Unconditional Election

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Sermon given by Pastor Keith Foskey Sovereign Grace Family Church www.SGFCjax.org

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Last week, when I taught on the doctrine of total depravity, I mentioned that I was going to give you all my notes, and then I didn't, because I saw so many people trying to write down all the verses I gave, and I said, there's no need for you to sit here and try to work your fingers to the bone writing down verses when I could just give you a copy of my notes.
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It's only one page, and so I went ahead and made a copy for you of last week, and I gave you a copy of this week.
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And if you're at home today, and you're not here, as I know at least one of our people that's normally here, Daniel, is not here with us tonight, I'll have a copy for you too.
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So tonight, we are going to continue our study of the doctrines of grace, the five points of Calvinism, as they are sometimes referred to, and we have already looked at the doctrine of total depravity, that was our lesson for last week, and if you'll remember, the doctrines of grace spell out TULIP, T-U-L-I-P, and so the T stands for total depravity, and if you were not here last week, I do recommend you going back and listening to that, because here is a very important truth.
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If you do not understand total depravity, you will not understand the rest.
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If you do not understand that man is dead in trespasses and sins, if you do not understand that man is totally unable to do anything good toward God, apart from the necessary grace of God, then you won't understand any of the rest of what we're going to talk about.
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So tonight, we're going to look at the U in TULIP, and the U stands for Unconditional Election.
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Now, if you remember, when I first began talking about this subject, I made the point that the reason for the five points of Calvinism was because there was originally five points of Arminianism.
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The first point of Arminianism was free will, and therefore the response is no, not free will, but a bound will, a will that is bound or enslaved or shackled, and that's what we call total depravity.
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Well, the second point of Arminianism is what we might refer to as conditional election.
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So, I'm just going to put a line right here, because the difference between Arminianism and Calvinism in this regard is really just the prefix UN, which makes it the opposite.
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They believe that election is conditioned upon a person exercising faith.
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Yes, God makes a choice, but you choose first.
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Yes, God chooses, but you are ultimately the one who chooses him to choose you.
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Think of it that way, because that really is the argument.
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You have to choose for God to be able to choose.
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So, their argument, the Arminian argument, is election, and by the way, what does election mean? It means to make a choice.
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Every four years, we go to the polls and we make a choice.
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We call it electing the president, right, or every few years we elect our local government or our senators or our congressmen.
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That's all election.
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It's making a choice.
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So, we're not unfamiliar with the word election.
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They say that election is conditional.
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It is conditioned upon a person exercising faith.
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Well, in our last lesson, we demonstrated that man cannot exercise faith apart from God enabling him to do so.
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This is affirmed in many passages which we looked at, but the one that I think you will probably remember best, at least it's the one that I remember best when I'm having this conversation with people, is Jesus' own words.
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When Jesus said, no man can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day.
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He cannot come.
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What does it mean to come? Well, in the context of that statement, if you read John 6, the concept of coming to Jesus means to believe.
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He says, you've come to me, but you don't believe.
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That's the context.
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And then he says, no one can come, truly come, meaning to believe, unless God grants it to him.
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Therefore, it is my argument, and it is the argument of Calvinism, that the condition upon which God chooses someone cannot be faith.
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Let me say that again.
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If the Arminian says election is conditional, and they say that the condition that the person must meet is faith, we would respond by saying, but a person cannot exercise faith unless God enables them to, and therefore, the condition cannot be faith.
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Is this making sense? Am I being clear? If you say that God chooses based on a condition, the condition is faith, I would say it can't be.
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Because if God chooses, he's choosing you based on something that unless he gives you the ability, you can't do it.
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So therefore, he has to choose to give you the ability, therefore, he's making a choice to give you the ability.
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Am I losing you? Are we together? Okay, make sure we're clear.
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Because here's the point.
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I'll read to you two quotes.
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And again, maybe I shouldn't have given you my notes, because some of you are looking so close at the notes, you're not looking at me.
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But I gave you my notes, but here's the thing.
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The condition of election cannot be faith.
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I'll read from Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul.
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The reformed view of election, known as unconditional election, means that God does not foresee an action or condition on our part that induces him to save us.
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Rather, election rests on God's sovereign decision to save whomever he is pleased to save.
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Wayne Grudem, in his commentary on this, or his systematic theology, he said this, he says, this understanding of election has traditionally been called unconditional election.
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It is unconditional because it is not conditioned upon anything that God sees in us that makes us worthy of his choosing us.
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So I'm going to remove this line.
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They say, they say, election is conditional.
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We say no, election is unconditional.
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Because when you say election is conditional, what you're saying is man can do something that causes God to choose him.
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Man can do something that causes God to look upon him with favor.
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Man can do something to please God in and of himself.
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And we would say no.
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The only way I can do anything good towards God is that God would give me the grace to do so.
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And if God gives me the grace to do so, and God chooses to do that, then it's him making the choice.
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God did not look at Keith Foskey from the foundation of the world and say, now there is a good one.
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Boy, I'll be happy to have him.
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I promise he didn't.
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Whatever high praises you may give me in life and whatever good you may think of me or Andy or any of the rest of us elders or deacons or whoever else in the church that you might see as somebody who is an encouragement to you spiritually, God did not look at any of us and say, now there's a good boy.
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In fact, the greatest instance of pride that we could ever come up with is to think that God chose us because of something in us.
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Calvinism is the pride destroyer.
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People say, oh, you're so prideful, you think God chose you.
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I said, I'm not prideful at all because I don't know why I did.
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I can't be prideful at all if I don't know for what reason, because it's not me.
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I met no conditions.
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I met no qualifications.
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I was not good.
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Still not good.
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Apart from Christ.
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If God were to remove his grace from me, I would be the most wicked man you've ever met.
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Conditional election.
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When someone says, I don't believe in unconditional election, I respond, I say, then you must believe in conditional election and what condition did you meet? So it says, I don't believe in unconditional.
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Then you believe in conditional.
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What condition did you meet? What made God choose you? Well, I believe.
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Did you believe without the grace of God? Because Jesus said you can't.
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You understand how it fits together now? You understand why one and the other cannot live apart from the other? This is why, and I'm going to be fair now, especially to anybody watching.
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You might think I'm being ugly.
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I'm not being ugly.
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I don't like people who say, well, I'm a three point Calvinist or a four point Calvinist or whatever.
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I realize there are people who think they are, but I'm going to tell you this.
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I think the whole thing stands or falls together.
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That's my opinion.
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And take it for what it's worth.
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That cup of that nickel, get you a cup of coffee.
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It's my opinion.
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But to say you're a four point or a three point, this whole thing is relying upon the first thing, total depravity.
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If total depravity is true, the rest of it has to be true.
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Because if total depravity is true, then your condition was your election was not conditioned on anything you did because you couldn't do it.
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The atonement was made for those who will believe, who will believe.
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Those who are elect.
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Who will be drawn, those who are elect, who who will persevere, those who have been chosen, it's all together.
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And as we'll see in the weeks ahead, I think they stand or fall together.
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And I know I may get an email or somebody may say, well, I know I know somebody who's a four point Calvinist.
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Well, I I think it's I think that there is a reason why these five things go together.
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They all take the they all take the emphasis off of you.
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And put it on what God has done, it's all taking the emphasis off the individual and putting it on God.
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So tonight, we're going to affirm the you and unconditional election or excuse me, the you and TULIP, which is unconditional election.
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We're going to do so by looking at several passages as we did last week.
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I'm just going to give you some passages to consider since I've already given them to you on the sheet.
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But the people at home don't have the sheet.
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I'm going to go ahead and read them and I want to look at each one, but I'm not sure that we're going to spend much time in each one because there's several passages.
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There's last week I had 10 verses in the Old Testament or I'm sorry, 10 verses in the New Testament, three verses in the Old Testament.
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Tonight, I've got six verses on the subject of election and unconditional election.
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Then I've got another eight or nine verses that just are showing how the word chosen and elect is used in the gospels and in a few of the epistles.
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So we got a lot of verses to get through.
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The first one, though, is the most important.
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So if you want to turn to John 6, 37, it's interesting how important John 6 is to this conversation.
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And remember the context of John 6, Jesus has fed 5000 people.
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Then he goes away and all those people find him.
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Why? Because he fed them.
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He is a miracle worker.
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And if I know anything about people, is they're going to go where the getting's good.
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And there is nobody who the getting was better than than those who were getting fed by a man who could take five loaves and two fish and feed an entire army of people.
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They're going to go where the getting's good.
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So they go to Jesus.
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And Jesus basically says, you don't believe in me.
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And the argument, well, what do you mean we don't believe that we came all the way here? No, you came here because I fed you.
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Read it, read the chapter.
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Look at it, verse 25, when they found him on the other side of the sea, they said, Rabbi, when did you come here? Jesus answered them, truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate of your fill of the loaves.
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Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the son of man will give to you.
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For on him, the God, for on him, God the Father has set his seal.
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Then they said to him, what must we do to be doing the works of God? Jesus answered them, this is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent.
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By the way, that's an interesting statement all of its own.
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This is the work of God that you believe in him.
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It's God's work that you believe.
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But he goes on, our fathers ate the man in the wilderness, as it is written, he gave them food from heaven to eat bread from heaven.
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Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my father gives you the true bread from heaven.
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For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.
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They said to him, sir, give us this bread always feed us forever.
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That's what they're saying.
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We're hungry and we're going to we're going to keep getting hungry.
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You're going to feed us.
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We're going to be hungry again tomorrow.
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We're going to be hungry again the next day.
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Keep feeding us forever.
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Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life.
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Whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
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But there's that adversity of conjunction.
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The word but but changes things, most important word in the Bible is the word but.
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Because it always changes things.
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Jesus said, whoever believes in me shall never thirst, but I said to you that you have seen me and yet you do not believe.
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Can you think about what they would have thought when he said that to them? They're literally just crossed a sea to see him.
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They literally are following him where he's at.
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They're literally believe that he can put his hand on bread and make more bread, put his hand on fish and make more fish.
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He has the power of God and they believe that you said you see me and you don't believe.
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People say, oh, Jesus was such a nice guy.
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Jesus was harsh with his language at times.
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And this is an example.
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I said to you, you have seen me and yet you do not believe.
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And then verse.
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Thirty seven.
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All that the father gives me will come to me.
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And whoever comes to me, I will never cast out all that the father gives me will come to me.
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Years ago, my one of my favorite pastors, Rory Hargrave, was on a cruise and it was a cruise, a Bible study cruise.
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And he was one of the speakers.
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And I got a copy of the audio from all of the sessions because they had them in the little rooms.
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You know, they had the audio in the little rooms.
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And his topic was Calvinism and evangelism, Calvinism and evangelism.
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Teach a lesson on Calvinism and evangelism.
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He came in.
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He opened up his Bible and he said, all the father gives me shall come to me.
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That's Calvinism.
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The one who comes to me, I will never cast out.
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That's evangelism.
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Let's go to the pool.
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He's in the right here together.
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All the father gives me will come to me.
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Think of what that's saying, think of it like this.
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Here's mankind.
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That circle represents all mankind.
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Do all mankind come to Jesus? The answer is no.
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Do some men come to Jesus? By that, I mean general men and women.
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Do some of mankind come to Jesus? So we can take within this circle of mankind and we can say there are some who do come, right? So we'll say the circle maybe is that big.
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All right, so all.
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And then some, but when you look at the sum, this sum becomes an all, all of those, all those who believe.
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Right.
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Jesus said all of these.
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Who come to Jesus? Are given to Jesus.
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By the father, all the father gives me will come to me now, let's say it the other way.
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All the father doesn't give.
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Will not come, that makes sense.
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Because all the father gives will come.
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What does that tell us? Some won't come.
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Why won't they come? Because they're not given by the father to the son.
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If you come to the son, you are a gift from the father in the ancient world.
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One of the things that fathers did, and you know this, if you've ever read your Bible in the Old Testament, one of the things that the fathers did was they went and got brides for their sons and they presented their son with that bride.
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They would actually pay a price for that bride.
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The dowry was a price that was paid for the wife.
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They would go and purchase her, as it were, from another person.
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And they would say, OK, my son likes your daughter.
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I'm going to give you a portion of my cattle or I'm going to give you a portion of my gold.
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I'm going to give you a portion of my wealth.
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And you're going to take that.
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And for that, you're going to give us her hand.
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And so the father goes and he purchases the bride for the son, and now he presents the bride to the son.
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He says, this is yours.
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She is now your bride.
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That's the same picture God gives us to the son.
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That's why we're called the bride of Christ.
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We are a gift from the father to the son.
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Father paid a great price for us.
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He paid with the death of his own son to pay the price for us to be the bride.
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But it's an amazing picture.
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All the father gives me will come to me and the one who comes.
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Why did he come? Because the father gave him to him.
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But the one who comes, I won't cast out.
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By the way, we're going to look at that one again when we come back at the perseverance of the saints, because the one who comes will be kept.
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He won't be cast away, the one who comes.
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That's why people say, well, what if God didn't elect somebody and they came to Jesus? Would God still save them? I say, well, first of all, you get in your categories mixed up because I've already told you that nobody's going to come unless he's given by the father to the son.
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But if by some miracle and it would have to be an unbiblical miracle, which would make it impossible, but by some miracle, if somebody could come to Jesus, he wouldn't be cast out because the promise is the one who comes will not be cast out.
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But remember this, no one will come.
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And that's why this fits together with verse 44.
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Jesus said no one can come unless the father draws him.
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Verse 65, no one can come unless the father grants it to him.
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Verse 27, verse 44 and verse 65, 37, 44 and 65 are all in the same context.
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No one can come and all who do come, come because they are given by the father to the son.
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You understand that's unconditional election.
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God choosing to give a bride to this son.
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Now let's run to Ephesians one.
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Ephesians one is a longer passage, and because of time, I won't be able to go through it, but I just want to read it to you and I want you to hear what it says.
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Ephesians chapter one, beginning at verse three, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.
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When were we chosen? Went before the foundation of the world.
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He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him.
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Notice the next line in love.
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He predestined us.
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You say, why did God choose me? Because he loved you.
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Why did God predestine me? Because he loved you.
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He didn't have to.
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He chose to love you.
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That's what makes his love even that much more special is God didn't have to love you and he didn't love you because of anything in you.
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He loved you because he's good, not because you're good.
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That's the powerful.
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In love, he predestined us.
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People miss that because it's two different verses in love is the end of verse four, and he predestined us at the beginning of verse five.
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But really, it's one sentence.
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In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons to Christ Jesus, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace.
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And he goes on to say in verse 11, in him, we have obtained an inheritance.
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Having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things, according to the counsel of my will, no, according to the counsel of his will, God made his choice according to what? The counsel of his will.
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Who does God have to counsel to make his choice? Me.
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Did God have to did God have to come and have a sit down and say, you know, Keith, we're going to we're going to talk about the salvation thing.
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I want you to sit down.
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I want a cup of coffee.
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We'll have a cup of coffee.
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Well, and we're going to talk about your salvation and we're going to see if you meet those conditions.
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Now, the Bible says God counsels with only one himself.
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Now, we can make the argument within the Trinity.
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There are three persons.
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So there's an inter-Trinitarian counsel.
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But yet still, it is a unified counsel of God.
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And he does not have to swear by anyone.
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If he wants to swear, he swears by himself because there's no one greater to whom to swear.
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And if he wants to counsel, he counsels with himself because there's no one greater with whom to counsel.
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And he certainly doesn't need to counsel with me.
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And when God chose, he chose according to the counsel of his will.
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All right, the next few, I'm just going to give you for the lack of time, very quickly.
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Number three is Acts 13, 48.
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Acts 13, 48 says when the Gentiles heard the gospel, they believed it.
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You say, well, what is that? That's not what it says.
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It says as many as were ordained to eternal life believed it.
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And what's key about that passage, and it's in the notes here, is belief is preceded by ordination.
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As many as were ordained to eternal life believed.
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That's unconditional election.
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God had chosen to ordain them to life before they believed.
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And somebody says, well, God knew they were going to believe.
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That's not what the text says.
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It says they believe because they were ordained to eternal life.
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Romans 9, 10 through 13.
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What does Romans 9 say? That God chose Jacob.
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And not Esau.
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Verse 13, everybody knows Jacob, I love Esau, I've hated.
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But look at the verse right before that.
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Why did God choose Jacob and not Esau? So that his purpose in election would stand.
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He chose them before they were born to demonstrate it was not anything that they did that made him choose one or the other.
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You understand.
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God does not choose based upon conditions.
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The very heart of Romans 9 is that God will show mercy to whom he will show mercy and he will come have compassion upon whom he has compassion.
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Therefore, he mercies whom he wills and he hardens whom he wills.
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The point of Romans 9 is it's not conditioned on anything but his will.
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The words of Jesus in John 15, 16, you did not choose me.
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I chose you.
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Remember that you said, well, he was talking about the disciples.
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Yes, he was.
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But by extension, he was talking to all of us.
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You have not chosen me.
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But I have chosen you.
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You say, well, how can you prove that because of John 10, 26, you know what John 10, 26 says? Jesus said this, he said to the Pharisees, he said, you do not believe because you're not my sheep.
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He didn't say you're not my sheep because you don't believe.
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He said, you don't believe because you're not my sheep.
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Putting that order, and that is the order, that is the proper order of the statement, you don't believe because you are not my sheep, my sheep hear my voice, they hear me, they know me and they follow me, Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice, they know me and they follow me and you don't believe because you're not my sheep.
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That is just a few of the verses that we can point to and say, here's a picture of God making a choice, unconditional choice of individuals.
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Now, you'll notice the text gets really small in my notes, and the reason for that is because I just wanted to tear through these and I'm not going to try to exegete these at all.
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I haven't really exegeted anything tonight except for maybe verse 37 of John 6.
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But this is important.
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The Bible not only says that election is unconditional, it can't be conditioned upon faith because we can't exercise faith apart from grace, and grace is necessary, and grace is a gift from God, and blah, blah, blah.
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But here's the point.
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The word elect is used over and over and over in the New Testament.
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I don't understand people who say, I don't believe in election.
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Can you read? That ain't being ugly.
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Maybe some people, maybe I'm just trying to be honest.
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People say, I don't believe predestination.
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It's in the Bible.
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Well, I don't like what you say about it.
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That's what they say.
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I say, OK, how about election? Well, I don't like that.
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Elections, I chose God, therefore he chose me.
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That's the idea of election.
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That's not what the Bible says.
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I've already shown that.
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But notice how many times you are called elect or chosen by God.
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Matthew 22, 14, for many are called, but few are chosen.
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That's the same.
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It's electos in the Greek.
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It's literally the word elect.
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Few are elect.
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That's literally what it says.
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Matthew 24 and Mark 13 both says in those days had not been cut short.
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No human being would be saved.
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But for the sake of the elect, for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short.
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Matthew 24 and Mark 13, 22, for false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.
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Again, Matthew 24 and Mark 13, and he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call and they will gather his elect from the four winds.
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Luke 18, seven will not give justice to will not God give justice to his elect.
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Romans 8, 33, who will bring a charge against God's elect? First Peter 2, 9, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation of people for his own possession.
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And by the way, the word chosen there is the word elect.
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You can say you are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a chosen nation.
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That word is all throughout.
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And that's only a few.
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I just pulled a few of the uses of the word elect us.
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Election is in the Bible and election is unconditional.
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Now, I do want for my remaining few minutes, I want to compare and deal with an objection.
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I want to compare something and then I want to deal with an objection and comparison is this.
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Some people say, well, I don't believe in unconditional election.
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I believe in unconditional love.
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That's an objection I've heard many times.
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In fact, years ago, I went to a debate.
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I was I was there.
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Dr.
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James White was doing the debate with John Shelby Spong.
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This was down.
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I think it was down near Tampa.
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Jennifer was with me.
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And it was a debate on the subject of homosexuality.
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Can you be gay and Christian? I think was the subject of the debate.
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And Dr.
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Spong was an Episcopalian and he was and he's he's he is a far out man anyway.
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And he was arguing for homosexuality as being a godly lifestyle.
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And during the debate, Dr.
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Spong was asked or during the debate, Dr.
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Spong and Dr.
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White were asked questions by the audience.
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At the end, audience got to stand up and ask questions.
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I was sitting right behind a lady who I knew was on the other side.
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She was very obviously rooting for Dr.
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Spong's side.
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So I knew that she was obviously taking the opposite position that I was taking.
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When it came time for the questions, she stood up, went to the microphone and said, Dr.
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White, who was the other debater, she said, Dr.
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White, can you please explain how your position on homosexuality goes with God's unconditional love? I'll never forget Dr.
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White's answer, and I'm sure I won't quote it exact, but this was basically the gist of it, because I was like I was I was happy that he said it.
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But it wasn't what I expected him to say.
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Because he basically looked at her and he said, can you show me in the Bible where it says anything about unconditional love from God? Can you show me where that term is used in the Bible? Well, we know God has unconditional love.
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Show me.
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You see, people assume unconditional love because it's a comforting statement.
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But the Bible does not use that term anywhere.
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The Bible doesn't teach that concept because God's love does have a condition.
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And you know what the condition is? It's very simple.
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He has to choose to love.
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God is not bound to love everyone the same way because he has to.
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Some people say, well, God is love.
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Yes, love is an attribute of God, but God does not love every person exactly the same.
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I can prove it.
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Romans 9, 13, Jacob, I love Esau.
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I hated Amos 3 to you.
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Israel have I love of all the nations of the world.
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It's not hard to prove that God.
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Chooses who and how he will love him, so I don't like that God has to love all the same.
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So what you're telling me is that God is not free to love.
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How and who he chooses.
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No, God has to love everyone the same, according to who? By what standard? Well, I've always been told that that's the way God is.
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Well, maybe you've been worshiping an idol.
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Absolutely.
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And how many of us have heard the phrase unconditional love? And if I go into a lot of churches and I say I don't believe in unconditional love, I get booted out of there.
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I would get rotten bananas and tomatoes thrown at me if I say I don't believe in unconditional love.
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But here's the thing.
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Here's here's my here's my logical syllogism.
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And here it goes.
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Very simple, my logical syllogism.
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God does not have to love fallen humanity at all.
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And God does not have to love all fallen humanity the same.
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God demonstrates his love.
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By grace alone.
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And therefore, God's love.
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Is demonstrated by saving souls.
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And so if someone is saved, if someone is regenerated, it's a result of God demonstrating grace in their life, a gracious love in their life.
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Now, for a moment, I'm going to step back.
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Do I believe God shows all people grace? Yes, I believe in common grace.
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We talked about this several weeks ago.
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I believe all people, because God is love, are the recipients of the common grace of God.
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But that does not mean all people are loved the same.
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And that does not mean that God savingly loves all people.
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And the most important thing is God chooses to love.
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God could have chosen not to love humanity, could have chosen to pour out his wrath.
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And that's it.
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But he didn't.
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And that leads us to the final objection, and I'll make this quick.
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Some people will say, well, what you're saying is God is partial.
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And the Bible says there's no partiality with God.
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Romans 2, 11 and Acts 10, 34 both clearly say there's no partiality with God.
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So there you go, Pastor, you're 100 percent wrong.
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The Bible says God is not partial.
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And you've been saying this whole time that God chooses to love some in a different way, that he chooses to love others.
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He loves some savingly and he loves some not in that way.
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And so you're saying God is partial.
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Understand this and hear me, the biblical concept of partiality is choosing someone based upon something in them.
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Whether it be that they look like you, talk like you, they're rich or they have something they can give you.
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James 2, 12, I'm sorry, James 2, 1 through 4, it says if a man comes in and he's well-dressed and you put him in a good seat and then a man comes in and he's poorly dressed and you put him in a bad seat, you've done wrong.
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Why? Because you've been partial to the rich man.
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He met a condition.
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You see, partiality is choosing based upon a condition.
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And what have I said ever since we started? God didn't choose you because you met a condition.
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Therefore, God's choice is impartial because he didn't choose you because you met a condition.
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Deuteronomy 7 is proof of this, because what is Deuteronomy? I want you to see this one.
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Go last verse, Deuteronomy 7, verse 6.
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This is God speaking to Israel.
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Deuteronomy 7, verse 6, God is speaking to the people of Israel and he says this.
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For you are a people holy to the Lord, your God, the Lord, your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
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Right there is a statement of God choosing one nation and not choosing the other.
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But look at verse 7.
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It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you for you were the fewest of all peoples.
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But it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
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What is God saying to Israel? God didn't choose you because you met a condition.
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He chose you because it was his sovereign pleasure to choose you.
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He made a promise to your ancestor who he chose, by the way, sovereignly.
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Abraham was an idolater.
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And he was from a family of idolaters, and God chose him and called him and blessed him.
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And notice that that, too, was unconditional.
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God didn't say, Abraham, I'm going to choose you because you're good.
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I'm going to choose you because you look like this or because you talk like this or because you act like this.
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God said, I'm choosing you.
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And the choice was without conditions.
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God chose Israel by sheer sovereign grace, the same grace with which he chose Abram.
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And it is the same unconditional election by which anyone today continues to be saved.
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If God has saved you, don't look at yourself as the reason.
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Look at his goodness as the reason.
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Because if there is a condition for your election, it was God's choice, not your goodness.
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Let's pray.