SPROUL: If God is not Sovereign, God is not God.
When I was teaching seminary, I was responsible
to teach a course on the theology of the Westminster
Confession of Faith. The Westminster Confession of Faith is 17th century theological document
that was the confessional foundation for historic Presbyterianism.
And we had come to the place in the confession where I was going to have to teach chapter
three the following week, and chapter three is entitled On The Eternal Decrees of God.
Now, I'm among Presbyterians, so they know exactly what that means. They says, "Uh-oh, now we're
going to talk about predestination." And when you get a bunch of seminary students
together, and there's nothing they enjoy better than to chew over questions about predestination
and have endless discussions into the night. They love it, and they love to debate that
topic. So I said next Tuesday night, we're going to take up chapter three of the confession.
Now you have to understand that this particular class was open to the public. And so people
who were not enrolled as seminary students were allowed to come in and audit the class
or drop by to visit a particular lecture. So every one of my students who had a friend
who didn't believe in predestination, they went out and cornered them and grabbed them
by the throat and say, "You've got to come hear our professor, and he's going to play
Paladin, Have Gun – Will Travel. He's going to teach us all about predestination." So
we had about 250 students assembled, I guess, that night in the class. And I started the
class by reading the opening lines of chapter three of the Westminster Confession.
I don't have them down verbatim, but I can give you basically what it says there. It
starts off by saying something like this that God has or does from all eternity, immutably
and sovereignly ordain whatsoever comes to pass, comma. I'll say that again. God does
sovereignly, immutably ordain whatsoever comes to pass, comma. I stopped right there at the
comma and I said "Now here's this statement, it says that from all eternity, God does freely
and sovereignly, and immutably ordain every single thing that comes to pass. How many
of you believe that?" I mean this was a Presbyterian seminary and
200 hands went up in the air, proudly wearing the badge of their conviction of the sovereignty.
They go "Oh we believe that." 50 hands didn't go up. I said, "Okay, how many of you don't
believe it?" I said, "It's okay. Nobody's taken down names and you're not going to get
in any trouble or we're not going to have a heresy trial here or get out the matches,
burn you at the stake." I said, "Let's be honest. How many of you don't believe that?"
About 50 guys raised their hand. "We don't believe that.
I said, "Okay, let me ask another question. How many of you would candidly describe yourselves
as atheists? Again, no persecution going to be taking place here. Just how many of you
would call yourself atheist?" Nobody put up their hand. And I immediately went into
my Lieutenant Colombo routine. "There's just one thing I don't understand here. I don't
understand why those of you who did say that you did not believe in this statement, didn't
raise your hand when I asked you if you were atheist." Well, I mean, there was a hue and
cry and I was ready to be lynched. They said, "What are you talking about? Just because
we don't believe that God freely and immutably ordains whatsoever comes to pass, you're calling
us atheist." I said "That's exactly what I'm calling you."
I said "If you don't believe that God ordains everything that comes to pass, bottom line,
you don't believe in God. You don't believe in God." I said, "You have to understand
that this passage here in the confession that God ordains everything that comes to pass,
there's not anything in that statement that is uniquely Presbyterian. There's not even
anything in there that's uniquely Christian. That statement doesn't divide Presbyterians
from Methodists or Lutherans or Anglicans. And it doesn't distinguish between Presbyterians
and Islamic religion or Judaism religions. It's a distinction between theism and atheism.
It's a statement, simply a declaration of the absolute sovereignty of God." What I
tried to get these young people to see was this, very simply that if God is not sovereign,
God is not God. If there is one maverick molecule in the universe, one molecule running loose
outside the scope of God's sovereign ordination, then ladies and gentlemen, there is not the
slightest confidence that you can have that any promise that God has ever made about the
future will come to pass.