He tells you, two minutes in, exactly what he is about to do.
This is not a verse-by-verse exposition. This is not the church's normal approach. This is — his words — "a little bit different" (1:35). For the month of August, Pella Communities will set aside its usual biblical theology and engage in systematic theology — specifically, Reformed systematic theology. Five weeks. Sovereignty and concurrence. Total depravity and free will. Election, predestination, and reprobation. Particular atonement. Irresistible grace and the perseverance of the saints.
TULIP. The whole flower. Planted deliberately, watered weekly, and presented to the congregation as the best available framework for understanding who God is.
He also tells you, six minutes in, that he is not here to defend John Calvin (5:17). And then he spends fifty-six minutes defending the system John Calvin built.
This is The Docket. Every installment takes a sermon, runs it against the text it claims to teach, and names what holds and what doesn't. Not to tear down a preacher. To build up a people who can read.
The Bench
Preacher: Sean Myers, Lead Pastor
Venue: Pella Communities, Glendale/Peoria, Arizona (with Sunnyslope Mission)
Background: Founded Pella Communities in 2020. Grew up in foster care, experienced homelessness and instability as a child. Came to faith in high school. Husband, father, and foster parent. Guest speaker at Grand Canyon University Chapel.
Date: August 2021 (inferred from references to 2022 planning and context)
Duration: Approximately 56 minutes
Format: Teaching-focused worship service, first in a five-week series on Reformed theology
Series: "Doctrines of Grace" — Week 1 of 5
Primary Texts: Hebrews 1:3, Colossians 1:17, Ephesians 1:11, Job 1:21, Acts 2:23
Stated Goals: Teach Reformed theology systematically, equip the congregation to engage cultural issues with theological tools, foster humility before God's sovereignty
Teaching Depth: 4/10 — Ambitious in scope, sincere in intent, but the system explains the text rather than the text generating the conclusions. Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology and R.C. Sproul's Chosen by God carry as much weight as Scripture in the argument's construction.
Sermon Status: Public
The Charge
The Westminster Confession of Faith is read aloud before a single Bible verse is opened (10:19–10:41). A 17th-century confessional document — produced by English and Scottish divines during a civil war, codified in a political context, and representing one strand of post-Reformation Protestant thought — is presented as the definition of God's sovereignty. The Scripture that follows is then read through that definition.
This is not exegesis. This is catechesis. The confession establishes the framework. The verses are marshaled as evidence. The conclusion — that God has "ordained whatever comes to pass" in an exhaustive, micromanagerial sense that extends to every fly landing on every windowsill (17:04) — is presented as what the Bible teaches. It is what the Westminster Confession teaches. These are not the same thing.
The charge is not that Sean Myers is insincere. His personal story — foster care, homelessness, coming to faith as a teenager — gives him a credibility that cannot be manufactured. The charge is that a man with a genuine testimony has been formed inside a theological system that he now presents to his congregation as the Bible's own conclusions, and that the system introduces specific, identifiable distortions to what the Tanakh and Brit Chadashah actually say about HaShem's sovereignty, human agency, and the nature of evil.
He says he is not here to defend John Calvin. He says his goal is to be a "biblicist" (1:35). He says he wants to give the congregation tools. The tools he gives them are the Westminster Confession, Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology, R.C. Sproul's Chosen by God, and Charles Spurgeon's theological prose. The Torah is not among the tools. Deuteronomy 30:19 — "I have set before you life and death; choose life" — does not appear in a sermon about God's control and human control. The most explicit statement in all of Scripture about the relationship between divine sovereignty and human choice is absent from a fifty-six-minute sermon on that exact topic.
The Exhibits
Exhibit One: The Confession Before the Text (10:19–10:50)
The sermon's theological foundation is laid not with Scripture but with the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646): "God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will freely and unchangeably ordain whatever comes to pass."
Myers reads this aloud (10:19) and then says: "So according to the Westminster, God according to His will ordained whatever He wants to come to pass. Whatever is, is because of God saying that it is" (10:41–10:50).
This is the load-bearing moment of the entire sermon. Everything that follows — every verse cited, every illustration offered, every application drawn — rests on this confession as its interpretive framework. The confession comes first. The Bible follows.
The problem is not that the Westminster Confession exists. Confessions are legitimate theological tools. The problem is the order of operations. In a Berean framework, the text comes first and the system is evaluated against it. In this sermon, the system comes first and the text is read through it. The congregation is given the conclusion — God ordains whatever comes to pass — before they are given the verses. The verses then function as proof texts for a conclusion already established by a 17th-century document.
The Tanakh does not present HaShem's sovereignty in the exhaustive, micromanagerial terms the Westminster Confession uses. HaShem declares in Yeshayahu (Isaiah) 46:10: "My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all My chefets (חֵפֶץ)" — My pleasure, My purpose, My delight. The word chefets is purposeful and redemptive. It describes what HaShem desires and intends. It is not a blanket statement that every event in the universe — every fly on every windowsill — is individually ordained. HaShem's sovereignty in the Tanakh is purposeful, covenantal, and directed toward redemption. It is not the totalizing control mechanism that the Westminster Confession describes.
Tehillim (Psalm) 115:3 — "Our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases" — uses chafets (חָפֵץ), the verbal form of the same root. He does what pleases Him. What pleases Him is revealed in Torah: justice, mercy, covenant faithfulness, the redemption of Israel and the nations through Yeshua. The psalm is not saying that every event in creation is individually decreed. It is saying that nothing can prevent HaShem from accomplishing what He has purposed. These are different claims. One describes invincible purpose. The other describes exhaustive control. The Westminster Confession asserts the second. The Tanakh teaches the first.
Credit: The sermon opens with transparency about what it is doing — teaching systematic theology, not verse-by-verse exposition. This honesty is unusual and should be acknowledged.
Charge: The Westminster Confession is read before Scripture and functions as the interpretive framework through which all subsequent verses are filtered. The congregation receives a 17th-century confessional document as the definition of God's sovereignty before encountering what the Tanakh actually says about it. The order of operations is confession-then-text, not text-then-conclusion.
Exhibit Two: Molecular Sovereignty — The Stretch That Reveals the Method (12:57–14:57)
Colossians 1:17 says: "In Him all things hold together." The Greek sunistēmi (συνίστημι) means to cohere, to stand together, to hold in unity. In its Colossians context, it describes Yeshua's preeminence over all creation — His cosmic lordship, the truth that the created order has its coherence in Him.
Myers takes this and extends it to molecular structure: "He controls the molecular structure... every time I put gas in my car I can be grateful that that gas is not going to turn into water because [its] molecular structure fires different under pressure" (13:37–13:52). He says he learned this reading from Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology (13:29).
This is eisegesis — reading into the text what the text does not say. Sha'ul (Paul) is not writing a physics lesson to the Colossians. He is making a Christological claim: Yeshua is supreme over all things, and all things find their unity and purpose in Him. The passage is about preeminence, not about micromanagement. The difference matters because the Reformed system needs Colossians 1:17 to support exhaustive divine control of every particle, and the text is making a different claim — a claim about Yeshua's lordship and the created order's dependence on Him.
The tell is the source. Myers does not arrive at this reading from the Greek text of Colossians. He arrives at it from Grudem's systematic theology textbook. The textbook generates the exegesis. This is the method in miniature: system first, text second. Grudem says it, Myers teaches it, the congregation receives it as what Paul said. Paul said something different. Paul said something bigger — Yeshua's cosmic preeminence — and the system shrunk it to a statement about gas not turning into water.
Credit: The awe at Yeshua's creative and sustaining power is genuine. The impulse to be amazed by Colossians 1:17 is the right impulse.
Charge: Sunistēmi is stretched beyond its semantic range to support a claim about molecular-level divine control that the text does not make. Wayne Grudem's systematic theology is the source of the reading, not the Greek text. The congregation receives a theology textbook's interpretation as the apostle's intent.
Exhibit Three: Ephesians 1:11 — The Verse That Carries Too Much (15:44–17:26)
"He accomplishes all things according to the counsel of His will" (Ephesians 1:11).
Myers uses this as the capstone of the sovereignty argument: "Everything that has ever happened — every single time a fly has landed on the windowsill of your home, when you fell off your bike as a kid, when you married that person, when you made that mistake — He has according to the counsel of His will ordained it all. Every single thing" (17:04–17:18).
This is the verse doing the most work in the sermon, and it is being asked to carry weight it was not designed to bear.
Ephesians 1:11 appears in a specific context. The chapter is about redemption — God's plan to bring all things together in Mashiach (Ephesians 1:10), the inheritance of believers (1:11), the sealing of the Ruach ha-Kodesh (1:13-14). The "all things" Paul is describing are the components of God's redemptive purpose — the plan that stretches from before the foundation of the world (1:4) to the fullness of time (1:10). It is a statement about God's sovereign control over His redemptive plan, not a statement about God's sovereign control over every fly on every windowsill.
The Greek energeō (ἐνεργέω) — "works, accomplishes, brings about" — describes purposeful, effective action. It is the word Paul uses for the working of HaShem's power in specific, redemptive contexts (Ephesians 1:19-20, 3:20, Philippians 2:13). It is not a word for passive, ambient, universal control. It describes HaShem doing something specific toward a specific end.
When Myers extends this verse to cover every event in creation — flies, bike accidents, marriages, mistakes — he has moved from what Paul wrote to what the Westminster Confession needs Paul to have written. The confession says "whatever comes to pass." Paul says "all things according to the counsel of His will" — within a chapter about redemption. The gap between these two claims is the width of the Reformed system.
Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) 9:11 offers a different perspective from within the Tanakh: "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor favor to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all." Time and chance — et va'pega (עֵת וָפֶגַע). The Tanakh's own wisdom literature acknowledges contingency in the created order. Not everything that happens is individually ordained. Some things happen because the world is a place where time and chance operate under HaShem's overarching sovereignty without being individually decreed by it.
Credit: The emphasis on God's sovereign purpose over redemption is genuine and biblically grounded.
Charge: Ephesians 1:11 is removed from its redemptive context and universalized to cover every event in creation. The distinction between HaShem's sovereign purpose (Isaiah 46:10, chefets) and exhaustive determinism (Westminster Confession) is collapsed. Ecclesiastes 9:11 — the Tanakh's own acknowledgment of contingency — is absent.
Exhibit Four: The Doctrine of Concurrence — A System's Solution to a System's Problem (24:49–33:17)
At 24:49, Myers introduces the doctrine of concurrence: "The doctrine of concurrence affirms that in one sense events are fully 100% caused by God and fully 100% caused by the creature as well."
He then says: "I don't know what to tell you... be okay with it" (26:29–26:38).
This is presented as the virtue of Reformed theology — that it "lets us sit in the mystery" (25:43–25:51). But the mystery it is sitting in is a manufactured one. Here is why.
The tension between God's sovereignty and human choice only becomes an impossible paradox if you first assert exhaustive determinism — that God ordains every event. Once you make that claim (which the Westminster Confession makes and Myers affirms), you must then explain why human choices feel real, carry moral weight, and produce genuine consequences. The doctrine of concurrence is the explanation: both God and the creature "fully cause" the event simultaneously. This is offered as a profound mystery.
But the Tanakh does not create this problem. Torah presents HaShem's sovereignty and human choice not as a paradox requiring philosophical resolution but as a command:
Devarim (Deuteronomy) 30:19 — "I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live."
Uvachar'ta bachayyim (וּבָחַרְתָּ בַּחַיִּים) — "choose life." This is an imperative. HaShem commands the choice. The command presupposes the capacity to choose. There is no tension here that requires a doctrine of concurrence to resolve. HaShem is sovereign. He has set the options before Israel. Israel chooses. The choice is real because HaShem says it is real.
Yehoshua (Joshua) 24:15 — "Choose this day whom you will serve." Another imperative. Another real choice. HaShem's sovereignty is not threatened by human agency because HaShem designed human agency. He does not need to "fully cause" every human choice in order to remain sovereign. He is sovereign over a creation that includes real choosers — because He made them to be real choosers.
The doctrine of concurrence solves a problem the Bible does not create. Reformed theology first asserts exhaustive determinism (via the Westminster Confession), then discovers that exhaustive determinism makes human responsibility incoherent, then invents concurrence to hold both together, then presents the resulting tension as a profound mystery — and then tells the congregation: "Be okay with it." The congregation is told to sit in a mystery that the system manufactured. Torah would have prevented the problem entirely.
The four examples Myers uses — Job, Pharaoh, Yonah (Jonah), and Yosef (Joseph) — all demonstrate something real: HaShem works within, through, and around human choices to accomplish His purposes. But "works within and through" is not the same as "fully causes." Beresheet (Genesis) 50:20 — "You meant it for evil; God meant it for good" — describes HaShem repurposing human evil, not co-causing it. Yosef's brothers chose to sell him. Their choice was theirs. HaShem took their evil choice and redirected its consequences toward redemption. That is sovereign purpose. It is not exhaustive determinism. The distinction is everything.
Credit: The four biblical examples (Job, Pharaoh, Jonah, Joseph) are well-chosen and demonstrate a genuine theological instinct for the complexity of divine sovereignty and human agency. The Genesis 50:20 passage is the strongest moment in the sermon.
Charge: The doctrine of concurrence is presented as the Bible's own resolution to a tension that the Reformed system creates. Deuteronomy 30:19 and Joshua 24:15 — the Torah's explicit statements on human choice — are absent. The distinction between sovereign purpose (God repurposes evil) and exhaustive determinism (God co-causes everything) is collapsed. The congregation is told to "be okay with" a mystery that Torah resolves by simply commanding: choose.
Exhibit Five: The Problem of Evil — Foreordained and Unexplained (38:01–46:05)
At 38:23, Myers quotes R.C. Sproul: "Did evil come into the world against God's sovereign will? If so, then He is not absolutely sovereign. If not, then we must conclude that in some sense even evil is foreordained by God."
Myers calls this logic "airtight" (38:52).
It is not. The logic is airtight only if you accept the premise that sovereignty means exhaustive determinism. If sovereignty means purposeful authority and invincible redemptive intent — which is what the Tanakh teaches — then a third option exists: HaShem permits evil within a creation that includes genuine moral agents, without ordaining it, and He works redemptively within the consequences of that evil without having caused it.
Iyov (Job) 1:12 — "HaShem said to the adversary, 'Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.'" HaShem permits. He sets boundaries. He does not decree. The adversary acts within permission, not under compulsion. Job suffers because HaShem allowed it — not because HaShem "foreordained" it in the sense Sproul means.
Ya'akov (James) 1:13 — "Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone." This is not ambiguous. HaShem does not originate evil. He does not decree it. He does not co-cause it. He permits it within a creation where free moral agents make real choices — and He redeems its consequences. That is the biblical picture. It is not the Reformed picture.
Chavakuk (Habakkuk) 1:13 — "You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness." HaShem's holiness is incompatible with evil's origin being in Him. If evil is "foreordained" by HaShem, then HaShem is the author of what His own nature finds abhorrent. The Reformed system knows this is a problem, which is why it immediately adds qualifiers — "foreordained" doesn't mean "caused," it means "permitted within the decree" — but these qualifiers are doing the work that a simpler, more Hebraic theology would not require.
The Chris Wright quote that Myers reads at length (42:03–44:59) is genuinely helpful — the observation that evil "does not make sense" because sense itself is part of God's good creation, and evil has no legitimate place within it, is a profound theological insight. Credit belongs there. But the insight is undermined by the Reformed framework that precedes it. If evil is "foreordained" by God, then it does have a place within God's plan — the very plan the Westminster Confession says ordains "whatever comes to pass." Wright's insight about evil's irrationality cuts against the system Myers is teaching, and Myers does not notice the contradiction.
Credit: The Chris Wright quote on evil's irrationality is the most theologically resonant moment in the sermon. The pastoral honesty about struggling with evil — the brother who died at 23, the frustration with God's apparent inaction (37:43–37:52) — is genuine and should be honored.
Charge: Sproul's binary — either God foreordained evil or He is not sovereign — is presented as "airtight" when it depends entirely on a premise (exhaustive determinism) that the Tanakh does not support. Job 1:12, James 1:13, and Habakkuk 1:13 all present a framework in which HaShem permits evil without ordaining it — a framework that preserves His sovereignty, His holiness, and human moral agency simultaneously. The congregation is given a false dilemma and told the logic is airtight.
Exhibit Six: Acts 2:23 — The Crucifixion as Concurrence's Crown Jewel (47:42–53:06)
Myers closes with Acts 2:23: "This Yeshua, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men."
He presents this as the ultimate demonstration of concurrence — God planned it, the Jews shouted for it, the Romans executed it, and our sin gave the reason for it (52:07–52:58). Four layers of causation, all operating simultaneously.
This is the strongest passage in the sermon, and Myers handles it with more care than most of the other texts. The observation that God's plan and human guilt coexist in the same event is genuinely biblical. Yeshayahu (Isaiah) 53:10 — "It pleased HaShem to crush Him" — uses chafets again, the same root as Psalm 115:3 and Isaiah 46:10. HaShem's sovereign pleasure — His redemptive purpose — is operative in the crucifixion. And human sin — real, chosen, culpable sin — is operative simultaneously. This is true.
But "God planned it and humans chose it" is not the same claim as "God fully caused it and humans fully caused it." The doctrine of concurrence says both are fully causal. The text says something more precise: HaShem's plan established the framework within which human beings made genuine moral choices for which they bear genuine moral responsibility. God did not "fully cause" Judas to betray, Caiaphas to condemn, or Pilate to sentence. He established the redemptive purpose that their choices — freely made, morally culpable — would serve. The purpose is His. The choices are theirs. The redemption is His. The guilt is theirs.
Acts 4:27-28 confirms: "For truly against Your holy Servant Yeshua, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done." HaShem's purpose was determined. The human actors gathered to carry it out through their own wicked choices. The purpose was predetermined. The wickedness was not compelled. These are not the same thing, and the doctrine of concurrence collapses them.
The Eminem and Rush illustrations that precede this section (48:36–51:03) — the double entendre, the triple entendre, the album cover analysis — are where the method reveals itself most clearly. Instead of opening the Hebrew and Greek of Acts 2:23, instead of tracing the Tanakh's theology of divine purpose through Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 and Zechariah 12:10, Myers spends two and a half minutes on an Eminem lyric and a Rush album cover to explain how one event can carry multiple layers of meaning. The illustration is clever. It is also a substitute for exegesis. The congregation receives a pop culture analogy where they should have received the Suffering Servant.
Credit: The fourfold observation — God's plan, Jewish involvement, Roman execution, humanity's sin — is a genuine and careful reading of Acts 2:23. The closing pastoral move — Yeshua went first, He leads us in suffering, not away from it (47:49–48:06) — is the sermon's strongest moment of pastoral application.
Charge: The doctrine of concurrence is applied to the crucifixion in a way that collapses the distinction between divine purpose and divine causation. The Eminem/Rush illustration substitutes for Tanakh exegesis. Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, and Zechariah 12:10 — the Tanakh passages that ground the crucifixion in HaShem's redemptive purpose — are absent. The congregation receives a pop culture analogy where the Suffering Servant should have been.
The Pattern
Six exhibits. Five primary texts. Fifty-six minutes. One 17th-century confession, two systematic theology textbooks, one Baptist theologian, one Victorian preacher, one rapper, and one Canadian prog-rock band. Zero Hebrew word studies. Zero Tanakh exegesis. Zero appearances of Deuteronomy 30:19 in a sermon about God's control and human control.
The pattern across all six exhibits is the same: the system explains the text. Not the other way around. The Westminster Confession defines sovereignty before Hebrews 1:3 is opened. Grudem's textbook generates the molecular interpretation of Colossians 1:17. Sproul's binary frames the problem of evil before James 1:13 is consulted. The doctrine of concurrence is presented as a biblical teaching when it is a systematic theological construct developed to reconcile claims the Bible does not make with realities the Bible does not deny.
Myers is not a dishonest teacher. He is transparent about what he is doing — "we're doing systematic theology this month" (1:35). He disclaims Calvin — "I am not here to defend John Calvin" (5:17). He invites humility — "our theology is always being sanctified" (54:02). These are genuine and should be honored.
But transparency about the method does not make the method faithful to the text. A teacher can openly declare that he is reading the Bible through a 17th-century confessional framework, and the framework can still be wrong. The honesty is admirable. The framework is not the text.
A brief note on pastoral formation: Myers' stage presence, vocal rhythms, and rhetorical pacing bear recognizable similarities to Matt Chandler's teaching style — the casual authority, the "let me just be honest with you" cadence, the deliberate cognitive-dissonance framing. This is not a criticism of character. It is an observation about the culture of evangelical pastoral formation, in which younger pastors absorb not only the theology but the delivery of the teachers they admire. The system transmits itself not only through doctrine but through performance. When a congregation receives Reformed theology in a Matt Chandler delivery, they are receiving a complete package — and the packaging makes the content harder to evaluate because the delivery feels authentic even when the theology is imported.
Myers' personal story — foster care, homelessness, instability, finding faith as a teenager — is genuine, hard-earned, and worthy of respect. A man who grew up in the system and now pastors a church while fostering children himself has a credibility that seminary alone cannot confer. The critique in this Docket is not of the man. It is of the theological system that formed him — a system so complete that it provides not only the doctrine but the vocabulary, the illustrations, the rhetorical moves, and the interpretive confidence to present its conclusions as the Bible's own.
A Word to the New Believer
If you attend Pella Communities, or if you have listened to this sermon series, here is what is worth keeping — and where you need to go deeper.
Keep the awe. HaShem is sovereign. He is bigger than anything you face, bigger than any system that tries to contain Him, bigger than any confession or textbook or sermon. That impulse to be amazed — honor it.
But do not let a system tell you what the Bible says before you have read the Bible for yourself.
Start with Devarim (Deuteronomy) 30:15-20. Read it slowly. HaShem sets life and death before Israel and says choose. He does not say "I have already chosen for you." He does not say "your choice is fully caused by Me." He says choose. The command is real. The choice is real. You are a genuine moral agent made in the image of HaShem, and your choices carry genuine weight. Any system that tells you otherwise — no matter how sophisticated, no matter how many verses it marshals, no matter how many theologians endorse it — is adding to what the text says.
Read Beresheet (Genesis) 50:20 — "You meant it for evil; God meant it for good." See that HaShem repurposes evil. He does not co-cause it. The brothers chose freely. Their choice was wicked. HaShem took their wickedness and redirected its consequences toward redemption. That is sovereign purpose. It is not exhaustive determinism.
Read Iyov (Job) 1-2. See that HaShem permits suffering within boundaries. He does not decree every detail of Job's loss. He allows the adversary to act and sets limits on how far the adversary can go. HaShem is sovereign over the process without being the author of the evil within it.
Read Ya'akov (James) 1:13. Let it settle: HaShem does not tempt anyone. He is not the origin of evil. Any theology that requires you to say "God foreordained evil" is asking you to say something James explicitly forbids.
Then read the Westminster Confession for yourself — not as Scripture, but as what it is: a human document, produced in a specific historical context, by fallible men who were doing their best to organize what they understood. Test it against Torah. Where it aligns, keep it. Where it adds, name it. Where it contradicts, reject it. That is the Berean standard. It applies to confessions as surely as it applies to sermons.
The Verdict
Teaching Depth: 4/10 — Sincere, ambitious in scope, transparent about its method, and consistently dependent on systematic theology textbooks and Reformed confessional documents rather than on the Hebrew text of the Tanakh. The awe at God's greatness is genuine. The framework that channels that awe is imported from a 17th-century confession, not derived from the text.
Credit: Transparency about the method — Myers tells the congregation this is systematic theology, not verse-by-verse exposition (1:35). This honesty is unusual and should be acknowledged.
Credit: The "I am not here to defend John Calvin" disclaimer (5:17) and the "our theology is always being sanctified" admission (54:02) demonstrate a posture of humility that many Reformed teachers do not offer.
Credit: Genesis 50:20 is handled with genuine care — the observation about intentions (35:12–35:58) is the strongest exegetical moment in the sermon and demonstrates real theological instinct.
Credit: The Chris Wright quote on evil's irrationality (42:03–44:59) is a profound theological insight that transcends the Reformed framework.
Credit: The pastoral close — Yeshua went first, He leads us in suffering (47:49–48:06) — is the sermon's most Christologically grounded moment.
Credit: No financial manipulation. No giving appeals. The PDF offer (8:39) is a genuine teaching aid.
Credit: Myers' personal history — foster care, homelessness, finding faith — gives his pastoral ministry a credibility rooted in lived experience, not institutional pedigree.
Charge sustained: Westminster Confession before Scripture — the confessional definition of sovereignty (10:19–10:41) is read before any Bible verse is opened, establishing the system as the interpretive framework rather than deriving conclusions from the text.
Charge sustained: Colossians 1:17 eisegesis — sunistēmi is stretched to mean molecular-level divine control (12:57–14:57), sourced from Grudem's Systematic Theology rather than from the Greek text; the passage's Christological claim about preeminence is shrunk to a physics illustration.
Charge sustained: Ephesians 1:11 universalized — a verse about God's redemptive purpose is extended to cover every event in creation, including flies on windowsills (17:04); Ecclesiastes 9:11's acknowledgment of contingency (et va'pega) is absent.
Charge sustained: Deuteronomy 30:19 absent — the Torah's most explicit statement on human choice does not appear in a sermon about God's control and human control; the word uvachar'ta — "choose" — which resolves the sovereignty/agency question by divine command, is never cited.
Charge sustained: Concurrence as manufactured mystery — the doctrine of concurrence is presented as the Bible's resolution to a tension that the Reformed system itself creates through exhaustive determinism; the congregation is told to "be okay with it" (26:38) rather than being given Torah's simpler, clearer framework.
Charge sustained: Sproul's false dilemma — the binary "either evil is foreordained or God is not sovereign" (38:23–38:52) is called "airtight" when it depends on a premise (exhaustive determinism) the Tanakh does not support; Job 1:12 (permission), James 1:13 (God does not tempt), and Habakkuk 1:13 (God's holiness incompatible with evil's origin) provide a third option the sermon does not consider.
Charge sustained: Tanakh exegesis absent — across fifty-six minutes, no Hebrew word is opened, no Tanakh passage is exegeted in its own right, and the Old Testament functions exclusively as a source of proof texts for Reformed systematic conclusions.
Charge sustained: Systematic theology textbooks as co-authorities — Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology (13:29), R.C. Sproul's Chosen by God (38:23), and Charles Spurgeon's theological prose (22:35, 54:51) function alongside Scripture as authoritative sources; the congregation receives these authors' interpretations without the tools to distinguish between what the authors say and what the text says.
Selah
The sermon says: God ordains whatever comes to pass — every fly on every windowsill, every bike accident, every marriage, every mistake. Deuteronomy 30:19 says: "I have set before you life and death; choose life." If God has already ordained every choice, what does it mean that He commands you to choose? Is the command genuine — or is it a performance within a predetermined script?
Myers says he is not here to defend John Calvin. He then teaches the Westminster Confession, quotes Sproul and Grudem, outlines TULIP, and calls it "the best way we can understand these things" (5:56–6:04). If a man spends fifty-six minutes presenting a system and calls it the best available framework, at what point does explanation become defense?
R.C. Sproul says the logic is airtight: either evil is foreordained or God is not sovereign. Ya'akov (James) says God does not tempt anyone. Chavakuk (Habakkuk) says God's eyes are too pure to behold evil. If the logic requires you to override what James and Habakkuk say, whose logic is it — HaShem's or Sproul's?
The Westminster Confession was read aloud before a single verse of Scripture was opened. The Bible begins with Beresheet — "In the beginning, God created." It does not begin with a confession about what God ordained. If you are building a theology of sovereignty, where do you start — with what men in 1646 concluded, or with what HaShem in the beginning revealed?
Shalom v'shalvah — may the peace of our Abba guard your discernment, and may you have the courage to read the text before you read the system that claims to explain it.
Your brother in the Way,
Sergio
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