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God Completely Saves Part 2 By John Paterson

verse 37, all that the Father gives me, before the world began, all the Father
gives me will come to me in this world, and whoever comes to me I'll never drive
away. God the Father has a specific group of people, the given ones, to give them to
the Son before time, and then in time he draws them to the Son. As we saw this
morning in verse 44, no one can come to me, no one has the ability to come, unless
the Father who sent me draws them. So he sent me sovereignly, he draws them
sovereignly, he brings them to me. When they come to me, he says I won't toss them away, I won't toss them away
when they come, I won't toss them away ever. I'll raise them at the last day, chosen by God
before time, given by the Fatherly four times to the Son, in time and then by the
Son, kept till the last day. Now brethren I don't know whether that raised any
questions for you this morning. There are some people who hear these things and
they have genuine questions. I think if we're listening we ought to have
questions, to be quite honest. I think if that doesn't make us say well what about
such-and-such? I don't think we're listening very well. That's different
from saying I don't like what I hear, but it ought to raise some questions for us.
I think that does that inevitably. And there are lots of questions people raise
when they hear these truths of God's complete salvation. And I've just chosen
three of them, I think about seven are listed, that people commonly ask, but
perhaps the most most commonly asked three. Let me try and answer them tonight
with you if I may from the scripture. We've said you can only come to Christ
because the Father has chosen you. And you can only come to Christ because
the Father brings you to the Son. And if he brings you, you will come. You can't
resist to the point of preventing him. Well then, says this person who hears
this, what about our free will? Don't we have a choice? Isn't it our choice to
come to Christ? You make it sound like it's only God's choice. What about
Christ's invitations? Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden. I'll give you
a rest, and that sounds like I've got a choice. What about where Christ says if
you're thirsty, come to me and drink, and you'll never be thirsty again, but out of
you will flow a spring of living water, and so on. Doesn't that
sound like an invitation? Doesn't it make it sound like I've got a choice? How can
you go on and make it sound as though it's only if the Father brings?
Well let me say a couple of things brethren. When Christ says come to me all
who labor and a heavy laden, he's simply telling you what you've got to do. He's
not telling you what you've got the freedom to do. If you don't come, you won't be
relieved of your burden. He's telling you what's got to happen. He's not telling
you you've got the ability to do it. And he's telling you what he'll do. He'll
give you rest, but again he doesn't say oh I really tell you it's up to you and
you alone to come. Doesn't say that. If you come, I'll relieve you of your burden.
Come to me and you'll find rest. These invitations are telling us what he'll do,
not what we have the freedom to do. I mean how could they? How could Jesus be
saying on one occasion it's all over to you. When he says so many places, things
like unless you're born of the Spirit of God, John 3-3, you can't even see the
kingdom of God. You don't even see it for what it is. I don't think he means there you'll go to
heaven, though he says that later to Nicodemus in that same passage, but you
won't even see the truth unless God gives you eyes to see it. So how can I be
saying it's all over to you to make yourself see? What about when Jesus says
no one can come to me? No one has the ability to come to me unless the Father
who sent me draws him. Why then can't say the next day well you really do have the
ability, you really do have the freedom, the choice is all yours. Jesus doesn't
contradict himself so foolishly. What about in chapter 8 of John's Gospel and
verse 43 when Jesus is speaking to these Jews who thought they had great freedom
and he says why is my language not clear to you? Why can't you understand what I'm
saying? Verse 43, because you're unable to hear. You don't have it in you. You're
spiritually dead. It's not possible for you to understand, to hear what I'm
saying. Or verse 47 of the same chapter, the reason you don't hear is you don't
belong to God. God hasn't already done something before time and in time to
give you grace to hear. You can't hear you see because you're not of God. Some
people I think today get the idea that it's like that I mean most of us I
suppose drive automatic cars nowadays but some of us still drive manual cars
and you know when you drive a manual car and you put the clutch down and you can
move the gear stick in the neutral and then you can choose to move it a second
or back to or third or into reverse whatever it might be. And some
people think well it's like that. We're really neutral and it's up to us as to
whether we move into top gear or into reverse and as though we're just sort of
rocking through this world as neutral people able to choose whichever way we
like to go. Well God never says we're neutral. It's like the picture I
think that Luther drew. Some people think that we come into this this world
like a wild horse able to run this way or able to run that way. This is not like
that at all. We come into this world with a rider on our back. He's the rider as
the devil. And it's not till Christ knocks the devil off and he gets on as it were
that we'll be able to go anyway that's right. Of course the devil's always
guiding us this way and this way pulling the bit and bridle this way and so on.
We're not neutral just a free agent. Never have been. I mean we're not free in so
many ways. I mean I don't think if you think about it we don't do anything that
is a completely we don't make any choice it's a completely free choice we don't
have free will. Let me give you a one example. Imagine you offer me two plates
of food and one plate of food are green juicy succulent brussel sprouts cooked
to perfection. A whole plate of them. Then on the other plate is a
beautiful pavlova with two inches of cream on the top and six saucy fruits.
Now you say take a pick. Now I smell one I smell the other and already my taste
buds are starting to tell me which choice I'm going to make. It's not a free choice.
It's like use another example if you if you were to get up our way thousands
thousands of crows and scavenging birds bring them down to the highway put this
put in front of a beautiful succulent roast dinner and put also there a
maggoty carcass of a rabbit. What will it choose? The crow will choose the
maggots every time instead of a beautiful baked dinner. Why? Because that's
its nature. We choose according to our nature. The brussel sprouts the pavlova
I know which choice I'll make because my nature but the taste buds and the
smells and everything else know that well you you can choose you can work out
which one you think you would choose but I'll go for one in preference to the
other every time. It's my nature. When we make choices we make choices according
to our nature. They're not free at all. As I said this morning I'm not free in my
nature to run a two-minute mile. My nature the way I'm made won't let me do
it. It's not a choice I can make. I might choose to run an eight-minute mile or a
15-minute mile more like it but I can't choose to run a two-minute mile it's not
in my nature. So the choices we make are according to our nature like the crow
that chooses the the maggots rather than the baked dinner. Now it's a real choice.
When I choose the pavlova over the brussel sprouts and that's a choice I'd
make I don't know about you but that's when I make that choice it's a real
choice. I say yes please give me the spoon give me the plate. It's a choice
it's a real choice. I say please hand it over. It's not a free choice because it's
a choice according to all sorts of other things that are already part of me. Now
when people come to us and say here is Jesus Christ look at the marvelous
things he provides. Look at the wonderful person he is. Choose him. You make a
choice. It's a real choice. Will I choose Christ or will I choose to go the way I've
always gone. It's a real choice but it's a choice according to your nature. Not
free choice because by nature you're already opposed to Christ. You already
hate the truth. That's the way you're born. You already come into this world
saying no I will not do what my parents want me to do. No I will not believe the
truth. That's what we are by nature. You say surely make a choice. We make a real
choice but it's never a free choice. We're never free from other circumstances.
We're never free from our nature. Some people say well then that means when
you do become a Christian it must be as though they present a kind of a
caricature. They've got grabs around the neck. He says come on into the
kingdom, into the kingdom and you'll say I don't want to go, I don't want to go but he grabs you and he pulls you in and
that's kind of a caricature that people make of people who believe, of Christians
who believe these wonderful truths of the scripture. That we're either brought
as it were against our will kicking and screaming or somehow we're brought into
the kingdom without our even knowing about it. The Bible never speaks like
that. You look at the very things that Christ says here in John
chapter 6. He talks about people who come, verse 35. People who believe, verse 35.
Verse 40. People who look to the Son. They're doing something. It's real. When
you become a Christian it's a real choice you see. It's a real action. It's not
against your will but something has happened to change your will so that
whereas before you didn't want to come you couldn't believe, now you do. God has
changed your nature and that's required before you can become a Christian. I
still have tracts at home written by Billy Graham. How to be born again. You
know how to be born again? Well first of all you do this and then you do this and
then God will make you born again. No, I'm just in the Bible anyway. It's only
because I'm born again that I can then do the things that Billy Graham says I
need to do. Unless you're born again, John 3 through, you can't see the kingdom of
God. You need a change of nature before you can even see the truth, let alone
believe and obey the truth. And the wonderful thing about God's grace is he
changes us to enable us to do what he's commanded us to do. He has believed and he
gives us grace to believe to obey the very command that is given. You
remember when Paul preached at Philippi in Acts chapter 16, he preaches to a mixed
group, some ladies, some men and one particular occasion to a group and
there's a lady there named Lydia and Lydia hears what Paul preaches. She hears
the gospel and one of the most wonderful verses to my mind in the whole
of the scripture is that it says, the Lord opened Lydia's heart to believe what
Paul said. It doesn't say, now Lydia stirred herself up to believe. Lydia got some
magic spark going inside her. The Lord opened her heart to believe what Paul
said. Of course she became a Christian and that's what God does by his gospel
and by his spirit. We had it here tonight and this morning in this passage in John
6 in verse 45, it's written in the prophets, they'll all be taught by God.
Who's the all? Who'll all be taught by God? This prophet, this Old Testament saying.
Well it's all those whom the Father has given the Son, he's already told us that
in this same passage. Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from
him, who is taught by him, comes to me. Everyone whose heart has changed and his
mind is reorientated, they come. So wonderfully worked on by the Spirit of
God. You see that's one of the wonderful things that we come in a Christian, it's
not as though I'm dragged by the neck. If I used another perhaps
example, when you see Lydia believed, you see her embracing Christ, what marks do
you see on her? Do you see the bruises of a rapist who's forced to have loved
Christ against her will? Or do you see the marks of kisses of love that have
sweetly won her to the truth? That's what God does. He doesn't leave the marks of a
rapist on us, he so wins us, winsomely and graciously, that we want to love
Christ. Not against our will at all. And as I said this morning, it's like
Arthur Pink says, some people figure it's kind of a 50-50 deal. God does a bit and
we do a bit and together hopefully it'll be enough to get us to heaven to know
Christ. He says no no no, he said it's 100 100 not 50 50. God wills it 100% and in
such a way that we then will it 100% is what we want, we want what he wants. He
means to get us to love Christ and say, oh we want to love Christ. So wonderfully
worked on, so wonderfully kissed, love changed, but we come so gladly. There's a
hymn that Isaac Watts wrote and I'll just read one verse of it and perhaps
it sums it all up, then I'll leave this first objection, what about our
free will? I've been saying we don't have a free will, we have a real will and God
wonderfully changes it. Listen to Isaac Watts, he says, why was I made to hear his
voice? And enter while there's room, when thousands make a wretched choice and
rather starve than come. T'was the same love that spread the feast that sweetly
forced us in, else otherwise we had refused to taste and perished in our sin,
T'was the same love that spread the feast of Christ's sacrifice, that sweetly
forced us in. I've met a Christian yet, who resents being forced sweetly to Christ.
You know he prays every day that he took a hard will and made it soft, and deaf ears and made
them open, and blind eyes and made them see, and that you were sweetly forced into the
feast of Christ, isn't it marvellous? You don't want free will, because if your free will
brought you to Christ, your free will will take you away from Christ. You don't want that, you want to know God
brought you to Christ and changed your will, so that your will is to do his will, isn't it marvellous?
What about a second question, we said this morning using the words of Christ
that all whom the Father has given me will come, okay? If all those whom the
Father has chosen will come, then let them come. Boy that's going to be a cheap
option for us, let's get back all our missionaries from Papua New Guinea and
everywhere else, let's stop giving sacrificially to keep them there, let's
stop trying to talk to our next-door neighbour or our wayward kids or whatever
it might be, but let's just take it easy folks, because if they will come, phew we
won't have to do anything, we can sit back and take it easy. We'll look at John
chapter 6, and let me say I've perhaps put that a bit cheekily, but there are
people who say that, I might say. That's the certain, not what the Lord Jesus says.
You see, God has guaranteed the result, the elect will come, but he's also
guaranteed the way they'll come. So Jesus here, in this very passage, he says I am
the bread of life, he who comes to me, hear me all? He who comes, do you want to come?
That's the means God uses. Christ offers the satisfaction of thirst and of hunger
to all who come. He talks words, he invites people, because that's the means
God has planned, to get the end God has planned. The end? All the elect to Christ.
The means? Through the preaching of the gospel and the offer of Christ. There's
no other way. There's no other way. They'll come alright, they'll believe
alright, they'll look to the Son alright, but only if they see the Son and hear the
Son. That's God's plan. The means as well as the end. And if I was to, let me
say there are dozens and probably hundreds of scriptures that speak in the
same way, but if I was to use perhaps just one to illustrate the point, it's in
2nd Thessalonians chapter 2. 2nd Thessalonians 2 verse 13. Let me read it
to you, verse 13 and 14 I better read. 2nd Thessalonians 2, 13 and 14. Paul says
Look, we are always to thank God for you. Look even that's interesting. Why thank
God if you did it? Have you ever thought about that? Why thank God that someone became a
Christian if they did it? We thank God because he makes people
Christians. That's why we pray. Why we pray for missionaries. Because we know people
can't do it of themselves. God must do it. Well he says we thank God for you, we
want to thank God for you brothers, loved by the Lord. How do we know you're loved
by the Lord? Well because from the beginning God chose you to be saved
through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth.
The goal was he chose you to be saved. How? By what means?
Through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, through belief in the truth. What
kind of elaboration? Verse 14 he called you to this through our gospel. That you
might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. The end is clear. He loved
you. He chose you from before the beginning. From the beginning, before the
beginning in this world. In the beginning. Back there when God was and God only was.
He chose you there. Well that's back to the fourth time but in time through the
work of the Spirit, through belief of the truth, through the gospel. That's the
means. It's no accident brethren the modern missionary movement, by modern
missionary movement we're talking about 1800s there of early 1800s there abouts
with people like William Carey and David Brainerd, Henry Martin, great great men.
It's no accident that those men were men who believed the sort of truth we've got
here in John chapter 6. You hardly find a missionary group anywhere today who
believe these truths. They think it all depends on people. That's not what God says.
Of course it depends on him. David Brainerd and William Carey and
Henry Martin and people like that, they believe these things. And they weren't
going out to get people who wouldn't be saved if they didn't go. They're going to
go out to get people saved and brought to Christ. And the fad's already chosen.
It was these very truths that drove them. It was these very truths that kept them
working at the gospel. They didn't say, well since God has chosen who's going to
believe, let's sit down and take it easy fellas. I mean we're with Henry Martin,
I've got this brilliant maths career ahead of me at Cambridge University. A
brilliant man. He was by 21 lecturing at Cambridge. Sent to be the greatest maths
mind that had come through in the last hundred years. In love with a beautiful
girl. Prospects of marriage, everything before him. But at 25 or thereabouts
left for India. Why? Because she says God's got elect. God's got his chosen. Let's go and get
them. Our work can't fail. Oh says people, but you're leaving this beautiful girl
Lydia? Well he said maybe she'll join me, maybe she won't. You're leaving this
wonderful maths career at Cambridge? Well he says it'll pass. Let's get the elect.
Let's go and get them. This work can't fail. Maths will fail one day and all the
all the attachments we've built upon it, the human estimation we've placed upon it,
that'll all go. But the elect will be saved. And Henry Martin went and of course by
the age of 31 was dead from the work that he gave himself to. That's a brilliant
career. Wasted? No, I'm not wasting my life. God's got the elect. They will be saved
and they will be saved through the preaching of the gospel. So let's preach.
Let's go. See they didn't believe, these men didn't believe half of God's plan.
They believed all of it. The end and the knees. I don't know whether you're used
to using the term Calvinist. Calvinists believe that God completely saves. In fact
the very verse that Don quoted in his prayer, when we started
tonight from Jonas, salvation is all of the Lord. Well when Calvin was
writing on that verse he said that's the sum and substance of Calvinistic
doctrine. Salvation is all of the Lord. That's what Calvinists believe that God
saved from beginning to end. Now I don't know whether you use the term,
whether you use the term Calvinists is a bit irrelevant, you can just say I'm a
biblical Christian, that's better. But that's what we're talking about. But often
the people who are Calvinists are said not to believe in evangelism. Well I tell
you brethren, Calvinists are the only people who've got any reason for
believing in evangelism. Of course we're not wasting our time. There will be results. The elect
will be brought in from every nation, every tribe, every language group. But
when we get to heaven, all the seats will be there around the
table of heaven with Christ at the head. And every seat will have a name of those
chosen by the Father before the beginning of the world. And I tell you this,
not one seat's going to be empty. Every one of them will be there. We're not wasting our time
when we pray for evangelism, pray for missionaries, go in the contact, go door to
the door, talk to your neighbor, talk to your children. You're not wasting your time.
The work of telling the gospel will work. See the people who don't believe these
things evangelize in the hope that maybe someone somewhere might believe. We've
got no mics about it, we know that people everywhere will believe who've been
chosen by the Father. We've got a guarantee that the other brethren do not
have. And we pray and we talk and we give, not in the hope that it might work, but
in the absolute certainty that it will. And that not one of God's purposes will fail.
See brethren, believing these things doesn't make us
careless or casual. The elect will be safe, but it makes us
confident. Big difference. Not careless, but confident. Not casual, but deliberate.
For all those in the Father's given to the Son will come. Well what about perhaps
a third question? Is it fair? I think that's perhaps the most telling of all.
It's the one that strikes our hearts most keenly. Is it fair that some should be
given to the Son, and they'll come, and presumably some not given to the
Son, and they'll be left with the words, they cannot come? They don't have the
ability because God didn't give it to them. Is this really fair? Why should some
people get what the others don't? And what is more, how can God condemn people
to hell who haven't come when they couldn't come anyway? It hardly seems
fair. It hardly seems right in the first place. Well take these people in John
chapter 6. As we said this morning, we know there are 5,000 men being fed with a
few loaves and fish. Probably men, if you had women and children, maybe 8,000, 10,000,
12,000, 20,000, who knows? It's a big crowd. Big crowd of people. Now let's ask
them, who of you here listening to Christ, John chapter 6, out in this
big stretch of countryside, who of you deserves to be fed by the Son of God? Put
your hand up. And who could have really put his head up? I deserve to have the Son of God
serve me, when in my heart I hate him. Who deserves to be fed by the Son of God
Who deserves to hear these wonderful things he's telling them, when in their
minds they are opposed to the truth? And they hate him, and they hate the truth.
Who deserves to hear what he says? Who deserves to be fed with that which he
hands out? Brethren, none of them deserves. Let me ask you, who of here today has
been so good, and so kind, and so law-abiding, he or she deserves God to be
good to you? Put your hand up. Who deserves God to just forget all the crummy things
you've done, all the wicked things you've done, all the lousy attitudes you've had.
Just say, oh forget about those. I can see that odd good thing you did back there in
1994. Yes, oh, who deserves? Who deserves anything? Alright then, what if we don't
deserve from God things that he gives so graciously? Can we say then, will God give
us what's fair? Give me what is fair. Some of these people in the crowd are given
life. The disciples, at least we know at this stage, maybe some of the others
later, they're given life. Why are they given life? Because they deserved it. No,
because it was fair. No, if God gave them what's fair, he'd send them to hell. Isn't
that right? Isn't that what they deserve? You know what you deserve when you've
raised your fist against God? You say, I don't want to hear God. You can get lost.
That's what it's like before you're a Christian, and even now you're a Christian
sometimes it's like that. If God gives you what you deserve, you'll go to hell. If
God gives you what's fair, he'll give you what he gives your unbelieving
neighbors in your street, or the guys at work, who are so rampantly immoral,
or careless, or whatever it might be. If you get what's fair, you'll get what they
give. But you're really no different from them, are you? Not from your heart. What God
gives these people, when he gives them life, he gives them the opposite of what
they deserve. They deserve hell, he gives them heaven. If they deserve death, he gives
them life. The fair thing to be, would be to send them all away, to perish forever.
But God doesn't give them what's fair. Still ready tonight, we've sung two hymns
about God's grace, God's amazing grace, that saved a good person like me,
like John Newton wrote, amazing grace that saved a wretch like me. Not a word we use much
nowadays, it's not a bad word, a wretched man. A man who there's nothing good, amazing
grace. We're in Ephesians 2, and let me refer you to that. In Ephesians 2,
we're told in verse 1 that we're dead, and we follow the devil. We're all like it,
says Paul, verse 3, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature, and
following its desires and thought, like the rest, we were by nature objects of
wrath. We couldn't say, Lord give us what's fair, because we're just the same as
everybody else. And that brethren is why you can't look down your nose at
unbelievers. Oh we're so good, aren't we, we're Christians. And the rest, they're so crummy
and so wicked and so evil. Oh we've made it. What is Paul, you just like the rest.
Think about that before you look down your nose at that fellow at work,
who cheats on his wife in a way that you never have. You're just the same, and given
the opportunity, you do the same thing. All of us are capable of the same sins,
and even as believers we are. I hope you don't think that you're immune from sin
because you're a Christian. There isn't a man in this room that given the right
circumstances couldn't later this year cheat on his wife. Think you're immune
from that? Because by nature, you're the same as everybody else. Now by God's
grace, he'll preserve you from that, and you'll pray for that, and you'll work to
be kept from that. But you can't say it's impossible. By nature we're the same. By
nature, objects of wrath. Verse 4 of Ephesians 2, but, we saw the word this
morning, let's, another one of those great words that you usually say. But, because of his
great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ, even while we were
dead. Even while we were sinners, ungodly, powerless. Even while we were dead, God made us alive. Why?
Because of his great love, God, who is rich in mercy. Brethren, when you get to
heaven, you're only going to have one song to sing, and that's what we're talking about.
That's what we're talking about. Heaven's better than fair.
Better than jealousy. Before we say anything, you should do it some other way. I mean to say,
who do you think you are? Say to God, God, you've got it wrong. You should have done it
something different. You should have saved them, not them. I mean, who do you think you are, to speak like
that? You know what, what Paul says? I'll just read it, don't look it up please, but let me just read it from
Romans 9 20. Who are you, a man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed, say to
him who formed it, why did you make me like this? Does not the potter have the
right to make out of the same lump of clay, some pottery for noble purposes, and
some for common use? Brethren, the question at the end is not how you assess God, whether
you're taught it with fear or not. God's God, and what he does is good. The question at the end
is not how do you assess God, but did you look to the Son? Did you come to the Son? Did you
believe in the Son? Let's get rid of all this other talk, as it were. Let's debate that.
No, it's not the debate. The debate is, the big question is, have you come? Have you
believed? Have you looked? And if you haven't, it's because of grace. And if you haven't, it's because
God has not yet been gracious to you, and it might be that tonight's the night is
gracious, and that he gives you grace tonight you've never had before. Why not?
Why not tonight? Next week, who knows? But why wouldn't you come to such a Savior as Jesus,
who loses no one that the Father has given him? Oh, don't think, don't think, my
friend, you put yourself in the hand of Christ, so to speak, and then you might find next
week he drops you because you're too hot to handle. But your sin will take you away. But he
hasn't got the ability to carry through what he says he'll do. It's not like that. Christ says,
all whom the Father gives me will come. I'll not cast them away, but I'll keep them and raise them
up at the last day. What a great, great Savior. Who wouldn't have cast himself, his family,
and his friends, to a Savior like him. Step back.
Oh, Lord, we thank you that the kingdom of the Lord Jesus will succeed, and the gates of
hell cannot prevent God the Father doing that which he has planned, of bringing people from
every nation and every tribe and every language group to his Son, just as he has planned. Father,
we praise and thank you that those whom the Father has given will come, and that if we have come to
Christ, it is not simply by virtue of our own decisions that our decisions were real,
but it was because of the grace of God. Help us to live, we pray, our Father, as those who live on
the grace of God, and not on the ability of man. Father, give us grace, we pray, to trust Christ
the King, and Christ this most wonderful Savior. And in his name we pray. Amen.