Introduction and Overview
Tom Shrader opens a multi-week series on God's plan for salvation by introducing the Five Points of Calvinism and contrasting them with the five points of Arminianism, which he traces to the Synod of Dort in 1618. He argues that the Calvinist view—that God is fully sovereign in election, redemption, and regeneration—is the historic, biblical position of the church, while Arminianism, which makes salvation ultimately dependent on man's choice, represents a departure from that foundation. Throughout the message he draws on the teaching of Jesus, the writings of Paul, and church historians to establish that the doctrines of grace are not peripheral but central to a right understanding of the gospel.
“God saves sinners. If He doesn't intervene, and He doesn't change our destination, we will continue to hell. But the Creator God of the universe has selected people — His people — He will intervene, and their destination changes from hell to heaven.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: God's Plan for Salvation (2002)
Recorded: 2002 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 1 hr 19 min
Themes: salvation, sovereignty of god, election, grace, gospel, predestination, calvinism, god's plan, new believer, questioning salvation, doubting god's control, searching for answers, young adult, skeptic exploring faith, longtime churchgoer, wrestling with theology
Scripture: 2 Thessalonians 2:13, John 6:44, John 14:6, John 6:37, John 10:11, John 10:27-29
Theological Themes: soteriology, total depravity, unconditional election, arminianism, doctrines of grace, reformed theology, synod of dort, divine sovereignty
Full Transcript
Introduction: Why This Series Matters
In today's message we begin what could well be the most important series we will ever teach at East Valley Bible Church. I know that sounds like hyperbole. Many people talk about the most important series until the next one comes along and seems more important. But I don't think I could teach a series more important than this one. The title is "God's Plan for Salvation," and that is precisely what makes it so significant — we are going to be talking about your salvation.
We are really talking about the gospel. What is the gospel? How were you saved? What did God do to save you? What was your involvement? How is God's plan for salvation worked out in your life individually, and in our life corporately? We have subtitled it "Understanding the Five Points of Calvinism."
The Word "Calvinism" and the Reactions It Generates
I know that the very phrase "Calvinism" can be explosive. For some of you it is a brand new term, so you can't even have a reaction to it — and that's fine. For others of you, it generates all sorts of emotion, much of it critical or negative, and most of that uninformed.
I was at Forest Home doing a summer camp, five or six years ago. It was the third night, the night out by the pool. They had a big band playing, and it was a really neat time. I was just walking around, going from table to table, greeting people at the conference.
I came to a table with three or four couples from the same church. We were talking, very pleasant, and they said, "Tell us about your church." I said it was a nice church, a good church, and so on. They told me they had spoken with people from our church who were also there, and that those people and the Forest Home staff had described it as a young, growing church. Then they asked what denomination we were part of. I said we were not part of a denomination — we were a Bible church. They said, "Okay, what is it that you teach?" I said that wasn't too complicated: we teach the Bible. They said, "What do you believe?"
I thought to myself that I would probably never see these people again, so I did something I would not typically do. I said, "Well, we're a Calvinistic church." It got as quiet there as it is here right now. One of the men said, "What's a Calvinist?" Another man said, "Well, those are the people who believe that God does everything — He chooses who's going to be saved, He sends people to hell, He predestines everything. God does everything." The first man asked, "Is that what a Calvinist is?" The second said yes. Then he asked, "Is he a Calvinist?" The other man said he thought so. And the first man said, "He's not a Calvinist. Look at him." Apparently there is some visible way you can tell by looking. He said, "He's not a Calvinist — you've heard him for three days. He's funny. He has fun." So I went and got a cup of coffee and never went back, and left them sitting there.
What Prompted This Series
I made some notes that night, and when I returned home I taught essentially the series we are beginning now. What motivates me this time is much the same thing. I so often hear people say that their friends would never come to East Valley Bible Church because it is a Calvinistic church. People say all the time they would never attend because we believe God elects those who will be saved. Whenever we deal with things like that, we are almost always dealing with a caricature.
The reason you may have been here for two or three years and never heard the term "Calvinism" is simply that I don't use it — not because we wouldn't embrace it, but because it has lost its meaning in the culture we are in. At the same time, I think it is important that we understand what this really means. So we are going to take the next six or seven weeks, answer some questions, raise some questions, and try to address what I believe is a very, very important issue.
This discussion is going to generate in you lots of questions and lots of reaction. If you just got saved, or you don't have much of a church background, or you are not even a Christian but have no church background, this will not be that hard for you. It is really hard for those who have been around church for five, ten, or twenty years and for whom this is new material.
I met a woman in the lobby after the last service. She was with a friend — someone who had come to me three or four weeks ago and said that the last time I taught this series, it changed her life. She said, "This is my friend. I've invited her here. We were raised together. We went to church school together. We were in church all our lives." And her friend had never heard any of this either. I am anxious to see what God is going to do. It is entirely possible that you have been around church a long time and have never heard this, or have only heard it in hushed tones — "Calvinism" — as though it were something to whisper about.
Questions We Will Address
Here are a couple of questions for today. First, what is Calvinism? Second, was that poolside definition accurate, or was it just a caricature? And third, why the reaction? Why do people react so strongly to this?
It is amazing to me the reaction this topic generates. The only reason it still surprises me is that I have a tendency to forget what it was like the first time I heard it. I was invited to a gentleman's house where a speaker had come in to talk about the sovereignty of God — specifically the book by A.W. Pink that bears that very title. When we were all done and gathered in the kitchen, I said, "You know what? You are so full of it. This is so wrong."
From Resistance to Conviction
What happened to me was strange. I went home, and as I started to read my Bible, what I discovered is that it was all through Scripture. I couldn't get away from it. I found myself saying, if I want to be intellectually honest, I have to say that this is true. You have verses that are pretty simple. Here is 2 Thessalonians 2:13: "But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren, beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation." Pretty hard to dance around those things. Once you see them, you see them everywhere.
I quickly began to say these things must be true, but it took me almost three years to totally be able to embrace, understand, and articulate these truths.
What Is at Stake
Do they matter? I think they matter enormously. What is at stake here is something more than just a battle of words. What is at stake here is the gospel itself. And what you need to know is that the view we as East Valley Bible Church embrace is, sadly, a minority view today. That is why you get that reaction. That is why people respond.
This may seem new to you. I have great sympathy for those of you for whom this seems new, or for whom you struggle, or you have just a flinch away from this, or you want to cut and run — certainly not wanting to sit through seven weeks of this. I understand exactly how you feel. But what you are dealing with here is one of the most important issues you can deal with. I have underestimated it.
One author writes this: "Ours is a culture in which the tendency is to exalt what is human and diminish what is divine. Even in evangelical circles we find increasingly attractive a view of God in which He is one of us, as it were, partners in the unfolding drama of life." That is what is at stake.
Two Views: Calvinism and Arminianism
You have two views, and here are the handles we are going to put on them. You have a Calvinistic view that says God is sovereign — God is God. That is what the very definition of the word means. God, from beginning to end, is a God who is in control. He is supreme. We exist by His grace and His mercy, and we are under His lordship.
Then you have another view. The handle for it is Arminian. The view is simply this: yes, God is good and God does great things, but He cannot and does not accomplish what He wants to accomplish without the assistance of man. So here is what is at stake. One view magnifies God and minifies man. The other view magnifies man and minifies God. That is what is at stake. It is a big deal.
Here is the definition. I did not want to get bogged down in some large theological book, so I went to the dictionary. The dictionary says this: Calvinism is the group of Christian doctrines of John Calvin and his followers, especially those doctrines of predestination, of salvation, of the elect, solely by God's grace.
The Historical Roots of Calvinism
I want to make a point here that we will likely return to in all of these sessions. Yes, the doctrines we identify as Calvinism were embraced by Calvin and his followers. John Knox, John Owen, Whitefield, Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, and more recently R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur, and James Montgomery Boyce — these men would all embrace these doctrines without question.
Let me add another group, because one of the things I hear is this: if Calvinism is true, if God has elected those who are going to be saved, then why would I ever share my faith? Why would I evangelize? Consider William Carey, the father of modern missions — a Calvinist. Dr. Livingston — a Calvinist. The Calvinists were at the core of the missionary movement. The Calvinists have been mainstream throughout the history of the church, really until just the last couple of hundred years.
The point I want to make is that while the doctrines we identify as Calvinism have some origination with Calvin and forward, the teaching itself goes all the way back to Augustine, to the Apostle Paul, to Jesus Himself. Do not think that when we embrace Calvinism we are embracing some truth that was uncovered in 1618. That is not the case. What we are saying is this is what the Bible teaches, especially in the areas of predestination and the salvation of the elect.
What Predestination Means
Now, the word predestination always scares people. Here is what it means simply. "Pre" means beforehand. "Destiny" refers to the place we are going, our destination. What we mean by predestination in its most elementary form is that we as believers have our final destination decided by God. If you are here today, and if you will be there when the roll is called up yonder, it is because of God, not because of you.
Here is where this starts to rub the wrong way. You might say: wait a minute, I made a decision. I chose to follow Him. I am the one who believed in Him. I repented, didn't I? Yes, you did. But it begs the question — why? Why did you believe? Why did you repent? Why is it that someone sat down with you and a friend, shared the gospel, and you responded while your friend did not? Are you a little bit smarter than they are? Do you simply have the advantage of a good church background? Why did you respond? Why are you headed to heaven?
The reason is because the Creator God of the universe, before the foundations of the earth, chose you to be saved. That is why.
A Question Deferred
Now that raises another question: if He chose me to be saved and intervened in my life to save me, did He then intervene in the lives of lost people and predestine them to hell? We will address that in session four.
The idea here is that salvation of the elect is solely by God's grace. It is remarkable to me — and this speaks not just to the church but to our culture as a whole — how far we have fallen in our understanding of what those words even mean.
God Saves Sinners
Words like "saved by grace" don't mean anything anymore. You'll sit around with your friends and they'll say, "Well, I believe that Jesus saved me. I believe I'm saved by grace." And then you start to define this. "Oh, you're saved by grace — you mean God intervened and He gave you a grace you didn't deserve? Unmerited favor. He gave it to you, and you didn't do anything." "Oh, no, I don't believe that. I believe God did that, but then I did something, too."
That is not what we believe at East Valley Bible Church. Here's what we believe: God saves sinners. The Creator God of the universe saves lost people. If He doesn't intervene and He doesn't change our destination, we will continue to hell.
But the Creator God of the universe has selected people — His people. He will intervene, and their destination changes from hell to heaven. Their life here, which has no meaning and no purpose and no direction, now has meaning and purpose and direction. Our overarching desire in life now is to live a life that brings honor and glory to God.
We are Christians today based on His mercy, His grace, and His love for you individually, for us as His people. This is a big deal. Charles Spurgeon, the prince of preachers, says this: "I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ, and Him crucified, unless we preach what we nowadays call Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism. Calvinism is the gospel and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel unless we preach the sovereignty of God."
Practical Ramifications
That's what's at stake here. This is a huge issue. This is not how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. This is not something that just has intellectual benefit, although there is an intellectual dimension to it. This is something that has enormous practical ramifications for your life.
It's going to affect the way you evangelize. It's going to affect the way you live your life. It's going to put joy into your life, because God gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And when you worship, you worship in a whole different way.
We saw it last night. One of the songs Tim and the guys sang was called "Without You" — without You, we can't do anything. When they were all done, I said, "Guys, I want you to come back when we're done with the message and do that again." I'll bet everybody has a different view of that song when it's over. We listened to the message last night, we sang that song, and you could see people say, "I got it. I see it." There's the difference — because without Him, you cannot do anything.
A Quick History Lesson
Here's a quick history lesson. I love parents because they always come along and say, "My kid doesn't know history. They don't know what century the Civil War was in. They don't know anything about World War I. They don't care about history." And I'll say, "You're right. Talk to me about the Synod of Dort." And they'll say, "I don't know anything about the Synod of Dort." That's because we're guilty of the same thing we accuse the kids of.
The New Dictionary of Theology gives us a little of the origin of the issue: "Considerable discussion had arisen in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 17th century concerning the understanding of divine sovereignty." Do you see the issue? The issue is the sovereignty of God. Who is God? Is God really sovereign, really independent of man? Is He the supreme, overriding authority or not? Does He rule without any restrictions or not?
The Synod addressed the teaching of Jacob Arminius, 1560 to 1609, a Dutch seminary professor. When we use terms like Calvinism, it flows from Calvin's teaching. We are going to oppose that with the teaching of Jacob Arminius — and that is Arminianism.
Arminius taught and began to gather a following around a body of truth that stood against what the church had taught essentially for 1,600 years. There had always been a slightly aberrant view, always a minority report. But under Arminius, this began to gather steam, so much so that a year after his death, in 1610, the Remonstrance document was drafted. This is the teaching we would identify today as Arminianism.
It is important to note that the five points of Calvinism were not something Calvin himself came up with. They are something the church came up with at the Synod of Dort to correct — and this is a very pointed word — the heresy of Arminianism.
The Five Points of Arminianism
Here is what Arminianism believed, and it has five points. The first is that God's election is based on the foresight of man's faith. In other words, God elects — you can't get away from that word throughout Scripture — but here is how they say He elects: He looks down the corridors of time, sees those who will select Him, and then selects them. Have you heard that? Have you said that? Do you have friends who believe that?
Here is the problem, and it falls apart quickly. If God chooses people based on the fact that they were going to choose Him, then God is not really sovereign or choosing at all. And that doesn't even get into the deeper problem: you now have natural man — fallen man, speaking of any man, woman, boy, or girl who does not have the Holy Spirit living in them — choosing Christ to begin with. That is impossible.
The second point is that the intent of Christ's death was the salvation of all human beings. In other words, they believed Christ died for everybody — that Christ paid the price for the sin of every person who ever lived. Here is what follows from that: if indeed Christ did that, and most of us would agree, unless —
The Arminian Position and Its Cultural Dominance
If you are a universalist, the problem with people being in hell is that we now have people in hell for whom Christ died. Fallen man is incapable of any good without the intervention of the Holy Spirit. Arminians would agree with that, but they would add that the Holy Spirit is working in everybody's life equally — no special favor to God's people. They also hold that saving grace may be resisted.
I actually attended a church for years where the pastor said this: "God's voted yes, Satan's voted no — now you decide." In other words, God wants you to be saved, God sent His Son to die on the cross, God has done everything He can do, and now it is up to you. That is a very popular view. When my girls were smaller, they sang in a play, and one of the songs was, "The Holy Spirit is a gentleman — He always knocks before He comes in." That is what the Arminians say.
What we say is that He is more like a DEA agent. He kicks that door down, He comes in, He rips your heart out, and He gives you a new heart. If He does not do that, He will knock and knock and knock, and you are dead — you cannot hear Him, you cannot get to the door. The last of the five Arminian points concerned perseverance. They thought you could be regenerated and lose your salvation, though they acknowledged they needed more study on the matter.
J.I. Packer summarizes it in one sentence: "Arminianism made man's salvation dependent ultimately on man himself. Saving faith was viewed throughout Arminianism as man's own work." Do you see what happens? God certainly plays a role, and there are things God must do, but ultimately it is all about man.
Here is what I want you to see. As you look at those five points, that is the dominant thought in the culture we are in today. Most Christians would say that God elects based on looking down the corridor of time. Most Christians would say that when Jesus died, He died for everybody. Most Christians would say the Holy Spirit is working in everybody's life, unlocking the goodness within us. Most Christians would say that saving grace can be resisted and that ultimately they will choose — and many would add that they could lose their salvation. All of that is centered around man.
The Synod of Dort and the Church's Response
This is important — and I have said it several times already today. Do you see that in the history of the church, that view is the aberrant view? It is the minority view. It is not what the great minds of the church have taught. Go to any respected church historian and ask them to name the great theologians in the history of the church. They did not believe that. The church could not allow it to stand unchallenged.
So in 1618, the Synod of Dort — a body of church leaders from the Netherlands and other churches — came together. They held 154 meetings over the course of seven months. Their purpose was twofold: first, to examine the five points of the Remonstrance, and second, to compare those points to Scripture — not to what Calvin said, not to what Arminius said, not to what Augustine said, but to what Scripture said. When they did that, they discovered that Arminianism — the dominant view in our church culture today — is incompatible with Scripture. They rejected it.
Throughout this study we will highlight recommended resources, because many of you are just fifty dollars away from being a Calvinist. Two books to note today: *Chosen by God* by R.C. Sproul — you can handle it, trust me — and *The Five Points of Calvinism* by David Steele and Curtis Thomas, a great little resource book. Both are available in the courtyard today.
Here is what Steele and Thomas write: "No doubt it may seem strange to many in our day that the Synod of Dort rejected as heretical the five doctrines advanced by the Arminians, for these doctrines have gained wide acceptance in the modern church. In fact, they are seldom questioned in our generation." Is that not sad? "Salvation was viewed by the members of the Synod of Dort as a work of God's grace from beginning to end; in no sense did they believe that the sinner saved himself or contributed to his salvation."
We played no role. God had to intervene. Why? Because the ability of fallen man to believe the gospel is itself a gift from God, bestowed upon those whom He has chosen to be objects of His unmerited favor. It was not man but God who determined which sinners would be shown mercy and saved. That, in essence, is what the members of the Synod of Dort understood the Bible to teach. God gets bigger, and man gets smaller.
The Five Points of Calvinism
That was not enough for the church. They said we must respond — we cannot let this simply sit out there. And so out of the Synod of Dort came the five points of Calvinism. Once again, this was a declaration by the mainstream church saying we stand on the shoulders of Augustine, of Paul, and most importantly of Jesus in Scripture. That is where we stand.
The five points of Calvinism are as follows. First, fallen man — natural man — cannot believe the gospel. Second, God's choice of a sinner is the cause of his salvation. The reason you are a follower of Christ today is because God intervened. Third, Christ's death actually saved His people. When Jesus went to the cross, His intention was to save a specific group of people. Jesus did not waste one drop of His blood — not one drop was shed that did not accomplish its design and purpose, which was to save His people from their sin.
The fourth point is that God's grace always accomplishes its saving purpose. And fifth — notice the Trinity at work — those chosen by God, redeemed by Christ, and given faith by the Spirit are actually saved forever. When God, before the foundations of the earth, decided whom He would save based on His own good pleasure, and Christ went to the cross and shed His blood to accomplish that saving purpose, the Spirit seals and keeps those whom the Father chose and the Son redeemed.
The Five Points as a Seamless Garment
For that specific group of people, at the appointed time, the Holy Spirit will intervene and cause us to be born again. Now let me give you something that I think is very important. We number them one, two, three, four, five, but only for purposes of discussion. This is a seamless garment. You'll find people that say, "I'm a three-point Calvinist, I'm a two-point Calvinist, I'm a four-point-five Calvinist." I think you either take them all or you don't take them at all. I just read some Randy Alcorn material — and I love what he writes — but he says he only buys four of them. I think they all flow together. You take them all as a seamless garment.
I said at the beginning, this isn't about any human teacher. This is about what Christ taught. I want you to see how Christ's teaching manifests itself in the five points of Calvinism.
Christ's Teaching and the Five Points
The first point: fallen man cannot on his own believe the gospel. Jesus says no one can. This is absolutely key, because now we unlock the condition of man. What condition is man in? Is he dead in his sin and trespasses or not? When you begin to deal with the condition of man, all of a sudden God has to intervene or no one would be saved, because no man can save himself — even to the extent of merely believing. This speaks to ability. No one can. If you can find one verse — not ten, not five, not two, just one verse — that says natural man has the ability to understand and believe the gospel, we will recant from all of this.
The second point: God's choice of a sinner is the cause of salvation. "Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him." Yes, He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to Him except by the Father. Who is going to believe that truth? Those who are granted insight into the truth.
Third, Christ's death actually saved people. "I am the good shepherd, and the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep." When Christ said "It is finished," He was saying: I have shed the blood necessary as a propitiation — the sacrifice — to pay the price for the sin of the elect.
Fourth, God's grace always accomplishes its saving purpose. "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me." There is none that the Father has chosen who will not come.
Fifth, they will never leave. "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me, and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand." Do you see the comfort there? If you are a Christian today, you are as certain of heaven as the saints who are already there. Nothing, no one can break that union with God. That union was established by Him. The depth of that communion is based on my grace and my obedience as He works in my life, but the union itself is a gift — established by Him.
The Glory of God as the Center of Salvation
Whenever we have a proper discussion of salvation, it always centers on God. The primary goal of redemption is the manifestation of the glory of God. God's glory is manifested even in the punishment of the wicked — those sent to hell as punishment for their sins. His justice is seen. His glory is demonstrated. We are display cases of the grace and work of God.
One author writes: "Even a brief summary of the doctrines of grace is sufficient to reveal what is at stake in the conflict between Calvinism and Arminianism. Ultimately, it is our view of God." That is what is at stake here. This is about God and who He is. This isn't about Calvin. This isn't about Arminius, though we will use those names. It is not about Sproul or Augustine. This is about God and who He really is.
This will radically change your life — because it radically changes your view of God. You will begin to see Him for who He really is, and maybe for the very first time, with the full depth of your being, you will begin to worship Him. If you are walking around thinking, "Well, there was a mustard seed of faith, but I produced that mustard seed," then you have diminished the glory of God by at least a mustard seed — which is too much. It is in the teachings of Calvin, flowing from the teachings of Scripture, that God's glory is seen.
Ground Rules for Our Discussion
Here are some ground rules for our discussion. Number one, the Bible is our final authority. We will quote these teachers, but ultimately Scripture settles every issue. Second, we are going to proceed logically. My experience is that we want to run ahead to conclusions rather than systematically work our way through the discussion. You cannot do that. You cannot take calculus until you have had algebra. You cannot jump into this discussion and say, "I want to talk about this, and then we'll go over here, and then over here." I have been through this enough to know we end up on rabbit trails and all over the place. We are going to deal with this material, but we are going to do it logically.
We will answer the what-ifs. Why evangelize? That is the question that always comes up. If God has decided who He is going to save, why evangelize? What do you do with John 3:16 — "For God so loved the world"? Whoever believes will be saved — what do you do with that? Does not Scripture say that God desires that none should perish? What does that mean? Does not Scripture say that Jesus is the propitiation for not only our sin but the sin of the world? What are you going to do with that? We will deal with all those questions and all those theoretical what-ifs — what does this mean, what about my grandmother, what about my aunt, why would —
Setting Aside Your Background
We will know you have really got this when you ask not "Why didn't He save my aunt, my mom, my child?" but rather, "Why did He save me?" That is when we will know you have truly understood it.
Here is the last thing I want to ask: set aside your background. I mentioned it earlier, and for many of you this is going to run counter to everything you have been taught. You come from families with a godly heritage — a godly mom, a godly dad — and you love them, and you should. They are heroes, and they ought to be. But when it came to this teaching, this is not what they taught you. You need to set that aside, because as great as mom and dad are, we still have to submit what they teach to Scripture. For many of you, this also means a break with the church you have been in for years and what they have taught.
Why Haven't You Heard This Before?
Here is a question I get all the time. As eyes are opened and the scales fall off, I start to hear things like: "Why didn't I hear this before? Why wasn't I taught this before? I've been in church all my life and I never heard this." And people are suspicious, and they ought to be. They come from churches where there are men with seminary degrees — names followed by more letters than a thermometer — and then they come in here and find a broken-down old commercial real estate broker. So I understand the hesitation. You are not going to hurt my feelings. I have that figured out.
Why have you never heard it? Let me give you a couple of reasons. Number one, a lot of churches are afraid that you do not have the capacity to deal with this. Years ago, a group of us in a small group went to meet with one of the local pastors about this issue. When we started to ask questions, what he essentially did was this — very patronizingly — he said, "Boys, you are dealing with some really hard stuff. The greatest minds in the world have argued over this. You are never going to figure it out." Number two, some people simply assume you do not have the persistence to get through it, because it is a process. Number three, some pastors just do not think it is important. I have heard them say it, and I know it is their line: "I believe it, but I would never teach it because it is divisive." I cannot fathom standing before God and saying, "I knew it was true, but it was divisive." I categorically reject all of those reasons.
You Can Get This
First, you can get this. Do you know how I know? I got it. And if I got it, anybody can get it. That is the beauty of this church — the bar is so low at the top that if he got it, you know you can get it. Second, I know some of you will cut and run, but the majority of you are going to hang in there. And if you hang in there, at the end of this you are going to be so gripped by it that even if you initially reject it, you will begin to embrace it. Third, this is absolutely critically important. I cannot say it to you enough. Your whole view of God changes. He gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It is what John the Baptist said: "He must increase, I must decrease."
Why This Teaching Is Driving Our Growth
East Valley Bible Church has now reached a point, size-wise, where we start to show up on the radar screen of people trying to figure out growing churches. They want to come in, look for the recipe, and replicate it. They look at what Gary does. They look at small groups. They look at all of this. But when they talk to me and ask, "What do you think is the key? Why is the church growing?" I tell them: because we believe the doctrines of grace. We cling to the teachings of John Calvin. That is why we are growing. And they look at me like I have eight eyes.
Does it look to you like people are running away from this? I will tell you what I think. I think if you are a Christian and you finally hear this, it is like a drink of cool water on a 110-degree day. All of a sudden all the tumblers click and it starts to come together. What you instinctively sensed — that God was there, that He did elect, that He did choose — you could never quite put it together, and nobody talked about it, so you assumed it was no big deal. It is a gigantic deal. The church fathers died for this. They stood up and said, "If you are going to teach that God looks down the corridor of time and chooses those who will choose Him, you are a heretic." That is strong, isn't it? This is hugely important to you as an individual and to us as a body.
What Is Coming Next
One of the reasons we are working through this right now is that dirt is going to fly in the next week or so. When the conference center is built, one of the possibilities is that we will do two services simultaneously on Sunday morning. That could mean the body automatically has the capacity to absorb another thousand people. I do not want to bring a thousand new people in here and set them on a foundation that is not rock solid. I want you to understand this material, and I want you to understand how serious we are about it.
Here is the teaching schedule for the next couple of weeks. Next week is Memorial Day, and total depravity is too important to cover on a holiday, so we will talk about what salvation really looks like next week instead. Total depravity will be June 2nd and June 9th. Then we are off to summer camp. We will be back June 23rd for election. June 29th and 30th we will cover limited atonement. Then we are gone the first week of July. I have no idea who I am speaking to that week — I just know they called and said, "You'll be at Cannon Beach," and I said, "I'll be there." We will be back on the 13th and 14th.
Coming Up: Irresistible Grace and Perseverance of the Saints
We will be covering Irresistible Grace and Perseverance of the Saints, and then we will summarize. It will take a week to summarize because I want to make sure we tie it all together. As a demonstration of how serious we are about this, on those first five nights we will have a subsequent meeting on Monday night that will be an open forum. Bring your believing friends and we will have a dialogue. We are not going to argue and we are not going to debate, but we are going to answer questions. I will moderate it, there will be some ground rules, and we will work our way through that.
Questions and the Monday Night Forum
I want you to know that you must have questions swirling around in your mind right now, and you need an outlet for them. Please do not email me — not now. We have too much to do before you are ready for email. I will tell you another reason I prefer the Monday night forum to email: we do not get to shepherd you through email. We do not get to see your eyes. We do not get to talk through this together. So join us on those Monday nights.
An Invitation to Bring Friends
This is heavy material, and it is so important. If you have friends at other churches, or friends with whom you have disagreed over the years on these things, bring them. Be patient. Do not run away from it. If you are starting to feel like you might want to step back, or you are telling yourself you are not sure it is worth it, let me assure you — it absolutely is worth it. The glory of God and the sovereignty of God are at stake. It is huge.
Closing Prayer
Father, help us see this truth. God, thank You for these men and women who so faithfully come. I pray that what they hear are Your words and Your truth. God, thank You that You have opened our eyes to salvation. God, open our eyes to this truth. We pray to You in Jesus' name, amen.
Elders Available After Each Service
Beginning now, after every service, we will have a couple of elders up front. If you have anything you want to talk through, they will be here for you. Have a great week, and we will see you next week.