The Doctrines of Grace in St. Charles, Part III

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So I tried by old and trusty little Casio for Saturday morning...still only managed about an hour.

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Let's get together, we only have a couple of hours left together, and we're going to be all done, so for year number 10.
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I keep telling Van I don't know anything more, and you've been here for all 10 of them, you know more than I do, so we'll just have to start inviting all the folks who've been here to start making presentations.
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I had indicated last evening that my goal would be to address the big three, the most commonly used texts to deny the doctrines of grace, especially the doctrine of election.
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I wanted to look at the atonement. I also have a story that Norm Geisler tells that he feels that no one knows how to respond to it, though many people actually respond to it in print over the years, but that would require that Dr.
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Geisler read the responses to his material, and since most of us who respond are younger than him, I guess that's not going to happen, so we may take a look at that.
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That all depends on time, in essence, but I wanted to start by looking at the background of the first text we're going to look at, and that's
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Matthew chapter 23. Unfortunately, in many instances, what happens is you just have text thrown out there, and we need to avoid dealing with the
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Bible as if it's just a bunch of disconnected texts. We need to deal with the
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Bible as a whole. We need to show that kind of respect for it, so we'll start off this morning, we'll look at the background of Matthew 23, we'll look at the big three, look at the doctrine of atonement, and hopefully that will give us a good, solid basis upon which to function, but before we get started, let's ask the
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Lord's blessing upon our heart. Neither heaven nor father, we ask that you would be with us by your spirit, that you would open our hearts and our minds, even as we might be somewhat weary this morning, that you would give us a focus upon your truth.
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May we honor and glorify you as we consider what your word says concerning these vital issues, we pray in Christ's name.
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Amen. Matthew chapter 23 is surely one of the most difficult texts in the
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New Testament, not because it's difficult to understand, but it's difficult for postmodern folks to realize that Jesus, meek and mild, would speak the way that he did in the 23rd chapter of Matthew.
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What it does is demonstrate to us that very often we have a sub -biblical view of Christ himself, and in the 23rd chapter of Matthew, you have this building controversy between Jesus and the
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Jewish leadership, and finally, in this chapter, you have an entire string of strong denunciations of the hypocrisy of the
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Jewish leaders. We'll read all of it, but we'll go far enough back to get a flavor of this judgment oracle.
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It is an announcement of judgment. Interestingly enough, it comes before Matthew chapter 24 with its discussion of the destruction of Jerusalem, the temple of Jerusalem.
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And so, we have a series of woes pronounced by Jesus, just picking up in verse 29 so we have a context.
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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous and say, if we had been living in the day of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in the shedding of blood of the prophets.
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So you testify against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.
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Keep that in mind. There is a theme here in Matthew 23. Jesus is about to die in Jerusalem.
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These are the men who are going to stand there and say, crucify him, crucify him. And he is saying, oh, you say this, but you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets, and you have the same kind of attitude that they did.
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Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?
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This is Jesus speaking here. Behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes.
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Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth and the blood of righteous
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Abel, the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.
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By the way, that's a very important text in regards to the canon of the Old Testament.
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The first incident is in Genesis. The last is in 2 Chronicles. Now, if that confuses you, you need to remember that 2
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Chronicles was the last book in the Jewish canon. All the prophets and everything came before that.
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The historical books were last. So, this would be like saying, from Genesis to Revelation, for us, it's an important text.
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Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. So, what do we have? Announcement of judgment, wrath, coming upon these leaders and upon the city in which they have been seated as leaders.
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And then, in that context, we have verse 37. Now, this, as I mentioned last night, is one of the most commonly misquoted verses
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I've ever encountered. It amazes me. I've even heard Reformed men misquote this. But, I cannot tell you how often, when people are just quoting off the top of their head, they don't quote this verse right, because they're quoting it by their tradition, not by having ever read it in its context and seen how it's functioning.
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We listened to it last night. We listened to someone on the Calvary Chapel radio program misquote this verse, the same way that Dave Hunt misquoted it in his newsletter, which resulted in that discussion that he and I had, et cetera, et cetera.
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It says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her, how often
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I wanted to gather your children together the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling.
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Behold, your house is being left to you desolate. For I say to you, from now on you will not see me, and so you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the
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Lord. And so, here is the conclusion and the continuation of the judgment oracle upon these
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Jewish leaders, which is what Matthew 23 has been all about.
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So, let's take a look. I have a nice little presentation. It's prettier than just the black and white, and at this time of the morning we need some nice color.
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Matthew 23, 37, 1 Timothy 2, 4, 2 Peter 3, 9. Matthew 23, 37, we just saw it.
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Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her, how often I wanted to gather your children together the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling.
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Context, context, context. Matthew 23 is a long denunciation of the
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Jewish leadership as we just saw. Jerusalem is said to have killed the prophets. Well, did
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Jerusalem as a city kill the prophets? No, of course not. Jerusalem here is referring to the very seat of Jewish power, the seat of the scribes and Pharisees, where the rules were worked out and promulgated and so on and so forth.
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Jerusalem is said to have killed the prophets. These were the actions of the Jewish leadership, and we have seen through the
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Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, see it in John as well, this constant friction that exists, the escalation of the battle seen right from the beginning because Jesus doesn't come up through the ranks of the
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Jewish leadership. He is outside of that. He's considered an outsider from the beginning, and so you have this conflict going on, and that's what
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Matthew 23 is about. Jerusalem here is said to have killed the prophets. Those were the actions of the
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Jewish leadership. The children is a different group than Jerusalem, unless you think you are identical to your children.
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The specific text is saying how often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling.
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What is this? This is talking about the fact that the Jewish leaders who have religious authority over the people use that religious authority to maintain their power.
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They stand in God's way because they have elevated their traditions and their own desire for fame, wealth, the adoration of the people, whatever the reasons might be.
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They stand in the way. They are the ones exciting the crowd.
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They are the ones who are whispering things about Jesus. They're the ones responding to Jesus' teaching. They're the ones saying
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Jesus is casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub. They are standing in the way of those that are under their care, listening to, being ministered to by the very
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Son of God. Talk about a condemnation. Therefore, when the text says you were unwilling, that is in reference to the
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Jewish leadership, not the ones Jesus desired to gather together. And that's the only reason Matthew 23 -37 is ever cited by Chuck Smith and Dave Hunt and Lorem Geisler.
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In fact, if you've seen The Potter's Freedom, I mentioned it there. But if you take Matthew 23 -37, 1 Timothy 2 -4 and 2
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Peter 3 -9, either citing them alone or together, two of them or three of them together, 45 times in Chosen but Free, Norma Geisler cites these texts.
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But he never exegetes these texts. He never does what we're doing right now. He just throws them out there and says, well, there it is.
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I mean, it's just plain as day. There's no reason to discuss this. They were unwilling. God wanted to do it.
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They didn't want to do it. So God doesn't get to do what he wants to do. The you were unwilling is a condemnation of the
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Jewish leaders standing in God's way. So if we just stop right there, the text is not talking about what these people wanted to be talking about.
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It's not saying, I wanted to gather you, but you were unwilling, and because you were unwilling, therefore
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I couldn't do it. I could not accomplish what I wanted to do. That's not what it's saying in any way, shape, or form.
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Now, the same thought of verse 37 is found earlier in Matthew 23, 13.
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Look at that text. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people, for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.
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Very same thought. You're standing in the way. They're condemned for going across land and sea to make one convert, and then they make him twice the son of hell, and then sells him.
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All of this is a condemnation of the Jewish leadership. It's the same thought that goes through the entire text.
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This passage, then, does not teach that Jesus is incapable of drawing or gathering his people in contradiction to John 6, which we saw last night, but that the
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Jewish leadership was unwilling for the Lord to minister to the people. That is part of their condemnation.
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They love the people's adoration. They want to be looked up to, but they are unwilling to do what's right in God's sight.
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The context is not soteriological. Jesus is not talking about the relationship of God's decree of salvation and man's will.
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He's condemning the Jewish leaders. The context is not soteriological. It's not about salvation.
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There is nothing here that in any way denies the reality of divine election, but that will not stop people from repeating it over and over again.
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And listen the next time you hear someone quote it, and see if they quote it right. More times,
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I'm being absolutely honest here, when you listen to Arminians quote this verse by memory,
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I would say 75 % of the time I've heard that done. They've misquoted it. They've skipped how often would
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I have gathered your children, because they're interpreting it, they're thinking about what this verse means to them, and what it means to them is how often
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I wanted to gather you, but you were unwilling, so if you're unwilling, I can't gather you. And so they quote it that way, rather than quoting it in its context, for what it actually says.
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So just listen. You'll see that that will in fact be the case. Matthew 23, 37.
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All right? Now, once again, let me point out. How many of you have read
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Chosen to Free? All right. I think, well, okay. How many of you have read enough of Chosen to Free quoted in my book to feel like you've read
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Chosen to Free? Okay. I fully understand that. And I can look at anybody with absolute integrity and honesty and say, look,
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I bend over backwards to accurately present what normal guys should lose. I mean, I went back in time.
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I ordered books. I didn't go back in time. What I meant was I got the
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Enterprise to help me with the slingshot effect. I went back in time. So I got used to being a little kid, asked him some questions.
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I went back to his older writings. I traced back into his earliest writings his concept of predeterminedly foreknowing, foreknowingly predetermining, and all the rest of that kind of stuff, because it's a somewhat unique perspective.
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And I bend over backwards to accurately represent what he had to say. And so when I say that in my reading of Chosen to Free, if these three texts do not teach what
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Norman Geisler assumes they teach, his book falls flat on the ground, because it was these three texts that are cited over and over again as his primary refutation of Reformed theology.
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And so one of the three we've now seen does not make the presentation that Dr.
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Geisler assumes that it did. So what's the next one? 1
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Timothy 2, verse 4. 1 Timothy 2, verse 4.
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1 Timothy 2, verse 4 says, This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our
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Savior, who desires all men to be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth. Now, there have been, and are to this day, some men who would be identified as Reformed, who view this text in 2
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Peter 3, 9, as expressing a universal salvific will that in some mysterious way is contradictory to God's decretive will.
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That is not the same thing as, I think, all
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Reformed men believe, that God's prescriptive will commands all men everywhere to repent.
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What do I mean by that? Well, what's a prescriptive will? Well, that's God's will as expressed in His law.
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And the law of God says to all men everywhere, repent. So there is the prescriptive will of God revealed in His law.
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That law is used to bring about men's condemnation. It is used to curb the evil of men.
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How many times has God used His law to hold back the evil of men?
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I think we see in our own nation, as the basis of law erodes,
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God is withdrawing His hand of restraint. When men no longer believe that they are the creatures of God, when men no longer believe that they will stand before a
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God and answer for their actions, if we're just simply jumbles of DNA that can be manipulated by scientists just one way or the other, then why should we even be concerned about these things?
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Just in passing, I mentioned, I'm not sure if any of you have seen it, but I think you might want to take a look at this.
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It would be something I think you might find useful in a Bible study situation, maybe the youth or something like that. But I debated a well -known atheist by the name of Dan Barker.
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Some of you may have seen Dan was on TV just last week sometime. Was it up in Seattle or Portland or I forget where it was, somewhere.
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But they were unveiling an atheist display against Christmas.
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And he's the head of the Freedom from Religion Foundation up in Madison, Wisconsin. So you may have seen Dan a number of times.
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I've debated him twice recently. He was one of the first atheists I ever encountered on the Tom Likas show back in the 1980s.
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And so we have a long history there. But we've done two formal debates this past year. And at the
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University of Illinois, I debated him on the existence of the triune God.
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And what's interesting is that I know that Dan is very much into music and things like that.
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Dan is a pianist. And in fact, he has a couple albums out and stuff like that.
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And quite a talented man. And I've always found it quite ironic that he can have that appreciation of beauty given his worldview.
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His worldview gives him, the only basis for believing his music is beautiful in his worldview is that, well, his particular chemical combinations in his brain as long as he's alive resonate in a certain way.
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And that's as far as he can go with why art and music and so on and so forth is beautiful.
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And I brought that up in the debate. And he really didn't have much of a response for it. Because he's a complete naturalist.
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There's nothing spiritual whatsoever. And it's an interesting thing to observe that.
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We have the videos available. I think you might find it useful in your studies. Anyway, there are men.
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John Murray, for example, a man of great intellect, wrote a presentation for the
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OPC, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, in which he presents the idea. 1 Timothy 2 .4
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and 2 Peter 3 .9 do present this idea. Beyond what we all agree that God's prescriptive will includes that men repent.
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That's part of what God's command, that's what we are to do. Since we don't know the identity of the elect, we command men everywhere to repent.
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Obviously, I'm using the term men there generically. Men and women, if you're really into that type of thing.
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But they go beyond that to say that there is a true desire on God's part that he chooses not to fulfill.
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And base it upon these texts. But many other people, again, Roman Geisler, Dave Hunt, Chuck Smith, Erwin Cantor, you name them.
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Look at these texts as a full refutation. Did the Apostle wrote Romans 8 through 9?
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Ephesians 1, which we saw last night. We saw Romans 8. Probably won't do Romans 9 because those of you in the church here have been hearing all about Romans 9 recently.
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Van mentioned that, so that's why I haven't gone there. But it is, of course, politically relevant. And who said he endured all things the sake of the elect.
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I love 2 Timothy 2 .10. When people don't like the idea of the elect, I always ask them, so what did
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Paul mean when he says he endured all things the sake of the elect? Was he saying he endured all things the sake of a nameless group that we get to fill up by our decisions?
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Is that what he meant? Did he contradict himself here in 1 Timothy 2 .4 when it says he desires all men to be saved?
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Does that mean that God has an equal salvific desire for every single person who's ever lived? God wanted to save the
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Amorites just as much as the Israelites. Is that the case?
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A lot. That was a rhetorical question. Once again, context, context, context.
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Let's look at the context, beginning at the beginning of the chapter. First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men.
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And as soon as he says all men, he then defines what he means. For kings and all who are in authority so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.
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So what's Paul doing here? He's saying to Timothy, entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men.
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Including, Timothy, kings and all who are in authority. Now what is the phrase kings and all who are in authority?
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How is that functioning? It's describing a group of men. A group of individuals who, interestingly enough, might not have been the first people that the persecuted
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Christians would think about praying for. And some of us sort of understand that today.
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When you have people who are either persecuting you or seeking to take your liberties from you or promoting the exact opposite of what you believe, a world view of utter godlessness.
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Then it's real easy to not be praying for those individuals. But Paul says to Timothy, remember to pray for all men, including, in that group, kings and all who are in authority.
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Now, it seems obvious to me, but it's not obvious to everybody, that when
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Paul says pray on behalf of all men, that he wasn't saying that every prayer meeting of the church at Ephesus meant that you got out the ancient equivalent of the
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Ephesian phone book and you started with the alphas and you prayed through the omegas. But that's, for some reason, how a lot of people interpret this.
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Pray for every single individual human being that has ever lived and ever will live. That's not what Paul's saying.
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He's saying your prayers should not be limited or restricted based upon your personal predilections.
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It's easier to pray for the brethren than it is for people that you might not naturally like. But you're praying for all men, including kings and those in authority, so we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.
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And that is the context prior to verses three and four.
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But there's also a context after verses three and four. For Paul then says, for there is one
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God and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Now, this is one of the most important Christological texts in all of the
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New Testament. It is an assertion of monotheism, but it is also an assertion of the reality of the incarnation, part of the functional aspect of Christ's role as mediator.
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He is the man Christ Jesus. He was truly man, therefore he can function as mediator.
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But this immediately raises the whole issue of Christ as intercessor or mediator.
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And this is where I truly believe that there is a massive blind spot in modern evangelicalism.
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I only somewhat jokingly point out that most modern
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Christians are canonically challenged. We may say we have 66 books in the canon of scripture, but when it comes to asking a simple question, that is, do, for example, the minor prophets function as fully inspired scripture in the life, ministry, beliefs of most evangelical churches, the only possible answer is no.
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I've shared the story before that I was prompted to read the entire
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Bible all the way through the first time by a Jack Chick tract. Now, you all know the
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Jack Chick tracts, right? And the irony is, today, Jack Chick would say that I'm a raving heretic and has identified me as one because he's a
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King James only -ist, and so I'm just the worst thing that's ever come down the pike. But I was reading a
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Jack Chick tract, and it was a tract that was meant to encourage you to read the entirety of the
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Bible. Well, that's great. The way he got me was, he said, what if you died, you get in a car accident, you go to heaven, and you're walking down the streets of gold, and Habakkuk walks up to you?
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And Habakkuk, and you start talking, and Habakkuk goes, so, what did you think of my book?
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And you're left going, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and. I'm going to try to get to that, now that I've got some extra time on my hands.
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Well, I didn't want to die and have to run into Habakkuk and go, sorry,
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I didn't read it. So, before I went to bed that night, I read Habakkuk. Now, I had no earthly idea what
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Habakkuk was talking about, unfortunately, but I read Habakkuk, so I can at least say that I did that. But then that left a specter of Zephaniah, and, you know, a whole bunch of other guys along the way, including a bunch of anonymous students that we're not really certain of.
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Hey, did you know I wrote 2 Chronicles? Wow, that's great. So, I started on a reading through the
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Bible, actually, in an organized way, as a result. How many people are there in evangelicalism today that try that?
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You know, you make a New Year's resolution, you get one of those little things to stick in your Bible, you're going to get up a little bit earlier, extra every morning, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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We've all tried it, right? And, where did you bonk out?
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Well, you know, for a lot of folks, it's somewhere in Genesis, but Leviticus.
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Leviticus, normally, is where people just, yeah, it's over. You have to be a true saint to make it through Leviticus, right?
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Well, that's the problem. We don't know our Old Testament. We don't know the sacrificial systems.
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We read this stuff about priests, and high priests, and the garments that they wear, and the stuff that they have to do, and it's just like, oh, please, and we lose it.
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Now, in our church, we not only read through the Bible, we read from the
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New Testament in the morning, the Old Testament in the evening. I do that, and so, we're currently in the
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Minor Prophets, I'm in Jonah right now. That takes a while, it takes many years, one chapter at a time, or if you're in the 119th
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Psalm, one section at a time. But, that's what we do. But, we also preach through the
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New Testament in the morning, the Old Testament in the evening. That's one of the things that attracted me to church, was the first time I attended, they were preaching through Amos, and I went, man, anybody brave enough to preach through Amos, that's good.
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That was a positive thing. And so, we have constant exposure to the
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Old Testament, but still, I believe the deepest, most clear, meaningful presentation about the purpose, function of the sacrifice of Christ is to be found in the
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New Testament's discussion of Jesus as the high priest. Primarily, in the book of Hebrews, but also, then, in the
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Pauline epistles, and specifically right here, one mediator between God and man, the man
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Christ Jesus. Most people have no idea what the high priest did. They don't know what happened on Yom Kippur, they don't know the offering of the sacrifice, and the taking of the blood into the holy place, and the sprinkling of the mercy seat.
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Heard sort of things about that, but never really worked it through to see that the high priest has one work, and the sacrifice is part of that work, but then it's the offering of that on the mercy seat that then becomes the picture of Christ entering into the holy place.
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There to appear in the presence of God for us. And so, this idea of intercession and mediation, and hence the cross as a sacrifice, and the one who dies on the cross being both sacrifice and high priest, what the high priest would then have to do with that blood, people don't even give a second thought.
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The vast majority of presentations that I have seen where Norman Geis or Dave Hunter, whoever, goes after specifically the limited atonement, particular redemption, they never give a positive theology of redemption.
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They never address the inherent inconsistency of saying Jesus died for me, that's
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Reformed theology. And Jesus died for everybody, but I'm not a universalist.
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They don't even address the issue of Christ as mediator, and answer really important questions, for example, does
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Jesus Christ intercede or mediate for every single individual? If you're going to take all men, in 1
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Timothy 2 -4, is every single individual is ever lived, ever will live. There's no reason of thinking that Paul had that in mind, but if you're going to take it that way, then there's one mediator between God and man, the man
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Christ Jesus. And if he dies on behalf of every single individual person, then is he interceding for every single individual person?
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Hebrews 7 -24 -25, we'll see this a little later on, teaches Christ saves all for whom he intercedes, and he does so perfectly.
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Revelation 5 -9 -11 tells us Jesus' work of atonement and intercession is for men of every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, and by that act he makes them kings and priests of God.
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He doesn't try, he doesn't say he made them savable, he actually saves.
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So the consistent way of understanding Paul in his own context is to allow the past to speak for itself.
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It is God's will that all kinds of men, including, believe it or not, high government officials,
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I know, if you want clear evidence of God's power, he can actually save politicians.
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I'm not sure they can stay politicians very long after that, because there's this thing about honesty, but he can actually save politicians.
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It is God's will that all kinds of men come to salvation, and that includes even those who persecuted the early
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Christians, kings and those in positions of authority. To say otherwise would be to say the apostle taught
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Christ, interceded for and failed to save the pagan Roman emperors and so many others. And if you want to say that, fine, just be consistent, because now you're going to have to say that Christ's intercession can fail.
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And so what then becomes your assurance, your surety at that point?
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Well, I jumped past that, but verse 72 -4, look at it in its context, ask yourself what was
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Paul's theology of atonement? And we're going to look at that a little bit more when we look at the atonement here after we deal with the big three.
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Now, was there any kind of response in Chosen but Free to that interpretation?
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No. What you get is that, oh, they just say that's the elect. Well, I didn't just say that's the elect. I just said that the exhortation to pray for all kinds of men means the elect is made up of men from every tribe, tongue, people and nation.
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But I was looking at the text and saying it's Paul who raises the issue of intercession and mediation.
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I'm not distracting from the real issue by saying in this context,
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Paul is saying pray for all kinds of men because we have a mediator between all kinds of men, the man
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Christ Jesus. We want to be able to proclaim the gospel to everybody, so we need to be praying for everybody in that way.
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We don't know the identity of the elect. That's one of the great dangers of hyper -Calvinism is hyper -Calvinists think they've figured out who the elect are.
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And so we don't have to preach the gospel to anybody else, we just preach to the elect. Well, there's one little problem, only
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God knows who the elect are. So Paul can say
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I'd do all things for the sake of the elect without them ripping out the little black book of the elect. And that's why for 18 years we stood outside the gates of the
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Mormon temple in Salt Lake City. God has his elect, even there. The Armenians thought we were nuts.
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Why bother with the hard cases? Well, God has his elect, even there.
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We had that happen, it was an amazing thing. Normally it would be years later, but I remember we got a phone call on the answering machine at PRVC from a woman up in a city north of Salt Lake City in Utah.
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And she was looking for a church because she said I have read a book by a man named
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James White that was given to my husband when he attended the general conference years ago.
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And it's called God's Sovereign Grace. And I've read the book, and as soon as I read the book
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I realized this is true, this is what I believe. But I can't find anybody else up here who believes this, can you help me find somebody?
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And so what had happened is years before, I don't remember it, that was not a book that we distributed.
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Obviously I had one in my bag with me. And I had a conversation with a
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Mormon, instead of giving him letters to a Mormon elder, maybe we were out of letters to a Mormon elder at the time, I don't know.
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But I gave somebody a copy of my book on the doctrines of grace. Here is his wife calling years later,
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I've read this book, this is true, this is what I believe, I want to find people who believe it. And thankfully we were able to put her together with a church up in Salt Lake City that sponsored many of the debates that I did up in Salt Lake City for years.
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And Mormons have realized that's not a good idea so they don't do it anymore. But for a while we were doing a series of debates up there, and there was an
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Orthodox Presbyterian church up in Salt Lake City. So we got in touch with that church, that led to a planting of a church in her city.
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It's amazing how that kind of thing happens. And yet many people say, we got a lot of flack back in those days.
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Why do you go up to us, those are the hard cases, there are so many people who are more soft to the word of God than those people are, why not just talk to them?
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Well, because God has his elect everyone. And as you may know, the first missionaries, the modern missionary movement, were all reformed.
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And especially in places like India, worked for 10 years before their first convert. Let me tell you something, today with most missions organizations, you work for 10 years at a convert and you're going to be gone out of there within 18 months, not 10 years.
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And yet so often it takes that kind of patience. So, two of the three we have seen, you can provide a meaningful, exegetical response.
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And I just don't find the people who quote these verses to ever even raise the issues, even acknowledge.
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Now I realize 1 Timothy 2, 5 then talks about the intercessory word of Christ, and we need to talk about the intercessory, no, they don't do that.
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They just throw it out there, rat -a -tat -tat, disconnected from context, just believe that it says what it says, and believe it says what
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I mean it says, and we just go on from there. That's not how you handle the word. So the last one, most popular of all,
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I've had many people quote this, normally they say Paul said it, and I'm not sure where it is, sadly. Peter said it, the
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Lord is not slow about his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.
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Of course very rarely is the passage seen in its own context. Who is the you? Notice it says, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any, so what's the any?
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Any of who? You. Is that how people understand it?
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No. This is how it's understood, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.
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Yet, even a slightly sober examination, you go, well it's saying that God is expressing patience toward you, not wishing for any, so logically that would be any of you to perish, but for all of you to come to repentance.
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There seems to be a limitation here, but again, as long as you can use your voice inflection to do interpretation without having to do interpretation, you can get away with it.
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Who is the you? Well, the context of the passage is the coming of Christ. Peter refers to those who mock the promise of the coming of Christ as them, but otherwise he refers to his audience as the beloved and you.
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He includes himself in the audience in verse 13. When verse 9 refers to God's patience toward you, the audience is identified at the very beginning of the letter of 2
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Peter, 2 Peter 1 1, Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours by the righteousness of our
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God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Now 2 Peter 1 1 is significant for many reasons, not just this discussion, but you will notice that it refers to faith as something that is received from God, it is a gift of God, it is a consistent gift of God, notice it's a faith of the same kind as ours, we all have faith in the same things about God's truth, who
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Christ was, etc, etc. And then, of course, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, Cranwell Sharp construction, identifying
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Jesus as God and Savior, so it's significant on two grounds. It cannot be simply assumed that the you in verse 3 9 refers to all of humanity, though that is the assumption that is made, you would have to prove it.
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Instead, the context refers to the elect, verses 1 through 3 of chapter 1.
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It is to God's elect that he is patient, not desiring that any of them perish, but all of the elect to come to repentance.
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Peter is explaining why the coming of Christ is delayed, it is delayed so that God may gather all of his elect down this very day.
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Aren't you glad that the coming of Christ was delayed to this modern day?
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Christ had come 200 years ago, you and I wouldn't be around now, would we? So, Peter is explaining why has there been this delay in the parousia, people are mocking, where is the promise of his coming?
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But it's a demonstration of God's patience, and that patience has resulted in the bringing in of each of the generations of his people down this very day.
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Now, again, if you want to assert some kind of idea that God has willed his own unhappiness, in the sense that he has willed to have a desire that he then wills not to fulfill, that's up to you.
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But you simply cannot say that there is not a fair, contextual, grammatically correct interpretation of every single one of the texts that Norm Geisser and others present, that does not support the use of the text as a proof text against the election.
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If you want to provide another interpretation, please do so, but the mere repetition of these texts without providing a meaningful response to this exegesis is only a demonstration that you don't have a response.
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If there was an easy method of refuting what I just said, something tells me that Norm Geisser would be willing to debate me on the subject.
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But he, and Dave Hunts, and Eric Encano, you all remember the
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Eric Encano story, will not engage in moderated scholarly debate on these particular topics.
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And I believe that there is a reason for that. I would like to address one other objection, and it is an objection to Dr.
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Geissler. Again, I know it's a little bit frustrating to watch a video where the mouth and the words are not the same, but they're within a second of each other, so you can make it work.
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Dr. Geissler presents the story of the three boys in the swimming hole, and he's presented it for a long time.
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But since it does grab at the heart and it does illustrate a lot of how people think,
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I want us to listen to the boys in the swimming hole story. And unfortunately, oh,
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I don't want to do that, I want to do this. There we go. It takes two, wow, double
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Geissler, there you go. It takes two clips to do it, because it's a few minutes long and it went over the break between the two.
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So I want you to hear his story, and then I want to make some comments on it.
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That is not the God of the Bible. That's the God of Islam, who is so sovereign that he can act contrary to his very nature if he wishes.
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If he wants, he can just love some people and hate other people.
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The God of the Bible, by his very nature, must love all.
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You cannot be all loving and not love all people.
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Let me just comment on that. We commented on it last evening with Professor Dave Hunt, but since Dr. Geissler is presenting it.
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If you're listening carefully to what he's saying, he's saying omnipotence means there can be no distinctions in God's love.
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Because when he just said he has to love all people, what he meant was, the only way to understand his words is, he must love all people equally and in the same way.
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Which means he must make the exact same effort to save every single individual, because he loves every single individual in the exact same way.
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So that means, Dr. Geissler thinks the Bible teaches that God loved Pharaoh in the exact same way he loved
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Moses. Does that make any sense? Like I said last evening, we make proper, necessary distinctions in the expression of love.
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There are times when love requires discipline. There are times when love requires you to engage in actions in defense of those that you love.
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It requires you to do harm to others. That's the sad reality of war. But God called his people to do that.
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Are you going to say that God is somehow less than man in his capacities? There is the expression of love and common grace that keeps the holy and just God, who is a consuming fire, from destroying every sinner before the sinner ever takes a breath.
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There are men today who spit in God's face. Why is Richard Dawkins alive today?
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Richard Dawkins hates God. Christopher Hitchens hates God. And they're going around doing everything they can to blaspheme
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God and to blaspheme his gospel. Why are they still alive today? That's an expression of God's love, expression of God's mercy, his long -suffering.
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But is that the same kind of love that God has for his elect people?
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In the Old Testament, are you really going to say that God's love for the Egyptians was identical to, did not differ in a whit, from his love for the
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Jewish people? It doesn't make the slightest bit of sense, but that's what people are saying.
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That's what Dr. Geisler is saying right now. And saying, ah, you've got the God of a law.
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There are fundamental differences between a law and Yahshua. But it's a convenient thought.
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Ooh, listen to, ooh, bad. Get the emotions going, not the mind going. That's the approach that people have.
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Paul. That leads us to a very important illustration.
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One that my traditional Calvinist friends don't like. But they don't really know what to do with, except to make it a more powerful illustration than I did to begin with.
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I think that's his acknowledgement that in print, not only I, but others have thoroughly dismantled this illustration that he keeps using over and over and over again.
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Here is what a five -point Calvinist really believes. He really believes that it's like this.
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A farmer had a pond, and the neighborhood boys were wont to swim there, and he didn't want them to drown.
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So he put up a fence and put up a sign, don't swim. One day, he was driving back to his field, three neighborhood boys were in the pond, drowning.
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The farmer pulled up on his tractor, he folded his arms, he pointed up to the sign and said, the sign says, don't trespass, don't swim here, you're swimming here, you're drowning, you deserve to drown.
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He folded his arms and watched all three boys drown. Now would anyone say that that was a loving person?
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God has a law, we disobey his law, and we justly take the consequences.
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The three boys drowned. Now would anyone say that that was a loving person?
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I think not. That's precisely what the five -point
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Calvinist believes. God can and could have done it. Because God gave his law, we disobeyed his law, and we all deserve to go to hell, and God didn't have to try to save anyone.
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Now they're half right. The half they're right on is God is just, God has a law, we disobey his law, and we justly take the consequences of our sin.
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Half right. But the other half is a tragic error. While they're half right in emphasizing that God is just and those people are justly condemned, they are totally wrong in saying that God is not so loving that he doesn't want to do anything about it and try and rescue those people.
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And any farmer who had a fence and a sign like that and would stand there and watch three people drown made me all just.
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But he's not all loving. The God in the Bible is both. But, the extreme
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Calvinist says, what actually happened was this. Everything in the story is the same up to the point he sees the three boys.
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And he says to them, you saw the sign, you're justly drowning, but you in the blue suit.
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And he throws a rope to one of the three and pulls him in, folds his arms and watches the other two drown.
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It's exactly what the traditional five point Calvinist believes.
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I confess to you that even though I find this in the Bible, for all the reasons we gave,
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God loves all. And neither in the depth of my heart, made in his image with a moral sensitivity, can
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I believe that such a God, such a God, is a
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God worthy of our commitment. Because a God who is not all loving is not worthy of all our love.
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A God who says, love the Lord your God with all your heart. A God who says, I am love.
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And who tells me that he loves only some people and that he wouldn't even try to rescue the other two.
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Is not an all loving God. So, there's your illustration.
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And it's been repeated over and over again. And when you have someone as well known as Norman Geisler, that means you're going to have many of his students repeating the same illustrations from pulpits over and over and over again.
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How do we respond to Dr. Baser's illustration? Well, fundamentally, the entire illustration and story is flawed.
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It's flawed on so many different levels that it does become an excellent example of a saying that I use a lot, theology matters.
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Let's start with the farmer. Is that an adequate representation of the thrice holy
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God of the Old Testament? Just a farmer who could have made the swimming hole open to all the kids.
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It was just an arbitrary thing. So, you don't have a holy, powerful being.
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You just have a farmer. And what are the boys doing? It was good old boys.
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We all did that when we were kids, right? It's just a good old boy today. Let's try to come up with a semi -accurate biblical parable.
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You have a powerful, just, righteous king.
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At least that's sort of like the parables Jesus told. Jesus never used a farmer in a swimming hole.
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But he did, in representing God, speak of God as a king. And let's say this king, who is just and powerful, has shown tremendous mercy and grace toward a group of his subjects.
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And when the king goes away on a campaign, this group of subjects invade his castle.
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They take over the castle. And they reject the king's rulership, and they begin attacking other people, raping, marauding, rampaging, even burning the castle.
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And the king returns, and when the king attempts to save them by putting out the fire in the castle, they're throwing rocks and debris at the firemen.
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And when the king commands them to come out of the castle, or they will die, they spit at the king, and they mock the king, and they willingly run back into the flames.
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And when the king's son seeks to come in to bring them out of the castle, they want to kill the son as well.
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But now you have a little bit more accurate illustration than a farmer with some good old boys in a swimming hole.
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Because now we can go, would the king be just to allow them to simply perish in the flames?
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Of course he would. Would the king be just to say to the firemen, back away, let it burn down within them?
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Of course he would. These are guilty rebels. In fact, would the king be just to put his best archers up upon the ramparts outside the castle and kill these men?
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Of course he would. But none of that appears in Dr.
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Geisser's really bad illustration. Really unbiblical illustration.
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But what about the saving of some? Well, here's where we can really illustrate this.
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What if, as they are lying now unconscious, overcome by the noxious fumes, death is but a moment away.
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The son of the king enters through those flames and saves some of those rebels.
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Not all, but he saves some, giving his life in the process.
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Is that unjust? You see, the Arminian says, oh yes, he has to save them all.
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You have to try equally for all of them. Why? When the governor of the state pardons a man on death row, does he have to pardon everyone on death row?
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Some people say, yeah. That's simply a denial of the freedom for a sovereign ruler to be sovereign in the exercise of not justice, but grace and mercy.
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He reduces the categories of justice and mercy. Well, that's not fair.
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No, what would be fair would be to allow every sinner to die. That's fair.
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You don't want fair. You want mercy. And mercy and grace must be free if it is to be mercy and grace at all.
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So, Dr. Geisler's illustration is very good for tugging at the strings of the heart, but it is grossly sub -biblical.
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It's anti -biblical. It does not represent the truth concerning the situation we face from the pages of Scripture.
01:00:00
Sorry about that. Now, many years ago,
01:00:10
I wrote an article for our newsletter called
01:00:17
The Terrible Horrible Elm. It's still in the ancient part of our website, the 1990s version of the website, back in the articles section.
01:00:31
It's still there, but it was an article on particular redemption and limited atonement.
01:00:38
And this is, as you heard last night, if you weren't here last evening, I keep making references to that. As you heard last evening, the folks on the
01:00:50
Calvary Chapel radio program, the leaders of the Calvary Chapel movement, focused in upon that particular point.
01:00:57
And, obviously, that is the direction they like to go. They see it as the
01:01:03
Achilles' heel. There's just so much in the Bible that contradicts this. And, admittedly, given the fact that most evangelicals have an emotional doctrine of the cross, not a biblical doctrine of the cross, it's pretty easy for them to score cheap debating points at this particular point.
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Oh, if you really believe that, then how could you preach the gospel and tell people Jesus died for you?
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A lot of people really struggle with that. A lot of people struggle with my response to that, where I go, excuse me, but where did the apostles ever ground the preaching of the gospel on the basis of Jesus died for you?
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Where did the apostles ever preach? Well, because Jesus did this for you, you should do something for him. That's not what the apostles ever taught.
01:02:02
Where did they do that? They commanded men everywhere to repent, and they all, in Acts 17, preached that there would be a day when
01:02:13
God was going to judge the world on the basis of the judgment of a man, Jesus, whom he raised from the dead.
01:02:20
The certainty of the resurrection would be the basis of that, the reason that people would go, yeah,
01:02:28
God's going to judge the world, and it's going to be a just judgment, because the one who's going to judge is going to be that man, that perfect man,
01:02:33
Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead. Acts 17, and as soon as Paul mentioned rising from the dead, well, then they started mocking because they didn't believe in resurrection.
01:02:45
But, where did the apostles preach like that? I want to do what the apostles do.