Man’s Responsibility

RIVERSIDE INDONESIAN FELLOWSHIP
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Man’s Responsibility

Riverside Indonesian Fellowship
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2020 · 23 August 2020

This evening we’re continuing with John 3. Jesus talks to Nicodemus about being born again, born from above. And we talked about the new birth. It’s solely the work of God by which He comes down from heaven, irresistibly brings an effectual call on the heart of a sinner, draws that sinner to himself. He regenerates that sinner, and then justifies, sanctifies and glorifies that person.

You didn’t participate in your physical birth, and you didn’t participate in your spiritual birth. It is a divine miracle of God. Our Lord continues to speak to Nicodemus but He broadens it to anyone else who happened to be there listening and who will ever read this. John 3:11-21, “Most assuredly, we speak what we know and testify what we have seen, and you do not receive our witness.”

“12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

“16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. 18 “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the Son of God.”

“19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. 21 But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”

Now the word “believe” appears seven times. The theme here is faith, believing. And so we can call this message “Sola Fide,” the aspect of salvation that declares that one is saved by ‘faith alone’, not by faith and works, for by grace are you saved through faith, it is not of works. That’s Ephesians 2:8 - 9. Romans 3:20, “No one is justified by behavior, by the deeds of the Law.”

That is what Jesus is saying in verses 11 to 21. “I say to all of you,” that is to anybody else who was standing with Nicodemus, including His own disciples. Verse 15, “Whoever believes will have eternal life.” Verse 16, “Whoever believes will not perish but have eternal life.” Verse 18, “He who believes is not judged.” It is about believing. It is about faith alone.

Jesus says, “And the first truth I want you to understand is that salvation is a divine work that God does from heaven down, that doesn’t depend on you.” And then without any explanation, our Lord takes the next part and says, “Anyone can be saved who believes.” So on one hand you have the doctrine of divine sovereignty. On the other hand you have the doctrine of human responsibility.

There are warnings. If you don’t believe, you’ll be condemned. If you don’t believe, you’ll be judged, and you will be punished. This is human responsibility. You need to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, so you will not perish; you will have eternal life. So here is human responsibility, both negatively and positively. You will bear the full weight of judgment if you refuse to believe.

On the other hand, if you will believe, eternal life waits for you no matter who you are. So how do those two things fit together? Most people in evangelism would avoid that question all together. They would be doing exactly the opposite of what Jesus did. Jesus presents the twin truths of divine sovereignty in salvation and human responsibility, and He does it at the very beginning of the conversation.

These twin truths always run parallel. They will never come together. Our inability to harmonize those things is a reflection of our sinfulness. And my answer is, “They can’t be harmonized in the human mind.” All I can tell you is that in the Word of God, these truths run parallel. And divine sovereignty will cause you to worship and human responsibility will motivate your evangelism.

You should be comfortable with the fact that you just might not understand something. When the Bible deals with these things, it doesn’t explain itself. These things are stated in Scripture as parallel realities and are never really explained or harmonized because they both exist. And the fact that we can’t understand them leaves us with one option, and that is to believe them both and be content with that.

God will do His will, He does whatever He purposes. He does what He wills among men and in the world. But there are illustrations of how that relates to responsibility. In Isaiah 10, God introduces the people of Assyria. Isaiah 10:5, “Woe to Assyria,” judgment is coming on Assyria from God. Woe is a word of terrible distress that signifies destruction and judgment. God is going to destroy Assyria.

Verse 5 continues, “The rod of My anger and the staff in whose hands is My indignation.” God identifies Assyria as the rod of His anger and the staff of His indignation. On whom? Verse 6, “I send it against a godless nation and commission it against the people of My fury.” He’s talking about Israel. The northern kingdom of ten tribes in 722 was taken captive and massacred.

Verse 7, “Yet, it does not so intend, nor does it plan so in its heart.” God says, I’m going to use Assyria to do this but this is not part of Assyria’s plan. This is not what Assyria is choosing, this is what I am choosing for Assyria to do. Assyria has its plan, but I have My plan, and I without their planning it, or intending to do it, I’m going to pick them up and use them as My weapon.

Well, this is amazing. Assyria has no intention of doing this. God literally, sovereignly picks them up, drives them at Israel to accomplish His will, and then He says in verse 5, “Woe to Assyria.” Woe to Assyria, a nation to be destroyed for doing something they didn’t choose to do, doing something they didn’t plan to do, doing something that was not their intention to do.

Assyria will be destroyed. Verse 12, “It will be when the Lord has completed all His work on Mount Zion, representing Israel and Jerusalem, He will say, ‘I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the pomp of his haughtiness.’” And then He goes on to quote what the king of Assyria said when he became proud and launched against Israel.

Verse 16, “I’m going to send wasting disease. Under His glory a fire of kindle like a burning flame. 17 The light of Israel will become a fire, his Holy One a flame and burn and devour his thorns and briars in a single day.” This is an amazing juxtaposing. God punishes a nation for doing what God picked them up and made them do. But full responsibility for pride fell on the king of Assyria.

This again is an illustration of those parallel realities: human responsibility and divine sovereignty. And they will always run parallel, and they will always have to be understood that way. Sinners bear the full weight of responsibility for their acts of defiance against God, even when God is using them to accomplish His purposes. And yet all things are decreed and determined by God.

Turn to John 6, Jesus fed the multitude; then He’s taught about Himself being the bread of life. In verse 35 He said, “I am the bread of life, he who comes to Me will not hunger. He who believes in Me will never thirst.” What does that mean? It means believing. Then Jesus says in verse 37, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me.” And Jesus goes from the failure to believe to divine sovereignty.

And, in verse 40 Jesus says, “This is the will of God, My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life.” It goes back and forth from divine sovereignty to human responsibility. It goes from new birth, regeneration as a work of God, the Father chooses, the Father draws, the Father gives to the Son, the Son receives, the Son keeps and loses none.

Look at verse 44, “No man can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws Him.” Yet verse 45, “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.” That says that this is a divine work of God. In fact, verse 46, “Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from the Father, He has seen the Father.” And yet, verse 47, “Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.”

In Acts 2, there is another illustration where Peter is preaching on the Day of Pentecost, and he says, “Men of Israel, listen,” Acts 2:22-23, “Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles, wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you know, 23 Him, being delivered by the determined plan and foreknowledge of God, you have crucified and put Him to death.”

And we know from the teaching of our Lord that they are held accountable for that, that their house was left to them desolate. They were guilty of not only stoning the prophets, but also killing the Son of God Himself and they would bear full weight for the responsibility of their actions. Yes, by the plan and foreknowledge of God, and yet full responsibility on the part of those who took His life.

So there, the Jews, the Romans, Pilate, Herod, everybody involved in the execution of Jesus, they were doing what they wanted to do in unbelief and yet they were executing the purpose predestined by the hand of God. Those parallel truths. The Old Testament prophesied the betrayal of Jesus. It prophesied Judas. The New Testament records that Judas was the one who would lift up his hand against Jesus.

It was ordained by God that Judas would be a betrayer in John 17:12, where Jesus says, “I have lost none of them except the son of perdition that Scripture may be fulfilled.” And yet in Acts 1:25 it says, “When Judas hanged himself, and fell and burst his bowels open, he turned and went to his own place.” See how consistently Scripture puts these things parallel without diminishing one or the other.

Now look at Romans 9 to 11, Paul there opens up his heart over the application of that gospel truth to sinners. And he chooses one group of sinners, the one that is the most familiar to him, and those about whom he cares the most, his fellow Jews. So let’s take the gospel truth and let’s apply it to the Jews that do not believe. How does Paul feel about his nation?

In Romans 9:1, Paul understands the gospel. He’s unfolded the glories of the gospel and he’s looking at his own people, the nation Israel. His heart is broken to the degree he would almost give up his own salvation if Israel could be saved. The same thing is in Romans 10:1 and in Romans 11:1, “Has God rejected His people? No He has not. May it never be.” What happened? Romans 9:6, “Not all Israel is Israel.”

God makes choices. In verse 15 is God’s answer from Exodus 33, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” I decide to whom I will give mercy and compassion. It doesn’t depend on the man who wills. It depends on God who has mercy. Verse 18, “He has mercy on whom He desires. He hardens whom He desires.”

The question is in verse 19, “How can God then find fault with me?” I’m not even a factor. If God is making all the choices, how can He hold me responsible for rejecting? That’s your complaint. That’s not fair. God’s answer is simply, “Shut up, you have no right to ask that.” That’s what he says in verse 20, “Who are you, O man, who answers back to God?”

Now we come to Romans 10, the other side, human responsibility. What’s the problem? Verse 1, “My prayer to God is that they may be saved.” Why are they not saved? “They have a zeal for God,” verse 2, “but not in accordance with knowledge.” It does not say, “Well I guess God didn’t choose them.” Paul says, “The problem is they don’t have knowledge.” They don’t understand God’s righteousness.

They don’t realize they can never attain to the righteousness of God, and therefore should cry out to Christ to end the reign of the Law and bring them righteousness and how would that happen? It would come to everyone who believes. Verse 4, they don’t understand that righteousness which brings an end to the tyranny of the Law is available to everyone who believes.

We preach the Word about faith. We preach that if you confess with your mouth “Jesus is Lord, believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you’ll be saved, for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness.” And then He says in verse 11, “Whoever believes in Him will not be ashamed.” Whoever believes, it doesn’t matter. Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

You see faith, verse 17, comes from hearing the Word concerning Christ. So what’s our responsibility? Our responsibility is to recognize this. We have been given a command and a commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature because anyone who believes can be saved. “Anyone who comes to Me,” Jesus said in John 6:37, “I will by no means cast out.” Let us pray.



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