So then he has

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August 30, 2015

I want to start this week by reminding of us how we started last week: If Romans 9 is an ocean of God’s freedom and sovereignty, we didn’t dive into the depths right off the bat. We stood on the edge of the shore and let the water wash up on our feet. One reason I led us to take that approach is because I know the waves of Romans 9 are so massive that they can come crashing down on us, crushing the breath out of us, and then we just want to get out of the water and never get back in again. And I want us to avoid that reaction, because that’s not the point of Romans 9. Yes, you should see the waves of God’s freedom and sovereignty in Romans 9 as so huge that you know they could crush you. There should be an appropriate reverence and awe in your heart that leads you to tremble in worship before your great God. But the point is not to strike a fear in your heart that drives you away from God and away from faith in His freedom and sovereignty. The point of Romans 9 is to assure you that all the promises of love and security and joy that God gives at the end of Romans 8 will be true forever. This same God who loves you so passionately also has utter power and sovereignty to carry out the desires of His love. Nothing can stop Him. He promises good to you, because He loves you. He is able to give good to you, because He is sovereign and free. Or you can say it the other way around: God can do whatever He wants, because He is sovereign and free. And because of His love, what He wants is to make all things work for your good for all eternity. When you see that connection between Romans 8 and Romans 9—between God’s love and God’s sovereignty—I hope you see that God didn’t inspire the massive waves of Romans 9 in order to crush you beneath them. God inspired the massive waves of Romans 9 because He wants you to experience the joy of riding on top of them. He wants you to experience the complete assurance and guarantee of knowing that the power of His sovereignty and freedom is carrying you to the goal of His love. So that’s one reason why we are taking small steps into the edge of Romans 9 before we plunge into the ocean: I hope it’s helpful to see how God wants us to relate to His “waves” before we encounter them full force. The second reason for taking small steps has to do with my inadequacy to teach these truths. They are very big, and my mind is very small, and my command of words is even smaller. I want to be very clear about our complete dependence on the Spirit to teach us if we are going to truly grasp the spiritual truths of this chapter. I can’t get my arms around it all at once. I certainly can’t express it clearly all at once. So we’re going to take it one piece at a time, all the while knowing that even one piece is too big for us on our own, and we are completely dependent on the Spirit to teach us. So last week we started looking at some of the most common objections we have to the teaching about God’s freedom and sovereignty in election—objections that often cause us to “jump off” the waves and refuse to get back on. Often, when we hear the truth of God’s freedom and sovereignty in election—that “It depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy,” and “So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills” (9:16, 18) - we have objections (or at least questions) like this: 1.

If that’s true, then it doesn’t matter what we do. If God’s already decided how everything’s going to happen, all we can do is accept it.

2. If that’s true, then there’s no way we should be responsible for anything. God makes it all happen. 3. If that’s true, then there’s no point in praying. God has already determined everything, so my prayers don’t matter, because they aren’t going to change anything. 4. If that’s true, then there’s no point is evangelism and missions, because God has already decided who He’s going to save.

Last week, we saw that 1, 2, and 4 are not biblically accurate. I pointed out that even within Romans 9-11, as Paul teaches so directly about God’s sovereignty and freedom in election, he still doesn’t teach any of those objections. We see him grieving over Israel’s unbelief, not passively accepting it as a result of God’s sovereignty (9:1-3). We see him passionately striving to lead them to faith, not declaring there’s nothing he can do because of election (11:13-14). We see him declaring Israel’s responsibility for their lostness, not denying their responsibility in light of God’s sovereignty (9:31-32; 10:3). We see him affirming that if God holds us responsible even in light of His sovereign election, then it’s foolish for us to argue back to God that His sovereign election should mean we aren’t responsible (9:19-21). Now, none of this reduces God’s sovereignty and freedom in election at all (9:10-13). None of this changes the truth that everything ultimately depends on God (9:16). Instead, it shows us that, according to the Bible, the importance of our choices and our responsibility for our choices is compatible with God’s sovereignty. So if our understanding of Romans 9 leads us to think it is teaching any of the above objections, then we don’t yet understand Romans 9. That leaves us with our third objection: “There’s no point in praying. God has already determined everything, so my prayers don’t matter, because they aren’t going to change anything.” Again, that’s not at all what Romans 9-11 teaches. After Paul devotes all of chapter 9 to explaining Israel’s lostness in terms of God’s sovereign election, he then responds to that truth in the very first verse of chapter 10 by saying, “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.” Right in the middle of the heaviest discussion of election in the Bible, Paul says he is driven to pray for the lost! Clearly, the Bible shows prayer to be compatible with God’s sovereignty. In fact, prayer actually makes more sense in light of God’s sovereignty. Here’s what I mean: If God is sovereign, then He has the power and ability to do whatever He chooses. It makes sense to pray to a God like that. If God weren’t sovereign, you could still pray to Him, but you wouldn’t know if He could do what you were asking. His sovereignty gives you more reason to pray, not less! On top of that, when you realize that a sovereign God has invited you to pray to Him, has promised to give you good gifts because He’s your loving Father, and has declared that He will work in answer to prayers, you’ve got huge reasons to pray. And when you pray and God answers, that doesn’t somehow undermine His sovereignty. You aren’t controlling Him with your prayers. He’s doing exactly what He wants—exactly what He already said He would do—because He’s the one who chose to work in response to prayer in the first place! Let me give a very personal example of this. Christy and I pray every night for Sydney and Emery. Part of what we pray is for God to turn their hearts to Him, so they love Him with their whole hearts; for God to give them pure hearts and soft hearts and stir up faith inside them, so they believe the gospel; for God to set them apart for His purposes and call them out by His grace and draw them to Himself. We know that only God can do that work in them, because only He is sovereign. But His sovereignty doesn’t mean we passively accept whatever happens to our children. His sovereignty gives us a reason to passionately pray for Him to save them! (And a reason for us to faithfully teach them the gospel. All of these thoughts about prayer are closely connected to what we saw about evangelism last week. Just as God ordained the speaking of the gospel as the means by which the elect are saved, so also He ordained prayer as the means by which He pours out His Spirit to soften hearts and draw the elect.) God’s sovereignty means prayer really affects things, including salvation, because He has declared that prayer will really affect things. So if you think of sovereignty and election in a way that makes you think they undermine prayer, you aren’t thinking about sovereignty and election the way the Bible teaches.

Let’s try an illustration. I’ve said before that no illustration about God is perfect, because nothing is exactly like God. That’s especially true when you’re talking about the timeless, eternal, sovereign election of God. Nothing else is timeless, eternal, or able to sovereignly elect for its purposes. But I’ve suggested the parallel of an author writing a book as a helpful illustration before. Remember, it’s not perfect, but I think it can help us some right now. The author is sovereign over everything that happens in the book. He is the ultimate cause of it all. But within the book, the characters choose and act. “Inside” the story, they are really causing what they do, and they are responsible for what they do. For example, think about Romeo and Juliet. Did Romeo die because he drank poison or because Shakespeare wrote his death into the book? Both. Within the book, Romeo makes a choice that has a real effect, and he is responsible for his choice. Outside the book, Shakespeare is sovereign over the whole story, including Romeo’s choices. Romeo and Shakespeare are both “causes” of what happens in the book, and the two causes are compatible because they exist on different levels. Romeo exists inside the book and is a direct cause of what happens in the book. Shakespeare exists outside the book and is the ultimate cause of what happens in the book. That at least gives us a glimpse into God’s sovereignty in election and our responsibility. God is the sovereign author of the whole story. We live “inside” the story. And we make real choices that have real effects. When we pray or share the gospel, those things are real causes in leading people to Jesus. But at the same time (actually “outside” this time altogether), God has eternally and sovereignly “written” everything that is happening, including our choices. And somehow— somehow—God takes into account our choices in such a way that we are responsible for them even as He sovereignly authors the whole story. If you pray on August 30, 2015 for the salvation of your child, your prayer is one of the things God takes (took) into account as He authors (authored) the spiritual destiny of your child. The same could be said of every time the gospel is spoken to your child, every decision your child makes, etc. It all really matters. It all has an effect, because God “wrote the book” in such a way that it really matters. He takes it all into account as He writes the book, and He is ultimately sovereign over everything that is written. I’m not saying you have to be able to fully grasp this. If you do, please tell me, because I don’t. But I am saying that we can at least get a glimpse of how it’s true. Let me point out one place where the illustration breaks down. God has written this story so that the characters in the story are able to speak to, hear from, and interact with the Author. The Author has stepped down into the story, and revealed Himself to us, and invited us into relationship with Him. Romeo couldn’t do that with Shakespeare. Romeo had no knowledge of what was going on outside the world of his story. Romeo couldn’t impact what was being written, because he didn’t know that it was being written. But God has created us in such a way that we get to impact what He “writes”. It’s mind-boggling—when I really think about it, I can’t hardly believe it. We are able to pray within the story, and the One who is writing the story takes those prayers into account as He chooses how to write the story. But one word of caution: Don’t go the other direction and think that means we impact the story in a way that undermines God’s sovereignty. We don’t. The reason we impact that story is because God has sovereignly declared that we can, and because God chooses to pour out His power when we pray. His declaration and His power are still the deepest causes of everything that happens when we pray. All that to say, the Bible clearly teaches both the sovereignty of God and the importance of prayer.

So none of our four objections against the teaching of God’s sovereign election stand in light of the Bible. In fact, even if we only look at Romans 9-11, none of the objections stand. If we try to set these objections up against the teaching on God’s sovereign election in Romans 9, we are not yet understanding the biblical teaching in Romans 9. Let me offer four closing thoughts about the past two weeks: First, be careful that you don’t get confused about what we’ve seen. What we’ve seen is that, according to the Bible, God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility are both true. But there’s such a tendency in our flesh to reject God’s sovereignty that I can imagine some of us taking parts of the teaching from these two weeks and thinking, “See, the Bible says what I do matters. The Bible says me sharing the gospel impacts who is saved. The Bible says my prayers impact what happens. The Bible says we’re responsible for how we respond to the gospel…” So far, so good. All of that is true. But then we want to say, “So God doesn’t really elect. We choose whether we’re saved. God doesn’t choose who’s saved.” Now we’ve crossed over into something that’s not true. We’ve drawn an unbiblical conclusion. Nothing we’re seeing about our responsibility lessens God’s sovereignty in any way. What we should be seeing is that both are taught together in the Bible, which means your belief in man’s responsibility is not a reason to reject God’s sovereignty. Second, be careful that you don’t reverse the biblical teaching on which cause is deeper. The Bible clearly teaches that God is the deepest, ultimate cause: “It depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy” (9:16). There have been times when I’ve found myself “softening” God’s sovereignty (and I’ve heard other people do the same thing) by saying something like, “Yes, God chooses to save the elect, but I choose to be part of the elect.” Or, “God chooses the elect, because He sees who will trust Him.” Or, “I chose to be chosen.” In those cases, we’re trying to acknowledge both causes (God and us), but we’re getting them in the wrong order. We’re making us the deeper cause than God. We’re saying our faith causes God to choose us, or our choice makes us part of the elect. That’s not true. It does not depend on us! It depends on God! Do not rob God of His glory by making yourself a deeper cause than God! Third, remember the effect God intends for this teaching to have on your heart: It’s supposed to give you great assurance and comfort and security. It’s telling you why you can trust the promise of God’s love in 8:28-39. And the reason is because, on the deepest level, that promise depends on God’s sovereign election, not your response to God. It’s grounded in God, not you. Do you see how crucial this is? If you’re the deepest cause, you can never be certain of anything, because you’re not perfectly reliable. If God is the deepest cause, you can be absolutely, unshakably certain, because God is perfectly reliable. Do you see that? Do you see that God is infinitely, immeasurably more reliable and more trustworthy than you? Do you see that the more certain you become of God’s sovereignty, the more reason you have for joy and hope and peace and security? Finally, if your heart isn’t responding to this teaching in that way yet—if you aren’t praising God for His greatness and mercy, and you aren’t rejoicing in the hope and joy and peace and security of His sovereignty—that’s not surprising. I’ve seen areas of my heart rebel against Romans 9 for years. That’s the flesh in us that does not want to submit to a God who is this big and this sovereign and this glorious. Ask the Spirit to do battle against the flesh and soften your heart, so you can submit to this truth and rejoice in the glory of God’s sovereign election the way you should.