The Whole Christ (part 6)

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The Whole Christ (part 7)

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So we are once again talking about the whole Christ if you have not read the book or Have it there's
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Copies out here on the book table for your purchase There's also the
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Kindle edition online of course that you can buy as well We're gonna do some more review again this morning and then also get into the next chapter although Interestingly enough
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I think even Sinclair Ferguson at this point in the book acknowledges that a review is in order because really chapter 6 is
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Basically a review of everything that has come before in the book, so this is going to be a lot of Today's lesson is going to be a lot of trying to put a bow on the first part of the book about legalism
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All right, and so you're gonna hear a lot about what we already did But we're gonna try to look at it again from slightly different angles.
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I Thank you very much. I know that this is difficult sometimes to follow It's difficult to teach through too.
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I'll just let you know So for any of you who feel like we're being really repetitive
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I hope no one feels that way Andrew and I really feel like it's very important to do a lot of review each time because there's just so many nuances and intricacies to this that and also
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Attendance in the summer is so sporadic of some people are here one week and then not here the next week and whatnot that we Feel like it's really important to cover lots of things.
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We also think maybe the secret to helping you understand better is That because you can actually go online to Ligonier and hear
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Sinclair Ferguson teach through this book Is that maybe our problem is we're not speaking with a
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Scottish accent So I'm not prepared for this week to do that. However, Andrew is going to practice and so next week
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Next week Andrew's gonna teach with a Scottish accent. Okay. All right. All right. So the subtitle of the book
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The whole Christ is Legalism antinomian ism and gospel assurance why the marrow controversy still matters.
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All right So for the beginning of our review, let's start start with the terms legalism Legalism the our working definition that we've been using here in the class is that it is bringing some element of the law or obedience into justification
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Okay into your salvation into your merit with God That's legalism
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Antinomian ism is on the other side of the spectrum and that's rejecting any role of the law in the life of the believer entirely
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All right. So you have on the one hand Bringing bringing law in and on the other hand you have pushing law completely out
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Okay, and We've been working with the great bowling analogy all this time and we've said that really we can think of legalism and antinomian ism as the two gutters on the extreme side of The bowling lane and that really the biblical
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Answer the biblical thought the correct thinking is somewhere in between those two
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All right that we want to stay in the lane and not end up in the gutters on either side
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However No, sorry and the Merrill controversy
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Which we've mentioned several times is named for the book the Merrill of modern divinity, which was a 1700s 18th century
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Book from England written by a barber surgeon named Edward Fisher He was a lay preacher a lay theologian
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And this controversy erupted Several decades after he wrote the book because of a
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Argument that took place in the Scottish Presbytery Where there was one group of folks who were saying that when presenting the gospel you need to tell the hearers that you need to forsake sin in order to be saved and To the point where you should not preach the gospel to people who don't show any remorse
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Or who aren't showing any sign of repentance already? And the
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Merrill men as they call themselves the folks who had read this book Thomas Boston most prominently among them said no that we need to offer
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Christ's to all with the promise of justification to the ungodly who believes period and and So the
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Presbytery on one side looked at the Merrill men, and they said you guys are antinomians you're saying that if grace is free, and it doesn't matter they don't have to repent and The Merrill men on the other side were saying you guys are legalists because you're saying that unless they obey and do x y & z
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They can't be saved Now who was right, right?
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we'd probably side with more with the Merrill men in terms of the words that I'm using and You know
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I think our bias and Sinclair Ferguson's bias sort of comes through in that Even in the way, we're trying to describe it, and I think we're maybe even being a little bit
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Overly unfair to the Scottish Presbytery, but they still were an error and needed some correcting
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Because the Presbytery was not completely rejecting salvation by grace if you ask them is
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Salvation by grace is it by faith alone. You know all the all the solos. They were a hundred percent on board with that Right they didn't they believe that firmly they argued for that firmly and the
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Merrill men on the other side They kept saying no, we are not antinomian you know that we want to see fruits of repentance and fruits of the
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Spirit and the believers when they're once they're saved and That there should be evidences of salvation, and they can't just get saved and then do whatever they want
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Right and so the both of them there was you know Accusations being hurled and isms being thrown at people
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But in fact like we like we've been saying there's Somewhere in the middle that we want to land and then we started talking about separation and whenever we talk about separation
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We're inevitably going to be talking about sin and sinful thinking When we separate the work of Christ from the person of Christ Right that leads to this fundamentally broken theology
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When we focus entirely on the work of Christ rather than the person of Christ we get fundamentally broken
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Theology because instead of talking about how do I preach Christ we start thinking about how do
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I offer the benefits of Christ? That's usually the first symptom of this
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Separate thinking Christ himself ceases to be central in this perspective and becomes a means to an end
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Right he turns into for lack of a better way of putting it the get out of hell free card
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And we get into this really wrong thinking of this idea of transactional grace Does anybody remember what transactional grace was wake you up this way
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Andrew Do you remember right yep
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And we very wrongly start thinking that God loves you because something right
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God loves you because you do good. God loves you because You obey
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God loves you because and here's the really bad one because Christ died for you right
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Does God the Father love us because Christ died for us? What's the verse that very clearly tells us that's wrong?
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Romans 5 8 that's not the one I had in mind, but that is a good one John 3 16 right for God so loved the world that he gave his son.
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It's the complete opposite Right God does not love us because Christ died for us
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Christ died for us because God the Father loved us and sent our son To die on our behalf, and then we explored the root of not just legalism but also surprisingly antinomianism that we saw that the separation of the law from the lawgiver
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Right the law from the lawgiver It's when we focus entirely on the rules and not on the gracious person who?
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Made those rules and his nature and his reasons his motivations You remember we spent a quite quite a bit of time two different weeks looking at the fall
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With Eve in the garden and Eve took her eyes off of paradise She took her eyes off the blessings that God had completely surrounded her with Off of his gracious nature his goodness his kindness his love and instead she got this sort of tragic tunnel vision where she could only see a rule and it was a rule she didn't like and Suddenly when you get this tunnel vision, and you look only at the you focus entirely on the rules
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God starts to look like an ogre Right he's just a rule maker at this point.
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He's a dictator with this like cold -hearted demand for unreasonable conformity I Get this a lot from my kids
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Right when we're kids we I like all kids do this why? Because I said so that's why
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All right at some point you just you give up you like I I don't have time to give you the full explanation Just go with because I said so but there is no because I said so with God He has his gracious nature his his goodness his kindness his love all these things are the motivations behind the law
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It's never just because I said so but when we focus entirely on the rules we start thinking the only reason we have to do this is because God said so and We start to think of them as someone who will we wrongly start to think of God as someone who will think of us well when we obey and Crush us if we do not
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God has become he whose favor must be earned right remember that and What does that sound like if you start thinking of God as he whose favor must be earned?
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What is that? works its works its Legalism Yeah, so even though aunt
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Eve you would say is being antinomian and that she's rebelling against the law in fact that there's this common ancestor between both legalism and antinomian ism in that it's
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All about thinking wrongly about God and his favor You've bought into the lie that there is something anything that we can do to change
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God's disposition toward us And so when you have this wrong view of God, there's just these two reactions you can react to this lie either with legalism and You can say
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I am scared of this ogre God and So I will work very hard to earn his favor because I don't want him to punish me
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I don't want bad things to come in my life. I don't want to go to hell So I'm going to do all the things that I'm supposed to do.
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That's the pharaoh cynical reaction Right, or there's the antinomian reaction, which is
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I refuse to obey this ogre God. I'm gonna go my own way He doesn't deserve my obedience
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What's the first question of the Westminster shorter catechism? What is the chief end of man?
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Anybody remember the answer to glorify
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God and enjoy him forever. That's a very important and It's a very important and Can unbelievers glorify
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God Can God bring glory will
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God glorify himself despite of them? Yes Well unbelievers have any joy in God's glory
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No will believers Yes, the gospel.
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I'm sorry sin separates God's the glorification of God from our joy, right?
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Whereas the gospel brings it together The gospel allows us to have for that chief end of man to once again be true and That joy and God's glory are no longer separate instead of having this, you know, joyless obedience kind of thing
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Our joy can be found in his glory. So now at this point
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We started looking at the symptoms of the legalist spirit Because as we've tried to prove
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Andrew and I often and Sinclair Ferguson puts out as a thesis All of us are legalists in some fashion
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We're all legalists. We all do this. We all separate the rules from the rule giver
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Not always but we have that spirit in us that tendency that just sort of continually tempts us to do this and the first symptom
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That I want to focus on this morning is self -reliance and self -righteousness Because when we're convicted of our sin our reaction is
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I will now try much harder I will do better All right, and what did
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Bob say about what was wrong with that statement? Do you remember a couple weeks ago? Too much
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I and too much trying That's right in that sentence That's such a worldly response when we do that And as Andrew said last week, it's the response we have when we fall off the diet wagon, right if we're trying to lose weight
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We'll say like I messed up. I'll try harder. I'll do better It's what we do when we mess up at work
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And we make a mistake. Oh, I messed up. I'll try harder. I'll do better next time. But when we apply
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Secular thinking like this to the sacred that's when we're running into trouble We're rewarded in a diet by losing weight by our works
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We're rewarded at at our job through what we do how we perform But we're not saved by our works nor do we earn any further merit from God by good works after we're saved
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Let's turn to Luke 17, please Luke 17. Can someone read verses 7 through 10?
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We are unworthy servants. We have only done what was our duty? right
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That's the attitude the mindset that we ought to have When we're talking about our service to God, we're not doing it to earn anything more from him
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We're doing it because we ought to right now in this this is like one of those teachings of Christ one of his many of the lesser to the greater right where you say like This is how you would treat your earthly master.
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So What would you do for your heavenly master right for your heavenly father?
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that it's not just a relationship of master that it's also a relationship of father and Son and family and so instead of doing it purely out of duty
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Like it says at the end we have other passages where we talk about serving out of love But regardless the point is is we're doing it because we ought to we're doing it
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We are still unworthy servants no matter how good we quote -unquote do Look also at Hebrews chapter 13
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Hebrews chapter 13 verse 21. We'll probably get to this verse with pastor
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Mike sometime in 2021 Let's look at we'll start at 20 now May the God of peace who brought again from the dead our
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Lord Jesus the great Shepherd of the sheep By the blood of the eternal covenant equip you with everything good that you may do his will working in us or You in some manuscripts, but working in us that which is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ to whom be glory forever and ever
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Amen, I think it was MacArthur that I heard this from once that said do you realize that when you get to heaven and You receive your reward and God says well done good and faithful servant
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That what he is rewarding you for is not what you've done, but what Christ has done in you
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I mean how it's it's completely and totally unfair, but it's it's wonderfully unfair in our favor
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That God is not rewarding us for anything we've done but for what he has done in us
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For what he has done in us through us by his power by his spirit With the gifts that he gave us, right?
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We are unworthy We are unworthy. So when we purpose to do better We become like the
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Galatians We fall from grace. We fail to believe the righteousness of Christ alone is sufficient to entitle us
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Now does sanctification confirm justification? Yes, or no? Yes Absolutely does sanctification strengthen our justification new
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No, it does not It could strengthen our assurance It could strengthen our it certainly will strengthen our
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Christian walk. It'll strengthen our character It'll strengthen our ability to edify others right
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But it does not strengthen our justification in terms of merit
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Right, which is a big deal for the Catholic Church in particular in terms of merit You will not earn any more brownie points any more merit with God through your good works after you're saved
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Why how does God love you? How well does God love you now and how well has he loved you since eternity past anybody?
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How well how does God love does he love like Perfectly thank you.
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He loves you perfectly if it's perfect. Can he love you any more than perfect? No If it's perfect, can he love you any less?
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Is there any room for it to go down? No It's perfect It's perfect.
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And that's how we got last time into talking about penance with Andrew about the mistake of replacing repentance with penance
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Okay, repentance with penance now Luther nailed this pardon the pun With number one and number two of his 95 theses, okay
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Here's number one of his the has who's read all 95 of Luther's theses Anybody I highly recommend it.
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It's really fascinating to go through Just to read through them Because you can see how it's like this early point in Luther's thinking and everything anyway,
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I digress anyway number one Okay, when our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said repent
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Matthew 417 he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance
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That's number one when our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said repent He willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
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Does that sound good? You cannot it's okay.
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Yes. That's the right answer. Yes is the right answer. Very good. Okay What does it mean your entire life is one of repentance?
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Anybody can you can anybody explain that? Tell me what that looks like Brian. Yeah, it's like a complete change in direction of our life, right?
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total reversal of thinking We go from being enemies of God trying to figure out all the ways that we can get away with stuff to instead
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Right turning and forsaking sin hating sin Thesis number two this word cannot be understood that word repentance
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This word cannot be understood as referring to the sacrament of penance That is confession and satisfaction as administered by the clergy
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What is penance? Anyone got a good definition.
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Yeah Making up for the sin that you've done. That's a good way to put it.
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Yep making up for the sin that you've done Like doing a bunch of good deeds Right to to you've done a bunch of bad things.
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So the scales way down here So let's do a couple of good things and get it back up, right? There's this idea that there's specific concrete acts that a priest could prescribe for sin as part of the sacramental system right and Repentance is not this punctiliar decision of a movement
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Movement But a radical heart transformation that reverses the whole direction of life and the proper biblical order of salutis
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Those of you who are here for that lesson What comes first repentance or faith? What comes first repentance or faith?
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Can we do it faith excellent, whoo, good job
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Andrew they remembered It must be faith why does it have to be faith
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Why couldn't it be repentance first what logically speaking? Why does it have to be faith first? What's that?
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Yes Right faith is what like shows you that you have a sinful nature in the first place
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Brian We need to know what we're turning to exactly, right?
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There are plenty of yeah, so go ahead Andrew, right, right.
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Yes, exactly, right. Yep True repentance can only take place in the context of true faith
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Right Brian that's great. Like that idea of like you have to know what you're turning towards There are plenty of religious people in the world who forsake their previous life their previous actions and say
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I'm gonna do something I'm gonna do better. I'm gonna do something else, right? plenty All over the world
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Why aren't they saved because they're not turning in the right direction They turned but they don't know what they're turning towards Ferguson puts the bow on this whole discussion by comparing contracts with covenants
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Okay contracts their bargains with conditions Maybe some of you have heard when you know
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The Old Testament is full of language about covenants and maybe some of you have even heard it described when someone says what's a covenant?
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Someone say well, it's like a contract But it's not it's very different Okay, a contract is one like I said, it's it's got it's a bargain with conditions
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So let's put it in biblical language It would be as if God said I will be your
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God if you live in a manner worthy of me Okay, that would be a contract you have one end of the bargain.
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I got another Right you fulfill yours. I fulfill mine covenants are unconditional promises with implications
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So in biblical language, it's this I will be your God therefore
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You will be my people It's not if it's there for promise
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From God, I will be your I am the Lord your God Right, that's the how the
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Decalogue begins. I'm the Lord your God who brought you out of slavery, right the implication
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You shall have no other gods before me Right, he's still the
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Lord your God no matter what but because he is we ought to Have no other gods before him
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For the Christian the law is not a rod to beat our backs. It's not a covenant of works
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There's no checklist to be fulfilled or promise of good circumstances if only we would obey
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Which I think is a really an error, we're all prone to fall into If we come to think of God as one whose total focus is on exposing our sin
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Then we're gonna become too short -sighted to see his grace So, let me ask you do you ever find yourself doing good
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So if you're honest with yourself that you're doing good solely because you want to avoid something bad happening, right?
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I'm pretty sure we've all done that at least once if you've ever been three years old or more subtly
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Do you ever blame something bad happening on your own failure to do good?
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Do you ever say to yourself if only I hadn't skipped my regular morning devotions If only
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I hadn't just told that if I only hadn't told that lie just to make that person like me more something like that Yes, it has consequences.
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But where's our thinking when children are young and immature? The three -year -old they obey not because they have a good heart or because they love you
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But because they're afraid of the consequences to be completely honest now as they mature that changes
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It's less about the fear of the consequences and more about the heart But at first when they're immature, it's not even when they're sorry, they're not sorry for what they've done wrong
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They're just sorry they got caught and so it is with us when our spiritual thinking is immature
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So what how should we actually think about the law then as Christians? What's the right way to think about the law?
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Yes Yeah, sure. Go ahead. Mm -hmm. Yeah.
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Yeah, right.
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Yes Exactly, right.
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Yeah, like they're equal parties in a contract, right? Both parties are equal. They both come into it voluntarily They both agree and thus they both at any moment could one of them could say all right,
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I'm out, right? Yeah, right
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The Covenant with God is unconditional. It's entirely one -sided all from his side. Yep.
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Yeah So not covenant of works. So how so how should we actually think about the law?
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Anybody want to tell me how they think about the law in their daily life? What does the law mean to you as a
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Christian? Yes Sounds good.
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I'm gonna turn there. I'm gonna read that Galatians 324 Maybe you had to memorize you could just to set it to us, but I'll read it
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So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be
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Justified by faith right guardian and I think the King James Version like says calls it the schoolmaster the tutor, right?
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Directing us towards Christ Yep, that's a good one. That's a very good one What else because we already are at Christ, right we've been directed towards him it once we're saved
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So in that sense, it's it's not just getting us there. But since we are there it's more like a course correction, right
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Right that I need the Holy Spirit. Yeah the Spirit of Christ. Yep.
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Yep. Yep Do you put it in terms of I think you're getting on exactly what the
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Puritans said they would they would call it the rule Of life as opposed to a covenant of works. It's a rule of life rule for our lives guidance for our lives
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Showing us how to be more Christlike Ferguson says that Satan has been driving people to the law as a contract
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Pressing down on our failure to keep its terms Confirming our worst fears about our relationship to God blackmailing us into further bondage in our legalism
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Spurgeon I'll get you a sec Spurgeon related. He would he he said that oftentimes when he was convicted of sin
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He heard and this is Spurgeon we're talking about so he's not charismatic not like a literal hearing of this
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But rather, you know that this this satanic whisper was down there in his heart where he'd say look
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You have sinned you have broken God's law You're under condemnation, how could you call yourself a
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Christian? How could you call yourself a Christian or worse yet?
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How could you think of yourself even fit to be a pastor? That's the lie that's coming in Yes, right, yes
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Guilty. Yeah, right. Exactly, right the that the law came to expose our guilt to show the guilt
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All right Satan he can't stop our salvation. So instead he's laser focused on destroying our peace and our liberty and our joy in God Right.
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What is the response? To that temptation that Spurgeon had what's like the proper response to that Dave?
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Yes Throw the inkwell Across the room.
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It's exactly right. Yeah Romans 8 1 If you want to read that for us, right, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus Like most things of satanic lies, there's an element of truth to it, right?
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We're not worthy We don't deserve to call ourselves
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Christians We don't deserve anything except hell But there is now no condemnation in Christ Jesus So the ongoing function of God's law is not to serve as a standard to be met for some kind of merit or credit with God, but it's the guide for Christian living.
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I already said that it's an implication to go back to the Covenant idea It's an implication of our salvation.
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Not a condition Okay, so because we are saved therefore We will follow the law as a guidance for our life as a rule of life
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And we don't want to let our sense of personal identity or worth become entwined with our performance and this is something that I myself really struggled with when
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I was a younger Christian that I put myself on this performance -based treadmill and I told myself that everything was okay in my life because I was doing
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X Y & Z. I had that mental checklist. I didn't even consciously admit it to myself, but I that's what was happening
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And I said everything's okay with me and God as long as I'm doing X Y & Z. I Completely believed
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I was saved. I completely believed that I had been saved by grace But now I was sort of working on keeping myself that way
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Right, and how does that affect our service to God? When we're on that performance treadmill, how does it affect it in a negative way?
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Let's go with that Ryan Right.
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Yep. It steals God glory because now it's like all about you, right? It makes you not useful to him because you're stressed out about how well you're doing.
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What about looking at others? What do you do when if you're thinking in that mindset and you see someone else?
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Doing well Serving God in a really great way Like really big fruit
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What do you start to think? Envy exactly you start to get jealous right
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They're gonna recognize I'm not oh, no, what if that means that they're more holy than I am
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Right, yeah Yeah, it robs us of joy. Exactly all the way back to the beginning thing, right?
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It's separating God's glory from our joy Right, you're not depending on God to empower you you're operating by the flesh.
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I'm just repeating this for the microphone Going back to the what
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I said earlier about how when we do good, it's God doing good through us, right? Are what our gifts?
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Do you earn gifts? No, right do
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I earn my birthday present? No, why do
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I get a birthday present? Because I managed to live I'm still here
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Not dead. Here's a birthday present, right? If I earned the gift, it's not really a gift anymore, right
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Now, what is it instead if I earned it? It's a it's a reward. It's a bonus. It's something right?
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It's not a gift. The Holy Spirit gives us spiritual gifts
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To serve right not spiritual rewards We should not be jealous when we see other people with different gifts or better get quote -unquote better Gifts than us
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Paul goes through this a lot Right where we don't want to start to get into this jealous mode of of you know
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Like oh, well, I'm I'm just an ear and I really want to be an eye So, you know that I'll be jealous of the eye because I want to be able to see you know
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Those those types of things now, we also saw another symptom
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And we're gonna expand upon it more again this morning where we start. We're almost out of time
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So I'm gonna get through this we start putting qualifications on the gospel We start putting qualifications on the gospel that did we actually
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Andrew did you get to the wedding feast last time we did? Okay, I can't remember if we I don't know if you did or not
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All right. Anybody remember if Andrew got to the wedding feast parable last week. No one's remembering. Maybe you didn't. All right.
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Here we go parable of the wedding feast in Matthew 22 Okay, let's turn there
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Matthew 22 Now we're really gonna run out of time, that's all right We'll just start service late.
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Okay All right, rather than read the entire thing
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Hit the highlights here of what the wedding feast parable is about so Jesus saying that the kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast
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Right, and he sends out his servants to invite One group of people and they're all like now we're too busy.
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We can't come to your wedding Then there's another group of people who even you know attack the servants treat them shamefully kill them and in this case, you know in this part of the parable the what he's saying is that the the servants are like the prophets who came in the
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Old Testament times and now even in this time with Jesus to the To preach to the
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Jews and the Jews said no And rejected him and then and then the king is angry and he
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Sends out the certain destroys those who Rejected him and then he says to his servants that the feast is ready in verse 8
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But those who were invited were not worthy go therefore to the main roads and invite everybody Right.
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Just find some people get them in here Let's go and those servants went out onto the roads and gathered all whom they found both bad and good both bad and good
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So the wedding hall was filled with guests do you get a little uncomfortable when you think about both bad and good
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Coming in. Have you ever?
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Had this is where qualifications on the gospel come in Have you ever had it creep into your mind where you think to yourself that people that you disdain or disapprove of that?
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They actually could get saved that it's still possible that when
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God says pray for your enemies and Bless them who curse you He's not saying pray for fire to rain down on their heads
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Have we ever let it creep into our minds that people who are different from us? People who are clearly unrepentant in their sin that they can't have their hearts pricked by the gospel
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That they're too far gone in the words of Samuel Rutherford He said reprobates have as fair a warrant to believe in Christ as the elect have
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Reprobates have as fair a warrant to believe in Christ as the elect have And Rutherford was
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Certainly not lax in his Calvinism. We're all very familiar with that parable of the
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Pharisee and the tax collector in the temple, right? I Think in fact,
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I think in Ferguson thinks we're too familiar with it We're not shocked by it anymore when
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Jesus told that parable in the first place Everyone was shocked. The Pharisee was
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God's man. I Mean if you want to save Jesus fine the tax collector, maybe he earned himself some step back towards God's good favor fine
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You know, he's turning around. Maybe we'll say that but there's surely but surely the
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Pharisee was also justified Because he's God's man But no
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Jesus says that this man the tax collector went home justified Not the other
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Not the other And this conclusion should still shock us because maybe just maybe
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Sometimes on our modern evangelical reformed thinking we have more in common with the Pharisee than the tax collector
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Sometimes we end up as accidental Pharisees and we end up as accidental Pharisees. We'll review this again next week
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But I just want to give you the list We sometimes end up as accidental Pharisees when we're looking down on another person
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Because it implies that we've merited more grace When we assume that our devotion to the
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Lord is the reason for God's acceptance When we assume that we're accepted because of a decision we made or because of our years of commitment to him
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Then we're like those servants who complained because they served God from They served the master from the morning straight through and got paid the same as the ones who showed up at the very last hour
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And that we treat with contempt and that's Luke's expression an embarrassing breach of etiquette or an outward show of sorrow
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Charles Wesley wrote in one of his hymns Oh Jesus full of truth and grace more full of grace than I of sin
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More full of grace than I of sin Not that grace is some kind of amount or commodity but in this way sin dropped us
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From the innocence of Eden to death Christ's grace did not just pardon us and get us back to there
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It didn't just bring us back to Eden's innocence Because if it did if that was all then we'd be back at square one
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And just like Adam and Eve there'd be a possibility of falling again No, Christ's grace goes beyond our sin because it not only takes us back to creation
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Eden it secures for us glorified Eden Permanently righteous
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Ferguson says that where sin abounds where the law condemns their grace abounds all the more
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This is the flood tide that drowns legalism in its tracks now
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We have no time for questions But I will say this if right now you're thinking to yourself that this sounds a little bit too much like free grace if you think
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I'm on the verge of antinomianism I I Refer you to the wisdom of Martin Lloyd -jones who said this free grace of God and salvation is always exposed to that charge of antinomianism if You do not make people say that sometimes if you are not misunderstood or slanderously
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Reported from the standpoint of antinomianism it is because you do not believe the gospel truly and you do not preach it truly
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If you're preaching it truly at least sometimes it ought to sound like you're on the verge of antinomianism
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We're on safe ground when we preach grace this free because that's the conclusion that people drew of Paul's gospel in Romans 5 20 to 21 where he's preaching about free grace that leads to Romans 6 1 where he says what shall we say then that?
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We should go on sinning that grace may abound Right even Paul was accused of this
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So if that's how you're preaching then you've got something in common with Paul And I'm that's safe ground to be on and so next week
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Andrew will pick up at Romans 6 2 Which is by no means and we will finally get to the chapters on antinomianism and how we make sure that even as we're offering this gospel full and free that we steer clear of that left gutter of Antinomianism, okay
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Let's pray Heavenly Father. Thank you so much Lord for our time this morning For everyone's attention,
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I pray Lord that as we look at these Topics in this discussion that it would edify us
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That you would help us Lord to think biblically and properly about how we offer the gospel about how we
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Follow the law in our lives about how we relate to you and most especially even the picture we have in our minds of you
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We thank you so much Lord that it is not up to us That it's not up to us to earn our salvation in the first place
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It's not up to us to keep our salvation afterwards that you have done it all that you have Provided us grace full and free
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That when we trust in you and believe in your name and believe in your son whom you've raised from the dead