In "SUNDAY SERMON," the speaker argues Christ died only for the elect, rejecting universal atonement as heresy that forces God to punish sins already paid. He contrasts Reformed assurance with Arminianism's incomplete bridge, asserting hell punishes unpaid sins like murder and adultery. Addressing prayer, he dismisses the idea of informing an omniscient God, instead claiming it fuels divine strength or expresses love for a sovereign plan. Ultimately, the sermon concludes that true mercy requires humble submission to God's word, distinguishing His children from those belonging to the devil. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
Time
Text
God Is Just And Fair00:10:01
One final time, our text is 1 John 2, verses 1 through 2.
The Bible says this My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.
But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous.
He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
This is the word of the Lord.
All right, please be seated.
If I was to title this sermon, which I kind of did, I called it limited or that is particular or definite atonement.
If I was titling it the way that Eddie Robles or Andrew Isker would have titled it, I would have called it Jesus did not die for everyone.
That would be the title of the sermon.
And that would be perfectly biblically true and Christ honoring, and it's a fine title.
Jesus did not die for everyone.
And the reason Jesus didn't die for everyone is because God is just.
And it's not to say that some people are not worth dying for, because the true and biblical thing to say is that all people are not worth dying for.
No one is worth the blood of Jesus.
No one is worth his death.
God is gracious.
God is merciful.
And so when I speak to the fact that God is just and how that plays into the doctrine of limited or particular atonement, particular redemption, I'm not saying that.
Some people were worth dying for and others were not.
And so it would not be just of God to send his son to die for all, but rather he sent him to die for a subset of humanity, some of humanity, the good part of humanity.
That's not what I'm espousing.
That's not what the Bible teaches.
That would fly in the face of scripture and logic to say that Jesus came to die for the good people.
Well, the good people wouldn't need him to die.
There are no good people.
Jesus came to die for sinners.
But not all sinners, because God is just.
So, what do I mean by invoking the justice of God?
What I mean is this it is unjust of God, who is thrice holy, to exact double penalties for the same infraction.
It is unjust, say it again, it is unjust, unrighteous, unfair, for God is the judge of the living and the dead, the righteous judge, the judge who shows no partiality, the judge who is fair.
Always fair, never lenient, but also never harsh.
It is unjust for that perfect judge to punish the same crime twice.
Hell is the wage for sin.
The Bible is clear in the book of Romans that the wages of sin is death, that is, the eternal death.
All will die once.
Hebrews says it is appointed to man that he should die once, and then comes the judgment.
All will die physically at the end of this life.
All will die once, but some will die forever.
That they will go to the second death.
That they will go to hell.
And what makes hell so terrible, what makes it an eternal, never ending death, where the worm does not die and the flame is not quenched, what makes hell an eternal death, a terrible, miserable, eternal death, is not that God is absent.
It is not as though hell is so terrible because God is not there.
Hell is so terrible because God is there.
God is present.
King David, underneath the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in writing the Psalms, he says this Where can I go from your presence?
That if I was thrown into the depths of the sea, you would be there.
And we saw that with Jonah, that God is with him, even in the belly of the fish.
And David goes further and says that if I was even not just in the depths of the sea, but thrown into the belly of Sheol, that is death, the grave, you would be there.
God is omnipresent.
Now we know this from scripture, but this is also simply logic.
God is infinite.
His infinite nature is expressed in multiple different facets.
He is omnipotent.
That means he has infinite knowledge.
There is nothing that God does not know.
He is omnipotent.
That means he is all powerful, infinite power.
There is nothing that God cannot do.
He is omnibenevolent.
That is infinite love, all loving.
There is no lack of love in God's part.
But he is also omnipresent.
There is no place where God is not present, including the depths of hell.
What makes hell so terrible is not that God is good and yet God is not there.
What makes hell so terrible is that God is just and he is there.
God is present in hell in his justice, his righteous, white hot wrath pouring out.
His just vengeance on his enemies forever and ever.
Amen.
Ephesians chapter 1 says that God does all with the elect, with those that he has chosen according to his foreknowledge before the foundations of the world were even laid, those that he chose by grace to save, that God does all things for those who are called according to his purposes, those who love him.
Those who he has saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, he is doing all things for them to the praise of his glorious grace.
So, as it pertains to the elect, those who are to inherit salvation, those who will spend eternity in heaven with Christ, for those, God is doing all things for their good, but also for his glory, more particularly to the praise of his glorious grace.
Likewise, by necessary inference, certainly by way of implication.
The other side of the coin, we could say this God does all things, namely pouring out his just judgment as it pertains to the non elect, his enemies, to the praise of his glorious justice.
God does all things for his elect to the praise of his glorious grace, and he does all things, including just judgment for the non elect, to the praise of his glorious justice.
So that no one can indict God.
No one can fault him.
No one can say to the Almighty that he was unfair or that he was unjust or that he was fickle or that he was harsh or that he was mean.
That he does all things well.
That he disperses his grace well and he pours out his justice well.
It would be just of God to punish all.
The fact that God saves anyone is not a matter of justice, but rather mercy.
And because God is just, and because the wages of sin is death, the eternal death, hell, God will not and did not subject his son to pay for sins that would already be paid for by those individuals in hell themselves.
The wages of sin is death, that is the eternal death, which is hell.
Some people will pay for their sins themselves.
By spending eternity in hell under God's just judgment.
Others have had their sins paid for by Christ at Calvary.
But to think, even for a moment, that Jesus died for the world and to interpret, he did, but to interpret that word world to mean each and every individual person who has ever and will ever live, to interpret the word world in a universal fashion.
Is to say that Jesus paid for everyone's sin, but for some his payment was insufficient.
For some, even though the Son of God, God incarnate, bled out and died to satisfy the wrath of God, God the Father looked down on the Son's work on the cross and said, Son, it is not finished.
Son, it wasn't good enough.
Son, this payment comes up too short.
But that is not what occurred.
And that is not the voice of the Father.
The Son says, It is finished in His death on the cross.
And by virtue of His resurrection three days later, the Father, in essence, by raising His Son from the dead, says, It is finished, Son, indeed.
That is to say, that every ounce of our debt against God by our rebellion and sin has been atoned for, paid for, covered in Christ.
Full and full.
Now, if Jesus died, it's very simple, but work with me for a moment because it's simple, but it's hard.
Chopping wood is not rocket surgery, but that doesn't mean it's easy.
It's simple, but it's still hard.
You're going to sweat.
You're going to probably get a couple blisters.
If you've been on a strict soy diet, you might even cry.
So, chopping wood, you know, it's simple, it's not complicated, but it is hard, not easy.
Okay, so what I'm about to express is simple, but it's not easy.
And the reason why it's not easy, it's simple logic, but it's not easy because people aren't logical.
We were, we used to be.
God has created people, both male and female, in his image.
We have a moral conscience.
We instinctively know that certain things like theft and murder are wrong.
And we have an ability to reason.
We have rationale, not just a conscience, not just a moral center, but also a rational center.
But because of the fall, Genesis chapter 3, human nature has been subjected to the curse of sin.
Now, the image of God has not been utterly lost, but a vestige of the image of God still remains, but it has been tarnished.
It has been damaged.
Our moral center has been damaged.
Our consciences have been doled and our ability to reason has been flawed.
And this has happened in a general sense because of the curse of sin, because of the fall, because of Adam and Eve, Genesis 3.
But I believe that people, as a populace, in various places and various times, may have their consciences and also their rationale extra doled, even more flawed.
Because of that culture as a whole, their further rebellion against God.
For us as Westerners, particularly as citizens of the United States of America, in this particular time, the year of our Lord 2023, logic is something that comes very, very difficultly.
Very, very difficult.
Logic is always a little bit more challenging since the fall of man, but it is especially challenging today.
Why Some Go To Hell00:09:49
We don't even understand the logic of gender.
We don't even understand the logic of a baby in the womb.
Some in our culture don't even understand the logic of two plus two equaling four.
And likewise, even evangelical Christians who actually may be regenerate and born again struggle with the logic of God's justice as it pertains to particular redemption.
So, here we go.
If Jesus died for everyone, each and every individual, world meaning universal, and he died for everyone and everyone's sin, each person and every sin of each person, then why do people go to hell?
The immediate counter, of course, is well, Jesus may have died for each person and for each of their sins, providing payment for their sin, but that's a gift.
The gift of Christ's blood, the gift of his atonement, the gift of his forgiveness and his payment.
It's a gift that's given, and people still have to choose to receive that gift.
And if people choose not to receive that gift, but rather to scorn it and to toss it aside, well, then even though Jesus paid for all their sins, all of their sins, they didn't receive that payment, and therefore they go to hell.
That's the common counter.
Here's my counter to the counter.
You're saying that Jesus paid for each person's sin, all the sins of all people.
But they have to receive that payment.
And some people reject his payment.
Is that a sin?
Is a person's rejection of Christ's sacrifice and atonement a sin?
Because you just admitted that Jesus paid for everyone's sin, and not just some, but all the sins of each person.
Is rejection of Jesus a sin?
If so, and it is, did he pay for that one?
And if not, this is what you have to do logically to reject limited atonement as a biblical doctrine, and it is.
What you have to do logically is this you have to say, okay, well then, I see where you're going.
Jesus paid for everyone's sin and every sin of every individual person except the sin of rejecting him.
So then, logically, you would have to say that those people who go to hell, because we're not universalists, we don't believe everyone goes to heaven, the Bible clearly teaches against that.
So you have to say that those who are in hell, Jesus paid for all their sin.
They're not in hell for adultery.
They're not in hell for murder.
They're not in hell for blasphemy.
They're not in hell for lying and bearing false witness.
They're not in hell for coveting.
They're not in hell for idolatry.
No, Jesus paid for all their sin.
That's your argument.
So you have to say the only sin that Jesus didn't pay for is a rejection of Jesus' payment.
So then you would have to say that anyone who goes to hell is only in hell being punished for that one sin, the rejection of Christ's payment.
And once you've arrived at This step of the argument, then it's easy to dispel because the Bible clearly teaches that people will be eternally punished in hell for a variety of sins, not only the sin of rejecting Christ's sacrificial work.
People will be punished in hell for murder, people will be punished in hell for sexual immorality, people will be punished in hell for lying and for theft.
This is expressed in the book of Romans, this is expressed in the book of Revelation.
And people ultimately will be the object of God's judgment.
It is not the ethereal spirit of murder that will be punished for eternity in hell.
It is murderers.
Murder won't be punished in hell forever.
Murderers will.
Adultery will not be punished forever in hell.
Adulterers will.
Lies will not be punished forever in hell.
Liars will.
This is what the Bible teaches.
The Bible teaches that some will go to hell, that they will not be recipients of God's saving grace through faith in Jesus Christ, that they will suffer under the just, righteous wrath of God for eternity, and his wrath will be poured out not merely for the singular sin of choosing to reject Christ in his sacrifice, but a variety of sins, rejecting Christ at the foremost, but also adultery and lying and murder and blasphemy.
And breaking the Sabbath and coveting and the whole nine yards, or in this case, 10 yards.
So, people will go to hell and they will be punished for their sin.
And God is just, He does not exact double payment for a singular crime.
If some people go to hell and are punished for some sins, it is precisely because those sins were not paid for by Jesus on the cross.
If we think about it any other way, then we have to ultimately conclude that God punished Jesus fully, the sufficiency of his sacrifice.
He punished Jesus for one group of people that are going to go to hell, and he punished him fully.
And then he said, You know what?
Even though I've exacted the fair payment for these sins, I'm going to go ahead and penalize these sins a second time.
Punish Jesus once, and then punish those individuals in hell a second time.
Jesus on the cross, one punishment.
These people in hell, the second punishment.
Two punishments, one infraction.
That's the simplest way to break it down.
That is injustice.
God is just.
Now, to get some Bible in here, there's the logical arguments, biblical arguments.
John chapter 10.
That Jesus is the good shepherd.
And we see that the scripture Jesus talks about, he uses this analogy of shepherd and sheep.
And he also throws another character into the equation the hired hand.
He says the hired hand cares nothing for the sheep.
When a wolf or a lion comes into the pasture, the hired hand, he runs.
They're not his sheep.
That's why he runs.
It's just a job, it's just a check.
He doesn't care about the sheep, he cares about what the sheep can produce for him.
And so when there's a threat, when there's a danger, he cares more for his own well being, his own self preservation, than he cares for the protection and defense of the sheep.
So he runs, he flees, he withdraws, and the sheep are ravaged and scattered.
But not so with the Good Shepherd.
Jesus says, I am the Good Shepherd.
And then he goes further and says, The Good Shepherd lays his life down for the sheep.
Now, Jesus teaches elsewhere, and the apostles pick up on this teaching within the letters of the New Testament that sheep make up one portion of human beings.
But not everyone is a sheep.
There are people who are sheep, but as Jesus himself teaches, and the apostles teach, Under the Holy Spirit's inspiration, there are some people who are sheep and there are some people who are goats.
We could say, really, there are four different characters when it comes to the makeup of humanity there are sheep, there are goats, there are shepherds, and there are wolves.
Now, a shepherd, if we're speaking about a person, not Christ who is the chief shepherd, that's 1 Peter 5, or the good shepherd, that's John chapter 10, but under shepherds, That is, human beings, not Christ himself, but someone like me, someone like Connor.
These would be undershepherds, what we call pastors, shepherds nonetheless, but a shepherd does hold a dual type office.
A shepherd is an undershepherd, shepherding the flock under the chief shepherd Christ, but he is also himself a sheep.
In a similar fashion, you could say the same thing about the wolves.
In a sense, there's a dual office.
He is a wolf who preys on the sheep, who devours the sheep, but also is, in a sense, himself a sheep.
A goat.
So there are goats, and some of them are wolves.
And there are sheep, and some of them are shepherds.
Not the chief shepherd, Christ alone, not the good shepherd, Christ alone, but under shepherds, pastors in local churches.
So there are goats, some are wolves, and there are sheep, some are shepherds.
Jesus says he gives his life for the sheep.
Ephesians chapter 5, even as the Apostle Paul writes to husbands and wives, he says that husbands should emulate Christ's example, that we should look to the eternal marriage between Christ and his bride, the church, and take our cues, and that a husband should love his wife as Christ loved the church.
The Narrow Bridge Of Salvation00:14:57
And how did Christ love the church?
Ephesians 5 goes on to say that he loved the church and gave himself up for her.
Jesus died for his bride.
Jesus did not give himself up unto death for the mass of humanity, but for the church, which is a subset of humanity.
Jesus did not, as a good shepherd, lay his life down for the goats or for the wolves, but for the sheep, a subset of humanity.
So, both in scripture, and I could go on, but for the sake of time, it'd be nice if I looked down at my notes at least once.
Both in scripture and in logic, we must, not just we may, not just that we can make this, we must logically and biblically make the argument of limited atonement.
The last thing that I'll say here is just this everyone limits the atonement.
The Arminian limits the atonement, the provisionist, which isn't really a thing, but they limit the atonement.
Every, what I'm saying is, every soteriological.
Framework limits the atonement.
The question is simply how.
It's not whether, but in which way does your soteriology, that word simply means the study of salvation, doctrine of salvation.
So, your view of salvation, your theology about salvation, who God saves, how God saves, what you believe the Bible's teaching espouses on the subject of salvation, no matter what view you hold.
You believe that in some form or fashion, in some way, the atonement of Jesus Christ, that is his payment on the cross for sin, is limited.
The only person who does not limit the atonement at all is the universalist, who believes that Christ paid for every person's sin and every single sin of every person.
And there's a word for universalism, it's called heresy.
And the irony is that the person who doesn't limit the atonement, Is a person who won't have any atonement and will go to hell for being the heretic that they are.
So, if we want to be orthodox and hold a view within the Bible and not blatant heresy, then you must hold a soteriological view, a view of salvation that limits the atonement.
So, at this point, you're not saying, hey, what I believe the Bible teaches about how God saves, who God saves.
I have a choice between if I want to view God's salvation as being limited or unlimited.
No.
You don't have that choice.
The unlimited, that just makes you a heretic.
So, your choice is not do I want to think that God's salvation is limited or not limited?
No.
Your choice is between do I want to think that God limits his salvation in this way or that God limits his salvation in another way?
Because, either way, if it's true, if it's biblical, if it's orthodox, it's going to be limited in some form or fashion.
And the simplest way that I can explain it is like this the reformed view of soteriology.
That holds to particular redemption or limited atonement.
We believe that Christ's atonement is limited in terms of its scope, how many people are covered by his blood.
The who is the limiting factor.
The Arminian, and in a different way, but pretty much the same thing, the provisionist, believes that.
That Christ's atonement is limited not in its width or its breadth, its scope, how many people it covers.
They believe it covers everyone.
But they believe that it's limited not in its scope, but in its depth.
How much sin is covered.
See, we believe in particular redemption, limited atonement, that Christ died for some.
And I think that we can say, as the scripture does in fact explicitly say, Christ died for many, more than just some, many.
But not all, insofar as all would represent universally each and every individual who's ever lived and ever will.
Christ did not die for all in a universal sense, but he did die for many.
But for those that Christ died for, the many, he covered in his death every single thing that they would ever need to have eternal reconciliation with God.
Meaning that Christ's atonement covered all their sins, past, present, and future, including the sin of unbelief, including the sin of rejecting Christ, and not only that.
Not only atonement for sin, but in Christ's atonement, he also paid for their justification that is being declared by God as righteous, for their sanctification that they would grow in the fruit of the Spirit, and for their glorification that one day this body would come up out of the ground and be new and resurrected with Christ forever.
What Christ paid for within the Reformed soteriological view, what Christ paid for is every single thing that he paid.
Paid in such a way that every single thing necessary for eternal reconciliation with God would be not just possible, not just available, but guaranteed.
See, the Arminian believes that Christ paid.
This is the easiest way I can say it.
Everyone's limiting the atonement.
The Arminian, we'll just call them the non Calvinist, everybody else.
The non Calvinist believes that Jesus paid for every single person's sin.
In the sense that he made salvation possible.
The non Calvinist believes that Jesus, through his work at Calvary, paid to make salvation possible for all.
The Calvinist believes that Jesus paid for actual salvation for many.
I'll say that again.
The Calvinist believes Jesus paid for full salvation, real salvation, actual salvation for many.
The non Calvinist believes Jesus paid for the possibility of salvation for all.
See, both are limiting the atonement.
The Calvinist is limiting it in its breadth, its scope, for many, not all, but full salvation in terms of depth, degree.
So the Calvinist believes full salvation for many people.
This tall, this wide.
The non Calvinist, potential salvation for all people.
This wide, but only this tall.
The non Calvinist view of salvation is a mile wide and an inch deep.
The Reformed view of salvation.
Is more than an inch wide.
Let's say it's about half a mile wide, and I'd like to see a little, think it's a little bit more.
I'm post millennial, and I do believe that the majority of humanity in real terms and numbers will be saved by the end.
Here's the caveat if you're like, what in the world are you talking about?
How many people believe in Jesus?
You know that most people are not saved.
That's right, but we're not done yet.
Right now, I think that hell is far more populated than heaven, but I also think that we've got a long way to go.
I think we've got multiple revivals in between now and then, and I do believe that.
With the population continuing exponentially to increase, which is not a bad thing.
Don't listen to bug man, right?
It's a good thing.
And with the population numerically increasing exponentially, and with thousands potentially of years left to go, and with great revivals and moves of the Spirit of God, that by the time it's all said and done, that heaven will be such a vast number of people that no man can count them like the stars in the sky, like the grains of sand on the seashore, and that heaven, in terms of population, will swallow up the population of hell.
So that Christ will be able to look to the Father and say, I actually saved the world.
And we would be able to echo the Son's claim and say, He saved the whole world indeed.
So I'm not saying, see, you need this combo.
You need to be Calvinist slash post mill maxing.
Because if you're just a Calvinist, you got this red pill going.
You understand that the world is trash world.
You understand how bad things are.
But then you're going to be following up that red pill with a black pill.
If you're just a Calvinist, total depravity.
Everyone's really bad.
It's like, I'm not going to argue with you.
All that's true.
But if you're just a Calvinist, you got the red pill followed with a black pill.
But if you're a Calvinist and post millennial, that's the red pill, white pill combo.
That's glorious.
That's like Theoden, he's like, it's all lost.
But then, boom, Aragorn shows up and he's like, one more time.
In the great deep, the horns, right?
The horns of Rodon are going to sound.
We're going to ride out into battle.
We're going to fight.
That's what we need.
So, all that being said, here's the point everyone's liberating the atonement.
Don't let people make that argument.
Calvinists are mean.
I can't believe you believe that Jesus only died for many people, but not all people.
Well, think of it like the last kind of maybe this will help, not just an argument, but an illustration.
Imagine salvation being like a bridge.
You've probably seen the little gospel tracts, and I think they're helpful.
You've got a thrice holy God on one side, and then you've got totally depraved, sinful man on the other side, and there's this great chasm in between.
And then you see the cross, you know, the cross, it falls over and it becomes a bridge to bridge the gap between fallen man and a holy God.
The non Calvinist believes that that cross, that it's there, it's so wide.
If it was like a bridge, it would be a bridge that is so wide that every single person in the world, linking arms, walking side by side, not single file line, but the opposite way, that we're all walking together, we could all fit on that bridge.
It's that wide.
The problem is here's the problem.
The non Calvinist believes the bridge is wide enough to where every single person, simultaneously, side by side, can be walking on this bridge, but it only stretches.
About a foot.
And the thrice holy God, the place where we actually need to get to, is still a mile away.
Whereas the Calvinist says, now that bridge, it's a little narrower.
It's a little narrower, but it's a lot longer.
It makes it all the way.
It doesn't make it part of the way.
It doesn't start the way.
It doesn't even make it most of the way.
It's not even a bridge.
God's salvation, Christ's atonement, Him as propitiation for our sins and not ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.
Christ's payment at Calvary is not even a bridge that bridges a gap, fills in the gap of this mild chasm between fallen man and the holy God all the way, but then leaves the last three feet where you and I have to get a running start and jump.
No, there's no jump.
There's no gap.
There's not a foot.
There's not an inch.
There's not a centimeter.
The bridge goes all the way, all the way.
Everything you and I need to be eternally reconciled to God was purchased by Christ at Calvary.
That is the forgiveness of all your sin.
That is the guarantee of your justification.
That is the guarantee of your sanctification and the future promise of your glorification.
It is finished.
When Christ speaks, he does not speak as evangelicals speak in limp platitudes.
When he says it's finished, he actually means it.
All done.
It's all paid for.
It's in the bank.
You got it.
You're there.
You are reconciled with God.
And all we're doing at this point is simply living out of that forgiveness, fueled by grace, seeking to be obedient to Christ's law for the good of God's glory and our neighbor, to bring him great glory in all the earth as we bide our time waiting for the foregone conclusion that is already written and will come to pass.
It's done.
But the non Calvinist, who does limit the atonement, not in its scope, how many people, the who, but in its depth, its degree, Its potency that Christ purchased only not salvation for many, but only the potential, the possibility of salvation for all.
Here's the problem that bridge doesn't go all the way to God.
So, what it requires is for people to jump.
You ever heard the expression white man can't jump?
Sinful man can't jump at all.
Not a mile, not a foot, not an inch.
If that bridge doesn't make it all the way, It might sound nice in your little theological platitudes in Big Evil Land.
It might sound nice coming from the female Sunday school teacher.
But the reality is this you're saying, well, no, no, no, God's got such a big heart.
He's a universal God.
He loves everybody.
He'll never leave anyone out.
Jesus died for every single person.
Okay, but remember, you got two options.
The moment you do that, the moment you make the atonement universal, you're saying that Jesus died for every single person and all of their sins, including the sin of rejecting him, which means boom.
Option one, you're a heretic and you're going to hell.
Option two, he died for each and every single person, universal in that sense, but he didn't cover everything that we need.
You've got to make a choice.
You've got to do some stuff.
You've got to go the right way.
Not just today, but you've got to wake up tomorrow.
You've got to do it again and again and again and again.
Christ satisfied some of the wrath of God, he paid for some of your sin, but you've got to finish the job.
And you can make it sound nice by saying it's universal in its scope, in the who, it's for everyone.
But here's the reality.
Your bridge is wide enough for everyone, but it's only a foot long.
So, in your empathy, in your kindness, what you've actually done is you've actually subscribed universally every person on earth to hell.
Universal Atonement Leads To Hell00:05:21
That's how kind you've been.
You've said, hey, this bridge is for everyone.
Yeah, but dude, the bridge doesn't connect.
Everyone will get one foot closer to heaven.
Yeah, but I need to go a mile.
One foot doesn't.
That doesn't cut it.
Yeah, but look how kind it is.
Look how empathetic I'm being.
Everyone will get one foot closer to it.
But that doesn't do.
What are you talking about?
How's that kind?
How's that good?
That doesn't solve anything.
I've still got over 5,000 feet to go.
Nobody can make that jump.
Yeah, but isn't this nice?
Nice isn't what we need.
Nice is never what we needed.
It's certainly not what the church needs in 2023.
We don't need nice.
Nice has sent many a soul to hell.
But never a soul to heaven.
Niceness is not a fruit of the Spirit.
Kindness is.
And whenever your kindness supersedes the kindness of God, you can be sure you have left the realm of kindness and entered into some other kind of realm.
You could call it niceness, but it's not kindness.
And you should admit that niceness in this context simply serves as a euphemism for cruelty.
The kindness of man, where it detours from the kindness of God, is not real kindness, but rather cruelty.
Let God be true and every man a liar.
God's plan is best.
God's mercy is deepest.
God's kindness is greatest.
There is more kindness in God than the whole kindnesses of all humanity combined together.
Christ didn't just pay for the possibility for us to be saved, He guaranteed the salvation for all His sheep.
Not all people, some are goats, some are wolves, but for all His sheep, He didn't pay for the possibility of the salvation of the sheep.
He guaranteed the salvation of the sheep, He guaranteed the salvation of the church.
He guaranteed the salvation of his bride.
Christ guaranteed, he finished the work of salvation and reconciliation with God for his people.
For his people.
My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father.
It's important in Christian doctrine to understand there are two advocates that the Christian has.
If you are a child of God, if you've been born again by grace, Grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, you have two advocates.
The word is actually used in the New Testament, advocate, in two regards Christ and the Holy Spirit.
So we have, as we see in the first verse, 1 John 2, verse 1, we have Christ who is an advocate with the Father.
But we also have, as we see elsewhere in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit who is an advocate.
Advocate means help with us.
So there is one advocate with the Father and one advocate with you.
The Holy Spirit is the helper with you.
And Christ is also our advocate.
So he's our advocate, our helper, but with the Father.
Because we need both.
We need someone on our side.
We need a help in every time of need.
We need an advocate, a strong defense with the Father in the divine heavenly courtroom to plead our case.
And not to enter on our behalf a not guilty plea, but rather to enter a guilty plea, say, yeah, they did it, they're guilty, but I paid for it in full.
So, Christ is our defense.
He's our advocate.
He is our help with the Father in a judicial sense, in terms of judicial righteousness, our justification.
The Holy Spirit is our advocate in terms of our sanctification.
He applies Christ's atonement for sin.
He's the one who regenerates our hearts, but then He also dwells with us.
The inward dwelling of the Holy Spirit with us.
Jesus said when He left His disciples, He said, Right before he left, he said, I will not abandon you as orphans.
I will not leave you as orphans, but I will come to you.
And he has, in fact, come to us.
He came to them.
He's still here with us.
And he did this at Pentecost.
Once he had died, been resurrected, revealed himself to over 500 witnesses, and then gloriously ascended in power and glory to the right hand of God the Father Almighty, he then, the Father and the Son, then sent the Holy Spirit, poured out the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to be with the church.
And so the Holy Spirit is now with us, and the Holy Spirit, one of his chief ministries, is to exude within us the ministry and the presence of the resurrected Christ.
So Christ is with the Father, our advocate, our defense, our help.
But Christ is also with us through the ministry of the indwelling Holy Spirit, because the Spirit exudes and exemplifies and magnifies the spirit of the risen Christ, and the Holy Spirit is with us.
Two advocates, one with the Father and one with the Church.
Two Advocates For Believers00:15:12
Another thing worth noting the word propitiation, it's a word that in antiquity has its origins and roots outside of the Christian faith with many pagan religions.
It's the idea of making some kind of immense sacrifice to the gods in this pantheon of a polytheist kind of religion where there are many different gods, and most of these gods think.
Ancient Greece or Rome or Norse gods, these gods, they're many and they're fickle.
In many cases, they have worse character, worse morals than many people do.
They're puny gods, in other words.
But the word propitiation in its pagan origins, that's where the word first appeared, the idea was there are many gods, these are fickle gods, they're easily angered gods, and so all of a sudden there's a drought and it's because the people must have angered the gods, or this happens.
There's pestilence, there's disease, there's a plague.
It's because the people have angered the gods, and they need, the gods are angry, they need that anger to be satiated, to be satisfied.
And so, in comes a propitiation.
So, it's some kind of sacrifice, and in many cultures, it was human sacrifice.
We're going to kill a person to satisfy the angers of the gods.
Now, note, on the bright side, and it's hard to find a bright side with human sacrifice, but I'm going to give it, you know, the old college try.
On the bright side, I do think that that is a confirmation of natural law, natural theology, the imago day, that people are made in the image of God, that they instinctively, even fallen man, they realize there is a God and he is angry and that we need some kind of payment and it must be blood.
That that's just etched into humanity.
We know that.
But the problem is that the people who are sacrificed, they're sacrificed to the wrong gods, not the true God, but false gods.
And the person who's dying, who is the sacrifice, is the wrong sacrifice.
Within pagan religion and mythology, you're sacrificing the wrong person to the wrong God.
But within the Christian faith, notice here's the difference.
Rather than man taking the initiative to say, we've angered the gods, or we've angered the triune God, the one true God, and we're going to put forth a sacrifice in Christian faith, in the Christian one true religion, it is God Himself.
Who takes it upon himself at the cost of his own son?
He's the one who takes the initiative.
He's the one who says, You've sinned against me, and I'll provide the ram with its horns caught in the thicket.
I'll provide the blood.
I'll provide the payment.
You've sinned against me.
You've angered me, and I'm far more holy than Thor.
I'm far more holy than Zeus.
What it'll take to satiate my just wrath, I'm not fickle, I'm angry.
I'm terribly angry, and it's fair.
I am angry.
I am so angry because I'm so holy and you are so rebellious.
But here's the difference it's not that my anger is less than these false gods.
If anything, my anger is infinitely more.
But I'm going to take the initiative of satisfying my own anger rather than you having to do it.
And I have the only sacrifice that can actually do the trick.
The Son of God does eternally and sufficiently satisfy the wrath of God for the people of God.
The death of the Son of God sacrifices the wrath of God for all the people of God forever and ever.
Amen.
That's the idea of a propitiation.
Remember, Jesus does not die at Calvary merely as an example of love.
Jesus says, Greater love has no one than this, that a man would lay down his own life for his friends.
So we can biblically faithfully say that one of the purposes in Christ's death on the cross was to set a moral example for how we should sacrificially love others.
That's fine, that's biblical.
But if we say that's all the crucifixion was, then it's heretical.
It's nothing less than that, but oh, how Jesus' death is so much more.
An example of sacrificial love for others?
Yes, but also payment, substitutionary atonement.
Jesus died as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
He pays the penalty for sin, satisfying God's wrath, canceling our debt.
Propitiation, a pleasing, satiating sacrifice put forward to God to satisfy his wrath towards man.
That's the idea of the word propitiation.
Last thing that I'll say, verse 2, gets back to the limited atonement or particular redemption.
He, that is Christ, is the propitiation, the full payment, not part of it, not a down payment, the full payment.
He is a propitiation for our sins, and here we go, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
If you interpret that verse, whole world, to mean in a universal sense, each and every individual person who has ever lived and ever will, Then you must be a universalist.
You must believe that there is no hell, or if there is, it's only for Satan and fallen angels.
That there is not a single human soul in hell, and there never will be.
You must hold to a universal view of the atonement, which is a heresy and has been condemned as a rank heresy for 2,000 years.
So you either need to step out of the entire Christian faith and all of church history and every single verse in the Bible, you have to abandon the scripture.
Abandoned 2,000 years of church history and thoroughly and conclusively abandoned Christian orthodoxy to say that Jesus dying for not our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world, world means universal, each and every person.
You have to embrace universalism and be a heretic, or you can just properly define that phrase, whole world, in that context.
John uses the word world in four different ways.
I don't have time to cover it, I've covered this a little bit in the past.
Before this morning, landing the plane now, the way in which he's using world in this context is global, not universal.
When he says he is a propitiation for our sins, but not our sins only, but the sins of the whole world, he's speaking as a Jew.
He's saying to fellow Jews, to Israelites, according to the flesh, that Jesus is not just the payment, the satisfying payment put forward by God Himself to satisfy God's holy wrath towards the Jews' sin.
Toward elect Christians among Israel, according to the flesh, not our sins only, but the sins of the whole world.
He's not saying world in a universal sense.
He's not saying each and every individual person.
He's saying every tribe, tongue, and nation.
That's what he's saying.
And we see this concept confirmed in verses like Revelation chapter 5, verse 9.
They then sang a new song.
Saying, Worthy are you to take the scroll and open its seals?
For you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.
The word there that I want to draw your attention to is from.
From every tribe and language and people and nation.
Jesus is not saving each and every individual person, universal.
No, he is saving from every tribe and nation.
And language and people and nation global.
That's the sense of the term.
All right.
What does this mean for us?
I guess the last thing that maybe I could address practically application.
None of this, well, I was going to say none of this has any bearing, but that's not true.
It has great bearing, but in a positive direction, not a negative one.
The final counter that people will make against the doctrines of grace, and there are more, but people will say this well, if God has chosen who He is, Going to elect, who he's going to save, and limited atonement.
Jesus died for some or many, but not all, and this, that, and the other.
Then, you know, what's the point of evangelism?
What's the point of even praying?
Right?
If God's already made up his mind that he's determined in his sovereign will and the councils of eternity, before the foundations of the world were laid, God has determined everything that will take place.
He has ordained the end all the way from the beginning.
Then why pray?
Let me start with prayer and then I'll land on evangelism.
Prayer.
Here's the problem.
Your thought, your picture of prayer is fundamentally flawed if you think that God ordaining all things would zap all incentive to pray.
What you've just confessed in a subtle, kind of indirect way, subconsciously, if you think that God being sovereign over all things and determining all that shall come to pass means renders prayer irrelevant to where there's no purpose in prayer now, what you've just admitted is this.
You've just admitted that your view of prayer is a think tank session with the God of the universe that you sit him down and instruct him with your great ideas and what he should do.
So you need to repent.
You're arrogant.
That's what I'm saying.
You're arrogant.
If you think the point of prayer is to either, and it can only really be one of two things, it's either to inform God because he's lacking in his wisdom.
So, the reason I'm praying is because I just want to bring some things to God's attention because, I mean, he's pretty great, you know, and who can blame him?
He's got a lot going on.
You know, the universe is a big place, there's a lot of people here.
You know, I'm not giving him a hard time, but I'm just, you know, me and God, we both recognize that there's some deficiencies on his part.
You know, I mean, he's keeping track of billions of people, and there's a few that maybe, you know, flew under the radar.
And so I need to sit down with God, have a little team meeting, you know, once a day or once a week, and bring some things to his attention that he might have passed over, he might have missed.
Okay, so obviously I'm being facetious here.
I hope you're just hearing that's bad.
That's bad.
That's bad.
Yes, church, that's bad.
Okay, the other option would be well, no, it's not that he's lacking in wisdom.
His omniscience is there, he knows everything.
He's lacking in the strength department.
It's not what he knows, it's what he can do, it's his ability.
So it's not his omniscience that's lacking, it's his omnipotence that's lacking.
And so the reason why we all pray is not to bring things, not to inform God.
He already knows everything.
It's not to bring things to his Attention in terms of his knowledge.
But the reason why we need to pray is although God already knows all that he's going to do, he can't carry it out.
Right?
God is like Santa.
And we all know that singing Christmas songs loud for all to hear is how we raise Christmas cheer.
Right?
So God knows everything that He's going to do.
He's omniscient.
He's just not omnipotent.
And so I'm not informing God.
That would be super arrogant, Pastor.
I know.
I'd never have that view of prayer.
But what I'm doing is we're all getting together.
And when we pray, our prayer is like gasoline into God's strength and ability tank.
You know what I mean?
And we're just trying to fill up Santa's sleigh a little bit because the reindeer can't do all the work.
You know?
So we've got to get it off the ground by prayer.
And if we pray enough, then God, who already knows what he will do, then he'll actually be able to do it.
Again, I hope the siren is going off in your mind.
Bad, bad, bad.
Yes, church, that's bad.
I like the way that John Piper said it.
Don't read John Piper on COVID or anything political, but on this particular topic, he says some good things.
He said that, you know, the non Calvinists will say if God doesn't change his mind, if he's already determined everything he will do and he's not going to change his mind, then why pray?
Why pray?
If God's not going to change his mind, why pray?
And Piper responded by saying, But if God is such a respecter of human free will to where he won't ever change other people's minds, why pray?
Why are you praying for your lost neighbor to get saved, to know Christ, to follow him, to submit to God's law, if you believe that that's something that God won't do, that that's a breach of this agreement that God's Established with man, well, you can never have true love if you don't have free will, right?
If I had a dollar every time somebody said that platitude, right?
If that's your view, if your view is that God's not going to intervene insofar as it affects human choices, He might intervene, you know, maybe with a storm, He might intervene with some inanimate objects, He might intervene, even with human choices, He might intervene, you know, once every thousand years, like maybe, you know, during the time of Jesus and His life, death, and resurrection.
But other than that, God leaves, you know, the slate.
Is blank.
He leaves people free will, total free will, total autonomous human agency, which is a myth, so that people can choose freely.
And he doesn't want to interrupt that.
Well, then why are you praying?
Why are you praying for your wife?
God's not going to interrupt that.
She's going to do what she's going to do.
Why are you praying for your lost neighbor?
Why are you praying for your kids?
God doesn't answer those prayers.
Because God cares more about being freely loved, however, you've defined that in a postmodern You know, weird Western way.
God cares more about being freely loved than He actually cares about intervening in the people that you love in a positive way.
God cares more about being freely loved by people than loving people.
I love my children.
You know how much I love them?
I love them enough to not always give them a choice.
And for the record, because the leftists are fine with me, but the Christians are the ones who will lose their minds, you know, on social media.
My children are five, four, Two and one years old.
Okay, so last time I brought up my children as an illustration, people were like, oh my God, I bet he's got a 17 year old child.
And he's like, no, they're little.
Okay, so my children, they're little bitty.
And there are certain things that I don't let my children choose.
Love Enough To Remove Choice00:02:22
If one of my children, if I said, don't play in the street, and I laid out the command, don't play in the street, and they're playing in the front yard, which they wouldn't do unless we were there, their mother and I, watching.
But let's just say they're in the front yard, I'm watching them through the window.
And the ball rolls into the street, and there's an 18 wheeler coming down, you know, 45 miles per hour.
The child is disregarding my command, disregarding the law that I've laid before them.
And one of my girls is running full speed into the street.
And I've got enough time, I am physically capable to burst through the front door, run and snatch them and grab them before they get hit by that truck.
In that moment, let me tell you what I won't do.
I'm not going to sit by, watch it through the window and say, but I just respect their choice.
You know?
Said no good father ever.
You think you're more compassionate than God, you think you're loving.
You're not, you're cruel.
You're cruel.
You're mean spirited.
You're sinister.
You're not nice.
You're not a nice person.
You are not kind.
You are not loving.
You're not gracious.
You are not merciful.
If you have that view, if you think a father not overriding the choice of his son or daughter to spare their life, I have no words for you.
No, good fathers, they intervene, even overriding the choice of their children when it comes to saving their life.
And that's exactly what God does for all of his children.
And the reason why some go to hell is because they are not his children.
And according to John chapter 8, in the words of Christ himself, those individuals, their father, is not God but the devil.
Let's pray.
Lord, thank you for your word.
Bless it to our hearts and minds.
Help us to believe it.
Help us to repent of our arrogance and our pride that we would stop.
Fancying ourselves to be better than you, but that we would recognize that true mercy, true grace, true love for you and others comes by humble submission to your word and your word alone.