All right. So last time we had to cut short something that I was hoping we could do. But I want to make sure that we do it now, which is how do we interpret the remaining favorite Calvinist passages? So we looked at Romans 9 to 11 on Tuesday. And then we did a lot of infrastructure and foundation laying yesterday with some key concepts that we're going to be using today and tomorrow. And just to also kind of finish a thought that we didn't quite finish last time about prevenient grace.
What does the word prevenient mean again? Going before, yeah. And what's the synonym for prevenient grace? Enabling grace. Enabling grace, right. And by the way, everyone should remember to turn off your phones here. So that's right. That's exactly right. And I want to actually go through and list some of the facets of prevenient grace. So the first one, and not to be obvious here, but we should never forget that God is the one who sent Jesus and got the whole plan of salvation in motion. And this is an aspect.
This is, if you will, the most foundational initiatory aspect of prevenient grace, God sending Jesus. And then in our personal lives, that is manifest through God sending an evangelist who in turn was sent by someone else. And you can go way, way back and imagine how that connects in some way to people hundreds or even thousands of years ago. So there was a lot of grace that got poured into people's lives before it happened to you.
I could tell you some pretty amazing stories about how there was a person who went to my dad's Bible college. He was an atheist. He was in college in India. And my father was listening to a lecture where someone gave a talk and someone opened up the talk by asking the question, " How many people do you know who had their biographies written 1,000 years before they were born? " And he gave this talk on Psalm 22, " My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? " They pierced my hands and my feet.
My dad didn't believe it. He was an atheist. He ends up investigating it and ends up believing that that was in fact written way before the life of Jesus, that Jesus uniquely fulfilled those prophecies, gave his life to God, and became a very vibrant, passionate evangelist, preacher, missionary. I don't even know that person's name who went to that classroom that day at this college, this random college in India. But if it wasn't for that person, I wouldn't be here right now.
It's like, wow, that's kind of wild, right? Somebody that I haven't met is responsible for me being here, and probably a lot of us here wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that person, right? Sattler College wouldn't be here. I mean, there's a lot of things that happened because of that one person that I don't even know his name.
That individual, whoever that individual is, that evangelist, maybe it's your parents, your dad and your mom are likely, hopefully, significant influences in your life or a preacher being kind and loving to you. That's an important dimension, isn't it? When you hear the gospel to have that be presented in a way that is winsome and attractive. The Word of God itself, the Bible often speaks of the Word of God having a power.
And if you remember in Romans 9, we didn't dwell on this, but it says, " For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh. " It's kind of an interesting way that it talks about that. It pictures not Moses talking to Pharaoh, but the Scripture talking to Pharaoh. And there's passages in Ephesians of how the Word of God is living and active. And there's all these powers that are attributed to the Word of God. There's a grace, there's a favor in the Word of God. We mentioned this yesterday.
The Lord opening your heart to pay attention. It always, to me, it strikes me about how different different people are. Some people, when you talk about spiritual things, they're just riveted and you can tell they're just sitting on the edge of their seat and they're excited and they're engaged. The Holy Spirit convicting you and helping you understand. There's a famous verse here in John 16. This is a great verse that's about prevenient grace.
So look at this, " When He has come, He will convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. " So notice how it's convicting the world, people who are in the world. These are not Christians yet. And so this is a ministry of the Holy Spirit to exercise prevenient grace in bringing people to Him. So these are all different gifts from God. These are all favors from God. And so when we consider, even for this minute or two here, we should just be bursting with joy and gladness and gratitude for this grace.
As I mentioned yesterday, sometimes when people react against Calvinism, they swing to some very unhealthy position and they don't want to embrace these terms like grace, because grace is a big term in the Calvinist scheme. But for us, it should be even bigger for reasons we talked about yesterday. OK, so just to review, the most important passages for Calvinists are the following. So Romans 9 to 11. And I want to encourage you to go back.
If you can't, you probably won't be able to remember everything that we talked about on Tuesday there. Go back and re-watch that. Make sure that you know that cold, because it's such an important passage, and it's definitely the most important passage for Calvinists. Ephesians 1, we're going to look at that today. And then John 6:10. These are really the four biggest passages that are quoted again and again and again and again and again.
And so you have to understand all of these very well in order to have a good answer for what you believe. All right, so we're going to now spend some time on Ephesians 1. We're not going to spend as much time on this as we did in the Romans 9 to 11, but I think it's an important passage for us. Just to review, can someone help us remember and just try to say it in your own words here, what, at its essence, is predestination? The word is used here, but building on what we said yesterday, what is predestination?
Determining where something is going to go? Yeah, determining where something is going to go, determining this final outcome for a people. So we use this analogy of airplanes. So an airplane leaving from the Boston Logan Airport, going to LA or going to Miami. And somebody, some airline company, has predestinated, they've predestined where those airplanes are going to go. There's a separate question about who gets tickets to go onto those airplanes.
But that's a separate question as to where the airplanes are going. And we have to keep those in mind that these are separate questions. And a lot of people do a very poor job at that. So let's read this. And as I said, we're going to go fairly quickly through this and just hit some of the high points. So Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus. So it's easy to read over these intros quickly.
It's a big mistake to read them quickly because there's a lot in them. So I want to just point out here that the audience is very clear. Who is the intended audience here, just from verse 1? Yeah, the Ephesians, the saints, who are in Ephesus, and? The faithful in Christ, okay? So it's a big group. And saints is the same thing as holy ones. It's the same word in Greek. So to the holy ones who are in Ephesus, and the faithful ones in Christ Jesus. So keep that in mind. That's who Paul is writing to.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who has blessed us? Who's the us here? We just said it. Yeah, it's these holy ones in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus. Let's keep it simple. Let's just say the faithful in Christ Jesus. So it's not so big of a mouthful. So it's the faithful in Christ Jesus. So he has blessed the faithful in Christ Jesus with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
Okay, so now what he's going to do is he's going to enumerate what those blessings are. Even as he chose us in him, who's the us? The faithful in Christ Jesus, right? In Him before the foundation of the world. And what was the purpose of this choosing that we should be holy and blameless before Him? In love, He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of His will. Okay, so it's saying here He predestined us. Who's the us? Faithful in Christ Jesus, okay?
I'm hitting this because it's really important. And he's telling us, and there's a lot of different ways of describing the goal, describing the destination. You can talk about it as adoption, you can talk about it as eternal life, heaven, whatever term you want to use, and the Bible uses all of these terms interchangeably. But the key idea here is notice what he's saying. He's saying that God has specified the destination, if you will, of the faithful.
The destination of the faithful is they're going to be these adopted sons through Christ Jesus, right? That's what he's telling us here. It's very simple. And generally speaking, in the ancient world, they tended to read passages with a more corporate dimension to it. We tend to be more individualistic. We tend to read it and be like, " Ooh, that's me. " But generally speaking, the word " us ", like don't just substitute " me " in there because I think a lot of us tend to do that just subconsciously.
But really, what he's talking about here is the destination of the faithful. The destination of the faithful is that they're going to be adopted according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace with which He has blessed us in the Beloved.
In Him, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us, and all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in Him, in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.
Now, before we go on, if it were the case that the Calvinist view of predestination were right, and going back to verse 5 here, it would have been very different. So if the Calvinist scheme were what Paul would have had in mind, he would have said, " Okay, out of this mass of humanity, God predestined some of us to believe in Jesus. " But that's not what he's talking about.
He's not talking about partitioning out the human race into a certain group that's going to believe and a certain group that's not going to believe. So it's not even, I think, remotely in his mind at this point. He's simply talking about what is the end, what is the goal to which God has given these blessings for the faithful in Christ Jesus, right? So it's really important. It's not he predestined out of humanity, some to believe, and some not to believe.
It's hard for me to even imagine that that is remotely on Paul's radar here in this passage. So verse 11, " In him, we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will. " So there's another way of describing the destination. How's it described in verse 11? Inheritance. That's another great way of describing salvation. We don't often use that.
But here he's saying, " The destination of the faithful in Christ Jesus is this inheritance who works all things according to the counsel of his will. The all things are the blessings that he's been talking about before so that we who were the first to hope in Christ Jesus might be to the praise of His glory. " Okay, 13 is an important verse here.
" In Him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in Him were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory. " Okay, so this here is telling us in 13 about how people got onto the right airplane, how they got into the camp of the faithful in Christ Jesus. How does Paul describe that here in verse 13 and 14? So heard the word of truth and the gospel of salvation.
And then there's one more verb that he uses besides heard. Heard and believed. So when you heard and believed, that's how you got in. And then you're sealed in this. So here in verse 13 and 14, he's giving us the mechanism to get the ticket onto the plane. So he's been describing here before how great this outcome is, how wonderful it is about where the plane is going, the adoption, the inheritance, all these amazing blessings. And finally in 13 and 14, he's like, " Okay, this is how you got to be in Christ.
You heard the Word of truth, the gospel of salvation. You believed in Him, and you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance. So what I just told you right now is how all of the early Christians read this passage. Very simple, very straightforward. There's no appeal to strange philosophical ideas here. And it's just really simple, isn't it?
And it's actually a very beautiful passage that's just designed to be almost a doxology or a song of praise to God, where really it says, " Blessed be the God and Father. " Any questions on this? How did you all read this passage? I wanted you to do this, and you'll see Calvinists refer to this a lot. How did you all come to understand this? Or did you see anything else in here that anyone wanted to raise? Straightforward, right? Yeah? So again, just keep in mind this notion of predestination and what it means.
It's not taking out of the mass of humanity arbitrarily. It's certainly not an arbitrary unconditional election. I mean, again, where is that in here? It's nowhere near this passage. It's certainly not that idea that God is, again, out of 1,000 people saying, OK, I'm going to pick you, you, you, you, for some reason that you have no idea about, for some reason that is arbitrary, and for no apparent reason, God is doing that. OK, so that is Ephesians 1.
If there's any questions, stop now, otherwise we're going to go on. I only have a small number of slides because I really do want to go slowly on this and make sure that everyone gets this because I love Ephesians too. It's actually my favorite letter of Paul's. Okay, so I'm going to pause here now. We're going to switch to John 6 and John 10. And I'm going to ask you, there were some pretty hard verses in John 6 and John 10, and I hope everyone got a chance to read those and spend some time.
I wanted you to read it the first day. I guess that would have been Tuesday and then reread it last night or this morning in light of what we've talked about here. So I'd like to hear some thoughts that you all have about how to handle some of these difficult verses and what thoughts might have come to your mind, given some of what we've developed thus far in our three days before. So what were some of the problem verses? Just to refresh our memory. And let's start with John 6.
What were some of the problem verses that Calvinists really plant a flag on? Yeah, so 37 and 44 are big ones. So all that the Father gives me will come to me. And the one who comes to me, I will by no means cast out. That's 37. And 44, " No one can come to me unless the Father who has sent me draws him and I will raise him up at the last day. " Were there any other verses that seem like they might be Calvinistic that anyone found in chapter six?
Okay, let's list the problem verses that might seem Calvinistic in John 10, and then we'll try to resolve these. And I mostly want to hear from you about what you came up with, and then I'll give you how I think we should read these passages. In John 10. Yeah, exactly. So in 26, he says, " But you do not believe because you are not of my sheep, " as I said to you. And then he says, " My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. " And then in 28, this is an important one.
And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Neither shall anyone 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 my father's hand. I and my father are one. I think those are the big ones. There might be one other verse here, but I think we hit all of the big ones. Am I missing one? Anyone else read another verse here that you read it and you thought, " Oh, that does sound a little bit Calvinist.
" Well, for 16, I have other people when I was springing. Yeah. Do you know can you elaborate on that, Stan, about how you read that and why that might be troubling? Well, in the article that he told us to read, Piper would say that the sheep are all those who are of the elect, right? So then he's saying like John 16 are the sheep that are not yet believers, but they're of the elect. And so he's going to bring those and they're going to listen. Okay. Yeah, good.
And we're going to revisit that in our second session where we talk about that article specifically, but I'm glad you raised that. Great point. Other verses that were troubling? OK, so I want to hear from you before I give you my thoughts on this. How do you read this? What ideas do you have and anyone can speak here? What ideas do you have about how we might be able to answer this in a way that fits more the soteriology that we've been outlining? No one has any ideas. Yeah, you have an idea? I think that's true.
But it doesn't bother everybody. Okay, so yeah, great question there. So in fact, the first thing we should notice is, would anybody here object to that statement, " No one can come to Jesus unless the Father draws him? " No, we shouldn't, right? And what is that, in fact, a great description of? Prevenient grace. If you can think of a better way to say prevenient grace, I can't think of a better way than say that. It's like, you can't come to God unless God gives you this enabling grace.
So I think this is a pretty amazing passage right there that in fact is a description of exactly that. Now you raise another question there, Elise, which is, who are the ones that are drawn? And there's another passage in the Book of John that we did not read, but Jesus specifically uses that same word, and what does he say there? I mentioned this the other day about who is drawn. Right. He says, " When I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself or all men to myself. " So it does use that same word.
And there he says that everyone is being drawn. So that's kind of interesting. And that's something that we'll need to handle as we synthesize this. So that no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And so does that mean everyone? Well, if that's everyone, and I will raise him up, is everyone raised up at the last day? Well, we wouldn't say that. It seems like there's got to be a little bit more to unlocking this passage then. Other ideas?
Well, verse 37, " All that the Father gives will come to me. Could we say that the Father chooses to give those to Christ to whoever believes or whoever? " Yeah, so excellent point. So I'm really glad you hit that. And that's actually one of the most important principles and questions of this whole passage, is that Jesus here does not say, and I'm going to show you where He does say, but He does not say here what the criteria are or who exactly the Father is giving to Jesus.
He just says, he's just making these statements about if the Father gives that person to me, I'm going to receive them. But what exactly is behind that? Is it the Calvinist idea that it's just this unconditional election and God is just, for some reason, unbeknownst to us, choosing different people and then giving them to Jesus? That's how Calvinists read it. But is that supported by this passage? So excellent, excellent point. I'm glad that you locked in on that.
That Jesus here, at least in this verse, is not specifying that. What other ideas do we have about resolving this? You're a very quiet group. Does verse 51 tie into this at all? Any fun eat to this bread, he will live forever. Okay. Can you tell me what your idea is there? I guess, as far as expounding on the choosing of partaking of Christ. And that may be a later step, I guess. But I guess my idea would be as far as partaking. Okay.
Yeah, so you raise an interesting point here, which is that Jesus also uses very strong language around the eating and drinking about that being connected to eternal life as well. So it seems like this language is broad-based. It's not just about initiation. And most people take the eating and drinking as relating to Lord Supper there. So there's more going on to this. We're not going to spend too much time talking about that today, but I'm glad you raised that.
Other ideas on understanding some of these hard verses? Okay, let's do this. I'm going to go through some ideas that I have. So as hopefully all of you know, one of the things that I think is very important is to read the Bible in context. And when we read Romans 9-11 in context, and we looked up the verses, it gave a very different picture than when you just read it without referencing the broader picture that the author is utilizing. So let's do that now. So John is the last gospel to be written.
So Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written first. Those are called synoptic gospels. John was written at the end. By this time, the church has become more Gentile, and tensions are growing between Jew and Gentile. And I mentioned this before, but this is a major, major theme of the New Testament, is this friction between Jew and Gentile. It's in Romans, it's in Galatians, it's in Titus, it's in John.
And much of John, in fact, there's a whole big section of John, which we're in right now, is concerned with why the Jews don't believe. And if you have a Bible, it's really good to actually just flip through it. This is the advantage of having a real Bible where you can actually just see it a little bit more carefully here. So this book has long confrontations between Jesus and Jewish groups.
So if you go back, and again, those of you who have Bibles can see this, there's a long section where, starting in chapter 5:16, it says, " For this reason, the Jews persecuted Jesus and sought to kill him because he had done these things on the Sabbath. " And it says, then he says, " My father's been working till now, and I have been working. Therefore, the Jews sought all the more to kill him because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was his father, making himself equal with God.
" Then Jesus gives a long justification about how he legitimately is from the Father. And if you look at, for example, chapter 5:42 of John, he says, " But I know you that you do not have the love of God in you. I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. " And so there's all this tension there in chapter five. Chapter 6, we read that.
This is a big theme here of the whole chapter, where if you look in chapter six, there's this whole discussion about manna and the bread that comes from heaven and how the Jews are resisting that. So can anyone see in chapter six places where it clearly describes tension between the Jews and Jesus? There's a bunch of places, actually, as I'm looking here. What about N6 verse 26 when it says they seeked him because of the miracles? Yeah. Exactly. So they're seeking him for miracles for the wrong reasons. Good.
There's a couple of other places that I'm seeing here. Yeah, 41. Then the Jews complained about him because he said, " I am the bread which came down from heaven. " And they said, " Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? " How is it then that he says, " I've come down from heaven? " And so, in fact, a lot of this dialogue that we just read here in John 6 is set in exactly that context. Now let's flip over to chapter 8.
So in chapter 8, can anyone see something similar where there's a conflict between the Jews and Jesus? Yeah, what do you see in 13? Yeah, exactly. So the Pharisees are now going to Jesus and basically saying, " Hey, you're a liar. " What Jesus responds with is a long dialogue here. And notice how in 19, he says, " You know neither me nor my father. If you had known me, you would have known my father also.
" And so again, there's this language of like, the Jews don't get him and he starts appealing to the Father in Him. Any other places where you see that in chapter 8? Okay, yeah. So that's a conflict as well? Sure. He calls them sons of the devil, yeah. So that's really powerful there. And then in, let's see. 25, they start questioning me again. This whole thing is a big back and forth, right, between the Jews and Jesus. Okay, and then last one, chapter 10. What do we see in chapter 10?
Yeah, verse 19, " Therefore there was a division again among the Jews. " Excellent, because of these things. And many of them said, " He has a demon and is mad. Why do you listen to him? " And then some people say, " Oh, can demons open the eyes of the blind? " And then in 24, then the Jews surrounded him and said to him, " How long do you keep us in doubt? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. " They're going to take up stones to stone him, right?
So there's a lot of chapters here where there's dialogue between the Jews and Jesus. And there's this whole contest of like, who are you? We think you're a liar. Jesus is saying they're the son of the devil. And they're all trying to figure out who's really from God and who's not. So interestingly, and I'm going to focus mostly on John since that's where we're trying to analyze. Jesus actually elsewhere says things that are very different than what you might assume from Calvinism.
So in John 3, 20-21, he says, " For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God. " Why do you think that doesn't fit so well with Calvinism? There's a choice of doing something? OK, good. And that's right. And there's something else too here as well. It says everyone that practices people. Exactly.
So he's saying, if you're living an evil life, you're not going to come into the light. But if you're practicing the truth, if you're an upright person, you're going to come into the light so that your deeds may be clearly seen. And this doesn't sound like unconditional election. This sounds like the type of person that you are, if you are living in the truth versus if you're living in the darkness, is going to affect your ability to come into the light. There's an overall point that spans several chapters.
If you know the Father, you will accept Jesus. That's a huge point in this section. This is another place where Jesus says something similar. John 7, " If anyone is willing to do His will, this is God's will, he will know of the teaching whether it is of God or whether I speak from myself. " Read this in context. Again, people just don't read the Bible in context. This is in the context of the Jews going after Jesus.
And he's saying, " If you Jews are willing to do God's will, you're going to know whether I, Jesus, am legitimately His Messiah or not. " So, I'm going to read a quote here from an author named Ben Henshaw, who says, " Here, we see this principle being plainly described by Christ. The one who truly wishes to do the will of the Father, He truly knows the Father and thereby practices the truth will immediately recognize that Jesus is speaking the words of His Father.
Such people will be given by the Father to the Shepherd as His sheep. They recognize His voice, listen to Him and follow Him just as they followed the Father. " So this is a really, really important idea. I hope you see how important this is.
It's simple, but what it does is it takes the context of this whole section of John and it says that if you know the Father, and the Father is God, the God of the Old Testament, especially for the Jews, you're going to know that Jesus is who God sent, and then God is going to give you to Jesus as the shepherd. Remember how there were all these prophecies in the Old Testament, particularly in Ezekiel, about how there was going to be a greater shepherd coming.
And that shepherd was going to be the one who ultimately took care of Israel well. John 6:44, let's look at this. " No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up at the last day. " So we mentioned that before. This first clause, it sounds like a prevenient grace. I'm going to read you, read this quote carefully. If you read this quote carefully, this will help you so much to understand John 6. Same author.
The secondary application is simply that those who are willing to hear from the Father, however He may teach them, will be drawn by the Father to Christ. In our situation, this happens by the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the preaching of the gospel. The principle is similar, but it is a different time and a different situation. We come to the Father through the Son.
While in a very real sense, the Jews of Jesus ' time came to the Son through the Father and were able then to take part in the new dispensation when only those joined to the Son can remain in right relationship with the Father. Does that make sense? This is a big idea here. So what this author is saying is that back then, the discussion was, okay, the Jews were claiming that the God of the Old Testament was their God, was Father, so to speak.
And the debate here that Jesus is engaging in constantly through this whole book, particularly in the middle chapters of John, is that if you are legitimately following the God of the Old Testament, if you truly are honoring Him, then you're going to be drawn by the Father to Christ. And we don't tend to think in this logic here, but in a very real sense, I'll read it again. The Jews of Jesus ' time came to the Son through the Father. They were coming to Jesus through the Old Testament.
They didn't have the whole Bible like we do today. Do you get this? This is a big, big, big, big idea, and it totally changes your perspective on the dialogues of John 6 and John 10. Let's read a little bit more here. Now, in John 8, it says, " He who is of God hears God's words. Therefore, you do not hear because you are not of God. " Then the Jews answered and said to him, " Do we not say rightly that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?
" Jesus answered, " I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. And I do not seek my own glory. There is one who seeks and judges. Most assuredly, I say to you, " If anyone keeps my word, he shall never see death. " Then the Jews said to him, " Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham is dead and the prophets, and you say, ' If anyone keeps my word, he shall never taste death. Are you greater than our father Abraham, who is dead and the prophets are dead?
What do you make yourself out to be? ' Jesus answered, ' If I honor myself, my honor is nothing. It is my Father who honors me of whom you say that He is your God. Yet you have not known him, but I know Him. And if I say I do not know Him, I shall be a liar like you, but I do know Him and keep His word. " Okay, so there's a really interesting set of expressions here. I wish we had a lot of time to go into this in detail, but we don't. Who is the person here or who is the group of people that are those of God?
See, right in the beginning, he says, " Therefore you do not hear because you are not of God. " What does this mean? What does that mean when it says, " You are not of God? " Because what? Right. They didn't listen to him. And of God means what though? Who is of God hears God's words? What is specifically the reference here? Like His people. What's that? Like His people. By whose people? Since we were saying earlier with his saints. So we come through sorry. So we come to follow Jesus. So I can't express it right.
So God's people, right? Not like he's chosen people, but like Well, so the idea that I think you might be saying is similar to what we said before. So when we go out and share the truth about when we share the gospel, we start talking about Jesus, right? And we're like, hey, Jesus, he died for your sins. We talk about all these things about the plan of salvation. But for thousands of years, nobody knew who Jesus was, or Jesus of Nazareth, before Jesus came.
And when he says he who is of God hears God's words, he means he who is of the God of the Old Testament. Here's God's words. Therefore you do not hear because you are not of God. And so again, it's the same dialogue going back and forth about if you understand the God of the Old Testament, and in many senses, the Jews of that day had to come to Jesus not because they first heard of Jesus, right? They were Jews. When they were little boys and girls in the synagogue, their stories were about the Old Testament God.
So these concepts are repeated again and again. So listen to this here. " Not of God " in John 8 simply means that these Jews were not in right covenant relationship with the Father when they encountered Christ in His claims. Since they didn't know the Father, they naturally would not recognize the perfect expression of the Father and the Son, nor would they recognize the Father's teaching and the Son's words. There's a bunch of references there.
" As long as they reject the Father and refuse His teaching, they will reject the Son and His teaching and will not be given to the Son. " Okay, none of these passages say anything about an unconditional eternal election being behind the description of these Jews is not of God. Such an idea is only read into these passages by Calvinists. Second, as mentioned above, their inability to hear was not because God wasn't working, but because they were resisting that working. Clearly, Jesus is still trying to reach them.
And if you read those references, Jesus is trying again and again to reach them, which would be senseless if you viewed them as hopeless reprobates. Let's look here at John 10:22 to 30. Now it was the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter. And try to read this in context, okay? So what's the context? This kind of Jew, Jesus friction. And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch. Then the Jews surrounded him and said to him, " How long do you keep us in doubt?
If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. " And here's where Calvinists love to plant their flag. Jesus answered them, " I told you and you do not believe. The works that I do in the Father's name, they bear witness of me. But you do not believe because you are not of my sheep, " as I said to you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Neither shall anyone 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 my father's hand. I and my father are one. Okay, whoops, so this is the last slide here. We're going to close making sure we understand this. So now, somebody give me an explanation of this passage here, 25 to 30, honoring the context of this conflict between the Jews and Jesus. The background is not Calvinism, the background here is nothing like that. Once you see it, hopefully you will be like, " Oh, now I get it.
" So here, conflict, right? The Jews are obviously arguing with Jesus here. There's fighting going on. And I told you you don't believe. The works that I do in my father's name, they bear witness of me. But if you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep as I said to you, so in 26, " You are not of my sheep as I said to you. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. " What does that mean? Yes, Julia? Exactly.
So what he's saying here is that the people who are truly following Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, that are genuine truth seekers, that are practicing the truth, as we saw way back in chapter 3. They are the ones that are responding to Jesus. Those who are not believing because they are not of the sheep, well, that's why, because they didn't believe the God of the Old Testament. If they didn't believe the Father, why are they going to believe the Son? They're not going to do that. It doesn't make any sense.
But the people who truly are following Jehovah, who truly are understanding the Old Testament, they hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, okay? It's a totally different way of reading this passage, right? Once you get this. And again, it's always about what is the background context? What is the question that's being posed here? And like I said, the question is about is Jesus the legitimate Messiah, the true Son of the Father, of the true God of the Old Testament?
Now, 28, " And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand. " Okay, so let's talk about this here and then we'll close. Take a break for 10 minutes. I give them eternal life, so we get that. And they shall never perish, neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand. So someone give us this verse 28 in simple English, and does this justify something like Perseverance of the Saints or Eternal Security? Stan?
Well, no one else can snatch them out, like it has to be their own decision. Exactly. So it's conspicuous, isn't it? The main thing that he's talking about here in 28 and 29 is there's no greater power other than God and Jesus that can take a person out. And here it even says, " My father is given to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand. " You know that passage in Romans 8 for I am convinced that neither angels nor demons, life and death.
And he lists all of these external things and he says nothing can separate us from the love of God. There's no greater power. That's how he says it here. " My Father who has given them to me is greater than all. " It doesn't say anything here in 28 about a person's own decision to leave. He's saying there's nothing that can pull you out. There's no external coercion. You don't have to worry about Satan. You don't have to worry about your parents. You don't have to worry about your siblings. Whoever it is.
Because God is greater than them all. So when I read this whole passage in John 6 and in John 10, I read it totally differently than the Calvinists do because I'm applying the context. And I'm seeing here Jesus simply making these claims of being the heir to the legitimate God of the Old Testament.
And those who follow that God are going to respond to Jesus, they're going to recognize His Messiahship and they are going to hear His voice and know them and follow Him and they're going to be the ones who receive eternal life. So it's actually a pretty straightforward passage if you have that background context. Now what happens most of the time and this happened to me for most of my life we are generally raised hearing sermons and reading books that people don't actually apply the context.
You just take this one verse. We do this all the time. We take this one verse and we start dissecting it and analyzing it. And we have all these highly Western individualistic assumptions that go into it. And we're ripping it out of the broader context of what's going on here with this dialogue between the Jews and Jesus. And when you simply put it back in, you're like, well, this is obvious. Same thing with Romans 9-11, right? If you do the work of the context, you're like, wow, it's like so clear.
It's so beautiful. So I don't think that any of these passages have any weight whatsoever for the Calvinists. If you want to strip them out of context, sure, they will. And I'm sure a lot of you when you read this, and the reason why I wanted you to read it twice, I want you to know how much even all of you have been affected by this highly individualistic, Protestant, Calvinistic way of reading things. And I'm not trying to put anybody down because I really don't blame anybody here, but it's in the air.
Remember that first message I showed you all those famous writers and speakers and the study Bibles? It's in the air these interpretations. And Mennonite pastors, Protestant pastors, everybody's picked this up and does not really preach these messages as they should be done out of their context. But once you see it, you're like, wow, wow, wow. I love it. It's just so beautiful and so amazing. OK, so let's take a break.
Let's come back at 9:30, and we're going to talk about the article that we read yesterday from John Piper. And we're going to talk about the concept of limited atonement.