Grace and Law XIII: Is God’s Law Fair?

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Welcome to the

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Whole Council Podcast, I'm Jon Snyder and with me again is Steve Crampton and we're looking at this book by Ernie Reisinger and the title is,

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The Law and the Gospel. And we're using this as a guide, it's a simple book really,

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Reisinger was a Reformed Southern Baptist and part of the Founders Movement, well respected, and I think the first Baptist to serve on the board of the

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American side of the Banner of Truth Trust. So he writes a book on the relationship and the interplay between law, gospel,

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Christian life, you know, freedom, obedience, and so a lot of topics that are very popular again today and I have found the book to be very readable, you know, simple, but also helpful and, you know, biblical and he does borrow a lot from older writers in a way that helps and so we're going to be looking at a chapter today, actually this is chapter 9 and the title is,

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Does Human Inability Make God Unjust? And that is a question that really we come across a lot in pastoring.

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Most people wouldn't use those words, you know, but the insinuation, the implication of their attitude when they're called to repent or believe or to follow

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Christ, you know, the feeling is, well if I am what you

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Reformed people say I am, if I am as bad off as the Bible says I am, then doesn't that kind of give me, you know, a free ride, a get out of jail free card when it comes to the issue of a wholehearted response to God and or we could say like he does,

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Does Human Inability Make God Unjust? I want to read kind of a significant couple paragraphs he gives here from David Brainerd, the early missionary to the

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American Indians. Brainerd was converted while listening to George Whitefield in one of his trips in the

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Great Awakening. Later, Brainerd fell in love with Edwards' daughter, Jonathan Edwards' daughter, and that's why really we know so much about him, because he died of tuberculosis, which they called consumption, and Edwards' daughter nursed him through those last weeks of his life and she contracted the disease from him.

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When Brainerd died, Jonathan Edwards took his journals and had them published, and so we have really just an extraordinary insight into this man's character.

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So it might surprise you, if you've read Brainerd, to know that prior to conversion, he mentions four things that caused him to be angry with God, and one of those things that greatly disturbed him was the strictness of God's divine law, and so here is an excerpt from his journals.

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He writes, For I found it was impossible for me, after my utmost pains, to answer the law's demands.

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I often made new resolutions, and as often broke them. I imputed the whole to carelessness and the lack of being more watchful, and used to call myself a fool for my negligence.

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So he blames himself at first. You know, that's a good response from a religious person.

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Well, it must be my fault. I need to try harder. But he says, When upon a stronger resolution, and greater endeavors, and close application to fasting and prayer,

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I found all attempts fail. Then I quarreled with the law of God.

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So he's no longer going to blame himself. He quarreled with the law of God as unreasonably rigid.

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I thought if it extended only to my outward actions and behaviors, I could bear with it. But I found it condemned me for my evil thoughts and sins of my years, which

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I could not possibly prevent. I was extremely loath to own my utter helplessness in this matter, but after repeated disappointments, thought that rather than perish,

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I could do a little more, especially if such and such circumstances might but attend my endeavors and strivings.

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I hoped that I should strive more earnestly than ever if the matter came to extremity, though I never could find the time to do my utmost in the matter

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I intended. And this hope of future, more favorable circumstances, and of doing something great hereafter, kept me from utter despair in myself, and from seeing myself fallen into the hands of a sovereign

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God and dependent on nothing but free and boundless grace. So that third thing he mentions, that if the circumstances would be different, so you know, we would say it in this way.

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You know, one day in the future, you know, things will be different. And if things were just a little different, and I could try harder in a different context,

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I would probably be able to do better. And the interesting thing he says there is, not only did that day never come, but the hope of that day provided him with kind of a hiding place from God.

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I don't need to be a beggar on God's grace because I have this hope.

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One day, circumstances will change, I'll be better at obeying. I'm not through yet. Right. I'm coming back for more.

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So again, you know, just really insightful into the way that what Paul says, you know, into the way that the law leads us to Christ.

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So Brainerd defended himself for that season against the law's work to drive him to a

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Savior by the thought that one day my circumstances will make me a better man. Well, not only does he quote from Brainerd in this chapter, but he also borrows help from Thomas Boston.

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Boston was a Scottish Puritan, but really at the very end of the Puritan era, late 17th and into the early 18th century.

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Boston, you could think of him as a bridge between the Puritan group proper and the

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Great Awakening, the revival men, the Erskines and the other Scottish men as well. Boston wrote a book as a pastor.

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He pastored in a rural area. It was a smallish church. He was a very capable minister, very blessed.

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And some of his friends regretted that Boston didn't take a pastorate in a city church where he could be heard by more people.

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But Boston appreciated the context of his ministry because it allowed him extra time to write.

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And you can find his 12 volumes for sale, I think now being reprinted by Reformation Heritage Books.

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The book that he quotes from is Thomas Boston's, probably his best -known book, and it's called Human Nature in its

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Fourfold State, and it is quite a helpful book. So he gives four states of human nature.

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The state of innocence, the state of nature, the state of grace, and the state of glory, or the eternal state of the human soul.

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So Steve and I are just going to walk through the highlights that Reisinger mentions, and all of these help us to answer the question, has

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God acted unfairly in expecting sinful man to obey the law?

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Yeah. So the state of innocence, as you might anticipate, refers to the state in which

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Adam and Eve first appeared in the garden. At which point, as created by God, here's

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Adam with, as Boston puts it, perfect rectitude of mind. In other words, he was upright in his principles, he was free from error, he was truly accurate in judgment.

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There was no corruption at all in that mind. Secondly, a perfect sanctity of will.

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In other words, again, pure will. There's no defiling, again, no corruption, no leaning of the will away from God.

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And lastly, with a perfection of power, meaning ultimately that Adam, as created, was perfectly capable of complying with, obeying, fulfilling the entire law of God, perfectly, from a perfect attitude as well.

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As Solomon observed in Ecclesiastes 7, verse 29, "'Truly this only

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I have found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.'"

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So we're talking here the state of Adam before the fall. So, returning to the question, is

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God unjust in requiring something that man could not achieve, could not fulfill?

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Well, clearly, when you consider man as created, you have the justice of God reflected in the fact that Adam was perfectly capable, there wasn't a problem.

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So we have to kind of ask, really, a follow -up, secondary question to that primary question that we're considering here, and that is, how did man come to be in the state he's in now, when we are, as unregenerate creatures, really completely incapable of fulfilling and keeping the law of God?

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And of course, for that question, you have to go to the answer to so many Sunday School questions.

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It's sin, man's sin. How does the prodigal son reach the point where he longed to eat the feed of the pigs?

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It is sin. We find ourselves completely fallen away from the perfection in which

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God created us originally. So, we might say an answer to that question that was originally posed, yes,

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God is unjust, unless He, in fact, first gave the ability to perform what

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He requires. Yes, God is unjust, unless man, by his own will, brought this inability upon himself.

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Yes, God is unjust, if, or unless, such a requirement is designed, ultimately, as we've been talking for many weeks here,

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John, to lead him to acknowledge and deplore his utter inability, and really, ultimately, bring us back to the

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Gospel, to what makes the Gospel the Gospel. In the second state, the state of nature, he's not talking about creation, the state of creation, because of our sin.

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He's talking about our natural state. Everyone born from Adam and Eve were born with a nature that was corrupted by sin.

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That's the impact. What Adam chose, he chose not only for himself, but Paul explains it so clearly in Romans, especially chapter 5 there, that Adam chose on behalf of a people.

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He's our representative, and so we bear the impact of his choice, whether good or bad, and, of course, it was bad, and so we are born with a nature that is corrupted.

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Now, when we talk about nature, that really is so important to the subject, because with any created being, nature determines everything, with creation.

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You think of the nature of a buzzard, all right? The nature of a buzzard is to eat carrion.

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If you put a buzzard in the midst of a number of hummingbird feeders, it would starve to death.

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It has no interest in that. If you put a hummingbird in a field full of dead, rotting animals, it would starve itself to death.

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It has no appetite for that. Even when we think of angelic nature or human nature, even when we think of, if we could apply it in this way, to the divine nature,

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God cannot do certain things. He cannot act against His nature. He does not desire sin.

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He does not tempt with sin. He does not deceive. He cannot lie. Yes, so God's actions flow from what

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He is, who He is, and that's the same for all of us. If our nature then is impacted by sin, if sin has come and bent us within, kind of twisted us away from a

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God orientation to a me orientation, then everything that flows from us from that point forward will bear something of that bent.

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May I interject? We live in a time when the hubris of man wants to redefine even nature, ultimately, right?

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We live in a time when we want to say, yes, I was maybe born in a man's body, but I feel like and I identify as a woman.

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I can change my nature. I've been immersed in some of the philosophical underpinnings of that movement, and I think back,

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John, to my days in college. I was really smitten with the writing of Jean -Jacques Rousseau, who famously said, man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.

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And so he paints the picture of natural man, sort of the ideal aborigine, as really the fulfillment of what we were intended to be, sort of like the picture of what

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Adam was in the garden, and completely misunderstands, throws out, if you will, biblical teaching as to what the nature of man is.

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Seems to me we could flip that around, as you just portrayed it. Unregenerate man is born in chains.

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He may think he's free, but we are in chains, and yes, God wants us to be free, but you can't get there apart from Jesus Christ and the work on the cross.

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Yes, so the issue of the nature being fallen, that affects every choice you make, as you said, and so we are in chain to our nature.

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Recently, I was having a discussion with a fellow who had been reading some of the older writers, and he said, don't you feel that man's will is bound?

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Some people think man has a free will, and I understand that question. Of course, it's an age -old question, but I think that we can be careful how we answer that.

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Man's will has always been bound to his nature. Man's will is determined, as are his appetites, his desires, his plans, his yearnings, and his thoughts, so his mind, his heart, and his will is constantly being influenced by his nature.

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So a fallen nature then warps what I think, what I desire, and what

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I choose, but when man fell, he did not lose those faculties of a spiritual being.

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He still has them. It's that they're under this new governance, they're under the deceptive power of sin, and so it's not that in our natural state, it's not that we can't read a

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Bible, and understand the language, and recognize the clear arguments, it's not that we are men without legs, and God says, follow my son, and we say, but God, I don't even have the legs for it.

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It's that we are men who prefer self to such a deep and thorough degree that when

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Christ calls us to follow Him, we have no interest in Him, and we would never follow

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Him, and our won't is so all -encompassing, our nature is so influenced by this self -centeredness, this sin, that it is also a can't.

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But it's not, Edwards and some of the other writers in arguing with those who said, well, how can

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God be fair? One of their arguments was, you have intact all the faculties that Adam had, you just have no desire for God, and so you will not turn these faculties back to Him.

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So if that's true, if our nature has fallen, and it is constantly influencing our thoughts and desires and choices, then what function has the law now?

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Well, he says, the law, therefore, it restrains evil, it's like a no -trespass sign, do not go past this, there's danger here, and it brings the knowledge of sin, and we've talked about this before, it accuses, it convinces, and it condemns us, but it does not cure the real problem.

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So he mentions the example of the Apostle Paul. Paul is a religious man who knows so much about Judaism, and yet he makes it to adult life, unaware of how sinful he is, you know, okay,

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I keep the law, I'm better than the people around me, I'm admirable,

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I'm noble, I'm sacrificial in my religion, and then he says, the law came and exposed him and killed him.

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It put to death his high view he had of himself, Romans 7, verse 7, the law talking about covetousness showed

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Paul that it wasn't just outward actions, but his very hidden desires that were constantly being monitored by God and condemned as unworthy.

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Interestingly, you know, we use the question with evangelism, it's an old question, so, you know, in a sense, the world already knows our answer, but you know, if you stood before God today, and He were to ask you, why should

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I let you into my heaven, what would you say? Now, if a person really gives that question a lot of thought, there's some value in a person wrestling with the different options, you know, that they're hoping in.

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But I think if you use that question, you ought to follow it up with what Romans says in chapter 3, in verse 19 and 20, and that is this, that one of the purposes of the law is that it shuts every mouth.

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In other words, God will never ask the sinner, well, why should I let you into heaven? And you say, well, I've, let me,

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I'm glad you asked. I have a lot of things I want to talk about here. When we see God, and the law has gone through us like, you know, like an x -ray machine, and it has, it has plastered our rebellion in every facet up on the big screen.

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When we see God and we see ourselves through His law clearly, then we will have no words.

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We would not dare. Job in chapter 9 of Job talks about, you know, the problem of a holy

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God and unholy men. And even though Job was a child of God and very godly, he said,

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I can't argue my case before the Lord. I can't reach that court. How can I go up to heaven?

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But even if I could, my mouth would accuse me. It's like Job, if I could walk into the courtroom of God and say,

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God, the way you've treated me, I didn't earn this with any particular sin. I'm innocent. But before he opened his mouth, his conscience would turn against him and accuse him of the sins that he has done.

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So in our natural state, we have no hope of justifying ourselves by the law.

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Now this is what, these are three points he sums up from Boston on that. He says, the sinfulness of man's natural state is expressed here.

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The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

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So that's the true measure of natural man. And may I just throw in the timing of that comment, which was right before setting up the flood.

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Right. So this is the state of mankind before the flood, which of course is the state of mankind today in so many respects.

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Then he says, second, we see the misery of man's nature. We were, Paul says to the

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Ephesians, by nature, children of wrath, just as the others. And third, man's utter inability to recover or to cure, to fix himself.

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For when we were still without strength, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly.

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That's why he says, Christ mentions to the crowds that no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.

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Because even crying out to Christ with a repentant hope, with a repentant faith, you know,

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I turn from every lie to you, the Savior, the truth.

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Even that is impossible for us because we are so intoxicated with deceit.

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Yeah, good way to put it. So the third state is the state of grace, at which point we're talking about the man who has gone from spiritual death to spiritual life.

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And so you've got a restored spiritual life in Christ in the state of grace, which we hear so much about.

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In this state, there are many uses of the law, Boston points out. You have now been made alive, you've been empowered by the indwelling

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Spirit of God. So we, believers in Christ, are actually now able to keep the law.

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But there's this strange kind of additional factor here.

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We're in the already in that sense, but we also experience the not yet, because sin remains.

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And I was thinking about this in just a little, very simple color context, John. In the state of, what do we call it, innocence, when

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Adam was first created, you've basically got a white screen, it's pure. In the state of nature, it's gone black, we're hopeless, helpless.

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In the state of grace, we've been restored spiritually, but we're not yet purely white, it's still, there's some gray in there.

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So we're this between transition kind of state. And so our obedience is far from complete, we can experience it and we can rejoice in our desire to follow after God and His law, but we are required again and again and brought to the end of ourselves and needing to fall back on the strength of the

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Holy Spirit, admit our own inability in the flesh, and really walk by the

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Spirit and not by the flesh. But we have those both elements in us. So we're able to grow the power of sin, the penalty of sin has been defeated, but we still feel some of that lingering after -effect in the state of grace.

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The final state that Boston mentions is the state of glory, and this is when we are there with Christ face -to -face, and the great work is complete, and justification which was complete when we embraced

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Christ, now sanctification is complete, or we call that glorification. So all that sin has touched at the end of time, you know, we have the resurrection, we have the judgment before Christ, we have the restoration of all things.

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So we could say everything that sin has touched and defiled from the cosmos to your thoughts to even the body that we had that we made to be an instrument of sin, all of that is redeemed in the sense that it is made perfect, and creation, there will be a new creation, even this body that we have now will be raised from the grave and will be devoted for countless billions of years to the love and service of our

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God. I think of it this way, God will leave no trophy in the hands of the enemy.

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He has sent his Son to restore. Of course, there is the judgment, and there is hell, and those who continue to prefer the lie to the truth, like the enemy of our souls, will be damned.

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But in the state of glory, what about the law? Well, he says the law will be perfectly written on the heart.

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You know, it won't be as if in the new creation you'll have to wake up in the morning and say, you know what?

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I don't want to forget anything I'm supposed to do today, so I'm going to go back to the Old Testament, I'm going to read the 600 plus laws,

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I'm going to go back to the New Testament, I'm going to just read the second half of all those epistles where you get all the practical application.

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Note, obviously, with a sinless nature, with a perfected human nature, the law perfectly written on the heart, we will live unto

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God in obedience without the strain of sin, without the battle.

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But what will that be? It will be the perfect application of the law in our lives.

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I mean, you can't imagine a new creation where we have been forgiven and, you know, raised from the dead, forgiven, put in a new creation, and God is okay if you wake up in the morning and decide to worship an idol instead, or decide to kill a neighbor, or, you know, so to speak, or decide to hate or to deceive.

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So the eternal state of the soul will be one of perfect obedience, and the law will, in that state, be perfectly engraved on the heart.

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And may I add, it won't be a new law, because again, God doesn't change, the perfection of His holiness hasn't changed, and so His law is still that eternal, perfect, just, right law that always has been.

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Yeah, I think, you know, the analogy of where Paul says, faith is replaced by sight. So there won't be believers in heaven,

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I mean, there won't be believers in the new creation, there are seers, so to speak, you know, it's no longer living, trusting a word that we've not yet seen fulfilled, so faith is replaced by sight, and in a sense, the printed page, the printed list, the

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Ten Commandments are replaced by the heart that has perfectly embraced them now.

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So he goes on to talk about willful inability and our need for Christ.

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Steve, what's he talking about there? Okay, so you've got the big picture with the four states of man, but we come back to consider, what is it about the unregenerate man that really kind of makes him unable to come to Christ?

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Well, there are two biblical truths that must be understood here. Man's inability is both hereditary and voluntary.

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So what we mean here is, hereditary refers back to the Fall, the doctrine of original sin that we've talked about.

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Once Adam fell, as you said, he's the federal head, and we're born that way. And you know, that's one of the excuses, right?

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I think some of my kids probably have used this over the time, I can't help it, I'm born that way, you know, it's just the way

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I am. Well, that's a cheap excuse, and as we know, that doesn't really hold any water in this context, but worse than that, our living in sin isn't just brought about by Adam's fall and our doctrine, our original sin, it is also brought about, and you touched on this a few minutes ago,

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John, by our own willful, voluntary choices. We love our depravity.

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We choose willfully our sin and our iniquity. Sinners do not sin against their will.

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John chapter 3, verses 19 to 21, And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

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For everyone who practices evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, for his deeds would be exposed.

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But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.

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So if we have God not requiring what sinners cannot perform, really, ultimately, you erase the need for the

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Son of God and a Savior at all, right? You basically destroy the need for both the law and the gospel.

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You're undermining everything here. What is needed is a power that does not come from us, a power from without, a power from God Himself in the person of the

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Holy Spirit. Only through that power in conversion can God put

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His law into our minds and into our hearts and enable us then to keep it and give us that desire.

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So we talk about free will. The will, having been bent through the fall, is in one theoretical sense capable of choosing

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God and His law, but it doesn't want to. You mentioned the won't. The won't is driven by the want.

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We want sin, and we choose sin. So in that sense, there is that willful inability.

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It is our choice to sin. And so the need for the law in many respects,

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I think, is only highlighted in that context because we are so warped in our minds, in our will, and even in our reason as we try to think it through, that we are unable to see what is really good.

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So we come down to praying to God for what we lack, we give thanks to God for what we have, and we trust

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God for what He has promised. But we must be careful because if God were to reduce our duty, and the argument is made, to what is capable, what our ability would allow us to actually do, it would mean that the weaker we are, the less our obligation.

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It's like turning righteousness and justice on its head, and making the worst sinner the easiest path to escape from sin.

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So ultimately, you come down to what Reisinger puts it as, those who reject the law because man has no power to keep it, seem to forget they have no power even to believe the gospel.

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The command to believe is just as impossible for the natural man as the command to obey.

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And that is pretty shocking, John, to many of us, I will say, to our listeners, that it sounds so easy in many an

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Arminian sermon, just believe, just choose Christ, and there you are.

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But I think the truth of Scripture, taken as the whole, is we're incapable in that very same way, because we will choose our sin at the end of the day.

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He goes on to talk about God's commands and human inability, and in this section, he really is talking about kind of the suggestion that comes to our minds, whether we say it or not, and that is that we think that it would be fair of God, in light of our present condition, that He adjusts

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His expectations of us. So if I can't keep the law perfectly, regardless of how

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I got here, regardless of how I daily cooperate, willingly, as you mentioned, willingly rebelling against Him, still we as humans feel that God kind of has put us in a bad spot, and it's really

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His fault that we're having this trouble. And so He ought to at least, you know, like you go to a bank and say, look,

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I need a break. And so God, you ought to give us a break, okay? So we'll still obey. Can you lower the expectations?

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And, you know, He kind of follows that through. He said, think of it this way, you know, if God lowered

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His expectations, then, you know, you're on a sliding scale. Right and wrong is just always adjustable.

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Now, do we want a universe where the God who rules it adjusts right and wrong all along?

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So let's say that, you know, in the first 100 years after Adam and Eve, we could say humanity just keeps complaining,

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God, this is just too hard now. You know, my great -grandfather did all this, and yes, I've cooperated with it, but God, we think that you should give us a break.

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So what if God lowers the standard of right and wrong? And so what used to be wrong is now okay, and then there's still some wrong, and then maybe 1 ,000 years later, 1 ,000, 1 ,000, 1 ,000.

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Would we want to live under the governance of a God who has continually adjusted right and wrong so that now, by now, you know, wicked things are right, and He's okay with them?

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You know, really, we would have to admit, if we're thinking correctly, even unbelievers would have to rejoice that the one who rules over all things is unadjustably right.

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He talks about the fact that God cannot adjust His expectations because they are built upon His character,

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His own righteousness, what He deserves, His rights as God, and He can no more adjust

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Himself than He can adjust the rules for us. And then He also applies this to faith, which you've mentioned, that when we say all men are commanded everywhere to repent and believe, some people would say, well, because of the inability of man, you can't make that requirement on all men, and you know, and the answer is that God does deserve our faith.

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If the God who has never lied has provided a Savior and commanded you to hope in Him and to turn to Him and to trust what

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He says, you owe that to God by the very nature of who

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He is and who you are, whether you feel capable of doing that or not, whether you're interested in that or not.

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And so, of course, in many ways, we could say that the height of sin is that when

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God comes to humanity with the good news of the gospel, which no fallen angel ever heard, humanity would prefer death to hope.

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It reminds me of a gentleman living near the first church I pastored.

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They weren't...his family wasn't actually in the church. It was in a different church, but I had befriended him and witnessed him.

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He was in his early 60s, but he looked much older because he lived a pretty rough life.

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He was a pretty heavy drinker and kind of a violent man at times, and he and his son, his adult son, would kind of get into arguments and would kind of have violent encounters at times when they both were drinking.

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And one night, about three in the morning, I got a phone call, and it was the police, and they said, can you come down?

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She has killed herself, and I thought, well, who are we talking about? And, you know, and so I get in the car, and I go down there, and the wife had watched the husband drunk and the son, the adult son, drunk again, and they were in a fistfight, and she just comes into the room and screams,

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I can't take this anymore. I'm just going to go kill myself. Well, they don't pay attention to her. She goes into the back room and gets a gun and kills herself.

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So obviously, it was a horrible tragedy, and, you know, you can't recover from that kind of a thing.

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The guilt that he felt, he really thought the world of his wife in spite of, you know, the misery he put her through.

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And so I began to seek him out pretty frequently from that point forward, and I would try to talk with him.

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And I never saw him sober again, you know.

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I had seen him sober before. I knew he was a drinker, but he never sobered up. And so I met with him one day, and I kind of caught him, and he couldn't get away from me, and we talked, and I explained to him the gospel.

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And his, for the first time ever, it's like the armor came down, the shield came down, and he was, you know, his eyes were bloodshot, and he was just a wreck.

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And he looked at me, you know, with a different look, and he said, can this be true, that I could be forgiven for what

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I did to my wife, you know, what I did to this life? And so I was talking to him, and then the face went back to the old face, and he said to me, wait, does

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Christ have to be my Lord for this? And I said, what are you afraid of giving up?

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Your life is gone, you know, you're at the end of your life. You've lost everything that matters to you.

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And you know, I said, you're in this, it's like you're treasuring this little bag of garbage, and the

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King offers you so much, and he said, I may be in a little boat that is sinking, but at least

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I'm the captain, so no thank you. And he wanted nothing to do with Christ. You know, what a picture of the depth of sin's impact.

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It's exactly what Paul says. We are blinded, so we cling to poison, telling everyone around us that this is life.

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And so as far as I know, that's how that man went into eternity. Well, he has one more section there,

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Steve. You want to walk us through that? Human inability. So we're talking about... Right, human inability and spiritual power.

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So from what we've just described, and you powerfully illustrated with that particular gentleman there, we can conclude what

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Scripture teaches, which is no influence of the Holy Spirit, but that which is irresistible will suffice to convert a sinner to God.

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So great is our love for ourselves, for our sin, so blinded are we to what's true and light and right, that but for the incredible, merciful act of God sending

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His Holy Spirit and turning on the lights, as it were, we're never going to get to Christ.

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The corruption is that strong. So if the Spirit were not infinitely efficacious, able, and efficient in His work, we would resist all efforts at conversion.

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So it's an infinitely powerful operation of the Spirit that is required. So the use of the term irresistible has sort of been loaded these days, of course, from the whole

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Calvinist tulip illustration, and it is the eye there, but the idea that, back to the free will too, that somehow we're kind of like in this more neutral state, and yeah, we can see both sides, and like the objective neutral arbiter, can decide wisely for ourselves.

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It's just out the window, right? We are so far tilted away from good, and our hearts so far bent toward loving sin, we can never hope to get back to God and His law and what is really good for our souls, apart from that operation of the

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Holy Spirit. It's really a kind of a natural, logical extension of what we've been saying all along, but again, it's still, there's a little shock to the system when you first recognize, wait a minute, irresistible?

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So again, it kind of, I'm giving up even my ability to not say no, right?

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Anything that is good for me must come first from God, and it feels, of course, at the end like, no,

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I really did make that choice. But until and unless that Holy Spirit works in our hearts and really begins to open our eyes,

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I thought when you first told that story, you were going to explain, for the first time, this man's eyes were seeing clearly, and the

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Holy Spirit was going to draw him. He was going to say, yes, of course, and then you turn there. But that is, in fact, the operation.

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I think those of us that have experienced that wonderful transition can look back and see that how many times in my own life did

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I say, absolutely not, to the offers that were pretty clearly put before me, the gospel explained, and logically it all made sense.

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But when I came down to what my heart really wanted, I chose sin every time.

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Yeah, wonderful chapter to deal with a question that we often throw up against God, and I think like David Brainerd at the beginning mentioned, we use this kind of cloudy complaint.

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God, it seems to me that because of the condition I'm in, it is just so unfair of you to expect me to keep the law, or it's unfair of you to expect me to even believe and repent, and so I'll just sit back and wait on you if you want to do something.

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You can. And so obviously, it's one of the enemy's tricks to take a truth, and you only get like one half of the truth.

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You get your hands on part of the truth, and then you misapply it to your own detriment.

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And like Brainerd, you use that kind of a question to say, well, unless God just explains all that to me,

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I don't owe Him anything. But this chapter has been helpful, because he points out that God did create humanity capable of keeping the law.

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Also, the law is not a ladder you're climbing up to God. The law is an expression of what is fundamentally right, because of God is fundamentally right.

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And so it's not as if the law is a ladder, and He could give you a six -foot step ladder instead of a 12 -foot ladder to climb now.

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The law is what is right, and we are not right, and having a fallen nature doesn't make our sinful choices less sinful.

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Robert Murray McShane in the 19th century said to the people in the town of Dundee, Scotland, that if you use the doctrine of total depravity as an excuse for your sin...so

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I know I did that, but it's not as bad as it looks, because actually, I couldn't help it.

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I'm depraved. McShane said this, depravity of heart or sinful heart or sinful nature does not lessen the guilt of sinful actions, it exacerbates it.

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What it's saying to God is this, God, it's not just what I'm doing that offends you, it's what I am that offends you.

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Now, if we know those things to be true from the God who has not lied to us about anything, what do we do?

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Well, if you know the one who can give life, who can bring you from a death into life that can open your eyes and melt the heart and free the will, cry out to Him.

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You may not be able to perfectly obey the law. You may struggle to even believe these things that are written in this book, but you can cry out in desperation and say to God, God, save me on your terms for your glory, and He will be kind.

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Well, we will return again next week as we look again at the law and the gospel, the theme covered by Ernie Reisinger.