THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE: INTRODUCTION (1 of 12)

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THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE: DEFINITIONS & HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE (2 of 12)

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the doctrines of grace. Well the first thing that we need to define is words, right?

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So you see number one there, the New Testament word that we get, doctrine, is a translation of a

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Greek word. It's a term from which we get our word, didactic. The Greek word is didakha,

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I believe. It really just means the written verbal instruction.

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So it can either be given as I'm speaking to you right now or written in written form, but it is instruction.

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This is important to define. Have you ever heard somebody in the church say,

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I'm not all into that doctrine stuff. I don't want to dive into the doctrine.

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Have you ever heard that seriously? I've heard it a hundred times. I don't want to get into the doctrine stuff.

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So you're telling me you're not into the written word. That's essentially what you're saying when you say I'm not into doctrine.

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I'm not into the written word because that's all this is, is didactic teaching. It simply means teaching and instruction, right?

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It's simple. Teaching and instruction. Paul over in Romans chapter 6,

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I believe, said but thanks be to God. Yep, Romans 6 17 says, but thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of, what, teaching to which you were committed.

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It's important. Doctrine is teaching. It is teaching and instruction or instruction.

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Well the second word in the doctrines of grace, it's the teaching of, and we have now grace.

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Number two, grace speaks of the bestowal of that which is not merited.

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Grace speaks of the bestowal of that which is not merited.

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And it's not merited by the recipient and there is already an error in your book.

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So I need you to scratch out the or and put a but. By the recipient but favor given to one unworthy of it.

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You have a note section on your side, by the way, as you see that. I made you to put that there. Jot down Romans 5 10 there on your notes.

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Paul said, for if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his son.

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We were what? Enemies. Are enemies worthy? Do enemies merit favor?

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No. That's simply grace. Grace is that which is bestowed that is not merited.

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God's favor toward the unworthy. This is why the topic that we are covering over these next 12 weeks have been titled the doctrines, the didactic teaching of grace.

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Of what is not been what has not been merited or gained by favor.

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And it's because these doctrines they they point to the teaching of that unmerited favor that God himself,

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God alone has bestowed upon his people in a way that no other doctrine in all of Scripture can.

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What I'm telling you is the doctrine that we're studying over the next 12 weeks there is no other doctrine in all of Scripture that points to that truth in greater light.

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None. That we do not deserve anything. We did not earn anything.

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It is all of him. The doctrines of grace. The study, the teaching of that grace of God.

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That's why these are so important. So number three there.

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Generally understood, and you've probably heard of these, the doctrines of grace contain five basic tenets.

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These can easily be retained through the use of a, it's an acrostic, tulip.

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Notice in our little thing I tried to draw a tulip in the middle of that O.

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I think I did okay. You can't see it. Tulip, aka Calvinism. And you see in the notes we have this.

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The T stands for total depravity. Again, this may be basic for some of you,

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I get that, but if we have it in our notes and for some this is all fresh and new, but we have to start at the foundations, right?

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Total depravity is where it starts. The second one is U in the tulip.

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It's unconditional election. Unconditional election.

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The third one, and this is where it gets hard for for us old Southern Baptists, is the

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L. Limited atonement. I actually don't like that phrase and when we get to the week of limited atonement

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I'll tell you the phrase I like better, but we'll we stick with the acrostic now because I don't know another flower that we can throw a word in there for.

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It's a limited atonement. The I in tulip stands for irresistible grace.

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Irresistible grace. And again, we'll talk about these in greater detail.

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We're gonna look at each one of these each week as you can see in our breakdown for the course breakdown.

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And lastly, the P is is the one that everyone likes and everyone wants to hold to, is perseverance of the

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Saints. Perseverance, yes. If you miss a week, you mean?

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Oh, then yell at me and tell me that I'm moving too quickly and you need you need that information.

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Or, I know, do

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I need to slow down? Because I can slow down. I need to slow down. I need to make sure to be careful with that.

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All right. Well, we'll just have to make sure and if anybody misses something, please, you're welcome to come up to me.

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If you're not comfortable raising your hand in the group, come up to me afterwards. So I'll show you in the book.

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We'll get it good. And nobody's looking at your book. That's your book. So if you misspell, which I would be, then there's nobody to laugh at you.

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Perseverance of the Saints. Now here, I want to say this about these. All five of these points stand and fall together.

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All five of these points stand and fall together. If any of these five points is wrong, then all of them are wrong.

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They build upon each other and they must be together. If any of them, if you do not hold, have you ever heard somebody say, well,

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I'm a three -point Calvinist. I'm a four -point Calvinist. Yeah, I'm being facetious, but usually in that situation,

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I kind of smirk and I go, you mean you don't read or you don't study? I get the point.

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I get why somebody would say that. The problem is when you start to dive into these doctrines, and as we're going to look at them over the next few weeks, you'll begin to see, oh my goodness, if we let go of any one of these.

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So for example, if I let go of total depravity, if I just don't want to hold to total depravity, then

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I can't hold the perseverance of the Saints. I can't because it falls.

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It just crumbles in front of it. If I can't hold to unconditional election, then I can't have irresistible grace.

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If I don't have limited atonement, well then I definitely don't have perseverance of the Saints. I definitely don't have irresistible grace.

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I can't pick and choose in any of these. If you don't hold to one of them, then congratulations, you're

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Roman Catholic, because you don't hold to any of them. I'm being facetious.

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Hey listen, I told you before we started this, humility and love, and maybe

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I'm not showing that right now. Maybe I'm being a little too facetious, but remember as we go into this, we have brothers and sisters that are well -meaning, that think differently than this stuff, and we love them, and we're not gonna be cruel and try and beat them over the head with all this stuff.

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Okay, all right, everybody with me so far? We made it through page one. Look at that. All right, yep, 25 minutes on page one.

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All right, look at page two. This leads to the next question, B. Why are the doctrines of grace important?

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I get asked this a lot. I'll talk to some pastors and they'll say, well

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I get why I need to hold to these, I learned it in seminary and I get that, but why is it important for the average church member to know these things?

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You'd be surprised how many pastors will tell you. Even pastors in big Southern Baptist churches in this area hold to these doctrines, but tell me,

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I would never tell anyone. I would never preach from the bullpen. That's very elitist of them.

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You mean, like, what's an everyday Christian? Like, what's an average Christian? I thought all Scripture was profitable for reproof, for reproach, for correction.

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The man of God would be lacking nothing, right? They'd be equipped, right? But every Christian is called to know what's in Scripture, but that's what we see, right?

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First and foremost, why is it important to know these doctrines? Look at number one, they're biblical doctrines.

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If they're biblical, then that's enough. All Scripture, as I said, is profitable.

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We see God's Word as he himself has given us special revelation of himself.

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Why would we neglect portions? Why would we neglect certain concepts and doctrines and ideas that are in there?

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Why would we ignore them to our own peril? We need them.

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They are literally the foundation of who God is and how he acts as defined by him and as he exposes man's heart.

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Number two, they are central to soteriology. Soteriology, sorry, it's the study of salvation.

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If you want to just write salvation, write salvation. Soteriology, S -O -T,

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E -I -O, S -O -T -E -R, oh, did

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I leave the R out? My bad. S -O -T -E -R -I -O -L -O -G -Y.

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I told you, I'm staring at the word and I was spelling it wrong. Number three, why are the doctrines of grace important?

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They glorify God and all of his perfection. As you guys will see over the next few weeks, man, when you come to these doctrines at first, it's almost like you got saved again.

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I mean, you are overwhelmed by the glory and magnificence of such a God that is altogether separate from us.

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And you begin to see him for who he is, which is the purpose of his word, the purpose of his truth. They glorify him.

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Number four, they help guard against faulty invitations and carnal methods in the church.

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They guard against faulty invitations and carnal methods in the church.

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Do we need this kind of protection in the church today? Yeah, an idol called evangelism?

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Yes. So when we look at the landscape of Finianism, which we'll talk about when we talk about historical concept, but revivalism is we use carnal methods.

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We use whatever means. We try and draw them emotionally. We need a decision to be made and we draw them down the aisle and we do these big group baptisms and everybody gets excited and everybody seems to, their lives are changing, there's tears and everyone's, oh man,

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God's working, God's working. And a month later, 80 % of them are nowhere to be found. It's because we're using carnal methods.

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We're using invitations that are worldly, not invitations as the

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New Testament says, repent and believe. And these doctrines, they guard us from that.

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Number five, and this one's important, they kill all forms of pride and arrogance.

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All forms of pride and arrogance in the heart of man towards meriting

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God's favor. And that's what we need to see in God's Word, don't we?

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When you go to God's Word, you see the truth. One, you see a mirror of who you are and two, you see the glory of God and you see the contrast between the two and your pride is stripped from you.

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Arrogance is stripped from you because you brought nothing to the table except for the sin that was necessary to be saved from.

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Period. C, that leads us to C, what are the dangers of teaching this doctrine?

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Make no mistake, there are dangers to this. Why do you think there's men that hold to this doctrine but say

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I'll never teach it to the people? There's a reason for it. There's dangers in teaching deep doctrine like this.

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Number one, look at there. All doctrines are dangerous if misrepresented.

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All doctrines are dangerous if misrepresented. The danger of these doctrines are magnified because they deal directly with the area of salvation.

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Salvation is central to the Christian life, right? And this is such a important and magnificent doctrine that when we get to it, we're getting closer and closer to that fine point of truth and it's so easy to fall off of the fine point of truth.

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And when you do, it can be catastrophic. There's dangers there. Number two, these doctrines can produce imbalance in our sovereignty and man's responsibility.

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That must be carefully maintained. If you look at it historically, Calvinism rises and falls over and over and over within the church.

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And you know why? Because we get to the truth, but then we swing the pendulum and we become what's known as hyper -Calvinist.

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As a matter of fact, I think it's on the back of your folder, on the very back, there's a book by Spurgeon. I believe

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Spurgeon against the hyper -Calvinist is on that list. It should be on that list. Excellent, excellent read.

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It'll scare you to death. But when you get to these doctrines and then you swing the pendulum the other way, it's damaging.

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And then hyper -Calvinism kills everything it touches. So there's a danger to this. We must, must, must be very, very careful.

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Number three, theological imbalance in this area thwarts evangelism.

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Hyper -Calvinist do not evangelize. It kills, it thwarts the fervor and purpose in the

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Christian life. It destroys it. You know why? Because they come to the table and they go,

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God's sovereign, God does what he wants to do. God saves. I guess I'm just gonna sit here and wait for him to bring the elect to me.

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You see the imbalance there? It's godless. See the example on the next page, as a matter of fact.

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Look to, look to page three. We have a box there. It says two extremes we must avoid. Two extremes we must avoid.

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Number one, disregard for man's responsibility. Disregard for man's responsibility creates an indifference an indifference in how?

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Concerning soul winning and passionate mission endeavors. By the way,

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I want you to know, if you study his church history, all modern missions, all great mission endeavors were started, launched, and carried out by Calvinist.

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Every one of them. Not a one by a hyper -Calvinist. They don't evangelize.

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God's sovereign, man's not responsible. That's an extreme we must avoid. The second one is disregard for God's sovereignty.

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Disregard for God's sovereignty. What does it do? It creates an atmosphere that we said a moment ago of carnal methodology, human manipulation, and extreme pragmatism.

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Why is that? Because if, if you diminish God's power to save,

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God's control over everything, you'll trust your own wisdom and human ingenuity. The moment you do that, you may see, think you're seeing fruit of the

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Holy Spirit at work, but most of the time you are simply seeing revivalism.

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That's all you're seeing. You don't see any depth of being filled with the

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Spirit. You don't see any depth of growing in the fear and knowledge of God. You see a lot of people who are a mile wide, an inch deep.

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They're spread thin everywhere, and they're using pragmatic means. I mean, look at, look at VBS. I'm not against a

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VBS. One day, maybe we'll have a building. Maybe we'll have a VBS. I love the opportunity. Evangelize the children, but oh, don't, please don't use pragmatic means.

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When you diminish the sovereignty of God, then you are bringing in means to try and manipulate those children into making decisions so that you can get baptisms, so that you can brag at the conference.

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And, and that may seem jaded, but I've grown up in that world, and I've been to the conferences. I've been to all of it, and trust me, it, that is a big part of it.

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Am I wrong? So, we cannot fall to these two extremes.

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Number four, misunderstandings of these doctrines can create pride and elitism.

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You'll see a pattern as I'm speaking through these, because all these kind of connect. Misunderstandings of these doctrines can create pride and elitism.

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Now, here's the thing. The opposite is true when properly understood. God's grace towards understanding sinners produces humility and love.

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So, the hyper -Calvinist, have you ever, have you ever seen the meme out there that says if you can't afford a seminary degree, go, go pick a fight with a

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Calvinist. You'll get a lecture. It's true, because there's a lot of cage -stage, idiot young guys out there that have read too much

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Piper and now think that they know everything. Am I wrong? It's true, right?

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I was one of those guys one time, carrying around your, your, your Piper books, right?

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Desiring God books, and throwing them at everybody, and trying to beat everybody down with your arguments. I've been there.

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But it's a distortion of this doctrine, and it creates pride and elitism. But the opposite is true in the other way.

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I've spent time with my brothers on the other side of the aisle. They are prideful, and arrogant, and elite, and they're thinking that they're not caring about these truths is the mature

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Christian that's not gonna argue over things. Pride and elitism.

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Both extremes, bad. Number five, the teaching of these doctrines in the context of present -day theological illiteracy may cause division within the local church.

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In this day of theological illiteracy, you know, I see a lot about how are we going to combat these

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Calvinists from coming into these existing churches and tearing them apart. And there are a lot of young guys that do that.

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They'll tear the church apart, but it's because of theological illiteracy, both maybe on their end and on the other end.

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The American church is so unbelievably illiterate biblically.

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They have a few memory verses done, they know their Bible drills, but they do not understand the concept of biblical theology as a whole.

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They have no real understanding of how this theology fits together, and the character and nature of God.

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And there's six reasons for this danger that causes division, okay? Let's look at those six reasons.

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These doctrines go against the grain of the carnal mind. The carnal mind, that's an understatement, isn't it?

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They're dramatically opposed to the natural mind. You can see

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I've got a couple verses down there, Romans 8, 6 or 7. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace.

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For the mind that is set on the flesh, what is it? It's hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law.

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Indeed, it cannot. The lost cannot see it.

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The natural mind cannot. And here's the thing, the Christian can, but often resist it, for the lack of renewing their minds through God's Word and through God's truth.

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Because the mind still must be renewed, even though you've been positionally made righteous, right?

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We talked about that Sunday. There is still the ongoing sanctification through the renewal of the mind.

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God doesn't just sanctify you through like some like spiritual beam of the

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Holy Spirit. It's the Holy Spirit within you using His Word and the renewal of your mind,

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His truth, who He is, that sanctifies you. You will not grow without it, right?

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That's God's Word and the carnal mind is against these doctrines. You see that passage there in 1

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Corinthians 2, the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, right? So turn to the next page, page 4.

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We see the second, this is the second reason for this danger. These doctrines undermine human arrogance and superiority.

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Told you you see a pattern there. Undermine human arrogance and superiority. They expose it, they crush it.

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These doctrines destroy it. Jonathan Edwards said, men are naturally proud creatures and he's right.

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Pride is in all of us. We want to be in control and these doctrines strip us of that.

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That passage there in 1 Corinthians 119, for it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning

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I will thwart. God's not going to allow you to share His glory.

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There's arrogance and superiority when we think that we know best, that we think we can define what's true.

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There again, 1 Corinthians 1, verse 27, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

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Why is that? Why did God do that? So that He gets all the glory.

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He chooses the foolish things and this doctrine shows it, but it really, it's a reason for this danger because our arrogance and superiority will then twist it and either take it to hyper

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Calvinism or twist it and avoid it altogether and hold to what some would call

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Arminianism or something else. We'll talk about that in historical context. The third, these doctrines rob man of a sense of being in control.

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You want to talk about a cat backed into a corner? Strip a man of what he feels like he's in control of.

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The heart of man plans his way but the Lord establishes his steps. The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the

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Lord. He turns it wherever he will. Remember the former things of old for I am

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God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done saying my counsel shall stand and I will accomplish my purposes.

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Not yours. You are not in control. You have zero control over your life and every time you do something that feels like you're in control it's only by the sovereign hand of a good and gracious God that declares all things, that gave you that opportunity.

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But they are dangerous because they're stripping us of that. We want to be in control.

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Page 5, number 4. Why are these dangerous? The doctrines destroy our concept of God's fairness.

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These doctrines destroy our concept of God's fairness. Our preconceived notions of who

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God is are often nothing more than an idol. We conjure up these ideas in our mind of who

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God is not based on the renewal of the mind from his word that's forming us. We'll take a verse here and a verse there and we'll take a little bit of our

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Sunday school class and a little bit of our little sermonette from our little sermonette preacher and we'll form this idea of who

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God is and then we create an idol and we stand it there and anytime that idol doesn't abide by your will, what happens?

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Feels like you're on sinking sand, doesn't it? Crumbles. What happens when you're on sinking sand?

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You panic. Causes you to be dangerous. Destroys your idea of fairness.

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You want to talk about fairness, go read Romans chapter 9. Paul has a little something to say about that.

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Number 5. These doctrines are often received first through the emotions instead of the mind.

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That's sad, isn't it? So it makes them dangerous. Man is receiving these emotionally instead of in the mind.

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A pastor by the name of O .S. Hawkins said men today would rather die than think. In fact, they do.

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We have all of communication around us, social media, advertisements.

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They appeal first to the emotions, don't they? And so oftentimes these doctrines and other doctrines are given to you pleading at your emotions and they distort things.

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And so whenever a person that is predisposed emotionally to love the concept of this idea of Calvinism, they're drawn to Calvinism not exegetically but because they're just predisposed to that kind of thinking somehow, some way, and they're dangerous.

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Or, and most the time, it goes so against their carnal mind and it goes against everything else that they become dangerous because now they're not thinking and looking at the text and trying to evaluate it exegetically and say whether or not it's true.

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They're declaring it's not true based on their emotion and they're dangerous. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your minds, right?

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You see, lots of people, if asked, would fundamentally disagree with Calvinism, wouldn't they?

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You walk up to any unbeliever in the grocery, here you walk up to even a believer in the grocery store, they will fundamentally deny the concept of God's sovereignty and being in total control and choosing whom he will and who he will not, right?

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They will oppose that but they have a carnal mind and our view of God is the same as theirs.

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That should give you pause, shouldn't it? So they are dangerous in here.

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It becomes dangerous when we come to this, that emotions is wrapped up in our minds.

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Number six, the last point that caused these to be dangerous is our traditions and past doctrinal teaching.

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Traditions and past doctrinal teachings. Jesus had something to say about that.

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When he answered them in Matthew 15, he says, and why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

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You can go to many church folks and you can show them every scripture in this folder and because it goes against their tradition and their thinking and their past teaching, they're not even willing to look at it.

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It's dangerous. Paul said that in Colossians 2, right?

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Not to be captive by philosophy and empty the seed according to human tradition, but yet that's much of the church today as we hang on to our past teaching, our past traditions.

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It makes it dangerous. We made it through the book. All right, maybe

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I was moving a little bit quick. I'll be honest, this is the shortest lesson in all of them.

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I wanted to give us an introduction to just whet your appetite a little bit. There's a personal observation though on page six.

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Angry reaction to these doctrines is much more prevalent among church people than those who have very little or no previous knowledge of biblical doctrine, right?

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Church people hate these doctrines. They can't stand these doctrines. And that's why

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I want to give a charge again, guys. As you're taking this class, you're going to take that book home, you're going to read your homework, you're going to do your stuff.

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Please, please don't go out getting in arguments and trying to convince people of Calvinism.

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One, we saw how many hands were up of people who actually have been Calvinist for any amount of time. So most of you don't know the doctrines as much as you think you do, okay?

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But two, we're not here as a church to proselytize

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Calvinism. This is simply doctrinal training night for the saints.

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This is for in here, for iron sharpening iron. Go out there and share the good news of Jesus Christ and call every man to repent and look to Christ and rest in Christ.

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Don't be getting in Calvinist arguments. That's a fool's errand, right?

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You want them to come to these deep truths? Invite them to a Bible study, invite them to one of these nights, invite them to church on Sunday, right?

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That's okay. But this is not what we're about here, okay? I'm simply wanting to give you the tools so that you can grow in your fear and knowledge of God, so that you will be better equipped to go out there to do the good work that God has set beforehand and prepared beforehand, right?

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To give the gospel, to share the good news of Christ, to serve, to be kind, to be gracious.

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Without love, it is all what? Clinging gongs and cymbals? They can't hear all of your lofty words and all your

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Calvinist speech over your lack of love. Y 'all hearing me?

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I want to make sure and keep saying this because we get through this class, and we are bound to get halfway through this class and create a bunch of cage stage animals that are willing to wreak havoc all over this community and tell everyone they're lost in their sins unless they bow to Calvin, right?

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We're not doing that. Does everybody agree? Everybody's on the same page, okay? Pastor Keith, I understand.

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So those of you that have been Calvinist for more than two years, did you go through cage stage?

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I think that answer tells me you might still be in it. Yes, that's true.

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That's true. Well, I'm glad you're not a fight starter because there can only be one in the marriage, so that's good.

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Yeah. You get excited. Yeah. Some people respond to it different.

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Yeah. You just get...well, here's the point. Some of us just aren't fighters, and we're not going to go out and have arguments, but have you ever heard the phrase, when all you have is a hammer and your tool belt, everything you see looks like a nail?

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That's cage stage. Everything you read in Scripture is Calvinism now, right?

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You're just like, oh, my goodness, it's Calvinism. You're looking for Calvinism everywhere you look. Like, you're looking at your grocery list.

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Oh, there's Calvinism. Okay. You got to be careful with that, and that happens.

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And the reason it is, is I think because it's such a glorious truth. It's such a beautiful...I'm

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telling you, if you've not experienced it and you're not there yet over the next few weeks,

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I have no doubt you will be. I've never seen it not happen, but you will be, and you will be hit right between the eyes with just an overwhelming, an overwhelming sense of God's goodness, and his love, and his great mercy and grace in your life.

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It is glorious. Yes, Andy. A P?

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It's a P. Yeah. A P because a presence. Yeah.

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That's all you have to do to pass, show up. Yes. Guys, this is for your good.

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That's the beauty. You know, you've heard me say the phrase, seminary is a necessary evil.

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You ever heard me say that phrase? Here's the thing. My dad used to say it all the time, and he had his doctorate.

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You know, he had gone and done all things, and he goes, the only reason I have it, he goes, I didn't learn anything in seminary. He goes, the only reason

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I have it is so people will read things I write. But his point was, is seminary only exists because the local church quit doing its job.

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It quit equipping the saints for the good work. That's the only reason. And some people will say, well, you can't offer like the languages and stuff.

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Well, we just announced that at the beginning of the night, right? You can. We did. I've experienced that.

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And here's the beauty. In academia, you're paying for credits. You're in competition for grades.

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You're trying to data dump, dump the information so you can pass the test and move on to the next situation.

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In here, this is family, guys. Every one of you, right?

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Like Wesley. Wesley wants Karen to grow in the faith, and he's there to support.

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And Karen wants Adam to grow in the faith, and she's in support. And we're walking with each other. There's no competition.

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There's no grades. There's no monies involved. It's just us being in unity together, and iron sharpening iron, and growing, and being able to see

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God for who he is. That's the beauty of this, unlike academia. We want that information to not puff up as Paul says.

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We want the information to renew the mind so that it percolates into the heart, and then makes its way out our fingertips and from our tongue.

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And the only way that can happen is in the context of the local church seminary can't do it. Every seminary graduate will tell you, right?

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Every seminary graduate says, you can't learn how to be a Christian in seminary. They can only give you data, period.

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And so here is where we're growing. That being said, let's look. I told you there's assignments.

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Week one is the easiest. Week one is the easiest assignment. I don't have y 'all reading too much this week.

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You see a list of passages there on page six. Page six, where we were just at, gives you a reading assignment.

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Genesis 17, you're going to see the covenant with Abraham. Psalm 89, you're going to see the covenant with David.

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John 6, 10, and 17, you're going to see salvation is of God. Ephesians 1, that we are chosen.

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Romans 9 through 11, God's election. 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, the cross and the power of God.

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I want you to read those things. I want those to resonate with you. Let the word just bathe over you in preparation for us to jump into next week's lesson.

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And next week is definitions and historical perspectives. And we'll get a foundation of that before we jump into really some of the meat here, because the next week we're jumping into total depravity.

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That's a hard one. So we want to lay the groundwork. Everybody on the same page? Everybody with me?

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You think this is gonna be worthwhile? Okay. I'm happy. I'm glad to be a part of this. Thank y 'all for letting me put this together.

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Yes, Don. Don says the only reason he's been

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Calvinist for this long is because he's old. Oh yeah.

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Yeah, those seminaries, they'll kick you out if you don't toe the line. Yes. No. Some of the scripture references that are printed in here are from different translations based upon the translation that I like best for that particular text.

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You'll see some King James in there, Danny. I like it. Alright guys, let me pray and we'll close down.

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If you got questions, come chat with me. Please remember, hang on to your books. Keep them.

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Keep them with you. And if you don't mind, leave those pens on the table so I don't have to make a last -minute run to Office Depot again next week, because I know many of you will forget your pen next week.

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Okay. Alright. Let's pray. Dearly Father, Lord, we thank you. Father, guard us.

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Protect us. Because of our flesh, knowledge so often puffs up.

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It makes me arrogant. It makes me pompous. It makes me feel superior.

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And Father, I have no right to that. None of us have a right to that.

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For you, God, you are sovereign over all things. You are the one that gets the glory.

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You are the one that gets the praise. You are the one that does not share. Does not share that glory because it belongs solely and only to you.

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Father, let that resonate in our hearts. Help us to be a humble people.

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The only way we can is through renewal of our minds by your truth, and we see you for who you are.

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And we're conformed more and more into the image of our glorious Savior, Jesus Christ, because it is his name we ask these things, in Christ's name.