The Making of a Calvinist

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Let me read Genesis 5020 as for you you meant evil against me But God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today Who was speaking in that who said that I was Joseph Joseph was a Calvinist and so am I and by Calvinism I simply mean a champion of God’s sovereignty I don’t think that Calvin would have appreciated very much the tulip articulation or the acronym. I’m not going to talk about that tonight. I do think that that is, as it relates to soteriology, that is pretty confining. Rather, a Calvinist is one who walks in light of God’s sovereignty. And that’s what I want to talk about tonight.

I believe that God ordains whatever comes to pass. I believe that He does what He pleases and that He redeems and preserves those whom He has chosen from before the foundation of the world. I believe that God is sovereign and absolute control. He answers to nobody and that His plans cannot be thwarted and there are none who are able to do so. I believe that the lordship of Jesus Christ is pervasive. and knows no bounds, as Jesus is preeminent. I believe that as He exercises the Father’s redemptive plan, we are human instruments for His use. I believe that Christ intends to present to Himself a pure spotless bride.

This bride, of course, is the church, and all of us Christians, modern Christians, are part of that. He takes very seriously her purity, and this plan is not subject to change or to reversal. I believe that man is responsible for his sin and accountable before God, the giver of all good gifts for any refusal to acknowledge a Creator. I believe that men cannot come to faith in Christ on their own any more than a corpse can walk out of its tomb under its own power. Men only come to faith in Christ once they have been given spiritual life and once God inclines their hearts toward Him. I believe that in their natural state, men hate God and love their sin.

And reversing this is a supernatural work that only God’s Holy Spirit can do. And therefore anyone who loves God only loves God because of God’s work in Him. Worship begins then with God and ends with Him. He is both the initiator and the object of worship. I believe there never has then been somebody who sincerely loved God and obeyed His commands but was turned away at the pearly gates simply because he was not numbered among the elect. Neither has there, on the contrary, ever been anybody who has dragged kicking and screaming into heaven because he was among the elect and didn’t want to be. These are some charges that are often thrown against Calvinists.

I believe that with spiritual life, God gives his children new hearts to love and obey him. I believe that as men cannot manufacture their own salvation, neither can they lose it once Christ has redeemed them. But there was a time when I couldn’t make that confession on those multiple bullets there. I could not have said that. It was not in fact until I was about 21 years old that I started to actually think in theological terms. And the straw that broke my once-Arminian back was a sermon by R.C. Sproul on Genesis 50 verse 20, my last brown paper passage message, and the one that I just read.

Genesis 50 verse 20 is a fantastic verse with a rich context and I believe presents an airtight argument for the sovereignty of God. And the first time I heard a sermon on it was the fall of 1999. But in order for you to fully appreciate how this sermon impacted me and why it brought me to a theological crossroads, I have to give you the background. But I promise before our time is is over we will land once again at Genesis 50 verse 20 but you might begin to doubt that after how much time we spend in the Gospel of John. When I was in college at WSU I was involved in the interdenominational Christian ministry. It’s funny people will say hey you went to WSU do you know so and so?

Which I always think is hilarious because there was about 17,000 students there and Now there’s about 21 or 22. But the funny thing is, I mean, that’s like saying, hey, you live in Marysville, do you know so and so? Marysville’s about three times that size. But the funny thing about it is that if the person was a Christian, I actually might have known the person because there are about 12 Christians in Pullman. And so the chances are, yeah. Plucked her out of there. Well, being a part of an inter-denominational Christian ministry, not surprisingly, I walked around with Christians from all sorts of theological stripes, so with different theological persuasions, with different denominational backgrounds or church backgrounds.

Looking back, it’s safe to say that we could have categorized them in two ways, Calvinist and other. I think you can probably still categorize people that way. I’m kidding people, lighten up. These were not factions. These are not adversarial relationships at all. They’re still not, of course. We were friends. But generally speaking, the Calvinists were the ones who knew what they believed. Generally speaking, who knew what they believed and why, theologically. It’s safe to say that almost everybody else was poorly taught or theologically ignorant, although most of us attended Armenian churches. I have no intention of bashing Armenians to make.

That is not my point. I believe that heaven will have Arminians and Calvinists get there. They’ll change to Calvinists once they’re there. But part of why this has been so impactful for me is the path, the trajectory that it put me on after my eyes were opened to the doctrines of grace and God’s sovereignty and how Scripture was illumined. But up until that point, I belonged to the latter group, the at least poorly taught group that did love Jesus but did not know the first thing about Reformed theology or Calvinism or Arminianism or the doctrines of grace or really about Soteriology, Eschatology, Pneumatology, Angelology, the rest.

What I was fond of saying was that those sorts of things were divisive and that there was lots of stuff in the Bible I didn’t know so I was not interested in or I was not equipped, to quibble about doctrinal differences with other Christians. Again, indeed, I consider myself unqualified to do so. I was generally disinterested in theological conversations, though I thought that reading the Bible was important. What I didn’t understand was, and what I would later discover, was that we cannot escape bringing presuppositions to any text. We can’t escape bringing presuppositions to any conversation or to any sermon listening activity.

And the more accurate your presuppositions, the more accurate your understanding of the passage or the message is going to be. And I was very ill equipped to understand much of anything with accuracy or precision. And it was, and I’m not really gonna go into this much later on, it was very much enlightening when I began to examine a lot of problem passages and scripture through the lens of a sovereign God. When I began to look at it that way, all of a sudden, so many things that had been confusing before made sense, but I get ahead of myself. We’ll fast forward to my junior year in college.

I was living in a big house with a bunch of Christian guys. There were 15 of us, and again, from all different theological stripes. My first semester, my classes started at 9.10 a.m., and so in all five days of the week, the classes started at the same time. I was able to get into a regular morning schedule that involved me reading and studying the Gospel of John for at least half an hour every day. Now I was a pretty new Christian. I had been a Christian for about a year and a half at that point. And I had no study tools, no resources. I had a Bible, a spiral notebook, and a ballpoint pen where I would write down thoughts and questions and observations on the verses that I was examining.

worth noting but just for information. I also had a stack of yellow cards where I would write down verses to memorize and I’d stuff in my pocket and then when I would put my hands in my pocket to walk in between classes and I’d feel it in there, I’d try to rehearse the verse from memory. So by adding students just a little life hack, by adding nothing more to my, I still had to walk from this point to this point. I added nothing more to my schedule is when I felt that I would try and see if I could rehearse it and if I couldn’t, yeah, pull it out, boom, put it back in, just go. I actually memorized a lot of scripture that semester, and actually that whole year doing just that.

But it’s fun to see now how God in His sovereignty was preparing me for what was to come. In His sovereign grace, He ordained, you can see my presuppositions now, that I memorized with and wrestled with a bunch of problem passages that would, well, that would be problematic for any Arminian like I was without knowing that I was in fact an Arminian and that he ordained that I even share a house with several Calvinists. There are a bunch of Calvinists in the house as well who are more familiar with scripture and theology than I was. Well that was hard to ignore. But what were these problem passages? Well if you’re at all familiar with the gospel of John, which you should be because as a church we finished going through it just the last year I do believe, well you probably have an idea what sorts of passages presented problems for an ignoramus such as myself.

Now I had been taught, and maybe your testimony is similar to mine, I had been taught and I had come to affirm, I had come to believe that salvation was a gift that men had the ability and the duty to receive and maintain. I had been taught and come to believe that salvation was a gift that men had the ability and the duty to receive and maintain. But as I studied John’s gospel, the plain reading of a host of passages sitting right on the surface, I didn’t have to dig at all, confronted my inflated view of man’s autonomy and challenged my presuppositions. And the head scratchers were always things that Jesus said, go figure.

So I’d like to look at several of them tonight and identify the sorts of questions and observations that the passages surface. So the next portion of my message, I’m going to identify, and we’ll look at them together, some passages, and I’ll tell you some of the things that came to mind when I was examining this. So hopefully you have enough context and you understand about the level of sophistication that I was bringing to the discussion theologically. Take a look at John 6.37. Jesus says, all that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. So a question that I had was, is this all ultimately conditional on man’s cooperation or work?

Like under what conditions or terms does the Father give someone to the Son? Who’s fit to be given? do then how do I get to be one of those presidents? Does this depend on their own righteousness? And if so, then how in fact are men saved at all? Well, in order for this to be true, the father and the son must have in mind a particular body of individuals. There must be names, a list, a quantifiable body of persons chosen for salvation. There are some who are gifts and some who are not. Again, try and put yourself in my shoes back in 1999 or 98, fall 98, sorry it was yeah fall 98 and wrestling with this. These are the sorts of things that came to mind. If this is true then the reverse must also be true, namely that those whom the Father does not give to the Son will will not come to the Son at all.

He also says, will come to me. If we are given to the Son by the Father, then can we finally resist that? Well, no. I mean, or God’s not as strong as I am, right? If I can then say, no Lord, I don’t want to be given to the Son, but what happens there? Well, of course we know that God changes our hearts, but he also says, I will never cast out. Hmm, if the Father gives us to the Son, and the Son states emphatically that we will come to Him, and He won’t cast us out, then, yeah, gotta look elsewhere for any sort of defense of being able to lose your salvation. What about a few verses later, John 644? No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

We neither have, here’s an observation, I think I still have this notebook, it’s pretty funny to look at it, we have neither the permission nor the ability to come to the sun on our own, but we are drawn. Why does he allure us? And if God’s doing the drawing, then can I just say, no? Is that a beckoning that we can resist? Well, it doesn’t seem like it based on verse 37, just a few verses earlier. What about another one, John nine, verses one through three, you know this story. “‘As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth, “‘and his disciples asked him, “‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, “‘that he was born blind?’

“’And Jesus answered, “‘It was not this man that sinned or his parents, “‘but that the works of God might be displayed in him.‘” Now, wait a minute, this is just not fair. So this guy had to live his whole life up to this point with blindness, just so that God could, I don’t know, perform some miracle and be shown off or something. That’s like an incredibly low view of man, isn’t it? Are men merely instruments for the display of God’s glory? I mean, not this man, no way. Doesn’t that paint a very low picture of man after all? It’s not the blind man’s fault. I mean, it’s not his fault that he was born blind. So why was he made to suffer all those years without sight?

Jesus says pretty clearly, but that the worst of God might be displayed in him. That man, that’s a hard one to swallow. Is it possible that men are in fact, instruments for the display of God’s glory? Is it possible that that’s all we are? But isn’t that pretty important? So, that seems like a low view of man, but isn’t that like the point of the universe is the display of God’s glory? And if that’s the case, then it seems like a pretty small thing that a guy would live years with blindness. Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe. Let’s move on. I mean, is it possible if this is right and good? if it brings about the greatest glory for God, as was the case when Jesus showed himself to be God by healing him.

What about John 10, verses 14 through 16? I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep, and I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also and they will listen to my voice, so there will be one flock, one shepherd. That’s verses 14 to 16. Does Jesus actually know beforehand who his sheep are? I mean, they haven’t even believed yet. What about those who have been offered salvation but have rejected it? Are there like sheep candidates in the economy of God? Like will be a sheep under certain conditions if he just starts to back correctly?

Then we’ll call him. I mean, who’s in charge here anyway? Jesus says that he must bring them in also. Well, says who? I mean, is that then a command from the Father as well? Or is it possible that he must do certain things in order to carry out plans of the Father?

You see the wrestling that I was experiencing. And again, I knew nothing of Calvinism, or what we have nicknamed Calvinism. John 10, verses 27 to 30, same chapter. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the father’s hand. I and the father are one. So wait a minute, Jesus. So are some people simply not ever going to become sheep? How on earth is that fair? And if Jesus gives eternal life, which I’ve been told somewhere, it doesn’t refer to just duration, but also quality of life, it’s a type of life.

He says in John 17.3, I’m not gonna get there. This eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you have sent. So, eternal life begins at the point where we start to have a relationship with Jesus. If he gives it, and it’s called eternal, then can I end it prematurely? How do so many Christians then argue that somebody can lose the salvation? And this is the first of the dominoes that started the tick for me. I do remember before I ever started confessing quietly in private groups that I think I’m a Calvinist. That’s when I was going to Western. That was pretty funny.

I believe for a while, and there are actually many who would say, I’m not a Calvinist, but I do believe that a person cannot lose the salvation once he’s Finally been given that. Yeah, so can a once redeemed man return to an unredeemed state? Having been bought, can I unbuy myself once more? Doesn’t that then make God unjust if that’s the case? Either our sins have been atoned for already or we’ll have to do it ourselves someday. Can God require a double payment for a solitary sin? Is the sacrifice of Jesus not sufficient? Must I also pay for my sins when Christ has done so already? like Jesus has died for everybody and This person goes to hell. How does that work?

When is the father actually satisfied? If as Jesus said and if I’m a sheep, which I love Jesus, I am a Christian So I’m calling myself a sheep. Let’s go with that if I’m a sheep and And no one is able to snatch me out of the father’s hand. Well, then can I step out of the hand myself? Or does that then make me greater than God? He is greater than all except for me maybe I can just I Have heard that argument by the way. Nobody can take you out, but you can take yourself out What’s next how about verses 16 to the first half verse 18? Truly truly I say to you a servant is not greater than his master nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him And if you know these things, bless you if you do them.

I’m not speaking to all of you. I know whom I have chosen.” Now Jesus was speaking here to His disciples. I couldn’t He chosen all of them? Like a few chapters earlier or in a different gospel or something like that, He like named them. I want this one, this one, this one, this one, this one. Is what kind of choosing are we talking about here? Not chosen to come to dinner. I’ve chosen all these people to come to dinner. He’s talking about a different kind of election. Okay, well, was Judas destined to betray Jesus? And if so, is it actually his fault? Can he be held responsible for his actions? Let’s skip a few chapters.

If we had, I don’t know, a week, we could go through just John 17. Since about this time, this has been my favorite chapter in the Bible. And it is for this reason because the whole prayer, John 17 is a prayer, the high priestly prayer, Jesus speaking to his father. There is one sense that I’ll get at later on, but the chapter is peppered with phrases that speak to Christ owning us and our being his. For instance, look at verses 6 through 8. I have manifested your name, remember this is a prayer, to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you, for I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them, and have come to know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me.”

Now in my sort of, my pretty immature assessment of this, I’m like, there is a specific group that he’s talking about. This is not offered universally. Now, it seems like in this context he was talking about his disciples, and then the word of his disciples went on and saved many.

Because he talks about the son of perdition, whom I lost none except for him, that was ordained too, and so on and so forth. Again, way more to talk about than we have time to do. But there was an overwhelming sense that there is a finite body that Jesus is referring to. Though he’s speaking of his disciples here, he’s emphatic that it is the prerogative of the Father to do what he wishes with his creations. It is the prerogative of the Creator to do what he wills with his creation. And we’re his creation. And that also sort of inflates my inflated view of mankind. The same sort of one that was offended by John 9.

It wasn’t that guy’s fault. like you let him go all those years just so that you could perform a trick. Jesus says next in verse 10, nine and 10, I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours, just in case there was any confusion. Now, all mine are yours and yours are mine and I am glorified in them. Isn’t this just mean that Jesus isn’t praying for everybody? Doesn’t Jesus want everybody to be saved? Well, then we get into some theological distinction between the will, the decreed will of God, the desired will of God, and whatnot, but again, just on the surface level, how can he say this?

Though Jesus is speaking of his disciples, he is emphatically not praying for everyone. Now, if salvation is offered universally, how does that work? I didn’t have answers for all of these, But, we do offer salvation liberally. We offer to everybody. We just believe that those who are saved are going to be made alive by Jesus. And the result is not up to us. The outcome is not up to us. God’s Spirit will give them life. What else? Verse 11, I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I’m coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one even as we are one? Well, if Jesus is praying for the preservation of his gifted ones, the ones that were given to him, it sure seems like the Father won’t say no. Like under what circumstances would the Son pray a prayer that is not consistent with the will of the Father? He says emphatically even in John, I do what the Father tells me. My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish his work.

That’s my sustenance. That’s what gives me life and energy. So part of what’s exciting about all of John 17 is he’s praying a prayer that the Father loves and loves to answer, but it’s also at the same time unsettling because the Father will answer that prayer that Jesus is crystal clear is not for everybody, but it is for us.

for these only, His disciples, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word. We are here as a testament to the genius of the Master’s plan. The fact that He invested in twelve, who then invested in others, and we are here, it works. So here, He’s praying for us. There’s another reason why I love John 17 is He prays explicitly for us, modern Christians. But again, this is a particular group. And some are part of that group and some are not. The reverse is also true. I am not praying for those who won’t believe through their word. Well, you get the picture. The overwhelming sense in my time in John, because there actually is a lot more, is there are a particular group of persons who destined by God to follow Jesus and I saw no way of getting around that. Also that God has a prerogative to do what he pleases with his people. Well as I work through these passages and I made these observations it’s funny I would just sometimes just dismiss them as little like curiosities. So Jesus apparently has

certain people in mind when he’s talking about the Father having given him certain people like their chosen and their salvation is really secure like they can’t lose it huh I just move on but little by little I was amassing this this this mountain of question marks in the back of my mind that had they had a lot of data in front of them that when I had the right lens through which to view them they became exclamation points yet I still had at this time a lot of questions and a lot of obstacles to overcome even in my own mind. I had been taught that men choose God, but Jesus talked about having chosen his own and the elect were a gift from the Father to the Son. Well, how could those things harmonize? How could they both be true?

I choose Jesus, Jesus chose me, but that was actually, had to be determined beforehand because I had to be numbered among a certain people in order for the Father to even give me to the Son. Hmm, like how does that all work? Or I had been taught that having chosen to believe in God unto salvation, a Christian could fall away from the faith. That is the teaching of the denomination where I grew up even now. Having them once saved, he can lose his salvation. But here Jesus was saying that the Father is greater than all and none can snatch Christ’s sheep from the Father’s hand. I had been taught that God was crazy about me and wanted nothing more than a personal relationship with me.

He loved me so much. He sent his only son to make it happen. But he’s also a gentleman. And he will not force himself on anyone. He cannot force himself into the heart of a person who doesn’t want him. So salvation was offered as a gift that I could receive or not receive. If I would just have faith, I could be saved. But in John, I saw that I couldn’t have that faith unless Jesus gave it. I saw that Jesus meets the needs of people who can’t meet them themselves. Lazarus, the blind man. He gives sight to blind men, life of the dead. He gave faith to those whom he gave eternal life. Yet I had been taught that faith precedes regeneration.

You have to have faith in order for God to give you spiritual life. But it sure seemed like Jesus was teaching that you had to have spiritual life in order to have faith. But all this time, though I’d heard of Calvinism and Reformed theology, I’d heard of them. I just didn’t know what they were. I’d heard of Arminianism. I didn’t know what that was. I did not know what these systems taught or what they advocated. So I’d immersed myself in the Gospel of John for several months during the school your 98, 99. Sonya and I got married in the summer of 1999 at an Assemblies of God church here in Marysville. We started attending that church. And a few weeks after we got married, I started working at Eagle Hardware and Garden. This is all germane. Okay, this all pertains to the conversation, okay. That’s why I love electrical and lighting to this day. Yeah, so if you have ever, if you’re ever there when it was Eagle, one of the smoky point, The electrical and lighting department is right here and across the aisles, the flooring department.

Over in flooring there was an Orthodox Presbyterian guy named Chuck Adelano. He and I became friends because there weren’t a whole lot of Christians who worked there at the time. So we had some good conversations and he always knew how to get under my skin. I would tell him about a prophecy that I just heard at the AOG church and he’d say, how do you know it was a prophecy? I say, what do you mean, how do I know it was a prophecy? The guy stood up and said, thus says the Lord, and said a bunch of things. I just found a whole lot like scriptures. Yeah. How do you know? What do you mean, how do I know? I was like there, and it was a prophecy.

It was like, how do you know he wasn’t a really good actor? I mean, just, yeah, and he just kept putting it back in my court and like, I don’t know. And he quipped one time, you know Jonathan? Like God’s trying to tell you something, because like in college you had these buddies who were Calvinists, now you got me? I’m just saying. And I also couldn’t argue with that. Well one day he gave me some tapes that I needed to listen to. And I couldn’t tell you what the other ones were. I think he gave me a couple. But he gave me an R.C. Sproul tape where Genesis 50 verse 20 was the principal passage. Now R.C. Sproul’s taught in writing, chosen by God, and in speaking a whole bunch on this.

So it’s not hard to find something. I have not been able to track down that particular sermon to save my life ever since. But there is a wealth of stuff that he’s written on this passage. And by that time, my curiosity was piqued, the soil of my heart was very well tilled and fertile. I had wrestled. I had wrestled with enough problem passages and failed to come up with conclusive answers. So now let’s do it. Let’s look at Genesis 50, verses 15. Well the whole paragraph will read verses 15 through 21. I’ve got it up here. You can turn to it. Break again with me at the passage and then we’ll see how this helps to tie together all the loose ends presented to me by John’s gospel.

Not all of them, but a bunch of loose ends presented by John’s gospel. And pay particular attention because we’ll read it a second time when we get to verse 20. Genesis 50, verses 15 through 21. When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, it may be that Joseph Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.” So they sent a message to Joseph saying, your father gave this command before he died. Say to Joseph, please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin because they did evil to you. And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.

Joseph wept when they spoke to him. His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, behold, we are your servants. Joseph said to them, do not fear for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. So do not fear. I will provide for you and for your little ones. Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. Once more, verse 20, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. Well, you’re most likely familiar with the context of this passage.

This is the last chapter of Genesis and a lot of really bad things. I even have bad in quotes because can we really call it bad, had happened to Joseph up to get us to this point. Just a whirlwind tour where we’ll get there soon. I’m working with chapter 23. Over there soon. Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob, aka Israel. Joseph dreamed that his brothers would one day bow down to him, and he shared this dream with his brothers, and that didn’t go over so well. As you’ll remember, his jealous brothers sold him into slavery, and they told their dad that his favorite son, number 11, was dead. Joseph was imprisoned, falsely accused, having been falsely accused of trying to violate the wife of his master, Potiphar.

And after interpreting the dream of Pharaoh regarding a coming famine, Joseph was elevated to high political status akin to prime minister of Egypt. On Pharaoh’s orders, Joseph’s counsel, his recommendations to Pharaoh about how to survive the famine, were put into action. And by doing what Joseph said, Pharaoh soon owned practically all of the people and the private property in Egypt. They didn’t have enough money to buy more grains. Like, well, give me your land. And so pretty soon Pharaoh had it all. But the people survived. And because Pharaoh followed Joseph’s counsel, there was enough stored grain to feed Egypt and her neighbors, those who came and bought grain, although the famine was severe.

And among those who were rescued from starvation was the entire household of Jacob. And of course, in a twist of irony, Joseph’s brothers were made to come and ask help from Joseph whom they didn’t know was him, whom they had of course betrayed and sold into slavery many years before. When they did this, interesting, Genesis 42 verse 9 says that Joseph remembered the dreams that he had dreamed of them. I wonder if that was the time where it really started to tie together. Wait a minute. I had those dreams back when everything was great, back in Canaan. And here we are, it’s almost like God knew what He was doing or something.

No, it couldn’t be. Of course Joseph was probably more full of faith all along the way, but he could see that it was planned from the start. So Joseph brings Jacob and all of his household goods to Egypt to take care of them, and they end up staying there for over 400 years, but that’s a lot further in the story than we’re going to get tonight. Eventually Jacob does die well advanced in years. He’s buried at the tomb of his fathers. And he is very happy to be reunited with his son whom he thought was dead, reunited with Joseph. And on Jacob’s death, Joseph continues to be kind to his brothers, much to their surprise.

And that, of course, is then when we find the exchange here between Joseph’s brothers and Joseph. Now there’s a ton in this paragraph, of course, that we can’t… It’s not my intention to try it to exhaust it or even really do it justice, but as we do drill down and zoom in on verse 20, I’d like to at least make a few observations. And first, I want to issue a disclaimer. Please don’t accuse me of formulating a doctrine based on one verse. Just because I draw these observations out of this one verse does not mean that I’m building a system of doctrine on that one verse, which is something you don’t want to do. Luther was emphatic that that’s dangerous.

Just one verse, you can twist it to make it mean anything you want. You have to look at all of scripture to interpret scripture. Part of my point in sharing the passages from John with you is to show that in fact, the observations that I would like to make here are supported elsewhere in scripture. The questions that were brought up time and again in a variety of ways in the gospel of John were answered as I got to look at Genesis 50 verse 20. It distilled so much of what I had seen in the Gospel of John. Further, hearing R.C. Sproul explain it, explaining the text and its significance, was a luxury that, as you’ll recall, I didn’t have in my John study. I had no additional resources that I was drawing on. So I didn’t have anybody to explain it to me. I was like the Ethiopian eunuch trying to understand Isaiah without somebody explaining it.

Further, having Dr. Sproul explain it, it was like, now that makes sense and harmonizes with these other things. So I maintain that the observations I’m about to make from Genesis verse 20, have mountains of support elsewhere in Scripture. End disclaimer. So, four observations, they’re not very long. We can call that all introduction and this is the meat of it. I don’t know. First, observation one is that men act volitionally. Men act volitionally. And so volition is will. So they act willfully. They do their things on purpose. He says, as for you, you meant evil against me. But God meant it for good. So there was no sugarcoating the evil intent behind the actions of Joseph’s brothers.

What’s equally undeniable is that they had intentions, they had plans, they had designs. They did this evil on purpose. They can’t blame somebody else. Joseph’s brothers acted according to their collective will, and their will was wicked. And Joseph does not dismiss or excuse the actions of his brothers, saying, you had no choice. Joseph didn’t recognize the tension between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. He just laid them right beside each other. You meant this? He meant this? He doesn’t say, it’s not your fault. God made you do it. And you can’t say that either. Neither can I. He simply acknowledges that God planned to use their wicked actions for His own good purposes.

They wronged Joseph. They meant to do it. And it’s a really good thing that they did. Yes, I said that. Well, you may remember I had questions in going through John about Judas. Well, this answers them. This one little verse answers that. Judas willed to do evil, but God meant it for good. His behavior was inexcusable and wicked, but also completely necessary for the plan of God. And this of course is very tied to my next observation, which is namely, God has a plan. Now this is just, this is just Christian-y, right? People say this, God has a plan, God has a plan. Well, now I’m going to get eye-poky for just a minute.

Forgive me. If you’re an Arminian, you can only believe that so far. has a plan, he’s really hoping that I cooperate with it. J.I. Packer in evangelism, the sovereignty of God, I believe, has articulated pretty well that nobody prays like an Arminian because what is the point in asking God to move if we can do it ourselves? No, we have a volition. God has a plan. He does. And like so many things, that actually has tremendous implications and ought to bring tremendous comfort. You know why? Because He’s sovereign. He has a plan and He is sovereign and He is good and He is going to work it out and we are on His side.

He is sovereign and He is good and He is for us. Joseph said, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. So you had a plan? God had a plan. Jacob’s brothers had plans and God had a plan for those plans. Well growing up, like I said, I had been taught that God has a plan and men have free will. And to harmonize these things they said that God looks down the corridors of time and sees how man is going to act and then develops his will or maybe even his election, we’ll use that word, based on his foreknowledge of what men are going to do someday completely independent of his will or influence.

Exactly. That’s a problem because who’s the sovereign one in that equation? That makes God the master responder, the great reactor to men’s plans rather than being the sovereign one, the one who’s in control. And what I could see in Joseph’s words is that the will of men and their free choices are never at odds with the sovereign plan of God. Rather, men’s volition is used by God in his plan. How many times do you read the Old Testament? God put it in this man’s heart to do this. It was decreed by God, yes, it was decreed by God, that the serpent should deceive Eve, that Eve should take the fruit, that Joseph’s brothers should sell him into slavery, that David should commit adultery with Bathsheba.

You know what happened after he married Bathsheba? Solomon was born. That actually turned out pretty well. Or that David should take security in the number of his military forces. Read the verses leading up to that. God had a beef with Israel, and so he put it into David’s heart to do this. And then what happened? 70,000 men died as a result of God’s corrective judgment there. It was decreed by God that Nebuchadnezzar should mandate idolatry. some really fantastic showcasing of God’s glory came about in the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. It was the decreed will of God that Romans should also mandate idolatry.

That Judas should betray Jesus. That Claudius should kick out the Jews from Rome. That Hitler should massacre Jews. And that Islamic terrorists should fly planes into the World Trade Center towers. Just because the canon of Scripture is closed does not mean that the pattern of God has closed. We learn from Scripture how God acts. And if those things were not the will of God, they would not have happened. And we can also see on this side of all of those things that all of them, every single one of them resulted in loss of life and judgment of the wicked. And tremendous, tremendous good has come about of that. And who gets to define what good is? God does. So sometimes even what we see as good, God does not.

Chuck’s always saying it’s hard and it’s good. Yeah, God determines what is good. Joseph states this plainly when he tells his brothers the very same plan, one plan, man side, God side, that was intended for evil by Joseph’s brothers was intended by God for good. The same plan, the same events. They meant to bring him harm, but their wicked act resulted in the preservation of God’s people and the showcasing of God’s wonders before Pharaoh in Egypt 400 years later and then of course much more with the Exodus giving of the law in the Messiah. So men act freely to be sure. They act absolutely freely within the confines of God’s sovereignty.

Their plans are always within that scope. Third observation is that man’s, I’m sorry, God’s plans cannot be thwarted. God’s plans cannot be thwarted. But first we have simply, men abolitionally, and God has a plan. God’s plan cannot be thwarted. And I draw this from simply, but God. There’s a contrast here. You meant this, but God meant this. So He had a plan for this, and you brothers could not undo the good plans that He had in place for this story. It’d be one thing if God had these grandiose plans that could be thwarted by the decisions of his creatures. I mean, that’d be tragic and pointless. So let’s say God’s got a really fantastic idea for the universe, but man, he’s just ringing his hands and hoping that it all works out.

And there are about 7.3 billion X-factors right now, and they’ve all got to line up perfectly for this best option to actually work itself out. Well, if that’s the case, then of course, God is not sovereign and in control. No creator is the subject, is subject to the will of His creation, and neither, of course, is God. We depend upon Him for our sustenance, for our life. And of course, this was confirmed in what I saw in John 6 and John 10 when Jesus insisted that His sheep were secure. If God plans to redeem a man, then the man is redeemed, and the redemptive work cannot be undone. We can’t be unredeemed. Joseph’s words here harmonize with the overall picture in Scripture of God’s sovereignty that is painted masterfully throughout the other books.

Satan and men are constantly about the work of trying to thwart the plan of God, but instead they constantly support it and are cast members in it. You know, God kindly peels back the curtain and shows us behind the scenes in the opening verses of Job. And you see that Satan afflicting Job is absolutely within the purview of God’s control. God gave him permission to do that, and Job was never given that insight that we have. But we see it. Men and Satan are constantly trying to thwart God’s plan, and all they do is serve to advance And last, God’s plan that he has is in fact good. God’s plan is good. As for you, you meant evil against me, says Joseph, but God meant it for good to bring about that many people should be kept alive as they are today.

And again, we have to say, well, God didn’t just have a plan for Joseph that involved periods of Joseph’s suffering, but he had a good plan. A hallmark of its goodness was that it was a plan to preserve and deliver his people and to glorify his own name before the nations. Of course that happened later on in the latter chapters of Genesis, the story of Joseph, and the book of Exodus. But what is good? It’s not what you and I think is good because we could see if there was a loss of a single human life then it was wicked. But not in God’s economy. Can you consider if what men, the purpose that men serve is, if we are instruments to be used by God to showcase His glory, to instruct, to inform the worship of the angels, well then when God is glorified, that is good.

Well taking these things together, taking the Gospel of John, the thorny passages we we looked at and taking Genesis chapter 50 verse 20 together, my clear takeaway is that God is absolutely sovereign, and He ordains all that happens in accordance with His perfect plan and good pleasure. If you think that Calvinism is simply about predestination, well, if God is absolutely sovereign and in control, of course He chooses who’s saved. But that’s just one of a trillion things that He does. So that’s why I call myself a Calvinist at this point, is because I began to, I mean, I became convinced that God controls it all.

And that’s a Calvinist. Let me conclude this evening with an extended quotation from R.C. Sproul. If it sounds familiar, it should, because it’s basically what I’ve said. And maybe you’ve read some of this before. Who knows? Like I said, he’s written extensively on this passage. He’s spoken on it extensively. None of my thoughts are original. I’ll credit him with anything intelligent that’s come out of this at all. RC Sproul is absolutely one of my heroes even today, and I totally disagree with him on a few points. And that’s fine, because those are not primary issues. They’re not salvific. But I absolutely give him credit for the main substance and a lot of the stronger points of what I said.

And you’ll see why here in just a moment. Here, I’ll let you read along with me. Consider the story of Joseph, whose brothers out of jealousy and greed sold their innocent brother into slavery in Egypt. At the reunion years later, and upon the confession of sin made by the brothers to Joseph, Joseph replied, You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. Here is the inscrutable majesty of God’s providence. God made use of human evil by bringing to pass His purpose for Joseph and for the Jewish nation. Joseph’s brothers were guilty of willful and malicious sin. By directly violating the perceptive will of God, they sinned against their brother.

Yet in their sin, God’s secret counsel was brought to pass and God brought redemption through it. However, what if Joseph’s brothers had been obedient? This really got me. Joseph would not have been sold into slavery. He would not have been taken captive into Egypt. He would not have been sent to prison from which he was recalled to interpret a dream. What if Joseph had not become prime minister? What would have become the historical reason for the brothers settling in Egypt? It would have happened, right? There would have been no Jewish settlement in Egypt, no Moses, no exodus from Egypt, no law, no prophets, no Christ, no salvation.

Can we therefore conclude that the sins of Joseph’s brothers were in fact virtues in disguise? Not at all. Their sin was sin. A clear violation of the perceptive will of God, for which they were held responsible and judged to be guilty. But God brought good out of evil. This reflects neither a contradiction in God’s character, nor a contradiction between His precepts and His decrees. Rather, it calls attention to the transcendent power of His sovereignty. Ladies and gentlemen, that is the substance of Mike Alvanism. And why I love to champion God’s sovereignty whenever I can. But when we look at the good that came about as a result of the diabolical acts of Joseph’s brothers and the other events that led up to the end of Genesis, and then of course we know the rest of the story, man, if Joseph had only known what was going to come, he would have said it even more emphatically.

You are not subject to change, and you are certainly not dependent upon our faithfulness, and for that we are also thankful. Thank you for your word, and thank you for the testimony of Joseph. Thank you for the teachings of Christ, and we thank you for the articulating of theology that so many men who have gone before us in past generations have done, as they have poured over your word and tried to rightly divide it. That we can stand here and take these things for granted is an evidence of your kindness. So be with us in a special way as we go about our week now and may we, even as we finish up the message, go forth in confidence in you who are sovereign and good and for us. We pray this now in the name of Christ, amen.

You are not subject to change, and you are certainly not dependent upon our faithfulness, and for that we are also thankful. Thank you for your word, and thank you for the testimony of Joseph. Thank you for the teachings of Christ, and we thank you for the articulating of theology that so many men who have gone before us in past generations have done, as they have poured over your word and tried to rightly divide it. That we can stand here and take these things for granted is an evidence of your kindness. So be with us in a special way as we go about our week now and may we, even as we finish up the message, go forth in confidence in you who are sovereign and good and for us.