Chosen by God
Tom Shrader works through the doctrines of grace, establishing from Ephesians 2, Romans 9, and John 6 that mankind is spiritually dead in sin and incapable of responding to God apart from divine intervention. He traces how God's sovereign election — choosing Jacob over Esau before either had done anything — illustrates that salvation rests entirely on God's mercy rather than human will or effort. The series moves toward the conclusion that understanding our total inability and God's free choice should produce not anxiety but profound gratitude, captured in the story of a ninety-year-old man who wept upon grasping that God had chosen him.
“As a result of Adam's sin, all mankind is spiritually dead, unable to either comprehend or believe spiritual truth — and if God doesn't do something in our life, we never could or would respond to any spiritual truth, including the gospel.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Grace for Life, Grace for Living
Recorded: 2008 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 42 min
Themes: election, grace, salvation, spiritual death, God's sovereignty, gratitude, mercy, faith, doubting salvation, feeling unworthy, new believer, struggling with pride, seeking assurance, questioning God's fairness, skeptic exploring faith, mature believer deepening theology
Scripture: Ephesians 2:8-10, Ephesians 1:3-6, Romans 5:12, Romans 3:23, 2 Chronicles 6:36, Ecclesiastes 7:20, 1 Corinthians 2:14, 1 Corinthians 1:18, John 6:44, John 3:16, 2 Thessalonians 2:13, 2 Timothy 1:9, Titus 3:3-5, Romans 1:18-28, Romans 8:28-30, Romans 9:10-20, John 9
Theological Themes: doctrines of grace, total depravity, unconditional election, sovereign election, soteriology, original sin, monergism, regeneration
Full Transcript
Grace for Life and Grace for Living
Let me invite you to open your Bibles to the book of Ephesians, chapter 2, verses 8 through 10. These three verses form the basis for this series, titled Grace for Life and Grace for Living. The distinction matters: grace for life means I need grace to bring me from spiritual death to life, and then I need that grace to sustain me. We see both of those in these three verses.
"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one might boast." Our salvation is a movement from death to life, and the source of it is grace — unmerited favor. Paul cannot be any more clear: it has nothing to do with anything we have done, are doing, or will do. It is not on the basis of our works, otherwise we would boast.
That is what we mean by grace for life. Grace for living is found in verse 10: "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we could walk in them." If all God wanted to do was get us to heaven, then at the point of conversion He could simply have taken us there. But He left us here, and He left us here for a reason. Now we have the privilege of being His hands and His feet on this earth — and yet we cannot do that on our own. We need that grace both to bring us into His family and to sustain us once we are there.
The Effect of Adam's Sin
This is our third week in the series. In the first two weeks we focused on how we got into our condition — that is, sin. Paul tells us in Romans 5:12 that it was through one man's sin, Adam, that sin entered into the world, and death through sin. He then says all have sinned, and repeats it in Romans chapter 3: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." We traced this back through Adam, and when Adam sinned, he plunged us all into ruin. We did a flyover of Genesis chapter 3 to establish that foundation.
Now we are at a key point in this discussion about salvation, and here is the issue: what effect did Adam's sin really have on us? That we all sin — every head nods at that. Romans 3:23, 2 Chronicles 6:36 — "there is no man who does not sin" — and Ecclesiastes 7:20: "for there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin." We all sin. We all have it. So the real question is: what is the effect of that sin on us?
In Ephesians chapter 2, Paul uses some striking imagery in verse 1. He says we were dead. Past tense — we were dead, which means we are now alive. How did we move from death to life? Answering that question brings us back to the effect sin had on us, and there are two key passages of Scripture that address it directly.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14, Paul tells us that the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God — they are foolishness to him. Then he raises the stakes: nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. Though we are alive physically, we are dead spiritually. As natural men and women — as we enter this world — we are not open to the things of God. Paul says it earlier in 1 Corinthians as well: to those who are perishing, the cross is foolishness, but to those of us who are being saved, it is the source of power. The effect of sin in our life is that we cannot receive the things of the Spirit, and we cannot know them. That is the condition we are in. We are dead.
Three Categories of People
We may look around and observe that some people seem better than others. That is, in fact, the argument Paul works through in Romans chapters 1, 2, and 3. He looks at three categories of people. In Romans chapter 1, he looks at those who are deeply depraved and deeply lost — people whose condition is evident, and he traces a progression there. Then he addresses people we would perceive as generally good — they make mistakes, but overall they seem decent. Then he addresses religious people. After examining all three groups, he arrives at the same conclusion: "There is none righteous, not one." They may look different from one another, but the verdict is the same.
To illustrate this, consider a funeral home with three slabs, each holding a body. The first is a man who died in his sleep — he looks so peaceful you feel you could simply wake him up. Next to him is a man who was crossing the street, miscalculated, and was struck by a car. He has lacerations, bruising, some swelling. And on the third slab is a man who was in a severe motorcycle accident. Here is the key question — the critical question: which one of these three
The Condition of Natural Man
The key question is: what is the deadest? And the answer is that they are all dead — equally dead. You can only die; you cannot get any deader. That is Paul's whole point about mankind. Some people you look at and think, that person is clearly lost. Others look like pretty good people, but you can see there is no religion about them. Then there are the religious people, and Paul says that though they look different from one another, they are all dead. They cannot receive natural or spiritual things, because those things are from the Spirit.
The second verse we spend some time on is John 6:44. This is Jesus speaking: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." The word "draws" means to compel. This is at the very crux of this issue, and I will tell you from thousands and thousands of conversations that this is a key point. What we are talking about here is natural man — our ability, apart from Christ, apart from the Spirit of God, to come to Him. We are talking about ability, not permission.
Someone will say, "You always talk about this, but listen to John 3:16 — 'For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.'" You understand what that verse says, don't you? It says that if you believe, you have everlasting life. But it has nothing to do with this discussion. It simply says if you believe, you will be saved. You have the permission. That is why we preach the way we do — we preach to everybody who will listen, we share, we proclaim the truth, and we pray that God is working in that person's life. But that is permission. There is not one verse in the entire Bible that says natural man has the ability to come.
In fact, Scripture teaches specifically that natural man does not have the ability and does not have the desire. As a result of Adam's sin, all mankind is spiritually dead, unable to either comprehend or believe spiritual truth. Man is blind and deaf to the message of salvation — not even interested. He may be interested in spiritual things, but he will create his own god or be attracted to a god that meets his parameters, not God's parameters.
One author writes this: the view one takes concerning salvation will be determined to a large extent by the view we take concerning sin and its effect on the human race. That is exactly what we are talking about in this series — how are we saved, redeemed, delivered from the effects and bondage of sin? When you come to grips with what the Bible teaches about our condition — namely, that we are dead — it becomes obvious that if God does not do something in our life, we never could or would respond to any spiritual truth, including the gospel.
A Student's Question
It just so happens that I am currently teaching the foundations of the Christian faith — Christianity 101 — in the midweek study, and we are dealing with the depravity of man. Though I did not spend nearly as much time on it there as we have spent here over the past two weeks, a man came up to me after class and said, "I believe that is true because that is what the Bible says, and if that is true, then how could I be saved?" I just listened. Then he answered his own question himself. He said, "For me to be saved, something had to happen to me, because I could not do anything. And it would seem to me that if it was the gospel and something happened to me, then God must have done something in my life. What do you think, Tom?"
I said, "You know what? It really does not matter what I think. What does the Bible tell us?" That is the real question. What I think, what I feel, and how I respond has a tendency to mess the discussion up, not enhance it. What does the Bible teach?
The Sovereignty of God
The Bible tells us that after mankind sinned in Adam, we were lost and needed a Savior. The Bible also tells us — and we spent a whole week on this — that God is sovereign. Here is what that means: He is above and superior to everything else, supreme in rank, independent of all others. He does as He pleases. He is God, so that everything that happens in this world is either caused by or allowed by God. He is all-knowing and all-powerful, immutable, a God of wrath and a God of love, of justice and mercy and grace — but He is sovereign.
Is it important to understand that big picture of God? Yes. Just this week I was talking with someone who, five years ago, faced a truly tragic event in their life. As I walked with this person through some of that, I saw the importance of the theology of the sovereignty of God and the comfort that comes from being able to say, "I do not have all the answers, but I know God is sovereign." My admiration, respect, and love for this person was enhanced about a thousand times as I watched him walk through that event, steeped in the theology of the sovereignty of God, and comfortable to let God be God without needing to know why the tragic event took place.
On the other hand, I meet people all the time — and this is not to say we have it all together — but I meet people from other churches for whom an event like this comes into their life and it absolutely destroys them. It sends them into a tailspin. They are angry at God, they are spinning downward, and they are trying to figure it out. I understand that completely. But ultimately I come to rest on my theology, and I will push the question: what do you think?
God's Absolute Freedom in Salvation
When people encounter difficult things about God, they often say, "I don't really know why God would do that." And oftentimes we even reconstruct our theology and make God a little bit weaker so He doesn't have to take the guilt for this. But He is all-knowing and all-powerful. Everything in your life is either caused by or allowed by God — that is what makes Him God.
Now, that is the big macro view. We narrow it down to salvation, coming to faith in Christ, and here is what we know: God is going to do as He pleases. He is God, and He doesn't need anybody's permission to intervene in any life. Man sinned, and the sentence was a death sentence. God is under absolutely no obligation to save anybody. He could very easily say, "You sinned, you live with it," and save absolutely no one.
He could have intervened and said, "I'll save all of you." He did neither of those. We know there are people who care nothing about the things of God. We don't for a second think that there are no people who are, in fact, going to spend eternity in hell. He didn't save everyone — but we also know people who love God and love Christ, and we know some were saved. So we know that God moves in the lives of certain people.
What Scripture Says About Election
This brings us into words like election — God's choosing. How did God choose? Let me take you through some passages. In Second Thessalonians chapter two, verse thirteen, Paul is writing to this church and he says, "But we should give thanks to God for you, because brethren, beloved by the Lord, because He has chosen you from the beginning for salvation." We are dead. We now know that there are some who are alive. How did they come to life? God has chosen them for salvation. It was an eternal decree.
You are in the book of Ephesians, so go ahead and look at chapter one, verse three: "Blessed be to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places." And then: "Just as He chose us in Christ, in Him, before the foundations of the earth, that we be holy and blameless in love." Here is His motivation — love and mercy. "In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the will of His kind intention, to give praise and the glory of grace which He freely bestowed on the beloved."
God chose to save some. He would call them His church, or the elect, and He did that before the foundations of the earth, predestining us to move into the family of God. He did it for His glory, for His pleasure, for mercy.
The Blind Man and the Display Case
I love the scene in John chapter nine. Jesus and the disciples are coming into town, and there is a blind man. The disciples say to Him, "Why is this man blind?" They give Jesus two options — the traditional thinking of the day. Either he sinned and that is why he is blind, or his parents sinned and that is why he is blind. Jesus said it is neither of those. He is blind that he might become a display case for the work of God. Then Jesus intervenes and the blind man can see.
What Jesus is saying is, in essence, the same thing to you and me about our salvation. We were dead because we had sinned. Why were we saved? Because God chose us from the very beginning. He chose us not because of anything that He saw in us. Second Timothy chapter one, verse nine says: "God saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own good purpose."
Titus and the Nature of God's Mercy
Turn to the right from Ephesians, past First and Second Timothy, and slow down at Titus. Paul is writing to Titus, and in chapter three, verse three, we find a miniature of what we see in Ephesians one and two. He writes: "We also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another." That is who we were — dead in our sins and trespasses. "But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of the works which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy." Driven by love and grace and mercy.
So now we come to the appropriate question. The appropriate question, to me, is not someone processing this and asking, "Why didn't God save my mom, or my dad, or my husband, or my wife, or my kids?" That is not the appropriate question. The appropriate question is: why did He save you? Why did He save me? Why did He save us? He was driven by His love and His mercy for us.
Not Because of Anything in Us
Paul could not be any more clear, returning to this again and again, emphasizing that it is not on the basis of works. It is not on the basis of things that we have done, or are doing, or will do. God was not attracted to you because He looked at you and said, "There is something really special there — she is a diamond in the rough, and if I can just get her on My side and take off those rough edges, who knows what she can do for Christ." That is not how God worked.
God chose us before the foundations of the earth so that we would become display cases for the grace and the mercy that He extends to us. For many of you, this is familiar territory. I hope you never grow tired of hearing it — I never grow tired of talking about it. But I know that even if you have been around a while, you still have these questions. Let's see if we can address some of those, not based on what Luther says, or Calvin says, or Spurgeon says, but on what God says about this. Let's turn to Romans.
The Sovereignty of God in Salvation
Paul has issued this blanket indictment of all mankind: we are all guilty. We are justified before God and reconciled. While we were still helpless, Christ died for us and demonstrated His love for us. While we were yet sinners, He died for us. We who were dead to sin are now alive to God, and we now have the power to battle sin and have been freed from the bondage of sin.
Romans chapter 8, beginning around verse 28, Paul takes things up a notch when he talks about how God causes all things to work together for good. We will spend a significant amount of time there in an upcoming week. Then comes this beautiful chain of salvation starting in verse 29: whom He foreknew He predestined, whom He predestined He called, whom He called He justified, and whom He justified He glorified. This is God moving all the way through that process. He determines who He is going to save, He predestines them, He calls them, He declares them righteous, and He takes them to heaven.
Paul then asks the wonderful question: if God is for us, who can be against us? What can separate us from the love of God? We will unpack those in due course. But as if to illustrate this whole point, Paul, in Romans chapter 9 verse 10, gives us a compelling and powerful illustration of the sovereignty of God in salvation — and in all of life.
The Illustration of Jacob and Esau
"And not only this, but there was also Rebecca. When she had conceived twins by one man." Notice what Paul is doing here. He is setting up these conditions deliberately. Here is one woman, one man — the same heritage, nothing distinct about their background that would explain what follows. And then there are two children born into this same family.
So if anyone is holding on to the idea that they are chosen because they are part of a particular family, a particular nation, or a particular church — no. These are twins, with one father, Isaac. And the twins were not yet born. Paul could not drive the point home more clearly than this. They had not yet been born, so they had not done anything good to merit salvation or anything bad to forfeit it.
"So that God's purpose, according to His choice, would stand, not because of the works, but because of Him who calls." It was said to her: "The older will serve the younger." That is a total reversal in that culture — the younger always served the older. Yet here the older would serve the younger. Why? "Because Jacob I loved and Esau I hated."
Consider what Paul is presenting. Two in the womb, all the same conditions, and God says: Jacob I love, Esau I hate. On one He would show extraordinary favor. On the other He would leave him to divine judgment. One would receive exactly what he deserves — justice. The other would receive mercy.
No Injustice with God
Paul knows how that settles in our hearts. He knows it is difficult to hear and to digest, and he anticipates that response. He says in verse 14: "What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be." We immediately find ourselves thinking, that is not fair. But Paul is saying: take a deep breath and understand that one gets justice and one gets mercy, but no one gets injustice.
The fact that God decides to give mercy to one person does not obligate Him in any way, shape, or form to give mercy to everybody. At that point it would not be mercy anymore. It is not based on something we have done — if it were, it would be a reward. It is grace, unmerited favor. It is God shedding mercy on Jacob in spite of Jacob, not because of him.
I understand why that is hard for us — it is hard. And Paul jumps all over it and says: you had better understand something here. We are talking about God. Verse 15: "For God says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and compassion on whom I have compassion.' So then, it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on the mercy of God."
Man's Will and God's Grace
This idea of salvation and grace is not driven by man and man's desire and man's choosing. This is where we need to return to what we already know. Natural man cannot understand spiritual things. No one can come to the Father unless the Father draws him — that is a given, that is established. Paul reinforces it here. Salvation does not rest on man's will. It rests on God's grace and God's mercy. It is God who gives us the desire and indeed compels us to come to Him in repentance and faith.
"For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, 'For this purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power, that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.' So then, He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires."
The Verdict on All Mankind
And this is not just about Pharaoh. Turn back to the beginning of Romans and you find a foundational truth being taught. Verse 18: "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth." That is, they actively hold it down. They have all the evidence they need. As Paul says in verse 19, what is known about God is evident within them.
"For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power, and His divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made. They are without excuse." So sometimes we ask the question: what do I need to do to go to heaven? Paul actually tells us here what you need to do to go to hell. Verse 21 gives the answer: you do not need to do anything. You are doing just fine — just keep going.
"For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give Him thanks. They became futile in their speculation."
Professing to Be Wise
Professing to be wise, they became fools, and then they made an exchange. Have you ever made a bad exchange? Maybe you are upside down in a house or a car, or you put some money into something and it has gone bad. Here is the worst exchange of all time: these people have exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the image in the form of a corruptible man, of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
In verses 24, 26, and 28, there is a phrase that appears three times. In your Bible, I would suggest putting a box around the phrase, or a line, so your eye is drawn to it in these three places. You will see the pattern, and your mind will go back to this very moment. In verse 24, "God gave them over to their lust." In verse 26, "God gave them over to their passions." In verse 28, "God gave them over to the depraved mind," and they just begin to down-cycle, getting worse and worse and worse.
Total Depravity and God's Restraint
This is so important. The Bible does not teach that we are as bad as we can possibly be in every action — even Hitler did not kill his mother. What the Bible teaches is that we are as bad off as we can possibly be. The slate was dead. Some of us exhibit that sin more than others.
Every once in a while, God will simply pull back His restraining power and let you see something like a Jeffrey Dahmer. What Dahmer would do is have sex with men and boys, then cut them up and eat them. There are a whole lot of people who say, "I don't understand why we would have a Jeffrey Dahmer." My thought is this: I don't know why we don't have more of them, because God restrains.
That is also why public policy matters. Can you legislate morality in terms of changing someone's heart? No. But God gives us government to provide at least some measure of restraint. That is why voting yes on marriage on 102 is important. That is why policy matters, and that is a legitimate role for government to fulfill — to help restrain evil within the culture. It does not change a heart, but it can alter behavior based on those restrictions.
When God gives people over, and you see a Jeffrey Dahmer or an Adolf Hitler — whoever you fill in the blank with — all that is is who you really are without God restraining you. That is all that is. So when people say, "There but for the grace of God go I," that is exactly true, even if you do not fully believe it. My rule of thumb on this is that we think God is okay, but we do not think He is that big, and we do not think we are that bad.
God's Sovereignty and Human Responsibility
Now let us go back to Romans 9. He is talking about Pharaoh, and here is what he says in verse 18: "So then God has mercy on who He desires and hardens who He desires." Then the question comes: "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?" Paul is anticipating the next question — this isn't fair. If God is going to choose who He saves, how can He hold me responsible for not coming? That is the argument Paul is dealing with here, and it is a normal, natural, thoughtful, semi-profound question.
There are two points. One: I don't know. But I know this — Paul sets them side by side and lets them hang there, and I do not need to resolve that tension. What we are saying is that we are going to let God be God. We are going to let God do what God does. He chooses to send no one to hell because they refuse to come to Christ; they go to hell because they are being punished for their sin. It is not as though they want to come to Christ and God is standing in the way, saying no.
Am I responsible? Yes. And yet am I born with this nature? Yes. How does that work? I don't know. But He is God, and He said it. That takes us back to a fundamental principle: somewhere in here, we have to get away from what I think and what I feel and simply say, "I don't know — and that is what it says." That is not intellectual suicide. Intellectual arrogance would be trying to explain away something that God deliberately leaves hanging in tension.
"On the contrary" — verse 20 — "who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, 'Why did you make me this way,' will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?" Here is what He is saying: you are not God.
The Book of Job
There is a wonderful scene in the book of Job. Even if you know hardly any scripture, you know Job. Here is what you know: suffering like Job, the patience of Job. And I love to point out that Job did not have the patience of Job until chapter 42 — it took him a long time to get there.
Life starts out going well for Job, and then Satan, with God's authorization, begins to bring attacks against him. He takes away a little, then a little more, then a great deal, then more still. And right when people are saying, "Well, at least you have your health," God takes his health away. Job has now lost everything he has, except the one thing he might wish to be rid of — the wife who is still with him. And what does the wife say? "Curse God and die." Everyone needs support like that.
Job is holding on. And now his friends are pressing him: "You must have done something, Job. You must have..."
The Limits of Human Understanding
Job finally reaches a breaking point where he wants to take his case directly to God. He says, "God, I want to ask you something." There is this beautiful moment where God responds, "Okay, Job, just one second — first, let me ask you something." And then there is this litany of questions.
Let me read you just some of them so you get a flavor. God says to Job, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you know so much." I love the sarcasm here — it is very attractive to me, and apparently I am more godly than I ever dreamed, because I appreciate it deeply. God continues: "Did you know where the gates of death are located? Have you seen the gates of utter gloom? Do you realize the extent of the earth? Tell me about it if you know. Where does the sun come from? Where does the darkness go? Can you take it home? Do you know how to get there? And of course you know all this — you were born before it was created. You're so very experienced."
God goes on and on with these questions — they span three chapters. Finally He says, "All right, Job, what was it? What did you want?" And Job essentially says, "You know what? I forgot. I don't remember anymore. I'm just going to go back."
That is the same posture we need here. I cannot fully explain these things, but I know this: it is what the Bible teaches. The Bible is not something that owes you an answer to everything. It simply does not. God has an infinite mind, and you are a finite creature. Either He did not tell you something because you do not need to know it, or because you cannot understand it. But this is what the Bible teaches about salvation.
Let me say it again: it does not matter what you think or feel, or what I think or feel. What matters is what the Bible teaches.
A Story of Grace at Ninety Years Old
The last time I taught this, I received an email. It described a small group discussion about a couple who had been asking for prayer for their ninety-year-old father. He had grown up in a church that did not accept any of this doctrine at all. They said he had been very cranky and very difficult to live with. They had been bringing him to church over the past few years and were surprised he even wanted to continue coming when he heard this teaching on the doctrines of grace.
One Sunday after church, they went out for breakfast following the service. All of a sudden, the father burst into tears and sobbed for five minutes. When he stopped crying, they asked him what was wrong, and he said, "I'm chosen, and I can't believe God chose me." He went on to say he believed God had allowed him to live this long just to experience that day — so he could know this truth. They said he has been a completely different person since. It is as if somebody had lifted the weight of the world off his shoulders.
I got so carried away reading this email that I read it at the first service and then realized afterward there was one more paragraph — a request not to share this story from the pulpit. But having already told it at the early service, I figured I might as well continue. It is easier to ask forgiveness than permission. And honestly, it is hard for me to honor that request, because this story so glorifies God. There would be no reason not to tell it, except to rejoice in what He has done in these people's hearts. And He will do the same, and has done the same, in your heart and mine.
Letting the Bible Speak
I have all sorts of friends who want to argue about these things. They get hung up on the terminology — Calvinism, limited atonement, total depravity, and all the rest. And what I have tried to say throughout this series is: that is fine with me. Let us just let the Bible say what the Bible says about this topic. In the places where it speaks, let it speak clearly, and let us accept it as our final authority — even if we do not fully understand it or like it, because that is what He says.
Here is what we have tried to do over the years: we have condensed the doctrines of grace into one sentence with three words — God saves sinners. Next week we are going to pick up right there and ask, okay, now what? We are dead, God has chosen us for salvation — now what happens? We will pick up right there.
A Word Before We Close
I want to remind you, as I do almost every week, that we hear all sorts of stories about life — praises like this one, and also hurts and pains. We want to be there to help you the best we can. One of the ways we can do that is by having our pastoral staff available at the front of every service. They are here strictly to minister to you and to pray with you. If something requires more than that, they may not be able to provide extensive counseling on the spot, but they would be happy to arrange a time to meet with you or point you toward the right person. Please take advantage of that.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for these amazing, wonderful truths. God, I pray that we would indeed become a display case for Your grace and mercy. Father, I confess all sorts of questions along the way, and I also confess a desire to try to answer them outside of Scripture. But we let the Bible say what it says, and here is what it says: You, the Creator God, save sinners like me. You save us for a purpose and a reason — to walk with You, to live for You. I pray that we would live lives that demonstrate that truth. Amen.