Clough Genesis Lesson 67

Doctrine of Election continued

This Sunday we are going to finish the doctrine of election which we’ve been studying in conjunction with the Jacob and Esau narrative of Genesis. Remember that we’ve gone through several chapter of this dealing with Isaac, and now we’ve recently gotten to the Jacob and Esau story, and as we’ve made the remark time and again on Sunday morning, Jacob and Esau are but one of many stories in the Bible, divinely inspired and divinely preserved so that you and I and all the people can read these stories in a very simple way and comprehend very hard to comprehend doctrine. These stories are preserved portions of history, history that was set up, designed and carried out by God the Holy Spirit to teach us. And we have, in summarizing the Bible’s teaching on election dealt with what we call two points in our five point summary. This Sunday morning we’re going to finish the last three of the five points.

We’ve looked first upon the fact that election depends conceptually and actually upon creation and fall, that unless somebody accepts the creation and accepts the fall, and thinks through what that means, then you cannot understand election. Election requires that we establish a framework and that framework is established right here in creation and the fall.

We said several things necessarily follow from this framework; let’s review these for just a moment. The first one we said is that history is not the same as the eternal plan of God in His mind. So if we have God represented here by an open box because He’s infinite, we can’t enclose Him with human concepts, but by an open box representing His being. And then we represent creation and history with a circle, outside of God showing that He creates this outside of Himself, that it is distinct from the plan in His mind, which is His eternal plan that existed from all eternity, and out of that plan He generates history. We, as Christians, have got to believe that history, from the point of its very creation, is distinct, different from God. If we don’t do this we’re trapped; we’re trapped in the same bog that the Hindu philosopher is trapped in and that is you can’t tell the difference between reality and non reality and so we label things as Maya, and this is exactly where you are if you don’t believe that the eternal plan of God is not identical to the history built on that eternal plan. Or said in a simple way as far as Jacob and Esau are concerned, in God’s mind Jacob and Esau were elect and reprobate for all eternity, but in history they did not become so until there were certain actions that took place. And when Jacob and Esau were born, then at that point of physical birth they did not exist in history as elect and reprobate.

Turn to Romans 9 again; in Romans 9:12-13, we have two sentences, two verses, and between those two verses, which are citations from the Old Testament, we have nearly 1400 years of history, one thousand four hundred years separate verse 12 and verse 13. Verse 12, if you have a marginal reference in your Bible ought to be cited from Genesis 25 and verse 13 ought to be from Malachi. Now between the date of those two books is 1400 years. The first verse, verse 12, said to the mother while she was carrying the twins in her womb, “It was said to her, The elder shall serve the younger.” That’s looking forward to what is going to happen to her babies, when they grow up, when they have their sons, when they have their grandsons, when they have their great-grandsons. And verse 13 looks backward, “It has been written, Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated.” The preference for Jacob over Esau, not just in person but in the destiny of their descendants, Jacob being the father of Israel and all the Jewish nation; Israel you would say or Jacob have I loved nationally; and Esau and his descendants, Edom, part of the Arabs, have I hated, that is the Jews are held in preference here. But God clearly does not operate on that Greek idea, that pagan idea, of democracy; we’re told that all men are equal. All men in God’s sight aren’t equal, never have been, and never will be. We’ll see more evidence of that as we go on. This is one reason why this doctrine of election strikes the modern man as so offensive, because the modern man has bought hook, line and sinker the myths of democracy, that all men are equal. All men are equal in some respects, but we can’t absolutize this.

So the first thing we’ve learned from the creation and the fall is that history is significant; it is significant what happens down here, we’re not running a dumb show, we’re not running a play that is just some sort of a projection, like a movie projector, projects something on the screen and the film is inside the projector. It’s not as though history is a projection of the eternal plan of God in time; it’s more than that; history is a place where things happen and things to which God responds.

A second thing we said about this creation and the fall, backdrop of election, is that limits our use of logic; that is, the human being is able to grasp pieces of truth, parts of it, and some connections between these truths and that’s all we can go on. And therefore we can’t hope to wait and wait and wait and wait until we get all the logical analysis and we said I can definitely show that this system is totally non-contradictory, or it is contradictory. I can’t operate in some ways because there are going to be what we call paradoxes; one of these being God’s sovereignty and human volition. And I’m sorry but they’re there and I can’t do anything about them. And for me to postpone response because I’m going to wait until my logic machine gains the capacity to do this puts me in a position of a rationalist, not a believer.

Let me give an illustration from mathematics. We’re all familiar with that constant p that we use to find circumferences of circles and so on; it’s been known for centuries and centuries and centuries. But let’s pose a question: as you all know p can be decimally expanded and we can keep on carrying the decimal point out as long as we want to carry the decimal point out. Now let’s raise a question: is there somewhere in the decimal expansion of p, a point, where we have four sevens together? Now that’s a legitimate question, no reason why I haven’t got the right to ask that question. Only one problem, to this day mathematicians don’t know the answer to the question, nor do we know exactly how to get the answer other than just simply run a computing machine for an infinitely long period to find out, and then of course obviously when we stop at the n^th decimal place and haven’t found our four sevens there’s still no way of proving that in the n^th plus four decimal point beyond that we won’t have answered the question.

So you see, there’s a situation where there are a group of people in modern mathematics known as the intuitionists who are consistent in their non-Christian thinking. They are more consistent humanists than so-called Christian mathematicians because they argue that until we have shown definitely one way or the other, then it’s an irrelevant question. Then it isn’t even part of knowledge; then it is not even to be considered. If I can’t show it one way or the other, it is irrelevant. Now that’s being a consistent humanist, that’s simply exalting human reason to the point where it is the authority, but at least as thinking Christians when we look at our constant p and we look upon our decimal expansion of that constant we say well wait a minute, isn’t God omniscient. Now does God know whether there are four sequential decimal places where there are four sevens; surely He does and therefore it is a relative question and there’s a truth there to be had, whether we can get it or not, God knows it and therefore that makes it part of knowledge. And so we, unlike the intuitionists, we do not believe that. We hold the fact that there are things we can prove, things we can disprove, and things that we just have to accept until proven one way or the other. And this is why we say all the time that the Word of God is the starting point for human knowledge, not logic and not experience. The Word of God must be prerequisite.

We don’t suspend our lives, stop breathing and hold our breath until the logic machine has done it’s work. We accept it because God has said so and therefore we make Him our authority, not our own human logic.

A third thing that we have said in this matter of creation and the fall is that there is a certain asymmetry to God’s plan; that is, God is sovereign over death and over evil. We have to hold that or we have to hold that there is chance in the universe, and God clearly says time after time I create light, I create darkness, I create the good and I create the evil. Proverbs 16:4 says He even made the wicked for the day of trouble. So God is sovereign over both good and evil; He’s got to be sovereign over both or He can’t be sovereign at all.

But having said that we go on to add another statement and this is part of the paradox: that God’s control over the good is different than His control over the evil. And we call that, or theologians call that asymmetry in the plan of God. There’s an asymmetry in the plan of God because the sovereign control over good is different than the sovereign control over evil. We’ve got to make that distinction or we make God the immediate author of evil. Now this distinction is found here in Romans 9; again we show you verses 22-23. In verse 22 we have the statement made that there “vessels of wrath fitted for destruction.” But the voice on that verb, voice is the relationship between the subject and the action and so for example in the English if I say I kill someone, that’s active voice; so we have an active voice, the subject does the action; or we have a passive voice, I was killed, the subject receives the action, passive voice. Or we have middle voice and in middle voice the subject participates in some way in the action, I kill myself, for example, suicide. Now we don’t really have a distinct middle voice in English, though its implicit in the way you talk; the Greeks had one that you could actually see in the text, they had a certain verb form that was middle voice. Now the verb form in verse 22, “the vessels of wrath fitted…” “fitted for destruction,” that verb form is middle voice. That means… there is middle and passive, it can be used both ways, it is not active, and so while God’s sovereignty over the vessels fitted for wrath, or His sovereignty over evil is passive, or middle in voice, in verse 23 it says “the vessels of mercy which He prepared for glory” is active voice. So we have active here, we have passive and middle voice there, and thus we have asymmetry in the overall sovereignty of God.

It’s got to be protected against statements like this, double predestination. Now there’s no such thing as double predestination. Now I know what people are talking about when they use the term; what they’re trying to say is that God has sovereignty over good and evil but if that’s what we’re trying to say then why don’t we say it? Why do we use the word “predestinate” that has something else; predestinate is the word that has to do with this linkage, not this linkage, so we don’t say double predestination. God has never predestinated people to hell. In fact the Bible says that the lake of fire was created for the devil and his angels; it doesn’t say the lake of fire was created for people. So again we have this very careful distinction made in the text of Scripture and we are very, very foolish to go on sixty miles an hour and never recognize these distinctions that God’s Word makes; they’re not just superfluous.

So that’s the first point in the doctrine of election. We must understand these basic things that all come out of this Creator/creature distinction or creation and the fall concept.

Now the second point. Last week we added a second point to our doctrine of election. Turn to Philippians 2:12; here very practically Paul shows the application of all this thinking in the daily Christian life. At the end of verse 12 it says, “how much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. [13] For it is God which works in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” Now this second point in the doctrine of election has to do with God’s election as the basic eternal promise. It is the promise behind all other promises. If you’re driving through a tunnel and I promise that you’re going to get through that tunnel all right, and get out into the light on the other end of the tunnel, and that’s obviously sure, then haven’t I also promised by way of implication that you will get through point by point by point by point by point through the tunnel? In other words, if we predict a future state we have already predicted everything leading to that future state. That’s what we mean when we say election is God’s basic eternal promise.

And Philippians 2:12 at the end says “work out your own salvation,” that’s the human effort, that is the response of the believer, that is trusting the promises, seeking God’s will, praying, carrying these things out into experience, all human effort, all human response. But notice, verse 13, which immediately follows says, “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” “For” by way of explanation, in other words, if I don’t know that it is God that works in me both to will and do of His good pleasure, where to I get my motive power to work out my own salvation? How can I get my motive power to work out my own salvation if I don’t know, in fact, whether I have salvation? Don’t you see, the power to execute verse 12 comes only from verse 13; verse 13 precedes verse 12 in logic. Verse 13 is what must be appropriated by faith, I must know this, I must come to definite knowledge of my elect position in Christ before I can work out my own salvation. That is what is meaty.

Now we said last week, how do we recognize that we are the elect? We don’t recognize it because we’ve had some experience; we don’t recognize because we joined a particular church; we don’t recognize because we dream dreams and see visions. We recognize it because we observe ourselves being attracted to the standard of Scripture. Beginning with the belief on the Lord Jesus Christ, at the point of salvation, beginning at that point we submit ourselves to the Scriptures, and then after that point we continue to go on. So this is the second point in the doctrine of election, and that is that we see ourselves being attracted to the standards of the Word.

Point three, this is new today, and this is that election is God’s 100% promise. It looks something like the third point but let’s look at it again to make sure. Election is 100% certain. Now we’ve really said that before but what I’m trying to get at here is how that certainty takes place. Turn to Matthew 16; this morning we’re going to again, it’ll be our last morning for this, we’ll be moving from various passage to various passage a lot because we’re dealing with a topic more than we’re dealing with a passage. Next Sunday we come back to the passage and work with it with more continuity.

Matthew 16:2-3, what we’re trying to do here is to show the difference between a mere prediction by a creature and a prediction by the Creator. In other words, there are creature predictions and there Creator predictions and the two are different. Here in Matthew 16:2-3 it deals with a familiar prediction, prediction the weather and so in verse 2 Jesus “answered and He said unto them, When it is evening, you say, It will be fair weather; for the sky is red. [3] And in the morning, It will be foul weather, for the sky is red and overcast.” Now that’s a creature prediction. That is because of a certain way our atmosphere is designed. If we take an observer at one point on the face of the globe and we look at that observer and we make west on the left side and east on the front side and we know that in the northern hemisphere, Jesus was in the northern hemisphere in Palestine, the weather moves from west to east in most cases. All right, so generally this is true. So when we have a sunset in the evening and the sun is off in the west and it’s raised, shines across the point of the observer and you see red clouds when the sun rays at a lower angle through various absorption problems in the atmosphere, project off that cloud is red. Why is this a sign of fair weather? Because it means the weather is to the east of the observer and since weather moves from west to east it’s moving away from the observer. When it is red in the morning, the sun, likewise is from the east at a low angle, due to diffraction and absorption and we’re getting red off the clouds that are off in the west, but since weather moves from west to east this now means bad weather because the clouds are moving in and lowering.

Well now that’s a creature prediction. Now the person who makes the observation and the prediction in verses 2-3, that person is a person who is an external observer of physical laws. And these external observations have nothing to do with the laws themselves. In other words, the creature, the meteorologist, radio or TV commentator, hasn’t made these laws, he watches these laws and he says I observe that when that happens, this happens; I observe that when that happens, this happens. In Lubbock when you smell the stockyards you know the wind shifted. So there are these creature observations, and they work most of the time and God wants us to know these things. Jesus expects us, in verses 2-3, to know this standard.

But that isn’t the way to look at how God predicts and that’s where people get screwed up. When we start talking about election they immediately start thinking in terms of how I would predict something; well I would observe this and I would observe this and I would observe this and I would observe this and then I would predict this. But that’s not how God works it. To see how God works it in distinction from this, let’s turn in the Old Testament to Isaiah 41:17; here’s a Creator prediction. Notice the difference in language. “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue fails for thirst, I, the LORD, will hear them; and I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. [18] I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. [19] I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree: I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together, [20] That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the LORD has done this, and the Holy One of Israel has created it.” Now there’s a prediction of what is going to take place, including predictions, obviously of climatic change, if you’re going to plant trees in the desert you’ve got to get rain in the desert first, so we have a climatic change predicted. Now is this because God sees clouds red in the east in the morning? No, that’s not what He sees. He is doing more than predict about laws outside of His character; what He is doing is stating His intent…His intent.

So there’s the difference between a Creator prediction and a creature prediction. A creature prediction is a guess about what’s going to happen based on natural observation but a Creator prediction is a statement of what He intends to do. And so this is His intent to perform this. Now to show that this is the interpretation of it, notice the next phrase, because here God addresses Himself to false idols or false gods that were being worshiped at that point in time, and in Isaiah 41:21 it says, “Produce your cause, says the LORD; bring forth your strong reason, say the King of Jacob. [22] Let them bring forth, and show us what shall happen; and let them show the former things, what they shall be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or” if you want to, “declare us things to come. [23] Show us the things that are to come [hereafter], that we may know that you are gods,” there’s the challenge. He offers to all the gods in the nations round about, create a prediction, try it. And the key Creator prediction is future history. You see, nobody can predict future history unless they’re God who intends to operate history that way. No way can you sit down with a computer and predict future history.

When I was going to MIT we had discussions in the meteorology department; there was a theoretical problem that was often posed and the problem was if we had the right amount of data and we had proper soundings in the atmosphere, all levels over a sufficiently fine grid, could we with an infinite computer predict every state of the future, given the initial conditions. In other words, with the prerequisites for prediction, just a computer and initial data, and this was a conundrum, I mean, you could discuss it forever but finally as a Christian you have to say no. A computer and infinite data about initial conditions does not give you enough to predict the future because you can’t tell… suppose here the meteorologist lives and we could do this; we’ll reduce this to uncertainty. Let’s take the situation; we’ve got absolute perception as far as his initial observations are concerned. Let’s suppose he has an infallible computer program. He puts the conditions into the computer and he predicts and the computer cranks out what the weather is going to be one hour, two hours, three hours, twenty-four hours, forty-eight hours, seventy-two hours, a week. Now, on Monday, say this prediction was made on Sunday, on Monday there’s a say a lone Christian farmer out here that has a problem, no rain in his field so he prays. He prays that God would change His mind about this matter and put some rain on that field. And God hears from heaven and says yeah, I’ll do that. And somehow he interfaces in the turbulent processes of the atmosphere and pulls it off. What happens to our computer; what happens to our prediction? It blows. Why? Because we’re constantly getting interference from outside the system. History, to the Christian, is an open system, not closed, therefore you can’t predict history except as the Creator.

Now, that is the difference between what we mean by election is 100% certain, it’s certain not because God is a super predictor, it is certain because it’s a statement of what He intends to do.

The fourth point in the doctrine of election; turn to Acts 27:21; this is a good balancing passage, it’s a passage that deals with something anybody can get involved in, they don’t need theology, you can visualize it very easily. Here’s the fourth point, that election is God’s free choice. Said another way, it means that election is unconditional. I’ll explain this in a moment but right now just the terms, the terminology we’re using. What is “unconditional election” or God’s free choice when He chooses to elect? In acts 27:21, “But after being long without food, Paul stood forth in the midst of them, and said, Sirs, ye should have hearkened unto me, and not have loosed from Crete, and have gained this harm and loss.” The context is on the Mediterranean in the fall of the year. The winter storm fronts are moving in; usually in the ancient world the shipping would stop in the fall as these winter storms began. The Mediterranean is extremely treacherous; the rule in navigation and water is the smaller the body of water and the more shallow it is the more treacherous it is in weather. Fresh water is worse than salt water and shallow ponds are far more dangerous than deep ones.

So in this situation the Mediterranean is an extremely dangerous place to be, and the shipped late, and they knew that, and he told them, look, you’re going to get in trouble if you keep on doing this, but no, they were in a hurry to get to Rome so they went ahead. Now in verse 22 he says, “I exhort you to be of good cheer; for there shall be no loss of any man’s life among you, except the ship.” Now let’s read through this thing carefully so we don’t get accused of sleight of hand here. Notice carefully each word in verse 22 because that is a statement of what God intends to do: “there shall be no loss of any man’s life among you, except the ship.” And verse 23, 24, and 25 are an explanation of how that prophecy of verse 22 came to be known to Paul; it talks about the problem. Verse 28, they come into shallow land, they know this because they’re dragging, sounding, a rope with a weight on the end of it and checking how many knots in the rope go out before the thing hits bottom and that’s how they’re measuring, an ancient way of sounding.

Verse 29, “Then, fearing lest we should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern, and wished for the day,” I imagine they did wish for the day. [30] “And as the sailors were about to flee out of the ship, when they had let down the boat into the sea, under pretense as though they would have cast anchors out of the foreship,” now what they do here is a clever thing. The shipmen, who really don’t buy Paul’s prophecy at all, they know what’s happening, these guys are experienced. And you get in a ship and that thing’s grounding and you’ve got a rocky shore, what’s happening is that the wave front keeps pushing against that hull and it will drive you inevitably into the rocks. It’s an extremely dangerous situation for a boat, and unless you have a strong tug there’s no way you’re going to get out of that thing. This is why we had the super tanker go in off the coast of France and dump thousands and thousands of gallons of petroleum into the English Channel, it’s a horrible mess. There’s no way, even in modern navigation that once you’re trapped in this situation, it’s a very, very desperate thing. So the shipmen who were the experienced ones make a good decision; in their experience they think it’s a good decision, and that is take off baby, don’t hang around this one.

Now what happens? [31] “Paul said to the soldiers,” there were some Roman soldiers aboard who had seized control of the ship, and he said “Except these abide in the ship, you cannot be saved.” Now isn’t that interesting? What did verse 22 say? Verse 22 said it was sovereignly certain that no man would be lost and yet verse 31 puts a condition on it, unless they stay in the ship they can’t be lost. So verse 31 clearly shows you there is a responsible choice involved in staying aboard the ship. The soldiers, being good soldiers under authority, acted decisively in the situation; they [32] “cut off the ropes of the ship, and let her fall off.” Paul passed the orders to the commanding officer and he said hey, if those guys get off the ship we’re in trouble, they’re going to die. Now my God said stay on the ship and we’ll be saved. So the officer said well, your God seems to know pretty well what He’s talking about so we’ll follow Him, and he gives the order and he says cut the boat, I don’t want to be standing here posting guards around the side of the ship waiting for every fool on deck to jump off, so I’m going to solve the problem and I’m going to solve it decisively; I’ll just eliminate the lifeboat. Now you’ve heard the expression, burning your bridges behind you, this is dropping your lifeboat behind you. There is no other way but this is a risk and it goes against the experienced men of verse 30; that was the experienced men and their experience decision. Paul counters that in the name of a sovereign decree of God.

Now as the story goes on they all are saved; we won’t go into all the nitty-gritty but the point we’re looking at is verse 22 and verse 31. Clearly there are conditions of human response involved. How, then can the theologian call election unconditional election? Here’s how he can. What the theologian is talking about is there are no conditions forcing God’s hand in what He is going to do. Again, drawing God, drawing creation, here’s God, there’s no force acting on God to make Him elect a certain way. That’s what the theologian is talking about when he says election is unconditional. He’s not saying that human responsibility in history is destroyed. If you want to picture what we’re talking about visualize a throne set up with a big screen in back of it; God does not sit on His throne and say now let’s see, do I design the plan of salvation so that everybody that stands on their head for four minutes is saved. He could have you know, and we wouldn’t have pews, we’d just have mats. But that isn’t the way He chose to do it; He chose it so that you believe and so we’d preach the Word of God, and that’s how He designed the plan. But here He is and He’s planning out the plan of salvation and He says well, I’m going to do it this way, this way, this way and this way. We’ll have a Paul in history and he will be saved, we have a Judas Iscariot, he’s a clod so he’ll be a reprobate, rejected and so on. And He makes these series of decisions.

What unconditional election means is that He’s free to make these, in and of His own will. He doesn’t have a screen in back of Him that says let’s see, I guess I’d better save him and not save him because he’s better than he is. God isn’t forced by something in back of Him; God makes the choice in and of Himself; that’s what unconditional election is all about.

Turn to 1 Peter for a little misunderstanding that often happens at this point. Often times and I have taught it years ago this way myself, oftentimes it is stated on such a passage as 1 Peter 1:2 that election is based on something called foreknowledge. Notice the wording in verse 2, it says: “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God, the Father,” oh, say some, what that means is that God looks down into the eternal future and He sees there is Paul, Paul is going to believe in Me, so I will elect Paul. There is Judas, Judas sits around and I’ve given him this opportunity and that opportunity and another opportunity and Judas always rejects it and rejects it and rejects it so to hell with him. Now that would be a common idea of election based upon foreknowledge. But the problem with it is this: in that view foreknowledge becomes a synonym for omniscience; that is, God in His omniscience knows all possibilities and He selects, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. It all sounds very nice except for these two problems: Does God’s foreknowledge mean omniscient? And (2) even if it did and God looks down the corridors of time how can He be sure it’s going to work that way unless He Himself has made it work that way. So what we’re saying is though it appears… though it appears to be a solution, it really doesn’t solve anything. And someday if you believe this you’re going to be walking into a situation, somebody is going to pull the plunger on you and you’re going to go down the drain and you’re going to wonder why. I’m telling you why, because that statement doesn’t solve a thing.

Let me show you. Let’s first deal with the problem of foreknowledge by turning to Romans 8:29. In Romans 8:29 we have the word “foreknowledge” used. But notice how it is used. It says, “For whom He did foreknow, He did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son,” verse 30, “Moreover, whom He did predestinate, then He also called, and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified.” Diagramming the syntax it looks like this: whom He foreknew, visualize a circle, and we have all the people that God foreknew. It says all of those whom He foreknew He predestinated, didn’t He. So we can say He foreknew, He predestinated, He called, He justified and He glorified. It’s all the same set; so it’s simply not true to say that He foreknew Judas Iscariot; He omnisciently knew of Judas Iscariot but the word foreknowledge we’re saying means something more special than just simple omniscience.

Turn to Acts 2; in Acts 2:23 you see this. And here it says, “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken….” Do you notice a parallel to foreknowledge there? It says “the determinate counsel” so here we have the meaning of foreknowledge. Better than translating it foreknowledge is forethought. Think of forethought and that’ll communicate better what we’re talking about, when it says the elect according to forethought, that means there’s a plan already established in the foreknowing. Well, some people still say yeah, but isn’t that still God looking ahead to see who’s going to believe and who isn’t going to believe. Turn to Matthew 11:21, Jesus Christ looks at a “what if” situation. And He says, to two cities that had rejected Him, there are two cities that had rejected Him, Chorazin and Bethsaida, they were both cloddy type cities in His generation and He says “woe unto both of you, for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon they would have repented.” Tyre and Sidon were two equally cloddy cities in the ancient world. But now notice, interesting, isn’t it, if we say God looks ahead in time to see who’s going to believe and who’s going to disbelieve, what do you do about the fact that there seems to be a variable that we don’t take account of in that simple way of talking. And the variable is the amount of revelation. In verse 21 it is clearly saying that had God turned the volume up, so to speak, in the revelation of Sidon and Tyre they would have believed. All He would have had to have done, Jesus is saying here is if He sent Me like He sent Me in New Testament times and He sent Me in Old Testament times and I dropped in to visit Sidon and I dropped in to visit Tyre, they’d have believed, but you people won’t. They would have.

Do you see that God does not operate history democratically? Every individual does not get equal amounts of revelation but that’s the way it is. Now there’s a corollary to this lest you be accusing God of being unfair. The corollary is if you’ve been exposed to more revelation than your neighbor the obligation is greater on you to produce. That’s why some of you who have had exposure to the Word of God for years and years and years in your life and you’ve done absolutely nothing with it, you are in a far worse position than that person you despise down the street who may never even have heard of Jesus. When my wife and I were in Dallas and I remember a boy who came up to the door one time and we started talking about Jesus and he said “who’s she.” Here’s a kid from the inner ghetto of a modern city who doesn’t know who Jesus Christ is. Now some of you have tons of miles along from that, you’ve got more respect; He’ll require more from you than He will from them. This is why woe is being pronounced in Chorazin and Bethsaida; “Woe unto you,” you are damned more than Sidon and Tyre because you people had far more revelation than they had and you’ve rejected it, and rejected it and rejected it.

So the point we’re making in the fourth condition is the only way of handling it is to say that God chooses the way He wants to choose because of a plan He has and it’s best left there, without trying to diddle around and try to explain why He does this and why He does that. It’s best to leave it there.

Now in Romans 9, we won’t go there; we’re going to go to Jeremiah 18, but in Romans 9 there’s a little story about a potter that just absolutely infuriates people to be compared to clay. But let’s turn to Jeremiah 18 where Paul got the illustration from. This is the famous business about God has a right, just like a potter, to do what he wants to with the clay. In Jeremiah 18:2, the passage from which Paul got that information, it says, very simple; all you have to do is look at this. I know this is very hard, this doctrine of election, to follow, many of you are doing magnificently in spite of all the complications we have, either is too hard or the microphone doesn’t work, it never happens except when we teach advanced doctrine. In Jeremiah 18:2, “Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words. [3] Then I went down to the potter’s house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. [4] And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter; so he made it again into another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. [5] Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, [6] O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? Saith the LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in My hand, O house of Israel. [7] At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck it up, and to pull down, and to destroy it, [8] If that nation against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. [9] And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, [10] If it do evil in My sight, that it obey not My voice, then I will repent of the good with which I said I will benefit them.”

Here’s the picture. You can easily see, you’ve all seen a picture of the potter’s wheel, and the clay is put on this wheel and it’s rotated around, sort of like a vertical axis of a… it would correspond to a horizontal action of a wood lathe or something and so you have this pile of clay. What does the potter do? Sit there and go eenie meanie miney moe? No, he has in his mind an idea and a plan and so he begins to shape this clay and in the ancient world the fingerprints would even be left in the pot, very personal. I remember when I was in Israel, we climbed up the big cliff over where the Philistines, once the Philistine cities were and we picked up this potsherd which is part of a Philistine pot and I never forget just looking at that and you could see the inside of it where the potter, and this is the guy that must have made that thing about 1000 BC, it was 3000 years old, and he had his hand on the inside of that and you could see grains in the [can’t understand word] that worked with it. It’s just amazing to sit here and hold in your hand a piece that was made during the time that the Old Testament was being written. And there was one individual potter in that Philistine city who one day made that pot; kind of interesting to think of it that way. But anyway, here is the wheel turning around as the potter begins to shape it something happens. It says, in verse 4 the vessel that he was making in the clay was marred. Now often times that happens, particularly if not enough water is used and the clay gets hard and it cracks and fractures and so something has to be done and it has to be reworked. So maybe he’s got it partly done here or something and it’s got a bad spot in it, so he has to rework it. And so the third step that has is he reworks it into something else.

All right, those are three steps that are involved that Jeremiah saw. Paul, if you now turn to Romans 9, picks those steps up. It’s not quite so ambiguous as it looks when you first see it. In Romans 9:20, “Nay but, O man, who are you that replies against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why have you made me thus? [21] Has not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor? [22] What if God, willing to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, [23] And that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy,” all right, think of the illustration. You were there with Jeremiah when he went to the potter’s house. What did you see in the potter’s house? You saw the potter work with this lump of clay, one lump, not three lumps, not four lumps, one lump. What’s that lump? All the human race, humanity. And God is working with humanity to produce something. And as Jeremiah watched what was happening to that? It said in Jeremiah 18:4 “it was marred in the hand of the potter” as he was building it. And as he was building it and it was marred, what does that correspond to in history. You’ve got the creation, you’ve got the fall. And then the potter, what did he do with the clay? He reworked it into something, and there is election.

In other words, God chooses out from the mass of fallen humanity those whom He has designed to receive salvation. He has designed a plan, He has designed a Savior, He has designed a salvation system and He has designed those people to exist in history. The whole thing is the pot that he’s left with. In effect he’s left two pots, Paul says after it’s all over, after this point he’s reached, actually there’s just the lump, “the vessel of wrath which has been fitted for destruction,” and then the good ones, “the vessels of mercy, which He has prepared.”

So that’s the potter illustration and point 4 of election is that God has the right to shape history the way He wants to shape it, period, without somebody telling Him it’s got to be this way or that way.

The last point in the doctrine of election is shown in Genesis 18. The last point in the doctrine of election is how do you see election operate in history. Where can you identify election happening? Election exists, not in the mind of God now, I’m not talking about that, exists in history where there is submission to the Word of God. Observe Genesis 18:19, “For I know him,” this is from the standpoint of foreknowledge, “I know him, in order that,” purpose clause, “he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which He has spoken about him.” Now notice the end of verse 19, see the end? That’s the blessing, “the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which He has spoken.” There’s the light at the end of the tunnel; there’s that certain future state. Well do you observe in the middle of verse 19, on the way to the end of the tunnel… on the way to final state, is that “they will keep the way of the LORD” in history. So where do you see election happening? You see it where there is historical obedience to the Scripture, to God’s will. That’s where it’s got to be.

Or, said another way, you don’t see election until somebody believes in Jesus Christ. Don’t go around talking about the unsaved elect; you don’t find that in the Scripture. Election is a term of position in Christ and it occurs in history only when someone believes in Jesus Christ. That’s when you start to see it and you see it as a person who grows and is sanctified in Christ.

Okay, we’re going to conclude by turning to Ephesians 1 to see how all this ties in to the Christian and his response to it. Those of you with the furrowed brows this morning, I warned you on the first point, didn’t I, that there would be things in the doctrines of God that couldn’t be brought together to your logical satisfaction. On the other hand I defend this by saying you can’t show there’s contradiction either. These are just things that the Word of God has stated and I put the first point first because I knew that would happen after we it all said and done, well I still don’t understand it. So you ought to understand it if you understood the first point because the first point, if you understood the first point you’d understand that you wouldn’t understand it.

Ephesians 1:3, “Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies, [4] According as He has elected us in Him,” notice it does not say elected us into Him, it says, “elected us in Him before the foundation of the world…. [5] Having predestinated us unto the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ to Himself,” etc. Now in a nutshell what are we talking about? What is talked about here is something that is impossible unless election is true, and that is this overwhelming confidence and thankfulness to God. There is a blessing that is offered God in verse 3; this blessing that is offered here is a blessing, it is possible for you to thank God only if you appreciate God’s call on you. Incidentally, those of you who are teaching English in the school system and you get into diagramming sentences, here’s a sneaky way to get the Word of God under then noses of the censors back into the classroom, and it is simply to assign your students the assignment of diagramming this sentence that begins in verse 3, the longest sentence in the New Testament. Ask them to find the end of it, ask them to diagram it; it’ll take about a week to do it and they’ll probably have to take butcher paper to do it on because it’s a big long sentence, but it forces your students to have to read the text of the Word of God and understand it. And so it can be presented as a very innocuous English assignment, but you know in these situations one has to follow the letter of the law but not the spirit. And so therefore you use ever insidious device you can to get the Word of God into the classroom.

So verse 3 is the proper biblical response to election; it’s praise and thanksgiving, praise because in Christ you cannot fail, whereas outside of Christ you cannot win. This call is “in Christ” and in what He’s setting up in Christ, which is said in verse 10, “all things He is going to gather to gather in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, in Him.” That’s the destiny and it cannot fail; the tragedy as I see it in our own time in our own day there are only two groups of people on the face of this earth that systematically grasp this point and they’re both heretics and they’re both non-Christian and they’ve both ripped off the Christian system. One is the Marxist, the communist, the person who says that economic determinism compels his victory. And the other is this latest group that you’ve been reading about in the paper, the new fundamentalist Muslims that have taken over Libya, that are taking over Iran, that have already taken over Iraq; they are the people who believe in fanatical holy war Jihad, and they are the ones who too believe that history Allah ordains their victory. It used to be the Christians of the west were the only ones of that push, the Puritans; wherever you have a group of people I assure you, wherever you have a group of people that grasp the idea of election you have an undefeatable people; they cannot be defeated. It’s simple. No way, the only way you can defeat them is to destroy every single one of them. But wherever you have a group of people that really grasp election, nothing can stop them. And that goes for you in your Christian life, if you’ve really grasped election, if you’ve really grasped what it means to be “in Christ” and that God has ordained victory in Him nothing can stop you; the gates of hell themselves, which means the leadership of hell, cannot assault you, cannot impede, cannot defeat you.

Therefore we will conclude by singing…..