Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Part 1 of 2)

If God is sovereign in fulfilling His plan of salvation, and He is, how does this affect our responsibility to evangelize?

That's the big question today on Truth for Life. So what do we do when there appears to be a tension here? Alistair Begg walks us through the balance between God's sovereignty and our responsibilities. Father, we delight to sing your praise and we want to revere your name, Almighty and sovereign God, and we want to acknowledge that when we think our best and brightest thoughts, still we are confounded by your incomprehensibility, that you are ultimately beyond our knowing save that you have chosen to make yourself known.

And as we study tonight in this area, regarding your sovereignty and man's responsibility, we enter into an arena that is known for argument, for debate, for discord. We pray that none of that may be our portion, but rather adoration and clarity and humility so that we might live to serve you. Guide our steps, make us bold, sensitive, enterprising, ingenious, but ultimately humble before you, since it is you alone, O God, who can draw sinners to yourself. Hear our prayer and let our cry come unto you, for Jesus' sake.

Amen. I invite you now to turn once again to John chapter 6. There has been one question which in one form or another has been asked with consistency. And summarizing the question, it would go something like this. If God is sovereign in fulfilling his plan of salvation in the lives of individuals, then how does this affect our duty to evangelize? Further, if we believe in the absolute sovereignty of God, does it not follow that we must therefore jettison the notion of our human responsibility? And I think, without exception, every time I've been asked that question, I have recommended one book. That book bears the title which forms the title of our study tonight, namely Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, written in 1961 by Dr. J. I. Packer, who has become most well known for his book Knowing God, a subsequent publication. And in the same way that John Stott's Basic Christianity has become a classic in the matter of the claims of Christ upon a life, so Packer's book has become a classic in relation to this question which is before us this evening.

And my dependence upon Packer's book will become increasingly obvious to all tonight who have either taken up my recommendation recently to read it or who perhaps have read it before. Indeed, such is my dependence upon his book that we might legitimately change the title from simply Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God to An Appreciation of Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God by J. I. Packer. But I want to use it then to tackle this subject in such a way that actually turns out to be much more of a lecture than as a sermon.

And my responsibility tonight is far more didactic than it is to preach. Now, let's just begin by looking at the verses before us. In verse 35, Jesus declares that he is the bread of life, and he says that whoever comes to him will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. And so verse 35 states quite obviously the opportunity of belief to all and to any. Verse 36 reminds us of the responsibility for unbelief.

But as I told you, you have seen me, and still you do not believe. The opportunity to believe is in verse 35. The responsibility for unbelief is in verse 36. The offer in verse 35 is a real offer, pointing out that the unbeliever may have salvation if he would, and therefore no one else, according to verse 36, is responsible for the fact that he chooses to reject it. In verse 37, in the opening part, you have this element of divine sovereignty—"all that the Father gives me will come to me"—that God the Father has purposed to give to his Son those whom he has chosen from all eternity. And then immediately, in the very same verse, the second half of verse 37, it moves from the sovereignty of God to the opportunity of man. And whoever comes to me, I will not drive away. In verse 39, once again, we have divine sovereignty, and this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me.

Once again, this notion of election. And then verse 40, for my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life. So far from the notion existing in disparate elements of the Bible, this whole question exists—indeed, coexists—in the very same verses of the Bible. You do not need to go beyond, for example, verse 39 or verse 37 of John 6 to be confronted with this question of divine sovereignty and human responsibility. What we have here is an antinomy, which is two truths—two truths that sit side by side, seemingly irreconcilable and yet both undeniable. Truth number one, God is sovereign. Truth number two, man is responsible. That is an antinomy. That God, first of all, orders and controls all things, human actions among them, in accordance with his own eternal purpose—is the first truth—and then that God holds every man responsible for the choices he makes and the courses of action that he pursues. Now, this is heavy, isn't it, as they used to say in the sixties?

And this is far out. And it is clear that each truth must be true on its own, but it is not clear to see how they can both be true together. Hence the antinomy. Now, I'm no physicist, but I believe there is something of an antinomy in the world of physics in relation to the question of light. For I believe, unless times have changed, that light is conceived of in terms of waves, but it is also conceived of in terms of particles. To try and explain it in the terms of one to the detriment of the other is to be inaccurate.

Both is true, but it's difficult to see how both can be true side by side. Now, in this matter, the preponderance of response in an endeavor to tidy things up, to try and get our theology all buttoned down and to make sure that there's no mystery left, we tend to be confronted by the temptation to reject one side of the equation. And so you can talk to people who will tell you, I believe only in human responsibility and thereby I reject divine sovereignty, or we believe in the sovereignty of God, and therefore apparently we reject human responsibility.

What happens? Well, an overemphasis, first of all, on human responsibility in relationship to evangelism, almost inevitably leads to an approach whereby we're tempted to regard ourselves as responsible for securing converts. If you come down on this, side of the equation, you will feel constantly that unless you adopt a certain style of approach, unless it is gone at in a particular way, people will not be saved, because we have this human responsibility to get at the question. And this is largely evidenced in a style of evangelism which was pioneered by Finney and by Moody and by others besides—an approach to evangelism which is not all wrong but tends to be heavily weighted on the side of human responsibility. When this is the approach, the tendency is to evaluate evangelism not simply by the criterion of the message proclaimed but by the visible results.

So people will say, well, nothing happened. Now, that is not to say that we should devalue our responsibility to preach, nor is it to say that we should diminish in any way the listener's responsibility to decide. But an overemphasis on human responsibility declares itself in a certain style of evangelism. On the other hand, to fall down, as it were, on the other side of the fence, the opposite temptation is to so emphasize divine sovereignty that we're tempted to lose sight of the church's responsibility, of our individual responsibility, to evangelize at all. And Packer, in his book, uses the illustration which is familiar to us from other sources, where Carey, as a young man attending a ministers fraternal in the south of England, suggested to all these Baptist ministers present that he thought it was an excellent idea to establish a missionary society. And he said, we could establish the Baptist missionary society, and we could reach the world.

On which occasion, the chairman of that ministers fraternal was reported to have said to him, sit down, young man. When God is pleased to convert the heathen, he will do it without your help or mine. Okay? Now, you say, whoa, but let's take the pluses for the man. The pluses in terms of what the man was saying are undeniably there. The man recognized that it is God who saves always and every time God saves people.

Okay? He also knew that with or without our involvement, the work of God would go on. And he also knew that without our involvement, God is not helpless.

So he had those pluses in his favor in his comment. However, the minus largely is this, that it seems that the man in making that statement was forgetting that God's way of saving people is by sending out his servants to tell others the gospel. So he was in danger of emphasizing one truth to the exclusion of the other. Christ's command means—and I'm quoting now probably from Peck or any quote tonight that I don't identify, you'll be able to find in his book—Christ's command means that we should all be devoting all our resources of ingenuity and enterprise to the task of making the gospel known in every possible way to every possible person.

And I like that, and I believe that, and I believe that's what the Bible teaches—that all of us have no other mandate given by Christ save to use all our ingenuity, all our endeavors, all our responsibility to seek to convey to others the saving news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So what are we saying? We're saying there is an antinomy. We're saying that the temptation is to embrace one to the exclusion of the other.

And we're suggesting that that is not the way to go. For if you try that, you will find yourself all the time trying to explain verses away in your Bible. Every time you come to a verse that falls down on the side of God's sovereignty—for example, this is, if you're a human responsibility individual, this is how you read these verses in John 6, okay? And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raised them up on the last day. For everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life. Of course, if you are a divine sovereignty—voila!—then you tend to read it like this.

And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, for my Father's will is, that everyone who looks to the Son, you see? You can't do it. You just can't do it. So if you've been trying it, I want you to know that it's futile. You will be a walking contradiction.

Partly truth and partly fiction. Yeah! That's right. It's inevitable.

You can't do it. Now, that's a real mind-blower, but it's a liberating truth. And if you grab a hold of this, it'll set you free.

If you don't, you are destined to pain your brain for the rest of your life. The only way to come through this is the way I'm about to tell you. That is, we must hold to each truth with equal seriousness, for that is what the Bible does. And we have no right to seek to dilute one by a heavy dose of the other. They once asked Charles Heaven Spurgeon, How do you reconcile the notion of divine sovereignty and human responsibility?

And Spurgeon replied, I don't. You don't have to reconcile friends. And he understood that these truths set side by side, sometimes even in the one verse as we note here in John 6, were purposefully put there by God. And we may be sure that both truths find their reconciliation in the mind and counsel of God. And we may expect that one day when we get to heaven, we may understand how they are reconciled. But today, as we live life down here, we must realize that this notion, these truths, must certainly be under the orb of Deuteronomy 29, 29. The secret things belong to the Lord our God.

And here is one of God's secrets. That is, how to reconcile the plain truth of human responsibility and the clear truth of God's divine sovereignty. Man's responsibility for his actions and God's sovereignty in relation to those same actions are equally real and ultimate facts.

Let me illustrate it in another arena. In Luke 22, verse 22, you find this plainly stated concerning the matter of the betrayal of Christ. Verse 22 of Luke 22, the Son of Man will go as it has been decreed. Decreed by whom? By God.

Quen. In his eternal purposes. That is, divine sovereignty. But woe to that man who betrays him!

That is human responsibility. And Judas was responsible for his actions. But God, in his eternal wisdom, determined that it would be so. Acts chapter 2 and verse 23, after the events have taken place, you find the same thing being proclaimed. Concerning what happened to Jesus, this man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. Now, we could go all through our Bibles dealing with this.

We don't have time to do it tonight. But let's just try and answer this question. How, then, does a robust faith in the sovereignty of God affect our duty to evangelize? Now, Packer answers it as follows, and I'm doing this for those of you who don't read or can't read or won't read, but for those of you who do and can and will, then you will find the book greatly beneficial. This is what he says, The sovereignty of God in grace does not affect anything we have said about the nature and duty of evangelism. He has just spent two chapters saying, We better evangelize. Now he comes back to his question that he has posited in the opening chapter, and he says, The facts of God's sovereignty in no way negate the previous two chapters.

God's secrets in relation to salvation have no bearing on our clear duty to evangelize. So often people say, Well, if I believe that God is a sovereign God, why forget the guest service? Let's just all sit on our bottoms and wait for all these people to come in and be saved. After all, isn't that what you're saying? No, it's not for a moment. God's way of saving sinners is to bring them to faith through bringing them into contact with the gospel.

That's how he saves. Matthew 22 and verse 1, Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son, and he sent his servants to those who had been invited to tell them to come, but they refused to come. It's interesting, see? He sent them, and they refused. How did they refuse?

They refused because they were human, and they had responsibility. And then he sent some more of his servants to tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner and so on. And eventually, as you read the story, what happens is they go out into the highways and the byways, and they populate the banquet as a result of the activity of the servants.

The picture is clear. The banquet, which God has prepared in heaven for us all, will be populated as a result of the activity of his servants, as a result of us going out in evangelism into the highways and byways and compelling people to come in. It is by this means that God will bring to faith those whom he has birthed. We're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life. We'll hear the conclusion of this message on Monday, but Alistair has stepped in here to encourage us in our efforts in evangelism.

Alistair? Thanks, Bob. You know, I mentioned at the beginning of today's message that I was often asked about how the sovereignty of God affects our responsibility to evangelize, and here we are more than 30 years later, and I'm still asked the question, and I still give the same explanation you just heard. God's way of saving people is to send out his servants to proclaim the gospel, and it is God who is able to bring sinners to saving faith when they hear the gospel proclaimed. I hope you find this a great comfort in your evangelism endeavors.

We do our part, and God does his. Our confidence in God's saving power is the foundation of all that we do at Truth for Life, and along these lines I encourage you to take advantage of the free online messages and the low-cost books and study guides that we make available so that you can share them with others. We've just recently released a new discipleship course to help you come alongside a new believer or even introduce a friend or a colleague to Jesus. It's called The Basics of the Christian Faith, and it'll help you to put into practice what we're learning in this series about evangelism, and let me remind you that it's the truth partners whose monthly giving makes all that we do possible. So if you're a part of this important group, thank you, and if you've yet to join with us in this enabling way, let me encourage you to do that today.

Thank you, Alistair. It is exciting to think about the impact that this study in evangelism could have if each one of us reached out to just one person and shared our faith. So as you think about that, as you prepare, we want to recommend to you some wonderful resources to help you. Go to truthforlife.org slash evangelism. One of the resources you'll find on the website is the new discipleship course Alistair just mentioned.

It's called The Basics of the Christian Faith. It's designed for you to take a friend or a family member step by step through the core beliefs of Christianity. The way this course works is you have a leader's guide. Your friend will have a companion guide. You'll listen to a message from Alistair and then answer some questions in your workbook. Then you get together and discuss the lesson and talk about any questions you may have.

All the prep work for this has been done for you for all 13 lessons. It's a great way to apply what you've learned in this evangelism series with minimal stress. You can find out more or purchase The Basics of the Christian Faith discipleship course for our cost of $16 at truthforlife.org slash evangelism. The reason Truth for Life is able to offer these kinds of high quality biblically sound resources at our cost is because of the faithful generosity that comes from our truth partners.

Listeners like you who have set aside a monthly amount to give. So if you have benefited from the teaching you hear on Truth for Life or the at-cost resources, would you join with this team today? The number to call to become a truth partner is 888-588-7884 or you can sign up online at truthforlife.org slash truth partner. You can request the book Confronting Jesus when you become a monthly truth partner or when you give a one-time gift at truthforlife.org slash donate. I'm Bob Lapine. We hope you have a great weekend and are able to worship with your local church. Join us Monday when we'll learn how to find hope and assurance even when our efforts at evangelism are met with rejection more often than acceptance. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.