He chose you that you would gain the very glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. He chose you that you would bear his image in heaven. He chose you in the past. He called you, a powerful, effectual call that awakened you from the dead. And granted you clear understanding of the gospel.
and the gift of saving faith. Welcome to Grace to You, featuring the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. It's been said, not all things are good for us to know, so God has not revealed everything to us, and there are some things that are good for us to know, even when we can't explain them fully.
Well, that's certainly true of the doctrine of election. A teaching that may be the most difficult part of salvation to accept. How could a loving God choose some people for heaven and allow others to perish in hell?
Well, stay here on Grace to You as John MacArthur continues his series called The Doctrines of Grace. Today you're going to see what Scripture says about sovereign election. truth that you can embrace even if you can't fully understand it.
Now here's John with the lesson.
Some people think that this doctrine of election is somehow alien to God and somehow alien to his purposes in the world. But that certainly is not true. After all, Clearly, out of all the people in the world, God chose Israel. Out of all the people in the world, God chose. Abraham.
and removed him from Ur the Chaldees. And made him the father of a great nation. That's why Israel is called, Psalm 105, verse 43, his chosen ones. Psalm 135, 4 says, For the Lord has chosen Jacob for himself. Deuteronomy 7, 6 and 14, too says, The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
And God said, It wasn't because you were better than any other people. It wasn't because you were more attractive than any other people. God said, It is because I, of my own free will, predetermined to set my love upon you and for no other reason. Israel Mine elect. God calls them.
You come into the New Testament and you have the same kind of language. The church is called the elect. The chosen. And this is not some isolated uh term in reference to the church. It's repeated.
In 1 Thessalonians chapter 1 and verse 4, Paul writes to the Thessalonian church, and listen to how he identifies them. Knowing BRETHERN How does he know?
Well, verse 3, I've seen your work of faith. I've seen your labor of love. I've seen the steadfastness of your hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father, and knowing, brethren, by all of that, Beloved of God, His choice of you. You're the chosen. You're the elect.
It's evident. from your life. And one other text, 2 Thessalonians 2.13. 2 Thessalonians 2. Yeah.
And Paul again says to the Thessalonians, we should always give thanks to God for you. Yeah. You don't thank the person for being smart enough to come to Jesus. You thank God. We should always give thanks to God for you, brethren, beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith and the truth.
There wouldn't be any capability for a person to be Sanctified, and sanctification begins at the point of salvation, separated from sin. There wouldn't be any hope of sanctification or any hope of faith in the truth unless God had chosen you from the beginning for salvation. And because he chose you, Verse 14 says, It was for this. This sanctification. This faith in the truth.
That he called you Through our gospel.
so that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. And all this language is consistent. He chose you before the foundation of the world that you should be like Christ. He chose you that you should be blameless and holy. He chose you that you should be ultimately in the presence of his glory.
He chose you that you would gain the very glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. He chose you that you would bear his image in heaven. He chose you in the past. He called you, a powerful, effectual call that awakened you from the dead. And granted you Clear understanding of the gospel.
and the gift of saving faith. Now There's no way that you can conclude from that that this is an ambiguous idea, right? This is not in doubt in the Bible. And I've often said, because I've answered this question myriad times in my life. I have discussed it, I have debated it, I have done so privately and even publicly.
And I have often said: if you believe the Bible, you believe in predestination. If you believe the Bible, you believe in God choosing who would be saved. If you believe the Bible, you believe that God determined who would be saved and determined that that salvation would reach its final conclusion when they are glorified. in heaven. If you believe the Bible, you believe that God effectually calls those that he chooses.
and grants them Faith. And yet with all that clarity, People still resist this Doctrine. Look at Romans 9. Verse 18. Talking about Jacob and Esau, and how God had determined that before they were ever born.
And then in verse 19, The the imaginary uh Opponent. Which helps Paul kind of argue with himself. and continue to clarify His teaching. His imaginary opponent says, Well, you will say to me then, why does he still find fault for who resists his will? I mean, if this is all cut and dried, right?
If this is all determined by divine choice before anybody's ever born, if this is God being merciful to whom he will be merciful and having compassion on whom he will have compassion, if this is not about the man who wills or the man who runs, if this is all about God, then how can he find fault with anybody? How can you blame me if I don't believe? How am I supposed to resist his sovereign and eternal will? That's a fairly reasonable response, wouldn't you think? And this is the bone that people always choke on.
in the doctrine of election. And Paul anticipated it. You're going to say, that's not fair. Because then you can't condemn me to hell. You can't find fault with me.
How am I going to resist his will? Verse twenty. gives an amazing response. Who are you, O man, who answers back to God? Shut your mouth.
That doesn't clarify anything. Who do you think you are? Are you accusing God of unjust punishment of sinners? Are you accusing God of unjust condemnation? Are you accusing God of evil?
You better close your mouth before you say anything else. And the illustration is amazing. The thing molded will not say to the molder, Why did you make me like this, will it? When a potter makes a pot, The pot doesn't talk. Pot doesn't say, Well, I don't want to be this shape.
Make me another shape. This isn't fair. I like to be like this pot, that pot, the other pot. Verse 21. Doesn't the potter have a right over the clay?
To make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use. That is amazing. Don't you dare question God. God's the potter, you're the clay. The the clay is So far beneath the potter.
Inanimate. Dirt. It has no right to even entertained the idea. of speaking to The Potter And as vast as the gulf is between a pot and a potter, even more vast is the gulf between you and God. The potter, verse 21, doesn't he have it right over the clay to make The way he wants to make it?
And then verse 22. Really very, very Powerful. If Or we could say, so what? If God Wants to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known, and so he endures with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.
So what if God wants To demonstrate his wrath. Doesn't he have a right to demonstrate his wrath? Isn't that part of his glory? Can he put his wrath on display? He is God?
Can't God make his power known in his judgment, in his wrath, in his condemnation? Yes, he can, but please notice how verse 22 ends. It flips into passive verbs. It never says God created vessels prepared for destruction. That's double predestination, and the Bible doesn't teach that.
It says he endured with much patience vessels of wrath, passive, prepared for destruction. Not that he prepared for destruction. God doesn't go down the list of humans to come and say, okay, you go to heaven and you go to hell, and you three go to hell and you go to heaven, and you ten go to hell, you go to heaven. The Bible doesn't teach that. The Bible teaches that all men are on their way to hell.
And God chose to rescue some. And he endured the others. Who are headed that way, not because of something God did, not because of a decree that God made individually for them. but because they continue in their sins and are fully guilty. God has every right.
to demonstrate his wrath. And he is as much glorified in his wrath as he is in his mercy. And verse 23 says, He will make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy. And here the verbs are active. He makes the vessels of mercy, he endures those that are fitted for destruction.
God is active. In redemption, he is passive. in reprobation. In Revelation 19, we are told the Lord God reigns. You know, we hear that and we think about a song, you know, the Lord God Reigns, the Lord Reigns.
I don't know if we even know what we're talking about. We say that. What does it mean? It means he makes every decision that's ever been made, essentially. About everything.
He reigns. As the Most High, he rules in the armies of heaven, and none can stay his hand or say to him, What are you doing? He works all things after the counsel of His own will. He's the heavenly potter who takes hold of our fallen humanity like a lump of clay, and out of it He fashions us into vessels of honor, and He endures those who fashion themselves into vessels of dishonor. He is the decider and the determiner of every person's destiny and the controller of every detail of every individual's life.
Which is only another way of saying God is God. And I'll tell you, what is really repugnant to me is some kind of an idea that God is constantly being trumped by Satan. That's blasphemy. But this doctrine of election. is not easy to accept.
Some of you are feeling a little pain. in your mind right now. This doctrine hurts a little. In fact, if I can make you feel a bit better... It is so painful.
That the only reason anybody believes in it is because it's in the Bible. We just wouldn't make it up. No man, no number of men, no committee would ever come up with this. We would never come up with the doctrine of eternal hell either because these are things that conflict with the dictates of the carnal mind. They are repugnant to the sentiments of the carnal heart.
Look, I don't understand the Trinity. That doesn't mean it's not true. I can't comprehend the Trinity. I don't know what it means to be three persons and yet one. I can't comprehend the virgin birth.
That's incomprehensible. I can't comprehend the character of Christ, His nature. There are so many things I can't understand. There are so many things that are incomprehensible to me, but I believe them because they're revealed in Scripture. And I don't even mind some tension here.
I don't even mind the fact that the Bible also says whosoever will. The Bible also says that Jesus wept over Jerusalem and said, You will not come to me that you might have life. You say, Well, what is all that? That's simply saying that anybody who will come can come, and anybody who does come will be received. You say, How does that work together with election?
I don't know. But aren't you comforted in the fact that I don't know? Because if my mind was like God's mind, That would be horrific. Like, there are so many things I don't know. If I ask you a very simple question, if I say to you, who wrote the book of Romans, what are you going to say?
You can't even say that, can you? See, I heard some feeble Paul. And then you're all of a sudden holding it up because you know that's not the complete answer, right? You say, well, the Holy Spirit wrote it.
Well, was it Paul or the Holy Spirit?
Well, it was both of them.
Well, what does that mean? Paul wrote a verse, the Holy Spirit wrote a verse, Paul wrote a verse, Holy Spirit. How do we understand that? You say, is every word out of the mind of Paul, every word out of the vocabulary of Paul, every word out of his heart? Absolutely.
But also, every word came from the Holy Spirit. How can that be? That is incomprehensible and inscrutable to me. I can ask you another question since you did so well on that one. Was Jesus God or man?
The right answer is yes. But how can he be 100% God and 100% man? You can't be 200% of something. How can he be all man and all God? That is beyond our comprehension.
When we say 100% of something, that's it. But if you're fully men, then you can't be fully God. If you're fully God, you can't be fully men, yet he was. I mean, it just goes on and on like this. If I ask you another simple question: who lives your Christian life?
What are you going to say? Come on, you got to do this every day.
Okay. Who lives your Christian life? You say I do. Really? Really?
You do? Say no, I don't. Say it's Christ who does it, so we're going to blame it all on him? I mean, we can't give you the credit and we can't give him the blame, so, we got a problem here. You know the pietists who said I will beat my body and discipline myself, and I will live my Christian life.
And then there were the quietists, you know, like the Quakers who said, let go and let God. Yeah. And they just wanted the passive mode, you know. And the Keswick movement came out of that. And the crucified life and all these kind of strange quietistic views.
Who is it living your Christian life? You say, well, then anything's wrong, it's me, anything right, it's him. I mean, it's a mystery that's inconceivable. The Apostle Paul said this about that. He said, I am crucified with Christ, Galatians 2.20.
Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I. See, he didn't know either. Yeah. You have a John Murray said many years ago that in every major doctrine of the Bible there is an apparent paradox.
There is an unresolved paradox that is transcendent. And this means God is God. And the fact that there are so many of those in the scripture means the scripture was not written by men. I know editors, they fix things like that.
So because we believe that Jesus is God doesn't mean we don't believe he's man. Because we believe that he was born of a human mother does not mean we don't believe he was born of God. Because we must persevere in our faith doesn't mean we aren't secure. Because the Bible was written by human authors doesn't mean we don't believe it wasn't written by the Holy Spirit. Because we have to discipline ourselves to live the Christian life doesn't mean we don't believe that it's not Christ in us.
And because we believe in the doctrine of election doesn't mean we don't believe in human responsibility. These are apparent paradoxes we can't resolve. But the danger is that you destroy the truth and come up with some. uh rationalistic middle ground That's dangerous.
So The unmistakable teaching of Scripture is The doctrine of election. Even the foreknowledge. Peter talks about 1 Peter 1, verse Yeah. He says uh that we are chosen. Who are chosen, and then in verse 2, according to the foreknowledge of God.
They say, Oh, that's it, that's the key right there. according to the foreknowledge of God. And immediately they'll say, What does that mean? That means that God knows what you're going to do. Right?
before you do it, for knowledge. And God Way back in eternity past, because he knows everything that's going to happen, looked down the annals of history and said, Oh, I see what's going to happen at John MacArthur. He's going to be born into that Christian family, and he's going to hear the gospel and he's going to believe the gospel, so I'm going to choose him. You think that's Strange, that's what most Christians believe. That's what most Christians believe and teach.
That this is like foresight. about what people will do.
Now the problem with this is How are these dead sinners going to resurrect themselves to do this? Unaided. By God. You answer that question. How are those who are totally depraved, totally blind, totally dead, going to come to the place where they make the decision for salvation?
How are they going to do that? Can't do it. Can the leopard change his spots? Can the Ethiopian change his skin? Neither can you do good.
who are evil. How's it going to happen? If God just looks down and sees who's going to make the decision, then his election is not based on his own free will, it's based on their merit, right? It's based on their merit. The good guys are going to choose me, and so I'm going to choose them.
This has nothing to do with all those verses we read. Absolutely nothing to do with them. And by the way. It says, We are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God. But I want you to look at verse 19.
What's the last word in verse 19? What is it? Christ, okay? Christ, now watch this one. Christ, for he was foreknown before the foundation of the world.
Oh, we got a problem. If foreknowledge means that God looks ahead and sees what's going to happen in verse 2. Then being foreknown must mean the same thing in verse 20, right?
So, does that mean that God looked down history and said, Oh, look at that. Christ is going to give his life.
Well, if he's going to do that, I'll... I'll make him the Saviour. I mean, obviously, foreknowledge can't mean that. Because Jesus said he came not to do his own will, but the will of. Father.
That's why He is called Christ mine elect. You say, well, what does foreknowledge mean? It's prognosis. Prognosis, we get the word prognosis from it, use the medical terms. It is a predetermined choice.
It is a predetermined choice. Christ was foreknown. That is, he was. Known. By God in the intimate sense as The Savior, the Redeemer.
Before the foundation of the world. It's talking about the intimate kind of knowing. Like it says in the Old Testament. Israel only have I known. Does that mean the Jews are the only people God knows about?
No, it's the kind of knowing that you have in Genesis. Cain knew his wife. And she bore a son. That doesn't mean any newer name. Doesn't mean you knew who she was.
means he had an intimate relationship with her and out of it came a son. Jesus said this in John 10: My sheep hear my voice, and I Know them. He's talking about an intimate love relationship. The shock was that Mary was pregnant and Joseph had never known her. We talk about that even today.
We use the expression carnal knowledge, meaning a sexual union. An intimate knowledge. What you have here in foreknowledge is a predetermined. Intimacy. Just as the father had a predetermined relationship with the son.
That would bring him to be the sacrifice for sin, to shed his precious blood as a lamb unblemished and spotless.
So the father had a predetermined relationship. with those whom he chose. Foreknowledge is a deliberate Choice. One other passage seals that case, Acts 2:23, and I'll close with this promise. This is a lot to cover.
Acts 2.23. This ends all discussion, if there is any left on the subject of foreknowledge. Peter gets up in verse 22 and he preaches Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs, which God performed through him in your midst. This man, verse 23, this Jesus. Delivered up.
They thought they crucified him. They thought it was their plan. No, no. This man delivered up by the predetermined plan, and what's the next phrase? Foreknowledge of God.
You nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put them to death. You're guilty, you're culpable, you did it, you did it with your own will, but God had predetermined it would be done. It was set in his predetermined plan and foreknowledge. That is, to predetermine, to To foreknow is not simply to have information about what's going to happen, but to predetermine it.
So we understand then that the Bible is very clear on the doctrine of election. That raises the compelling question about why God did this. And that question is going to be answered next Sunday night in what I believe is the most compelling, the most powerful, The most sweeping understanding of redemption that is possible to know. And I think if you're with us next Sunday night, your mind will not only be satisfied, but your soul will be satisfied, and out of it will come a greater joy in your salvation than you've ever known. But we'll save that for next time.
Let's pray. Father. We are thrilled. With this glorious truth, thrilled. stunned really that you've chosen us.
And we asked the question, why us? Why us? We thank you, O God, for your gracious salvation. And we thank you that that salvation. Even though we cannot comprehend it, it is open to anyone who looks to Christ and believes in Him.
Whosoever will may come. How you harmonize that with your Sovereign election is for you to understand and not for us. But we know Jesus weeps over those who will not come. We thank you on the one hand. For those who have not embraced Christ, May you awaken their dead souls, give sight to their blind eyes, may they see Christ irresistibly before them and run to Him for salvation.
We pray in His name. You're listening to Grace to You, featuring the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. Today, John continued his series titled The Doctrines of Grace. Friend, I just want to take a moment to say thank you for your generous support at the end of 2025. Your partnership allows us to continue doing what we're doing, making biblical truth available to people just like you around the globe who desperately need it.
So on behalf of the entire GraceDU staff, thank you for what you have done to launch us into 2026 on a strong footing. And if you benefited from John's teaching, we'd love to hear about it. When you have a moment, write a note and send it our way. You can send us an email by writing to letters at gty.org. That's letters at gty.org.
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Well, friend, even though the new year has already begun, it's not too late to start building a habit of regular Bible reading. and the MacArthur Daily Bible can be a big help in that. It takes you verse by verse through the entire Bible in a year. Each day it gives you portions of scripture from the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Psalms, and Proverbs. Plus, it includes notes from John to help you better understand what you're reading.
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Now for the entire Grace TU staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch Grace to You Television this Sunday on DirecTV Channel 378. And then be here Monday as we continue John MacArthur's compelling study, The Doctrines of Grace. It's another half hour of Unleashing God's Truth one verse at a time on grace to you.
