"The Only Election that Matters" Matthew 11:25-28 Sunday Morning Worship Service

A word about my title this morning.

The only election that matters.

I received this week a letter, which I have in my right hand, from a local pastor who wrote me a letter encouraging me to preach an election sermon.

The heading, Why Teach an Election Sermon?

Historically, pastors have always played a critical role in faith in the earlier days of our nation.

So throughout Scripture, God has always used His people to speak truth to power and to wield their influence.

So I am eager to do exactly that.

I thought no one would ever ask.

At that time, Jesus declared, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you've hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.

Yes, Father, for such is your gracious will.

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

There's so much in these three verses that that's all we'll take this morning.

I know there's a gospel invitation that comes next, verses 28 through 30.

We'll look at that, Lord willing, next Lord's Day.

But for this morning, just these three verses, 25 through 27.

These verses are on the doctrine of election.

My thesis statement this morning that I derive from this passage is that God chooses whom to save, and then he actually saves them.

That's the doctrine of election boiled down in a nutshell, that God chooses whom to save and then actually saves them.

That this idea of God's sovereignty over salvation is not abstract.

It's not that God is generally sovereign over all things, but then he gives us some capacity to make determinative choices, that he then, you know, alters his own decree based upon how we act, or, you know, various ways to try to explain away the doctrine of election.

But underneath the doctrine of election is this basic truth that I have on your screen that God chooses whom to save, and then he actually does save them.

That's the doctrine of election.

This is the core of these three verses in Jesus' teaching.

And it's interesting to me that Jesus turns to these three verses at this point because this is a long sermon.

Matthew 11 is presented as one entire sermon.

It begins with the messengers from John the Baptist, and then, of course, in Luke 7, it says, Jesus began to preach for the next hour.

Over that hour-long time, he's doing miracles, he's preaching.

People from Korazan come out to him, and the crowd grows and grows and grows.

Earlier on in the passage, uh, verse 7, he begins to speak to the crowds.

So that's probably at the end of that hour-long sermon.

He then starts addressing the crowds.

So continuing on the message there, um, he rebukes the crowds for just flocking to his uh teaching for the signs and wonders and not for the truth.

They don't submit themselves to Christ, they're just drawn to the crowd.

Crowds draw crowds, kind of thing.

And Jesus rebukes them for that.

He then ultimately condemns them, specifically the religious leaders, in verse 20, denounces the towns that these people are from, and he says that it's going to be better off in hell for people from Sodom than it will be for the religious leaders who don't submit their lives to Christ, which is just a jarring statement to make.

And you see him say that, and you wonder, how would a Jewish person understand that statement?

Well, they would say, probably in their minds, he doesn't know what he's talking about, he's out of his mind.

God didn't choose Sodom, he chose Abraham.

Sodom was destroyed, he chose Abraham.

We're descendants of Abraham, we're the chosen people of God.

God chose us.

And so Jesus follows that condemnation by, in a sense, falling back on the doctrine of election.

And I don't mean falling back on in even any kind of negative sense, as much as he just said, you guys are going to hell, and now he's falling back on this kind of premise that God chooses whom he's going to save.

And he does so with thankfulness.

He says, at that time, uh he declared, I thank you, Father, that you have shielded their eyes from these things.

He worships God because of this doctrine.

Now, in this concluding part of his sermon here, there's three real deep doctrinal truths, and I'll take them one at a time to help support my thesis.

My thesis is that God chooses him to save and then he actually saves them.

There's three doctrines that Jesus has tucked in this text here that support that thesis statement.

They're massive doctrines.

There's whole books and whole sermon series could be devoted to each of these doctrines, but he gives them one after another just in these three verses.

So we'll take them one at a time in kind of a condensed approach.

The first is the doctrine of election.

The doctrine of election.

And like I said, it's basically what my thesis was.

The doctrine of election is simply stated that God chooses whom to save.

Doctrine of election is that God chooses whom to save.

Now there are softer ways to say it.

Uh you can you can soft pedal a little bit by saying we're all on our way to hell, that we exercise our free will to rebel against God, and yet he steps into life and changes our hearts to draw him towards himself.

Uh, you can say it that way, which is fine.

But Jesus doesn't say it that way here.

Here he just jumps in with the basic point that God chooses whom to save.

He is the one who reveals these truths to little children at the end of verse 25.

This is his gracious will in verse 26.

Verse 27 no one can know the Father except those whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

That's the end of verse 27.

It is impossible to know God unless Jesus reveals God to you, and he only reveals God to those whom he chooses.

This is not a generic blanket statement as if God reveals himself to everybody equally.

This is not what he's saying here.

And he's not even saying that God chooses to reveal himself to the crowds that are in front of him.

In fact, the contrast here is about the crowds in front of him.

That they are all listening to his teaching, they're hearing the signs, uh, seeing the signs, they're seeing the miracles, they're hearing this rich doctrine from Jesus, and they do not believe.

So, how do you explain the unbelief of people that are seeing Jesus eyeball to eyeball?

They're watching him raise the dead, they're watching him do sign after sign, miracle after miracle, and they are recalcitrant in their hearts and they do not believe.

Do you think that they are worse people than you, or that they are more obstinate than you, or that they have less insight than you, and had you been there, you would have believed, but unfortunately you're here.

The answer, no.

What determines whether somebody believes or does not believe?

The answer is nothing in that person's heart.

The answer is the sovereign choice of God.

That is the doctrine of election.

That God chooses whom to save.

He does not choose everyone.

There is this idea that is common in American, the American Christian world, that election is like democracy, that God casts one vote for your salvation, the devil casts one vote for your damnation, and you cast the tie-breaking vote.

I'm sure you've heard something along those lines.

That's a very democratic statement, isn't it?

Uh hey, it is election.

Look, lo and behold, we got there eventually.

It's just that your vote is the one that matters, and God could be outvoted or the devil could be outvoted, and it's all up to you.

And that's just really bad theology, and it's bad logic, and it's not what the Bible teaches about election.

It makes you sovereign, not God.

And the Bible nowhere teaches that you are sovereign, it always teaches that God is sovereign.

Another way to dilute the doctrine of election is what I call the be kind, please rewind view of election.

You remember the blockbuster video days with those stickers on the uh the VHS cassette tapes.

I, if my teenagers were here, I would have a lot of explaining to you on the way home.

There's something called the VCR.

Never mind.

You remember you watched the video and it had the sign on it that said, be kind, please rewind, and you would get fined like 75 cents or something if you returned it without rewinding, and that was a big deal.

There are people that explain the way the doctrine of election like that, as if God has watched the movie of your life, and he saw what you would have done anyway, and so he rewinds the tape and chooses you to do what he saw you would do.

In other words, God knows that in your heart you would choose to follow him, so therefore he chose you to follow him because he knew what you would do.

That's the be kind, please rewind view of election.

And it is not at all what the Bible teaches.

Because people are not saved based upon what they would do if left to their own.

They are saved despite what they would do if left to their own.

That God supernaturally intervenes in your life, providentially by giving you the Bible and having you exposed to the gospel, but personally and supernaturally by causing your dead soul to come alive.

That's the doctrine of election, that God chooses whom to save.

Let me give you a line from the IBC statement of faith.

I don't often quote our statement of faith, but I wanted to a couple times this morning on this topic.

First of all, our statement of faith says this that God expresses himself in relationships with those whom he chooses, binding himself to them by his eternal promises.

God expresses himself in relationships with whomever he wants to.

It is God's choice.

People ask, do you believe in free will?

Yeah, God is absolutely free in his will.

He can bind himself to whomever he wants to based upon nothing except what is in God's own heart.

And he does this, notice the phrase, by his eternal promises.

This is not a temporal thing.

God doesn't make a promise to you like a wedding vow, you know, where you make your vow in time at that moment.

Yes, it will bind the rest of your life until death do you part, but you're making it in time.

That is not at all like the doctrine of election.

God does not make a promise to you that binds him in time.

The doctrine of election is that God makes a promise to you that binds his heart to yours in eternity past, before you were born, before Genesis 1 verse 2, when it when the earth was just non-existent and there's only God in his triune will.

Genesis 1:2

God in eternity past to himself promises the gospel to those whom he will save.

God makes this promise before you were born, before you had done anything good or bad, in order so that his purpose in election might stand, that salvation is not based upon man who wills or man who runs, but upon God who promises.

That's the doctrine of election.

And God is faithful to those whom he gives his promise.

Now, Americans, of course, come up with all kinds of objections to this.

It's not fair.

Why do God was good?

Why doesn't he choose everyone?

And the Bible answers those questions.

I'm not going to go into all of them this morning because we will never get through what Jesus has, but I do want to give you just one point here of contrast.

Our normal response to the doctrine of election is skepticism or is reluctance or is questioning, how can God be good if this is true, it's not fair, etc.

But notice how Jesus responds to the doctrine of election in this passage.

He responds, first of all, with thankfulness.

In verse 26, he says, I thank you, Father.

He describes it in verse 25 with thankfulness.

I thank you, Father.

Verse 26, such was your gracious will.

Jesus describes the doctrine of election as gracious.

And this is why.

Gracious is just the adjective of grace, really.

Giving someone something they don't deserve.

In fact, contrary to what they deserve, that's grace.

When you get something you deserve, that's wages, that's work.

If you have, you know, your first minimum wage job, you work 40 hours, you get your check for, you know, whatever minimum wage is, and you first see the check, your normal response with your first job is not one of like gratitude.

Not one of, oh, I'm so thankful for this job and this paycheck.

Your first response to your first paycheck is probably, how come no one told me about taxes?

This doesn't seem fair.

But you would not describe that paycheck as graciousness.

Maybe if you were hired despite your incompetence, it's gracious by your boss.

Maybe if you deserve to get fired and he decided to, you know, deal with you a couple more weeks, that could be gracious.

But the fact that he paid you for your work is not gracious.

That's just your wages.

Salvation is not wages, it is gracious.

And Jesus understands that.

That's why he describes salvation as gracious.

God is giving something to people who do not deserve it.

There's nothing in your heart that makes you worthy of election.

God, it's not divine duck duck goose where God decides to create everybody and it's like, yes, yes, no, no, no, no, yes.

No, God elects people before he makes them.

There are not people for him to tap on the head before he designs his whole, the whole history of the universe, complete with your identity and your election in all things.

That's the doctrine of election.

And it is gracious because God chooses to save people who do not deserve it.

In fact, Jesus does more than says thank you.

He worships God because of this.

In Luke's account of this, remember, this whole sermon is also in Luke.

And Luke has uh, you know, other teaching in the middle of it.

So where the sermon starts in Luke is Luke 7, it doesn't conclude until like Luke 12.

So it covers a lot of text in Luke with other parables and other teaching.

But where this concludes in Luke's gospel, it says, Jesus, filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit, says, I thank you, Father, that you've hid these things from them.

So filled with the Spirit and joy of the Spirit, that is an overflowing heart of worship.

So when Jesus talks about election, he is thanking God, he is recognizes it as gracious, and he worships God because of it.

Specifically, he worships God because God has chosen to obscure things from the wise.

That's the language of verse 25.

I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, speaking of God and his sovereignty over the universe.

Notice Jesus uses that phrase, Lord of heaven and earth, because it's underlining and underscoring that God is sovereign over all things.

That you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding.

And then the flip side of that, you've revealed them to the kids, to little children.

And he doesn't mean literally little children here, although certainly some would be included.

He means those who are humble, those who are have faith like a child, kind of language here.

Those who have been broken by their sin, to use the language of the Beatitudes.

Those who are broken, who mourn over their sin, who are low, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they have this revealed to them.

Whereas those who are proud and are exalted and think that they are righteous and they're religious and you know they're following the Torah and they are descendants of Abraham and all of that, those people have it hidden from them.

They're not able to perceive the gospel.

Their eyes are blinded.

It's hidden.

Notice there's a positive and a negative side.

The positive, he's revealed it to some.

The negative, he's hidden it from others.

He's hidden it.

Who's he hidden it from?

Well, those who are wise in their own eyes.

This is a teaching that's all over the scriptures.

It's not just here.

I could put 50 verses on the screen, but I'll just do one.

1 Corinthians 1.27.

God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

Here, Paul in 1 Corinthians is talking specifically about the whole plan of salvation.

God chose someone foolish, namely Jesus here, to shame the wise.

The whole plan that the high king of heaven would come to earth, be born in Bethlehem, flee to Egypt, be raised in Nazareth, do ministry in Galilee.

I mean, that's like nowhere, nowhere's, with a bunch of fishermen as his assistants, and then to be ridiculed, betrayed, stripped, mocked, etc., crucified outside Jerusalem by a Roman governor.

This is foolish.

This is not, this cannot be the plan of salvation.

A wise person would not invent this.

This is comical to the wise people.

And yet God plans salvation that way to shame those very wise people.

Those people that are so smart, they're so smart, they have everything figured out, but they cannot figure out God, and it shows you how foolish they are.

In contrast, the broken, the person who is humble, the person who recognizes their sin, recognizes their spiritual blindness, their spiritual deafness, their spiritually dead, those are the people that God reveals himself to.

So that God gets all the glory and not them.

He hides his truth.

This is gracious of God in so many ways.

It's gracious of God to save people, but it's also in the context of Matthew, gracious of God to hide himself from people.

And you think, how is that gracious?

Do you remember the text we looked at last week where Jesus says, comparing Sodomites and Pharisees, Sodomites and the religious leaders.

And he says, it will be better in hell, it will be more bearable in hell for the Sodomites than it will be for the religious leaders of Israel.

And they're going to respond with, you know, indignation that Jesus can't know what he's talking about.

And a lot of you asked between services last week, if that's true, if people are condemned more for being close to Jesus yet not believing, than they would be for being, you know, a sodomite, wouldn't it be better to not keep sharing the gospel to people that reject it?

And sharing the gospel to people that reject it, aren't you just heaping up judgment on them?

That's a very complicated question.

You know, nobody can be saved unless they hear the gospel preached to them.

You're constantly inviting people to follow Christ, that's true.

But also it's true that you are heaping up judgment for them.

How does Jesus navigate that tension?

He says, Don't cast your pearl before swine.

When somebody rejects you, dust your feet off and move along.

But then he also switches to parables.

He teaches plainly to them, tells them the beatitudes, you know, humble yourself, get broken, search for righteousness.

And when they don't believe and they reject him, they're about to commit blasphemy of the spirit.

We'll look at that in a few weeks in Matthew 12.

From that point on, Jesus starts teaching in parables.

Why?

Because he's hiding the truth from them.

So they don't understand it.

It's protecting them.

Believers, those with eyes of faith, they hear the parables and they are built up.

But a person who is spiritually blind and deaf hears the parables and doesn't understand them.

They don't get it.

It was fashionable for a while to say, you know, teaching shouldn't be doctrinal, it should be storytelling, because that's how Jesus preached.

But you have to understand, Jesus' stories were designed to hide the truth from people that wouldn't receive it.

They were not designed to reveal the truth, but to obscure it.

You see this today, you know, the story of the prodigal son.

And you see all these people with PhDs and religious scholars that talk about the religious systems behind the two systems and you know what the pigs represent and what this represents and blah, blah, blah.

They write books and books and books about it, and the end of it, they're like, so try really hard to be a good person.

Which is not at all the story of the prodigal son.

And you get some little kid in Iwana who hears the story of the prodigal son, he's like, I don't deserve salvation, I need Jesus' help.

Amen.

That's Jesus' point here.

The Father hides the truth from those who are so wise in their own eyes they could never understand it.

He reveals himself to ignorant, broken, humble sinners.

Calvin writes this in this passage.

He says, quote, It's because while he was Lord of the whole world, he preferred children and ignorant persons over the wise.

When Jesus was Lord of the whole universe, he'd rather surround himself with the ignorant than the so-called wise.

And this is why Jesus worships.

Again, we respond to this doctrine by muddying it, diluting it, distorting it with the goal of ignoring it or explaining it away, of making it more acceptable to us.

Instead, Jesus worships God because of it.

There is such a contrast in this chapter between John who doubts and the crowds who deny, and the religious leaders who bark hatred at Jesus, all those people, the contrast of that, Jesus in this chapter is the first person who's worshiping.

He worships God and he does so because of the doctrine of election.

And this should encourage us.

This should encourage us.

Remember, a Jewish person would hear Jesus say, Better to be in hell a sodomite than a religious Jew who heard Jesus and doesn't repent.

And they would say, Jesus doesn't know what he's talking about.

God chose the Jews.

They're his chosen people.

Sodom was destroyed, Abraham was chosen, we're from Abraham.

And so Jesus responds to that without even hearing it out loud.

In fact, the Greek word that's translated in the ESV declared is actually the word answered.

In verse 25, Jesus answered them, answered that internal objection.

I love it when Jesus answers things that nobody actually vocalized.

One of my favorite things he does.

In their hearts they're thinking, God chose Abraham, not the Sodomites.

And Jesus answers them by going to an older election, an older choice.

That before Abraham was, God chose whom he's going to save.

Long before Abraham.

Long before.

This this text and told him I hope he's encouraged by it.

In middle school ministry, you preached like the lights out.

You're leaving your heart in there and you're preaching your guts out to these kids that are like scrolling on their phones.

And you're thinking, why aren't these kids saved?

Should I be preaching better?

And the answer is it's not about your preaching, man.

You know, it's not that you can do more or whatever in the middle school ministry.

It's that their hearts are hard.

And that's God's sovereign will.

All you can do is be faithful and trust the Lord's going to save whom He's going to save.

And that's that's all you can do.

That should be encouraging to us.

Notice also this statement of Jesus that he hides the truth and the wise and understanding.

That should slash their unbelief.

I have had people tell me that they would rather die and go to hell, but at least in their own mind know that they chose that, than die and go to heaven because that's what God wanted them to do.

Their self-autonomy is so important to them that they would rather face judgment but say, I'm in charge of it at least.

I'd rather go where I'm in charge of.

And you can see how the doctrine of election slays that attitude too.

Nobody can stand before God and say, Well, at least I chose this.

In that sense, election destroys the final boast of unbelief.

Not even the unbeliever can say, but I chose this hardly.

That's the first doctrine Jesus turns to, is the doctrine of election.

Second one he turns to is the doctrine of unity.

And here I'm talking about unity of the Trinity.

The doctrine of unity, that the three persons of God are one.

They're one being, one essence, one will.

The three persons of God don't have their own wills, they have one will, the divine will, the heavenly will, and that's where Jesus turns next.

He says in verse 26, Yes, Father, for this was your gracious will.

And then in verse 27, he says, All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father.

Notice the reciprocity here.

No one knows the Father except the Son.

That everything that is in the Father is given to the Son.

And then he ends it here in verse 27 by saying to those whom the Son chooses.

So notice that the doctrine of election in verse 26 is described as the gracious will of our Father.

And then verse 27 is described as the will of the Son.

They're both saying that the doctrine of election is their will.

And that's because Jesus is teaching here that everything the Father has is the Son's, all the Father's attributes, all the Father's qualities, all the Father's glory, all the Father's essence, the Father's will, all of that, the Father's desires, all of that is the Son's.

The Father and Son have the same identity in that sense, the same essence, the same attributes, the same glory, the same will.

And I harp on this because one of the ways that we are so educated, more educated of their own good, is we try to explain away the doctrine of election by saying, yes, the Father chooses him to save, but then Jesus tries to save everyone.

So election belongs to the Father, but Jesus dies for everyone equally because he, election as the father is not Jesus.

Jesus is the savior, and it makes the father with a different set of attributes than the son.

Do you see how that can subtly do that?

Like the father becomes more reluctant or more stingy, and the son is more open and more loving.

But that's not true.

The son's attributes are the father's.

The only distinction is the father is the father and the son is the son, but they have the same attributes, they have the same will.

I saw a video this week of some Harvard students for their uh graduate in um engineering degree, designed these glasses with a camera in the glasses.

Perhaps some of you saw this, and they walked on the subway in DC, and the camera has facial recognition software in it, could ID people they're walking by, they populate, wrote an app that does this, they populate the facial imaging with uh an Instagram filter and goes through and finds who the person is through Instagram.

So the person's on Instagram will ID who they are, then this app will do Google searches and identify key documents and put it up on the person's phone.

And it takes about 30 seconds for the whole thing.

So these guys were walking down the subway and they would see people on in their glasses and they would get an alert on their phone that there was a match and they would know the person's name, their address like they come up to me.

I'm sorry, are you?

They didn't actually come up to me, but the people in the video, the conversation was like this.

Oh, I'm sorry, are you Jesse?

Yeah, and they would pretend they knew the guy.

Oh, you're that pastor in Alexandria.

Oh yeah, have we met before?

Yeah, and yeah, and your daughters are Madison, Savannah, and Geneva, right?

And they and they would know all these things, and the people would just play along with it.

The only person it didn't work for, I thought this was interesting, one of President Obama's cabinet members had two twins, had twins, and it picked the wrong twin.

And ID'd this person as the wrong twin.

So they were like, oh, are you so-and-so?

And she's like, Yeah, that is that is my mom, but that's my twin sister you're describing.

Like, oh you can see the point.

That's a long way to make this point.

Thanks for bearing with me.

Long walk, but the water will be worth it.

You can see how when you see the father, you see the son.

You could not tell the two apart.

Are they different persons?

Yes, but their identities, their attributes, their glory is the same.

Jesus says it this way in John 14.

Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.

How can you say, show us the Father?

How can you say that to Jesus?

Show us the Father.

What else would you want him to do?

All that the Father has, the Son has.

So if you've seen the Son, you have seen the Father.

The conclusion of that is if one person is acting, the whole Trinity is acting.

There's no secret rescue mission the Son is on.

If one person of God is acting, all three persons of God are acting.

Now, theologians refer to this as the doctrine of inseparable operations, but I was picturing my 11-year-old here in church trying to write inseparable operations, so I decided not to use that phrase, but I give it to you for free.

A basic way to say it is just the unity of the Trinity.

If you see the Father doing something, you also see the Son and Spirit doing the same thing.

Even in passages of the scripture that seem to order them, like Ephesians 1.

The Father chooses him to save, the Son redeems, the Spirit seals.

That's true.

The Father does choose, the Son does redeem, the Spirit does seal.

And yet all three persons of God do all three of those things.

And you know this even with the examples I just gave.

The Father chooses him to save.

Yeah, that's that's that's fine.

One, two, three, choosing, redeeming, sealing.

That's one, two, three.

Father, son, spirit.

That makes sense.

But here in this passage, it says the son chooses.

Or in John chapter three, it says the spirit chooses.

He goes wherever he wants.

And no one can say, Why did you save that person, not this person?

He goes wherever, you know, you like the wind goes wherever it blows.

The spirit regenerates whomever he wants to.

Redeeming.

There's only one Savior, but there are three who save.

Sealing your heart.

There's only one who regenerates and seals your heart.

But there's only one who, one regenerator, but there are three who actually work that out in your life.

This is the doctrine of the unity of the Trinity.

And here Jesus falls back on it.

It's generically all things, specifically election, but it does cover all things.

Notice verse 27.

All things have been handed over to me by the Father.

Everything the Father has designed, the Son is also designed.

All things.

And no one can know one unless it's revealed to them.

No one can know one unless it's revealed to them.

There's nobody who knows the Father except the Son.

And understand this just like on a logical level first.

God exists outside of the universe.

He doesn't exist in some far-flung corner of the, you know, a galaxy somewhere that's just unexplored, and Elon Musk and a spaceship might find him one day, but there's no hope for the rest of us.

No, he exists outside of the universe.

There's no way that you could know anything about God.

He's outside of our experience.

The only one who can know the Father is the Son and by extension the Spirit.

That's it.

And anyone whom the Father chooses, or the Son chooses, or the Spirit chooses, to reveal Himself to.

Otherwise, there's no hope for us.

And that's what Jesus says.

No one can know the Son except the Father.

No one can know the Father in verse 27, except the Son.

And also those whom the Son reveals himself to.

The Son chooses.

In other words, there's only one election.

But there are three who elect, and their ballots all match, by the way.

Number three, regeneration.

So election, unity, and regeneration.

Regeneration is simply the doctrine that God actually saves those whom he chooses.

He causes their dead hearts to come alive.

That God gives spiritual life to people, he gives them faith.

He doesn't give spiritual life to all people, he gives spiritual life to those whom he chooses.

That's the language of verse 27.

No one can know this unless the Son chooses to reveal him.

Now this is not talking about general revelation.

Although general revelation exists, you're standing on a planet, somebody made the planet, that person is God.

That's general revelation.

Your conscience convicts you of sin, that's general revelation.

We're talking about something more specific here because all of the Jewish people surrounding Jesus in this conversation had general revelation.

They're on the same planet.

They even had some special revelation.

They had the Torah, they have the Old Testament, they have all that.

That is not sufficient to save them unless God makes their heart alive.

That's the context of this sermon here, where Jesus says, you don't believe.

You see the wonders, you see the signs, you see the miracles, but you don't believe because God didn't choose you to believe.

And all those whom he's chosen have spiritual life given to them.

They have God revealed to them.

He says back in verse 25, you blinded some people.

That concept of being blinded, it's all over Matthew's gospel.

In Matthew 15, Jesus calls the Jewish leaders the blind leading the blind.

Matthew 23, he says, woe to you, blind guides.

In fact, in Matthew 23, he says, everyone who swears falsely is blind.

And there your oath is just standing in for breaking the law.

Everyone who sins is blind.

Matthew 11 begins with Jesus healing the blind, if you remember.

So this chapter is bracketed by Jesus healing the blind and then not revealing himself to some who are blind.

Remember the Jewish leaders asked Jesus, are you saying we're blind?

Like Jesus says, you guys are the blind leading the blind.

They're like, wait a minute.

If we're the blind leading the blind, are you saying we are also blind?

And Jesus says, No, because you say you can see, you're not blind.

Which is like obviously sarcastic.

He says, in fact, if you were blind, your guilt would be less.

But because you say you see, your guilt is more.

The revelation he's talking about here is regeneration, where God saves people.

It's the knowledge of the Son revealed by the Father.

It's the knowledge of the Father revealed by the Son.

And while it's not mentioned in this passage, it's knowledge that comes through the Holy Spirit.

In fact, in Matthew 10, Jesus says that when people confess Christ, it is the Spirit of the Father speaking through them.

So the Holy Spirit is in the near context here in Matthew 10.

The Holy Spirit's the one who reveals Christ to people.

In chapter 12, to reject Christ is to commit blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

That's not something you accidentally do.

I've had people say, I feel like I accidentally blaspheme the Holy Spirit.

Now there's no hope for salvation.

No, you didn't.

Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is when you reject Christ, because the only way to know the Son is to have the Spirit reveal him to you.

And so if you reject the revelation of God, you reject the revelation of Jesus Christ, you cannot be saved.

At the end of Matthew's gospel, Jesus will remind us that David confessed who the Christ was while he was in the Spirit.

And this teaching is all over the New Testament as well.

John chapter 3, no one can even see the kingdom of God unless the Spirit gives them new life.

John 3 · chapter mention

Titus chapter 2, that you have new life through the washing of the water of the Word and regeneration brought by the Holy Spirit.

Titus 2 · chapter mention

John 6 44 says this no one can come to me, this is Jesus speaking, unless the Father who sent me draws him.

And I will raise him up on the last day.

Notice again, Jesus is closing the door for us to say, the Father chooses everyone, or the Son draws everyone.

That door is closed.

It says, the Father chooses, the Son draws here.

We're drawing together, we're working together, and everyone whom we choose and draw will be saved.

Nobody's lost.

Who's chosen by God for salvation?

That's regeneration.

It's when the dead person becomes spiritually alive.

You might ask, well, is it the Father who regenerates, or the Son, or the Spirit?

And the answer again is yes, all three.

In John 6, 44, it's the Father.

In John 3, it's the Spirit.

In our verse this morning, verse 27, it's the Son.

All three persons elect, all three persons work, and then all three persons save.

Again from our statement of faith.

Believe in the Son and be born again.

That God does this in people's hearts.

Your hearts are closed to the truth, you're blind and you're deaf, and God opens your hearts, causing you to turn from sin.

Opens your minds, causing you to believe in the Son and to be born again.

This is what God does in people's lives.

This allows us to say that salvation comes from God's grace, unaided by human effort.

It is God who saves.

People will often ask if the doctrine of election is true, why evangelize?

And the answer to that is in the very next few verses, where Jesus, after giving one of his clearest teachings on the doctrine of election, follows it with an open invitation for all who are who are heavy laden, all who are burdened, to come to him and find rest for their souls.

Lord, we're grateful that you continually invite people to salvation.

We know it's your invitation that you actually use to save people.

So, God, we pray that people would have their hearts open in the truth this morning.

We pray that the doctrine of election would humble us and remind us that our salvation is not contingent upon anything that we have done.

It does not depend on man who wills or man who runs, but on God who chooses.

We're thankful for the triune work of the gospel.

There is one Savior but three who save.

We're thankful for the Father, we're thankful for the Son, we're thankful for the Spirit.

Together they have saved us from sin.

I pray for anyone's heart here this morning who's never been humbled by their own sin, has never turned to you in faith.

I pray that today you would humble them from their sin and cause them to turn to you to be born again.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.