1 Corinthians - 07-05-10

No Compromise Radio. Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with no compromise.

The Sovereignty of God Over Everything

There's an implication, since God is sovereign, that you are not. We're not sovereign. If God is that sovereign. There's not two sovereigns of the universe. There's one sovereign of the universe. And for many, that is frightening, that is disturbing.

I'm not in charge, I'm not the captain of my own ship. Manifest destiny and all these kind of things. After all, the slogan of the American war of independence was, we serve no sovereign here, yet God is sovereign.

Spurgeon said, men will allow God to be everywhere except on his throne. They will allow him to create stars, give gifts, rule the oceans. Men have no objection to a God who is really no God, a God who shall be the subject of a caprice, who shall be a servile follower of their will, who shall be under their will, who shall be under their control.

But a God who speaks and it is done, who commands and it stands fast, a God who does as he will among the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of this lower world, such a God as this they cannot endure.

And yet, it is not essential to the very being of God that he should be absolutely sovereign. Certainly, to the scriptural conception of God, sovereignty is an absolute necessity. God is sovereign over every molecule, proton, neutron, I know we have WPI students, quarks, I don't know what else we have out there, stars, moon, sun, he's sovereign over everything, including you, including your mind, including your emotions, including your soul, including your spirit, including your will.

I can just hear the little retractor say here with a higher voice, I know God's sovereign, but I want to drive that contrasting particle out of your vocabulary when it comes to the sovereignty of God.

There isn't God as sovereign, but to say that is to betray that you think there's some chink in his sovereign armor. So now Isaiah, this is the plan devised against the whole earth, and this is the hand that is stretched out against the nations, for the Lord of hosts has planned, and who can frustrate it?

God's Sovereignty Over the Human Will

What I want you to do is I want you to turn your Bibles to Proverbs, please, chapter 16, and now we're going to tighten this funnel a little bit. I showed you generally that it's marvelous that you should think about the sovereignty of God.

Still under the first point where we're marveling about the sovereignty of God, I'm going from generally sovereign over everything, tightening it up a little bit, and saying that God's sovereignty does not stop at the human heart and will.

We're tightening this up a little bit. Somehow we've got to say to ourselves, God's sovereign over everything, nothing can frustrate his plan, and that also includes that everything includes the will, the heart, the mind, the whole person of a man or a woman.

I want you to see from these verses that there's no invisible barrier or invisible force field that's around the will of a person, because our society is like free will, free will, free will, free will, like there's some kind of invisible force field.

You ever see someone and they're behind some force field in a science fiction movie, and you've got some phaser set to stun? I don't know what show that would be, but a show like that, and they try to stun the person, and then it just stops right here, and it kind of dissipates laterally, you know, that force field protects.

People go around and they say, God is sovereign, but I've got this little kind of force field around my will, and they give all these reasons about free will, robots, and everything else. We'll get to that in a little bit, but I'm trying to show you from the Bible, he's sovereign over everything, and now look at these four out of many verses, even in the Proverbs, that aren't a barrier to God's sovereignty.

Proverbs 16, 9. We're going to look at four here in Proverbs. Proverbs 16, 9. Whatever man is going to plan, God's will gets done. It's not the sinful, finite, fallen person's will that overrides. The whole time we go through these, I hope you say to yourself, this is exactly how I pray.

I'm praying that God saves my loved one. I'm praying that God makes them the called. And by the way, left to themselves, they'll never get saved. This is the God you should be praying to, to say, I want this God to save my loved one.

Proverbs 16, 9. The plan, excuse me, the mind of a man plans his way, but the Lord directs his step. See that overarching, overriding element, Yahweh, the king? Look at Proverbs 19, 21, please. No matter what man plans, God's will gets done.

And by the way, they're not always the same, because man is sinful, God is holy, they both don't track. You can't say to me, well, man always plans the way God plans. You don't need a savior for that kind of theology.

Proverbs 19, 21. God's sovereignty doesn't stop at the human will and heart. The heart, by the way, when you think of this, in the Old Testament and the New, the heart is the mission control center. We wrongly in our society say this today.

Well, you know, that's good head knowledge, but it's not good heart knowledge. And the farthest 12 inches of the world is going through my head and then coming down to my heart before it goes out my mouth.

By the way, that preaches really well. And there's something to be said for internalizing truth. But if you said to a Jew, you said to a Greek, you better love God with all your heart. That person was not being told, oh, I've just got to love God with all my emotions and love and peace.

He's saying, you better love God with your mission control center, with who you are, your heart. Out of the heart, the mind, what? Feels. I'm not against feelings. I got an e-mail the other day from someone listening to No Compromise Radio.

He said, you're against feelings. I got a bad feeling about that e-mail. I'm telling you. We have feelings. But God is sovereign over your feelings, over your will, over your heart. Isn't he? Isn't he sovereign over everything?

Proverbs 19, 21. Many are the plans in a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord. But the counsel of the Lord. It, the counsel of the Lord, will stand. If I wanted to say it this way, I'd say it, who's on first?

Proverbs 20, next chapter. This should make you marvel. This should make you say, you know, there's no God like this. This is the God that I like to study. Because you study a God that's this holy, this great, this awesome.

Make you praise him. Make you be thankful that he loves you. Proverbs 20, 24. Man's steps are ordained by the Lord. How then can man understand his way? One more chapter forward. Proverbs 21, 1. God's sovereign over everything, including the heart and the will.

Find me the most powerful person in the universe back in those days who was a created being. And I'll find you a king. Can God control the king? The king's heart is like the channels of water in the hand of the Lord.

He turns it wherever he wishes. The he there in the second sentence is not the king. He turns it wherever he wishes. And he has capitalized his personal pronouns referring to God, which I think is a good thing.

He, the Lord, turns it, the king's heart, wherever he, the Lord, wishes. Used to play in sandbox when we were kids. And sometimes there'd be a big tire, a tractor tire laid down sideways, and you fill it with sand.

Or else there's kind of some boards, some two-by-sixes or something. And we'd have all kinds of forts, and we'd go get the bucket. And we'd get the bucket, and we'd pretty much, we did whatever we wanted with that bucket of water.

Fill the bucket full of water. And then we were little sovereigns, by the way. And I would say to myself, you know what? There's another flood coming for these Confederate soldiers that you don't know about.

They got a little too close to Wittenberg or something. I was going to say Wittenberg. They might have gotten too close there. I'm sovereign, and in my sandbox, Civil War soldiers can be at Wittenberg if they want.

And I would come along. But see, in our mind, what we like in ourselves, sovereignty, choice, we don't want God to have that same right. You are a chooser because you are made in the image and likeness of God.

You say, it's time for the flood, Confederate Army. You can't flood me because my barrier of free will won't allow it. You take that thing, and I would just pour it on the Confederate Army, and they would just float away.

Their legs would still be stuck to that platform thing, so they were floating kind of sideways. But off they would go. I could make a river. I could make a channel. I could make it whatever way. Here it's coming down, but I'll make a diversion so the dam makes it go over here.

I could do whatever I want, whenever I wanted, as often as I wanted, as long as I had the resources to do it. I know God's sovereign, but let's tighten it a little bit more. Still under marveling at God's sovereignty.

Still under the first point, he's generally sovereign. That sovereignty doesn't stop at the heart. God's sovereignty means that he can then do what he wants with the heart. Open it or harden it. Open it or harden it.

God Hardens and Directs Hearts

Turn your Bibles to Revelation chapter 17, please. God gives people strong delusions in 2 Thessalonians 2, so they should believe the lie. Ezra chapter 6, the Lord caused them to rejoice and had turned the heart of the king of Syria toward them to encourage them in the work of the house of the Lord.

You've got an unbeliever and God says, I'm going to turn his heart so he is supportive of my ministry. But there's another side to this that people want to relegate to, oh, that's kind of seminary talk.

No, we now look at the only book in the Bible that says you're blessed if you read it and hear it. Revelation 17, 17. Of course you're blessed with other ones, but it's good to know the end. It's good to know about the revelation of Christ Jesus.

Look at Revelation 17, 17 and tell me just how sovereign is God? For God has put it in their hearts to execute whose purpose? His purpose. By having a common purpose and by giving their kingdom to the beast until the words of God should be fulfilled.

God hardened Pharaoh's heart. God hardened the hearts of the Hivites in Joshua 11. The idea, the notion that God surrenders his control of man's will is not a biblical notion at all. Oh, I see the white flag there of the man's will and that means I can kind of come over here and take over.

No, people dethrone God by declaring him impotent over the will of man. This kind of effeminate Jesus who is such a gentleman, he would never kind of impinge on someone's will. That isn't the God of the Bible.

We've just seen in 1 Corinthians that if people go from the lost to the called, God has to do something. If God somehow created a little pocket here, a little vacuum of something around a will and he wasn't sovereign over that, he wouldn't be God.

There'd be no logical thought to say God's God now because he can create an area that he's not in control of. That God has somehow created something that's equal in power and equal in authority to him and he's now waiting.

He's up there tapping and kind of biting his proverbial nails. I sure wish that person would do something so I could do something. Remember I went to Paris long, long time ago. I wanted to see Napoleon's tomb.

How many people have seen Napoleon's tomb? Some have. If memory serves me back to 1984, just outside of Paris, and Napoleon wanted everyone to bow to him that would come and see him in his crypt. So you know what he did?

He designed his crypt in such a way that three or four stories down is his crypt. There's a big open room with nothing in the middle, kind of, how could I describe it? Like a courtyard Marriott, right?

With an atrium, something open in the center. And you could not go down and touch his crypt like this, same level. You had to be two or three stories up and when you looked down at the crypt of Napoleon, you were bowing.

What a man-centered way to try to get homage. The better way is to show this God here who says things like this. Is this your God, by the way? Or do you have a different God in your mind? God says in 2 Samuel, Thus says the Lord, behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household.

I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he shall lie with your wives in broad daylight. Indeed, you did it in secret, but I will do this thing before all Israel and under the sun.

David, I'm going to make your son, Absalom, pollute your marriage bed. You might have ran off and hid with Bathsheba, but I'm going to do this so everyone sees. What do we do with that? You know, those kind of verses are so oblique and so sharp, they almost make some people do today what others have done with the Thomas Jefferson Bible.

You know what Jefferson Bible, I wish I had the Jefferson Bible right here. The Jefferson Bible is fairly thin, and what did Thomas Jefferson, the deist, do? He said every time there's some kind of supernatural thing, Jesus walked on water, you can't really do that, and so let's cut that out.

Jesus fed 20 ,000 people, can't really do that, you know, people were, you know, they were just having little bits of it, and it was kind of like a sacrament, it was kind of like communion share a little bit, but let's just get rid of that.

He cut all the resurrection stuff out, because at the very end it says they put him in a tomb and rolled up the stone. Because ideas have consequences, and the idea that Jesus was a supernatural God who raised himself from the dead would demand that Jefferson would bow.

And this God who says, I'll do whatever I want, whenever I want, to whomever I want, should make you bow. But if you're not careful, you're going to want to get your scissors out. The God of the Bible who says in Jeremiah 25 that Nebuchadnezzar is God's servant.

The God of Isaiah 28 who destroys the temple of God through others and then calls it his work. The God in Psalm 105 that turned the Egyptians' hearts to hate the Israelites. Friends, there is nothing, mark this, there is nothing that is done except for the decree of God.

God’s Sovereignty in Salvation and the Effectual Call

Number two, I just looked at my clock, and we're going to go, let's just try to get number two. Never going to happen. Number two, not only should you marvel at God because God's effectual call teaches that God controls the human heart.

Number two, you should marvel at God because God's effectual call teaches that God is sovereign over the salvation of sinners. God is sovereign over the salvation of sinners. If God wanted everyone to be saved, everyone would be saved.

Your only option is, God has a plan to save everyone. Judas, Saul, Jezebel, Hitler, if he died unrepentantly. And he has looked on the quarter of time and kind of give them enough grace that they might believe.

He's had their son die for them, and now he just waits and waits and waits and waits. And oh, thankfully, maybe one out of 200, they'll bow the knee. But if God has died for the bride, if the son has died for the bride, won't the bride be washed, complete?

If Jesus died for one person that's in hell, Christ's death was insufficient. If Jesus died for you, you're going to heaven. And I know what's coming through your mind. Well then, you mean when I tell an unbeliever, when I'm evangelizing, Jesus died for you?

Should I still tell him that? What if he didn't die for them? And I've got all these things going through my mind. Well, I'll have to tell you next week, but I'll give you a little hint of what's going on right now.

Tell them what the Bible tells them. How about that? And nowhere in the Bible does it say, Jesus died for your sins, believe. Why do we talk that way? Why do we go around and say, well, you know, just, you know, accept Jesus in your heart.

I found once in the Bible, God really loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. You know, if somebody told me that, you know what I would say as an unbeliever? Great, because I like to sin, and he loves me now in my sin, that is great.

God says, Jesus died for sinners, and you ought to trust and believe this risen Savior right now. Why don't we talk that way? That's the Bible way. But it's my belief, it's the elder's belief, that we've come so far from evangelicalism 300 years ago, when Edwards and Whitefield were running around saying, God's on the throne.

We've now swung over here that says, man's on the throne. And you can just watch what happens to a society. Let me just tell you now what happens to a society called the church, where you take God off the throne, and you put man on the throne.

Forget the point, I'm just going to do this. This is faster. When the doctrines of God, the sovereignty of God are taken out of the pulpit, and man's will is put in the pulpit. Ladies, I love you, but you've got to hear this too.

I'll show you a church that's run by a bunch of women. I don't mean women. I mean men who look like men, but they act like women. You take a look at church history and how America was feminized. Read Ann Douglas, her Harvard thesis, Ph .D. thesis, The Feminization of the American Culture.

Here's what Ann Douglas, an unbeliever, said. When the doctrines of the sovereignty of God were taken out of the pulpit in the early 1700s with Jonathan Edwards and Whitefield, taken out of the pulpit and replaced with a God who didn't have so many sharp edges.

A God who died for everybody and universalism was in, and Unitarian churches sprouted up everywhere. A God who was disregarded on Monday through Saturday and replaced with romance novels. It's literally what she said.

You take that twerking of this hard, sovereign God, that I agree is difficult to stomach, but it's in the text. You take that out and you'll morph into a society that says, you know, Christianity is just for Sundays.

We don't care if there's women pastors. You'll take a look at a church and there'll be 85 women. I love you women. I'm not anti-women. But I want the men to, I'm thinking about that song, Rise Up, O Men of God.

And if you give men the sovereignty of God and salvation, they will rise up and they'll say, I want to lead. There's a reason why churches that teach the sovereignty of God and salvation have a predominant number of men in the church and men leadership.

I hope you walk into the church and go, I never really noticed it before, but there's men elders, there's men deacons, there's men's ushers, there are men's Sunday school teachers, the junior high kids.

They're just men all over. And of course, I don't want them to be ogres. I don't want them to somehow suppress women's rights. I'll show you a church that says, I see this God who's worthy of following.

I'll see this God that, you know, I don't know about you, but when I think about Jesus as some kind of, you know, when I think about him as a groom and I'm the bride, I don't, that metaphor only goes so far.

And I don't say to myself, you know, I'm going to write love poetry to Jesus and, you know, I'm going to kind of look into his eyes with love and Jesus is the lover of my soul and I kind of, you know, do this kind of whole thing and I have to be kind of a woman to get in touch with my inner emotions so I can do this.

Friends, the society has said this, men are idiots. Men are losers and you want to see why the society is totally to pot? Men are the problem. There's a lot of sinful men. Men need to be leaders to show their wives and the kids and the church, look at this God who you serve.

Honey, follow me, let's serve this God. This God is so great, he doesn't just demand an hour on Sunday and then, well, let's see, we've got some sports today, forget that. We're going to forget sports.

There's a God who is so consuming that you'll say, for everything, we will abandon the cost. And you'll see people line right up. First the men, then the ladies, and then the kids and they'll say, this is the God of the universe, we'll follow him.

Show me the God of the universe who's somebody's will, they won't follow that. You'll have a bunch of Oprah book club people sitting around reading some blue light jazz book. God is sovereign. You preach that and you'll watch the men rise up and then you'll watch the women lovingly follow and you'll see a church where God says, I'm on the throne and I've punished my son on a cross, naked, slowly, tortured because I love you, because I care for you, because now you're my pure bride.

There's a reason why Jesus is called Lord.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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