It's their followers who had problems.

And you're right. The points of Calvin was a response to the points of Arminian's followers.

So I usually don't use the labels because I don't want them to get in the way because a lot of what we're talking about.

So many people identify election with Calvinism. So in this episode, I am using some of those labels, but I'm doing it because that is the understanding so many have.

You go through this doctrinal statement. There's nothing in here that mentions Calvinism. It doesn't mention tulip. It's not listed.

Because what we're trying to teach is what the Bible says on these areas. And we're not using these ideas that we have from men to be able to label something so that we can reference it.

Now, a label is only as good as both sides understand the meaning. In other words, there's a reason people will say, are you a

Calvinist? And my answer always is, what do you mean by that? Because depending what they mean, I may be or I may not be.

This is the dilemma is so many people have different definitions for these things. As we said with election, people have different definitions for election.

And because of that, you get wildly different views. Well, we want to define what we believe it to be here so that then if you agree with our definition, now we can talk on the same playing field with what election is.

And that's why we're taking the time here. Let's look at the next sentence we have here. Nevertheless, since sovereign grace includes the means of receiving the gift of salvation as well as the gift itself, sovereign election will result in what

God determines. So we just talked about the fact that election does not negate human responsibility.

Yet this is saying, though, it is God's sovereignty. It's His sovereign choice.

It's by His grace. So we're saying that is salvation a gift? Yes, it's a gift that we do not deserve.

But election is the gift itself. Salvation is the gift itself. It's not only that we receive a gift of salvation, but having the gift of salvation is election.

How do we know if we're elect? Because we're saved. That's how. And that is the whole point.

You and I cannot tell who actually is or is not elect. We only can look at the fruits of regeneration, as we looked at in the previous episode.

We can look at the fruits of regeneration and examine that and say, is this fitting with what we see in the

Bible for someone who's a believer? If the answer is yes, then what do we do? We assume they're a believer, but we also know that people can be self -deceived.

We know that Jesus gave a parable of the four different types of soil, that the gospel was being thrown like seed.

One soil, clearly an unbeliever rejects. One soil, clearly a believer accepts.

Two soils, people that give an appearance of acceptance, but in the end, with enough time, you see they weren't.

And so that's why I say time and truth go hand in hand. If you have someone that says they're a believer, give them enough time and we will see.

Keep inspecting the fruit in their lives, including myself. You should be inspecting my fruit, seeing whether I'm truly a believer.

We don't just call someone a believer just because they say they want to. We trust. Love believes all things.

So we're going to trust that they are, but we still examine the fruit. And so you have people that start denying things like the deity of Christ or the nature of God, then you have to start going, well, then maybe you weren't really saved.

Yeah, perseverance of the saints. You have to persevere. I mean, you're right. I mean, and that's a gift of God by the grace of God, but you still have to persevere.

And then that's one of the things that shows if somebody's truly God's people, if somebody's truly elect.

Usually God's elect are, we struggle in the thing. You know, we struggle. We struggle with our sin.

We struggle with our life. But by God's grace— Wait, wait, wait. You struggle? I have no struggle at all.

I have plenty of struggle. No, that's, I mean, but that's the whole part of the

Christian life is that struggle between— Now, I will say Romans 7 is a bad passage to use for this argument, but people say that, you know, where it says in Romans, you know,

I do the things I don't want to do and the things I do, I don't want to do. People think of that as sanctification.

I disagree with that. I think Paul is actually in Romans 7. What he's doing is going back in past, and he's talking about his conversion.

Just with the way the Greek is, with the tense, it seems that he goes back in time. You're saying, Andrew, are you saying that we don't have that struggle?

No, we do have that struggle. The passage I would use for that struggle, though, I would use 1

Peter 2, verse 11. Behold, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts, which wage war against our soul.

That's the idea is right there, is that waging of war. That's a passage that is talking about the sanctification process, that we have this body of flesh that we have a war going on.

And so that's a passage that does describe very well what you were just saying, Pastor Dom.

And, you know, but part of this also comes down to where we often see with the doctrine of election, this last part of this sentence, where I say, sovereign election will result in what

God determines. That is a struggle for many people because it seems as if their thinking is, if God elects something, we have no choice but to be saved.

In other words, the real struggle people have with the doctrine of election is they think that this means everything is determinism.

Because if God wills it, it's going to happen. If God wills it, it's determined before the foundation of the world, and therefore we have no choice.

And that's the reason so many people have a rub with the doctrine of election. So let's resolve that. First off,

I already said, I think that when he says he elected us before the foundation of the time or of the world,

I think he's using baby talk to explain to us what we can't comprehend. Because God's will is different than the way you and I would will something.

If I will my child to do something, I can force my will upon my child.

That's one option. I can convince my child of my will. Let me give an example.

I remember my son, I think he was maybe 13 or 14, and he decided he wanted money.

He wanted allowance like his friends in school got. He just wanted me to give him money to spend.

And I sat him down, I said, do you not think that your parents take good care of you? We buy you what we think you need.

When you want something, you ask us and we get it for you. And he said, well, I just want an allowance like my friends.

And so I said, okay, you know, you want money. Because he didn't want to have to work for it. I said, we have a couple options here.

I can just give you money as an allowance. That's one option.

Option two is you can do some other things around the house, some chores, some things that I would pay someone to do.

You want to mow the lawn. You want to shovel the driveway. I may pay someone to do things like that. I could pay you.

That's not part of your chores that you have as part of the family. So that's extra. And I can pay you to do work in the house.

Or option number three, we keep it the way it is that when you need something, I will buy it for you if I think you need it.

Dom, out of those three, which one do you think I wanted him to choose? Three, I guess.

Exactly. That's where you had him in the beginning. Exactly. So what did I do? My will was option three.

Okay. So here it comes. He decides, well, I want option one, right? Option one is best for him.

He wants money with no work. I said, okay, I want you tomorrow to think about a number, how much you want for your allowance, and let me know tomorrow.

There's a reason I had said tomorrow, because I needed to calculate some numbers. So he comes up and says, dad,

I think $250 a month. I said, okay, that's pretty good.

I think that could be reasonable. And his eyes lit up. He was so happy. And I said, now let's talk through your responsibilities.

He said, what? I said, well, yeah, your rent is going to be $250 a month. Your utilities are $50 a month.

Your food is another. He's like, stop, dad, that's more money than you're giving me. I said, well, that's not my problem. I said, all

I did was calculate your portion of the mortgage, of the food, the utilities.

You got to pay your share, because you now have the money to do it. And all of a sudden he realized, wait, wait, wait.

That's not enough money. You're paying a lot of money for my living every month.

And I said, yes. And now if you want me to pay you an allowance, you're going to have to pay into the family.

And so he quickly decided option number three sounded really good to him after that. I was going to say, is option number three still available now?

And it was. And that's how we kept it. Now I will grant, I will grant that he did end up, I think of 14 or 15.

He decided to start his own business and he's still doing that business today. And so that business does very well.

He started it as like 14, 15 years old. And I think he makes like three times what my wife and I make combined.

So he does well for himself. But you see, that is a point where that whole illustration is to say that it was my will for my son to choose a certain path.

And I gave him options. But those options, I knew what he would choose.

Well, sorry, I guessed what he would choose. Now, do you notice the difference?

God knows we guess. So God's will is different than things we would think about.

God could, in his will, work within us so that the very things we choose are exactly as he determined, but he does not force it.

And that's where all the debate is with election, that they think that God forces it.

They get into determinism. I remember my wife's Sunday school teacher, he ended up getting into a very extreme level of Calvinism where he was a determinist.

And I remember asking him, I said, listen, I just got a question. If I just pull back and cold cock you, I mean,

I just knock you unconscious with my fist. Did I do that or did God do that? And he said,

God did that. I said, then you have removed all human responsibility. And so what we're trying to say, and this is really laying the foundation for next week, but so you see how much of this in a good doctrinal statement, we're laying that foundation.

We're trying to make it really clear that God's sovereignty, human responsibility are both involved.

It is God's will, but this is the aspect of where God does it. This is God's side of the coin.

And we wrap it up by saying, all whom the father calls to himself will come to faith and all who come to faith, the father will receive.

Now, this is where some say, well, you're saying that we have no choice. We believed against our will.

No, no, God works with your will. That's the doctrine of superintending. God works with your will to choose exactly what is in his will.

It's not either or. And he uses the gospel, the beautiful feet of the preachers, bringing the word of God that God uses.

That's the catalyst he uses to bring people into faith. It's a wonderful symmetry that God uses in salvation.

It really is. And it's full orbed. And the problem is, and notice what

Andrew's doing over these months and weeks and even years going through this doctrinal statement.

He's not just focusing on this. This is part of it. But he's giving you a full orbed view because that's the gospel.

And election is part of the gospel. You know, it's just something that is. And praise God for it.

The reason we struggle with it is if we think we can understand the mind of God, we're wrong.

I mean, this is something that I do. I do this with Muslims all the time. I get

Muslims that, once I start a conversation with a Muslim, there's a couple questions I know I'm going to ask up front.

And this is a good tactic to do apologetically. These are some of the things I teach on the

Apologetics Live podcast. But ask the questions up front that you get their answers so that you could use them later.

So one of the questions I'll ask a Muslim up front, is God greater than our ability to understand him?

And they always say yes. Now, I take that and I just tuck that away. I just kind of store that, save it for later.

And so later, when we start discussing and they go, how could God die?

Trinity makes no sense to me. Then I just say, oh, thank you.

Thank you for admitting that your God is wrong. And they go,

I never said that. I said, sure you did. You said you can understand your God. We've already established the real

God that exists is beyond our ability to understand him. So the fact that I can't understand the

Trinity or understand fully how Jesus could be God and man and die on a cross, that means that God's greater than my ability to understand him.

But if you have a system where you reject that because of your human thinking, then you don't have the

God of the universe. You're the God of the Quran. And so this is a little tactic we could do, but that's the thing that we're really struggling with, with this doctrine of election.

It's the struggle between what I can comprehend. And what

I can comprehend is I experientially chose God. What I can't comprehend is how

God worked through me completely. I can't fully understand this, how God worked through me so that that choice to believe in him is something that God was actually part of God's will.

And he just, he knew that would happen. And he tries to say that he chose that before the foundation of the world, before he created the universe.

The way he knew that before the foundation of the universe is because he's eternal. Everything's an eternal now to him.

Right now, Pastor Dom and I are having this conversation. We're recording it. But right now, you're listening to it.

Right now, Adam and Eve are in the garden. Jesus is on the cross. Abraham's offering

Isaac. And that's all the same eternal now to God. Great point.

We can't comprehend that. Everything we know, we've learned. We learn through observation or are taught.

God wasn't taught a thing. He never learned a thing. He just knows it. And he knows it, like everything that we think of as history, it's the same millisecond to God.

We can't wrap our heads around that because we're finite and he's not. And that's why this doctrine is so difficult for some folks.

Because they want the either or. And the answer is both and. Yeah, I know we got to wrap up.

But I was just thinking, as you were saying that, even Adam, again, created sinless, had to learn in naming the animals.

I mean, it's a great point you make. He's a man, created sinless, but still had to learn to, you know, learn and probably very brilliant, but still had to learn.

Well, he probably had his genetics would have been better than ours. So we would think that. Yeah, that's my point. I mean, my point is, you know, you're talking about someone like Adam had to, you know, learn the behavior.

He wasn't naming the animals and surprising God. Hey, that's a nice name for a giraffe. It's just a good point.

A great point. And I think it was I always go back to Adam because that's my that's all federal headed.

Somebody we can relate to. And, you know, what was God trying to teach Adam? He was trying to teach him as he goes through naming all the animals.

There's two. There's two. Wait, there's no one for me. He was teaching him that he needed a helpmate.

And so even in naming the animals, there was a lesson for him to learn.

It's amazing. God's multifaceted. He's not just trying to teach one thing to, you know, one time to one person.

Because of his omniscience, he's working all things together for his glory.

And just you think about the tree of good and evil, the restricted tree.

If again, it's as if Adam would have waited, he would have learned good and evil in God's estimation, not the enemy's estimation.

And so, you know, just a point, because in other words, that good and evil should have been recognized in God.

You know, when you get it the other way around, that's why you got to get out of the garden before you get to that tree of life.

Right. So this is really a great point you're saying is that learned behavior.

I don't believe. And again, this is just way off topic. I don't believe the tree of good and evil, the knowledge of good and evil would have been restricted eternally.

But had it be learned in how God learns good and evil, then maybe. Well, God doesn't learn good and evil.

He knows it. No, right. I'm saying, but we have to learn it. And that's the whole thing with this. And that's a great point.

And I think that actually makes a full conversation here.

I know we went a little off track, but it's an interesting conversation. Yeah. And there's a reason, folks, if you've been listening through a series, you're saying, wait,

Andrew, you're repeating yourself. You've said this before. Yes, I have for a very simple reason.

A, we forget it. B, there's new people joining all the time. And even though I encourage folks to go back to the first in this series and go back and listen to that,

I know some won't. And that's why I have to remind everyone, we root our theology in the nature of God.

And so it's got to be consistent with his nature. And if it's not, then we have a problem, right?

And so the other thing that we have to recognize is that as we look at this, we have to recognize that when we see

God and we see our theology, our theology is the study of God, not us telling

God how he is. And so a lot of what we do is we have this systematic theology where we study things and we say, well, this is what it means because John Calvin has written this.

I don't care what John Calvin has written. Doesn't matter what John Calvin wrote.

It matters what the Bible says about God. And that's what we're trying to do in a doctrinal statement is say, this is what we believe

God has said. And that's why we're doing this whole series. And I hope it's helpful for you, not just in understanding why you have a doctrinal statement, but more so understanding the theology behind it and see how much is in these short sentences.

We got through two short paragraphs and it took us an hour to go through. Well, that's what good theology should do.

It should cause you to think deeply and richly on the things of God. And if you have a good systematic theology that you're reading,

I would, of course, recommend my book, What Do We Believe? That's a great one. It's only 200 pages, so it's not that intimidating.

And if you did, by the way, want to go through that with your church, like as a

Sunday school, we also have a workbook that you can order on the website that go along with it for small groups.

And if you are interested in getting a bulk discount, you want to get a large order for Sunday schools, just contact the office, email us, and we will get that out to you.

You can email us at info at strivingforeternity .com. That's info at strivingforeternity .com.

And so, by the way, that is a changed email address. For those who know the old one, we did change that.

info at strivingforeternity .com. And that will get you to find out more about the store there, how we can get you some group discounts.

So, we do want to encourage that. And just lastly, remind you, if you do want to have Striving For Eternity come out to your church to speak, please let us know.

We do not have a booking fee. It seems to be strange for folks. People are like, oh, how much does it cost? What's your speaker fee?

We don't have one. We ask that you at least cover our travel costs, but we're going to try and keep those down as much as we can.

But if they can't be covered, they can't be covered. But if you want us to come out to your church, just contact us on the website.

There's a way to request a speaker, or you could just reach out to a speaker at strivingforeternity .com.

speaker at strivingforeternity .com. But all that information is always available at strivingforeternity .org.

So, with that, I'm going to thank Dom and say, that's a wrap. This podcast is part of the

Striving For Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.