Free, Or Not?

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, happy Sunday, and happy Memorial Day weekend. Thank you for joining us in worship today.

I’d like to touch upon a few announcements as we begin our service.

The men’s group won’t be meeting tonight due to the holiday, but we’ll be having a cookout on June 4 at 4 pm.

During the month of June, our missions group will be helping Love INC as they minister to local families by collecting paper products. You can leave those either at the front doors or in Randal’s Sunday school classroom.

Starting next Saturday, the Coffeys will be trading the Virginia mountains for the Carolina shore. Harvey will be delivering next Sunday’s sermon, and I promise to think about you all while I spend seven days fishing on the beach.

Lastly, on Friday, Joanne and I had a lovely dinner with several of the town pastors. We’ve spent the past six months or so looking for a neutral place here in town to hold a week-long community revival, and it just seemed like every time we thought we’d found a place, that door was closed for one reason or another.

The goal was to find a location that is centralized, highly visible, and offers plenty of space for tents and booths and food and activities for kids, and the pastors finally agreed that they’d found the perfect place — right here, at Stuarts Draft Baptist Church.

I’ve spoken with the deacons and they have approved the use of our church grounds. The date for that week-long revival will be July 23-29, with a special Sunday morning service with all of the churches together on the 30th. I’ll have a lot more information on the revival in the coming weeks, along with plenty of opportunities for you all to help prepare the church grounds and to volunteer during that week as many of our local churches unite as Christ’s church to bring light back to our town.

Amy, do you have an announcement this morning?

Jesyka, do you have anything this morning?

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Let’s pray:

Father we’re grateful for this Sunday morning to gather together to worship your continued goodness, love, and protection for your world, your church, and all people. We’re especially thankful today for the freedoms that we all enjoy and for the lives which were sacrificed in the defense and preservation of that freedom. Be with us now as we offer our voices, our hearts, and our minds to your glory. Fill us with truth and the power of your Spirit. For it’s in Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

Sermon

Tomorrow is a sacred day for our nation, when we honor our fallen men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice in order to preserve the most precious and basic human right of freedom. For centuries the wisest of us have made it clear that the source of that freedom isn’t human at all. Freedom is a divine gift, and along with that gift comes the responsibility to safeguard it and use it wisely.

Our founding fathers were clear on that point. Thomas Jefferson based the reasoning for the Revolutionary War upon the God-given freedom that every person possesses. In the Declaration of Independence, he wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident” — meaning these truths are obvious and need no explanation — “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” — rights that cannot be taken away — “that among these are life, liberty,” — meaning freedom — “and the pursuit of happiness.”

Freedom is a right given to us by God and protected in our nation’s constitution. It is the freedom to choose how we will live our lives, to believe or not believe according to our own conscience, and to act according to our wills without the influence of anyone or anything else. That is what our fallen heroes died defending. We honor them by saying their sacrifice is worth such a high and terrible cost, because free will is central not just to our faith, but to our entire society. Our court and political systems are based on the belief that we are free to make choices but are also responsible for those choices. The American dream is based on the belief that freedom allows anyone to make something of themselves no matter who they are.

But in the past decade or so, the idea of free will has been challenged by a very unlikely source. Many scientists now say that we don’t have free will at all. Every choice we make is actually an illusion, because our choices are determined by things we aren’t aware of and have no control over. Things like how our brains are wired, or how we were raised as children, or what part of the country we live in, or a thousand other things. If that’s true, then we’re not actually responsible for anything we do because we have no choice in doing it. It’s not our fault, it’s our parents’ fault, or our past, or society, or chemistry.

Of course these same scientists understand the dangers of people actually believing this. If no one is accountable for anything, then our entire civilization will break down. So their advice is to understand that you don’t have free will at all, but act like you do. In other words, the best scientific advice right now is to live a lie.

Are we free? Or is every choice we make really not a choice at all? That’s actually an argument that’s been going on in Christian circles for a very long time.

We’re beginning a new series on the internet’s most-asked questions about the Christian faith. Last week we answered the question of why a loving God sends people to hell. Today we’re going to look at a question that touches on that, because, if you remember, hell is a choice made by our own free will. But when it comes to God, are we really free, or has God already decided everything?

The Bible is filled with verses that say we are completely free to make choices in life, including whether or not to accept Christ as our Savior.

“I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse,” God says in Deuteronomy 30. “Therefore, choose life.” The fact that God says to choose life means that he also allows us room to choose death.

And so you have some Christian teachers say that our choices are what determine God’s actions. He keeps the universe running and knows what the end will look like, but because our choices come first, God doesn’t quite know how we’re going to get there yet.

But it just doesn’t seem right that there’s something God doesn’t know. That can’t be right, because the Bible says that God is sovereign. God knows and controls everything. In fact nothing can happen without his approval. Nothing is hidden from him.

For as many places in the Bible that say we’re completely free, there are just as many that say God has planned out every detail and every moment according to his perfect will, and that includes us. Psalm 139 says that our days were written in God’s book before we were even born. And so you have other Christian teachers who say that ultimately we don’t have any freedom at all, because God’s already decided everything.

But that doesn’t sound right either. Because if that’s true, then it can only mean that a God of complete and unfailing love, a God who wants nothing more than to forgive and show mercy, gave life to billions of people that he knew beforehand would end up in hell. Martin Luther believed this. He said that God has already determined everything, including who would go to heaven and who would go to hell. But he also struggled a great deal with that idea, even calling it offensive.

So which is it? Are we free, or has God settled everything? That’s the question we’re going to look at today.

There’s a story in the Bible where human freedom and God’s sovereignty take center stage, and that’s found in Moses’s struggle against Pharaoh for the lives of the Israelites. Turn with me to the book of Exodus, chapter 9. Let’s read verses 12-21:

But the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as the LORD had spoken to Moses.

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Rise up early in the morning and present yourself before Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. For this time I will send all my plagues on you yourself, and on your servants and your people, so that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth.

“For by now I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth. But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth. You are still exalting yourself against my people and will not let them go.

“Behold, about this time tomorrow I will cause very heavy hail to fall, such as never has been in Egypt from the day it was founded until now. Now therefore send, get your livestock and all that you have in the field into safe shelter, for every man and beast that is in the field and is not brought home will die when the hail falls on them.”’”

Then whoever feared the word of the LORD among the servants of Pharaoh hurried his slaves and his livestock into the houses, but whoever did not pay attention to the word of the LORD left his slaves and his livestock in the field.

And this is the word of the Lord.

Let’s back up just a moment and remember how Moses and Pharaoh got to this point. God has instructed Moses to go to Pharaoh and ask him to let his people go. Moses goes and makes the request, but Pharaoh refuses. So God appears to Moses and promises to bring the Israelites out of captivity, and in Exodus 7 verse 3, God says he will do all of this by hardening Pharaoh’s heart.

So the first question we have to answer is what hardening Pharaoh’s heart means. Because it sounds like God changes the kind of person Pharaoh is in order to free the Israelites. But that’s not true. There is no doubt at all that God foresees everything, but that doesn’t mean he causes what happens.

There’s no evidence at all that Pharaoh had any sympathy for the Israelites. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The Israelites were slaves. They were mistreated and beaten. In the first chapter of Exodus alone, the Pharaohs had enslaved them, demanded the murder of all the male Hebrew babies who were born, and commanded every Egyptian that if they saw a Hebrew baby, they were to throw him into the Nile.

That’s the pharaoh that Moses and Aaron meet. And after that first meeting, Pharaoh makes life even harder for the slaves. He wants them so exhausted that they won’t listen to what Moses and Aaron have to say. So even before Moses arrives, Pharaoh’s heart is already hard.

After Pharaoh refuses, Moses goes to him again. He and Aaron perform a miracle. But Pharaoh’s magicians do that same miracle, and so in chapter 7 verse 13, Pharaoh’s heart is hardened, just as God said. And that’s when God sends the plagues.

First, the Nile is turned to blood. But the magicians can do that too, so Pharaoh’s heart becomes hard.

Then the frogs come. The magicians manage to bring frogs as well, but they can’t get rid of them. Pharaoh asks Moses to pray that the frogs will leave. Moses does, but once the frogs hop back into the Nile, Pharaoh hardens his heart.

After that come the gnats. The magicians can’t do this one though, and they tell Pharaoh that this is God at work. But Pharaoh won’t listen because his heart is hardened.

The flies are next. Finally, Pharaoh agrees to let the people go. But when the plague ends because of Moses’s prayer, Pharaoh hardens his heart again.

The livestock die. Pharaoh’s heart is hardened.

Then every Egyptian gets boils on their skin, and now we come to verse 12 of chapter 9 — “But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as the Lord had spoken to Moses.”

So on the one hand, God is using Moses to perform miracles that have never been seen. And on the other hand, God seems to be treating Pharaoh like a puppet on a string. So how are we to think about the fact that Pharaoh’s free will seems to be gone? It’s hard for us to blame Pharaoh for having a hard heart if, like it says in verse 12, God is the one doing the hardening.

But let’s look at what the Bible says. Again, God says back in chapter 7 that he will harden Pharaoh’s heart. But we’ve already seen that Pharaoh already had a problem with his heart even before Moses and Aaron arrive.

And here’s the key to understanding this whole question about our free will and God’s sovereignty — there are ten plagues that happen in Exodus, and each of those ten plagues involve Pharaoh’s heart being hardened.

But in the first five of those plagues, Pharaoh hardens his own heart. He chooses to of his own free will. It’s not until the sixth plague here in verse 12 that God himself actually moves in and hardens Pharaoh’s heart.

God uses Pharaoh’s choices to carry out his own sovereign will. Look at verse 15. God tells Pharaoh that because he’s hardened his own heart and made all of these wicked choices, a point has now been reached that God could justifiably strike Pharaoh down and kill him. But in verse 16, God says he’s not going to do that. Instead, he’s going to use Pharaoh in a way that sends a powerful message to the entire world. But he’s not going to do that by removing Pharaoh’s free will. Pharaoh’s already hardened his own heart. God’s just not going to step in and offer Pharaoh a chance to fix it.

Remember a few weeks ago when we talked about that phrase “and it came to pass.” Remember the sin that was crouching at Cain’s door, and how Cain kept giving in to that sin over and over to the point where killing Abel was the only possible result? It’s the same thing with Pharaoh.

Every one of us has free will over any decision we make. But since we have to make thousands of small decisions every day, we build up habits that help us make those decisions automatically. So if you decide to react in anger to something, you’re going to harden your heart. Then it’ll be a little easier to react that same way the next time, and even easier the time after that, until before you know it, you’re going to react with anger automatically. You started out by hardening your own heart, but because of those habits you don’t correct, your heart starts hardening even more on its own.

That’s what’s happened with Pharaoh. He’s reached a point of no return, and that’s what leads God to say what he does in verse 15. But those words also mean something we don’t like to hear — if you go long enough without obeying God, if you keep on and keep on telling him no your entire life, you can reach a point where forgiveness isn’t possible anymore. If you die without God, you’re going to spend eternity without God. Pharaoh has reached that point. He’s hardened his own heart to the point where it can never be anything different, so now God steps in to speed things along. He’s not taking Pharaoh’s choices away, he’s simply bringing about what those choices will ultimately lead to.

Think of it in terms of how World War II ended. Germany had surrendered, but the Japanese were still fighting on even though their eventual defeat was certain. Thousands of American troops were dying across the South Pacific, and the United States had only two choices left: either we would have to invade Japan, which would cost tens of thousands of American lives and stretch the war out for years more. Or they could use the most terrible and destructive weapon in human history and drop atomic bombs on two Japanese cities and force the emperor to surrender. An agonizing choice, and one that resulted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki being destroyed. It was an overwhelming blow, and it was tragic, but the war ended just 15 days later.

God’s doing much the same in verses 15 and 16. Pharaoh’s already hardened his heart, he’s incapable of changing, and so God’s going to harden Pharaoh’s heart even more so that the Israelites will be freed as soon as possible. Pharaoh is completely free, but God’s will is still being completely fulfilled. It’s not either Pharaoh is completely free or God controls everything. It’s Pharaoh is completely free and God controls everything.

That’s such an important point for all of us. We know that one day everyone who’s ever lived will be judged by whether they believe that God exists and Christ is his son. But the very fact that we’ll be judged by that decision means that we have to have a God-given freedom to make that decision. The fact that God says in verse 15 that he’s in a position to judge Pharaoh means that Pharaoh had to have the free choice to accept God’s offer of grace before that point.

And Pharaoh did have that chance. If you look back through these plagues, sometimes Pharaoh’s heart is like a rock, and other times it grows a little softer. When the magicians can’t get rid of the plague of frogs, Pharaoh pleads for Moses to pray to God. When the flies come, Pharaoh asks Moses to plead for him. God answers both of those prayers. He has mercy on Pharaoh. He offers grace. But then Pharaoh goes right back to his old way of living and treating the Israelites. So God finally says to Pharaoh, “Okay, your will be done,” and hardens his heart.

It can be such a hard thing for us to hold both of those things in our minds, that we are completely free and that God is completely sovereign over our lives. God causes all things to happen, but he does it in a way that we are still accountable for the choices we make, and that those choices are real and have real eternal results.

Exactly how God keeps those two things together isn’t explained in scripture. It’s one of those mysteries that we can’t understand in this world but will understand in heaven. But just because we can’t explain how we have freedom and that God controls everything doesn’t mean that we have to deny one or the other. It just means that if we’re going to accept what the Bible teaches, then we have to accept both of those things as true.

Hebrews 1:3 says that Jesus upholds the universe by the word of his power. Paul writes in Ephesians 1 that as believers, we have been predestined according to the purpose of Christ, who works all things according to the counsel of his will. Both of those verses make it seem like we don’t have any freedom at all. But that’s because we’re confusing what freedom really is.

Our human idea of freedom, the sort of freedom guaranteed in our Constitution, basically means that we’re the bosses of our lives. That government can’t tell us how to live. But that’s not what the Bible calls freedom. In fact, that kind of freedom is impossible.

If we go back to Hebrews 1:3, if Christ is the one holding together the entire universe, then no one can do anything apart from Christ’s will.

And if we go back to Ephesians 1, if Christ is working all things according to his will, then it’s impossible for us to act outside of God’s control.

Freedom in the Bible just means that in any situation, we are free to choose what we most want to do. But just like Pharaoh, those choices have consequences. If we do right and obey God, he will reward us, and things will go well for us both in this life and in eternity. But if we do wrong and disobey God, he will discipline us and maybe punish us, and things will go bad for us.

Think of it this way: there are two farmers. The first farmer chooses to take great care of his field. He works hard and does everything he’s supposed to, preparing the ground and planting the seeds. The rains come. The sun shines. His crops grow, and he’s blessed.

But the second farmer doesn’t take care of his field at all. He chooses to not work it and won’t take responsibility for all the things he has to do. The rains come, but because of his choices, the ground turns to mud. Then the sun shines, but because of his choices, the ground becomes hard as clay.

God creates the circumstances for both of those farmers. He sends the rain and the sun and is in complete control. But because of the free choice of one farmer to be responsible and the other farmer to not be responsible, one of them prospers while the other’s heart becomes as hardened as his field.

You have to start thinking of yourself as a farmer. Your life is your field, and the blessings of your life are the crops that grow in your field. But guess what? You can’t grow anything. Farmers know this better than anybody. Farmers know they can’t grow crops. Only God can do that. God sends the rain. God sends the sun. God makes the seeds sprout and grow. All a farmer can do is create an environment that makes growth possible. He has to choose to plow his field and keep the soil fertile. He has to choose to plant his seeds. He has to choose to keep the weeds out. If he does those things, then the rain and sun that God sends is going to turn his field into a paradise, and he has no one to praise for that but God. But if he chooses not to do any of that, the rain and sun is going to turn his field into a picture of hell, and he has no one to blame for that but himself.

All of this should encourage us not only to obey God, but to be very careful of how we live our lives. He wants us to take an active part in his work, which means that God in some way governs the universe through our own actions. If we live our lives by the wisdom and care that God says we should, those decisions will open the door to his blessings. The opposite is also true. If we see some difficulty that could come in the future but don’t use that wisdom and care to avoid it, God will use that choice to allow that difficulty to happen.

A great example of this is prayer. All through the Bible, prayer is held up as a specific kind of action that changes the course of events. There are plagues that happen to the Egyptians that won’t end until Pharaoh asks Moses to pray. Prayer is immensely powerful in a believer’s life, but it’s also the first thing that goes when we start thinking that God’s already planned everything out. If God’s already decided everything, why bother praying at all? Why pray for this person to be made well, or for revival, or for success, when God already made up his mind about it before the creation of the world? Nothing we say to God is going to make any difference at all.

But what if God’s ordained things so that your prayer is the one thing that will bring about His action? What if your prayer is like that first farmer being diligent in preparing his fields so God can answer with rain and sun? What if your decision not to pray is like the second farmer who didn’t prepare his fields for the rain and sun that God was going to send? In both cases, whether we pray or not, God’s sovereignty works through our choices.

The Bible is filled with stories that focus on that same idea. In Isaiah 38, King Hezekiah becomes sick to the point of death. He prays to God to save him, and God says through Isaiah that Hezekiah will get better. God’s even going to add fifteen more years to his life. But God also gives Isaiah a prescription for some medicine that will cure Hezekiah’s illness — a cake of figs. God’s promised the king fifteen more years of life, but that’s only going to happen if the king chooses to take the medicine.

In Acts 27, which is one of my favorite stories in the Bible, Paul is in a boat when a massive storm hits. An angel appears and tells Paul not to worry, no one in the boat is going to perish. When the sailors are afraid the ship will run aground, they try to get into the lifeboats to save themselves. But Paul says no, if you do that, you’re going to die. Now how can both of those be true? How can the angel say to Paul that no one’s going to perish, but Paul say to the sailors that unless they stay in the ship, they’re going to die? That can only be true if both God is sovereign and our choices matter.

And it has to be that way. It must be, “Both God is in complete control of everything and we have free will,” and it can’t be, “Either God is in complete control of everything or we have free will.” Because if you think your choices count most of all and everything depends on you, what’s going to happen? You’re going to be paralyzed, aren’t you? You won’t even be able to get out of bed in the morning for fear that one wrong choice is going to wreck your entire life.

We have a much too high opinion of our own wisdom if we think that our choices can ruin God’s plans. When I was 30, I realized what an idiot I was at 20. When I was 40, I realized what an idiot I was at 30. Now that I’m 50, I realize what an idiot I was at 40. So guess what that means? It means I’m an idiot at 50, too.

But as bad as it is for us to think that everything depends on our own free will, it’s just as bad to think that nothing does. If we think that God’s already settled everything and nothing depends on us, we’re just going to be lazy. We won’t take control of our lives. We’ll just drift through our days accomplishing and becoming nothing, and before we know it, our lives will be over. We’ll have missed out on everything that God had for us simply because we didn’t choose to become involved in God’s work in and around us. Saying that you’re just going to trust God to work everything out without doing all you can to allow God to work everything out is more than negligence, it’s a sin.

Our free will gives us a dignity that is missing in a lot of people today, and we have to reclaim that dignity. God has the power to transform your life, but he can’t let that power into you unless you’re out there taking care of your field. The story of Pharaoh’s heart shows us that our lives are a creation of the choices we make. It also shows us that God’s perfect will can never be broken.

So does everything depend on you? Yes. And does everything depend on God? Also yes. Your life with God is not a 50/50 proposition. It’s not half depends on you and half depends on him. It’s not 75/25 or 80/20 or 90/10 either. It’s 100/100. It’s putting all of your effort into making sure your field is in the perfect condition for growth, and it’s God putting all of his effort into sending the rain and sun and growing your seeds. It’s completely up to you and completely up to him. That’s hard to get into our minds sometimes, but that’s exactly what the Bible says.

God has given us free will, which means we are free to make any choice we want. But God is also sovereign over all creation, which means he already knows every choice we’ll ever make. Both of those things work together to fulfill his perfect will for your life, and this world, and for eternity. And that actually creates the perfect recipe for your success and for the meaning that your life needs, because it means that the choices in your life matter, but you can’t screw it up beyond fixing because God’s in charge. That’s real freedom. That’s a freedom worth protecting. And if you’d like to enjoy that freedom, I invite you down front as we sing our closing hymn.

Let’s pray:

Father how fearfully and wonderfully have you made every single person here. You have given us a greater dignity and honor that we often realize by offering us a free will to choose whether we will cling to you or cling to ourselves, whether we will honor your truth or the world’s falsehoods, whether we will follow your paths or our own. And yet Father how wonderful it is that no matter how much we stumble, no matter how much we sin, no matter the poor choices we make because of our own limitations, we can never stray from the good and perfect path you have ordained for our lives. Your way is perfect. Your love is never-ending. Your will cannot be overcome. Bring us each day to seek your wisdom for our lives, and lead us in the paths of righteousness for your name’s sake. For it’s in Christ’s name we pray, Amen.