Ephesians 1 and Provisionism

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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it was prompted by the material on the screen right now, which is a meme that was posted by Layton Flowers, Soteriology 101, and it says predestination, a destination is marked out beforehand for whosoever believes in Christ.

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Calvinism versus provisionism, and then you have this graphic. Predestined, who is predestined to what?

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Under the Calvinism side, who equals individuals mysteriously selected by God for no revealed reasons before the world began.

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To what? To become believers in Christ by irresistible means so as to receive the blessings for those chosen to be in him.

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Then provisionism says who is the faithful in Christ, Ephesians 1, 1 through 2, whosoever puts their trust in him,

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John 3, 16. And to what? To receive the blessings promised to all who trust in Christ, to be conformed to his image and made holy and blameless,

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Romans 8, 29 and Ephesians 1, 4. And so I, when we looked at this and I saw this,

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I responded to it on on Twitter, and I think it's important, it's important enough to look at these things and to point some of the most important aspects of this out.

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First of all, this, a destination is marked out beforehand as a definition of predestination is based upon a very common linguistic error.

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It is taking the English translation, predestination, and focusing upon that second part of the word, destination, when that's not a part of the original

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Greek. There isn't anything about destinations in Proorizo. Literally, it's before the horizon, but even then you have to be very careful.

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Hopefully we all know that you cannot simply take a word and chop it up and say, this is what it meant.

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So we all know, you've all heard someone say, ekklesia means ek out of kaleo, called out, the called out ones.

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Well, that is the transparent history of the word in Greek, but that's not what the word means.

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And you've probably heard, if you look at, for example, the word television, you've got tele, far, and vision, see.

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When we say television, we don't mean Farsi. Normally we're talking about a substantive, we're talking about an actual thing, that's a television right there, right?

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And so just to look at predestination and go, well, you know, predestination is like getting on an airplane that's flying to Chicago.

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Everybody who gets on this airplane will fly to Chicago. The destination has been preset as if this is predestination.

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That's not what we're talking about. And so the provisionist idea is, well, what predestination is, is a destination is marked out beforehand for whosoever believes in Christ.

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And so this whosoever then becomes the capacity, the ability that everyone has, and then predestination is just, well, there's a destination.

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The destination is glorification, the destination is heaven, the destination is all the benefits of salvation, you see.

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And so predestination becomes something that is not a sovereign choice of God, it's no longer specific with an object, it's just simply a part of an overall scheme.

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So the choice on God's part is that the end result is going to be this, but who's gonna be involved, you've managed to move that out of the focus, which of course is what the focus was down through history as people looked at these things because they saw what was being discussed.

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Now, we remember that Leighton Flowers claims to be a former Calvinist. As I've said many times, there are many people who knew him at that time that have told me, news to us, but the wording of what

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Calvinism says here, of course, is completely different than anything that we would ourselves say.

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And as soon as I made reference to the fact that, you know, it's interesting,

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Rich keeps telling me that when I speak in this room, that I talk way too loud.

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I've figured out, I think, why. I look primarily at this camera and so I'm thinking

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I have to be heard by that camera when all I have to be heard by is this little thing right here.

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So I could talk much more quietly and save my voice a great deal if I did not talk so loudly in this room, but I bet you anything that if I try to do that right now, within five minutes,

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I'll be back to where I was. But let's see if Rich can keep up with me, okay?

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So let me try to save my voice and not talk so loud.

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Not that there's anyone on my voice at the moment, but anyway. All right, who is predestined?

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Now it's interesting, even in the this side, you still have a who, but the who are people who have the, who are the faithful in Christ.

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We're going to see this is from Ephesians chapter 1. We're going to look at how this is not what Paul was saying.

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And then, whosoever puts their trust in him, we all know John 3 16 and other places like that.

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That's pas hapistun, everyone believing. None of that addresses is that a capacity that is inherent in all human beings, no matter what their spiritual condition is.

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In provisionism, since you are providing, what God does is he provides a mechanism.

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He provides a way, but he does not give specific saving grace to certain individuals that he does not give to others.

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That element is missing in provisionism, because all you're doing is providing the opportunity, and then others can then go from there.

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So, but you still have a who, even over here, but the who here is determined by the nature of those individuals.

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Who here, notice what is said, individuals mysteriously selected by God.

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So our first is right here, mysteriously. Mysteriously. That's not the

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New Testament use of the term musterion. A mystery in the

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New Testament is something that was withheld from, not known from preceding ages, but now has been revealed in the coming of Christ in the

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New Covenant. This is meant to talk about mystery.

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The idea is, of course, that unconditional election in Reformed Theology specifically says that it is not what

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I do that brings about my being chosen. I am

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NOT choice meets. Remember? Remember. Choice meets.

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I did not make that up, okay? I'm not the one who has video out there talking about people who are, who receive grace from God, are the choice meets.

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All right? That's latent flowers, all right? This is a clear recognition that when he talks about the ability to be humble, the ability to be spiritually sensitive, that no matter how hard they try, there is an assertion that there are certain people in the unregenerate state who have greater spiritual capacity than other people in the unregenerate state.

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And it's all up to them, because these are natural abilities. All people have them.

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That's why they deny federal headship, that's why they deny original sin. Have to.

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That's why they actually go beyond Roman Catholicism in their assertions on these matters.

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Anyways, this idea of mysteriously is meant to communicate something,

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I guess, that when God makes a free choice, that God can do so without that choice being determined by what man does.

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So I guess you would say that God mysteriously chose to create. God mysteriously chose to enter into his own creation in Christ Jesus.

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I guess that's what mysterious means. Mysteriously selected, of course the term would be chosen by God for no revealed reasons.

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Now, Leighton Flowers knew that that was an inaccurate statement, and how do

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I know that? Because of the fact that as soon as I mentioned that I was going to address this on the dividing line, he tweeted, now

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I know that what in reality, what you're going to say, and I'm not saying that there isn't in Reformed theology a concept of the glory of God, and that it's for the glory of God, and that's what that's what you're going to say, but the idea is it's no revealed reasons in regards to what?

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In regards to the who, in regards to what they have done. So what that means is over here, the who is, why are they quote -unquote chosen?

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Because they're faithful, because they are the whosoever who put their trust, it's because of what they do.

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It's because of their placing faith in God, their humbling themselves, their repentance.

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That's how they become the who, over against no revealed reasons for why they become the who, and that is it's

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God's good pleasure, and that's not a evidently a sufficiently revealed reason.

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And what are they predestined to? Well, here the emphasis is to become believers in Christ by irresistible means, and again this is, sometimes

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Reformed people listen to this kind of description and just go, what?

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Okay, yes, when the Spirit of God works in the life of the elect to bring them to regeneration and raise them to spiritual life, he can do so at the exact time he chooses to do so, and hence his work is irresistible, because we are spiritually dead, we are then raised to spiritual life.

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And so in our unregenerate state, we simply walk in the ways of the flesh, but to believe, to repent, to walk in holiness, to believe divine truth and act upon divine truth, to have various kinds of elements that are a part of saving faith, requires regeneration.

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It requires a spiritual life, and so yes, there is, you could say it's irresistible, because it's resurrection power.

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It's the same power that raised Lazarus from the dead. When Jesus said, Lazarus come forth, he was in no danger of failing.

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He was in no danger of being frustrated by the will of Lazarus in that situation.

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This was one of the ways in which the glory of the Son of God was to be demonstrated, and yet there are seriously people who will tell you that, yes,

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Jesus could have been frustrated in that situation. Jesus could have said, Lazarus come forth, and Lazarus might have said, no thank you, it's nice in here,

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I'm gonna stay put. There are people whose theology demands that that be what they say, to emphasize the free will of man.

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And so certainly what is predestined, faith, faith is part of that.

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Repentance is part of that as well, no question about that. But it's the entirety of salvation, it's all of salvation, which would include regeneration, faith, repentance, adoption, forgiveness, sanctification, the entire golden chain of redemption, the effective call, all of these are a part of what that predestination involves.

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And then on the other side, predestined to receive the blessings promised to all who trust in Christ, to be conformed with his image, made holy and blameless, which of course is everything that is believed over here too.

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So the blessings are all the same, except I would point out that it would seem that if this trust issue here, and this faithful in here, if that is coming from unregenerate men, and that's a natural capacity, that's something that could be lost.

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And that's why consistently, it seems to me that a true provisionist must also be a person who does not believe in the perseverance of the saints.

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You can be in Christ, truly in Christ, and then lost. You can walk away from that.

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And I've certainly heard a number of people identifying themselves as provisionists, who would say exactly that, that's the case.

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And so the question becomes, how do we respond to this?

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Aside from doing what we just did, and looking at these things, and going, well, all right, this is not really the most fair and effective way of expressing these truths, how should we respond to these things?

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So I want to do so exegetically. I will try to be clear. That's why we're doing this again, is because I did this using annotation, and was pointing to things

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I just cannot imagine, because I assumed you could see what I was pointing to, that what I did then was all that understandable.

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So let's try it again, and I will try to be fairly brief.

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We're looking at Ephesians 1, and that was referenced in the meme.

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And one of the things that was mentioned was this phrase right here, the faithful in Christ Jesus.

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The faithful in Christ Jesus. Please note, that is part of a chain. That is part of a chain.

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So Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, and he is an apostle by the will of God.

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By the will of God. So from the beginning, there is no problem from Paul's perspective that his apostleship is dependent upon the will of God.

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Was it dependent upon Paul's will? Was it dependent upon some free will action along those lines?

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It's a question we have to ask. To the saints, the ones who are in Ephesus, I just noticed in passing, there is a textual variant here.

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There are certain early manuscripts and sources, Marcion being one of them, that does not have an NFSO. This, I believe, was a circular letter, which is why you don't have any personal greetings to the

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Ephesians in this material. But to the saints who are in, the ones in Ephesus, and faithful.

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So both faithful in Christ Jesus and the saints are placed in parallel to one another.

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So if this is a free will choice, then this would have to be a free will choice as well.

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So saints, I guess, by their free will, choose to be saints. Or is this descriptive?

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Of course, this is descriptive. Just as their location is descriptive, so is their being saints is descriptive, and their being faithful in Christ Jesus is descriptive.

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So when the meme made reference to Ephesians 1 as if this faithfulness is an innate capacity of the unregenerate man, it's not even talking about that.

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That's a misuse of this text. That's a misuse of this text. Grace to you and peace from God our

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Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we enter in verse 3. Of course, verses 1 and 2 is the prologue, the introduction.

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Verse 3, into the body of the text. Many have said that everything on the screen here is one long sentence with many, many, many sub clauses.

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Most translations obviously break that up, but you could argue here there is actually a break in the

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Nessie Olin at verse 7, but you could construe it as a very lengthy, lengthy, run -on sentence.

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But it's important to see from the beginning. Blessed be the God and Father of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. So we're talking about God the Father. This blessing is being pronounced upon him for what he does.

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For what he does. And what we will see is throughout this entire section, these are divine actions.

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These are things that are divinely accomplished. And I will just ask you if you think that mankind is actually the one in control of these things, where in all of this does mankind get involved?

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Because, after the introduction, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who blessed us.

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So, the article takes us back over here, right there, the one who blessed us.

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So, the blessing comes, we bless him because he blessed us, and we're going to see this right here,

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Hamas, over and over and over again, all the way through here.

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Us, us, us. Who's the us? Who is the us? Well, it's the saints in Ephesus.

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The saints in Ephesus. And there are some theologies that would say, this is all of mankind, in potentiality.

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Ask yourself if that would fit in this context, because you're going to see that Hamas, it's right here, there's another

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Hamas right there, there's another one right there, another one right there, another one right there.

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All the way through. Us, us, us, us, us. And Hamas is in the accusative form.

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The accusative is the case of being the direct object.

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The object of the verbal actions. And who's doing the verbs in this section?

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It's God. So, God is the one who is active here. He has blessed us, with every spiritual blessing.

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Every spiritual blessing comes from God the Father, and they have been given to us in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

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In the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So, again, this would indicate to us that Hamas has a specific audience, and that is those people who will receive every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

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Now, a universalist might say, yeah, that's everybody.

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Everyone eventually will receive those heavenly blessings, but that's not what

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Paul taught. In other words, this is a specific group. This is a specific group, who will receive every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

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Just as, and then we have a finite verb, exsalexata.

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And exsalexata has, again, direct object, the same Hamas. Just as he chose us in him, and you could argue that in some fashion that's referring to God the

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Father, but because you have this right here, and Christo right beforehand. All of these in hims, in the beloved one, in Christ, are referring to the fact that God limits this to his action in Christ.

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This is, I can't think of too many passages in scripture that are more directly contradictory to the idea of pluralism, the idea that all roads lead to God, et cetera, et cetera, than you would find right here.

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It was probably less than five minutes that I was back to the same level of volume, I would say, probably.

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Rich is going, uh -huh. So, just as he chose us in him, and then we have, please note something.

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Verse four begins with exsalexata, chose. And I wonder if that,

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I'm not going to mess up. I'm not even going to play with it. We'll do that some other time. Verse five begins with another finite verb, to predestine.

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All right? Exsalexata hamas, praerissos hamas.

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These again are divine actions of God the

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Father. In verse four, we are given a temporal phrase, before the foundation of the world.

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So that becomes the temporal context of the verb.

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When did this choosing take place? Before the foundation of the world. But then there is a purpose clause introduced with the infinitive, that we, and there is hamas again, we might be holy and blameless before him in love.

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Now, differing translations, there's different interpretations as to whether in love should be at the end of this phrase, or the beginning of the next.

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So, in other words, it could be that we should be holy and blameless before him in love, or that we should be holy and blameless before him in love he predestined us.

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Both make perfect sense. Doesn't really change the fundamental meaning. And both are possible.

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Because remember, didn't have any of these spaces between words, didn't have any of these punctuation marks.

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In the oldest manuscripts, long line of capital letters. We could throw p46 up here, look at the same text.

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Harder to read, but same stuff. And so these are editorial choices.

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But the point is, the choosing is before the foundation of the world.

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And it has a purpose. The purpose is sanctification, that we might be holy and blameless before him.

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So, from the beginning, there is an intentionality. There is an intentionality in what

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God is going to be doing. All of Reformed theology has always emphasized the intentionality of God.

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He is saving a people to make them like Jesus. And that's why all of the blessings must be connected together.

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That's why the golden chain of redemption is a chain. They all go together.

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Very, very important. So, you have the temporal clause, then you have the purpose clause, and then he predestined us, verse 5, unto what?

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Unto adoption through Jesus Christ unto himself. So, there is this emphasis in Ephesians 1 on union with Christ.

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We are in him. And it is a very personal union.

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This is why this Hamas simply cannot be an impersonal group.

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It can't be an impersonal group. You see, the vast majority of means of trying to get around what this text is saying is to introduce class election.

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So, what you have here is the choosing and the predestining is a group, a class.

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It's not the individuals in the group. That's up to us. The idea is that God is choosing a particular group, and if you get into the group, this will be the result of your being in the group, is that you will get adoption, you will get forgiveness, you will get these things.

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So, the object is moved from us to an impersonal group, and now you have all sorts of questions as to, does

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God know who's going to be in that group? Upon what basis does he know this? If you assert as open theists or those who believe in dynamic omniscience that God cannot know as a rational element of his knowledge, the actions of free creatures in the future because the future does not yet exist, then the best you can say is that this adoption is an unfulfilled hope that may or may not come to fruition.

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But when Christ dies for everyone in the future, and of course on an open theistic perspective, you can't know who's going to exist in the future because every person who exists today, 2 ,000 years after the time of Christ, is the result of literally millions of free choices, of free creatures, and if you want to do what open theism does to try to preserve the concept of free choice in the sense of autonomous will, then you simply have to say

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God could not have known that I would ever exist because thousands of people up line from me might have chosen somebody else to marry or may have not chosen to marry at all, and so I could be a very, very different person or just not exist as a person, so on and so forth.

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So the result of class election is a removal of the personal aspect of this.

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It only becomes personal if we make it personal on down the road.

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But this predestination is of us unto adoption through Jesus Christ himself.

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Oh, so if I just hold it long enough, okay. I was personally getting tired of the same color, so we're going to change color here for the fun of it, and I'll remember that.

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Through Jesus Christ, again, becomes the repeated reality of the exclusive nature, and it is eis auton to the

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Father. So we have our access to the Father through Jesus Christ.

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He is the God -man. It is the second person in the Trinity who took on flesh. That's why he will always be the God -man, because it is through him that we are united to God, and that is a concept that you will not find anywhere else in world religion.

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It is absolutely unique, absolutely unique. But then we come to the key issue.

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Then we come to the key issue, and it's found right here, and I want to make this nice and clear.

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According to the kind intention of his will may well be the clearest statement in Inspired Writ that answers the mysteriously unrevealed reasons objection that was seen in the meme.

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And my response to the meme on Twitter was to simply quote this and say, this is enough for any redeemed heart.

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This is enough for any redeemed heart. This katah then, this little preposition, gives us the foundation, gives us the basis of all that has come before, these choices that have come before.

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The kind intention, is that a kind intention? I'd like to submit to you that many people in their zeal to defend the autonomous will of man fundamentally blaspheme that term right there.

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The beginning here, you, that in Greek is good.

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The good purpose. It's a good purpose. It is the good purpose of his will.

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And when people try to judge the eternal God's actions based upon their personal very limited experience and say,

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I would never worship a God who would do these things, what they're saying is,

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I cannot see how that's a good purpose, and so I reject that. I reject that. This is the foundation.

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This is the basis. According to the good purpose of his will, his will, his thelematos, please show me in scripture where man's will in this matter is considered to be eudaicheia.

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The will that is presented to us here is God's will, as being good.

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And this is enough for the redeemed heart. In the darkest of times, in the darkest of circumstances,

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God's people look at that and say, I can trust him. Because we're going to see that he's going to be described right down here as having predestined according to the purpose of the one working all things according to the counsel of his thelematos.

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Right there. That's the Christian God. That's not the pagan

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God who tries. That's the Christian God. And it's amazing to me there are so many

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Christians that don't want that Christian God. That is amazing to me. So, katah is our preposition here, according to.

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And then we have the next. Unto ice the praise of his glorious grace, or you could simply say praise of the glory of his grace.

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That is acceptable. It's not as flowing as the

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NIV might want. But you could translate doxas teis caritas autu as to the praise of the glory of his grace, or his glorious grace.

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But there are your two big answers. The big answer is katah.

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Well, that's the basis. That's the foundation. Result, the praise of his glorious grace.

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And again, that for the heart that recognizes the depth of its own sin, and its own slavery to sin, this will be sufficient.

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This will be enough. I simply suggest that if this is not enough for you, it may be because you have yet to come to realize how much you are dependent upon us.

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And this glorious grace that we are to praise right here was, which, relative pronoun pointing back, was graced to us, ekaritasen.

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You see karitas right here, then we've got the verb, ekaritasen, and look who's right behind it.

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There's our hemos again, which we were abundantly graced, which we received as a gift, ento egape meno.

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Now, I told the story yesterday. I'll go ahead and repeat it, even though I'm trying to get through this as efficiently as I can.

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I grew up in a context where you called everybody in the church the beloved.

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Well, beloved, here we are. And so beloved was a plural. It was a y 'all.

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It was a religious y 'all. It was what beloved was. But even if the paricipial form looks strange to you, you've got a article right there, to, and whenever you have to with the eota subscript, that's singular, as is, of course, the ending right there.

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So in the beloved one, that's in Jesus. That's in Jesus. So again, where do we receive his glorious grace?

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Where is it graced to us? It's in the beloved one. It is in Christ Jesus, in him alone.

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And so as soon as you have the presentation of the idea of Christ, in whom we have an ecumen, there's your amen at the end, so we're continuing the heima, same group, in whom we have redemption, how?

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Dia tu haimatas autu, through his blood. I see in light of Romans chapter 8, a particular redemption here, obviously.

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Those who would say, well, this is not determined. The content of the plural is not determined by God's choice.

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It's determined by our choice can then expand out the atonement and make it impersonal again, so that we're the ones who fill out who actually ends up benefiting from it, which is very difficult with substitutionary atonement.

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Substitutionary atonement is a reformed doctrine. When non -reformed people try to embrace substitutionary atonement, they are unbeknownst to themselves contradicting their own position, because if you died with Christ, either everybody died with him or nobody died with him.

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The idea that he died and then we join ourselves to him at some point later on doesn't make any sense, and certainly is not what is being taught here.

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But our redemption is through his blood, and that redemption then, in a positive phrase, you'll notice you see the accusative article here, then you have an accusative article repeated here, so this becomes in a positive phrase, that is the forgiveness of our trespasses.

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So redemption, the forgiveness of our trespasses. Well, how many of our trespasses can possibly be forgiven?

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Well, a whole bunch. How do we know? Because it is according to the riches of his grace.

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See, here's Cataw again. Remember Cataw up here? Remember that one? Cataw gives us the foundation, gives us the basis, so this was according to the

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Kai intention as well. Now, how much forgiveness, how much forgiveness?

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It's according to the riches of his grace. I can't help but think that there might not be a lot of folks in the audience who need to hear the fact that the standard, the depths of that grace is his grace, not ours.

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It's inexhaustible. The riches, the riches. Taplutas. That's one of the reasons

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I just feel, I just am so sad for Roman Catholics.

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Because of the sacramental system of Rome, the riches of his grace becomes limited.

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You don't have a finished sacrifice. You have to go to that mass over and over again.

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You have to go to that man who calls himself an alter Christus. You have the penances.

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You have the false doctrine of sin. And that's why you don't have peace, is because you don't understand the riches of his grace.

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It's not funneled. These riches are not funneled through the sacramental system of Rome.

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He has made those riches, the riches of that grace, he has made, which, going back again, which he has made to abound unto...

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I hope by now hamos has become one of your favorite Greek words, because it's a beautiful Greek word.

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He has made to abound unto us. We didn't make it abound. Have you seen man doing anything here yet?

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The only thing that I can find about man in all of this mess is right here, our sins.

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We do the sinning. We do what makes us need redemption.

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But this is God. He, here it is again, see the end in there? He made to abound unto us.

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This is how God does it. And he's done it in all wisdom and understanding.

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Isn't it funny that we have Sophia right there? Because mankind is so, so focused upon wisdom and demonstrating wisdom.

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And there's some young men out there, you think you are just the sharpest thing that's come along in forever.

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And yet, in your heart, you know you're in rebellion against all this. There is a wisdom in all of this, but it's a wisdom in recognizing that God is the source of all these things.

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Wisdom and understanding. And he made known, now interesting, it's to us, that's partly because of the meaning of noticis, but made known to us the mystery of his will.

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Now here, here, here we go. Here's, here's mystery there. We had that in the, in the meme, right?

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The mystery. He has made known the mystery of his will to us. Well, what's, what, what is it?

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Well, he's made known the mystery of his will. Here's another Ketah, according to his

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Eudokian. Where have we seen Eudokian before? Still remains completely in the realm of what

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God is willing to reveal and why. God wants us to know the foundation of our salvation.

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And that is which, which he has purposed in Christ. Which he has purposed in Christ.

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This is, you know, the idea that God wanted to do one thing and then that didn't work out.

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And so he adopted plan B and that didn't work. And now he's on plan C and, and all this stuff that you can get in process theology and all this kind of, of utter philosophical nonsense out there just crashes against the rocks of inspired scripture such as this.

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He intended these things in Christ Jesus. And what was that intention?

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Unto the, you can actually call this dispensation in a sense, oikonomion.

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The, the working out the government of the fullness of the times, the fullness of the times.

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The things that were being looked forward to by the prophets being fulfilled now.

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And what is he intending to do in the fullness of times?

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I need a, I need a new color here. I've got so many cool colors up here already.

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It's, oh, there's only so many left and we'll go with a bright one right there. To sum up, it is a infinitive.

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You can see kephale right here, head. So to, to, to sum up, to bring into one, all things in Christ, all things in Christ, the things in heaven, the things upon the earth.

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So that should sound somewhat familiar to us. Remember, what is Ephesians? The parallel letter to Colossians.

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So you can see the connection in the language, all things in heaven and earth, where in him, in him, in Christ, in whom in Christ going back right here, in whom we have been called.

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And there's your, there's your ending, which connects us back to Haman, Hamas.

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Same thing all the way through. Having been predestined.

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There's Proorizo one again, once again, having been predestined here, it was up here.

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So here's your two occurrences right there. Having been predestined, katah, here's katah again, where did we first see it up here?

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There's, well, let's, we keep pointing to that one up there. To the purpose of, then you're, we already noted this before, the one working according to his will.

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Here's will down here. The purpose of his will, bule, all things, all things, all things in this heaven, this earth being worked according to his will.

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This becomes the foundation of Paul's understanding. He starts here.

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Then he makes application to what we experience in time, beginning in verse 12.

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So we might be to the first, to the praise of him, so on and so forth. I'm not going to try to scroll everything and redo everything that's up there.

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So what do we see? We see that for the redeemed heart, it is sufficient to understand that our salvation is due according to the kind intention of his will, and that its result is to the praise of his glorious grace.

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If you find that to be insufficient, then you find

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God's revelation to be insufficient. And I'll simply say to you, if you think you've found something that goes beyond that, it will not satisfy you and will eventually lead you away from what is found right there.

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Provisionism reminds us that the reformation is still ongoing, because provisionists, if they were to take a side between Luther and Erasmus, will take

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Erasmus' side and will actually say that Erasmus cedes too much territory to Luther, because some of them that I'm seeing today go beyond Roman Catholicism.

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They go beyond Erasmus into beliefs that I know historically, when they have entered into the external

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Christian church before, have always led any denomination infected by them to utter apostasy.

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That's the verdict of history. Wow. I like that.

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That's what I did yesterday. Okay. That's what I did yesterday. I know.

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I know. When I went back and looked at that video, I just wanted to cry. I just wanted to cry.

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I really did. But that's what we did yesterday. I hope this has been useful to you.

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I hope what we'll probably do is we'll probably break this section out and maybe post it separately.

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That'd be a good idea. Yeah, that'd be a good idea. So if you're seeing this, and you'll see it after the interview,

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I don't know what we'll do, but we'll get it all up there so that people can see it and hopefully utilize it and be helpful to you.

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Thank you for watching, and we'll have more to say on this subject in the future.