The last two weeks we have been trying to answer, in part, the reason for the existence of the Reformed Church. What is our reason for existence. Why should we continue to be distinct.
And we have been offering up as one answer that the reason for our existence is our belief in a high Predestination as taught in Scripture. We have said that we need to continue to exist so that Biblical doctrine is not lost to the Church because nobody else is going to preach it or defend it.
Only the Reformed are Predestinatrians in the way Scripture teaches it. Not the Quakers (Friends), not the Mennonites, not the Amish, not the Nazarenes, not the Wesleyans, not the Methodists, not the Lutherans, not the Roman Catholics, not the Assemblies of God, not the Church of God – Anderson Indiana, not the General Baptists, not the Christian Missionary and Alliance, and on and on it goes.
You will only find this doctrine of predestination articulated among a smattering of the Reformed, the Presbyterians, and Reformed Baptists. I say a smattering because even among the Reformed churches there is a reluctance to go here. Spurgeon captured this 150 years ago,
“Many of our Calvinistic preachers do not feed God’s people. They believe in election (predestination) but they do not preach it. They think particular redemption true but they lock it in the chest of their creed, and never bring it out in their ministry. They hold final perseverance, but they persevere in keeping quite about it. They think there is such a thing as effectual calling, but they do not think they are called to frequently preach on it. The great fault we find with them is, that they do not speak right out what they believe. You could not know if your heard them fifty times what were the doctrines of the Gospel, or what was their system of salvation. And hence God’s people get starved.”
And so even in the Churches where one would think they would routinely hear the doctrines that provide our reason for existence, even there one hears only the muffled voice. Even in Reformed Churches, minority among the Church world that we are, even there these truths are hidden and locked away.
The last two weeks have found us trying to communicate some of these doctrines that fall under the grand and glorious umbrella of Predestination. We have spoken of the doctrine of Predestination proper spending the first week giving a general introduction. Then last week we spent time speaking about Predestination in terms of the general call vs. the effectual call. We spent time going a little further into the doctrine of Predestination as it pertained to Election and Reprobation – that is as it pertains to the salvation of individuals and peoples. We grazed up against doctrines like irresistible grace, and unconditional election. Only grazed.
We will give this one more week and then move on. However, I promise you we have only seen the peek of the peek of the peek of all there is to see on the doctrine of Predestination.
This week I want to start by spending a wee bit of time looking at the doctrine of predestination as it refers to Creation … want to give some implication there and then I want to finish off by looking at the need for Predestination in light of Total Depravity.
Predestination in Creation
When we think of Predestination we ought not to think of it only in terms of salvation – to life or to death. We can also speak of Predestination in terms of Creation.
Rev. 4:11“You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things; by Your will they exist, and came to be.”
4The LORD has made everything for His purpose—
Psalm 147:4 He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.
32He fills His hands with lightning and commands it to strike its mark. 33The thunder declares His presence; even the cattle regard the rising storm.”
Job 37:11
He loads the clouds with moisture; He scatters His lightning through them.
Job 37:12
They swirl about, turning round and round at His direction, accomplishing all that He commands over the face of all the earth.
Job 38:35
Can you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?
These are but a few texts we could appeal to that the world is not self-created but was predestined and created by an eternal God who painted the giraffe and dotted the beetle. This is considered God’s Predestination as applied to creation.
A. W. Pink gets at this when he offered,
“If then we see the Sovereignty of God displayed throughout all creation, why should it be thought a strange thing if we behold it operating in the midst of the human family? Why should it be thought strange if to one God is pleased to give five talents and to another only one? Why should it be thought strange if one is born with a robust constitution and another of the same parents is frail and sickly? Why should it be thought strange if Abel is cut off in his prime, while Cain is suffered to live on for many years? Why should it be thought strange that some should be born black and others white; some be born idiots and others with high intellectual endowments; some be born constitutionally lethargic and others full of energy; some be born with a temperament that is selfish, fiery, egotistical, others who are naturally self-sacrificing, submissive and meek? Why should it be thought strange if some are qualified by nature to lead and rule, while others are only fitted to follow and serve? Heredity and environment cannot account for all these variations and inequalities. No; it is God who maketh one to differ from another. Why should He? “Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight” must be our reply.”
And so we affirm that for the Christian Predestination accounts for the simplest things such as the different types of grass – from the blue grass in Kentucky to the Deer grass of the Southwest to the creeping bent-grass used by golfers for their putting greens.
Note what is emphasized in Pink’s quote and that is the variety we find in God’s predestination work. To embrace God’s predestination is to embrace the predestination of a God whose predestination reflects His nature and Character. This means that as God is both one and many the embrace of God’s predestination means the embrace of the predestination that is both One and Many. God’s predestination is marked by the unity in diversity we find in creation. It is to embrace the distinctions that God predestined the world with. So, as we consider the doctrine of Predestination we find it teaching us about the character and nature of God. God is One and Many and His creation reflects that reality of the God who owns us.
In creation God’s predestination reflects His character and nature. As God is one and many so His predestination in creation reflects that One and Many as seen in all that He has predestined in creation. The Nightingale’s song is distinct from the crow’s. The graceful Hart is distinct from the plowing Ox. The Rose is distinct from the dandelion. This impulse towards the distinct in predestination is seen also in God’s predestinating of man. Some are fools while some are genius. Some are clever while others are idiots. God predestines so that distinctions exist between the maiden fair and her warrior suitor, predestination creates the distinctions between the God’s coal colored Africans and His Ginger Irishmen. Predestination accounts for artisan, seafarer, and Bauxite miner. To be sure God marries nurture and nature to His predestination ends but nurture and nature alone cannot account for the distinctions God predestines. Besides… nurture and nature are nothing without God’s predestinating them and their work as well.
So the variety that we find in Creation is there because of God’s predestinating work.
Perhaps this kind of predestination explains how it is the war on God expresses itself by fallen man. This Predestined creation screams at fallen man what he’s doing all he can do to escape – to wit, the reality of God. And so man seeks to blot out God and His predestinated diverse creation. If only to escape God and the reminder of His predestination man rips and tears at that predestined creation.
Fallen man would supplant God’s predestination in all of its hues and varieties with a humanist predestination. The humanist predestination, instead of camellia and buttercups gives us camelcups. The humanist predestination instead of Hart and Ox gives us Harx.
You see, this is one reason as Christians we cannot ignore predestination as a core doctrine of our faith. If we will not have God’s predestination in creation we will end up with man’s predestination in creation. The creature dare not think that by ignoring God’s predestination that the idea of predestination just goes away. Reality doesn’t work that way. One can’t make reality disappear by wishing it so. Only mad men think that way. No, when we ignore God’s predestination and determine we are not going to have it we merely open the door for man’s predestination. Now of course, should men go mad and seek to supplant God’s predestination for theirs we know they were predestined by God to that end however in their rush to have the creaturely predestination they have made an awful exchange.
In the book, Post Historical Man, Man Beyond History. Roderick Seidenberg, in dealing with the future, sees it, of course, in light of a totally non-Christian perspective, and therefore, he sees it as a world in which the, to use theological terminology, the predestination of God is supplanted by the predestination of man, of the state. It is a world in which a beehive society exists, in which man is scarcely aware that he is man. So that like the bees, or the ants, he functions automatically, hardly aware of himself, living and dying, and being replaced by others, as one replaces one spent cog with a new cog.
The humanist Statist, like the Borg in the Star Trek flicks would abolish God’s predesignating distinctions from off the planet if only to wipe out the memory of the One and Many God. Man’s predestination fuses man and woman into a single “it.” Gone is the gentleness of maiden fair and the ruggedness of her suitors and in its place man predestines a gender mixed hermaphroditic Uruk Hai monster. Man’s predestination collapses the races of men into a single suicide alcohol drink. Gone is the distinctions found in the God ordained races and in its place is the predestination work of fallen man yielding up a unitary race of Nimrods.
So, the work of the predestianarian egalitarians is the antipodal work to God’s predestination. We will not have God rule over us and so we will scrub out His predestination for our own predestination thus recreating creation.
Time does not allow us to explain how this Statist predestination is the obvious outcome of man embracing self-consciousness as God. If man is God and if God is one then all men must be the same and the State will work to that end.
II.) Predestination In Election
We began to take this up last week when we talked about the distinction between the general call and the effectual call that we considered last week as seen in Acts 13:48. Briefly we said that the General Call in evangelism is the idea that the words of the evangelist commanding all men everywhere to repent falls on the ears on all who listen. However the effectual call comes to those who have the words of the Gospel command to repent combined with the Holy Work of regeneration so that the dead sinner can indeed respond to a call which otherwise would only be general.
Why this distinction between the general call and the effectual call? Well, that points us to predestination. You see we have to have this distinction because were it not for the effectual call going out to the particular ones set aside for salvation no one would be redeemed.
Why is there this necessity for a effectual call?
Well Paul there in Acts 13;48 is proclaiming Christ to a group of people who are dead in their trespasses and sins. They have no spiritual life in them. This is the effect of total depravity which teaches that fallen man is spiritually dead and can do nothing to please God. Total depravity teaches that all men can do is sin all the time since that is His nature. So, Paul has a crowd of people like that before him to whom he is preaching Christ. What will cause some to hear the effectual call while others don’t? Only God’s predestinating grace that breathes life into one so they can hear and leaves another dead in their total depravity… dead in trespasses and sins.
The Reformed church needs to continue to exist because it alone teaches that predestinating grace alone awakens the totally depraved unto eternal life.
Total depravity teaches that while fallen man can do some things that are less wicked then other things no son of Adam can do anything that God counts “good.” Fallen man may and does build burn hospitals for children but such a splendid vice is not good in the sense that it wins any consideration from God. Indeed, God finds such an act a “filthy rag.” And the reason that is so is that even in philanthropic works like the building of burn hospitals for children this is not done out of love for God but out of love for self. The totally depraved person never operates out of love for God because being dead in sin they can’t. By definition they live for their own glory. And this stinks before God.
So, if man as totally depraved is to come to Christ it has to be due to God’s predestinating grace. And the redeemed sinner once redeemed says that very thing. Ask the redeemed sinner who has come to Christ and if he is has indeed understood the Scripture he will tell you that nothing he did deserved God’s grace.
Now this doctrine of total depravity does not teach that all men are equally wicked. The dean in sin man in Adam who builds children’s burn hospitals obviously far less wicked than the man who goes around sitting children on fire but they are still both totally depraved. Dead to Christ. Dead to wanting Christ. Dead to the idea that they are answerable to the God of the Bible. Dead, Dead, Dead.
And so the command comes to repent. Some of the totally depraved hearing only the general call will only stiffen their necks against Christ. Others of the totally depraved hearing the effectual call repent and plead mercy. What distinguishes the two responses?
Only the predestinating grace of God found in the effectual call to the elect totally depraved.