8. James White | The Calvinism of Paul | Open Air Theology Conference 2024

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9. Austin Keeler | Calvinism in the Gospel | Open Air Theology Conference 2024

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It is good to be back with you. We were with you, I was we, the royal we there, I guess. I was with you last year and this year, as you may know, is a very, very, very busy year for me as far as this particular trip is concerned.

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I've already done two debates in Houston and preached at Votie Balcombe's old church,

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Grace Family Baptist Church in North Houston this past weekend, and so we have the debate tomorrow and then

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I go from here to Conway and I'll be teaching Baptist Church History, an intensive class.

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If you've ever taken an intensive class, you know that it is extremely difficult on the students, but let me tell you something, it's a whole lot harder on the professor.

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It's all day Thursday, all day Friday, and half the day on Saturday. They call it intensive for a reason, and then head out from there, make a stop in Tyler, Texas.

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I would ask if anybody can guess what the significance of Tyler, Texas would be, but it's actually just close to where Tom Buck is.

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Tom was supposed to be with us and wasn't able to be, but I will be speaking on Roman Catholicism there, especially because Bishop Strickland of Tyler, Texas was removed as a bishop by Pope Francis, and there's a lot of background to that stuff going on right now in the world.

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And then straight from there to Houston, back to First Lutheran Church.

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You may be wondering, most Lutheran churches aren't really into debates the way that this church is.

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This will be my fifth and sixth debates at First Lutheran there in downtown

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Houston, and we'll be debating Thursday night against Leighton Flowers over here, and Saturday night

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I will be debating really the king of the Unitarians, Dr. Dale Tuggy, on the identification, the

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Bible's identification of Jesus as Yahweh. So that will make five debates on this particular trip, and we should be, we hoped today to be able to make an announcement about two more debates coming up in April in Lafayette, Louisiana.

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We haven't gotten that final confirmation yet, so I can't do that, but to say it's a busy spring is probably to underestimate things just a little bit.

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I have to remind myself to keep my voice a little bit lower. I've been fighting a bunch of stuff for a long time, and I wanna be able to have a voice tomorrow at least, so I need to try to throttle things back a little bit.

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And when you've got the microphone right there, you really don't need to speak that loudly anyways. Don't really need to do that.

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I wanna thank Jeffrey Rice for inviting me once again. Very much appreciate it, and I think it is completely appropriate that I am preaching from one of Jeffrey's Bibles, the

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Johnny Cash. For those of you who don't have enough cash, don't have a Johnny Cash. Ha ha ha!

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Uh. Brunch. Yes. Uh. Ha ha ha.

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I don't know, maybe it did air, but I haven't been informed yet, but I did record two hours and 15 minutes with Trent Horn on the

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Ali Beth Stuckey Show, talking about all sorts of things in regards to Roman Catholicism.

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And the only, I wanted Jeffrey to know, the only book in front of me on the table for that entire time was my

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Johnny Cash. So there you go, he actually planned all this.

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I won't tell you the story about it, but I saw an interview where he planned all of this. So he's just a marketing genius hiding behind that big beard.

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That's all there is to it. Anyway, when Jeffrey contacted me about the topics for the conference, he said,

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I'd like you to do Paul's Calvinism. And I wrote back,

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I just put ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, right. Because if you simply read the relevant passages from Romans and Ephesians and so on and so forth, you'd pretty much take up the majority of your time.

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But he was being serious. And so I thought, well, you know, the best way, if you were assigned this topic, if you were asked to address

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Paul's Calvinism, as anachronistic as that term actually is, obviously, a couple of passages immediately pop into your mind.

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You think of Romans eight and nine, you think of Ephesians chapter one especially. And both of those,

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I preached Ephesians one, three through 14 at Grace Family Baptist Church last

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Sunday. And even though I was supposed to emphasize verse 14, it was tough to get there and to do that because there is just so much to be dealing with.

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But that would then leave out a whole lot of other stuff. So what I decided to do is

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I decided to start with two texts that might be lesser known or wouldn't be the first things that would pop into your mind to lay somewhat of a foundation.

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And then we will, obviously, need to at least acknowledge and make some comments on such things as the golden chain of redemption and things like that in Romans and Ephesians.

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But I actually wanna start in 2 Timothy chapter two. 2 Timothy chapter two, it's interesting to me how much more often now

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I have to, in passing, make reference to the fact that if you believe that this is all the word of God and it is consistent with itself and it is the result of supernatural creationism and creativity, the work of the spirit of God in bringing this about, and that you can read it consistently with itself, you are in a minority in what calls itself

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Christianity today. And certainly in seminaries and Bible colleges all around the world, but certainly amongst

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English -speaking ones as well. And what I refer to is the fact that recently in dealing with Roman Catholicism and in dealing with Trent Horne, the apologist, one of the apologists for Catholic Answers, the guy that I debated last weekend, he has made the argumentation that when we look at the term theognostos in 2

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Timothy 3 .16, all scripture is God -breathed, he made the argument recently, based upon a

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Protestant work, that that term shouldn't be understood as God -breathed, but as life -giving.

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And the whole idea was to try to open up space for there to be something else that is

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God -breathed, specifically sacred tradition, oral tradition, the deposit of faith, so on and so forth.

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And in the process, when I looked up this fellow he was quoting, I found out, once I got his book, it was very expensive, as always, once I got his book,

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I discovered that he doesn't believe that Paul wrote 2 Timothy, or 1

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Timothy, or Titus. And in fact, a lot of people today have a diminished

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Pauline canon, Bart Ehrman has made that quite popular, there's only seven genuine epistles from Paul, according to him.

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And so it's pretty amazing that more and more now, I have to sort of warn believing

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Christians who've just been raised in good, solid churches, that if you go out there and you buy commentaries and things like that, just be aware that there are a lot of other views out there,

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I'm not saying that they're equally valid views in any way, shape, or form, but just be aware you buy a commentary, and you may end up reading something from someone who doesn't actually believe that the

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Apostle Paul wrote whatever it is we're gonna be reading, even right now. So 2

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Timothy, chapter two, verse eight, remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead of the seed of David, according to my gospel, for which

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I endure hardship even to chains as a criminal, but the word of God has not been chained.

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For this reason I endure all things for the sake of the elect, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.

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It is a trustworthy saying, for if we died with him, we will also live with him. If we endure, we will also reign with him.

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If we will deny him, he also will deny us. If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.

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Now, most of the time, we are familiar with what's probably a creedal statement or a hymnic statement, specifically verses 11 through 13.

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You've probably heard a lot of sermons about it. Hopefully you've had it pointed out to you that the section about if we will deny him, he also will deny us, this is the sin unto death that 1

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John talks to us about. But notice that if we died with him, we will also live with him.

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You might wanna think about that tomorrow during the debate. If we endure, we will also reign with him, promises from the book of Revelation.

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If we are faithless, and this is really interesting, if we deny him, he will deny us. That's the sin spoken of in Hebrews.

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That's Hebrews 6, that's Hebrews 10, that's 1 John. But if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.

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Fascinating to think about what we could develop here in regards to union with Christ, the union of the elect with Christ in his death.

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There's lots of things we could do here, but that's not actually what I'm focusing on. I wanted to just look at in passing what

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Paul says in verse 10, for this reason I endure all things, what?

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For the sake of the elect. My suggestion to you is that the concept of divine election, the fact that there is a specific people who in God's grace have been granted grace and mercy, which has to be free, or it's not grace and mercy at all.

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If it's demanded of all, it's not grace and mercy at all. There is a specific people called the elect.

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Now, Paul as an apostle, at times, had supernatural knowledge, supernatural insight into things, but I don't think that was the general thing.

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I don't think that apostles walked around, and as Paul was walking through the busy streets of Ephesus that he could see someone walking by and go, oh, there's one of the elect, and then the next person, oh, not that one, not gonna talk to that one.

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I don't think he had that kind of supernatural revelation of things at all, and of course, we do not have that kind of supernatural revelation, but he talks about enduring hardships, chains as a criminal, so on and so forth, but he says

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I endure all things for the sake of the elect. This is the end of his life.

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He has seen God draw his elect people unto himself in many missionary journeys and in many different contexts and cities and people you never would have expected.

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He's seen people in Caesar's own household who have been drawn to faith in Jesus Christ, and he recognizes that he has endured all these things, the beatings and the shipwrecks and the imprisonment for the sake of the elect.

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He didn't choose them. He doesn't know who they are, and so he's commanded us to proclaim the gospel to all promiscuously, as the

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Puritans like to put it, though words have changed in meaning a little bit since then, but to command all men everywhere to repent, because it's not up to us to be the fruit inspectors.

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It's not up to us to go, oh, that's an elect person, that's not an elect person, and in fact, as I said,

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I'm teaching Baptist church history next week, and there have been times when forms of what we would call hyper -Calvinism have developed, especially in the experience of Britain, little less here in the

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United States, but in Britain, where people would actually try to start looking for signs of fruit before offering the forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus, to do things that we have not been given the power or the ability or even the command to do, but Paul says he endures all things for the sake of the elect, why?

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So that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.

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That's a pretty amazing thing to say, that his enduring has been used by God to bring about the salvation of God's elect so that they also may obtain the salvation.

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Notice it's a they, it's a specific group. It's not some nameless, faceless group.

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It's a specific group. He understands that God knows his elect. He told the

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Ephesians, as we will see, that that is the case, but he recognizes that God uses means, and what a tremendous benefit it has been for God's people down through the ages to recognize that all the things that we go through, all the deprivations we experience,

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I was just kicked in the gut in my preparation for this class on Baptist history, especially as we go back farther into the 16 and 1700s, of how many of the great men who gave rise to our

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Baptist churches, how many of them went through such tremendous trials in their ministry.

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One individual had 11 out of 12 children born to him who did not live to maturity.

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11 children he lost, and if I recall correctly, at least one wife in the process, and most of the time, that was in childbirth.

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And I couldn't help but think to myself, when you think about the things that Paul went through, when you think about the things that our forefathers, not all that long ago, went through, how many of us would just throw in the towel?

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And yet, what kept those men going? What gave them joy?

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What gave them strength? It's that God is using me, he's using means to accomplish his ends, and the end is the salvation of the elect, that they also may obtain that salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.

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That made it all worthwhile. That made the loss of all of his physical possessions and possibly, and again, it's a debatable issue, but his horrible eyesight or whatever else it might have been along those lines, the sufferings that were his, his thorn in the flesh, weakness, betrayal, can you imagine what it was like, and some of you can, those of you with as much snow on the chin now, it used to be on the roof, it fell off.

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But snow on the chin now, no one can be in ministry for a lengthy period of time, 40 years for me now, without a pretty long list of people that we have been betrayed by.

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People we sowed into their lives, we ministered the word of God to them, and they don't even name the name of Christ today.

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And they betrayed us, and they lied about us. And I can think of a situation within the past seven months in my own church, that very same thing.

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And what keeps people going? How can you have joy in the midst of that?

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And I suggest to you that this gives us an idea. Paul's writing to Timothy, this is gonna be probably the last communication he's gonna have with him.

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Important things to communicate to him, encourage him. And one of the things he communicates, not as, this isn't some central part of what he's saying.

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This isn't, and the main point of what I'm saying is, I've endured all things for the sake of your life. He says it in passing. Those are some of the most important sections in all of scripture.

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When something is said in passing, why? Because it assumes the person you're talking to will fully understand what you're saying by simply mentioning it and going on.

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That means it's a shared conviction between the two of you. We all do that in text messages, right?

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Now my wife does that a little bit more in text messages than actually is possible, because I still don't know what in the world she's saying.

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She uses voice texting, and that has resulted in some of the most hilarious things. The rest of the family, we just sort of share those round backwards, you know, back channels.

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Look at what Nani said, oh wow, that's amazing. Anyway, we have that shared commonality that allows us to just make those quick references.

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And that's what Paul's doing here. He doesn't have to stop and explain to Timothy who the elect are. He doesn't have to give him a theological background.

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They already shared that. That's what was already there. And so in saying this, he's saying to Timothy, I have remained faithful,

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I have endured all things because I know God is using me as the means of proclaiming the gospel so that his elect may obtain that salvation that he from eternity past has vouchsafed to them in the eternal counsels of the

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Father, Son, and Spirit. It's found only in Christ Jesus and no place else, and they will receive eternal glory.

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Not because they deserve it, but because God is the one who glorifies his people.

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That's what glorification is about. That's what kept so many people going.

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So many of those initial missionaries, and I honestly was unaware of the tremendous amount of opposition to foreign missions work there was in the

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United States, and it wasn't due to some theological issue amongst

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Baptists. And yet, who was it that started these things? Who was it that went over there and ministered for year and year and year and year after year after year patiently sowing the seed until the converts began?

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They were Reformed, they were Calvinists, they believed in the sovereignty of God. You can read about it. One of the big things that happened was some of them went over there as Congregationalists, which means they believed in paedo -baptism, and they started really studying the issue once they got over there, because you're gonna have to be baptizing people, and they became

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Baptists, and they lost their support at home. They were thinking about these things.

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They were focused upon these things. They endured all things for the sake of the elect, and I hope for us that is a exhortation.

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We don't know who the elect are, and we may live in a day as in, when

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I first went to Australia, my Australian friends said plowing with the gospel here is hard, it's rocky soil, and you run into rocks, and you run into false converts, and all the stuff that Jesus warned about, the shallow soil, and the springing up, and then no root in itself, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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We see it all the time, and you have to truly keep your eye on the calling, and as we live in a more and more secular society, we have to ask ourselves a question, how much am

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I willing to endure for the sake of the elect? Do I pray to God, use me, use me as the instrument, as the means to draw your people unto yourself?

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That's a question. Keep that in mind, there's one other, and it's not even in Paul, but it is.

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Turn with me to the history of the church, Acts chapter 13. The history of the church, and here you have

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Luke recording for us God using Paul in that very way, and so Paul and Barnabas, Acts chapter 13, verse 46.

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Well, let's go to verse 44. In the next Sabbath, nearly a whole city assembled to hear the word of the Lord, but when the

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Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began contradicting the things spoken by Paul, blaspheming,

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Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and said, it was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first, since you reject it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life.

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Behold, we are turning to the Gentiles, for so the Lord has commanded us, I have placed you as a light for the

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Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the end of the earth. And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the

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Lord, and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. And the word of the

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Lord is being spread through the whole region. Now, again, if you want to delve into some of the technical aspects of the underlying

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Greek text and all the rest of that stuff, we're not gonna get into that today. I deal with that in the

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Potter's Freedom. There's a lot of good information out there. It is sad that in a lot of evangelical circles, the same translation used by Jehovah's Witnesses of this will be presented as if instead of it saying, and as many has been appointed to eternal life believe, it's as many as judged themselves to be worthy of eternal life believed, or something along these lines, based upon a rather fundamental misunderstanding of how middle and passives work, especially in classical

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Greek. This is Luke. Luke uses a very specific language.

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If you want to discourage anybody who is first learning the Greek language after they finish, say, mounts or a beginning grammar, ask them to read from Luke, Acts, or Hebrews, and they will immediately leave the faith and become a

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Buddhist, because it is extremely different than reading

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John or Mark or Paul, for that matter. And notice I said Hebrews.

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I do believe, I believe Paul preached Hebrews, and Luke wrote

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Hebrews in Greek. It's Paul's theology, but it is

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Luke's grammar and syntax. So that's my theory.

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Nobody knows, so you can't prove it one way or the other. So there you go. But that's what I think.

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And so here Luke records for us, and again, notice how it is. It's in passing. If this was some strange, amazing thing, then you would think that there would be a discussion about it, but no.

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It's just in passing. The Gentiles heard this. They heard the promise of Scripture, that I have placed you as a light for the

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Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the end of the earth. And they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the

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Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. It's just a common understanding.

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It's the common recognition of what Paul has been preaching and what he's writing to the churches.

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There is this appointment on the part of the sovereign God of a specific people unto salvation.

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And we don't know who they are. So we go out, and I can give you story after story after story after story.

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Going up to Utah, when we started going up to the General Conference, the

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Mormon Church in Salt Lake City in the 1980s. And the first time we went up,

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Mike Beliveau and I, he and his wife, and me and my wife, we were the founders of Alpha and Omega Ministries 40 years ago.

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And the first time we went up, we went up in my 1964 Dodge Dart. Anyone ever seen a 1964

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Dodge Dart? Now imagine one where no two body panels are the same color. Mag wheels and a hood scoop.

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That's what I was driving. My wife did not even want to get in that car. She did not want to be seen in it. She just sort of slinked down the front seat if we ever had to drive in it.

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And of course, didn't have air conditioning, so in Arizona, it wasn't a whole lot of fun anyway. We drove that thing up to Salt Lake City.

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I remember stopping in Page, at the dam up in Page, because we were driving overnight, it was cold, and there were so many holes in the floorboard that the wind was whistling in on Mike's ankles while he's trying to drive, and his feet were freezing.

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And so we're rummaging around the trunk, I wasn't sure whether it would close again, looking for extra socks for him to put on so we could get up to Salt Lake City.

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We did that for years, but eventually, we got nicer vehicles. And in fact, last few years, we flew.

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What an idea that was. But what we saw the Lord do up there was truly astonishing.

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It truly was astonishing. I could tell you the stories, but you see, as we stood there, I don't know who the elect are, so I'm gonna try to give a tract to everybody

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I can. I passed out a tract once to Senator Orrin Hatch outside the south gate of the temple there, and he took it, and you know why he took it?

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Because he was wearing a Rush Limbaugh tie, and I was wearing a Rush Limbaugh tie.

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You want God's sovereignty? There you go. He never would have taken a tract from Layton Flowers, but he took one from me because I was wearing a

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Rush Limbaugh tie. Now, I want to point something else out to you as well. You all are special. I'm wearing a

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Rush Limbaugh tie right now. You're like, no, yes.

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You say, Rush never made bow ties. That's true, but that doesn't mean you can't take a tie and make a bow tie out of it.

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And so, if you ever want to take a tie, or a Rush Limbaugh tie, you can send it to Bow Ties Limited of Vermont, and this is a genuine

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Rush Limbaugh bow tie. I want you to just know that you're very special, that I will be wearing that for you today.

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So, and yet, years later, years later,

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I will go up to Salt Lake City. Just last year, I was up in, man,

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I forget, was I in Salt Lake? Anyways, I had, oh, that's right, it was for the 40th anniversary.

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Someone sent in an email, and she said, you know, I remember you. I remember you outside of General Conference.

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Me and my friends came up to you, and we really tried to give you a hard time, and we sort of, you know, took tracks, and then threw them out, and 29 years later, the

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Lord used that witness to open her heart, and bring her to faith in Christ.

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29 years later. And I'm gonna tell you something.

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Sometimes when you're standing outside that General Conference, you're wondering why you're there.

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You really are wondering. But in hindsight now, I can tell you of so many times where God was faithful to bring us to people that I never would have gone to.

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And when we first started doing it, I was at a very, very, very large Southern Baptist Church at the time, and we had a lot of people at that church going, why are you bothering the

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Mormons? They've already got their own religion. And I'm like, yeah, and it's gonna take them to hell.

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They need the gospel. And that's why we would go up there and do that. And so in passing, as many as were appointed to eternal life, that's been my experience.

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Passing out tracks when Pope John Paul II came, in, ooh, to 19, what was that, 1989 to Phoenix?

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Somewhere around there, may have been 90. To the thousands and thousands of people there.

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Or in 93, when he went to World Youth Day in Denver. There's Rich Pierce and I, and they're doing a little pilgrimage walk to Cherry Creek State Park for the mass.

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And there's Rich and I along the trail, passing out tracks. And we had this one, and the line worked really well.

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They're really tired, it's hot. And so special, lightweight tracks. They won't weigh you down. Boy, we got so many of them out that way.

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It was great, it was wonderful. It was great. Do I know what happened to all those tracks?

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No. Will I find out in eternity? I don't know, I hope so. But I believe as many as were appointed to eternal life will believe.

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And that's why you keep going. And that's why as it becomes more and more difficult and more and more secular, you keep going.

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You show boldness because you believe that God has his elect people.

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So, Romans chapter eight, we gotta look at a couple of them. I know, you all know what these are.

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And the danger is, since you know them so well, that when you look at them, it's like, yeah, we've heard all this before, and your mind shuts down.

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My hope is that as we discuss these things, and as we discuss these truths that you know so very well, that you will ask the

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Lord to keep you from experiencing apathy about his great truths.

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Sometimes I see people who leave Reformed churches, and when I talk to them afterwards, I realize they had heard things, but they did not have a passion to see the fullness of God's truth.

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Five points is not enough. Being Reformed has to do with the church and worship and worldview and everything else.

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We can talk about God's sovereignty and salvation. We can talk about him using us as means unto the ends.

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But you need to see he uses us in all of life, not just on outreach night, but in all of life, in how we live our lives.

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And I've learned, and I was not raised with this. I wish I had been. I'm really seeing this, and I love it so much.

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I'm seeing this in my daughter's family. I have five grandkids with my daughter's, my daughter has five kids, and one's a little one -year -old,

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Ransom, and her oldest is 14, gonna be driving soon.

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That's scary, really, really scary. The most frightened I've ever been in my life was when

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I taught my kids to drive. I mean, that is the most helpless feeling on the planet, to be in the driver's side without brakes and without a steering wheel.

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Oh my goodness, I'm not gonna tell you anymore because we even had a problem with that, so it made it even all the more terrifying.

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But anyways, it is so beautiful, beautiful, to see the

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Lord working in a family that I've baptized three of those children so far, to hear their testimonies, to be out at the

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Mesa Easter pageant with them. My girls love to go out there because my daughter loved to go out there.

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Summer loved to go out and witness to the Mormons, and that's one of her favorite memories of her childhood was going with me to witness to the

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Mormons or going to my debates. I have one of my favorite video clips that I show in my classes.

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It's my first debate ever with a Muslim. It's not my first Muslim debate because we weren't debating Islam, but my first debate with a

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Muslim, Hamza Abdul Malik on Long Island in 1999. Right as the camera's gonna swing back and show you this long line of Muslims who are getting ready to throw all their questions at me, it pans across, and here's this little girl with bangs cut straight across.

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She's nine years old. She's sitting on the front row, and she's just heard her daddy defending the deity of Christ, and now she's gonna be listening to all these men standing there trying to refute him.

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She remembers those things, and now my grandchildren are the recipients of that, and I'll be honest with you.

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When I talk about long life, the only reason I'd want to have a really long life is I'd really like to have great -grandchildren.

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That would be really cool. It really would be. I'd love to see that, and what I'm doing now is

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I'm trying to invest into them. Don't worry. I'm not gonna get into eschatology right now. We could have a debate about that in the other room later on.

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Romans chapter eight. You know the text. You know it well.

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Let's back up from where we normally start. It truly is the capstone in the cathedral of Christianity.

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It is, we know that Paul is putting sublime effort into the writing of this epistle because he knows a church grounded in Rome will be a church that transmits its faith around the world because there's a reason why even we know the phrase all roads lead to Rome.

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Just as Paul had labored in Ephesus, and as a result, you have the church in Colossae.

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You have the evangelization of the Lycus River Valley. It was wise. Now he's writing to Rome to lay that foundation there, and by the way, church history guy here, when you read what's called

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First Clement, or we don't know who wrote it, but it's the letter from the church at Rome, the church at Corinth, probably first century.

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It's fascinating to note that that writer knows not only

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Romans real well, but 1st and 2nd Corinthians as well. So these letters were already circulating.

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They knew that the apostle had written these things. These things were already being copied. Paul was wise to invest this time.

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And so here in chapter eight, you've already had justification laid out.

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Then you've had the foundations of that in regards to the sinfulness of man.

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You have that in chapters one, two, and three, and then you have federal headship in Adam and Christ in chapter five, our walking in newness of life and not using grace as a means for sinning in chapters six and seven, and then in chapter eight, you start wrapping all of these things up, present suffering, future glory, and then these words in verse 26.

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And in the same way, the spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

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And he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the spirit is because he intercedes to the saints according to the will of God.

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May I suggest to you the only consistent way to read that is in a reformed way. Does the spirit of God intercede for rebel sinners with groanings that cannot be uttered?

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Who is, when the spirit intercedes, you have the son who intercedes in a special way because of his finished work, but he who searches the hearts, that's the father, knows what the mind of the spirit is because he, the spirit, intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

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The gospel is always Trinitarian. I don't know how Unitarians even begin to make heads or tails out of what the

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New Testament teaches about the gospel. I really, really honestly don't. And that's why Unitarianism always leads to a degradation of the gospel.

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And every Unitarian denomination in history has collapsed over a fairly short period of time without a divine savior.

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I say that in light of debates I have coming up against the Unitarian. But when you read these words, think about the role of father, son, and spirit.

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The spirit also helps our weakness. You know, the spirit chose to take that role in the economy of salvation in eternity past.

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You realize that? This isn't, we cannot have the idea that God has been going, oh, oh, well,

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I'm gonna create, there's a possibility of sin, but I don't know whether it's gonna happen or not. And then sin happens, like, oh, sin has happened, so now

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I'm gonna come up with some other ways of trying to handle that. Oh, wow, it's getting really bad. Uh -oh, flood time. Is this really what we think the

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Bible is teaching us about God? That he's reacting, he's doing all this kind of stuff?

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Is that where Paul's coming from? He tells us the spirit helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should.

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It's not that you don't know how to bow your head and close your eyes and things like that. It's what you should be praying for.

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We don't know the future, God does. God does. And so the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

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How many times have you poured your heart out to God? God, I desire this, please.

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In this loved one, this loved one's life, he's ruining his life, the drugs, the alcohol, please, father, do something.

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And we pray to God. We're not trying to get God to be better than he already is. When you pray, you're the one being changed.

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You're being conformed to his will. God's already as good as God can ever be, and he's really good.

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And you can trust that. But when you pray, then you are making yourself available to be used, to be sensitive to God's spirit, to be the means by which mercy can be extended to others.

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And so the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. There are times we don't know what to pray for.

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We don't know what the future's gonna hold. We don't know what the best outcome would be. Everything's a mess.

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And so we lay our heart out before God, and God, I don't know what to do. And the spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

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I'm awful glad that I don't have to be a perfect prayer because I have the spirit who will intercede for me with groanings too deep for words.

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And he who searches the hearts, the father, knows what the mind of the spirit is because he intercedes for the saints according to what?

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The will of God. The will of God. That's what's behind all of this.

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For the Apostle Paul, he can simply say, on the basis of the good will of God.

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That's the end, that's it. You ask for more and you don't really believe what this says.

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You don't believe what it says. You don't trust it. He intercedes for whom?

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The saints. It's a very specific work of intercession. And we know that for those who love

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God, all things work together for good. And who are those who love God? For those who are called according to his purpose.

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Now, it's not uncommon for people to say, no, no, no, no, no. No. In reality, everyone has the capacity in and of themselves, even though they're slaves to sin, to love

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God and as a result, then they will be the ones who are called according to his purpose.

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Mankind simply cannot stand the fact that God is autonomous and we are not.

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God is God, we are his creatures. And we have this promise here and every one of you,

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I was a hospital chaplain for a number of years, some of the hardest work I ever did. And we all know

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Romans 828, but there is an entire theology behind Romans 828.

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And you can say the words, but let me tell you something. I've buried many an unbeliever and many a believer and in only one of those contexts were these words actually valid.

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And the great temptation is to say these words when they're not valid for people who didn't love

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God, who were not called according to his purpose. Because when death happens, we all wanna go, well, you know, once they're gone, all that stuff that they said beforehand, all the expression they made of their hatred toward God and his truth,

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I'm just gonna forget all that and I'm gonna assume that everything turned out well at the end and besides that, that's what the family wants me to do.

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That's the temptation. And many of you in here who are ministers know exactly what

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I'm talking about. You've been there, you've felt it. You've had to deal with it. Paul says that there are those who are called according to his purpose.

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Well, that's everybody. Really? Because those whom he foreknew, active verb, not those about whom he had foreknowledge, that's a completely different concept.

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Those whom he foreknew, every single time that this verb is used with God as the one doing it, the object is personal.

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It's personal, it's not events. It's not God looking down the corridors of time. I heard all those examples when

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I was a young person as well. Those whom he foreknew, this is personal, it's a finite verb.

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Those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.

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That is the ultimate purpose in our context of what salvation is all about.

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Yes, forgiveness of sins, adoption, everything. What's all of that lead to? Being conformed to the image of his son.

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What is the result of predestination? Being conformed to the image of his son.

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That's what it's all about. So, those whom he foreknew, that is who he chose to enter into relationship with.

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When God knew, when the Old Testament says, of all the nations, only Israel did he knew.

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You mean God didn't know about these other nations? No, it's not just a matter of knowledge. We know that the

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Hebrew term yadah has intimate elements to it. When Adam yadahed Eve, she had a child.

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And so, this is intimate and personal. It's right after talking about those who love

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God, called according to his purpose. He foreknew them, he predestined them to become conformed to the image of his son.

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And I say to you, if God predestined someone to be conformed to the image of his son, guess what?

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They will be conformed to the image of his son. So that, and notice, that's central for us, but check this out.

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So that he would be the firstborn among many brothers. Even when we have that statement made to us, conformed to the image of Christ, the

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God man, the perfect man. There's still something greater than anything that we personally, we are a part of this great body.

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And there are promises in scripture. Your children shall be as what?

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The sand of the seashore. And as the stars of the heavens. Again, we don't wanna have an eschatological brawl develop.

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I think Jeffrey could handle anybody, right brother? He's not listening to me right now.

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But there are some people who have the idea that well, if you believe in election, then you don't really believe that there's gonna be a great number.

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Oh, I do, I do. So they're gonna be conformed to the image of his son so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers.

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Not just a few, many brothers. And those whom he predestined, again, finite verb,

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God's the one doing it, he also called. Well, there's calling up above, and what was it about?

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According to his purpose. Those whom he predestined, he also called.

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That's an effective call. There is a general call. But this is a specific call.

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Because it says, and those whom he called, he also justified. So unless you're going to be a universalist, and everyone's going to be saved, and the universalist will use this text.

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Most of us have never debated with a universalist, so we don't really think about it very much, but they're out there. Those who he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also glorified.

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Each one of these is divine act. It's something God does. We are told elsewhere in scripture the means that he uses in these ways.

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It's not meant to be exhaustive in the sense of, well, what about adoption, or what about this, or what about the other thing?

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This is Paul's way of saying that God is the one accomplishing his purpose.

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He will not be frustrated. He will bring exactly those that he has chosen in eternity past into fellowship with himself.

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Foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified.

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They're all God's work, and that's why people stand on their heads to try to undo this text.

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I know that there are videos online, the golden chain undone, the golden chain refuted, golden chain refuted in 10 minutes, and all the rest of this kind of stuff that you can find on YouTube.

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Can't do it. Not, and keep Romans 8, Romans 8. Because Paul, having said this, then says, what then shall we say to these things?

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If God is for us, who is against us? Now, who's the us? Who's the us?

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Well, it's pretty obvious if you just follow it through. We know that those who

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God loves, all things work together. Then we have those who are predestined, called. What then shall we say to these things if God is for us?

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He's already said the spirit intercedes for us. Who? The saints.

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Verse 27. What then shall we say to these things?

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If God is for us, who is against us? Follow the pronouns.

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He who indeed did not spare his own son, but delivered him over for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things, and once again, the lengths to which people will go to try to break the text's flow?

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Ah, let's jump over here for some, oh, let's jump something over here. Whenever you see someone who can't walk through a text first and then go elsewhere to provide some illumination here, there, whatever, but cannot allow the text to define its own terms.

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You can't follow the pronouns. You can't follow the verbs. You can't follow the thought. Someone has a tradition that is overriding scripture in this place.

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It's a red flag, and it's a big one, and it flutters in the wind. God is for a specific people, and he did not spare his own son, but delivered him over for that specific people, and the question is then asked, how will he not also with him, with the son, graciously give us all things?

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This is not some promise of Kenneth Copeland's airplane. What are the all things that are given to us?

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Well, it's having the spirit interceding for us and making all things work together and justifying, glorifying, and everything else.

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Think about what is said here. Who will bring a charge against God's elect?

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Who is the us? God's elect. God's elect. It's right there. You can't avoid it.

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Who will bring a charge against God's elect? Well, that's a good question. Who will? Well, we know

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Satan does, right? But can Satan successfully prosecute the elect?

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God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Wrote a book called

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The God Who Justifies. There's a reason for that. Justification is a forensic declaration on the part of God the

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Father based upon the merits of Jesus Christ in behalf of his people.

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Substitutionary atonement is reformed theology. Arminius rejected it.

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Arminians should reject it. Most of them do who are self -aware of their own background.

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Those who try to hold onto substitutionary atonement and yet reject the foundation of it, which is

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God's sovereign decree of election, end up in a true mess. They really do.

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Who will bring a charge against God's elect? Verse 33 and following is the courtroom scene.

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The courtroom scene. And of course, the judge is

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God. And the question is, who will be the prosecutor?

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Who will be the one who will walk into God's courtroom and bring a charge against God's elect people?

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God is the one who justifies it. So right here, this is so important, especially in dealing with Roman Catholicism, and my time is very short, but in dealing with Roman Catholicism, this came out really clearly this past weekend.

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The fundamental difference is we believe that our standing before God is based upon what Jesus Christ did in our place.

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His righteousness imputed to us, our sins imputed to him. Rome does not believe that.

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And therefore, a Roman Catholic cannot have peace because it's all up to you and what you do and your working of the sacraments.

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That's Rome's teaching. But God is the one who justifies.

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That is the bringing down of the gavel by the judge who says, not guilty.

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But you and I both know our own hearts. And the Roman Catholic will say to you, how can you say you're not guilty?

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You know, this is a legal fiction. It's not a legal fiction. You see,

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God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who brings a sentence of condemnation?

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Well, the answer is very clear when it says, Christ Jesus is he who died, yes, rather, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.

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There is the gospel. There is the gospel that broke the chains of Rome.

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That's why the Reformation was needed and still needs to be needed today.

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What is the ultimate answer when Satan brings a charge against God's elect? Christ Jesus is he who died, yes, rather, was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also does what?

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Intercedes for us. This is particular redemption.

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This is limited atonement. This is the high priest interceding on the basis of his death for a specific people.

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And if you say that the son can die for someone and intercede for someone and they still be lost, you are destroying the power of Christ as savior.

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You have nothing to offer. It is not surprising to me that in our day, so many of those who agree with Rome on the key issues, even as non -Roman

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Catholics, are focused upon denying. What the

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Reformation so clearly brought to the fore, and that is salvation is all of God, and it is perfectly done, and it will be accomplished, and we have a savior, the perfect God -man, who has gone into heaven, who is seated at the right hand of the

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Father, and he intercedes for us. Like I said earlier, I think Paul preached

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Hebrews, because in Hebrews chapter seven, he talks about Jesus, and he has his priesthood, and that priesthood can never be taken away, and it's never given to anyone else.

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And because he lives forever, he intercedes for us, and therefore he is able to save us to the uttermost.

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That's the foundation of peace. That's the only gospel that will give peace to the

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Roman Catholic who believes in the sacraments of Rome, the beauty of the consistency of the