Today, I’m beginning a series of doctrinal sermons. Some people say, “I don’t like these doctrinal things,” but the bottom line is, the Bible says you need to watch your doctrine carefully because from what you believe flow the issues of life. I’ve entitled this series “Understanding the Big Words.”
In reading the Bible, sometimes you come across big words and ask, “What does that big word mean?” We are going to talk about five big words. All these words have five syllables. We will talk about predestination, justification, sanctification, regeneration, and glorification. Today, we are going to dive head over heels into predestination. When is the last time you thought, “I wish I could go to church and hear someone preach on predestination”? My wife, my son and daughter-in-law were in my house last night, and I was talking about having worked on this sermon for hours and had more hours to go to make sure I get this right. We were talking about some of the great, deep questions people ask about predestination. My wife, in her loving, sweet voice, asked, “Why do you want to preach on this? Why don’t you just preach on love and joy?”
Why do I preach on this?
I preach on it because it is in the Bible. If it’s in the bible, I have to preach it. You can’t just skip over it.
Now, you know how some of us who are from the Pentecostal, Charismatic persuasion sometimes take great issue with our Christian brothers and sisters from other churches who don’t necessarily believe all the things that we believe about the Holy Spirit. They just come to those verses and just jump over them, saying, “We won’t even deal with those verses. We’ll just skip those verses.”
We say, “That’s terrible. They just skipped our favorite verses about the Holy Spirit.” We do the same thing. We skip the ones we don’t want to look at either. We say, “Well, I don’t want to talk about that one. Let’s just go on.” Perhaps, we have our mind made up and don’t want to consider any other idea. All of us at some time or another have always had our mind made up about what we believe. We try to find just one verse to justify our position, rather than coming to the Bible and letting it say what it says. Today we’re going to talk about predestination. There is probably no thornier issue that a preacher can preach on than predestination. But these sermons the next few weeks are directed toward helping us to go a little bit deeper in our understanding of God and His Word.
The sixth chapter of the book of Hebrews says, “ Let us go on to the deeper things of God.” They had been dealing with the foundational things, and said, “Let’s go a little deeper.” Those of you that know me know I love The Message Paraphrase Of Scripture by Eugene Peterson. Here is his rendering of Hebrews chapter six, verses one and three:
So, come on. Let’s leave the preschool finger painting exercise on Christ and let’s get on to the grand work of art. Grow up in Christ. There’s so much more. Let’s get on with it. 2 He’s saying we should go deeper. Let’s get past finger painting and get to the masterpiece of art. Let’s see the glory of God and the deep things of God. I will tell you that this sermon will not answer all your questions about predestination. In fact, I still have some questions that I don’t understand about this. But just because I have questions I don’t understand doesn’t mean I don’t need to at least share what I think I’ve understood up to this point. So I will share with you what I understand about predestination up to this point.
The whole purpose of studying about God and theology is not to answer all your questions. The purpose of this is to make you stand in awe of how great God is and how amazing His grace and His majesty really are. We preach on predestination because the Bible speaks about it. There are three verses of scripture that make it very clear that you must talk about this. One is in Ephesians, chapter one, verse four, five and eleven. Paul said, He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world…in love, he predestined us…In Him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to His plan…
Right there in one passage, Paul uses the word “predestined” two times, and he talks about the concept by saying we were “chosen in Him before the foundation of the world”. In John 15:16, Jesus spoke to His disciples and said, You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you. I ask you this question, if you are a committed follower of Christ, “Did you choose God, or did God choose you?” I want us to look at Romans 8:29, but before we read that verse, I want to also read verse 28, one that we all should know well:
For we know that all things work together for good to them who love the Lord, who are the called according to His purpose. You realize this is the verse we often quote in times of great stress and when we are in need of comfort. It actually talks about the whole concept of being chosen by God. It says you were called according to God’s purpose. God had a purpose in calling you.
The next verse says,
For those He foreknew, He also predestinated.
So let’s jump in it and see what it means. Predestination is the sovereign and free act of God’s grace by which He chose to save some in and by Jesus Christ. I want to address this by looking at three questions.
Who is God?
Who Are We?
How Does Salvation Come To Us?
WHO IS GOD?
God is God. Now by saying that, I’m saying God is not just an exalted human being. God is not just an exalted, real strong, super human. He is not a perfect human being. God is not human at all. God is God. 3 Although you and I were created in God’s image, and all humans on the planet bear the image of God, God is not man and man is not God. God is God. J.B. Phillips wrote a classic book entitled Your God Is Too Small. For many, he is exactly right. I am convinced we have greatly humanized God. Do you know how we humanize God? We try to rationalize God using the best of our mind to understand Him. What does the Bible say about that?
In Isaiah 55: 8 and 9, God says,
“My thoughts are completely different from yours,” says the Lord. I want you to notice that first phrase. That means the thoughts of God are in a total different category than the thoughts of humans. God thinks differently than we do. His thoughts are completely different than our thoughts. Notice what else God says:
“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways and my thoughts higher than yours.”
What God is saying is you will never fully comprehend the his ways. We are finite humans. We are so limited in our understanding. There is a lid placed on our knowledge. We cannot go beyond that lid. We will never fully understand God. Now that is compounded by sin. Sin has blinded our eyes and stopped up our ears. But even if man had never sinned, even if man was still in the garden, pure and holy, we still would never fully comprehend God because man is finite and God is infinite. We have a lid. God has no lid. We have boundaries. God has is limitless and without boundaries.
Paul talked about this also in that wonderful song of praise that he declared at the end of the eleventh chapter of Romans, verse 33:
Oh, what a wonderful God we have! How great are His riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand His decisions and His methods! Did you see what that just said? We have a great God, a wonderful God! He said it’s just impossible for us to fully understand His ways and His decisions.
Notice what Paul did not say, “God is impossible. I give up. I quit.” No. He used the impossibility of fully understanding God as a time of praise, to say, “Hallelujah!” You see, when you know how great God is and how little you are and the inability to fully comprehend God, it does not really lead you to despair, it leads you to worship. It leads you to stand in awe of who He is and that that great God would even care about you. “What is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you give him any thought?” What Paul is saying is that God’s ways are far beyond ours.
The Psalmist said in Psalm chapter 139, verse 6:
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to know.
Paul wrote in I Corinthians chapter 13, verse 12:
Now we see through a glass darkly.
What that means is that the basic understanding we have of the deeper things of God are like looking through a dirty glass. I get little shadowy images here and there, but it doesn’t mean I stop squinting. I keep looking. You see the glass that we look through is the veil of our flesh, the veil of our humanness. But there is coming a time when that veil is 4 going to be done away with and we will talk about that when we get to the other big word, glorification That is when God is going to remove that veil, and then we will see everything and know everything as clearly as we are known. In the meantime, we look through this veil of our flesh and we get shadowy understanding. We get a little piece here and a little piece there. But, you know what, just because I don’t have the full understanding, doesn’t mean there’s not a
full understanding. God is God.
The second thing you need to know: because God is God, He is sovereign. That is the bedrock of all theology. God is a sovereign God. Do you know what that means? He is the King. He is the supreme Ruler. He rules with absolute authority, and His purpose always prevails. God is in control. Since God is all knowing, all wise, and all powerful, He must be sovereign. If God is all knowing, that means there is not one scintilla of any body of information that God has not always known at one moment. God knows everything. There is nothing God does not know. There is nothing yet for God to discover, and there is nothing God has ever forgotten. At one moment, He has complete and total knowledge of all things. That is the omniscience of God. God is all wise. That simply means He chooses the best ends and the best methods to those ends. He is all wise. God is all-powerful. That means He has the power to perform His will.
Now if you say God is all knowing, God is all wise and God is all-powerful, then you must say God is sovereign. He has the right to be in control. He is the only one who can be in control. He is the only one who is sovereign. Sovereignty means this: God can do whatever He wants to do. He doesn’t have to consult anyone. He doesn’t have to check with anyone. He doesn’t have to reason with anyone. He doesn’t have to answer to anyone.
Quite frequently, I’m asked questions by people to explain some of these mysteries of what’s happening in their lives. They say, “Pastor, I need you to tell me what’s going on in my life.” A lot of times, I have no answer. I want to say, “I’m in sales, not management.” I’m a salesman – God is the management. And He doesn’t have to check with me. I hope this doesn’t come as a surprise to you, but God doesn’t have to check with you either. He is free to do whatever He wants to do. God has the right to be God. If you want to take away the sovereignty of God, you’re telling God, “You don’t have the right to be God.” God has the right to be God.
If you want to argue against the sovereignty of God, you are basically saying God is not in control of everything. God is not the ultimate authority. There are things outside His control. When you begin to take away God’s sovereignty, basically you are degrading the nature of God. You are denying the wisdom of God and defying the power of God. God is sovereign!
The Bible tells us in Psalm chapter 115, verse three:
Our God is in the heavens and He does as He wishes.
God says in Ephesians chapter 1, verse 11:
God works out everything according to the purpose of His will.
According to the purpose of His will, He works out everything. Not some things and not just little things. God works out everything in accordance with His will. The amazing thing is this: In this world, there are about six and a half billion people on this planet right now, everybody with wills, everybody with the ability to choose, everybody everyday is making multitudes of choices. Billions and billions of choices are being made on this planet daily. But not one choice any human being will ever make will ever stop the plan of God. And all choices that every human makes on this planet are somehow part of overall weaving of the ultimate plan of God. That, to me, is an amazing thought. God can take six and a half billion people living on this planet right 5 now, all making choices about life every day, but not one of those choices are outside the overall determined plan of God so that God’s plan will prevail.
In Isaiah chapter 46, verses 10 and 11, God says,
I make known the end from the beginning; from ancient times, what is still to come. I say my purpose will stand and I will do all that I please. What I have said, that will I bring about. What I have planned, that will I do. God is sovereign!
The next thing I want you to know about God is that God is good. When a little child prays that simple prayer, “God is great, God is good…” he or she is making the most profound theological statement that can ever be made. That is the foundation of everything that is anything. God is great and God is good. What do I mean when I say, “God is good?” I mean simply this: God is just and fair. You can never say God is unjust. God is always fair. God is merciful and gracious, loving and kind. He is actively compassionate. He is eternally inclined to bestow benefits on the undeserving. “God is love,” the Bible says. God is a good God. Psalm 119:68 says,
You are good and do only good.
What does all this mean? If God is sovereign, if He is the ruler, if He is the master of the universe, if He is in control of everything that takes place, you can count on one thing: His sovereignty is a good sovereignty. God is a gracious sovereign. God is a merciful authority. All that God does agrees with all God is. In God, being and doing come together. What God does is because of who He is and who He is determines what He does. He is a God who is sovereign and in control. Because He is a loving, compassionate, fair, just, merciful God, that sovereignty is a loving, fair, compassionate and merciful sovereignty. God is a merciful God. God is great and God is good!
You say, “Now wait a minute. What about when I see the sovereign acts of God that don’t seem good to me?” Here’s where the rubber meets the road. Are you going to trust your wisdom or God’s wisdom? The sovereign plan and the sovereign acts of God are not whimsical, fickle plans. They are not capricious. Capricious means going with the mood. “Boy, God must have gotten up in a bad mood today. Bad stuff happened.” No. God is not capricious. He is all wise. He is always just. He is always good.
That means that I have no right when I don’t see the reason or understand the purpose to say, “This isn’t fair, God.”
How could I say to the only just person in the universe, “This is not fair?” Who am I to impose what I think is fair on God? Isn’t that the real test?
You say, “Why didn’t God tell us the whole story?” For two reasons: if He told us the whole story, we wouldn’t understand it anyway. His ways are far higher than your ways, and you couldn’t have understood it if He told you. You talk about Einstein’s theory of relatively or you talk about quantum physics and say, “I don’t understand that.” If God told you all of the mysteries of the universe that are hidden in Him, do you think you would understand them? What purpose would there be in His telling you? You wouldn’t understand it.
There is a second reason why God didn’t tell you. He wants to know if you will love Him and serve Him when you see no purpose. Will you be like Job, who once in his life cried, “Though God slay me, yet will I trust Him?” That’s the question, isn’t it? Will you trust God when you don’t know? When you trust God, you are saying, “I believe God is sovereign and God is good. Therefore, while I don’t see the good in this or the purpose in this, I believe with all my heart God is good and God is sovereign and I will trust Him.
The temptation that comes to us all the time is the same temptation that came to Adam and Eve. It is to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You know what we say? “I want to know what’s good and evil.” God says, “Why 6 don’t you trust me with that? Because I know what is good and I know what is evil. Why don’t you trust me and love me and serve me? Do I have to explain everything to you for you to love me? Do you have to know everything?” Why don’t you say, “You’re God, and that’s enough.” We do this all the time with our kids, don’t we? Your little child will come up to you and say, “Why can’t I do this?”
Sometimes you simply say, “Because I’m the daddy, that’s why!” Or, “I’m the mommy, that’s why!” Now I’m not advocating that this is the way we should deal with our kids, but you all know that, at some time in our lives, we have done that. We say the things that we hated our parents saying to us. God wants to know will you serve Him, will you love Him, when you don’t have the whole picture?