God's Sovereignty and Human Responsibility in Transformation

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In this session of look at the book, we're going to focus on second Timothy 2:24-26, which in my experience over the last thirty plus years has been one of the most important texts in helping me understand the relationship between the sovereignty of God in the transformation of people's lives out of the deadness and blindness of unbelief into a living vital loving relationship with God. [00:00:05]

The Lord's servant, so that's me, yes, you must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach patiently enduring evil correcting his opponents with gentleness. Then comes this crucial section on the sovereign work of God in changing people. God may perhaps grant them repentance so the granting of repentance is by God. [00:01:42]

Repentance, of course, Metta Noah is a change of mind, a change of heart, a change of soul. It's a deep inner change that leads to a knowledge of the truth. Now there's lots of knowledge of the truth that requires no repentance to have, right? The devil has lots of knowledge of the truth. [00:03:29]

They had knowledge, but they didn't have repentance, and therefore their knowledge was not a knowledge of the truth as it is. They didn't see the holiness of Jesus as beautiful and compelling and infinitely valuable and desirable and satisfying. They didn't see it; they didn't have a knowledge of it for what it is. [00:03:58]

So there is a kind of knowing that unbelievers and the unrepentant have, but the kind of knowing that leads to a freedom from the devil and that leads to a true relationship that saves is rooted in repentance. So God changes us, brings us to a turning of soul and mind which then leads to a sight of the truth for what it really is. [00:04:22]

The way the devil snares us is not by snaring our hands, right? He doesn't bind our hands behind our back so that we say, oh, I'd love to do right, but my hands are bound by the devil that I can't do right. That's not the way he snares us. We don't love to do right when we're in the snare of the devil. [00:07:13]

The devil snares us by deception. He is a liar from the beginning. He deceives people. He deceived Adam and Eve. He tried to deceive Jesus. He is a deceiver and a liar, and so the way he holds us in captivity here is by blinding us. So the coming to our senses leads to the escape from the snare because it leads to a knowledge of the truth for what it really is. [00:07:20]

Repentance is a deep soul change that leads to a true knowledge of what is true, and that's the same as coming to our senses, sobering up, becoming sightful instead of blind, sightless, so that we then escape from the deception of the devil after being captured by him, and all of that, it says, is the gift of God. [00:08:04]

God granted repentance, and he granted that we come to our senses. So God gives repentance. He gives sense, reason. He opens us to see what's really there, and that leads to a knowledge of what truth really is, how valuable it is, how precious it is, which is an escape from Satan, and we are then free, free from the captivity to do his will and for God's will. [00:09:04]

If God is so decisive in granting the change that helps us to know, enables us to know, causes us to know the truth and gain our senses and escape from the devil so that we can do God's will, what's our role? Is there any place for a human agent in bringing any of this about? [00:10:07]

The answer is given right here, and we'll come back with a glorious answer, yes, and we need to see what that is. [00:10:33]

The sovereignty of God on the one hand and my responsibility as a pastor, as a father, as a teacher, as a friend, or your responsibility on the other hand, and no text that I can think of right now has put together these two with more illumination than this one. [00:00:41]

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