Foundational Doctrine: Why the Doctrines of Grace Support Missions

Well, greetings to all of you. Thank you for being here. I do bring you greetings from the elders and fellow saints at Grace Community Church in Los Angeles. And it is a privilege for me to be here with you today, really all week. I do want to say thank you publicly to the brothers at Radius International as well as Missionary for their very gracious invitation. It is not lost on me that it is very undeserved.

My assignment this afternoon is to address why the doctrines of grace support missions. And I love that topic. I feel like that topic captures the blend of my life. I am blessed to serve as a professor of theology at the Master's Seminary, where my special focus is on the doctrines of man, sin, and salvation. And so the doctrines of grace are a perennial topic of study for me and a topic of proclamation.

And I'm also blessed to have served as the pastor of local outreach ministries at Grace Church for the last almost 15 years, where one of my responsibilities is to sit on a subcommittee of elders that oversees our more than 90 missionary families sent throughout the world. And so, doctrines of grace and evangelism and missions are a great intersection and summary of the good bit of ministry that we do at Grace.

And so this topic is a treat for me to address. There are better men to address it who are here even this week, but no one is more excited to address it than I am. Now, the doctrines of grace is shorthand for what have been called the five points of Calvinism, often summarized by the acronym TULIP. Let me just try to define them briefly.

So, total depravity teaches that the corruption of sin so totally pervades man's nature that before he is regenerate, he is entirely unable to will any spiritual good. Especially unable to bow the heart in humble faith that receives Christ as savior.

The natural man, says 1 Corinthians 2.14, cannot understand and does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for They are foolishness to him. The natural man cannot spontaneously decide to believe the gospel. He must become a supernatural spiritual man by the grace of regeneration before he can receive the gospel in faith.

Unconditional election teaches that from all eternity, God set his saving love on particular individuals. And based on nothing at all in or about those individuals, he chose to save them from sin and death solely on the basis of his good pleasure and nothing at all in them.

He chose to save them through the redemptive work of his Son. Ephesians 1, 4, and 5 says, He, the Father, chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.

In love, He predestined us for adoption as sons, through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will. Total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement for the sake of the acronym, but perhaps better termed, particular redemption. That teaches that Jesus died on the cross to atone for the sins of the very same particular individuals whom the Father chose to save in eternity past.

Namely, the elect alone, not all without exception. Jesus often speaks of those whom the Father has given Him. John 6, John 10, John 17. He calls those same people His sheep in John 10, 27. And He says in John 10, 15 that He lays down His life for the sheep whom His Father has given Him.

Then irresistible grace teaches that the spirit of God overcomes man's natural resistance to the gospel by sovereignly enlightening his blind mind, by subduing his heart of stone and implanting a heart of flesh, by freeing his enslaved will, so that the spiritually dead sinner is made alive by the grace of God, and is given the gifts of repentance and faith, and thus is effectually called to saving faith in Jesus.

Ephesians 2, 5. When we were dead in our transgressions, He made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. And then the perseverance of the saints is the doctrine that all those who genuinely trust in Christ for salvation will be preserved by the grace and power of God from finally falling away from Him in unbelief.

They will persevere in faith because nothing, will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Romans 8, 39. And because God who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1, 6.

Those five truths are precious. They are the marrow and lifeblood of true religion. They are the foundation of all comfort and communion with God. They are the articulation of the Lord's work in salvation that ascribes no glory at all to man and reserves all glory for God alone.

And yet, the accusation is often leveled against them that such teaching undermines evangelism. That it undermines missions and renders them meaningless. That one cannot consistently be a five-point Calvinist and all... Also, passionately pursue the salvation of lost sinners by bringing them the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, that is not true at all. But you could see how someone would raise the question. If God determines who will be saved from before the foundation of the world, not based on foreseen faith or foreseen anything, but solely on the ground of His own good pleasure, does our evangelism even make a difference? If not, then what? If men are so totally depraved that they're unable even to respond to the gospel in faith, why preach it to them?

If Christ has died to save the elect alone, is there even a gospel to preach to people unless we know somehow that they're elect? Well, there are a number of ways to answer those objections. One answer that just should not be overlooked is the answer of history.

It is just a plain historical fact that not only have Calvinists, Calvinists professed to believe in missions, but Calvinists have been a driving force in the training and sending and supporting of missions and missionaries from the earliest days of the Reformation.

History not only does not suggest that Calvinism is inimical to evangelism, as one writer put it, even a cursory glance at the history of missions and missionaries produces a hall of fame filled with Calvinists. Calvin himself, sent missionaries, as Sinclair spoke to us briefly last night. Refugees from England and Scotland and France fled to Geneva to escape Romanist persecution.

Calvin trained them for pastoral ministry and sent them back to their countries as preachers of the true gospel. Even as far as Brazil, so many of those men were persecuted unto martyrdom that this institute became known as the school of death.

And yet, they kept coming, and Calvin kept training them and sending them. You have John Eliot in the 1600s and David Brainerd in the 1700s, both Calvinists, both missionaries to the American Indian population. Eliot is often called the grandfather of the modern missions movement.

The father of the modern missions movement was William Carey, a Calvinist, who left England in 1792 to bring the gospel to India, where he founded 26 churches and 126 churches, and translated the Bible into 44 languages. Theodore Frelinghuysen, along with George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards, were all Reformed preachers who would help start the Great Awakening, the first Great Awakening in the American colonies. Whitefield crossed the Atlantic 13 times to bring the gospel to England and America. And Edwards himself served as a missionary to the Housatonic Indians later on in his ministry, in the twilight days of his ministry.

Adoniram Judson to Burma, David Livingstone to Africa, Henry Martyn to India and Greater Persia were all Calvinist missionaries, preachers of the doctrines of grace who went out for the sake of the name. Charles Simeon founded the Church Missionary Society in England in 1799, which has now sent more than 9,000 missionaries into the world. Charles Spurgeon believed in the five points of Calvinism with all of his heart, so much so that he said Calvinism was just a nickname for the gospel, and that you couldn't preach the gospel unless you preached the doctrines of grace. And if you ever devote yourself to reading the sermons of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, you will find it difficult to find an evangelist his equal.

So the facts of history simply do not support the narrative that Calvinism undermines evangelism and missions. Quite the opposite is true. Calvinists have given us the modern missions movement. J.I. Packer was right when he said, So far from inhibiting evangelism, faith in the sovereignty of God's government and grace is the only thing that can sustain evangelism.

And the record of history does bear that out. But history doesn't settle the question. We need to go to the Word of God to answer the objection that faith in man's total inability and God's absolute sovereignty is somehow at odds with a passion to preach the gospel to all people.

And so what I'd like to do in the rest of this session is to show how Scripture, Scripture teaches that the doctrines of God's sovereign grace in salvation, so far from inhibiting missions, are the great and sure foundation for missions and for all gospel proclamation.

I'll start with unconditional election. Then I'll treat total depravity and irresistible grace together. And we'll end with particular redemption. For the sake of time, I'm going to skip the perseverance of the saints. The short version of that is a gospel that keeps you saved all the way to the end is better than a gospel that doesn't.

Amen indeed. Well, let's consider first the doctrine of unconditional election. The divine rescue mission, wherein God intervenes to save guilty sinners bound for eternal punishment, does not begin when missionaries are sent. It doesn't even begin when the Father sends the Son into the world.

It doesn't even begin at some time after the fall, after mankind had ruined himself by rebellion against God. God's redemptive grace to sinners has its origin in eternity past, in the eternal counsel of the Trinity. Before man had sinned, and even before man had been created, the triune God contemplated all of humanity in light of their eventual fall into sin. And He purposed to save a people for Himself.

He purposed to set His love upon a remnant of humanity to rescue them from deserved punishment and to give those people as a bride to His Son. I read Ephesians 1, 4, and 5 just a moment ago. He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. The Father chose His people in the Son.

This choice, this election, constitutes a union between Christ and those whom the Father has chosen. And where Paul talks about, the Father choosing people in the Son, Jesus speaks of that same reality as the Father giving people to the Son.

In John chapter 6 and verse 39, Jesus says, This is the will of Him who sent me, that of all that He has given me, I lose nothing but raise it up on the last day. There exists a group of individuals whom the Father has given to the Son, and the Son will not lose those individuals. He will raise them to everlasting life on the last day.

In John chapter 10, Jesus begins to call these people who He's been given, His sheep. And in verse 29, He says of the sheep, 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.

And then in John chapter 17 and verse 29, where Kevin led us in yesterday, Jesus prays to the Father, You gave the Son authority over all flesh that to all whom You have given Him He may give eternal life.

And then John 17, 6, He says to the Father, They were Yours, and You gave them to Me. This group belonged to the Father in the way that the rest of the world did not belong to the Father. The Father, God who owns, the cattle on a thousand hills, whatever's under the whole heaven is Mine, He says. But these were Yours in a way that others were not. This is to say that God set His love on these people and made them His from all eternity. And He gave those people to His Son as a gift of His own love.

He entrusted them to the care of the Lord Jesus as their mediator. The Father's choice of some for salvation is the choice to give those to the Son so that He would be their representative and mediator, that He would stand in their place and lay down His life for those sheep, John 10, 14, and 15, and give them eternal life and not lose a single one of them. Why? Because My Father is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand.

Now if you would, I've sort of been in and around John 10, 14, and 15, Go ahead and look at John chapter 10 and verse 16. I've just read chapter 10, verses 14 and 15. But in John chapter 10, verse 16, Jesus says, after I lay down My life for the sheep, He says, I have other sheep which are not of this fold.

I must bring them also and they will hear My voice and they will become one flock with one shepherd. Jesus says that He has presently at that time other sheep that have not yet been brought into His flock. They are not yet believers, but they are sheep that He says He has. Not that I will get, not that I will have, but that He presently has.

The sheep that the Father has given to the Son before the foundation of the world are out there. Scattered abroad throughout the world. Christ says He already has them, but that He must bring them. The elect who are not yet believers must be brought to faith.

Now you say, how does that support missions? Well, now I want you to turn to Acts chapter 18. The Apostle Paul has come to preach the gospel in Corinth and he's run into some challenging circumstances. When Silas and Timothy come from Macedonia, Paul is able to devote himself entirely to preaching the gospel to the Jews. But in verse 6, they resist and they blaspheme. And Paul is so vexed that he shakes out his garments and he says, your blood be on your own heads. I'm clean. From now on, I will go to the Gentiles.

And then after what might have been a cause for discouragement, the Lord is kind to give some fruit. Paul goes on to stay in the house of a man who lives right next to the synagogue. And verse 8 says, the leader of the synagogue gets converted. He and his whole household believe in Christ.

And then the people in the surrounding city, they hear that and they start believing. The leader of the synagogue is believing in Jesus. Well, we need to hear about this. And they hear and they turn to Christ in faith. And on the very crest of that blessing, the Lord Jesus comes to Paul in the night by a vision, verse 9 says.

And Jesus says to Paul, do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent for I am with you. And no man will attack you in order to harm you for I have many people in this city.

Now, what does the Lord mean? Is he saying there's a bunch of Christians who are already there in Corinth and Paul just doesn't know about them yet. And if he gets into a fight, those Christians will come out of the woodwork and bail him out so that he won't get beat up too badly.

No, Paul is the frontier missionary. He's bringing the message by which people will be saved. What's the Lord saying? He's saying there are many people in this city whom I have, who have been given to me by the Father before the foundation of the world. There are many sheep whom I know by name and for whom I have laid my life down, but whom I have not yet brought into the fold.

Some of them came into the fold from the household of Crispus and many others, when they heard of it. I have more sheep to bring, Paul. Some of those whom the Father has chosen and given to me are here.

And no matter what kind of opposition you face, you keep speaking. You keep proclaiming the gospel by which my sheep hear my voice and come into my fold. Jesus comforted Paul, the missionary, by reminding him of sovereign election.

The Father has his chosen. The Son has his people whom the Father has given to him. And so, dear missionary, you can rest absolutely assured that your faithful proclamation of the gospel will be effective according to the purpose of God because his word, Isaiah 55, 11, never fails to succeed in the matter for which he sends it.

Whether for salvation or whether for further hardening, God's word will accomplish God's purpose. And so you can be stirred to speak the gospel boldly and courageously and fearlessly and patiently even because the Lord has many people in these cities. The Lord has many people in these nations. The good shepherd has other sheep whose salvation he has purchased whom he must bring into the fold also.

I love that. I love that word must in John 10, 16. Spurgeon says, who can resist the omnipotent must? Clear out, devils. Clear out, wicked men. Flee darkness. Die, O death, if Jesus says must. We know what is going to happen.

He says difficulties vanish. Impossibilities are achieved. And then Spurgeon celebrates glory. Glory. The Lord shall get the victory. Jesus says of his chosen, his redeemed, his espoused, his covenanted ones, them also I must bring. And therefore, it must be done.

You can't fail because he can't fail. And you say, well, if it must happen, why should I be preaching then? If it must happen, I can sit here nice and safe and God will go and get what he's given to Jesus.

But I would say, not if it must happen, why should I be preaching? If it might not happen, why should you be preaching? There, there'd be no use for preaching if God hadn't chosen to save some. If God had not chosen some to believe, you might as well preach to horses or cows like John Newton said.

Your preaching is the means by which the sovereign Lord has ordained to bring his people. He's enlisted you as the instrument by which he brings them. By sounding the good shepherd's voice in the proclamation of his gospel. He must bring them. They must come. But we must fetch them.

So, do not be silent. Go on speaking. Because where Christ sends his gospel, Packer said, there Christ has his people. Where Christ sends his gospel, there he has his people. And you say, well, but you believe though and the doctrines of grace teach that even when sinful man hears the gospel, he's totally unable to believe it.

And that's right. Saving faith is classically conceived, as knowledge, assent, and trust. In saving faith, the mind apprehends the knowledge of the facts of the gospel. We can't believe in him of whom we have not heard, Romans 10.

Faith recognizes and understands the truths of God's holiness and man's sinfulness and Christ's sacrifice and so on. And then the heart gives glad assent to these facts that the mind apprehends. It's one thing to understand. It is another to wholeheartedly and warmly embrace them as into your very soul.

Romans 10, 10. With the heart, a person believes. And then the will casts the entire soul upon Jesus, trusting him and entrusting oneself to him, relying utterly upon him alone for the forgiveness of sins and for a record of righteousness that meets the demands of God's holiness.

In other words, saving faith, requires the proper working of the human soul in all of its faculties, mind, heart, and will. But what is the state of the human soul since Genesis 3? Ephesians 4:17 and 18 says, "The mind has become futile and the understanding darkened so that man is characterized by spiritual ignorance."

1 Corinthians 2:14 again, "The natural man cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him." And then the heart. "The heart is a heart of stone." Ezekiel 11:19. "Cold and unresponsive to divine truth.

Though the light shines ever so brightly in the eyes of the natural man's heart, he always and ever refuses that light. Does not come into the light. Why John 3:19? Because he loves darkness rather than the light. His heart is wrong. He loves wrong.

"And the will of the natural man is enslaved to sin." Romans 6:17. "You were slaves of sin." That means that the natural man delights in the manure pile of sin and turns in disgust from the pure streams of righteousness.

Now, if saving faith requires the proper working of the mind, heart, and will, and if the mind, heart, and will of the natural man is darkened, hardened, and enslaved, so that it is truly morally incapable of working properly, then it is impossible for the natural man to exercise saving faith.

It is impossible for the natural man to exercise saving faith. And so you say, "So why, Mike, would I risk my life and my wife's life and my children's lives? Why would we leave our families and everything that is familiar to us to move across the world if sinners can't believe the message that we're bringing to them.

Because God has ordained that the preaching of the gospel to natural men is the very means by which He turns them into supernatural men. God has ordained that the speaking of the gospel message that blind men can't see or hear be the very means by which He opens those blind men's eyes, the very means by which He melts those hearts of stone, the very means by which He frees their enslaved wills.

2 Corinthians 4:6, "For God who said, 'Light shall shine out of darkness,' just as in the beginning when God says, 'Let there be light,' and by the creative power of His word, the galaxies leap into existence." So 2 Corinthians 4:6 says, "He is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ."

In the irresistible grace of regeneration, God sovereignly speaks into the darkened and dead heart, "Let there be light." And instantaneously, He births the light of eternal spiritual life where it had not existed. He gives us new spiritual eyes so that we finally see sin for what it is, in all of its objective ugliness, so that we finally see Christ for who He is in all of His objective beauty and glory and mightiness to save.

And now with our eyes finally open, finally able to see and evaluate sin and Christ as they actually are, we turn away in repentant disgust from the filth of sin and self, and we delightfully, irresistibly cling to our savior in the embrace of saving faith.

And you say, "Well, wait a second now. If that miracle is God's work, if it's something only He can do, why do we evangelize?" And the answer is because God accomplishes that miracle of regeneration by the means of the preaching of the Lordship of Christ. That's 2 Corinthians 4:5.

We don't preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord. So turn with me to James chapter 1. And let me see if I can just hammer home as we turn to James 1 what it is that I'm saying. You preach a message to people who can't see it, who can't hear it, who can't understand it until they can.

And by what means can they or I should say it this way, by what agency do they go from being unable to understand it to being able to see it and inexorably and irresistibly laying hold of it? Jesus would say, "The wind blows where it wishes."

By the agency of the sovereign power of the Holy Spirit, by the God who said, "Let light shine in the darkness of this heart." But by what means does God, the Holy Spirit, exercise that almighty power of regeneration?

Or does He just do it whenever He decides? No. He does it by means of the preached word. So look at James 1 and verse 18. He says, "In the exercise of His will." Whose will? Man's will? No, no, that's a capital H. In the exercise of His will, God's will, He brought us forth. There's the language of new birth. There's the language of regeneration.

And by what means did He do this bringing forth? By the word of truth. In the exercise of His will, He brought us forth by the word of truth. Or if you were to turn one book over to 1 Peter 1 and verse 23, Peter says, "You have been born again, not of seed which is perishable, but imperishable, that is, through," there's means language again, "through the living and enduring word of God." And verse 25 says, "And this was the word, the gospel, that was preached to you."

And you've heard it cited several times this week, Romans 10:17, "Faith, which is the immediate fruit of regeneration, faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ." The only way that God will dispense this irresistible grace of regeneration that overcomes man's depraved blindness is the proclamation of the word of God.

And therefore, missionary, you are indispensable. Someone needs to preach that message. But, because of the total depravity of man, your proclamation is powerless apart from the sovereign power of the irresistible grace of regeneration. And so, J. I. Packer says again, "However clear and cogent we may be in presenting the gospel, we have no hope of convincing or converting anyone.

Can you or I, by our earnest talking, break the power of Satan over a man's life? No. Can you or I give life to the spiritually dead? No. Can we hope to convince sinners of the truth of the gospel by patient explanation? No.

Can we hope to move men to obey the gospel by any words of entreaty that we may utter? No." He says, "Were it not for the sovereign grace of God, evangelism would be the most futile and useless enterprise that the world has ever seen, and there would be no more complete waste of time under the sun than to preach the Christian gospel.

And then he concludes, so far from making evangelism pointless, the sovereignty of God in grace is the one thing that prevents evangelism from being pointless. For it creates the certainty that evangelism will be fruitful. For God does what man cannot do.

God works by His Spirit through His Word in the hearts of sinful men to bring them to repentance and faith. Christ has them by donation from the Father, and He must bring them. They're dead, and so we must preach the message by which God makes them alive and grants them faith.

Well, what about particular redemption? If Christ didn't die for everyone without exception, well, then isn't salvation not really available? Everyone? And if salvation isn't available to everyone, doesn't that mean we can't offer it to everyone? How can we believe in a strictly particular redemption on the one hand and a genuinely universal free offer of the gospel to all people without discrimination on the other?

And the answer is, we can believe in both of those, because the Bible teaches them both. The Bible teaches that Jesus has come to lay down His life for these particular sheep that the Father has given Him. He has given to Him in eternity past, John 10, 14, and 15, verses 27 to 29 as well.

And at the very same time, the Bible teaches that God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere must repent, Acts 17, 30. In John 6 and verse 64, we're told Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe and who it was that would betray Him.

You and I don't know who the elect are, Spurgeon said, if the way that we were supposed to only preach to the elect, if God would have painted a yellow stripe on the backs of the elect ones, I'd go around lifting shirts. But since He hasn't done that, I preach to all. But Jesus did know who the elect and reprobate were, and that didn't keep even Him from offering the promises of the gospel to all indiscriminately, even to Judas who would betray Him.

Matthew 22, 14 says it, many are called, but few are chosen. That is to say many are called to repentance and faith through the preaching of the gospel, but comparatively few are among God's elect who are enabled to respond to that call in genuine faith.

And in fact, the mainstream of historic Reformed particularism has never been conflicted about this. So, the Synod of Dort was convened in 1618 to establish the accepted Reformed teaching for the churches in the United States. In response to the growing Arminianism. And because they were responding to the five articles of the Arminians' doctrine, the canons of Dort summarized the Bible's teaching under five heads, which become known today as the five points of Calvinism. And so, in some sense, there is no better measure of historic Calvinism than the canons of the Synod of Dort.

Well, in the section on the work of Christ, Dort unequivocally asserted the particularity of Christ's atonement. It says, it was the will of God that Christ, by the blood of the cross, whereby He confirmed the new covenant, should effectually redeem out of every people, tribe, nation, and language, all those and those only who were from eternity chosen to salvation and given to Him by the Father.

Christ redeems those only who were chosen from eternity by the Father. And yet, at the very same time, under that very same head of doctrine, Dort, also affirmed that the gospel not may be preached, must be preached to all people. It says this, the promise of the gospel is that whosoever believeth in Christ crucified shall not perish, but have everlasting life. This promise, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be declared and published to all nations and to all persons promiscuously and without distinction, to whom God, out of His good pleasure, sends the gospel.

They saw no incompatibility between a particular redemption and a universal gospel call. And we could go right on down through history from the rest of the 17th century to today. Articles and books have been written on Reformed particularists' free offer of the gospel. One scholar writes this, "Belief in the full, free, and indiscriminate offer of the gospel has been a core dogma of Reformed orthodoxy from the beginning. It has not merely been conceded. It has been insisted on as a dogma of such importance that any doctrine inconsistent with it would have to be instantly jettisoned.

This wasn't some concession. This was insisted upon. But it's not just that Scripture teaches that a particular election and a particular redemption are not at odds with universal gospel preaching. Scripture often presents both of these truths in the very same context without a hint of irony.

or perceived tension. There is no chapter in all the Bible that teaches God's absolute sovereignty and salvation as relentlessly as Romans chapter 9. Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then, it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.

God says, salvation is up to Me. And then verse 18 again, in Romans 9, He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. And then, after these unqualified, unembarrassed declarations of God's particularism in salvation.

In the very next chapter, God says of Israel, chapter 10, verse 21, all the day long, I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people. The outstretched arms of God are a picture of the earnest and compassionate entreaty for rebels to repent and be reconciled to Him. He's saying, I'm right here. Turn to me. Welcome home and receive salvation.

And you say, God, you just said last chapter that it depends entirely upon you. Why are you calling them earnestly as if it was up to them? Apparently, he feels no tension there. Apparently, Paul, who wrote that passage, does not feel any tension between. Salvation depends nothing at all upon man, but on God alone who chooses. In chapter 9, and then I stretch out my hands to all and call you to repentance. In chapter 10, and I would submit to you that if God and Paul don't feel like those are at odds with one another, you should train your own sensibilities not to discern any odds between them yourself.

Or consider, Matthew chapter 11. Go ahead and turn to Matthew chapter 11. Just before Jesus issues that tender searching invitation for all who are weary and weighed down by their sin to come to Him and find rest for their souls, He makes what is perhaps His strongest comments in support of particularist divine sovereignty. Matthew 11, 25. At that time, Jesus said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and in intelligence and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in your sight.

Jesus praises the Father for hiding salvation from some and revealing it to others. And then He says in verse 27, all things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.

Now, knowing the Father, is the definition of eternal life, John 17, 3. Jesus says no one knows the Father. No one has eternal life except those to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Salvation is the sovereign prerogative of the Son.

He chooses those whom He will save. And then in the very next verse comes that glorious invitation, come to Me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Not the slightest indication that the universal gospel call in verse 28 is incompatible with the soteriological particularism in verses 25 to 27. In fact, not only are they compatible, these texts illustrate that that particularism is the foundation upon which the universal gospel call goes forth.

The great twentieth-century theologian John Murray puts it this way. He says, "It is on the crest of the wave of divine sovereignty that the unrestricted summons comes to the laboring and heavy laden. In other words, not only does particularism pose no obstacle to the indiscriminate proclamation of the gospel, Scripture presents the latter flowing out of the former.

The universal offer comes from particular redemption. And that is because, dear people, the only kind of atonement that can serve as a thoroughly solid foundation for such a full and free offer of the gospel is an efficacious atonement, an effective atonement.

And the only way to preserve an effective atonement is if it is a particular atonement. Why do I say that? What do I mean by that? Well, if you hold to a universal redemption, you wind up fundamentally altering the very nature of the cross.

Sometimes, well, someone will say, no, listen, Jesus died for everyone, absolutely all without exception. Christ atoned for the sins of everyone who ever has lived or will live. And you say, oh, well, then do you believe that everybody is saved?

Will all without exception escape punishment for their sins and go to heaven? And the response comes back, oh, no, I'm not a universalist. Jesus himself says that people go to eternal destruction. The gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction and many there be that find it.

And so, I ask, does that mean then that Jesus' death doesn't save people? And they say, well, he died to provide salvation. He died to make it possible for everyone to be saved. But those who don't believe in him, they forfeit that provision.

Now, you see, the atonement is reimagined. It is reimagined to be not an efficacious accomplishment which guarantees salvation, but now a resistible provision which makes salvation possible. Jesus died to make it possible for sinners to be saved and not to save sinners.

One longtime professor at a very well-known evangelical summary wrote, seminary wrote this, Christ's death does not save, either actually or potentially. Rather, it makes all men savable. Another professor at another well-known evangelical seminary says, we cannot speak correctly of Christ's death as actually and certainly saving the elect.

The payment made by His death on behalf of the elect renders their salvation possible. Now, here's the problem. I don't need a possible salvation. I don't need to be made savable. I need to be saved. I need an actual salvation, not a potential one.

You see, if Christ has merely provided and not accomplished the same potential atonement for everyone without exception, then the decisive difference between the saved and the lost is not the omnipotent grace of the savior. It is the depraved will of the sinner.

And that means, as J. I. Packer put it, that the decisive factor that actually saves us is our own believing. He says, Christ saves us with our help. And then he says, and what that really means when you think it out, is that we save ourselves with Christ's help.

The burden of the difference-making in salvation is taken off the strong shoulders of our substitute, and it's thrust back onto the backs of the weary and heavy-laden. You see, it sounds good and large-hearted and loving to say, "Jesus died to save everyone."

Because we assume that the glory of the atonement is in its breadth, rather than its in effect in its effectiveness. But if you universalize the extent of the atonement without universalizing the extent of salvation, then you say something other than the atonement is what is definitive for salvation.

Let me say that again. If you universalize the extent of the atonement without universalizing the extent of salvation, you say that something other than the atonement is the determinative cause of salvation, the difference maker. And let me tell you something, friends, that's not good news for sinners.

That's not good news for sinners. A. A. Hodge said, it's not we who teach a limited atonement, but our opponents. That must be a limited redemption indeed, which leaves the majority of those for whom it was designed in hell forever.

But you see, when you proclaim the Bible's teaching, that Christ's atonement is not an indefinite provision by which He makes salvation possible, but a definite accomplishment by which he makes salvation inevitable. When you proclaim the Bible's teaching that though Jesus does not die for every single individual without exception, that every single one he does die for is by that very death infallibly assured to be saved from sin and brought home to heaven. Well, then you begin to taste the sweetness of the doctrine of particular redemption.

When you recognize that the atonement does not need faith added to it to give it its saving power, but that the atonement of itself is so savingly powerful that it purchases the very faith that unites us to Christ and all the blessings of salvation in him, Well, then you feel the strength of the cross.

Then you can cast your whole soul on the cross. Then you see the glory of a perfect redemption. That's the heart behind particular redemption. It's not to exclude people from salvation. It's to bring people to salvation and not just a potential or possible salvation.

Jesus Himself casts the very glory of His atoning work in terms of its efficacy. In John 17, 4, the Son says to the Father, I glorified You on the earth. How, Jesus? How did You glorify the Father? Having accomplished the work which you have given me to do.

The Son's saving mission is glorifying to the Father Because it was a work that was accomplished and not merely provisional or potential. And so the cross did not purchase possibilities or create opportunities. It accomplished certainties. It didn't make sinners savable. It saved His people.

The glory of the atonement is the glory of its perfect efficacy. That every last one for whom Christ's blood was shed will be released from His bonds and will finally be set free into the freedom of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. The great hymn declares, "Death and the curse were in our cup. Oh Christ, 'twas full for thee. But thou hast drained the last dark drop. 'Tis empty now for me." You see, that's what it means for Jesus' death to be a substitution.

He drains the cup of God's wrath down to its very dregs so that there is no condemnation to drink for those for whom He died, no suffering, no God forsakenness, no cry of dereliction for Me to cry. Those for whom Christ died can never experience the punishment which He bore in our place.

Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood shall never lose its power till all the ransomed church of God be saved to sin no more. Everybody ransomed by that precious blood comes all the way home. That's the gospel that only the particularist gets to offer.

That here is a Savior whose blood has satisfied the fearful wrath of the holy God for everyone who trusts in Him alone for forgiveness and righteousness. The particularist offers Christ to the sinner in all of His sovereign power to save, and not just His power to provide salvation or to make salvation possible. You see, we don't offer the nations the opportunity of salvation.

We offer them salvation. We don't offer the nations a potential Savior who will have done as much for them as He's done for those suffering in hell already. We don't offer them a possibility which they may turn into an actuality by fulfilling certain conditions.