R.C. Sproul: If God Is Sovereign, How Can Man Be Free?

my assignment tonight is to speak about the problem of the relationship between the sovereignty of God and human freedom and after hearing Dr MacArthur's message earlier I feel like the message that I'm to bring this evening is uh a concluding unscientific postcript to what we've already heard from his lips he really captured the essence of the sovereignty of God a concept that needs to be proclaimed again and again and again in the church because we tend to think that God uh is impotent and that the arm of the Lord has waxed short and the way in which Dr MacArthur always grounds his views in sacred scripture is a wonderful thing and I thought that today's treatment of the subject was a or divorce and so as really I'm just giving an epilog uh to what you've already heard and before I read the scripture I'd like to ask you to join with me in prayer let us pray our father and our God we Rejoice that it is you who is Sovereign and not we ourselves that this is your world and all that is in it and all that is in us has been moved by thy Spirit to praise your holy name and rather than being intimidated by your sovereignty we rejoice in it and find our comfort therein so speak to us tonight as we wrestle with this question of how your sovereignty relates to our freedom for we ask it in the name of Jesus Amen I'd like to uh begin this this evening by reading a brief passage from The Book of Genesis we've already considered with Dr Duncan uh earlier today Genesis 1 which is the first chapter of the Book of Genesis who knows what the last chapter of the Book of Genesis is Right chapter 50 there was a resounding answer to that question I'm glad there are a few Baptists here in this group that read their bies okay I'd like to to direct your attention really almost to the very end of the book of Genesis in chapter 50 beginning at verse 15 where we read these words when Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead they said perhaps Joseph will hate us and may actually repay us for all the EV evil which we did to him and so they sent Messengers to Joseph saying before your father died he commanded saying thus you shall say to Joseph I beg you please forgive the trespass of your brothers and their sin for they did Evil to you now please forgive for the trespass of the Servants of the god of your father and Joseph wept when they spoke to him before I finish this text you're aware of what has led up to this moment where in one of the most coldblooded acts of treachery and betrayal Joseph who was the apple of his father's eye had been sold into slavery by his jealous and envious brothers and they took his coat of many colors and dipped it in the blood of an animal and came back to their home and to their father Jacob with the story they made up that alas Joseph had fallen prey to a ravenous Beast had been torn limb for Limb and was no more when in fact they had exploited the advantage they had to get rid of him by selling him to midianite caravaners and Traders who were on their way to Egypt you know the story they came there sold him in the slave Mart to potier he became Piper's slave and then the treacherous uh lies of Piper's wife had Joseph thrown into prison where he languished year after year after year but never abandoned his faith in the Lord God and then through the mysterious manner of his ability to interpret dreams Joseph was freed in order to interpret the troubling dreams of the Pharaoh and because of that Pharaoh appointed Joseph to be working with the the uh erection of the store cities for the grain to protect them against famine and Joseph showed such an an a a a pension for administration that the Pharaoh elevated him to the level of prime minister you know the story then how when the famine hit Canan Jacob sent his sons down into Egypt to get uh relief to try to get Goods from the storehouses to feed their family and they came into the courts of pharaoh and were met there by Joseph Joseph recognized them they didn't recognize him and all of the drama that unfolded in that encounter until finally it became clear that the prime minister of Egypt was the brother that they had betrayed and as all of this works out we finally come to the end of the story where Jacob after having learned that his son was still alive has died and the brothers now know that they don't have the protection of their father Jacob to Shield them from the vengeful Wrath of their brother they are now terrified and they don't know how to deal with it and so we're told here that they said maybe Joseph will hate us and they recognized instantly that Joseph had every right under the sun to hate them because what he had what they had done to him was a Despicable and hateful thing and so they assumed that Joseph would behave toward them in seeking Revenge with the same kind of Fury that they had exercised out of their jealousy and envy against him those many years before so now they are begging for forgiveness but they acknowledged that what they had done was evil thus you shall say to Joseph I beg you please forgive the trespass of the Servants of the god of your father and Joseph wept in the midst of this acknowledgment of their sin in the midst of their repentance where we still don't know was motivated by a genuine Contrition or more out of a fear of punishment but they acknowledged that what they had done was wicked and it brought their brother to tears now listen to what follows so his brothers went and fell down before his face and they said behold we are your servants doesn't that uh foreshadow the experience of the prodal son in the New Testament where after he came to himself by living a life of Lous and determined to come home to his father's house when he comes in Repentance he says to his father I am not worthy to be your son please forgive me and make me as one of your slaves I don't have to be a son I just want to be in your house and I'm happy to be there as your slave and it's the same idea here that the brothers are saying to Joseph look we've wronged you we don't expect you to receive us as your brothers and they're on their face and they say accept us as your slaves now how does Joseph respond Joseph said to them do not be afraid am I in the place of God you're on your faces before me as if I were the Living God I'm just your brother I'm not ruling in the place of God As for you you meant evil against me you acknowledge it I'm not going to sugarcoat it what you did to me those years ago when you betrayed me and sold me into slavery was unspeakable Wicked it wasn't an accident you knew exactly what you were doing you meant it and intended it for evil and it's just as if Joseph was saying to his brothers you know I thought about this a little bit over the last several decades I had a lot of time in the prison to think about about this and I've had to deal with the possible root of bitterness that would grow up in my soul because of what you guys did to me but I've come to understand that you were not the only players in this episode I've come to understand that the Sovereign god of the universe the Lord God of Israel was intimately involved in your wickedness you couldn't have hurt me for a second you couldn't have damaged my heart or destroyed my relationship with my father you couldn't have had me delivered into the hands of my enemies and cast into prison for one second apart from The Sovereign Providence of God because God's sovereignty was involved in your diabolical actions against me and I believe in a God who works all things together for good to those who love him and who are called according to his purpose and that I believe that the Lord God of the universe has the Sovereign power even to work your treachery against me for good now before you relax and say well see we were just carrying out the Sovereign will of God certainly you're not going to be upset with us uh for that uh we can't even say that the devil made us do it but it's this Sovereign God up there that made us betray you so just like uh Adam before them would say the woman that you gave me led me into this predicament Joseph is not going to give them that option he said let's be clear what you did was evil and Joseph was not about to call good evil or evil good what you did was evil and you meant it for evil but what you meant for evil what you designed out of the wicked minations of your hearts for evil God meant for good so that God's intent in all of this was allog together righteous that God in his sovereignty has the capacity and the ability to work through the sinful decisions and the wicked choices of his creatures to bring about his Sovereign will which is all together righteous well John has already shown how that works out in the New Testament that the cross was not an accident the cross was the most wicked evil ever perpetrated by human beings Caiaphas meant it for evil pilate meant it for evil the Pharisees meant it for evil but over and above the human intentionality the human decisions that grew out of the evil inclinations and impulses of Fallen human beings God was at work to bring about good I didn't know you know I thought this place was a desert and I didn't know that there were seals in the desert thank you and then no want to wonder why we all the most uh Wicked event in the history of the world that took place in golgatha that we remember that and call that day Good Friday why don't we call it bad Friday we don't call it bad Friday because what God wrought in that action was the greatest good in the history of the world world and the atonement for his people now what we see here in this passage well let me read it the rest of it as for you you meant evil against me but God meant it for good comma in order now those two words in order in the text Express purpose God meant it for good God's purpose in all of this in order to bring it about as it is this day to save many people alive so don't be afraid I will provide for you and your little ones and he comforted them and he spoke kindly to them not because of their good intentions but because of God's good intention you know how God's sovereignty works you had the old adage for one of a nail the shoe was lost for one of the shoe the horse was lost for one of the horse the rider was lost for one of the rider the battle was lost and so the pivotal moment that decided the outcome of the battle was a single nail from the shoe of the horse an insignificant detail became the pivotal reason for the loss of the battle do you ever think of what led to Good Friday whatever led to your salvation just go back a little bit in time Jacob favors Joseph so he makes this gorgeous coat of many colors for him and he gives him that coat and Joseph struts around like a peacock in the thing and he tells his older brothers that I had this dream where you guys were bowing down in front of me and they said that's it it's enough with the coat you know this kid has got to go and so they go and they sell him into the slavery and he goes they just happens it just so happened and when they're trying to get rid of him just at that second comes these caravaners on their way to Egypt and there's this unplanned intersection between the intentions of the midianite Caravan merchants meeting up with the plans of Joseph's brother and so when they join together everybody's happy it's a no lose situation the brothers get rid of Joseph the midianite Traders get a prize that they can sell in the in the slave Mark so they now go down to Egypt and just by chance when they put this kid up for sale and the slave block it just so happens that the one who gets the winning bid is this captain in the guard named Piper who just happened to be married to this unscrupulous woman who tried to seduce this young slave who was falsely accused rown into prison whether happened to be his fellow Prisoners the butcher the Baker and the Candlestick maker and while he's in there he's interpreting dreams for them and just so happens that one of them gets out and goes to talk to pharaoh and Pharaoh has these nightmares and but good luck for for Joseph the Candlestick maker remembers this guy back in prison who can interpret Dre you know the story so he finally brings it back Joseph becomes the Prime Minister the famine Comes The Brothers come they finally invite Jacob to come back down to Egypt and if it hadn't been for that the Jews never would have sojourned in Egypt but now they come and they live in the land of Goan they multipli they produced but it just so happens that there Comes This pharaoh who didn't know about Joseph and instead of giving safe conduct to these Jewish immigrants he decides to turn them into a slave labor force to take care of his public building projects well this fate would have it one of their women conceived was has this baby and at the time the Pharaoh creates this edict to destroy the children and so this mother not wanting her baby to be put to death makes this little Arc out of reads and Pitch sets it a drift in the river consigns the fate of her child to the hidden Providence of God and so the little thing starts to float down the river starts to cry if there child had to CED nobody would ever notice the dog on think but it just so happened that Pharaoh's daughter's down there doing her wash and she finds this baby and she says well I got to take care of this baby takes it home raises it as the child of Pharaoh so that the little baby gets all the training of the best of the Egyptian court but then just one faithful day any intent without any plans nobody was lying in weight he happens to see a guard mistreat one of the Jewish slaves and in his anger he rises up and Strikes this guard and kills him accidentally wasn't uh malice a fourthought it wasn't first-degree murder he wants to hide the body but somebody saw it and because somebody saw it Moses is banished into EXA where he languishes as a Shepherd in the midianite desert until his old age but when he least expected it he's taking care of the sheep one day and all of a sudden he looks over when he sees this bush this Burning is not being consumed he says what is this and he turns aside and the bush starts talking to him and tells him it just so happens that that was the place where God reveals himself to Moses and God gives Moses the mandate to go to the court of pharaoh and to say to Pharaoh I have heard the Cry of my people let my people go and what follows is the Great great Redemptive event in the whole history of the Old Testament The Exodus God Saves his people enters into a covenant with them makes them a nation gives them his law conquers the the land gives them a king sends them His prophets and a couple of thousand years later out of all of this a baby is born in Bethlehem and we could go on with this story but you realize all of this because of one lousy Coat of Many Colors huh no coat no jealousy no jealousy no betrayal no betrayal no sail into slavery no trip to Egypt no potier no potier no Piper's wife no Piper's wife no prison sentence no prison sentence never meets The Butcher Baker and the Candlestick maker doesn't meet them he never gets acquainted with Pharaoh he's never elevated to the Prime Minister the children of Israel never settle in the land of Goan there's never a slavery there's never an exodus there's never a nation there's never the 10 commandments there's never the kingdom of God you meant it for evil but God intended this for good to save many people is that incredible you know when I hear people struggling over the relationship of between oh no there goes my watch all the way down behind the pulpit that's my most valuable possession that that's better than the code of M colors ever was do you see you can't even reach it I got to keep preaching until we find a lady who has a really skinny arm or somebody who here she comes can you reach down in there I bet you can't even get that that's it there she is thank you very much thank you I'm putting this in my pocket before that happens again but if it hadn't happened that watch I never would have met that lady you know but when don't we deal with this difficult questions that we have to struggle with as Christians it always comes up in the list how do we reconcile the sovereignty of God with human freedom I have to say a couple of things about this that seem to be almost contradictory in the first instance I have to say as as a brand new Christian as a Christian of only a couple of months I thought about this question and I was troubled by it I thought it seems to me that I'm facing a contradiction here between human freedom and divine sovereignty I'm thinking if God is really Sovereign then we can't really be free or if we're really free God can't really be Sovereign and so I was in a in a college that was church related and it was a very very weak relationship but as one in which there was still a a requirement to take uh introduction to the Old Testament which I was doing as a freshman and I raised the question to the professor but what about God's sovereignty and human freedom and he kind of screwed up his forehead to give a look of profundity you know and he talked in hushed terms he says Ah he says it's a mystery he said it's like God's sovereignty and human Freedom are like parallel lines that meet in eternity and I heard them say that and I thought wow that's heavy stuff this professor is really smart parallel lines that meet in eternity I left the classroom and I went back to the dorm and I like to play ping pong there and I was playing ping pong and I was in the middle of this ping pong game and I'm thinking parallel lines that meet I'm thinking if those parallel lines meet in eternity in fact if they meet in Albuquerque in Dallas in Atlanta or New York City never mind eternity they're not really parallel lines no are they cuz if they're really parallel lines they're not going to beat in Albuquerque or anywhere let alone eternity and I said on the other side if they do meet an eternity then they're not really parallel lines so that this seemingly Prof found answer to my question sort of fell by its own weight and I thought you know that's really silly to talk like that so then I got another one he tells me it's like when you go get water out of a well you have this bucket up at the top and it's attached to a rope and you let that bucket down to the bottom of the well you can't see it's too dark down there and you drop it down in there and you let the bucket collect some water and then you pull it back up and and you have your water and he says do you realize that there are two ropes that go down there but outside of your sight they wrap around the uh uh what do you call that thing the pulley things at the bottom and so their connection and their Unity is beyond the scope of your vision and that's kind of how it is with the sovereignty of God and human freedom but what we're talking about here folks is not getting water out of a well and I realized uh by the time I was just a Christian for about three months what's the big deal with this question this question is really not a tough question at all it's a very simple question and what amazes me is I'll so many people seem to stumble over it there there's really no problem there's no contradiction there's no mystery at all you have God who's a being and you have people who are beings and when we talk about the difference between the two we call the beings that we are human beings and when we call refer to God we say the Supreme Being being and what's the relationship between human beings and Supreme Beings well the main thing we have to understand there is which one is supreme we don't call people Supreme Beings we call them human beings it's God who is the Supreme Being now God is a volitional being that is to say that God has a will he has a Divine faculty by which he makes Decisions by which he undergoes choices we as his creatures are also volitional beings and part of our humanity is that our creature has endowed us with the faculty of choosing which we call the will and what having a will means and the faculty of choosing means is that we have the ability to make choices and that's what we're concerned about when we're talking about freedom and about free will the ability to make choices now back in the 19 19th century in Europe there was a very important philosopher whose name was Edmund Hass now most people on the street have never heard of Edmund hustel who was one of the leading founders of a school of philosophy called personalism and one of the things that the philosophy of personalism was trying to answer was the question what makes human beings unique what is it that defines our existence as human beings as persons what does it mean to be a person rather than a thing and the answer that Edmund hustel gave to that question was simply this that human beings have the ability to act with intentionality that is we can conceive of a purpose that we want to accomplish and we can make choices and decisions in order or for the purpose of for the intent of bringing that idea to pass and so hasso insisted that absolutely Central to our humanness is the fact that we have the ability to make choices and I said most of you probably have never heard of Edmund hell but I suggest that most of you have heard at least of one of his two famous disciples his two most famous students were Jean Paul S and uh oh my I took a pain pill about an hour ago and I said to my wife I said this is going to be an exercise in terror tonight because I'm going to be so loopy I'm not I'm not even going to be able to remember Martin High dagger's name but I just it just came to me all right so you have sart and higer are two of the most significant atheistic philosophers of the 20th century both studied under husto both preoccupied with the whole concept of human volition and SS came to the conclusion that it's human Freedom that is the strongest argument there is against the existence of God basically sart reasoned in this manner he said if man is truly free God cannot exist and conversely if God exists man cannot be free now those were the options and he said we know for sure that we are free we know for sure that we are moral creatures that we are volitional creatures so that proves that there can't be a god well there was one element in his reasoning process that I haven't uh explained to you yet in defining freedom s argued that freedom means autonomy let me say it again Freedom means autonomy and unless your freedom is elevated to the level of autonomy your supposed freedom is but a mirage okay what is autonomy what is an automobile you all know what an automobile is it's the thing that guzzles your gasoline every day the word auto mobile has a prefix and a root auto means self MO moile has to do with movement an automobile is a machine that moves itself except when it runs out of gas then we have to push it and it's no longer an autom mobile but that word Auto means self the Greek word for law is the word nomos you've heard it already today the word antinomian means against the law and so the word autonomy autonomos means literally self law or self Rule and so the idea sart had was this that to be true truly free we have to have absolute freedom we have to have autonomy meaning that we have no accountability ultimately to anyone outside of ourself so obviously if I am autonomous if I rule myself there is no room in that scenario for a Sovereign omnipotent deity who Reigns in heaven over all things now if you want to find an insoluble contradiction an antomy that no amount of insight can resolve it would be the conflict between Divine sovereignty and human autonomy those two cannot mutually exist in the same universe just like we understand that there cannot coexist in the same universe an immovable object and an irresistible Force now we can conceive of a force that is is irresistible and we can conceive of an object that is immovable what reason cannot conceive is the coexistence of two objects one of which is immovable and the other of which is irresistible why not if an irresistible Force meets an immovable object and the object moves what does that tell you about the force what does that tell you about the object it's not immovable if an irresistible Force meets an immovable object and it doesn't move what does that tell you about the irresistible force it wasn't irresistible you thought it was irresistible and the old songwriter understood this some of you with snowing in the roof remember the song Go something like this if an irresistible Force such as you meets an immovable object like me any what somewhere somehow something's got to give something's got to give something's got to give remember that that's the way they used to write songs uh in this country what you can't have is a universe where you have a sovereign God and an autonomous creature and only if you think of human Freedom as rising to the level of autonomy do you have this problem but nowhere does the bible ever teach that human beings have been given autonomy by God on the contrary autonomy is the illegitimate illicit reach of creatures made in submission to a sovereign God you know what we read in creation that when God put Adam and Eve in the garden and I had to take the watch out again I got to finish this quick what did he say you live in this garden and you're not allowed to do anything I have all these trees with all these beautiful Foods there in the garden I've made but you can't Avail yourself of any of it don't you touch any of those trees cuz if you touch touch a single tree in that Garden you will die is that what God said that's what the devil said that God said that's not what God said here's the first introduction of the concept of freedom of all of the trees in the garden you may freely eat except this one over here you may not eat of that if you do you die what God gave human beings in creation was the ability to make choices but that ability was not unlimited it was limited of all the trees God said over here you may freely eat but you can't just do anything you want to do there are limits to your freedom there are restrictions to your freedom and the thing is this God is free and his creatures are free but God is more free than his creatures now that's simple you would think it would be simple but here's the kind of stuff I hear all the time in the church see if you've heard this one God's sovereignty is limited by human Freedom have you ever heard that beloved that's that's not that's not good theology that's blasphemy because you say that God's sovereignty is limited by your freedom who's Sovereign you are you're given now autonomy you're given Freedom that exceeds the freedom of God himself here's one even worse God Saves as many people as he possibly can you know he'd like to save everybody he does the best he can but if he would work in your heart to change your heart without your permission he'd be violating your freedom and so God can't save you unless you want to be saved and The Sinner in hell would give everything he had and do anything he could to get rid of that freedom that kept God from saving him on the road to Damascus Saul of Tarsus did not ask Christ to save him when God intruded into my life through his Sovereign good pleasure and changed the disposition of your of my heart I wasn't seeking him I didn't ask him to come in he came that's how I came to you he didn't destroy my freedom he elevated it because until he did that I was a slave to my own Wicked inclinations now in the doctrine of Providence we talk about the doctrine of concurrence how there can be the choices of God at the same time there are choices of men and how God works through the choices of human beings without annihilating our choices God did not Rob Joseph's brothers of their freedom Joseph's brothers did exactly what Joseph's brothers wanted to do God didn't coerce them God didn't force them but God exercised his sovereignty through their free decisions that's an amazing thing it is a good thing and I Rejoice that my freedom never places a limit on God if I choose to do anything that I do if I choose to raise my hand right now as an exercise of valtion my mind has has decided would be a good thing for me to raise my hand and that that notion somehow is communicated to the body and their interaction between a non-extension and extension takes place in this activity where I raise my hand what if God didn't want me to raise my hand what if God sovereignly decreed that I would not be able to raise my hand God knew I was going to raise my hand and he said no you're not going to raise your hand could he annihilate me before I raised my hand could he remove my ability absolutely there was already a reference earlier to the Westminster Confession that says God ordains from all eternity freely and IM whatsoever comes to pass but not in such a way as to do violence to the will of the creature or to do away with secondary causes my ability to raise my hand is a real power I can exercise real causal Power by deciding I want this effect of raising my hand but always and everywhere I live and move and have my being in God and I can't even raise my hand with without the primary power of God so if you're going to deal with this problem of human Freedom quickly you got to get rid of the Pagan idea that has infiltrated the church that Free Will means autonomy or the Free Will means that as a creature you have the ability to decline incline yourself either to the good or to the bad with equal power no God says that by nature in your sin you're a slave you still have a will you still have the ability to make choices but your choices are wicked you are morally incapable in and of yourself until you are enabled by God the Holy Spirit ever to choose the holy things of God if God said here I am here's Jesus here's no Jesus Take your pick the humanist the secularist the that person says you have the equal power to choose Jesus or not to choose Jesus the Bible says Jesus says if that option is set before you in your sin in your corruption in your state of spiritual death you will not choose Jesus because you cannot choose Jesus and the reason you cannot choose G Jesus is because you will not choose Jesus see the simple thing is you cannot choose what you don't want what choice is is choosing what you want the most in a given situation the most powerful inclination that you have at the moment so choices don't happen in a vacuum they're not magic every choice that you've ever made has a motivation behind it it's your motivation not somebody else's you've never once in your whole life done something that you didn't want to do I have $100 in my wallet that I will give not to the first person but however many of you can do it who can tell me tomorrow after thinking about it all night of a single action you've ever done in your life that you didn't want to do you can say wait I don't have to go to bed and think about that I'm at this conference and it's the last place I ever wanted to go said well why are you here if you didn't want to come you don't know my wife if I didn't come to this conference she was going to make my life hell on Earth and I had no desire to come to this conference and I saides but at the time of the decision your strongest inclination was to acquest to the wishes of your wife rather than to live in the misery that you would have if you didn't it's like Jack Benny you remember the old skit when he would be on front of his giving his M dialogue and the guy come from the side of the stage with a mask and a gun and he would point the gun at the Jack Benny and say your money or your life and Benny would go and the burger said come on what are you doing he says I'm thinking about it see even in that what the burglar does is he doesn't force you to give him his money he's just reduced your options to two and he leaves you to make the decision whether you want to give him this money or whether you want to die you will choose according to the strongest inclination that you have at the moment that's the way human Choice operates and God knows that and God has the wisdom and the power to work through our desires to bring about his plan even if and when our desires are altogether evil God can and does work through our evil desires to bring about his good purposes you meant it for evil but God meant it for good just remember who is Sovereign and who isn't and this will never be a problem for you let's pray father we are so glad that it is you who is Sovereign we thank you for the degree of freedom you have given to us and we thank you for the Liberty that is ours in Christ that by the power of the Holy Spirit you've empowered us now to choose Jesus to want Jesus to desire that which was once completely undesirable to us when once we didn't want you in our thinking you have given now to our soul a desire to know you and to love you thank you for the Exodus of our souls from the bondage of sin amen

Channel: Ligonier Ministries

Views: 1,031,956

Keywords: sovreign, free, freewill, god is sovereign, the sovereignty of god, the scriptures teach, scripture, the bible, do we have free will?, responsibility of man, rc sproul free will, rc sproul predestination, rc sproul reformed theology, reformed, reformed theology, ligonier, ligonier ministries, christian, christianity, educational, god, jesus, jesus christ, christ jesus, freedom of the will, bondage of the will, ligonier conference, ligonier conference 2008, rc srpoul, rc sproul sermons

Id: wQ5cclvdWjo

Length: 57min 17sec (3437 seconds)

Published: Tue May 12 2015