Answering Objections to Calvinism

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Open your Bible to John chapter 6. You know, we've been here so many times before, and at this point, you've probably memorized most of this, and that was part of what

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I wanted to do. John chapter 6 is a good place that expresses all that we've been talking about down to a single point.

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John chapter 6, if you start in verse 35, you'll see what we often call the doctrines of grace, the five points of Calvinism.

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You'll see them really expressed here in the teaching of Jesus, the words of God. Today is a little different, since this is the last of our series,

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I wanted to address not all, but a few of the major challenges to the freedom of God in salvation, the grace of God, the unmerited grace of God in salvation to unworthy people.

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And so, today is really just working through some of those major challenges. But the core here, what matters most, is not the philosophy, it's not the confessions, it's not a clique that you're a part of.

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What matters the most is what does the Word of God say? As a matter of fact, when the

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Apostle Paul, as he explains the gospel, when he wants to deliver the death blow, when he wants to give you the maneuver that actually takes out the jugular, he doesn't do it based upon tradition and philosophy, although he can go there, and he does many times go there.

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He does it by saying this, what does the Scripture say? And he goes back to the

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Word of God. And as Christians, we know that confessions can be good and healthy and helpful, they can act as guardrails to the

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Bible and to the truth. We recognize that the ultimate standard, the ultimate authority that we appeal to for whatever we believe, whatever we preach and teach, the ultimate authority is the

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Word of God. The Bible says that all Scripture is theanoustos, it is breathed out by God, is

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God -breathed revelation. God has disclosed Himself to people, He's let us know about Himself, and we can have certainty about what is true because God's told us.

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And so, if you want to go to the source, the principium, you go to the Word of God, you go to what is

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God said, and that's where this is summarized. In John chapter 6, starting at verse 35, hear now the words of the living and true

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God. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst.

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But I said to you that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe.

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All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never cast down.

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For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent

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Me. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given to Me, but raise it up on the last day.

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For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise

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Him up on the last day. So the Jews grumbled about Him because He said, I am the bread that came down from heaven.

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They said, is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does

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He now say, I have come down from heaven? Here it is. Jesus answered them, do not grumble among yourselves.

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No one can come to Me unless the Father who has sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

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Thus far is the reading of God's Word. Let's pray. God, please bless this last message in this series.

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It's coming, God, from an unworthy servant, of course, in ourselves to an unworthy people, and we need,

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God, Your grace. We need You to teach. We need You to, God, illuminate, open up our eyes.

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Give us understanding, God. I pray that You would allow us, God, to have the humility to lay aside traditions and philosophies and presuppositions that are not in accordance with Your Word.

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Help us, God, to embrace what You say. Give us the ability, God, to do so. Give us the ability,

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God, to put down haughtiness. Help us to see Your Word for what it is and to listen to what

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You say. I pray, God, that as a result of this series, God, You would use it to shape our minds and hearts, not just in this room, but believers around the world.

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You'd use it, God, to raise people up, to love You, to worship You, to be in awe of You, and to serve

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You. God, use this for Your glory and not ours. In Jesus' name, amen.

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Hey, Summer, hey, what did your dad used to say to you?

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It comes from this text. It's a word. It's a G -word. He'd tell you to stop what? Gungus?

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Gungus -mooing. Dr. White talks about how he would say to his kids when they were, you know, being little pests.

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You can't imagine Summer ever being a pest, right? But, you know, being the kind, you know, grumbling, moaning, complaining.

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Of course, only Dr. White would actually use this with his own kids, right? Like stop gungus -mooing. What are you talking about, right?

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Stop gungus -mooing. And he gets that from this text here where it says that the Jews were grumbling and Jesus answered them, do not grumble among yourselves.

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Don't, and that's where, stop gungus -mooing, right? Don't do that. What's interesting here in the text as we work through the doctrines of grace and we think about what really matters in the foundations, did you notice what happened there?

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Did you notice it? Jesus is talking to a crowd of people, and this crowd of people, they're there hanging out with Jesus, following the

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Messiah. They look like they're followers of Jesus. I'd be willing to bet if you had asked any of them, or the majority of them, who's the

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Messiah, I think they probably would have pointed to Jesus, and they would have said, well, I think He is, right? Isn't that what we're doing here?

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Like that's the Messiah? I think that they would have said, well, that's the Messiah, and maybe

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I'm identifying with Him. And Jesus says that to them. He says, you've seen me, and yet you don't believe.

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He knows the condition of their hearts. He knows whether their faith is real, and watch. He didn't say, you're not doing enough, you're not accomplishing enough, you're not in yourselves righteous enough.

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He says, you've seen me, and you don't believe. So He knows the conditions of their hearts, and what's interesting is these large crowds follow

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Jesus, and He says, you've seen me, you don't believe, but He says in response to their unbelief, they're not believing.

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These aren't people who are believers and fall away. He says, you don't believe, you've seen, you don't believe, but He says this, all that the

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Father gives to me will come to me. So you have a people that have been given to Jesus Christ.

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That much is clear from the text, that the Father has given a people to Jesus Christ, and what Jesus says about those people is that, watch, you've seen, you don't believe, all of this lot of people that the

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Father has given to me, they will come to me. No question. It's gonna happen, it's guaranteed.

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It's not a maybe, it's not wishful thinking, Jesus hopes so, Jesus says, all the ones the Father has given to me, they will come to me, and He says,

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I will never cast them out. That's a teaching of Jesus, and He says that He'll raise them up on the last day, and what's interesting here about Jesus in this text, and there's so many we can go to to talk about the freedom of God, and the grace of God in salvation, and His sovereignty, there's so many.

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But in this text here, Jesus says something about the will of God, that you can't miss.

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Because when we lose the biblical view of grace, and the sovereignty of God, you lose any meaning in these promises.

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Does it matter? Is the study of the sovereignty of God, and the grace of God, and Calvinism, this conflict, does it matter?

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Is it something we should actually lay aside? I would say, yes, it matters, because if you distort grace, if you distort the sovereignty of God, if you distort texts like this, then you distort the narrative of the

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Scriptures, you distort the message of the Scriptures, you distort redemption. You lose these promises.

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When you say it's possible for Jesus to have purchased somebody, and for Him to have brought someone to Himself, and then

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He loses them. His atonement was for not, for nothing. If you say that, then you lose any hope in these passages.

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Jesus says, watch, I've come down from heaven, not to do my own will.

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He submits Himself to the Father. He says, but to do the will of Him who has sent me. And He says, this is it, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given to me.

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And you have to ask yourself this question. Do we believe that it's possible for Jesus to fail in His mission to do the will of God?

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Is it possible for Jesus, the Lord of glory, the Messiah, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the divine

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Son of God, God, the Son, the second person of the Trinity, is it possible for Him to actually fail in His mission in the world?

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I say no. It's utterly impossible for the all -powerful God to fail in something.

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And Jesus says, this is what I'm here to do, that I lose none of all that He has given to me, but raise it up at the last day.

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And they're grumbling about it, because He says, you don't really believe. And so they're grumbling about it. And He says this, no man can come to Me.

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They're grumbling about what He said, about what He just laid before them. You've seen and you don't believe.

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All that the Father gives will come, and I'll never lose them. I'll raise them up. And now they're grumbling about that.

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He just nailed them. You're not really believing. And what He says to them is this, more sovereignty, more

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Calvinism laying on thick. He says what? John 6, 44, no man can come to Me.

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No man is able to come to Me. But Jesus, that's offensive. He just took away the idea of free will.

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But my free will, bro, right? No man can come to Me. No man is able to come to Me.

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What do you mean, Jesus? And Jesus says, no man is able to come to Me unless, unless something happens.

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Unless the Father who has sent Me draws him. Who's the him? The one who had no ability to come. Unless the

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Father who has sent Me draws him. And Jesus says this, and I will raise him up. I will raise up the one the

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Father draws. What matters here is the grace of God.

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Watch. Name the religion. Name the God. Name the religious text.

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What do they always distort? Of course, they distort who Jesus is, that always takes place, and counterfeit

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Christian cults, religions that ape Christianity, they distort the person of Jesus Christ. But what does every religion distort?

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The grace of God and sin. They all do it. They always say sin is not so sinful, we're not so really bad off, but what they usually say about the grace of God is that it's not enough.

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Now it's rare to find any religion that will say grace isn't necessary. Almost every religion says grace is necessary.

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Mormonism says grace is necessary. Roman Catholicism says grace is necessary. Jehovah's Witnesses say grace is necessary.

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It's actually rare to find people who are truly Pelagian in their view, believing that you don't really need the grace of God, that you've got the power in yourself to do it.

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It's rare to find that. Islam says grace is necessary. Allah must give you grace.

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You can't do it apart from Him. So again, religions will generally say grace is necessary.

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However, it is only biblical Christianity, it is only the

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Reformed faith that says that grace is not only necessary, but God's grace is sufficient.

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It's actually sufficient to accomplish what God commands of it. God's grace is sufficient and means that God is able in His power and with His love and mercy and grace to raise people from the dead to life.

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Nobody can thwart His purposes. Nobody can stop God when He determines to save a rebel sinner.

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Nothing in the universe can stop Him. No circumstances, no people, no devices and schemes, nothing can stop the

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God of the universe when He determines to set His love upon a dead rebel sinner and to raise them to life.

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He will accomplish all of His purposes. That's why I put in the text today for our Bible verse for today,

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Psalm 135. You can read it also in Psalm 115. You can read it also in Isaiah chapters 40 through 46, what?

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That He is God alone in the heavens above and on the earth below. He does what

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He pleases. Where? In heaven, on earth, in the deep.

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There isn't a place in this universe where God doesn't sovereignly wield His authority.

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He's completely sovereign, not kind of sovereign. What we're saying as Christians, as Reformed folks, is that we don't merely tip the hat at God's sovereignty.

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We say, when we say God is sovereign, we mean sovereign, sovereign, completely sovereign, not halfway sovereign, partly sovereign.

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He's sovereign. He's in control of everything, which means that you can say as a

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Christian with hope, with courage and boldness, that if something happens in this world, it is according to God's own purpose and that nothing ever comes into my life that wasn't first strained through the sovereign hands of God.

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That He determines, He decreed what would and wouldn't happen in His world.

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That it's His Word that gives history its shape. That's the God that we're talking about.

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So that as Christians, you can say in the blessing, in the garden, or in the trial and curse in the desert,

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God is sovereign and God is enough. He's enough. He does according to His will.

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That's why Christians have been able to go to the stake and be burned at the stake. Why Christians have let goods and kindred go and their mortal lives also.

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Why Christians have laid everything down to bring the gospel to foreign lands, to hostile people.

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Why would a believer bring the gospel to a tribe of cannibals? Why? Because believers have that hope that God is sovereign and not them, that God has

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His purposes, that He brings salvation, that Jesus is the Messiah, the King of the world, putting

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His enemies under His feet. That I know as a Christian, if God's called us to some faraway land to bring the gospel, or He's given us some task to accomplish, some mission to accomplish,

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I know that God has His people. He has His sheep. And what does Jesus say to people who hear

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His voice that can't understand, that can't perceive it? In John chapter 10, what does He say to them?

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He says, I'm the good shepherd who lays His life down for the what? The sheep.

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And He says this, I have other sheep which are not of this fold, them I must also bring, and they will become one flock with one shepherd.

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And what does He say to the people who can't hear Him? They say to Jesus in John 10, look, tell us plainly.

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If you're the Messiah, tell us. And Jesus says what? I told you. I told you.

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He didn't neglect it. He didn't forget. They didn't miss the memo. He actually did tell them

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He was the Messiah. They heard it from Him over and over and over again. He says, I told you.

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And the reason you can't hear Me is because you are not of My sheep.

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My sheep, the ones I lay My life down for, the ones I must also bring that will become one flock with one shepherd,

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My sheep hear My voice and they come. And Jesus says, I give them eternal life.

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And what does He say about them? He says this, they're in My hands and nothing can snatch them from My hand. They're in My Father's hand and nothing can snatch them from My Father's hands.

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That's the message. And you know, here's the thing. Watch. When you hear that, I recognize if your view of salvation is centered upon man, if it's a view that is centered upon what you do or don't do, then what you just heard from Jesus is offensive.

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Because what does it say about you? You're helpless. You're a sinner. You're broken. You have no ability.

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What does it do? When you hear this message of the sovereignty of God and the grace of God, what's it do? It reveals something about you that you are trying to ignore, that we try to ignore all the time, is that you are much worse than you think you are.

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And in a culture that doesn't like to talk about our own failings and our own brokenness, in a culture that idolizes self -esteem, this message is offensive.

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You are not able. You are wicked. You are a sinner. You are ungodly. You are helpless. You are a hater of God.

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You are an enemy of God. You are dead in your sins and trespasses. You are by nature a child of wrath. Don't get mad at me.

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I am just quoting it. So what does it tell you and I? It tells you that you need

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Him, that you don't have the abilities that you thought you have.

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And guess what? You're not actually the sovereign like you thought you were. You're not the authority like you thought you were.

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He actually is all those things. And what does it do? It forces a person who's in rebellion against God to completely submit to God's will and sovereignty.

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And you know what we don't like as human beings fallen in God's world? We know we don't like that.

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That He's the boss, that He's in charge, that He rules over all. We don't want a God like that.

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We like a God that actually bends to our will. We like a God that we can thwart. We like a

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God that we can manipulate. We like a God that we can buy off. And God doesn't fit into that scheme.

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This is why most religions are very, very hostile to Reformed faith.

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Why are so many people so hostile to Reformed theology? Because Reformed theology has as a fundamental banner over everything that we say,

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God is sovereign, I am not. God is the sovereign. You know, watch, this is powerful.

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How many of you guys saw the Satanist attack us this week? How many of you guys saw that video? Interesting, right? So pray for that woman, by the way, pray for her.

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But do you notice something? In the clips that we pulled together of some of her teachings and talk, do you notice what she said?

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She said something that identifies all of us before Christ.

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She says exactly, she quotes before the, she was actually on the news, she was one of the people that was trying to actually pray a prayer to Satan during the town council meeting a while back.

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And what does she say in her prayer? Let us eat from the tree of knowledge, right?

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What's that go back to? It goes back to the very beginning when the deceiver comes in and he says, hath

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God said, did God really say that? No, no, no. You won't die. You'll be like God, knowing good and evil, right?

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And what's that mean? It's a mean not experiencing, but it means fundamentally, you will be the determiner.

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You'll be the sovereign. You see, God doesn't want you to take that because He knows that if you do, you'll be the sovereign, you'll be the one that determines what is right and what is wrong.

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And what has plagued humanity since the very beginning is this, we think we're the sovereign.

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It was the lie that got Satan cast out of God's presence. It's the lie that got humanity cast out of the garden.

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It is a lie that we embrace all the time, that we're the sovereign, we will determine.

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And you see it's even in the Satanic temple in Arizona, where they're saying, let us eat from the tree of knowledge.

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We will be the ones that determine, we'll be the sovereigns. And here's the truth, you'll never be the sovereign in God's universe.

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He is, and nothing will ever change that. And I believe with all my heart that one of the main reasons people resist the reformed theology and the doctrines of grace is because fundamentally we don't like the idea of God being sovereign over me.

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So let's do a couple of things and talk about some important things just to move through these questions. Let's do it quickly.

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You guys ready? Yes? Okay, so a couple of things. We're talking about the doctrines of grace. If you don't know what we're talking about, go back and listen to the series.

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It's on YouTube now, TULIP, T -U -L -I -P, is an acrostic that essentially breaks apart some fundamental teachings in Scripture so that we can understand the nature of the fall,

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God's sovereign grace and salvation, what was accomplished with the atonement.

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When Jesus died, what happened, if anything at all? And when God wants to save somebody, irresistible grace, can

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He save them? Can He raise a dead person to life? And then perseverance of the saints is what Jesus said there in John 6.

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I will raise them up. I'll never cast them out. I'll never lose them,

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John 10. It's that. When God saves somebody, raises them to newness of life, when He dies for their sins, when

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He brings them to Christ and unites them to Jesus, can they ever be lost? Can you be born again and unborn again, regenerate and unregenerate, loved by God, hated by God?

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Is that possible? We would say, of course, that's impossible. No. Because the

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Scriptures. Now, a couple of things in terms of answering these questions. First thing is that Christians would do well to learn something called hermeneutics.

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Hermeneutics is the art and science of biblical interpretation. It's very, very important.

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To give you a good example, want a good example? The book of Revelation, not Revelations, the book of Revelation, one of the most abused books of the

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Bible throughout history. But in particular, in the last 200 years, just in our nation, many of the cults that have sprung up on American soil have actually been apocalyptic cults based upon the book of Revelation and misinterpretations in the book of Revelation.

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You guys remember, of course, David Koresh from Waco, Texas, years ago, that awful cult leader there who essentially said that he was

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Jesus Christ. Some of his teachings are actually available online. You can see them. And he based a lot of his teachings upon the book of Revelation.

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Why? Because it mystifies people. They don't understand it. And so when someone says, this is what this means, well, if you don't know your

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Bible, sky's the limit, right? It's infinitely malleable. You can do whatever you want with it.

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Good example is this. If we don't understand proper biblical interpretation, how to interpret the

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Bible properly, you're going to read the book of Revelation and what are you going to see? If you decide to read it literally, you'll get to that text and you'll see a whore drinking blood riding a seven -headed ten -horned beast wearing purple and scarlet.

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You'll see the beast turning on the whore, devouring her and burning with fire. Now question, where do

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I find a seven -headed ten -horned beast and where is there a whore riding this beast drinking blood?

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Somewhere in Van Buren? It's possible, okay?

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But no, actually no. If you understand the book of Revelation and recognize that this text written by John, over half of the book is direct quotations and allusions to the

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Old Testament. If watch, by today's standards, the apostle John could rightly be accused of plagiarism because he is copy and pasting much of what he says in the book of Revelation from the

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Old Testament. So what does that tell you? If you don't understand the Old Testament text from which he's drawing, you could never possibly understand his message.

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And this is why it's dangerous for someone simply to crack the Bible open and let it be their playground.

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You have to handle the word of God with respect and you have to understand what author, who wrote this, audience, who did he write it to, content.

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What does it say in its context? What is the wording? What is the etymology of this word?

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What's the word actually mean? What did it mean to Paul when he wrote it? What did it mean to John when he wrote it? What's the context of the passage itself?

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Context in that passage and in the book itself as you're reading something, ask the question, what's the context?

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Who's the audience in question there? And what's he referring to? Does he quote a Bible verse? What did that Bible verse mean in that book when it was used before?

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Who was the audience there? What was the context there? It's vitally important to understand. We have to go to our

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Bibles with respect and awe and we have to understand when we read the text of Scripture, we have to understand author, audience, content, context, and comparison.

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How does this text work with tota Scriptura, all of Scripture?

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How does it fit into the entire narrative of redemption? Also we have to recognize when we ask questions about the grace of God and the sovereignty of God, we have to recognize the power of tradition.

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The power of tradition. Now Reformed folks love to say, it's sola

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Scriptura. What's that mean? Scripture alone, it's the final authority, right?

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We always like to say, it's not a Pope, it's not a council, it's not a confession, it's not a creed, that's not the final standard.

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It's the Scripture. So we like to say, you got to fight against your traditions. We think about Rome and all the things that came into the

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Roman Catholic communion that distorted the gospel of grace, distorted praxis. How do we live as Christians?

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And watch, we say, beware of your traditions. I don't have any traditions.

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That's what people like to say. It's a really interesting moment. I believe it was when

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Dr. White was talking to, oh, what was his name? Who was the old guy years ago?

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From the Berean call. What was his name? What's that? He didn't want to debate your dad.

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He wrote a book about Calvinism, The Dark Side of Calvinism, right? It was from Washington, I think.

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Old guy. Older than dirt. Anyway, he was on the radio with your dad, and when

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Dr. White challenged him on traditions, like testing your traditions, Dave Hunt, yes,

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Dave Hunt. I think it was in that radio interview he said, I don't have any traditions. And something that stuck with me is how

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Dr. White has responded to that. The person who says they have no traditions is the person who has plagued with the most of them.

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Because watch, if you say you don't have any traditions, it means you don't recognize how you have been impacted by teachers and people that you love and respect.

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We all have traditions. It's impossible not to. The question is, are your traditions consistent with the scriptures or not?

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You have to be willing to test your traditions. Is what you believe actually from the word of God?

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Is it consistent with it? You have to be willing to order your presuppositions, your pre -beliefs, order those according to the scriptures.

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Everybody has presuppositions. To deny so is to live a fiction. We all have presuppositions.

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Watch. Here's what we should be in a lifelong pursuit of. Taking our presuppositions, our fundamental commitments, and making sure that those presuppositions are consistent with the

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Bible. There is where you're safe. We have to be willing to test our philosophy, our tradition.

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Here's some challenges. Ready? I told you I'd keep my sermons shorter, and I'm going to do my best. First challenge.

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Ready? Jeff, if God is sovereign in the way that you say He is, if God is the one who controls salvation, if He's the one that determines who

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He's going to save, if He's given a decree of salvation, if Jesus died for people's sins and only a particular people, if God can raise the dead and never lose somebody, ready?

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If He has an elect people and He's predestined, then what's the point of evangelism?

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Probably the most common objection, that's why I put it first. What's the point of evangelism if God is predestined and He has an elect people?

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First thing I'll say is this, ready? You can't get away from the word predestination because it's in your

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Bible. You can't get away from the concept of election because it's in your

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Bible. You can't get away from the word elect of God because it's in your Bible.

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This is not really a question of whether or not we want to believe in predestination and election. It's impossible to be faithful with God's word and not have a view of predestination and election.

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The question is, what do we believe about it? When someone says, what's the point of evangelism?

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What I like to say is this, well, if God is not sovereign over salvation, then what's the point of evangelism?

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You see, I think that that is a better challenge to the Arminian or to the person that has an anthropocentric view of salvation, that it's based upon us and what we do.

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When someone says, if God is sovereign, then what's the point of evangelism? I like to say, take a breath and try that again because actually that's a challenge toward you.

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If God is not completely sovereign, if he can be thwarted by man, if God can determine to save and fail to save in your system, then my question is, what's the point of evangelism?

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Think about it for a moment now. If I go out to go preach the gospel downtown, I bring the gospel.

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In the Arminian view, they believe that God wants to save every single person who's ever lived.

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He's actually willing and trying to do it, that Jesus died for their sins and paid them in full, and that the

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Holy Spirit of God can try and fail to save. The person who believes all those things, when they go out to preach the gospel, the truth is, watch,

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God's already done everything that he can. He's tried.

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Jesus purchased their salvation, and the Holy Spirit of God can try to apply it, and they can resist

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God, and they can thwart him. The question is, if it's centered upon us, then what's the point of evangelism?

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What's the point? God can be thwarted in your system. Watch what I say. I say,

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Jesus said, all that the Father has given to me will come to me. When someone says, what's the point of evangelism?

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I say, because John 6, because they're coming, baby. And you know what

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God does? He uses people as the means of his grace to bring the message of salvation. What does

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Romans 1 say, 116? The gospel is the power of God for what? He uses his message.

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It's proclaimed. It's distributed. Watch. And God, by his spirit, empowers that message, and he uses it to ignite life into dead people.

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Why preach the gospel if God is sovereign? Why preach it if he's not? You see, because I believe

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God is totally sovereign, I go out, watch. And I have, it's a beautiful track record,

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I have 100 % success in evangelism. How do you like them apples? 100 % success rate in evangelism.

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That's what I got. Because when I preach the gospel, God commands you to repent and believe. Sometimes God allows people to live in their sin and to have their way.

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And sometimes God, in his love and mercy and grace, raises a dead person to life.

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Each way, God is glorified. One in his justice, one in his grace, 100 % guaranteed success.

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When I preach the gospel, I do it because of what God says in Romans 10. Think for a moment now about this.

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Romans 8, it says what? Golden chain of redemption. God foreknows us, he predestines us, he calls us, he justifies us, he glorifies us.

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There's that chain, foreknow, predestined, called, justified, glorified. You can't break it. And then it goes into Romans 9, and it says

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God does what? He has mercy on whom he wills, and he hardens whom he wills.

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And the person says, well then why does he still find fault? For who resists his will? And then the divine answer to that challenge is what?

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Who are you? Oh man, who answers back to God? So you have this view of God's sovereignty.

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Esau, he says what? Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated. God's choosing to give love to one and not to the other.

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And in the text itself, right after this big discussion on the sovereignty of God, Romans 10, why evangelize?

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Romans 10, it says in verse 9, because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is

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Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you'll be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

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For the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same

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Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the

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Lord will be saved. That's a promise. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

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And how are they to believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

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And how are they to preach unless they are sent as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news?

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Do you see? After Paul's long discussion of the sovereignty of God and salvation, what's he say about that message?

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Someone's got to preach it. Someone's got to go. Someone has to be sent. You are the means of God's grace to bring about the salvation of his elect people.

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God uses people to bring about the salvation of his people, and so that's why

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I go. I go out of obedience for God. I go out of love for God and love for neighbor. And when

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I preach that gospel, it's the same gospel. It tells about what Jesus did, not ultimately what they must do in themselves to save themselves.

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This is who Jesus is. This is what he's done, and now the command is to repent and believe the gospel.

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Come to Christ for life. That's the call that goes out. Here's another thing to think about.

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If God isn't sovereign, completely sovereign over salvation, if God can be thwarted when he tries to save somebody, wants to save somebody, here's a good question.

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What's the point of prayers for the lost? Do you ever notice that, that when Arminians pray, they're

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Calvinists? Do you notice that? They argue that Jesus, you know, he can die for people and then he can fail to save them.

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The spirit of God can try to save people, but God can be thwarted. But all of a sudden, when they get down before the

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Lord, they're like, God, change their heart. Lord, open their eyes to the truth. God, please save them.

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God, please bring about their... All of a sudden now, we're reformed theologians, right?

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I'm fine with that. But that's a contradiction and it needs to be called down.

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If God can be thwarted in his salvation by the free will of man, then what's the point of praying for the lost?

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He's already done everything he can. Why pray for them? He's already tried to save, Jesus already died, but he can be thwarted.

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So why pray? I'll tell you why, because every one of us, as image of God and as followers of Jesus, know deep down that God's the one that saves.

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It's got nothing to do with us. He's the one that does it. And that's why we pray, because fundamentally, deep down, we're all

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Calvinists. Another question, are you denying that we're making choices?

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So if God is sovereign over salvation, if he's the one that has to grant repentance and faith, if God's the one who raises people to life, are you saying that we're not making choices like we're robots?

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We've addressed this a few times over the course of this series, but something to consider is that what we're saying is that God is the truly free one.

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He is the one that is truly free. And that, watch, we are making choices. We're making choices all the time.

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But watch this, people make choices based upon their nature. So if your nature is fallen, then that fallen nature actually causes the choices or our wills to be with them fallen.

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So think about it for a minute now. I gave you the illustration of the vulture and the bunny, right? The vulture, put it in a room with a pile of meat and a pile of carrots.

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Ask the vulture to make a choice. You can try to even convince the vulture, if we're possible, to eat the carrots.

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But what will the vulture freely choose between the pile of meat and the pile of carrots? It chooses the meat, because by nature, the nature determines the activity of the will.

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Now take a rabbit, put it in front of the two choices, pile of meat, pile of carrots. Now, unless it's some zombie rabbit, okay, what is the rabbit going to freely choose?

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It's going to choose the vegetable over the meat freely. Now take a sinner and put a sinner before God and their sin.

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A fallen person before God and their sin, what will they freely choose? Their sin over God.

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Now, when God raises that dead person to life, He gives them a new nature. He regenerates them, gives them a new heart.

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Now put that person before Jesus and their sin, what do they choose freely? Jesus. We're making choices, and we're responsible for our choices, but God is sovereign over that.

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And I gave you illustrations, Joseph and his brothers, they sell them into slavery, they throw them into a pit, they do all these evil things.

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But what happens like 20 years later when Joseph is like, head over Egypt, when his brothers finally come for rescue into Egypt for food, what does

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Joseph say to them? He says, you didn't send me here, God did. As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.

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Not that he just made it work out for good, but God actually meant it. He meant your sin for good, to preserve for you a remnant and to keep many people alive.

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That murder of Jesus, one of the most wicked things committed in history, the most wicked thing committed in history, what's it say?

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The prayer of the church says what? Gathered in this city against your holy servant Jesus, people of Israel, Herod, Pontius Pilate, the

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Gentiles, to do what? To do whatever your hand had predestined to occur. Did they want to kill

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Jesus? Yes. Were they evil in their hearts? Yes. Did God make them do something against their will?

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No. But God had predestined that they would murder Jesus, for what purpose?

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His glory and your good. Do you see? We make choices.

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We are not robots. Now here's a big one. Somebody says, well, if God is completely sovereign over salvation, and if he saves his elect people, then what about John 3 .16?

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What does John 3 .16 say? For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

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You hear a verse like that. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish.

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And what people often tend to do with that passage is they tend to quote it in terms of capacity, that what we mean when we quote that is, whosoever will believe in him will not perish, like as though everybody has the capacity.

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They treat John 3 .16 as though that verse means the whole world has the capacity to believe in Jesus.

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So if they will, they'll have eternal life. But actually, the text itself says nothing about capacity, people's abilities to do this or that.

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The word or the term, whoever believes or whosoever believes in him, is the

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Greek, pas ha pistouan. Now, that occurs six times in the

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New Testament, John 3 .15, John 3 .16, John 12 .46,

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Acts 13 .39, Romans 10 .11, and 1 John 5 .1. And in all those contexts, that term, that terminology has nothing to do with capacity or ability.

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It has to do, it means this, so that every believing one, so that everyone believing would have eternal life.

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So let's read it actually as it is. For God so loved the world that he gave his only

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Son, so that every believing one would have eternal life, would not perish.

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That's what the promise is. What is it a promise for? It's not a blanket general promise to the world that they have the ability to believe.

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It's actually a promise to believers, everyone believing in Jesus will have eternal life and will never perish.

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That is for you, Christian. That's for you. But what of the word world?

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For God so loved the world. What's important here is to think about context.

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Think about audience. Think about who wrote this. John is a

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Jew. In that very passage, who is he talking to? John 3. Anyone know who's he talking to?

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Nicodemus. Who is Nicodemus? He's a Pharisee. The Pharisees, we know about them from the

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New Testament, what they believed and what they were like. Think about this, the context. They thought

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Gentiles were sinners, were dogs, were outside many ways the grace of God.

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As a matter of fact, you know the Samaritan, the story of the Samaritan, right? They saw the

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Samaritans as sort of halfsies, right? Kind of Jewish, kind of not.

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The result of syncretism, dirty. They would even take a different route around Samaria to avoid contact with these half -breeds, these almost -Jews.

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You see, they believed in that day, of course, that salvation was of the Jews, and it is, but they forgot that the promise to Abraham was that Abraham's descendants would be as numerous as the stars, and that in Abraham, all the nations of the earth would be blessed.

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That Jew and Gentile would be brought together in one people of God. That the world,

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Jews and Gentiles, were being brought to God in salvation. All the families of the earth were going to be blessed and returned to worship

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God. And so when Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, a Pharisee, I believe that he is correcting.

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God so loved the world, Nicodemus, not just Jews, Jews and Gentiles, that He gave

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His unique and one and only Son so that every one believing, so that every believing one would have eternal life and not perish.

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The text says nothing about people's abilities. It says nothing about salvation for every single person who has ever lived.

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Also consider this. The word world is used in many different ways in the

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Scriptures. I'll give you an example. In John 12, 19, it's used as people are following Jesus.

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All these different people following Jesus, what's their response? They say, look, the whole world is following after Him.

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Question, when they say that about Jesus, the whole world is following Jesus, did they mean that every single person in the entire world was following Jesus?

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We recognize what they meant. So the text in John 3, 16, when it says God so loved the world, it doesn't necessarily mean that God is salvifically loving every single person who has ever lived.

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Another example in terms of how John uses that word in Revelation 5, 9, he talks about Jesus purchasing out of every tribe, tongue, and language people for God.

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So moving on past John 3, 16, somebody might say, are you saying that Jesus died for the elect, that He actually purchased only the elect?

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My answer would be, well, that's what the Bible teaches, yes. And they would say, well, I couldn't believe that because I couldn't believe in a limited atonement.

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And here's my response. Every Christian limits the atonement, every single one of us.

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We all limit the atonement. It's a question of how you limit it. Let me give you an example.

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How does the Calvinist limit the atonement? What's that? We limit and say, no, it was for a specific people and it actually accomplished something for those people.

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It was a real atonement. It was real wrath. It was real propitiation for a particular people, right?

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So we limit the number. Now I happen to believe that the vast majority of humanity at the end of time will actually have experienced redemption.

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I do believe that personally. I think I could defend that from the Scriptures. I'm willing to be corrected. But I actually think that's a very hopeful thing and I think we can see that.

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However, yes, we believe that God limits in terms of who He saves.

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But the Arminian also limits the atonement because what do they say? They say that Jesus died a death, watch, for everybody who ever lived and it could be for those people and they still spend an eternity in hell forever.

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Jesus secured it. He died for them and they'll still suffer eternity away from God.

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So the Arminian limits the efficacy of the atonement. What they say is this, you can have

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Jesus dying for your sins and it won't matter. You'll still go to hell. Jesus bears the wrath of God in your place and you still go to hell.

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They limit the atonement's efficacy. So everybody limits the atonement. It's a question of, is your view of the atonement and its limitations biblical?

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Next, somebody says, what? It's not, what? Fair. It's not fair.

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Are you telling me that God has chosen to save people but not others?

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They say, what? That's not fair. What does it reveal when someone says that's not fair? It reveals that their view of sin is not biblical.

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It reveals that their view of God's holiness is not biblical.

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Because if we truly understood, like Isaiah says, all of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.

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If we felt about our sin the way that Isaiah did, when he gets a glimpse of God's holiness, what does he say?

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Woe is me. I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean lips. You see, if we had that view of our sin and God's holiness, then the real thing we'd be asking is this, why does

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God save one? Everybody looks at Romans 9 and what do they say? Jacob I have loved,

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Esau I have hated. And what do we say when we look at that? We say, why did

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God hate Esau? But if we understand the word of God, that's the wrong question.

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The better question, if you're thinking biblically, is this, why would God ever love Jacob? He's a sinner like Esau.

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I understand the hostility with Esau and God. Esau is a sinner,

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God is holy. Esau is a rebel, God is good. And there's a rebellion there.

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I get the hostility there, but what I find peculiar is that a holy God would love a person like Jacob.

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What I find even more peculiar is that God doesn't just love Jacob and save him.

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God loves Jeff. God loves Robin. God loves Marilee. God loves

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Candy. God loves Sage. God loves Esther. God loves John. God loves Matt. God loves not just Jacob, but he loves a multitude, a myriad of other sinners.

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And I don't get it. So actually the answer is this, it's not fair. The answer is, you're right.

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It isn't fair. It is imminently not fair that God saves anyone.

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It's grace. It's not fair. No, what we don't want from God is fairness.

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What you don't want to do is walk into a court before a judge and say, your honor, give me all you got.

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What you don't do is walk into God's court and say, God, be just with me.

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You don't want that. You want God's grace and his mercy. You plead with God, God, don't be just with me.

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Don't be just with my sin. Give me your grace. Give me your mercy. Don't give me your justice.

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Don't bring your law to bear. Don't do it in my life. God, please give me Jesus. Give me your grace.

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That's what you want. Not fairness, but mercy and grace. Because if God was fair to humanity, what he would do with that one lump is take the entire lump and throw it out.

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But he chose with the same lump, Romans 9, to make vessels of honorable use that he would mercy and vessels of dishonorable that he would harden.

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Next, if God is sovereign over everything, then it makes God responsible for evil.

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What I would quote is the London Baptist Confession of Faith, same thing as the

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Westminster Confession. It says this, God hath decreed in himself from all eternity.

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By the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things whatsoever come to pass.

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Yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin, nor hath fellowship with any therein, nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established, in which appears his wisdom in disposing all things, and power and faithfulness in accomplishing his decree.

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Here's a summary. Ready? God is sovereign and he works through primary causes and secondary means.

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When we say God is sovereign over any sinful act, we are not saying that God made sinners do anything.

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They're doing what they want to do. And watch, if God hadn't restrained them, they would've done worse. They do what they want to do, but God in his sovereignty determines what they will and won't do for his glory and our good.

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God is not responsible for evil. It's a wicked thing to even suggest so.

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Next, and here's a big one. Ready? Go to your Bibles. We're going to do this quickly. 1 John chapter 5.

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It's a big one. And hopefully I've already answered most of it. 1

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John chapter 5. Ready? Verse 1.

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My bad. 1 John 2. 1.

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Ready? My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin.

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He's talking to the church, Christians. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the

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Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation, stop. What's the word propitiation mean?

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A full satisfaction of the wrath of God. Propitiation means, watch. God diverted

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His wrath away from you and He gave it to Jesus and Jesus exhausted it. It's a full payment of sin.

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It's a turning aside of wrath. Gotta get that. Listen closely. Propitiation means to divert wrath, to turn it aside, to exhaust it.

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Great? Now watch. He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

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Now, someone looks at that text, they proof text it. It's one of the three main proof texts for Arminianism.

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And they say, look, it says that Jesus is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

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See? Jesus' cross work was for everybody. Now let's just look at it on the face of it, brothers and sisters.

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Propitiation means a turning aside of wrath, a full satisfaction of the wrath of God. So let's do it in context.

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Ready? Ready? He is the full satisfaction of the wrath of God for our sins and the sins of the whole world.

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Now watch. What view would you get if you really believe that, that Jesus fully exhausted the wrath of God for our sins and the sins of every person who ever lived?

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What would you get? Universalism. Universalism, because watch this. If all of the sins of every person who's ever lived have been fully exhausted and fully turned aside and given to Jesus, then that means there are no more sins to be dealt with.

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Nobody goes to hell. So if we just understand what the word propitiation means, then we have to understand that this could not possibly mean that Christ propitiated for every sin of every person who ever lived.

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But think about context. Remember we said in the beginning, author, audience, content, context, comparison.

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How do you read this? First we know the world, propitiation means a full satisfaction of wrath.

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Next, we know that the word world could be used in a number of different ways.

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We see that in John chapter 12 verse 19, the whole world was following Jesus. Romans chapter 1, the apostle

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Paul says their faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world. Was it being proclaimed in Canada in the first century?

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Certainly not Canada. We see that John who wrote the epistle of John also wrote

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Revelation 5 where it says that Jesus purchased out of every tribe, tongue, and nation, language, people for God.

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But here's a good point of how John thinks. Hold your finger in first John. Now go quickly to John, the gospel of John, and go to verse 11,

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John 11, and look at what John records starting in verse 47,

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John 11, 47. So the chief priests and the

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Pharisees gathered the council and said, what are we to do for this man performs many signs.

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If we let him go on like this, watch, everyone will believe in him and the

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Romans will come and take away both our place and nation. But one of them Caiaphas who was high priest that year said to them, you know nothing at all nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, listen, not that the whole nation should perish.

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He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, watch, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.

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The nation of Israel and the people of God, the children of God scattered abroad.

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So the same John writes his epistle and he says that Jesus is our representative, he's the righteous one, he is the propitiation for our sins, but not just for our sins church, the sins of the whole world,

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Jew and Gentile, slave, free, barbarian, Greek, all the world.

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Now remember, words matter, context matters.

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If we say that Jesus propitiated for the sins of every person who has ever lived, you get universalism.

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Next, and these are rather quick, Matthew chapter 23 is another popular one where people quote proof texts to argue against Reformed theology, the doctrines of grace.

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In Matthew chapter 23 verse 37, let me tell you how it's normally read.

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Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it, how often

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I wanted to gather you together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing.

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You see, there's an example of Jesus desiring to bring Jerusalem and Jerusalem wasn't willing, they just didn't want to come.

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I'll read it again, let's see if you can catch what I did, because it's most often quoted this way, pay close attention,

01:00:08

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it, how often

01:00:14

I would have gathered you together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing.

01:00:21

Who caught it, did you catch it? Say it nice and loud, what did

01:00:28

I do? See what I did there? See, you didn't even, you were looking at the text and you still didn't see it.

01:00:36

You see how subtle that is? Now try and look again, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it, how often

01:00:45

I wanted to gather you together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings but you were not willing. Do you see it now?

01:00:52

What did I drop out of the verse? Gathered your what?

01:00:57

Children. Who is Jesus talking to in Matthew 23? The scribes, the Pharisees, what does he say to them?

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Woe to you, woe to you, you whitewashed tombs. He says woe to you.

01:01:10

He condemns them over, it's actually amazing, meek and mild Jesus, hardly.

01:01:16

Jesus is completely laying it down on them and Jesus says all the blood of the righteous from Abel, and he names his last prophet, will be upon this generation.

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He actually says in the text, he says these are the days of vengeance, that all the blood's going to be upon them.

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And he says Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it, how often would

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I have gathered, synagogued your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing.

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Who was not willing? The leadership of Jerusalem, constantly oppressing the people of God.

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I wanted to synagogue my children, I wanted to gather my children like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings and you were not willing.

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You stone the prophets and you kill those who are sent to you. Who is Jesus condemning here? The leadership in Jerusalem.

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How he would gather the children of Israel and it's the leadership who are always resisting

01:02:21

God and fighting against God. Nothing in this text here says that Jesus could want to save somebody and he couldn't do it.

01:02:29

As a matter of fact, and this is just an aside, check this, this is really cool, it's actually very neat. Keep your finger there, how often

01:02:37

I wanted to gather your children, right, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.

01:02:42

The word there is the word you get synagogue from, gathered, synagogue.

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How often I wanted to synagogue you together, synagogue is the word, okay? Now watch.

01:02:54

Now when Jesus talks about the destruction of Jerusalem, you get to the famous part where it talks about he's going to come in great glory, watch, in verse 31 of Matthew 24, and he will send out his angels, it means messengers, don't think angelic beings, it means messengers, with a loud trumpet call and they will synagogue his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other, amazing.

01:03:26

He says to Jerusalem, you stoned the prophets, you killed those who were sent to you, you're always resisting, gathering my children, right?

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And then at the end of Matthew 24, after he just condemned them for trying to stop him from gathering his people, what does it say he's going to do?

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He's going to send his messengers and they will synagogue his people from around the world.

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I think that's awesome. I think it's awesome. Quickly, 1

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Timothy 2, 4 is a popular one, and I think it's rather quick and simple to get through.

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These are typical proof texts that are used to fight against reformed theology, 1

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Timothy 2, 4. I'll start in verse 1.

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First of all, then I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

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This is good and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

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First point, the context is that prayers and supplications be made for all people.

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Question, do you believe that the apostle Paul was asking you to get out the phone book and to start praying for every single person in the phone book?

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Kids, there was this thing before. When you read the context, what does he say?

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You persecuted Christians, who are right now under the boot of Rome, being persecuted, he says,

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I urge you that supplications, prayer, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made for all people, guys, for kings and all who are in high positions.

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Make them for everybody, for rulers, authorities, kings in high positions, because God desires for all, what?

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All people to be saved and come to knowledge of the truth. It's not just you peasant people, kings and those in high authority, all people.

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This is referring to all kinds of people. The context itself clearly gives to us an understanding that there are different kinds of people here, classes of people here, kings and all who are in high positions.

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Remember, the Christians at this time were being persecuted, were experiencing difficulties. As a matter of fact, not long after this, it was both

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Rome and the Jews who were opposed to the church and trying to destroy her, and the

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Christians here are being told to live a quiet life, a godly life, dignified in every way, and to pray and to make supplications and intercessions, thanksgiving for all people, kings and all who are in high positions.

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God desires all people, what? All kinds of people, all classes of people to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth.

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Watch. Here's how you know with clarity what's being said. Verse 5, for there is one

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God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Now question, is

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Jesus mediating for people who will go to hell forever? When someone's in hell, is

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Jesus mediating for them? So the text clearly cannot be speaking about Jesus mediating and ransoming people who actually spend eternity in hell.

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I think we're good now. I don't want to go too much farther over time. I want to just end with this.

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Somebody might say, you can't demand or command someone to love.

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You ever hear that? You can't command someone to love.

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You can't demand someone's love. People give this false portrait of God in the

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Reformed theology that He's like this oppressive. They call Him, watch. You ever heard this one? They call

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God a divine rapist in Calvinism, right? He's a divine rapist who forces

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His love onto people. First of all, what a fiction. To spin something like that and say that God takes a dead person, raising their life, that that's divine rape.

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God giving mercy and salvation to unworthy people, that's divine rape. But watch, when someone says this, you can't command somebody to love somebody.

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Can't do it. That's not real love. What I would say is, do you read your Bible, bro? Because what are the two greatest commandments?

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What does God command everybody as His greatest commandments? What's the first one?

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Love God. What's God doing? Commanding His image bearers that He's made out of His love to love

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Him. How can God command people to love Him? Are you ready? Because He's worthy of it.

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And not to love God who is worthy of love is wicked. This is why

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God can command people to love Him, because He's infinitely worthy of it and valuable.

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And God commands us to love one another. Now I would say the summary of this entire series should be understood in this.

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The holy God of the universe, who is all powerful, just, righteous, blameless, chose to set

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His love upon unworthy people who, if left to themselves, would have continued down the path of death and destruction, and they would have done it willingly.

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God raises dead people to life and gives to them what they could never do in themselves.

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So watch, watch. So that He could love them and they would love

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Him back. I think that that's a beautiful message.

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And brothers and sisters, I believe that it's a message worth dying for. And again,

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I'll say I believe that if we lose these truths, we ultimately lose the gospel.

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And so I do believe that there are tertiary issues, side issues, adiaphora on the side as Christians that we should never divide over and separate over.

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But then there are core issues like the gospel of grace that we have to fight with all we've got for.

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These truths transform. Don't lose them. Let's pray. Father, please bless the message that went out today for Your glory.