Undeniably Lost Without God

"All that the Father gives to me will come to me."
-Jesus Christ


"I believe that nothing happens apart from divine determination and decree. We shall never be able to escape from the doctrine of divine predestination - the doctrine that God has foreordained certain people unto eternal life."
-Charles Spurgeon

This isn't easy.

Sometimes there isn't a very palatable way to explain God.

But God is very good. Eternally good. That's good ad infinitum.

Once when I was in high school, someone asked me if predestination was true. My response was that if predestination is true, and my actions don't matter, then why am I trying to do good? What's the point of following God's law at all if He's just going to do want He wants anyway?

I wish I had read the Bible instead of opening my dumb mouth. But I opened my mouth and I confirmed my rampant Arminianism to a tee.

I hope to affirm through these posts that predestination is true and that my actions do matter.

There are truly two reasons only why the idea of Predestination is hotly debated among Christians. Those reasons are because we naturally do not want it to be true. We want to choose. We want to commit to Him. We want to do something in favor of our Salvation. Secondly, we do not want a God who does not freely relinquish His control. We want our God to be of our making.

We want Him to be fair on our terms.

We want Him to love on our terms.

We want Him to save on our terms.

Reading the first post in this series we must come to a conclusion. That conclusion is that we as humans are sinful. And that our sinfulness separates from God. And that the wages of our sinfulness is our own death.

If we were to receive the just punishment for our sinful nature we would receive death.

Everybody.

No one can save themselves.

It would be to the praise of God's holiness and justice to sentence the entire human race to eternal death.

But obviously He doesn't do that. I am saved. I am sure of it. I am positive that God has saved me from my sins.

God is good.

So once I found out how terribly corrupt my human nature was I began to wonder. How does anybody "find" God.

If the Apostle Paul said that, "No one seeks God" and people are finding God, then it must follow that God sovereignly seeks sinners. One step further, He pre-ordained these particular sinners to eternal life. I could honestly stop here. The logic and reason make sense.

Everyone is a sinner.

Sinners can't save themselves.

God must save sinners.

Not all sinners are being saved.

God must save only some sinners.

But no theology may be accepted without Biblical evidence. So let's talk about what we know the Bible says about God.

God is absolutely, eternally Sovereign. He created this World and all that is in it. God has a plan for His creation. From the "foundations of the earth" He has set about accomplishing His will. I think this is the fundamental lesson we need learn about God. God has a plan. God is having no trouble at all accomplishing His plan.

God always wins.

Let's see what Jesus had to say about His Father.

"All that the Father gives to me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out...This is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day...No one can come to me unless the Father who sent Me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day...It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe. This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father."

It seems to me that Jesus is making a point here about God's salvation plan.

When I read this the first time with questions in my head about this subject, I felt like my head exploded. It was like, here I am, I've grown up in church, faithful attender for 18 years and I've never heard an explanation or a sermon on this passage. I felt way behind the times. Like 2,000 years behind.

I want to break this section down a bit, but let's start with what's going on and how it is that Jesus even got this crowd excited.

John 6 is a great chapter that is jammed to the brim with goodness and doctrine. It begins with Jesus feeding thousands of people with five loaves of bread and two fish. It became apparent, to many people there, that Jesus was indeed the Prophet sent into the world. They were so stoked, they wanted to make him king by force, but Jesus slipped away. Later the disciples are crossing the sea by boat, to Caperaum, and they're having a rough time of it due to a strong wind. Jesus walks out across the water and hops in the boat. The disciples were scared when He first appeared, but Jesus said, "Do not be afraid." So they were glad when He joined them. Then they appeared at the other side of the sea immediately. The next day a crowd of folks had searched Jesus out on the other side of sea at Caperaum. That's when Jesus starts getting serious about teaching truth to these bread and fish eating followers.

Let's get serious.

Jesus begins to make the distinction between regular ol' bread and the bread of life that comes from God. The people were quite on board with this idea at first. They said, quite politely, "Sir, give us this bread always." But when Jesus said explicitly that He was the bread of life, that's when the people began to grumble. Their biggest problem was not with God being Sovereign over salvation, they understood that. They took issue with Jesus being the bread sent from God for salvation. These days, we don't have nearly as much issue with Jesus being sent by God and Jesus Himself being God, we have more issue with God's sovereignty over salvation. Let's dig into this most divisive teaching...

Jesus said, "All that the Father gives me..."

So right off the bat Jesus makes a distinction between those given to him by God and those who are not given to him by God.

Further He says, " ...will come to me."

So Jesus teaches that those given to him by the Father will come to him.

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

So the people given to Jesus by God, will come to Jesus, and Jesus will lose none of them.

Jesus says, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him."

Now this makes perfect sense in combination with the idea that we are so very corrupted by sin that we do not seek God.

God Himself must draw us to Christ. God gives us to Christ. When God gives us to Christ, we go to Christ. When we go to Christ, we are raised up on the last day.

God always wins.

Let's rewind the tape back to Moses and the exodus from Egypt.

Here's a little scenario where Moses and Aaron are going back and forth to Pharaoh trying to get Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of slavery and to the land God had promised them. Moses is operating under strict instruction from God on how to do this. Basically the two guys, Moses and Aaron, are going to Pharaoh and telling him that if he doesn't let the people go under some certain stipulations, God's wrath and power will be made known through a series of nasty plagues. Nasty plagues. You've got blood for water, frogs, gnats, flies, dead livestock, boils, hail, locusts, darkness and finally, all firstborn of Egypt, man and beast, were killed. Then later, as Pharaoh and the Egyptian army chase the people of Israel across country, God drowns the whole army in the Red Sea. Nasty.

Let's examine Pharaoh. He was a stern and terrible leader. He was fairly tough on his own Egyptians, but he was hell to the Israelites. The Israelites were slaves in Egypt. They were not allowed to offer worship and sacrifices to the LORD and they were pretty much just making bricks and stuff all day. They had wicked daily quotas to meet and when Moses was stirring things up the slave labor got worse the for Israelites. It was a tough time.

But God had a plan to accomplish concerning Pharaoh. Pharaoh existed only to show the might, power, and glory of God. This is same reason we exist. God's will is not bound by His creature's will. God has purposed Himself to be free with His creatures. So different vessels (creatures) get different uses.

Like I said, Pharaoh was quite sinful. His heart was full of nothing but sin all the time. So Pharaoh wasn't used against his will, but his will was used for the glory of God. Explain?

If you read through the book of the Exodus in the Bible you will read about some exchanges between Pharaoh and Moses. Moses would go to Pharaoh and say, "Thus says the LORD, let My people go or I will afflict you with a plague of ____. Pharaoh would not relent. It says, Pharaoh hardened his heart. It actually mentions a number times in the English Standard Version of the Bible, either that Pharaoh's heart was hardened or that Pharaoh hardened his heart or that The LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart. Here's the countdown:

2 Times - Pharaoh hardened his heart.

5 Times - Pharaoh's heart was hardened.

5 Times - God hardened Pharaoh's heart.

1 -Time - God will harden Pharaoh's heart. And He did.

What are we to make of this?

I believe it would be an error to say that God looked down the corridor of time and saw Pharaoh's evil heart and made His plan accordingly. This would be an error because the Apostle Paul quite explicitly states the opposite. Paul said in his famous letter to the Romans,

"For He says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." So then He has mercy on whomever He wills and He hardens whomever He wills."

God's plan with His creature Pharaoh, was to raise him up, to harden his heart, and make him a display of God's power to the Israelites, and to the world. Pharaoh had no problem with this. Pharaoh was born sinful. His desires were evil all the time. God's perfect Justice is satisfied in His dealing with Pharaoh, while God's perfect Love is satisfied in His dealing with the people of Israel.

These are just two examples in Scripture where the sovereignty of God is displayed in detail. There are so many places in Scripture where God makes his power known. I could easily write for an eternity and not exhaust fully the richness and detail that is God's sovereign control over His world.

But let's finish on a really "up" note.

Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus...

"...He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of his will..."

God showed us through Pharaoh.

Jesus explained it to us.

Paul assured us of it.

God's will is made known in the election and predestination of His saints. His love is poured out on His elect in a way that no man can measure. Paul says God is rich in mercy. He said God has loved us with a great love. He made us alive when we were spiritually dead. We, who could not choose Him, have been chosen by Him. His love and mercy abound. He has taken dead dumb slaves and set them free. Free to love Him. Free to serve Him. Free from the slavery of our sins and set apart for glory with Him in the Heavenly realm.

Good ad infinitum.


Coming Soon: Part 3. Love Of Christ So Rich And Free.