Reverend Steven Felton's Sermon

August 3, 2003, 8:00, 9:30, 11:00 AM

Rev. Steven Felton

Typed from audio transcript

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Today's Epistle is a very important passage for the life and health of the Christian church because it speaks of one of those difficult things in the Christian Faith, one of those long words, predestination. It's an important matter. It's delivered to us directly from God through His holy Word and so it's important that we study it and understand it. What makes it sort of difficult is that God's Word concerning predestination is approachable by our human reason to a point, but beyond that point, reason just stops, and we don't understand how it all works, but we just accept what God says about it. We have to put reason in check, in other words, and just believe what we read. The Word of God, for instance, certainly talks about Christians being predestined to eternal life with Him and, if we think of God predestining us to be with Him, we must think that He then predestines some other people to not be with Him. That's where reason fails. It's not a two-sided coin. It only works one way. The word of God says that God predestines no one to hell. Only the Christian can be described as predestined.

This isn't going to turn into an English lesson, but let's think a little bit about our English language. There are nouns that describe people, places, things, and concepts. And there are adjectives that go with nouns and modify them and explain them. Well, some adjectives just don't go at all with some nouns. Like if, I had a big, o'l rock here, the kind somebody might throw through a window or if you dropped it on your toe, you'd have to say "ow" about, nobody would ever describe that rock as being fluffy. Or that sun, which if you stand out there in the narthex just at the right point, it shines in your eyes so bright, the surface of that is about 6,000 degrees Celsius and nobody would ever describe the surface of the sun as being icy. It just doesn't fit. The word isn't right. Similarly, the word predestined can never be applied to an unbeliever. God tells us that word just doesn't apply to unbelievers They're not predestined to anything. The word doesn't fit at all. But to believers, the word does fit, as do some other words like holy and sanctify and heirs of eternal life. Those words don't apply to unbelievers. You just can't use them with unbelievers.

Now it's a sad fact, but a true fact, that there are going to be some people who are going to spend eternity separated from their God. Its also true that God, in His perfect knowledge, knows who those people are. He knows who is going to be damned, and He knows who is going to be saved. St. Paul even says that in our text this morning that God has known that before the world was even created, before any of you or before I was born or before my parents or grandparents or great-grandparents or before Adam was born, God knew who was going to end up saved and God knew who was going to end up separated from Him eternally. But we have to distinguish between God's foreknowledge and God's predestination or God's election, another word for the same thing. God didn't send sin into the world. If our God sent sin in the world, I wouldn't want to worship Him. He'd be an evil God. He'd be something like you read about in the Iliad and the Odyssey, one of those gods who just capriciously cam down to earth and created problems for people. God didn't do that. He didn't send sin into the world, but He knew about the evil one who would bring sin into the world. In the same way, God predestines no one to hell even though He knows from eternity exactly who's gong to end up there, who will disbelieve Him, and who will thus, consign themselves to suffering and separation from Him.

Predestination. It's an important matter. It's delivered to us from God above, and we can understand it to a certain point using our human reason; but the point ends at some place and, beyond that, we just take what God says.

Now since I've been around Des Moines, I've been here while you've done some different building plans. Did any of you come around regularly when they were putting the last addition on Gloria Dei, sort of check out the progress and that? Well, one of the very most important things is when they lay the foundation, getting it exactly perfect, getting it exactly square, getting it exactly level. If you don't have the foundation exactly right, before too long, then you end up with cracks in your walls and windows that don't fit and rain leaking in. But if you get it exactly perfect, then everything is aligned and it's right from a basement window all the way up to the eaves. Everything just works right.

In order for us to build our understanding of God's predestination, we have to first lay a good foundation for it. And if we understand that, then it starts to work. The foundation for this teaching about predestination is Jesus Christ. In fact, there's a sense in which the teaching about predestination is just another teaching about Christ as St. Paul declares here, "God predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ." See, Jesus Christ is the start of this. And again, St. Paul writes, "In Him that's in Christ, we were chosen having been predestined." So predestination begins with Jesus. It's made possible by one and only one thing, the death of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and His resurrection for the sins of the whole world. Predestination begins with the realization that Jesus died for who? For all people in the world, all people of every time and of every place for people who loved Him and who would love Him later and for people who hated Him and would hate Him later. Jesus died for people who would believe in Him, and He died for people who would refuse to believe in Him. There is not one person who has ever lived for whom Jesus did not give up His life. This we know from St. John. He declares that "Christ ins the atoning sacrifice for our sins and not only for ours but for the sins of the whole world." And St. John doesn't stand alone in saying that. St. Paul, when he was writing to Timothy in the second chapter, he speaks of God our Savior who wants all to be saved, all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Even when Jesus said, in His words, that "many are called but few are chosen," He doesn't mean that He doesn't want everyone to be saved. He doesn't mean He doesn't want them all to be saved. Instead, the reason for their condemnation lies in their not hearing God's word at all or else, when they hear it, refusing to believe it or else stopping up their ears and shutting down their hearts so that the Holy Spirit Who causes faith in us can't work by His normal path by avoiding the Word of God. Then the fault lies where? If some people are not saved, does the fault lie with God? No, it doesn't lie with God. It lies with people's own wickedness and refusal to believe in God.

Now there's a fancy term for this kind of teaching. It's called the universal atonement. Universal atonement is the foundation that we have to have for understanding predestination rightly. Without that universal atonement, Jesus Christ dying for everybody, whether good, whether bad, whether they believed Him or they don't believe Him, whether they love Him or they hate Him, without that foundation, without the insistence that Christ died for all people everywhere, you end up wrongly thinking that some people have been predestined to hell. And that is a teaching that takes away confidence from people. That is something that makes us doubt, at times, that Christ would have died for me. Christ died for all. There is no one for whom His blood was not shed, and therefore, there is no one that is predestined to hell.

Now St. Paul declares here, "God predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ." And again, St. Paul said, "In Him," that is, in Christ, "we were chosen having been predestined." And because of the universal atonement, we must not think of our Lord Christ as if He were the captain of a kickball team on a schoolyard, got everybody lined up against the fence and He says, "Well, I'm going to choose you. And you look pretty fit; I think I'll choose you. And you look pretty good out there, I'll choose you. And the rest of you, I don't wan t you." That is not the way it works at all. Christ wants everyone to be on His team, and He offered His life so that everyone could be on His team, but some people refuse. Its' not that God doesn't want them, not that at all. Its that they do not want God. They are not on the divine kickball team, as it were, because they stay there by the fence and they stubbornly refuse their Lord's choosing. The Lord Jesus Christ says to them through His Word, "I choose you," and they respond, "No, you don't. You can't choose me. I don't want to be chosen." They are not predestined because they turned their backs on the heavenly destination that the Lord Jesus created for them in His own body and blood.

But this is not the Lord's proclamation of forgiveness and eternal life; its not the way it worked out for you folks. That's not the way it worked out for you. What St. Paul says here applies to you, to all Christians in the one true church wherever they're sitting this morning, wherever they worship Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, the eternally begotten Son of the father. St. Paul says, "you also were included in Christ when you heard the world of truth having believed you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit who's a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance." The universal atonement then is a great comfort to Christians because It allows the Christian to say to himself or to herself if Christ indeed died for everybody in this world and if I, in fact, am in this world, then Christ died for me too. He died for me and for my sins, and I can be confident before the Father that the Father will not condemn me on account of my sins, because all my sins have been taken away from me by my Lord Jesus Christ.

Predestination is a great comfort to all Christians, because it allows you to know that God has chosen you and this is not like a group choosing. Its an individual choosing. God has chosen you individually for the great gift of his salvation. Predestination, that's something you can just glory in. You can be happy about it because you were chosen. You were also included in Christ when you heard the Word of truth and having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit who's a deposit guaranteeing your inheritance.

There's a sense in which it doesn't matter to you at all that some have chosen not to believe. You do believe. You are the chosen. There are certain adjectives that just cannot be used to describe certain nouns. You can't talk about any of the unbelievers as being predestined, but all God's Christians are indeed the predestined, must as they're rightly called the chosen. They're called the sanctified, the enlightened. You've been called by the gospel and enlightened with the Spirit's gifts. You've been sanctified. You've been kept in the true faith.

So Christians do well to think of this predestination thing as just another expression of God's overflowing, overwhelming, His superabundant grace, His grace for you in Christ. It's simply God's act of choosing you and of saying to you, "I love you. I forgive you. I want you to be with me forever."

Now here's a little word from a Lutheran writing. We're about ready to wrap up. It's from the Epitome of the Formula of Concord, one of our confessional documents:

"A Christian should only think about the article of God's eternal election, that's predestination, to the extent that it's revealed in God's Word. We should set aside other thoughts for they donot come from God but rather from the imagination of the evil foe. Through such thoughts, the devil approaches us to weaken this glorious comfort for us or to take it away completely. However, we have a glorious comfort in this salutary teaching of predestination that we know how we've been chosen for eternal life in Christ out of sheer grace without any merit of our own so that no one can tear us out of His hand for He's assured us that He's graciously chosen us not only with mere words. He's corroborated this with an oath and promise and sealed it with the Holy Sacraments. In the midst of our greatest trials, we can remind ourselves of God's promises, comfort ourselves with them, and thereby quench the fiery darts of the devil."

So, predestination is nothing more than God's choosing you for eternal life, choosing you before you ever even heard about His name, choosing you from the very foundation of the world. And since you are in the world and since He died for all, you can be sure it includes you. And God's promise and His choice will never fail, and He'll never let you slip out of His hand.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guards your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Copyright 2003 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church