The Word of Truth is sponsored in part by Paul Rents. Visit paulrents.com for party and equipment rentals. Welcome to the Word of Truth, a ministry of Pastor Lars Larson and the First Baptist Church of Leominster, Massachusetts. It is our desire that our Lord use this broadcast to instruct, encourage, and strengthen both Christians and local churches in the New England region. Pastor Lars is always available to assist you. You may reach him at 978-660-7000. May today's message from our pastor be blessed by our Lord to instruct and encourage you through the Holy Scriptures, the Word of Truth. Greetings, and thank you for tuning in today. We are currently addressing the biblical teaching regarding God's decree. This is the third program which we have devoted to this subject. When we speak of God's decree, We are addressing God's will that is taking place in history. His will of decree that was determined in eternity prior to creation. All that occurs in history. God had determined would occur before creation. He determined these things fully and absolutely. History is an unfolding or a realization of God's decree, or sometimes referred to as the counsel of God. God's decree is absolute, complete, and unalterable. All that God has willed comes to pass. Isaiah 1427 records for us. For the Lord of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back? And no one, of course, is the answer. God fulfills all His will. God does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and no one can restrain His hand or say to Him, What have you done? Daniel 4, 35. But understanding this doctrine of Holy Scripture is not easily comprehended. Questions arise, and we have already posited several. If all things occur due to God's decree, how is it that all sin and great evil actions of injustice may not be laid at God's feet? Why is He not responsible for these, if He has decreed all things? Or, this question, if all things are a manifestation of God's eternal decree, what does that do to our understanding of the free will of man? Or another, if all things that occur in one's life are a result of God's eternal decree, how can God hold man responsible for his sinful actions? Well, these are the kinds of questions that we will be answering. And there are other questions as well respecting God's decree that will surface, I'm sure, in our study. Let us ask our God for His grace to help us in this endeavor. Our Heavenly Father, we thank You that You are our God and that You have purpose to create us and save us through Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. For indeed by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. We thank you, Father, that not only have you created all things, but that you are governing all things to their appointed end. Indeed, as the Scripture declares, the Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble. Father, I ask that you would help us to understand the glory of your counsel, that all things are unfolding as you purpose from eternity, to the end that you are glorified by all that transpires in history. and so help us fulfill your purpose for us, for I do pray in Jesus' name, Amen. We have described this doctrine of the Holy Scriptures, the Eternal Decree of God, through the use of a definition provided by an older Reformed Confession of Faith. It is Article 3, Paragraph 1 from the Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689, But it is substantially the same in the historic Westminster Confession of 1646 and the Savoy Declaration of 1658, all three of these confessions being Reformed confessions of the English Puritans of the 17th century. And here is their common statement regarding God's decree. God hath decreed in himself from all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things, whatsoever comes to pass, yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin, nor have fellowship with any therein, nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established, in which appears his wisdom in disposing all things, and power and faithfulness in accomplishing his decree. Now, that's a statement that attempts to describe what the Bible teaches about these matters. This high view of God and His sovereign control and management of His world is a doctrine that distinguishes historic Reformed theology. That God is in control of His world, working out infallibly all His will as He is determined, is foundational to all other considerations regarding God and His nature. those who are reformed in their understanding of the Scriptures, Look out at this chaotic and unjust world and see a holy, just, sovereign God accomplishing His perfect will in His world. God created all things for His glory. The universe, the world in which we live, and all events of history are a grand stage on which God has displayed who He is and what He is like to His creatures. And therefore God works all things after the counsel of His own will. Ephesians 111. All things that have and will occur in history, from the smallest detail to the greatest of events, were decreed of God before creation. And it is through God's decree of all things that God glorifies Himself to the angels and to mankind whom He has made. God's sovereignty, of course, touches on the matter of salvation, in which the glory of God is most wonderfully and fully displayed. Although human beings born in this world are sinners, and all are under sentence of death, deserving of damnation, and under the sentence of damnation, thankfully God has purposed that not all would be lost. but rather He purposed to save a people from fallen humanity, a people that He would save from their sins by pardoning them, renewing them, and delivering them from their sin. Our Lord Jesus spoke of these ones that the Father had promised or had given Him from eternity. This would be, of course, in God's decree, reflected in our Lord Jesus' prayer in John 17, 24. Father, I desire that they also whom you gave me may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which you have given me, for you loved me before the foundation of the world. And there will be a day when the glorified Lord Jesus will stand before His Father in heaven, and all of the redeemed of all ages will be standing about Him when Jesus will announce, Here am I and the children whom God has given me. Hebrews 2.13 And we look forward to that day. Even so, come Lord Jesus. And so if anyone is saved, he or she is saved by God's grace and by God's grace alone. and the cause of his salvation is not to be found in him, but in God alone. We are not saved as a result of anything that we do, or that we desire to do, or will to do, but because God has willed that we be saved. We are not saved by our work, for we are His workmanship. Ephesians 2, 8-10. If we are saved, it is because God has willed it so from eternity. Our salvation is a result of God's good pleasure and the work of His grace in our hearts. No sinner can come before God. He cannot prepare himself for God. God is always first in the matter of salvation. He is before our convictions, before our desires, before our fears, before our hopes. God is before all things. All that is good, or ever will be good in us, is preceded by the grace of God and is the effect of God's grace working in us. And the result is that God alone is given glory for the great things He has done. Now there are some who refuse to preach these old truths of the Reformation, and I will not be among them. The matters of which we are discussing bring glory to God, and so why should I or anyone be silent about these things? When they are proclaimed faithfully, these biblical doctrines humble the pride of man, exalt the grace and glory of God in salvation, and they promote true holiness in the heart and life of believers. But sadly, some are so afraid of offending people, because they may then not come back to church, that they compromise these very foundational truths of the Godhead and His dealings among men. They say that teachings regarding God's sovereignty are offensive, and therefore should not be proclaimed. They would sooner please men than God, and therefore they are silent on these matters. Well, we are speaking of salvation by God's grace alone. God's grace ordained that salvation take place. God's grace chose an eternity whom God would save by His grace. God's grace brings His chosen people to salvation through the power of the Holy Spirit as He applies the grace of the Gospel to sinners. It is self-righteousness that desires to have a say, to have a part in bringing about our own salvation. We feel that there must be something about us that distinguishes us from others as we being more savable or less sinful or more responsive, more believing, less sinful than those others who are not saved. But this cannot be so. We are all similarly prone to this self-righteousness. and therefore when confronted with the notion that God deals with us by grace alone, and it's made clear what that means, there's commonly a reaction of that teaching, or to that teaching, and oftentimes a rejection of it and its messenger. This is why Jesus' own neighbors would attempt to stone him in Nazareth as he recorded in Luke chapter 4, because he preached to them sola gratia, grace alone. This is why virtually all abandoned him, and even his own twelve were tempted to do so when our Lord taught the crowds, grace alone, in John chapter 6. And this is why the Jews stoned Stephen when he preached to them grace alone in Acts chapter 7. Sinners hate the notion of grace alone. And even after we come to Christ we may find ourselves resisting the notion of grace alone. for we want to think that there's something worthy in us or something that we can do to secure God's favor toward us. People in churches, pastors of churches, resist the notion of grace alone. Charles Spurgeon once preached a sermon, Religionists Hate Sovereign Grace. and he showed how there is an animosity against those who hold forth grace if it be true biblical teaching of grace alone. And so we might rehearse what Spurgeon wrote about this matter as he encouraged the preaching of God's grace in saving sinners, even over the objections of those who would not hear it. Now, these are his comments from his sermon based on the text of Galatians 1.11, where Paul wrote, I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. Here are Spurgeon's words. Lastly, we are sure that the gospel we have preached is not after men, because men do not take to it. It is opposed even to this day. If anything is hated bitterly, it is the out-and-out gospel of the grace of God, especially if that hateful word sovereignty is mentioned with it. Dare to say he will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, and he will have compassion on whom he will have compassion, and furious critics will revile you without stint. The modern religionist not only hates the doctrine of sovereign grace, but he raves and rages at the mention of it. He would sooner hear you blaspheme than preach election by the Father, atonement by the Son, or regeneration by the Spirit. If you want to see a man worked up till the satanic is clearly uppermost, let some of the new divines hear you preach a free grace sermon. A gospel which is after men will be welcomed by men, but it needs a divine operation upon the heart and mind to make a man willing to receive into his utmost soul this distasteful gospel of the grace of God. My brethren, do not try to make it tasteful to carnal minds. Hide not the offense of the cross, lest you make it of none effect. The angles and the corners of the gospel are its strength. To pare them off is to deprive it of power. Toning down is not the increase of strength, but rather the death of it. Why, even among the cults, the sects, you must have noticed that their distinguishing points are the horns of their power, and when these are practically omitted, then the sect is rendered ineffectual. Learn, then, that if you take Christ out of Christianity, Christianity is dead. If you remove grace out of the gospel, the gospel is gone. If the people do not like the doctrine of grace, give them all the more of it. Amen, Spurgeon. I had a good friend in California who had come to the doctrines of grace, or to the doctrines of Calvinism, as it's commonly understood, back in the sixties. And he began to teach these biblical truths to a Sunday school class. It was not long before the Baptist pastor came to him and told him, Doug, you can't preach that here. And Doug, of course, asked, why not? They're biblical. And the pastor responded, because it would be offensive to young Christians. And Doug immediately shot back, the doctrines of grace are not offensive to new Christians, but rather they're offensive to old preachers. And Doug was absolutely right. I came to the doctrines of sovereign grace when I was still a young pastor back in 1980. My wife and I had started a church in Folsom, California. And I became struck with the reality that as the pastor I would be the one who would have to answer people's questions regarding the faith. And so I pulled out our Confession of Faith, the one that had been used by the churches of which I had been a member in the past, of churches in which I had formerly served as an associate pastor. And it was somewhat a lost and forgotten document, one which everybody espoused but nobody read or used. And when I read and studied it, I came to see that our churches had not taught these things. The Confession was a copy of the old New Hampshire Confession of Faith that had been drafted back in 1833. It had originally been drafted to show the biblical teaching of the Reformed faith, that is, Calvinism. to churches whose doctrines had been undergoing erosion and defection from former tenants held and espoused. That document served to point me to many of the same scriptures that I'd been citing in our discussion of this matter of God's decree. A whole new world had been opened to me. I saw the glory of God in His holy and perfect attributes and His glorious works in history that changed my outlook, changed me from trying to be a people-pleaser to a God-glorifier. And I'm not ashamed to speak of these things. They bring glory to God and His Son. Now, we quoted earlier a well-known Reformed spokesman from the past, Charles Spurgeon, who wrote and spoke a great deal about these matters. Spurgeon was an outspoken Calvinist, or again what we prefer to call Reformed. Spurgeon once said of himself and his own experience, listen to this account. It is a great thing to begin the Christian life by believing good solid doctrine. Some people have received twenty different Gospels in as many years. How many more they will accept before they get to their journeys and it would be difficult to predict. I thank God that he early taught me the Gospel. and I've been so perfectly satisfied with it that I do not want to know any other. Constant change of creed is your loss. If a tree has to be taken up two or three times a year, you will not need to build a very large loft in which to store the apples. When people are always shifting their doctrinal principles, they are not likely to bring much fruit to the glory of God. It is good for young believers to begin with a firm hold upon these great foundational doctrines which the Lord has taught in His Word. Why, if I believe what some preach about the temporary, trumpery salvation which only lasts for a time, I would scarcely be at all grateful for it. When I know that those whom God saves, He saves with an everlasting salvation, when I know that He gives to them an everlasting righteousness, when I know that He settles them on an everlasting foundation of everlasting love, and that He will bring them to His everlasting kingdom, Oh, then I do wonder, and I'm astonished that such a blessing as this should ever have been given to me. Praise my soul, adore and wonder. Ask, oh, why such love to me? Grace hath put me in the number of the Saviour's family. Hallelujah! Thanks, Eternal, thanks to Thee. Spurgeon went on to write, I suppose there are some persons whose minds naturally incline toward the doctrine of free will. I can only say that mine inclines us naturally toward the doctrines of sovereign grace. Sometimes when I see some of the worst characters in the street, I feel as if my heart must burst forth in tears of gratitude that God has never let me act as they have done. I have thought, why if God had left me alone and had not touched me by his grace, what a great sinner I should have been. I should have run to the utmost lengths of sin, dived into the very depths of evil, nor should I have stopped at any vice or folly if God had not restrained me. I feel that I should have been a very king of sinners if God had let me alone. I cannot understand the reason why I am saved except upon the ground that God would have it so. I cannot, if I look ever so earnestly, discover any kind of reason in myself why I should be a partaker of divine grace. If I am not at this moment without Christ, it is only because Christ Jesus would have His will with me. And that will was that I should be with Him where He is and should share in His glory. I can put the crown nowhere but on the head of Him, whose mighty graces saved me from the going down into the pit. Looking back on my past life, I can see that the dawning of it all was of God, of God effectively. I took no torch with which to light the sun, but the sun enlightened me. I did not commence my spiritual life, no, I rather kicked and struggled against the things of the Spirit. And when God drew me, for a time I did not run after Him. There was a natural hatred in my soul of everything holy and good. Wooings were lost upon me, warnings were cast to the wind, thunders were despised, and as for the whispers of His love, they were rejected as being less than nothing and vanity. But sure I am, I can say now, speaking on behalf of myself, He only is my salvation. It was He who turned my heart and brought me down on my knees before Him. I can in every deed say with Doddridge and Toplady, they were two songwriters, grace taught my soul to pray and made my eyes o'erflow. And coming to this moment I can add, his grace has kept me to this day and will not let me go. Well, can I remember the manner in which I learned the doctrines of grace in a single instant? Born, as all of us are by nature, an Arminian, I still believe the old things I had heard continually from the pulpit and did not see the grace of God. When I was coming to Christ, I thought I was doing it all myself, and though I sought the Lord earnestly, I had no idea the Lord was seeking me. I do not think the young convert is at first aware of this. I can recall the very day and hour when first I received those truths in my own soul, when they were, as John Bunyan says, burnt into my heart as with a hot iron, and I can recollect how I felt that I had grown on a sudden from a baby into a man, that I had made progress in scriptural knowledge through having found once for all the clue to the truth of God, One weeknight when I was sitting in the house of God, I was not thinking much about the preacher's sermon, for I did not believe it. The thought struck me. How did you come to be a Christian? I sought the Lord. But how did you come to seek the Lord? And the truth flashed across my mind in a moment. I should not have sought him unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make me seek him. I prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, how came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the scriptures. How came I to read the scriptures? I did read them, but what led me to do so? And then in a moment I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that He was the author of my faith, and so the whole doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from that doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I desire to make this my constant confession, I ascribe my change wholly to God." It must be so. Spurgeon also once said in a sermon in his defense of Calvinism, the late lamented Dr. Denham has put it at the foot of his portrait, a most admirable text, salvation is of the Lord. And this is just the epitome of Calvinism. It is the sum and substance of it. If anyone should ask me what I mean by a Calvinist, I should reply, he is one who says salvation is of the Lord. I cannot find in Scripture any other doctrine than this. It is the essence of the Bible. He only is my rock and salvation. Tell me anything contrary to this truth, and it will be a heresy. Tell me a heresy, and I shall find its essence here, that it is departed from this great fundamental, this rock truth. God is my rock and my salvation. What is the heresy of Roman Catholicism but the addition of something to perfect the merits of Jesus Christ, the bringing in of the works of the flesh to assist in our justification? And what is the heresy of Arminianism but the addition of something to the work of the Redeemer? Every heresy, if brought to the touchstone, will discover itself here. I have my own private opinion that there's no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. Well, amen, Spurgeon. We'll have to pick up here next time. Until then, may God richly bless you. We trust that God has blessed you from listening to Dr. Lars Larson. Today's program as well as previously recorded messages are available through our website. We invite you to visit the wordoftruth.net. The First Baptist Church of Lemonster and Concerned Friends have sponsored this broadcast of the Word of Truth. If we may assist you by directing you to a sound, reformed church near you, please contact us. If Pastor Larson can assist you further or answer a question that you may have about today's subject, he would be pleased to speak with you. You may reach him at 978-660-8869. Until our next time together, may our God bless you richly through our Lord Jesus Christ. Today's The Word of Truth program was sponsored in part by Paul Rents. Visit paulrents.com for party and equipment rentals.