The Trinity (Part 5)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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

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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.

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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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

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

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Mike Abendroth here. Good to be with you. Glad to be talking to you about the

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Lord Jesus, hopefully encouraging, hopefully not too much

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Caleb. Although, speaking of Caleb, I saw something on the internet, I think I mentioned it last show, you know, never tell an unbeliever that God loves them, talk about sin and wrath and all that other stuff.

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Obviously, we talk about sin and wrath saved from certain things. That's true.

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But would you ever tell somebody that God loved them? I mean, why did the Father send the

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Son? Because He loves sinners, right? Did Jesus, in Mark 10, verse 21, just feel a love for that rich young ruler?

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That's what the NES says. No, it says in the original, He loved him. And you say, well, there's nothing ever said where when you evangelize, you say,

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God loves you. Okay, well, my point isn't that.

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My point is, it would be hyper -Calvinistic to say, don't pray, don't evangelize, and no love of God for the lost.

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Anyway, that's just stuck in my craw. I don't like that. Because you know, when you want to know why? Because I used to be that guy.

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Today on No Compromise Radio, message five on the

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Trinity. Not trying to make an exhaustive study on the Trinity. I wanted to talk about a few different things.

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If you want to get the Richard Mueller Latin and Greek Dictionary of Theological Terms, that would help you.

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If you want to talk about inseparable operations, or how many wills does

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Jesus have, or perichoresis, or ad extra and ad intra, or I don't know, all that kind of stuff.

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That would be a good book for you to get. Or just get simply Trinity by Matthew Barrett.

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Today, I want to start off with a little quote. Oh, don't forget, Israel, 2023,

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February 21st. Email me if you want to get put on the I'm interested list. Thomas Jefferson, of course, he took a

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Bible and dissected it, taking all the supernatural things out. Ends with Jesus in the tomb.

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Very depressing. I have a copy of it, just because it's so like, ooh. He did not like Trinitarian arithmetic, right, three and one.

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When shall we have done away with the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one and one is three?

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When we shall have knocked down the artificial scaffolding, reared the mask from the very, excuse me, from the view of the very simple structure of Jesus.

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When, in short, we shall have unlearned everything which has been taught since his day and got back to the pure and simple doctrines he inculcated.

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We shall then be truly and worthily his disciples. Okie doke.

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Last show. If you remember, I had a couple of goals. Every time you see one member of the Godhead in scripture, you think about the other.

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If you see the son, you think about how he is the sent son. You think about, you see the word father, how he sends the father and the spirit proceeds from the father and the son.

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And I just want you to begin to think in a Trinitarian fashion. I also wanted you to think that God's gospel is triune.

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If God is triune, his good news about himself is triune. So every time you hear the word gospel, I want you to think of Trinity.

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Good news of what Jesus did? Yes. I think that would be the focal point of scripture.

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That's true. But who sent the son and who empowered the son on the earth and then who then applies the son's work to our account in real time?

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Well, the son was incarnate in real time too, but throughout time. That's better. Throughout time.

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See how you have to just theologically autocorrect all the time? Crazy. When you think of God, I want you to think that he's three, that he's one.

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Back and forth, right? That's the Gregory quote from last week. I also want you to think about his works are

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Trinitarian and especially the ultimate work and that is the good news of God, the father, the son, and the spirit rescuing sinners by the father's love sending, the son going.

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Son is the one who became incarnate, not the father and the spirit assisting the Lord Jesus on earth and applying the

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Lord's benefits to us throughout time. Ephesians along with Romans has a

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Trinitarian, explicit Trinitarian intros.

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The other ones just talk about the father and the son, but that doesn't concern me because when you think of the one, you think of the three.

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If you think of two, you think of three. If you think of three, then now you think of the one. I don't know what your background is and maybe it would just easier for me.

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I grew up in a liberal Lutheran church. Maybe some factions weren't so liberal, but I grew up and I believed that the

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Bible was the Bible. God revealed himself as one God, father, son, and spirit.

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I believe that Jesus was the only way that whatever he said actually happened. Miracles, lepers, healing, raising

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Lazarus from the dead, I believe up from the grave he arose, mighty triumph for his foes.

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He arose a victory of the dark domain and lives forever as truth proclaims.

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He arose, he arose. I believe all that. Well, it wasn't savingly that I believed that.

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There are some things I didn't know about, right? I thought to be born again was to be baptized, so I never heard you must be born again.

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I realized that fornication and adultery was sin and that I was a sinner. I'm thankful that I had that.

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The Lord used that in my life. I'm not saying it's good to grow up in that. There are better ways to grow up, right?

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You grew up in a household where you were catechized and all that stuff. Okay, I get it. But it's not that hard for me to just go, hmm,

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I'm finite, I'm sinful, I can't really understand cost accounting, how could

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I understand? But I can say to myself, all right, difference between apprehension and comprehension, at least total apprehension, total comprehension,

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I can understand what's revealed as God reveals Himself as Father, Son, and Spirit.

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And there's the way He relates to Himself in the Trinity, in the Godhead, well, the

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Father's always the Father and He didn't become incarnate, and the Son's always the Son, and He doesn't proceed from the

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Father, no, He's sent by the Father as the begotten Son. And, well, you throw your hands up or you say,

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I'm gonna praise God for who He is. And that's exactly what Paul does. Ephesians 1, 3, blessed be the

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God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

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And it's this burst of praise. It's where we get the word eulogy, I commend,

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I praise, I thank, I speak well of. It's this great blessing. He's perpetually blessed,

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He's unchangingly blessed, He's...because of His character and nature, the intrinsic nature of who

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He is, He is worthy of all these blessings. Paul got saved on the

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Damascus Road 25 years earlier, and he still was praising God from whom all blessings flow.

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Remember that old song, count your blessings, name them what? One by one. Here, he was not counting his blessings, but he was counting that God is the one who is to be blessed.

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And He blesses, not just piecemeal, not just divvied up a little bit, but with every spiritual blessing.

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This is just how God is. This is what He does. He blesses. 400 times in the

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Old Testament, bestowing gifts, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, giving great prosperity to believers.

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And I don't mean financial, although, so that's sometimes true as well, but that's not the focus of this passage. How does

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God give? He gives good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, pouring into your lap.

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That's the kind of language that we could use from 638,

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Luke 638, that would talk about how God doesn't dole out kind of piecemeal. And He has all these great spiritual heavenly blessings.

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And what He wants to do is He wants you to think that same way. He wants you to rouse your hearts to gratitude, to fill them to overflowing with this disposition.

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So said John Calvin. And that's what we want. We want to get our eyes away from ourselves and unto the

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Lord. And when you think of the Lord, you think of a Trinitarian God, right? That's what's going to happen. You think of a

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Trinitarian God. Well, on Mike Ebendroth's No Compromise Radio, you're learning about many things, law, gospel, covenants, this, that, and the other.

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I should have an article out pretty soon, kind of a little intro article called From Lordship to Law Gospel.

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Maybe some of you will like that article. But here, this section is about the

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Father choosing, the Son dying, and the Spirit sealing.

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It's to make you praise God for being a triune God. Spurgeon said,

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Mike, when you think of deity, you're supposed to think of the

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Trinity, right? Spurgeon goes on, Isn't that good?

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That is so good. Now we could talk about who God is in and of himself. That would be good.

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Or here in Ephesians 1, it's what theologians call or speak of as the economic trinity.

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What does God do? What do the persons of the Godhead do within their roles when it comes to creation and redemption?

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John Owen's Catechism, Can we conceive of these things, goddess triune, as they are in themselves? Answer, neither we nor yet the angels of heaven are at all able to dive into these secrets as they are internally in God.

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But in respect of the outward dispensation, or economy, of themselves to us by creation, redemption, sanctification, a knowledge may be attained of these things, saving and heavenly.

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And therefore, we come to this passage and we say, what does

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God do as a triune God? Simply speaking, that's the economic trinity.

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How the three persons in the Godhead relate not only to each other, but also us, the world.

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Different roles in relationship to the world. Is there some overlap?

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Yes, there's overlap. We can talk more about that later. But essentially we have, as I've said many times before, the

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Father sending the Son, the Son coming down to do the Father's will, and we see those things.

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Already from there you know there's different roles. The Spirit of God sanctifies the church, the

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Son is sacrificed, the Father sends. So there are differences in roles and functions, and typically what we'll see is we see in Scripture the

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Father sending, directing, orchestrating, predestining the

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Son who does what the Father wants Him to do, takes on human flesh, accomplishes everything the

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Father wants Him to do by perfect law -keeping, by dying for the sins of the elect's law -breaking.

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The Spirit of God indwells, sanctifies, and then we say, oh, we see the differences of distinction, the relationship of the triune

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God to the world in salvation history with respect to creation, atonement, and perfection.

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And this will go back to Irenaeus and Tertullian, and when we say economic we just mean household management.

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These are the assigned roles of the family. That's all. What does God do?

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There are distinctions that are clear from Scripture, and therefore we recognize that. St.

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Louis Johnson makes it kind of clear. In the economy of redemption there is division of labor.

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The Father the originator, the Son the executive, the Spirit the applier. Now if you think about that for a moment, the

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Father, the originator of the purpose of the ages, the Son, the executor of it in the carrying out of its redemptive work, and the

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Spirit, the applier of it through the ministry of conviction of sin, regeneration of faith, in thorough harmony with the nature of the relationship between the persons of the

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Trinity revealed in Scripture, then you can see that this must be the result of voluntary agreement among the persons of the

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Godhead. And that's what we see here. This is a good revealing to us of what we call the economic

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Trinity, what God does. You can talk about the ontological part of the Trinity and understanding of the

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Trinity, who God is, and here we see, oh, in time, in creation, in redemption, how does

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God work? And you'll see the different roles, right? Because there is a Father, there is a Son, and there is

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Holy Spirit. And what do they do in these roles as revealed to us? Yes, there's going to be some overlap.

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We can get into inseparable operations at another time, but here's how God, the

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Holy Spirit, shows us this great praise for the

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Father's sending the Son's dying, the Spirit's sealing.

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The first blast of praise is the Father, this Originator, as Lewis Johnson called

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Him, plans salvation even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before Him.

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In love, He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace with which

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He has blessed us in the Beloved. We understand that the elect in eternity past were...the

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Father gave the elect to the Son to go ransom. The Spirit was a witness to that transaction.

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Of course, the Spirit empowered Jesus on earth and applies in real time those benefits to all believers' accounts.

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It is the Father who gives the elect to the

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Son. He didn't give them to the Holy Spirit, He gives them to the Son. The Father here chooses before the foundation of the world, that's the focus there.

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The Father predestines us, the Father's giving the Son. And here we see the

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Father's economic distinction or role, election.

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Now most people don't really like to talk about election because they don't think it's praise -inducing, it's gnashing their teeth, causing instead.

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And therefore, lots of people don't want to talk about election. Well, if you want to talk about gospel, you have to talk about the triune

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God. And if you talk about the Father, you're going to see that He's an electing God. He's a selecting

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God. He's a predestining God. He's a God who has His own free will and He predestines us to adoption.

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And it's too bad that so many people seethe with anger when this topic comes up. It has been said that Herman Melville wrote

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Moby Dick as a reaction to this doctrine. And the fall of the house of Usher was the metaphor written, it was written as a metaphor for the fall of this doctrine.

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I think that on the positive side, if you want to look at literature, Daniel Defoe writes Robinson Crusoe, and you'll think, hmm, oh yeah, he believes in the sovereignty of God.

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Some think this is just some family secret that we talk about on Tuesday nights, not on Sunday morning. But since Calvin is correct when he said,

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Scripture is the school of the Holy Spirit in which as nothing is omitted, that is both necessary and useful to know.

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So nothing is taught but what is expedient to know. Therefore we must guard against depriving believers of anything disclosed about predestination in Scripture, lest we seem either wickedly to defraud them of the blessing of their

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God or to accuse and scoff at the Holy Spirit for having published what it is in any way profitable to suppress.

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I don't think you're going to hurt new believers if you talk about election because this is what the

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Father does. This is His economic role emphasis. And you just take a look at it and you think, wow, this sovereign act of choosing some individuals for salvation.

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He didn't have to choose anyone, but He chose some. He predestined some. He has the right to claim people and elect people.

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And you just go, wow, He chose me. God chooses all the time in Scripture. He chooses

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Israel, not the other nations. Some angels, not all. Some people for Levitical priests, not all.

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Some people for prophets like Jeremiah, not all. Some believers, not all.

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God is God. God the Father chooses. This is not invented by Calvin or Augustine or anybody else.

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Augustine, two separate people, one person, one place. It's clearly taught in the

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Bible. And He chose us when? Before the foundation of the world. Before we did anything good or evil.

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Everybody says, well, God votes for you. Satan votes against you. You cast a deciding vote. Where were you in eternity past?

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And if you were to be seen looking down the quarters of time, God would see that you'd say, no,

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I don't want you. That's why we're not saved because of works. We're saved because of Him who calls.

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And we weren't holy and blameless because the text says that we should be holy and blameless. It's good for us to be holy and blameless and walk a life worthy of our calling.

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That's good. Faithfulness is good. Obedience is good. Law -keeping is good. But that doesn't save us because we have to be chosen because we were dead in trespasses and sins.

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If anybody says, well, you believe in election, therefore you're going to be antinomian, then we remind them of this verse.

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We are chosen so that we might be conformed to the image of God's Son. Spiritual laziness?

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No. Thankfulness? Yes. Praise? Yes. There's a song that goes this way, "'Tis not that I did choose thee, for,

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Lord, that could not be. This heart would still refuse thee, hadst thou not chosen me."

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Why does He choose people? It says, "'In love He predestined us.' What amazes me,"

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Spurgeon said, "'is not that God doesn't choose everybody, but rather He chose me.'" There you go.

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That's the idea. Horton said, "'He is more love than you are sin.'" That's excellent.

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"'According to His good pleasure, motivated by His love, the Father's delight.'"

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This is to Him who loves sinners, and this election marking somehow for salvation.

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That's pretty startling. Lloyd -Jones, "'If you start imagining that you can understand the mind and will of God, you are doomed to failure, for these are mysteries with which no mind of man can ever cope.

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If you try to understand God's ways with respect to man, and I would assume you would find yourself so overwhelmed that you would become miserable and unhappy.'"

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Flip side is to think, wow, God actually loves me. There's kind of a funny little thing

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I always like to say. Detzler's quote, "'My reaction to this difficult doctrine must be belief.

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Although I cannot decipher it, I can accept it, just as I cannot comprehend how a brown cow eats green grass and yields white milk, which turns into yellow butter.

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Nevertheless, I enjoy its products.'" And He adopted you as a son via this predestination.

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You receive the adoption, spirit of adoption as sons, and you cry out, "'Abba, Father.'" You want to understand

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Christianity, as J. I. Pecker said, you understand God as Father. "'Justice would damn all a father that pities and provides and protects and loves.

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It's only due His grace. It's only because it's freely bestowed on us in the beloved,' chapter one, verse six.

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Isn't that good news? "'I sought the Lord, and afterwards I knew. He moved my soul to seek

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Him, seeking me. It was not that I found, O Savior, true. It was not

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I that found, O Savior, true.'" That's a great little hymn, is it not? Your father chose you in eternity past, you're a

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Christian, and you say, okay, uncle, I give. It's there.

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I believe it. On my behalf, the Father is the one. Now we move to the

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Lord Jesus. Now we move to, I have to write this down, okay.

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Economic Trinity, roles, functions. And now there's a praise to the

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Father for the Son's redemption. Remember, the Father sent the Son. The Son didn't send the

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Father. And it's Jesus who came down from heaven to do the Father's will. It's Jesus who we'll see in this section that does the redemptive work, not the

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Holy Spirit. The unbegotten Father sends the begotten, the only begotten, begotten not made

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Son, and He's going to accomplish something. And it's going to accomplish redemption.

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Do you see it in verse 7? In Him we have redemption. Well, time has just zoomed by.

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Can't talk any more about this today. But I can say this. When you think of the

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Trinity, you should think one God, three persons, Father, Son, Spirit.

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You should say to yourself, the Father's not the Spirit, and the Spirit's not the Son, and the Son's not the Father, et cetera. And you should think, when

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I think of the Gospel, the Gospel's Trinitarian, and I think I should believe that God, one

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God, three persons, should cause me to praise Him. And when I think of one person in the

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Trinity, my mind goes to the three, and then I go back to the, there's one God. Back and forth we go. And in time,

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I see that Scripture has shown certain emphases that the Father does, including choosing the

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Son, dying, and the Spirit's seed. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.