Is Free Will Biblical?

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Ashley's going to hand out our handout for the evening.
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She's going to pass it out for us.
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While she's doing that, open your Bible to John chapter 6, verse 44.
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You can hold your place there.
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We have been in this series, well we've been in this series for a long time, well over a year, looking at systematic theology, overview of Christian theology and doctrine.
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We've been in the seventh part of that now for several months.
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This is the doctrine of hamartiology, which is the doctrine of sin.
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We have looked, if you look at your handout, you'll see on the section headings, you'll see what we've looked at so far.
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The nature of sin, the origin and problem of sin, the consequences of sin, the extent and imputation of sin.
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And tonight we have come to what I can only describe as one of the most contentious subjects in the church.
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And that is the subject of the bondage of the will.
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In part 3 of this series we discussed the consequences of sin and we learned that sin has affected man morally, environmentally and intellectually.
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We have a moral problem because of sin.
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We have an environmental problem because of sin.
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The world is different because of sin.
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And we have an intellectual problem.
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We have a lot of intellectual problems.
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I can use the other side.
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No, no, it's mine.
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They're both mine.
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This is a Greek preposition, so I'll get rid of that.
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As I was saying, we have seen the moral, environmental and intellectual result of sin, the effects of sin, the consequences of sin.
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But tonight we're going to expand in what can only be described as the most profound of the effects of sin.
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And that is the effect on man's ability to make choices.
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Man's ability to will.
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In fact, that is the word.
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That is the focus of tonight.
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It will probably be the focus of next week and maybe even the week after because the subject is so broad and so deep.
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And even though I've got plenty of time tonight, I don't want to belabor, but I don't want to rush.
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And I want to look at several passages of Scripture.
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Because it is often taken for granted, without any appeal to Scripture, but rather with an appeal to experience, it is often taken for granted that men have a free will.
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And there are even whole movements that are based on that.
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You've probably heard of Free Will Baptists.
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And you've heard of other theologies and doctrines which focus and really drive on the subject of free will.
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And it has become so caught up in our culture that for anyone to even question the concept of the freedom of the will has become almost impossible for people to accept.
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And this is a lesson and series of lessons that I am sure would not go over well in many churches.
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Because of the a priori belief in a free will.
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A priori is Latin.
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It simply means a belief that is already there.
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It precedes the argument.
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People just assume.
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Of course I have a free will.
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I can make choices.
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But what you are going to find out, I hope, through the series of lessons that we are going to look at, the ability to make choices does not prove that you have a free will.
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In fact, what I am going to show you is that your very ability to make choices proves my point.
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Because my point is that your will is bound and is not free.
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And we are going to see that that is what the Bible teaches.
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As I said, it is often taken for granted that mankind has a free will.
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But my question is, is it true? Is the will free? Is the will free? That is the major question that we have to deal with.
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Throughout history the question of man's will has been hotly contested.
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It was debated by Pelagius and Augustine in the 5th century.
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It was debated by Erasmus and Luther in writing in the 16th century.
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You can actually read the book, The Bondage of the Will, by Martin Luther, which is the written exchange between him and Desiderius Erasmus on the subject of the will.
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It is one of my favorite books.
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One of the most important books I think has ever been written.
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But just because Erasmus and Luther debated the subject does not mean it was case closed because every generation has to have this conversation.
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Every generation fights this battle.
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Every generation has to ask itself the question of how free am I? And I want you to understand something.
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A lot of atheists and scientists don't even use the words free will anymore because they say we are pre-programmed to certain behaviors and thoughts.
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In fact, one of the things that I will often say if an atheist is challenging me about my faith and he says I'm a free thinker, if he says he's a free thinker, I say no you're really not.
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If you're an atheist and you believe you're the byproduct of your genes and your genetics and your evolutionary makeup and your environmental conditions and even your social conditions, you're the least of a free man.
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You're absolutely bound by your biology.
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If you look at your notes, you'll see that I've given you a fourfold outline.
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This is my argument regarding the will of man.
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And I'm going to make it beginning tonight.
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Like I said, I don't know how long it's going to take.
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But I'm going to make four arguments that I believe will prove my point.
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And all of them will be biblical arguments.
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Because of two things.
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And before we get to those four, let me say these two things.
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I do not believe man is a robot.
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I do not believe man is a puppet.
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I do believe man makes choices according to his desires.
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But I also believe God is sovereign, which means that he is ultimately and absolutely in control of all things that take place in this world.
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And I have to justify both of those because both of those are taught in Scripture.
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And I have to be able to justify those together.
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And what we're going to see tonight and throughout the weeks ahead is that the human will has been affected to the point that we no longer desire the things of God until such time as God chooses to open up our hearts to do so.
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In fact, before we look at the fourfold outline, read John with me.
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John 6.
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This was the passage that...
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I don't want to say this is what turned me into a Reformed theologian, but this is one of probably six passages that were mainly responsible for me truly having to turn the corner because there was no way around it.
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John 6, 44 and 65.
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Romans 8, 28 to 30.
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Acts 13, 48.
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Romans 9, the whole chapter.
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I mean, I can go through the ones that are probably most influential on me, but this is the one because people used to always say, Well, it's Paul.
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It's Paul who's making you Reformed.
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No, it's Jesus.
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It's Jesus who makes me Reformed.
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Because before I ever argue the issues of Paul's theology of predestination and election, I go to Jesus who tells me in this passage, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.
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That passage all by itself is a field of theology that needs to be mined, but we're going to look at that a little further later, but that's the passage we're beginning with because it says something very important.
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It says these words, No one can.
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When you were in grade school, and at least one of you was a teacher, you had at least an experience, if it did not happen to you, it happened to someone, where they raised their hand and said, Teacher, can I go to the restroom? And she would respond by saying, I'm sure that you can, but that's not what you want to know.
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You want to know, may I go to the restroom? Because you were not asking about ability, you were asking about permission.
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This word in the Greek, No one can, Jesus speaking these words very clearly, the word can is about ability.
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It is absolutely not about permission.
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It is absolutely about the ability to do something.
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And Jesus says, No one can come to Me.
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Now the grace of God is that the sentence didn't stop there, because it could be that that is where the sentence ended, and we would all be damned and rightfully so.
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We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God, we all deserve the wrath of God, and the wrath of God abides upon the unbeliever, and as long as we are outside of Christ, we remain with the wrath of God abiding upon us.
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Therefore, if no one can come to Him, no one could be saved.
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So when Jesus says, No one can come to Me, unless, that word unless, I've heard people say, but God, is the most beautiful phrase in the Bible, and I think it's true.
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You know, the Bible says we were dead in sin, but God, being gracious and great in mercy, made us alive.
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But God is a wonderful phrase.
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But there's another wonderful phrase in the Bible, and it's the word unless.
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Because Jesus said, No one can come to Me, unless, unless what? Unless the Father, who sent Me, draws Him.
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Now, I'm giving you this passage.
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I'm actually getting ahead of myself, but I don't want to just read this passage and walk away from it.
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I've taught on this passage more than probably just about any other passage because it's such an important passage.
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But when He says, No one can come to Me, unless, and we said the word unless is important, unless the Father, who sent Me, draws.
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That word draws is a very important word because that word draws is often associated in the minds of people with the concept of wooing.
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God woos all men to Himself, and the ones who are wooed in their hearts will come if they accept the wooing.
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Sort of like a man who is seeking a bride.
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A man seeking a bride will try to woo her.
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He will try to impress her.
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He will try to cause her heart to turn to Him by all kinds of goodness.
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And He will flower her, or shower her with flowers and love and candies and gifts to try to woo her heart.
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And I've heard the Armenian theologians say that this is what this word means.
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God is actively wooing us, but it's up to us to come.
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The word draw does not mean woo.
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It doesn't even fit in the semantic domain of woo.
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It actually fits into another semantic domain, and I'll write the word up here that is most commonly associated with it in the Bible.
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And it is the word drag.
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You say, Pastor, where do you get that? If you go over to the book of Acts, it says the Apostle Paul was dragged into court by his enemies.
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The word is the same word as the word that is used here.
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Nobody was standing in the court going, Come here, Paul! You're such a cutie! Nobody was doing that.
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Nobody was wooing Paul into court.
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They were beating him and dragging him into court.
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Now, I said it's within the semantic domain.
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I don't think that drag is the absolute meaning of the word.
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I don't think that we should translate it.
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No one can come to me unless the Father drags him because I think that's a bit coarse.
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I do think there is a winsomeness to the grace of God wherein He does by love draw, but it's not in such a way that it has the possibility of being ineffective.
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When God draws, men come.
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The other word that is used here, you've heard of drawing water up from a well in a bucket.
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That's another way this word is used in Scripture.
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When you send the bucket down into the well, you have to pull that heavy bucket up.
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That's the picture.
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Because man is unwilling to come.
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That's why no one can come, because we don't want to come.
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And Jesus said no one can want to.
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That's not what He said.
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Well, He said no one can come.
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And I believe what He means by no one can come is no one can want to come because it's against our nature to want to come.
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Therefore God, like the man at the top of the well who is pulling up the bucket, God is drawing us, and when He draws, we come.
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Now John 6.44 doesn't end there though.
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No one can come to Me unless...
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Beautiful word.
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The Father who sent Me draws Him like water up a well.
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And I, Jesus now, the Father did what? The Father drew Him, and I will raise Him up on the last day.
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Now I have a question for you.
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Will all men be raised to life on the last day to go to heaven? The answer is no.
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All men will be raised.
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Some will go to hell.
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In this sense though, it's the person being raised to heaven.
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We know that based on the context.
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Jesus is talking about those who have been drawn.
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And He said no one can come unless he is drawn.
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And then He says, and I will raise Him up.
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Notice the hymn.
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I will raise Him up.
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Who's the hymn? The hymn is the one who was drawn.
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Earlier it says I will draw Him.
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No one can come unless the Father draws Him, and I will raise Him up.
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It's the same hymn.
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The one who is drawn by the Father is raised by the Son.
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You say, why are you making such an important point? Because some people will say this, God draws everybody.
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Not so.
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Because if God draws everybody, then everybody will be raised up.
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Because the text clearly says the one who is drawn will be raised up.
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They say that, they don't look at verse 65.
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Yeah, and I was going to go there in just a minute, brother.
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The interesting point of this text is when Jesus finishes it, it says everybody leaves.
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Jesus was the inventor of the church destruction movement.
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When I talk about the church growth movement, Jesus started the church degrowth movement.
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He got rid of people.
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He actually preached and people left.
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I've had people walk out on a sermon.
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I have.
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I've been preaching and seen people get up, give me a dirty look, and walk out the door.
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I can live with that, but I don't know what I'd do if everybody got up and left.
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That's basically what happened at the end of the sermon.
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Everybody got up and left except for the disciples.
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And Jesus turns to them and says, Are you going to go too? Peter said, To whom shall we go? You are the one who has the words of eternal life.
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And Jesus said, This is why I told you, no one can come to Me unless it is granted to him by my Father.
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Notice He changes the language, but not the intention of the meaning.
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Because He changes the language from drawing to granting.
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No one can come to Me unless it is granted to him by my Father.
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And that's another important thing.
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Sometimes when you have a parallel like that, you can take the words and you can say, ok, so in John 6.44, He uses draw, but in John 6.65, He uses granted, but these two words are parallel with one another because in the sentence, they mean the same thing.
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God granting it to someone to come is the same as God drawing someone to come.
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So, that was more than I wanted to say on the text, but I can't not do it.
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If somebody said today, you're going to debate an Arminian on the subject of the will of man, this would be the only text, or not the only one, this would be the primary text I would bring.
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There is simply no way around it.
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Jesus is right or He is not.
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Linguistically, contextually, this is it.
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If somebody says, I have the will and ability and the free will to come to God whenever I so choose, I say, baloney, absolute garbage.
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Not to be ugly, but this text denies that.
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John 6, 44 is the primary text on this issue, but there are many others.
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So, what we're going to look at in our fourfold outline, and you'll see it on your sheet, four statements that I have, and I've used this before actually, years ago, because I was asked to teach on this, so this is actually an outline I've used before.
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Four arguments from Scripture that prove that man is not completely free.
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Oh, and by the way, there's a word I want to introduce you to.
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Most of you probably know it, but just in case you don't, the word is autonomous.
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Are you familiar with the word autonomous? A lot of people use the word autonomous to refer to a country.
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Let's say we have an autonomous nation, which means we're self-governing.
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We don't have government coming from Britain, as we once did.
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The Revolutionary War took care of that.
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Right? The idea of autonomous nations.
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Also, there's the idea of autonomous churches.
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Our church, technically, is an autonomous church, because we don't have a governing body over the church that would come and make policy here, even though I don't like using the word autonomous for a church, because we still have Christ, who is above and is the head of the church.
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And so, to say a church is self-governing, only in the sense that there's not a district assembly or a national assembly to whom we are responsible to.
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But when the word autonomous is used for humans, for people, it is referring to the idea that a man has the freedom to do what he wants, how he wants, when he wants, in the way he wants, without any sense of there being any limitations on his freedom.
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That he acts in a way that is uncoerced.
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And again, that's what most people think.
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I have free will.
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I act how I want, when I want, in the way that I want.
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I do what I want.
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And I want to say this.
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I don't believe in autonomous free will.
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I don't believe in...
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This is also sometimes referred to as libertarian free will.
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Now, don't get confused, because I know there's a libertarian political system.
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This is not that.
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Libertarian, again, just simply is another way of saying uncoerced freedom.
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Uncoerced freedom.
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So, a libertarian free will person would say that I have the ability to come to God without any necessity of God doing anything to pre-eminate that ability to come, or to prevene in that, to give me the ability to come.
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Now, Arminians don't even believe that.
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Arminians do not believe that men can come on their own.
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Arminians believe in something called prevenient grace.
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Prevenient grace is the idea that no one can come.
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They can't deny John 6.44.
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They can't deny John 6.65.
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It's so clear, and they wouldn't attempt to deny it.
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So, Pelagius did that.
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Pelagius essentially denied it, because Pelagius was the one who believed in complete libertarian autonomy.
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But the Arminians would say this, what we call semi-Pelagianism.
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They would say that man is bound in sin, but God has given prevenient grace.
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And prevenient grace is a blanket grace that goes to all people that rises them up to the point of neutrality.
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So, all men are not opposed to God, but neither are all men for God.
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God has given them just enough grace to be neutral.
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They have just enough grace to where now they can choose to come if they so will.
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You say, well, what's wrong with that? If that's the truth, then why did Jesus say what He said in John 6.44? In John 6.65.
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Why make a statement that's unnecessary? Because if prevenient grace is true, and all men have been brought to a state of neutrality, then it is not true that no one can come.
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Because God has made them able to come.
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And it is not true that no one is able, because God has enabled everyone.
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The Arminian view of, essentially, universal enablement flies in the face of John 6.
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Well, it makes Jesus at least confused, doesn't it? Certainly.
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So, here's my fourfold argument.
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I keep going back to it.
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I haven't got to it yet.
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Four things that I want to show you.
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And if these four things be true, man cannot be completely autonomous.
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Number one.
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Mankind is sinful by nature.
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I know we've looked at that in the weeks past, but I'm going to show you how that affects this.
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Number two.
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God restrains the sinful nature of men.
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Number three.
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God hardens the hearts of some men.
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Number four.
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God opens the hearts of some men to hear the Gospel.
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If those four statements are true, and I'm going to prove to you that they are, I'm going to show you in the Bible that they are.
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If those four statements are true, then you cannot argue that man has a completely free will.
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Because if man is sinful by nature, then he's not free.
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He's sinful.
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The Bible says, He who sins is a slave to sin.
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Guess what? Slaves ain't free, y'all.
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That's a pretty simple thing.
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But slavery is not freedom.
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That's the first right out of the bag.
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Number two.
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God restrains the sinful nature of men.
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I'm going to show you many places where the Bible shows that.
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If God restrains men's sinful nature, guess what? They weren't free to do what they wanted.
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God restrained them.
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And if they're not free to do what they want all the time, then they ain't free.
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I put my dog on a leash.
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Guess what? He ain't free.
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He's on my leash.
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You are all on God's leash.
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You may not realize it, but you are.
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You know what it looks like when God takes a man off the leash? You get a Hitler or a Mussolini or a Genghis Khan.
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And even then, those men are still on a leash.
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It's just let out a little.
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God hardens the hearts of some men.
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Is that true? Well, we're going to see that it is.
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If God hardens the heart, are they free? God opens the heart of some.
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If God opens the heart, are they free? Did they open it themselves? How many examples does Pharaoh have? And he's one of my examples of the hardened heart.
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See, that's my point.
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If all four of these things are true, when somebody says, man is free, I say, based on what? Here's the arguments I usually hear.
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Well, man has to be free.
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Joshua said, choose this day for whom you will serve.
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And if we have the ability to make a choice, then we must be free to make the right choice.
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That sounds well and good until you read Romans 8, where Paul says, the one who is in the flesh cannot please God.
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Can someone in the flesh please God? Paul says it's impossible.
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Now let me ask you this.
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Is faith pleasing to God? It's the only thing that's pleasing to God.
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Without faith, you cannot even draw near to Him.
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Without faith, everything is sin.
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That which is not of faith is sin, Romans 14.
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So, if the person that is in the flesh cannot please God and faith is pleasing to God, can the person in the flesh exercise faith? Logically, the answer is no.
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So let's look at these four things.
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And I've expelled a lot of my time.
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Expelled.
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I made up a word there.
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Expelled.
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Expelled a lot of my time.
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But let's at least look at the first one.
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And again, if you wonder why I may be being a little more up to with what I'm saying tonight, is this is an issue I've had to debate and challenge.
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And I've had, I mean, this is an issue I was almost fired over.
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And I had people in this church having private meetings in their home trying to have me removed because I was a Calvinist.
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Are you telling me, Pastor, that I can't come to Christ unless God changes my heart? Yes, I am.
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You heard me right.
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Are you telling me that I am so dead in sin that I can't do anything good towards God unless He first opened my heart to do it? You're listening.
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Because that's exactly what I'm saying.
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And that's exactly what the Bible says.
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So yeah, if I seem a little passionate about this particular subject, because this is the heart of all of Reformed theology.
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If you don't understand the bondage of man in sin, you will never understand the idea of election, predestination, and all the accoutrement that comes with being Reformed.
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None of that will make sense if you think that man can in some way do good towards God before God does something good in him.
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Mankind is sinful by nature.
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Now we've looked at this over the last couple weeks, but here's my argument.
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All people have inherited a sinful nature from our sinful parents.
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Do we agree with that? Didn't we study that at length over the last few weeks? We call that what? Imputed sin.
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We inherit the sin of Adam.
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It is imputed to us.
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We receive the sin that Adam committed and we receive the consequences thereof.
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This is known as the doctrine of what? Original sin.
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What did David say? I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
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Sinful from birth.
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But I want to show you a passage that I think you really need to see.
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Go to Ephesians 2.
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Ephesians 2.
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The Apostle Paul writing to the church at Ephesus.
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In Ephesians 1, he spends quite a bit of time talking about the subject of election, the work of God in saving the soul, and that it is a work that only God can do and only God does.
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And then in chapter 2, verse 1, he says this.
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And you were sick in your trespasses and sins.
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And you were dying in your trespasses and sins.
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And you were almost dead in your trespasses and sins.
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Did any of those meet with your particular translation? Because if they did, get rid of it.
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Because that's not what it says.
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It doesn't say sick.
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It doesn't say dying.
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It doesn't say almost dead.
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It says you were dead in your trespasses and sins.
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In which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is not working, the sons of disobedience.
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That's Satan, y'all, by the way.
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That's Satan and his demons.
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And you walked with him.
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You followed his example of denying God and you walked according to his ways when you were dead in sin, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
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Let me ask you a question.
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Are men sinners by nature or by choice? Both.
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But it begins in our nature.
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We are sinners by nature.
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The nature is because of Adam.
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And we are born dead in sin.
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But here's the thing.
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This is the key.
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This is the point, guys.
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If you don't believe you're a sinner by nature, if you don't believe there's something wrong with you by nature, you will never accept the rest of what I'm going to say.
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That's why this is number one on the list.
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If you don't understand mankind is sinful by nature and you're part of that mankind because you're that kind, you know, the mankind.
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You're that.
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And you're sinful by nature.
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I remember one night we used to...
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Our fellowship hall, we used to have a little stage built.
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It was in the corner over there.
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Probably none of y'all remember it.
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But it was over there in the corner.
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And we would have Sunday night services.
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This was back when I first started preaching because I wanted to preach so bad that before the former pastor retired, I was still in seminary and I was so...
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I ached to preach.
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I mean, I was just ready to preach.
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Anytime they would give me the pulpit and a Bible, I was ready to go.
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And so what I did was I said, you know what, I can't preach on Sunday mornings because the pastor preaches on Sunday mornings.
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I can't teach on Wednesday night because I was doing youth on Wednesday night.
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I said, tell you what, I'll start a Sunday night service and I don't care if it's me and the cockroaches.
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I'll preach if anybody will come.
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And so I started a Sunday night service.
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I preached for about two years on Sunday night when I was going for my master's degree.
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I was working on my master's.
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And one night, one of the ladies of the church who was aggressively opposed to my ministry, that's the only nice way of putting it.
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She did not like what I had to say most of the time and she was one of the ones who would have liked to have seen me expelled or whatever the word I'm trying to make up.
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She told me once she didn't need to be told she was a sinner every week.
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I said, no, you especially need to be told you're a sinner.
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No, I'm sorry.
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That's being ugly.
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But that night I was preaching and I said, we're sinners by nature.
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And she stopped me in the middle of my sermon.
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Very bold, very brazen.
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She goes, no, we are not sinners by nature.
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I said, everyone take out your Bibles and turn to Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1.
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You were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked, falling in the course of this world, falling to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now, the work of sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passion of the flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and of the mind and were by nature children of wrath.
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It's not a debate.
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It's what the Bible says.
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I'm not interpreting it.
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I'm saying what it says.
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We are by nature children of wrath because of our relationship to Adam.
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Therefore, we are limited because we are slaves to sin.
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Write down this verse.
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John 8 verse 34.
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Jesus said, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.
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Do you sin? Here's the interesting thing.
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This is the most powerful thing and this is taking me off the subject.
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This actually goes to the next part of the whole series and that's the subject of Christians and sin.
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As a Christian, you have been made alive so you can actually fight it.
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You can battle it.
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And you can actually overcome because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
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But prior to being born again, you were dead in trespasses and sins.
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And think about the question that Jeremiah asks when he says, can the leopard change his spots or the Ethiopian change the color of his skin? Can you who are evil do good? Notice the analogy the prophet's giving.
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The very nature of the leopard is to have spots.
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It can't change it.
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The very nature of the Ethiopian person is to have dark skin.
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They can't change it.
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Neither can you who are a slave to sin change your heart.
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God has to do the changing.
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Not you.
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And until such time as the Son sets you free, you will not be free.
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But when the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
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You see why this is number one on the list? Mankind is sinful by nature because if you don't understand this, you can't go any further.
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Our sinful nature proves that we're not free.
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Because the moment somebody tells me I have a free will, I'll say, stop sinning.
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I'll wait.
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Well, I can't stop sinning.
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Then you ain't free.
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It's proof, guys.
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The debate is over.
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You say, well, they still want to debate.
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Well, they still want to debate because they're trying, in some form or fashion, to try to weasel in some arguments to prove this idea of free will when you don't have to.
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It's not necessary.
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Go ahead, brother.
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This issue was critical to the Reformation.
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It was absolutely critical to the Reformation.
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Luther said it was...
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I'll get the quote, but I don't have it right now, but I have the gist of it in my mind.
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Luther basically said this when he debated Erasmus.
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He said, You, above all others, have hit on what really is the issue.
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Because the issue isn't really the pope.
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The issue isn't really the mass.
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The issue isn't really transubstantiation.
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And the issue really isn't the doctrine of justification by faith as much as the issue is the deadness of man in sin before he is made alive by God in Christ.
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Because Rome would make the argument that through these acts you can be made alive.
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We owe our debt to Erasmus.
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He stirred up Luther.
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Oh, sure.
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Yeah.
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And Erasmus was no dummy.
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But he was a devout Roman Catholic.
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And by the way, what a lot of people don't realize is when they hold to the Arminian position, Arminians were going back towards Rome.
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They were waiting on the banks of the Tiber just waiting to swim across.
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And many people who abandon Reformed theology will swim the Tiber.
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And they'll go back to Rome.
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I want to finish with this, and then we'll close and we'll look at the next three next week, Lord willing.
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Because when I talk about God restraining the sinful nature of men, I want to show you some things that just amaze me in Scripture.
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How God restrains even sinners who aren't saved.
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God still restrains them.
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And praise God He restrained me because I was unsaved and He still kept me from sin.
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If I could have done everything I wanted to do, I wouldn't even be here.
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I'd be in jail or the dirt.
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If I could have done everything I wanted to do.
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Praise God that He restrains the hearts of men.
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But we'll get to that next week.
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But here's the thing.
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Because I am saying that the Bible doesn't teach free will, some people think what I'm saying is men do not make choices.
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And I want to introduce you to a concept.
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And this might sound like I'm contradicting myself.
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I promise you I'm not.
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Calvinists do not believe in free will.
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But we do believe in something called free moral agency.
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Free moral agency.
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And you say, well what in the world is the difference? Well here's the difference and it's very simple.
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All Calvinists, at least all the ones I know, believe that men make choices and those choices are real choices.
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And they are really responsible for those choices.
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So, have I denied what I said before? No.
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Because free will is not that men make choices.
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Free will is men have the ability to make good choices towards God because He has no limitations.
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Free moral agency says, no, you do make choices, but your choices will always be bound by your nature.
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And guess what your nature is before you are saved by the grace of God? Your nature is dead in sin.
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You are dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked forward to the Prince of the power of the air, and were by nature children of wrath.
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You can't change your nature.
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Only God can change your nature.
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So, do you have the ability to make choices? Yes you do.
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And if you want to dig deep in this, I would say read two books.
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On the Bondage of the Will, by Martin Luther.
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On the Freedom of the Will, by Jonathan Edwards.
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The Freedom of the Will, Jonathan Edwards gives what I consider to be the best treatise on the subject.
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And this is what he says.
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This is what he says, and it's simple as, I'll give you the whole book in a sentence.
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Even though it's certainly not the whole book.
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But this is his argument, and I think it really is, and I know we've got to go, I've went way over time.
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This is his argument in a sentence.
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Yes, man is free to do what he wants.
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But he's always bound to do what he wants.
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And until such time as you are born again, you will not want to do the things of God.
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Yes, you can do what you want.
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But until God saves you, you can't want to do what's good towards him.
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The problem is not with the ability, the problem is with the want to.
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You don't want to do it.
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You're not able to want to, because you're bound in sin.
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All right, we're out of time.
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15 minutes ago, so I'll finish with a quick prayer.
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Father, thank you for this time of study.
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I pray that it's been useful, and I pray that it will be something of encouragement to study deeper.
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And when we look in the weeks ahead, that we'll see the proof of this is found in the text, and not just in the heart of me or the heart of anyone else, but in the heart of you, oh God.
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For you know the hearts of men, and you know what makes us as we are.
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In Christ's name, amen.