In his sermon, Mike Davenport discusses the complex relationship between God's sovereignty and human responsibility. He emphasizes that God's sovereignty is vast and beyond human understanding, likening it to an ocean, while human responsibility is clearly outlined in scripture. He uses biblical examples, such as Romans 14:12 and Acts 17, to illustrate that individuals are accountable for their actions. Davenport explains that while God is sovereign, He does not force human actions against their will, citing Pharaoh's hardened heart as an example. He addresses the misconception of free will, arguing that human will is in bondage due to original sin, and cannot choose God without divine intervention. The sermon challenges listeners to move beyond a superficial understanding of these concepts, encouraging them to explore and embrace the deeper truths of God's sovereignty and human responsibility.

We're going to be talking about now the sovereignty of God and man's will. So if you want to go ahead and be seated again. The sovereignty of God and man's will. The subject of the sovereignty of God is not a little five foot diameter Walmart special kiddie pool. It's a vast and bottomless ocean.

In taking up this topic, we are taking you out of the kiddie pool and we're dropping you right in the middle of the immensity of the Atlantic Ocean. There are portions of the doctrine that that as you work your way out you can you can feel the bottom as you weigh it out into it but then it just drops off And it drops off in such a way that it's way over our heads. But there's true freedom. There's true freedom in swimming out where we can no longer reach the bottom and lose ourselves in the wonder of our God and His ways, to cry out with the Apostle Paul, oh, oh the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. Oh the depths.

Oh the depths. Will you feel those depths when you stop to consider that even though God is sovereign, man is still responsible for his decisions and his actions. You young ladies, even though God is sovereign, you are responsible for your decisions and you're responsible for your actions. Scripture holds the reality of both of these things before us. It's very clear as we saw last night that the sovereignty of God is true.

It's right. But the Bible also tells us very clearly of our responsibility. Turn with me to Romans 14. Romans 14 and verse 12. And if one of you could please read that for us.

Romans 14 and verse 12. Each of us shall give a count of himself to God. So here's a question for you that I wanna answer. Who is held accountable for their thoughts and actions? Who?

Who's held accountable? Okay, he's the one who holds us accountable, but who is it that's held accountable? Us. Us. All of us.

Every one of us in this room will be held accountable for our thoughts and our actions. And of whom must each of us give account to God? Who do we have to give an account for? Do you have to give an account for your sister sitting beside you, your dad sitting beside you? Who do you have to give an account of?

You, yourself. Yes, yourself. You are going to have to give an account of yourself to God. You were, you are, as it were, going to be standing before God alone to give an account for everything you've done, every word and every deed. Look at Acts 17, Acts chapter 17.

Here we've got Paul. He's preaching here on Mars Hill addressing the Areopagus. And look with me at verses 30 and 31. Acts 17, 30 and 31. Who can read that?

All right, thank you. So how, look at it deeply, how does God view our repentance? What does he think of that repentance? What does he do with that? How does he view it?

Who has an answer for that? How does God view our repentance? It's an act of obedience, which means he does what? What's the word here? Commands.

He commands. Commands. Is to be an act of obedience. We must, we must repent of our sins. And to whom is this command to repent given?

This command to repent is given to whom? All men. All men. And obviously that term all men is all mankind. So it's not just men and women don't have to repent.

It's all men, all mankind, men, women, children. It's a command to repent. You have a responsibility. Yes, God is sovereign, but the sovereign God commands you to repent. But that brings up an interesting thing.

How does God's sovereignty and man's will, how do they coincide? How do they operate together? You see, if you got out there on 401, and you got out here on 401, You would have to either turn right and go north or turn left and go south Five four or one you can't go both direction either going north or you're going south But it's not so here it's not It's either the sovereignty of God or it's man's will, man's responsibility. No, it's both. These two travel side by side, parallel, the same direction.

Both are true. How can that be? Well, the 1689 second London Baptist confession of faith in paragraph three or chapter three paragraph one states the following. God hath decreed in himself from all eternity by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will freely and unchangeably all things that's what he's decreed all things whatsoever come to pass Yet he does so as thereby he is neither the author of sin nor hath fellowship with any therein, nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor yet is the liberty of contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established in which appears his wisdom in disposing all things and power and faithfulness in accomplishing his decree. So as we consider the sovereignty of God that he is doing all of his holy will These two things must be kept in the forefront of our minds.

God's not the author of sin. He is sovereign, but he's not the author of sin. And second, in his sovereignty, he never goes against the grain of our own will. He doesn't do violence to the will of any creature, be it a vessel prepared for destruction and wrath or a Vessel prepared for glory. Turn to Acts, Acts 2, Acts chapter 2 and verse 23.

Acts 2 and verse 23, it's talking about Jesus Christ. Who can read that? Acts 2-23. So this is talking about the death of Christ. How was the death of Christ brought about?

He was crucified. And so, who determined that He would be crucified? What does this passage teach us? God? Yeah, he was delivered up by God.

But who else had a hand in this death? The lawless. The lawless, both Jew and Gentile. And so we see this, that Peter does not take his hearers off the hook and say you don't have to worry about this. This was planned by God from all eternity.

It's true, God had planned it from all eternity, but he looks at these men and said, you, you took him and with lawless hands, you killed him. God planned it long ago, but you killed him. You're responsible. And that's why they come to the point men and brothers. What shall we do?

What shall we do we have taken we've done this and Yet knowing the whole time that this happened according to the plan of God the foreknowledge of God If we were to go back to the book of Exodus, the book of Exodus, we have this in Exodus 9-12, but the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart Exodus 10 1 the Lord said to Moses go into Pharaoh for I Have hardened his heart and the hearts of his servants that I may show these signs of mine before him." So we learn from those two texts how did Pharaoh's heart get hardened? Who did that? God did that. God did that. Okay, but then in Exodus chapter 8, did Moses forget what he wrote?

No. In Exodus 8.15 it says, when Pharaoh saw that there was relief he hardened his heart and did not heed them. Exodus 832 but Pharaoh hardened his heart at this time also Exodus 9 34 and 35 but when Pharaoh saw that the rain the hail and the thunder had ceased he sinned yet more and he hardened his heart he and his servants so the heart of Pharaoh was hard Who hardened Pharaoh's heart in those passages? No, not in those passages. In the earlier passages, God did, but who did it here?

No. Pharaoh did, But we just read that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. You see God was not doing violence against the will of Pharaoh. God didn't have Pharaoh in an armlock, in a headlock, saying, you will do this. But I don't want to do this.

No, you will do. That's not what happened. God hardened his heart, but in the very process, this is what Pharaoh wanted to do. He hated God. And he was responsible.

And God judged Pharaoh. God destroyed Pharaoh. As the Confession states, There was no violence offered to the will of Pharaoh. No violence. God did not force Pharaoh to do something that he did not want to do.

Pharaoh did exactly what his heart desired and God at the same time carried out all that he had purposed. Now when anyone seeks to deal with the reality of the sovereignty of God, there's always present the argument of man's free will, or man's free moral agency, declaring by that statement that man has within himself the ability to choose whatever he will that there are no bounds and that man has complete autonomy. That's what we like to believe. We want to believe that about ourselves. We want to believe that we were in control.

We're at the wheel. We're driving this. But AW Pink states the following. He says much, very much of the unsound doctrine which we now hear on every hand is the direct and logical outcome of man's repudiation of God's expressed estimate of human depravity. So what he's saying is when when man starts to bring out this talk about free will, man's repudiating, he's throwing out the window, casting behind his back what God says about human depravity.

He goes on to say, Free moral agency quote unquote is an expression of human invention and as we have said before to talk of the freedom of the natural man is to flatly repudiate his total spiritual ruin. Nowhere nowhere does Scripture speak of the freedom or moral ability of the sinner. On the contrary, Scripture insists on his moral and spiritual inability. So we shouldn't think as we think of God's sovereignty and man's will that man's will is just free to do whatever. He is morally and spiritually unable to do much.

Why is that? It's because of the fall. It's because of the fall. We must face the reality of the bondage of man's will. When man fell in Adam and with Adam in the Garden of Eden all of man fell.

That's why when we talk about the five points of Calvinism it hinges on point one total depravity and if there's a four point Calvinist I would argue he's a three point Calvinist because if he was actually four and he believed in total depravity, he would believe five. Total depravity leaves you at no other place. There is nothing within us that stayed whole, nothing within us that stayed complete. 2nd Timothy 2 26 identifies us as those who have been taken captive by Satan to do his will. Ephesians 2 describes man in his natural state as dead in trespasses and sins, as walking according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience.

It describes us as conducting ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. I ask you, what in those verses in Ephesians indicates a freedom, a freedom that we could choose Christ, a freedom to obey the gospel, a freedom to choose the narrow way. There is no indication of that And that's why Paul has to go on in Ephesians 2 to say, but God, but God. Because man's enabled. There's no moral free agency where he can just choose God of his own accord.

But yet he's responsible. He is responsible. This bondage of the will does not negate our responsibility. As we saw a few minutes ago in Acts 17, God commands everyone to repent. But you see this bondage of our wills, this bondage of our wills of its own volition sets up these man-made boundaries of the freedom of our will.

There is as it were a fence that was constructed when we all send an Adam. When we send an Adam, we construct it as it were a fence. And then each day in this world we continue to build that fence higher, refusing the will of God for ourselves. Take, for instance, the picky food eater. I won't ask for a show of hands, but I can imagine We probably have some picky food eaters in here.

Let me ask you a question. Does anybody slap your hand when you're going through the buffet line? You can't have that. You can't have that. No, that doesn't happen, does it?

You go right on through that line, and what are you doing? You're choosing the things that you have an appetite for and you walk by the rest. You walk by the rest. The picky eater will pick the same thing to eat every trip because her likes and her dislikes have determined what is and what is not off limits. So it is with the gospel.

God offers freely the gospel. Just like that food on that buffet line, Isaiah 55, ho everyone who thirsts come to the waters. Like you hungry, come. Even without money I'll let you buy and eat. Free offer of the gospel, but the bondage of our own wills walks through there and our appetite says nah nah nah and we pick that which does not satisfy We pick that which he says in Isaiah 55, that's not food, that's not bread, that won't satisfy.

But it's our heart, just like it is with the picky food eater. Well, what are we to do with all of these truths? Well, we must be convinced that God wants us to continue, to not continue in this spiritual kiddie pool. Nor does he want us to sit in a lounge chair with our toes in the sands content to watch the waves of this ocean of the vastness of his sovereignty. That's not what he wants us to do.

C.H. Spurgeon states what we as fathers want for you, our daughters. And we want this for ourselves. Spurgeon said, many people never get beyond the floating period. And they conclude that they are safe and all is well because they fancy their heads are above water but the man who is really taught of God goes on from floating to the swimming.

Now swimming is an active exercise The man progresses as he strikes out. He makes headway. He dives and rises. He turns to the right. He swims to the left.

He pursues his course. He goes where he wills. Now the holy word of God and the gospel are waters to swim in. And I would add this doctrine of the sovereignty of God and human responsibility is a doctrine to swim in. Many of You know only what it is to float.

You are resting in the truth of God for your salvation, but making no advance in heavenly things. Oh, beloved, he says, let us learn to swim in those waters, to swim in them. And that's our desire for you, is to swim in these waters, to grasp more and more what it is that God is sovereign and yet He holds you responsible to repent, to believe in Him, and to pursue righteousness, to trust and obey. Let's look to Him in prayer. Father, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for these truths. Give us grace to be able to grapple with them. And Lord, give us grace to swim out in them and to enjoy the immensity of them and to not worry that our feet can't touch bottom in so many areas of this doctrine but to know that you have said it is so and we will believe it even if we don't fully understand it but oh Lord we thank you that the Holy Spirit searches out the deep things of the triune God and he will make it known to us. And so we ask that you would give us of your spirit freely and that we would learn more and that you would continue to teach us and cause us to walk in your ways. In Christ's name we pray, amen.