"U" unconditional election (Part 2)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio.

Grace, Free Will, and the Charge of Self-Salvation

This is Mike Abendroth, and it's Tuesday. I've got Pastor Steve Cooley in the office. And Steve, news alert. Yes. You asked last time, last Tuesday, to have everyone send in all their freewill verses in the Bible.

Every single one. I've just got a piece of paper with all those verses on there. Sadly, it's a blank piece of paper. I think you could find freewill when it comes to a certain kind of offering in the Old Testament, but that would not be for man, because of his own freewill, picks himself up by his own bootstraps, sola bootstrapsa, and then somehow saves himself as according to some theologians, that would be called autopistos, and that would be self-faith, self-salvation.

Autosotirism, self-salvation. And so there's no such thing. And we here at this radio show want to guard the glory of God. Not that he needs it guarded ultimately, but he does use his heralds, his people, his preachers, to say this is truth and this is not truth.

And today we're talking about what does the Bible say about grace? We learned two weeks ago that the Bible teaches that men and women are incapable of coming to God on their own, and it takes a divine initiative.

And we learned last week on Unconditional Election Part One that God is the one who chooses, and man is the one who responds to that choice, not the other way around, in no way, shape, or form. And so today we want to expand Part Two of election.

We can't do that on one week, Steve. It just was impossible. Yes, it was.

And just to be clear, we are not saying, here's what we're not saying. We're not saying that someone does not have to believe. I think we've said this before, but God does not believe for you. You must believe, but there are two truths that are both proclaimed in scripture.

One is that God is sovereign in salvation, and the other one is that man is responsible to believe. God commands us to believe, but the fact that he commands us to believe does not mean that everyone is independently capable of believing.

In fact, no one is independently capable of believing.

You're right, and when people go to hell, they will not say, God, I'm here because you chose me to put me here. You'll see the tenor of scripture that sinners, not God, are responsible if they continue in sin and go to hell.

And you can look at Matthew 11. You can look at other passages. I guess ultimately, if you think logically, who determines where they go, you may think through those things, but you could never say, God, you are unjust.

God, you are not righteous. God, you are not sovereign. God, somehow I'm no longer responsible because you're the king of the universe.

You won't see that at all. Well, and you know that idea that you said, you know, nobody will go to hell and then say, you know, it's God's fault. Well, Paul answers that question in Romans 9. In fact, I used to tell my kids, you know, when they were little, and we'd sit around the dinner table, and I'd go, remember this, that the answer for every difficult question of the Bible is in Romans 9.

Now, that's not always true, but it seems like it's true. Let me read Romans 9 .19. And Paul addresses this very issue. He says, you will say to me then, why does he still find fault? For who resists his will?

Talking about God and his sovereign will. And so the question then is, well, gee, this person's in hell, and it really isn't fair. He never really had a chance. You know, how could that be? And verse 20, Paul writes, on the contrary, who are you, oh man, who answers back to God?

He doesn't try to come up with some new doctrine of fairness or, you know, explain away God's sovereignty. He just says, listen, you, and ultimately this is what he says. He says, you are the creation.

He's the creator. You have absolutely no right to question him.

Well, Steve, I don't like the fairness doctrine when it comes to liberals trying to promote that for the airwaves. And I don't like the fairness doctrine when it comes to unconditional election, because that somehow strikes on God, the ultimate monarch's authority to do whatever he wants.

Steve just read Romans 9 .19. You will say to me then, why does he still find fault for who, by the way, that's singular. We're not talking about somehow, oh, God just, you know, picks nations. No, who singularly resists God's will?

Who takes a stand against God's will like that? And Steve says it's right, said it rightly. God has the questions now. And so for all those people that want to say, I've got some questions for God regarding this unconditional election of lack of fairness thing.

I have questions for you through Paul, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Who are you to answer back to God? Why are you saying things like this? If the question is, I'd like to understand it theologically, maybe.

But if the question is, how could you do that, God? God will rebuke you. God has rebuked you in that very verse. And so I don't want to rebuke anyone. I just want people to be careful and to walk on thin ice when it comes around saying anything negative about God.

Yeah, kind of eggshells. I mean, imagine this.

That's what I was after, eggshells. I live to serve. Imagine, you know, Judgment Day. I think some people have this wrong idea. Like, we're going to walk into a room with God and there's going to be a settling between the two of us.

We're going to get to ask him the tough questions and he's going to have to answer our questions. And then he's going to ask us some questions and we're going to tell him. We're going to give him what's on our mind and we're going to give him all of our opinions about all the things that he did wrong.

I got a news bulletin for you. If you're thinking like that, then you may not know the God of the Bible because there aren't going to be any interrogatories of the sovereign God of the universe on Judgment Day.

He is going to tell you, as one of my friends used to say, how the cow eats the cabbage.

Wow, that's a good picture there. I'm just kind of picturing that right now. Well, think about it, Steve. It was true back in Paul's days because the sovereign, the utter naked alien sovereignty of God rubs a prideful, sinful human being the wrong way.

And now you compound that with this internet culture that we have. Weigh in on this, vote here. What does the community say? Call back, phone in. We want to get your two cents in. We want to get your two cents worth.

And it's just amazing in our culture today where we think we need to have our say. The say is God's say. And listen to what Boyce and Rykin say on page 109 of their excellent book, The Doctrines of Grace, that you need to read.

In other words, speaking of Romans 9, a perfectly legitimate answer to our question is that the why, does God choose or not choose, is none of your business. God does not owe us an answer, end quote.

The Potter, the Clay, and the Gift of Grace

Yeah, I mean, it gets right back to the idea that every knee will bow and every mouth will be closed. Every mouth will be stopped. I mean, nobody's going to say anything back to God because he is God.

He is the giver and sustainer of lives. And somehow we've, and I say we in a cultural sense, we have this paradigm that somehow God can be lowered down to our level and he's going to be our peer. Forget that.

Well, especially, you're right, especially when God is so utterly holy to the nth degree and we have been so detrimentally affected by sin to the nth degree. So now we, the sinner, are going to dictate terms to God, the righteous one.

I have some more questions to those people out there who are listening who will not bow the knee to sovereign election. Does not the potter have a right over the clay? I have another question. Does not the potter have a right to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?

And we would all give that potter the freedom to say, you know what, you're going to make some nice dishes for the company coming over tonight and you're going to make out of the same lump some kind of garbage can, little garbage, I guess they're not garbage tins, some little garbage clay container or some kind of privy pot.

We would not say that was wrong from the same clump.

Yeah, and somehow we want to establish this idea that everyone, while everyone is equally an image bearer, not everyone is equally given the grace of God. And to say that God is somehow obligated to give everybody the same grace is to say that God is not God, that he's not sovereign, that he's not on the throne, that he cannot dispense grace as he wishes.

And ultimately you wind up with a graceless gospel.

Without any gospel at all. Well, Steve, when it comes to the doctrine of election, if someone has a question, they can always write us at info at nocompromisedradio .com. Info at nocompromisedradio .com.

But I've got a little quiz here that I found on the internet and let me just ask you a couple of questions, Steve. Does God ever do anything that is unrighteous? No, he cannot. And so that means that when he chooses, and everyone has to believe that he chooses because he chose Israel, he chose Abraham, he chose Isaac, he chose Moses over Pharaoh, and the list goes on and on, he chose John and not Judas to be ultimately saved, that it is done righteously.

So why the unrighteous reaction to his righteous choosing? Question two, is God under obligation to save anyone?

No, because again, if he's under obligation, we would talk about salvation as a work of grace, as a work of mercy. And so if we apply terms like that, and then we say that he is obligated, then it's not grace at all.

Well, I was reading Randy Seaver's article on the internet, and he said, the act of election itself saved no one. What it did was to mark out certain individuals for salvation. Consequently, the doctrine of election must not be divorced from the doctrines of human guilt, redemption, regeneration, or else it will be distorted and misrepresented, end quote.

Steve, don't you think that some people's problem, some of the problems that people have with this doctrine, it comes because they don't realize there are other doctrines that need to be fleshed out before you can really thoroughly examine biblical election?

Oh, absolutely.

And whenever anybody says, well, I don't really, I mean, this is one of my favorite comments, someone to say, well, I don't really believe in election. I'm going, hmm, that's interesting. Because if you don't really believe in election, you must not really read the New Testament a whole lot because it's in there.

And you have to, we read Ephesians 4 last time, where he chose us before the foundations of the world. Well, what is that if it's not election? It talks about in Romans 8 about how he predestines us. Those terms, choose, predestine, elect, are just sprinkled throughout the New Testament.

It's everywhere there. Christ said that he chose some and didn't choose others. He prays in Matthew 17 for some and not for the entire world. Why is that? Was Jesus wrong to do that?

One man said, if you don't believe that God picks and chooses, then you should believe that you do and that you're made in the image and likeness of God. So you should think that God does. When we were kids, Steve, we would play in the backyard in the sandbox.

And so my father made a sandbox. I think he got a huge tractor tire and then laid it sideways and then filled the middle up with all kinds of sand. And we played Civil War. And of course, we were, at least being in Nebraska, we affiliated with the winners, the Yankees.

And so I had the Yanks and the cons. Oh, that's an old Star Trek, sorry. And the Yankees would always win. And I was a certain Yankee and I was always the last guy to stand. And I killed the final Robert E. Lee lookalike and everything and I was the winner.

And I was a little image bearer of God because I was sovereign over who was the good team, who was a bad team, who lived, who died, how they died, how often they died on several occasions. When you think of the sovereignty of God, think about your own life and you will say, yes, as an image bearer, I like to choose.

And so what we like in ourselves, we won't let God do. That's foolish. Let me give you the coup de grace verse for those who still believe in unconditional election. And you might stand behind Dave Hunt and his air-filled book What Love Is This? But You Cannot Get Around This Verse.

And so Steve, I'll read you the verse and you talk to me about it, please. And when the Gentiles, Acts 13, 48, heard this, what did they hear? I've made you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.

That's what they heard. That was verse 47. They began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord. And they were so happy to know that Jesus was not just a God who would save only the Gentiles. And as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.

Believed. What is the significance of the word order there? As many as believed were appointed to eternal life. The only Bible that I know that speaks like that is the New World Translation, or Dave Hunt's alleged Hebrew translation.

I don't know where he gets a Hebrew translation out of that.

Yeah, because the New Testament was written in Greek.

Thank you very much. As many as were appointed to eternal life believed. Now, certainly as Steve said on this show, or maybe the last one, you have to believe. We're not saying you don't have to believe.

We're saying, why do you get to heaven? And we're saying something comes before belief, and that's God's work. You don't get to heaven because you believed, essentially. You get to heaven because God chose you and gave you belief, and then you believed.

Yeah, as many as had been appointed to eternal life. That doesn't mean, you know, what does it mean if somebody, if the president appoints you to be his secretary of state, does that mean you were sitting at home, picked up the phone, called the president, said, I'd like to be the secretary of state, and he said, hmm, you seem like a very good choice to me.

I think I will choose you. That's not what it means at all. It means that out of all the people in the United States, he chose you. And why would we not have a problem with that, but we have a problem with God's sovereign choice, his sovereign appointment, as it were.

And it's interesting, too, because nowhere in there does it say that everyone is appointed to eternal life. In fact, it says, as many as. There's a limited number. And this limited number, when they heard the words of life, when they heard the gospel, they believed.

Perfect. That's exactly what the doctrine of election is.

To quote somebody in this room, preach it. 2 Timothy 1. How about this? You know this verse, Steve, as well. He's talking about God who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, not because of looking down the corridor of time and seeing that we believed, seeing that we prayed the sinner's prayer, seeing that we raised up our hand, but because God saved us, because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.

Now, before you run to a verse-listening congregation, whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved, for God so loved the world. What about robots? I have a question for you. What does 2 Timothy 1 .9 say?

It says he saved us, he called us, and he did that not because there was anything in us, not because of any good work, certainly not because of any filthy work, not any righteous work, but because God saved us because it was his purpose and grace.

And then you say, when did that happen? In time, in reaction to what we did, no, Paul makes sure that he guards the glory of God and he snuffs out any boasting in self, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.

Well, and that's always the case. You will not find it.

I mean, sometimes I think we, evangelicalism in general has this picture of God sitting on his throne, kind of observing men and women and children and thinking, hmm, you know, he might be a good addition to my team, you know, or she might be a good pickup, you know, like it's some kind of rotisserie baseball league or something like that.

Not at all. God chooses, and Pastor Mike's been doing a series, 1 Corinthians 1, he doesn't choose, you know, great people to save. He chooses kind of the scrubs and the refugees and all the extras and all that.

Why? Because when people look at the church, they see God's glory, they see his work. Why would he save somebody like Saul, a murderer? Why would he do that? Why would he transform him into the apostle Paul?

Because what could be better than Paul's testimony? And over and over again, he gives it in the New Testament, including in 1 Timothy 1, where he just says, listen, I was a blasphemer, I was all these things, and God saved me.

Sovereign Grace, Worship, and the Glory of God

Well, when we think of sovereign grace and choosing, as Pastor Steve would say, everywhere you go, you see how God and the prophets and apostles guard God's glory. God says he has glory, and he will not give, through Isaiah, that glory to another.

If you think you're saved because of your own free will, you are robbing the glory from God. You might have all kinds of hop, skip, and jumping machinations in your mind to say, no, I really don't. But at the end of the day, if you go to heaven, there's only one person, yea, three persons, the Father, Son, and the Spirit, who have gotten you there, and you will not say, as my brother's prone to caricature, God, we did it, and high-five God.

You will say, God, I can't believe that I was a blasphemer and a murderer and a rapist and every other kind of sinner, and yet, out of your love and your mercy, you sent your Son to die on my behalf, in my place, for my sins.

Because you love me, and you love me so much that you sent your Son to die for me, and you raised that Son from the dead, and everything that I have now, it is by your grace, and I'll worship you forever.

Steve, don't you think people that believe in some free will have a skewed view of worship, and they cannot ultimately worship God on earth as well as one who believes in free grace?

Oh, totally, because it is something that they did in kind of cooperation with him, or, well, I mean, imagine it this way. Do you think in heaven, forever and ever, we'll be singing, holy, holy, holy, and then maybe worthy is the Lamb who was slain, and you know what, I wasn't very bad either.

You know, I did a little something, too. Good for me. You know, God and me were kind of partners in this whole saving exercise. No, no one's ever gonna, I mean, the focus is all on God, and in scripture, as you were saying, talking about not sharing his glory, well, does it glorify God when people get saved?

Yes. Does he share that glory with anybody else? No, and if you think that somehow it was your own work or your own decision that brought you into the kingdom of God, then you do deserve some kind of credit.

Well, when God looks down the corridors of time, he sees depraved people. If you think somehow you're good enough to choose God so he then chooses you, you need to go back to two weeks ago's show, T, Total Depravity.

Show me someone, Steve, that does not understand unconditional election or will not agree with it. Understanding it is this amazing thing. I mean, who can know the mind of God? It's an amazing thing, but who will not agree with it?

It's clear in scripture. It's because they have not understood the depth of man's sinfulness, and they don't understand it, and they need to go back. Show me a problem with election, I'll show you a problem with depravity.

That's just the way it works. We are certain that God has chosen according to his free will, his purpose, his plan, his decree. And when you think about even decree of God, Steve, the scriptures use that in the singular.

How does that fit into man's free will when God has a singular decree?

One decree, and it never changes. He spoke it before the foundations of the world, and it continues on. And his purpose is A, sometimes thwarted, or B, never thwarted. The answer is never thwarted. God will accomplish all his good pleasure.

You will not sing amazing grace if you think God's choice of you was arbitrary, without reason and random, nor will you sing amazing grace if you think God chose you because of a foreseen faith and works and perseverance that you had and did.

You will only sing amazing grace when you realize that you were deserving to go to the lake of fire forever and ever, to be cast in the deepest pits of fire, in the flame of fire, in hell, and God said, no, I'll love you.

I'll let you be in my court. You know, Steve, I think about Mephibosheth and how he was a cripple. No cripples in the king's court. No cripples in the king's place. And here, David, I think a wonderful example of God's own heart here specifically saying, I love the cripple and I love Mephibosheth and he can eat my food at my table.

Now, isn't that a good picture of something that happens to us at a greater degree spiritually when we get to eat at the table of God?

It's a great illustration, you know, not to get too confessional, but when I think about my own life, when I was saved, you know, the idea that as I began to know myself and as I began to see myself for who I was, a sinner estranged from God and I thought that God would send his son to die for me was just, that was an amazing thought because I thought I wouldn't do anything for me.

If I was God, I would just chuck me into hell immediately. And so the amazing thing isn't that God sent his son to save pretty good sinners. It's that he sent his son to die in the place of those who would never choose him, who would spit on him, who would crucify him themselves if they were allowed to.

Well, Paul says, as you quoted 1 Timothy 1 a little bit earlier, Paul's response to all this salvation was not,. I'm kind of glad we cooperated. Thanks a lot, God, for the prevenient grace. It just helped me get pushed over the edge.

I was a blasphemer and persecutor and insolent opponent, but I found something in my heart of hearts, in my free willy, in my Gilligan's Island of Righteousness, and now I'm happy, and God, you're lucky to have me.

No, what does he say? To the king of ages, immortal, invisible, God-only wise. He said almost that. He said, the only God be glory and honor forever and ever.

The Free Will Challenge and Closing Announcements

Well, again, I'm gonna call this the free will challenge. If you can show a verse that speaks about salvation and indicates that man has a free will apart from the will of God, apart from a sin nature to choose God, well, please send it at info at BBC, or I'm sorry, at nocompromisedradio .com.

And I'll send you one of the bad books that we're gonna burn as one of your prizes if you can give us one of those.

Sweet, what could be better than that? Info at No Compromised Radio.

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

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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