PREDESTINATION continued
the Lord Jesus when He came. In verse 23 Peter says to them, speaking of Christ, "H im , being delivered by the determinate counsel and fore knowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” It says that God determined something and then foreknew it. “Determinate counsel” comes first. God deter mined that Christ would be slain and that He would be slain by the Jewish people and then He announced to the prophet that it was going to happen. And when the time came they indeed took Him but He also says that it was with wicked hands. They are still held responsible for the fact that they slew the King of glory who came unto them. Now there you have a clear-cut statement of election plus free will. Were these Jewish leaders conscious of any compulsion in rejecting Christ? Not a bit. They did it of their own free will. They made the choice themselves. Was Pilate under compulsion of God to reject Christ and crucify Him? Not at all. He did it of his own free will. Did Judas have to betray Christ? No, he could have done otherwise, as far as he was aware; yet it was determined beforehand of God that such would be the case. I have been stressing this aspect of it in order that you might see that this is a problem greater than human minds can solve. W e cannot reconcile these two things except in a very limited way. W e can reconcile to some degree the sovereignty of God and the free will of man in the sense that God does not always control with outward force. W e don’t either! There are two ways we can control one another. There is outward control which simply forces a person to do something by compulsion. Yet that is a violation of free will. When a person is dragged up before the court and sentenced to jail he goes to jail, but not of his own free will. But on the other hand all of us have had the experience of influencing people to do our will when their will was quite contrary and we did it in such a way that thev did our will without any sense of compulsion. They chose it themselves. Every time a salesman talks to someone he in fluences another person to do his will, to buy his product; he doesn’t do it with a gun, he doesn’t
do it with force: he presents the object in such a way that it appeals to the individual and changes his will. There is something of this involved in election. W e don’t understand fully how. But if we limi ted human beings can do that with each other to some degree, how much more can the God of the universe influence man to an infinite degree to do that which He chooses and foreordains that they should do. It is necessary that God determine all these things because, as history teaches us, the great and decisive turning points of history have often hung upon some very little details. You remember the classic story of how Rome was saved by the cackling of some geese? When the barbarian hordes came sweeping down against the city of Rome, the sentries of the city were asleep and the barbarians would have sacked Rome and destroyed it completely had it not been for some geese that cackled. They awoke a sentry and he gave the alarm that saved the city. Now that’s a big thing, the saving of the city of Rome, isn’t it? But it hung upon that one little thing— the cackling of geese. W e have an instance like this in Scripture in the story of Peter and the crowing of the rooster. Peter’s whole life was altered by that incident— a rooster crowed at the precise psychological moment. Did God control the crowing o f the rooster? O f course He did. He controls every minute detail of our life. And yet He does it (and this is where we can’t reconcile it but we have to face the fact that He does) without any sense of compulsion in us. I might illustrate it this way. Suppose there was a penitentiary filled with 200 men who were under sentence of death. I had the power to arrange for free pardons for those men and I did so in such a way that the law was satisfied and justice was vindicated. It was announced to these men that they were free to go out of the prison, the doors were flung open, the bars were unlatched. But nobody moves out of the prison. They are suspicious and won’t go. Suppose that I am determined that my arrange ment for their pardon shall not be in vain, and knowing that they will be a little bit suspicious and distrustful of this move I go beforehand to HO of these men and talk to them individually. I persuade them that this is a trustworthy thing
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