Let's go back to that passage
of scripture. It is a bit warm up here, so
with or without your permission, I will shed this. Today is August the 13th. If my dad had lived, He would
be 99 tomorrow. Tomorrow would have been his
birthday. He was born August 14th, 1924. Shortly before my
dad died, he died August 27th of 1975. He died of pancreatic
cancer. A couple of weeks before he turned
51 years of age. But I visited him, and he was
in the Roanoke Hospital. I worked through the week at
United Parcel Service in Winston-Salem. I drove a truck, a package car,
they call it, and I had resigned my position from being music
director, youth director, Sun School teacher, essentially the
assistant to the pastor at Rosemont Baptist in Winston-Salem. That's where I first heard Brother
Mahan. And I've come up on the weekends and preached for my
dad. I visited him every weekend I
came up on Saturday. For all of his ministry, my dad
was a free will preacher. I grew up hearing that God loved everybody,
that the Lord Jesus laid down his life for everybody, and the
Holy Spirit sought to save everybody. That salvation was, therefore,
up to the sinner. And, of course, I learned the
gospel, and my dad and I would begin to talk about The truth
of the gospel of God's saving grace. The successful work that
the Lord Jesus Christ did upon the cross of Calvary. Saving
his people from their sins. We'd begin to talk about that
and then it would develop into an argument. And so we wouldn't talk about
it anymore. Isn't it sad, and I know some
of you, maybe your dad weren't preachers, but you have people
in your family, you can talk to them about just about anything
except the gospel of grace. That's a sad truth, isn't it? And I remember when I first learned
the gospel, I was so excited. I wanted to tell my daddy first.
And my daddy's brother, who was, we called him a lay preacher.
And I spent a lot of time with him when I was a little boy.
And I just, I told Nancy, I said, let's go, let's go home. I've
learned this truth and I'm so excited and I can't wait to tell
my dad and my uncle. And they were together, as providence
would have it. My uncle was visiting my dad.
And I began to tell them what God had taught me. I thought
they'd be just as excited as I was. And they weren't. And anyway, to kind of make a
long story short, my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer
and given about 30 days to live, and actually, it was exactly
30 days after the diagnosis that he passed away. But I visited
with him, and my dad said to me, and of course, my dad started
Central Baptist Church, and some of the folks here have attended
that church. They dropped the name Baptist,
I think. But anyway, it was my dad established
that and a few other folks in 1963. And he preached free will, free willism
all his life. But anyway, we got to talking
again. He said, I think the Lord would
have you to be pastor of the church. And I said, well, dad, I don't
know how that would be because you and I differ so much on the
way sinners are saved. And my dad said, we don't differ
anymore. He said, God has taught me that
salvation's of the Lord. And of course, that broke my
heart. And I rejoiced in that. I still rejoice in the words
that he shared with me. And he said, I'll never have
the opportunity to preach the truth. But he said, you will. He said, I'm just convinced that
it's God's will for the church to call you as pastor. And I said, well, We'll see what
the Lord has in store. And then he said something else
that I never have forgotten. He said, just don't call it what
you believe. Just don't call it by that name. And I said, what name is that? He said, you know, Calvinism. Don't call it by that name. He
said, would you kind of make me a promise that you won't do
that? And I said, well, I don't use
that word much anyhow. And I rarely do, because people
don't understand, especially people who don't have a knowledge
of doctrine, haven't studied theology, et cetera. I rarely
use it. I was in the hospital down here
three weeks ago, and a nurse came in and saw my Bible sitting
there. We got to talking. He's a Baptist. He's Southern Baptist. I asked
if he knew who James Pettigrew Boyce was. Bill Parker and I
were talking about this a little bit ago, and he said he didn't.
I said, well, you know, You trace the roots of your Southern Baptist
Church back to him and the seminary. And this fellow said, so you're
a Calvinist. And I said, well, I don't know.
What do you mean by that? And I would give you this advice.
You know, when somebody asks you something, Maybe they'll
say something like this, and I've been asked this before,
do you believe in predestination? Before you answer, find out what
they mean by predestination. Because I've often had people
say, you know, you believe babies are predestinated to go to hell.
And I say, well, no, that's not what I believe. That's not what
predestination is in the Bible. But this guy said, so you're
a Calvinist. I said, well, what do you mean
by that? He said, well, you believe in
the five points of Calvinism, T-U-L-I-P, an acrostic. And I said, well, that which
the word of God teaches about those things, that's what I believe.
He said, well, I just have trouble with the middle one. And the
middle one is limited atonement. He said, I do have trouble with
that, that the Lord Jesus only died for his elect. And I said,
so you have trouble with the gospel. Oh, he said, no, I don't have
trouble with the gospel. I just have trouble with that
middle point. And I said, but that is the gospel. You see, the good news is that
the Lord Jesus has come into this vile world. That one who is God over all,
blessed forever, he came into this world and he robed his deity
in human human flesh, and more than that, he joined himself
to human flesh, and there'll never be a divorce between his
deity and his humanity. He wasn't part God and part man. He's the God-man. I had a little
discussion with one of my doctors about that the other day. And
she said, he's a God, he was a God, but he wasn't a real man. He was really God and he was
really man. That's what he was. And he had
to be in order to satisfy all divine requirements. And he had
to be in order to satisfy the needs of this sinner and all
the sinners in whose stead he died. But this nurse said, that's
the one I have trouble with. Well, I want to talk to you tonight
about redemption, particular or universal. And I'm going to be speaking
on the subject of redemption for probably three messages at
least. I brought three messages on the
election, I want to deal with the doctrine of particular redemption,
and particular redemption is simply that the Lord Jesus, our
Savior, when he died on the cross of Calvary, he died for his people,
a particular people. His death was not universal at
all. And I've had men, preachers even,
who've said to me, well, in some sense he died for everybody. I said, in no sense did he die
for everybody. He died for his elect. And I'm
not going to try to build a straw man before you tonight and then
commence to tearing it down. I want to present this fairly
and set before you what I believed for several years and what my
daddy believed right up to the time shortly before he died. that Christ Jesus tasted death
for every single person that lived. And those are the two
positions. Redemption. Redemption is the
purchase of a slave from the slave market. It involves payment
of a debt. So the issue is, did Christ,
down the cross, did he pay the indebtedness of all of the human
race? Because there's no question about
this, we're all in debt to God. Everybody's gonna agree with
that, surely. We all are in debt to God. We owe a debt that we can't pay. We're absolutely helpless to
begin to commence to get started for paying for even one sin,
much less all of them. So the issue is, did the Lord
Jesus come down here to redeem, to pay the indebtedness of the
whole human race? Or did He, in fact, enter into
this world to save His people from their sins? And those are
the words of the angel to Joseph. The angel said, Thou shalt call
His name Jesus. What's the reason for that? He's
Jehovah who saves. Nobody but Jehovah could pay
our sin debt. And whosever indebtedness he
retired, those people are no longer in debt to God. You agree with that? So if universal redemption is
correct, then nobody is in debt to God. Hell is going to be empty
and heaven's gonna be full of everybody. So there's the two
positions. Redemption, particular, or universal. Now, I will say that I do believe
in what's been called tulip, which is an acrostic. I don't
believe everything John Calvin wrote. I don't believe everything
John Calvin believed. I believe a lot of what he believed.
I don't believe it all. I don't believe it all. In fact,
he put us out of business. People who immerse. The doctrine that I believe and
embrace and really the doctrine that has embraced me I believe
that's a better way to say it, Alan. The truth has embraced
us. See, it's one thing for you to
hold on to the truth. Well, I hold to this position. I hold to that position. It's
one thing to say that. It's another thing for the truth
of God's Word, the glorious gospel of grace, to take a hold of us
and hold us. That's a totally different thing. Tula T total depravity that doesn't
mean that we're as bad as we could be But it does mean that we have
no spiritual life We have no spiritual ability We're dead
in trespasses and sins We are as dead spiritually as as Lazarus,
the brother of Martha and Mary, was dead physically. He could sooner come out of that
grave on his own as a sinner can give life, spiritual life,
to himself. That's why Christ said to Nicodemus,
you must be born again. You must be born from above.
Let's stop talking about what we've got to do. Let's start
talking about what God's got to do. He's got to birth you
into His kingdom. A baby doesn't have any choice
about being born. You didn't have any choice about
who your parents would be. You didn't have anything to do
with it whatsoever. I wish I was born into wealth.
Well, you were born into wealth if
your parents believed the gospel of God's grace. If God has given them the riches
of his mercies, you was born into a wealthy family. And if
you weren't born into a spiritually wealthy family, God has now brought
you into a family of believers and we all enjoy the riches of
his grace, don't we? I think we're all wealthy. I
don't wanna hear what you don't have. You have all things in
Christ. You lack nothing. Total depravity. Unconditional election is you. God from the beginning chose
a people unto salvation without any consideration of what they'd
ever do. Nothing like that. Romans 9,
before any works were done, either good or bad. Say, I don't know
why I'm a child of God. I can tell you why you're a child
of God. God chose you on salvation. I'm
not ashamed to say that. I'm gonna say it loud as I can,
clear as I can. I tell you something, two things
every preacher, just every preacher of the gospel will do, and he's
got to do it. He's got to speak the truth.
And number two, he's got to speak out against error. And we have
to do that. And we're not trying to disguise
what we're saying. We're not trying to avoid being,
you know, certain words lest we offend somebody. There's an
offense to the cross of Christ. There is an offense to the gospel
of God's redeeming grace, salvation, all of God dependent upon the
death, the burial, the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, revealed
by the sovereign work of the Spirit of God. I am not ashamed
to say that. I remember years ago I was working
in a church. I think I've told you this, but
anyway, I was working in a church, I was learning the truth, and
I was teaching a Sunday school class. And I thought it was only
fair to go to the preacher and tell him I had learned the truth,
and I aimed to teach it. But I knew he didn't believe
it, and that's the right thing to do. And so I went to him and
talked to him about what I believed, what I felt like God had revealed
to me, pointed up on his book, in his book, on his bookshelf,
he said, you see that work of The Sovereignty of God by A.W. Pink? And he had an old set,
like six volumes, six little thin volumes. I said, yeah, those
are great books. He said, I believe every word
in there. I said, well, how come you don't
preach that? He said, you don't understand,
Brother Jimmy. If I preached that, I'd lose
my job here at this church. I thought even less of him then.
I already didn't think too much of him. Let me tell you something. A
man will preach what a man believes. That's right, isn't it, Bill? If a man believes free willism,
if a man believes that man makes the difference, that's what he's
going to preach. If he believes God's sovereign, that God is
gracious to whom He'll be gracious, He's merciful to whom He'll be
merciful. If he believes Christ actually
paid the debt of His people, He redeemed His people by His
shed blood, if a man believes that, he's got to preach it. It's got to come out on him. I had no more respect. Of course,
I didn't have much for him already. But that preacher, I thought
he was enjoying a good salary. And they pay to put money for
a pension, you know. You could retire. Uh-huh. Well, I'm done. I'm done. I was 19 years old. That church was paying my tuition
at college. He said, you know what this means,
don't you? Yeah, I know what that means,
and that's all right. And they was giving us, what,
$20 a week or something like that. 1970 so but anyway Got
to preach what you believe unconditional election God chose the people under salvation
if you deny that you're denying the word of God And then what's
called limited atonement? meaning particular redemption See, everybody limits the atonement. Everybody limits the atonement. Either the scope of it or the
power of it. The scope of redemption of the
atonement and atonement is reconciliation. The redemption of our Lord Jesus
Christ was for a specific group of people. It had to be because
it settled the issue once and for all. Christ came and atoned for or
reconciled to God all those chosen unto salvation. I've got to go
quickly. And then I, irresistible grace. The Holy Spirit uses the gospel
preached. Gospel Bill preaches, the gospel
I preach, the gospel Alan preaches, and these men who speak for me
here. The truth of who Christ is and
what He did and the reason that He did it, why He did it, and
where He is now. The truth of this salvation accomplished,
accomplished, By Christ Jesus? The Spirit of God takes that
message and it's delivered to us. You hear the Gospel. You
hear it from somebody. Somebody tells you the truth.
You find out who God is. He's not at all like you thought
He was. You thought He'd accept you on
any basis. God is holy and just and righteous. I talked to a doctor the other
day, and this doctor said, well, you know, God is love, and God
loves everybody. I said, well, God's holy. What
about the holiness of God? What about the justice of God?
And the doctor said, I don't know too much about that, but
I do know that God loves everybody. There's ignorance of who God
is. They don't know. They don't know. And this is a person who goes
to the Catholic church right down here, the so-called holy
family church, or whatever the name of it is. I call it unholy. The unholy church is somebody
who's raised in a Catholic school. Don't know who God is. We're
covered over with religion today, but it's a religion of ignorance. They have no idea who God is. And they don't have any idea
who they are. They don't know they're fallen
creatures. That doctor told me, said, all good people go to heaven. I said, well, the Bible says
there's none good, no, not one. That means there's nobody going.
She said, well, that's your Bible. Yeah, it is my Bible. That's
God's Word. Irresistible grace, God's got
to do something for you. And I'll tell you when it is
that people will believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, when the Spirit
of God does a mysterious, miraculous work within, using the gospel,
using that hissing of the Lord, that call of grace, Through the
message of redemption, the message of salvation accomplished by
Christ, the blood of Christ, the righteousness of Christ,
the glorious person of Christ. They hear about Him and the Spirit
of God says that's the one right there to believe on. Irresistible grace in the lastness,
perseverance, or preservation of the saints. The righteous
shall hold on their way. Why, salvation's not to be approved
by God and welcomed by God today, and then he kicks you out tomorrow
because you did something bad. Salvation's forever. He gives us everlasting life. Now, I'm gonna be straight with
you. There is no more, in my estimation,
there is no more damnable heresy or hideous error that a preacher
could declare than for him to say Christ died for every member
of the human race. If you want to get my dander
up, or any preacher of the gospel, you start talking like that.
It's not going to hear you. It's demeaning to the Savior.
It puts Him down. And it lifts the center up because
it makes salvation ultimately not dependent upon Christ and
His blood and His righteousness and His sacrifice and His faithfulness. His suffering? His death? No, it makes salvation dependent
upon the sinner's decision. That is sure enough damnable
heresy. God'll put you in hell for believing
that. Because you're trying to steal
the glory of Christ. For somebody to say that the
Lord Jesus died just as much for Judas as he did for the Apostle
Paul, or just as much for the believing thief as the unbelieving
thief, that's wrong. You see, actually, universal
redemption is the teaching that our Lord Jesus laid down his
life for people who were already in hell. And for multitudes who will yet
perish in their sins. It's the teaching that the Lord
Jesus on the cross of Calvary made salvation possible for everybody
but did not actually secure salvation for anybody. That is sure enough
heresy. This is a belief that He died
for all people without exception. As much for the world of the
elect as the world of the non-elect. It's the teaching that He did
not actually secure the salvation of anybody or put away the sins
of anybody, but that He only made salvation a possibility
and that the sinner, by his or her faith, actually makes the
death of Christ to be, by their faith, successful. Here in this passage that Bill
read to us, verse 25, Husbands, Ephesians 5, 25, Husbands, love
your wives even as Christ also. Who do you love? He loved the
church. And what did he do for the church?
Gave himself for it. That's particular redemption.
that he might sanctify, and the word might doesn't present the
idea of there's a possibility that he would, but maybe he won't.
No, the word might means in order that. In order that he would
sanctify and cleanse it by the washing of water, by the word. So make sure you understand the
issue. Essentially, universal redemption
makes salvation dependent not on the eternal purpose of God,
not on the everlasting love of the Father, not upon the unchanging
covenant of grace by the triune God, not upon the blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ, It makes salvation conditioned upon the sinner. And therefore, it really gives
the glory for salvation to the sinner. I've had people say to me and
these preachers, I'm sure they've had people say something like
this to them. Yes, Jesus died, but you've got
to accept the price that he paid. And I said, I didn't know the
price was offered to us. I thought the price of redemption
was offered to divine justice, not about you accepting what
He did. He's not offering His blood to
you saying, will you accept this as payment for your sins? He
offered it to offended justice. He stood as our substitute. He
hung on the cross of Calvary as the Lamb of God, smitten in
old eternity, and revealed and died on the cross in order to
present to God the sacrifice that fully and finally put away
the sins of His people. He's not offering that to you.
He's not offering it to the devil. He didn't buy us from the devil. He strong-armed the devil and
crushed his head and conquered him, but he offered him no price. No price was due him. The price
of our redemption is offered to God! To God! Old brother Scott Richardson used
to say, God had to do something for Himself! before he could
do anything for us. And there's not one in 10,000
preachers that knows anything about that. Turn to John 17, and I'll continue
this next week, but let me show you a couple of verses here.
John 17, and I got a question for you. I have a question for anybody
that has difficulty with this glorious truth that our Lord
Jesus died for His church. And once you get to John 17,
I'll ask you the question. I don't want to hear any pages
turned. Well, maybe a couple. All right.
Here we go. I have a question for anyone
who has a problem with this glorious truth that Christ laid down His
life. for the church. Would the Lord
Jesus lay down his life for people that he refused to pray for? He wouldn't do that. There's some people he don't
pray for. Look here in John 17, look at
verse nine. This is his high priestly prayer
and really this is the Lord's prayer right here. John 17 verse
nine. He says, I pray for them. Who's
the them? He keeps on repeating those that
you gave me. Those that you gave me. He says,
I pray for them. I pray not for the world, but
you're trying to tell me he died for the world? He laid down his life for the
world, and yet he won't pray for the world? That's confusing to say that. He says, but for them, I pray
for them which thou hast given me. Given him, when were these
given to him? In the covenant of grace. That
everlasting covenant of grace which was established in all
things insure. And that's all of our salvation
right there. They don't fight against election,
that started the whole thing. The eternal purpose of God. Those that thou hast given me
for they are thine. They are thine, look down in
verse 20. Neither pray I for these alone,
but for them also which shall believe on me through their word,
the word of the preachers, that they all may be one as thou,
Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in
us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. Tell you another story. Years
ago I drove package car for UPS, you know that. One of my regular
stops was a place in Lexington, North Carolina called Furniture
Makers. And I met at that business and
he was head of the shipping department. I met and became very good friends
with the man who was the head of the shipping department, Brother
Swise Good. He's gone on to glory now. He's
an old Presbyterian, and I would take my break there. Sometimes
I'll take about 30 minutes of lunch there, and he and I would
sit down and eat together and talk about the truth of God's
Word. In fact, just Can't tell you a little bit more about it.
When my dad was dying, I left word for Nancy, if you need to
reach me, call Furniture Makers in Lexington, North Carolina,
and ask for Brother Sweiskud and give him the news. And sure
enough, I made a delivery there one day and went in. He come up to me and said, Brother
Jim, your dad's gone home to glory. It just broke my heart. He hugged me, and I cried, and
he cried. I was so thankful for him. And
I went in one day, and Vern, that's his name, Vern Swicegood,
he said, he said, boy, I'm glad you're here. He said, I got a
hard-headed overnight driver. You've heard of overnight trucking
company, I guess. He said, this guy's hard-headed. I said, I'm not hard-headed.
I just know Jesus loves everybody and died for everybody. Vern
said, help me, help me. I said, well, I'll back you up
here a little bit. And of course, we couldn't get
anywhere with him. But the man said this. He said,
I can't bear the thought that there are people on the top side
of God's earth for whom Christ Jesus didn't die for. He said,
I can't bear that thought. I said, well, I'll tell you what
thought I can't bear, that there are people in hell suffering
the wrath of God and Christ has already paid their sin debt.
I said, I can't bear that. You mean to tell me Christ paid
the debt of some people who are in hell now because they still
owe a debt to God? See, that's how ridiculous it
is. Emotions get involved in this. But the thing that we need to
be involved with is the very truth of God. It's a successful
redemption. Let's be clear on this. You see, give me about five more
minutes and I'll let you go. Let me show you five reasons
why universal redemption needs to be exposed and denounced as
the heresy that it is. Number one, the doctrine of universal
redemption says there's no power, merit, or efficacy in the blood
of Christ Jesus without man's faith needed to ignite the power. That's what they say. It's faith
that ignites the power. The power's there, you just got
to avail yourself of it and make it active on your account. If
that's true, that makes man his own savior. And we're not our own savior.
And the second thing is the doctrine of universal redemption makes
the grace of God nothing more than a frustrated desire on God's
part. That's all it is. You take the purpose of God and
make it dependent upon man. What kind of God do you have
there? God can't do anything unless
we let him. You need to reevaluate the God
you worship. He's quite pitiful if he doesn't
have power over all things to do his will. And number three, the theory
of universal redemption really perverts the character of God.
and reduces his glorious attributes to just meaningless words. Because it's a denial of the
very character of God. It reduces the love of God to
nothing. What kind of love could save
people but sets idly by when they love them but won't save
them? It perverts the wisdom of God
and makes it mere ignorance and foolishness. Who makes any kind
of plan and yet knows it won't be fulfilled? So that's really
what the Armenians say. God planned this, but it may
not come to pass. What kind of God you got? Who pays a debt for somebody
and yet requires them to pay the debt if they don't accept
you paying the debt? And it makes a mockery of the
justice of God. That's exactly what it is. What they're saying is, God,
if you don't believe Christ, God's going to punish you even
though He's already punished Christ in your stead. That's injustice. The old brother's top lady said,
twice payment God will not demand. First from my bleeding surety
and then again at my hand. No, He's not going to do that. And I'll tell you what, Reduces
the omnipotence the power of God to a helplessness And to the very point that he's
dependent upon me To give him the okay to save me And it robs God of his glory And then I'll say this, universal
redemption makes the work of Christ Jesus a futile exercise
and a waste. It makes the precious blood of
Christ merely a possibility of saving. That's horrible, isn't
it? That's horrible. I had a pastor friend of mine. He's gone to glory now. He told me he was in theology
class at a certain Bible college. And the professor said this,
and I wrote it down, wrote it down years ago. He told me this.
This professor said, what is hell? It's an infinite negation. And
it is more than that. I tell you, and I say it with
profound reverence, that hell is a ghastly monument to the
failure of the triune God to save multitudes who are in hell
right now. He said, I say it reverently,
I say it with every nerve of my body tense, sinners go to
hell because God himself couldn't save them. He did everything
he could, but he failed. Isn't that awful? And that man
has written books that you can buy on Amazon. I'll tell you what, that does
away with Isaiah 53, where it says, he shall see of the travail
of his soul and be satisfied. It just does away with that,
Ron. Where it says, the pleasure of
the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Just do away with that.
Just like Thomas Jefferson, just cut that, cut those lines out.
He makes the word of God to be meaningless, therefore. And I'll say this, and I'll quit.
The doctrine of universal redemption is as useless as it is despicable. It's just useless, because it
doesn't save anybody. It offers no ground of hope. It offers no basis of assurance. Here's my assurance. Christ died
for me. John Jasper, his black preacher
from Richmond, Virginia. Somebody said, what are you going
to say when you get to heaven? Somebody says, why should we
open the pearly gates and let you in this holy heaven? He said,
because Jesus died for me. That's it. That's it right there. Christ died for me. Well, I'll
continue next Sunday night. If you like what you heard tonight,
come back next Sunday night. If I don't see you next Sunday
night, I'll get the message. Unless you got a good excuse.
215.