Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

verses. We’ll begin the consideration of the Canons of Dort, the first article on divine election and reprobation. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Ephesians 1:1-14.

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus and to the faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.

To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace, wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are in earth, even in him.

In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him, who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will, that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted after that you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and whom also after that you believed you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession unto the praise of his glory.

Let us pray. Father, we pray that you would open this text for understanding and open our hearts, Lord God, to receive these truths deep down into our very being, to give you praise and glory, to receive the assurance that these texts speak of, and the motivation to live holy lives. We ask this in the name of and by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Please be seated.

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The powerful and exclusive role of God. The powerful and exclusive role of God with the focus of religion being on God, not men.

Quoting from his article on the left side of the line, Arminians believe in a greater role for man and woman. That’s interesting, isn’t it, to decline right away from the covenantal headship of men in his writing—man and woman—arguing in a greater role for men and women, including a synergism with God in matters of religion. So Drury says that this is kind of the balance that’s supposed to be out there. And his reason for writing the column is he’s bemoaning the fact, he’s lamenting the fact that the right side of the line, the Calvinists who stress God-centeredness are gone away.

Where are they to be found? He says the article is “Where are the Calvinists gone?” That’s the title of it, and that’s the question he asks. He says that today, while many Calvinists salute the Westminster Confession and traditional Calvinist doctrines, they have slipped over to the Arminian side in practice. They are confessing Calvinist but practicing Arminians. He says if it walks like an Arminian, quacks like an Arminian, and holds seeker services like an Arminian, it probably really is an Arminian, at least practically speaking.

So he’s bemoaning the fact that the right side of the line has abandoned the line, and everybody now is over on the left side with him and the rest of the Arminians. And he includes in that those people that act like Arminians with holding seeker services, etc. He says that the Arminian side of the line is proper to give attention to human reason, tradition, and experience. The right side of the line, the Calvinist, stressed the Bible.

The Arminians stress, along with the Bible, reason, human reason, tradition, and experience. We on the left side, he said, have been prolific in spawning movements: revivalism, camp meetings, charismatics, seeker-centeredness, contemporary Christian music, and programism—hiring all kinds of fantastic whiz-bang programming designed to make your church successful. In fact, over here on the left is where all the action has been for the last several decades.

So he’s saying—I’m not saying anything against the left side of the line that I’m a part of. He says the Arminians are good and useful because they do all these neat things. But he says what we really need also is the balance of the right side of the line. He says Christianity today—the danger of Christianity today is not becoming too God-focused, Bible-oriented, or truth-based. That’s the right-hand side of the line.

No, that’s not the problem. He says rather it is becoming a mushy, over-oriented, experience-based, sentimental, man-centered religion. We’ve always counted on the Calvinist/Reformed right end of the line to beat this kind of excess back. But in the last twenty years, experience-based religion has been blitzing the right side of the line. He says that, you know, I’m not saying I want to change over, but you guys who are Calvinists, get back to your own side of the line.

He’s saying, he says, if you don’t, we’ll eventually be swept off our feet and washed out to new age humanism and universalism. So here we have an Arminian acknowledging the plight of the Calvinist churches, so-called, who had the confessions and yet has ceded over to Arminianism. It’s my belief that he’s wrong in his analysis. The right side of the line is the biblical side of the line, and it is true that the decline of the biblical side of the line has led to experientialism, a mushy-based religion, and is indeed washing the Christian faith over into new age mysticism.

The decline of the doctrine, the preaching of the doctrine of hell and the part on many evangelicals abandoning the doctrine of hell in the last decade, for instance, is one more indication. Things aren’t static. You know, ideas do have consequences. And whether we bow the knee to God’s sovereign truths or not do have consequences, and the consequences we see today are even seen on the part of a man who is self-confessed Arminian, who sees that the excesses of Arminianism are leading to real problems.

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Well, we want to begin—we began last week and we’ll now begin a formal analysis or discussion going through the Canons of Dort to try to counteract this, at least at our own church. We want to come to grips with what the scriptures teach about the sovereignty of God. Now I want to say first here that when we talk about the Canons of Dort, the term “canon” might throw some people off. Canon, in the context of if you have a Catholic background, indicates the laws of the church.

We are not holding up the Canons of Dort as the law of the church that everyone must submit to. The Canons, the Westminster Confessions, and the standards—the three forms of unity of which the Canons of Dort are a part—these only have binding authority on Christians as they conform to the word of God. And so when we go through these Canons, we’re not asserting that because the church has historically said so, you have to do it.

But we said the church has historically expressed itself here on this opinion after a thorough analysis of what the scriptures teach on these things. And as such, we ought to bow to the teaching of scripture as reflected in those findings of the Synod of Dort. So it’s a little weird for me talking on the Canons of Dort because I’ve never really preached through a secondary standard. Well, I’ve preached through our own secondary standards using scripture to support the positions of our confessional statement.

But in terms of a long series of sermons through historical secondary standards, I’ve not done that before, and it always seemed a little odd to me. And maybe if it seems odd to you, look at this as a topical series. Okay? It’s a set of topical sermons on the sovereignty of God as related to the doctrine of salvation. And so the Canons can be read that way, and hopefully these sermons will conform themselves to that particular way of looking at this as well—that this is really a series of topical sermons.

This is not exposition of the Canons of Dort’s exposition of scripture as they relate to this particular topic. Now I want to use Ephesians 1 here in a couple of minutes to talk about the first articles of the Canons of Dort. But I want to begin by putting this in a proper context. Arminianism and Calvinism, ultimately in its direct application, refer to God’s means of salvation. But as Mr. Drury correctly points out, it really revolves around much bigger issues involving God-centeredness versus man-centeredness, scripture as opposed to human reason, tradition, and the logic of men.

So it really is a lot larger context, and that context is the overall scripture teaching on God’s sovereignty—not just in salvation but in all things. The words of the Westminster Confession—”he has decreed whatsoever comes to pass”—and so on. In your outline, the first set of scriptures there, an extensive set of scriptures, are scriptures about the sovereignty of God. Now we train ourselves liturgically every Lord’s Day in this particular pattern: we always have a sovereign call and our response is just that—it is a response, as we just sung about, to the love of God manifested in his call to us. So we continually repeat and practice in this church the doctrinal truth that we are responders to God. We do not initiate things. God initiates and we respond. And I think that’s very important to keep in mind in a greater context as well, in terms of God’s sovereignty.

I just want to go over these scriptures to begin with that speak to God’s overall sovereignty before we get to specifically talking about God’s sovereignty relative to salvation.

Okay. In Psalm 115:3 we read, “Our God is in the heavens. He hath done whatsoever he hath pleased.” No conditions, no qualifications, no external judgments upon who God is. God does whatsoever he pleases. Psalm 135:6, “Whatsoever the Lord pleases, that did he in the heavens, in the earth, in the seas and all deep places.” God does whatever he wants, not just in terms of heavenly counsel, but in terms of the actions of the entire created order.

God does what he pleases, not what suits us, not what conforms to our understanding of who he should be. God is sovereign. We bow the knee to that. Job 23:13, “He is in one mind and who can turn him? And what his soul desires, even that he does.” God can’t be turned or changed. What God puts his mind to do, what God purposes to do, he accomplishes, in the context of his history of men. Ephesians 1 repeats this same truth.

“In whom also we have obtained inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who works all things after the counsel of his own will.” We want to look at Ephesians in a couple of minutes for teaching the sovereignty of God in salvation. But Ephesians teaches us first that he works—not just our salvation or the things relative to it, but indeed—he works all things after the counsel of his own will.

Daniel 4:35, “Now all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing, and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. And none can stay his hand or say unto him, ‘What doest thou?’” See the inappropriateness of asking God, “Why are you doing this?” God does whatsoever he pleases. Matthew 11:26, “Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.” Jesus is a picture there of submission to the Father.

There are things that we don’t understand—not unlike our Savior, understood all things. There are things that are difficult for us, and yet we must say at the end of the day, “It seems good in your sight,” to have given us this particular reality. And we must then, by the need of that, acknowledge his sovereignty. God’s sovereignty is expressed in the terms of his purpose. In Jeremiah 49:20, for instance:

“Therefore hear the counsel of the Lord that he hath taken against Edom and his purposes that he hath purposed against the inhabitants of Teman.” God has purposes. He sets himself to a particular set of actions relative to his creation. Jeremiah 50:45, “Therefore, hear ye the counsel of the Lord that he hath taken against Babylon and his purposes that he hath purposed against the land of the Chaldeans.”

You know, it’s interesting that Jeremiah over and over stresses God’s sovereignty. And we’ll see as we get into the Canons of Dort that they correctly moved a discussion of God’s sovereign election and his predestination of men and his divine election of those whom he has foreknown and loved in eternity. They move that to the doctrine of assurance of faith. In Jeremiah, one of the passages of scripture—one of the chapters of scripture—that so stress the sovereignty of God. It is to a people that are under tremendous judgment from him. We have difficult times in our lives to remember the overall sovereignty of God, not just limited to our salvation, but to all things that come to pass—that he has these purposes that he works out. It’s a tremendous doctrine of comfort to us.

Romans 8:28, as we read last week, “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” God’s determinative purpose again is stressed. Romans 9:11, “For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand.” Speaking of his differentiation between children not yet born, that his purpose might stand.

Isaiah 46:10, “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.’” Sovereign assertion: God’s counsel will stand. He will bring to pass. He will do all his good pleasure. Ephesians 3:11, “According to the eternal purpose rather, which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That’s how our salvation comes to be. That’s how everything comes to be in this world—through his eternal purpose that he has purposed in all eternity.

Acts 4:28, “For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel”—again, not just what he does, but what he does is determined by his counsel, his purposes in eternity, his decree. He accomplishes all things that have come, that come to pass. 2 Timothy 1:9, “Who has saved us and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace.” His purpose—deliberative purpose in eternity—is spoken of again, time and time again in holy scripture.

This eternal purpose of God goes down to the minutest details of life. Luke 12:6 and 7—for which of you intending to build—I’m sorry, that’s the wrong reference. That reference is here: the building of a tower. And God, as he sees fit to do what he does, certainly takes the advice here of our Savior, so to speak. The Savior reflects the advice of God’s eternal purpose. God establishes a plan and resources to effect his plan.

Psalm 33:11, “The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.” Jeremiah 4:28, “For thus shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black, because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not repent, neither will I turn back from it.” Jeremiah 30:24, “The fierce anger of the Lord shall not return until he hath done it, and until he hath performed the intents of his heart.” 1 Samuel 15:29,

“And also the Strength of Israel will not lie, nor repent, for he is not a man that he should repent.” You know, we like to take our pets and make them into people. And Disney does that all the time. We’ve been trained to do that since we were kids. But it’s not because Disney programmed us. It’s because that’s what we tend to do. We’re egocentric, and we like to project who we are onto our pets and the things around us.

And so we personalize things. And we do the same thing with God. We think of God in terms of who we are. But the scriptures over and over and over and over and over say that God is sovereign. He has purposed certain things. He will surely bring them to pass. And he doesn’t bring it to pass because it’s good for us. He does it because it’s his own good pleasure to work these things out. Now, in that good pleasure, he has sovereignly set his love upon us and works all things together for our good.

But it is to the end that his purposes might be established. He is not a man that he should repent.

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Proverbs 16:33, Jonah 1:7, Acts 1:26. These scriptures all speak to God’s providence in terms of events and chance. Well, I suppose we could talk about how the lot being cast—and the lots being cast of the disciples, and in the book of Jonah, the lot being cast to determine who is the guilty party for why God’s judgment had come upon them.

We can maybe put a little more religious significance on this than we might do today playing the Oregon Lottery or something. The point that’s made here is applicable to even the Oregon Lottery: there is no such thing as chance in God’s universe. The very rolling of the dice, the casting of the lot, is determined by himself sovereignly. Judge Rousas Rushdoony used to say that chance—probability rather—is the statistical regularity of God’s will.

It’s a demonstration of the statistical regularity of his will relating to things that we sometimes talk about in terms of being chance events. Scripture says there are no really, ultimately, chance events. Now, the scriptures use that language. It’s okay for us to use the language if we understand by the language we use. When we say “chance,” we mean “not determined by a man.” But it is determined by the sovereign counsel of God that extends, even, as those scriptures tell us, to the throwing of lots.

Acts 1:26, the throwing of lots for the choosing of the disciples. A wonderful picture of this is in 1 Kings 22:34. You know, Ahab is out there, and God is going to get him. And Ahab doesn’t want to be. So he kind of disguises himself. Doesn’t think he’s going to get shot. And in 1 Kings 22:34, we read, “A certain man drew a bow at a venture”—just kind of shoots it by chance, the text sort of indicates here.

“And he smote the king of Israel between the joints of the harness, wherein he said unto the drivers of the chariot, ‘Turn thine hand and carry me out of the host, for I am wounded.’” A bow shot by chance. God directs it sovereignly into the chink in the armor, so to speak, so that his judgment against Ahab would be pictured. So the chance event—for man’s choosing—the shooting of the bow is an incident totally controlled and regulated by the sovereign God.

God says in his word that his sovereignty extends to the very hairs of our head. Matthew 10:30. It refers to the sparrows falling to the ground. Matthew 10:29. So it doesn’t just men. It’s talking about the animal creation as well. The scriptures assert over and over and over that God’s sovereignty extends to every minutest detail of the created order and of what God has designed and created and brings to pass.

And that means as well that God’s sovereignty extends to calamities. Isaiah 45:7, “I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things.” He brings forth calamities into the context of the earth. That’s what that message from Isaiah tells us. Ecclesiastes 7:14, “In the day of prosperity, be joyful. But in the day of adversity, consider: God also hath set the one against the other to the end that man should find nothing after him.”

God sovereignly determines not just the day of blessing but the days of adversity as well. We talk about things being providential. And again, I’m not trying, you know, to correct speech. I mean, we’re trying. When we say something is providentially happened, we mean that God and his providence determined this really for our good. It was a neat thing to see God work it all out. That’s okay to say that, but it’s not okay if by that we mean that when bad things happen or boring things happen, that wasn’t providential as well.

God providentially brings to pass all things, including these minutest details of the casting of lots, the shooting of arrows at a venture, and the hairs of our head. As you get up in the morning and comb your hair and see certain hairs come out, God numbers those hairs. God has determined those particular hairs to fall out. A sparrow falls to the ground by the providence of God. It extended to all things, including calamities.

Exodus 4:11, “The Lord said unto him, ‘Who hath made man’s mouth? Or who hath made the dumb or deaf or the seeing or the blind? Have not I, the Lord?’” We got physical calamities. Some of us have more obvious ones than others—sight, being unable to hear. Most people have physical difficulties that are a little more hidden. I’ve got a number myself. And it is, it can be a source of contention for you to know that God has sovereignly determined those things.

But the proper response to that, of course, is rest. I mean, we do want to ask God for deliverance from physical health and normally—from physical illness, normally of the Christian is to be healthy. But sovereignly then, if God allows us or brings to pass the fact that we have continuing infirmities—what a source of pleasure and comfort—knowing that God has determined that these things are what our lot is, that God’s love is set upon us in the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s sovereignty extends down to the minutest details of who we are, including these minutest details of our health.

God’s sovereignty extends to rulers as well. Exodus 9:16, “And in very deed, for this cause have I raised thee up, for to show in thee my power, that my name should be declared rather throughout all the earth.” Exodus 4:21, “The Lord said unto Moses, ‘When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand, but I will harden his heart, that he should not let my people go.’” Romans 9:18, “Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will, he hardens.”

God sovereignly disposing all men, but particularly relative to the rulers that he brings to pass. Acts 13:48, “When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as were ordained to eternal life, believed.” Those that were ordained to eternal life. 1 Peter 2:8, “A stone of stumbling, a rock of offense, even to them which stumble at the word, becoming or being disobedient, whether to also they were appointed to that disobedience.” Romans 9:16, “It is not of him that wills, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.”

We want to move to a consideration of God showing mercy sovereignly out of his grace and bringing a particular people to election in the Lord Jesus Christ and salvation. But we want to do it not by restricting down Calvinism—the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, Augustinianism, whatever you want to call it. We don’t want to restrict it down to matters of salvation only. One of the tremendous difficulties in the Reformed churches for the last century has been restricting the word of God down to matters of salvation only.

And if we do that in terms of the doctrine of the sovereignty of God—although that’s the thrust of the Canons of Dort—the context for them is this broader concept of God’s sovereignty in all things. And so we want to assert that at the beginning of this.

We do, however, want to move on to a consideration now then of the first article of the Canons of Dort. Remember again what I said last week: what’s going on here when the Synod at Dort was held is that the followers of Jacob Hermanzoon—Latin name, Jacobus Arminius—when he’s died by now. His followers have written up a series of five remonstrances, and those five points of doctrine then of the Arminians are examined by the Synod. That’s what the Synod is all about.

So I wanted to read at the beginning here what this first article that’s addressed by the Arminians was, and I’ll read it. The Arminians wrote this: “That God by an eternal unchangeable purpose in Jesus Christ his son before the foundation of the world hath determined out of the fallen sinful race of men to save in Christ for Christ’s sake and through Christ those who through the grace of the Holy Ghost shall believe on this his son Jesus and shall persevere in this faith and obedience of faith through this grace even to the end, and on the other hand to leave the incorrigible and unbelieving in sin and under wrath and to condemn them as alienate from Christ according to the word of the gospel in John 3:36, ‘He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God abideth on him,’ that according to other passages of scripture also.”

Well, it sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? To most of us, to make such an assertion sounds pretty good. The interesting thing about this first article, as well as some others we’ll see, is that what is significant, as men postulate these kind of arguments, these kind of declarations—as significant as what is written—is what is not written. Now they acknowledge here that God in all eternity, from all eternity, has chosen a particular people. He hath determined out of some fallen group to save some.

But notice what they say is the condition for God’s eternal determination of who he would save: “Save those who through the grace of the Holy Spirit”—they’re not denying grace, but nonetheless—”save those who shall believe on this his son Jesus and shall persevere in this faith and obedience of faith.” So it’s what we talked about last week. Arminianism holds here—the classical Arminianism, that is, who adheres to this position—says that God sees those who will exercise faith and will persevere in that faith, and then determines to save those particular people.

Okay. Now it is true that God determines to save those who exercise faith and who persevere in the faith. But their exercise of faith and the perseverance in the faith is what happens because of God’s choice. The Arminian is phrasing it this way, to the exclusion of all other ways, makes those results of God’s election the determination of who God will elect, determine to become, to salvation. Do you understand?

I mean, it’s true. If I say, “The only folder I’m going to choose to use for my sermon this Lord’s Day is the one marked—can’t read my writing here—’Article text and Ephesians.’” Okay. So if I say, “The only folder I’m going to use this Lord’s Day is the one marked ‘Article text in Ephesians,’” well, that’s true. The folder I use today. But I didn’t use it because it was marked that. I marked it that because I decided to use it today.

So the Arminian says, “No, the basis for the determination is man’s exercise of faith and his perseverance in faith as well.” That’s the article that the Canons first dealt with in their first head of doctrine. And as Herman Hoeksema properly points out, if this article is true, God is not really the sovereign determiner of all, but he is himself determined by the fulfillment or nonfulfillment of the conditions of election by the creature of his hand, man.

He is not sovereignly free, but absolutely dependent upon him. If the reason why God’s determination is made is some act by man, that makes God a responder to a sovereign man. If God’s sovereign action of choosing or not choosing—aided by the grace of God, undoubtedly—nonetheless, his sovereign action—then God is no longer sovereign at all. He now is the responder to man and determined by the effects of man.

And so this article had to be rebutted. Now Herman Hoeksema in his syllabus on the Canons says this against that sovereignty of God: “The sinful mind and heart of man always and again exalts itself. This is the issue. Man will go along with an election on the ground of foreseen faith and good works, and they will accept a reprobation on the ground of foreseen unbelief and foreseen sin. Then matters are in the hand of little man.

He, not God, decides things.” Now the point is that first point is that if they’re right, then man is the sovereign determiner of things. But the second point to be made here is that the error of the Arminian—the sin of it—appeals to us. It appeals to our fallen nature. Fallen nature wants to determine for himself good and evil. That’s the nature of the fall, right? In Adam, we want to decide these things ourselves.

And so, if we can put that drive—to be our own boss, to be God, to be as God ourselves and determine things for ourselves—if we can dress that up in really nice church clothes and make it acceptable to ourselves and others, that’s the very thing we’re going to do. You see? So the problem with this position of the Arminians is it’s certainly unbiblical. We’ll see that. But understand, it’s a particularly pernicious view of the scriptures because it appeals to our flesh, and it sucks our flesh into wanting to believe it.

That’s our nature. We’re prone to wander. In our fallen nature, we’re prone to want to assert our sovereignty instead of the sovereignty of God.

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Well, over against that, the Canons of Dort—the Synod of Dort rather—came up with seventeen particular articles. And this is the heading: “The first main point of doctrine, divine election or reprobation. The judgment concerning divine predestination, which the Synod declares to be in agreement with the word of God and accepted till now in the Reformed churches, set forth in several articles.” And on your outline you’ll see the articles. And what I’ve tried to do with this first group under the heads is to bunch them up in sections.

Now the way it worked, as I said last week, first are the positive statements. There’s seventeen articles in which they articulate the biblical view—a topical study of God’s sovereignty in terms of election and reprobation. And then they’ll take—I believe it’s eight or nine—negative statements. So reaffirm this, and now anybody who teaches this is wrong. And we’ll get to those in a week or two. But today I want to talk mostly about the first section dealing with divine election and reprobation. And actually we’ll get to reprobation either—understand the first head of doctrine is not just divine election, it also involves the doctrine of reprobation.

So next Lord’s Day we’ll talk about reprobation. And then the following Lord’s Day the objections to the arguments of the Arminians. But first we’ll talk about this first set of statements. And this first set of statements begins with a process leading up to a definition of election.

The first six articles recorded there on your outline really lead up to the central doctrine. The central article of the Canons is right there in the middle—number seven—where election is defined. And that’s probably about what we’ll get to this Lord’s Day. Okay. First of all then, in this first section, we’re dealing with the Canons’ treatment of fallen men, God’s justice, God’s love in the Lord Jesus Christ, gospel preaching, the results of the gospel preaching, and the source of differing results.

Okay, so it’s really a very simple set of propositions that are laid out. And topically then the Synod teaches first of all that all mankind is condemned before God. And in the words of the oracles of God—this is what they actually said—okay? This is the first head, article one of the Canons of Dort:

“As all men have sinned in Adam, lie under the curse and are deserving of eternal death, God would have done no injustice by leaving them all to perish and delivering them over to condemnation on account of sin according to the words of the apostle.” And they quote here from Romans 3:19, “That every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God,” and Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death.”

So if we leave the scripture text to the side for just a moment, they say that all men have sinned in Adam, they lie under the curse, they deserve eternal death. God would have done no injustice by leaving them all to perish and delivering them over to condemnation on account of sin according to these particular scripture texts that I have on your outline.

So the first point, the first article quite simply says that since men sin and since men daily accumulate to themselves sin, God does no injustice by leaving all men to die the death eternally. So they begin in history. They begin at the historical acts of men in sin and rebellion against God, and they say because of man’s sin, God isn’t required to save anybody. So they begin also with a refutation of one of the charges against the Reformed doctrine and the doctrine of the saints delivered once for all—that God is sovereign.

If God is sovereign, then he’s not just because he sends some men to hell. But the church fathers here say, “No, God is perfectly just even if he decided to send all men to hell because we are miserable, rotten sinners.” Look in your scriptures. I know you’ve seen these before, but understand what we’re trying to do here at the start of this is to get our heads straight about who we are and about who God is.

And those first scriptures were designed to get our heads straight about how little and inconsequential in relationship to God we are. And now let’s turn to Romans chapter 3 and see not just how inconsequential we are, but how defiled we are in our fallen state. You know, it’s not just the covenantal imputation of Adam’s sin we’re talking about. We are covenantally judged in Adam, representative, and we are under the curse because of that, but we’re also under the curse because of the actual sins that we commit and commit daily.

In Romans chapter 3:9, “What then? Are we better than they? No, in no wise, for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin, as it is written.” So he’s taught, so he says, this is who all men are. Not just Jews, not just Gentiles, everybody. This is you, Christian, in your fallen state before God saves you. This is who you are in your old nature. “As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understands. There is none that seeks after God. They have all gone out of their way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good, not one. Their throat is as an open sepulcher. With their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

That’s us. God says, “I’m sovereign. You’re little compared to my sovereignty. I determine whatsoever comes to pass, including in your life.” And the second thing—and the first thing the Canons start with—is the assertion that who we are. A proper view of man is that we are in rebellion against God. And God, in his very nature, is just. And in his justice, he exhibits wrath toward sinful fallen man who rebel against him, who rebel against the very God that made them.

Everything in the creation shouts out, as Romans 1 says, and as we sang about earlier, that God is the Lord and he should be thanked. Yet every atom of our being shouts back to God, “We are not going to praise you, and we are not going to thank you for who you are.” Nothing. We don’t do any good works. This says we are altogether turned aside. We’re in rebellion to God.

So from a consideration of who man is, God is perfectly just in sending his wrath upon all men and sending us to eternal death and damnation. And there could be no charge made against God if that’s what he decides to do in his sovereignty. A wonderful starting place that the Canons stretch forth for us in terms of the fallenness of men.

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Ephesians 1, the text we read at the beginning of the sermon: notice again and again and again that the state of the Ephesians, their blessed estate that Paul writes them about, is because of their connection to God’s will and God’s grace.

In verse one, Paul said that he was an apostle by the will of God. He stresses the sovereignty of God even in his calling as an apostle. The very first words off this pen stress God’s sovereignty. Verse two, “Grace be to you.” You see, grace—because we are those rotten, miserable sinners that the Canons adore assert in their first article, who justly, if God decides to, are justly sent to eternal death. But we, by the will of God, have been given grace by God.

Verse three, we are blessed in Christ. You see, because in ourselves, we’re not going to be recipients of God’s blessing because we are turned aside from the way. Verse four says that we are in him. Verse five talks about our adoption. Verse six says we’re accepted in the beloved. Verse seven says we are given redemption through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and forgiveness of sins. This first article of the Canons of Dort under this first head of doctrine is affirmed over and over and over again in the scriptures. And in the text from Ephesians 1 is asserted over and over and over that we stand in the position by the grace of God, by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the redemption, by the forgiveness of sins, by being covenantally in the Lord Jesus Christ—covenantally in the covenant keeper for us—our only basis of right standing is the grace of God toward us.

Because in ourselves, God owes us absolutely nothing but eternal death and damnation. When bad things happen to us, apart from God’s providentially bringing calamities into our lives, always think upon the fact that you never get what you deserve because you and your fallen state, as Romans 3 points out, the only thing you deserve is death and hell. God is not unjust if he consigns all men to hell.

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The Canons begin by asserting the character of God, and they’ll continue right through to the end by talking about how all the truths of biblical Calvinism, the teaching of God’s sovereignty relative to salvation, flow forth from the character of God. And the character of God, one of those attributes of God, is his justice. The attribute of man is his sinfulness before God.

Now, I won’t talk here—I’ll next week talk a little bit about infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism. Excuse me. Don’t worry about it. We’ll talk about that next week. It has to do with the perspective. Just briefly: see, the perspective they start with is a historical perspective where men have fallen. They don’t say “before men fell.” I will talk about this a little bit. You see, that’s really in the providence of God. That’s useful. See, some people say, “Well, Arminianism is just a reaction against that hyper-Calvinism that says that God determined all this stuff before the fall of man.”

But see, the very definition of the five points of Calvinism start with the position that man’s already fallen. So we didn’t even get to talk about the decree before the fall of Adam. We’re talking about now that man has fallen. Okay? So it makes it an easier job in terms of an apologetic for God’s sovereignty in salvation to pick it up at that point. Doesn’t mean that it’d be wrong to say that he determined this before the fall of men. We’ll talk about that more next week. The point is that all we have to defend is what’s called an infralapsarian position—after the fall, God has now decided to elect certain people in a logical order.

So the point is it makes it a little easier to defend. That’s where the articles start, and we’ll talk more about that next week.

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So the articles begin by asserting the sovereignty of God by looking at, first of all, his justice upon fallen man. Secondly then, the articles continue by talking about another attribute of God which is God’s love. Article two goes on to say: then the question is, “Well, is that what God going to do? Is God going to leave all men in their sin and misery?” No. The Canons go on to assert, as scripture does, “But in this the love of God was manifested, that he sent his one and only Son into the world that whosoever believes on him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

See, we believe in “whosoever believes.” It’s just that we say whosoever believes are the ones that God has called to salvation. All men are free ultimately in the moral sense of the term. But what the first article says, what Romans 3 says, is that man is free, but the only thing man wants to do in his freedom is sin. He never wants to submit to the master God or the sovereign God. So man is free, and because man is free, he is the author of sin because he is the one who’s deciding to sin.

God uses his sin sinlessly, but man is himself the author of sin because that’s the only thing he knows how to do and the only thing he puts his hand to do. But in spite of that, the justice of God is manifested in wrath against all men, or theoretically in all men. But God decides to demonstrate another one of his attributes: his love. And that love is focused on the sending of the person of the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. In the translation of the actual article in the Latin, it was “sent his own and only Son, his only begotten Son into the world that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

And so the articles go on to talk about how God has provided salvation for men in the Lord Jesus Christ. And again here, Ephesians clearly testifies to this. In verse three of Ephesians 1, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who have blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” The source of the blessings of God’s love that flow out to us are those blessings being found in Christ.

All spiritual blessings, and grace and peace in verses 2 and 3, are the demonstration of God’s love to us who are covenantally in the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse four, “He has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated us.” God’s love is what moves him to these actions. Verse six talks about that “He hath made us accepted in the beloved.”

Our covenantal union with the Lord Jesus Christ is one who is beloved of the Father. And so it is the love of God for the Father that we are covenantally in the context of. And so we are the recipients of that love of God. God has abounded to us. Verse eight of Ephesians 1 says he abounds to us in love, and that love is then manifested in the context of the salvation he brings us into.

So the Canons move from a determination or an expedition of the wrath of God and his justice, and moves then to the fact that says, “But no, God isn’t just going to demonstrate his justice and wrath. He’s going to demonstrate his mercy by means of love. And he’s going to do it by sending the Lord Jesus Christ so that those people that he sovereignly brings to belief might be saved from all that sin and misery that spoken of in the first verse or the first article rather.”

And so the Canons assert in the first two articles the justice as well as the grace and mercy of God, and the wrath of God upon some and the love of God upon others. And they move on from that then to talk about what is the basis for this extension of mercy. Who is it? How do men arrive at this faith?

And in article three, the Canons say this: “That they may be brought to believe, God mercifully sends the messengers of his most joyful tidings to whom he will and at what time he pleases. By whose ministry men are called to repentance in faith in Christ crucified.” And then they quote from Romans 10, “How then can they believe? How can they call on the one whom they not believed in? How can they believe in the one whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?”

So having talked about how God’s going to demonstrate his justice and wrath and his grace and his love, the means whereby this comes to pass is the message of the gospel. And indeed in those opening verses of Ephesians, and again in chapter 1, we read that indeed it is through that mechanism that the Ephesians have been—