David Copperfield, Dr. Phil, and Calvinism

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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January 20, 2022

00:00: What do Dr.
00:00: Phil, David Copperfield, and Calvinism have in common? Find out today on Conversations with a Calvinist, starting right now.
00:12: Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.
00:14: My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist coming to you today on this side of my battle with COVID.
00:22: I want to thank everyone who reached out to me and my wife last week as we went through our turn of going through COVID.
00:30: We do believe we had the Omicron variant because even though we were pretty sick, it was still mild in comparison to what I've heard some other people did have to go through.
00:40: So I'm thankful to God for that.
00:42: And I'm thankful for all of you who were praying, as I said before.
00:45: And just to give you a little sort of review of what we went through, I experienced a lot of body aches, a lot of pains, felt very much like the flu.
00:57: And it sort of came and went.
01:00: Some days I felt bad, some days I felt better, some days I felt like I wasn't sick at all.
01:04: And then I would, the very next day or even the next hour, I might fall down to being just completely in a lot of pain, headaches, fever, things like that.
01:13: So it really is a strange feeling to be sick and well and sick and well and sort of going through that rotation.
01:21: And my wife sort of the same way, she would feel better one day and then the next day feel bad again.
01:26: And she, of course, has some other issues.
01:30: She has asthma.
01:31: So we're a little more concerned with her.
01:32: I want to say how grateful I am to the folks who brought us food.
01:36: Some folks brought us some vitamins.
01:38: And we're just so grateful for everyone who reached out to us, who loved on us, and who just expressed the love of Christ to us through this time.
01:47: And we're thankful.
01:48: We think we're both getting better now.
01:51: I was back at work today, sort of a normal day for me, and looking forward to being back in the pulpit this Sunday and thankful that God is continuing to be gracious and walking with us.
02:04: So we praise the Lord for that.
02:06: And today's program is going to be a little different.
02:09: I don't have one single thing that I want to talk about.
02:11: I have sort of an amalgam of several things that I'm going to discuss.
02:15: I mentioned on the introduction to the program that I was going to talk about Dr.
02:19: Phil, David Copperfield, and Calvinism.
02:21: So hopefully you'll understand what all that means.
02:24: And I'll begin with the situation with Dr.
02:27: Phil.
02:27: If you are unaware, yesterday, Matt Walsh, and today is January 20th, so yesterday would have been the 19th, and I believe it was yesterday, Matt Walsh, very famous, conservative voice.
02:42: He speaks, I think, for the Daily Wire as one of the programs that are one of the media outlets that produces his material.
02:50: And Matt Walsh is a very well-known Roman Catholic, so obviously there are many things that he would say that I would disagree with.
02:55: I think I've even disagreed with him on this program before.
02:58: But he did do something yesterday that I think is notable and a positive, and I want to mention it, and I'm even going to slide a clip in of what happened.
03:07: He went on the show Dr.
03:09: Phil, and if you're not familiar with Dr.
03:11: Phil, praise the Lord, but you probably are.
03:13: Dr.
03:13: Phil has a television program.
03:15: He is a psychologist, and he brings people on his program and talks about their problems.
03:21: Well, Dr.
03:21: Phil brought on to his program Matt Walsh to discuss the subject of transgenderism and gender identity, and Matt Walsh, of course, was promoting what I would consider to be the right perspective, the biblical perspective.
03:36: He promoted a perspective that understands the difference between the biological sexes, men and women, and that those things are recognizable.
03:44: They are more than just cultural constructs, but they are actually found in the very depth of our being.
03:50: The very fabric of who we are is made up of either male or female.
03:54: The Bible tells us God created us male and female in the beginning, and that there aren't multiple genders.
04:01: There are two genders, and the male and female, man and woman, are created by God in his image, and we are created to serve him as we are made.
04:12: Well, there were on the program with Matt Walsh people who were representing the other side.
04:17: There were two transgender individuals that I saw, there may have been more, and then a professor who was, I'm assuming a professor of some type of gender studies, who was promoting the idea that gender is a spectrum, that gender can be changed.
04:35: The thing that got my attention the most in listening to the parts that I did get to listen to, and as I said, I'm going to slide a clip here in a minute, the parts that got my attention the most was just how much absolute agreement that the people in the audience seemed to have for the other side.
04:54: It was almost like every time Matt Walsh would say something, there would be crickets.
04:58: There would be nobody wants to agree with this guy because he is on the outside, he's on the fringe.
05:02: But then there would be almost universal agreement with those who were spouting nonsense, and that's really just what I wanted to point out on the program today.
05:12: If you haven't seen it, I recommend go watch, I'm going to slide a clip in, but you'll see just a snippet, but go watch the whole thing and see that even though there were a few people who were willing to agree with Matt Walsh, at least with their applause, many people just remained silent, and that's the problem.
05:35: That is the problem that many people don't understand, is that when the truth is proclaimed, we should reinforce it with our hearty approval and amen, and we should not be afraid to stand for the truth.
05:51: Men like Matt Walsh are in short supply.
05:54: Men who will stand up for the truth are in short supply, and even though we would disagree with him on many things theologically, and he certainly is wrong when it comes to his Roman Catholicism, there are many things that he gets right in regard to the temperature of the culture and taking the current temperature of the culture, and I'm thankful, and we need more people who will stand up, and we need to be people who will stand up, who will not be afraid to say what needs to be said.
06:23: And does that mean we're going to get canceled? Probably.
06:26: Does that mean that there are going to be times where people won't get to hear our voices because media platforms like the one that I'm on right now may not eventually allow for this? I just recently this week received an email from one of the outlets that we use for this program telling me that one of my shows is now being deemed offensive, and because it was deemed offensive, they immediately took it down.
06:52: They didn't ask me, they didn't give me a chance to fight or anything like that, they just simply deleted the footage, and I went in to look for it, it's gone, all the comments are gone, everything's gone, the program is no longer available on that particular media outlet, and so this is just going to continue to happen.
07:11: This is just going to continue to happen.
07:14: So let us be as strong as we can, and as loud as we can, for as long as we can.
07:23: All right, so here is the clip from the Dr.
07:27: Phil show.
07:28: So you think it's a delusion, someone is self-delusional? Yeah, I think it's delusion, it could be a mental illness, it could be, it's a lot of different things.
07:36: With children, there's also just a basic confusion that all kids have.
07:41: That's why when you hear someone, a parent say, oh, my four-year-old son came to me and said that I'm a girl now, and so that's what I'm going to, I'm going to raise him as a girl.
07:51: No, you're a four-year-old, I have four kids.
07:53: When a four-year-old boy comes to you and says, oh, I'm a girl, here's a good follow-up question.
07:58: What is a girl? Ask him what he means by that.
08:01: What do you mean by a girl? And when you ask him that, here's what he'll tell you.
08:04: He will tell you what he really means is that he wants to do some of the things that girls do, like play with the dollhouse, or he likes the color pink.
08:12: That's fine, play with the dollhouse, but you're still a boy.
08:16: That's a question I would like to throw out to other members of the panel, actually, because just like the four-year-old can't answer what is a girl, well, this is one of the problems with this left-wing gender ideology, is that no one who espouses it can even tell you what these words mean.
08:30: It's like, what is a woman? Can you tell me what a woman is? No, I can't, because it's not for me to say.
08:37: Womanhood looks different for everybody.
08:39: What do you define a woman as? An adult human female.
08:42: And what does a female mean? How do you define a female? Someone with female reproductive organs.
08:50: Here's the thing, when you're a female, it goes right down to your bones, your DNA.
08:53: So that's why if someone dies, we could dig up their bones a hundred years from now.
08:58: We have no idea what they believed in their head, but we can tell what sex they were, because it's ingrained in every fiber of their being.
09:06: Interesting.
09:07: So I'm trying to understand.
09:08: Your definition is that a woman is someone who is female, you said, right? Correct, is a biological female.
09:14: So what happens if we have maybe someone who is female, identifies as a woman, right? You know, cisgender woman, right? As you just explained, maybe doesn't have the ability to reproduce.
09:25: Maybe doesn't have those organs that you're talking about that are reproductive organs.
09:29: I have answered the question.
09:31: You stood up here and said trans women are women.
09:33: Yes.
09:34: Tell me what you mean.
09:35: What is a woman? Womanhood is something that, just as Ethan explained, I cannot define because I am not myself.
09:40: But you used the word.
09:40: So what did you mean when you said trans women are women if you don't know what it means? So here's the thing.
09:44: So I do not define what a woman is because I do not identify as a woman.
09:49: Womanhood is something that is an umbrella term.
09:52: It includes people who- That describes what? People who identify as a woman.
09:58: Identify as what? As a woman.
10:00: What is that? Was to each their own.
10:03: Each woman, each man, each person is going to have a different relation with their own gender identity and define it differently.
10:08: And so trans women are women too.
10:11: Okay.
10:13: And you want to- Hold on, hold on.
10:15: Trans women are women.
10:16: You won't even tell me what the word means though.
10:18: So that's the problem.
10:19: You want to reduce women.
10:19: You want to reduce men down to maybe just their genetics, our genitals, our chromosomes, right? That's what you're saying.
10:25: What you want to do is appropriate women.
10:28: You want to appropriate womanhood and turn it into basically a costume that can be worn.
10:33: Okay.
10:33: So that was what happened.
10:36: And again, I recommend if you have the opportunity, go back and watch more that particular situation that happened there on Dr.
10:44: Phil.
10:44: I think it's interesting and I think it's something that we should be watching.
10:48: We should look for these things that are happening, these opportunities which are happening for the truth to be proclaimed and to give a hearty approval when the truth is proclaimed.
10:59: Okay.
11:00: So we're going to move on today.
11:01: We're going to talk about getting out of the news.
11:03: We're going to get into a subject which is, it's been on my heart lately.
11:07: I was talking to my wife about it and I said, I want to bring it up on the program.
11:10: And that is the subject of false healers, false teachers, particularly those who proclaim to be healers.
11:19: I'm teaching through on Wednesday nights at Sovereign Grace Family Church.
11:23: I'm teaching through the book of Jude.
11:26: And one of the things that Jude points out is that there are people who come into the church who come in sort of under the radar and they're dangerous.
11:37: They are, as Jude describes them, they are like Cain and Balaam and Korah.
11:42: They are dangerous people in the church.
11:45: And as Jude describes them, they're clouds without water.
11:51: They appear to have something, but they're without substance.
11:55: And so one of the things that I have really dealt with over the years is the subject of false healings.
12:06: I remember when I was a kid, I would visit various churches, some of them being very Pentecostal style churches.
12:15: And I remember hearing all the time about the work that God was doing in these healings.
12:19: I remember one time a man saying that there were people who were coughing up tumors and they were spitting them in trash cans on the front of the church chancel there.
12:29: And it always just sounded very fantastic to me, very unrealistic.
12:34: And I want to say from the outset, I believe that God can and does heal even today.
12:39: I believe that miracles do happen today.
12:41: I am not a person who would deny the presence of the work of the Holy Spirit within the church.
12:49: But I do not believe that the gift of healing, as it was given to the apostles, is still operational today.
12:56: I believe that, again, God does heal, but the idea that men can simply tell other men to rise and walk in the name of Jesus, I do not believe that that is still happening.
13:07: I don't believe we see that happening, let me say that.
13:10: And for those who claim that it is happening, it is almost always a charlatan who is the one proclaiming to do these mighty works.
13:21: And that's what I call this the David Copperfield test.
13:26: And that's why I said earlier when I said I would talk about Dr.
13:29: Phil and David Copperfield and Calvinism.
13:33: Well, the David Copperfield test is something that actually it's something that I sort of came up with in my own mind many, many years ago when it comes to any type of thing that I'm that I have speculation about that, that I'm that I'm skeptical rather about, not speculative, but I'm skeptical about.
14:00: And I'll give you I'll give you the where this comes from.
14:04: When I was a young man, and many people know this, many people who know me, I had two jobs when I was in high school.
14:12: One of my jobs, I worked as a funeral attendant.
14:15: So I worked at a funeral home.
14:16: I wore a suit.
14:17: I went to work on Saturdays and Sundays.
14:20: I worked at the funeral home.
14:21: I attended funerals and handed out the little cards.
14:25: And I did that for for a few years.
14:28: And the other job that I had was I worked for Deland Entertainment as a magician.
14:36: Yep, an actual illusionist, I guess would be the better term.
14:43: I didn't do actual magic, but I did do illusions.
14:46: When I was 14 years old, my brother Bobby showed me my first magic trick.
14:52: And I remember exactly where I was.
14:54: I was in line for the sky ride at Busch Gardens, Tampa, Florida.
14:59: My brother turned around, took a coin, made the coin disappear.
15:04: And I was so amazed.
15:06: I'd never seen anything so amazing in my life.
15:09: I demanded that he teach me how to do it.
15:11: He spent the rest of the day trying to show me this trick.
15:14: And it took me a while to learn it, but I did learn it.
15:17: And then out of that grew just this passion to want to learn how to do sleight of hand.
15:24: And I began to attend seminars where professional magicians would come and you would pay them and they would teach you professional magicians secrets.
15:36: And I would buy books and I would buy videotapes.
15:39: My brother and I would go in together and buy videotapes.
15:42: And I began to learn more about the concept of illusion.
15:48: And then I became completely enamored with the idea of stage magic.
15:53: I began to watch men like David Copperfield, as I mentioned earlier, David Copperfield.
15:58: If you've never seen David Copperfield, he is an amazing illusionist.
16:02: And I know he's a little older now, but when I was 14, that was pretty much in the height of his popularity.
16:10: And he was much younger and so was I.
16:14: He was an amazing illusionist.
16:16: He did things like his flying illusion was beautiful.
16:20: His sawing in half illusions were heads and tails above what anybody else was doing at the time.
16:28: And he did certain things on television that were just amazing, made the Statue of Liberty disappear, went over the falls of Niagara, did a lot of different things.
16:39: But I remember one particular illusion that he did, and it was it was an illusion.
16:47: He did it with his with two rubber bands.
16:49: Now, I'm not sure how good this is going to look on on film, but I'm going to try to show you this this illusion, this this you see how these rubber bands are together.
17:00: They are they're linked.
17:01: One is inside the other.
17:04: Well, what I do if I if I rub them right in the center, I can cause one to pass through the other just like that.
17:13: I'll do it again.
17:14: You'll notice they are one is inside the other.
17:18: But now I rub right there and I cause one to pass through the other.
17:24: Now, that may not have amazed you when I was 16.
17:28: That was the coolest thing I'd ever learned how to do.
17:29: And what amazed me about that was when David Copperfield did it on stage, he had somebody bring a camera in, zoomed into his hands.
17:40: He pulled out two ordinary rubber bands and he made the rubber bands pass through each other.
17:47: And I just was so amazed.
17:48: I'd never seen anything so awesome.
17:50: It was so small and so intimate, but yet it was so powerful.
17:53: And I was so amazed.
17:55: The other goes into the loop that we've created.
17:59: So one is is locked within the other.
18:02: Really see how they're together there.
18:04: I want you to watch real closely.
18:05: This is real cool.
18:14: And then I'm I was able to procure a videotape by a magician by the name of Michael Amar.
18:20: Michael Amar taught how to do that illusion.
18:23: And as I just showed you, I learned how to do that illusion by watching Michael Amar's video.
18:30: And here's where all this sort of comes together and why this is important for today's conversation.
18:35: When I learned how to do the illusion, everything changed in my relationship to David Copperfield.
18:47: And what I mean by that, we didn't have a say relationship.
18:50: How I saw David Copperfield changed.
18:53: And here's why.
18:56: Up until then, there were things that he did that I did not know how he did them.
19:03: And I, I never wondered if he was a really, really doing magic, because that wasn't that wasn't something that I never believed in in magic in the sense that I never believed David Copperfield was doing real magic.
19:15: But once I learned how one of his tricks was done, it sort of.
19:23: Put a veneer over everything that he did, because this is what came into my mind.
19:29: If I can do this, then everything he does is possible.
19:34: If I can do this, this one thing which I thought was amazing and I learned how to do it and I could do it in a sense just as well as he did.
19:42: In fact, I actually met the man who was most famous for doing that illusion.
19:46: It wasn't David Copperfield.
19:47: He was one of the men who taught David Copperfield and he saw me do it and he said I had did it.
19:51: And my brother would test this.
19:53: It was one of the best he'd ever seen because I studied it.
19:56: I did it millions of times.
19:58: And that's not an exaggeration, because to me, I wanted to learn how to do that illusion and do it well.
20:03: And so having said all that.
20:07: The David Copperfield principle in my mind became this.
20:14: If I know that somebody is doing one thing that is a trick.
20:21: Then everything else is a trick.
20:24: If I know how a guy does one thing and that one thing is false.
20:30: Then everything else is false.
20:32: Now, having said that, let me just explain what I mean and why I'm applying this to false teachers and particularly false healers.
20:42: There are men out there today.
20:44: One very famous television preacher by the name of Todd White, who goes around proclaiming to heal people in Jesus name.
20:55: And one of the healings that he does is a leg lengthening exercise where he will say to someone, do you have back problems? Oh, yes.
21:06: Well, who doesn't have some back problems? I'm 42 years old almost, and I have back problems.
21:11: I hurt in my back.
21:12: People hurt in their backs.
21:14: Just about anybody, if you ask who's over 40, is going to say, yeah, I feel pain in my lower back.
21:19: OK, he'll say, well, lay down.
21:21: And he'll say, see here, one of your legs is longer than the other.
21:27: And he'll show that their legs are one is just slightly longer than the other.
21:31: And then he'll do through the, according to him, the power of the Holy Spirit and the magic, not magic, excuse me, the miracle of God.
21:40: He will lengthen one of their legs, according to him.
21:47: But it's not.
21:49: It's a false trick.
21:54: It's an illusion.
21:56: All he is doing is shifting their feet.
22:00: He's not really lengthening anyone's limbs.
22:04: I'll throw a video in here and you'll see what I'm talking about.
23:07: OK, so I bring this up because, again, when I was a young man and I learned one of David Copperfield's tricks, I knew from then on, if one thing is fake, it's all fake.
23:19: If one thing is not really magic, none of it's real magic, because if he could do real magic, then he wouldn't have to do anything that was fake.
23:25: And if this one person, if this Todd White character could genuinely grow limbs, he wouldn't be doing this silly trick that he's doing.
23:38: And let me give you another thought on these false teachers.
23:43: You will never see any of them go to a veteran who has lost a limb in battle.
23:57: And you'll never see any of them take a man whose foot has been removed from an IED and give him his foot back.
24:10: You're not going to see it because those types of things aren't happening.
24:16: What they are healing, according to them, are things like back pain, which is not a disease that can be measured by the foot being gone or somebody having lost an ear or somebody having lost an eye.
24:33: By the way, things that the Bible tells us Jesus actually did.
24:36: Jesus actually put a man's ear back on.
24:38: We don't see that.
24:39: Jesus actually healed withered limbs, limbs that were shriveled up and were dead.
24:45: That Jesus gave new life to these things and the miracles that Jesus did and the apostles did are not being replicated today.
24:53: That's what we understand.
24:55: That's what we have to understand is that these charlatans, they don't pass the David Copperfield test because in the same way that David Copperfield is fooling his audience by presenting to them something that is amazing to the eyes and amazing to the ears, but is ultimately not really happening.
25:19: It's the same thing that Todd White is doing.
25:21: It's the same thing that Benny Hinn is doing.
25:22: It's the same thing that Todd Bentley is doing.
25:24: It's the same thing that all of these false teachers are doing.
25:28: They are dangerous men.
25:30: They are playing a dangerous game because they are proclaiming to be agents of the God of the universe and they are not.
25:44: They are dangerous men.
25:47: And so I just wanted to mention the David Copperfield test.
25:55: Apply that to other areas too.
25:59: When you're dealing with someone who makes a fantastic claim but one of the things that they say or one of the areas that they say is false, understand this, that is the domino that's going to cause the rest of them to fall.
26:13: And we have to be vigilant.
26:16: We have to be discerning, especially when it deals with people who are claiming to have the power of God and to be doing things on behalf of God.
26:25: Okay, so I want to move on to the last thing.
26:29: I said I was going to bring in Calvinism and I am going to do that every week.
26:33: I am going to have some form of Calvinism discussion.
26:36: I've talked about Matt Walsh.
26:37: I've talked about Dr.
26:38: Phil and David Copperfield.
26:40: And I said, what do David Copperfield, Dr.
26:42: Phil and Calvinism have in common? Well, they're all three on today's program.
26:46: That's what they have in common.
26:48: And what I want to address, and this is really just answering another very common Calvinistic question, and that is the question, if men are as bad as they can be, if men are totally depraved, then why does God have to harden some men? The Bible tells us God hardens the hearts of some men.
27:12: And so if total depravity is true, why does God have to do anything more if they already are in a state of unbelief and they refuse to believe? Why does God have to do anything extra? Well, that is a it's an important question.
27:29: And it is a question that I think deserves an answer.
27:32: And here's the first thing that we have to understand.
27:35: Most people do not really have a right understanding of total depravity, because even in the question that I just asked, the definition of total depravity is really not described in the way a Calvinist would describe it.
27:46: Total depravity does not mean that men are as bad as they could be.
27:51: Total depravity means that all men are have have a have a natural aversion to God and to trusting in God and believing in God because we love our sin.
28:05: The Bible says we are born sons and daughters of Adam.
28:08: We are born by nature, children of wrath.
28:12: And because we are born by nature, children of wrath, that causes us to be averse to the things of God.
28:21: However, that does not mean that every man exercises every evil desire that he has.
28:30: Men don't exercise all the evil desires that they have.
28:33: In fact, men do the opposite.
28:36: Men often exercise good and wholesome desires because they want to live in a safe and wholesome community.
28:46: And rather than always engaging in the worst part of their nature, some men actually do good things, even though they are unbelievers.
28:58: And so how do we rectify that? How do we understand that people often do good, even though they're unbelievers? Well, let me let me I'm going to give you two things to consider.
29:11: Number one is the illustration of the the pirates.
29:16: And keep that in mind, because we're going to go back to that one in a moment.
29:20: But before we do that, I do want to I want to clarify something very quickly, because I saw a ad.
29:25: And if I can, I'll slide the ad in real quick.
29:32: There was an ad for a pastor sermon series.
29:37: He's a pastor out in Texas.
29:38: I don't know this guy.
29:39: So if you if you see the ad and you you know him, you think he's great.
29:42: That's that's fine.
29:43: I but the thing the thing about is his his advertisement said that why does God send good people to hell? And I understand what he's getting at.
29:58: But I think that that is a bad way to say it.
30:02: In fact, if you go on to look at the comments under his advertisement, it was over and over because God is unjust, because God is unrighteous.
30:10: He shouldn't send good people to hell.
30:12: Your God is evil.
30:13: And there were all these things that people were saying.
30:15: And I thought, here is an example of somebody trying to say something true, but they're saying it in a way that actually expresses something that is not true.
30:25: God does not send good people to hell because there are no good people.
30:29: The Bible says there's no one good.
30:30: No, not one.
30:31: There's none who understands.
30:32: There's none who seeks after God.
30:33: All have turned aside, gone his own way.
30:35: The venom of asps is under our lips.
30:38: We are there's no fear of God before our eyes.
30:42: This is the way the Bible describes us.
30:43: It does not describe us as good people who God sends to hell.
30:47: The Bible describes us as reprobates.
30:49: The Bible describes us as sinners.
30:51: The Bible describes us as being children of wrath.
30:55: That's the way the Bible describes us.
30:57: And that's why we deserve to go to hell.
30:58: The only reason anyone goes to heaven is because God saves us in spite of our sin.
31:06: Not that because we're good old boys and God is just being mean.
31:10: So I do recommend not ever saying God sends good people to hell.
31:15: Because what you're essentially saying is God is unjust.
31:18: God does not send good people to hell because there are none.
31:23: The Bible says there's none good.
31:24: No, not one.
31:26: And that brings me to the pirate analogy.
31:28: You say, but didn't you just a few minutes ago say that people do good things? I did.
31:33: And I stand by that.
31:36: I'm not contradicting myself.
31:37: I hope that you'll understand in a moment why I'm not contradicting myself.
31:40: And here's why.
31:42: When we address the subject of goodness, we have to understand the difference between goodness that is toward God and goodness that might be toward our fellow man.
31:52: And most people, most people exercise a certain form of goodness toward their fellow man.
31:59: And the reason why is because we all have a natural sense of ought within us.
32:05: The Bible tells us we have a conscience.
32:08: The Bible says when we do what is right, we show that the law of God is written in our hearts and we do what the law requires.
32:14: It's in Romans chapter 2.
32:16: And so people do what is right to one another because there is a natural sense of ought within us.
32:23: And even though we struggle against it, even though we battle against it, even though we suppress the truth and unrighteousness according to Romans chapter 1, it's still there and we still have that natural sense of goodness within us that we are responsible to.
32:39: And we feel shame when we do go against it.
32:42: And that's why we suppress that truth and unrighteousness because we don't want to feel that shame.
32:45: And that's why when we become adolescents and we begin to feel more of that shame, we begin to try to kill that shame with things like drugs and alcohol and sex and lust and all kinds of other debauchery because we're trying to suppress that truth and unrighteousness and that happens.
32:59: But also, and here's the pirate illustration, and if you've ever heard me give this, forgive my repetition, but remember repetition is the key to learning and the key to learning is repetition.
33:08: So if you ever ask me, if somebody ever tried to nail me down and say, well, why do people do good things? Why, if we're so totally depraved, do people do good things? I would say, well, first of all, it's our, there is within us a conscience that God has placed there.
33:24: And unless God is, unless God lifts his grace, his restraining grace, our conscience will continue to operate.
33:32: Now there is, there are times where God lifts the restraining grace.
33:34: That's what we talk about, the hardening of the heart.
33:36: And I may do another show at another time about what it means really to be hardened.
33:39: But I mentioned that on the last program.
33:40: I don't want to continue to keep going down that road.
33:45: But another thing we have to consider, and this is the pirate illustration, is that if you think about pirates, and I don't know what comes to your mind when you think pirates.
33:57: For me, it's the Goonies, for the generation under mine, it's Pirates of the Caribbean and Johnny Depp.
34:03: Johnny Depp will never beat One-Eyed Willie.
34:05: I don't care.
34:06: But anyway, when we think about pirates, pirates live by a code when they're on the pirate ship.
34:17: Pirates are, they work together.
34:20: They cook food for one another.
34:22: They clean the ship together.
34:24: They do all of the things that are required to be in a community on the ship.
34:31: But the problem is they're always 100% of the time maritime criminals because they are pirates.
34:41: And here's how that illustration works for us.
34:44: Men and women do good to one another.
34:47: And they do that because they live within a society.
34:50: They want to live within a society.
34:52: They want to live essentially without shame.
34:54: They want to live where their neighbors are good neighbors and they're able to function.
34:59: And most people are not roving criminal people who are going about in gangs and things like that.
35:07: There are people who do that.
35:08: But in general, I look around, and most of my neighbors are relatively nice to me, and I'm nice to them.
35:15: And we all live together on this street, and we sort of, you know, sometimes we'll help each other out and do things for one another, and these are all things that neighbors do.
35:24: And yet at the same time, if we are not in Christ, if we are outside of Christ, all we are doing essentially is continuing to be criminals against the Lord of the universe.
35:40: We are continuing, and even though we're doing good to one another, we're still, as a pirate is a perpetual maritime criminal, a person who is outside of Christ is a perpetual traitor against the Lord of the universe.
35:53: He is a perpetual opponent of God.
35:58: He is at odds with God all the time.
36:03: And so when somebody says, well, if men are as bad as they could be, why do some men do good things? And if men are as bad as they could be, why does God have to harden some men? Because men aren't as bad as they could be.
36:15: By God's grace, he restrains us from being as bad as we could be.
36:20: And we should be thankful for that.
36:22: We should be thankful that men are not as bad as they could be, that God does restrain the sin.
36:28: God restrains my sin.
36:30: I was at Set Free earlier, and I was set free as a men's ministry that I go and preach at on Thursdays, and I said to the men, I said, this place right here is a place where God is actively working in the restraint of many people's lives, because men go there to get help.
36:50: And God uses that place to restrain the desires.
36:55: He uses that place to give them a safe place to get better.
37:02: And God does that with us as well.
37:05: He restrains our hearts.
37:07: We are not as bad as we could be.
37:08: Total depravity does not mean men are as bad as they could be.
37:12: But total depravity does mean this, that men by nature are children of wrath.
37:18: Men and women are all by nature children of wrath.
37:20: And no one will have a desire for the righteousness of God.
37:24: No one will have a desire to come to the living God unless God himself changes their heart.
37:36: That is the doctrine of total depravity.
37:38: And that wraps up our show today, as I did bring together Dr.
37:42: Phil, David Copperfield, and Calvinism.
37:46: Thank you for listening today to Conversations with a Calvinist.
37:50: I hope it was a blessing to you.
37:51: And if you have any questions that you would like me to go over on a future program, please feel free to send me an email at calvinistpodcast at gmail.com.
38:01: Thank you again for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.
38:04: My name is Keith Boskey, and I've been your Calvinist.
38:08: May God bless you.
38:09: Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.
38:13: If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe.
38:17: And if you have a question you would like us to discuss on a future program, please email us at calvinistpodcast at gmail.com.
38:25: As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
38:31: All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior.
38:37: He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
38:43: May God be with you.