1 Corinthians 06-14-10

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Top 10 Ways Christians Fail at Being Christian (Part 2)

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No Compromise Radio Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author,
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Dr. Mike Ebendroff. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the
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Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.
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Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse with no compromise.
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Let's go to Luke 14. The second passage that we'll talk about this call, this effectual call.
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One call says believe and can be turned down. The other call says believe, but when the Spirit of God changes somebody on the inside, that person has to be changed.
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That person is born from above. You say, what does this matter at all? For Corinth it mattered because if you believe
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God saved, you won't follow man. If you believe man is ultimately the king of salvation, then you might follow some of those men.
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For us, I think everyone who is here today and you think somehow you move first, you will give less praise to God the
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Father, Son, and Spirit for your salvation if you think you allowed God and you thought you were the author.
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Okay, I'm just trying to contain myself and we'll get into the lack of containment in the next passage.
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So let's go to Luke 14. Okay, well, let's just do it anyway. Why do
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I wait? The will has been affected by the fall.
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If you're an unbeliever, your will with your mind, soul, spirit, whole constitution, your one constituted whole, you've been affected by the fall.
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And so if that will has been affected by the fall and that will who used to say in Adam, I want to please you,
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God, now says, I want to run away from you, God, blaming God, you gave me this woman, that's why
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I sinned. This will is never going to say, huh, Jesus is wonderful.
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That will is always going to say the cross is stupid, it's for morons. So something's got to happen to that entire person, including the will.
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And people say, well, yeah, but that makes me a robot. Well, let me just ask you a question.
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Just go home and do all your homework and find all the verses in the Bible about free will. You're not going to find any because you're going to find out as the
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Reformation told us that the will is enslaved to sin, Romans 6, captive to Satan, 2
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Timothy chapter 2. And God's will can come along anytime he wants and says, now
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I'm going to change that person's willer. Is he free to do that? He doesn't have to, but can he do that?
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Of course. And to be saved, he must do that. People say, well, I have a, uh, my mind is corrupt and my, my, my body's corrupt and I have gray hair and I'm balding and I have all these other things, but inside I've got a good island of righteousness, some kind of free will in there that can't be touched.
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You know what I call that? I got a new name for it. This isle of righteousness. It's fiction.
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I call it Gilligan's island of righteousness because as Gilligan and Skipper and little buddy, we're all fake.
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So too is it that there's this island of righteousness and with the right kind of wooing, the right kind of environment, with the right kind of talk and persuasion, this island of righteousness and can now say, well, you know, the cross is stupid and repugnant, but you know,
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I think I'll believe in my own free will. Free will is an idol that I would just as soon stomp out if I could, and I'm trying to do it right now.
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Free will. You mean you're as a, as a, as a fallen person in Adam, an unbeliever, they have the will to do whatever they want, including to say no to the
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God of the universe who speaks light into the world. If you believe in free will, your praise is not sufficient.
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How can you take an effeminate homosexual adulterer drunkard at Corinth, one minute they're worshiping themselves and the next minute they sing
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Fairest Lord Jesus? The answer is not found in the people in Corinth. If the answer was found in the people of Corinth, then follow those people with a special insight and your church will split up into a thousand pieces.
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Paul says you're called by God. You all know this anyway, because when you pray for your loved ones to be saved, you never pray a prayer that says, by the way,
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God work in such a way that you never tread on their free will. You never touch their island of righteousness, coordinate everything.
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So they'll somehow figure it out. You say what God do, anything it takes to open their minds, to save them, to give them eternal life.
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God save them. Don't you pray that way. And when people say to you, well, you know,
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God doesn't force anybody to love you. Friends, that is just nonsense talk. Here's what happens.
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God calls you. You have a new nature. And then that nature says what I used to find repulsive,
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I now find lovely. You don't have to force a Christian to follow Christ because he's got a new nature.
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Think about something like a tiger and you've got a tiger and you keep coming up to the tiger with Snickers bars.
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You can tell I'm into this no sugar thing. I'm just so dying for a Snickers bar tiger. Come on,
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Snicker bar, Snicker bar, Snicker bar. You could leave that Snicker bar there till 10 kingdom come and he's never going to have a
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Snicker bar, dark chocolate or regular. He'll never eat it because it's not in his constitution.
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It's not in his nature. He will try to bite your head off for giving him such a foolish object. And only one person in the whole world, the
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God of the universe, could take that lion and turn that lion into a lamb or a sheep.
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And then that sheep would say, now I do love the Savior. I do love his voice.
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I hear his voice. I like milk. I like little lambs eat ivy. I don't know what
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I like. God doesn't make any robots.
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Romans 9 talks about not robots, but clay and the potter's hand. And God can do whatever he wants with fallen creatures, can't he?
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The question is, why does God do it? The question is, why does God do anything at all?
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The real question is, I can't believe that God would change a sinner's heart when they deserve wrath. All right, let's go to Luke 14.
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Second kind of call passage. There's two kinds of calls, general, effectual.
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And look at the grace and the mercy of Christ to invite the unworthy to dine with him.
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You're going to be thrilled with God's compassion in this verse, that God would want fellowship with sinners, me or you.
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Look at the context, verse 15 of Luke 14. And when one of those who were reclining at the table with Jesus heard this, he said, now if you just read it in English, blessed is everyone who shall eat the bread of the kingdom of God.
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Here's what's happening. This person is saying, you're talking about how this banquet, this heavenly banquet is going to include
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Gentiles? Don't forget about us Jews. Blessed is everybody like us Jews. He's kind of dulling this point.
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It's just a start point. Listen, a lot of Jews are rejecting Christ. And Jesus says, and by the way,
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I've got a big banquet for Gentiles too. And now this Jew goes, oh, you know what? But yeah, there's some of us
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Jews, we're going to make it too, right? Blessed is everyone who shall eat in the kingdom of God, us Jews. And now
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Jesus says, let's prove the sincerity of that point. And he gives this parable.
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Verse 16, you can see it in the first word with the contrast. Oh, really? Verse 16, but, let's test this out.
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He said to him, the best storyteller who's ever lived now gives this parable.
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A certain man was given a big dinner, and he invited many. Of course, right away you're thinking this certain man is
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God. Invited many, he gave a general call. At the dinner hour, he sent a slave to say to those who had been invited, come for everything is ready now.
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Here's the general call. You don't have your little day timer, you can't call people later, and so you have this big dinner, please come next
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Saturday. And then on Saturday morning or Friday night, you send your guy back out again and say, we're going to have this big dinner, please come.
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Elaborate meal, this big dinner. How many big dinners did you get back in those days?
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Not many. Banquets that would have all kinds of things, fish, and bread, and olives, and cheese, and honey.
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This is a big deal. And here, the passage is, God is calling sinners to fellowship with Him. Come, everything's now ready.
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Preparations have been made. Soon it will start. Old Testament prophets have told you,
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Jesus is coming, you better believe in Him. Jesus has told you Himself, I'm going to come, and you must follow me.
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And now look at these sinful excuses. Who's going to pass up this kind of meal? Verse 18, but they all alike began to make excuses, maybe all at the same time, maybe all the same kind of excuse.
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By the way, you do this in this culture here with the Arabian culture, and it is more than a slap on a face, it could be a declaration of war.
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And the excuses are nice. The excuses aren't, I'm sorry, I can't make it to the banquet. I said I could come, but now
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I can't come because I need to go murder some people, and I need to go rob some people and pillage some other people.
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The excuses are just like the excuses that we used to give before we're saved. And if you're not a Christian, the kind of excuses you give today.
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Excuse number one, possessions. The first one said to him, I bought a piece of land.
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I need to go out and look at it. Please consider me excused. Business before pleasure, of course.
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Please consider me excused. Be warm, be filled. How many people go and buy property without looking at it, kind of some post inspection, post -purchase inspection?
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Who would do this? It's fake. He didn't want to come, and he just gives some kind of excuse.
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It's flimsy. Look at the next excuse, kind of with materialism again and business.
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And another one said to him, I've bought five yoke of oxen. I've got 20 ,000 pounds of oxen, 10 oxen, and I'm going out to try them.
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Please consider me excused. The oxen, I think, will probably be there tomorrow, don't you think?
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Yeah, probably. It's laughable. We'd say today, I wasn't born yesterday. You bought some oxen, and now you're going to try it?
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You can't come to my feast? G. Campbell Morgan said, it may be perfectly true that you do not look a gift horse in the mouth, but you do look at the horse you were buying.
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You mean you didn't see the oxen when you bought them? Sadly, unbelievers' excuses sound this stupid as well.
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Look at the third excuse, natural affection, family affection. Verse 20, and another one said, forget the feast.
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I've married a wife, and for that reason, I cannot come. Literally, I'm in the state of being married.
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This guy, he doesn't even say, please excuse me. No excuses. Do you see the text? I don't need an excuse.
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I'm married. I'm not trying to draw any laughter at all.
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And it's kind of cloaked in some clever speech, because if you were a Jew back in those days, and you were going to join the military, you were exempt for a while to just enjoy your family life, enjoy your wife.
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For one year, you didn't have to go to war. And by the way, if you have a wife and you're newly married, and you could go to something that would be akin to getting invited to the president's dinner at the
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White House, what would you say? Sorry, President Obama, I can't come.
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I'm married. This kind of dull, drudgery kind of life in the middle of nowhere 2 ,000 years ago, kind of spice up your relationship with your wife, cheer up your bride.
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These all may be good excuses, but none are good enough. Every one of them is,
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I've got something better to do. Every one of them says to the general call of God. God says, repent, believe, trust in the finished work of Christ.
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You'll die one day and stand before me in judgment. You need someone else's righteousness. You need a resurrected king who lives for eternity and who can give you divine righteousness.
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You better believe in that God. And somebody comes along and says, you know what? But I got work to do. I got kids. I'm living with my girlfriend.
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I've got this going on. I've got that going on. I've got these excuses later. Yeah, it's important, but not that important.
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Now, I'll wait till I have kids and they grow up, and maybe I'll get into religion then. Here, God is offering forgiveness, and hardly anybody responds.
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How do you explain that? You explain it because the will is corrupt and the will loves to worship idols instead of the
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God who grants forgiveness. But God's not finished. Now, we see what we call the effectual call, the call that we saw in 1
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Corinthians in verse 21. God's not done. God could just wipe out everybody kind of with fire, similar to the flood in Genesis 6, but no,
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God is good. That's what the effectual call is, generous and gracious. Verse 21, and the slave came back and reported this to his master.
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And the head of the household became angry and said to his slave, go out at once into the streets, big roads, lanes, small nooks and crannies where bad people are, and bring them in here, the poor, crippled, blind, and lame.
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This banquet's not going to get called off. The riches and mercy of God, it's not going to get canceled because people say no to the general call.
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The Jewish leaders reject me, but I'm going to go get Gentiles as well. Here, Jesus is the friend of sinners.
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This was just anger, just righteous anger. These are people spitting in the face of Jesus, as it were.
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And his solution was not to wipe out the earth. He says, you go find the loiterers.
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You go find the people who are ultimately sinners, publicans, the worst of the worst.
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You go find the people that were not allowed to go to the temple for worship because they weren't perfect in their body.
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Verse 22, and the slave said, Master, what you have commanded has been done, and there is still room.
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A citywide search, yet we still have room. This is over -the -top grace. And the master said to the slave, verse 23, go out into the highways, and among the hedges, along the hedges, and what?
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Here's the effectual call, compel them to come in. Don't take no for an answer, that my house may be filled.
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Look at the mercy and saving nature of God. Compel them.
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This is a command. Insist. I insist that you come to this banquet. It's a strong word.
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Force them. It's a word that's used to load up a ship, fill it to the gills. If they've got an excuse because they're too poor, because they're blind, they're lame, they're other things, you say, you come anyway, because my master has called you to come.
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You come. I won't take no for an answer. The medieval Catholics used to tell people that this compelling was, you bring them in by special acquisitors, even to the point of torture.
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You bring them to the kingdom of Rome. That's not what this text is about. This text is, the banquet has been provided.
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God calls everyone to believe. Come to the banquet of forgiveness. Some say no. God says, well,
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I'm going to act. They say no because they have to say no. Their corrupt nature say no. So now
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I go send my messenger and say, you have them come in. It's the effectual call.
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Urge them to come in. And there's a fateful end for those that reject that general call.
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For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner. And lots of Israel experienced that judgment in 70
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AD, just 40 years later. The refusal that men and women give to accept God's gracious invitation of salvation by grace alone would banish them forever from the kingdom.
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Until God, through the preached word, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, comes and calls them and regenerates them.
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All right, just quickly, let's go to the last passage. Just quickly, John chapter six. Don't have tons of time, but we want to just make a couple quick questions and answers, and comments, rather, on John chapter six.
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We're talking about the called, the called of God. And look at this ministry of the word of God here in John chapter six, verse 41.
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Therefore the Jews were grumbling about him because he said, I am the bread that came down from heaven. They were saying, is this not
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Jesus, son of Joseph, John 642, whose father and mother we know? He does not now say,
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I have come down out of heaven. Jesus answered and said to them, do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me, lest they exercise their free will.
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It's their God -given right, it's America after all. No one can come to me like some robot.
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No one can come to me unless the father who sent me what? No one, all inclusive, not one person, no one, unless the father who sent me what?
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Draws him. The father that sends the son is the father to draw the people that he's sent his son to go get.
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How can you believe that God is somehow up in heaven trying to earnestly convert every person that who's ever lived?
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You can't think that. Listen to what top lady said. According to this tenant,
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God is endeavoring to convert sinners and he may by sinners be foiled, defeated, and disappointed.
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He may lay close and long siege to the soul and that soul can from the citadel of impregnable free will hang a flag of defiance to God himself.
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And by a continued obstinacy of defense and a few vigorous sallies of free will compel him to raise a siege.
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In a word, the Holy Spirit, after having for years perhaps danced attendance on the free will of man, may at length, like a discomforted general or an unsuccessful politician, be either put to ignominious flight or contemptuously dismissed without accomplishing the end for which he was sent.
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I ask you this. If God the father says to the son, you go get those people for a bride, and I will draw them, will those people come to faith?
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The answer is yes. Don't miss verse 45. Almost everybody
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I know reads verse 44 and forgets verse 45, John 6, 45. It is written in the prophets, and they shall be taught of God.
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If someone comes to faith and repentance, MacArthur said it is because they have been taught, drawn by God.
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Everyone who has heard, John 6, 45, and learned from the father comes to me.
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If you've heard the gospel and the spirit of God has applied it to your life and called you, you will come to him.
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God is the prime mover. Calvin said of this verse, the whole faculty of free will, which the papists dream about, is utterly overthrown.
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Mark this. Here's the end of my message, the point at the end. God must do something in the sinner to make the sinner willing.
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And it is a compelling thing that he does, a forceful thing that he does, to overcome sin,
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Satan, the world, death, and judgment. If you're a Christian, you're a
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Christian because God made you one. You'll never get to heaven and say to God when you're there, what my brother always says, you'll run up to God, will you?
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And go high five him and say to God, we did it. Sin is so bad and devious, you need the
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God of the universe to come and with compelling, drawing, dragging, to take that person up out of sin and make them alive.
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You say, well, you're kind of hot and bothered about this. God will not give his glory to another, and we live in a culture.
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Everybody you talk to, I dare you this week to go out and say, do you believe in free will? It's like the mantra of the universe.
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Yeah, could you give me a Bible verse about that? No, but God wouldn't make me a robot. No, no, I'm talking about what would the scripture say?
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I'm not talking about robots, or you can't force love. I'm not talking about love. I'm not talking about your philosophy of love. I'm not talking about societal love.
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I'm asking you, in and of yourself, if you're not a believer, can you make yourself believe? Can you make yourself born from above?
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Can you regenerate yourself? God alone works in creation, but in recreation, you have to participate.
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Is that what you're telling me? It's you and God together. Well, no, but God gave me enough grace so I could decide and all these other things.
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Friends, at the end of the day, you are saved by the grace of God alone. I'm not saying that people believe in free will, they're heretics, but if you push them far enough, you would see that the heretical doctrines of works slip in there.
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And when Jesus says, the father must draw them, look at the text, John 644. This is the word to drag.
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This is a compelling force. It's used in John 21 where you drag a net of fish.
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And the fish are in the net going, excuse me, I've got my free will going on here. Don't pull me up.
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I have to agree. We have to cooperate. You pull and I ascent to the pulling. It just sounds dumb.
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It's used in ancient Greek to drag a dead body by the foot, to drag away a prisoner to jail, to drag a felled tree.
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And in none of these cases do you need consent of the draggy. The dragger is the one who takes the draggy in the dragnet and pulls.
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Compelling force. That force is God. I don't mean God as a force, but God, his power, is forceful.
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Why can William Barclay then say, God can and does draw men, but man's resistance can defeat the pull of God?
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God doesn't say, I want everybody to be saved now. It's all up to you. Walk in the way.
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I love what Donald Gray Barnhouse said. It was interesting the way he said it. This was the pastor before James Boyce in Philadelphia.
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If you have made a decision of the will that is according to God's will, it is because God has first jiggled your willer.
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Not the labors of my hands can fill thy law's commands. Could my zeal no respite know?
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Could my tears forever flow? All for sin could not atone. Thou must save with my free will alone.
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The will's not free. The will is at enmity with God. God needs no permission to do anything ever.
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And if you think God does not have sovereign will over the will of man, we're going to look at that next week.
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Step back now and think of the big picture. Corinth, why follow men when it wasn't anything to do with the men to be saved?
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Why don't you follow God? Because he calls you, he saves you, you contribute nothing but sin, and he's the one that does it, so follow him.
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You need to preach to your friends the forgiveness banquet. And if they say no, well, you pray for them that God the
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Spirit, God the Father, and God the Son would compel them to come in because when God does that, they won't say no.
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And then with their new nature, they will gladly believe, worship, and adore the one that they used to find repugnant and now they find precious.
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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.
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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.
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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.