Introduction

Today I would like to relate the sovereignty of God to apologetics. This is a vital perspective for us to have in serving the Lord in the present evil age. There is so much confusion. When we get a glimpse of the endlessness of the confusing views about life, death, and God, we can easily be perplexed if not confused ourselves. Furthermore, if unreasoned and unreasonable dogmatism is added to the confusion then our perplexity may give way to hopelessness. And hopelessness may become despair when we consider man's blindness, arrogance, and willfulness.

Thus we need a resource to lift us up in the difficulties of standing up for Christ. I know of no greater resource than the sovereignty of God. So this message will work from sovereignty to apologetics by discussing two things: the sovereignty of God gives us hope, and the sovereignty of God guides our duty (it gives us hope and duty, both at the same time).

1A. The Sovereignty of God gives us hope

One of the key "apologetics" texts in Scripture is 2 Corinthians 10. It is often quoted and it raises the specific issues of argument, logic, knowledge, standards, and ethics. Reading through the passage, all of these apologetical concerns can be clearly seen (1-5). But what would you say if I asked you to explain the general context in which these matters of apologetics are raised? The context is going to show us how much we need to rest on God clinging to His sovereignty. So what is it? What is the general and perhaps surprising context indicated by 10:1 & 6? It is the conduct of the Corinthians (not atheists, enemies, etc.) that is a disobedience that needs to be punished (v. 6). And a thorn that may dig deep is the fact that their bad conduct includes opposition to Paul and thus to his gospel (criticisms of Paul are hinted at in v. 1).

A great need of dependence on the Lord arises from various pressures to lose hope. These pressures show how much we need the sovereign Lord. We need Him; we need to depend more and more on Him. Some of the pressures that challenge us to lose heart and hope are the same that challenged Paul. There is the real and troubling fact that many religiously influential people "peddle the word of God for profit" (2 Cor. 2:17). It may cause us to lose heart (2 Cor. 4:1) being shameful, deceptive and distorting (2 Cor. 4:2). This reminds me of Paul's similar comments about flattery and mask wearing (1 Thess. 2:4-6). Those who are so close but so far away are evil men and imposters who "go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived" (2 Tim. 3:13). They preach what itching ears want to hear (2 Tim. 4:3). In the context of deceit and distortion of the gospel, the gospel preacher is to keep his head (be sober minded, ESV) and faithfully discharge his duties (2 Tim. 4:5).

So how do we keep our heads without being distraught and excessively disheartened? The gospel is veiled, fallen man is blind, sinners cannot see the light, they are perishing (2 Cor. 4:3-4), and opposition may even arise from among those who profess to be the Lord's people! How do we have a firm hope that gives a lively spring to our step in light of the fact that on top of all this confusion (or beneath it all) is the stark reality of human depravity and spiritual inability? Paul has a resource of hope that he cites again and again. We can characterize this hope in three ways from the letter to the Corinthians.

a) It is a God-centered hope

It is the sovereignty of God that gives us hope. "Smack dab" in the face of distorted and dogmatic argumentation, we know that the weapons of our warfare have divine power to demolish strongholds (2 Cor. 10:4).

A powerful illustration of this power is given in the creation account (2 Cor. 4:6). Coming to see the light is a miracle on a par with the creation of light. This is another way of describing effectual calling. It is a special and efficacious act of the sovereign God that turns unbelievers into believers. As the catechism puts it, "we are made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ, by the effectual application of it to us by his Holy Spirit" (WSC, Q 29). This is the work of the Spirit "whereby, convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel" (WSC, Q 31). Our hope is in God knowing that it is His counsel from eternity that is being effectively worked out in time by creation, providence, and redemption in Christ.

Now notice how this works out in a practical way for Paul when he says, "we do not lose heart" (2 Cor. 4:16). Consider what is sandwiched between efficacious grace (4:1-6) and not losing heart (4:16). It is the sovereignty of God in display and in contrast to human power (4:7). That we are mere jars of clay is summarized in the fact that "death is at work in us (4:12) in many ways (4:7-12). But grace is reaching more and more people (4:15). The great end is the revelation of Christ (4:10-11) and the glory of God (4:15). God is at work creating redeemed sinners through history and through many pressures that may cause us to lose heart and hope. But we do not lose hope because our hope is God-centered. This kind of hope is out of reach of people and circumstances. No one and no thing can touch this hope.

b) It is a sobered (balanced) hope

I say this because on one hand Paul speaks of the open door and triumph that is his (and by implication ours) always and that spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ everywhere (2 Cor. 2:14). And on the other hand, the sweet fragrance is balanced by the smell of death in those who are perishing (the aroma of Christ produces the smell of death, 2 Cor. 2:15-16). Hence it is a sober hope that ends with the searching question, "who is sufficient for these things?" or "who is equal to such a task?" We must therefore firmly fix our focus: "we speak before God" in contrast to the perplexing array of deceivers who peddle the gospel for profit (2 Cor. 2:17). We are confident as we look to the future; Jesus has a people and they will be brought safely home to heaven. At the same time our view is realistic. We know that many are perishing in their sin and the gospel in some way seals their doom. To me this is a hard truth, difficult to digest while I find my hope in the sovereign acts of God.

c) But it is an enduring hope

Thus we are God-centered, sobered, clear headed, and realistic in our dependence on the Lord and His power to demolish arguments. With this attitude we endure because we are renewed daily (2 Cor. 4:16-18). The challenges take their toll as they stretch out over the course of our brief time on earth but we do not lose heart. Knowing the power of God that commands the light to shine in our hearts we rest in that power in all the challenges.

He is at work. This is our great hope in the darkness of this world with the depravity of man. No one seeks after God. We seek Him when found by His seeking. Thus we have a deep foundation for hope.

• 'Tis not that I did choose thee, for, Lord, that could not be
• This heart would still refuse thee, hadst thou not chosen me
• Thou from the sin that stained me, hadst cleansed and set me free
• Of old thou hast ordained me, that I should live to thee
• Twas sovereign mercy called me, and taught my op'ning mind
• The world had else enthralled me, to heavenly glories blind
• My heart owns none before thee, for they rich grace I thirst
• This knowing, if I love thee, Thou must have loved me first (Josiah Conder, 1836)

Thus we sang earlier that "it was the same love that spread the feast that sweetly drew us in else we had still refused to taste and perished in our sin" (Watts, 1707).

Consider an example that shows that there is hope for the future even for mockers. Remember that Paul went beyond mocking Christians to destroying them (Gal.1:13). So he shows that there is hope for even the chief of sinners. In this connection, an example that always comes to mind when I think of mockery is a person that I know as the heckler. In my college years I spent many hours at neighboring Southwest Missouri State University (by a different name then). The Lord opened many doors for witness bearing in the dorms. I would meet week after week in various dorm rooms with a student or two and when word got out that a religious discussion was going on the room would fill with students. We would cover everything in the book as best we all could, given their inexperience/ignorance as unbelievers and my inexperience/ignorance as a believer.

After some months of these meetings a heckler appeared, I think he was a resident assistant. Whatever his official title may have been, he was outspoken and determined in his opposition to these meetings. As time went on, I would feel like a meeting would be going along great and then the heckler would appear, raise objections, and heckle as I tried to keep things on track. He often broke up the discussion. This went on intermittently over a couple of years. Then I graduated and left Springfield, Missouri. That was 1967. I went on to graduate school. In Indiana, I did some memorable dorm interaction like back in Missouri. Then I went to Westminster Seminary, graduated in 1972, and returned as an instructor to my alma mater in Springfield, Missouri. I taught there for just one year. During that year, I made a number of visits again to SMSU. And a very interesting thing happened during one of my visits, near the end of my time in Missouri. I was having a discussion with some students in the dorm when through the door came the heckler. I was taken back not knowing what to expect. I expected the third degree and worse. But he came up to me and said, "Do you remember me?" With all kinds of thoughts running through my head, I said with as calm a voice as I could, "yes I do." He then proceeded with an outburst of apologies for how he had acted years ago. The gist of what he said was, "I have become a Christian, I am on staff of a Christian organization (IV or CC, I can't remember) and I am seeking to witness to students for Christ." I was pleasantly flabbergasted. In the excitement of it all, I never got his name, and I have never seen him since. I know him as the heckler. But I know him as the heckler who was saved by the one he mocked, Jesus Christ, conqueror of mockery and evil by his death and resurrection.

The lesson is that we always have hope for success in the progress of the gospel because even when we are not looking or cannot see no matter how hard we try, Jesus is building His church as He promised (cf. always, everywhere, 2 Cor. 2:14). The seed of the gospel is like a seed growing by itself and we do not know when or how. Time is not a limiting factor. Our perspective is on the Lord who is pleased to work out His sovereign plan steadily, patiently, and certainly in day by day stages that stretch out over the entire course of history.

2A. Therefore, the Sovereignty of God guides our duty

Taking our cue again from 2 Corinthians 10, we need to make the important point very clear that the sovereignty of God does not lead us to fold our hands in some kind of apologetic idleness. By Paul's example we are called to arms.

If we read 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 in light of 1 Peter 3:15, we must acknowledge that we are commanded to bring all thoughts captive to Christ. It is part and parcel of sanctifying Christ in our hearts as Lord to engage in argument demolition. This is a separate thread of truth in the passage that intertwines with the hope we have in God's power (10:4). Our witness (small w witness versus the capital W witness of the apostolic eyewitnesses but based on that witness), our confession of faith, and our proclamation of the truth is a real, necessary, and challenging means because God calls people to Himself by Paul's gospel and ours (2 Thess. 2:14). God works out His purpose of election through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through faith, to which we are called by God through the gospel of Paul (2 Thess. 2:13-14).

This is just saying that the sovereign God commands various duties from us and it is a false, corrupt, ugly, and distorted "belief" in divine sovereignty that says we do not need the commandments of God in general or the commandment to defend the faith in particular. It is our sovereign God that commands us to sanctify Christ in our hearts and to be always readying ourselves to give answers regarding the hope we have within us (1 Pet. 3:15).

It is a shame of shames and not worthy of the name of Calvinism, for people to take a "what will be, will be" attitude regarding God's law and the means of grace. Any who do this should carefully weight the warning about people who twist the Scriptures to their own destruction (2 Pet. 3:16).

We are called to engage the world, to argue for His name's sake even though we face an impossible task. We know that it is not impossible for Him and He is about the doing of it through means. The means are real. They include our duty of Christian witness bearing (confessing of our faith) and interaction with unbelief.

A central duty is prayer. In the doing of this work, a main duty is prayer for we depend fully on the sovereignty of God as we tread every step of our journey. Prayer for the open door is essential (Col. 4:2-6). We are to be like the man who begged for bread at midnight and got his answer, Jesus says, because of his persistence (Lk. 11:8). This is to encourage us to ask, seek, and knock in prayer with persistence for the work of the Holy Spirit to give efficacy to our work (Lk. 11:9-13).

We are to get down to specifics. The core in our task is the preached word. So prayer must be oriented here. It is like a hub with spokes extending from it. The hub is the word. The spokes then branch out from that center. For us how can we pray specifically? Begin with the hub of the word. And then branch out. The first branch can be prayer for my preparation for preaching (for both understanding and delivery). You help me by your prayers (cf. 2 Cor. 1:11). Consider how prayer is tied to ministerial hope in hardship (2 Cor. 1:3-11). Closely connected is the prayer for good listening by the blessing of the Spirit.

Pray about the writing of the sermons and the use of that written product within our body and without by giving copies to family and friends, and by the Internet (point family and friends to sermons or studies that are there—we seek God's blessing in this). Pray for "mile-making" of the Lord's Day sermon. I pray for and hope you will also pray for making of miles out of the sermon on the Lord's Day at family dinner. Have cooked pastor and digest the sermon with your meal thanking God for the food of both kinds. Pray about our work at Cornerstone University and Michigan Theological Seminary that these open doors may be entered with the blessing of the Holy Spirit. Pray for the Spirit's blessing on our labors in our place and setting in these cities we represent, in this state, in this country and in the world at large.

Conclusion

We have every reason to go forward with confidence and hope. This is so because the work is the Lord's and it is marvelous in our eyes. And we commanded by the Lord to ready ourselves for gospel proclamation and defense. We should continue to pray for open doors for the word and with willing hearts we should do all that we can to spread the word of Christ near and far.