Excerpt: BEYOND THE SCENE

God's sovereignty in our salvation

God's sovereignty in salvation means that He saves whom He will, and those whom He saves owe nothing to anything in or of themselves. We are saved because God graciously chose to save us out of His own will. We cannot even take credit for that because it is the gift that He Himself sovereignly bestows.

Psalm 115:3 “Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him”. (NIV)

Romans 9:20 “But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?”(NIV)

Part of God's sovereignty is that despite our unworthiness, he chooses to love and save us anyway. He gives everyone the freedom to accept or reject His love.

The average preacher man’s pulpit conveys the impression that it lies wholly in the power of the sinner whether or not he shall be saved. It is said that "God has done His part, now man must do his”. Come to think of it, what can a lifeless man do, because man by nature is "dead in trespasses and sins" Eph. 2:1. Remember Lazarus, was it his choice to be raised from the dead? He was a dead man, he was blind, deaf and could not perceive anything and he could not also make a choice.  A lot of erroneous messages being divulged from the pulpit, but it is the responsibility of the congregation to search and prove all things right Tthess5:21 “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good”.

When addressing the unsaved, preachers often draw an analogy between God’s sending of the Gospel to the sinner, and a sick man in bed, with some healing medicine on a table by his side: all he needs to do is reach forth his hand and take it. But in order for this illustration to be in any wise true to the picture which Scripture gives us of the fallen and depraved sinner, the sick man in bed must be described as one who is blind Eph. 4:18 so that he cannot see the medicine, his hand paralyzed Rom 5:6 so that he is unable to reach forth for it, and his heart not only devoid of all confidence in the medicine but filled with hatred against the physician himself John 15:18. The man is a living dead.

 Christ came not to those who in their pride say they know the truth, but for His people, they that were incapable of knowing the truth which all men fell in the category, Rom3:23 “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. He came for that man that is blind of God’s mercy, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and they that sit in darkness out of the prison house" Isa. 42:7.

Why preach the Gospel if man is powerless to respond? Why bid the sinner come to Christ if sin has so enslaved him that he has no power in himself to come? We do not preach the Gospel because men are free moral agents, and therefore capable of receiving Christ, but we preach it because we are commanded to do so Mark 16. We do not have ability to convert or change another person, as much as one can associate with our good attitudes and life styles, it cannot make one change.

Rom1:17-19 reveals that Gospel is about Christ, it is the power of God unto Salvation, in it, the Righteousness of God is revealed  Gospel to those who are perishing is foolishness yet, unto us which are saved it is the power of God" 1Cor. 1:18. "The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men" 1 Cor. 1:25. The sinner is dead in trespasses and sins Eph. 2:1, and a dead man is utterly incapable of willing or knowing the truth and so cannot please God Rom. 8:8.

1Co 1:21 “For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.