The Dangers of Hyper-Calvinism

If you'll turn with me, please, to the Gospel of John, Chapter 5. Gospel of John, Chapter 5. And before we consider this evening some thoughts from this and other texts, let's ask the Lord to bless our time together.

Our gracious Heavenly Father, once again we come into your presence. We are thankful for the opportunity of having sung hymns, having listened to your Word, and now as we open that Word once again to consider your truth, we would ask that you would bless this time, that you would protect us from distraction.

You would help us to hear, and most importantly, Lord, that we would not do this simply as something that we do out of rote, out of duty, but Lord, you would truly deal with your people during this time.

We would remember and we would be changed. All to your honor and glory. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. I'm not sure that I could shift gears any more than I am this evening from this morning. This evening I am definitely demonstrating that I am a Reformed Baptist in the sense that there is no connection whatsoever between the liturgical calendar and what we're discussing this evening.

This evening, as most of you know, over the years, especially on a Sunday evening, I'm likely to do something you might call pastoral, something topical. Some of you may remember years and years ago it was a Sunday evening that I preached a sermon, Why do Reformed Baptists do what Reformed Baptists do?

And that was a sort of interesting study, and I've done one, Why I am a Reformed Baptist, and so on and so forth. This evening, definitely not a topic that I've ever addressed, at least within this context, and certainly it's something that we've talked about at points in time, normally in Sunday school or in conversation with one another, but I felt it would be appropriate in the public ministry of the Word to, in essence, address the dangers of hyper-Calvinism.

The dangers of hyper-Calvinism. Now, some of you, a couple of you, are going, What in the world is that? Is that Pastor Fry when he has too many cups of coffee in the morning? Is that what a hyper-Calvinist is?

There are some of you, is that like some of our young men? Oh, I don't know, are they hyper-Calvinists? Well, sometimes they might get a little excited, I don't know. But, no, there is a historical definition, and unfortunately that's the problem.

Many of you know that when you come to understand the doctrines of grace and you start realizing that this is a consistent understanding of the work of God and what it does is it shifts your attention from man and human accomplishment to God and divine accomplishment and the glory of God and things like that.

Certainly we all understand that during what we call the cage stage, that early period of time where you've come to understand these things and it would probably be better if for a while you were put in a cage on a hillside someplace, it's better for you, it's better for everybody else especially, as you gain some maturity and some experience, that maybe during that period of time you tried to, maybe a little bit too zealously, a little bit too quickly, not really in the best way, introduce these things to some of your friends and family.

And some of them didn't take it real well. Well, in that process, you might have heard somebody say, you're a hyper-Calvinist. Now, I'll be honest with you, I have written some books that the Lord has blessed and I've introduced a lot of people to the doctrines of grace over the years and so I know what hyper-Calvinism is, but I get accused of it all the time too.

And most of the time, the accusation is based upon pure ignorance on the part of the person making the accusation. They don't know what Calvinism is, they don't know what hyper-Calvinism is, and so they will basically say, if you believe all five points of the acrostic tulip, that makes you a hyper-Calvinist.

Well, that's a meaningful historical definition. It doesn't advance the accusation in any way, shape, or form. And that's not what hyper-Calvinism is. Hyper-Calvinism and hyper-Arminianism, I would put both in the same camp, are rationalistic systems.

They're rationalistic, they're not biblical. They basically exalt the reason of man and they take certain elements of biblical truth, set them up, and say, well, since this is true, then we'll reason from this down to these final assumptions.

And so, on the one hand, you've met the hyper-Arminian who believes you and I are on a bobsled to hell. There's no possible way we could be saved. They will actually make their understanding of these things exactly definitional to the gospel.

You disagree with them on this, you're gone. On the other hand, there are some people who call themselves Calvinists and every Arminian, he's on his way to hell as well. If you don't believe in limited atonement, then that means this, and therefore you're off to perdition as well.

And I'll let them go into a room and argue with each other and I will stay out of that room personally because I don't think anything meaningful is going to come of that particular conversation. But that still doesn't define what the issues are and why did we even look at John chapter 6?

I think I have a feeling if we're having any sound issues why that is and I'll fix it right now. Watch this. There. If that took care of any of the sound issues. It felt like it dropped out of me there, but I think I know what it might have been.

Anyway, why are we looking at John chapter 5 and John chapter 6? I want to have us look at two texts of scripture. I want to give you a definition, make some application. We don't have all that much time on a Sunday evening, but hopefully this will be useful to you.

Look at John chapter 5, beginning at verse 33. You have sent to John, and he has testified of the truth. But the testimony which I receive is not from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved.

He was the lamp that was burning, was shining, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But the testimony which I have is greater than the testimony of John. For the works that your Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I do, testify about me that the Father has sent me.

Now here in the middle of this conversation with the Jews, we have this line. But I say these things so that you may be saved. Jesus does not say to these individuals, I say these things for the sole reason that I'm going to increase your guilt.

He does not say that I say these things just simply so that I can heap condemnation upon your head. Instead, he is engaging in dialogue, in witness to these individuals, even though they're opposing him.

He says, but I say these things so that you may be saved. Now Jesus knows who's who. Jesus knows who his people are. Jesus, it's over and over again said, Jesus knew the hearts of men and so on and so forth.

You and I don't have that ability. And one of the major errors of Hyper-Calvinism is that it basically demands that we have the ability to be able to see into the hearts and minds of individuals and to look for election, to see if we can see who the elect are.

We don't know who the elect are. And so in God's prescriptive will, that is in what reveals to us what our duties are, we have it very plainly laid out for us. Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations.

Preach the gospel to every creature. Command men everywhere to repent. We are to, as the term is frequently used, promiscuously proclaim the gospel. There is nothing, we are not given any ability, any capacity to in any way, shape or form mitigate the command of Christ to proclaim the gospel to all people.

It doesn't mean that we do so in unwise ways. It doesn't mean that we do so in such a way as to bring dishonor to God because we don't have jobs and so on and so forth. I'm not talking about that. What I am saying is that we proclaim the gospel to everyone.

It is indeed our duty and it is our privilege. And yet, the very same writer then gave us the 6th chapter of John and just literally a matter of a few pages later, Jesus says, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I'll raise him up on the last day.

And so we know that no man possesses the capacity in of himself to come unto Christ. The drawing of the Father is necessary and we know that you don't read John backwards and go to John 12, 32 and say, Well, that's just a general drawing and God just draws everybody in the same way.

That's not what the message of the gospel of John is. You have a particular work of God. We understand that there is election. We understand that the number of the elect is fixed. The identity of the elect is fixed.

It's not God just electing a corporate group and then we get to fill it up as if he doesn't know who it's going to be. No, he has his elect people. He draws them unto Christ. That is the only way they'll be saved.

And yet you have the command to preach to all. Now, how do we put that together? Well, there is a balance. We understand that God ordains the ends as well as the means. The end we have revealed to us is the glorification of God's grace.

The means that God has chosen is the entirety of the gospel and our role as the ones who bring the message of life to others. And that is why we are given the great privilege of proclaiming the gospel freely.

In fact, it is a great... the burden that it takes off of us to recognize that only God can save. I mean, I feel so sorry for people who are constantly looking for the new methodology and the new little twist on things to try to trick people into Christianity.

You know? We've got to make it attractive. And what's the current best research on the color scheme we should use on this tract? There are certain colors that are more likely to cause people to buy certain things.

It's just a constant struggle that people have to try to trick people into believing in Christ. And we realize, don't have to do that. Don't have to do that. The gospel is to them a perishing foolishness.

Nothing is going to change that. As long as I'm preaching the gospel, if the Spirit of God doesn't bring results, well, nothing is. That doesn't mean that we try to get in the way and try to be offensive or any of the rest of those types of things.

The point is that we always recognize that if there is going to be true conversion, it's going to be brought about by the Spirit of God. And it's going to be brought about in the hearts of His elect people.

And so, we believe in missions. We support mission agencies and missionaries. And we give money to this cause and that cause. And we support local churches and foreign lands that are doing the work of missions work.

And my goodness, in Western culture, all of us are doing missions work anymore in that sense. And so, we recognize that there needs to be a balance. We recognize we need to believe tota Scriptura, all of Scripture, not just parts of Scripture.

Well, then, what is, you might ask, a hyper-Calvinist? Maybe that will help us to see. Let me give you a definition and it doesn't come from, I think it comes from a pretty decent source that really, I think, avoids some of the emotions that unfortunately get into this particular discussion.

But let's look at this. Hyper-Calvinism was a system of theology or a system of the doctrines of God, man, and grace which was framed to exalt the honor and glory of God and did so at the expense of minimizing the moral and spiritual responsibility of sinners to God.

It placed excessive emphasis on the imminent acts of God. Listen to these phrases. Eternal justification, eternal adoption, and the eternal covenant of grace. In practice, this meant that Christ and him crucified, the central message of the apostles, was obscured.

It also often made no distinction between the secret and revealed will of God and tried to deduce the duty of men from what it taught concerning the secret eternal decrees of God. Excessive emphasis was also placed on the doctrine of irresistible grace with a tendency to state that an elect man is not only passive in regeneration but also in conversion as well.

The absorbing interest in the eternal imminent acts of God and in irresistible grace led to the notion that grace must only be offered to those for whom it was intended. Finally, a valid assurance of salvation was seen as consisting in an inner feeling and conviction of being eternally elected by God.

So Hyper-Calvinism led its adherents to hold that evangelism was not necessary and to place much emphasis on introspection in order to discover whether or not one was elect. Now, think about just some of the things that were defined for us there and I think we can see where we need to strive to be fully Biblical and hence balanced.

Because, see, a lot of folks will say, and this is one of the concerns that I do have, there are a lot of well-meaning Reformed folks who, seeing the corrosive effect of Hyper-Calvinism especially in England and you know that Spurgeon said much against Hyper-Calvinism and blamed it for a lot of things.

What has happened is there will be a lot of people that say, well, we know we don't want to go down that road therefore you shouldn't believe these things that might lead you to that. Well, here's the problem.

I have heard that kind of argumentation used many times in a gross sense you shouldn't believe in the deity of Christ because it could lead to tritheism. Well, that's a real obvious example. You can't help but believe in the deity of Christ it's the teaching of scripture even if there's a danger that it might lead someone to believing in three gods.

What's the only way that can happen? If you lose your balance, if you lose the grounding that you need to have in the word of God and believing the entirety of the word of God. And so, it'd be easy to say we shouldn't even preach the doctrine of election because it could lead to and then start all down the road of people who have taken truths of God and have taken them to an imbalanced position at times in their lives.

Well, the reality is any truth of God can be abused in that way. Any truth of God can be abused if it is taken out of the context in which it has been revealed to us in scripture in the first place. And so, we must always be striving for balance.

The older I get, the more I think that one of the central aspects of Christian maturity is the ability to remain balanced in the midst of the changing vicissitudes of life, the winds of doctrine that blow about us remaining balanced and not tipping one direction or the other.

And very often, when we are in conflicts and everyone every generation has its conflicts. We are surrounded by today secularism and so we're constantly fighting against the forces of secularism. But, when you're fighting something, the tendency is to become imbalanced in the opposite direction.

When you're in a tug of war, you're pulling this direction and you're not really balanced in the center any longer. And so, when that happens, we need to recognize that we are pulling against something and make sure that as we think about that, okay, I don't want to go too far this direction.

I know that seems to be the biggest thing but that's our conflict right now, that's where we are and we need to remain balanced in how we're handling the Word of God and how we're seeing things. And so, there are all sorts of doctrines, the truths of the Scripture, that have been abused by people in the past.

It doesn't mean that they were properly using those doctrines of Scripture or that we should not believe in those doctrines of Scripture. And so, when you keep that in mind then, when you look at what is said here, certainly, many of these individuals were seeking the honor and glory of God.

They had proper intentions but there is a loss of balance. So, for example, we want to exalt the honor and glory of God. That should be the desire of any individual but to do so at the expense of minimizing the moral and spiritual responsibilities of sinners to God is to ignore the biblical teaching itself.

I mean, no matter how exalted the language might be anywhere in Scripture, when you look at Acts chapter 4 and you listen to the church talking about how God's hand had predestined and ordained the acts of Herod and Pilate and the Romans and the Jews, does it then come about that that early church minimizes the responsibility of Herod, Pilate, the Romans and the Jews?

Of course not. It's a both and, not an either or. They remain balanced. They recognize that God will hold men accountable for acting upon the desires of their hearts as well as they recognize that God was accomplishing His purpose in the exact same things.

And it's only when we will not allow God's work to be so deep and so multifaceted when we only squish it down to just two dimensions and then have to make a decision, well, you know, either God's sovereign or man's responsible.

No, both are true and God's sovereignty is what establishes man's responsibility. If God wasn't sovereign there'd be all sorts of other forces in the universe that might be able to control man and remove his responsibility from him.

That is not what God's intention has been. And so then you had some doctrines like eternal justification or eternal adoption and what did that mean? Well, the eternal justification the idea that, well, you look at the golden chain of redemption and it says right there those whom he foreknew, he predestined, called, justified, glorified, it's all in the past tense.

So, we've eternally been justified. Well, what is that missing? Well, you have Paul's clear statement in Ephesians chapter 2 that we were all children of wrath like the rest. And there was a point in time where God broke in and you have regeneration, you have faith and on the basis of that faith you have justification and so what they've done is they've said, well, it's certain that the elect of God are going to be justified therefore they always have been.

No, that is destroying the reality of the action of God within time itself. He has intended to act within time. That's like, that would lead to having to conclude that the Son of God was eternally incarnate.

Well, no, He wasn't. The Word became flesh at a point in time. Well, it was certain He was going to be, that may be, but time is still real and so there was a point in time when the Son became incarnate.

There's a point in time where God breaks into our lives and we experience regeneration and so these are rationalistic doctrines and so it also made no distinction between the secret and revealed will of God.

Now, what does that mean? Well, I've already used the term once. I referred to the prescriptive will of God and that is the revealed will of God. That's God's law. That's God's revelation. That's what God has revealed for us.

How it is that we are to live that reveals His character and therefore how we are to walk in His ways. We're reading through that in the Old Testament right now and the application in the New Testament so on and so forth.

We have all of that. That's the prescriptive will of God revealed to us primarily in Scripture but then the secret or decretive will of God is God's decree and that is what God has chosen to do in time and we're not going to have time this evening but just remember the number of times that we have discussed what's called compatibilism the fact that God's sovereignty and man's will they are compatible together in Scripture.

You think of Genesis 50 you think of Joseph and his brothers you think of Isaiah chapter 10 God bringing the Assyrians down against Israel He uses the Assyrians as His means of punishing Israel and yet then He judges the Assyrians on the basis of what filled their heart and then of course as I just mentioned Acts chapter 4 you have the early church confessing you have all these different people Herod and Pilate and the Jews and the Romans and they have all these different motivations and yet they're doing exactly what God's will and God's decree has intended to take place and so the Hyper-Calvinist would tend to conflate these to squish these together to not recognize what the difference between these things is partly because they would not feel that the proclamation of the prescriptive will of God would be relevant to the non-elect person in the first place not again seeing the fact that God uses means God uses the means that He has given to us to bring about even the conviction of sin so on and so forth and so from that it says they tried to deduce the duty of men from what it taught concerning the secret eternal decrees of God.

The problem is we don't know what the secret eternal decrees of God are. We are never held accountable in scripture for acting upon the basis of God's secret decrees because we don't know what they are.

And the same way one of the major things that's mentioned here is the minimizing of evangelism and the hesitation to offer what the gospel offers to those who might not be elect. And so we know that many hyper-Calvinists would look for evidence of regeneration before presenting Christ as a perfect savior.

Now I don't know about you but I don't know how in the world you do that. How I mean certainly we can talk about. Well this might be an evidence of regeneration or that might be an evidence of regeneration.

But the whole concept turns the person from a proclaimer of the gospel into an examiner of fruit. And you have to somehow get to know people well enough to see if you can find an evidence of regeneration within them.

Now I suppose in some older context in England where pretty much everybody went to church you might at least be able to live closely enough with people to have some kind of knowledge like that. But it just would not work.

Especially in Phoenix. You don't even know your neighbors in Phoenix. You can't know anybody well enough to look for signs of election or regeneration or something like that. And it just completely turns upside down the means that God has chosen to use to bring about the salvation of his people which is the proclamation of the word of God the promiscuous preaching of the promises of God.

And then our reliance upon the spirit of God to make those promises to come alive in the hearts of God's people. It also seems to completely miss the point of Jesus' parable of the sower and the soils.

It's not the sower and the seed really it's the sower and the soils the parable of the soils. Because there Jesus is warning his disciples you're gonna sow the seed and you're not gonna do it like we do today where you know you have computers that put the seed in the exact right depth and you know do all the rest of that kind of stuff.

They didn't quite have that technology. Then the sower goes out and he sows the seed and he's promiscuously distributing it upon the soil. And he can't necessarily tell. I mean a lot of the rocks and the trees for example would be buried.

He couldn't see them. The ground looks the same to him. And so he sows the seed. And Jesus prepares his disciples for the reality that there's gonna be all sorts of different kinds of reactions to the sowing of that seed.

And there's gonna be some that are gonna spring up real fast. They're gonna look really promising for a while. And you know some of that seed is gonna go out there on the hardened soil and it's gonna be eaten by the birds.

Does that mean the sower was wrong to have sowed the seed. No it's just simply part of the reality of what that promiscuous sowing of the seed is gonna result in. And you've got the shallow soil and there's the sudden growth but there's never any fruit.

There's never any maturity. And then you have different kinds of soil. And some bring 430 and some 60 and some 90 fold and this is this would not make any sense if what what we're supposed to be doing is is keeping the seed bag here.

And well well well no no no no ok is is that really how we're supposed to be doing things. That's what it would result in if we lose our balance and if we don't see all of what the scripture has to say now one of the big big big big issues today one of the big issues today is the issue of what's called the free offer or the well meant offer of the gospel.

Now what does that mean. Well again here's one of the problems depends on who you talk to depends on who's getting to do the definitions fundamentally as I understand it how I understand the well meant offer is that we are to proclaim Jesus Christ as the savior of sinners to anyone whatsoever and we have the freedom to be able to say that anyone who will turn in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ will find him to be a powerful and perfect savior.

I can proclaim that to anybody you say yeah. But that means you're going to say that to some non-elect people. Well yeah I am because I'm not given that information and God has given me that message.

He does not give me the right to edit that message. Now I can theologically reason with you that obviously the only person who's ever going to turn repentance and faith Jesus Christ is the person who's drawn by the fire of the sun.

So but I don't know who that is and so I'm not in control of that. That is beyond my control. It's beyond my knowledge. And therefore I cannot act upon the basis of something when I'm not given any means to do so.

But what a lot of people will say is well some Arminians some who resist reform theology will say you as a reform person cannot make the well-meant offer because you are saying that fundamentally because you believe in particular redemption or limited atonement or whatever other terminology you want to use.

Because you really believe that the death of Christ is perfectly in harmony with the decree of God and election. And so the death of Christ is for those individuals they are united with him and his death.

Since you believe that then you're in essence lying. When you proclaim the gospel to someone who's non-elect because there's been no provision made for them and so they make the argument that the need is to believe in universal atonement change the nature of the atonement so that Christ's death makes all men savable.

And that way you can then have a well-meant offer. That's their argument. Now leaving that aside for the moment because we're not necessarily talking about people who resist reform theology. There are others who would say no we're not making the argument and should not make the argument.

We can talk about the sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ and that it was sufficient for all men even if it's intention and application and the union with Christ means it's only for the elect we can.

There's been a lot of discussion of sufficiency. Certainly no one that I know of denies the sufficiency of the death of Christ. The whole issue is what was it intended to do. But then there are others who would say what you need to do is to not be a hyper-Calvinist.

And really I think if they were more honest themselves what they'd say is to keep from starting down a road that might cause you to eventually lose your balance and eventually stop believing all scripture and become this.

I think that would be the fair thing to say is what you have to believe is that God's call to all is equal to and of the same kind as his call to the elect. What do I mean by that. It's not so much they're saying that there is not an effective effectual call over against the general call.

That's terminology that most reformed people use. There is the general call of the gospel. It goes out to all people. And then you have the effectual call which we have in the golden chain Romans chapter 8.

Those whom he called he also justified. And so that calling is effectual it is powerful it will accomplish what God intends. What they're really getting to is God's desire. And if you're not to become a hyper-Calvinist they will say you must say that God desires the salvation of the non-elect basically in the same way he desires the salvation of the elect.

That's the argument. And that's where they've got me is because I go well wait a minute you have the general call in God's prescriptive will you have the fact that God calls all men everywhere to repent.

We can never ignore that we can never avoid that we have to follow the apostolic example. I don't see anywhere in scripture where the apostles withheld the proclamation of the gospel from someone because I don't see evidence.

And I mean even they might have experienced some level of supernatural knowledge at times but they proclaimed the gospel to Simon and Simon responded and then wanted to you know it turned out to be an apostate and so on and so forth.

And we know from Paul's letters that there were people who had once been in the church and they had gone back to the world. And we know from 1 John that many went out from us and so the apostles had proclaimed the gospel to people who weren't elect and they'd experienced exactly what the parable of the soil said they would experience.

So we can never get past that. And if we're going to remain balanced and if going to remain believers in all scripture we can never get away from that. So basically what I've said is I have a hard time affirming the idea that God's electing grace is not particularly focused upon the elect and that God has decreed that he is going to be eternally unhappy.

I don't get the idea that God has decreed that he's going to be eternally unhappy. You have in Psalm 135 6 that God does whatever he pleases whatever pleases him whatever makes him happy in the heavens and upon the earth.

And so the idea that what I have to believe is that well God's desire for salvation for everyone is equal for everyone and therefore he's going to be mourning over his just acts of judgment for eternity.

I can't find evidence of that anywhere in scripture. I have a difficult time finding that kind of a concept anywhere in scripture. And some people say well but if you don't go there you might end up a hyper-Calvinist.

Well I suppose if I lost my balance if I stopped believing in the prescriptive will of God and I stopped believing in the command to proclaim the gospel. I suppose that's possible. But you know there I suppose I could make the argument the other way.

I mean could I not make the argument the other way. That if you affirm what you're saying you must affirm for what you call the well meant offer. Might it not turn out that you end up rejecting election itself.

You end up rejecting that there is a specific people that God has called unto himself. Wouldn't that possibly lead you to synergism. And the result would be well no I would never go there. I'm gonna remain.

What. Balanced. That's the key. That's the key you've heard me say it so many times before sola scriptura and tota scriptura scripture as the sole infallible rule of faith and all of scripture we must constantly be examining our traditions.

We must recognize that all of us have our traditions. And we must always be going back to that which is God breathed. And folks in theology it's vitally important. But you know what how many times recently we've been talking about how it is that.

And the past week and a half two weeks has shown us once again that we haven't been wasting our time with a lot of the sermons we've been having recently we've talked about how we as Christians need to know what we believe about such things as marriage and human sexuality.

Why do we need to do that. Well because we're probably going to be facing sacrifice. We're probably going to be facing having to pay for continuing to believe we believe. And so what are we always saying.

We've got to look at the foundation. We've got to know what our foundation is. This is a gospel issue. How do we know all that sola scriptura tota scriptura conviction that we must believe all that the word of God teaches us to believe.

And so while this particular issue might seem somewhat esoteric it might seem somewhat out there a little bit it's not. It again is an illustration of how we must be balanced how we must be constantly praying God keep us from losing our balance.

Because when you think of anyone who has gone out from our midst for theological reasons where'd it start. It didn't happen overnight one night there is a there is an imbalance that developed and there's an imbalance that developed over time until that tipping point comes.

And so we need to be praying for balance. We need to be a people who recognize that there are temptations in being reformed. There is a temptation to be to lose. A zeal in the proclamation of the word of God a zeal in telling other people about Jesus Christ calling them to repentance.

We need to recognize those dangers. We need to recognize that when we're always pulling one direction the muscles can sort of we become accustomed to that. And we need to be seeking purposefully in our own minds in our own spiritual discipline to avoid the effects of the battles that we are constantly battling in our lives and in our ministry as Christians in this day.

So just some thoughts today on maintaining balance. Recognizing that within the same book you can find all these texts that talk about the proclamation of the gospel and the fact that we are to be open in our desire as people who have found a great treasure and we want others to share in it.

It should not be something that we are holding to ourselves. We should truly desire to express clearly to other people. We want to see people bowing the knee to the lordship of Jesus Christ. What a thrill it is to see people walking through the waters of baptism.

We don't want to be silent Christians. We want to recognize that we can believe all that the word of God says without sacrificing any element. It's all there. It's all to be believed. And if we will simply allow the word of God to speak with its full voice we will see that it speaks to us consistently and gives us light and guidance as to how we are to live in a way that is pleasing before God.

Let's pray together our gracious heavenly father. Indeed as we have considered your truth this evening we would ask that you would give us balance lord. That you would give us great zeal as we seek to proclaim your truth.

As we seek to proclaim the gospel the lordship of Jesus Christ over this world to call men to repentance and faith in him. At the same time lord may we not be influenced by all of the programs and isms of the world around us where people try to modify the gospel as if they can somehow trick people into your kingdom.