Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

"Compatilbilism"

That the free will of man is compatible with the Divine Decree

Gen.

I. Paul’s Passion (vs.

1-5)

II.

Paul’s Proclamation (vs.

6-8)

III.

God’s Prerogative (vs.

9-29)

We ended last time together really getting into the deep end of the deep end of the pool.

We have been discussing all of these things and realizing that God loved and chose Jacob and that He hated and did not chose Esau.

That is was not based on foresaw faith or rejection in either one of them for the Bible is clear, and we looked at those verses, that God does not decide to do what He does because of foreseen faith or rejection in men.

Because what you need to realize is that if God”looked down through the corridors of time” all He would see are a bunch of dead people, right?

Biblically speaking, without the assistance of Grace, He would not see people accepting or rejecting, because He would see a bunch of dead people.

Now, just to be far and complete, the synergist will say that they believe that the assistance of Grace is necessary for people to be saved.

But the problem with their view is that they say that at the end of the day the autonomous free will of man can override the sovereignty and the grace of God; and that is what is offensive about synergistic doctrine.

I think a great Biblical example of this is found in the Gospel of .

You remember that in , a very close friend to our Lord, Lazarus, was sick to the point of death.

He was from Bethany and Jesus was very close to he and his two sisters, Mary and Martha.

The Scriptures tell us that when Jesus had heard that Lazarus was sick He waited two days before He left.

Then in verse 14.

There was no pony express or Jerusalem Postal Service around to bring Christ a telegram, this was Divine power at work.

When Jesus arrived at Bethany, he was greeting by Martha.

In other words, I believe that you can heal him but I do not believe that you can raise him from the dead.

So there is no doubt here that we are speaking about a dead person.

No, notice what happened.

That is the reason that Jesus waited.

Because there was an old urban legend that after a person dies that their spirit hovered above the body for three days before going into Hades.

Perhaps Jesus was accommodating that legend so that there would be no doubt about what He was about to do.

The power of the Son of God goes to the tomb of a dead person and commands that life enter that body once again and it obeys His voice.

He did not “look down the corridors of time” to see if Lazarus was going to rise when He said “come fourth” and then determine that would happen, such is ridiculous.

He commands and it happens.

And then we began to really speaking about God’s prerogative in doing what He wants to do.

How that God will have “mercy on whom He will have mercy”.

Let me ask you a question.

Does that sound like that God feels obligated to give mercy?

No it does not.

But the problem with the theology of the synergist is that they really do believe that it is unfair and unjust God not to give equal opportunities to every single person and then what that person will do with it is up to them.

Now, that sound good and it sounds equal but it just is not Scriptural.

Paul gave us the illustration of Pharoah and how that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart each time that he said Israel could leave and then changed his mind.

As I said last time, right away the synergist will say that “But the Bible says that Pharoah hardened his own heart first and then God hardened it”.

Two points of that.

First, no one has ever argued that.

Men are born with hearts hardened toward the true and living God; which is why Pharoah worshipped a plethora of Gods before Moses ever arrived.

Second, and this is important, what was the Apostolic interpretation of the events in Exodus?

The mighty acts of God at work there is Exodus demonstrate two great truths.

He delivered Israel to exhibit His sovereign mercy on those whom He desires and He raised up and destroyed Pharoah to exhibit the corollary truth that He hardened those whom He desires.

Only His divine desire determines which will it be.

Moses was a Jew, whereas Pharoah was a Gentile; but both of them were sinners.

Both were murderers, and both witnessed God’s miracles.

Yet Moses was redeemed and Pharoah was not.

God raised up Pharoah in order to reveal His own glory and power, and God had mercy on Moses in order to se him to deliver His people Israel.

Pharoah was a ruler, whereas Moses was a slave under Pharoah.

But Moses received God’s mercy and compassion, because that was God’s will.

The Lord’s work is sovereign, and He acts entirely according to His own will to accomplish His own purposes.

The issue was not the presumed rights of either men but rather the sovereign will of God.

The word “harden” is “σκληρύνω” literally means “to be unyielding in resisting information, to be obstinate ”.

Now, this is the flip-side of grace, the concept of hardening.

Some have alleged that God is unjust is hardening somebody’s heart and then punishing them for doing what he could not possibly stop from doing one his heart was hardened.

Such an idea if utterly repugnant to everything that the Bible teaches about the character of God.

The question is, Shall the just of all the earth ever do wrong?

God is incapable of committing an unjust act, there is no dark side to his personality by which He would commit an outrageous act of injustice, such as would be the case if he hardened somebody and then punished him for being hardened.

We have to make a distinction between:

Active Hardening

Passive Hardening.

And we need to understand here that what we are reading is God’s punitive judgment against a wicked man.

Pharaoh was already wicked, he was already ill-disposed towards the things of God.

Out of Pharaoh’s heart came only wickedness continually.

To do something evil was Pharaoh’s sheer delight.

The only thing that could stop him would be the restraints and constraints that God placed upon him.

This brings in the concept of ‘common grace’.

We distinguish between special grace and common grace.

Special grace is for the redeemed: the grace of salvation.

Common grace is the favour or the benefits that all men, indiscriminately, receive at the hands of God.

One of the most important principles of common grace is the restraint of evil.

All God had to do to accelerate the wickedness of Pharaoh was to remove the restraints from him.

God had been keeping Pharaoh’s wickedness in check, providentially.

Even though Pharaoh was powerful, he was not all-powerful, he was still under the control of the providence of God.

Pharaoh would have liked to perform more wickedness than he actually did.

God wanted Pharaoh to resist the Exodus, in order that Israel would understand that deliverance came not through the beneficence of Pharaoh, but through the redemptive grace of God.

All God had to do was remove the restraints.

He did not have to create fresh evil in the heart of Pharaoh.

The evil disposition was already there, and so through a providential act that was both an act of punishment on Pharaoh, and an act of redemption to Israel, God removed the restraints and therefore passively hardened Pharaoh’s heart.

Some may say, “that’s not fair!

If God knew that Pharoah was going to commit sin, shouldn’t God have stopped him?”

But I ask the question, “Why should he?”

If God stops Pharoah from committing sin, and therefore reduces the number of his sin and the consequent amount of punishment, he would be doing Pharoah a favor, and a favor is what we call grace.

So had God not hardened Pharaoh’s heart, he would have been gracious to Pharoah.

But Paul is emphasizing the point that grace is voluntary.

God does not owe Pharoah grace; so God let’s him go on knowing full well that is going to sin, and knowing full well that when he sins he is going to be brought into judgment.

Hence, God’s activity towards Pharoah is an act of punitive judgment.

Pharoah gets justice, the people of Israel get mercy.

So there is no injustice involved in this act of hardening.

Then the Apostle introduces another imaginary objector; probably one that he had heard.

“Paul, that is not fair!

How can it be fair that God hardens whoever He chooses and then holds them responsible for their hardening when their destiny has already been divinely determined?”

Josua 11:18-20

Anyone who has taught the Doctrines of Grace or the Doctrine of God’s Sovereignty has encountered this reaction.

The best answer I give is the Apostolic answer.

In other words, it is blasphemous even to question, not to mention, deny God’s right to hold men accountable when they are captive to His sovereign will.