Preached in Markham Baptist Church, February 6, 2005

GREAT WORDS OF THE FAITH - PART 6: "ELECTION"

It has been said that the current generation does not want a faith that feeds them pat answers. “Make room for mystery!” is their call. “Allow for unanswerable questions.” “Make room for mystery.”

If that is the case and that is your desire, then you should love this morning’s great word of the faith "election". Election is the biblical idea that is stated in our text this morning, that before the creation of the world God chose us to be holy and blameless. In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons and daughters. (Ephesians 1:4,5).

Of course it is not an idea which we find in the book of Ephesians alone. This idea is taught in the Old Testament where we read in Psalm 135:4, “The Lord has chosen Jacob to his son, Israel to be his treasured possession.” In Amos 3:2, “You [Israel] only have I chosen of all the families of the earth.”

As we turn to the New Testament we hear Jesus saying, “You did not choose me but I chose you.” (John 15:16) and in the book of Romans 8:28,29: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”

And as you read through the New Testament you discover that believers are constantly referred to as “elect people”, and “chosen of God”. So it is a biblical doctrine, concept and theme.

But reading through the Scriptures you discover that there is another clear stream of teaching that tells us that we must choose to follow God, that we must decide for Christ or against Christ. That it is our responsibility to respond to the invitation to life given by God.

Revelation 22:17 reads, “The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come! Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of water of life.' ” Or again in Revelation 3:20 - “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”

And this is where the mystery enters in, because clearly the Bible teaches both free will and election - God chose you and you must choose God.

The difficulty with such mysteries is that we want to answer – which one is it, do I choose for God or does God choose me? And while we want to choose one or the other, the truth is it is both. It is one of those mysteries that exist in the Christian faith – a mystery where we have to hold true two ideas at the same time. Scripture is full of them actually. We learn in Scripture that Jesus is fully God and fully man (see Philippians 2). We also discover that Scripture is written by humans yet it is the Word of God. Salvation is forever, yet Christians need to remain obedient to the end. We are both chosen and we have the responsibility to choose. Both truths are equally true at the same time.

The trouble for the church throughout history is that people have taken sides. They have said, all election, or all free will but the reality is that it is both.

There once was a group of pastors arguing about the sovereignty of God and the free will of man. The argument got so heated that they had to split into two groups. One on this side of the room arguing for the sovereignty of God - election. And another group on this side of the room arguing for free will. Well, there was a pastor who was left standing in the middle. He didn’t know which one to choose. But after hearing the arguments he decided for the election side, the sovereignty of God. So, he headed off to that side of the room, but before he joined the group they asked him, “Why are you coming here? Why do you want to join our group?”

And the pastor said, “Well, after hearing all the arguments and listening to the reasons I have decided to join your group, I choose to come.”

They said, “Sorry, you can’t join our group, if you choose to come. You can have nothing to do with the decision. You must want to join that group over there, the free will group.”

So he was a little discouraged, but at least there was group he could belong to on the other side of the room, so he walked over to join the free will group. And as he approached them they said to him, “Hold it! Hold it! Why are you coming over here. Why do you want to join our group?”

And the pastor responded, “Well, see that group over there, they sent me here.”

And the free will group said, “Sorry you can’t join our group unless you choose to join of your own free will.”

The argument is that silly. Both truths are taught in Scripture and we must keep them in balance.

When we lived in Acton our house had no air conditioning. And to cool the house down in the summer Janet would open the windows at the front of the house and the back of the house. I’m not all that technical but what she taught me was that by opening windows on opposite sides of the house the summer breezes are allowed to blow through the house. And if the windows on the south side of the house were closed, the breezes from the north were not nearly as strong if the north windows alone were left open.

There is a benefit to the Christian life of leaving the seemingly opposite windows of free will and election open in your life. For instance, if you close the free will windows your life will miss the refreshing breezes that come from realizing that God respects us individuals and does not force His will on us. If you close the free will window you are apt to say that God chooses some to be with Him now and forever in heaven, and others He chooses not to be with Him now and forever in hell. And that’s not true. Scripture does not teach that. If anyone lives without God now and forever it is their choice. Scripture is clear we have a responsibility to choose for God or against God and how we choose has eternal consequences. So we need to keep the window of free will open.

But if we close the windows marked election in our lives, and I think this is what most often happens because we find it difficult to live with two seemingly opposing truths being true at the same time we seek to solve the problem by closing out the idea of election, we are big on free will. But if we close the windows in our lives marked election we will miss out on all the wonderful truths that are associated with this truth. And as I focus on election this morning I don’t want you to think that I’ve closed the window on free will – we need to keep both windows open at the same time.

So what is the strength of this truth of election? There are three strengths – first, the doctrine of election magnifies the grace of God. We all profess that we are saved by the grace of God. It is safe to say that the majority of us, if not all of us, here today believe that it is because of His grace, His unmerited favour, that we are cleansed of our sin, and called His children. We love to sing the hymns of God’s grace and believe that we need to hear more of God’s grace. Many of you weren’t all that crazy on my sermon about God’s judgment the other week and you feel that we need to hear more sermons about the grace of God. Well if that describes you, then you will love the doctrine of election. Because this doctrine says that our salvation is all of God’s grace.

The doctrine of election recognizes what we have learned during the last number of weeks that we not only commit sin, but we have a sin nature. We were slaves to sin. So if that is the case then we had to obey sin, we could obey nothing else. Were we free? No, not really, because we had to choose the one thing that mastered us and that was sin. So when presented with the choice of living for God and experiencing His life in our lives we could not choose - we were incapable of choosing.

But we made a choice, didn’t we? Yes, but the only reason that you and I were able to make that choice was because God chose us, He elected us, He enabled us from the creation of the world to choose Him.

So we read in Ephesians 2:4-5: "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions–it is by grace you have been saved." And then skipping down to verse 8 and 9: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God– not by works, so that no one can boast."

You see, there are some who believe that while we are saved by grace we are still able to claim one good work before God and that is that fact that we chose Him. But the doctrine of election says, “No, you cannot even claim that you chose Him - He chose you.”

And logic agrees with this. How can we say that we are saved by God’s unmerited favour yet still claim to have some merit, in this case the merit of choosing God - it wouldn’t be unmerited favour.

Do we still have free will to choose for God? Yes, but we are only able to choose God as He enables us, as He opens our eyes to His goodness, as He by His grace awakens our dead sinful bodies to respond to His grace. You see, one of the refreshing truths that comes along with the doctrine of election is that God’s grace is heightened, it is magnified. It is all of God’s grace that we are saved.

When you think of this world and the horrendous state that it is in, the thing that should strike us is not that some are not chosen but that some are chosen at all, it is because of God’s amazing grace that you and I able to be called His children.

There may be some who complain that God has chosen some and not others. And the question we have to ask people who say this is – “Do you who want to live a holy life with God? If so then God has elected you.” But if they say, “No I don’t really want to be holy. I don’t want to give up my selfishness, my life to God.” Then we need to say, “Why complain about something that you don’t want any way? You have no right to grumble that God should have made you one of the elect if you don’t want to be one of the elect in the first place.”

If you want a new heart, if you want a right spirit, if you want forgiveness of sin, if you want to be enabled to live a holy life then they are all for you. God gives generously to all who desire - first He enables us to desire, otherwise we never would. If you love all these things then you are elect and you can have them but if do not want them, then don’t blame God for electing some when you don’t want them in the first place.

This leads us to the second strength of the doctrine of election – not only does it magnify God’s grace, but it also magnifies your worth. Verse 5: “In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons and daughters through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will – the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.”

Not too many weeks ago there was a documentary on TVO that stated that we have raised a generation of girls with no self-esteem. This is evidenced in the fact that they are giving themselves to one sexual partner after another, allowing themselves to be used by one male after another. We have a generation of girls who have no sense of self-worth, being told by their divorcing parents that they are of little value, being shunned by their fathers and ignored by their mothers, thinking they are of little use except to be used for the sexual pleasure of an endless stream of men.

O, the great news of gospel is that girls, women, boys, men, everyone is of immense worth. Everyone is loved by God and the world needs to hear it, but we Christians should have no trouble with self-esteem for we know that in love He chose us, not because of any merit of our own, but in love He chose us. This is the message that God had to make clear to the Israelites he says to them in Deuteronomy 7:7,8a: “The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers ….”

My friends you are of immense worth to God not because of something that you have done, not because you may have some gift that you can offer to Him, not because there’s anything to recommend you to Him – you are of immense worth to Him because you are! And there is great comfort in that as we live in a world that is constantly tearing down our self-esteem and valuing us because of what we do. This is not so in God’s economy. You are of value to Him because you are. And He chooses you.

Well some may say, Doesn’t this idea of election lead to pride? And this leads us to the third strength of the doctrine of election and it is that it brings humility, not pride.

We read in Scripture that we are to be humble. Ephesians 4:2 “Be completely humble,” and James 4:10 “Humble yourselves before the Lord …” How are we to humble ourselves? I would suggest that the most humble of all truths is the truth of election. For here I realize that there is nothing in me that recommends me to God, in fact says Scripture in Romans 5 I am powerless, I am a sinner, and I was even an enemy of God, my heart was set against God. There is nothing in me that recommends me to God, yet God in His grace chose you, chose me. In our text it says we were chosen before the foundation of the world! Even before there was a chance for us to gain any merit, if that was possible, God chose us. And that is very humbling, to realize that I am a child of God only because of His grace.

So the doctrine of election: some may say that such thinking leads to laziness – if I have been chosen by God I can live the way I like. Read the Bible very carefully, our text says at verse 4 “He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be what? To be saved? To go to heaven?” These are mere sidebars to the foundational truth that we have been chosen to be holy and blameless. We have been elected to actively live a holy life, blameless not for our glory but the praise of His glorious grace.

So let us approach this table this morning, humbly, joyfully, magnifying not ourselves but the wonder of His grace.

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