Why Does Christ Want Some Not to Believe?

00:00:00.000 | Well, why does Christ want some to not believe?

00:00:08.760 | That's a perplexing question for a lot of Bible readers who scratch their heads when

00:00:12.160 | they meet texts like Matthew 13, 13 and Luke 8, 10.

00:00:16.880 | Today, the question arrives from a listener named Max, a question for Pastor John, who

00:00:21.200 | joins us again over Skype today.

00:00:23.440 | "Hello, Pastor John.

00:00:24.760 | Can you explain Jesus' parable in Luke 8, verses 9 to 15, in which he quotes Isaiah

00:00:30.280 | 6, 9?

00:00:31.280 | In Isaiah 6, God says to "make the hearts of this people calloused, otherwise they might

00:00:36.520 | see with their eyes, and understand with their hearts, and be healed."

00:00:42.220 | What perplexes me is that God purposefully keeps people from salvation, even though 1

00:00:47.400 | Timothy 2, 4 states that God wants all people to repent and receive salvation.

00:00:52.800 | Please help me to understand this seeming paradox, and if possible, God's reasoning

00:00:56.920 | behind hardening certain hearts to keep them from repentance.

00:01:02.280 | Pastor John, what would you say to Max?

00:01:04.920 | There really are two questions here.

00:01:07.920 | They're both good.

00:01:09.560 | One is, does 1 Timothy 2, 4 imply that God's desire for all to be saved rule out, does

00:01:20.000 | it rule out his decisive sovereignty over who is in fact saved?

00:01:26.640 | So if he desires all to be saved, are you going to draw the inference, well, then he

00:01:32.880 | can't be involved in choosing some to be saved and some to pass over and not be saved?

00:01:39.520 | That's one question.

00:01:40.520 | The other question is, what is God's reasoning or purpose behind preventing some people from

00:01:47.920 | seeing the truth and being saved in Luke 8?

00:01:53.200 | Now let's take those one at a time and then relate them.

00:01:57.760 | 1 Timothy 2, 1 to 4 goes like this.

00:02:00.560 | I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people,

00:02:07.640 | for kings, all those who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life,

00:02:15.120 | godly, dignified in every way.

00:02:18.360 | This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people

00:02:24.680 | to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

00:02:29.360 | So this text raises the question, if God desires all people to be saved, why are not all people

00:02:39.760 | saved?

00:02:40.760 | That's the question.

00:02:42.320 | And the typical modern, and by modern I mean the last two, three hundred years, the typical

00:02:49.240 | modern answer is to say that man's free will, his self-determination, keeps God from doing

00:03:01.440 | what he desires to do, namely save them.

00:03:04.560 | Now I don't think that's a biblical answer.

00:03:06.680 | I think that's a philosophical presupposition brought to the text and taught nowhere in

00:03:13.200 | the Bible.

00:03:14.760 | I don't think man has that kind of free will, that kind of self-determination that can thwart

00:03:22.000 | God's sovereign will to save whomever he pleases by overcoming their hard heart and their resistance

00:03:31.120 | and rebellion and giving them a new heart of faith.

00:03:35.060 | In Paul's teaching, faith is a gift of God, not a creation of man out of his own ultimate

00:03:42.640 | self-determination.

00:03:43.640 | It's not a product of free will understood as self-determining power.

00:03:53.600 | You can see that in Philippians 129, you see it in Ephesians 2.8, but you see it especially

00:03:59.320 | in Acts 13.48, where Luke says that it is those whom God has chosen and appointed who

00:04:07.660 | will actually believe when they hear the gospel.

00:04:11.240 | It goes like this.

00:04:12.840 | This is Acts 13.48.

00:04:15.580 | The Gentiles began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were

00:04:22.080 | appointed to eternal life believed.

00:04:27.840 | So I take this to mean that human self-determination is not the ultimate explanation for why all

00:04:36.840 | people are not saved.

00:04:39.240 | Even though Paul says God desires all people to be saved in 1 Timothy 2.4, in fact, Paul

00:04:46.520 | says as much in these very letters to Timothy.

00:04:50.800 | For example, in 2 Timothy 2.25, he says this, "The Lord's servant should correct his opponents

00:04:58.960 | with gentleness.

00:05:01.160 | God may perhaps grant them repentance unto a knowledge of the truth."

00:05:10.440 | Now that very phrase, "unto a knowledge of the truth," is the same exact phrase used

00:05:18.560 | in 1 Timothy 2.4, where God desires all people to come to a knowledge of the truth, which

00:05:27.280 | not all do.

00:05:29.100 | So on the one hand, God desires all to come to a knowledge of the truth in 1 Timothy 2.4,

00:05:37.000 | and on the other hand, it says he may perhaps grant as a gift that some particular people

00:05:44.940 | will come to a knowledge of the truth, 2 Timothy 2.25.

00:05:50.380 | So I think Paul makes it clear that what hinders God's desire for people to repent and come

00:05:59.600 | to a knowledge of the truth, what keeps it from rising, what keeps that desire for all

00:06:06.240 | to be saved from rising to the level of decisive action in which everybody would be saved,

00:06:13.520 | is not the power of human self-determination, so-called free will, but rather the fact that

00:06:20.040 | God may or may not grant repentance and faith.

00:06:26.840 | At one level, God desires all to be saved.

00:06:32.620 | He does not delight in the death of the wicked, Ezekiel 18.23 says, but another commitment

00:06:40.000 | in God, another commitment to act with wisdom and justice and a wider love, love seen through

00:06:47.760 | a wider perspective, a wider lens, prevents him from acting on the desire for all to be

00:06:55.360 | saved in a way that saves all.

00:06:58.280 | So in reference to Max's question about Luke 8, about God's choosing not to liberate some

00:07:06.980 | from their rebellion and spiritual blindness, what we have seen so far is that this is not

00:07:14.700 | a contradiction of 1 Timothy 2.4, where God desires all people to be saved.

00:07:20.280 | He desires it, but he doesn't always perform it.

00:07:24.440 | And Max is asking, "Well, please help me understand God's reasoning behind the hardening of certain

00:07:32.120 | hearts to keep them from repentance."

00:07:35.420 | And then he quotes Luke 8, 9 and 10.

00:07:38.660 | It says this, "When Jesus' disciples asked him what the parable of the sower meant, he

00:07:45.320 | said, 'To you it has been given.'"

00:07:48.440 | So it's a gift.

00:07:49.440 | They don't deserve it.

00:07:50.440 | They didn't earn it.

00:07:51.680 | "'To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom, but to others they are in

00:07:58.760 | parables so that,'" and here's the divine purpose, "'so that, seeing they may not see,

00:08:06.140 | and hearing they may not understand.'"

00:08:09.560 | And Max sees rightly that this is an allusion to Isaiah 6, 9 and 10, where God gives Isaiah

00:08:18.840 | the painful task of preaching with the effect of hardening.

00:08:24.220 | So he says this, God says, "Go, Isaiah, say to this people, 'Keep on hearing, but do not

00:08:31.780 | understand.

00:08:33.040 | Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.

00:08:35.900 | Make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes.'"

00:08:40.940 | This is God telling Isaiah what his preaching is going to do.

00:08:44.060 | "Blinding their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, lest," this is his purpose, "lest they

00:08:49.780 | see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn

00:08:55.940 | and be healed."

00:08:57.900 | So the explanation of hardening in Isaiah's and in Jesus' ministry is that this design

00:09:08.220 | of God's Word is judgment.

00:09:11.140 | It's judgment upon sin.

00:09:13.980 | This dulling, hardening effect of the preaching is not happening to people who love the Word

00:09:22.380 | of God.

00:09:23.380 | He's not going out and finding people who love and submit to the Word of God and then

00:09:27.580 | preaching so that they become hard-hearted.

00:09:29.060 | No, no.

00:09:30.060 | No one is made blind against their will.

00:09:35.700 | Mark that.

00:09:37.220 | This indifference to God is what they want.

00:09:42.140 | There's nobody kicking and screaming, moving into blindness.

00:09:44.620 | "I want to see."

00:09:46.460 | There are no innocent people under the judgment of God's blinding.

00:09:51.420 | None.

00:09:52.580 | Nobody is made blind to God who loves to see God.

00:09:58.780 | This blindness and dullness are judgments for sin.

00:10:02.940 | They are the handing over into blindness to be blind.

00:10:08.700 | Now I'll end with this.

00:10:11.340 | Where is this judgment leading?

00:10:14.020 | What's the big picture?

00:10:15.540 | And Paul tells us in Romans 11, 25 and 26, he says to us Gentiles, "Lest you Gentiles

00:10:23.500 | be wise in your own sight."

00:10:26.940 | I don't want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers.

00:10:30.740 | A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles, that's us, and

00:10:41.620 | the great world mission of the church, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.

00:10:47.100 | And then in this way, all Israel will be saved.

00:10:52.260 | It's leading to salvation.

00:10:54.860 | And then later in that same chapter, verse 32, he says, "God has thus consigned all to

00:11:02.740 | disobedience that he may have mercy on all.

00:11:07.420 | Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God.

00:11:13.160 | How unsearchable are his judgments.

00:11:15.900 | How inscrutable are his ways.

00:11:18.260 | For from him and through him and to him are all things.

00:11:23.820 | To him be glory forever and ever.

00:11:26.580 | Amen.

00:11:27.580 | Amen.

00:11:28.580 | Thank you for walking us through an answer to this very common and very perplexing question,

00:11:33.260 | Pastor John.

00:11:34.340 | And thanks for listening.

00:11:35.340 | If you want new episodes of this podcast delivered to you, subscribe to Ask Pastor John in your

00:11:39.700 | favorite podcast app in Spotify or by subscribing to DG's YouTube channel to find other episodes

00:11:45.180 | in our archive or submit a question to us of your own, do that online at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:11:53.460 | Well this spring during quarantine, my youngest son and I have taken up a new hobby.

00:11:57.420 | We go outside in the darkness, lay down, stare straight up into the dark Arizona sky and

00:12:02.580 | look at the dazzling stars.

00:12:05.340 | The more our eyes adjust, the more stars we begin to see.

00:12:08.620 | So as we look up, what do we see and hear in the night sky?

00:12:13.260 | You'll hear from Pastor John on that theme next time on Wednesday to explain what the

00:12:17.340 | creation is saying to us about the creator.

00:12:20.780 | I'm Tony Reinke.

00:12:21.780 | We'll see you then.

00:12:22.340 | [Music]

00:12:24.340 | [Music]

00:12:26.340 | [Music]

00:12:28.340 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Why Does Christ Want Some Not to Believe?

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