Modern Man’s Struggle with Reformed Theology
July 29, 2009
Grace Versus Needs
I once heard a minister say to a congregation, a lot like this, “thank you very
much for coming out tonight,” and when he did, I cringed.
Cause, you shouldn’t be thanked for worshipping God.
So I want you to understand that yea, inside my heart, I thank you for
being here, but that ain’t why you here, okay?
So let’s just keep that in mind.
In this series, we’ve been looking at
some different topics. But, we’ve
been looking at what are really, fundamental concepts in the Christian faith.
I mean, it’s about as basic as they get.
And once we moved away from those core, fundamental concepts, we moved
into some concepts of our particular understanding of that faith:
the Sovereignty of God, Scripture, Heaven, Hell, man as a sinner.
Those are just sort of, you know, givens…aren’t they?
Most Christians believe to some extent, those core concepts.
Now, when we shift gears and go into what we believe, the five points of
Calvinism and by the way, I have to interrupt myself again – you may have
noticed by now that each word has an adjective in front of it and theologically,
the debates historically have been over the adjective, not the word.
Total depravity.
We’ve debated whether it is total or not; not whether we are depraved.
Unconditional election – we
accept election, but is it unconditional?
Limited atonement. We
believe atonement, but is it limited?
And tonight, irresistible
grace. So the church has, man, how
many pine trees have been cut down to publish all that stuff about the
adjectives? But you may have
noticed, that as I have talked to you, I haven’t talked to you about the
adjectives a whole bunch – I have a little bit.
I have presented the case – not even trying to do it exclusively because
I am not the theologian. We happen
to be blessed with some theologians around this church who can do a really good
job of explaining it from the pulpit or from this – anywhere.
What I’ve been trying to do is explain how modern man struggles with some
of this. And modern man doesn’t
struggle with the adjective. He
struggles with the noun. The same
is true tonight. It is the concept
of grace that’s the problem, not whether or not it’s irresistible.
So if you’ll bear with me, we are gonna keep on following the same
pattern. So, irresistible grace.
T-U-L-I…there is not an adjective with a “p,” but I’ll come up with one
if you want me to. But anyway,
tonight we are dealing with the concept of grace versus the concept of needs.
Now, irresistible grace is
what we believe. Irresistible
means, you can’t say no. Grace –
unmerited favor. God looking down
and not noticing the one that will accept and then being gracious, but God being
gracious because He chooses to be gracious.
Irresistible grace. I’m
reading again from Spencer’s little book on Tulip. The fourth point of Calvinism
counters the fourth point of Arminianism.
With irresistible grace versus obstructable grace.
You may not have heard that term.
In our circle, you don’t hear about
obstructable grace.
But you hear about irresistible grace.
Well, the Arminian theory is that you can obstruct, resist, say “no” to
grace. So God puts His grace down
and we say, “no, don’t want it.”
Okay, go ahead.
Now of course, as hard-headed
Presbyterians, we say what you have just done is significant damage to the
concept of the Sovereignty of God.
As we look at creatures, we say that God is up here, then there is the devil,
then humans are down here – in a third order.
Well can the third order say no to the first order?
If you believe in a Sovereign God , “no, I don’t want it” – that’s
obstructable grace. You may try to
give me your grace, Lord, but I don’t want it, so I can say no.
Irresistible grace is something else and that’s what we believe, but it
is based, we believe, on Scripture and the concept of the Sovereignty of God,
and also the concept that we are totally depraved, hence, we don’t have the good
in us to reach out to God. It is He
who worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.
That’s old Presbyterian belief.
Okay? Now, some verses to
sort of back it up as we typically do:
2 Timothy 1:9 – “God has saved us, not according to our works, but according to
His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world
began.”
You may notice that I have used some of the same verses because they apply to
all of the points here.
John 5:21 – “The Son
quickeneth whom He will.”
John 6:27 – “All that the Father giveth me, shall come to me.
And him that cometh to me, I will no wise cast out.
Notice the originating force with God.
Daniel 4:35 – “He doeth according to His will in the army of Heaven and among
the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay His hand.”
If none can stay His hand, how can I obstruct His grace?
John 6:44 – “No man can come
to me, except the Father which hath sent me, draw him.”
So, the Arminian struggles (in my opinion, with the opinion of many, of course
of the Reformed tradition), with this concept that God is Sovereign but He is
not really omnipotent. If little ol
me, from
This Arminian view:
It is the will of God that all should be saved, but His will can be
resisted since each person has the faculty of self-determination.
Since God loves all people indiscriminately, He woes them with His Holy
Spirit, seeking to draw them to faith in Christ.
The external call of the Gospel is accompanied by universal, sufficient
grace, but it will not be found irresistible to all men, but is obstructable by
man’s free will. That’s the
Arminian position. Now, by the way,
don’t get me wrong. They are
Christian people who believe the Arminian position, okay?
Some of my best friends are Arminians.
One of my high school buddies was a guy named Morris Chapman, later
President of the Southern Baptist Convention from Kosciusko – one of Adrian
Rogers’ right hand men. He would
take this position. Now, we differ.
But he is my Christian brother.
As I like to say, not all of my cousins am I proud of.
Not all of my cousins do you want to know.
I think I told some of you about one of my cousins who had the fighting
roosters – well, when we did his funeral, my older cousin Jan – so when he died,
we had to drive by from the church on the way to the graveyard so that we could
say goodbye to his roosters. Yea,
it’s illegal by the way, but he had to say goodbye to his roosters.
I don’t particularly want you to think of my family in terms of my
rooster-fighting cousin. But he is
still my cousin. He is still my
cousin. So, they are my Christian
brothers and I want my brothers and sisters to be my brothers and sisters, but I
really want more than that to honor God as presented in His Word.
That’s what I really wish to do.
This irresistible grace, to
read our position: Since it is the
will of God that those whom He gave to His dear Son in eternity past, should be
saved, He will surely act in Sovereign grace in such a way that the elect will
find Christ irresistible. God does not force the elect to trust in His son, but
rather, He gives them life. The
dead human spirit finds the dead spirit of Satan irresistible.
And all living human spirits find the God of the living irresistible.
Regeneration – a work of God, must precede true repentance and faith.
Ya’ll have heard that from sermons from this pulpit for years and years
and years. That is what we believe.
Daniel 4:35 – “Jehovah doth
according to His will, in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the
earth and none can stay His hand or say unto Him, ‘what doest thou.’”
I just read that one, okay?
“My council shall stand. I will do
all my pleasure” – Isaiah 46:10.
Isaiah 55:11, “So shall My word be, it shall accomplish that which I please.”
And I know that verses can be given back to support the resistible
position too, okay? But just –
we’re going to save that. Now,
that’s sort of a quick overview.
I’m not trying to convince you of irresistible grace.
I just want to state it.
Because to me, we have two forces going on in the world today.
One I’ll spend more time on – the psychology part, but the theology part
too. The Presbyterian church traces
an awful lot of its history from what could be called the Scotch-Irish
background/the Church of Scotland.
And we thank the Lord for John Knox and granted, they were pretty dire, sour
people over there. And my family
was pretty much just like that. My
family names are Black, McClellan, Thompson, and Elkin.
Well, Elkin is sort of Welsh-ish, but that others are Scotch-Irish, okay?
So this is my background, these folk.
Well, I started to talk with
you just a little bit about the influence of
Now, on one hand, I believe he
is right. But the minute we start
categorizing needs like this, we run into some problems.
Most of us would agree that human beings, because the need for air,
water, and food is so great, it is a cruel thing to withhold those from another
person. We struggle when we start
to withhold things from another person.
I was there, my brother was there, when we voted not to put a feeding
tube in my mother, knowing full well that if we didn’t put a feeding tube in,
she would die. She had Alzheimer’s.
Her body had forgotten how to swallow food.
So when she tried to swallow, food would go in her lungs and in the
stomach as well. And she was 89
years old, her quality of life was not good.
Bless her heart, she didn’t know where she was or what was going on.
We can look at the medical ethics if you wish, but we were asked, “do you
want to put a feeding tube in?” And
we voted no. We withheld from her
one of the physiological needs and in-so-doing, we voted for God to be in charge
and for us not to be in charge and sustain her life artificially.
That was the way we did it.
You may take exception to it. There
are different opinions. I
understand that, okay? I believe you should put a feeding tube in if there is
legitimate hope for the person to get better.
I believe in a respirator if there is legitimate hope that the person
will get better. And there are
other situations that I am not smart enough to know.
That’s why we leave it to physicians and medical ethics.
I’m just telling you what we did.
Her core physiological needs.
But most of us would agree, see – there is almost a sense of entitlement
to have those needs met. Every
human being should have food, water, and air.
And not to allow that is wrong.
Entitlement.
Notice I started using a different word, now.
From need, shift over to entitlement.
And I’m going to tell you right now, I believe that’s what has happened.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has been reinterpreted in our society as
Maslow’s hierarchy of entitlements.
Now, physiological needs, yes.
Safety - well. We don’t
realize how this happened in our society.
When my little brother was born – y’all know Bebo.
When my little brother was born, my mother was in the hospital.
We had just gotten a new hospital in Kosciusko.
When I was born, we didn’t have one.
When I was born, I was born at home.
But when he was born, he was born in the hospital.
My task everyday – we lived about three blocks from the hospital – was to
put the fresh diapers in the basket of my bicycle and ride to the hospital and
take the fresh diapers in. The
hospital didn’t provide diapers.
How old was I? I was six years old.
Riding my bicycle to the hospital, to deliver the fresh diapers, and I
might add, to bring the dirty ones home.
I rode faster coming home than I did going!
I don’t know if I could ever smell it or not – it might have been smart
to ride slow. But anyway, I rode
faster. It was downhill coming
home, too.
Now, your child must wear a
helmet. You are a bad parent if you
let your child ride the bicycle or roller skate or skateboard or anything
without a helmet. If your child
goes rock climbing. We have a whole
bunch of pictures from David and his family – they just got back from
Now, belongingness and love.
Maslow’s hierarchy says it’s a need for belonging and love.
What has our society done?
If I have a greater sense of belongingness and love with someone of the same
sex, who are you to tell me that I shouldn’t have it, because I should be
entitled to have belongingness and
love if I wish it—with Harry. And
who are you to tell me that I couldn’t .
I’m just telling you.
Whether you feel yes or no on that, I’m telling you that the need of Maslow
presented as belongingness and love has become an entitlement in our society.
Who are you to say that somebody shouldn’t – has become sort of a
natural. Esteem.
Let’s use the term self-esteem.
Remember, there are two ways in which we get self-esteem so the
psychologist tell us. One is, you
are declared to have value and worth.
Therefore, every parent, every day, should tell their child, “you are the
neatest thing I know – I am so glad I got to be your daddy.
I am so glad I didn’t get one of those ding-dongs down the street.
You are so sweet. I love you
to death. I just love you.”
Everyday your child needs to hear that.
By the way, your spouse does too – that’s another whole deal.
But, affirmation – the granting of value and worth.
The other one is, the earned
value and worth. Now this is mine.
If you don’t like it, it’s okay.
But self-esteem is the function of an equation in terms of performance.
The success that you have in the light of the expectation that you have,
times the value that you put on what you are doing, determines how you feel
about yourself. Put it in plain
words. Suppose you study two weeks
for an Algebra test and make a D.
I’m sorry, but you are dumb.
Suppose you study the night before and make an A.
You are smart. That’s the
way our society thinks. Okay?
Success over effort.
Now let’s suppose you study two weeks and make an A, but it’s in basket
weaving. You don’t really feel that
good about yourself, do you? I
don’t care if you make an A in basket weaving or not, you don’t just feel really
pumped up about that. The value
that you put on what you do – this is a performance part of our self-esteem.
So what we need to have here is affirmation and declaration of value, but
I need to have some way to do something, too.
Notice God, in His wisdom, declares us righteous with justification but
urges us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling in sanctification.
He wants us to buffet our bodies and run with patience, the race that is
set before us and lay aside every weight that besets us.
Justification, He declares.
Sanctification, we try to cooperate with the Spirit working within us to want
that. So, self-esteem is a function
of declaration and participation in some sense.
Okay. In our society today, it
appears that we have done away with part two of the equation.
Everybody needs to be told how wonderful they are, whether they are or
not. And I use the same old
illustration – so every kid on the swim team gets a trophy.
It doesn’t matter whether they flake out or not.
When we were living in
So what we are saying here is,
esteem – when esteem is declared humanly speaking, forget the God part for the
moment. When humanly speaking we
declare everybody everywhere to be equal and deserving of the same thing no
matter what, we do away with any striving or personal trying.
And we say that people are entitled to esteem whether they perform or
not. Got a problem!
Got a real problem!
Now, self-actualization.
If self-actualization is an entitlement, what if I think that
self-actualization is making a billion dollars?
Suppose my last name is Madoff.
There is a problem here.
But, if I am entitled to self-actualization.
If I am entitled to being all that I wish to be, then why shouldn’t I –
there actually isn’t a right and wrong anyway.
It’s actually a question of what I can get away with.
My point is, that needs which I think are somewhat legitimate – and once
we start enabling so that entitlement becomes the issue, we got us a problem.
I need to give you a couple of illustrations here.
I have a friend in
As needs are re-interpreted as
entitlements, we begin to have a problem.
Now the problem gets really sort of tricky here.
Reading to you from Canadian Internal Development Agency position paper:
“the day will come when the progress of nations will be judged, not by
their military or economic strength nor by the splendor of their capitol cities
and public buildings (which I agree with, by the way) but by the well-being of
their people, by the levels of health, nutrition, and education, by their
opportunities to earn a fair reward for their labors, by their abilities to
participate in the decisions that effect their lives, by the respect that is
shown for their civil and political liberties, by the provision that is made by
those who are vulnerable and disadvantaged and by the protection that is
afforded to the growing lives and bodies of their children.”
I personally think that is wonderful.
I like what I read there.
But at what point does entitlement come into play.
At what point? See, in my
opinion, as we shift from need to entitlement, the more we shift to entitlement,
the less respect we have for grace.
Grace is unmerited favor. Grace is
“I am a sinner, Lord.” You could
burn me up in hell right now and be justified in-so-doing.
My heart is evil and deceitful above all things and nobody can know it.
Men can look on the outward appearance but you look on the heart.
I deserve eternal damnation.
That’s our theology. The more we
cloud needs with entitlement – and by the way, in case you think that I am
thinking about social issues, I’m not.
I am talking about Christian people.
I am talking about those who believe, who begin to think in terms of
entitlements. Who begin to think
that hell shouldn’t be preached about.
That we should be more gentle – we should try to persuade people to
become Christians. God changes
hearts, we don’t. Grace is
unmerited favor. It implies that we
have a core need for that grace and without it, we are nothing.
Needs as Maslow described them, have a hierarchical effect – the bottom
ones are necessities, the top ones are luxuries.
But the minute we start making all of his hierarchies to be necessities,
we have us a problem. So that
entitlement comes. Thus,
irresistible grace versus obstructable grace is not really the question to most
people today. The question is, how
important is grace period? Without
grace as a major theme, guess what? We begin to think in terms of all people
being Christians. All people
deserving Heaven. I’m sorry but
when he is twenty-four years old, I have no trouble thinking of him going to
hell, but when he’s 84 years old and broken, how could God turn His back on him?
See. Well, God can turn His
back on him because He is a sinner.
That’s the bottom line. In today’s
world, the modern man struggles with Reformed Theology because we believe in
grace. We believe in unmerited favor.
We believe that we don’t deserve any good thing that comes.
Hence, every Sunday in this sermon in prayer, in preaching, or in song,
you will hear something about we’re broken, we’re sinners, and we don’t deserve.
That’s a core part of our belief.
At the same time, we live in a world that is promoting more and more, the
concept that there is an entitlement, and how could God reject us, if He is a
God of love. Because He is also a
God of justice, that’s how. We need
to understand what’s taking place in the world around us.
Let’s pray…
Heavenly Father, You are so good and You are so gracious.
You allow us Your Word, You let us think, You let us endure, You give us
love, You give us compassion, but so often, Lord, we assume that we know more
than You have told us. We assume
that You are obligated in some way to human beings.
There is not a person on the face of this earth who holds any obligatory
relationship from You. You are the
only perfect, Sovereign being. We
are creatures and we are sinners.
Lord, please keep us from looking at other people and judging them.
Help us to understand though, the world in which we live, the waters in
which we swim, the theology in which we believe, the Scriptures which you have
given. And in-so-doing, may we be
Your people. Grant us Your grace.
We pray in Christ’s name, Amen.
Stand please. Please receive God’s
benediction.
May grace, mercy and peace, from the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, rest and
abide upon each of you, both now and forevermore, Amen.
© First Presbyterian Church,
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