Beeson Podcast, Episode #541 Dr. Doug Webster March 23, 2021 >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I am Doug Sweeney, here with my co-host, Kristen Padilla. Today on the podcast we want to play for you a sermon preached just a few weeks ago here at Beeson in Hodges Chapel by one of our colleagues and friends, Dr. Doug Webster. This spring, during community worship, we are preaching sermons on the theme of The Sinews of Scripture: Leading Doctrines of the Bible. In seminaries today we usually teach students to preach what are called “expository” sermons, which follow the flow of a passage we select from the Bible, interpreting it in relation to its context in history, and helping listeners understand what the passage would have meant to those who heard it originally. This is a very good method of expounding the Word of God, one that schools like ours will inculcate for many years to come. But in early protestant history many teachers of preaching encouraged students to deliver what were called “doctrinal sermons,” which take a doctrine from the passage that’s read to the people, reinforce that doctrine from other parts of the Bible and apply that doctrine to the lives of those who listen. This is also a good way to teach the Word of God, one we might well recover in our churches today as a supplement to verse by verse biblical exposition. Especially at times when church leaders want to show people how the Bible coheres or hangs together around its main themes or doctrines or sinews. In chapel this spring, we have gone old school showing people how to preach good doctrinal sermons. We’re still delivering substantial exegesis of the Bible, explaining scripture in detail in a manner that’s driven and controlled by scripture itself. We’re not falling prey to the sins of topical preacher who twist bits of scripture to fit their own worldly agendas, but rather than preach biblical paragraphs verse by verse, this semester we have chosen major doctrines or teachings of the Bible. We’ve begun with crucial texts in which those doctrines are laid out. And then we’ve reinforced those texts and the doctrines they command with reference to other passages of scripture. Just enough to make it clear that these doctrines pervade both the Old and New Testaments - functioning as sinews of scripture. Our prayer is that this series will inform the Beeson family about the main teachings of scripture, show them how our doctrines have come from the Bible, explain to them the ways in which these doctrines are practical, and model how to apply Bible doctrines to our lives. Kristen, the sermon we’re about to hear now is a wonderful model of this kind of doctrinal preaching. Would you let our listeners know a bit about it? >>Kristen Padilla: Yes. Hello, everyone. Today on the show you’re going to hear the sermon that Dr. Doug Webster preached in Hodges Chapel on March 9th for our series that Doug has just described. Dr. Webster chose to preach on the doctrine of election from Ephesians 1:3-14. His sermon was entitled, “Love or Luck.” What I appreciate about Dr. Webster’s sermon is how pastoral he is, even in his preaching. He has been a long time pastor and that just comes out in his sermon. Often, the doctrine of election can be scary for some. For others it might be an opportunity for debate. But Dr. Webster showed from scripture how God’s election is one of love and grace, one of reassurance and encouragement. Dr. Webster even teared up as he shared the story of a wife of a former Beeson student, now graduate, reciting this text during a very difficult and painful moment of her life. For us, we’ve been living through a difficult season and year, and it has caused some of us to question God’s sovereignty and will. And so I believe that Dr. Webster’s sermon will encourage and minister to you as he did to me, as he points us back to scripture reminding us that God is good. He loves us. And he is with us. He is near to us. For those of you who do not know Dr. Webster, he is a professor of divinity here at Beeson where he teaches pastoral theology and Christian preaching. So, we’re excited to play this sermon for you today. Let me just say a word – that if you want to hear all of our sermons from this series, you can go to our YouTube Channel: youtube.com/beesondivinity. There, you can watch each week live on Tuesdays at 11:00 AM Central Standard time. Or, you can go back and watch the recordings. But, for now, we’re going to play this special sermon for you. >>Doug Sweeney: Doug Webster is a treasure trove of pastoral ministry and experience. It is a privilege to serve with him at Beeson. Let’s go now to Hodges Chapel and hear Dr. Webster preach his sermon entitled, “Love or Luck.” >>Dr. Webster: “A reading from the Book of Ephesians 1:3-14. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For He chose us in Him and before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with His pleasure and will to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the one He loves. In Him we have redemption through His blood; the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that He lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ to be put into effect and at time reach their fulfillment; to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. In Him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will in order that we, who are the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of His glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, of the gospel of your salvation. When you believed you were marked in Him with a seal; the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession to praise His glory. The Word of the Lord.” Dean Sweeney’s assignment to me was the doctrine of divine providence. And I immediately thought of Ephesians 1:13-14 is a wonderful summary of this doctrine. Just in these few verses there is an emphasis on being chosen before the creation of the world, predestined for adoption, chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything according to His will until the redemption of those who are God’s possession. All of those are indicators of the providence of God. Paul wonderfully puts that together in his opening overture to the Church at Ephesus. Let’s pray together. Lord God, with your Word open and we have been gathered by you in your name, to the glory of the Father, and through the empowerment and wisdom of the Holy Spirit, we pray together. Amen. Jack Keith was the former director of the FBI and attended our church in San Diego. When Jack became too weak to attend worship services I paid a pastoral visit and he and Anne were in the living room. Jack was in a recliner, a big leather chair, with his feet propped up because he had trouble with circulation. And he said, “Let’s read my favorite text.” And it was Ephesians 1. I find it interesting now as I think back over that occasion. He asked Anne, his wife, to read it. I don’t think it dawned on me until preparing for this ... you know, that’s 20 years ago ... the significance of not having me read it, but having Anne read it. Because in a way he was indicating implicitly that I had entered their worship space. Instead of having me create a worship space, I was entering into theirs. At first glance, I don’t know, maybe somebody here does have Ephesians 1 as their favorite biblical text. “Praise be to the God, Father, of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” But, you know, I sometimes think that when we read the epistles we kind of read through that theologically sounding overture so we can get to what we think is a bit more practical. But the practicality of this overture, when it comes to understanding our salvation and understanding our identity in Christ, is really profound. Calvin said, “Doctrine is not an affair of the tongue, but of the life. It is not apprehended by the intellect and the memory, merely, but is received only when it possesses the whole soul.” With Jack Keith, he kind of led me, as his pastor, into what the literary critic, George Steiner, calls his four fold hermeneutical motion. You begin with trust, you trust the text. Because there’s really no beginning unless you begin with trust. And then you apply effort to the text to understand, to interpret. The hard work of getting into the text. Then the third in George Steiner’s hermeneutical motion is embodiment. You ingest it. You take it into yourself. In a way there’s a kind of sacramental motion here. This becomes life. And then fourth, Steiner insists we never live in judgment of the text, but we’re always humbled before the text. Trust, effort, embodiment, and humility before the text of God. And Jack Keith was leading me in that. He was helping me to pay attention. A man in his last few months of life. A passage that doesn’t directly speak of anything of comfort or suffering. But it speaks of his wonderful existence and his identity in the triune God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Ephesians 1 is made up of two sentences. In the Greek, this eulogizing praise is the first sentence and this Eucharistic prayer is the second sentence. We’re going to look at just the eulogizing praise. In a way there’s a kind of musicality to this. There’s a sense in which this has been crafted, certainly not be chance but it has been in a sense skillfully poetically put together. And praise is a significant aspect of this. Four times we have a reference to praise. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. To the praise of His glorious grace. Our hope in Christ might be for the praise of His glory.” And then it finishes up with, “To the praise of His glory.” So, doxology is very much a part of this. The theology that’s being communicated is communicated in the context of worship and devotion. A kind of cascading description of God’s work in Christ. A benediction with a beat, if you will. And in a sense, you know, the downbeat in rock, I think, is Paul’s reference to in Christ, in Him, in His sight, in the one He loves, in Him, in Christ, under Christ, in Him, in Christ, in Christ, in Him. That’s the beat. That’s the identifying understanding that Paul insists on 11 times over. We are in Christ. In addition to that sort of downbeat there’s kind of a ... maybe this is a stretch ... a kind of country western three chord procession. There’s Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There’s before time, in time, and after time. There is a sense in which these kind of are grouped together. And I even wonder, and Mark may differ with me here, but is there kind of a residual Hebrew parallelism? Because Paul says “chosen” twice, “loved” twice, “predestined” twice, “grace” twice, “redeemed” twice, and “purpose” twice. And what hangs this all together is kind of jazz piece. The propositions, the prepositions that are scattered throughout here. To, of, in, with, before, for, through, into, according ... and all of that kind of knits it together. But it’s not a three stanza hymn. I think it’s more. I think you can dance to this. There’s a dynamic to this description. And there’s a fourfold progression in underscoring God’s purpose. “In accordance with His pleasure and will, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace, according to His good pleasure, according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity to the purpose of His will.” Is there any question by this point that God is sovereign? That his will prevails? So often it seems that when we talk about divine providence it seems that it’s subject to debate, but Paul here says that it ignites praise. It’s not a problem. It’s rather the source of praise. The inspiration for doxology. A kind of marvelous spiral of uninhibited praise. And I think there’s an implicit notion of pastoral care in this. You really are held secure by God. It’s not a deterministic plan that denies human freedom, but God’s will, God’s Word, God’s way provides a way for human flourishing. What Paul would indicate here is that God is not the passive object of our inquirer. Here at seminary you could begin to think that way. God is the subject and we explore God. But it’s the opposite. The more one becomes aware of God and is known by God we are defined by God, we’re not defining God. The prophet Jeremiah said it this way ... God’s saying to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. Before you were born I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah’s life didn’t begin with Jeremiah. “In the beginning, God ...” works not only for the cosmos, it works for you and me. We’re all meant to hear the Word of the Lord saying to us, “I created you, I understand you, I alone can save you, and I give you significance.” All of us can join Paul in saying, “But by the grace of God I am who I am.” And His grace to me was not without affect. Or, I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. So, all of this poses kind of a decision for us to understand the providence of God. Are we the holy possession of God in Christ, personally chosen by God? Predestined for communion with God? Adopted into the community of God’s people? Recipients of God’s grace? Redeemed by his personal sacrifice on our behalf? Signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit? Or, are we the accidental product of an impersonal universe? Subject to blind chance and random forces? Existing in a sphere of energy de-void of promise, plan, purpose, and fulfillment? Most of us struggle with the largeness of Paul’s vision. And that’s a good thing. It’s a good thing to struggle with that largeness. This kind of Trinitarian pattern of sovereignty that extends to us personally and beyond. In his novel, Saturday, Ian McEwan looks at the world through the eyes of an 18 year old named, Theo. Theo has grown up in a sincerely godless generation. McEwan describes it this way, “No one in his bright plate class, forward-looking school ever had asked him to pray or sing a hymn.” There is no entity like a loving, redeeming God for him to doubt. Theo has his own philosophy for coping with life. It’s really not a philosophy, it’s more like a maxim. Theo’s advice is this: the bigger you think, the crappier it looks. And this is how he explains it, “When we go on about big things, the political situation, global warming, world poverty, it all looks really terrible with nothing better, nothing to look forward to. But when I think small and think closer in ... you know, the girl I just met, or snowboarding next month ... then it looks great. This is going to be my motto: think small.” So, “think small” is kind of a strategy, I think, for coping. And that’s in contrast with Paul’s eulogy for salvation, of thinking on the grandest scale. And he’s writing this from prison. Probably every excuse to think small. (laughs) And very immediate. Instead, “Praise be to the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing. For He chose us before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” David Wells, the theologian from Gordon-Conwell, says, “The self is a canvas too narrow, too cramped, to contain the largeness of Christian truth.” So, let me reflect a bit in the light of this passage on divine providence. I would say we hold God’s truth in tension. The truth of God is held in tension. We accept. Follow me here, because I think in a seminary like ours this probably is foundational to our working together for cross-denominations. We accept God’s unconditional sovereign control and election of all people. And affirm the freedom and responsibility of each person to respond to God. We believe in total depravity, the total depravity of humankind and the evidence of God’s image in the vilest sinner. We believe in the salvific efficacy of God’s atoning sacrifice on the cross for all those who are called in the universal invitation that whosoever will may come. We believe in the irresistible grace of God and the human freedom of choice to reject as well as accept. We believe in eternal security of the saints, the perseverance of the saints. And we believe in the struggle to remain faithful to the end. You take, for example, Hebrews 6 and you put that against Ephesians 1 and it seems like you have a conflict. Charles Simeon, who preached in the early part of the 19th century when the Armenian and Calvinist controversy was at its height. Charles Simeon said it this way, “When I come to a text which speaks of election, I delight myself in the doctrine of election. And when the apostles exhort me to repentance and obedience and indicate my freedom of choice and action, I give myself to that side of the question. Is it wrong to hold in the mystery of God’s truth these seemingly, from a humanistic standpoint, contradictory truths? Isn’t the incarnation the paradigm? The incarnate one, fully God, fully human.” I wish that the author of Hebrews had changed a few words in Hebrew 6. He writes this, “It’s impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who’ve tasted the heavenly gift, who’ve shared in the Holy Spirit, who’ve tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the coming age.” And I want him to say, “It’s impossible for that kind of person to have fallen away.” That’s what I want him to say. But he doesn’t say that. “Those who have tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away.” It’s impossible for them to be brought back to repentance. But then addressing these believers he says, “Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things, things that belong to salvation.” Others have explained that I think the context is really important. In Ephesians 1, in this description of God’s sovereignty over all, it is written to reassure, to encourage, to pastor believers in Ephesus that are feeling challenged and feeling weak. But Hebrews 6 is addressed to those who have become complacent and indifferent and apathetic. Second generation believers who may be drifting away. But both truths, the perseverance of the saints and our persistence in faith to the end, both are important. A second aspect of divine providence to mention here is the issue of luck. Providence and luck. To my surprise, luck is a major concept in a number of modern thinkers. Luck never shows up in their indexes, but luck is a major factor in how they put things together. Luck never shows up in the indexes, but it is offered as a major explanation for the origin of life and the hope for the future. Richard Dawkins attributes both the origin of life and the origin of consciousness to luck. Says it clearly. Two big ones, if you ask me. “Once that initial stroke of luck has been granted,” Dawkins says, “we’re often running with evolution.” Bill Bryson, a writer that I really appreciate, concludes his masterful work on the science of life by saying, “How awfully lucky we are, doubly lucky, and if we don’t have a lot of luck going forward this one planet experiment won’t last.” Divine providence has kind of a friendly fatalistic modern look to it in these days. I don’t think there’s a lot of angst in people that have given up on the notion that there’s a loving, redeeming, choosing, predestining God. In a novel of a gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles tells the story of an aristocrat during the Bolshevik Revolution and this aristocrat, Alexander Rostov, has done a favor for one of the Bolshevik leaders. And so he’s consigned to the Hotel Metropol and if he walks out of the hotel he’ll be killed. So, this whole story sort of takes place in this closed universe of the Hotel Metropol. And he has a stash of gold coins. He has plenty of wealth. And he is interested only in practicalities. Not the Bible, not Darwin, not Nietzsche, as he would say, and he actually thinks that weather, clement and inclement weather, has been a bigger factor in history than anything God has done. And it’s just this picture of sort of a friendly fatalistic attitude. We don’t need to sweat it, there’s nothing more out there, and so it’s how you kind of put life together on a day to day basis that counts. These practicalities. I resonate much more with Albert Camus, The Plague, in 1947, where I think he brings the angst of living in a closed universe without God, without love, without freedom, without hope. I’m reading, right now, A Promise Land, former President Obama’s memoir. And I came across this quote by him, because I think it does capture nominal Christianity’s perspective. “I suspect that God’s plan, whatever it is,” and there you already have ... “I suspect that God’s plan, whatever it is, works on a scale too large to admit our mortal tribulations. That in a single lifetime accidents and happenstance determine more than we care to admit. And that the best we can do is try to align ourselves with what we feel is right and construct some meaning out of our confusion with grace and nerve, playing at each moment the hand that we’re dealt with.” Now, I hope it doesn’t throw you off at all that I’m quoting from Obama. I appreciate him in many respects. And yet I think he’s captured here what many people believe about God’s providence. It’s beyond us. It doesn’t really affect us. And that fate plays a far greater hand in our life. Luck plays a far greater hand than anything that we would attribute to the sovereignty of God. Divine providence in the mess of the human condition. I’ve had plenty of time to think about this sermon and maybe that’s a problem when you have so much time to think about a sermon you begin to really see a lot of different dimensions to it. A few years ago my wife led a Bible study in Ephesians and Emily Hooten, her husband Chuck was a student here at Beeson. Emily Hooten memorized all of chapter one and shared it with the Bible study group. Now, you try to memorize Ephesians 1. It’s a challenge with all those propositions and with all the repetition. It’s not easy to memorize. And she said it to the group. When she was about to have her third child, and something terribly went wrong after the birth. She lost all strength, all energy. Some sort of chemical imbalance. Virginia brought over a meal. I think at that point the debate was whether for her to go to the hospital. And Virginia played with the two girls and came in to see Emily just at the end. She thought Emily was saying she wanted a drink of water. And she leaned in closer to hear was Emily was saying. Emily said, “Praise be to the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” There’s a woman who had no strength at all, but understanding the sovereignty of God in her life. Now, Emily fully recovered and Virginia talked to her last week to see if I could use this word, this witness. God is sovereign in the mess of the human condition, in our weakness, in our brokenness, in the persecution. Somehow we don’t always see the connection between those two. The providence of God in the difficulties. The seemingly random trivialities and messes that life puts up to us. You can see this everywhere in scripture. While I was thinking about this I was reading in 1 Kings, and don’t most of us think that Solomon just succeeded David? When you read the first couple chapters of 1 Kings and, wow, Solomon’s fourth half brother claimed to be king. And have Joab’s support, the high priest’s support. Everybody seemed to be flocking to Adonjiya. And Nathan gets word of this, runs into Bathsheba, and says, “You know what’s coming down?” And you know David is totally weak here. So, Bathsheba goes in, entrance to David, explains the situation. Nathan comes in after. What a mess! Any yet, God is sovereign. It doesn’t look like it at certain points, does it, in that process? I remember in 1964 kind of a troubled junior higher over the death of Dr. Paul Carlson, medical missionary in the Congo. And his dead body was on a full page in life magazine. And on the cover. And the circumstances that surrounded his death, the Belgium troops and rebels were on two sides and these hostages, including Dr. Carlson, was caught in the middle. And they ran for it at the last minute, because they knew a firefight was going to take place. Carlson was on the wall. He had helped somebody get over the wall. He was on the wall when a bullet went right through his head. As a junior higher I’m thinking, “Just seconds, Lord. Just seconds for him to get up over the wall. You’re sovereign.” And doesn’t that also strike a chord with how Jesus died? Betrayed by a friend. Seemingly a victim of circumstances. Subject to political expediency. And yet he is the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world. So, divine providence, the sovereignty of God takes place really in the mess of the human situation. Albert Raboteau is a professor at Princeton. He’s well known for his book on Slave Religion. I have the quote on that outline in your bulletin. He writes, “Divine election brings not preeminence, elevation, and glory.” And the context for this quote is dealing with American exceptionalism. And the idea that Americans somehow feel privileged and special among the nations. And Raboteau says, “No, divine election brings not preeminence and elevation and glory, but as black Christians know all too well, it brings humiliation, suffering, and rejection. Chosenness, as reflected in the life of Jesus, led to a cross.” Finally, and encouragingly, divine providence in the love of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Richard Hayes, the Duke New Testament professor, frames it this way, “The action of the three person God, as paternal, given the Father’s adopting love, passionate, given the Son’s sacrificial death, and participatory, given the Spirit’s action to unite us in Christ.” You realize that not only your salvation, but your relational life, your friendships, are the fruit of God’s providential care. I like Lewis’s quote in The Four Loves, “A secret master of the ceremonies has been at work. Christ who said to the disciples, ‘You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you’ can truly say to every group of Christian friends, ‘You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.’ The friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It’s the instrument that God uses, that God reveals, to each the beauties of the other.” One last story. Friday night, Virginia and I would rendezvous in Toronto. She was working two jobs to support us. I was teaching and I was working on my doctorate at St. Michaels in Toronto. We were hand to mouth poor, who had no money. But on Friday night we would splurge and get the cheapest item on the menu at Swiss Chalet Chicken Restaurant. Some of you may have actually heard of Swiss Chalet in the past. If you’ve ever been to Canada. Well, we would get to the apartment at Bathurst and Steeles and immediately take off to drop whatever we had and go. We’d probably sit there somewhat in a fog, looking at each other. Well, I put the key in the lock and I heard the phone ring. And I looked at Virginia and said, “Do I have to?” And she kind of nodded, “Yeah.” On the fourth ring I picked up the phone and it was Miss Cadbury. I could tell immediately by the tone, “Where have you been!? I’ve been trying to get you all week. If you didn’t answer it this time I was going to the next person on the list.” We were on a list for adoption. If we had known that we were anywhere near close, we would have been sitting by the phone. This is before the ubiquitous cell phone. And she said, “You have a baby boy. He was born three days ago.” And they gave me directions for how to pick him up tomorrow at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto. It only took about three minutes. I mean, she was probably frustrated. It was the end of her day and she wanted to get on with getting home. I went back to Virginia ... How do you explain, “Well, our earth just moved. Our lives have changed.” “The last time I was going to call you before I move onto the next person on the list.” Jeremiah’s biological mother gave him the name, “Adam” as kind of the placeholder. And said as much. We gave him the name, “Jeremiah” because before he was born, before he was known, he was set apart by God. Did we almost miss our future? If I hadn’t picked up the phone? Fate or faith? Love or luck? Divine love, overruling the randomness of life. In love He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ according to His purpose and will to the praise of His glorious grace. Amen. >>Kristen Padilla: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our co-hosts are Doug Sweeney and, myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.