Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

I. God’s Faithfulness (vs.

28)

II.

God’s Foreknowledge (vs.

29a)

III.

God’s Formula (vs.

29b)

IV.

God’s Facilitation (vs.

30)

A. Predestinate

Just to hit this point and then move on, I want to give you a couple of verses to kind of sum up.

We all understand that because the words “predestinate” and “election” are Biblical words, that you have to form a Biblical Doctrine of them.

You cannot avoid them and you must; therefore, formulate a Doctrine on them based on the Bible as far as revelation will take you.

Now, there will always be questions, just like with other Doctrines in the Bible, but we go as far a Divine inspiration will take us and then leave it at that.

We said that to “predestinate” was to “choose or determine beforehand”.

Danel

Psalm 33:

So, the picture that the Bible paints for us is that in eternity past, the Sovereign God decreed or predetermined a people that would be like Christ.

Remember that we told you that all of this Doctrine of Predestination has to do with the love of the Father for the Son, that He wanted to give Him a love gift that would be like Him.

So, the ultimate purpose of election has to do with the conforming of a people to Jesus Christ.

Heaven is just a destiny; the purpose and the result of election is the conformation to the image of Christ.

So God foreordains a people out of the good pleasure of His will (), and then Predetermines that those foreordained people would be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ and then He calls those people.

And that takes us to the next link in the chain.

B. Called (vs.

30)

“Called” is the Greek word “καλέω” and it means “to summon” or “to be chosen as a recipient for a special benefit”.

For those people whom God foreordained and then Predetermined to be conformed to the image of Christ, He then summoned to come as a recipient of a special benefit.

This is a pattern of God that flows in both the OT and the NT.

First, God called Abraham ().

Then God called Israel.

And this calling is now realized in the Church

God’s predetermined ones are called out of a state of sinfulness and into a state of Divine Grace.

Saints are said to be called.

This Greek word is the same root as the Greek word for “Church”.

“ἐκκλησία” means “the called out ones”.

We, as the ones that have been foreordained and Predetermined, have been summoned out of a group.

We have been summoned out of the group of the fallen into a state of Grace to be conformed to the image of Christ.

There are at least 13 different places in the NT where the believer is said to experience the calling of God.

This doctrinal view has many times gone by the name: “Irresistible Grace”, meaning that people cannot resist the calling of God.

When the Holy Spirit comes on the hearts of the ones Foreordained and Predetermined, they will answer the call.

I do not, and there are others that feel this way as well, particularly like that doctrinal designation, because it gives an inaccurate picture of what I see in the Scriptures actually happens.

Because people do, in fact, resist the grace of God.

Sinners do it everyday.

And “Irresistible Grace” gives the idea that God brings people “kicking and screaming” into the Kingdom; which is so much an obvious characterization of the truth, but still needs to be addressed.

I prefer, and I believe is a more accurate picture in the Bible, the term “Effectual Calling”.

Meaning that when the Spirit calls, that calling will effective in what it was sent to do.

So, as you can see, the teaching of the two words are pretty much equal, but the term “effectual calling”, I believe, more accurately portrays what the Bible teaching on our calling.

Why is this calling necessary?

Why must we be summoned to come?

Because unless we were summoned to come, we would never come.

I want to give you an illustration that is given by many semi-Pelagians in regard to this Doctrine.

The say that the sinner is sick and he/she needs the medicine of the Gospel in order to be healed of their illness.

Jesus stands beside them with the medicine of the Gospel and all they need to do is to take the medicine that is offered to them and they will be healed.

Now, the obvious problem with that illustration is that the person lying in the bed is not sick; not even sick unto death, but the person lying in the bed is…DEAD!

He/She cannot take the medicine that would heal them of their sickness because they are dead.

This has to do with our nature from birth, we are born spiritually dead.

“Dead” or “νεκρός” literally means “to be a corpse, to be lifeless”.

So from a spiritual stand point, the one thing that every person has in common with each other is the fact that we all, if we will ever respond to the message of the Gospel, need to be raised from spiritual death to spiritual life.

We are born with natures that will only choose what is its natures delight.

And our natures are in bondage to unbelief.

The inspired words are talking about willingness, they are talking about ability.

People that are dead in sin do not have the ability to so anything that is pleasing to God.

Is faith and repentance something that is pleasing to God? Yes!

So; therefore, by our nature we cannot do those things ourselves.

By our natures we suppress the truth

As Jesus spoke to Nicodemus in , Jesus makes it clear to him that dead sinners cannot bring about their spiritual birth anymore than they can bring about physical birth.

So, the doctrine of the inability of man to come to God is part and parcel of what is missing in many evangelicals doctrine.

That while they believe that we are all sinners and, while they may not fully admit the following statement, their basically good people down deep.

Would you agree with the following statement?

“The Holy Spirit exerts His regenerating power only on certain conditions, that is, on the conditions of repentance and faith.”

If you would lean to believe that statement to be true, that is similar to asking a blind person to see before they have been healed of their blindness; it is just something that they cannot do.

The truth is:

Only because of God’s one-sided act of regeneration does anyone repent and believe.

You say, “It sounds like you are saying that regeneration proceeds faith and repentance”.

That is exactly what I am saying.

I particularly want you to notice the first part of the verse.

Now, that is a pretty straight forward statement and not difficult to understand.

What we need to do is to dig down into the text and see what John was actually saying and what his readers would have understood him to be saying.

John starts our by saying:

Πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων

That is a very popular phrase that the Apostle John uses in His Gospel; start back in .

And it is translated, “everyone that is believing”.

It is a Present, Participle and it speaks to the nature of our faith that it is ongoing; being the present tense shows continual action.

Then he says something about the ones that are believing.

ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ γεγέννηται

“Have been born of God”.

Now, it sounds like on the surface that John is saying that our believing results in our being born of God.

But as you dig into the language that is not what John is saying.

γεγέννηται is a Perfect tense verb which; and you always have to study it in context, speaks about action that is completed in the past and has results abiding into the present.

And when you have Perfect tense verb with a Present Tense Participle, what is the relationship of the words?

And the vast majority of the time, that action that is accomplished in the Perfect tense verb is going to Proceed the action of the Participle.

What that would mean here that this being born of God proceeds the saving faith and I would argue gives rise to it.

Now, let’s look at some verbal parallels to see if this is the consistent message of John.

What you have here is a exact match in grammar.

πᾶς ὁ ποιῶν

“Everyone that is doing....” and also a Present Participle, just like

And then....

αὐτοῦ γεγέννηται

“Is born of Him”, of course the context there is the “Him” being God.

And γεγέννηται is also a Perfect Tense verb, just like .

So, going by the same principle are we going to say that doing righteousness that makes us born of God.

And if not, why not!

It is the same grammatical construction that is founds in .

In being born of God comes before our doing righteousness.