April 27, 2022 Show with Bill Sasser on “Grace” (Part 2)

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Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 27th day of April, 2022.

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I'm thrilled to have back as a returning guest someone who just conducted an interview with me very recently on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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I'm speaking of Bill Sasser, pastor of Grace Church at Franklin in Franklin, Tennessee.

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And Pastor Bill and I just recently conducted what I believe was an excellent interview on the same subject that we are addressing today.

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We are going to be addressing part two of Grace, what is it, why do we need it, what does it do, and why do men reject this free precious gift?

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And we're going to be picking up on two elements of that theme that we did not have time to adequately address last time.

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The two themes that we are going to be addressing today are what does

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Grace do and why do men reject this free precious gift? And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Bill Sasser.

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Glad to be with you. Glad to be with you, Chris. Hope you've had a great far. Had a busy day here today.

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I had an old friend who passed away and attended a memorial service just a couple of hours ago, in fact.

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But I'm glad to be here with you on the radio. Everything went well with your memorial service and hope it will go well today with our radio program.

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Amen. And if anybody, after this program is over, who missed the part one interview that we did on this very same subject, that was held on Monday, April 18th, you can go to the ironsharpensironradio .com

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archive, click on past shows podcast, and type in Sasser into the search engine,

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S -A -S -S -E -R, and that will come up as well as all of my interviews with Pastor Bill Sasser.

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And you can enjoy that interview as well. Again, as we always do, please describe for our listeners who are unfamiliar with you,

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Grace Church at Franklin in Franklin, Tennessee. Yes, well, we're located on Arno Road, A -R -N -O

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Road. Franklin is about 15 to 20 minutes south of Nashville, just off I -65.

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In fact, if you were coming that way, you would exit on exit 65, go east for almost exactly one mile, and there's only one road you can turn on there, and that would be

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Arno, A -R -N -O Road. The church is about 300 or 400 yards down Arno Road on the left.

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I've been here going on 52 years. We have a very strong congregation, a very faithful congregation.

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We have what we still consider to be a new building. We were in another building for 35 years, and we've been in this new building since about 2006,

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I believe. And it really is a beautiful building, and we'd just love to invite anyone who's visiting in the

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Nashville, Tennessee area to come out and visit with us after coronavirus. We've cut back a little bit on our number of services a week, but we are certainly meeting on Sunday morning at 1045, and we have classes that meet at 10 o 'clock and taught by a couple of elders in those classes.

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They deal with a lot of doctrinal issues and doctrines there. So we just cordially invite anybody and everyone who may be coming in that Nashville, Tennessee area to come by and visit with us.

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We'd be glad to have you. They can always call us if they're not sure where we are. Of course, today, with all of the

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GPS services and the telephones, people can find anybody they want to find.

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So I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to invite them, Chris. Sure do. Well, if you ask a glutton for directions, they'll likely give you all of the best eating places as a part of those directions.

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If anybody wants to find out more about Grace Church at Franklin, go to gracechurchatfranklin .org,

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gracechurchatfranklin .org, and the at is the word at. It is not the symbol.

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It's A -T, so gracechurchatfranklin .org. Well, if you could, start off with a recap of what we addressed on Monday, the 18th of April, for part one of this subject, grace, what is it, what do we need, why do we need it, what does it do, and why do men reject this free precious gift?

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You had an acronym or an acrostic, whichever you prefer calling that, of the word grace, and each letter symbolized something or stood for an element of grace.

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So maybe you'll start with that, and anything else that you care to say to summarize what we already addressed.

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Sure. Well, in preparing for this broadcast, I found that the

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English term grace is found some 170 times in the Authorized King James Version, and I'm sure that every person listening, regardless of their theological persuasion, believes in some kind of aspect of the grace of God.

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The term that is used in the so -called Authorized Version is a term that is easily defined, but it's a lot more difficult when we begin to get into what all that means.

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I did give an acrostic for grace, the English word grace,

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G -R -A -C -E. The grace of God begins with the goodness of God, that is the

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G in grace. The R in grace is for righteousness.

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The goodness of God could not be shown at the expense of righteousness. If one is guilty, even with the law of men, the law has to be satisfied.

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If I get a speeding ticket, I can't just let it go. I have to pay the fine to be relieved from punishment by the law.

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So man, having fallen in the Garden of Eden and having our own personal falls thereafter, we must have our sin paid for.

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We owe a debt. In fact, in the so -called Lord's Prayer, which I prefer to refer to it as the model prayer,

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I think the Lord's Prayer is in John's Gospel, Chapter 17, when our Lord Jesus Christ was praying to the

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Father and we are allowed to listen in. I think the model prayer, in that model prayer, our

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Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.

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He says in that prayer that we should pray, forgive us our debts or forgive us our transgressions as we forgive those who transgress or trespass against us.

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So sin is a debt. The goodness of God cannot be shown to us at the expense of the righteousness of God.

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So the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to satisfy the righteousness of God against us.

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And even right here, I might add, there are differences of opinion on what it took to satisfy the righteousness of God.

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Some speak of the passive and active obedience of Christ. By that they mean that when he lived in this world, he was satisfying all of the demands of the law.

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And then when he died on the cross, he paid the penalty for the law having been broken.

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Suffice it to be said that Christ is the one who paid the debt.

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So goodness could not be shown at the expense of righteousness. How will righteousness be satisfied?

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With atonement. That's the A in grace. And as I pointed out, actually the word atonement is not really in the

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New Testament. It is translated atonement, the word for reconciliation, translated atonement in Romans chapter 5.

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But the English word atonement, made up of two words and a suffix, at -a -t -one -o -n -e meant atonement.

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So what Christ did was he reconciled two parties. He reconciled man to God.

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And I think that's very important. We don't say that God was reconciled because God does not change.

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He is immutable. He doesn't change his mind. He doesn't change his purpose. He doesn't change his plans.

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But we must be reconciled to God. So we're reconciled to him through the atoning work of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. That brought us back into a situation where we could approach

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God. So we have the goodness of God, the righteousness of God, the atonement of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, S -G -R -A. To see is covenant.

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The Lord and the persons of the Godhead, I should say, spirit.

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As one of my friends says billions and billions and billions of years ago, by that he means before time, the

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Lord determined that he would save man, having known all things since he is

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God, he knows everything that is possible. He knows everything that is probable.

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He knew that man, and I think I discussed that also in our first broadcast, that is that God considered man,

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I believe, from a fallen perspective. He did not just arbitrarily say,

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I'm going to create a race of humans and then I'm going to select some to go to heaven and some to go to hell.

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But he considered them as fallen, and considering man as fallen,

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I think I pointed out that all of the early confessions of faith, about 96 -97 % of them were all written from the infra,

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I -N -F -R -A, lapsarian view, lapsus from the

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Latin meaning to fall, and so infra meaning after, after the fall.

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We have the other view, the supra -lapsarian view, S -U -P -R -A, that God made his eternal decrees up before considering man as a sinner.

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John Gill would have held to that view, one of the predecessors of Charles Athens Spurgeon. Who did?

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John Gill, the great writer of the Baptist commentary and so on.

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Well, I'll tell you something else. Actually, in all the old works of John Bunyan, and I have some of them, before modern printing of Bunyan, I don't have a lot of printing of him today except Pilgrim's Progress, but in all of his older works, at the end of the book, he would have two charts that he himself drew up.

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These two charts showed the path of the reprobate and the path of the elect.

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And probably Bunyan was a supra -lapsarian fellow.

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Some of the old writers were. But all I said was that most of the confessions of faith were written from the infra -lapsarian view, and when the question is asked why, the answer is because that view seems to be more compatible with the mercy of God and the grace of God, the love of God.

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Let's consider a man as fallen and saying, I will not leave him in his fallen state.

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You remember, Chris, that even in the Garden of Eden, after man had sinned, and I hear a lot of teachings sometimes that they don't mention that there were two trees in the

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Garden of Eden. There was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There was also the tree of life. And do you remember that the

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Lord forced man out of the Garden of Eden after he had sinned to prevent, specifically, him from eating from the tree of life?

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And as I understand it, had he eaten from the tree of life, he would have remained in a fallen state.

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So the Lord's mercy is seen even there in the very beginning of our record of his relationships with human beings.

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So goodness is the G in grace is goodness. The R in grace is righteousness.

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The A in grace is atonement. The C in grace is covenant. And the

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E in grace, we certainly could use that as the elect, but I also use it as everyone that is thirsty.

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It was Spurgeon who said to a man who said,

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Mr. Spurgeon, I don't understand this thing you're preaching here, this election thing, and, you know, how do you know who the elect are?

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And Spurgeon said, you go out and mark them, and I'll preach to them. So the idea is we don't know who the elect are.

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We are commanded to preach the gospel to every creature and to those who believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life, and the righteousness, to have the promise that they shall be saved.

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I think this also is a point that is overlooked or at least under -emphasized, and that is that salvation is simply, it is a complex thing, but it is simply experientially through faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ as my Lord, as my Savior, as my atonement, my sacrifice, the way and the means by which

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I come to God in a satisfactory manner. So that's really what

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I opened up with last week, was using that term of grace, and then

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I think we went on to talk about the meaning of the term grace as it is used in Scripture and also some of the implications of grace.

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As you know, you had many great and wonderful people up in the program that listened to this, but I think we must all agree that the grace of God is absolutely essential.

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I believe that it is the cause, the sustainer, and the finisher of our salvation.

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Without it, of course, we cannot be saved. We cannot be reconciled to God.

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By the way, brother, I don't know if you're doing something different than our last discussion, but you are breaking up from time to time.

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I don't know if there's anything you could change to prevent that. For the most part, you're coming through crystal clear, but from time to time you break up, unlike last time, so I'm not sure what's happening.

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Yeah. Well, I'm sorry. I don't know. I didn't hear anything unless it was something. Well, I don't know what it would be.

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Well, I don't either. It could be atmospheric as well. I don't know. But all of the main parts that you emphasized there were heard clearly.

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And so I really want to pick up right now for part two of this discussion that we began on Monday, April 18th, with what does grace do?

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Because, as I hinted last time, there are people who have the same vocabulary as we do who are not only professing evangelicals, who

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I believe are an error, but also you have Roman Catholics, members of world religions and cults who have the same vocabulary very often but a different dictionary, and there are two extreme errors, even in the professing body of Christ, on the concept of grace.

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You have, on one hand, if you're talking about the legalist end, if you're talking about the

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Roman Catholic end, the Eastern Orthodox end, you have, even in existence in some

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Pentecostal circles, especially old -school Pentecostals, you have a grace that merely gives people a jump start and a clean slate to work with.

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You have people getting saved and lost sometimes every week in certain circles, and the grace itself does not transform the lost sinner.

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Then on the other end of the spectrum, an equally dangerous heresy, is the idea that all grace is intended to do is to forgive the sinner, and the unrepentant sinner who raises his hand and goes forward at an altar call or any way that he is invited to receive

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Christ into his heart by reciting a prayer. There are many, even within evangelical circles, who would say that, including somebody as famous as Charles Stanley, that a person can receive

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Christ through an altar call and that immediately after becoming a true child of God, immediately after becoming born again, that person can recant their profession and live as an atheist or even as the devil himself for the remainder of his life, which could be many decades, and that person will still go to heaven because of a past experience of having accepted

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Christ into his heart. So both of those extreme opposite heresies have a very flawed and false understanding of what grace is.

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They have a grace that does not transform, and I'm assuming that you would agree with me, and if you could pick up there.

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Well, I do agree with you. I wouldn't take any exception to that.

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But I think probably that the key to an understanding biblically of grace begins with one's view of the status, the state, the nature of man.

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I use a lot of biblical illustrations. Sometimes people understand those better than they do trying to use the theological jargon.

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I love theology. I love philosophy. I went to Vanderbilt University to study philosophy years and years ago, so I love all those kinds of things.

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But I think sometimes that just sticking with Scripture makes it easier for people to understand.

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So first of all, I don't think, for example, if we have people listening who say,

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Well, I don't understand these five points of Calvinism. Total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints.

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Well, I think that the issue in understanding grace comes with an understanding of what we think, where we think man is.

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If a man is dead in trespasses and sins, it's going to take a sovereign

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God to save him, and it's going to take a sovereign God to keep him. We have that old hymn,

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Prawn to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prawn to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, take it, seal it.

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Seal it for thy courts above. So the Lord, as you have pointed out, and hinted at least, grace is more than just changing our legal status with God.

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So if I can maybe elaborate a little bit here. Justification, I believe, is a legal standing of the redeemed sinner.

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Our standing before God is changed from condemnation to no condemnation.

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As we read in Romans 8, There's therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

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So I think justification removes us from being under condemnation and puts us in a state of no condemnation.

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What people forget many times is that it is not just our standing before God and his law that is changed, but it is also our persons which are changed.

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As you say, the Lord Jesus said to Nicodemus, You must be born again.

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In that language, literally, you must be born from above.

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You must have a heavenly birth. You've had an earthly birth. You have a mom and dad here.

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But you have to have a birth from heaven so that God becomes your father.

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And that happens only by the grace of God. So along with justification,

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I certainly would not want to overlook regeneration. Regeneration means that we are made new creatures.

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We have a new heart. We have a new mind. We have a new spirit. We are indwelt by the

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Spirit of the Lord. This is another touchy subject. Many people think that vocalization, raising one's voice, everything from running down an aisle to walking on pews has to do with the

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Spirit of God. But it does not. In Scripture, the Spirit of the Lord was compared to the wind that comes silently.

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You don't know when it's coming, when it's going, how long it's going to stay, what it's going to do. But you know when the wind is there, and you know when the

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Spirit is there. So I would say, first of all, that regeneration must not be overlooked.

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Look, if we have a salvation by grace that teaches that only our destiny has been changed and little else has been changed,

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I think we have a counterfeit coin. If I have a coin with two heads or two tails,

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I don't have a head on one side and a tail on the other, I have a counterfeit coin. If I have a salvation that over -emphasizes or under -emphasizes a balanced doctrine, then

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I think I have a counterfeit. So I do believe that one is changed, one is made new, one has a new heart, a new mind.

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Of course, that goes along with the new covenant. But I will say this. I will say this.

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Peter himself denied the Lord, and he denied the Lord three times. We know that.

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We know that when we go to the Old Testament and we have a man like David, I told him, I said, well, look at what

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David did. And I said, well, we can all sin like David, but we don't repent like David.

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And that is very, very important. So I think, first of all, it is a mistake to set up any kind of pattern and say, this is the way you have to walk.

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You have to walk in this. You have to be like this. You have to do this. If you don't do this, if you don't do that, if you do this and you don't do that, then you're not saved.

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I think those issues have to be left in the hands of the Lord. But I do think that we should teach that men are regenerated.

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They are changed. They are made new creatures in Christ, but that's also a new creature positionally.

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We are not under condemnation. We are now under his grace and under his blessings.

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As far as all those different paths, Chris, of grace from Roman Catholicism to Arminianism to Subsidianism, I'm assuming that many of the people know what these mean.

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The Arminian people, and we have a lot of believers out there, a lot of people who profess to be believers who are in the

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Arminian school, and that means that they believe that when man fell in the Garden of Eden, this is primarily what they believe, there are other parts of this, that man retained what is called a free will.

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The psychologists have always taught, I mean the philosophers have always taught that free will is an impossibility.

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That's by people who don't know anything about God or don't care to know anything about God. Our wills are influenced by nature.

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You can will not to eat for a month, but more than likely your stomach is going to well out and you're going to eat something.

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So our wills are enslaved by our nature, by our environment, influenced by our genetic makeup, by our

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DNA, all of these things. So nobody has a free will but God. We are free moral agents.

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We are free to make decisions and choices based upon the limitation of our nature.

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But we're not free to act outside of the confines of our nature.

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So I don't really know if I've answered that question, except to say that grace means more than just changing your destiny with God so that you're not going to hell, you're going to heaven.

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I think if people make professions of faith and then depart from those professions of faith, number one, we should pray for them.

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Number two, we should visit with them and try to talk to them and try to witness to them from the

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Scripture. You know, in the Bible, we're told in 1 John about some people who went out from the

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Christian camp. And he said they went out from us, but they were not of us.

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Or if they had been of us, they would not have continued with us.

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That's why the old school believers of grace believed that perseverance was part of grace of God and evidence of the grace of God.

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You don't earn this grace by persevering, but you persevere because grace is in you and upon you.

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It is an evidence of grace. In fact, we're going to pick up right where we left off there after we return from our first break.

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If anybody has a question for Pastor Bill Sasser of Grace Church at Franklin in Franklin, Tennessee, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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You might even be wondering if you are indeed a born -again Christian, which is sort of a redundancy because everybody who is a true

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Christian is born again. But you may be wondering if you are truly a new creature in Christ, whether you are heaven -bound or hell -bound, and something like that that may compel you to remain anonymous, or maybe a host of other reasons that are personal and private.

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Then we will permit you to remain anonymous. But if it's a general question on grace, on theology, on doctrine, on the

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Bible, we will include all pastoral questions since our guest is a pastor, although you should always seek the counsel and guidance of your own pastor if you are a member of a

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Bible -believing church. But we also open the door for our listeners to ask our guests questions of a pastoral nature when they are pastors themselves.

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So feel free to do so. The email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA.

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And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. So don't go away.

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We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors. I'm Dr.

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Call 717 -258 -4688 today. This is

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Pastor Bill Sousa of Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

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Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio financially. Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture through the person and work of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. And of course, the end for which we strive is the glory of God.

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If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe ten minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

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Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior. Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.

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Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org. That's gracechurchatfranklin .org.

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We are back now with our discussion with Pastor Bill Sasser, who is pastor at Grace Church at Franklin in Franklin, Tennessee, and we are discussing

40:38

Part 2 of a theme that we began on Monday, the 18th of April.

40:45

That is, Grace, what is it, why do we need it, what does it do, and why do men reject this free, precious gift?

40:52

And we are highlighting today what does it do, and why do men reject this free, precious gift?

40:59

Before the break, you were defining and differentiating justification and sanctification, and isn't it vitally important, in fact,

41:11

I believe eternity hinges on it, that we rightly separate those two things?

41:16

The Church of Rome does not. The Church of Rome believes that we are reconciled by God because of not only our justification but our sanctification also.

41:30

It's through obedience that they believe we are enabled to enter into eternal life with Him, and most of humanity, even before that, will endure perhaps thousands or tens of thousands or possibly hundreds of thousands of years of purging, of punishment, of torment and purgatory before being made acceptable to God.

41:58

And that is a heresy. In fact, I would say it's a damning heresy because if the

42:04

Judaizers were described by the Apostle Paul as having no gospel at all, and all they were doing was adding circumcision to faith, why on earth wouldn't

42:16

Rome be in the same category? Are you on the same page with me on those things? Yes, I think that we can say about the grace of God as it's revealed in Scripture that if we, by any works or attitudes or anything that we do, are trying to help the

42:41

Lord save us, I think we're in gross error because grace means that it is all of Him and none of us.

42:54

In fact, you might remember in the Old Testament, when He told them to build an altar,

43:00

He told the people of Israel, when you build an altar to Me, do not cut it with any chisels or anything else.

43:10

Why? Because you pollute it. If you change it, if you touch it, if you mess with it, if you try to improve it, then it will be like the grass, and I won't accept it.

43:23

So I think anything, and this is very critical, any faith in anything, if I have faith in my faith, if I have faith in myself, if I'm like the man who said, well,

43:39

I believe what my church believes, I've shared this with you. In fact, John Reisinger is the one who shared it with me probably 35, 40 years ago, that a man was cutting another fellow's hair, and he was witnessing to it, and he said, well, he said, what do you believe about salvation?

44:01

Well, he said, I believe what my church believes. Well, he said, what does your church believe? He said, well, they believe what

44:07

I believe. He said, well, what do you and your church believe? He said, well, we believe the same thing. And that's just saying,

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I don't know what I believe, and I don't know what my church believes. I'm just going to go to church and do what my priest tells me to do, and I will be all right with God.

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And that is a very perilous situation to be in. The scriptures emphasize coming to, and here we are limited by language.

44:38

And not only the Roman Catholics, but other people have given us some problems by creating language that's not biblical language.

44:46

We talk about making Jesus your personal Savior. I know what people mean by that, but why don't we just stick to the scripture which says, he that believes on the

44:59

Lord Jesus Christ should be saved, and the Spirit of God is going to have to teach people,

45:05

I believe, what that means, and where they are.

45:11

I agree with you that anything that anyone thinks they can do to help

45:19

God save them is certainly wrong. And of course, now

45:24

Chris, I don't have to tell you this, but all the doctrines, such as limbo, for the infants, and purgatory for the adults, those are not found in scripture.

45:35

They're found in some of the apocryphal books that we do not believe are inspired.

45:41

And I think that you said purgatory was not in the Bible, because you were breaking up at that point.

45:46

Is that what you were saying before you went to limbo? Limbo and purgatory, yeah, are both places where folks go, according to the

45:55

Roman Catholic Church, because Christ didn't quite do enough to take care of all of their sins, and so they have to go and be purged which is what purgatory is about, purged of the remainder of their sins.

46:09

And of course, they're also taught, not as much today, but if you go down to Mexico, you will find that this is still taught, that gifts to the church and prayers for the dead and so on help them get out of purgatory a lot sooner.

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If you give money to the church, you're going to help them get out of purgatory. All of that, of course, is heresy.

46:32

It is not found in the Bible. The scripture teaches that God sent his son into the world to save his people, and his people are identified as those who put their faith, their trust, their hope, their salvation, their righteousness in Christ alone.

46:52

And if we belong to his people, that's where our salvation is.

46:58

It is in him. You know what I know. That we're going to have people who make professions of faith, both in the

47:07

Protestant world and the Roman Catholic world, who do not know the

47:14

Lord. But there again, I'll come back to the scripture. You remember when Christ taught the parable of the wheat and the tares?

47:21

The tare being the darnel weed. It looks very much like a stalk of weed, except it has no fruit in it.

47:28

And in his parable, he said, that the workers came to the man who owned the field and said, sir, did not we plant good wheat in the field?

47:39

Yes, we did. Well, where did the tares come from? Well, he said, an enemy has done this. Well, did you want us to go and try to pull the tares up?

47:47

And he said, no, because if you try to pull the tares up, you're going to hurt some of the wheat.

47:53

You're going to bruise the wheat. But in the great harvest, when I come from heaven with my holy angels,

47:59

I will give them the orders to pull up the tares and separate the wheat from the tares, the sheep from the goat, and the wise from the foolish.

48:09

So at Grace Church at Franklin, Chris, and again, this may not be the sentiment of some of your listeners.

48:17

I am a believer in the sovereign grace of God, but I don't waste my time trying to differentiate between who's saved and who's not saved because I'm not the

48:26

Holy Spirit. What I do is I preach the truth of the Word of God in Scripture, and I believe those who hear it and who believe it will come to an assurance that they are in Christ and they are received of God for Christ's sake.

48:42

But if we waste our time just trying to pull up the tares, we're going to end up hurting the wheat.

48:50

Now let me ask you a question about that to clarify. There are, I think, far too many churches, maybe even the majority, who never conduct church discipline.

49:02

And if somebody is manifesting signs that they are very likely a false convert because of scandalous, unrepentant, ongoing sin, a couple committing adultery in the church, a person who professes to be a believer who's even a member of the church, and then it's exposed that this person is actively involved in homosexual behavior.

49:26

We could go on and on and on with the signs that somebody is not truly regenerate.

49:32

Wouldn't you, in cases like that, warn the person that they need to be under discipline?

49:38

Certainly, yeah. And I'm not speaking of the more blatant things. I'm saying that when people have these questions about this, that, and the other, and splitting hairs,

49:50

I think the Lord has to teach them. But yes, no, I don't have any problem with going and talking to a brother, that's what the scripture, or a sister, that's what the scriptures teach us, that if we have any kind of practices like that that are blatant sins, we must, we are under pressure from the

50:14

Holy Spirit, according to the Bible, to deal with that, not only just for the sake of not causing trouble in the church, but for the sake of the souls of those who apparently are deceived, or are being deceived.

50:30

We have a lot of that happen today in churches because now, in fact, recently, here in Franklin, we had a situation in which a person who was a homosexual was offended because of something that they heard in the church.

50:55

And I'm very sorry, I don't want to offend anyone, or I don't want anybody to be needlessly offended, but the

51:01

Lord Jesus did say, blessed is he whosoever is not offended in me.

51:08

And we can't lower the standards of the Lord to try to please the world, and we're not going to do it.

51:16

But I think good, strong, exegetical teaching, just teaching through Scripture, in fact,

51:23

I think the most biblical kind of teaching is teaching verse by verse through books of the

51:29

Bible. This is one reason why I have great difficulty, a lot of times, just dealing with a specific subject, because I think if we go through books of the

51:41

Bible, I was in the book of Genesis for nine years, I think I may have told you that.

51:47

It was a woman who was carrying a baby when I started the book of Genesis, and that child was nine years old when

51:54

I finished. But what we're doing is we are relating all the rest of Scripture to that.

52:02

In fact, let's pick up right where you left off on expository preaching, because we have to go to our middle break.

52:09

And please be patient with us, folks, because the midway break is longer than any of the breaks, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show, because they are required by the

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FCC to localize Iron Trump and Zion Radio and all of their programming geographically to Lake City, Florida, with their own public service announcements and other local announcements.

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While they do that, we here simultaneously are globally heard commercials.

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Please use this time wisely. Write down as much of the information as you can, provided by as many of our advertisers as you can, so that you can more frequently respond to them, and hopefully that will often include buying their products, using their services, supporting their parachurch organizations and visiting their churches.

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But when you cannot do any of those, please, at the very least, contact our advertisers and thank them for sponsoring this program, if indeed you are grateful that there are those who share some of the money that God has gifted them with us in order to keep us in existence.

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So thank our sponsors, at the very least, and also send in your questions to Bill Sasser, to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. We'll be right back after these messages.

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Hello. My name is Anthony Uvino and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York and also the host of the reformrookie .com

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Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Invinio and thanks for listening. As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

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A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

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If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe ten minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

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Before I return to my interview with Bill Sasser, which is part two of an interview we began on Monday, the 18th of April, on the theme,

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Grace, what is it? Why do we need it? What does it do? And why do men reject this free, precious gift?

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01:10:15

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Right before the break, we were discussing why it is very dangerous to mix or not to differentiate between justification and sanctification because it will lead to a damning heresy where you're actually saying that the deeds of humans are helping to merit the favor of God and enable us to enter into His presence for eternity.

01:10:48

Well, the opposite heresy would be those that would claim that repentance is only a nice option, it's a wonderful thing, but it's not essential.

01:11:03

I can still remember, again, to bring up Charles Stanley because there are many people who are unaware of some of the very serious heresies that he has believed and taught for decades.

01:11:15

He was preaching a sermon on repentance, and I said to myself, wow, that sounded like a really good sermon because I know that he does not believe in the necessity of repentance.

01:11:30

He only believes that you need to say a sinner's prayer at some point in your life. It could be when you're six years old, and then you could live like Satan the rest of your life and you'll still go to heaven.

01:11:41

So I was puzzled by this, and I listened to the sermon again, and when I listened more carefully,

01:11:46

I recognized that Charles Stanley never warned people that were unrepentant about hell.

01:11:54

He only said that if you don't repent, you're not going to be living a fulfilled life as a

01:11:59

Christian. If you don't repent, you're not going to be a good witness for Christ. If you don't repent, you're not going to enjoy the

01:12:07

Christian life as you could. If you don't repent, you're not going to reach your potential. You could go on and on and on as the secondary and tertiary reasons why people should repent, but there was never a definitive declaration that people must repent in order to expect to see

01:12:30

Christ face -to -face for all eternity and enjoy heaven with him. So wouldn't you agree that that is an equally damning heresy that all one needs to do is raise a hand at Bible camp and that's all that's going to seal their eternity with Christ, and the core area that we are saying here is that the sanctified life, the evidence of repentance and good works are only the evidence that you are truly regenerate, not a cause or something that helps merit your favor with God.

01:13:12

Just like James in his epistle says that faith without works is dead, so good works, repentance, is a sign of life, that your faith is truly a living faith, that you are a good tree and not a bad tree.

01:13:28

Am I on the right road here? I think so. Let me clarify something

01:13:34

I said earlier and then I'll take that up. The thing I said earlier when we were talking about sins that people bring into a church and do they need to be dealt with or not, will we go and deal with them, what

01:13:49

I was trying to say was my experience, it doesn't mean that every pastor's experience, but I found that when we teach through the scripture, generally people who have problems, they either seek the

01:14:06

Lord or they leave. So I don't have to deal with them. I don't have to deal with them because I touch bases on everything that's in the word of God and if they think that they can live an ungodly life, that way.

01:14:22

Of course people do things we don't know anything about. I'm not privy to anyone's thoughts to their private lives unless they reveal it, but I have just found that when we teach through the scripture, teach everything that's in the scripture, the whole counsel of God, as one would say, generally the spirit of the

01:14:41

Lord either deals with them or causes them to say, well, this is not the place that I want to be.

01:14:47

I'm not hearing what I want to hear. So that's what I meant to say about that. Now secondly, I would say this,

01:14:53

Chris, and you'd have to see if you agree with me on this. When we come to faith in the

01:14:59

Lord Jesus Christ, I have always taught, because this has been my experience, that faith and repentance are opposite sides of the same coin.

01:15:08

Faith is turning to Christ. Repentance is turning from sin.

01:15:14

If I turn from something, you're familiar with that term, which means to repent, means to turn.

01:15:20

It means there's a change of heart, a change of mind. It results in a change of life.

01:15:27

So I think that where there is no repentance there is no faith, and where there is no faith there is no repentance.

01:15:36

Now, having said that, I believe, you remember the passage there in, let's see,

01:15:42

Deuteronomy probably, Deuteronomy chapter six, verse four, which is called the Shema.

01:15:48

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. I'm sure you remember that.

01:15:54

That passage is called the Shema, S -H -A -M -A, because the very first word in it is hear.

01:16:04

Shema means to hear with a readiness to consent, a readiness to believe and to obey.

01:16:13

You remember when Isaiah 53, who has believed our report, if I might take just a moment here, over in Romans chapter 10,

01:16:25

I'm going to turn to that if I can find it here in my notes, Romans chapter 10, where Paul says that people who call upon the name of the

01:16:37

Lord shall be saved. Romans chapter 10, beginning in verse 13. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the

01:16:43

Lord shall be saved. At the end of that passage, just down in verse 16, he says, but they have not all obeyed the gospel.

01:16:54

For Isaiah said, Now when we study that passage and compare that with Isaiah, Paul is quoting

01:17:03

Isaiah, he's saying that believing the gospel is believing with a spirit of obedience, with willing to obey.

01:17:13

And the gospel plainly said, repent and believe the gospel. One cannot really believe the gospel if one hasn't turned from the way you're going and turned to Christ.

01:17:27

If you haven't turned, if you turn to Christ, you can't, if I turn to the wall on my left,

01:17:34

I have to be turning away from the wall on my right. And so, I believe that faith and repentance, number one, are opposite sides of the same coin.

01:17:44

And if you don't have one, you have a counterfeit coin, you have a counterfeit salvation. Secondly, I believe that repentance, just like faith, is a continual thing.

01:17:56

I believed, I am believing, I shall believe. I repented, I am repenting, and I shall repent.

01:18:04

There's a daily repentance just like there's a daily looking to the Lord. And I think those two go together.

01:18:12

And where that element is missing, you know, that's probably why Paul, at least one reason why Paul says, make your calling.

01:18:21

And we lost our guest, so we're going to have to have him call back. And while we are waiting for him to call back,

01:18:31

I am going to play a commercial, and hopefully he will be calling back momentarily.

01:18:39

Don't go away. We'll be right back. Don't go away.

01:18:45

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While always defending the key doctrines of the Christian faith, I've always been happy to point people to this podcast knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the internet where folk won't be led astray.

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I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide. This is a day of great spiritual compromise and yet God has raised

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Chris up for just such a time and knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances.

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I'm pleased to do so and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

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Iron Sharpens Iron financially. Would you consider sending either a one -time gift or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry?

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I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com

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It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word and to enthusiastically proclaim

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for more information. Always mention that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Well, we have

01:33:43

Pastor Bill Sasser of Grace Church at Franklin in Franklin, Tennessee, back on the phone. These things happen in live radio.

01:33:51

And we are going to have the next portion of the program uninterrupted, there will be no more ads, because we just had a considerable ad break there while we reconnected with him.

01:34:02

And before the break, you were talking about the two sides of the coin of faith.

01:34:09

You have faith is a turning to Christ, and on the other side of the coin, repentance is a turning from sin.

01:34:17

They both must be present for faith to be genuine. And in fact, it reminded me of a sermon that one of my former pastors preached years ago, where he was saying it would be obvious that a man is not truly entering into the covenant of marriage with his bride as if during the wedding ceremony, he begins marching down the aisle to his bride, arm in arm with a whore or a prostitute.

01:34:49

This would be obviously glaring evidence. This man has no intention on entering into a covenant of marriage with his bride and honoring

01:34:58

Christ in that covenant. And saying or believing or thinking that you are entering into a covenant of God with your arms around your own idols and whores is a glaring evidence that you're not really regenerate.

01:35:15

So would that be an analogy that you would agree with that my pastor preached many years ago? Yeah, that's a radical analogy, but sure.

01:35:25

I mean, there would be real trouble there if somebody is about to get married and they wouldn't even have to have a prostitute there with them if they had even another woman.

01:35:37

So, well, this is an old girlfriend. I just can't let her go. I think it would be a problem.

01:35:43

I think, Chris, you know, as we talk about the resistance of grace, to me, this kind of comes under that canopy, and that is that men by nature, let me start off by saying this.

01:36:02

I have heard, you mentioned earlier, a pastor that's known all over the world,

01:36:09

Charles Stadley, and I noticed lately I heard a message about him, and I listened to a couple of other messages by a couple of other well -known

01:36:19

TV pastors. They're pastor churches, but they're on TV.

01:36:25

I'm probably more radical than a lot of the pastors are on certain things. For example, this doesn't, it does relate to grace to me, but it may not to your heroes.

01:36:35

I was on television for 20 years, and we had a very successful television program, and we were on the

01:36:44

Fox network, and when we decided to build a new building, we don't like being in debt, and television, that was really before the internet days, really gung -ho, and so we went off of television.

01:37:00

Now, of course, we're on YouTube, Ustream, and Sermon Audio Video. Anybody that wants to watch our services can go to those, but I said all of that to say this.

01:37:13

In the 20 years that I was on television, this is something that I believe.

01:37:18

I believe the local congregation is to support the ministry that goes out of that particular congregation, that particular local church, and here's what

01:37:29

I mean by that. I'm not going to go on television and say God gave me a message, a message from heaven that'll bless you, and you can have it for $25 or $30 or $50.

01:37:41

You can have this TV, which cost me about a dollar, and you can have a $50 offer.

01:37:48

I think that is absolutely wrong, and I'd be condemned by a lot of TV pastors because there are some guys that aren't too bad.

01:37:58

You know, they do believe the Scriptures, the Word of God and all that, but they always are trying to sell their messages, get you to send that.

01:38:08

I like what you say. You say, look, I need support for Iron Sharpens Iron.

01:38:14

I must have it, but I don't want you to take away what your family needs, and if you're in a local assembly, you need to do all you can to support that assembly, and I appreciate that, and that's the attitude that I have.

01:38:32

I think that if God is big enough to create the world, we don't have to go on and beg for money to keep us on television or anything else.

01:38:42

If he wants us on there, he's able to supply. If he doesn't, then maybe there's something else he wants us to do.

01:38:49

So having said that, I think that by nature, men and women resist the grace of God, but that's why some of the old reformers talked about irresistible grace.

01:39:05

They believed that where sin abounded, grace that's much more abound. They believed that the will of God can overcome the will of man, not pinning him down and beating him necessarily, but as the illustration goes, there was a woman sitting talking to her friend, and while they were talking, her 16 -year -old boy, you've probably heard this illustration.

01:39:32

I've used it many times. He came up with his girlfriend, and he introduced his girlfriend to his mom and to her friend, and they talked for a few minutes, and then the boy and the young lady excused themselves, and so the mother said, you know, the woman talking to the boy's mother said, well, what a nice young man.

01:39:57

He just has wonderful manners. He's just so courteous and respectful, and the mother said, yes.

01:40:04

She said, that young girl did in six months what I couldn't do in 16 years.

01:40:11

Now, the idea there is that that young boy was encapsulated.

01:40:17

He was enraptured. He was in love. He thought with that young girl, and so he was willing to do anything and everything that she wanted to please her, and I believe that that's what

01:40:29

Irresistible Grace is about. I think the Lord brings us down, but he gives us a hope in the

01:40:35

Lord Jesus Christ, and he captures our hearts. He captures our minds.

01:40:40

He captures our spirits, and we're saying, as Paul did on the road to Damascus, Lord, what would you have me to do?

01:40:48

And I believe that's the attitude of God's children. I don't think necessarily we just have to deal with one particular kind of sin or one group of sin, but if people ever fall in love with Christ, if he ever captures their hearts, the resistance to him and coming to him will be over.

01:41:10

Now, as we go along, we still have this flesh. We still have the world. We still have

01:41:16

Lucifer. We still have all of these things that are fighting against us, but I believe that the grace of God will enable us to persevere, to keep on, to keep going, and to die in faith in the

01:41:30

Lord Jesus Christ. We can welcome death as believers because at death, we will be finished with our journey, and one day, this mortal should put on immortality and is corruptible in corruption, and then we'll see him who loved us, and we'll see him face to face, and we will be like he is.

01:41:52

And so I think that issue there is, to me, is the breaking down of this resistance.

01:42:02

I think, and you stop me anytime, but I think probably the four best examples in the scripture of the grace of God is

01:42:12

Adam, Abraham, Peter, and Paul. I think the only reason that Adam wasn't confined to everlasting punishment was because of the grace of God, and that it was the

01:42:26

Lord who provided a substitute for it, according to Genesis chapter 3, about somewhere around verse 21, 22.

01:42:34

The Lord made coats of skin. The Lord shed blood. That was a substitute for Adam, and then

01:42:41

Abraham, where was he? Well, he was in Ur of the Chaldees. Well, what was he? Well, he was a lost heathen, and many people don't realize

01:42:48

Abraham was a Gentile until he was circumcised. He wasn't born a

01:42:53

Jew. He was born a Gentile, and how was he raised? Well, his father raised him as an idol maker.

01:43:00

That's in Joshua chapter 24. Joshua said, your father's dwelt on the other side of the flood.

01:43:09

Terah, who was the father of Abraham, served other gods, and I brought up this quote here by Matthew Henry about that, and he said he brought

01:43:22

Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees. He and his ancestors had served other gods there, for it was the country in which idolatry, as some think, had its rise.

01:43:34

There, the world, by wisdom, knew not God. Abraham, who afterwards was the friend of God and the great favorite of heaven, was bred up in idolatry, and he lived long in it till God, by his grace, snatched him as a brand out of that burning.

01:43:54

I took him, says God, else he never had come out of that sinful state.

01:44:01

So I'm saying this. I'm saying that when the Lord's grace comes to a sinner through the preaching of the gospel by the spirit of God, in the word of God, I believe that the

01:44:15

Lord overcomes the resistance of that sinner, but I think he does that by showing them their need of a savior that they fall in love with Christ because he loved them and he gave himself for them.

01:44:29

And if you're in love with somebody and you know something about that because you've been married and when you're in love with someone, whether it's the man or the woman we're talking about, you want to please them.

01:44:40

You want to do anything for them, and how much more should that be for our Lord Jesus Christ?

01:44:46

And I think grace is him coming to us. We do not come to him. I mean,

01:44:51

Abraham, the Lord came to him. He couldn't come to a God he didn't know, and the Lord spoke to him.

01:44:57

He didn't call upon a God he didn't know, and the Lord made a covenant with him, and the nature of the covenant, it was a unilateral covenant.

01:45:07

I'm taking for granted that people know the difference. Bilateral covenant is a covenant between two parties.

01:45:13

It is a conditional covenant. I will do this if you will do that, but a unilateral covenant is

01:45:22

I will do this and you will do that, and that was the kind of covenant that God made with Abraham, and you'll read about that, of course, in the book of Genesis, chapter 17.

01:45:36

So I'm saying that the covenant in the Lord Jesus Christ, the salvation that we have in the

01:45:44

Lord Jesus Christ is a salvation by grace. That means he called us.

01:45:51

That means he convicts us. That means he reveals his son to us.

01:45:57

He gives us faith. By once we lay hold of his son, and he gives us grace so that we walk with his son in fellowship while we're in this world, and we persevere, and it's really

01:46:08

Christ persevering in us. We persevere until the very end of our lives. I believe that.

01:46:14

This is what I teach, and this is what I preach. Amen. In fact, to believe otherwise,

01:46:22

I know I bring up my friend, Dr. James R. White a lot, but he says a lot of valuable things to say.

01:46:29

He was saying that Roman Catholics and even the five -point

01:46:36

Arminian who believes you could lose your salvation, that they do not have a gospel that brings peace.

01:46:45

They only have a gospel that in their minds brings a ceasefire that could erupt into a full -scale war with God at any given moment.

01:46:54

Wow. I just thought that it was a very profound thing, and it's remained with me ever since he said it. We have a listener who actually knows you.

01:47:04

Dear Brother Chris, thank you for your ministry and for your interview with my longtime friend

01:47:10

Bill Sasser. Please greet him for me. This is a bit of a softball question for him, but if you think his answer might be illuminating,

01:47:19

I'll offer it. We often hear people talking about Sovereign Grace. There are

01:47:25

Sovereign Grace Ministries, Sovereign Grace Churches, and Sovereign Grace Conferences. Isn't Sovereign Grace really redundant?

01:47:32

Is there any other kind of grace? And that is from Ben in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

01:47:39

Yes, I agree with that completely. In fact, in our first broadcast, the last one we had a week or so ago,

01:47:47

I said exactly that. I said I think that we use these adjectives to describe grace because people don't really know what grace is, and so we say things like Sovereign Grace.

01:48:01

I agree with that. I don't think it's necessary to say that.

01:48:06

If we're teaching the Scripture, people will begin to understand, if the Spirit of the

01:48:12

Lord blesses it, they'll begin to understand that grace means everything that we say about it, and even more.

01:48:20

We probably haven't begun to commence to get started, as one of my friends used to say.

01:48:26

It really scratched the surface of the grace of God. Yes, I agree, but I also believe that phraseology can be helpful to distinguish what we're saying from other false views.

01:48:40

It doesn't work perfectly, but to give you an example, I just, earlier on in the program,

01:48:46

I used the phrase born -again Christian, and I caught myself and said it was a redundancy because all true

01:48:51

Christians are born again, but there is a common use of the word

01:48:58

Christian, and people, many people, who knows, maybe even the majority of people, when they hear the word

01:49:06

Christian, that just means to them the person is not a Muslim or a Jew or an atheist and that they are either coming from a family background of a religion that identifies

01:49:21

Christ in some way, or they may go to church every Sunday as a custom, but the person is as dead as a doornail, spiritually, and headed for hell.

01:49:32

So I think that using phrases that highlight or illuminate the true article in contrast to the false article,

01:49:41

I think that those things can be helpful. Well, I think, yes, what we're doing, though, is we're struggling, and I do this every time

01:49:49

I preach, any time I preach or teach, I'm struggling to try to exegete what

01:49:56

I think the scripture is teaching. Now, when I speak to an individual in a personal, private manner, then

01:50:04

I expand on that a lot. If I'm preaching, if you come to Grace Church, you don't have to be there but one time, and I guarantee you'll know what the term sovereign grace means, because we have passages such as the

01:50:21

Romans 9, 15, 16 passage, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,

01:50:27

I will harden whom I will, no man can, the difference between may and can, may is a word of permission, can is a word of ability, no man can come to me except the

01:50:39

Father which has sent me draw him. The whole scripture, I think, emphasizes and tells us and defines what grace means, but yes, we are struggling to try to say to people, we're not, as you've done in this broadcast, you have mentioned the

01:50:55

Roman Catholic Church, you have mentioned some folks that might be Arminian or even

01:51:01

Pelagian in their theological approach to scripture and you've tried to differentiate between what they're thinking about grace and what we think the

01:51:12

Bible says about it. So yes, I know those terms can be helpful, but I do think there's a redundancy simply because people don't understand what grace is and I think if we teach the scripture as it is, they certainly will understand that we believe that grace is in the hands of God, it begins with Him, it's under His power, it's used by Him as it pleases

01:51:37

Him and men cannot be God. There's a friend of mine who had a problem counseling, went and saw a counselor of a friend of his and after he told him his problems, he said, can you help me?

01:51:52

And his friend said, I think I can. He said, well, what would you say to me? He said, well, there's just one

01:51:57

God and you're not Him. I think that's what we have to understand is as I said earlier, any effort to try to help

01:52:08

God out, do His work in our salvation is legalism or something worse.

01:52:15

It's almost blasphemous because it's an affront to the Son of God. Why would

01:52:21

God send His Son and put Him through what He put Him through if there's something we can do to save ourselves?

01:52:28

Amen, and in fact, it boggles my mind and I think it just has to do with ignorance of what the man really taught.

01:52:37

It boggles my mind that so many of my independent fundamentalist Baptist friends uphold as a great hero of the

01:52:46

Christian faith, Charles Finney. Charles Finney was more Pelagian than any

01:52:51

Roman Catholic is and these same fundamentalists will immediately declare

01:52:57

Roman Catholicism as a false religion and at the same time uphold Finney as a hero.

01:53:03

Finney did not believe in the requirement of grace for a sinner to come to Christ.

01:53:11

He thought grace was a wonderful thing and a help and all that. He did not believe that it was essential and he believed that man was born with a clean slate.

01:53:23

He was not born totally depraved or with original sin and was able by the very nature of his free will that Finney taught man has could come to Christ without any miracle occurring in the person's heart as we who are sovereign grace believers believe that a heart transplant by Christ Himself is required.

01:53:50

So, you know, it's just amazing to me but before we go here, I want to make sure that we address the last element of our discussion today and that is why do men reject this free precious gift?

01:54:06

I know people hate hearing about this gift when it comes to describing one of the more extreme cases.

01:54:19

To give you an example, one of the Manson family Tex Watson, Charles Tex Watson, who is serving a life sentence in prison for being involved in the murders.

01:54:36

The one of the surviving members of the Tate family has actually,

01:54:43

I'm sorry. I remember Tex Watson. Yes. Well, Susan LaBerge, Rosemary, the daughter of Rosemary LaBianca, I believe it was.

01:55:02

Yes, Rosemary LaBianca's daughter. She has not only forgiven Tex Watson because Tex Watson said to her that he is a

01:55:14

Christian now and has repented of the damning evil of his murder and Susan LaBerge is also a

01:55:23

Christian or professes to be and she has forgiven Tex and they've actually become friends.

01:55:30

This is the kind of grace that your average person is abhorred by. They don't want anything to do with that.

01:55:36

They want that guilty person to have nothing but punishment with no ability to receive grace from God and they think that we are insane or even evil for saying that this kind of mercy and forgiveness is possible for a heinous crime like that and if you could respond, why do men reject this free precious gift?

01:55:58

Well, I think you're right and to answer that question succinctly in the time we have left,

01:56:03

I would simply say this. I think if we go back, you know, there's a law of what we call first mention from something that's first mentioned in the scripture then everything that follows that needs to be interpreted in light of that and it relates to that.

01:56:18

So in the Garden of Eden, when the serpent approached the woman and said, look, the reason

01:56:24

God doesn't want you to eat of these other trees, this tree here, the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil is because he knows that when you eat of that tree, you will be independent and you will be as God's, literally from the

01:56:42

Hebrew it says, you will be as God's determining for yourself what is right and what is wrong.

01:56:48

So the bottom line of resistance is simply a matter of the will. It is a matter of am

01:56:55

I going to be God of God or is God going to be God over me?

01:57:01

And that is the issue. The issue is that men do not want a God who tells them what to do or who demands or who provides a spirit that leads them.

01:57:16

I believe coming to Christ is coming to serve him. We're coming to be saved by him and I didn't finish my statement earlier about those preachers on television.

01:57:25

They're always talking about if you want to go to heaven. Well, I don't know of anybody that doesn't want to go to heaven but that's not the issue of the gospel.

01:57:34

The issue of the gospel is being saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. If you're saved by him then you want to be saved from your sins.

01:57:44

And if you're saved from your sins, heaven and the rest of it will take care of itself. So I think the issue is between the will of man and the will of God.

01:57:54

And as an old preacher said, he said, you have a will and God has a will. And he said, you better pray that God wins because if you win, you get the prize and the prize is theirs.

01:58:06

Amen, and I want to make sure that our listeners have once again your website for Grace Church at Franklin in Franklin, Tennessee.

01:58:15

It is gracechurchatfranklin .org gracechurchatfranklin .org.

01:58:22

It is the word at and not the symbol gracechurchatfranklin .org and Franklin is spelled

01:58:28

F -R -A -N -K -L -I -N. I want to thank you so much Pastor Bill for doing such an extraordinary job as I knew you would.

01:58:37

I'm looking forward to your return to this program soon and frequently, God willing.

01:58:44

I want to thank you. Yes, I thank you and appreciate it. I want to encourage everybody out there to support you properly and financially.

01:58:50

We certainly will. I appreciate that. And I know one thing for sure is for all future interviews, use your cell phone because it's working a lot better.

01:59:01

Unlike the usual situation, your cell phone is working infinitely better than your landline did.

01:59:09

And I want to thank everybody who listened and I want to quickly recommend a book that addresses the subject we were focusing on today,

01:59:21

The Transforming Grace, the book of the same title, Transforming Grace by the late

01:59:27

Jerry Bridges, published by NAV Press. That's N -A -V as in Victory Press, short for Navigators Press.

01:59:35

And you can get that at cvbbs .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

01:59:41

Make sure you tell them that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Trip and Zion Radio. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater