Chosen...
Notes
Transcript
Election is Biblical
Election is Biblical
The first truth that we in this text is this: God’s electing of sinners to salvation is biblical and faithful. There are literally no theologians who disagree with this point. There are not pastors who rightly handle and understand that word of God who question this. We may feel uncomfortable discussing it, but election is biblical.
The question isn’t does God elect? The question is how does God elect.
There are three major ways to answer this question. First there is the Wesleyan/Armenian view of election. This view sees God as electing those who God knows will elect to choose him.
This view is held by many who would hold that God chooses those he knows would choose him. But there’s a problem with this. First in our text, God is not choose in Isaac, Jacob or Moses because of what they have done.
though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls—
It’s not based on their works but on God.
Second God chooses people, not actions. God’s choice is because of God’s mercy.
A second view is the view of Hard Determinism, or Double Predestination. This view holds that men and women are chosen by God for damnation.
This too has problems.
For how can man be morally responsible if he is “forced” to sin and is not free to repent? This view, known as double predestination is also untenable.
There is a third way, and a way that I feel is both faithful to scripture and at the heart of the Baptist Faith and Message, the Confession that we as Baptist hold to:
"Election is the gracious purpose of God, according to which He regenerates, justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies sinners. It is consistent with the free agency of man, and comprehends all the means in connection with the end. It is the glorious display of God's sovereign goodness, and is infinitely wise, holy, and unchangeable. It excludes boasting and promotes humility. All true believers endure to the end."
This view, which is asserted throughout scripture is called Compatibilism.
Compatibilism Defined
Compatibilism Defined
To understand what I see in this text and to understand how God works out our salvation one must understand what Compatibilism is:
Put simply, Biblical compatibilism means that God's sovereignty in all things is compatible with human freedom, or in other words, it claims that determinism and free will are compatible. Rather than limit the exercise of God's sovereignty in order to preserve man's freedom, what we see throughout scripture is our freedom works within the sovereign plan and will.
D. A. Carson notes it like this:
God is absolutely sovereign, but his sovereignty never functions in Scripture to reduce human responsibility. We are responsible for our sin.
Human beings are responsible creatures—that is, they choose, they believe, they disobey, they respond, and there is moral significance in their choices; but human responsibility never functions in Scripture to diminish God’s sovereignty or to make God a slave to our choices.
This is the testimony of scripture: God is Faithful to Save, Man is Responsible and in Need of a savior.
God: Faithful to Save
God: Faithful to Save
What we first find in our scripture is the faithfulness of God to save. In this text, Paul notes the SURITY of Salvation.
God saved Isaac and Jacob because He chose to save them.
God is absolutely sovereign in his choosing.
As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
W. A. Criswell, writer of the Baptist Faith and Message and former pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas Texas in his sermon entitled: Election: The Achievement of God’s Sovereign purpose notes, “This revelation of the mind and purpose of God, the sovereignty of the Lord in human history, in creation, in destiny and consummation, this doctrine of the elective purpose of God is inwoven in all of Scripture, all of it, every part of it. It’s a part of the fabric of the Holy Scriptures themselves, the elective purpose of God.”
It is God who has set into motion all of human history. It is God who has purposed all that has happened to accomplish his divine will.
The Lord of hosts has sworn: “As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand,
This is the purpose that is purposed concerning the whole earth, and this is the hand that is stretched out over all the nations.
For the Lord of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back?
And again:
Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it; shout, O depths of the earth; break forth into singing, O mountains, O forest, and every tree in it! For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and will be glorified in Israel.
Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb: “I am the Lord, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself,
who frustrates the signs of liars and makes fools of diviners, who turns wise men back and makes their knowledge foolish,
who confirms the word of his servant and fulfills the counsel of his messengers, who says of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be inhabited,’ and of the cities of Judah, ‘They shall be built, and I will raise up their ruins’;
who says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd, and he shall fulfill all my purpose’; saying of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be built,’ and of the temple, ‘Your foundation shall be laid.’ ”
God has set all of human history into motion and he has set the salvation of the elect into motion. God, before time began, knew you and purposed to save you and not because of who we were, not because we were morally superior or morally just, but for his own divine will.
The same God who stretched the heavens above is the same God who all of human history.
What this means is that God saves men.
But does this mean that God sends men to hell?
NO!
Look with me.
Man: Responsible for their sins
Man: Responsible for their sins
Here’s a great truth of this text, though God chooses to save some, he never sends people to hell. Everyone who goes to hell chooses to reject the loving offer of salvation.
Christ’s election is a people; and for us, it is the grace and mercy of God extended to our souls [Ephesians 2:7-8; Titus 3:5].
The election of God, the appointment of God, the ordination of God, is never to damnation and hell. God’s election is always to heaven and to salvation. The election is never to condemnation, to judgment.
Pharaoh, Esau and every man and woman who are damned are damned because they reject, freely, the free offer of salvation. As Criswell notes, “When men are damned, they damn themselves. When men go to hell, they choose hell for themselves. God never does that. A man damns himself always. There is no such thing as an appointment, as an election, to hell.”
God in his mercy chooses to save men from sin.
Dr. Barnhouse agrees:
Romans—Righteousness From Heaven (Theodicy C: God’s Justice Continued (vv. 19-29))
“The Bible nowhere announces the predestination of the lost. (This) would hold that the choice of Jacob implies the reprobation of Esau. Both of these brothers were born in sin; they both had the nature of Adam. They both grew up in sin. They both were children of wrath, disobedient by nature. If there had been any merit in these two sons, God would have been unjust in not rewarding that merit. The choice of one deserving man over another deserving man would have been favoritism. When we see that the two were equally undeserving, the whole picture becomes different. Everything that is said in the entire Bible about the nature of fallen man may be said—must be said—about both Jacob and Esau. God determined, for causes that are to be found in Himself and have not been revealed to us, to show favor to Jacob.
The God of the universe is not answerable for what he does, but we are answerable for our rejection of God’s sovereign grace.
Election also does not mean that there will be people in heaven who do not want to be there, nor will there be people in hell who wanted to be saved but could not be because they were not elect. We all choose what we will do with the offer of salvation. We must recognize that, apart from God’s supernatural work in the life of a sinner, you will always choose to reject God and rebel against Him.
This is the mystery: This is the paradox taught in scripture: God is sovereign and he does as he will, man has the free choice to accept or reject God’s offer of salvation. These two which seem contradictory are not: In God’s glorious sovereignty he chooses to save the whosoever will and the whosoever will are those redeemed before the foundation of the world.
This is the beauty of the gospel. This is the joy of election: If you are God’s then you can rest in the knowledge that NOTHING can separate you from his love!
Today, you have a choice and I have a choice: Today you can damn your soul eternally to hell.
But God in his mercy has interceded into human history to bring his son so that man might be saved.
“Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.
And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
All of the gospel points to this truth: We must decide what we will do with the savior. Today, if you are saved, it is because of the elective purpose of God in your life. God has loved you before the foundation of the world, sent his son to die for you, and made a way for your salvation.
But today if you choose to reject him, then you have chosen damnation and hell.
That’s it. Like Pharaoh before you who chose not to let God’s people go and thus damn himself.
The choice is your. Choose for yourself today.
