Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

the paraphrase that we just sang in Psalm 8. I don’t know if you noticed or not, but verse 7, we sang, “Flocks and cattle, every tribe, beast that in the fields abide.” A little bit of interpretation there that probably correctly sees the created order, beasts and fish and birds as pictures of different sorts of people in the context of the earth. Strong bulls of Bashan that came up against our savior.

Those bulls are the ones that eventually are converted to the Lord Jesus Christ. In the New Testament, the fishermen are called to go and catch the fish in the deep ocean. The Gentiles coming from the various nations of the world, the birds that will indeed find their place in the kingdom of God, resting in that kingdom. That is our sermon subject. As we review the five points of Calvinism, I want us to spend some time reviewing them and then at the conclusion, we will look briefly at John 3:16.

More specifically, we will look at the implications of the five points of Calvinism for eschatology. So if you could turn in your scriptures to John chapter 3, we’ll begin reading at verse 14. Verses 14-18 of John chapter 3. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God.

Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you Lord God for the inestimable gift of the Holy Spirit who resides within us and brings us things of the Savior whose work was to do your will. Father, we pray that we might be empowered to do your will through this word. We pray that you would through your Holy Spirit open our hearts and minds to understand the things of the scriptures which we shall consider and that it might indeed transform us bringing us to repentance, bringing us to wholeness and maturation in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We thank you, Father, for your word and we pray that it would do its work now in the power of the spirit. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

This is the 27th sermon I will have given on the Canons of Dort. This will be my last sermon on this subject. We began last November and have for about eight months now considered the five points of Calvinism, so-called the findings of the church fathers at Dort in the early 1600s refuting the teachings of a man named Jacobus Arminius, the father of Arminianism. And so I thought it’d be good to review these five points of Calvinism in a simple form, provide you an outline that will bring to mind hopefully some of the more important features of these teachings of the church from the Canons from the assemblies at Dort—the Canons of Dort, the rules of Dort—and review those briefly. Also, I’ll give you a handout that you can maintain hopefully and will take home and use in your discussions with friends, with those who claim the name of the Lord Jesus Christ but may not have thought through very well these five points of Calvinism that are so rejected by most of the visible church in our day and age, particularly in this country and I suppose all the way around the world.

So the idea here is that we might more properly understand these things. We’ve tried to do that the last eight months. But the other thing we’ve tried to do is take it to the living room, so to speak, being able to provide us all with simple summations of some of these things that we can then discuss these things and turn to various scriptures as we discuss these points of God’s truth or doctrine with friends that we know that perhaps would identify themselves as Arminians, although maybe not very self-consciously.

Okay. So let’s review then these things first and then we’ll look at the application of this to John 3:14-18 as we get done with this review. First of all, it is a TULIP, but you’ll see that point A is all TULIP. Hopefully, you remember now that the rearrangement of the acronym TULIP fits the order in which the church fathers wrote the five heads of doctrine. They did not start with total depravity.

They started with God’s unconditional election. So, first we begin with unconditional election. And if you could turn in your scriptures to Ephesians 1, hopefully this is what you will do as you have conversations with friends about this first point. So important—you’ll be able to turn to scriptures that you have memorized the reference to and talk with them about how that plainly teaches these particular points of doctrine articulated by the historic church.

So if you look at the book of Ephesians and I haven’t given you specific verse references, but you know, take your time as you talk to people and as you reinforce with your children the teaching of these important points of church doctrine. Turn to that particular passage of scripture. This is an example of doing this. And then simply begin to read through, perhaps aloud, to the person that you’re speaking with.

And you will discover in these particular scripture references much that is applicable to this particular truth. So in Ephesians 1, Paul starts by saying that he’s an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. So there we have a talking point already. He’s an apostle not by his decision but ultimately by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, to the faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace 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 has 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. So here we have the statement, the clear statement that God’s election or choice of us in context of time is before the foundation of the world.

It is in eternity past. It’s in the council of God and eternal councils of God prior to the actual creation of the world. And this choice, this election is that we might be holy and without blame before him in love. And in that love, verse 4, he has predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will. You see, it’s all right there, isn’t it?

There it is in nice summary fashion: that God’s election is unconditional. It’s got to be unconditional because it’s before the foundation of the world, before we did anything positive or negative. God has chose us and he chose us in love. It is in that love of God from eternity that he has indeed predestinated us. He has before determined what our destiny will be. Predestinated us. And what is it? Unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself.

God’s election is to a particular end. It’s not just a choosing away from sin and damnation. It is unto holiness. The scriptures here tell us it’s unto the adoption of sons and it is motivated by what? It says here according to the good pleasure of his will. Why did God do this? Why did he set his love upon us? Well, it’s the good pleasure of his will. And if you continue to go through Ephesians 1 with your friends, you will see various places where this truth is reinforced as you go through Ephesians 1.

It’s really that simple to present this particular truth of God’s unconditional election. Now, the person may or may not believe it. That’s up to God. That’s up to the Holy Spirit. Your job is to give a clear presentation, not based upon the teachings of John Calvin or Dennis Tuuri, but based upon the teachings of God’s clearly articulate word that God has chosen us in Christ before the foundations of the world for the good pleasure of his will, that it is in love that he has predestinated us, and that is to be conformed to the image of his son.

And he has chosen us to be holy and blameless in Christ. So this first point is absolutely critical to the rest. Of course everything else kind of flows out from this one. Now when we talked about this particular text, or this particular truth rather, we really didn’t begin here though. Where we began is a very clear articulate statement of what is expanded on in Ephesians 1, found in Romans chapter 8. So if you turn now to Romans chapter 8, we will look at the verses that hopefully you’ll remember this reference, that we have referred to and other reformed men have as the golden chain.

Romans 8:29-30. And you know this is easy to remember because it follows the one we’re most memorized and one of the most memorized verses in scripture. Romans 8:28. We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose. But verses 29 and 30 are extremely important. It talks about this chain of what God accomplishes for his particular people.

Verse 29, for whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. And verse 30, whom he did predestinate, them he also called. And whom he called, them he also justified. And whom he justified, them he also glorified. And there is the progression. It begins with God’s foreknowledge of us. Remember we said that it’s quite simple to say that this is not a foreknowledge of particular events.

This is foreknowledge of a particular people, not what they’ll do but of them. Clearly that’s the grammatical structure here. And then to add on to that the idea that knowledge in the scriptures—to foreknow or to know someone—is the terminology that God used for Adam with Eve or that God used for him relative to his covenant people of Israel. He knew Israel and didn’t know the other nations of the earth. It doesn’t refer to intellectual knowledge.

It refers to covenantal love. He set his love on those people. Adam set his love on his wife in union and communion with her. So the golden chain of our election, our unconditional election begins with a fiat decision of God according to his good pleasure to love some and not to love others in that same way. So the beginning of this process is God’s forelove of his people.

On the basis of that forelove, he then predestinates us to a particular purpose. Predestination without knowing what the predestination is to means nothing. But predestination here is to an end that we might be conformed to the image of his son, that he, that is Jesus, might be the firstborn among many brethren. What’s the purpose again? According to the good pleasure of God in his omniscience, he has said the most wise thing I can do to particular end is to forelove these people and perfect them and conform them to the image of the son. And the end of that the verse tells us is the preeminence of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You see he conforms us to his image that he, Christ, might be the firstborn among many brethren. To the end goal of the preeminence of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the obedient, suffering, resurrected son. Okay. Well in that forelove of God he says I’m going to set them to a particular course that my son might be exalted. And in those people then he also calls. He calls effectually. We’ll talk about that in a moment.

And those whom he calls effectually, he justifies. He makes righteous in his sight through the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. And whom he justifies, them he also glorifies. And so there is a final glorification although there is an element of this every Lord’s day. We spoke of it last week. We come forward to the Lord God. And we say we are like all men. We have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

We are no one in and of ourselves. We are worse than neutral. We are positively your enemies in and of ourselves. We have sinned. We have fallen short of the glory of God. But God says to us when we make that confession to him at the beginning of our worship service that he has indeed glorified us through the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We said that one thing that every man is given by God a desire to have is to be someone, to have glory or weight.

That’s what glory means—is weight. And God says, “You, beloved, are someone. Not in and of yourselves. Not because you’re great, not because of your works, but because God has placed his love on you.” The bride basks in the reflected glory of the husband. That’s what she wants to do. And when the husband doesn’t have glory—he does not have weight in what he does in terms of vocation or as a husband or as a father—he loses esteem in the eyes of the wife and she loses esteem as well.

The bride, the church basks in the reflected glory of the preeminent son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise God. Who we are. Our identity is that we are someone. We are the bride of the Lord Jesus Christ. So the golden chain really is—in another scripture you would want to turn to very quickly in a discussion with friends or relatives or other Christians that you know about this particular important foundational truth of the Christian life.

We also said that all of this should be seen in the context of God’s absolute sovereignty. It’s not enough to think of God’s sovereignty relative to salvation. We must think of it also in terms of his decree that he has decreed whatsoever comes to pass. Okay. So this unconditional election means that we are foreloved and not foreseen. We are chosen or elected and it is motivated by God’s good pleasure. We really cannot go further than that in terms of why he chose us as opposed to someone else.

It simply was the love of the father according to his good pleasure. But the goal we can speak of—that goal as articulated on your outline—is the preeminence of the Lord Jesus Christ. The goal that might be fulfilled is also that we might be glorified in God. Now this election the church fathers said is unchangeable. God is not mutable. God is not changeable. If he decides something that’s what he does. This election is unchangeable.

That’s important because if we don’t have an unchangeable election, then we have no assurance of our participation in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. This election is unconditional. That’s important because if it’s conditioned upon faith on our part or perseverance in faith or works of any type—whether the work is believing or acting—then we have pride in ourselves; it is not all of grace. But when election is seen as totally unconditioned on anything that we do, then the exaltation of God’s grace goes forth in the preaching of the gospel.

And then and only then does the true humility come to the person, the recipient of that grace of God freely given to him, not on the basis of what he might do in response but of God’s sovereign election. Pride is the root sin of all the other sins that we have. Humility is the root virtue—humbled before God—that allows us to walk in terms of obedience to God. So unconditional election is not some arcane doctrine about salvation.

It is absolutely critical to your sanctification and to your growth in grace. I don’t care if there are men who are self-consciously Arminian who seem to be very pious people. The scriptures tell me that if a person is self-consciously Arminian, thinking that ultimately their response to the same grace that Joe Blow got merits them salvation, that person walks in pride. The Pharisees could appear very pious before God and could try to put on a show of humility, but they were puffed up against God.

It is only the person who sheds self-conscious Arminianism who is truly humble before God and thus can really participate in a growth in grace. That is true. Now, this election is also uniform as opposed to multiform. Remember, we said the Arminians say, well, there’s various kinds of elections, various things, a whole bunch of conditions. It’s not just whether you’re going to believe, it’s whether you’re going to persevere, it’s how you persevere.

A whole bunch of conditions. God’s election is simple. It is simplicity. It is uniform. It’s not multiform. It is a covenantal election. Mess with this doctrine and you mess with the covenant that God has established between himself and Jesus Christ and those in Christ. To change the doctrine of God’s election is to change the nature of the covenant and to come up with all kinds of covenants and to destroy the simplicity of the covenantal election that God has said he gives to his children.

This covenantal election extends to our children. And so he spoke of the doctrine of baptism of infants relative to this doctrine of covenantal election. God effects not just individuals. He covenantally works with groups or units, families. And we’ll see the importance of this as we get to John 3:16. I believe that we can appropriately say that God deals with the covenantal unit of the world as well as the family.

We don’t mean by that every child baptized in the Lord Jesus Christ is regenerated by that baptism. We do not mean that. But we do mean that as God’s covenantal sign is applied to our children, they are to be seen and treated as covenantally elect in the Lord Jesus Christ until they demonstrate their reprobation before God. Covenantal election relates to children. And also under this head of doctrine—it wasn’t really called unconditional election in the Canons of Dort.

It was called of divine election and reprobation. God reprobates as a decree of reprobation those he doesn’t sovereignly predestine to be conformed to the image of Christ. He positively reprobates that they might be indeed sent to hell. And what we said was very important to understand that doctrine: it’s not like the yin-yang symbol of white and black equally matched. The doctrine of reprobation as Romans 9 so clearly indicates really serves the doctrine of God’s election.

God’s purpose is election. God’s purpose is primarily the demonstration of his grace and love and justice to those called in Christ. And to that end, he reprobates a particular portion of humanity. That’s also important for considering eschatology because it is an inference—it’s not a proof, but it is an inference—that God will elect the world and bring the world to salvation through the preaching of the gospel because grace is going to abound more than sin abounded.

You see, election is served by the doctrine of reprobation. Evangelism is not deterred by the doctrine of unconditional election, but it is encouraged by that doctrine. Our children can simply state to their classmates, to their schoolmates, those children that they may get together with in recreational activities, those children that they may see in the context of various social events who don’t believe in the Lord Jesus.

And they can clearly say that the Lord Jesus Christ died for the sins of various people that are called to believe in the Lord Jesus. And they can say to people, you should believe that Jesus died for your sins. You should admit you’re a sinner. It is that simple. And God says that he uses that word, or the simplicity of the gospel, to sovereignly, of his spirit, bring people to the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is not complicated. It is the gift of God’s salvation. It’s not the gift of our rhetoric. So unconditional election by God and his means of evangelism—that this should be preached to all men—encourages evangelism. It doesn’t deter evangelism. Okay.

From this we went on to a consideration of limited atonement. And here the fathers called this head of doctrine “of the death of Christ and the redemption of men thereby.” That’s important. Isaiah 53, which we read a couple of minutes ago, demonstrates this. It’s one of those scripture references that you should have memorized for this particular one. Like Ephesians 1 and Romans 9 dealing with reprobation should be the ones you should have put away in your head for unconditional election. So with limited atonement, Isaiah 53 talks about the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now John 10:11 says that Jesus died for his sheep. Ephesians 5:25 says that he died for the church, showing the particular purpose of Christ’s death. It was not for every last individual. It was for a particular people. Now the doctrine of limited atonement can also be spoken of as particular redemption. And you’ll see series of adjectives here. It is particular. It is effectual and it is just. What do I mean by those things?

Well, when Jesus died on the cross, it was particular. He died for a particular group of people, those people who are the recipients of the father’s love from all eternity. It is particular. It is effectual. Jesus didn’t offer an atonement that may or may not be applied to someone. He offered an atonement for sins that was totally effectual for those whom he died for. It needed nothing else with it to make satisfaction for sins or righteousness.

Only his death in the body, becoming the sin bearer of the elect and his resurrection, the imputation of that righteousness of his—those are the conditions of the covenant. Okay. Now there is a mechanism whereby God has decided to preach the word, come effectually by the spirit, and men will demonstrate their life in Christ through an acceptance of the will of God in their lives. But understand that in the atonement, it is effectual.

It was effectual for the salvation of those that he died for. It’s not a halfway atonement. There’s nothing limited about the atonement in terms of its ability to save, to pay the price for those who are loved by God. And it is just in the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. It fulfills God’s righteous standards of justice. He paid the price of eternal damnation for sins on the cross for us.

The Apostles’ Creed says that he descended into hell—doesn’t mean a literal descent. He took upon himself suffering on the cross, the full cup of God’s wrath, the full cup of eternal damnation for sins on the part of the elect. It fulfills the justice of God. God doesn’t wink at sin. These are adjectives applied but the nouns we can talk about are: it makes satisfaction. “He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied.”

This is the Father looking at the Son. Nothing needs to be added to the travail of Christ’s soul for God’s satisfaction. The just penalty against your sin, Christian, he made satisfaction. He accomplishes redemption. It’s particular redemption. He buys a particular people through that death on the cross and his resurrection. And it is effectual.

Yet it is a just redemption, but it is a particular redemption of particular people. He makes expiation—big word. He takes care. He calms God’s wrath against sinners. Expiation. God is angry with sinners. But Jesus in his death on the cross makes expiation for our sins. So God is no longer angry toward you for your sin. Okay? Not only that, but he makes propitiation. God is now favorably disposed to you. Not just that he’s no longer angry, the Christian beloved of the Lord because of the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross for your sins.

God looks at you then with favor, with blessing, no longer not just angry or neutral toward you, positively loving you in all that he does with you. Chastening, yes, but positively moving in terms of love toward you. And he effects reconciliation. Atonement is at-one-ment. It puts us at one with God through these various things we’ve talked about and it is an effectual reconciliation.

Ultimately, we could sum up all those words and say salvation. Jesus has provided salvation for a particular people through his death at the cross. And we talked about the horrors of a false imputation and a false atonement. How did Jesus pay the price for your sins? God imputed—legally declared to his account on the cross—the sins of his people. Okay. The Lord Jesus then made an atonement for those sins.

If we reject the atonement of Christ, I mean, in terms of our understanding of it, if we don’t have full assurance that every sin we have done in the past or will do in the future has been atoned for through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and been imputed to the Lord Jesus, then we’re going to impute it to someone else other than Jesus, either to ourselves or someone else.

And either way is wrong. We cannot make atonement for our own sins because they are too deep. They’re too broad. Only the Lord Jesus, perfect man and God in union together working for us can make that final atonement of sins. The world is filled with Adams and Eves, blaming someone other than themselves, falsely imputing their sin to their wives, the wives to the serpent, the children to other people.

We always falsely impute our sin to other people in the Adamic nature, in the fallen nature. That’s who we are. And not only do we want to blame our wives for our sins or blame our husbands for our failure to meet God’s righteous requirements, we’re going to make him pay for those sins, too. We’re going to make him atone. And so people kill other people. And classes rise up against other classes, and races battle against other races.

And nations battle against other nations, saying that it’s their fault that I’ve fallen short of the glory of God. Horrific difficulties. The atonement says, It is our fault, our own fault, our own most grievous fault every time we sin and transgress God’s command. But praise God that the Lord Jesus has paid the price for those sins that we have committed against our holy God.

Now those who talk about unlimited atonement, they mess with the covenant. Again, this is a covenantal reality. It was covenant fulfilled, fulfilling the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. And to reject limited atonement, what men have done is concocted different versions of the covenant between God and man. Instead of saying Jesus met the terms of that covenant, they come up with the fact they say, “Well, Jesus made a demonstration on the cross. Didn’t really save anybody.”

That doesn’t happen unless you believe in the atonement. You know, it’s kind of like—well, I don’t want to make fun. I won’t say that. You have to, you know, believe in the atonement and then it is effectual for you. Up until then it’s effectual for no one. So if no one believes in Jesus then the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ is effectual for nobody anywhere. You see, it’s all up to people and that puts the condition for fulfilling the covenant between God and man in the hands of man. You see, instead of in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So to deposit unlimited atonement and a redemption to the death of our savior that anybody has access to is to completely ignore all the scriptures teachings on what the covenant of grace is all about and is to come up with all kinds of strange ideas of the covenant.

Now and this is related, as you’re outlining, the last point: common body versus common grace. People think that Jesus accomplished common grace for all men through the atonement. That’s another idea that’s positive. But that’s not true. There is a common bounty, gifts that God gives to every man—gifts of life, etc., and rain comes down, etc. But this is not saving grace. This is not common grace. All grace from God, I believe, is saving grace.

The Lord Jesus through his death on the cross accomplished grace, which was saving grace for a particular people. And so we talked about the doctrine of common grace and how really the most typical formulations of it really are not in concert with God’s word. There is common bounty from God and there is a common grace to the world but not to every last individual. That’s what we’ll talk about as we get to the end of this.

Okay. And then we talked about total depravity. Romans 8, we just sang and recited, talks about the high created estate of mankind. It doesn’t say what is man that thou art mindful of him because he’s such a jerk. It says what is man? Look at what you’ve done. You’ve given him dominion over all the works of your hand. You’ve made him a little lower than God, than you.” And then Hebrews says, “A little lower than the angels for a short while. But God, man—and we’ll talk about this next week—man begins to exert control over his creation, replacing angels as the new covenant comes to fruition.”

We’ll talk about that more next week. But the point is that man now is God’s image bearer once more, and he has tremendous importance. Your life as a human is of tremendous significance in the context of the created order. I used to hate my fact that I was human. I’ve heard expressions of that this last week or two on the radio and TV and political commentary. People thinking we’re just terrible. We’re the ones that ruin this created order.

Well, in our fallen estate, we do. We’ve fallen from our high created estate. But in our created estate, our entire purpose is union and communion with Christ. And then to reflect that in the entire created order as we make it into a garden. And as we cause it not to just be maintained or preserved but to be matured and to be blessed. And so we have tremendous significance. Humanity, created in the image of God.

Man has a high estate but he’s fallen from that estate. We were created in righteousness, holiness, knowledge, and dominion. I’ve listed the particular portions of scripture—Psalms 8 for how high our creation, Romans 3, you know the list about how terrible we are and how our mouths are like open sewers. All men have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Ephesians 2 says we’re dead in our trespasses and sins.

We have been created in a tremendously high estate and we have fallen to a tremendously low rebellion, enemies against God. We were the dead, the walking dead of the earth without the Lord Jesus Christ. Man’s deep fall was talked about in the context of total depravity. We said that the Arminian, the Pelagian—don’t worry about those names now. But there are people who say that man’s will was created neutral. So when men fell, their will is still neutral.

They can still decide what’s good. They can still decide to believe in Jesus. They’re not dead. They’re sick. And what they need is not a physician who resurrects them, but a physician who tunes them up a bit and who causes them through education to make right choices with their wills. You see, so the kind of world we live in today, we live in an Arminian world and a world that stresses education for all men.

And really, it’s the implications of a common grace idea that God Jesus died for the sins of every last man. There’s common grace in the world. And the way to bring salvation to men is to educate them so that their minds are better and that neutral will make the positive choice. But the scriptures teach that man was created with the will that was holy and righteous, desiring God. And in his fall, his will didn’t just become neutral.

It became positively motivated against God. Romans 1 says that man suppresses the truth of God and righteousness. Our wills aren’t neutral. There is no neutrality in the world. There are men who are either motivated at the center of their being with a will to serve God—imperfectly, yes, but a will to serve God. Or there are men who are motivated by a will to destroy God, to kill him if they could, and to kill his image bearers and to suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness.

“All those that hate me,” God says, “love death.” Now, it doesn’t seem like that when you go down to Salem and talk to legislators. You go to your workplace and the pagan next to you may seem like a pretty nice guy, but understand that his will is not neutral. He is positively animated by a hatred of God and he may try to cover it up through various mechanisms, but that is who he is in this fallen estate.

Bob Dylan sings, “Blinded by the devil, born already ruined, stone cold dead as I stepped out of the womb.” Remember the illustration of the baby sharks feeding on their brothers and sisters in the womb. Video of this is available in the womb, bloody in the womb. Not only did Adam fall and the covenantal implications of that for mankind were that we all fell in Adam. Not only that, but we can only propagate children of wrath.

The scriptures describe children as children of wrath. All children are born in this state, well, apart from the grace of God that might regenerate them in the womb. The point is, apart from God’s regeneration, all mankind propagates the kind of evil seed that’s described in Romans 3 and Ephesians 2.

Now, if that’s true, that dead man cannot choose the Lord Jesus Christ. The man with the bent will, whose will is to suppress the truth of God and righteousness—yes, he’s got a choice. But he is going to choose every time to rebel against God and to deny God every time. That’s who he is. Now, can a leopard change his spots? No. Every time, apart from the grace of God through the work of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit, man still has knowledge.

Romans 1 says he looks at the created order and there is a sense in which he knows the created order is telling him there is a God. God is triune. You are in violation of God’s word. God should be thanked. But he says no, no, no, no, no. He has culpable knowledge of God. So his fault is not that he doesn’t have knowledge of God. He’s not become totally absolutely irrational. He still is rational. He still has knowledge. But in that knowledge, he suppresses that knowledge.

So it’s knowledge that brings him culpability for his sin.

There’s again here a covenantal truth. Election is a covenantal fact. It is a uniform election. Limited atonement is a covenantal fact. And mess with that doctrine and you mess with the doctrine of the covenant and you make up all kinds of other covenants. And here in the depravity of man, to reject the depravity of man is to move away from the covenantal depravity, the imputation of Adam’s depravity upon all men.

Then we talked about irresistible grace—man’s conversion to God and the means thereof. Here in 1 Corinthians 1, now, this is an example of what you’ll have to do sometimes. Turn to First Corinthians 1 if you would in your scriptures. Just memorize these places. I mean, if you got a sharp memory, you can memorize the verses, but for me, as I get older, I have a hard time memorizing specific verse citations.

Very easy to memorize a chapter citation—1 Corinthians 1, that’s really easy. And as you read through it, you’re not going to really get to what the verse that we want you to get to is until fairly late in the chapter. That’s verses 22, 23, and 24. The Jews require—now, it’s going to have an emphasis. We talked about this as you read this aloud to your friends in your living room. Don’t despair. You’ll get to verses 22 in a little while, but there is an emphasis on calling early on in the chapter as well, which we won’t deal with.

But the real emphasis is verses 22, 23, 24. The Jews require a sign. The Greeks seek after wisdom. We preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a stumbling block and unto the Greeks foolishness. But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God because the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

You see, he talks about Jews and Greeks. And he says that to some Jews and Greeks, Christ is a stumbling block and he is foolishness. But to other Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. And what makes distinction? Verse 24, unto them which are called—unto them which are called effectually by God. God irresistibly calls, draws the elect to him that he forlove, his son to die for their sins.

In spite of their depravity, he irresistibly calls them to himself. Irresistible grace, the conversion to God and the means thereof. Matthew 22 and other like parables tells the story of God bringing people to the feast. And in some of these stories, it’s talked about in some of the parables rather that our savior uses, you go out and you get the lame and the halt and the blind and you carry them in to the wedding feast and you lead the blind in to the wedding feast.

Pictures that we have no ability of ourselves to come into the kingdom of God. We are totally come as a result of God’s irresistible grace and calling, the effectual calling of the Holy Spirit, the word, spirit, and church. Command all men to repent. The church’s particular evangelistic task is to command men to repent, not to invite men to try Jesus, but to command them to repent.

The chosen become a new creation. Their wills are renewed to holiness. They are not treated as stocks and blocks. The means of this conversion is that God works in the innermost recesses of the heart to bring a sense of sin and rebellion against God. To bring a sense of repentance. He re-energizes. He brings it back to life from the deadness that our hearts have.

It is referred to in the scriptures and in the Canons of Dort as a new creation, as life from the dead, and as being born again. He does not treat us as stocks and blocks. He treats us as people. We are carried, led, and compelled to enter the kingdom of God. Moral persuasion, exhortations to men is certainly part of gospel preaching, but ultimately all the moral persuasion in the world will not carry the day unless God’s spirit does his gracious work of giving us new hearts, new life from the dead, making us a new creation in Christ.

And then finally, the perseverance of the saints. We spent a lot of time on this the last couple of months here. First John 3. Indeed, those who have this hope will purify themselves. Romans 8, God will preserve his elect. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ. Our sins, small and great, demonstrate our inability to persevere but God preserves us so that we end up persevering in the faith.

The synergy of promise and command. Perseverance is a command. You must persevere in the faith. But it is also a promise from God that you will indeed persevere in the faith. You can know with assurity that you are called and elect in the Lord Jesus Christ. Assurance of salvation is taught. But that assurance of salvation works synergistically with our sanctification. What does that mean? Synergism means that if you’ve got two things that come together, it’s more than the sum if you just add them up.

It’s like 1 + 1 equals 3. Okay? I mean, it’s not just the sum of the parts. It works synergistically rather to make a greater product of the two. It’s like when two people come together, you can have five kids. It’s an illustration. Well, the idea is that God says that this hope that he gives us, the assurance of salvation in Christ leads us to draw into the light of God as it were and leads us to sanctification.

So he promises us salvation in Christ. We come then and work out our salvation. We sanctify. We become more sanctified through our obedience to Christ. Assurance ministers to perseverance. Okay. And First Timothy, 1 Thessalonians 1:3.

Turn to that if you will. 1 Thessalonians 1:3. Paul says that he remembers without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Patience or perseverance of hope with its root being the hope or assurance of our salvation. You see, hope is the basis for our patience and our perseverance in Christ. Hope, assurance, God’s preservation of us, his promised preservation ministers to us that we then persevere and have patience and perseverance.

Now, it also works the other way around. As we then persevere in the faith, we see the fruits of God’s spirit in the context of our lives and we become more convinced that indeed we’re Christians and we’re going to be saved eternally. So these things work synergistically together: God’s assurance that he’ll preserve us, but him then also calling us to persevere in the faith. God uses sin sinlessly, even pokes in the face.

I got this illustration from a brother last week. He talked to me about an illustration that Greg Bahnsen used about speaking about God’s secondary means or secondary causes and our growth in grace. It doesn’t seem like every aspect of God toward us is loving. Maybe you have a death of a loved one. Maybe something horrible happens to someone you love very dearly and who is a Christian. How do we explain those things?

Well, Greg Bahnsen’s illustration was, let’s say I told you that this afternoon I’m going to go home and I’m going to poke holes in my daughter’s face. I hope I’m getting this right. Going to poke holes in my daughter’s face with a sharp pin. You’re going to be—you say that’s terrible. Your response is going to be how that’s how could you be a loving father and have that done to your daughter’s face. But if the rest of the story is that she’s got a gash, a cut on her face and she needs stitches so that it will heal correctly and so she won’t die of this bleeding wound on her face.

Well, then poking holes to enable the stitch process to occur with a sharp needle makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? Well, in much of our lives, we don’t know what the gash is. All we experience are the pokes in the holes, poking holes in our face. We experience difficulties. We experience problems with people. We experience problems with events. Maybe you get beat up. Maybe you get shoved around. Maybe one of our daughters gets raped.

And we can’t understand it. You see, it’s a poke in the face, but we trust God our father to be working through all things to preserve us and to cause us to persevere in the faith. We don’t know what we need. God knows perfectly what we need. And God uses sin, even the gross sin of murder as an example or rape. God uses sin sinlessly to the end that he might perfect his people.

Now, he hates the sin. He hates the person that pokes the hole in the face without knowing why he’s doing it—just to cause harm to someone else. But God is in control of all things and he works through the secondary means.