07-05-2020

Park Meadows Church

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Good to have all of you with us today and it's a kind of an interesting day yesterday.

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I felt I couldn't help but feel that we were a nation divided and I hate that feeling.

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But we're going through that in the history of our country right now.

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My good friend Myron Golden and I have had many good talks about what's going on with the race relations.

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I've sent out a couple of letters to all the tradeway, some 30 ,000 people, and gotten hundreds and hundreds of letters back saying they appreciated it, benefited from it, and four or five letters that didn't like it.

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And those were very interesting too. I mean, I appreciate getting those as well and I spent a good deal of time answering those as well because it's a different viewpoint than mine.

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And I like they were well written, you know, they really were well written and from the heart.

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So I learned things from it and I sent my response back and then got wonderful, cordial responses back again.

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And I think it's a learning experience for all of us, whatever race we were born into.

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We have to understand God is sovereign. We are what we are because he put us here in the family we're in, the color that we are, the race we are, the country we live in.

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Some of us live in the best country in the world, which is Texas. And that's a joke, of course.

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But I know this, if you just travel, and I travel a lot anywhere in the world, you can go to Israel, you can go to Europe, go to Africa.

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I've traveled extensively. Every time I get back to the US, I want to kiss the earth because I'm back home in the best country that exists.

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So we're not perfect and never have been. And the men who founded this country were sinners.

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But some of them were brilliant. And all of them were the persons who

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God chose in his sovereignty to found our country, to fight the battles that had to be fought, to risk their lives and everything that they owned, and to also write the

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Constitution, which might be the most wonderful political document ever written. And all of that is a part of history.

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There's an unfortunate, that's not a good word. There's a horrifying part of history that began long before America became a country of slavery.

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It's been in the world since pretty much the time of Nimrod. And that goes way back.

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And you can go into Barbary pirates who enslaved European white people.

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You can go into Egypt to enslave the Hebrews for over 400 years.

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And long before this country was really founded as a nation, almost 200 years before that, there was slavery on this continent.

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Going into the time when our forefathers founded the country, they were born into that environment.

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And their grandfathers and fathers taught them that slavery was part of the economy.

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Well, you say, well, okay, so we have to look at them in the context of their lives, and we should.

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It's ridiculous not to. But on the other hand, they had something that we have, and this is it right here.

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They had one of these. And so they're not excused for the sin of making other human beings be slaves.

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There's no way to excuse it. So I think the most brilliant point that's been made that I've read anywhere or heard anywhere,

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I've never seen it or read it anywhere except from my friend Myron. And I heard it on a one -hour interview, and I sent that out to all of you guys.

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So I hope all of you got to hear it. Let us know if you didn't receive that.

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But it's a URL. You can click on it and hear an interview with Myron Golden. And he said, you know, and my point has sometimes been this.

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You know, when do we let this go? It's part of the past. None of us who are alive today own slaves. I don't know anyone that's for that.

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When do we let it go and move forward? And Myron, without even taking a breath, answered it this way.

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He said, well, David, he said it's never been repented of publicly by the United States government, nor has it been confessed.

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And maybe once that's done and there's an apology and a confession, then we can move forward.

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And I said, wow. I never thought of that. And he gave Scripture to support his viewpoint, which is that God visits the iniquity of the fathers down to the second and third generations.

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So we are somewhat responsible. That's what Scripture says. Whether you like it or whether you think it makes logical sense or not doesn't matter.

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It is how God looks at it. And in Nehemiah and Jeremiah, both prophets prayed for the sins of their fathers and confessed the sins of their fathers.

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And so this is a biblical concept Myron put in my mind. And I'm thinking, man, he is right.

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I wish he could get before the President of the United States and show these things to him and see if that would make a difference.

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But I think that would be a great thing that could be done to help. But who knows what our government will do?

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Government is really great at military. It's not so great at almost everything else it attempts. So we have to really pray for our leaders.

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Well, enough of that. I just want to share my heart with you. Over the holiday, I was not having a particularly joyful holiday because my heart was burdened with these things, these letters that have been sent to me and that I've read and responded to and had wonderful responses back, even with people that disagreed with me.

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And it made me think about all these things. And it's sad that this was a stain on our nation.

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Even some of our greatest founding fathers, Washington, had slaves.

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He did free them before he died. Jefferson had slaves. And a lot of people don't know because we don't read history as much as we ought to.

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But Jefferson attempted to free the slaves by getting laws through legislature on more than one occasion.

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And, of course, the Southern states had a lot of votes in the Congress. So he never got it through. But he felt like slavery should be eliminated in the

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United States and that if it weren't, it could risk the very nation, the existence of the nation.

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That's what he felt. And yet he didn't free his slaves, except for, I think, maybe seven of them out of a couple of hundred.

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Some people say 600. History says 200. I don't know what the truth is. One would be too many.

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And so that taints his name. But none of them were perfect.

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They're all sinners. And every politician we have today is the same way, including our president.

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He's not a preacher. He's a president. And he's not perfect. But God put him there.

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Same with our founding father. So I think we should ask questions like, do we like this country? Do we have another country we'd rather live in that has more freedom, that has printed more

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Bibles and sent more missionaries out into the world and still doing millions and millions and hundreds of millions of dollars sent out into the world?

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Billions, actually, to feed the hungry from this nation. And God ordained this nation to protect the existence of Israel.

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So we have to ask, why don't we look at some of the good things a little bit that our nation has done as well?

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And so that's what I ask my family to do, because in previous days, we had discussed the negative side, because we need to look at that.

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And I thought yesterday, let's look at some of the good things about America. So we did. So it's really an interesting time.

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Well, let's get into the Bible. That's why you guys are here. And as we move into Romans 8, verses 29 and following, we come into a new topic, a new great doctrine or teaching or theme of the

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Bible. And it's the idea of predestination. Now, I travel around the country, or did before the virus anyway, and speak to hundreds of people all over the country.

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Usually, it would be 10 different denominations or something like that in the room. I just put Scripture up on the board behind me at those meetings, and we just go through Scripture.

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And I have people say, wow, I never saw that Scripture. I didn't know that was in the Bible. And I've had other people come up to me at breaks and say, do you believe in predestination?

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And sometimes, tongue in cheek, I'll say, no, I don't believe in that. I don't believe in John 3 .16 either. And they go, what?

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And I say, well, look, I'm teasing. But predestination is in the Bible, so of course I believe in it, just like John 3 .16

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is in the Bible, and I believe in it. But they just go to churches where people don't believe in it, so they don't preach on it, so they've not seen it.

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So a lot of times, my job is just get people to study, and I like that job.

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But we're going to talk about this topic, and it's not popular. Not everyone on today will agree with it at first, but my hope is that we've all grown to the place of being a mature

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Christian, an adult Christian where we're allowed to lay aside what our denomination taught us, even what our mentors taught us, and look at Scripture, properly interpret it in the right context and so forth, looking up the word meanings in the

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Greek or Hebrew, and looking at the grammar and looking at how letting other portions of Scripture interpret this portion of Scripture and all of that, properly interpret and take a look and just go with truth.

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It doesn't matter what our denominations believe. A lot of it's good. A lot of it's not even in the Bible. We throw that part out.

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We keep the good part, and then we just get the rest from the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. Jesus said you need two things.

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Two. Two things. Good teacher there. All right. You need two. First one is the water, and the second one is the

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Spirit, and the water is the water of the Word of God that cleanses us, and the Spirit is the

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Holy Spirit. It takes those two things to be saved, and then it takes those two things to grow and to understand the

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Bible. So let's take a look at this. I asked the question, this ancient doctrine of predestination, is it

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Calvinism? Because I know Calvinism has a bad ring to it, and we're going to ask that question.

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Now here's a picture of John Calvin who lived from 1509 to 1564.

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He was part of the end of time of the Renaissance when God just went shoo and sent light to the earth in science, in architecture, in art, and he sent light to the world.

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Did I say to the church? I meant he sent light to the world in those areas. He sent light to the world in the area of theology through the reformers in the same time period, and John Calvin was one of the great, maybe the greatest of all reformers other than Martin Luther, and yet he has a bad name because people talk about Calvinism.

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Well, most people that talk about it in a negative sense have not read Calvin. If you read Calvin, it's almost like reading the Bible. Such a man of God.

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I remember the great prince of preachers, Charles Spurgeon, who was a

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Baptist preacher in the 1800s. He got the opportunity to go and preach in the church where John Calvin preached, and they asked him, would you like to wear his robe and his collar?

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And Spurgeon, being a Baptist, was thinking, I don't wear a dress when I preach. Sorry, I'm not going to do that.

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And they asked him, well, look, it's not a requirement. We just offer it to you. And Spurgeon got to thinking, you know, because Calvin was one of Spurgeon's heroes.

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He read everything Calvin ever wrote along with everything else.

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Spurgeon was the best read man in England by the age of 21, they say. So he loved

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John Calvin. He got this opportunity, and he decided on traveling on the way. He said, you know what?

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Since they're not requiring me to wear the robe, I'm going to wear it because John Calvin preached in it.

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I just want to wear it. And he did. And he preached a sermon in the church where John Calvin preached.

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And so anyway, Calvinism is an unfortunate phrase because I'm asking the question, did

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Calvin invent predestination? Did he invent these concepts? All right? So what

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I'd like to do is review just a little bit because it's important for us to always know the context of the passage we're studying.

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We're about to go into verses 29 through 30. And so what came before it?

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Well, we know we just finished a couple of big studies. One started with about verse 23 where it talked about we ourselves groaning and waiting for the adoption and the redemption of the body.

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And that is a reference to the rapture and the second coming and everything surrounding it.

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So we talked about that quite a bit. And then the next thing right in the immediate context was this beautiful one we just finished on prayer, verse 26, 27, 28.

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Likewise, the Spirit also helps our infirmities, for we know not what we ought to pray for as we ought.

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But the Spirit intercedes for us. The Holy Spirit intercedes for us. And translates our meager language into the

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Father's infinite language and magnifies our message. And he brings to our heart what to pray for in the first place, all that.

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So all that is in the context of what we're about to study. And if you think about it, that study on prayer had a lot to do with the sovereignty of God.

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And, of course, predestination is a major subtopic under the major topic sovereignty of God.

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Now, then we came to verse 28, which sort of ended the little passage we ended up last Sunday on prayer.

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And it said, and we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.

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Now, the reason that's important to bring this context in, because when we jump into verse 29 where we're talking about predestination, the phrase called, the called, according to his purpose, the calling is a part of the process of salvation.

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It certainly has to do with the sovereignty of God. And it is, in many ways, the fulfillment of predestination in time and space.

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So the calling is an important word that's going to be in this study. And then where it says they're called how, it's in that verbal phrase, it says according to God's purpose.

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See, that's not according to man's will. It's according to God's purpose. And yet the modern gospel is all about man deciding his own destiny.

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Which is impossible, but that is the modern gospel in many, many churches around the world today, especially in America.

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And it's unfortunate. But there is a cycle that all church groups go through. They start out with God's sovereign and really love, hot love for the

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Lord Jesus Christ, their first love. And they move around to programs and more money coming in to build bigger institutions and try to draw more people in in worldly fashions.

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And it goes all the way down around the cycle of where humanism becomes a huge part of it.

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And man is in more control than God. And at that point, Jesus removes the candlestick, which pictures his presence.

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And it becomes just an empty institution full of people. And God will pull out his remnant, the true believers, and start something new that will be very small and insignificant in the world's eyes.

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And that process has been going on and on for over 2 ,000 years. And a huge part of it was the

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Protestant movement, where God pulled these godly men and women out of Catholicism, because Catholicism had long since gone through that cycle, where it started out with men like Augustine, that we'll study here in a minute, where he believed in the sovereignty of God and went full circle to where they felt man needed to be in control.

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The Pope is in control. The whole system is in control. God removes the candlestick and then pulls his people out and they start something new that's smaller and insignificant at the time, which was the

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Protestant movement. And so the Baptist sprung from that. I grew up Baptist. I don't have

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Baptist on the name anymore because the church, all of us voted to remove it because we're more like Charles Spurgeon was a long, long time ago.

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We're not like modern Baptists. So we didn't want to confuse people, but I love the history of the Baptist. And I'll bring some of that into this study as well as we go.

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All right. So this little part at the end of verse 28 sort of introduces verse 29 through 39, which is all going to be about the topic of predestination.

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Called according to his purpose is where the idea is put in. The germ of the idea is put in our mind right now, and the

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Holy Spirit is going to flesh that out as he moved the Apostle Paul to write the next passages.

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All right. So before we go into the scripture and break it down, all the words, all the meanings, verse by verse, through this beautiful, powerful, majestic passage,

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I want us to look at a little bit of church history. And you say, well, Brother David, why would you waste your time reading other books, reading what other people think?

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Well, there are a couple of reasons, but one is found here in 2 Timothy 4, 11 through 13. And the principle is found in that passage.

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You don't have to read that thing right now, but it just, it's when Paul was in prison and he asked

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Timothy to send someone, and you'll notice down there in the end of verse 13, it says, especially bring my books, but especially the parchments.

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So he didn't just ask for copies of scripture. He did, that would be the parchments, but he also asked for other books that he studied.

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So people that say, oh, we're just going to only get what, get it out of the Bible. They're a little bit off for this reason, but also for the scripture that says we're not to have a private interpretation, which means we have to go back 2000 years and look at what our brothers and sisters have thought certain passages meant, and at least read it.

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We don't have to agree with it, but we need to read it and see what they think. Because if we come up with something totally new that no one's ever believed, we got to put a real red flag there.

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And then the only way you can keep it is if all of the whole scripture witnesses to it, that it is scriptural and interprets it to mean what it means.

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And, you know, you have to go through these 10 rules of Bible interpretation and be very, very careful.

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If you think you've come up with something that no one for 2000 years, these brilliant people who spent way more time in prayer than we did do because they had more time because they didn't have all of the worldly amusements we have.

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We got to be really careful before we invent something they didn't see. So I like to look at history.

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So let's take a look at this. And remember the question is, is predestination Calvinism?

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Well, why don't we go back a few years before John Calvin was born?

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Remember he was in the 1500s, right? And let's go back to a man named Augustine. And here we have a depiction of him there, pictured there, but he was born in 354.

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Now you see that's quite a bit long time ago before John Calvin was born in the 1500s.

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All right. And so he lived between 354 and 430. He was an elder or bishop of a region called

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Hippo, which now is in Algeria in the modern terminology of that.

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That's where he was from. And so he's known as one of the Latin fathers of the church, the early church fathers, perhaps the most significant

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Christian thinker since the apostle Paul, many people believe, myself included.

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And you can see information about him anywhere. I found these quotes out of Encyclopedia Britannica, but it's everywhere.

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So let me give you some quotes here. The human will, and this is

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Augustine, he said this a long time before John Calvin was ever born. He said the human will is so divinely helped in the pursuit of righteousness that he, the believer, receives the

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Holy Spirit by whom there is formed in his mind, a delight in and love of that supreme and unchangeable good, which is

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God. Now people wrote longer sentences back in that day, didn't they?

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And I'm going to, I'm going to hold on just one second. My house is getting buzzed by an airplane.

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Is that unusual right at this moment? So I'm going to let you don't hear it on our side.

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We don't hear it on our side. Yeah, but it's bothering me. So I'm going to just hold off for a second. I mean, it's very unusually loud.

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So I'm going to let him buzz someone else. Maybe it's a July 4th demonstration.

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There are 400 planes outside my house. I haven't looked. Okay. I'm just going to pray and then

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I'll get started again. Lord, thank you for this time and the services so far.

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We do ask you to bless the Bible study time now. May your Holy spirit be in control.

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May you block Satan and his demons and rebuke them and remove them and not allow them around us in any of our homes of any of our listeners right now for we belong to you and Satan has no right to us whatsoever.

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So we ask you to bind him and rebuke him and remove him and give us clear minds to study and learn from your

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Holy spirit today. Amen. So long sentences.

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I'm going to go back just a little bit. The human will is so divinely helped in the pursuit of righteousness, or you could say of salvation, that the believer receives the

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Holy spirit by whom there is formed in the believer's mind, a delight and in love for God.

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So notice who Augustine felt caused salvation to happen.

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Not the person, but the Holy spirit. So the Holy spirit is the cause of salvation and anything that the person does are effects of that salvation.

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Now let's keep reading by this gift. So now we see that Augustine felt that salvation was a free gift.

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It's not something to be earned by works by this gift of the down payment.

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That's the earnest. The Holy spirit in dwelling us is the earnest of our salvation. That's what he's referring to.

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By this gift of the down payment, as it were of the free gift, he the believer receives a burning desire to cleave to his master.

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So when the Holy spirit brings the gift of the faith of Jesus brings the gift of himself and indwells your body brings the gift of opening our eyes, which were blind.

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The scripture says our ears, which were deaf. The scripture says our heart, which was dead is quickened.

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The scripture says by the Holy spirit at the moment he regenerates us. And so Augustine is pointing out.

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This is exactly what he sees in scripture. Now this goes way back 350

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AD long before Calvin was ever born. So here in his writings, we see, first of all, one of what people call

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Calvinism, which Calvin wasn't born yet, irresistible grace. So as the

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Holy spirit begins to move in the life of this particular believer who is in the process of being born again, he brings the desire into that person's heart for the first time, because had they had the desire yesterday, they'd already been saved.

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Or 10 minutes ago, they would already be saved. Or two seconds ago, they didn't have it, because the scripture says there's none that seeketh

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God, not one. So the Holy spirit brings this desire and creates a situation where it's like he takes the chin of the person, points it up, and says, there's your shepherd, you're the sheep, you're hungry, he's got the food, what will you do with him?

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He makes Jesus to be irresistible for the first time. Augustine goes on and says a man's free will indeed does not help at all except to cause him to sin.

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You see that? He didn't think human will had anything to do with salvation.

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If he does not know the way of truth, which the scripture says there's none that knows it, none that seeks it, so forth.

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And even after he begins to know, in other words, when the Holy Spirit opens his eyes and begins to work on the person, at that point, effects begin to happen.

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The person responds like the bride does to the groom and begins to respond to Jesus Christ.

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But even after this begins and we begin to know the duty and the proper aim of the life, unless he also takes delight in and feels love for it, he neither does his duty nor sets about it, nor does he live right, so he still has to depend on the

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Holy Spirit. This is known as the depravity of man. Man's free will can do nothing towards saving himself, and even after he's saved, if the

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Holy Spirit ceased to work, there would be no fruit produced, there would be no good life, no righteousness experientially produced.

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So that's the depravity of man, which people say that's Calvinism. Well, this was a long time before Calvin was born.

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And I'm still quoting Augustine. This is still in quotes, as you see. Now, in order that such a course may engage our affections, in other words, is the

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Holy Spirit going to change our want to and make us want Christ for the first time? God's love is shed abroad in our hearts.

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Why? So that our affections would be changed, and instead of loving ourself and the world system and the flesh and the devil and everything we followed, the

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Holy Spirit changes our affections and moves our affections towards the Lord Jesus Christ. God's love is shed abroad in our hearts.

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See, that's something only God can do. It's not something we cause. The modern gospel that man decides everything is totally false.

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This is caused by God shedding in our hearts God's love, placing in our hearts

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God's love. God's love is shed abroad in our hearts, not through the free will, Augustine says, which arises from ourselves, but through the

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Holy Spirit who is given to us, and he cites in his work, Romans 5 .5.

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Well, what does that say? We'll look in a minute, but look what this is. Saved through free gift of grace.

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Sounds like Calvinism, doesn't it? Calvin didn't invent any of this. He just studied. Just like we're supposed to study.

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He read Augustine, just like we're supposed to study. And by the calling of regeneration of the

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Holy Spirit, which is the cause of salvation. All that sounds like Calvinism, but this was a long time before Calvin.

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Now, here is the Scripture that Augustine quoted to come up with his thoughts that we just read.

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Romans 5 .5, and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the

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Holy Ghost, which is given to us as a gift, for when we were yet without strength, we were still sinners in due time

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Christ died for the ungodly. It's all God saving us. You see that? All right, so St.

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Augustine wrote this 375 A .D., written 1 ,155 years before John Calvin was born, or ever thought of, of course.

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So, people, you know, you have people throw stuff at you, you don't bother to go check out the validity of it, and it's just fake,

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I call it fake arguing, where you just, you bluff your way through an argument.

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Well, Calvin made all that stuff up, and it's Calvinism, and Baptists are not supposed to be Calvinists, neither. No one's supposed to be a

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Calvinist. That's a man. We need to go back to the Bible, and they'll say stuff like that, and they don't even understand that 1 ,155 years before Calvin lived, one of the greatest theologians that ever lived,

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Augustine, taught the same things. Well, let's go back before Augustine. Wonder where he got it from.

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You think maybe he got it from Romans 5, like he said, but do you think he also consulted others before him so that he would not have a private interpretation?

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Well, we go back to Tertullian, who lived in 200 A .D. This was 1 ,309 years before, oh, look,

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John Calvin. I got an S .P. there, a little bit of spelling problem there, before John Calvin was born.

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All right, so let's see what Tertullian says. He distinguishes the issues of things, for who does not place the judgment of God in a twofold sentence of salvation and punishment?

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So he's referring to God, Tertullian is, and he's referring to the fact that God is sovereign, and he is saying that when we speak of the fact that God distinguishes the issues of things, in other words, everything that issues out into time and space,

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God distinguishes it or causes it in the detail. That's why he uses the word distinguish.

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In the detail, to the detail, God brings it to pass. And who discusses this concept,

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Tertullian says, unless they want to talk about two parts of it, salvation and punishment for those who aren't saved.

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That's how he starts out. Now look what else he says. Wherefore, all flesh is grass, and he quotes

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Scripture, which is appointed to fire, and all flesh, the

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Scripture also says, shall see the salvation of God, which is ordained to salvation.

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There can be no election without reprobation. Now he speaks of election.

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I have people ask me, do you believe in election? Listen, 200 AD, Tertullian was talking about it, 350

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AD, Augustine was talking about it, 1500s, Calvin talked about it, many others, and it's always been talked about by God's people because it's in the

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Scripture. Now let's go a little farther back.

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Let's go back to 88 AD, St. Clement of Rome. And it is believed that St.

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Clement knew the apostles. He might have been a very young man at the time, but he knew the apostles, and that Peter actually ordained

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St. Clement as a bishop. So he knew Peter. So this goes way back in church history.

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And he was born in Rome, we believe. He died in the first century

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AD in Rome on November 23rd. And he's known as the first apostolic father or bishop of Rome from 88 to around 97, some say out to 101

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AD. He is supposedly the third bishop from Peter.

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And according to Tertullian, who lived 200 years later and wrote also as a theologian but also historian,

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St. Clement was consecrated to be a bishop by Peter himself. Bishop Irenaeus, who is an early church father we read, he lists

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Clement as a contemporary with the apostles and a witness of their preaching.

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So this man heard the apostles preach when he was a young man and later became a pastor himself.

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And he has been hypothetically identified. Many people believe that he is the Clement that's actually mentioned in Philippians 4 .3.

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If you want to go look that up sometime, you'll see Clement is mentioned by the apostle Paul. So here is this man.

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Now, what does he say? Well, here's some information about what he believed. This goes way back before Calvin, way before Augustine.

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And Clement Romanus, Clement of Rome, the apostle Paul speaks of in Philippians 4 .3

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as one of his fellow laborers. He wrote an epistle in the name of the church at Rome to the church at Corinth.

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It is not part of the canon, but it is a letter that he wrote to the church at Corinth about the year 69

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AD, which is the earliest piece of antiquity next to the writings of the apostles themselves.

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And here's what he said. When God wills and as he wills, he does all things.

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So God is sovereign. And that none of those things which are decreed by him shall pass away.

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Sovereignty of God. And let us therefore consider, brethren, out of what matter we are made.

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How do we exist? Why are we here? Because God put us here.

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Who and what we were when we came into the world, that's the depravity of man.

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As out of the grave and darkness itself, that's where we came from. Out of the dirt of the earth, the belly of the earth, the physical part of us came from that.

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Out of darkness itself, the Bible says, that's the depravity of man. Who having made and formed us,

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God now, brought us into this world having first prepared his good things such as salvation for us before we were born.

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Man, that sounds like election right out of Ephesians 1 to me. Well, where do we think Clement got his information?

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Well, he knew Paul. He heard him preach. Therefore he, that is

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God, being desirous that all his beloved ones, that's the elect. And if you understand the context he's writing this in, it's not the non -elect, it's the elect, the ones that God knew as his own people before the foundation of the world.

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Therefore he, that is God, being desirous that all of his beloved ones, and you'll see scripture in the

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New Testament where it calls the elect the beloved, as distinguished from the goats or the tares, which will never be saved.

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Therefore he, that is God, being desirous that all his beloved ones should partake of repentance, confirmed it by his almighty will.

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God made it happen. He called us. He sent his Holy Spirit directly to the individuals he had elected or chosen as his own children before he made anything.

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In time and space, he sends his Holy Spirit. It's called the calling, the effectual calling. He opens the eyes, opens the ears, says, look up at Jesus.

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He's got the food. Are you hungry? And he makes Jesus where our hearts desire him for the first time.

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And here is what Clement is talking about in 68 AD. So I don't think that's

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Calvinism. He wrote this 1 ,408 years before John Calvin was born.

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And then what about the Apostle Paul? Well, he lived from 5 to 64 AD, and this is a depiction of Paul that Rembrandt, the famous artist, made.

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The Apostle Paul lived 1 ,474 years before John Calvin was born, and he said this in Romans 8 -29, which is what we're starting out today.

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He said, For whom he, God, did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his

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Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. A lot of people who hate predestination try to say,

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Well, this verse is only saying that God predestinated us to be conformed into his image.

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He predestinated that we would do good works. But the problem is there's not a period after the word image of his Son. There's a comma.

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In the Greek, there's no comma. It ends up talking about salvation. It's talking about being firstborn, which is

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Jesus. Those who were born after him are the ones who are born again. That is salvation. So this is talking about both two things, salvation and the life that we live after we're born again.

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Both were foreknown and predestinated. But the person who would be saved is foreknown that he would be saved.

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He is also predestinated that he would eventually be saved in his lifetime and that he would do good works.

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It's all written in one concise verse. John chapter 6, verse 39 is interesting.

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Now, if we want to go back even farther before Paul's time, I mean, we're way before Calvin. Now we're all the way down to Apostle Paul, but before him was

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Jesus. And Jesus said this, And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he has given me, that's the elect,

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I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.

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No man could come to me except the Father which has sent me draws him. That's election, that's predestination, and that's the calling, the drawing.

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That's the Holy Spirit calling that person. And I will raise him up at the last day. Jesus said that in 32

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AD, 1 ,477 years before John Calvin. So I think we answered our question.

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Predestination is not Calvinism. Now let's go back to the 1800s.

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Charles Spurgeon, Prince of Preachers, known as that by many different denominations.

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So this is not a denomination. He was a particular Baptist. That's the type of Baptist that he was.

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But he was loved by Presbyterians. He was loved by Pentecostals.

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He was loved by everybody. And still today, probably more sermons than any other human for 2 ,000 years of church history have been reproduced as they were recorded as he preached them, and books, and devotions, and prayers, and just an amazing man.

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Charles Spurgeon was a particular Baptist preacher who was and remains highly influential across many denominations.

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He preached, they say, to over 10 million people in his lifetime. Now, you didn't have the internet, right?

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10 million people in person, often preaching 10 times a week at different places.

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Spurgeon was a prolific author, and he had many types of works, including sermons, his own autobiography, commentaries, books on prayer, devotionals, magazines that he published, poetry, hymns, and more.

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Never went to college, never went to seminary, but the best read man in England by the age of 21.

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Many sermons were transcribed as he spoke and were translated into many languages, even during his lifetime, and distributed across the world.

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Spurgeon produced powerful sermons of penetrating thought and precise exposition.

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And Charles Spurgeon was a particular Baptist, and we'll go into some church history and what that title means.

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What is that as a denomination? What does that mean? Well, there were two types of Baptists in his day, and even back to the 1700s, in the late 1600s, one group was called

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Particular Baptists, the other group was called General Baptists. The Particular Baptists believed that Jesus died only for those whom

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God had elected before the foundation of the world, not for everybody. The General Baptists believed

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Jesus died for every human. And Spurgeon did not espouse that belief.

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He believed that Jesus only died for the elect. And we're gonna talk about that part of church history in a little bit.

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So just wanted you to know what Particular Baptist meant, because we just saw that he was a

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Particular Baptist. So we'll get back to more in detail on what that is. But here's, I wanna give you some quotes from this amazing man.

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I wouldn't be a bit surprised if we got to heaven when all of this is over and in the number one seat of all elders sits

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Charles Spurgeon. I wouldn't be a bit surprised, but it could be anybody. But this man,

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I mean, if we vote, I'll vote for him. I don't know about you. But here's what he said concerning predestination and election.

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And this was in the 1800s. He's a Baptist, right? I've had people come up and see

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David and say, David, predestination is not Baptistic. Well, I mean, I've never had a scholar tell me that or anyone who had ever read church history, but I have a lot of people tell me that.

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And it's just nonsense. Here's one of the greatest Baptist preachers ever lived said this. I believe that man who is not willing to submit to the electing love and sovereign grace of God, that's sovereignty of God and the fact that God elected them to be saved because he loved them, that a man who is not willing to submit to this has great reason to question whether he is a

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Christian at all. For the spirit that kicks against that is the spirit of the devil and the spirit of the unhumbled, unrenewed heart.

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Wow. Now, I've never said this behind the pulpit, but Spurgeon behind the pulpit said, if people don't believe in predestination, election, the sovereignty of God, I have trouble thinking they're even saved.

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Well, if you really understand what these doctrines are teaching, you would have to say he probably made a pretty wise statement there.

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Now, I know we live in a day with much confusion where even most Baptists don't believe they wouldn't be considered to be particular

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Baptist anymore. And they're ignorant about these points. And I know that God is the only judge and I believe he has his own born -again children in the

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Roman Catholic Church, in the Presbyterians, among the Baptists, even Baptists, yes, among Methodists, Lutherans.

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He's got them scattered around and they don't always all totally agree with some of these doctrines because they're never taught these things by their pastors.

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Does that mean they're not saved? I don't think so. But if you put it in the context of when this man lived, you think about this,

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Charles Moody, he put up a tent right next to the World's Fair in New York City and more people went to hear him preach than went to the

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World's Fair. That's how these men lived in a day when mighty preachers of the gospel were the entertainment.

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And so people were more educated and that's the context in which you... He said in his day, if you don't understand this and you fight against it,

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I have to wonder about your salvation. Now, I was playing golf with Myron here this past week.

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And we were talking about some of these things, but I just said, well, Myron, you do know that Satan was the first Arminian, don't you?

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Well, if you don't know what an Arminian is, that's a person who believes that it's the human will that causes us to be saved, that we get saved because we choose to and stuff like that.

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That's the other side of Christianity. The Roman Catholics are Arminians. Most Methodists are, most

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Pentecostals are, not all, but most. Church of Christ, you can go down.

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There's still huge groups that are Arminian. But I told Myron that I think the first Arminian was

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Lucifer because he believed that his will could change things that God had already ordained, put into place, because Satan knows the

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Bible, right? He knows how it ends. He just doesn't believe it. He thinks he can change it. That's humanism, only it's

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Satanism, right? But that's what humanism is. It's Luciferian. But certainly

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Spurgeon believed, I mean, I said it to Myron. I've always believed this way, but Spurgeon believed it that way.

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And then he said this, whatever may be said about the doctrine of election, it is written in the word of God as with an iron pin, and there is no getting rid of it.

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There it stands. And he also said this, however much this may be despised, this doctrine of predestination and election, as it frequently is, even in his day, you must first deny the authenticity and full inspiration of the

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Holy Scripture before you can legitimately and truly deny that it exists. You got to cut pages out of your

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Bible. Almost every page, actually, once you see that God is sovereign, once you see that, and the

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Holy Spirit teaches it to you, you'll find it on every page. You're going to have to cut a lot of stuff out if you don't believe it. Then he said this, they who seek

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Christ are already being sought by Him. Now you see, that's what the

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Bible teaches, that none seeketh God, not any, but God seeks us. So those who seek

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Christ are already being sought by Him. Long before time began, God had foreknown

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His chosen and foreordained them unto eternal life. They had not chosen

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Him for they were not yet in existence. Seems clear to me.

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That's what the Scripture says. And then he said this, to this day, men cannot bear the doctrine of election.

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Free will suits them very well, but free grace does not. They would not let

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Christ choose His own wife. I say it with the utmost reverence.

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I can hear him preaching and raising his voice when he says that. These free willers, these

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Arminians, don't believe in the doctrine of election, which means to choose. So they don't believe

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Jesus gets to choose who His bride is, that the bride chooses, but He doesn't. Well, that's contrary to all

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Scripture and to the nature of humanity. So this is amazing, powerful statements.

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Men like to say God looked forward in time, saw who would accept Christ, and then chose them to be saved.

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Spurgeon gave the best argument against this illogical thought that I've ever read. He said this, and you guys stop and read it slow.

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A lot of us don't study logic anymore. Spurgeon studied logic and philosophy. I studied logic in college, and I'm thankful that I did.

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And if you didn't, just go out to Google it, find an online university and take a course, audit a course in logic.

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You will love it. You need to take it. It'll help you with Scripture. Because God said, come let us reason together.

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That's what logic is, reasoning. But Spurgeon said this, there is nothing more in Abraham than in any of us why

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God should have selected him. For whatever good was in Abraham, God put it there.

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Now, if God put it there, the motive for His putting it there could not be the fact of His putting it there.

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I know that's a little hard for us. But just think about that, what he's saying for a moment, is that an effect can never be the cause of the cause.

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That's what he's saying. An effect cannot cause the cause. The cause is that God put the goodness in Abraham, and He put the goodness in all of us that He has chosen, because as a race, we have no good within us.

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The Bible says, our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. So God has to send His Holy Spirit and place

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God's goodness in the person as He regenerates that person. And so if God put it there, then it can't be that God looked out and saw the person having it, and that that was the cause of Him putting it there.

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That's nonsense. It's totally illogical. And, you know, it's cool. It's hard to read these old writers, but if you think that through and read it slowly, you'll get the gist of it.

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And he preached it in two seconds in a sermon and went on to the next point back in his day. And then

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Spurgeon said, The love of God therefore existed before there was any good thing in man.

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And if you tell me that God loved men because of the foresight of some good thing in them, I again reply to that, that the same thing cannot be both the cause and the effect.

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Wow. Now it is quite certain that any virtue, which there may be in any man, is the result of God's grace.

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It did not cause God to shine His grace on the man. It is the result of the grace that God had already shined on the man or the woman.

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Now, if it be the result of grace, it cannot be the cause of grace.

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Okay, so look. If before there was anything good in us and we were a totally depraved, fallen race, which

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Scripture teaches all the way from the very first book of the Bible, Genesis, all the way to the end of Revelation, where men rise up against Christ after a thousand years of perfect leadership with Christ on the earth and the man rises up against Him.

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If we don't understand that man is to pray, we'll never understand salvation. But if we give that, if we understand the

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Bible teaches that, then how can we preach a gospel today that says what God does,

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He looks out and He sees the good people, the ones that do good things, and He elects them and chooses them to be saved.

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So therefore their goodness was the cause of God putting His grace on them. That is a ridiculous argument, and Spurgeon points it out so well.

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Listen, the effect cannot be the cause of the cause. And so I would never have wanted to get into an argument with Charles Spurgeon about free will causing salvation versus the sovereignty of God causing salvation.

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It is utterly impossible that an effect should have existed before the cause,

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Spurgeon says. But God's love existed before man's goodness, therefore that goodness of man cannot be the cause of the election.

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But I think no sincere and earnest student, Spurgeon says, of the scripture will ever believe that God commences to love

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His people when they began to love Him. On the contrary, the

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Bible says we love Him because He first loved us. Very well written, wouldn't you say?

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Spurgeon said this, the doctrine which is called Calvinism did not spring from Calvin.

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We believe that it sprang from the great founder of all truth, which is the Holy Spirit.

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I am not a Calvinist by choice, Spurgeon says, but because I cannot help it. I believe nothing merely because Calvin taught it, but because I have found his teaching in the word of God.

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And then I've had people tell me Calvinism is not Baptistic. I've already shown this morning that predestination did not come from Calvin, right?

52:32

It didn't originate with Calvin. But this phrase is beyond nonsense when people tell me that Calvinism is not

52:40

Baptistic. They don't tell me that so much now because I don't have Baptist on the sign, but they used to tell me this all the time.

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Well, let's look at church history again. And at this time, let's look at Baptist history. If you looked at Presbyterian history, it'd be even stronger than this.

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But let's look at Baptist history. That's what I grew up and I've studied a lot. We go all the way back to the 1750s.

53:02

George Whitefield was not technically a Baptist, but he had the greatest influence, along with John Calvin, on Spurgeon than anyone else.

53:12

And so I'll list him here because the great Baptists loved George Whitefield and his preaching.

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And he lived in the 1750s, and he was what the world would now call a

53:25

Calvinist. And I'll use the title, the rest of this little study here on church history, because that's what the world calls people that believe in the sovereignty of God and election and predestination.

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They call them Calvinists. I've already demonstrated that's not what we are, but I'll use it just for this purpose.

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So John Whitefield in 1750 was a Calvinist. I don't know if you know this part of history, but he, together with John Wesley, founded the

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Methodist church. Did you know George Whitefield, together with Wesley, founded it?

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Most people think Wesley founded it. No, the two of them founded it. And the problem is, George Whitefield believed in the sovereignty of God, predestination, and election, and John Wesley did not.

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He was an Arminian. And so George Whitefield came to him in a good heart and said, look, we don't want to split the church that we founded.

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How about I go off into evangelism and just go preach across the world and travel and put up tents and speak that way, and you take control as bishop of the

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Methodist church? And that's why today the Methodist church is Arminian, because George Whitefield pulled away from the leadership and went out and just began to preach around the world.

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But he influenced, there was a great revival that happened because of Whitefield's preaching in England and across America.

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So he was a Calvinist. Now, what did

54:50

Whitefield say about Arminians? He said, we're all born Arminians when we're born again.

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And even before we're born again, we're born Arminians, because we're like Satan in that sense, that we believe we can control everything.

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We believe in free will, like Lucifer does. And we're all born thinking that. It is by grace that turns, it is grace that turns us into Calvinists, he said.

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Now, I'm quoting George Whitefield, 1750. It is grace that makes us

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Christians, grace that makes Christians of us, grace that makes us free, and makes us know our standing in Christ Jesus.

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And it's also grace that turns us into Calvinists from starting out as Arminians. So we're all born just like physical babies think they're the center of the universe, right?

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They think that. They think it's all about them, a baby does. Well, a baby Christian thinks the same thing.

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He thinks he actually caused his salvation by accepting Christ, which the Bible never says you accepted

55:51

Christ. It says you received him, and it's different. But we start out our Christianity believing that.

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Then as we study the word, the word of God and the Holy Spirit inform us that actually God is the one who saved us.

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We didn't do the saving. We received it as a free gift. Well, this is what Whitefield said about it.

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And then you had the wonderful Charles Spurgeon in the 1800s who was a particular Baptist, which means he believed in predestination, election, and so forth.

56:19

And now all the, from after George Whitefield, everyone I list is a Baptist. And I'm talking about these folks that have come to me and said,

56:26

Calvinism is not Baptistic. Really? The Prince of Baptist Preachers in 1870 was a particular

56:33

Baptist. He believed in election, that Jesus only died for the elect. Adoniram Judson, one of the greatest missionaries.

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You should read the lives of these missionaries. If you see them listed on this sheet, go grab a book and read their lives.

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It will change your life if you read about this man. In the 1830s, missionary to Burma, he formed the first Baptist Association in America supporting missions.

56:55

I've had people all over the world tell me, oh, if you're a Calvinist, you don't believe in witnessing. You do realize that the biggest

57:01

Calvinist that existed in history started the largest mission works ever started in history.

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So that is not accurate. We witness because God tells us to. We pray because God tells us to.

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And listen, when we get to heaven, there won't be anyone there who didn't hear the gospel and receive

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Jesus as their Lord and Savior. That's in space and time. That is what happens. They can't do that if they don't hear the gospel.

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So we have to witness. This is nuts. One of the biggest Calvinists that ever lived was Adoniram Judson, and he formed the great mission work that was done.

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In fact, he created the American Association of Mission Work. And then everyone's heard of John Bunyan who wrote

57:43

Pilgrim's Progress. He was a Calvinist in the 1670s. And William Carey, I implore you, pick up a book on the life of William Carey and read it.

57:52

He lived in the 1800s. He was a strong Calvinist, and he believed that God was sovereign, that he chose who would be saved, that he called them out of time and space to himself, put within their hearts the love of Christ, the faith of Christ, and caused them to want

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Jesus, and they were regenerated and so forth. He believed all that's what he taught. He also translated the

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Bible into I don't know how many dialects in India because he was the father of modern missions in India.

58:23

Soul winner, right? Chief soul winner. And then there was Basil Manley in 1870s who was the president of the

58:32

University of Alabama, later called to preach, helped form the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest

58:38

Baptist movement in the world today. And then there was B .H. Carroll who was another Southern Baptist in the 1890s.

58:44

He helped found Baylor University. He founded Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, which is the largest

58:51

Baptist seminary in the world, and he was a Calvinist. I've read him. I know what he believed.

58:57

You can't say Calvinism is not Baptistic. Jesse Mercer, 1820s, Georgia Baptist Convention.

59:03

He published a popular Baptist hymnal and a newspaper. He was a Calvinist. Andrew Fuller, 1800, founded the

59:10

Baptist Missionary Society. Oh, well, Calvinists don't witness. Really, they're the founders of nearly every

59:16

Baptist mission work that exists today. Founded the Baptist Missionary Society, and his book,

59:21

The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptations, which he wrote in 1785, restated

59:28

Calvinistic theology for Baptists. Isn't that something? He was also the first secretary of the

59:33

Baptist Mission Society in 1792. Andrew Fuller, great, wonderful, educated man.

59:40

He was a Calvinist and a Baptist preacher and so forth. Richard Furman in the 1800s was self -taught.

59:47

He knew Latin, Greek, Hebrew. He studied history, theology, and medicine. He was influential in the constitutional clauses on separation of church and state, and he was a

59:58

Baptist preacher who was a Calvinist. Arthur Pink in the 1930s, great

01:00:03

Baptist preacher. Read his classic book called The Sovereignty of God. It will totally change your life. It's only about that thick.

01:00:09

You can get it in a paper book on Amazon. The Sovereignty of God by Arthur Pink will change your life. John Clark, a

01:00:15

Baptist preacher in the 1600s. He was also a medical doctor and founder of Rhode Island. He was the founder of the state of Rhode Island.

01:00:23

He was an advocate of religious freedom in America. He was a Calvinist. Luther Rice in the 1800s was a missionary to India.

01:00:31

He helped establish the Southern Baptist Convention. He worked with Adoniram Judson and William Carey in missions.

01:00:37

He was a Baptist preacher. Great. Read some of his sermons someday. Great preacher. He was a Calvinist. J .R.

01:00:42

Graves in the 1870s, one of the most influential men in the Southern Baptist Convention in the 19th century.

01:00:48

One of the most gifted speakers in his day. You should read what other preachers would say about this man when they would hear him preach.

01:00:54

A Baptist pastor who was Calvinistic. A .H. Strong in the 1900s wrote a systematic theology, which there's not a lot of Baptists that do scholarly work like that, but this one did.

01:01:08

It was the mainstay of Reformed Baptist theological education, and he was a Calvinist. You've heard of Strong's Greek dictionary.

01:01:16

This is who we're talking about. R .B .C. Howell, 1840s, the second president of the

01:01:21

Southern Baptist Convention, was a Calvinist. One of the ablest and most learned men of the South, it was said about him when he was preaching.

01:01:29

J .B. Tidwell in the 1900s. I remember there was the big building at Baylor where we studied theology was called the

01:01:36

Tidwell Bible Building. It was named after this man. He was the chairman of the Bible Department at Baylor University. He was a

01:01:42

Calvinist. Francis Whelan in the 1840s, American Baptist educator and economist, president of Brown University, which

01:01:49

Brother Otis went to, by the way. Whelan Seminary was founded in 1867 to help educate former slaves, and it was named after this man who was a

01:01:59

Calvinist. Although the particular Baptists were to represent the major continuing

01:02:09

Baptist tradition. Now, I want to talk a little bit about this for a second. We'll be done with this part.

01:02:17

The particular Baptists believed that Jesus died only for the elect. That's what Spurgeon was.

01:02:22

That is what I believe. My mentor, Dr. Freeman, did not believe that when I first met him, but two decades before he went to heaven, he came to believe it as well.

01:02:34

Spurgeon believed it, and all of these men that I just listed, these Baptists, believe it this way. Most of them did.

01:02:39

Not all of them believed that perhaps, but they believed in other components of Calvinism.

01:02:46

The thing is that when Baptists began as a denomination, the general

01:02:56

Baptists were the first to appear in 1608, and their leader was John Smith, who you studied about in school.

01:03:05

But it did not represent the major continuing Baptist tradition.

01:03:11

It was the other group that represented the biggest growth and the biggest main Baptist tradition in the early days, and they were the particular

01:03:18

Baptists. So the general Baptists were very small, and they almost completely died out after Smith passed off the scene.

01:03:27

So you see some of the history here. John Smith, who was general

01:03:33

Baptist, and then another group under the leadership of John Robinson, and then these were the particular

01:03:40

Baptists. Now, here's something I clipped right out of a history book about the numbers of particular

01:03:48

Baptists versus general Baptists. And by this time in the 1730s, you'll notice here that, let's see, it says the growth in number of Methodists and Roman Catholics in the second half of the 18th century is paralleled by the growth of the old descent from the base level in the 1730s.

01:04:09

Now, what's interesting about this particular book, I got this out of a Roman Catholic history book, and they were talking about the growth of different denominations.

01:04:19

It has been estimated, for example, that the number of independents and particular Baptists more than doubled in the period 1750 to 1800, and this growth was sustained well into the 19th century.

01:04:32

So the particular Baptists began to grow as a group or as a denomination during this time period.

01:04:37

This is a Roman Catholic historian that's pointing this out. Although much of this growth has been explained by the influence of evangelism, yeah, they were witnessing.

01:04:48

Oh, you mean Calvinist witness? Particularly Calvinistic Methodism, in other words, the method of Calvinism, old descent and its own traditions.

01:04:59

There are, fourthly, some basic questions which are easy to pose and not so easy to answer.

01:05:06

How many nonconformists were there in the 19th century? M .R. Watts has estimated that in the early 18th century, there were some 338 ,000 dissenters, compromising 6 .21

01:05:18

% of the total population of England. Now look at this. Of these, there were a huge number of Presbyterians, right?

01:05:25

Because Martin Luther started the Lutheran Church, and then John Calvin started Presbyterians.

01:05:31

They came first, so they had more adherents. But when it talks about particular Baptists there, there were around 40 ,000 estimated at that time, and of general

01:05:40

Baptists, 18 ,000, so it's half. So even as early as this, the particular

01:05:46

Baptists had grown to double the number of general Baptists by this point of time, and here's my footnote of this.

01:05:54

But this is not part of the Catholic history book. This is a different history of the

01:06:00

Baptists. So the two decades from 1640 to 1660 constituted the great period of early

01:06:09

Baptist growth. Baptist preachers won many adherents around the campfires of the

01:06:14

Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell's army. The greatest gains were made by the particular

01:06:20

Baptists, those like Spurgeon, like myself, who believed Jesus died for the elect. While the general

01:06:27

Baptists suffered defections, and many of them joined Quakerism, and the reason for that is the general

01:06:33

Baptists did not believe in eternal security. They believed you could lose your salvation, and that's what the

01:06:38

Quakers believed, and they were more emotional, so a lot of them went over to the emotional religion of the Quakers.

01:06:44

And the general Baptists began to practically die out at that time, and the particular Baptists who were Calvinistic, and in my viewpoint, more biblical, grew and grew and grew.

01:06:54

And all of these influential men we just read about were preaching all over the world and teaching people what the

01:07:00

Bible said about these issues. So they grew and grew and grew. During the following decades, the vitality of the general

01:07:07

Baptists was drained by the inroads of skepticism, because they were humanistic, and their churches generally dwindled and died or became unitarian.

01:07:18

Among the particular Baptists in England, renewal came as a result of the influence of evangelical revivals and tent meetings and so forth, with a new surge of growth initiated by the activity of the

01:07:30

English Baptist clergyman Andrew Fuller, a famous Baptist, Robert Hall, William Carey, the missionary to India that I mentioned earlier.

01:07:39

Carey, in 1792, formed the English Baptist Missionary Society, the beginning of the modern foreign mission movement in the

01:07:47

English -speaking world, and became its first missionary to India, and he was a Calvinist. So a lot of what people say just simply is not factual.

01:07:56

I have seen estimates that by the 19th century, more than 95 % of Baptists in existence were particular

01:08:03

Baptists. They were Calvinistic, believed Jesus only died for the elect. Less than 5 % were general

01:08:08

Baptists. Now what's interesting is today that has totally reversed, and maybe 5 % of Baptists believe in election predestination that we're about to go through in this great chapter of Romans 8, and maybe 90 % would be more in line with the general

01:08:25

Baptist not believing it. So Jesus said in the end times there would be many false prophets. Maybe that's the explanation for why this changed so quickly when you came into the 20th century.

01:08:39

All right, so we've used up a lot of our time, and I wanted us to get the history part, and now let's look at a little bit of Scripture.

01:08:50

I don't have much time. I'm just going to go into it a little bit, and we'll let this be our introduction to this great passage in Romans 8, verse 29 through 39.

01:08:59

This little part here, verses 29 and 30, we'll start with this.

01:09:05

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his

01:09:11

Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. So obviously that encompasses the born -again part, firstborn, and also the sanctification part, how we live later.

01:09:26

All of that was predestinated by God. And he foreknew who he would save, and he foreknew that they would have good works.

01:09:33

He foreordained that they would have good works. Ephesians 2 .10 says that. And he also predestinated they would be saved and that they would do good works and be conformed into the image of Christ.

01:09:44

It's all in that one little verse, if you just read it word for word. Verse 30 says, Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called.

01:09:53

And who he called, them he also justified. And whom he justified, them he also glorified.

01:09:59

That takes you throughout the entire spectrum of our Christian life. And what's interesting about it, it begins before time, outside of time, in verse 29, and it comes into time at the point in the middle of verse 30 where it says they are called.

01:10:13

That comes into time and space in your individual lifetime and then goes out through eternity into eternity future in the glorified part.

01:10:23

So isn't that something? These two verses start before time began, in eternity past, when predestination took place, in election, and foreknowledge.

01:10:34

All that happened before there was time, before there was space. And then it comes into time,

01:10:39

Genesis 1 .1, God creates, speaks into existence everything that is. Our lives begin, and then you have the very same persons that he foreknew before he made anything and predestinated before he made anything.

01:10:54

Those same people, in verse 30 it says, he also called them. And those who are called, he justifies them.

01:11:02

That means he makes them right with God. Justified means just as if I'd never sinned. And this is something

01:11:07

God does to you at the moment he regenerates you. He justifies you by the blood of Jesus.

01:11:13

Jesus' blood had already been shed, it had already been presented at the throne in heaven by Jesus himself, and now it is sprinkled on the life of the believer by the

01:11:23

Holy Spirit, as pictured by the hyssop weed in Exodus. When they left during the

01:11:29

Passover, and they dipped that hyssop weed into the blood of the lamb and sprinkled it on the doorpost, that's the application of it to the individual life, all pictured there.

01:11:41

The Holy Spirit performs this work of applying the blood when he calls us. So now we're in time and space, and we're called, and we are justified by the blood of Jesus.

01:11:50

The finished work of Christ makes us right with God because God had ordained he would die for us.

01:11:57

You can see clearly already, before we even go into this at all, that had he died for the entire world, since we're only saved by his death and his blood, then the whole world would be saved.

01:12:08

So he cannot fail. He cannot give his blood and it not be effectual, and that's why not hardly anybody believed that he died for everybody in the 17 -1800s, and now almost everybody believes that, but we're in the end times.

01:12:23

So moreover, whom he did predestinate, that same group of people he called them in time and space, and when he called them, he regenerated them and justified them, saved them, in other words, and the same ones who are justified, you go out time on the other end, out into what we call the future, into eternity, that same group are the ones that are glorified.

01:12:42

Those are the ones who will be in heaven. Isn't that something? In just two verses, it spans from eternity past, as we call it, through time, out the other side, to eternity future.

01:12:52

It's all about the sovereignty of God and his foreknowledge and predestination. Now this word for predestinate, poroidzo, it means to limit in advance, to predetermine.

01:13:06

It has been translated to determine before or to ordain or to predestinate.

01:13:12

This same word is given those different words in English, in the English version. It comes from two

01:13:17

Greek words. The first one is pro, which means before or before time, and secondly, horizo, which means to mark out or to bound.

01:13:28

In other words, to appoint, to decree, to specify. It's been translated into the word declare, determine, limit, preordain in the

01:13:38

English. So when you take a look at it, when God predestinated those who would be saved, what the word means is

01:13:47

God himself marked them out of the whole human race. He put a mark on them.

01:13:53

Out of the whole fallen race, it was bound for hell. God took a remnant of that race, and he put a mark on them, and he marked them out, or he made them bound to be saved.

01:14:05

He appointed them to be saved beforehand, and he predetermined that they would be saved.

01:14:12

He preordained that they would be saved. He declared that they would be saved, and therefore, he limited events to these events.

01:14:21

All of that's carried in the colors of the meaning of this word. The second part of this word pro means beforehand, and the herizo part, all of these things are carried in the color of that word.

01:14:33

So God before ordained, he before marked out and bound those who would be saved.

01:14:40

Isn't that something? All of that's just in the word itself. So it says whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate.

01:14:48

Now I'm out of time, but I'm going to go into this in detail starting next week, and the rest will be scripture.

01:14:54

I want to give you that historical introduction, but the rest will be pure scripture, word studies, context studies, and so forth.

01:15:01

But where it says here in Romans 8 -29, whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate.

01:15:07

There are a lot of people that say, well, what God did was he looked out in time and saw who was good, and he foreknew that, and then he chose them.

01:15:15

That's nowhere in the language of this passage, and I'm going to show that. I don't have time to show it all this morning, but I just want to give you a little touch of it right here.

01:15:23

Whom he foreknew, he also predestinated. I want you to look at the definition of the word also, where it says the same person that he foreknew, he also predestinated that person to be saved, right?

01:15:35

This word is kai in the Greek. It is a particle, and it means having a copulative and cumulative effect.

01:15:46

So it is something that connects the word before it to the word after it. It can be translated, even so, both.

01:15:55

So this and this both happened. That's what the word means in the Greek. You can say it means accompanied.

01:16:02

This accompanied this. Okay, this thing accompanied this thing. Even so, both things are happening.

01:16:08

That's what the word means. It means likewise. This happened, and likewise that happened. This happened, and just like that, this happened.

01:16:15

This happened, and together with this happening, this happened. Do you see my point? It does not mean, in Greek, sequence in time.

01:16:22

Now, when we use it in English, we'll say, well, I was born, and also I lived a good life, as if the birth had to take place first in time, and then the life happened second, and that's what our word also means.

01:16:33

In Greek, it doesn't mean that. In Greek, it is not with regard to sequence in time. It means both happened together at the same time.

01:16:41

Isn't that interesting? It means both happened together and accompanied one another when they happened.

01:16:47

Now, that word study, I'm telling you, if you understand the Ten Commandments of Bible Interpretation, you've got to look at the meanings of the words, even the little words like also are important.

01:16:58

The Holy Spirit put that word there, and He used the Greek language because it's unique in its accuracy.

01:17:03

It's mathematical in so many ways. So, both foreknowledge and predestinate, those two words in that sentence, they're also in the aorist, which

01:17:15

Greek has, English doesn't have. It means, it's a tense. It does not mean past, present, or future.

01:17:20

It's without regard to time is what the word aorist means, and it's in the aorist. It's active, which means it's done by the subject, which means

01:17:27

God did it. It's God that foreknew us and God predestinated us. Man did not do it.

01:17:32

God did it. It's in the active. God was the doer of it, and it's indicative, which means it's real and it's certain, and it has happened.

01:17:41

Secondly, the very grammar shows that the foreknowledge does not come before the predestination.

01:17:46

So, you cannot say, God looked out and saw who would get saved and chosen. In the Greek, it defies that meaning.

01:17:51

It does not say that. It's not one happens before the other in sequence of time, but also the grammar shows it.

01:17:58

Both happened before time. Now, think about that. Genesis 1 -1 is when time and space were created by God.

01:18:06

Before the foundation of the world is when God knew who his own were and predestinated us.

01:18:12

So, this passage in verse 29 happened before time started. Therefore, there can be no sequence.

01:18:19

Just think about the logic of that. God didn't foreknow it and then all of a sudden predestinated it. It just is because God is now all the time.

01:18:27

It's just like it just is, and that's why it's in the eros tense in Greek because it's without regard to time.

01:18:33

So, when you look in Ephesians 1 -4, according as he hath chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world, it's before time started, so there's no sequence in this.

01:18:45

He didn't look out and see something and then predestinate according to that. They both happened at the same time.

01:18:50

They both existed at the same time. Not one came before the other. They just both were things that God did.

01:18:57

He foreknew and he also predestinated who would be saved. According as he chose us in Christ to be saved, before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, people say, oh, that's all he did, was he predestinated us that we'd be holy.

01:19:15

No, it doesn't stop there. It says, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children. Now, you've got to admit that's the born -againedness.

01:19:21

It's a word I just invented. The born -againedness, the adoption of children, is the salvation part, so it's both, just like the passage in Romans 8 and 29 says.

01:19:32

It's both. He foreordained before the foundation of the world that we would both be born again and live for God, do good works.

01:19:41

Both were foreordained. So both will happen in the life of a genuine believer. Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, how and why?

01:19:51

According to the good pleasure of God's will, not man's will. You see that? This is common teaching.

01:19:57

It's been around for thousands of years, going all the way back to the time of Paul and Jesus Christ and these early church fathers who wrote in 68

01:20:09

A .D., they wrote in 200 A .D., they wrote in 350 A .D., they wrote in 1500 A .D.,

01:20:15

all the way out to Spurgeon in 1800 A .D. On and on, our brothers and sisters have interpreted these passages this way.

01:20:21

So this is not a private interpretation. So the very grammar shows that foreknowledge does not come before predestination.

01:20:29

Both happen at the same time because it was before time, so there was no sequence.

01:20:35

Aorist, in the tense, it means punctiliar action without regard to time or sequence. So this passage cannot mean that foreknowledge happened first, then this led to predestination, and then this led to the calling, and then that led to the justification, and then that led to the glorification.

01:20:52

It's not in sequence. It all just happens. And if you think about it, you say, well, what about the glorification part?

01:20:58

We haven't been glorified yet, but in the Father's mind, you have been. And the Father, who is outside of time and not in time, who is always now, he sees you as already glorified, and that's a glorious doctrine in and of itself.

01:21:14

He sees us as if we've never sinned. That means we've been justified. But all these things didn't happen in sequence.

01:21:21

God just made them to be so. And the other concept here that proves it couldn't be the other way is the eternal nature of God.

01:21:29

He's the I Am of Exodus 3 .14. If you think about it, the Father does not dwell in time.

01:21:35

He is the I Am. He just knows, and things just are, and he does not think or do in sequence.

01:21:44

So these things which God has done were not done in sequence. They just were.

01:21:51

They just are. Now, I'm going to leave that with you to think about this week, and we'll get more into the particulars of these beautiful verses going on out through the end of Chapter 8 as we go.

01:22:03

Dave, I'm going to turn it back over to you. Right now, I think I have worn out people's attention span.

01:22:10

Oh, so good. Can't hear you,

01:22:20

Dave. That's weird. Can you hear me now? Yes, now we can. Okay, I accidentally double -tapped the unmute button.

01:22:26

I was going to say, I really love it when you connect the history dots like that. It's pretty cool.

01:22:33

It's important. It is. We're in a time when people are trying to forget history or change history, and you can't change history.

01:22:43

And you know, Paul said, I want the books and the parchments. Not just the Bible. I want the books.

01:22:49

I want the learned man, just like Moses was a learned man, and Daniel was a learned man, and Joseph was a learned man.

01:22:58

And we have too many unlearned pastors preaching just stuff they think is true that they heard another preacher say that's never been part of fact of history.

01:23:08

You know, one of these days, maybe we'll get on the topic of modern tongues movement and speaking in tongues and faith healing and all that, and I know a lot of you guys, we're all multi -denominational on here.

01:23:19

A lot of you guys believe in that because your denomination taught it. How about if we look at the history of that sometime in church history, along with what

01:23:26

Scripture says. I don't want to do that now. It's too tiring, though. That would take that as a big study, but same thing.

01:23:32

You should always look. You're not allowed to have a private interpretation. So you've got to look at what your brothers and sisters have believed for 2 ,000 years, and at least consider it.

01:23:42

You don't have to agree with it, but you have to consider it. Like you said, you get to study it.

01:23:48

Yeah. Okay. So good. Well, why don't we close in a word of prayer?