Does God Intend to Save All?

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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January 19, 2021

00:02: Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
00:07: This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture, and media from a Reformed perspective.
00:15: Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
00:20: Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
00:24: Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist, my name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
00:29: Today is January 19th, 2021 and today we're going to talk about the subject of the disposition of God toward the unbelieving.
00:43: And this is based on a recent event that I attended and participated in at another church.
00:52: I was invited, along with some other men, to come and answer questions at an apologetics event called Tough Questions, Real Answers.
01:03: And if you didn't have an opportunity to see that, it was posted on our Facebook page and it is something that I would encourage you to listen to.
01:13: It was two hours of answering some of the more difficult questions about the Christian faith.
01:17: We talked about everything from the Trinity to the canon of scripture to creation and evolution and abortion and we even addressed the issue of Christians and self-defense.
01:29: But at the end, we allowed for questions to be asked and one of the questions that was asked, we answered, but as the more I thought about it, the more I was driving home, I was thinking about it, the more I thought, this question deserves a little fuller treatment and I wanted to spend some time on the show today just sort of going through how I would answer this if I had the time to sit down with the person and really go through this issue because I do understand the heart of the question, but I do think the question misses a major point that we really didn't get around to in our conversation that evening.
02:12: So again, if you want to listen to the whole event, you can look it up.
02:15: It was done at Sunrise Community Church and you can go and look up Sunrise Community Church, which is in Atlantic Beach, Florida, and you can find the link there on their website or you can go through our Facebook page and find the link there.
02:29: It's definitely worth your time to listen to and I think it would be an encouragement to you.
02:34: But if you do listen to it, you'll notice at the end there's a young man who asks a question about, why is it that we would believe that God would not try to save everyone and why is it that God has not ensured that all people everywhere have heard his message of salvation? If it is God's desire to save everyone, why hasn't God essentially written a note in the sky or ensured that everyone receives a Bible or ensures that everyone hears a gospel appeal? Because we know that ultimately not everyone will hear the gospel.
03:23: There are people who go their whole life without ever touching a Bible.
03:28: There are people who go their whole life without ever hearing a Bible or hearing the gospel.
03:33: And so how do we respond to that? How do we deal with this? I think that one of my fellow speakers did a very good job of immediately going to Romans 1 and he pointed out that Romans 1 does remind us that the message that we are made in God's image that we are sinners and that we are responsible to God and that we are without excuse is given to all men through natural revelation.
04:03: We find this in Romans chapter 1.
04:07: It says that the divine nature of God and his attributes are clearly seen in the things that have been made.
04:15: And so I do think that was a good answer, at least initially, to the question is that yes, all men are given enough information to be lost.
04:27: All men are given enough information to be responsible.
04:31: But not all men are given enough information to be saved.
04:35: And so now we have to take a step back because this is really, I think, the questioner.
04:40: I think the questioner is, well, if God wants to save everybody, essentially, why doesn't he do more? And I may be wording that a little incorrectly, but I think the heart of it is that.
04:53: And I do think the questioner mentioned something to the effect of why did he keep it in such a small region of people? Why did he keep it in such a small community? I think he used the word community maybe.
05:07: Again, I'm going back off memory.
05:10: But essentially, it's the same question that comes up a lot.
05:13: Why would God do it only among these small people and then, of course, use the agency of humanity to get his word out when the agency of humanity tends to be pretty slow and pretty inconsistent and not really all that dependable? And if God really wanted to get his message out, why didn't he use some other method that was more consistent, more dependable than man, who is obviously neither of those things? So again, I understand.
05:47: I think I understand the heart of the question because it's a question I think many of us have asked, and it really deals with the disposition of God towards the unbeliever.
05:55: What is God's disposition? Is it God's will that all would be saved? And before we even seek to answer that question, I think it's important that we deal with the passage that most people look to when that question is raised.
06:12: They go over into the letters of Peter and they say, see here, it says that God is not willing that any should perish, but all should come to repentance.
06:23: And a further examination of that text, actually, it says more than what most people say.
06:30: Most people quote it just how I did.
06:32: Most people don't quote the whole passage, which says this, that God is not slack in – well, let me just pull up the passage.
06:41: I want to make sure I say it exactly as it is written because this is one, again, that often people misquote, and the reason why they misquote it is the same reason I'm doing it now.
06:51: They're quoting it from memory.
06:54: So let's very quickly pull up the text here, and taking a second from my Bible program, pardon me, get this up in just a second here.
07:06: It is, let's see, all right, okay, it is 2 Peter 3, 9, it says, The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise, as some count slowness.
07:27: But is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, or all should reach repentance.
07:34: So again, listen to it again, The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, or the superscript on that says us, patient towards us, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
07:49: The key to that passage, I believe, is the word us.
07:53: I do think that God has a people, an elect people, that he is specifically going to save and he is specifically patient with because he is not willing that they perish and he's not going to allow them to perish.
08:11: God has, as he said to the prophet, he says, I have 7,000 that have not bowed the knee to Baal.
08:18: You know, I have my remnant, I have my people that have been set aside that I will not allow to perish.
08:26: And this is why God stays his hand of judgment on a people because he has his people whom he is going to save.
08:36: But that being said, it is not God's will, and I think we can bear this out from Scripture, it is not God's ultimate perfect will that everyone be saved, because if it were God's ultimate perfect final will that all would be saved, then all would be saved, because the Bible says he does as he pleases on earth and in heaven.
08:59: And so we do have to consider the fact that though God's disposition is one of mercy and love, it is not in the plan of God that all would be saved.
09:12: And this is, I think, one of the first real big issues that people have when they come from another theological persuasion into Calvinism, because that's one of the sort of the first hurdles that people have to get over, is that even though the Bible says God so loved the world, you know John 3 16, it doesn't say he intended to save the world.
09:34: It says that God so loved the world that whoever believes will not perish.
09:40: It doesn't say everyone will not perish, it simply says whoever believes.
09:44: And actually the wording there in the Greek is a little more specific, it says all the ones believing.
09:49: All the ones believing will not perish, but will have everlasting life.
09:56: So the disposition of God, I would say, is one of love and grace and mercy, and he has demonstrated a common example of grace and mercy to all men, because all men receive the benefits of this world, sunlight and rain, and it falls on the just and the unjust, as the Bible says, and there is a certain sense in which all men are beneficiaries of God's goodness, but all men are not the object of God's saving grace.
10:31: God has a purpose in saving the elect and in passing over in judgment those who are going to be punished, and in doing so he demonstrates both the power of his love and grace and the reality of his justice and wrath, and all of his attributes are on display in that, not one giving way to the other or one being overtaken by the other.
11:10: God's justice and his wrath are both on display, and this is something we should remember, that we will always be either an object of his grace or an object of his wrath.
11:26: There is no middle ground, there's no one who is almost saved, no one is holding on to the outside of the ark while the waters of God's judgment are flowing down in the days of Noah.
11:36: You're either in the ark or you're not, and again the ark is a perfect picture, right? The ark is a perfect picture that God was not intending to save all of humanity, but those whom he chose, and we we're gonna look at this actually this week in our study of Genesis, God chose Noah by grace.
11:59: The Bible says Noah found grace in the eyes of God, and grace is unmerited, grace is not something that is deserved.
12:10: When you ask the question, why doesn't God save all men equally, or at least provide a way of salvation for all men equally, providing that everyone here at the same and everyone gets the same opportunity, what you are assuming in the question is that man somehow deserves it.
12:31: But really, because of sin, all that man deserves from God is his justice and wrath.
12:40: Therefore, we should be eternally grateful that God has demonstrated not only wrath and justice, but grace and mercy.
12:51: If we receive from God what we deserve, it will always be justice.
12:57: Praise God, he does not give us what we deserve.
13:00: He gives us mercy in his Son Jesus Christ, and grace, mercy being a holding back of what we deserve, and a grace is a lavishing of gifts that we do not deserve.
13:13: And if you are in Christ today, you are an object of God's grace and mercy, and you have every reason to drop down to your knees and praise God that you are.
13:22: So I hope this is a little bit of a further answer to the question that was given.
13:26: I appreciate, again, the reason for the question, and perhaps maybe the person who asked the question will even get an opportunity to hear this.
13:33: But if not, at least you did today, listener, and I appreciate you listening to Coffee with a Calvinist.
13:40: Thank you for listening today.
13:41: My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.
13:45: May God bless you.
13:46: Thank you for listening to today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.
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13:56: We love to receive your comments and questions and may even engage with them in a future episode.
14:03: As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
14:10: All who come to him in repentance and faith will find him to be a perfect Savior.
14:16: He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him.
14:22: May God be with you.