September Q&A with Pastor Osman of Kootenai Community Church

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All right, good morning, everyone. We're gonna start our adult Sunday school hour. Class hasn't even started and Vince is already making a distraction.

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All right, so Jess is unable to be here because of a cold or sickness in the last couple of days, so he asked me if I would do a

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Q &A for him, which I'm happy to do because I love Q &As, and we haven't done one actually since we've been in this building, so it's been over a year since we've done a

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Q &A, and I'm sure that questions pop up or, somebody's texting me right now, questions probably.

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Questions pop up and it's good to have a chance to answer them. So I've got a couple here that will sort of prime the pump and get us going and be thinking about some questions that you have.

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It can be anything related to church ministry or philosophy of ministry or theology or a passage of scripture, and just as I used to tell the

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Awana kids when we'd do an Ask the Pastor night, this is not Stump the Pastor, that's easy to do. If you asked me to name

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David's mighty men off the top of my head or the 12 tribes of Israel or the disciples, I probably wouldn't be able to do that from memory, so you could stump me, but that's not the objective.

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The objective is to raise serious questions that we can answer here this morning. So let's begin with a word of prayer, and then

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I will tell you about some of the questions that have already come up, as people already heard about Ask the

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Pastor, a question and answer. All right, let's bow our heads. Father, we do desire to dedicate this time and our morning to you, and we're grateful that we have the chance to begin this week afresh by looking at your word and being refreshed and encouraged together in your word and by our fellowship together.

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We thank you for your Holy Spirit, which lives within each and every one of us and is able to be our teacher and our guide and to give us the understanding and illumination that we need in all things and in your word.

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And it is our earnest prayer that you would be glorified through our conversation and the questions that are asked, and my answers help them to be clear and concise and precise and according to scripture.

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And we pray that in our time together here that your glory and your grace may be manifested through your word to your people.

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And we pray that that may be the case, both now and forever, and that you would be glorified here. We ask this in Christ's name, amen.

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Oh yes, it was a question. Josh Comstock heard

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I was doing a Q &A, so he decided he was gonna ask a question, but I'm gonna ignore Josh's question and start with one that I was planning on answering already.

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This was a question I received this week and I gave a brief answer, and so I'm gonna begin with this just to sort of prime the pump and we'll see where it goes from here.

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Would you mind sharing where your church stands on predestination Calvinism? Wondering if your interpretation is

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God's foreknowledge of who will respond is construed as predestination, or do you believe

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God has only chosen or afforded salvation to a prescribed people? And I'll put the question in other terms because it is significant.

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Do we believe as a church, and I wouldn't say that this is the belief of everybody who attends this church, but this is gonna certainly be the belief of what is preached and taught here and what is reflected in our doctrinal statement.

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So the question is, do we as a church believe that God looks down through time and chooses those whom he foresees or foreknows will respond to the offer of the gospel, and so he chooses them on that basis, or do we believe that God chooses a people out of the mass of humanity and that that choice is not based upon what he foresees we will do, but it is based upon the good pleasure of his and the kind intention of his will?

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That's the way of looking at it. Typically, those two views are called the Arminian and the Calvinist perspective. So we would be, in our perspective on the doctrine of election, we would be a

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Calvinist church. I would consider myself a Calvinist. That is, I do not believe that God looked down through time and foresaw who it was that would trust him and respond to the offer of the gospel because that means that at some point,

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God did not know that, and then looking down through time, he figured that out, found that out, and then he chose us on that basis. If that's the case, then his election doesn't do anything because it would have already happened that way, and so God's choice doesn't secure anything for anybody.

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It's just God saying, okay, you would do that? Well, I agree with your decision, but in Scripture, salvation is not based upon our response to salvation, or our response to the offer of the gospel.

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Election's not based upon that. In Scripture, election is based upon the kind intention of God's will, that before time began, in eternity past,

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God chose a people that he would bring and draw to himself. He would send his son to pay their debt, and he would secure their salvation through Christ's death on the cross, and then he would infallibly draw those people to himself, grant to them repentance, and grant to them faith, and so that they might believe, he would give them eternal life, and he would raise them up on the last day.

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So that is what I believe. So the short answer, that's a long answer to that question. Those are my two perspectives.

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So I kind of, those are the two perspectives, and I gave mine, I kind of laid that out for this person, and then they responded this way.

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Are you saying, and there's other questions surrounding this, but I'm getting to the meat of this, are you saying there are individuals born who are not, quote, his people, unquote, and have no chance to become one of his children?

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So are you saying that there are people born who are not his people, and have no chance to become one of his children?

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And my response to that was, I do believe that there are people who are born who are not of his sheep, because that's what

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Jesus said in John chapter 10. He said to the Pharisees, you do not believe because you're not my sheep.

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My sheep hear my voice, and they come to me, and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. That's the promise. So there is a group of people who are born,

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Pharisees, who are not his sheep. So by his people, how I would describe that as his people,

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I would say that there are people who belong to the Savior before they are born, and before the Savior ever came into the world. Those people are not prescribed or outlined because of something that we do.

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We don't put ourselves into that class or that group. Those people are his because, as Jesus said in John 6, and John 10, and John 17, the

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Father has given to him a people. The Father chose them. That's what scripture says when it talks about the four ordination, the predestination, the election of God.

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The Father chose those people, and gave them to the Son as a love gift. The Son agreed to come into the world, to be incarnated, and to die, to redeem those people whom the

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Father has chosen. And so are there people born who are not his people? Yes, Jesus identified the Pharisees as not his sheep.

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And that was the explanation for their unbelief. You do not believe because you're not my sheep. Jesus didn't say you're not my sheep because you won't believe.

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He said the reason for your unbelief is that you are not my sheep. If you were my sheep, you would hear my voice, you would come to me,

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I would give you eternal life. But because they did not believe, that was an evidence that they did not belong to the

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Son. They were not his. So there are people who are born into this world who are not chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.

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But does that mean that they have no chance to become his children? The only reason that you, and I would never use the term chance to describe why it is that we become his children.

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I would say that the reason they do not become his children is because they are not chosen. That is correct. But in the end, those who reject

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Christ get exactly what it is that they desire and get exactly what it is that they deserve. They both desire and deserve separation from God.

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They do not want to be part of his people. They do not want to belong to him any more than the Pharisees wanted to belong to him.

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The Pharisees weren't knocking on the door of salvation and saying, please let us in, let us in. And then Jesus saying, nope, you can't come to me,

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I won't allow it. I know you want to, but I haven't chosen you, the Father hasn't given you to me, and therefore you're not included in this.

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And though you want to have the chance to become my sheep, I have prohibited it because I'm just, I'm stingy with my gifts and stingy with my grace, and therefore you're not allowed in.

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That's not how the Savior responded to it. The Pharisees, they opposed him, they hated him, they expressed their rebellion, and in the expression of their rebellion, they demonstrated or showed that they were not his sheep and did not belong to him.

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And then Jesus said, this is why you don't believe, because you're not mine. So the short answer to that question is yes, there are a group of people who are born into this world who do not belong to him.

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And we don't know who those people are and who they aren't. And that's why we preach the gospel to all the nations and to everybody that we come into contact with.

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Because we don't know ahead of time who it is that will respond to that gracious offer of salvation. The only reason we are saved is because God has done the work.

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He chose us in Christ, he opened our eyes, he drew us to the Savior, Christ paid the price for our sins, he's granted us repentance and faith.

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Everything that we have that makes us one of his people is a gift of divine grace from him and has nothing to do with any merit or ability or willingness on our behalf.

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Because if God had looked down through time and saw who it was who would believe, what would he have seen? Would he have seen a bunch of people believing?

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No, he would have seen nobody believing, because nobody will come to him. Nobody could come to him unless the

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Father draws him, John 6, 44 says. So if God had just looked down through time to learn who it was who would respond to salvation, he would have seen nobody responding.

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Because men are dead in their trespasses and sins and unable to repent, unable to turn, unable to believe, unwilling to come.

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We are at war with God and enmity with him, hostile in our minds and hearts through wicked works. We hate him, we hate the truth and we hate the light.

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God must do something in his sovereign grace to change that condition from first to last so that we will respond to the gospel.

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So that is the answer to that question. Yes. Am I correct in saying that if my grandchildren are chosen and are born again, are their children, can their children be brought into the kingdom?

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I mean, has God chosen even those children who have not been born yet?

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Would it be fair, okay, a short way of asking that question is does God's foreknowledge include those people who have not yet been born, correct?

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His electing grace, does his electing grace take place in time or in eternity past? That's a short way of asking that question.

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So that right now, has God already chosen even people who have not yet been born whether or not they will be saved and chosen by his grace to save them?

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And the answer to that is God's electing work of choosing takes place in eternity past. The outworking of that sovereign decree and that electing grace takes place in time.

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So I cannot know whether or not my grandchildren will be saved until they are saved and redeemed. I'm not gonna know that because God has not revealed the identity of the elect.

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Yes, if anybody does get saved, then God knew my salvation before I was born. Yeah, right, so he not only knew it, he predestined it, he predestined me to adoption of sons and granted me every grace that's in Christ Jesus even before he spoke a single

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Adam into existence. He did all of that and the same thing is true of not only me, but my great, great ancestors as well as all of my great, great grandchildren if they are to be born.

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If something happens to them, if there's salvation at all for them, it will be because God has done a sovereign work that started in eternity past.

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Yes, Dan. Yeah, how would

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I respond to somebody who asks why would God elect some and not others? I would respond by saying it's amazing to me that God elects any.

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That really is the question. Why would God choose any? Not some as opposed to others. Now, the basis of God's choice is not revealed to us in Scripture other than what

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Ephesians one says that it is according to the kind intention of his will. So why God would choose me and not my neighbor next to me is not revealed in Scripture other than it pleased the

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Father to do it this way. So that I owe my election and thus my salvation to God and to God's grace alone and the real answer to that question is, see the assumption behind that question is that everybody deserves to go to heaven and it's niggardly of God, stingy of God to only allow some people in when everybody deserves it.

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That's the assumption behind the question. So I would identify that assumption as being unbiblical and erroneous.

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None of us deserve heaven. So the real question is why would God demonstrate or give grace to any? Even if he were to grace only one person in the history of humanity with the salvation that we get to enjoy and allow us to inherit the kingdom, that is still grace that is immeasurable and untold.

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And yet he has done this for countless millions. And if it weren't for his grace in doing this, his sovereign decree and what he has done for his elect, if it weren't for that, nobody would be saved.

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None of us would be because none of us would desire it. Yeah. Yeah, and what

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Jan just pointed out was Romans nine is also an answer to that very question is what right does the clay have to say to the potter, why have you made me like this?

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And really that's what all the questions to divine sovereign election result in or end up being is just the clay shaking its fist at the potter and saying you have no right to do this.

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And really Paul's argument is who are you, oh man, to answer back to God? And the potter has right to do whatever he wants with whatever clay he chooses.

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And he does, and the fact that any are saved proves that he has made some vessels for honor, which we're very grateful for.

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Yep, Peter. Okay.

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So now this gets into a related doctrine, which is the scope and the nature of what Christ did in the atonement.

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And your question is probably coming back from a comment that was posted on one of the, okay, he's taking credit for it, but somebody else posted a comment on a

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YouTube, one of the YouTube videos that said in relation to John 3 .16, does that mean all people are predestined?

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Because it says whosoever will believe or all those who believe have eternal life. And so people confuse that and say, well, if anybody can believe, as John 3 .16

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seems to suggest, then that means that everybody would have to be predestined. But John 3 .16 is not addressing the scope of the atonement, the nature of the body or the limit or the particularity of the atonement of Christ.

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John 3 .16 is simply saying that God so loved the world, that is, all people, and I would say that God has a love for all people.

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He has a particular love for his elect, whom he redeems, but he demonstrates his love for man or mankind by sending his son to die so that whoever it is that believes, all the believing ones, everyone who does believe, has eternal life.

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That's the demonstration of the love of God. So that verse has nothing to do with did Christ die for the elect only or did

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Christ die for the sins of all people? That's a different discussion. So I will go ahead and get into that discussion since you raised it.

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And here is the short answer to that. It was the intention, I hinted at this a couple of weeks ago, and this is what actually raised the question on the

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YouTube channel. And I said that the intention of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in salvation are all one.

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And so there is a Trinitarian will in the salvation of God's elect people. So it is the

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Father who chooses, it is the Son who pays the debt, and it is the

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Spirit who grants eternal life to them. That's the economic trinity, as it were.

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Each person of the trinity, each person of the triune Godhead has a function, a role in salvation.

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They work in harmony with one another, never at cross purposes, always accomplishing the will of the triune

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God in the salvation of God's people. So if the Father has limited, in a sense, the scope or the parameters of the elect, and he has chosen who it is that are his elect, that's what we are called in Scripture, if the

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Father has chosen that, then the role of the Son is to come and to secure the salvation of those whom the

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Father has chosen. In other words, the Son was not trying to save a whole bunch of people who did not belong to him.

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The Son came to do what the Father sent him to do, and that is to pay the debt for any and all who will believe, that's the universal scope of it, but it's universal to all whom the

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Father has chosen. So that the Son, having secured their debt, the Holy Spirit then is not trying to apply salvation and the work of Christ to a whole bunch of people for whom the

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Father did not choose. So that the purposes of the triune God are all the same. The Father elects them, the

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Son pays the debt, and the Spirit resurrects them. That's the triune God at work in the doctrine of salvation. So did

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Christ pay for the sins of all people who have ever lived? I don't believe that that is possible, nor do I believe that that is true.

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I believe that the Son perfectly paid all of the sin debt for any and all who will believe, all of the elect, all those whom the

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Father has chosen. Everybody believes in a limited atonement of some type, and this is key to remember.

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Everybody believes in some form of a limited atonement. That is that the salvation or the atonement of Jesus Christ is limited in some respect.

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You either limit the scope of it, which I do, or you limit the power of it, which Arminians do. So I limit the scope of it, and I say it absolutely perfectly, infallibly, and without any possibility of failure, secures the salvation of every last person for whom it was given.

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Not only does it satisfy the wrath of God, it secures every blessing intended by the

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Father for every person whom he has chosen, and it does so infallibly so that it cannot fail. Christ cannot fail to save anybody for whom he has died.

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So I would limit the scope of the atonement, but I believe in an infinite power, an unlimited and infallible power, whereas the

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Arminian, the other people who say Christ died for everybody, they believe that the scope is unlimited. He paid the sin debt for the

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Amorite high priest who was suffering the flames of eternal damnation even while Christ was hanging on the cross, and Pharaoh, for whom

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God hardened his heart to demonstrate his wrath and power to Moses into a watching world, Christ paid and perfectly atoned for all of his sins as well as all of the elect.

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In other words, everybody sins, but that death of Christ doesn't actually secure the salvation of any, because now, even though the sin debt is paid, what remains to be actuated is the atonement of Christ by our belief.

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In other words, we make the atonement effective by believing in it, and then it is applied to us. But the key in that scenario is our belief or my willingness, and that's not what

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Scripture teaches. And I don't believe that, look, if there are people in hell whose all of their sins have been paid for, then why are they in hell?

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What are they suffering for? Scripture says they're suffering because they're lawbreakers, for they're lying, they're blasphemy, they're stealing, they're adultery, they're fornication, they're immorality, they're gossip, they're slander, they're idolatry, et cetera.

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Well, if all those sins have been paid for, then what are they suffering? You're telling me that there's somebody in hell who can say,

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I have been crucified with Christ, and all of my sins have been paid for, and the eternal blessings of all of salvation have been secured on my behalf, and yet they are in hell?

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I don't believe that that is right at all. I believe that it's a besmirch on the justice of God to suggest that he paid the debt for a whole bunch of people that he then, not only did he punish

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Christ in their stead, but then he punishes them for the very same sins which have already been paid for and atoned for in the death of Christ.

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That's double jeopardy, and that cuts against the grain of God's justice. Yes? In 2

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Peter 3, 9, it says, the Lord is not slow, but His promise is sometimes slow. His patience forward, you know, it wasn't for any to perish, but for all.

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Is that all the one that God has chosen? Yeah, in 2

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Peter 3, 9, God is not slack concerning His promises, but is waiting for all to come to repentance.

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So the question in that context is who is the all intended by Peter? To whom is Peter writing? He's writing to Christians. So it's just the

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Christians. It is what God is waiting for is for all His elect ones to come to saving faith.

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Jesus said I have other sheep which are not of this fold and I will gather them in and there will be one sheep one fold with one shepherd. Yeah, that is right.

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God is not ringing His hands up in heaven waiting to see if people are gonna turn around and repent.

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Right, is Vladimir Putin gonna repent and Brad Pitt and Samuel L.

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Jackson? Are these guys gonna repent or not? God is not there waiting for people to find out whether or not they're going to repent or waiting for them to do something which

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He knows they will not do if in fact they will not do it. So He is waiting until all of His elect ones are gonna be gathered in because Christ said

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I will raise them all up and I will lose none of them. And so the plan and purpose of God is to wait until there's the gathering in of every last person whom

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He has chosen and given to the Son and when that one is saved, then that's it. And He's gonna wrap it up and He will come and He will do exactly what scripture says

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He will do. All right, any other questions on that subject? None?

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Okay. I'm trying to think if there was something that was connected to that that I was gonna bring up.

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Okay, somebody asked before the service if I could define dispensationalism and describe what that is.

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And this is something different from what we've been discussing because whether you are a dispensationalist or a covenant theologian in terms of how you view

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God's plan for the end times, whichever side of that coin you fall on, you could still affirm and believe everything that I just said.

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So for instance, R .C. Sproul would believe everything I just said, though he is a covenant theologian. And everything

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I just said in terms of salvation and God's election and the payment of Christ, et cetera. He's a covenant theologian.

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John MacArthur would agree with everything I've just said and he's a dispensationalist. So in other words, so these are two different theological camps that there is some overlap between them.

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Typically, dispensationalists do not believe everything that I just said. And typically, covenant theologians would affirm everything

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I just said. But as I said, there's a little bit of overlap between them. So what is dispensationalism? Dispensationalism, as I would define, and I think that historically there's been a number of different kinds of definitions of dispensationalism.

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Dispensationalism, as first articulated, at least in our modern times in the early 19th century by C .I.

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Schofield, would be a little bit different than dispensationalism as articulated or taught today by, for instance,

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John MacArthur. I think that there would be a little bit of a difference between how they would cash that out. But basically, the two different theological camps are these.

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On the one side, and this is not me, I'm a dispensationalist in case you're wondering, where is Jim? Okay, I'm a dispensationalist.

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On the one side would be covenant theology. Covenant theology would say that God, they would go all the way back before creation. This is why everybody in this group would agree with what

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I just said regarding election and the scope of the atonement. A covenant theologian would go all the way back before creation and say, God made a covenant, and that covenant was within the

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Trinitarian Godhead. The Father covenanted with the Son, and the Son covenanted with the Father regarding the salvation of his people.

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There were decrees that were made, there were acts of predestination that took place, and in the eternal councils of the

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Godhead, this plan to redeem man took place. Now, in time, there's the outworking of this eternal covenant, and that is expressed when

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God makes a covenant with Abraham that is enlarged and added to, and then God makes the covenant with, sorry,

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Adam. Adam, and then with Abraham, and then, Adam, sorry, Adam, and then Noah, and then

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Abraham, and then later David, and then there's the new covenant with us, and that all of these are part of one large unfolding and singular and advancing and expanding covenants.

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So there's one covenant that is made that begins small and ends up enveloping all of the nations, as it were, and all people's

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Gentiles. So it's an expanding covenant, but it's primarily multiple expressions of one singular covenant.

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That's what a covenant theologian would say. Now, a dispensationalist would say, and we would make the distinction, that there is a difference between people who, between Jews and the church, so that Old Testament Israel and the church are not the same entity, they're not the same thing.

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These are two different people groups. And so, as a dispensationalist, I would say, I have no problem affirming that God made a covenant with the

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Son, the Father made a covenant with the Son, and eternity passed, but I would distinguish between the way that God worked in the days of Adam and the way that God worked in the days of Abraham and the way that God works now under the new covenant, that these are different dispensations, or administrations, that's what a dispensation means, different administrations of God's redemptive plan, so that he does have an

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Old Testament people to whom he has promised a kingdom and blessings, et cetera. He had promised that to Abraham, and he added to that promise and further clarified that promise with David by promising to put a son of David's on his throne and rule in Jerusalem, and the whole unfolding of the

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Old Testament is God's plan for those people. But there is also now, under the new covenant, in the new covenant, because Hebrews, I think, teaches that those old things have passed away, so we have a new priesthood, a new priest, a new covenant, et cetera, built on better promises, as Hebrews says.

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But now, under the new covenant, God has a people that doesn't just incorporate Israel, it is expanded to include any and all who will believe,

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Gentiles as well, Gentile nations. And that this is the meaning of the term world, as you read it oftentimes in the

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New Testament, that this is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Not that every sin is atoned for, but that this world incorporates now not just Jews, but Gentiles as well, all the nations.

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This is the Lamb of God provided for the salvation of all nations. So any and all who will come to him from all of the nations, irrespective of their background or their ethnicity, can have eternal life.

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So now we have a different group of people called the church and those two are not to be confused, I don't believe.

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There's no overlap. The church is never called, or Israel's never called the church in the Old Testament, the church is never called Israel in the

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New Testament. So these are two separate and distinct people groups and God now is administering his redemptive plan for the church in the church age in a different way than he did under the old covenant with Old Testament Israel.

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And so then the question becomes, what is God's plan then for these two different people groups? As a dispensationalist,

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I would say that God's plan is to complete the church age and then to wrap up and fulfill all the promises that he gave to Abraham and to David and to David's descendants.

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All of those promises will be fulfilled, but now as the church, we get grafted in to the fulfillment of all those promises.

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We get blessed with all of that as well. So now as those who are in the church and the body of Christ, we get the salvation that is promised to any who believe by faith as Abraham did and we get the kingdom and we get eternal life and we get heaven and we get to dwell with God.

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These are all the things that were promised to believers in Old Testament Israel and now as those in the church age, we've been grafted in to that.

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We get that as well. And so that's the difference between covenant and dispensational. So a dispensationalist is one who believes that God has different ways of administering his plan of redemption, his redemptive purposes in different time periods.

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And some dispensationalists, they have seven dispensations that they lay out. Hard, fast rules, time periods, dates when these things started and ended.

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And I prefer to, I would be more where John MacArthur would be and say, he uses the term leaky dispensationalist, meaning

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I don't think that necessarily those lines can be firmly drawn. I think that the one line that you have to firmly draw is old covenant and new covenant, right?

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Israel and the church. And beyond that, in Old Testament Israel, I have a hard time necessarily affirming or at least

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I wouldn't die for all of the distinctions that a lot of dispensationalists have made. But I think if you recognize

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Israel and the church are different and if you recognize that we have two covenants and you recognize there are two priesthoods and you recognize there are two testaments and two peoples of God, then you have to be a dispensationalist.

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Is this related, is this separate or connected, Peter? Okay, Jen? Okay. Peter, did you have a question?

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I'll grab that. Yeah. Dispensationalist.

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So the question is, are all the covenants completed or some of them completed? Are we still in some of them? That is where dispensationalists are gonna differ for a little bit in how they would work out some of that because some dispensationalists would say, well, we're still grafted in, as it were, to the

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Abrahamic covenant. The Abrahamic covenant is still in effect, but the covenant that God made with Noah is no longer in effect.

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Some of the things of Abraham's covenant relate to us because we're Abraham's descendants by faith.

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And in the new covenant is the expression of all of these multitude blessings of God. So I would say that we are still going to, though we are not under David's covenant, we're not under Abraham's covenant, per se, that we are, and nor are we under the

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Mosaic covenant made with Moses and the law, that we are still going to benefit from many of the things that were promised and will ultimately be fulfilled from those covenants.

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So we're not under the Mosaic covenant at all, which is why we don't have to do circumcision and Sabbath -keeping and law -keeping and dietary laws and restrictions and all of that.

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There are aspects of those covenants that are set aside, and we're not talking about moral commands. We're talking about the way that God dealt with the nation of Israel and things that were specific to them.

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Yes. But Mosaic covenant is done. I have no problem saying that that's completely set aside.

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I think that the argument of Hebrews makes that, and we're gonna see that in chapter seven, eight, nine, and 10 as we go through that.

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So Jan's question was, how is infant baptism related to the view of the covenant? Well, because a covenant theologian would say that we are, that the church and Israel are the same entity, that they're one people of God, called

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Israel in the Old Testament, called the church in the New Testament. That's the case that they would make, because in covenant theology, you can't have two covenants or two groups of people.

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You have to have them be one. They would look at the Lord's Supper and say that that has replaced

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Passover, and that baptism has replaced circumcision.

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So though we are no longer required to circumcise our sons on the eighth day, that the sign of the covenant for us now, we are the same people of God, the sign of the covenant for us now has gone from being circumcision to being baptism.

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That's the argument that they would make. Well, because you have to have, yeah, so the question is, how did they get that?

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And it's because of the assumptions that I think you bring to the whole, it's because of the presuppositions that you bring to the enterprise.

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You're presupposing that these are one people and not two. And so if you're presupposing that these are one people, not two, then you have to be able to explain these signs of the covenant and see them overlap, or at least one replace the other.

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And yet there is no place, so that's how they get there. They bring the presuppositions to the table and say, these have to be one people instead of two, and therefore, we would expect that these signs would overlap, or the one would become the other, or one would replace the other.

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So that's how they get to that. I don't think that they can argue that from Scripture. Now, they will try and, I think, again, bringing presuppositions to the table, they will try and make the argument from the

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New Testament, and here's how they would argue it from the New Testament. They would say that you read through the book of Acts, and you see that on at least three occasions, it is

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Lydia and somebody in Corinth, and Cornelius, when they believed, they were baptized, they and all of their household, and they would include infants in that.

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And they would say, so here, there's an expression of a whole household being baptized. Now, I baptized whole households and never baptized an infant.

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So you have to assume that there are infants involved in this household in order for it, and I think that the context of those verses makes clear.

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It's all who believed who were baptized. Any in the household who believed, they were the ones that were baptized.

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So they would argue from that. Then they would argue and say that this baptism was assumed as part of, since this covenant exists, that we are to baptize infants as an expression of our belief that they are inside the covenant, even though they may or may not ever profess to be believers or become believers later on.

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It's an expression, it's a mark that they are part of a covenant community. And so I would baptize my infant because they're part of our church and they're part of the covenant community, even though later on they may stray away from it.

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So you have this weird thing happening throughout church history, in particular the last couple of hundred years, where you have people who have been baptized as infants who are not believers and then die in unbelief.

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And then you have in the church people who have never been baptized who are genuine believers. That's why we can have a whole bunch of baptized unbelievers and unbaptized believers in the modern church in America.

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So that's the argument that they would make to get there. And to counter that, I would simply point out, in the book of Acts, I think there was a perfect opportunity in the book of Acts for these things to be clarified.

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In the early church, when the Judaizing Pharisees came in after Paul into the regions of Galatia and said, okay, it's good that you believe, it's good that you have faith in Jesus, and that's all fine and dandy, but now you must be baptized in order to fulfill the commands of Moses.

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And this, of course, created quite a controversy because Paul was going in and people were being, or sorry, not baptized, circumcised.

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I said baptized, circumcised. You must be circumcised in order to fulfill the law of Moses. And Paul, of course, was going in and preaching the gospel and people were believing and being filled with the spirit and he was ordaining elders, and none of these people in some of these

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Gentile regions were being circumcised. And so this created a controversy, a rift in the church, and you see it resolved in Acts chapter 15 when they called the

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Jerusalem Council and all of the elders got there, the heads of the church in Jerusalem, and Paul and Barnabas were there, and Timothy wasn't with him, that's 16.

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Paul and Barnabas were there. Titus is there, Galatians chapter one says. And Paul came and he presented his gospel to them.

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So this is what I'm preaching. And Peter said, yes, I can attest to that. Cornelius, whom I presented the gospel to, he believed and he was filled with the spirit and he was never circumcised.

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And all of the apostles were in agreement. Yes, Gentiles can believe and be filled with the spirit, inherit all of the blessings promised to us under the new covenant, and never be circumcised.

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And so when the apostles wrote a letter back to the Gentile churches, they basically said, look, for the sake of your

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Jewish brethren, abstain from the things of which are really offensive to them. Rare meat, eating of blood, sexual immorality, and some things like that.

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Abstain from these things, but enjoy unity and peace in all of the churches. If baptism replaced circumcision,

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Acts 15 would read entirely differently. Because you would have the apostles saying, look, Gentiles, don't you understand that you're grafted into this thing and that you are the

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Old Testament Israel, even though you're Gentiles? So now instead of being circumcised, you need to be baptizing your infants.

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That's what Acts chapter 16 would say. But they never say that. That case is never made. Baptism is discussed, circumcision is discussed, and not once, not once, does the apostle to the

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Gentiles, or Peter, ever describe baptism as replacing circumcision as the sign of the covenant, and therefore we should baptize infants.

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They would say we should baptize infants because they circumcised infants and eight days old under the old covenant.

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So they would say baptism has replaced that, therefore we need to baptize infants. But as Dave Rich pointed out, and I think this is a great observation, if baptism has replaced circumcision as the sign of the covenant, then why do we baptize women?

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That I think is a fantastic argument. I'd like to know what the answer to that is. Why do we baptize women?

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If we're to baptize infants, it was only male infants that were circumcised. And so if we are to baptize infants to replace male infants being circumcised, then why do we baptize women?

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Infants or adults, why do we baptize them? If these two signs are the same then only the manner or the means of the sign has changed.

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All right, we've got two minutes left. Any questions?

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Cornell? I suppose you can start.

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That's right. Okay, so the question is can I address the concept that one can not have presuppositions?

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It is impossible to approach anything without certain presuppositions. A presupposition is something you supposed to be true beforehand.

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You're presupposing something. So when I come to scripture to study scripture, I'm bringing all kinds of presuppositions to the table.

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That God's word is authoritative, that it is inspired, that it is inerrant, that it is infallible, that it doesn't contradict itself, that God exists, that truth can be known, that I can know the truth, the

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Holy Spirit exists, that he will illuminate me, that God's word is worth studying. There's all kinds of presuppositions that I bring to the table.

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Atheists bring all kinds of presuppositions to the table when they want to discuss atheism. The fact is that everybody, there's no such thing as neutrality.

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This is called the myth of neutrality. Jason Lyle talked about it at our spring conference. He talked about the myth of neutrality. Nobody is neutral.

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Everybody brings presuppositions to the table. The question is are you aware of your presuppositions and can you identify what presuppositions you're bringing to any and every discussion?

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And it is impossible to approach any discussion without presuppositions. So recently, and this was brought up because I posted something on Facebook, somebody put an ad in the paper for a naked

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Bible study. And it didn't mean naked Bible study in the sense that you show up naked, which this was clarified, but it meant naked

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Bible study in the sense that we just show up with our Bible and our Bible alone without any, and this is what the ad said, without any preconceived doctrines ahead of time.

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So we don't preconceive or bring any suppositions to the table. We just show up with the

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Bible and the Bible alone. Well, can you identify all of the presuppositions that are necessary for you to show up?

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You have to presuppose that presuppositions are bad in order to want to study

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Scripture without any presuppositions. You have to presuppose that that's a bad thing. You have to presuppose that it is possible to not have presuppositions.

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You see how self -contradictory this is? You have to presuppose that the Bible is even worthy of being studied if you want to just study it.

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You have to presuppose that a bare naked Bible study with just the Bible and no preconceived doctrine is necessary.

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And you have to presuppose that one can actually come to Scripture without any doctrine, but you can't because the minute

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I open this up, I'm already presupposing that truth can be known, that truth is revealed, that there is a

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God, that this is authoritative, that it is inspired, that it is inerrant, and that it is worthy of my study.

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So there's just off the top of my head, I don't know what, eight or 10 presuppositions that you bring, but just to open up your Bible, you have to presuppose eight or 10 different things.

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So as Christians, we should never ask, can I be neutral in this circumstance or in this discussion?

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Nobody is neutral. And when I have conversations with atheists or unbelievers, you have to identify their presuppositions, right?

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What I did this earlier with the question that was asked, I said, the presupposition behind the question is that everybody is worthy of going to heaven.

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So you always have, it's always good to step back and say, okay, what assumptions are we bringing to the table in this discussion? An atheist brings certain assumptions to the table when he assumes that science is true and reliable, that his senses can be trusted, that truth can be known, that the world is actually as he perceives it, he presupposes all of that.

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He presupposes that truth is reliable, that the laws of nature stay the same. All of these presuppositions are things that as Christians we affirm because they fit a

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Christian worldview, but they're not things that an atheist can presuppose because they don't make sense in an atheistic worldview. Is it quick?

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Okay, what does it mean to say that Jesus and the Father are consubstantial? This was asked online to whoever's watching, that's what that question's about.

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What does it mean to say Jesus and the Father are consubstantial? We would affirm the consubstantiality of all three members of the

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Trinity, and it simply means that they are of the same substance, that they share the same substance. So there's no distinguishing between the substance of the

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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We distinguish between the persons, but not the substance. They all are the one God. Not parts of the same

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God, but they are all the one God. So Christ shares the full nature of all divinity in its fullness, as does the

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Spirit, and as does the Father. So they are con with overlapping the same, sharing that substance.

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That's what it is. The substance or the nature, the very essence of deity. They're consubstantial. Our doctrinal statement actually says consubstantial, and that's what we mean.

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All right. Well, I have to preach here in about a half an hour, so let's close our time in prayer, and I'll try and get my mind done to that subject.

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Melchizedek, that should be fun, right? Let's bow our heads. Father, we're so grateful for the salvation that you have made, not just available, but you have made secure on behalf of all who are yours.

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We thank you for the certainty that we can have in our redemption and the work of Christ and your ability and effectiveness in making that salvation applied to all who have trusted you, all whom you've chosen, all whom you've loved for the foundation of the world.

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And we thank you for this opportunity this morning to reflect upon some of these things and to fellowship together. We ask your blessing upon not only our conversation that is to follow, our fellowship that is to follow, but also our worship service together.