This message is about the confidence God's choice gives us in outreach
Outreach is about people. Outreach in Inwood is about people so let’s see some of the people of Inwood. Please bring up the first picture.
Here’s a look at some of the people the section of Manhattan called Inwood. Look at that little man getting back on his bike. Look at frustration on his sister’s face. That’s a long-suffering mama in the middle. If you’re interested in outreach, it’s because you’re interested in people.
Since it’s been so hot this week, let’s see some of the people of Inwood, New York in the winter. Please bring up the next slide.
This picture is from myinwood.net, which is run by Cole Thompson. Cole gives local history talks on the first Tuesday of every month over lunch at the Inwood Farm restaurant. That’s a little bit about the people of Inwood, New York. They’re not better than the people of Inwood, Iowa, and they’re not worse.
My hope is that you want to engage with people like that. My hope is that you want to engage with people like that around here. This doctrine that we’re going to consider this morning has been misused to avoid people here and there. Don’t blame that on what we’ll study, though. Any truth can be twisted. We’re trying to correct this misuse and see that this second doctrine of grace gives us confidence to reach out. God’s choice gives us confidence in reaching out. That’s the claim of this sermon.
We will study this in three points. First: why God needs to act first. Second: election in real time. Third: principles for outreach.
First: why God needs to act first. Last week we saw that left to ourselves, none of us would ever bend the knee to God. We saw the extent of our problem. We saw that unless Christ takes the throne of the human heart, the monster of sin sits on that throne. This monster won’t go willingly and—deep down—none of us actually wants it to go. We are, by nature, sin-sick unto death. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” as Jeremiah 17:9 puts it. That’s no more true for the people that you saw in those pictures than it is for the next child born in Inwood, Iowa. We really are all the same deep down in that regard.
This means that if anyone is ever going to want to please God, God is going to have to make it happen. God needs to act first. He must give new birth to, “children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God,” as the apostle John put it. It’s God’s decision. It’s God’s will. It’s God’s choice.
This is what is called unconditional election. Last week was T—total depravity. Now we’re on U—unconditional election. We’re familiar with the word election. It has to do with choice. Grace is about God’s choice. The human heart can’t and won’t choose to give itself over to God. It can’t because it’s broken itself in sin. It’s dead in sin. It won’t give itself over to God because it’s terrified of God. “Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed,” as John put it.
The human heart can’t and won’t open up to God, which means that if it’s ever to open up to God, He must open it. Now God only does anything by choice—His choice. He only opens up individual human hearts by His choice. The apostle Paul wrote to a group of people who had their hearts opened by God. He made clear to them that this miracle had only happened because God had chosen them to experience it; “He chose us in [Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight.”
That’s the “election” half of unconditional election—the choice. The “unconditional” half of unconditional election says that this choice of us is not about us. God didn’t choose to change anyone because He saw anything in them that made them choose-able. He didn’t see anything in my heart that made it seem more openable to Him than Hitler’s heart. God’s choice isn’t conditioned on anything He finds in anyone He chooses. It’s unconditional—unconditional election. As the Lord told Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”
Now, we long for unconditional love, right? We want love that will take us as we are. We long for love that’s about someone’s choice to simply love us and not about our worthiness. Well, here it is.
It’s what we want and yet is so humbles us that we wrestle mightily with it. This doctrine we’re studying is widely despised. Part of the reason is that while we want to be loved at our most unworthy, we don’t want to believe that we really are at our most unworthy. We want to be taken at our worst, but we don’t want to believe that we are at our worst. We want the grace of God to be able to reach anyone, but we don’t want to accept that our hearts were or perhaps still are just as unopenable as Hitler’s. In other words, even though we love the idea of grace because it’s all about God’s mercy and compassion, we are very uncomfortable with the idea of grace because it’s all about God’s choice of whether to give this mercy and compassion we don’t deserve. Hear God’s words to Moses again, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”
This doctrine is widely despised because it’s humbling. It’s also despised because it’s misunderstood. People confuse it with fatalism thinking that it makes human choice irrelevant. They think it turns us all into robots who make no decisions for ourselves. They say it strips us of all dignity—some of us are objects to be picked up and put on God’s mantle-place while others are objects to be tossed into the fire.
You can see the logic of that if you just look at one side of the equation. Listen to just one side of it in Paul. ‘You will say to me then, “Why does [God] still find fault [with people]? For who can resist His will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?’
Read just that and you’ll walk away thinking that maybe choice doesn’t matter after all and maybe we do have about as much dignity as objects in a pile waiting to be sorted for heaven or hell. You can see how that might lead to treating others as mere objects. You can see how that might lead to arrogance within Christianity. You can see how it might lead to looking down on those outside. You can see how it might poison outreach for those who feel they still need to do it because, after all its commanded. You can see how it might poison outreach for those on the receiving end who are treated as if they’re objects of wrath. You see this poison in Israel in the Old Testament, and you see it throughout church history. Do we see it in us? That’s a question to consider when considering outreach.
That’s what can happen if you only look at one side of the equation. You can see why people might despise it so let’s look at both sides of the equation. This same Paul who stressed God’s sovereign choice—‘Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?”’—stressed the human side of the equation too. He put his full weight on both sides—the divine side and the human side.
Paul stressed the human side in how he dealt with people. Think about the way he treated his jailer in Philippi. Paul treated him as if he truly could choose to come to Christ. Paul treated him with the dignity we extend to those we view as just as responsible as ourselves. Paul did that with more people than anyone else we read about in Scripture. He is the poster child for outreach. In in him, you see no arrogance at being in the in-group. God had every right to pass Paul over and leave him dead in sin and Paul knew it. You see a recognition that he’s only in grace by grace and that if this grace saved him, it can save anybody. That’s why these are called the doctrines of grace.
Don’t take unconditional election to mean that people never choose. People do choose to come to Christ. Hopefully you have. You really chose even though sin had made it totally impossible for you to choose as we saw last week. You chose because, as Article 6 puts it, “God graciously softens the hearts, however hard, of the elect and inclines them to believe.” It was really you, really choosing, and you were really choosing because God opened your heart.
It was you who heard, “come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,” and you who wanted rest and you who came, and you came because God opened your eyes to how much you really needed rest. Now that’s the basics of why God needed to act first. Now we’re going to see how this works out in real time. That’s our second point.
Jesus told his original disciples, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” That’s election. That’s choosing. If you know much about these men, you also know that it was unconditional. Peter wasn’t bringing anything to the table that made him choose-able.
Let’s see how that worked out in real time. Peter’s brother Andrew was really impressed with John the Baptist. One day, Andrew heard John the Baptist say that Jesus was someone special. Andrew asked Jesus some questions, and then went back and told his brother Peter about Jesus. Peter came and met him. Sometime later, Jesus was teaching by a lake and so many people crowded around him that he asked a man if he could borrow his boat to row out and teach from. That man was Peter. After Jesus finished teaching, he told Peter to row out into the deep water and cast the nets down. Now Jesus could teach, but what did he know about fishing? Peter, though, didn’t want to be rude and so he did what Jesus said. They caught so many fish that the nets began to break. When Peter saw it, he told Jesus, “Depart from me. I am a sinful man.” Jesus told him, “from now on you will be catching men.”
Now at what point in what you just heard was Peter a robot with no will of his own? Was it when he chose to go with his brother Andrew to meet Jesus? Was it when he chose to let Jesus use his boat? Was it when he chose to show some respect to Jesus by listening to his amateur fishing instructions? Was it when he broke into tears upon recognizing that this Jesus had something to do with God and then telling Jesus to get lost because Jesus wouldn’t want anything to do with him? Was it in Peter’s choice to drag that boat to shore and leave everything and follow Jesus? Somebody show me where that wasn’t really Peter doing exactly what Peter wanted to do in that moment. No, it really was Peter all along, and yet Jesus was just as right to say, “Peter, I chose you.” That’s what the choice looks like in real time. It looks like God, “graciously soften[ing] the hearts, however hard, of the elect and inclin[ing] them to believe” rather than leaving them in their own hardness.
Now I used the phrase “in real time” because some groups try to look at this from the perspective of eternity. Rather than looking at, “receiving the gift of faith within time,” as Article 6 puts it, they try to decipher whether or not they were chosen before the creation of the world. They try to see all of this from God’s perspective, which they can’t do. This leads to “inquisitive searching into the hidden and deep things of God,” which Article 12 warns against. This leads to longing for some sort of vision or experience to prove that they’re chosen. Some of you grew up in this. You can’t see this from God’s perspective. You have to see it in real time as we saw with Peter.
Think about Lydia. She heard what Paul said about Jesus and she wanted in. We’re told that happened because, “The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message.” She, like Peter, came to Jesus because she really wanted to not because she knew she was chosen. It was only looking back that they saw that they wanted to because the Lord had given her a new heart. Don’t try to look at this from God’s perspective. Just come to Jesus. If you want to come to hm, and please him, and honor him, it’s because you were given a new heart by God’s choice. That’s election in real time. Now let’s see some principles for outreach from what we’ve studied. That’s our final point: principles for outreach.
Our first principle this morning is that we should have confidence in outreach because it’s not about what we can do but what GOd can do. You see this in Paul in Corinth. He was getting tremendous pushback, but the Lord told him, “I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.” Paul didn’t need to be afraid that his work would come to nothing. The Lord had many people in that city—those people just didn’t know it yet. They hadn’t received faith in real time. You see this in Pisidian Antioch as well. Some Jews were heckling Paul. Paul said, “Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles.” Luke writes, “When the Gentiles heard [the gospel], they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed.” They were appointed and so came to Jesus. Paul could go into new cities with confidence not because he was so very skilled in changing hearts or because those hearts could open themselves but because the Lord opens hearts.
Our second principle from unconditional election is that nobody is too far gone. You can’t get more dead in sin than dead in sin and that’s what we are all by nature. It was no harder for God to open my heart than it would have been for him to open Hitler’s heart. You see that in Jesus’ words, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them.” You see the confidence that anyone’s heart can be changed in Jesus’ words, “All those the Father gives me will come to me.” God doesn’t see the worst as any less savable. That’s why William Booth the founder of the Salvation Army said, “go straight for souls, and go for the worst.”
Our third principle from unconditional election is that we ought to have confidence for the future of the church. Paul was discouraged that more Jews—people who grew up like him—didn’t want to follow Jesus. He thought about Elijah’s similar complaint and told the Romans, ‘[well] what was God’s answer to him? “I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.” Let’s not fear as if the future of the church depended on us and our work or wisdom. It’s about God’s work and wisdom. It is by grace. That’s what Paul saw and so he reached out in confidence as to what God could do, not in fear as to what he couldn’t do.
Everyone needs God to act first. That’s true about you, for me, and for everyone we saw in those pictures of Inwood, New York. Getting wrapped up in knots about God’s choice, though, isn’t what led to whatever happened in real time that brought about anyone putting faith in Christ. What happened was that somebody—a parent, a teacher, a friend, a Bible translator—thought that you really could come to Jesus, and so they told you about Christ. God was working. You’re only in by grace and if that grace saved you, it can save anyone. If it saved me, it can save anyone. Amen.