Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 14:1-3 | Date: October 18, 2020 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Now I’m jumping back into a series this morning that we left off back in March. And it seems just ridiculous to have such an interruption, but with COVID that series got put aside. We took up a different series with that. And now finally we are back to our regular schedule. And so I can come back to the series on the doctrine of salvation. We’ll be pursuing that on Sunday mornings, at least every other month—that is the months that I’ll be preaching, we’ll be pursuing this.

And again, it seems so difficult to reach back so far. I think we have two messages in this series so far, and this builds on that. So I’m just going to assume that you remember everything that I said seven months ago or whatever it was, but let me give you just a nutshell of what we looked at that brings it to bear here. Remember that in our first message we saw just an overview of the doctrine of salvation and we saw how the scriptures view the doctrine of salvation and how they present it, the various categories. There’s the Bible story of salvation, and then there’s the various ways of looking at salvation.

And I said then that we would be pursuing it through this series under these categories: salvation planned, salvation accomplished, and salvation applied. Or redemption planned, redemption accomplished, redemption applied. So we have redemption planned—there’s the work of God before time, planning the salvation of his people. Salvation accomplished—that focuses primarily on the work of Christ and what he did in his death and resurrection. We’ll look at a few on the first category, we’ll look at several in the second category, and then salvation applied—what does it look like when it comes to us? And we’ll take up matters like conversion, repentance, and forgiveness, and justification, and sanctification, and perseverance, and things like that.

So that’s the broad overview of where we are. Last time, we looked at salvation planned. And we just took that broad topic, without getting into the specifics of it, just to demonstrate that the scriptures speak of your conversion and mine in terms of the outworking of a divine purpose. Your salvation may have been a surprise to you. It was not a surprise to God. It is the outworking of his purpose. And we find certain vocabulary that’s used to demonstrate that in the scripture. The word “purpose” is a big one. We’re called according to his purpose. He saved us and called us to a holy calling, not according to things we’ve done, but according to his own purpose. And we have plenty of verses that we saw about God saving us according to his purpose. He saved us intentionally and in keeping with a plan that he had from eternity past.

With that, there’s vocabulary that’s used in the scriptures like predestination, election, foreordaining—all of that pointing to the fact that our salvation was no surprise to God, that it was the outworking of his purpose. I want to pursue that more next time; we’ll look at specifically the doctrine of election. But today I’d like to look at just another broad background to all of that and then look at the theological background to that and how the scriptures present it. If salvation was the outworking of God’s plan, what are some considerations that inform that for us? So that’s where we’re going this morning.

And I’ll begin with Psalm 14, verses 1 to 3: “The fool says in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They do abominable deeds. There is none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of men to see if there were any who understand, who seek after God. They’ve all turned aside. Together they have become corrupt. There is none who does good, not even one.” Let’s bow together for prayer. Father, give us a grasp of the greatness of your salvation and the greatness of your grace. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

Our point here now this morning is to look at two issues that show that our salvation is the result of God’s plan.

Human Depravity

The first consideration is that we should recognize the fact of human depravity in scripture. This is the broader theological context of the doctrine of the divine plan of salvation: the doctrine of human depravity. And my point here is just to say that in one sense, the doctrine of the divine plan of salvation or the divine initiative in salvation—that God had to do the choosing first—is already assumed in the Bible’s presentation of the depravity of man. Given what we are in sin, the initiative had to be God’s. And that’s where we’re going here first of all this morning. I would love to have developed this in a couple of messages. Let’s run through it just quickly.

We have in the scriptures various characterizations of men and women without Christ. And we’ve got some not so flattering vocabulary: enemies, blind, dead in trespasses and sins, enslaved to sin, having stony hearts, unresponsive to God. All of that kind of language that’s so familiar to you, if you’ve read the Bible at all, demonstrates that salvation, if it is to come at all, must come from God’s side.

Now here in Psalm 14, we have a famous example of that. In verse 1, he speaks of the sinfulness of humanity. “The fool says in his heart, there’s no God. They’re corrupt. They do abominable deeds. There is none who does good.” So notice the sinfulness of mankind. In fact, verse 1, the universal sinfulness of mankind. Or if you want to make it more individual sounding, the unanimous sinfulness of mankind. Verse 1: “There is none who does good.”

So then verses 2 and 3 present God as looking: is there anybody? And so, verse 2: “The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of men to see if there are any who understand, to see if any who seek after God.” And what do you find? Verse 3: “They’ve all turned aside. Together they’ve become corrupt. There’s none who does good, not even one.” So we have the universal and unanimous sinfulness of mankind. And notice the one expression in particular: “there’s none who seek after God.” He’s looking: is there anyone who seeks after me? Anyone pursuing me? And the answer is no, there’s nobody. So in this problem of salvation, this is what, if we can put it this way, confronts God: a humanity of unanimous rejection and rebellion.

Now you’ve probably already thought of it; look at Romans chapter 3 and there we have Paul the Apostle taking up this psalm, himself quoting it and then kind of paraphrasing it as well. Romans 3 beginning with verse 9. In context here he has read the indictment of all of humanity, both Jew and Gentile. And now in verse 9, he says, “What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all, for we’ve already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin.” Verse 10: “As it is written [that is Psalm 14], None is righteous, not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they’ve become worthless. No one does good, not even one.”

Then verses 13 and following describe that condition in graphic terms. Their throat is an open sepulcher, their tongues are used to deceive, the poison of asps on their lips. Just worthless, sinful humanity. I don’t think I ever read this passage without thinking—I think it was the first time I taught, first semester that I taught at Penn State, teaching a New Testament course—and someone remarked, “Well, a psychology teacher tells us that we are basically good.” And I said, “Okay, the question in this class is, is that a Christian notion?” So we read this passage, and I had him read it. And he got through, and he says, “He’s not saying we’re sinful. He’s saying we’re nothing but sinful. We’re worthless.” I said, “Yeah, that seems to me what he’s saying as well.” But this is Paul’s indictment on humanity, and he’s taking it from God himself in Psalm 14. None seeks for God.

Turn over a couple of pages, Romans chapter 8, verses 7 and 8. And here he adds a notion to it: “For the mind that is set on the flesh [that is the natural mind] is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law. Indeed, it cannot. For those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” So here we have the notion of universal depravity. He adds the notion of hostility—enmity against God. And then he adds another notion: inability. Did you see that? “Indeed, it cannot.” Then he explains it again, verse 8: “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

Turn over a few pages further, 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Another very well-known verse, verse 14. 1 Corinthians 2:14: “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him and he’s not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” He is a natural man and in his natural condition he has no capacity for understanding spiritual things.

Well, we could pile these verses one on another forever. Let me give you one more that I think illustrates it well, and that is John chapter 8, verse 45. John 8:45. Here we have an event in the life of Jesus where he’s confronting the Pharisees regarding their rejection of him. And he tells them that you rejected me because you’re the child of the devil, and the devil always was a liar, and you believe him all the time, and you’re just like him. But verse 45: “Because I tell you the truth, you do not believe.”

Now notice that the idea is not concessive. It’s not “although I tell you the truth”; it’s causative. “Because I tell you the truth, you don’t believe.” If I told you a lie, you’d believe that. But because I tell you the truth, you don’t believe me. You’ve seen that before, haven’t you, in witnessing? You go up to a friend and say, “Look, you try your best, God will have you.” He’ll believe that. You tell him, “You try to keep the Ten Commandments—don’t tell him you have to keep them perfectly—just tell him, try to keep the Ten Commandments, God will have you.” He’ll believe that. Or if you tell him something really stringent, like, “If you’re as sincere as you can possibly be, God will have you.” Impossible as that is, he’ll believe that. But if you tell them, “Look, Christ did all the work himself. There’s nothing you can do to contribute to it. You must flee to Christ and fall on him for mercy and God will have you freely because of what he did.” “Yeah, I don’t know about that.” Because I tell you the truth, you won’t believe me.

We talked about this last year in our Sunday School series. Remember the big words, “noetic effects of sin”? The effects of sin on the mind? And how is it construed? Misconstrued reasoning? It’s not that these people are dumb. It’s not that they’re stupid or uneducated or anything like that. It’s just that when it comes to spiritual things, there’s a hardness, a blindness, that they’re just not able to see it. Paul will say it in 2 Corinthians: the god of this world has blinded their minds. They’re under the authority of Satan, walking according to his dictates, and there’s a blindness and an inability then to understand the things of the Spirit of God. You present them with the glories of Christ, they just don’t see it.

And as I’ve said it so many times, sometimes it frustrates you when you witness to people you love and you want to say, “Don’t you see this?” And no, they don’t see it. And that’s the problem. This is the effect of human depravity. The Apostle Paul gives his testimony the same way: “I was persecuting the church. I was very zealous for it. I was giving everything I had in great sincerity to the service of God in persecuting the church. God interrupted me one day and he opened my eyes. He revealed his son in me and I saw Jesus as I’d never seen him before.”

Well, that’s your testimony. That’s my testimony—that God must break through this blindness. I think I’ve told you before of that evangelist I heard one time that said he was convinced that he could convince any open-minded man or woman to become a Christian. And of course his statement smuggled in something; it smuggled in the assumption that there are some open-minded people out there. And that’s just the problem. There’s an inbred hostility. The natural condition of man is that it is opposed to the things of God and cannot understand it. And it does not lie within your ability to open the eyes of anybody. If that’s the case, and here’s our point, if that’s the case, then clearly God must make the first choice. And salvation must come in its first instance from God’s side. So once we have recognized the biblical teaching on the condition of humanity in sin, we have said, by implication, God must choose.

Divine Sovereignty

All right. I’d be happy to chase that further, but you can ask me about it further if you would like afterwards. We must move on. Looking at the broader theological context of the plan of salvation, God taking the initiative. The first was human depravity. The other then is divine sovereignty. Now again, this could take us forever, but let’s take a quick look at that. Look at Psalm 115, the 115th Psalm. I plan in most of these messages, by the way, to take a text and work through it for much of the message. Today we’re looking at several different passages to handle these quickly.

Psalm 115, look at verses 1 to 7: “Not unto us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory for the sake of your steadfast love and faithfulness. Why should the nations say, where is their God? Our God is in the heavens. He does all that he pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths but do not speak. They have eyes and don’t see. They have ears, cannot hear. And they have noses and cannot smell. They have hands, cannot feel. Feet, they can’t walk. And they do not make a sound in their throat.”

So he is contrasting here the gods of the heathen around them with the God of Israel. And the big difference is: God can, they can’t. They may be fashioned in such a way that they have ears, but they don’t hear a thing. They have mouths, but they can’t speak. They can’t do anything. By contrast, God is the God who can. Now, that raises the question then, what does God do? And the answer is given to us in verse 3: “Our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he wants.” And that, in brief, is the definition of divine sovereignty. God does whatever he wants to do. The other gods can’t do a thing. They can’t hear a thing. God can, and he does. And in fact, he does whatever he wants, and that’s all he ever does—is what he wants to do.

Let’s look at another very famous passage in that regard, Daniel chapter 4. This again is well known. If it’s not, it should be. Daniel chapter 4. This is in the passage where Nebuchadnezzar has been put out to pasture for a while. He comes back. He confesses that his sense came back to him. In verses 34 and 35, he says, “At the end of the days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever. Why? Because his dominion is an everlasting dominion. His kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing. He does according to his will among the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and no one can stay his hand or say to him, what have you done?”

Notice “all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing.” What does that mean in this context? It means they don’t have a say. It means they have no say when he does what he does. He does according to his will. Where? Among the hosts of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth. That is everywhere. Heaven, earth, wherever it is, God does what he wants and no one has another say. He rules.

So what is divine sovereignty? It is God doing what he wants to do without interference. No one can stay his hand. No one can challenge. He does what he wants. He’s not accountable. So we could say divine sovereignty is the exercise of God’s divine supremacy. He is God over all. His sovereignty is all of that working out. I think a very helpful explanation of divine sovereignty comes from—Gene Halverson will like this—from A.W. Tozer. A. W. Tozer wrote a wonderful little book, The Knowledge of the Holy. Tozer is a wonderful author almost all the time. He is the most Calvinistic Arminian you will ever read.

And he has a chapter in that book, Knowledge of the Holy, on the sovereignty of God. And in the first half of the chapter, he explains it like this: Divine sovereignty consists of three things: God’s omniscience, God’s omnipotence, and his freedom. His omniscience—if there were any datum of knowledge anywhere unknown to God, his rule would fall at that point. But in fact, he knows all. Omnipotence—if there were any force, any power anywhere outside of God’s grasp, his rule would fall down at that point. But God is omnipotent. He’s omniscient, he’s omnipotent, and he’s free. He does what he wants to do, when he wants to do it, how he wants to do it, with whom he wants to do it. He’s unaccountable to anyone else. Omniscience, omnipotence, freedom. Now, the second half of the chapter, he throws out everything he wrote in the first half of the chapter, but Tozer’s first half of the chapter I think is very helpful.

And the Bible says all of that under the metaphor of king. God is king. He’s not a democratically elected president. He’s not a president who’s frustrated by two houses of Congress and a judiciary branch. He’s not a president who, if we don’t like him, gets voted out next term. He’s king. And he does whatever he wants to do. He’s free. And the Bible presents that to us in terms of not only God’s omnipotence, his power, but it presents it to us under the term authority. He not only has the power to do what is right, to do what he wants; he has the right to do what he wants. It’s like that old joke we used to tell: if a 500-pound gorilla comes in the room, where does he sit? Wherever he wants to. That’s not quite the point here with God. He’s omnipotent, all right, but he can do what he wants because he has a right to do it.

And why does he have the right? Because it’s his. He made it. So for example, Psalm 24 verses 1 and 2: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell in it. Why? Because he founded it on the seas, the rivers.” He made it, it’s his. Deuteronomy chapter 10 verse 14: “To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest of heavens, the earth and everything in it.” It’s all his. And that’s why God can say in the Psalms, “If I were hungry, would I tell you? All the cattle on a thousand hills are mine.” Everything out there is mine. I made it and he has rights over it to do with it whatever he wants to do. That’s divine sovereignty.

And the point then is that God is always prior. He’s not contingent. He does his will in all that he does. He always maintains the initiative. He’s never in competition. He’s never contingent. He does according to his will. Now the Bible gives us some terminology specifically to tell us all of that and there are big words like “predestined” and “foreordained,” and that kind of vocabulary is given to us in the scriptures just to drive that point and to summarize it crisply: the decrees of God.

The Bible also gives us some all-encompassing statements to say that. God works all things according to the counsel of his own will. All things work together. God works all things together for those who are called according to his purpose. All things he does as he pleases. In fact, let’s look at that one in Ephesians chapter 1, and I want you to see the breadth of the statement. Ephesians chapter 1, verse 11: “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined [well, there’s that big word, but notice how it’s phrased], having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his own will.” God works all things according to his will.

Now the Bible reflects this just in the narrative through scriptures as well and I think this is just a fascinating thing to observe. For example, in scripture, it makes these specific applications of the universal sovereignty of God. If, for example, the biblical writer in the Old Testament wants to tell us there was a famine, he doesn’t usually say—very rarely will he say—”there was a famine.” What he says is, “God withheld the rain.” Or, if the famine ended, he doesn’t say, “it rained.” “God sent the rain.” “God sent a mighty wind.” “God threw a great storm.”

Sometimes, like in Jonah, the language is very graphic. He hurled a great storm at the sea. God threw the lightning down to make it strike where it struck. Or, if a woman cannot have a child, it might say, “She was barren.” But more often, it says, “God closed her womb.” Or if she can have a child, “God opened her womb.” And same in the New Testament. Whether it’s the hairs of your head that God is keeping track of and numbering, or if it’s the sparrow that falls to the earth, none of it happens apart from God.

In fact, that kind of approach to looking at things, seeing things from God’s standpoint as universal sovereign over all that happens, it could at times, if you didn’t read the whole Bible, it could at times leave you with the impression that God doesn’t work through second causes. In fact, he does. But there’s such a conviction on the part of the biblical writers that God rules over all that is—yes, over secondary causes, but God rules over all it is—that we have to, if we’re going to trace it back to its origin, say God did these things. If calamity hits a city, isn’t it God who sent it? And over and over again, they trace it back. All things that happen—these are traceable to God working out his own purpose.

And so we have these all-encompassing statements. We have that specific vocabulary. We have the biblical narrative. We even have some specifics in the wisdom literature that are fascinating. “The lot is cast into the lap, and the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.” You get the dice and you throw it. God’s behind that, too. “The king’s heart is in the Lord’s hands. As rivers of water, he turns it wherever he will.” God ruling over every aspect of life.

Now, we’re here in Ephesians. Notice here, again, how he states this: “In him we’ve obtained an inheritance, having been predestined [that is predestined to salvation] according to the purpose of him who works all things, according to the counsel of his will.” So what he’s saying here is our election to salvation is just one specific application of this broader doctrine of God’s universal sovereign rule. God works all things according to the counsel of his will and that’s no less true with regard to salvation. God takes the initiative in that as he does in all things. In fact, there’s even discussion among theologians: should we properly discuss this doctrine of predestination under the category of theology proper, doctrine of God, or should we discuss it under soteriology, doctrine of salvation? Is this a salvation theme or a God theme? Now here you see it’s a God theme, but almost every time you see it in scripture, it’s a salvation theme. Of course, the idea is that this is all interrelated—that God rules over all things, and salvation is no exception to it.

I’m going to take another minute. Let’s look at Matthew chapter 11. Look at one more passage. Matthew chapter 11, verses 25 and 26. Some months ago we worked through Matthew chapter 11, you might remember. Just to remind you here of a couple of points that Jesus makes in this regard. Matthew 11:25 and 26. In context here, remember Jesus has been pronouncing woes against the cities because they had seen him and they had heard him preach, they had seen his miracles, and yet they had rejected him. And so, verses 20 and following, Jesus pronounces woe on them because of the great responsibility they have having heard him.

And then he says, verse 25: “At that time Jesus declared, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and you’ve revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.” A couple of observations here in this passage. Number one, God does not owe salvation to anyone. That’s implicit in the passage, isn’t it? Otherwise, you could fault him for not giving Tyre and Sidon and Sodom more information than they had. If they had heard it, they would have repented. And Jesus says, “No, you’ve hidden it from them. You didn’t give them that information. You’ve kept it from them.” Now, why didn’t God give that revelation to Tyre, to Sidon, and to Sodom? Jesus answers, verse 26: Because he didn’t want to. That was his gracious will. He revealed it to some, and he hid it from others.

So number one, first observation here: God doesn’t owe salvation to anyone. And the second observation is just the implicate of that: God bestows salvation sovereignly. In fact, verse 27 tells us the same about the Son: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” That God is sovereign in these matters.

Now keep in mind the background to all of this. Here is a humanity that is universally and unanimously in rejection of God. It pictures God as, “I would, they won’t,” and rather than just ripping out the page, God chooses a people whom he will save. And sovereignly he determines who will be saved and who will not. Now we’ll see more of this specifically in the doctrine of election, and then when we look at Romans chapter 9 at some length. Our purpose here was to look back then at the broader theological context of God’s sovereignty and salvation—the plan of salvation. One, because humanity is what it is in sin, the initiative belongs to God. He didn’t have to save anybody. But if anyone is going to be saved, it has to be because of God’s choice. And number two, that is just a specific application of God’s universal sovereignty. He works all things according to the counsel of his own will, including saving sinners.

Why Is It Important To Know All Of This?

All right, now quickly, why is it important to know all of this? Why do we need to know all of this? I’ll give you two reasons. Number one, it is important for us to know that God is God. And especially in a culture like ours in which God has been reduced to something significantly less—that God is basically our errand boy; he owes it to us to do certain favors. And to have this kind of God who himself determines who is to be saved and who not, that’s just over the top. It is important to us always to know that God is God.

And two, closely related to that, in order to worship and praise God rightly, we must know that salvation is entirely of grace. It is entirely too much like us to strut, to take credit for something that doesn’t belong to us, even in this matter of salvation. And it’s here in this doctrine of election that it’s established once and for all that salvation is of the Lord. Here we learn—we want to use this Reformation slogan—here we learn to say soli deo gloria. Not just Deo gloria, to God be the glory, but to God alone be the glory. In this teaching, we learn to bow. In this teaching, we learn to be humbled. And in this teaching, we learn to revel in the fact that salvation is by divine grace alone. And here we learn to rejoice that our salvation is dependent and grounded in nothing to do with us, but it is grounded entirely in work from God’s side.

Here is the God who chose to save sinners who were rebelling against Him, and to save them, sends His Son to do all the work necessary, and sends His Spirit to draw them to Himself in faith, to His glory. Let me say this to any of you who are not saved—particularly any of you children here growing up, and you’ve heard the gospel and you’ve heard it over and over again—don’t dare think that you’ll get saved when you want to. You’ll get saved when you’re ready for it. Don’t ever think that all of this lies in your hands. You must know that this lies in God’s hands and that you have no hope, whatever, but to fly to God for mercy.

And the great thing is, he says, “If you come, I’ll have you and I’ll not turn you away.” And if you come to him and ask for mercy in Christ, he’ll save you and you can go away from there saying, “I was chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.” And every one of us must learn to rejoice in the fact that our salvation is grounded not in anything about us, but it comes to us from God’s side entirely. Amen.

Let’s pray. Our Father, it is a great thing for us to know this at our church here. We thank you that these are familiar themes. We pray that you will make them firm in our minds and our thinking, so that we may praise and worship you rightly. Lord, make this to mark our devotional thoughts every day in prayer and in praise and worship. Help us to acknowledge and just revel in the fact that you have been gracious to us—how great that we should be called the children of God, and we are by your working. Thank you for your grace. In Christ’s name we pray, amen.

If you’re a member of the Church of Christ by virtue of saving faith, we invite you to participate.