1689 London Baptist Confession (part 18)

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Father, we praise you this morning as your children, as those you have deigned to save, those in whom you have begun a good work.
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Father, we praise you for these things. We ask for your blessing as we look to your word and see what it says about salvation, about what it says about our wills, about the nature of what we can do and what we think we can do.
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Father, we pray that you'd bless our time in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, happy October. We have, yes, we have.
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Yeah, I'm like, it was cold yesterday. Well, I don't know exactly what happened.
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We went from like 80 and sweltering to 40 and chilly in one week.
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So welcome to New England. Last week, we were, we talked about the extent of the atonement.
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And then we spoke about, we began to speak about the freedom of the will.
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And so what I wanted to do was just go back to John 1, verse 29 for a moment.
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And we'll kind of jump around a little bit and then we'll go back to free will to just kind of emphasize the atonement, the extent of it, the purpose of it.
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And when you think about it, I mean, if you were to categorize what were the major goals of the atonement, what would you say?
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So I try to figure out what's going on. What would you say the goals? Why did Jesus come to die? Okay.
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To save his people from the wrath of That's one of the ones
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I have. What else? What's that?
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To put away sin. Okay. Now, is sin put away?
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Pastor? No. Did he fail?
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No. I have any other thoughts about this?
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Because I have another way of phrasing, I think what Pastor Bob was saying, which will get us to where I want us to go, where I know
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I want us to go. Sorry. If he redeemed the elect, if he died for our sins, if he paid the price for our sins, what else did he do or why else did he have to do that?
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He did it because the first Adam failed.
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So he had to finish what Adam failed to do.
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And another way, you know, to say, well, how does that tie into putting away sin? Who introduced sin?
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Adam did, right? In Adam, we're all fallen. And so in Christ, sin ultimately is vanquished.
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Let's look at just a few things. First, John 1 29. Would somebody read that please? John 1 29.
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Yes, Mark. Okay.
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It's John the Baptist saying that he says, you know, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
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And we talked about a little bit about what the world would mean. Well, does it mean every single person who ever lived?
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And if it means every single person who ever lived, then we have a problem, you know, and that is to say
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God's justice. Why would it be that God sees all of our sin, every person, every man, woman and child ever born, our sin removed from us, and yet still sends people to hell?
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Why would he do that? Well, he wouldn't, because that would be unjust.
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People say, well, it's because not every man, woman and child will receive the forgiveness of sin in Christ Jesus, which is true.
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But isn't lack of belief, isn't that a sin? Is it a sin to not believe in Christ?
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Is it a sin not to drink coffee before you come to church? Is it a sin not to believe in Christ?
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Yes. Did Jesus die for the sins of all who would ever believe all of their sins?
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Okay, so if it's a sin to not believe in Christ, then did he have to die for my sin of not believing in Christ for 30 some odd years?
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Yes. So there's more going on here than just saying, you know, people refuse that.
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Ultimately, what it has to be is Jesus didn't die for their sins. Let's look at Revelation 5 verses 6 to 14.
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Revelation 5 verses 6 to 14. And if we want to see, this is kind of looking at the ultimate results of the death of Jesus.
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Certainly one of them, right? Revelation 5 verses 6 to 14. I'll read that.
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And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a lamb standing as though it had been slain with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.
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And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
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And they sang a new song saying, worthy are you to take the scroll and open its seals for you were slain.
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And by your blood, you ransom people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.
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Well, what does that sound like? Sounds like the world to me, right?
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But notice it doesn't say for you ransomed all the people from every tribe and language and people and nation.
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He ransomed people from all around the world, people of every tribe, but not all of them.
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Verse 11. Then I looked and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders of many angels numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands saying with a loud voice, worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.
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And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that is in them saying to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever and ever.
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And the four living creatures said, amen. And the elders fell down and worship. This is all obviously a picture of Jesus.
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And the picture here is of the ultimate in heaven, where we're all there.
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People from every part of the globe, people from every tribe, people of every language group, which
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I know pastor Bob likes to hear, right? And this is the point. The point is Jesus died for all kinds of people, people literally from all around the world.
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Not that he died for every single person, because then we'd have another issue. Okay. One person here says, one commentator said this, said
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Jesus bears the consequence of human sin in order that its guilt might be removed.
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He removes the guilt from those who believe, but he also in the more cosmic sense, when
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I said he's finishing the work that Adam failed to do, when
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Adam plunged the world into sin, he's reversing that as it were, uh,
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Ferdie said last week that he was removing sin from the physical world.
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And I, there, there is truth to that. And it's true in this sense that without the death of Christ, now the purpose of Christ's death was that he would redeem his elect.
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And he had to have, we said he had to have a human soul in order to do that because there had to be the death of Jesus, the physical death of Jesus in order to pay that.
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But they're also, because Jesus pays the penalty of sin. Well, one of the penalties of that was what, what happened to the physical world because of Adam and Eve sinning the cursed, right?
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The, the earth becomes, instead of being fruitful, it becomes very hard to live. And you're going to, you know, make your, get your food by the sweat of your brow.
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This is the curse that's placed on Adam. So we have that idea there that, um, the purpose was to redeem the elect, but one of the other effects is ultimately the sin is going to be removed and it's going to be removed, not because directly because of Christ's death, but because God is going to destroy everything and recreate things.
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But why would he do that? He'd only do it to get rid of the taint of sin. Um, I think that's enough on that.
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Let's go back to talking about free will. We, we have talked about the extent of the atonement that Jesus died for the elect, you know, are there benefits to other people?
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Yes. But the purpose was for his people, not necessarily for, or not for every person.
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Uh, we started talking about free will and, and if you recall, I, I, well, let's just look at Romans six because to me,
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I think there's no passage. I mean, there are plenty of passages that illustrate the issues of free will, but I like this one because we like to think that, um, in, in a very real sense, we are free, but we're not free because the word of God makes it clear.
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We are not free the way we like to believe that we're free. I think it's maybe starting in verse 17 of Romans six, but thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching, which you were committed.
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And having been set free from sin have become slaves of righteousness. Yeah. You ever thought of yourself as I take off my microphone, have you ever, and it's not, is it working?
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Okay. Have you ever thought of yourself as a slave of righteousness? You know, there is a, uh, there's a phrase, you know,
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I mean, back in California, when we were at grace community church, people would have, they would have catchy little names for their
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Sunday school groups. So like faith builders or, um, sojourners or something like that.
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And I'm like, what about that one? Would that be a good Sunday school class fellowship group? Slaves of righteousness.
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I don't know if that would go over too well, but, um, so you're slaves of sin basically, or slaves of righteousness.
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What, what's the, well, who wants to explain that who wants to just teach this class for about 30 seconds or so.
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You're a slave of sin or you're a slave of righteousness. How does that apply to free will? What does that tell us about free will that you don't have it?
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My wife's been listening to me. What else, what else can we say about that?
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If you're a slave to something, you are owned by it. Excellent point, right?
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You are owned by Satan. And then once you are set free from Satan's power, right?
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We'd read this in second Timothy. If you're set free from the power of Satan, then you are, um, what a slave of righteousness.
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And you just think of the words of Jesus, where he says, you know, take my yoke upon you because I'm going to load it up on you and you're going to be heavy laden.
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No, he says, what my yoke is light. So the picture of being a slave of Christ, he's done all the work, you know, we do, we, you know, and, and this is,
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I think the, and what pastor Mike has been kind of preaching against over and over again, maybe more so to me,
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I hear it all the time. I don't know about you guys, but this idea that having been set free from the law, then what we are free indeed.
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Does that mean we're free in regard to righteousness? Can we sin all the more that grace may abound?
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No, but, and I, I think he said this well, you know, when people hear the gospel preached, what, what's, what should be their first response?
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I'm a sinner. Okay. That's a good response. What else should they say to someone who fancies themselves to be religious, to be righteous?
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What is their response to the gospel going to be? Okay. That's not me, right?
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I'm not a sinner, but they're also going to say this. I think if you think about this for a moment, you'll say, well, wait a minute.
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If what you're saying is true, right? Because I come from a Mormon background. If what you're saying is true, then all these things
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I've been doing are of no value. And what you're telling me is
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I can do whatever I want. I can sin.
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I can live however I want, because there are no consequences because Jesus died for all my sins. So when the gospel is properly preached, you want people for a moment to think, okay, yes, it's good.
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If they think I'm a sinner in need of a savior, that's what you hope that they'll think.
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But if they consider themselves a good person, then they'll say, well, there's no real point in anyway, since Jesus died for all my sins,
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I can live however I want, or a Christian can live however they want is another way they might, excuse me, respond to it.
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Because the idea of grace should be frightening, right?
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It should be a little like, well, what are you saying? You know, can't you just give me some rules?
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Can you give me some just some outlines and things I could do? You know, we're going to talk about the Sabbath eventually.
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And here's what people are going to want to know. Is it okay for me to go out and eat on the Sabbath? Is it okay for me to go to a gas station?
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Can I watch TV? Can my oven go on? You know, what are the limits to what
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I'm allowed to do on Sunday? Why do people think like that? Because they need rules or they like rules.
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Rules bring us comfort. Because if we think if we can reduce Christianity, if we can reduce anything down to a series of rules, then what?
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You know, if I have 20 rules for my life and I keep 19 of them, dude,
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I'm doing, I'm really doing it, right? I'm living it. And if you look at every single religion and MacArthur says this, well, he says there are two religions in the world.
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There's the religion of human achievement. That is to say, do, do, do. And then there's a religion of divine accomplishment.
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Done, done, done. What we as human beings like is a series of rules because we like to know what we're responsible for.
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We like to know when we've done enough. We like to know when we've crossed the finish line or finished the crossing line.
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I speak for a living. Yeah, Corey. Yeah, we want to be a part of it.
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And there's a very real sense. I think this is exactly right, Corey. Thank you. I think there's a very real sense in which we want to like hit the tape, right?
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You know, where's the finish line? How do I get across? When can I say, yes, I've done it?
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And that's exactly wrong because it's not about us and it's not about our own, you know, our own sense of comfort, our own sense of salvation, our own sense of eternal security, may
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I say, shouldn't come from our performance. If it does,
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I mean, I like to think, you know, the other day I walked 10K and I was, I was very pleased by this because there was a point where I couldn't walk around my couch.
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So this is good. But myself, my sense of self -worth should not come from what
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I'm doing or what I've done. My sense of security should not come from that. It should be in Christ alone and not in any of these other things and not in keeping a series of rules.
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So we're talking about free will. Amazingly enough, as I went off on that tangent, we talked about origin, about his rather warped sense of things.
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And I thought it was interesting for a couple of reasons. One is because it's in the book that we're studying, the 1689
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London Baptist Confession of Faith and the analysis of it by, what's his name?
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Anyway, doesn't matter what his name is, I'll figure it out. I want to say Walker, but it's not that, it's, what is it?
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Waldron, Samuel Waldron. And he talked about origin and it was interesting to me because origin very much sounds
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Mormon, as I said last week. I mean, because this whole idea of a pre -existence, he's trying to explain why people, without using karma, right?
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Without using some kind of reincarnation specifically, but why do people in this world have such disparate situations that they're born into, right?
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Why is it that somebody's born in abject poverty or somebody's born to a drug addicted mom and dad?
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And why is somebody else born with a silver spoon in their mouth, so to speak? Or why is somebody else born into a loving home with Christian parents?
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Why do all these different things happen to people? And his idea was that something happened before you were born, that you had a so -called pre -existence, and that the more sinful you were in the pre -existence, and this, by the way, is somebody who is considered a
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Christian theologian, the more sinful you were in this pre -existence, the worse your condition was when you came into this world.
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And the only one who ever got through the pre -existence without sinning was Jesus Christ. Now, you just think, well, that's bizarre.
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Who would even listen to this guy? I don't know, but apparently Joseph Smith did, because this is basically
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Mormon theology. But this is how he explained free will, because in his mind, the idea of, and this is also a
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Mormon concept, the idea that Adam was our federal head, that Adam represented all of us, and that when he sinned, we all got plunged into sin nature.
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That just was not fair to him, right? That just didn't seem fair.
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So in this respect, everybody gets what they deserve. Everybody gets what they've earned.
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You, in the previous life, you must have been this, that, or the other thing, or your conditions in this life would be different.
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And so you come into this world a sinner because of your choices in the last world, not because of what
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Adam did, which again, pretty, you know, would we see, would we find support for this in the
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Bible? Just checking to see if anybody has anything before Genesis in their Bibles. That would be,
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I used to call this like, you know, Genesis negative 10. Let's open our Bibles, you know, the pre, the preamble that we don't have.
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And we talked about origin being a universalist. And then we, we talked about free will because the, the confession of faith does.
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Waldron notes, the confession affirms and defines free will. Man has natural liberty, the ability to act on choice.
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We make choices, but we choose what we desire. We choose what we desire.
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So if you are a slave of sin, what do you choose? Sin. If you're a slave of righteousness, what do you choose?
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Righteousness sometimes, right? So it's sin all the time, or it's sin some of the time.
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And a longing, you know, the difference between, yeah, I, I, it is interesting. And I, I'm sorry,
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I apologize for bringing this up ahead of time, but a well -known person died this week and a lot of people are lamenting his death.
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Now, I don't know where Hugh Hefner went. I don't know if he went to heaven or he went to hell. Based on his life,
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I don't see any real reason to, to think that he went to heaven. Maybe something happened at the end of his life, you know, while he was in a coma or something.
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I don't know. But the number of people I saw writing, you know, well -intentioned people, but writing rest in peace, what does that mean?
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You know, when I think about free will, well, he, Hugh Hefner had a will and his will was to rebel against God at every turn, as far as we saw during his life, right?
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We choose according to our nature and the more corrupt our nature becomes, you know, it's absolutely corrupt.
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But when, as people lend themselves to more and more sin, as they abase themselves more and more and more, they become worse and worse.
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You know, it's Romans one, right? It's true about the culture. And it's true about individuals. God gave them over.
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God gave them over. God gave them over. And when we think about criminals and we think, you know, how could somebody become a serial murderer?
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Well, they harden themselves. You know, if you read about them, what do they do? They start on bugs and then they go to small animals and, you know, they just kind of graduate.
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And what they're doing is they're searing their consciences. And again, what they're doing is they're choosing according to their nature.
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But when they choose, they're choosing the worst possible path and hardening themselves as much as they can so that they can go to the next level of depravity, to the next level of sin.
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People are choosing, but they're choosing according to their nature. So, you know, if you get into a and by the way, one of my rules, you know,
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Steve's rules that he sometimes violates on Facebook is Steve's rules that I sometimes violate because I'm not exactly a rule keeper.
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I'm a rule breaker. But I try, really try not to argue doctrine with unbelievers.
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Why is that? Because they don't get it.
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And even if I win, what do
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I win? I want an argument with an unbeliever over doctrine, right?
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Who cares? I know more about the Bible than an unbeliever. I'm going to do a victory lap, right?
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I don't argue doctrine with them because what I want to do is have them believe.
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I want to preach the gospel to them. Now, I may say some doctrine and they might go, well, that's absolute rubbish. I don't believe that.
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And then my response should be, well, I didn't expect you would because, you know, until you believe in the
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Lord Jesus Christ, until you've been born again, you can't understand scripture. Of course, you don't believe it.
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I want them to believe. We act according to our natures.
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We need to keep that in mind as we're talking to people, as they're posting things, as they're saying things.
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We can't win an argument or we can win arguments about doctrine, but that's not ultimately where we want to go.
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We want to give them the gospel. Okay, so free will.
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There are plenty of evidences in the Bible about people making choices. That's not the issue. The issue is, do they make it according to their nature or not?
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And the Bible says they always make choices according to their nature. Free will, what it is not.
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We mentioned this briefly. Free will is not utter unpredictability. That is to say, nobody gets up in the morning and says, you know, how am
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I going to act today? Spin the wheel. You know, I'm going to act righteously.
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I'm going to act unrighteously. I'm going to act somewhere in between. That's not how we are. We choose according to our nature and our human will is not ultimate.
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We are, whether we're believers or unbelievers, we are ultimately in control of God's sovereign will.
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And you say, well, how can that be? How is it possible that an unbeliever is in control of God?
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How can that be? Who can tell me how that can be? How is it that God controls the actions even of unbelievers?
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Because he's sovereign over everything. I was like, I thought maybe this is too hard of a question. That's exactly right. Thank you,
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Becky. Did I?
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OK. That's OK. How is it possible that I could confuse the entire class?
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Well, that's how. I had too much caffeine this morning. But divine freedom and human freedom are not in conflict, that is to say.
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Mankind never does anything that catches God off guard, you know, whether it was in the
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Garden of Eden, whether it was at the Tower of Babel or Gomorrah or wherever it was,
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God never says, I can't believe that's happened. I need to, you know, on my flow chart,
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I've got to find a new branch because I've got to change plans. That never happens. OK.
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Free will is not the ability to will the opposite, as if men can unpredictably do good or evil.
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So we talked about this a little bit. I'll just read Matthew 7, 17 and 20.
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We talked about this, but I'll just refresh your memory. So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruits.
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A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
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Therefore, you will recognize them by their fruits. Now, this is with regard to false teachers, but it's true about everybody.
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A person who is unsaved, can they give money to disaster relief?
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Yes. Can they do, can they give money for disaster relief anonymously?
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OK, so they're not seeking praise or anything else. Well, how can that not be God honoring?
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In other words, an unsaved person gives, you know, $500 ,000 check to disaster relief.
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How can that not be God honoring? OK, they do it for their own gain, but they're not actually gaining, right?
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And they do it anonymously. Nobody knows, so they're not getting any glory out of it. It's to soothe their conscience, right?
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To make them feel better about themselves. And ultimately, we know that apart from a desire, a motivation to please
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God, it doesn't matter what you do, even that $500 ,000 check is sinful.
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Without faith, it is impossible to please God. You can have the best motivation, you know, human motivation, and it doesn't matter.
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It's still sinful. You think that's a high standard. Well, you're starting to get it then. The high standard, again, is
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Christ Jesus. It's to honor God as completely selfless, and a natural man cannot do that.
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The London Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 9,
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Paragraph 3, says this. It is 9 .3. Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost, listen, all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation.
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So, as a natural man, being altogether averse or opposed or outside of that good and dead in sin, is not able but his own strength to convert himself or to prepare himself thereunto.
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He's not able to save himself, sola bootstrapsa, and he's not able to even prepare himself.
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You know, and as I've read through this, I just think about how many of you have ever been to a church that did altar calls?
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How many of you ever heard of an anxious bench? You know what the anxious bench is?
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It's where you sit and you're anxious, right? You're like antsy. You're wanting to get saved.
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You know, they put you there to kind of get you motivated, get you to come forward. Does anybody know where the idea of coming forward to, you know, receive
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Christ, do you know where that came from? Charles Finney, who was a heretic of the first order, didn't believe in the sovereignty of God.
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And when I say the first order, I mean, I could go on and on about his errors, but, which is to say,
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I didn't bring a list of his errors with me this morning, but there are a lot of them. Here's the point.
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When people come forward, are they preparing themselves for salvation? Are they actually, you know, if God takes 99 steps towards them, is that first step towards the front of the church?
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I don't know how that's the Lord, but is that first step towards Christ? Is that really a step towards Christ?
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The reason we don't do altar calls, the reason we don't have an anxious bench, although we talked to an architect about putting one in, is that unsaved people can't do anything to save themselves.
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They can't prepare themselves. When they walk down the aisle, it's not if they did walk down the aisle, a changed person, it's not the walking down the aisle that changes them, it's what they heard.
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It's the Holy Spirit working on them through what they've heard, right? If we look at, well, in fact, let's look at Romans 10.
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How do people get saved? You're going to wind up walking down the Romans road, which is okay. It's okay to walk down the
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Romans road. What's that? Yeah, as long as you don't walk down the aisle.
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And, you know, I mean, why don't we do that? Because it creates a lot of false converts.
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I probably told you this story before, but it's a fun story. Anyway, I went years and years ago,
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I was a counselor at a crusade, which was kind of a funny deal.
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But our church in California participated in this because I think MacArthur was trying to come in alongside this evangelist and get him straightened out.
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I remember the whole evening just sitting there. And the most sanctifying moment of the entire evening was when
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MacArthur prayed and the rest of it was just downhill. Even the gospel didn't quite get to the gospel. You have no idea when we, well,
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I'm going to digress again. When we were in Oxford, England, a few months ago, Janet and I, we went to a
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Sunday evening service and we had listened to this guy do some street evangelism.
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And we're listening and we're in this little church and it's like, it probably holds 50 people max. And there's like 48 people in there and it's hot and it's humid and it's nasty.
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And this guy's all fired up and he's getting up there and, you know, and he's in John, but he's kind of jumping around a little bit and never quite exegesis the text.
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And he says that Jesus lays down his life for all people everywhere. And then he's, you know, he's talking about Jesus, like he's in heaven, wringing his hands, hoping he'll do the right thing.
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And he didn't even get to the resurrection. I was like, I wanted to grab him and just go, how do you expect people to get saved when you don't preach the gospel?
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I didn't say that. I didn't say much of anything except for, you know, have a nice evening. But my point is, there's nothing that can be done other than the hearing of the gospel to get somebody to have somebody get saved.
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Romans 10 verse nine says, because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and listen and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
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You have to believe these things. What does it mean that Jesus is Lord? Well, that he's both
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God and man, that he died for your sins and that he was raised on the third day, that you are a sinner in need of these things.
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For the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.
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Going on a little bit further, verse 14, how then will they call on him and whom they have not believed?
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And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
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Well, now they can read about it on the internet. But here's the, you know, and that gets back to don't argue doctrine, give them a gospel.
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But there's nothing that an unbeliever can do of his own strength. It has to be a work of God.
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First Peter chapter one says that God has to cause them to believe. Jesus in John chapter three, when he's talking to Nicodemus says, you must be born again, he goes on to describe it as a work of the
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Holy Spirit. There is nothing that a mere mortal dead in his sins and trespasses can do to confirm himself or to get himself ready.
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London Baptist confession of faith chapter nine, and then paragraph five says this, this will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to good alone in the state of glory only.
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What does that mean? It means that only in heaven, only in glory will we have a free will, a will that is free, not to sin.
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We will freely choose not to sin. We'll, we'll not have any desire to sin in heaven and we'll not finally be able to sin.
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I mean, what's the best thing about heaven? Well, you could argue, and I think it's a good argument that we'll be with Jesus forever, but I think close second is free from the power of sin, the presence of sin, just free.
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In fact, it goes on to say, uh, Walden does that in glory, our natures will be immutable.
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That is to say they will be unchanging. We will not be able to fall into sin.
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That's an amazing thing to think about from, you know, weighted down even by the fact that we're surrounded by sin, that we live in a world full of sinful people, just being reminded of that day after day, whether it's a terrorist attack or some awful crime that we read of, and just being thought or just being reminded again and again of the fact that we live in a sinful world, that we are surrounded by sinful people.
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You know, we're like Isaiah in Isaiah six, except, you know, it's not like we're pretty good and, you know, all that.
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But anyway, we are sinners surrounded by sinful people, but then in heaven, no more sin.
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Walter says as finite beings, we undergo moral and ethical developments, even as Jesus did.
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We are born sinful and totally unable to save ourselves as a result of the act of one man,
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Adam, yet we are not born in a state where our wills are fixed immutably for good or evil.
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Meaning as we go through life, we develop, and it isn't until we're either saved or we die that our will is fixed.
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You know, here's a question. In hell, will people be able to worship
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God? Will they be able to express sorrow, godly sorrow in hell?
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What's that? Be a good place to do it, but too late.
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Well, I guess we could put it another way. Would the person who's in hell, would their nature be such that they would cry out to God for forgiveness or even sorrow?
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They're still rebelling. That's exactly right, John. They're still rebelling even in hell. Yes, they will.
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They will confess Jesus as Lord to the glory of God, but not to the salvation of their souls.
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We can even, you know, talk about demons and what they say. They never, they never, they don't bow the knee, but they understand who he is and they're afraid of him.
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Um, let's see, where are we down here? The wills of the unconverted are progressively hardened towards evil.
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And again, I just think, you know, if you want to talk about somebody hardened in their sin, I think
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Hugh Hefner is a fine example. Somebody who was just so perverse and delighted in perversity and that kind of thing.
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Could God save him? Absolutely. You know, if you think, uh, it's a, it's a different, it seems like a different moral plane, but if you think of Saul of Tarsus, he was zealous according to the law, all these ways that he describes himself.
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He was so zealous that he was putting Christians in jail. He hated Christians.
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Did God save him? Yes. God can save anyone. There's no one who's outside of his, his reach.
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And, and I think sometimes we tend to underestimate the power of God and overestimate the power of sin.
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Sin is powerful. Yes. But which is more powerful sin or the power of God? And it's always the power of God, the worst sinner.
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I mean, we sing it. Do we really believe it? The vilest offender who truly believes that moment from Jesus, a pardon receives.
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And that is absolutely true. Let's look at second
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Corinthians five, 10, second
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Corinthians five, 10. And if somebody would read that, please, I'm looking for a hand as the organist plays, just as I am for the 532nd time.
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Yes, Larry. Okay. Now you read that.
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And what does it sound like, Larry? Thank you. What does it sound like? Does it sound like you get what you deserve?
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Okay. What was that? What you earned? Is that right?
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What does he mean here? When he says that we may receive what is due for what, what he has done in the body, whether good or evil, does that just mean that if you did good, then you go to heaven?
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If you did poorly, then you go to hell. Is that what it says? Okay. Done in the judge and works that we've done since we became a
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Christian. Okay. Charlie, right. They're not meaningless at all.
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Right, Charlie. Okay.
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So if you don't enter into eternity in the covenant of grace, if you're not in Christ, then you enter in the covenant of works.
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And then you're left with, did you keep all the law, right? Were you perfectly righteous?
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And if the answer is no, then you go to hell. First Corinthians three 13, which is go ahead and read it.
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Okay. And so that is, that's a judgment, but that's a judgment for believers, right?
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As you were saying earlier, I think in second Corinthians five, what we're talking about is, um, in fact, he's just, if we back up a little bit to verse six, he said, so we are all, uh, always of good courage.
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We know that while we are at home in the body and a wave, or we are away from the Lord for we walk, uh, by faith, not by sight.
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Yes, we are of good courage and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.
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And of course, he's speaking of believers for, we must all appear the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due.
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Um, but he goes on in verse 11 and we know what's coming up here, right? Is he's going to talk about the ministry of reconciliation and he's ultimately going to say that Jesus died for, uh, believers.
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And then he's going to say, you know, we, uh, we beg, we urge people to believe, to be reconciled to God.
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And then he gives the gospel and the gospel verses 20 and 21.
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But we, we urge people to be reconciled. Yeah. I like what he says here in verse 14 for the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died.
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And he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
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In other words, believers, those for whom he died no longer live for themselves, but they live for Christ.
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And that's where we would see, even in verse 10, how we are going to be judged according to our works, whether they are good or not.
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Right. But it doesn't, that's not a salvific, uh, judgment for believers, um, for unbelievers.
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It certainly is. Anyway, I don't want to keep minding that, but we are becoming, here's
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Waldron's point. We are becoming what we shall be eternally. We are being molded and shaped into the image of Christ or for those who are not believers, uh, they are being molded and shaped into something, uh, decidedly on Christ -like and, um, so questions or comments.
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We're about to enter into the doctrine of total depravity and I don't want to go there.
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Gary. Yeah. Um, the trespasses of unbelievers are not accounted to them.
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They're, of course, put on at the cross. So yeah, not imputing those others comments.
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Otherwise we'll close in prayer. Father in heaven, thank you for your word. Thank you for what it says about you, for about the work of Christ, uh, about us and the great work that you have accomplished in redeeming us and sending us free from the curse of the law.
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Father, putting us in your service, even if the terminology says slaves of righteousness, slaves of Christ.
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Father, we want to be obedient servants out of gratitude, not out of obligation, even if that obligation is ours.
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Ours is not a heart of grudging obedience, but of joyful obedience.
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Father, for any here who don't know you this morning, just pray that you would, uh, work in them, draw them.
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Father, that you would, uh, convict them of their sinfulness, that the
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Holy Spirit would even cause them to be born again, or that they might have newness of life in Christ.