Bondage Of The Will

All Saints Day, Reformation Day, and the Historical Background

All Hallows Day or All Saints Day was first celebrated May 13th, 609 A .D. when Pope Boniface the fourth dedicated the Pantheon in Rome to the Virgin Mary. Later on it was changed to November 1st by Pope Gregory the third who dedicated the chapel in honor of all saints.

In 837 or 837 A .D. Pope Gregory the fourth ordered its churchwide observance. You need to celebrate this holiday and they started commemorating martyrs of the Christian faith and eventually it just turned into celebrating martyrs and all saints November 1st.

But we know that that date the night day before was changed in terms of the the idea of a holiday or a reformation day because on October 31st Luther posted the 95 thesis on the castle door in Wittenberg.

Free Grace Versus Free Will

And so usually churches will have a Sunday night service or a reformation service to talk about some great truth of the Reformation. So tonight is the bondage of the will. I have a question for you. How free is the will of the unbeliever?

Is it totally free? Is it kind of free? Is it a smidgen free? Or is it bound? And the real question of the Reformation was do we believe in free will or do we believe in free grace? Now you've got to put your thinking caps on tonight because you might be tempted to say emotional things like, well my God would never force me to believe or my God would never make me act like a robot and my God this that and the other.

Really the point is we have to figure out what does the Bible say. So to start tonight I want to give you a little quiz from my friend R. Scott Clark and you can either choose A or B. One is free will and the other is free grace.

These are the competing thoughts. Free will and free grace and we'll define these things later but just it's good to start off with a quiz. Alright? I like giving quizzes. Which one's true? A. God chooses those who of their own free wills decide to believe.

Is that true? Or is this true? God gives faith to those whom he has sovereignly chosen. B. Okay good. I was going to say if you chose A, I was gonna wonder what Pastor Steve taught you for the last three months because when I left you would have chosen B.

A or B, which one's true? God's blood has redeemed all but it is our faith in him that saves us. B. Christ saves every person whom he redeemed with his blood. B. Good. I like that. You know the best part about preaching and having kids answer questions and even rhetorical questions that aren't supposed to be answered is that they're listening.

A or B. Okay, I'm gonna switch it around. The visitors must think this is what happens on Sunday morning. Preaching is not dialogical, congregation. It is monological proclamation. Alright, I'm switching it this time.

A. The Holy Spirit regenerates the elect and enables them to believe. Or B. Those who are willing to believe enable the Holy Spirit to regenerate them. And the answer is A. Good. See, that's perfect. Let's say you're a believer and most of you are professing believers here tonight and your relative isn't.

Let's say you had a twin sister or brother and you're a believer and they aren't. What's the difference between you and them? That's really the question. Where is the difference found? In other words, is the difference found in you and what you did or who you are, R, or is the difference found in the sovereign hand of God?

I could ask it this way. Why are some people saved and other people aren't saved? Is it because the Spirit worked, A, or B, those of free will open their heart to give God a chance? If I had a little microphone up here and we had a testimony time.

We had a testimony time this morning with baptism and I were to give you the microphone and you would come up and I would like you to give a testimony, Christian, to how you came to Jesus Christ without the work of the Holy Spirit.

I wonder how that would work. And that is the work of your own free will versus the Lord did it all. Can you say of my own free will I have turned to the Lord? I did not need his help at all. I didn't need the Holy Spirit's regenerating power.

Spurgeon had a prayer for those kind of people. Lord, I was born with a glorious free will. I was born with power by which I can turn to you of myself. I have improved my grace. If everybody had done the same with their grace that I have, they might have all been saved.

Lord, I know that you do not make us willing if we're not willing ourselves. You give grace to everybody. Some do not improve upon it, but I do. There are many that will go to hell as much bought with the blood of Christ as I was.

They had as much of the Holy Ghost given to me. They had as good a chance and were as much blessed as I am. It was not thy grace that made us to differ. I know it did a great deal. Still, I turned the point.

I made use of what was given to me and others did not. And that's the difference between me and them. And Spurgeon went on to say that's the prayer of a devil. So let me give you a background tonight on the Reformation and this topic.

And then I'm going to ask you a series of questions and we're going to look at what the Bible says about the will, okay? If you said no, not okay. I'm still going to do it. Erasmus was a Roman Catholic and he wrote a book entitled The Freedom of the Will or the Diatribe of the Freedom of the Will.

And he wrote that in 1524. He was a key scholar. He helped us a lot in the Reformation because although a Roman Catholic, he helped put together the Greek New Testament, 1516. Remember, they used to have the old Vulgate in Latin, but the Bible was written, the New Testament in Greek.

And so Erasmus helped us rescue the text out of the Latin translation. But Erasmus had a high view of man. He didn't see original sin as all pervasive. He didn't like Augustine's pessimistic view of man.

And he, the enlightened Erasmus and banking on the Renaissance and enlightenment, thought that education was the key to salvation. If you can just be educated enough, if you can cultivate your mind enough, if you can have enough religious kind of experiences and imitate Christ enough, you can be saved because you're not really dead in Christ.

I mean, dead in your sins, you are just sick. Luther didn't like that. And so he writes the book called The Bondage of the Will, 1525. How many people have read that? Oh, excellent. So we have the chosen and the unchosen.

Okay, good. It is a great piece of theological writing. It is probably what started the Reformation in many senses. B .B. Warfield called it the true manifesto of the Reformation. And Luther himself said, burn all my books except my children's catechism and the bondage of the will.

He thought it was that important because it comes to the very heart of the gospel. And Luther wrote to Erasmus and he said this, you have attacked the real thing, Erasmus, that is the issue. You have not worried me with the papacy, purgatory, indulgences and such like trifles, rather than issues in respect of almost all to date have sought my blood.

In other words, people are trying to kill me because I'm after the Pope, but you, Erasmus, really know the issue. And here's the issue. It's the issue of the will. Is the will in bondage to sin or is it free?

Spiritual Death and Total Depravity

Now probably what we should do at the very beginning is ask the question, what is free will? Let me give you some definitions. One definition. Free will is the mind choosing. Free will is the faculty of choice.

To will is to choose and you can decide between two alternatives, to pick this thing or that thing. Arthur Pink writes, choice necessarily implies the refusal of one thing and the acceptance of another.

The positive and the negative both must be present to the mind before there can be any choice. Freedom is the ability to choose according to our desires. So before we choose something, we must first desire it.

And so I think it was Edwards who said, the will is the mind choosing. And so what's before us, here's the big picture. Can we, as unbelievers, choose between going to heaven and not going to heaven? Do we have the ability to choose freely?

And what we're going to say in this message tonight is, and here's what Luther said, because of Adam's fall, we're sinful and we can only make choices based on our sinful nature and we'll always choose to sin.

That is to say, if we hadn't sinned, Adam hadn't sinned in our place, you might be able to choose between obeying God and not obeying God. But now that our nature is corrupt, we can only make choices within that corrupt nature.

We can sin all we want to, and matter of fact, we do as unbelievers, but could we ever say, I, based on my own bootstraps, can decide to follow God without any of his help. I can decide to follow him or not based on my own free will.

And that great songwriter, Augustus Toplady, he kind of was really getting under people's skin when he said, a man's free will cannot cure him of even a toothache or a sore finger, yet he madly thinks it is in his power to cure his soul.

In summary, you have an ability to make choices, but it's tied to your nature. And so, when I teach kids this topic, I think, okay, can you get a lion to eat pretzels? Well, maybe you can, I don't know, force it down his throat, I haven't thought that far ahead.

But lions don't want to eat pretzels, why? Because it's in their nature to eat meat. And so, if our nature is sin, sin, sin because of the fall, could we ever choose God on our own without his help? That's the real issue.

So, let me give you a series of questions that will help you understand what do we mean when we talk about the bondage of the will. Do you believe in free will, free to choose on your own without any help from God, or bondage of the will, slave to sin, and we need God's help to rescue us.

Question one, and now we'll get into the Bible. Are unbelieving men and women dead spiritually? Answer, kids, you should just say A. I went to Canada this summer, and everybody jokes about how they say A all the time, and you get up there, and they say A all the time, A, just all the time, A, so maybe they're always choosing A.

Are unbelieving men and women dead spiritually? Let's turn to Ephesians chapter two, and just see what you already know. This is, of course, not physical necrosis. This is spiritual, and this is not total depravity because there are some good things that people do.

Hitler spared some people in the French villages when priests begged him, but the depraved man can do no spiritual good without God working. Those natives showed Paul extraordinary kindness, Acts 28, on the island of Malta, and people can build hospitals and feed the poor and give water to those in need, but you cannot do anything good in God's eyes as an unbeliever because Adam's sin has affected you, and you are sinful.

What does Ephesians 2 .1 say? This is for the unbeliever, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins. The best way to think about this is spiritual inability. You're going to need to be rescued, and we would all believe that the doctrine of sin and depravity is pretty much assumed in our society.

We have legislation because people can't be trusted. We can't have just promises between people. We need contracts. You lock your door at night because you can't trust other people. You can't even have just laws in the society because you have to have police to enforce the law.

Why? Because men and women are sinful. I know it's a humbling doctrine, but it is true. One man said, we are as blind as cyclops with his eye poked out. And if you want a little more humorous discussion when it comes to depravity, remember old Dear Abby.

You'd write in and get advice. Remember Dear Abby? She couldn't even get along with her sister. That was sad, but Dear Abby, I'm 44 and would like to meet a man my age with no bad habits. Sincerely, Rose.

Dear Rose, so would I. Isn't that great? That is so great. When I was a kid, I would watch those commercials, and it would show old people fallen, and then they'd have to have a little button to call the ambulance, and they would always say what?

I know. Isn't it powerful commercials and media? I'm fallen and I can't get up. Every part of man is fallen. Intellect, conscience, heart, total being, and the will is also included. And what does Paul say?

Look at that. And you emphatically were dead in your trespasses and sins. He's saying everyone. This is not just gang members and terrorists. Everybody. And he sums up our condition as unbelievers with one word dead.

Necros. Can you not remember in the prodigal son where the dad said this? My son was dead. He was dead to me. Oh, he was still alive. Can't you hear Jesus when he would say, follow me and allow the dead to bury their own dead?

He's not talking about physical deadness, but he's dead to God. Colossians two, you were dead in your transgressions. One man said the salt flavors every drop in the Atlantic. And does sin affect every atom of our nature?

Yes. Jesus said, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. And it is these that bear witness of me. And you are unwilling to come to me that you may have life. That's depravity.

That's why Jesus goes on to say, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws me true or false. It does not depend on the man who wills of the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. True, because that's Romans nine 16.

Here's what I'm driving at with this message. Since we are slaves to sin, since we are dead in our trespasses and sins, somebody is going to have to make us alive. Somebody is going to have to rescue us and he's going to get all the credit.

Here's evangelicalism. God has done his part. You do your part, but our part as unbelievers would always be to sin. Steve Cooley, was it John Gerstner who always said, who said, there's always room for deprovement.

I mean, we're so sinful. We can't get any better, but we could always get worse. Question two. Well, let me just. Yeah, that's good. Question two. Are unbelievers free from indwelling sin? I don't think believers, unbelievers are free from indwelling sin.

Let's find out. Let's go to Romans chapter six. So we're not free from being spiritually dead. Are we free from indwelling sin? So if somebody ever said to me, I believe that unbelievers have free will.

My first question is, are they free to choose God on their own? Second question is, are they free from their own sin? Romans six 16. We're talking about slavery here. No human is totally free. You're either a slave to sin or you're a slave to Christ.

And that's what's going on here. Romans six, Romans six 16. Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey either of sin resulting in death.

That's one option or of obedience resulting in righteousness. But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you are committed.

And having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. Isn't that fascinating? Slaves of sin back there in verse 17. Once slaves of sin. If someone said to me, I believe that unbelievers have free will.

I say there's a slave to sin because here that's exactly what the text says. How free are you? Question three, are unbelievers free from the world's influence? Let's go back to chapter two of Ephesians.

Okay. So you have unbelievers and they're dead in trespasses and sins. They are slaves to sin. And are they influenced by the world? Does the world influence their system of thinking? And I think the answer is yes.

And if I want to try to be funny, if I was on the radio show, I would say, I can't even watch a Big Mac commercial without getting hungry and wanting one, even though I never go to McDonald's. But just the influence of commercials.

What does Ephesians 2 .2 say? I mean, how can you be free when you're dead? How can you be free when you have indwelling sin and you're a slave to it? And how can you be free when you do what the world does in which you formally walked according to the course of this world?

And what do people in the world do? They live for self. They live for hedonism and all the other isms and materialism and education and everything else they're living for that. And here the text says you walked in them.

You didn't just dip your toe in. You walked in these as a, as a manner of life. Now here's, here's the big one. Number four, are unbelievers free from Satan's will? Let's turn to 2nd Timothy 2 .25, please.

2nd Timothy 2 .25. Paul is writing to Timothy and he's going to help him pastorally. And what does he say? If you can't remember that men and women are spiritually dead, so how could they be free? If you can't remember that unbelievers are free, you are not free from indwelling sin.

How could they be free? If you can't remember their influence by the world, how could they be free? Remember this verse, this is it. This would have made Luther's book much shorter. 2nd Timothy 2 .25 with gentleness, correcting those who are in opposition.

If perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his Satan's will.

The ruler of the world, the ruler of the, of the demonic forces is controlling unbelievers. Ephesians 2 says, according to the prince of the power of the air, are you free from Satan's will? Turn to another passage.

John 8, please. And you can see as one man called this dancing the devil's tune. Ephesians, John chapter eight. I like the sounds. I like a lot of sounds. It doesn't bother me at all, but it makes me look.

I don't know what happens, you know, when, when I first started preaching, every little sound would distract me. And then you get older. Is it because I've just preached more or is it because I'm just deaf?

I don't know which one it is. John eight 31. You're going to see something here. All false religion is forced. When you think of Hinduism and Buddhism and every other ism, it's forced and it's forced by Satan.

Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, John eight 31. There's just nothing like we're just watching Jesus deal with people. If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

They answered him. We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. Can you hear what they're saying? I thought the Jews, there's a little place called Egypt. If I remember rightly, we've never been enslaved to anyone.

How is it that you Jesus say you will become free? Jesus answered them. By the way, when Jesus is talking to unrighteous people who know they're unrighteous, what's his MO? How does he talk to them? Kindly, warmly.

When he's talking to self righteous people, how does he talk to them? I mean, it is duck. I remember sometimes when my mom would spank me before she spanked me. She'd say, Mike, you're going to get a blistering.

We don't talk that way anymore. It's probably because DSS is around, but you're going to get a blistering. This is a verbal blistering. Jesus answered them truly, truly. I mean, we say amen. Amen. At the end of our prayers, he sometimes says at the beginning of what he's going to say, here's the import.

I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a what slave to sin. How free is a person who's a slave? The slave does not remain in the house forever. The sun remains forever. So if the sun sets you free, you will be free.

Indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham. You're Jewish. Yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I've seen with my father and you do what you've heard from your father.

Oh, they answered him. Abraham is our father. Jesus said to them, if you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did. But now you seek to kill me. A man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.

This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did. They said to him, we were not born of sexual immorality. We have one father, even God. Jesus said to them, if God were your father, you would love me for I came from God and I am here.

I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. And here it comes. Circle it. Verse 44. You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

That is true friends of every single unbeliever. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. And when he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and a father of lies.

He's talking about their dad. But because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God.

The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God. If you say to yourself, an unbeliever is free to do whatever he wants, how can he be free to do whatever he wants or whatever she wants when they're a slave to Satan and they do what their father does, who is the father of lies?

God’s Sovereign Regeneration and Lydia’s Open Heart

Number five. Men and women are unbelieving. Men and women are dead. Unbelieving people are not free from indwelling sin. Unbelievers are not free from the world's influence and unbelievers are not free from Satan's will.

And here is the $25 ,000 question. Are unbelievers free from God's sovereign regeneration? Are men and women who are unbelievers free from God influencing them, changing them, saving them? In other words, can God intervene in the human will or is it the Holy of Holies where God can't even go?

Put another way, must God work alone to regenerate the people that he has chosen? Turn to 1 Peter chapter one, please. And let's just find out what's going on here. Since man prior to salvation is bound by sin, enslaved to sin, following his father, Satan, God has to come to the rescue.

He can't save himself, this unbeliever. He can't will himself to be saved apart from God. He has to trust in what God has done. And look at what it says here in 1 Peter chapter one. It could be one of the greatest intros of any book ever written in the New Testament.

Nothing from ourselves do we contribute to salvation. All from God. Can man will himself to be saved if he's slaved to sin? No. So this has to happen. And Peter praises God for it. 1 Peter 1 3. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again. Think about that. He's caused us to be born again. He did it to us. We are passive. He is active. This is the language of passivity on our part.

God is the actor. We are the recipients. This is God alone working. Why? Because we're dead and he caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Can man will himself to be saved apart from God?

No. I turn if you would with me please to Acts chapter 16. Acts chapter 16. And here's the great thing about Acts 16 is you see what's going on in this little place called Philippi. Acts 16. We went to Greece a few years ago and went to Philippi and went to this little spot.

Was anybody here? Anybody here go with me on that trip? Grace, raise your hand. At least Grace went. Now let's just back up a little bit because this is brilliant. Acts 16 verse six. And they went through the region of Phygeia, Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.

That's interesting. How did God forbid Paul from going to Asia? I don't know, but he was forbidden. I mean, think about all the people in Asia and the thousands of people, the hundreds of thousands of people.

I think that was good. Paul wanted to go to talk to them, to the masses. The Holy Spirit said no. And when they'd come up from Mycenae, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the spirit of Jesus did not allow them.

So passing by Mycenae, they went down to Troas and a vision appeared to Paul in the night. Here's this Macedonian call concluding at the end of verse 10, God wanted Paul to go preach to them. So what do they do?

Verse 11, they set sail to Troas and they go to Philippi. Verse 12, a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. So when you go to Philippi, it seems like you're in Rome, because this is where all the soldiers would go to retire.

I don't know, where do people go to retire now? Florida. All right, this is like Florida, except it looks like Roman places, 2000 years ago. Verse 14, now they'll go to verse 13. And on the Sabbath day, we went outside the gate to the riverside where we suppose there was a place of prayer and we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together.

Okay, now get this, because you'll never read this passage again the same. Paul wanted to go to Asia. There's thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions of people. And the Spirit of God, how He did it, I don't know, said, no, you can't go there.

So I want you to go to Philippi. Philippi isn't that big. It's not that many people. As a matter of fact, there's so few Jews there, they can't even have a synagogue. So there's just some people down by the river and they're praying, some ladies.

You don't have 10 men to have a synagogue. So what do you do? You just go down to the river and you pray. You can go to that river even today. There's some women there. One, verse 14, who had heard us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God.

In other words, she was a monotheist. And the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. After she was baptized and her household as well, she urged us, saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.

And she prevailed upon us. Now, friends, listen, open hearts, open hearts. She was slaved to sin. God opened her heart so then she could respond. But I also want to just bring into the point, because I think it's such a fascinating story.

There is a desire in evangelicalism. This has nothing to do with the bondage of the will, but this is just it's just on my heart. Numbers, buildings, thousands of people, multi campuses. And God says, you know what?

I don't want you to go. I'll send other people to Asia later. Paul, the apostle. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to go to that one woman over there in Greece, down by the river, because I've chosen her in eternity past acts 1348, as many as were appointed to eternal life believe.

And God takes Paul of all people to not go to the thousands and millions in Asia. He says, you know what? I want you to go down by the river and find that one, because the only way her heart will be open is to hear the message.

And then God sovereignly opens her heart to hear the message. And God saves the one Lydia. That's why I've told you many times when I meet other pastors, I restrain myself from ever saying how many people are at your church.

Does it really matter how many people are at our church? It's all God's doing. Now think about this when it comes to evangelism. You've got a friend, you've got a relative, you've got a son or daughter or a mom or dad or somebody that you love.

And you think, you know what? I know they're sinful because the Bible tells me that. And I know they're going to go to hell when they die if they don't believe. And I've tried to coax them. I've tried to, I've tried to, to, to pray for them.

I've tried to bother them. I've tried to, I remember MacArthur always used to say there was a lady that would put tracks in her husband's lunchbox every day. And sometimes she'd put tracks in the husband's sandwich instead of the lettuce.

That'd be like a track. You've got to open it up and take it out. But what if you had to have your own power and strength and intellect to try to convince people to believe versus I'm going to just tell them the good news about how God saves sinners.

It's a great announcement. And I'm not dependent on their free will to come to Christ. Spurgeon said, I do not come into this pulpit hoping that perhaps somebody will of his own free will return to Christ.

My hope lies in another quarter. I hope that my master will lay hold of some of them and say, you're mine and you shall be mine. And I claim you for myself. My hope arises from the freeness of grace and not from the freedom of the will.

Did I say I don't believe in free will? If free will means that you're able to choose God on your own, the answer's yes. But I think there is somebody who ultimately had the best free will and that was the Lord Jesus Christ.

Did he die of his own free will? I think he did. I lay down my life that I might take it up again. No man takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again.

Jesus submitted to his own death of his own free will because he knew that was the only way we could be right in the Father's eyes by he going to the cross for us. Now we just end with the final reading, Romans chapter nine, and we will be done.

Romans 9, Divine Mercy, and Human Responsibility

Romans nine. Do we believe in free will? This is the chapter. I have a friend I talked to not recent, not that long ago. I talked with him recently and he said when he read this chapter, he wanted to rip it out of his Bible because it so extols God freely choosing versus our free will.

If you mean free will, I can choose between my own sins. Fine, but this is the issue when people say, well, that makes me a robot that makes me a God forcing his will on me. Friends, he he forces his will on you to give you a new life so that you freely choose to worship him with your new nature.

And so what does Paul say? Paul says in Romans nine, the chapter that some people would wish to be ripped out. It says in chapter nine, verse 12, the older will serve the younger as it is written. Jacob, I love.

But Esau, I hated. I mean, they were twins. What should we say then? He knows people are going to talk back. Is there injustice on God's part? By no means. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and have compassion on whom I have compassion.

Nobody deserves compassion. So God can freely choose to give it. It does not depend on human. What's the text say? Will. Does it depend on human will to get to heaven? No, because human will is enslaved to sin.

It does not depend on human will, but on God who has mercy for the scripture, says the Pharaoh for this purpose. I've raised you up. Verse 18. So then he has mercy on whomever he wills. Whose will is it talking about?

Their God's will. And he hardens whomever he wills. Whose will is that? God's will. Yeah. But if God hardens people and God chooses people, how can I be responsible? Verse 19. You will say to me then, why does he still find fault for who can resist his will?

And of course, if you'd like to answer that question with reverence and figure it out theologically, I don't mind. But if you say to yourself, you know what? God, how dare you give grace to some and not grace to everybody?

There's a response for you. And here's the response. You ought to just bite your lip and hold your tongue. But who are you, old man, to answer back to God? We're not talking about robots here. We're talking about potters and molders and clay.

Will, what does molded say to the molder? Why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump? Hear that well, out of the same lump, one vessel for honorable use, China and another for dishonorable use, a trash can.