I was at my new community group location on Tuesday with Allan and Brian and Crystal and we all decided to visit Mars Hill Church during yesterday afternoon. We decided to use the ferry boat that was to leave Bremerton at 3:00 in the afternoon. The easiest way that Brian and I have to get to the ferry boat is to drive to the Seaside Church parking lot and then walk. The question answered by the sermon at Mars Hill Church was, "Why does an all knowing, all loving, and all sovereign God will into creation people He foreknows will suffer eternal condemnation?"
Of course I recommend it along with another sermon about Unlimited Limited Atonement (small audio, large audio, notes).
Yesterday's sermon is available here.
During the sermon, I learned two new words: Monergism and Synergism.
Monergism is the idea that God decides ahead of time who He is going to save and then He saves them unilaterally. God just reaches down and grabs a sinner and says, "sorry, I know you were traveling towards hell as quickly as your little legs would carry you, but I have decided to save you. You'll thank me later."
Synergism is the idea that God extends His arm from heaven to men, and that those who are saved are the people who wisely accept God's help and reach out to Him so that He can lift them up to be with Him.
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What did these two terms teach you about the gospel on a practical level?
Those terms don't teach me anything about the gospel on a practical level. They teach me about how people think about God and they provide me with a convenient way to describe the way that people think about God.
If I am to learn anything about the gospel from either of those terms, I must understand that at least one of them is wrong because they can't both be right.
Since I recommended the sermons, I guess that I can go ahead and say that I understand that synergism is a wrong idea that people have about the way in which God works and that monergism is a much better understanding of the way in which God works.
This leads to some practical conclusions which ought to become teachings:
1. There is no reason to think that those to whom God is gracious have been any more wise than those to whom God has chosen not to be gracious
2. those to whom God has been gracious need not concern themselves with their own weight or their own ability remain attached to Jesus
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