AG STUDY GUIDE FINAL - The Forerunner

will chose to harden their hearts and persecute the truth. In fact, in their case, they
opted to nail it to a cross.
Rev. Walter J. Chantry – Jesus, in Matthew chapter eleven, when He contemplates the
fact that many of the people in the town where He did his main public ministry, in
Caesarea, had not believed or received the Gospel, He thanked God that God had
hidden the Gospel from the wise and the prudent and had revealed it unto babes. And
then He went on to express His reason for that thanksgiving, because it was good in
Your sight Father. So, it was the Father’s choice as to who would be the recipient of the
Gospel and who would be hard hearted toward it.
Logically this answer raises another question. And Paul anticipates it by asking:
“You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His
will?’” ~ Romans 9:19
His answer is a stiff rebuke to any man who would dare sit in judgment on God:
“But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say
to Him who formed it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’” ~ Romans 9:20
Paul insists that as sinners we have no rights before God. We have no claims on His
mercy. God could have elected everyone. He could have elected no one. The choice,
therefore, was His and His alone.
Dr. R.C. Sproul – Students come to me all the time and they ask me a myriad of
theological questions. And I’ve never had a student come to me and say to me, “R.C.,
why does God save anybody?” That’s the real question. Not: Why is there only one
way? Why does He save me? I can’t imagine why He would save a creation that is in
manifest, consistent, impenitent rebellion against His glory and against His majesty.
And yet, God’s grace is so profound that He sends His Son, and that He – God! –initiates
a plan of salvation, a plan of redemption and it doesn’t include the salvation of
everybody. I don’t know why He doesn’t save everybody. I don’t know why He saves
anybody! So those are both questions that I’d like to have to ask Him because I can’t
answer them for Him.
Paul continues,
“Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one
vessel for honor and another for dishonor? What if God, wanting to show His
wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels
154