Good Friday 2019

INTRO: A while ago my son and I were discussing Calvinism. I had an e-mail from a pastor friend, and he sent me some material and he stood strongly against Calvinism. What many people do not know about Calvinism he knew because he lives in a community filled with them. And many of them live very loose lives but they are all Christians because they are in a Calvinistic church and many grew up as Calvinists, therefore they are the elect, and how they live is not that important. They are fully traditionalists with not much spirituality in their lives. And so we were discussing this and he showed me a few clips by John Piper and one of the passages he mentioned in favor of Calvinism caught my interest. It is found in Acts 4:27-28. Verses 23-30 were read for us earlier so let us read verses 27-28 once more:
27 "For truly against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together
28 "to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done.
The day we commemorate today is the day Christ was crucified. Before we start on our text, I want to just point out that the Jews have been called Christ killers over the centuries. When I was going to Bible school we worked with a mission to Jews for some time. And the head of the little mission, Arvi Wilkinson, would quote this verse and point out it was the leaders of Gentiles and of Jews, and both Gentiles and Jews that were guilty of killing Christ.