Astor and I just would say, first
of all, that you need to get with Brother James. Find out
whatever it is he's been eating and drinking and doing for 90
years. To have a voice that strong and
that clear, you need to talk to him. 90 years. He's been my friend a
long time. What I must say tonight, first
of all, is how much that myself and my
Betty and my family thank you and appreciate you, not just
for the last year, but for so many years, your kindness and
help to us. But especially in this last year,
I'm grateful for you. I thank God for you all. And as Paul said, I thank God for
every remembrance of you. And I just pray that the spirit
of God will convey it to your heart. because I'm afraid to say very
much or I won't be able to preach. I want you to turn tonight to
the book of Romans in the ninth chapter. If the Lord enables me and continues to direct me in this way, I want to try to bring you four messages on the sovereign will of God. And tonight I want to begin by
trying to speak to you about the sovereign will of God as the cause of salvation. If you look here in Romans chapter
9, you find the Apostle Paul not
only being led by the Spirit of God in what he says, but the
Spirit of God is revealing to him what will be the natural
response of all people. He knows because God has taught
him and from his own experience what the natural response of
man is to this whole notion of God's sovereignty. And so in verse 14 he says, what
shall we say then Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. Four. He saith to Moses, or he
said to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. and I will have compassion on
whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that
willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. I am convinced that there is
something that we must be confronted with. We must acknowledge it. We must be brought to some understanding
of it. And we must confess it if we
are ever to believe the truth. if we're ever to acknowledge
God as He is, and if we are ever to really worship and praise
Him right. And that is, since there is no need in God
To be gracious or merciful to man. He'll still be God. He'll still be gracious. Even
if he's not gracious to me. It's like a man who's rich. He'll
still be rich if he doesn't give me a penny. And he'll still be
loved. But that doesn't mean He loves
you or me. There is no need in God to be
gracious or merciful to men. And, not only that, but since
there is nothing in man to deserve God's favor, or to deserve His
grace or mercy. There's nothing in us to draw
out God to be merciful or gracious to us. And since those two things
are undoubtedly true, The grace and mercy that God
shows to His elect arises out of an act of His sovereign will. And when you read such verses
as these, and all Paul is really doing is quoting what we find
in the book of Exodus, God actually speaking to Moses, who has just
asked God to show him His glory. Before we hear anything about
grace, Anything about mercy, anything about compassion on
sinners, we read two words. I will. I will. And that simply means that when
there is no need in God to be merciful, and no reason in us
for Him to show us mercy, though we need it, God simply in Himself,
acting by Himself, as a sovereign act of His will, says, I will
be merciful upon whom I'll be merciful, and I will be gracious
to whom I'll be gracious, and I'll have compassion on whom
I have compassion. And in our day, men have heard
so much such things as this, if you will, God will. But all of salvation, all that
God has to give in grace and mercy and compassion, it all
begins and finds its fountainhead in the sovereign God. and His act and His will. That's it. And that's why in
this book so often we find what is called by some the covenant
language of God in passages such as this in Jeremiah chapter 32. He says, Behold, I will gather
them out of all countries, whether I have driven them in mine anger,
and in my fury, and in great wrath, and I will bring them
again unto this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely. and they shall be my people,
and I will be their God. And I will give them one heart
and one way that they may fear me forever for the good of them
and of their children after them. and I will make an everlasting
covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them to do
them good, but I will put my fear in their hearts that they
shall not depart from me. Yea, I will rejoice over them
to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with
my whole heart and with my own And there is not one contingent
plan in all that is said. There is not one word about a
dependence on what they'll do. There is not one word about it
being conditioned on their faith or anything else. It all begins,
it all is carried on, and it all ends in, I will. I will. And that makes every
other will subservient to His. And not only that, but when He
willed to do that, when He willed to do so, He also in a sovereign
act of His will appointed Christ to die the death of the cross. He appointed Christ to act as
our substitute. He appointed Christ as this one
way of salvation. And there never has been, and
there never will be, any other will in the matter of salvation
except the divine will. And at that same time, He not
only purposed and determined and will to save and to do so
in the Lord Jesus Christ as the one Mediator and Redeemer, but
He also will determine not to impute their sins to them. Men and women, they like to put
times here and times there, but since the whole purpose of God
and salvation depended on that, I have to believe it was then
when He willed to do it. I will. And it has nothing to
do with what men call free will. It has nothing to do with the
will of man initiating anything in salvation. The will of man
can only be associated with sin. We all will to sin. It's not the devil that makes
us do it. We all will to sin. And the truth is this is something
that no one by the natural mind can ever comprehend of themselves. We can never understand of ourselves
what this is all about since we never could and never have
and never will act in such a way. Oh, I believe we can do anything
we want to. Well, why are you still hanging on to that 10 pounds
that you willed to get rid of January 1st? Why are you not a millionaire
that you willed to do when you were 16 years old, whatever it
is? No, but we always have will to
sin, and that's why we have sin, so that anything in salvation
is not associated with man's will. It can only be in God's
will, and we only find that out when the Spirit of God takes
the truth of God, just like it's written in such plain passages
as Roman Nines and everywhere in this book, and convinces us
that it is true and enables us to believe it. That's not real complicated,
is it? I will have mercy on whom I'll have mercy. I'll be gracious
to whom I'll be gracious. I'll have compassion on whom
I'll have compassion. And to top that, I'll harden
whom I'll harden. So everything begins, carries
on, and will wind up all because God It's an act of His sovereign
will. And amazingly, this was one of
the first things that Saul of Tarsus had to learn. And he learned
it experimentally, or experientially, whichever word you want to use
there, but he learned it when he was unhorsed on the road to
Damascus and found out who it is that's in charge. But he sent
him down to Damascus in a street called Straight. And he said,
you're going to find there a man by the name of Ananias and he's
got something to tell you. He's not going to be like these
preachers in 2016 who want to keep the cookies on the lower
shelf for the Lord's people. No, he's going to bring the hard
tack right to the bottom shelf and that's what he's going to
feed you. And this is what he says. Ananias says to Saul of
Tarsus, that rebel that he's almost afraid to meet and talk
to because he's heard about him, but he tells him, the God of
our fathers have chosen thee. Ananias, haven't you ever been
to school? You're supposed to wait to tell them about election
after you get them hooked and after you get a decision out
of them. No, he says, the God of our fathers hath chosen thee
that thou shouldest know his will. It's got something to do with
the will of God. that you should know His will,
and see that just one, and shouldest hear the voice of His mouth. God's going to teach you something,
buddy. He's going to teach you whose will counts in this business,
in all things, but especially in pleasing God. He is going
to teach you whose will it is that brings all of salvation
to pass. He is going to teach you these
things and this is also why only believing, only believing the
gospel, only believing on Christ alone is truly doing the will
of God. He said, if any man will do his
will, If any man will do his will,
he shall know of the doctrine, whether or not it be of God,
or whether I speak of myself." Somebody said, well, I just want
to find out the will of God. No, you don't. No, you don't. Because in order for you to know
and believe the God of the Bible and find out His will, He's going
to have to bring you down. And you're going to have to know.
You're going to have to find out. You are going to have to
be taught by the Spirit of God through the Word of God. You
are going to have to be brought head on to passages just like
what we read tonight in Romans 9. He is going to have to bring
you to that very thought and declaration of Scripture. He
is going to break you and save you or you will be damned. Because He is not going to share
His glory with another. You can boast your free will
all you want to. It won't change His will one
bit. You can brag on your decision.
You can talk about you making your choice. But nothing that
is done in time can alter what God did before time. He said,
I will. You see, the truth of the matter
is, rather than fighting against that, rather than always kicking
against that. We ought to be glad he didn't
say to all, I won't. Because if he had of, there's
nothing you could have done about it. Not one thing. But he said, I will. I will. And this also means that the
greatest act of obedience, the one thing that has glorified
God Almighty the most, was Jesus Christ Himself submitting to
and doing the will of God. He's the one who's done the Father's
will. And the purpose of God, the purpose
and will of God was to save a people in Him and by Him, and that was
His will. That's the will of God. Is His
will to save everybody? Nope. Is his will to only save
Jews? No. Is his will only to save
Gentiles? No. Is his will to save a mass
of people any way that they can be saved? No. His will was to save a people. His will was to be compassionate,
to show mercy, and to be gracious in a people that He gave to His
Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what began to lay so
heavily on the heart and on the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ
in Gethsemane. You see, this is no simple task.
I might say to you, I will that you go out there and get a drink
of water. That's an easy will to perform.
Or I might say, I will that you go out and do this, that, or
the other. Maybe some really ugly task and you might do it.
But to save a sinner, To save a sinner in a way that honors
God, to save a sinner in a way that magnifies His justice and
His holiness, to save a sinner in a righteous way and make that
sinner righteous? That's no easy job. And when that weight of performing
the will of the Father When that weight began to lay
on Him, when He began to pray, and the Bible says in that place,
He sweat as it were great drops of blood. This is what we find
Him saying, Father, if Thou be willing, remove this
cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but
Thine be done. What was he facing? The will
of the Father. And some people struggle with
that. But I say what it is, is this man, who is the eternal
Son of God, the perfect, holy Son of God, who has never known
sin, and there in his humanity shrieks,
cringes almost, at the weight of it and the thought of it.
But he says, nevertheless, not my will but thine be done. And I'm going to tell you this,
all who truly believe will and must trust and acknowledge
that Christ doing the will of God is all our salvation. Is that right? His doing in every jot and tittle,
the will of God, that's our salvation. That's our righteousness. That's
our blessing. Turn over to Hebrews chapter
10, and look with me in Hebrews chapter 10, and listen to this
glorious book. If we had the New Testament,
if we had the book of Hebrews without the Old Testament, it
wouldn't mean anything. If we had the Old Testament without
the book of Hebrews, it wouldn't mean anything nearly as much. But he is quoting the Messiah
here. What was it that the Messiah
was saying? Long before He comes. Long before
He suffered. The Messiah said, Sacrifice an
offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me.
In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I. Lo, I come, in the volume of
the book it is written of me, to do thy will, O God. He comes to do what? To do thy
will, O God. Above when he said, Sacrifice
and offering, and burnt offerings, and offering for sin, thou wouldest
not, neither hadst pleasure therein, which are offered by the law.
Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away
the first, that He may establish the second, by the which will
we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus
Christ once for all." What did He come for? He came to do this
will. He came to accomplish this work
that would be the doing of His will. And all those Old Testament
sacrifices and that Old Testament worship and all that went on
under that old mosaic economy, it pictured how this will would
be accomplished. But only the Christ Himself would
accomplish it. He said it's written in the volume
of the book. Well, it was written all through
the Old Testament prophecies time and time again. And it's
written in the New Testament Gospels and the Epistles, but
long before that. It was written in the book of
God's purpose. It was written in the eternal
scroll of divine decrees. It was written in that which
contains all that is foreordained and all that is predestinated
by God, all the will of God, called in some places, the Lamb's
Book of Life. It was always written. that he
would come to do the will of God. Now I suppose there's a
sense in which you could drop back and from his very birth, you could say he did the will
of God in all things. But rather than just doing that,
which if he had just done those things up to the cross and ascended
back into heaven, every sinner would would even then still perish. Why? Because his sinless obedience
before the law will not save you. Why? Because the law never demanded
a redo. The law said the soul that sinneth
shall surely die. And so here he comes. And it is that will of God in
which we are set apart in Christ Jesus that is the only way we
are made righteous and acceptable in his sight. And I do mean the
only way. His doing the will of God is
the only work of righteousness there is. You can look and you
examine your best, the best among us. And it could never, by the
farthest stretch of the imagination, it could never be called doing
the will of God or a work of righteousness. And when you read through these
verses in Romans chapter 9, and the apostle begins to talk about
how that it is not of a man who wills or a man who runs, which
he simply does and works and all that, but of God that showeth
mercy. He is pointing us back always
to God as the fountainhead of every blessing, His grace and
His mercy that flows out of this solemn act and determination
to be merciful. And he said, what if God, what if God, willing to show
His wrath, willing to show his power, endured these objects
and these vessels of destruction. Let me ask you this. I'll just
throw this in. Do you think any sinner will
go willingly into hell? Why won't his free will save
him then? It reminds me of a story I heard years ago about a preacher
who was preaching free will stupid nonsense in a church in a coal
town in Wales. He began to tell how God would
cast those who didn't choose Jesus, who didn't of their will
decide for Jesus, and there was an old miner sitting at the back
and he just busted out laughing. And the preacher said, What are you laughing about?
Aren't you afraid?" He said, no, I'm not afraid. He said,
if God can't save me against my will, He can't damn me against
my will. Let me tell you this, God is
just as willing to show His wrath, because it's just wrath. It's
deserved wrath. He's just as willing to show
his wrath as he is to show mercy. You're not going to get him boxed
up in a corner. If you can't trace the fountainhead
of all that you claim is your hope of salvation back to this
very thing that it originated, that it is because that God in
old eternity determined and willed to be merciful to you, you don't
know anything about Him. Sorry. You don't know anything
about Him. Because Christ coming to this
earth and taking on Himself human flesh, and living sinlessly before
God and men, and dying that death of the cross, putting away all
the sins of His people of all time, and establishing righteousness
on their behalf, and totally accomplishing their salvation,
is and shall always be the will of God. And he delighted in doing it. Oh, it says, for the joy set
before him. For the joy that set before him,
he did all these things. And this will, the apostle in
Hebrews 10 here, he sums it up in this way, and he says in this
10th verse, by the witch will, we are sanctified. He didn't
say we can be sanctified. We might be sanctified. No, he
said, by the witch will, we are sanctified. That is, we are set
apart unto God as vessels of His mercy in Christ Jesus. We are set apart unto God and
counted holy through the person and the work of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And we shall be eternally set
apart and kept by God for all the ages to come. And how is
it we are sanctified? Progressively? I don't know about you, but I
ain't making much progress. Progressively. No. By the witch will. The will that
the Lord Jesus Christ, in obedience to the Father, accomplished. That's all he came to do. And
that is what it was his sole desire to do. Look over in John's
Gospel. In John chapter 4. John chapter 4. And look down in verse 34. That's
when those disciples had gone away to get food. And Christ,
when they got back To him, he is so satisfied, he is so delighted
in what he has been doing. And they say, did somebody get
him a sandwich? Somebody must have got him a
cheeseburger or something. Look at him. He is doing good.
Look at what he says. Verse 34, Jesus saith unto them,
My meat. That means my necessary food,
that which satisfies me and sustains me and makes me happy and makes
me fulfilled if you want to. My meat is to do the will of
Him that sent me and to finish His work. What did He come to do? The will
of Him that sent me. What was it satisfied him? You
don't hear him whimpering about being a failure. You don't hear
him picturing himself as being a possible failure at what he's
come to do. They reject him. He tells them
they reject him and he doesn't seem flustered by it one bit. He said, all that the Father
gives me, they'll come to me. Why? Because it's God's will. That's what the covenant is all
about. It's about God's will in Christ. And so everything that was necessary,
that alone could satisfy the Lord Jesus because that alone
could satisfy the Father. And the Lord Jesus Christ, though
He undoubtedly is co-equal to the Father, He said, I and my
Father are one. but coming as Jehovah's servant
and saying, my father is greater than I. It was to accomplish the one
thing that he could not do from heaven, the one thing necessary
to save his people, the one thing that was bound up in the will
of God, and that was to die for our sins. Isaiah had said this, yet it
pleased the Lord. What would be the pleasure of
the Lord? Would it not be His will? I mean,
what He wants, what He desires, what will satisfy Him, what will
honor Him, it is all bound up in His will. Yet it pleased the
Lord to bruise Him. He hath put him to grief, when
thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed,
he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord, the will of the Lord shall prosper
in his hand. In John chapter 5, he restates
this in another way, very much the same. In John chapter 5 and
verse 30, he says, I can of mine own self do nothing. As I hear,
I judge. And my judgment is just, because
I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which
hath sent me. That's Jehovah's servant talking
there. What are you going to do? In
my humanity, I've come to do the will of God. I've come to
do the will of Him that sent me. Could we dare even imagine
that He, as the God-man, did not accomplish the will of Him
that sent Him? That's right. You're always lacking assurance. You always have no hope because
you still in your heart and mind think it's your doing the will
of God. You feel good if you think you've done His will. You
don't feel so good if you don't think so. But it's not our doing His will.
But it's Christ who came to do His will. And you know what? We don't even
have to wonder about what that is. Just look over in John chapter
6. This is after the Lord Jesus
Christ said, you've seen me but you don't believe on me. All that the Father giveth me
shall come to me. And him that cometh to me I will
in no wise cast out, for I came down from heaven not to do mine
own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the
Father's will. The unchangeable will of the
Father. This is the Father's will which
has sent me, that of all which He has given me, I should lose
nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day." Are
all His people going to be saved? Absolutely. They can talk about
empty seats in heaven if they want to. They can press morality
issues on men and women. They can put them on guilt trips
and all this kind of thing. They can promise them reward.
They can scare them to death with threats and punishment.
It's all going to come right back to this. The Lord Jesus Christ in His
life And as that glorious, perfect person, through his cross death,
through his burial, through his resurrection, as a witness that
he had done the Father's will, he accomplished that will of
grace, that will of mercy, that will of compassion. that God
will before the foundation of the world. I used to think it was quite
noble of me when I stopped beginning my salvation with when I did
something. But really, to ascribe all the
glory to God for His sovereign grace and mercy. And to put aside
all hope in myself as having any part of it, I have to go
back, way back, and hear Him say, I
will. I will. For a long time I said, I won't. You know what he was still saying?
I will. I will. I will be gracious. I will have mercy. And if I will it, ain't one thing
you can do about it except get it. And I'm glad His will is the
will that counts. Because He said, and this is
the Father's will which has sent me, that of all which He hath
given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again
at the last day. Somebody said, well, then He can save us and we never
believe. Is that what that next verse
says? And this is the will of Him that sent me, that everyone
which seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have everlasting
life, and I will raise him up at the last day." But in order to get a clear picture
of where salvation originated, why it's maintained, and why
it's sure, And in order to get a clear continuing picture of
what you and I are of ourselves, He has to bring us right back
here. Because before you were born,
He said, I will. Before you ever read a page in
the Bible, He had said, I will. Before you ever did anything,
before Christ even came and died on the cross, He said, I will. I'm going to
be gracious to these old Tim and James there. I'm going to
be gracious to old Bill and Blond and this one and that one. I'm
going to be gracious to them." And the devil said, well, I don't
know why you would be. Look at them. Number one, they don't even exist. Oh, but they did to the father
because he gave them to the son. Well, look at them. They don't
deserve it. They haven't done anything. Look even down in the
future. They're not going to do anything.
He said, but I will. They're not going to be saved
by what they do. They're going to be saved by what I do. And
I will. But I don't think you ought to.
That doesn't matter. I will. You look at all the forces
I'll bring up to try to stop it. I'll stop you for sure. No,
I will. I will. Paul said he gave himself for
our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world
according to the will of God and our Father. That's the marvel
of it. When we say the will of God,
at the same time the Lord's people are talking about the will of
our Father. And this sovereign act of God's
will to be gracious and merciful to us as sinners, and this Christ
alone by Himself and for His glory doing that will, this is
all of salvation in its entirety. That's our salvation. It's all
outside of ourself. It's all done by the Lord Jesus
Christ, and it's all according to the will of God. Is that your hope? You say, I can tell you, I can
tell you the time and I can take you to the place. And there's some of you old enough,
I bet you could sing a good bit of that song too. Where the Lord
saved me. When I did this, that and the
other. You better go back farther. Because it better begin right
here. Because as Moses found out, and as all that God saves
find out, this is His glory. You can put all the conditions
on it you want to, and you can argue and debate about your timetables
and all this kind of stuff. But it's kind of like old Gil
said, God's will to do something is the doing of it. Why? Because
there's no one can stop Him. There's no possibility of noncompliance
within the Godhead. He's not dealing with you and
me. He's dealing with the persons
of the Godhead. And Zephaniah says, The Lord
thy God in the midst of thee is mighty. He will save. He will rejoice over thee with
joy. He will rest in His love. He
will joy over thee with sin. And if He's willed to save you,
sinner, you can run, but you can't hide. We'll sing a closing hymn, number
42, All Hail the Power. When we finish, there is food
be food and fellowship in the back. You're all welcome to stay
and enjoy with us. 42, All Hail