A Tale of Two Sermons: Calvinist vs Non-Calvinist
The other day, I watched a Willow Creek sermon again, and it happened to be Megan preaching again. (I talked about her once before, see at the end of this post). It was about heaven. And it was good. Very good.
But after that sermon, I decided to watch the sermon at the Calvinist church we left (I won't identify the church, or link to it), just to see what they were preaching. And I wanted to compare these two sermons, to give you a taste of what sermons are like at a non-Calvinist church versus a Calvinist church. I'm going to paraphrase what each pastor said, for space and to sum it up quickly. And interestingly, both of them gave their version of the gospel, the call to salvation. Notice how different they are.
And I want you to imagine what it would be like to be in the audience listening to these different sermons, especially if you were a broken, hurting, lost person who was aching for help and healing and hope.
First, I'll briefly paraphrase Megan's sermon, which was delivered with heart, passion, joy, pleading with people to open themselves up to God's love (click on this link to watch the actual sermon):
"What do you think about heaven? Because guess what? It's going to be better than we can ever imagine. So what do you believe about it, and how has it impacted your life now? When we set our minds on the glory of heaven, the things of earth [the things we focus on now and take pride in now] will grow strangely dim...
In heaven, we're going to be fully exposed to God, fully known. Even all the stuff we try to hide from others will be exposed before Him. But guess what? We're going to feel more love than we ever have - because the Bible says God is love. And the amazing thing is, God's always fully known you, and yet He's always fully loved you. This love has been there all along. God has always known all of you and always loved all of you. You don't need to hide from Him. One day we'll be standing before God in heaven, fully known and fully exposed, but because of Who we're standing before, we'll never feel more love than that.
Heaven, the throne room of God, will be full of His holiness and His glory and angels praising Him, and yet we'll be able to approach His throne with confidence. How? Because on that day, we'll be approaching God not with our resume full of our good deeds... but with Jesus's resume, His blood shed for you, His righteousness. I can't enter God's presence because of any good I do but only because of what Jesus did for me. I plead His blood. The blood He shed as a substitute for me. I don't believe in myself or my ability to be good - because I'm not good enough even on my best day - but I put my faith in Jesus who died for all our sins. I believe in Jesus. Do you? Or have you just been trying to believe in yourself? Because you don't have to anymore. I... believe... in Jesus!
Guess what? Heaven is filled with people who know they don't deserve to be there either on their own - but in Christ, it's more than enough. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. So who will get to heaven? The people who put their faith in Jesus Christ! Is your name written in the Lamb's Book of Life? For those who know it is, rejoice! Jesus is our reward. But for those of you who don't know if your name is written there, what's stopping you from putting your full faith and trust in Jesus as your Savior?
Jesus says that in His Father's house are many rooms. And guess what? One of those rooms can be yours. God's still taking reservations. Have you made your reservation? Pray with me if you want to do that, if you want to put your trust in Jesus as your Lord and Savior: "God, I believe in You. I'm sorry I've been trying to live life for myself, without You. I believe You sent Your Son, Jesus, to die the death I deserve. I believe He rose again to give me life, and I want that life. I want to receive that life from You. I believe. And help my unbelief. Right now, I put my faith and trust in You, Jesus. Amen."
And now the Calvinist one (paraphrased), which is about the book of Jonah, titled something like "God loves every nation," delivered in a rather preachy way, a little scolding, a little negative. I added some commentary here. My comments will be [in brackets, italics, and blue]. If you want to, first read through it skipping my comments, and then go back and read my comments.
And once again, imagine you are a broken, hurting, lost person listening to this sermon, someone who's been beaten up by life, looking for some healing, desperate for some hope:
"Jonah ran from God. Why? Why do we run from God? At the root of all disobedience is wrong belief, even before wrong behavior. A mistrust in the goodness of God.
[How can Calvinists trust in the "goodness" of a God whom they think preplans/causes our sins, evils, and unbelief, for His glory - while commanding us to believe and not sin - and who then punishes us for it? If that's "good" and "trustworthy," I'd hate to see "bad" and "untrustworthy."]
Jonah did not believe that God had his best interest at heart. And that's where all sin comes from: the belief that God's way is not the best way. That's why the first thing you need to repent from is wrong belief. We run from God because we convince ourselves that if we obey, we'll be miserable. But the more we run and the more we do our own thing, the more mess we make in our lives. We all do the Jonah thing, running from God. Maybe you're refusing to surrender to Christ as Savior, thinking you know better than 'repent and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.' And if you're running from Him, I just have to ask: How's it working out for you?
Or maybe you're refusing to be baptized. That's disobedience. It doesn't save us, but we are commanded to be baptized first thing after we are saved. Maybe you're refusing to stop lying, stop cheating, stop looking at pornography, start tithing, etc. The point is, we all do the Jonah thing, running away from God. And the message we get from Jonah is this: If we run from God, lots of things are going to happen, and they'll all be bad.
We also see at the end of the book of Jonah that God provided the vine and the worm and the scorching wind. And the lesson here is that God is in complete control of our circumstances, good, bad, or otherwise.
[Calvinists overextend the idea of God controlling some circumstances and causing some things, turning it into God controls all circumstances and causes all things, including sin and evil and our eternal destinies. That's a huge and unbiblical leap! And it's an attack on God's righteous character. You see, non-Calvinists do believe that God is in control over all - but that doesn't mean He actively preplans, controls, causes all things, as Calvinists believe. God allows us to make our own choices (but He can override us or block us, if He wants to), and then He finds ways to work our choices into His plans or to bring something good out of it. That's how He can be "in control" without actively controlling, preplanning, micromanaging everything, even sin.]
The key verse in Jonah - the one that the rest of the book of Jonah hinges on - is "Salvation belongs to our God." Tim Keller [Calvinist!] says this: 'If someone is saved, it is wholly God's doing. It is not a matter of God saving you partly and you partly saving yourself. No! God saves us. We do not and cannot save ourselves. That is the gospel."
And that is the message of Jonah: Only God elects. Only God sovereignly draws. Only God sovereignly convicts us of sin. Only God sovereignly opens blinded eyes.
[We all agree that God saves us, that we cannot save ourselves. But what Keller - and all Calvinists - really mean is that we can't even choose to put our faith in Jesus on our own, that God decides whom to save and that He causes those prechosen people to have faith and that no one else can be saved. And the Calvinist pastor confirms it. And that idea - combined with "God controls everything" - is what all Calvinist sermons hinge on. Their underlying belief that "God chooses who gets saved and controls everything" taints everything else they preach. And notice how the Calvinist pastor slipped in into the middle. Oftentimes, Calvinists will preach a fairly good sermon, but then they'll slip in their unbiblical Calvinism - the bottom-line, what they really mean - somewhere in the middle surrounded with biblical-sounding things or at the end after all the biblical-sounding things. Because if they had said it upfront, it would have completely negated or contradicted the rest of their sermon.]
And here are some other lessons we can take away from Jonah:
1. God has a heart for the nations.
[He constantly said "nations, nations, nations, people groups, peoples," but he never says or means all individual people. Never "all of you." Never "everyone." Just "all nations," all kinds of people, elect people from all over the world.]
2. The best way to deal with life's sorrows, pains, disappointments, suffering, etc. is not just to submit to God's Will for your life, but to delight in it. It's one thing to believe in God; it's another thing to trust Him with the circumstances He's appointed for you.
[Notice that it's not that God allowed the bad things to happen, but that He deliberately "appointed" them to happen. He preplanned it all and caused it all to happen exactly the way it did, and nothing different could have happened. "Delight in the tragedies, sins, and evils that God appointed for you" is great advice for those who've been abused or had cancer or lost a child or some other horrible tragedy, isn't it? (Notice the dripping sarcasm.) It's reminiscent of his sermon where he said that God "ordained" all your tragedies - even your childhood abuse - for His glory, for your good, and to keep you humble. That it was God's "Plan A" for your life, and you just need to trust Him. It's exactly like Calvinist James White saying that God decrees child-rape - because if He didn't then it would be a meaningless, purposeless evil (listen here).
A Calvinist's attempt to comfort is like "God commands us to not sin, but He also preplans and causes all sins, tragedies, and evils, for your good and for His glory, and you just need to trust Him and delight in it and praise Him for it (even though He'll punish us for doing what He predestined us to do). He is the Potter and you are the clay, and so He can do whatever He wants with you, and He doesn't have to explain it to you, even if it seems unjust, unrighteous, or contradictory."
I kid you not, when I was at a candlelight vigil for a young boy who went missing a block away (we later found out he was deliberately beaten to death by his parents), there was some crazy lady sitting all alone who was preaching to some men who were passing by whose eyebrows were raised in disgust, and I overheard her saying something like "Well, He is the Potter and we are the clay, and God can do whatever He wants for His glory." My jaw hit the ground, and all I could think was, "Oh my goodness! It's a Calvinist using the old 'God ordains all evils for His glory, and who are we to question Him' line at a candlelight vigil for a missing young boy. Disgusting! And it made me realize just how common this theology is.
Non-Calvinists praise God in spite of the sins, evils, and tragedies of the world. Non-Calvinists believe He is glorified in spite of the evil things people do. And non-Calvinists trust Him to be a good, loving, faithful Father even though people are allowed to make their own decisions, even wicked ones, because we trust that He didn't want or cause the evil to happen to us, that His heart broke for us when it happened, that He was with us in the pain and will carry us through it, and that someday He'll avenge all wrongs, vanquish all evil, punish all evildoers, set all things right again, and work all the bad into something good.
But Calvinists praise God for the sins, evils, and tragedies of the world. Calvinists believe He gets glory for causing the evil things people do. And Calvinists believe they have to trust God even though they're taught that He preplans, causes, controls all the wicked things people do, all the evils that happen to us, all the sinful things He commands us not to do but causes us to do and will someday punish us for. Calvinists are taught to call this kind of god "loving, just, righteous, holy, good, and trustworthy."
No wonder Calvinism kills people's faith!
Also see these posts of mine: "Are Tragedies Gifts from God?" and "Calvinism's heart-breaking destruction" and "Does God cause childhood abuse?"]
3. We learn from Jonah that we can take comfort in the fact that when God puts His affections on someone and draws them to Him and makes them one of His own, He commits to them.
[Well, in Calvinism, that's not a "when" but an "if" - IF God loves you and chooses you to be saved and causes you to believe. And let's face it, He won't do this for most people, in Calvinism. And so there is no comfort in this for the majority of people, the non-elect. There is only comfort for the elect. And even then, no one can know for sure if they are truly elect until the end of their lives. So, really, there's no comfort in this at all for anyone while we're alive on earth. See my post "MacArthur on Calvinism's (lack of) Assurance of Salvation."]
4. The book of Jonah challenges us to answer this question: Do you know Jesus Christ as Lord? The Bible says you are cut off from God from the moment you're born. It says that from conception, you are born in sin, with a disposition to sin, under God's judgment, with Adam's guilt imputed to you [Yes, we get it, we're terrible!], and if something doesn't happen to change that, you're going to perish in hell, under God's wrath, an enemy of God.
But here's the good news, God says "repent and believe." Have you done that? Have you reconciled to God? It's the most important thing in the world. Have you done it?
[I don't know, ask God. Isn't He the one in charge of that in Calvinism!?!]
5. And finally, are you running from God? If so, it's not going to go well. If you're running from God, take a lesson from Jonah, you're going to make a mess and it's gonna hurt more, until you do it God's way.
[Yeah, well, if God "sovereignly controls" all things, even whether or not we're saved, it would certainly include whether or not we're running from God, making this a nonsensical, pointless, inconsequential sermon!]
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Notice how one sermon is positive and full of life, while the other is negative and full of death. One's about what's right and good, while the other's about what's wrong and bad. One draws you with God's love, while the other shames you for how terrible you are. One offers grace, healing, and hope to all people, while the other can only give grace, healing, and hope to a few lucky people, but wrath, pain, and hopelessness to everyone else. One is truth, and one is twisted. One pleads with us all to believe in Jesus, to pray right then and there to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, while one just asks if we did.
If you were a hurting person looking for hope and healing, which sermon would help you find it? Which one sounds more like truth and how God really is? And do you know how to discern what Calvinists really mean, underneath the deceptive things they say? Do you know when they're playing you for the fool - when they word things carefully to make you think they're saying one thing when they're really saying something else, when they disguise what they really mean, and when they strategically make something bad sound good?
And some further commentary about the Calvinist sermon:
To Keller: Oh my goodness, no, the gospel is not that God preplans/chooses whom to save and that He causes them (and only them!) to be saved and that we have no influence or choice over whether or not we are saved (which is what Keller is really saying)!
The gospel is (my paraphrase, and succinctly) "Jesus died for your sins and rose again so that you could believe in Him and be saved." Like Megan said: "I believe You sent Your Son, Jesus, to die the death I deserve. I believe He rose again to give me life, and I want that life." That is the gospel!
1 Cor. 15:3-4: "For what I received I passed onto you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures,".
This is of first importance, the message we are supposed to pass on to all people: Christ died for our sins and rose again, and so we can believe in Him and be saved.
John 20:31: "But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."
1 Timothy 2:3-6: "This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all men..."
That is the gospel, the good news!
And yet this gospel is exactly what's missing from Calvinism's message of "'If someone is saved, it is wholly God's doing. It is not a matter of God saving you partly and you partly saving yourself. No! God saves us. We do not and cannot save ourselves. That is the gospel.' And that is the message of Jonah: Only God elects. Only God sovereignly draws. Only God sovereignly convicts us of sin. Only God sovereignly opens blinded eyes."
Calvinism's "gospel" is only good news for the elect. But the Bible's gospel is good news for all people (Luke 2:10): Christ died for all our sins, and so anyone can believe in Him and be saved, "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men" (Titus 2:11).
Or even a little more fully: "We are all sinners headed to hell, but God loves us all and wants us all with Him in heaven. But because we can't get to heaven on our own (our sins keep us out), Jesus came to earth to make heaven possible for us. He paid the penalty we owe for our sins by dying the death we deserved. He died in our place so that we could live. And then to prove He's God and has power over death, He rose again three days later. And because He died for all people's sins, He offers the free gift of eternal life to all people. And if we want it - if we want to spend eternity with Him in heaven - all we have to do is accept the free gift of eternal life by putting our faith in Him as our Lord and Savior, accepting His sacrificial payment for our sins, His death in our place. And anyone can."
Romans 5:8: "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
2 Peter 3:9: "... He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."
Ezekiel 33:11: "Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live..."
Acts 2:38: "Peter replied, 'Repent and be baptized every one of you ...'"
Romans 10:9,13: "That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved... Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
And it's far different than the gospel according to Calvinism: "Jesus died for some of you - the elect - and if you're elect then you're predestined to heaven and God will make believe. But the rest of you are non-elect - hopelessly lost, created for hell, predestined to reject Jesus, and there's nothing you can do about it because Jesus didn't die for you anyway."
And for the record, if the Calvinist pastor bothered to look up the Jonah reference to "salvation" in the concordance, he'd see that in the Old Testament, the word "salvation" does not refer to salvation from sin, but it refers to God delivering people from things like distress, war, servitude, enemies, etc. Yet, Calvinists make it about eternal, save-your-soul-from-hell salvation and then say "See, it says salvation belongs to God, meaning that God controls who gets saved." And then they quote Calvinist theologians to "prove" it. (Bogus!)
And furthermore, Calvinist pastor: No, the message of Jonah is not that God sovereignly controls whether we are saved or not. It's that God is merciful and wants all people to repent and be saved, that He made it possible for all people to repent and be saved, even wicked sinners. No one is hopeless. No one is predestined for hell. No one is beyond God's saving grace. Anyone can be saved because God loves all and wants all to be saved and offers salvation to all. But it's our choice to repent and believe, or not. That's the message of Jonah. Big difference! Your Calvinism, your sermon, is a terrible corruption of God's Word and heart and gospel!
(It made me so mad watching it that, I'll confess, my language about it was, let's say, "colorful." Not the nicest. Oh, it makes me mad!)]
Anyway, these sermons reminded me of the other post I wrote where I compared a Christmas message from both these churches. I'll repost it here briefly, just for fun:
"Christmas at the movies: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (December 18, 2022)"
(Willow Creek Huntley YouTube channel, sermon by Megan Marshman)
Merry Christmas, Everyone!
FYI: I've written before about how I disagree with woman being head pastors. And it seems that, at Willow, the head pastor is a man but there are several teaching pastors under him, including women. To me, that's a gray area. And I'm not sure yet what I think of it. But since it doesn't break my hardline, definitive "no woman head pastor" rule, I've decided to be okay with Willow Creek for now, to allow God to speak to me through Megan's sermon, to get what good I can from it, until and unless God leads me otherwise.
(To me, a woman associate pastor is far less of a concern than how Calvinism corrupts the gospel and God's character and truth. I'd rather have a church with a woman associate pastor who preaches biblical truth than have an all-male-pastors Calvinist church that preaches lies. And let's face it... these days, since most churches are off-track about something or other, we all have to make a choice about what we're willing to compromise on. And for me, I'd rather compromise about a lesser issue like women associate pastors/teachers than compromise the truth of the gospel and who Jesus died for and how people get saved and what God is like. The first one isn't an attack on God and Truth and the heart of the gospel/Christianity, but the second one - Calvinism - is.)
I'll take a sermon like this Willow one over a Calvinist one any day. Watch it. It's good.
