7/12/2015 Unconditional Election Pastor Josh Sheldon

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7/12/2015 Unconditional Election Ephesians 1:3-14 Pastor Josh Sheldon

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8/2/2015 Perserverance Of The Saints Pastor Josh Sheldon

8/2/2015 Perserverance Of The Saints Pastor Josh Sheldon

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What we've been going through, what we call the Doctrines of Grace, the acrostic
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TULIP, T -U -L -I -P, which of course stands for T, Total Depravity of Man, U, Unconditional Election, L, The Limitation of the
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Atonement, the I is Irresistible Grace, and the P is the Perseverance of the
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Saints, TULIP. We selected this as a series to go through, sort of a doctrinal, sort of a topical series, and yet,
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Lord willing, a very biblical series that gathers together in one place various scriptures in a topic that is,
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I think, very important to us. A couple of weeks ago, we handled the T, the
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Total Depravity of Man. This morning, our subject is the U, Unconditional Election, the second of these
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Doctrines of Grace. So we covered last week, T, Total Depravity.
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What does it say? It says that we are born depraved creatures in the sight of God, having inherited
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Adam's corruption, and by willing submission to its cravings, to the cravings of that corruption, we've actually done the things demanded by that sin nature.
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This doctrine extols God's grace, because if we are depraved, as scripture so clearly demands, we believe, if unable to change our leopard spots, which truth be told, we can't even see, much less change.
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No, in truth, in our natural state, we like those spots. Then only by grace can the inner man be changed and made acceptable to God and amenable to His ways.
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That's why we call the Doctrine of Total Depravity of Man the first of the
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Doctrines of Grace, God's grace, seen in this summary, this collection of the various scriptures that point to this idea that man is totally depraved.
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And it does laud God's grace. If depraved, then there's nothing we can do to bring ourselves to God.
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If depraved, then it's all of grace that God has revealed Himself to man.
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This morning, we continue to applaud this grace of God, this unbelievable grace of God, this unfathomable grace of the only true and living
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God, by looking at Unconditional Election. Unconditional Election, a glorious doctrine that magnifies this grace.
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It's a glorious doctrine that necessarily lessens our view of ourselves. It brings our view of us down, way, way down.
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And properly understood, it has to make us more humble before God and all the more grateful to Him for what
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He has done in His Son, Jesus Christ. Unconditional Election, it is a doctrine that brings comfort to our souls by making our appointment to eternal life, to quote
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Jesus, not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God.
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We don't have to add a lot of qualifying words there. We don't have to say, but only of God, exclusively of God, solely of God.
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It's all there. Not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God.
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This is Unconditional Election. I want to define what
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I'm talking about here. The canons of Dort, which I'll quote to you in a second, was a response to an
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Arminian position back in the early 17th century in Holland, and the response to the
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Arminian position of a universal election, if you will, was this,
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I quote, He hath chosen in Christ unto salvation a set number of certain men, neither better nor more worthy than others, but lying in common misery with others.
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The unchangeable purpose of God, according to the free pleasure of His will, according to the good pleasure of His grace, as John read from Ephesians 1 to you, by mere grace
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He chose out of all mankind who is fallen by our own fault, fallen from our first integrity of sin,
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He chose out of that mass of humanity to be in Christ unto salvation a set certain number of men, not one more worthy or less worthy than anyone else.
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Many places we could go in Scripture to support this. I'll read again just a few of the verses that John read to you a few moments ago from Ephesians 1, 3 through 6.
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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.
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Pause for a moment, before the foundation of the world, a phrase that means simply eternity past.
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Doesn't mean the moment before He made the globe on which we now reside. Before the foundation of the world is eternity past.
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We could even say, pardon me, before time began God made this election.
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That we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which
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He made us accepted in the Beloved. This is another major blow against any idea that there's an involvement of human agency in salvation.
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The first blow, the first defeating strike against the idea that we did something to save ourselves, if indeed you are saved by faith in Jesus Christ, that you had anything to do with it, the first strike against that is what we spoke of a few weeks ago.
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We're depraved. We cannot have a movement within ourselves to move ourselves towards salvation, to want after the good things of God, to desire salvation in His Son, Jesus Christ, to repent of our sins.
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We can't do that on our own. We like all those non -God, all those anti -God things.
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Now we have this, those whom God chose for salvation in Jesus Christ, and make no mistake, nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
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In Jesus Christ alone, the work He did on the cross alone, by faith in Him, and Him alone, by grace alone, by faith alone, is salvation to be found.
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He chose before the foundation of the world. Eternity passed, and before He made the world, much less man to populate it, before all this,
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He made the election of individuals. How much could you or I have had to do with this decision?
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We didn't exist when God decided who would be saved. Nothing existed, and once we did exist, we were what?
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We were by nature, Paul says in Ephesians 2, children of wrath, dead in trespasses and sins,
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Ephesians 2 .1. Yet God predestined us, as was just read to you a few moments ago, having predestined us to be in His Son Jesus Christ.
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Predestination is a Greek word, praorizo. It means to foreordain, to predestinate.
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It's a compound word. It has pra, pro, if you will, meaning over, followed by orizo, which is where we get horizon.
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The idea is that God sees beyond and over our limited view. It's more, by the way, and this is important, it's more than God simply knowing the future.
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Predestination is not simply knowledge of what will happen, because God does not elect based on His foreseeing,
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His knowing what, quote -unquote, what choice a person might make. We're speaking of God's absolute, sovereign determination of what the future holds.
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It's His predetermination of specific persons to a specific end, as always used in the context of salvation.
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Salvation, eternal life in the Lord Jesus Christ. So predestination, in a sense of order, in a logical order, predestination comes first, before the foundation of the world, before time, before eternity.
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Election, then, our topic this morning, election is the means by which
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God accomplishes what He predestined. Predestination is the eternal decree of God of individuals to be in Christ Jesus.
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Election, then, is how predestination is applied.
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It's surprising how hard men will work to include some amount of human agency into this equation.
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We're speaking of unconditional election. What do we actually mean by that?
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We're saying that there is no condition placed upon God that would cause
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Him or compel Him to choose anyone. That He doesn't foresee some good thing in you or me or anyone else, and based upon that,
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He says, well, if they're going to do that, then conditions would then require me or compel me or demand of me that I choose this one.
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There's no condition placed upon God by any merit in ourselves or any power or authority or rule of law above Him, by which
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He must analyze things and therefore be forced into this or that or the other choice. It's unconditional, and yet men will work very hard to put some of us into it, to bring something to the table.
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Have you heard this say, all you bring is your, and then they fill in the blank with different things. You bring your sin, you bring your faith.
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I would argue we bring nothing. We had a good lively discussion in Sunday school this morning, and one of the brothers was pointing out that when
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Jesus says that God will draw men to Jesus Christ, that draw is not simply coaxing along, like we're little puppy dogs.
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Yeah, come on puppy, come over here, and try and get them to come over and wag their tail or something silly like that. No, it's
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God dragging men to Himself. It's God accomplishing His purposes.
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It's God doing what He has decreed to do. The Arminian view, which the paragraph
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I read from Canons of Dort at the beginning directly refutes, is that God the
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Father graciously elects some sinners to salvation because He foresaw from eternity past that they would believe in Jesus.
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I find this to be out of kilter with the scriptures, and we can sense the error in a statement like that.
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God foresaw that you would enact faith. God foresaw, if you will, this good thing, this good work, this good deed that you would do, and therefore
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He elected you. Can you sense in your spirit the error with that?
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Does it make you uncomfortable? Maybe just even a little bit. It makes me a lot uncomfortable, and I'm sure a lot of you too.
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The error is simply this. It elevates man, if ever so slightly, even microscopically, into God's place.
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You see, it reduces God's sovereignty just the slightest, most subtle little bit.
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It appeals to our flesh, to our pride, to our willful desire to, like Adam and Eve before us, be like God.
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That's the problem with this idea that God foresaw that you would believe and not decreed that you will believe and predestined that faith, that believing that you will have, and then of His same sovereign freedom,
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He elected and put you into Christ and applied that salvation to you. But when we have this idea of God foreseeing some good thing you would do, even something so biblical and pious as exercising faith, our spirit -led conscience,
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Spirit, capital S, our spirit -led conscience can sense the error because it raised you up just a teensy -weensy little bit, and He gave you any slightest tinge of a hint of a part in what
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God and God alone has done. See, what's concocted in that wrongful view is conditional election.
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They mean that there's some condition placed upon God that compelled Him to make a choice. In eternity past before anything existed but the triune
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God and only Him, He looked down the corridors of time and He said, well, well, look there. I see
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Mr. John Doe exercising faith in my son. How wonderful of him. I think I'll glorify myself by electing him to enjoy the salvation that my son will accomplish.
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I don't treat that view with very much sympathy, I admit that. Well, the problem with it is that God is compelled to do nothing.
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Psalm 115 verse 3 says, but our God is in heaven. He does whatever He pleases. The pagan king
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Nebuchadnezzar, he rightly said, he, God, he does according to his will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.
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No one can constrain his hand or say to him, what have you done? In Acts, we read over and over again that those who come to God are those who are appointed by God to come to Him.
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Those who are appointed to eternal life, says the inspired author Luke. Not those who chose, not those who
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God saw choosing to believe, those who were appointed to it by God.
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There's no condition placed upon God that forces Him as it were to choose anyone. And this is what we mean by unconditional election.
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This is what we mean when we say unconditional election is not no condition placed upon us. We've already covered that and we'll cover that some more.
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No condition placed upon God. Wayne Grudem puts it this way, election is an act of God before creation in which
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He chooses some men to be saved, not on account of any foreseen merit in them, but only because of His sovereign good pleasure.
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Now we might notice that in Deuteronomy 7, which John read to you a little bit ago, God makes it plain that Israel is
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His peculiar treasure. Why? Because He elected them and He elected them to be just that,
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His peculiar treasure. And if we ask why, merit is excluded.
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Any hint of the human agency is completely eliminated.
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Verse six, the Lord your God has chosen you. The Lord your God has chosen you.
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We shouldn't need to say any more. Verse seven, not because you are more in number for you are the least of all peoples.
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There's nothing in them that would cause God to say what a wonderful people, these people will bring glory to my name just because of how grand they are.
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Quite the opposite. Maybe amongst all those peoples that we saw there, all those civilizations around them from Egypt to the
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Philistines, Israel was probably the least likely to grow into a nation that would bring glory to God by men look and say how wonderful these people are.
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No, not because you were more or more grand, you were the least. Verse eight, here is really the reason, and this is as much reason as we can get for this elective process of God, but because the
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Lord loves you, because He would keep His oath which He swore to your fathers. In other words, not for anything inherent in the people
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He saved, not because they were more numerous, more prestigious, more intelligent, more holy, but only because He chose to as a matter of His own freely given commitment to His own freely determined and given promises.
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He elects sinful men in order that He Himself might be glorified.
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He elects sinful men. He elects unworthy sinners. We were even speaking in Sunday school about 1
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Corinthians where it speaks of God choosing the foolish things of the world. You might think back to Gideon where the army had to be whittled down to 300, and there
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I agree completely with Alistair Begg, don't go into these gyrations of what it means to kneel and pull the water up out of the river into your mouth or kneel down like a dog and all these crazy things.
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The point is simply 300 people, not thousands of big strong men, but just 300 people so God gets all the glory.
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That's why God chooses sinners, why God chooses foolish men and women. He gets the glory.
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That's why God chose Israel, the least of all peoples, in every way imaginable, so that He gets the glory.
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Unless we think that only Israel was unworthy of God's favor, I'll read to you a few verses from 1
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Corinthians chapter 1 beginning at verse 27. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things that are mighty.
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And the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence.
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Doesn't this tell us so much about this idea of God's elective decree? What's it for?
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It's for His glory. What does it reduce? Boasting in His presence, glory in His presence.
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If He did all the choosing, which He did, if He did all the choosing with nothing foreseen of any good or any merit in us, then are we going to stand before Him thumping our chest?
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Not before Him, certainly. Am I going to turn to the man or woman next to me and say, look what I did to get up?
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May it never be. God does not foresee faith.
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He gives it. He does not anticipate holiness. He grants it.
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The good works that we do, what does Ephesians 2 .10 says? God prepared them beforehand that we should walk in them.
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And when we get to Ephesians 2 .10, if we haven't started Ephesians 1 .1, we might think we're walking in those works because we saw those good works, and we decided to.
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But only if you started Ephesians 2 .10 and ignore what came before. Because it's
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God who converted the soul. It's God who predestined. It's God who elected. It's God who put us on that path.
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It's God who made us see the path. It's God who made us want the path. It's God, God, God.
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No man. He doesn't foresee faith. He gives faith. He doesn't see that we're going to be holy.
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He makes us holy. He doesn't make us meritorious.
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He does not make us meritorious even when He elects us to be in His Son. Does it mean to be elected to Jesus Christ?
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Does it make us somehow grander people? No. It means that He has given to us the merits of His Son, Jesus Christ.
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Not our own merits, the merits of His Son. He imputes them to us.
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There's our $64 ,000 theological word, imputation. They're ours by imputation.
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He doesn't attribute Christ's righteousness. He, excuse me, He doesn't infuse us and make us righteous as Christ is.
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He attributes it to us. He sees us as if. Knowing that we're not, but He chooses to see us as though we are.
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God of His own volition and sovereign freedom chooses to view us as if we had obeyed the law as Jesus did, as if we had lived fully righteous and holy before Him as Jesus did.
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He views us as if our sins were paid for. Speaking of those, the community of faith, those whose faith is in the
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Lord Jesus Christ and what He accomplished on the cross to answer our sins before God, paying the penalty of God's holy wrath deserved by us.
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He views us if we have faith in that as if our sins were paid for, but here it's not by imputation.
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Here we must say as the elect of God that our sins were in fact paid for.
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I think unconditional election is no less humbling for us than was the previous subject, total depravity.
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I mean, our minds can process and understand what's being said here from the Word of God, but it's the heart that needs to apprehend it.
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It's the heart that needs to apprehend. A .W. Pink calls this a humbling and flesh -withering truth.
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A humbling and flesh - withering truth. I ask, does this humble you?
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This idea of God's unconditional election, God choosing you or anyone else simply because He chose to, excluding all qualities within us, does this humble you?
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Or does it make your flesh crawl just a little bit in rebellion? Does it make you object a little bit?
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Wait a second, I do bring something to the table, don't I? Don't I add and I stop right?
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No, don't tell me what you think you add. You don't. Only Jesus. Only Christ.
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Only His sacrifice. You know, it's common to say that this just isn't fair.
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When we take this hard -line, reformed, Calvinistic approach to this, they say, well, it's just not fair.
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God is unjust in choosing one over another since all in our natural inclinations are equally repugnant to God.
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But while mass murder is certainly a crime that is worse than embezzlement, both perpetrators fall under Romans 3 .23,
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do they not? For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So we need not justify
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God's right to elect who He will by comparing one depraved sinner to another and saying, well, that's not fair because my sins aren't as bad as His and those are worse over there.
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No, we don't get to do that. A better way to look at it is this.
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If all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and if Paul later writes, for the wages of sin is death, this being the case, then
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God's choice to elect anyone is a matter of sheer grace. Only grace.
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Nothing but grace. He is fair in condemning each and every one of us.
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He's gracious in saving any one of us. Universal condemnation is fair.
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A single soul saved from that fair condemnation is sheer, unadulterated grace.
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We object that God would choose that one over me, but the doctrine of total depravity, which
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I think we did a pretty good job with a few weeks ago, it teaches that no one deserves to be in heaven.
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Think of what it implies if we speak of God as electing based on some foreseen thing in us, whatever you want it to be.
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Can you actually be saying that God is unfair for having taken one depraved sinner over another?
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The owner of the field in the parable, the one who hired the workers at all the different times, yet paid them all the same wage, he spoke very well for God when he said, is it not lawful for me to do what
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I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good? See, God had freedom to make us or not.
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He had freedom whether we should be temporary or eternal. The creator has no obligation to the creator.
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I'm not going to read it all. I commend your reading later. Romans 9 14 to 21. You must come away from those verses, those eight verses, with this conclusion.
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God is not obligated in any way to anything or anyone. God does as he will because of his good pleasure.
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The fact is being born depraved and in our lives proving the truth of this by our moral failures, justice requires that all be punished.
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It is mercy and grace alone that draws us away from this mass of sin and any to be saved.
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Ezekiel 36 22 demands of us that we give all the glory and all the purpose and all the initiative to God, to him alone.
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Listen to what he says to Israel. How much more to us who know the
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Lord Jesus Christ. I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for my holy name's sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went.
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Election just keeps things in their proper place. It confirms God's freedom and his sovereignty, his complete dominion, and election maintains something very, very important.
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It maintains our total inability. You did not choose me, but I chose you, said our
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Savior. How the Arminian can say that Christ's choosing is from his foreseeing of faith is just really beyond me.
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I can't understand it and I can't really give it a fair hearing, but they're wrong. God's predestination of every soul was determined before that soul existed.
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Election is the stamp placed upon a person in time that seals him as the
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Lord's own. Election is the stamp placed upon you in time that seals you as the
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Lord's own. The universalist says that God will save everyone indiscriminately, a proposition that makes one wonder why anyone should even preach and call men to repentance if all are going to be saved anyway.
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I mean, if they're right, then the imperative commands of the Bible are there only to make life a little bit easier until Christ comes.
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If they're right, then Christ died for nothing. If universalism is right, then
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Jesus came for nothing. If God will save everyone regardless of their faith, regardless of his election, they're anything.
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Well, then Anselm's question, why did God become man? It's a frivolous speculation. Nothing God does is without purpose.
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What purpose is served in the election? First and foremost, of course, God's glory. His glory is precious to him, and he will not give it to another.
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An unconditional election should cause us to glorify and to praise God. Ephesians 1, 5, and 6 again,
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God predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he made us accepted in the beloved.
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Before the world was made, God, to the praise of the glory of his grace, predestined the people to salvation by placing them in his son
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Jesus. And there's more. In Christ also we have obtained an inheritance being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of his glory.
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Why do we have an inheritance in Christ? Why were we predestined, elected personally by God for salvation?
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The answer is very simple. So we, broken vessels all, feet of clay on each one of us, so that we might be to the praise of his glory.
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And there's even more. Paul looks at unconditional election, and he sees only cause to praise
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God, to revel in his glory, and to bask in his goodness. He wrote to the Thessalonians, we give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our
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Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father, knowing, beloved brethren, your election by God.
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Election by God is cause for prayers of thanks. Our election, as well as others, should cause us to just revel and bask in the goodness of our gracious God.
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The mere thought that God would choose anyone should make us just shake our heads in wonder.
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It should empty of us of all our pride, especially that form of pride that wants to take a share in what
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God and God alone can do, and what he and he alone has done.
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There's another aspect to unconditional election. First and foremost, God's glory.
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But election also should provide us with comfort, with confidence. You see,
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God's election of you, if indeed you have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, that was not mechanistic, as though there were some formula he used to analyze you or anyone else.
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And what would that imply except that by this analysis some of us came out as worthy on our own merits of receiving this grace from God?
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And that would necessarily mean that we, being changeable, could then discontinue in whatever wonderful ways we had that caused
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God to be so impressed with us, and we could cause ourselves to be unelected.
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Another serious error, I believe, in the church at large, that you can fall in and out of God's elective grace, as though this eternal decree of God depends upon our approval, our compliance, our something.
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It's impossible. Your merits or mine were never in view when
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God chose his people. When Paul wrote, Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated, quoting
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God through Malachi the prophet, he goes to great length to demonstrate that there's nothing inherently good or bad in either child.
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For the children, not yet being born nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God, according to election, might stand, not of works, but of him who calls.
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God chooses for his own purposes, and this must comfort us. It should encourage us.
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This should magnify our trust in God and our certainty in his promises. Now think about this for a moment.
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Romans 8, 28 to 30, it stood for millennia as a special comfort to Christians, especially when they're going through various difficult trials.
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Many of you have memorized these, and we know that all things work together for good to those who love
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God, to those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
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Moreover, whom he predestined, these he also called. Whom he called, these he also justified.
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Whom he justified, these he also glorified. For whom do all things work together for good?
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It's those who are called according to his purpose. And who are they? Those are those whom he foreknew. And what did he do with those whom he foreknew?
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He predestined them to be conformed to the image of his son, Jesus Christ. And he doesn't stop there.
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The predestined ones were called, another way of saying elected, and then justified, and ultimately with Jesus Christ, glorified.
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You see, without the doctrine of unconditional election, these are just pretty sounding words. But they're not just sweet words.
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They convey certainty. They convey confidence, and trust, and hope. But just think, though, for a second about it.
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If our election is not the choice of God, without any preconditions, if it is not this, if it is in any way tinged by the slightest human involvement, then these promises will be just such a fortification for Christians over so many centuries.
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They're almost worthless. If it depends on me, they're just pretty sounding flowery words.
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But they're not worthless. They're not just nice words. These words are from the very mouth of God, and he grounds them in the fact that our standing before him is by his unfettered choice.
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Our unconditional election assures us that we will be conformed to Christ's image, that we will be glorified, that come what may, it is meant for our good and will bring about God's intended purposes.
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What's the foundation of all that? God's unconditional election of you for his sovereign good purposes according to the good pleasure of his will and that alone.
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If your faith, your hope, your trust are in Christ Jesus, you are secure.
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Why? Because salvation is God's choice, not ours. It is he who chooses us, not as Titus 2 -3 will tell us, by works of mercy.
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You know, it's we who cried out, Lord save us. It's Jesus who answers back,
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I will never leave you or forsake you. We despair over our weaknesses and we plead, Lord help my own belief.
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To which Jesus replies, I give you eternal life and you shall never perish, neither shall anyone snatch you out of my hands.
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We fret whether we've done enough to keep God's favor. We fret over whether we've done enough because we don't understand that God's election says there's nothing you've done at all.
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We fret over this, we worry about this, we wring our hands. Have I done enough for God to save me for one more day?
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And Peter answers that we are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last times.
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You see, unconditional election teaches us to God's glory that our salvation is secure.
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You or I didn't merit or earn it. God didn't grant it because of our worth, but only because of his good pleasure and Christ's meritorious life and his work on the cross.
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No one, not even you, can snatch you away from him. It is not our works that caused election or keeps us there.
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It is the father's regard for his son that secures us to his bosom. That's what unconditional election teaches us.
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God will bring about what he intends. In a couple of weeks,
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Lord willing, he will be pleased for me to continue this series with the doctrine of the atonement, where we will see what means
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God has determined for the accomplishment of what he purposed in our election. But for today, it's enough that election is the unchangeable purpose of God, by which before the foundation of the world, according to the most free pleasure of his will and of his mere grace of all mankind, he hath chosen in Christ unto salvation a set number of men, neither better nor more worthy than others, but lying in common misery with others.
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Now, some of you might be working through this and wondering, why then do we preach? If God has elected a set number of people known by him since eternity past, and they will certainly come to him, why preach?
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I mean, the certainty of the coming is not in doubt, nor is the means God has appointed for the changing of souls so chosen.
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It's preaching. Paul said to the Thessalonians, Our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, and in the
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Holy Spirit, and in much assurance. And you know what kind of men we were among you for your sake. The word of God, attended by the power of the
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Spirit of God, is the means God has ordained for the calling of his people. It is the way his unconditional election is made effectual.
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As he wrote to the Romans, How then shall they call on him whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?
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And how shall they hear without a preacher? And the answers here are all negative. No one can call on him in whom they've not believed.
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No one can believe in his name unless they've heard his name. And unless a preacher should faithfully proclaim
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God's word, they can't hear. I ask you, does this word get through to you?
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I mean, are you by it convicted of your sin? Do you see the value of repentance for your sins?
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That is how the elect of God hear the word. Jesus asked in John 8 43,
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Why do you not understand my speech? Because you are not able to listen to my word. Just a moment later, the
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Lord said, He who is of God hears God's words. Therefore you do not hear because you are not of God.
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Unconditional election, rightly understood, glorifies God as much as it diminishes man. Man is the pinnacle of creation, so I don't mean to degrade us.
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What I mean by man being diminished by the doctrine of unconditional election is our self -reliance.
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It must go. God made us and not we ourselves. God chose us and not we ourselves.
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Rightly understood, this all has to make us the more confident in the salvation to which his election has drawn us.
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By his eternal decree, we are his. If our salvation was up to us, we'd slip easily and constantly in and out of it.
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One morning we'd wake up and we'd say, nope, I don't feel like I'm saved today. I guess I'll live for myself and not for Christ.
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And by the end of the day, we might have resaved ourselves and be willing to give a nod towards holiness. But it's not up to us.
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Praise God. Election is God's eternal unchangeable decree. Just a few closing thoughts here.
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God's choice of you or me or anyone else is unconditional. There's nothing in any of us, no deed we've done, no quality we exhibit, no character trait that would compel
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God to make his choice. It's all of grace, for by grace you've been saved through faith and that not of yourselves is a gift of God.
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And why would God want you or me or anyone else around him? In a word, he wouldn't.
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Not, that is, not on the basis of any good in us because there is none.
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None that is native to us anyway. In our natural depraved state, we are so opposed to God that far from choosing him to be ours, we would object to him choosing us.
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We would cast off his bonds as quick as we could. There's none who seeks after God. They've all turned away.
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So be clear on this. Must be clear on this. Jesus said we did not choose him but that he made his choice.
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He did the work of choosing. He did the work of redeeming. He came and lived a perfect life before God as a man and as a perfect man he died for the sins of those he elected unto himself.
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He, Jesus, fully God in his divinity, his eternality, his power.
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When he as a man had suffered all of God's wrath for all our sins, of course I speak of the cross, he cried out, it is finished.
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And I ask us, what will you add to that? Your willingness to accept what
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God has done in his son Jesus? I mean, how generous. How generous to accept
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God's goodness. What is often phrased as accepting
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Jesus just will not do. You don't accept Jesus, you are converted to him. Now does this leave us as fatalists who would walk away from this place complacent?
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Would you leave here passively expecting God to smite you from above? No friend, that is not it.
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That is not it. We plead with you, come to Christ. You are here today, you are hearing this gospel, if you will but repent and trust
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Christ. And Christ did it all. As the hymn says, excuse me, my sin, not the part but the whole, was nailed to the cross and I bear it no more.
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Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul. The gospel demands of you but this, confess yourself a sinner in need of what
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God has provided in his son on the cross. Flee to him, to Jesus for forgiveness of your sins.
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This doctrine ought not to make us so dangerously passive. You might have heard this today and concluded that there being nothing you can do, you might as well leave here as you came, without God in the world and a stranger to the promise of eternal life in Christ.
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God will do what he will do, so we'll just wait and see what that is. Or, and here's a better option, you might hear all this and conclude that there is nothing in you that would attract
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God's notice of anything but your sin. There's nothing in you of any good and so there are no conditions placed on God to take you.
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And in this mode of thinking, the idea of unconditional election causes us to see our sin all the more clearly and God's goodness is thereby magnified.
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And then you conclude that only by pleading to God by faith in his son
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Jesus Christ for what he has done on the cross to take God's wrath for my sins and beg him for forgiveness.
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God accepts sinners not on the basis of themselves but for the sake of his son, what he suffered on our behalf.
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And as Paul writes, this is to the praise of the glory of his grace by which he made us accepted in the beloved, his son, our savior
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Jesus Christ. Amen. Gracious heavenly father, we do thank you again for the day that you've given us, for this time that we have together around your word.
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And I thank you lord for your sovereign choice to elect some, not one of whom was worthy, not one of whom is deserving.
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Lord, we are unworthy, deserving only of wrath by nature, children of wrath. I thank you lord for the gift of repentance.
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I thank you lord for the gift of faith. I thank you lord for opening our eyes to see your sovereign eternal election of some.
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That it's all of God, all for the sake of your son Jesus Christ. I pray lord that you would regenerate souls even this day, that you would change hearts, that you would show yourself merciful and bring many to faith and to complete trust in your son
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Jesus Christ and what he has done to bring unworthy sinners to yourself.