Grace Bible Church
Pastor Teacher
Robert R. McLaughlin
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Before we begin our subject this evening, I want to unserstand the difference between what is known as Monergism and Synergism.
Not monogenism which is the theory that the human race has descended from a single pair of ancestors. But monergism which states that the regeneration of an individual is the work of God through the Holy Spirit alone.
As opposed to Synergism, which, in its simplest form, argues that the human will cooperates with God’s grace in order to be regenerated.
When a baby is born into the world and God determines that the baby will be endowed with eyesight, is this a violation of the infants’ free will?
This is God’s world which is governed by His rules and persons born into it it have to live with what God blesses them with.
The moment God opens our spiritual eyes, we see. The moment He unplugs or circumcises our ears, we hear.
Likewise, the moment God capacitates us with understanding and illumination, we believe.
God isn’t doing the believing for us, He has only restored the spiritual capacity we were meant to have.
If God miraculously gives new eyes to a blind man and he sees, it is not God who is doing the seeing but the man, yet all glory goes to God because without this new capacity, sight would not be possible.
We infallibly exercise our own faith because we have been given the new capacity to do so by the work of the Holy Spirit, who has disarmed our hostility to God by giving us a new moral perception.
And that is why EPH 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that [the grace, the salvation and even the faith] is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
This is why the apostle Paul wrote in 2CO 6:1-2, And working together with Him, we also urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain‑‑
2CO 6:2 for He says, “At the acceptable time I listened to you, And on the day of salvation I HELPED YOU”; Behold, Now is “the acceptable time,” Behold, Now is” the day of salvation “‑‑
“cries out” = the present active indicative of crazo which means to cry but really it means to shout out with an intensive and urgent form of speaking – “speaking [preaching] in an emergency.”
Sennacherib was the prince of Assyria who ruled Assyria from 705 to 681 BC.
This was the great crisis which came to Israel because of a large rejection of the first advent when the Jews did not believe that TLJC was coming.
JOH 1:11 He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.
Present tense = a pictorial present tense which presents to the mind a picture of Isaiah’s message in the process of occurrence.
The active voice: Isaiah gave the message, producing the action of the verb in a dramatic speech in a time of a national crisis.
The indicative mood is declarative representing the verbal action from the viewpoint of reality.
You must remember that the theme of the book of Romans is generally the integrity of God.
The integrity of God has 2 parts, that is His perfect and absolute righteousness and His perfect and absolute justice.
Election, which is the subject here in Rom 9, cannot be viewed apart from God’s integrity.
When you think about election, we all think about God’s sovereign choice, but it’s very dangerous to separate or disengage His sovereign choice from His justice and from His omniscience from all the other attributes of His deity.
Election is a subject that cannot be viewed apart from God’s integrity.
Because God is just and righteous, He will never violate your free will.
LUK 6:13 And when day came, He called His disciples to Him; and chose twelve of them, whom He also named as apostles:
EPH 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that [the grace, the salvation and even the faith] is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
The point is that when the word of God says that God has chosen us it is not a violation of our free will.
The question is posed, which we all have already looked at it, and it’s answered emphatically in ROM 9:14 ‑ there cannot be injustice or unrighteousness in God.
There can be no opposition or contradictions between His divine attributes. This means He can never be unfair or unjust with His divine decisions.
When He elected us, He elected us according to not only his sovereign choice but according to His omniscience, including His foreknowledge.