2003 Shepherds' Conference, A Ministry of Grace Community Church 818.909.5530.  © 2003 All Rights Reserved. Grace Community Church. A CD, MP3, or tape cassette copy of this session can be obtained by going to www.shepherdsconference.org

Preaching the Gospel Message (Part 2)

by

John MacArthur

General Session #6

SC1008

It is a very difficult task to be preached to and then, instantaneously, turn around and preach, because my mind is no longer on my passage.  Furthermore, can you imagine how difficult it is for me to cope with the reality of a man actually covering 73 verses in one message?  For me, that is two years worth of preaching—just trying to figure out how to get through it!  I love those kinds of overviews: sweeping through the text at the pace that the events occurred.  For me, that discussion took two years, although we know it didn’t.  But anyway.  Where am I and what’s going on here?

Open up your Bible to I Corinthians 1.  It does amaze me how God—always amazes me—how God orchestrates everything, strengthening us and giving us fortitude—I love that word—for the task that is at hand for us.  Strengthening our commitment and our resolve to be faithful and true to the purity of the gospel has become the sort of unplanned theme of this conference.  And we are intersecting at all points; the Spirit of God is blending all of this together in wonderful ways.  What has been on my heart in the messages that you’ve already heard from me is this matter of how hard it is to believe, that it is impossible to believe if one is left to himself or herself.  We saw in the first message that the invitation itself is, from the human viewpoint, impossible because it calls for total self-denial, the taking up of the cross daily, and a life of obedience from the heart.  The demand that Jesus made is just very hard.  For a person to deny all dreams, all hopes, all ambitions, all desires, all longings, all wants, all possessions, all relationships—all everything that constitute the whole of human life—and to be willing to give it all up for Christ, is as hard as it can possibly be made.  Then we are finding that compounding the difficulty of the invitation is the difficulty of the message, and that shameful cross that we started talking about a couple of nights ago. 

I want to take us back to that.  We remember the words of Isaiah, that first glimpse of the suffering Servant on the cross in Isaiah 51, and Isaiah says, “There is no beauty that we should,” what?  “Desire him.”  There’s nothing about the crucifixion that draws out normal desire.  There’s no beauty there.  There’s nothing attractive there.  So, we began to look at I Corinthians 1 and the unattractiveness or the shame of the cross.  We talked about the shameful stigma of the cross, as we started out in verse 18, that “the cross”—preaching about the cross—“is, to those who are perishing, foolishness.”  We noted over in verses 22 and 23, “the Jews want a sign, the Greeks want wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, which is to the Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness.”  We talked about the fact that the cross itself—crucifixion itself—had such a stigma in the first century that nobody rationally could come to the conclusion that you could have a crucified God.  Neither Jew nor Gentile. 

So, there was the shameful stigma of the cross, that acted as an almost impossible barrier to belief in the gospel, and then there was the shameful simplicity of the cross.  And we talked about that a little bit, how that “the cross, in its foolishness, destroys the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever.”  The question then, in verse 20, is asked, “Where is the wise man?  Where is the scribe?  Where is the debater of this age?  They bring nothing to bear on this.”  The questions, of course, are rhetorical.  What do they have to offer?  They have nothing to offer.  God has rendered all of their most erudite musings as absolute folly.  God has determined that by means of human wisdom, man cannot come to know Him. 

So you have this shameful stigma, compounded by a shameful simplicity, and then there is that shameful singularity of the cross.  That is to say that the cross is the only way that anyone can be saved.  Those who are being saved, according to verse 18, are being saved by the power of God, through the Word of the cross.  Paul says we only have one message, in verse 23 again, and that is “we preach Christ crucified.”  That is the only message that can save; there is no other saving message. 

We could even add to the stigma and the simplicity and the singularity—I won’t take too much time with this, but just the comment struck me—we could even add the shameful sentence of the cross.  That sentence is indicated back in verse 18: “The Word of the cross comes to those that are perishing.”  It rescues the perishing.  The perishing are the damned, they are the doomed, they are the ruined, they are the destroyed, they are the lost, having been rendered so under the judgment of God for endless violations of his holy law.  The cross, in itself, proclaims a verdict on fallen man, does it not?  The cross says that God requires death for sin.  While it proclaims to us the glory of substitution, on the other side of that it proclaims the necessity of death for sin, and if one doesn’t embrace the substitute then one bears that death himself or herself, and that is an undying death that lasts forever.  So, there is that shameful sentence of the cross that exposes the true condition of the sinner.  “Christ crucified” was Paul’s message.  When he said, “We preach Christ crucified” in verse 23, that was simply a summary statement; there was a whole message to go with that!  Why He was crucified, of course, would be at the heart of that message.  The message of the cross is not about felt needs.  It is not about Jesus loving you so much, He wants to make you happy.  It is about rescuing you from damnation, because that is the sentence that rests upon the head of every human being.

So, the gospel is an offense every way you look at it.  There’s nothing about the cross that fits in comfortably with how man views himself or his condition.  The gospel confronts man and exposes him for what he really is.  It ignores the superficiality of life.  It ignores the disappointments that he feels.  It offers him no relief from the struggles of being human.  It, rather, goes to the profound and eternal issue of the fact that he is damned and desperately needs to be rescued, and it is a rescue that can only be accomplished through death, and God, in his mercy, has provided a substitute.  The indictment of the sinner then, adds another component to the barrier of believing in this cross, therein the sinner must come to the attitude of the publican in Luke 18 and pound his breast and cry out for mercy.  So, we’re just trying to paint the picture a little bit that it doesn’t matter how lofty and elevated and powerful and influential in the culture the preachers of the gospel are; posturing ourselves for positions of prestige cannot mitigate the distastefulness of this message. 

But somebody might, at this point, say, “Well, it would certainly help if we had people like that.”  Well, that takes us to the next point—and I gave it to you a little bit last time, I’ll just reiterate it and we’ll look at it: we have to compound this dilemma of the shame of the message itself by adding the shameful society of the cross.  Let’s go to verse 26, “For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble.  But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong; and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen—the things that are not—that He might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God.” 

For all those who feel the only hope of this very difficult message, the only way that it could possibly advance, was to somehow get it in the mouth of the rich and the famous and the powerful and the influential, and maybe they could somehow be more believable, and therefore cause people to somehow get across the barrier—for those of you who are hoping for that, that is not the plan.  Not the plan. 

I just want you to look at the language here, “Consider your calling, brethren…”

“Not many WISE” (sophos; not many “intellectuals”).

“Not many MIGHTY” (not many dunatos; not many “wielding power”).

“Not many NOBLE” (eugenes; that is, “aristocratic”).

In 178, Celsus wrote that Christians were “the vulgarest and most uneducated.”  Not many intellectuals, not many wielding cultural power, not many aristocrats…  In fact, verse 27 says just the opposite:

“God has chosen the FOOLISH” (“the non-intellectuals”) “to shame the wise.”

“God has chosen the WEAK” (asthenes; “void of strength, void of power”).

And then, I love this one.  Verse 28, “He has chosen the BASE” (agenes; “people of no birth, without any significance”).  I always think of the most insignificant person I ever heard of being born—and I read this somewhere years ago—was a baby, and the mother wrote on the birth certificate his name, “Nosmoking.”  And somebody said, “Where did you get a name like that?”  Well, it turned out the mother was illiterate, so she just copied down the “No Smoking” sign.  Nos-mo-king.  There is a nothing person, named after a “No Smoking” sign.  This is the nobodies.  And if that’s not bad enough, I mean, we’re the foolish, we’re the weak, we’re the people of no birth (that is, with no significance). 

He adds, in verse 28, “the DESPISED” (exoutheneo is the verb; it means “to consider as nothing”—we’re going deeper here—this Perfect Passive Participle: “those who were and continue to be nothing”). 

Well, I mean, we’re just sinking here.  You say, “We can’t get any lower!”  Oh, yes we can.  Verse 28: “THE THINGS THAT ARE NOT”—that’s a great phrase (tamaonta?; “the nonexistent ones”).  You’ve got to understand, in the first century, being somebody was a really important thing!  Still is, isn’t it?  So the Lord said, “Well, I’m just going to do it a different way: the non-intellectual, impotent nobodies who are considered as nothing because they are nothing.” 

You say, “Well, wouldn’t God want to choose the somebodies?”  I mean, you’ve got enough to get over with just the message and the invitation; wouldn’t it help if there were just some really important people?” and I’ve heard this through the years, you know, “If just this famous person could get saved, just think about their testimony, what it would be like” or, “If this famous person in athletics or the media or the arts or politics or whatever could just be a Christian, just imagine the power of their testimony!”  Well, occasionally—it doesn’t say, “There aren’t any”; there’re just not many—occasionally, though, such people are converted by the grace of God, but the gospel has never moved, through history, fulfilling the redemptive plan on the back of influential people.  It moves with us.  And here we are: the non-intellectual, impotent, nothing nobodies. 

Why does God do this?  Well, to shame the wise, to shame the strong, to nullify them (end of verse 28, katargeo; “to neutralize them; to render them inoperative”).  The gospel is taken away from the world’s somebodies and given to the nobodies so that, in the end, verse 29, “The advancement of the gospel can be credited to no person.”  There will never be any human credit for the advancement of the gospel. 

I think last year, at the end of the conference, I addressed this passage on Sunday a little bit, and somebody suggested I might touch on it again, so turn to II Corinthians 4 if we can digress…  This is really good for us to relate to this.  II Corinthians 4:5, Paul says, “We do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bondservants for Jesus’ sake, for God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God and the face of Christ.  But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves.”  If I signed a book or something for you this week, you’ll notice that I put that passage under my name. 

I just want to pick out one little term there: ostrakinos  (in the Greek).  It’s in verse 7, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.”  “Earthen vessel” is, frankly, too dignified a term.  It’s not very dignified, but it’s too dignified to translate the word ostrakinos.  It’s a clay pot is what it is!  It’s a clay pot!  Baked clay.  Cheap, unrefined, ugly, breakable, replaceable, valueless.  It’s that pot that a plant comes in.  That’s it.  And the contrast is staggering!  “We have this treasure”—what treasure?  The treasure of the glorious light of the gospel, the one shining in our hearts: “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God and the face of Christ.”  I mean, he’s picking up all the brilliance, all the glory of the Shekinah, of the true revelation of the glorious light of the essence of the nature of God, manifest in Christ.  He’s trying to describe what is most indescribably and inexplicably beautiful, and saying, “This treasure, the treasure of this glorious reality of the gospel is carried around in clay pots.”  We’re baked dirt.  That’s what we are.  Baked dirt. 

Paul was scorned for his unimpressive persona, wasn’t he?  His presence was unimpressive and his speech was absolutely contemptible.  He had a bodily condition that was repulsive.  Some scholars think he had some terrible stuff oozing out of his eyes.  I mean, he would not have had the look that you sort of have to have to be the slick entrepreneurial guy today.  He was just baked clay, but that was okay with him because that was the way God had designed it, and that made it very evident where the power was. 

I’ve been reading David Daniels’ book on William Tyndale.  I read it and then I go back and read it again.  Then I go back and read it again.  It’s just cathartic for me!  Thomas Moore was a great defender of Roman Catholicism in England, and he felt himself the servant of God in taking on William Tyndale and doing everything he could to destroy his work.  William Tyndale did the horrible thing, an absolutely horrible thing: he determined that the Bible ought to be in a language people could read.  And so, that’s what he did—in exile, in Antwerp—because he knew if he went back to England, he’d be killed, because the people who read his New Testament were being killed. 

Well, Thomas Moore not only attacked William Tyndale, but he was very good at attacking Martin Luther.  Part of the condemnation of Tyndale was that he was a Lutheran, that he followed Luther (“Now Lutheran” in the sense of what it would have been then, not now).  So, Thomas Moore came up with a title for Luther.  He called him a “privy-pot.”  Do I need exegete that?  He called Luther a privy-pot!  Thomas Moore wrote things of a scatological nature, the likes of which I will not speak.  He said things that are absolutely beyond belief, demeaning Luther.  But, you know something?  He was close to being right. 

If you would look, for just a moment, at II Timothy 2:20, we can take this brief excursus into scatology one step further, if not any more than that.  In II Timothy 2:20, “In a large house, you’ve got to have some containers!  You have some containers in a large house that are gold and silver, but you also have other containers that are wood and clay pots.  The ones that are gold and silver have honorable purposes, and the ones that are wood and clay have dishonorable purposes.”  Now, just use your imagination.  The food came in on the gold and silver, and it went out on the earth and wooden.  Paul knew what he said here—go back to II Corinthians—he knew what he was saying here.  We’re privy pots—baked clay—so that the explanation of the advance of the gospel is never going to be us, is it? 

You know, none of the early preachers, among the apostles, was important.  I just wrote that book—I think you got it, didn’t you—Twelve Ordinary Men.  I mean, they were so ordinary; it was painful to go through those guys.  Not one priest, not one rabbi, not one scribe, not one Pharisee, not one Sadducee—not one anything!  Not even an archon!  Not even a synagogue ruler!  Nobody!  Half of them or so were fisherman; the rest of them worked with their hands; one was a terrorist who went around with a little knife trying to spear Romans (Simon the Zealot); then there was Judas, the loser of all losers.  What was the Lord doing? 

He picked people with absolutely no influence.  There aren’t any of the great intellects from Egypt or Greece or Rome or Israel.  During the New Testament time, the greatest scholars, we understand, were very likely in Egypt.  The greatest library was in Alexandria, the most distinguished philosophers were in Athens, the powerful were in Rome, the biblical scholars were in Jerusalem—God disdained all of them and just picked clay pots.  And He’s still doing it.  He passed by Herodotus the historian, He passed by Socrates the great thinker, He passed by the father of medicine, Hippocrates, Herodotus the historian, Socrates the great thinker. He passed by Plato the philosopher, Aristotle the wise, Euclid the mathematician, Archimedes the father of mechanics, Hyparcus the astronomer, Cicero the orator, Virgil the poet…  Do we need more?  He didn’t pay any attention to any of those people, and He’s still in the business of picking up clay pots. 

Now, just to kind of take this another step, turn to I Corinthians 4.  If you don’t feel bad already, I’m going to make you feel worse.  If you came to try to find your self-esteem, you’re in some trouble here.  Verse 6, I Corinthians 4, “These things, brethren, I figuratively applied to myself…”  He’s been talking about the fact that he doesn’t want anybody to consider him as anything.  Verse 1, you know, “Let a man regard us as servants of Christ, stewards of the mystery of God.”  Don’t make anything out of me.  Don’t name cathedrals after me in cities in Minnesota or any of that stuff.  I’m just a servant of Christ.  I’m a steward of the mysteries of God.  I’m an under-rower, a third level galley slave; I pulled my oar, that’s enough.  It doesn’t matter what you think about me (verse 3).  It doesn’t matter what human court says about me.  I don’t even care what I say about myself.  You don’t know the truth, and I’m biased in my favor, and neither one of us is likely to be accurate.  Don’t pass judgment; let the Lord do that.  Verse 6, he says, “These things, brethren, I figuratively applied to myself and Apollos for your sake, that in us you might learn not to exceed what is written, in order that no one of you might become arrogant in behalf of one against the other.”  We can’t be thinking about each other with regard to who’s more important that the next person; we’re just clay pots! 

Verse 7, “For who regards you as superior?  What do you have that you didn’t receive?  And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?”  He’s starting to get a little sarcastic here: “You are already filled, you’ve already become rich”—you’re really something, aren’t you?—“you’ve become kings without us; I would, indeed, that you had become kings, so that we also might reign with you.” 

And then he says this in verse 9—an amazing statement—“I think, God has exhibited us apostles last of all, lowest of the low, like criminals on death row; we have become a spectacle to the world.”  They would drag the criminals through the streets in a parade on the way to the execution in the arena, headed for death.  We’re viewed as the lowest of the lowest of the low. 

In fact, just skipping over to verse 13, he says, “We have become as the scum of the world, the dregs of all things, even until now.”  Scum…dregs…really interesting words.  Perikatharma is the word for “scum.”  Katharma, related to catharsis, is “to cleanse.” Peri is “around,” right?  What that word means is scum—the perikatharma is “that which is removed by thorough cleansing.”  It’s the scum that sticks to the bottom of the pot.  Used metaphorically in the ancient world, it was describing criminals—the lowest class of criminals, who were offered as human sacrifices to appease the deities.  If you wanted to get your god off your back because you had a famine or you had a plague or you lost a war, you found some scum in your society, something filthy that you wanted eliminated, and you put him on an altar as a sacrifice to your deity.  Paul says that’s who we are.  We’re the scum.

And then he says we’re the “dregs” (peripsoma).  This even goes down deeper.  I mean, Paul—he’s at the bottom.  The perikatharma is what was removed by cleaning thoroughly; the peripsoma was what didn’t come off until you scraped it.  The caked crud.  Feeling better about yourself?  I mean, this is really amazing, isn’t it?  It’s the last of the refuse to cling!  I mean, are you beginning to feel the hopelessness of this task? 

We are offering an invitation to people that makes them literally commit suicide, with all their dreams, ambitions, desires, felt needs, all…you name it—it’s all gone.  And then we’re presenting them a gospel of salvation that is absolutely against the grain of every normal human impulse.  And to compound our problem, the people who are offering this are the scum of the world!  If I were planning a plan to do this, this would not be my plan: to come up with an impossible message, an impossible invitation, and we’ll spread it around with the most despicable people in the world, the ones that are most likely to be hated and vilified and belittled and demeaned.

Well, go back to II Corinthians 4, from the “scum,” to the “clay pot.”  II Corinthians 4.  Let’s just pick this up, and I just want to bounce through this really quick here.  Paul says, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.”  At this particular point, you might say to yourself, “You know, we’ve got to figure out a strategy here.  We’ve got to overcome these obstacles.  I mean, this is really pretty disastrous.  We need somehow to be able to survive in this kind of environment.  What could we do?”  Well, I want you to hear Paul.  Here are the things he will not do, right here. 

One: we will not surrender in cowardice.  Verse 1, “Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy”—we have this ministry by mercy—“we do not lose heart.”  What does that assume?  It assumes rejection.  It assumes hostility.  It assumes hatred.  We will not enkakoumen (?).  We will not [literally means “to] give in to evil.”  To lose courage.  We will not become faint-hearted.  We will not crumble under this—and in our crumbling, of course, we are useless.  False teachers in Corinth were market-savvy.  False teachers in Corinth were selling their image, packaging their message with what the people wanted to hear.  The people want their religion a little metaphysical, a little oratorical, a little philosophical, a little transcendental, a little allegorical, and a little legalistic, and they wanted it in the mouths of the slick.  Paul says, “I will not be a coward.  We will not lose heart.”

Two: we will not tamper with the message.  Verse 2, “We have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the Word of God, but by manifestation of truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.”  It is tough, it is impossible, it is hard, it is painful…  One: we will not become cowards.  Two: we will not tamper with the truth.  We will not walk in panourgia.  We will not walk in trickery, adulterating the Word of God, tampering with the gospel to be commended to men.  But we will be faithful to the gospel, manifesting the truth, in order to commend ourselves to every man’s conscience with God watching. 

We will not surrender.  We will not change the message.

Thirdly, we will not manipulate the results, verse 3 and 4, because we know this: “If our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.”  The problem—listen—is not the seed; the problem is the what?  The soil, isn’t it?  It’s the condition of the human heart.  “If it is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing,” in whose case “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”  Paul says, “We will not manipulate the results because we understand if they don’t believe, they don’t believe because they are perishing and blinded by Satan.”  Our gospel, if it is veiled, it is veiled because they are unable to understand.  In the language that we heard in the last message, it “has not been granted” to them to understand.  There’s nothing wrong with the message. 

We will not become cowards.  We will not change the message.  We will not manipulate the results. 

If they don’t hear, cool music won’t help.  If they don’t hear, PowerPoint won’t help.  If they don’t hear, drama won’t help and video won’t help.  They’re blind—and dead.  So we just go on preaching—not ourselves, not our manipulated message—but Christ Jesus as Lord.  The message never changes.  We have this supernatural message, we’re nothing more but privy-pots, but we will not surrender that message, we will not lose heart, we will not manipulate results (number four) because we will not seek popularity.

[Fourth], we will not seek popularity.  Verse 8, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.  Always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body.  For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, in order that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.  So death works in us, but, as a result, life works in you.”  And here’s the key, verse 13: “We have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written”—back in Psalm 1:16 ‘I believed; therefore, I spoke’—“we also believe; therefore, we also speak.”  We don’t expect popularity!  What do we expect?  He gave you the list: affliction, crushing, persecution, being struck down, always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus—that doesn’t mean some spiritual thing; it simply means that he’s always on the brink of death, always ready to die, always being delivered over by some plot to death.  He knew every day that he awakened that it could be the day he died.  Death was working in him as a daily experience, in anticipating it.  I know what he means by that.  He had to live through his own funeral every day, because it could have happened any day.  But, this never changed: “I believed; therefore, I spoke.”  That’s it, men.  If you believe, you speak. 

One more commitment: we will not look at earthly success.  We will not look at earthly success.  Why do we do this?  Verse 14, “Because we know that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will present us with you.  For all things are for your sakes, that the grace, which is spreading to more and more people, may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God.  Therefore we do not lose heart.  But though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.  For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory, far beyond all comparison.  While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen.  For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are unseen are”—what?  “Eternal.”  We’re not into the temporal. 

What standards for ministry!  We will not lose heart.  We will not alter the message.  We will not manipulate the results, because we understand that there is a profound spiritual reality at work in those who do not believe.  We will not expect popularity; therefore, we will not be disappointed.  And we will not look at earthly success, but at that which is unseen.

Then, back to verse 6 and 7, “The light shines, the glory of God and the face of Jesus Christ, and we have this treasure in earthen vessels” and I love this, the end of verse 7, “that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves,” and then we’re right back where we have been all along in these messages.  At the end of the day, there is no human explanation for us, is there?  The world thinks we’re odd and bizarre, as Dr. Mohler was saying.  They think we’re strange, and yet the church moves with immense power through the history of the world.  Not to be explained by us.  If we brought the elite university professors of Los Angeles into this room, they’d look at us and laugh.  “These people can’t change the world!”  No, but God is changing it through us.

Well, I have to take you back for one final note to I Corinthians 1—and this is a good place to sort of wrap up in the next couple of minutes. 

We have been dealing with all the shameful elements of the cross—the shameful stigma of the cross, the shameful simplicity of the cross, the shameful singularity of the cross, the shameful sentence of the cross, the shameful society of the cross—I just want to give you one more. 

There’s one more thing that stands in the way, that’s really offensive, and it’s the shameful sovereignty of the cross.  You know, I used to hear, years ago, people say, “Don’t ever preach the doctrine of the sovereignty of God when you have nonbelievers there.”  I was literally warned against that!  But here is another offense to tell the unbeliever: salvation is limited.  So, how is it limited?

Well, go back to verse 18.  It’s limited to those who are “being saved.”  Okay, “being saved”…  Go down to verse 21.  Those who are being saved, according to verse 21, are those who “believe.”  Those who believe—go down to verse 24—are those who are the “called” (efficacious call; always, in the epistles of the New Testament, the call is efficacious).  This salvation is only for those who are being saved, because they are believing, because they are called—go to verse 27—“because God has”—what’s the next word?—“chosen.”  That’s the second time, in verse 27 (“because God has chosen”). Third time, in verse 28 (“because God has chosen”).  Eklegomai: “picked out for Himself.” 

Do you mean to tell me…this gospel assaults everything about me.  It assaults my emotions with the stigma of the cross; it assaults my intellect with the simplicity of the cross; it assaults my human affections with the singularity of the cross, by attacking my tolerances; it assaults my sense of well-being and dignity with the sentence of the cross; it assaults my nobility with this mucky, scummy society of the cross; and now, all I have left is my autonomy, and now you’re telling me it doesn’t have anything to do with me!  Well, that’s an overstatement, in a sense.  “Him that comes to Me, I will in no way”—what?  “Cast out.” 

But, it’s really true.  I love this, verse 30…  How could anybody get saved?  How could anybody get saved under those terms?  You’ve got nothing left; you’re absolutely stripped of everything.  Verse 30, “But, by His doing, you are in Christ Jesus.”  What else can be said?  So, if it’s His doing anyway, why would I tamper with the message?  Why would I manipulate the results?  And to seal that, verse 29, “That no man should boast before God,” verse 31, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.”  It is by his doing that you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness from God and sanctification from God and redemption from God. 

R.C. Sproul said that God’s favorite doctrine is sovereignty, and if you were God, it would be yours.  I’ll tell you something, it’s my favorite!  I just get a sick feeling when I hear contemporary people within evangelicalism attack the sovereignty of God—his elective purpose in salvation—because if God isn’t saving people, they can’t get saved! 

This is a quote from a very famous evangelical: “To suggest that the merciful, longsuffering, gracious, and loving God of the Bible would invent a dreadful doctrine like election, which would have us believe it is an act of grace to select only certain people for heaven, comes perilously close to blasphemy.”  He’s saying that God sovereignly saving people by his power is close to blasphemy!  How else are they going to get saved? 

Another head of a national ministry writes, “The flawed theology of pre-selection,” as he calls it, “is an attempt to eliminate man’s capacity to exercise his free will, which reduces God’s sovereign love to an act of a mere dictator.” 

Another writer says, “Election makes our heavenly Father look like the worst of despots!” 

Another says, “This is the most unreasonable, incongruous, self-contradictory, man-belittling, God-dishonoring scheme of theology that ever appeared in Christian thought!  No one can accept its contradictory, mutually exclusive propositions without intellectual self-debasement.  It holds up a self-centered, selfish, heartless, remorseless tyrant for God and bids us to worship Him.” 

What a twisted understanding of God.

Another says, “It makes God a monster.”  These are evangelicals; some, pastors.  Another says, “It makes God a monster, who eternally tortures innocent…removes the hope of conciliation from the gospel…limits the atoning work of Christ…resists evangelism…stirs up argumentation and division…promotes a small, angry, judgmental God.” 

I’d be worried to be saying things like that. 

“To say that God sovereignly chooses”—here’s another one—“who will be saved is the most twisted thing I have ever read, making God into a monster, no better than a pagan idol.”

Well, I don’t need to read any more of that, but that’s the kind of stuff that I found in the flyleaf of Dave Hunt’s book What Love Is This?

What in the world is going on here?  The gospel is impossible for the unregenerated man, until he has been regenerated.  The gospel is impossible for the blind man, until he’s been given sight.  There’s nothing about it that’s attractive; there’s “no beauty in Christ that we should desire him.”  The invitation is impossible.  It’s self-suicide.  Believing in this cross gospel is just fraught with shame.  It’s just unreasonable, illogical.  It assaults everything that is human about us, everything we love about our fallenness.  And then, to make things worse, it is espoused by the scum and the dregs and the nobodies. 

So, what do we do?  What are we left to do, with this impossibility?  Look at chapter 2: “When I came to you, brethren, I didn’t come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.  In spite of all of that, I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  I was with you in weakness and fear and much trembling.  And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power, that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men but on the power of God.”  And that’s where Paul landed.  He said, “Look, I’m not looking for a popular position, from which to proclaim this message, somehow thinking it can ride and advance on the back of public favor.  I preach the shameful cross, because that’s what I’ve been told to preach, and I leave it to the sovereign power of God to work through that message to produce a faith that rests, not on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.”

I’ll just close with one more comment.  Mark 12:13-14.  This is one of those just marvelous moments with Jesus and the Pharisees and Herodians, and the Pharisees and Herodians came to Him and the idea was to catch Him in his words, as always.  Listen to what they said to Jesus, Mark 12:13-14, “And they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Him, in order to trap Him or catch Him in his words.  And they came to Him and said”—I love this—“‘Teacher, we know that you are truthful and defer to no one, for You are not partial to anyone, but teach the way of God in truth.’”  What a commendation!  Write that somewhere in your Bible, and follow in the footsteps of Christ.  They killed him for it, and God overruled and provided salvation.

Prayer:

Father, we do thank You for these wonderful days together and this glorious evening that we have shared.  We have been taught and we have been inspired and we have been convicted and we have been motivated and we have gone through the cleansing of the Word as it prunes us—and we’ve also rejoiced and celebrated.  We are so full of your truth and we are enjoying so richly the sweetness of this fellowship.  Lord, somehow, we know that it can’t continue, but somehow, Lord, conserve this in us and translate it into power, as we live and preach to the glory of our Christ, in whose name we pray, Amen.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "Shepherds' Conference Collection" by:

Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
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