Reformed Theology (Part 2)

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Reformed Theology (Part 3)

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we'll get started.
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Father God, we thank you for the opportunity to study together.
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We thank you for the Word of God, which tells us that we are to be seekers of truth, that we are to study to show ourselves approved unto God as workmen who needeth not to be ashamed, rightly handling the Word of truth.
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So I pray, Lord, that we would rightly handle your truth.
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I pray that we would not be those who are seeking our own ends, our own prideful ways, or even our own dogmas, Lord, to force them into Scripture, but that we would seek to derive our theology from the Bible and never try to force a theological paradigm onto the text.
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We do pray that we would be consistent, Father, for that is the hallmark of truth, that we speak with consistency.
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And we just pray that you would give us consistency in our thinking.
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And ultimately, Father, that the Holy Spirit would be the teacher this morning, for I know that, Lord, I am less than unworthy, I'm so unworthy.
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And Father, I just I thank you for making us worthy in Jesus Christ and giving us the power of the Spirit whereby we can learn your truths.
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We thank you for all of this in the name of your Son Jesus Christ and for his sake.
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Amen.
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It's interesting, I had a short discussion yesterday with a gentleman as I was handing out gospel tracts at the Callahan Parade.
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A man stopped me, he was one of the leaders of the parade, and he said, I need to tell you something, I'm very thankful for you doing this.
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He said, I'm just thankful to see somebody who's out sharing the gospel with people, and he really seemed very genuine, and he said, and I wanted, when I was a young man, I wanted to go into ministry, and I had a full scholarship, I was going to go to seminary.
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I thought it was interesting that he would say that, because he's sort of telling me his story, and he said, but I just didn't feel worthy, and so I never pursued it, and I ended up in, you know, secular work, he said, but I still serve in my church, I serve as a layperson, I just didn't feel worthy to be in the ministry as a pastor.
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And there's two ways to look at that, because I got, you know, I thought about it, it kind of resonated in my mind, what I said to him is, I said, look, I said, you know, it's Christ who makes us worthy, none of us are worthy of ourselves.
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That was all I could say to him, but as I was walking away, I said, you know what, it is a fearful thing to teach God's Word.
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The Bible says not everyone should presume to be teachers, because teachers will be held to a higher standard, and that's a frightening thing, that's my scary life verse.
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Everybody has life verse, well I have different ones, I have my positive life verse, and then my scary life verse, you know, well the scary life verse is don't everybody presume to be teachers, that's it, it's a frightening thing, but it was also just a reminder about something of theology that we often forget, and that is that none of us in and of ourselves are worthy of anything that we have received from God.
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The moment you begin to think that you are somehow worthy of what God has given you, that you are somehow worth in and of yourself God's favor, then it stops being grace.
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Paul tells us that, he says if grace is a debt, if it's something that you earned, then it's not grace, it's a wage that God had to pay you, because it's something that you earned, and he said as soon as you start thinking like that, then you have missed grace by a mile, and so thinking about Reformed theology, one of the hallmarks of the teaching of Reformed theology is something that's called total depravity.
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Now we haven't gotten to the book yet, and I am kind of offshooting a bit from the book, but come on in brother.
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Yeah, yeah, come on around.
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Total depravity is the belief that man is born in sin, that he not only is born in sin, but he is born dead in trespasses and sins, and that this is his nature, this was all of our nature, until God in his providence saw fit to give us life, and it is that life that produces in us a desire to trust in Christ, it is that life that produces in us a desire to obey God's law, it is that new life that produces in us an ability to walk uprightly in the world.
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Outside of those things, we are, outside of the new birth, we are totally depraved, and people say, well wait a minute, I don't know if I believe that, because hey, I know people who aren't saved, and they are good people, and the question always becomes, well what is the standard of goodness that you're measuring them by? Because if all you're doing is measuring them by the standard of other men, yes, the spectrum of social righteousness is widely divergent.
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You have among the unbelievers men as worldly virtuous as Gandhi, and then someone as worldly evil as Hitler, or somebody like Ted Bundy, if you want to make it more very close to home, you know, somebody who would go and murder and rape women.
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Yes, obviously on the scale of social iniquity, there are two wildly divergent things, but it's the old scale thing, as I say, you know, if you put Jesus Christ on a scale, and you put the most evil person you could think of, let's think, you know, Ted Bundy, the most evil person you could think of on the other end of the scale, you know, where in would you land? And if you think that, you know, I'd run somewhere in the middle, I remember a lady told me that one time, I said, where would you be if I put Jesus Christ on this end, and I put, you know, Ted Bundy on this end, where would you, she said, well I think I'd be somewhere in the middle.
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Well, the thing is, is there's no right way to understand this scale if this is the way our mind works, because Jesus isn't on the spectrum.
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There is no, there's Jesus, and then there's Ted Bundy.
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There is humans, humanity, and then God.
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Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, and you're right, down here with Ted Bundy.
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Yeah, exactly, and that's what I'm saying, is, I mean, we could say, yes, I'd be arm-in-arm with Ted Bundy, or I'd be shoulders with Hitler, because I'm human, and I'm failed, and I'm sinful, but my point is this, is it's, we don't even understand the concept of holiness and righteousness without having something to compare it to.
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What do we compare it to? We compare it to us.
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You can come around this way.
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Yeah, don't be sorry, it's no big deal.
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So what do we do? We, you know, we don't, we try to compare.
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Here's the comparison that Scripture makes.
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You're either dead in sin, or you're alive to righteousness.
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You're either dead in sin, or you're alive to righteousness.
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There is no scale.
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Can somebody be half-dead? Well, you can feel half-dead, but in reality, you're either dead, or you're alive, and there is no scale of deadness.
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In fact, it's one of the most interesting things in the world.
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You know, if you come across an old 57 Chevy that's been sitting in a junkyard for 50 years, and you can add all the parts back together, and you can restore that car, and you can make it alive, right? Because it's a mechanically dead thing, but spiritual, spiritual life is like physical life in the sense that once you die, even if they took all your parts out, and they put all new parts in, and they zapped you with electricity, it ain't like Frankenstein.
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You wouldn't come back to life.
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It would just be all new parts and a rotting corpse, right? There's something about death.
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This is something that science has never really been able to adequately explain, that once someone is dead, they're dead.
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There is no reintroducing of the spirit to the body.
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Once it's dead, it's gone.
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Outside of a miracle of God, outside of the miracle of resurrection, people who die are dead.
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Now you say, well, I know people who have died, you know, two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, but they were brought back to life.
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Okay, that's, we're talking in terms of deadness here.
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You go to the grave, you dig somebody up who's got formaldehyde in them, you dump the formaldehyde out, put blood back in them, and you try to hit them with electric, you know, from like a car battery, what's gonna happen? They're gonna stay dead, because it's a, yeah, you're gonna burn the corpse.
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It's two categories, dead and alive, and there's no spectrum.
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You're either dead or you're alive, and that's the same way spiritually.
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No matter how good a person is socially, no matter how righteous a person may behave on the social spectrum, they're either dead in their sins, or they're alive in Jesus Christ.
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That sounds maybe oversimplified, but that's what the Bible teaches us, and this is a big issue regarding Reformed theology, because Reformed theology rejects common language that is used in the church today.
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For instance, you'll hear in the church today talk about seekers.
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What's a seeker? Yeah, exactly.
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They have churches that are seeker sensitive, and the whole church is designed around what? The model that we want to make the church look exactly like the world, so that when the world comes in, it feels right at home, and so the church, we were talking a little bit this morning about, you know, big band, rock and roll, music, and the disco ball.
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I guess we're not in the 70s, so it wouldn't be a disco ball, but they have the lights, and when the pastor comes in, it's like, you know, Stone Cold Steve Austin on the WWE, and he comes in, well, are you ready to get down with GOD? You know, it's really ridiculous, but that's what we've done, because we are trying to appeal to the most fleshly part of man, that part which gets sensuously excited over lights, and music, and loud, boisterous behavior, or we have the little guy who comes out looking like Steve Jobs.
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He's got the tight pants, and the haircut, and the little nice rimmed glasses, and he comes out, and he wants to tell us a story, you know, because that is also appealing too.
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Maybe he's not Stone Cold Steve Austin, maybe he's Steve Jobs, but it's all about the appeal.
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The guys like me are dinosaurs.
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I'm 35 years old.
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I'm already extinct, you know, because I wear a tie.
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Oh, shame on me, you know.
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I wear a jacket in church.
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Oh my goodness, you know, that's crazy, and I'm not saying clothes matter.
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What I'm saying is that guys who look like me are the court of the old hat type thing, you know.
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I actually have a haircut that's parts, you know.
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What are you gonna do with that? Anyway, the point is we have tried to find these seekers.
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When the Bible says there is none who seeks after God, you realize that was one of the first things when I became reformed in my theology, that was one of the first things that absolutely struck me was that I had used this term seeker for a long time, and I had given over to the idea that that was what the church needed, is it needed to focus on the people who were seeking God, and then I, you know, by a miracle, opened the Word of God, and I read Romans 3, and it says there are none who understands.
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There is none who seeks after God, and I said, but wait a minute, God.
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You know, here I am answering back to God because I'm not real bright.
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I'm saying, hey, but God, what about all these people I see that flood into the concerts, that flood into the churches, that flood into these places seeking God? You know, the answer is it's an ancient maxim.
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I believe it was Augustine who said it, but I could be wrong, but the ancient maxim is this, everyone wants the blessings of God without obedience.
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Everyone wants the blessings of God without obedience.
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It is the man who wants obedience who has been converted.
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It's a man who wants to serve God who has been changed.
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Everybody wants his blessings.
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It's just like there's another kind of expression, I don't know how old it is, but everybody wants to go to heaven, nobody wants to die.
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You've heard that? Everybody wants God's blessings, but nobody wants to bow the knee.
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Everybody wants what God can give them, but no one wants to serve Him.
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I want it on my terms, I want it my way, I want it according to my standards, and what? Sorry, I'm a little loud.
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Apologize.
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I want it according to my standards, and so what? We now come up with a new term.
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Come as you are.
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Why? Because it's all about you.
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I showed my friend the other day, actually as a relative, we're talking about the differences in music, and he's very much into southern gospel music.
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Now if I'm going to offend you with this, know that I truly, truly am not trying to offend anyone because music is never something that I want to divide people on.
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It's just not that big of a deal to me.
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As long as the songs are doctrinally accurate, I don't care whether it's played with a guitar or an organ.
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It really doesn't matter, but here's the issue.
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He and I were talking, and I said, think about every song that you sing in church because they do traditional southern singing.
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I said, how many of those songs are about you? I'm gonna have a little talk with Jesus.
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I'm gonna tell him all about my troubles.
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I will hear my Savior cry.
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I will answer by and by.
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How many times did I say I and my? And that's one of their favorite songs.
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How many of you know that song? Have you heard that? Yeah.
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Never heard that one? That's one of the more popular ones in this church because I grew up going to some of these churches with my mom, and so I was talking to him, and I was just saying, listen to how much the song is about you.
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How many of your songs are intended to glorify the God of the universe and not your blessings? That's right on, man.
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I noticed even on one of the songs that that we sing on a regular basis, there was a line that kind of went, hmm.
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It just kind of jumped out, and then the line says, every blessing you pour out, I'll turn back to praise.
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Really? Everyone? You will? Hmm.
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You sure? Maybe you should say, every blessing you pour out, may every blessing you pour out be turned back to praise.
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How about that? And I think that's the heart of the song.
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I agree with what you're saying.
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I think that's the heart of the song, is that's what should happen.
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For every blessing we receive, we should turn it back to praise.
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That's right.
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You're right, we don't.
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Don't say you're gonna.
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That's my goal not to sin today.
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Yeah, exactly.
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I do think that that song is speaking of a goal, but you're right, we don't automatically turn everything back into praise.
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In fact, how much do we receive from God that we don't praise Him for? Right.
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Every breath, every heartbeat.
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You could group it and say, you know, Lord, everything I missed, you know.
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Yeah, that's what I'm doing right now, God.
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I'm turning everything into praise.
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But yeah, obviously, like I said, and you know, we know a lot of the songs, they're not necessarily perfect, and as I said, we've never claimed perfection in that area, but you know, the goal is, should always be doctrinal purity, you know, in our teaching, in our singing, in our everything.
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Now, I've gone a little off the subject.
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My point in all this is total depravity is a very important part of understanding Reformed theology.
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If total depravity is true, if it's true, which I will say because it's true, I'm not going to say if.
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I say because it's true, the rest of Reformed theology is there by necessity.
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If I cannot respond positively to the gospel because of being dead in sin, which is what Jesus says, no one can come to me unless the Father in heaven grants it to him.
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That's a powerful text from the words of Jesus Christ, and he says it twice in the same context.
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He says it once in verse 44, once in verse 65, and he says the opposite in verse 37.
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He says, all the Father gives me will come to him.
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All the Father gives me, something God does, will come to me, is what we do.
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Our response to coming is because God did something prior.
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All of this is important because this leads us into everything else.
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If we don't understand total depravity, then really we don't understand biblical theology.
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This is the hard part because I've heard men say, well, I believe in total depravity, I just don't believe in the rest.
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Well, the rest is there as a result of a right understanding of the first.
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Yes? I wholeheartedly agree that the Lynchpins is the concept of total depravity because how many times have many churches, Christians, can't explain why bad things happen? We fail to acknowledge Adam's original sin as the cause of why the earth is cursed now, and once you, if you can grasp that concept, you can, we may not be able to answer specifically what happens in all situations, but we can explain to people why it's caused and why it's happened.
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Many times we go out like we don't have the answers, but we do because our sins have cursed this world, and we're not capable of being righteous in it of our own power.
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Yeah, and like I said, that's the, you know, I talked to a guy the other day, and he was a pastor, sweet man, we would disagree on a lot, he is holiness pastor, so we would, he's congregational, not congregational Methodist, but they're similar, their theology is like if you were to mix Methodism in its old form and Pentecostal together, that's sort of what you get when you get holiness because Methodism is really how they view the salvation, the ability to lose their salvation, very Arminian in their understanding of God's sovereignty in those things, but then they're Pentecostal in that they believe in signed gifts and things, and it's sort of like a melding of the two, which is why sometimes they're called congregational Methodist.
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But anyhow, as he and I were speaking, it almost sounded like, and I don't want to quote him and say this is exactly what he said, but it almost sounded like he was saying that, you know, if somebody's in church, they're doing okay, if somebody's outside of church, they're not doing okay, and that was sort of his understanding of, because we were talking about people, not talking about people, we were just sitting there gossiping up a storm, no, we were actually talking about people that we know, and there's the young man that was going to his church that I know, and I was sort of saying, hey, you know, I really hope you can minister to this young man, and it's like I said, even though we have a divergence of theology, I know this young man's going to his church, I know this is what he's getting, so I was just sort of talking to him about him, and he was like, yeah, well, you know, this person goes to church, you know, but he's not, he doesn't really go to church very often, and this other person, well, he knows God and everything, but he'll come to church, and he won't come to church, but it sounded like I said, in the midst of the conversation, it was all about whether or not, if you're in church, you're saved, and when you're not in church, you're not saved, and again, if you have a belief that you can win and lose your salvation by your works, if you believe that regeneration is something that God turns on and off like a faucet, you're born again when you're doing right, you're dead in sin when you're not doing right, and it's a faucet.
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I remember years ago, I had a conversation with a man who believed that, and he said, he said, I see, he was just arguing, yes, you can lose your salvation, yes, you can lose it, yes, and I said, so are you saved right now? Yes, because right now I'm doing good.
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I said, what about tonight? Could you theoretically, before you put your head down on your pillow, lay it down and be dead in sin and hell-bound if you were to die in your sleep? Yes, that's possible.
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I said, you don't have peace with God.
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Romans 5.1 says, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God.
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The word peace there is a Greek derivative of the ancient word shalom.
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Shalom means what? Means forever peace.
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That's why when the Jews cry out shalom for Israel, they're not calling for a ceasefire.
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They're not calling for a treaty of men that would last as long as the men in charge last.
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They're calling for forever peace.
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That's what we have with God.
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I'm preaching on peace this morning, so it's sort of on my mind.
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That's what we have when we're born again.
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We go from death to life forever.
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It says He gives them eternal life.
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It doesn't say if we can lose our salvation, guess what? John 3.16 is false.
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He said, whosoever believeth in Him will not perish but will have everlasting life.
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If you can lose it again, it's not everlasting.
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Duh.
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So I'm not here to argue eternal security, but it is to me, again, it's building out of the idea that if we were totally depraved, and we were, and God saved us by His mercy and not because of our works, which He did, and God gave us new birth to eternal life, not to temporary life, which we are promised, then we are secure in Him and we do have shalom with God.
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We have peace.
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That's the heart of Reformed theology.
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How does an unrighteous man be made right with a righteous God? God sets down the terms of peace.
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He enacts the work which brings about the peace.
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He is the one who is the peacemaker, and He sends His Son who is the Prince of Peace to provide the terms of that peace agreement.
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So that's where we are.
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Now all that didn't give us any further in our book.
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He's sovereign.
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And that's, I think, what's happened with the Seekers Sensitive Church is to the point is we take God out of the sovereignty of setting the terms of peace.
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It becomes, again, all about us.
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Well, let's look at the third block on our paper.
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Do you guys need one? The third block, we've already looked at theology.
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Reformed theology builds around sovereignty of God.
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We've looked at God.
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God is sovereign, perfect, and He's no way limited by His creation.
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Huge important thing.
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God is not limited by us.
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We are limited by Him, but He is not limited by us.
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Third thing is revelation.
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That's not talking about the book of Revelation.
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Revelation is God, how God has revealed Himself.
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Reformed theology rests on Scripture alone.
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The Latin phrase is sola scriptura.
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We've talked about that several times.
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The Bible is God's Word and as such remains without error in every respect.
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Scripture guides all of church life and teaching.
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The Bible is authoritative in every area it addresses.
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Alright, I want to share a principle with you that isn't mentioned here, but it's important when you understand sort of the overarching argument of how Reformed theology understands Scripture.
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We understand sola scriptura, and if you ever, if anybody ever asks you to define sola scriptura, the Bible is the sole infallible rule for faith and practice.
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That's the simple explanation.
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Why do I make it very specific? Sole, meaning only, infallible, meaning it is without error.
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It's the only inerrant rule for faith and practice.
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It's the sole infallible rule for faith and practice.
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Now why do I make it very specific? Because I want to also say this, it's not the only rule that we look at.
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It's the only infallible rule.
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We have 2,000 years of church history that speaks to us about truth and godliness, righteousness.
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This is why I can quote guys like Spurgeon and Jonathan Edwards and other people like that.
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I can quote them as authorities, but not infallible authorities.
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I can quote them as godly men who have studied Scripture before me, but they're not infallible authorities.
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You see, this is where the Catholic Church would attack us.
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They would say that sola scriptura means that we read the Bible and nothing else, that we ignore history, that we ignore tradition, that we ignore everything the church has done in 2,000 years, and that's where the Catholic Church attacks the Protestants.
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They say, you ignore the history of the church and it's just you with your Bible on an island and every man is an island unto himself.
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Let me tell you that, that's dangerous.
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I agree with the Roman Catholic Church in one sense.
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The Bible was never intended to be interpreted individually by a man on an island by himself.
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There is history, there is learned men, there are learned men, say that correctly, in history who have spoken on these issues which we should give our attention to.
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As I said, I quote Spurgeon, I quote Edwards, I quote Augustine, I did it earlier.
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You don't go to a lot of Baptist churches and hear people quoting Augustine.
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You might hear them quote Augustine.
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The correct way to say it.
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But my point being, when we say Sola Scriptura, we do not deny that the church has a very long history of learned men who have given us thoughtful and powerful insight and traditions that we don't necessarily jettison, but everything is measured by what? Scripture.
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Because it's the only infallible rule.
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If some guy brings up some nutty thing and says this, we ought to be doing this because I don't care who did it.
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Calvin did this.
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I don't care.
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If it's against the Bible, I'm not doing it.
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If it's not what the Bible teaches, then it's not what we should be doing.
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You see, that's where infallible becomes in.
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It's the only infallible source.
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See, in Roman Catholicism, there's two infallible sources.
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You have the infallible Bible and the infallible magisterium.
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The magisterium has the authority to interpret the Bible, so guess who's more important? Well, they'll say they're equal, but when one is interpreting the other, the one given deference to the interpretation is the more authoritative one.
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Then by definition, they have more power because they can say, I don't mean that, even if it clearly says it.
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They can say it doesn't mean that.
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Who's to speak against them? They're infallible, right? So they can give wildly weird interpretations.
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Well, when the angel spoke to Mary, he was proving all of Mariology because he said, blessed are you among women, and that proves that we should be praying the Rosary, and that proves that we should be praying to her, and that proves that we should understand that she was extended up into heaven, that she was born without sin, that she never was without her virginity.
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It was intact before, during, and after the birth of Jesus Christ, and she never had another child.
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This is all built into one phrase in Luke where it says, blessed are you among women.
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It's all built into that, but who told us that? The magisterium.
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And because they're authoritative, what do they get to do? They get to interpret it.
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And so who's to question them? They're authoritative.
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This is why sola scriptura was so important during the Reformation.
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It was making the argument that there's only one infallible source, and it ain't the magisterium, it's the Scripture.
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And so something that was birthed out of the Reformation was something that, I don't think it was birthed out of the Reformation, let me say something that was rediscovered.
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I don't think the Reformation gave birth to anything.
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It was a rediscovery.
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It was something called the regulative principle.
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All right, that's wrong.
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That's wrong.
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Wrong principle.
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Sorry.
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I knew it, so I wrote it.
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All right.
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The other one's your pal.
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Yeah, yeah, yes, okay.
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Principle, and yeah, I knew it.
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The regulative principle is this, and it really should be the regulative principle of worship.
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The regulative principle of worship is this, that what we do in worship should come from the Bible, and the Bible regulates what we do in worship.
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If the Bible doesn't command it, then we are not to do it in worship to God.
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That's the regulative principle.
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Why is it so important for the Reformation? Because think of all the things that were going on in the Roman Catholic Church that weren't given in Scripture, the prayer to saints, the very understanding of the Mass.
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These are all things that weren't biblical, and they said, no, we have to go back and derive our worship from our Scriptures.
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That's the regulative principle.
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Now, the opposite principle to the regulative principle, it's called the normative principle.
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Normative principle is this, if the Bible doesn't forbid it, then it is welcome in worship.
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So one says the Bible has to command it for it to be a part of worship.
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The other says if the Bible doesn't forbid it, then it should be a part of worship.
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Now I have to tell you, just between you and me, and everybody who listens to this by recording, haha, no church perfectly follows the regulative principle, because, you know, even in these churches that hold to a very staunch regulative principle, they would probably still light candles in the worship service, and you won't find anywhere in the New Testament where there's command to light candles.
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We're gonna light candles this morning on our communion table, we're gonna light candles in the Advent ceremony, you know, the devotional that we do.
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So, know this, I'm not, I'm not saying we're perfect by any means, but here's the, here's where the principle is derived from.
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It is scripturally derived.
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When Nadab and Abihu took their offering to God, God killed them for what reason? Because they offered up what I did not command them.
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That's what, that's, that was God's explanation.
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He said, they offered what I did not command.
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That's, that's where the regulative principle comes from.
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If we're being willy-nilly in worship, and we're simply putting stuff out there, and it's not what God has commanded, I would say this, our worship service, our liturgy, and every church has a liturgy, even non-liturgical services.
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Do you know what liturgy is? You've heard the phrase of liturgical churches.
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Normally, you think liturgical, you think of Roman Catholics, Episcopals, Presbyterian churches that, huh? Smells and bells, and they have the high church set up, and the worship is outlined, and usually you're reading along, following some kind of outline.
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It's very structured.
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I actually dig that.
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I don't hate it.
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Some people hate it.
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I dig it.
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I don't mind the pomp and the circumstance, because worship should be special.
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I don't mind putting a lot of thought into how we're worshiping.
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I actually, we don't do that a lot here, but I don't, I love it.
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I go to R.C.'s church.
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I can dig it.
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Here's the thing, everybody has a liturgy.
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I don't care if you go to Backwoods Baptist, and you've been there for 50 years, and you've never been to a church that had an organ or a censer where they're putting out good smells or anything.
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If you've only been to Backwood Baptist, every church service, pastor comes in, prays, you sing three songs, he prays again, they take an offering, you sing another song, and then he preaches.
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That's your liturgy, because that's what you do.
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Your liturgy is prayer, hymns, and preaching.
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Liturgy is simply the elements of worship, and it's in there.
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Now it may change every Sunday, but it's those same elements are simply moving around.
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The liturgy is the elements of the worship, and that's where the regulative principle comes in.
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Does God command prayer? So do we pray when we come together? Yeah.
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Does God command the singing of hymns? Actually, the New Testament does us to speak to each other in songs and hymns and spiritual songs, so that is part of our commendation from Scripture, is to sing to one another.
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Encourage one another in the singing of psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
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That's part of what we're commanded to do, and that's part of what singing does, is it's not only to praise God, but it's also an encouraging word to another.
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When we speak truth, think about like the song this morning.
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We're going to do the song, Sit With You, which I know is not the most deepest theological song.
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It's one of my favorite songs.
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It was sung at my grandmother's funeral.
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It just has a lot emotionally for me.
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It wasn't sung at her funeral.
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It was sung the Sunday after, and I broke down.
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It was so just reminded me of God's presence with me and His peace, which was the only place I could find peace.
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My grandmother helped raise me, a very important lady in my life, and it was a very difficult time in my life to lose her.
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Even though I believe she was a believer, still losing her from this earth was hard for me.
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So this song is very powerful because it speaks to not only a situation in my life, but it speaks to the reality of God's presence, being in God's presence, and finding your peace there and not somewhere else, you know.
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So singing of hymns has a twofold effect.
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We praise God and we also remind ourselves and others about the promises of God, the blessings of God, and all these things.
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So God commands singing of hymns? Yeah.
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Does God command the preaching of the Word? Absolutely.
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It's all through the New Testament.
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That's what Paul went about doing.
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We see it by example and by decree that we are to preach the Word of God.
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What about communion? The Bible doesn't tell us how often we have to do it.
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In our church, we do it every Sunday, but other churches don't.
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That doesn't matter.
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I think that the only thing that we should never overlook it.
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It should be a part of the liturgy, whether it's a monthly or bimonthly or annual thing.
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It should never be overlooked as an important part of worship.
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What's my time? Anybody got it? Okay, we're out of time.
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Basically, this stuff, just to finish up, the normative principle says if it's not disallowed, then it's okay.
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That gets very dangerous.
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We should always seek to have a scriptural precedent for what we do in worship.
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This can flood over into our life because oftentimes people will say, Pastor, can I do such-and-so and it not be a sin? Almost every time I say, first of all, if you can't do it without asking that question, it's probably a sin for you.
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Even if it's not a sin objectively, Romans 14 tells us it can be a sin subjectively because you can't do it in good faith.
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So that's the first answer normally.
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In case you're coming to ask me that question later, just know that's what I must say.
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The second thing is, can we apply the regulative principle to our life? Well, in a sense we can.
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We can always ask ourselves, is this what God has commanded of me? He's commanded two things, first of all, to love Him and to love our neighbors ourselves.
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So I know that if I'm doing something that is not out of love for God or love for my neighbor, I have to ask myself, what's my motivation? Is it pride? Is it arrogance? Is it selfish ambition? Am I doing this because I love God and I love other people? That's the very first regulative principle.
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Why am I doing anything that I do? So hopefully that's helpful for you.
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Hopefully that helps you understand how Reformed theology looks at Scripture.
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It is the sole infallible rule for faith and practice.
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Let's pray.
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Father, thank you for the time to study together.
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I thank you for all of these folks who come out early on Sunday to hear the Word taught, and I just pray that it has been an encouragement to their souls and that your Holy Spirit would apply it to our hearts is our one request, in Christ's name, Amen.