The National Center for Family Integrated Churches presents Election, the Doctrine of Salvation Begins with God, a message given by John Snyder at the Power of the Gospel Conference. In Psalm 145, the psalmist writes, One generation shall praise your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts. I will meditate on the glorious splendor of your majesty and on your wondrous works. Men shall speak of the might of your awesome acts and I will declare your greatness. They shall utter the memory of your great goodness and shall sing of your righteousness.

Let's pray. Our everlasting and unapproachably glorious God, We come to you, Father. We meet you at that great mercy seat where our kinsman sits enthroned. All our hope is in you. Lord, we've come together this weekend to know what is beyond knowledge, to lay hold of what is infinite.

We do pray that you would give us buckets large enough to take home with us, to take into our hearts all that you would have for us that we might live unto you. God, give us the grace to be self-forgetful and to see Christ rising on the horizon of our minds, to be laid hold of by the superior charms of that King. We pray that this weekend might be one small part of the fulfillment of that Psalm, that from generation to generation, from person to person, we would speak of the glorious splendor of Your majesty and of Your mighty acts. And that the great realities of the wonderful work of redemption, of the bringing us out of death and into life, that we might walk with you, that these things would produce in us a song that our hearts might be made happy in Him. Help us, Father, as we look at these things.

Illuminate our minds. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Well, as I mentioned earlier, my task is to unfold a great love story. And it is...I think we all love love stories.

One time when I was on vacation in the little country of Wales. Now I wasn't supposed to be really on vacation in Wales. I was supposed to be working on a PhD, but I was often on vacation. And my wife and I and our two little children at that time were at a farmhouse that someone let us go to to give us a break. And I got my hands on the six hour, I don't know how long it is, that six or the pride and prejudice that the BBC did years ago, you know what I'm talking about?

So I put the videotape in and my wife and I watched the first installment and, so I put another videotape in, we watched the next, And my wife says, there are six of these? I said, yeah. Now we have a two-year-old and a one-year-old. She says, I can't stay up any longer. I've got to be awake in the morning.

I can't do this. Let's go to bed. I said, okay. All right, you go on. And so she went on.

So I put the third one in and the fourth and the fifth and the sixth. And at four in the morning, she comes down the stairs with this wild look on her eyes. And right when they're rushing together, they're gonna get married, and the song's going, and all the romantic feelings and the sentiment are stirred to such a pinnacle. I turn and there's my wife and she says, I can't believe you! You know, so it all evaporated.

When I asked her to marry me, we were at a small Baptist college, I dressed up like Robin Hood. So I am a romantic and an optimist because I wore Kermit the Frog colored tights with a long shirt. All right? My kids say to her, I cannot believe you said yes, he wore Kermit the Frog colored tights. Well, I love love stories, but the love story that we're gonna be talking about tonight that we're going to unfold from Scripture, is not a fable.

And it's not based on sentiment. It is based on objective facts that God has revealed in Scripture. And So much of this will be beyond the telling, really. We're only going to come to the edges of his ways. But we do want to investigate the great doctrine of God's choice of his enemies to be his children, the doctrine of election.

In my mind, I think of our weekend as it's like we're a group of hikers and we're coming up, we're in a beautiful area of the country here. We're coming up to a great mountain and this mountain goes high above all other mountains. So if we can take a path up this mountain, the sights that we can see as we climb are breathtaking. It's not an easy ascent, but that's our task this weekend. We're going up the mountain of redemption, the mountain of the doctrines of our rescue and of God's everlasting glory through that.

Now along this mountain as we climb, we can imagine kind of levels. Every level we go to, there are stopping places where we can come to a vantage point where we can stop in the climb and there's a clearing and we look out over the scene in front of us and it's beautiful. But then we climb a little further, we go to another great truth and we stop and we look out at the same scene from another truth and it's beautiful like it was before, but there's a new dimension and we go on and on and on looking at all of human history, looking at our lives from the different vantage points of the doctrines of redemption. Now, the many stopping points, regeneration, conversion, justification, sanctification, perseverance, assurance, glorification. The highest on this in a sense, not because it's greatest, but most mysterious, The mountain goes through the cloud bank.

And if we keep going, we have to go through the cloud bank. And there's a lot of mystery here. But if we can penetrate the cloud bank, There are views of breathtaking beauty there. It's the doctrine of election, the timeless choice of the eternal God to save a people, to give them to a son as a bride and as a church. Which path you take as you go up this mountain determines significantly which views you see.

Let me give you kind of what I mean by this. Imagine three different paths that go up the mountain. There are some paths that look like they will take you all the way up the mountain, but they don't take you up the mountain. They only go so far, because they really, they start at the wrong place. With regard to the doctrine of election, if we start at the place of me, if I'm the center of it all, if you're the center of the question, explain how God can make choices about my life without asking me.

What about me? If that's the path you're on and when we look at election, that's the constant question in your mind Then I fear that you're on a path that will not reach the doctrine of election John Wesley Deeply prejudiced against this doctrine from amazingly from his parents who were the children of Puritans. John Wesley wrote a sermon entitled Free grace to counteract what he felt was the dangerous preaching of men like George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards, men who mentioned the free grace of God. And so Wesley had a different idea of free grace. And this is what he wrote.

He said, predestination, and we could talk about many words under that category, for knowledge, for ordination, election. Predestination, he said, destroys all God's attributes at once. It overturns both his justice, his mercy, and his truth. It represents the most holy God as worse than the devil. Now that was Wesley's view.

That was ingrained. And then he's having an argument with an opponent, a straw man, and he says, but you say that you will prove this to me from scripture. Wait, what will you prove from scripture? That God is worse than the devil? No, it cannot be.

Whatever scripture proves it can never prove that. Well, we would agree. But you see Wesley's path. Having said in his mind that predestination was a doctrine that made God worse than the devil, there was no way that you could take Wesley to the Bible and show him that he was wrong. So he was on a path that only went partway up the hill and he missed a lot of the views.

There are people on a path that will not go all the way. They don't get the right words. Now some people are on a path that will reach the top. It will go all the way to the doctrine of election, but it's coming from a wrong angle. And so the views as you climb the hill and the view when you finally get to the top, it's not the beautiful views that the Scripture gives.

It's different, it's distorted. The way they approach the doctrine is wrong. And so unlike Wesley, they agree that the doctrine of election is a biblical doctrine, and they climb the hill and they get the right words on paper, they have the right doctrine. But how that doctrine has a hold of them is wrong. Right doctrine but wrong heart.

And they're not much better off than the person who's on a path that won't even take them far enough to understand election. Years ago, as a young pastor, I was listening to the Christian radio, and it was a broadcast by a very popular reformed pastor and speaker. And it was one of those hours where you could call in with questions. And so the topic was kind of Arminianism versus Calvinism. And somebody called in and said, can an Arminian be saved?

And the teacher on the program and all the people that were with him on the panel discussion all laughed. And they said, barely. That man certainly had good doctrine. He had the right words on election. But the attitude was wrong.

Of all people, a person who believes in the doctrine of God's choice of His enemies to be His children. Of all people, you must know that nothing has made you more savable than the other man. If the Arminian is barely saved, then the Calvinist is barely saved. There is a creeping pride that comes in if we go up the wrong path. Then let me give you the third path, and this is all introduction, all right?

So you can start your watch after this. There's a third path where it leads all the way to the top and the approach is from a better angle, a biblical angle. You start at the right place. You're starting with God. I want to know God as He really is, and whatever He reveals of Himself, I will love it for love of God.

If election is part of the glory of Jesus Christ, then I will love what the Bible says about election because I love Christ. Right words, right hearts, right results in a life. The Puritan William Ames said, theology is the science or the study of how to live unto God. Earlier today we heard William Perkins quoted, early Puritan, and Perkins said, theology was the study of how to live blessedly forever, how to live happily forever. Now that's our goal this weekend, to ask God, who are you?

And how have you dealt with our souls because we want to live unto you. It's really the goal of the whole life this weekend is just one part of that. Now, in order to deal with the doctrine of election, we're going to read a passage and use it kind of as our centerpiece in Ephesians chapter 1 beginning in verse 3 and going down through verse 6. The apostle writes, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of his grace by which he made us accepted in the beloved. That's a famous passage when people talk about this.

James Pettigrew Boyce was an early Southern Baptist theologian. His most popular book, I suppose, is the abstract of systematic theology. Boyce wrote this, the words elect, election, for ordination, chosen, for new, for knowledge, occur so frequently in Scripture that it is allowed by everyone that the Scripture teaches the doctrine of election of some kind. The chief controversy is as to what that doctrine is. Now, this is a doctrine of love and it is a doctrine that baffles us because it is a doctrine of God's love.

Like the love that Paul describes in Ephesians chapter 3, the love that chooses us before the foundation of the world for salvation is a love that is incomprehensible. Its length, its breadth, its height, and its depth are beyond the measure of any theologian. But this is what we're viewing. We're going to look at five questions that the Scripture answers, and it's always helpful to ask the right questions. If you come to the text and ask a wrong question, you generally get the wrong answer.

So we want to ask the questions that Scripture deals with. Let me give you these questions and then we're going to look at some applications. Now there are five questions, but some of them have sub-points, all right? So put your thinking caps on. Number one, who and whom are involved in the doctrine of election?

Here Paul says that God has blessed us with every possible spiritual blessing. Verse 4, just as, and then we have these three words, He chose us. Now I want us to just take the two words of those three, He and Us. There is such an infinite distance between the word he and the word us. And I know we don't believe it because we're very impressed with humanity and we have, like our generation, embraced oftentimes low views of God.

But there is an infinite gap there. So let's just stop and think about that. Who is the he? What you think of God fills the little word He there. He is separated from us in His essential glories, His bigness.

He is self-existing. He has no origin or end. He is self-sustaining. He owes no one for His existence. He is infinite and beyond our measure, beyond limitation.

He is incomprehensible. He is incomparable. No one else is in this category. When we say God is like, We're really like little children using baby language to describe a parent. God is in a category all to Himself.

He is solitary. We have never met another person like Him. He is unchanging or immutable, unaltered and undiminished. He is eternal. That means He's not just ancient, really old and going to last a long time.

He is actually above time, timeless. He is the Ancient of Days and yet He's eternally young. He is sovereign, ruling over all the worlds alone. He is all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful. The question has to come to your mind.

How can Paul align these words, he and us? He's separated not only by that great essential distance, his bigness, but he's separated from us by a moral distance that's equally shocking. He is holy, He is righteous, morally perfect and straight, He is just, He never bends the rules, He is a wrathful, avenging God, His whole being is bent toward wrath with regard to sin. He is against sin. How can we have the words he and us?

Then we take us. You, what are you like? You, every one of your children, every person you've ever met, of the family of Adam is by nature a person who is alienated from God. Ungodly, helpless, missing the mark, spiritually dead and unresponsive. And Paul says, enemies.

That's what he tells us in Romans 5, while we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Later, he says that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. Again, in verse 10 of chapter 5 of the book of Romans, if while we were enemies, what we are is the problem, not things we do. The problem is not outside of us and the cure within us. The problem is within us and the cure is outside of us.

The whole of our person has been warped by sin. Paul makes it clear in Romans 3, the understanding is warped, no one understands God, he says. The heart is warped, No one seeks after God, the will is warped, no one does good, no not one. And that goes not just for the sinful things that we're doing, but that goes for the good things that we do. The things that look so clean.

But the problem is they flow from the same fountain. And so they too were polluted. Years ago when I was in the UK, occasionally friends would come visit me. I was a student so I had no money. They were on vacation so they had money.

If they wanted a tour guide, I was the tour guide and the deal was they paid for all the gasoline, all the food, and all the lodging. So, one of my friends came over and we went to Scotland and we hiked through some of the lower highlands. We got to a stream and we were up in elevation high enough to drink from the water without worrying about purification. We knelt down by a stream and it was so clear, it was coming down the mountain, it was beautiful. I knelt down to drink, my friend was up a little higher in elevation and he calls down to me from the top of the mountain and says, don't drink it.

And I said, it's great, man. Look, it's clear. He said, no, it's not. So I climbed up and met him. And in the stream up at the top where it began, there was this dead bloated sheep carcass.

There's sheep everywhere. Everything in you, apart from the work of Christ, flows out of a stream that is polluted by something much more foul than a rotted sheep carcass. And no matter how clean it looks when it filters down to church and prayers and Bible studies, outside of Christ it's polluted. So the question is this, how can God choose us? That's the who and the whom of election.

And if we start there, we're on the right track. He chose us. That's the who and the whom. Second question, to what has He chosen us? Now, there are many scriptural descriptions and they are so wonderful, but we're only going to be able to really hit them and you can go back and look at them for yourself.

He has chosen us for a completely new relationship with Him, a new position before Him. He has brought us to Himself. Ephesians talks about that in verse four and five. He's chosen us to be holy. Now this is not primarily an ethical change, it's a change of position.

We were in this piece of property under this ruler, and we've been brought out of that field, out from underneath the rule of the enemy, and we've been brought into a completely new country. We've been brought into the field of Christ. We have been separated unto Christ by God's everlasting love. Now, there are moral implications. If we've been separated to a person who is morally clean, then when we walk with the person that's morally clean, then it would affect our morality.

In the next verse, he describes the same type of thing, but through a different metaphor, he says, we've been predestined to be adopted into his family through Christ, brought out of the courtroom and into the family room. In 1 Corinthians 1, 9 we read this, God is faithful through whom you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord." John Owen speaks about this passage in his book, Communion with God, and he argues, Paul is not saying that you're brought into fellowship with Christ, that's true, but it's something more wonderful here. The same fellowship that the Son of God has with the Father, you are now united to the Son, and by virtue of that union, you are called to that same fellowship. It's not just a new relationship, it's a new condition in your life. Second Thessalonians, Paul says, we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren, beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth.

Chosen for salvation, the big term there, the umbrella term, everything that is included in the rescue, You've been chosen for life. Romans 8, Paul writes this about a new practice. We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of Christ." Again, in John 15, we read this, "'You did not choose me, ' Christ says, but I chose you, and I appointed you that you would go and bear fruit." Ephesians 2. Ephesians 1, God chose us.

Ephesians 2, you are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. What a strange choice for his enemies. What are we chosen for? Third question, how can we be chosen for life when we are by nature opposed to God and we're not the kind of people that God ought to be attracted to. How can God be just and the justifier of those who believe in him?

How can God be clean and bring those who are filthy so close? And the answer lies in another choice or another election, which really, in my opinion, is more beautiful than the election of the sinner. And it is the election of Jesus Christ. In the book of Ephesians, over and over, we find it this way. God chose us in Him.

We just read through the book of Ephesians. In Him, in Him, in Him, in Him. God, to choose you, sinner, God must choose a champion to represent you. He lays his hand upon his son. He chooses him for the task of redemption.

Everything that's involved there. The incarnation, the carrying of the law, the suffering of the cross, the grave, the resurrection, and the throne. All is chosen for Christ. He is the Elect One. And by virtue of belonging to Him, of being placed in Him by the Spirit, All that He has accomplished is accomplished for you.

In Isaiah 42, God is talking about His Son. It's one of the servant songs, one of those songs that talk about the coming of the Messiah. And this is how it opens in verse 1. Behold, look, he says, my servant. He's speaking of the Messiah.

Behold, my servant, God says, whom I uphold, my elect one, my chosen one, in whom my soul delights. Do you see that? Before the Father could delight in any one of Adam's fallen race, He must delight in the one that would represent them. He must choose Him. In 1 Peter, when Christ is compared to that chief stone, He is called a choice stone or a chosen stone or other versions translated the elect stone.

I want us to stop and contrast the two elections that I just mentioned. God's election of His Son, He elects the Most High, His Son, eternal God, for the humility of becoming human. God, the God-man, is dependent upon Mary as a babe. God, the Law-maker, is chosen to carry the Law. The Clean is chosen to carry our filth.

The one who is nearest the Father is chosen to be banished from the Father so that he cries out on the cross, why have you forsaken me? The innocent is chosen to bear shame and punishment, the rich is chosen for poverty, and the one who is worshiped by angels is chosen for a life of mocking by men. And ask yourself, does Christ once in his life express some concerns about the Father's choice, that perhaps the Father hasn't been very careful here. The election of the Son to the humiliation required for Him to redeem us, He never questions the Father. He knows the Father perfectly, He trusts the Father perfectly, He loves the Father's will perfectly, and He embraces that election.

But what about us, the sinner? The sinner is chosen. Here's the enemy, chosen to be a friend. The one who is opposed to God is brought into the family of God. The one who is against God's laws is given a new heart.

The one who prefers himself to worship himself to God, is brought to love God. We're brought to life, to rescue, to adoption, to cleansing, to peace. We're given an inheritance that we would want and not the inheritance that we had in Adam. And what does humanity do with the choice of God? Well, we rise up.

Now, I'm not talking about American culture. I'm talking about American church culture, rages against the right of God to choose to save without asking our opinion, getting our vote. What a strange contrast, the response of the Son regarding the choices the Father made for Him and the response of us. Now, you may say, well, it's such a mysterious doctrine. It bothers us.

Well, we do have other mysteries in the Bible, don't we? We have the Trinity. I've never seen anybody get fighting mad over the Trinity. I've got some nasty emails over the Trinity, actually, but I've never actually been in a church where I preached and someone came up to me afterward and said, you're a heretic, you believe God is three in one. When we say that Jesus is God and man, the union of the divine and human in Christ is a great mystery that no one can explain, but I've never had anyone in church get angry with me for saying that Christ is God and man.

But when I say that God has the right to choose to save some of those who are rushing off the cliff of self, worshiping self, preferring death to the rule of God, and God sovereignly intervenes and brings a people to himself that no man can number. Well, I have had deacons before corner me and say that they would need to protect the children of the church against me, because the children might agree with that. They don't know enough, but no adult would agree with that. It's amazing our response, our pride, how visible it becomes when we hear that God has the right to make some choices. The fourth question, when did God choose?

Well, in Ephesians it says, before the world began. In 2 Timothy 1-9, it says that God saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and the grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began. Now, we don't want to think about time the way we experience time. God doesn't experience time like that. God is not limited to the unfolding of events.

He does not measure his life that way. He's not affected by time. He is above and outside of time. Time is a thing He's created. The timeless God, think of it, has, He describes, in eternity past, if we can speak that way, He has chosen to save his enemies.

He has chosen a bride out of Adam's fallen race. That means that there never was a time in the existence of the eternal being, There never was a day, there never was a time when the elect were not upon his heart, when they were not the delight of his soul. Jeremiah 31, 3, the Lord has appeared of old to me saying, yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, therefore, with loving kindness, I have drawn you. When did he choose?

Well, in eternity past. Why? Now, this is where we have to have some sub-points because this is the mystery. Why did God choose to save from Adam's fallen race a bride for his son? In the book of Ephesians, the answer that we are given is this.

It was his good pleasure or the kind intention of His will. When God describes His choice of Israel, He is equally vague. Listen to Deuteronomy 4, verse 37. Moses speaking to the Israelites, he says this, because he loved your fathers, therefore he chose their descendants after them. So why did he choose Israel?

Because he loved them. Why did He love them? Well, no answer is given. Deuteronomy chapter 7 verse 6 and 7, we find the same kind of picture. Moses says this, you are a holy people to the Lord your God.

The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love on you, nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples, but because the Lord loves you. It's a strange logic, isn't it? He loved you not because there was anything special about you, but because he loves you. But that really hasn't answered the question.

Here's what the Scottish Puritan, Samuel Rutherford said. He drew all his reasons for loving you, he drew them all from himself. None of them came from you. Now, there are a couple of popular theories going around in American religion that probably need to be put in the grave or we won't really be able to understand the beauty of election. The first is that there was something morally good in us.

Okay, we're sinners. But even though we're kind of dirty, there's still something about us that would attract a holy God, and that simply isn't what the Scripture says. Listen to what the book of Job says in chapter 15, verse 14 through 16. Here's the question. What is man that he should be pure?

Or he who is born of a woman that he should be righteous? Behold, God puts no trust in his holy ones and the heavens are not pure in His sight, how much less one who is detestable and corrupt man who drinks iniquity like water. We've already seen the great chasm between God and us morally, we are enemies, we are ungodly, we are sinners, we are helpless. We aren't just a cup that needs a little cleaning up and then we'll do, we are a cup that is completely smashed and ruined. There is nothing in you that God saw from eternity past that attracted His kind of love.

What is man? We are detestable. We are corrupt. We drink iniquity like water. I mean, he doesn't say we drink down sin like whiskey.

So the old cowboy movies. Down goes the shot. It's hard to get it down. Love the flavor. No, it's water.

Look, sin is not hard for us to get down. It doesn't burn. By nature, we are at ease with sin. We are familiar with every form of self-worship. Whatever we think would profit us, we're okay with it.

The only restrictions we put on our sin is when we are convinced that that sin would bring more harm than good. We drink it down like water. God has not loved us from eternity past because there was something in us that was morally attractive. The second lie that we need to put in the grave is this, that God has chosen to love us from eternity past because after He cleans us up, we'll be really useful to Him, and He needs people like us. We hear people talk this way all the time.

I've talked this way, perhaps you've talked this way. We know a person in our town that's lost. They have so many talents and people say, oh, if only they would get saved, just think what they could do for God. Think how many people they could reach. It's such a small view of God that we have.

In the book of Ephesians where we read about this choice, there is a wonderful way of putting this lie to death, and that is this little word blessed. Blessed be the God. Yulei getas. It's a Greek word that's only applied to God. It's never applied to angels, it's never applied to men, not Christians, not unbelievers.

It means a perpetual, unchanging happiness or blessedness. In verse 3, Paul is ascribing to God. He is admitting, he is recognizing there is one source of infinite perfection and completion and happiness, and there is only one who possesses this. It is His excellence, His perfection. He is infinitely complete in Himself.

He is overflowingly happy, overflowingly satisfied in Himself. God is the blessed God, Romans 9-5 says, the eternally blessed God. He is forever self-satisfied. He needs nothing. He lacks nothing.

We can add nothing to Him. He does not save anyone because He needs us. Now God shares this with us as we read in Ephesians. He blesses us with every blessing. But He needs nothing from us.

When He shares this with us, we become complete, we become happy. The Greeks used this word outside of Scripture to describe the kind of life that the gods must enjoy. And Paul says no. It's the kind of life that the least of believers have because they're united to the ever-blessed God. Now, the implication is this.

All that Paul talks about in chapter 1 and 2 and 3 of Ephesians, when he talks about his working out our salvation. It is all flowing from the one person who cannot need anyone else. He is perfectly satisfied. If you don't understand that, then you will warp the love of God and think that this is a barter. His great love for your small service.

Yes, his love's greater than my service, but it was a, I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine. You think that God is bribing you? You say to yourself deep within where nobody's listening, yes, I know that He loved me, I know that He chose me, I know that He saved me, I know that He's forgiven me, I know that He's adopted me, but after all, He's using me. In Job 35, we read these amazing words, verse 6 and 7 and 8. If you sin, what do you accomplish against God?

Is He toppled? No. Or If your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to Him? If you are righteous, ah, here we go. If you're righteous, what do you give to Him?

What does He receive from your hand? Your wickedness affects a man such as you and your righteousness a son of man. In other words, if you act wrong, you're affected. God isn't toppled off his throne. If you act in a right way, you're benefited.

God isn't added to in any way. He isn't augmented. Never think that God has chosen from eternity past his enemies to make them his friends, to make them his children, to give them to his son because there was something in them that was attractive. There was something about them that was useful. Paul says it this way, he didn't choose the great, he chose the least.

He didn't choose the good, he chose the worst. It ought to be as clear as day. But it's hard for us to believe. Now, here's another point under this question, why? This brings us to the question of justice and fairness.

And Sometimes people come to the doctrine of God's eternal choices like this and say, that's not fair, so it can't be true. Let's think about fairness or justice. Justice would be a better word. What is justice? Justice is not being equally nice to everybody, giving everybody an equal gift.

You know, like at Christmas, I have one sister. That's just it, me and my sister. I was so bad, my parents couldn't take anymore probably, but just me and my sister. Now, at Christmas, when we were young, my dad's mom, in all of her family, she had a lot of grandchildren and not one of them was a granddaughter except my sister. So Christmas would come.

I was in fifth grade and she got me Kermit the Frog blue jeans. You'd get killed wearing Kermit the Frog blue jeans. I mean I wasn't homeschooled, you know. There's a jungle out there if you're dressed like Kermit. Maybe this is the root of my other story, I don't know.

I'm sure I need help here, but my sister, I got one present, my sister got a boatload. I would sit there and count them. And so being a good American kid, I went to my parents and said, grandma gets her five presents to my one. It's not fair. Well, Really, I didn't have a reason to complain.

I didn't deserve a present, it's a gift. If she wanted to give me one and my sister five, that was up to her. Think of the justice of God. It's not just giving everyone equally what they want, what they think they need for happiness. It is giving what is right to everyone.

Justice is giving what is owed. Sin is an activity that brings a paycheck every time. The wages of sin are death. How do you feel about a boss that when it comes payday? He says look guys we got trouble I'm not gonna be able to pay you today or I've got to be out of town Friday I'm not gonna be here to write your check We say well, he's unjust But God is never unjust he pays Every time He pays what is due without exception.

You have earned death. If God is to be just, if you're to argue for the fairness of God, we have to say this, you have to give all of us what we've earned, which is death. Now, mercy is when Christ comes and takes our place, and He receives the paycheck, and we are not given what we deserve. Grace is when we're given the good things that we could never have deserved. Neither of these, mercy and grace, neither can ever be obligated.

If they are obligated, they're no longer mercy and grace, they're justice. You understand? If we say, you owe me grace, you owe me mercy, then what we're saying is, that would be justice. But mercy and grace are only given to people who can't afford justice. Mercy is mercy and grace is grace because it's not what you've earned.

It is mercy for God to rescue one soul, even if He damns the rest of Adam's fallen race. If God saves one person and damns every other person, regardless of what you do. Because we're sinners, is it fair, is it just? Well, it's not just in a sense to the one that was saved, it's mercy. But to the rest of us, it's just.

If we approach the doctrine of election from the path of demanding what we deserve from God, we will never understand the scripture. It will seem like God, that the doctrine of election is God holding the door shut and humanity is beating on the door saying, please let me in. I want to live for the God that I can't see and touch and feel. I want to live for someone bigger than me. I want to lay my rights down in the dirt and my righteousness down.

All My claims are nothing. I want to treasure someone other than myself. I want to quit being an imposter. And that has never happened in the history of humanity. Election is God choosing to send justice so as to exalt His glory.

Everyone will see that God is just on the judgment day. And the Scripture is so amazing when it says that the redeemed of the Lord will praise God's justice even when He is casting people to hell. But alongside justice, he sends the companions of mercy and grace. Charles Spurgeon talks about this idea that we think that we deserve Mercy, we think we deserve grace. He says this, man makes himself out to be a poor, weak creature who's been victimized by a law that is too rigid for his frailty.

He thinks he has a right to mercy, and a great uproar is made if we deny him any such right, and much anger is felt if we declare that mercy is the sovereign prerogative of God and may be exercised at God's own discretion. Rebellion against divine election is often founded on the idea that the sinner has a sort of right to be saved, And this is to deny the full desert of sin. Let me give you one helpful exercise here, because we just have trouble with this. Back up from you, back up from your family, back up from the lost people you know and you're concerned about, back up from humanity, back all the way up and view the other group that sinned, angels. One rebellion, everlasting damnation, perfect justice, He was fair, but only justice, unbending justice.

Humanity, countless, tens of thousands of millions of expressions of rebellion. And yet God chooses to save from that group and not from the fallen angels. Listen to what Isaac Watts wrote about this. He says this about the angels, from heaven the sinning angels fell and wrath and darkness chained them down. But man, vile man, forsook his bliss and mercy lifts him to a crown.

Amazing work of sovereign grace that could distinguish rebels so. Our guilty treason called aloud for everlasting fetters too. Then he ends the hymn this way, to thee, to thee, almighty love, our souls, ourselves are all we pay. One last issue under this question of why, and then we'll finish up with the questions is, what about foreknowledge? Romans 8.29 says, for those whom he foreknew, he predestined to become conformed.

All right, so we say, ah, that means that God looked down time and what we call prescience. He knew ahead of time. He knew ahead of time because He's timeless. He knows what you're going to do. And He looks down and He finds events in your life or qualities about your life that make you more chooseable than others and that's why you were chosen.

Is that what this word means, whom he foreknew he predestined? Well, there's a couple of ways to answer that. One is the Greek word itself. It can mean to know in advance, but when applied to God, it is a word, the foreknowledge, when it's applied to God and a people whom He foreknew. It is better translated foreordained.

It is a Greek word that means to select in advance or to know personally in advance. We'll talk about that again in a minute. Let me give you two scriptural examples. Acts 2 23. Listen to how this same word is used in other places.

Peter's preaching and he talks about Christ and he says, this man delivered over by the predetermined plan and the foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death. By the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God. Do you think that Peter is saying, God has a predetermined plan for the Messiah that he would die? And also he knew ahead of time that you would act this way, so he went ahead and picked this plan. These are parallel phrases.

There's a predetermined plan. He selected beforehand, he ordained beforehand this man, Jesus Christ, to be the bearer of our sin, to go to the cross. In 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 18, he says, you were redeemed with precious blood as of a lamb, unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ, for he was foreknown before the foundation of the world." Is Peter saying we were purchased with the death of Christ because God looked down through history and saw a person named Jesus Christ that would be a fitting person and he went ahead and chose that for him. No, obviously. You were rescued by the death of Christ because God foreordained that He would be the sin-bearer.

So the use of the Greek word shows us that God did not look at my life and say that John Snyder There are events in his life that I like and I think he's more choosable than the guy next to him The context of these passages is is also another proof Always election is the root and the changes in our life are the fruits. So Ephesians 1, he says, you have been chosen to be holy. He doesn't say you've been holy so you could be chosen. You've been chosen to be holy, chapter 1. Chapter 2, you've been created for good works.

Titus Chapter 3, verse 4, listen to what he says, when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy." In 2 Timothy 1.9, again, He has called us with the holy calling, not according to our works, but according to the purpose of His grace, granted to us in Christ Jesus from all eternity. That whole issue of time is important. The strongest argument, of course, is in Romans 9, verse 11 through 16, where God says, look at Jacob and Esau. Paul says, look at Jacob and Esau. Before the twins were born, and they had not done anything good or bad so that God's purpose, according to his choice, would stand, not because of the works, but because of him who calls.

That's his argument. How can you say Jacob earned God's love, or Esau lost God's love, when God chose to love Jacob in that extraordinary way before they were even born. And if you look at the life of Jacob and Esau, it's very hard to make the argument that there's just something about Jacob's life that God knew ahead of time. What about your faith? You say, well, but because he saw I would believe, then he decided to choose me.

Acts 13, Paul is preaching on his first missionary journey, and this is what The Bible says, when the Gentiles heard this, this Gospel, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as had been appointed to eternal life, believed. So always, The root of the changes in us, the root of the response in us, ultimately is this incomprehensible love. The love of God for us, not us for Him. I think foreknowledge is the sweetest word of this group of words. Election, predestination, foreknowledge.

Here's why. It's personal. Election could be a code word. A sovereign king makes a choice. He decrees a thing.

That can be code. He predetermines certain events that will lead to the fruition of his plans. That can be cold, but foreknowledge can't be cold. It is to initiate a relationship beforehand. He has set his affections upon his enemies before his enemies were born.

It's the mystery. Well, that's the end of our questions. Now, let's get some practical applications. It is a mysterious doctrine, but it is not an impractical doctrine. How do we live unto God, like William Ames said?

How do we live happily, like William Perkins said, when we look at a doctrine that is so mysterious as election? Well, The first thing is we can avoid certain abuses that have become popular, especially among those who say that they are reformed and agree with this doctrine. Let me give you a couple of those. We don't want to make election the context of the center of every passage that we study. Every passage in the Bible does not have to validate its existence by proving to us that God is elected.

Charles Spurgeon said that in his day, many of his Calvinistic brothers had an organ in the church, this is metaphorical, that only had five keys, Five points of Calvinism. And they were all in the minor key. And they played the most somber and morose tunes and they felt that the more morose they were, the more pleasing to God. We don't come to every passage and say this, how does that fit with election? Election is not the center of every passage.

It's one spoke that comes out of the hub of Christ. There's only one doctrine that I found that really fits with every passage and you don't have to warp any passage to understand its connection with this one doctrine, and that's the doctrine of God. This is God unfolding. And if I know who God is, it helps me to understand. It puts election in its context.

Remember, second, we want to keep the order of truths. These are important. We abuse things when we get the order out of whack. This is what the Puritans said about the study of election. They said, you cannot go to the university of election until you have attended the grammar school of repentance.

Until your heart is humbled, election just doesn't make sense. Jonathan Edwards is a great example. He grew up in a church that taught the doctrine of election. His father, his grandfather, everyone he knew taught the doctrine of election. And he said this, listen to his words, from my childhood up, my mind had been full of objections against the doctrine of God's sovereignty in choosing whom He would to eternal life and rejecting whom He pleased, leaving them to eternally perish and be everlastingly tormented in hell.

It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me. But then Edwards records a time in his life when God dealt with his heart, and Edwards saw the sinfulness of his life. And following that period of where God opened his eyes to see how sinful he was, Edwards writes this, but I often sense that first conviction had quite another sense of God's sovereignty than I had before. I have often since had not only a conviction but a delightful conviction. The doctrine of election has very often appeared exceedingly pleasant, bright and sweet, absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God, but my first conviction was not so.

What happened? As long as Edwards thought that I'm a sinner, but I just need a little help, God, then election is a cruel limitation. But if Edwards understood that he was completely helpless and he didn't even want to be rescued so deep the sin stain us then the understanding that God has chosen a company that no man can number to be given to the son Edwards said then that became a precious thing to me. Rich men are offended when you give them a loan. I mean, go up to a rich person and say, look, I got a dollar, you need help with that?

I got a dollar. You go to a fancy restaurant, I mean, you know, the too expensive kind, And you see the rich man, he gets his check at the table. Well, I dare you, lean over and say, look, I got an extra five bucks here for you. You want that? I mean, the state costs $75.

What does your $5 do? The guy wouldn't be there if he needed your money. But a poor man, a poor man, so different. Are you spiritually rich in your own eyes or are you a beggar? The right views of our need make election a beautiful thing.

Let me give you another application. Never think of election as disconnected from or a replacement for other aspects of the work of redemption. When we isolate election and we focus on it in isolation from all the other aspects of salvation, then it begins to replace the other things and it becomes everything. And we see people that this happens to all the time. We call them hyper-Calvinists.

So, a hyper-Calvinist says, faith is not necessary. You don't have to believe in Christ. You don't have to repent to Christ. You don't have to run to Christ because if you're elect, God will just at the end of your life, you will see him. You'll believe in heaven.

You don't have to believe here. So conversion's unnecessary. Holiness to a hyper-Calvinist is unnecessary. Why does he not care about holiness? No, because he thinks election is everything.

If God has sovereignly chosen to save you, it doesn't matter how you act. Evangelism is unnecessary, church is unnecessary. If I'm chosen, I'm going. If I'm not, I won't. Perseverance by faith is unnecessary.

I have close friends who preach, and they're Calvinists, and they say this. One of them goes to a jail and he preached this. He used to. He would go to the jail and he would say to the men in jail, You don't have a choice. It's a terrible way to approach it.

Because it's not true. They're always making the wrong choice, but they have a choice, and they reject Christ moment by moment of their own free will. Another, during the first election when Obama was elected, during that first election my friend gathered a bunch of Calvinist friends from seminary and they did a weekend retreat, a weekend conference on the doctrines of grace and the conference title was, Your Vote Doesn't Matter. This is what happens when election becomes the centerpiece of your Christianity instead of Christ. It's no longer held in its right perspective.

It replaces everything else. Listen, according to that logic, faith isn't necessary, holiness isn't necessary, church isn't necessary, evangelism isn't necessary, but neither is the incarnation. If God is choosing to save us, why doesn't Christ say to the Father in eternity past, then if you're gonna go ahead and choose that, it's going to happen, why should I go? The incarnation, the cross, the grave, none of that's necessary. God's chosen.

The answer of course is this, God has chosen us for salvation, And God has chosen everything required to save us in a way that is in harmony with His character. So everything that we've been talking about and everything we will talk about this weekend is part of the election. Our believing the gospel that's being preached, our turning from and turning to in repentance, our adoption, our justification, our sanctification, our daily perseverance, our assurance, our glorification, it's all part of God's choice for His enemies. Let me give you another application. Do not look to election to find proof that God loves you.

The Puritans had a lot of trouble with this in their churches. People who were melancholy and introspective because of this doctrine were under a lot of depressive, they called it melancholy. So Puritans wrote a lot about this. There are people in the church where I pastor who are just basically melancholy and because of the doctrine of election, they tend to say, well gosh, I don't know if God loves sinners like me. So what hope is there for me?

Where does the Bible tell us to look to know that God loves sinners like you? Well, the cross. Romans 5, 8, God demonstrates His own love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Or John 3.16, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. That's where we look for the proof that God loves sinners.

We don't try to look to the mysterious doctrine of elections and say to God, if you'll prove to me I'm elect, then I know there's hope for me. Another thing we don't look to election for, we do not look to election as a mandate for our right to come and receive forgiveness to Christ. Why should you go to Christ? You say, well, I should go if I'm elect. No, that's not what the scripture says.

You have commands from the sovereign king. God commands all men everywhere to repent. We have invitations, come unto me, but they're the invitations of a monarch and they come with an imperial weight. Come unto me. That's your mandate.

You don't need any more excuse than that. Father, I'm coming. God, I'm coming. I'm wretched. I don't deserve it.

But I'm coming because you've commanded. You can look at the names that are written on the invitation. The weary, the heavy laden, the thirsty, the hungry, the sinner, the ungodly, the helpless, those whose sins have stained them like scarlet, those who are sick and not healthy, those who are poor and cannot pay. Is that you? Then go.

If that's not you, what do you need to save you for anyway? The mandate that we have a right to seek God through Christ is the command of Christ, the command of God. Listen to what Charles Spurgeon said, Many persons want to know their election before they look to Christ, but they cannot learn it by this. It is only discovered by looking to Christ. I hope in Christ, And the fact that I hope in Christ, I look back and I say, well, why did that happen?

Was I a great person? No. Behind all of that is this inexplicable love of God. Again, Spurgeon writes this, I wish that any sinner who is troubled about election would wait until God tells him he isn't elected. Or if he has any misgiving about whether he may come to Christ, I wish he would wait until he finds a passage which tells him he may not come.

I mean, why not? It's just as logical. God, I am coming to you because you are the savior of sinners. You gave your son for sinners. I fit the bill.

Every description of the wretchedness of humanity that you came to rescue us from, that's my life. So I'm coming to you. Now, if I'm not elect, you'll have to tell me. But otherwise, I'm going to live and die with my face toward the promises. Election is the root system of a beautiful plant.

But like every root system, You don't see the roots. You see the fruit. Now there are some positive benefits. There is an assurance of His love. Now I just said to you, don't look to election to find proof that God loves sinners like you.

This is what I mean. It's the assurance of familial love. You go from living for yourself and the tyranny of Satan into the family of God through faith and repentance, through hoping in Christ. You're justified, you're adopted, you're in a new family, you've never been in a family like this, ever. You've never seen a family like this.

You've never met a father like this. You've never heard of a father like this. Now you're in the family. You're a Christian now. But you're not perfect.

Soon you realize that you still are capable of sinning against your heavenly Father. And the question comes to your mind, I wonder if I'll be kicked out of the family. I mean, what kind of love is there here? It's a perfect family, I just don't really fit in. Charles Spurgeon said the doctrine of election is what God gives to bad children who have disobeyed their parents and at night, they wake up in the night and they're afraid that parents have packed up and moved house.

And so they cry out, mom, dad, and the parents say yes. And the child says, just want to make sure you're still there. Election assures us of what kind of love has laid hold of us in Christ. It is the kind of love that is unconditional. It began before you were born, it will last forever, you cannot shake it loose.

In my opinion, The love of God like this is the most terrifying thing to a Christian when we want to sin It's not the fear of hell It's that I am sinning against a God who will not become indifferent toward me while I am indifferent toward him I'm sinning against love There are other benefits There's the confidence that what we do has meaning and purpose. It's not wasted. God has chosen to rescue a people and we are joining Him. How do you know you've taken hold of election in the right way? Well when it produces the results in you that God elected you for.

Are you holy because you realize He has loved me with an everlasting love? I want to walk as near to Him as possible. Second Timothy 2 19, this is the foundation of God that stands, alright? The Lord knows who are His, that's election, and everyone who names The name of the Lord is to abstain from wickedness. That's the fruit.

Do you abstain from wickedness because you've been loved with an everlasting love? Do you walk worthy because you've been called? Do you produce good fruit? Do you do good works? Spurgeon said, Again, he said, if God has set his choice upon us, then let us aim to be choice men.

Now our time's run out, so let me just give you a couple of closing. How do you handle biblical paradoxes that bother you? Where you read the Bible and it seems to be saying some things that are pretty far apart. Now, there's three ways to handle that. You can say, I like this doctrine, but not that doctrine, so I'm going to throw that doctrine out and I'm just going to focus on this doctrine.

And we don't talk that way, but that's how many people act in practice. And so maybe you like election and so you ignore everything that God says about man's responsibility or you like man's responsibility and you sweep over every passage that talks about God's electing choice. That's a wrong way. Then there's another way. You take the two extreme truths, the paradox, and you water them down theologically until they kind of meet in this murky middle where neither truth really has much of a cutting edge anymore.

And in seminary, many of my years in seminary and in Bible college, that's what I was given. God's electing love, man's responsibility. Well, let's redefine these until really there's not much difference. But that's not a good way. An 18th century preacher, Charles Simeon, converted during the Great Awakening over there, he said this, this is what I do when I find a paradox in the Bible that I can't solve.

I lay one hand on the most extreme edge of the first truth and I lay my other hand on the most extreme edge of the opposite truth and by grace I hold them both simultaneously. God is sovereign in His love and man is responsible to repent and believe. And there's a great mystery there, but we hold both. What do you do if you're still bothered? Well, let me give you the advice of an Arminian, all right, who's my favorite Arminian, A.W.

Tozer. Not a full-blown Arminian. He was buried – I looked for his grave, I found it. It's in Akron, Ohio. He's buried in a Presbyterian cemetery.

So we're moving the right way. Theological student came up to Tozer and said to him, Mr. Tozer, I'm at the Bible College and we're coming into Christian history. We've gotten to the Reformation and everybody's arguing, Calvinists versus Arminians. I just can't figure it out.

What should I do? And this was Tozer's advice, and I think this is good advice if you're having trouble. Tozer said this, well, you're not really going to figure that mystery out right now, are you? So go get your Bible and instead of arguing with your friends and taking a side, take your Bible and get alone and kneel down and open that book and get to know God. Now here's why I think that's great advice, not because there's never a time to think about this doctrine, but here, if a man or a woman will get to know the God of the Bible, it won't be long before election has a certain clarity to it.

We don't want the path that gives us clear formulas for election, but we don't know the God behind that, electing love. So if you're really struggling with this, I'm not interested in trying to out-argue you or force it down your throat. I really would suggest to you what Tozer said. Take your Bible and say to the Lord, I just don't understand it. I'm having a real hard time with this.

But I want to know you. And if you are the electing God, then when it's time for me to understand that more clearly, as I study my Bible, will you help me? Where does all of this stop? Well, where it stopped with Paul in Romans 11. Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God.

How unsearchable are His judgments and his ways are past finding out who has known the mind of the Lord, who has become his counselor, who first gave to him and it shall be repaid to him. For of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever and ever. Well actually I want to close with a different quote, not pause. Richard Roll, anybody know who Richard Roll is? I'll give you all the money in my pocket if you know who Richard Roll is.

I don't have any money in my pocket, by the way. I did this at church one time and a kid got $10 off me. It really ruined my week. Richard Roll was a hermit, a Bible translator, an author, a monk in 14th century England. He's a Roman Catholic.

He talks about the work of God in his heart and he talks about it like a conversion. And this is what he says. Now listen to this quote. When God dealt with me, He says, I was compelled to sing what I had once only said. That's the goal.

Why consider the doctrine of election, which is so mysterious? Because I want God to help me to understand a love that is infinite. It's height and breadth, it's length and depth are beyond my knowledge. I want to understand something of the edges of His ways so that I will be compelled to sing the theology that once I just spoke. And Jehovah will then, as Scott told us, be our strength and our song.

Let's pray. Our Father, we pray that you would so help us that like Richard Roll, with much more reason than Roll could have had, we would be able to say, I am compelled to sing what I once had only spoken. Help us, Father, for the glory of Christ, we pray. The subject of conforming the Church and the family to the Word of God and for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website ncfic.org. FIC.org