Full Service

You asked about sovereignty, predestination, election, free will.

(Rom 9; Isa. 43:8-13; 46:8-11)

In the Beginning … (Gen. 1:1, 28; 2:15-17)

• The emphasis is a dominant Creator and a dependant, responsible-to-God creature.
• The original design is the sovereignty of God and the accountable responsibility of man.
• The fall is from “free-to-be-responsible” to now “enslaved-to-be-irresponsibly sinful”.

The problem of a one dimension solution to a fourth dimension reality …

• Salvation reality exists outside of time and space but is explained in time and space and recorded on the written page.
• Instead of embracing by faith what the Scriptures appropriately hold in tension, we insist upon an emotionally satisfying solution and end up with even more egregious problems.

There is only one truth that guarantees the promises of God won’t fail … Rom. 9:1f

• How things look won’t… (9:1-5)
• How things feel won’t… (9:14, 19)
• How we think things should be can’t… (9:6, 7)
• Nothing human at all can… (9:16)

The only truth that guarantees the promises of God won’t fail is the absolute and complete SOVEREIGNTY of GOD (9:12, 14, 17-18, 20-29).

You can have security in God’s promises (WORD) or the free will of man; you cannot have both.

Points to Ponder…

• You cannot be partially sovereign; either God is fully sovereign or the creature is – both cannot be.
• Unless predestination, none of the promises of God can be guaranteed (9:6), including our salvation.
• Unless undeserved, unmerited election is so, grace is disgraced and mercy ceases to exist (9:31, 32).
• According to the Scriptures, man is not free; he is either an accountable slave to sin or graciously freed to be a responsible slave to righteousness (Rom. 6:17-18).
• People are not called (elected) to sin and destruction, they are left to what they choose to do (Rom. 9:22-23).
• Justice exists when, and only when, God is God; as he fulfills his claims about himself (9:28).
• Unless God mercifully intervenes, there is no one saved (9:27, 29).
  

From first to last the story of redemption is God’s story planned and unfolding according to his good pleasure and for his exclusive glory. God alone is free; man is not. God alone is God; man cannot be. The purposes of God in salvation is his right to choose, in order to accomplish his ultimate purpose to display the fullness of all his glory, that the whole of creation might praise him.