Total Depravity: The Fall of Adam

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The Apostle Peter commanded all Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give this answer with gentleness and reverence.
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The Dividing Line is brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries, Calvary Press Publishers, the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church and Bethany House Publishers.
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Your host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha and Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now by dialing 1 -888 -TALK -960. That's 1 -888 -TALK -960.
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And now with today's topic, here is James White. It's undoubtedly one of the most unpopular doctrines of the
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Christian faith. It is undoubtedly a belief that if we were able to edit the gospel to make it acceptable to the world around us, it would probably be the first thing to go.
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What am I talking about? I'm talking about what the Bible teaches about man, about sin, about rebellion, about the nature of man as a rebel against God.
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It is not exactly a popular topic. It is not exactly a topic that is going to attract a lot of people into the pews.
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But it's a topic that is fundamental, foundational to the gospel. It is fundamental and foundational to the task of apologetics.
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And I would like to submit to you that an unwillingness to be biblical and honest with what the scriptures teach about the nature of man, about sin, about man being dead in sin is one of the main reasons that the church in our land suffers confusion about the gospel, confusion about Christian living, confusion about how to defend the gospel itself.
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I think our unwillingness to deal with this subject in a straightforward manner is one of the biggest failures that we have in dealing with biblical truth in an honest and direct way.
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So today I invite you to take your Bible, look with me at the subject of man and sin, and do so with a prayerful attitude, an attitude that desires to know what
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God's truth is. And then later on this hour we'll be opening the phones at 1 -888 -TALK -960.
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And you may not agree with what I have to say. You may have another viewpoint. In fact, a large portion of folks in our land do.
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But I'd like to hear from you. 1 -888 -TALK -960. We'll be opening the phones later on in this half hour and taking your phone calls about this very, very important subject.
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Certainly as we look at what Christians have believed over the years, this is a subject that has come in for much discussion.
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The London Confession, the Baptist Confession of 1689, says very clearly,
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Our first parents, by this sin, the sin in the garden, fell from their original righteousness in communion with God, and we in them, whereby death came upon all, all becoming dead in sin and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body.
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This is the doctrine that has been named various and sundry things.
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Total inability, total corruption. It does not refer in point of fact to the idea that any of us is as sinful as we could be.
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The doctrine of total depravity does not mean that every single individual is as bad as he could be.
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Even the most evil man didn't do everything bad that he could have done.
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He didn't even think of the worst person on the planet and he still could have kicked a dog on the way to a mass murder or something like that and he didn't.
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Total depravity is not a teaching that every man is as evil as he can be. It is the teaching that every aspect of man's being has been corrupted, defiled, and touched by sin.
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That includes his mind, his heart, his will. Every aspect of man has been radically altered by the presence of sin in his life.
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The Baptist Confession goes on to say they being the root and by God's appointment staying in the room instead of all mankind, that's referring to Adam and Eve, the guilt of the sin was imputed and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by ordinary generation, being now conceived in sin and by nature children of wrath, the servants of sin, the subjects of death, and all other miseries spiritual, temporal, and eternal unless the
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Lord Jesus set them free from this original corruption whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.
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Now those are strong words. Being made utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good.
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And there are very, very few people in our society today who actually believe that. That goes directly against the prevailing notions of our world that man is generally good.
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He is basically good, that there is this spark of goodness that resides within his heart and that all we really need to do is to fan that flame of goodness and man will prove himself truly to be a good creature, a good man at his soul.
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That's not what the Bible teaches in the least bit. In fact, if you'll turn with me to Romans chapter 3, we have here placed before us all, and I recognize it can be uncomfortable to hear these words,
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I recognize that it is not a popular thing to discuss this subject, but I really do think it is fundamental and foundational to everything else that we could discuss.
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We could discuss all sorts of very controversial issues that would light up the phones and get people really talking and thinking and so on and so forth in regards to all sorts of different issues.
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But at the basics, at the basis of all of these topics is the fact that man is a sinner and is opposed to God's truth.
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And fundamentally how we defend the faith, how we present the gospel, how we live the
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Christian life will very much be determined by whether we take very seriously what the
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Bible teaches about man and about man's sin and about the result of sin.
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Does it simply hinder man? Does it simply make it a little bit more difficult for man to embrace
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Christ? Or does it make man dead in sin, unable to do what is right in God's sight, unable to come to Christ unless God in His sovereignty first draws him and enables him and regenerates him and raises him from spiritual death to spiritual life?
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That is the question that we must wrestle with. Romans chapter 3,
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Paul in the first two chapters has addressed both Jew and Gentile. In the first chapter the
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Gentile world, in the second the Jewish world, and has demonstrated that both are condemned by God's truth.
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Both are condemned as sinners. And in Romans 3, 9 we begin reading, And beginning in verse 10 you have a katina, a selection of passages drawn from the
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Old Testament put together by the Apostle Paul to demonstrate that it is the consistent teaching of all of the scriptures that there is no righteous man.
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That there is no man who can stand before God and say, Your law does not touch me. I have perfectly fulfilled your righteous demands.
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Beginning in verse 10 it says, There is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands.
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There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become useless.
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There is none who does good. There is not even one. Their throat is an open grave.
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With their tongues they keep deceiving. The poison of asps is under their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
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Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their paths. And the path of peace they have not known.
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There is no fear of God before their eyes. Very strong words.
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Very negative words from our perspective these days. This isn't a position that would fare well in our politically correct climate today.
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But Paul is very straightforward. And while it is the viewpoint of the humanistic society in which we live, to close our eyes to the radical corruption of man, and passages of scripture like this, rip away the cover and force us to see us as we truly are.
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It is one thing for us to look at ourselves and compare us with ourselves. We can always find someone else that we're doing better than they are.
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Someone that we can compare ourselves to and say, Hey, I'm not that bad. But when we take our eyes off of ourselves, and when we look upon God's holy standard, when we look upon God as He is, when we consider
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His holiness, that is when we truly see ourselves the way we need to see ourselves.
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We are like the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 6, when he sees the holy
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God sitting upon the throne. He, even though he was one of the holiest men in Israel, recognizes the depth of his own sin, and confesses that he is a man of unclean lips, and he lives amongst a people of unclean lips, and he keenly feels the need for forgiveness.
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He keenly feels the need for cleansing, and God provides that to him.
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It was, in fact, an act of mercy that God showed him his sin. It is an act of mercy that the word of God does not allow us to deceive ourselves.
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That if we are honest with the scriptures, there is no way that we can possibly, for even a moment, miss the fact that there is none righteous, not even one.
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There is none who understands. In point of fact, as Paul says in Romans 3 .11, there is none who seeks for God.
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And while the words are clear, and the words are plain, yet you rarely hear these words either preached or consistently applied.
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In point of fact, I would submit to you that in most of the evangelistic efforts that you hear in our land today,
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Romans 3 .11 is not taken into consideration. There is no room left for the teaching that there is none who seeks for God.
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In fact, their entire church is built upon the idea that there is a whole bunch of folks who seek for God. But there is a bunch of God -seekers out there, and all we got to do is channel them in the right direction, and make sure not to offend them when they walk through the front door, and don't talk about sin, and don't talk about repentance, and don't talk about holiness.
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But instead, let's provide lots of fellowship meals, and a little bit of interpretive dance, and maybe some drama, and just try to get them in far enough that since they're already seeking
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God, then they'll just sort of follow through naturally. And the Bible simply says, there is none who seeks for God.
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And you say, but I know of people who've been seeking for God. I would submit to you one of two things is true in that situation.
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Either you're dealing with a person who has, in point of fact, been touched by God's grace, and God is drawing that person to himself, or you're dealing with someone who's seeking for the benefits of God without the responsibility of dealing with the
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God who is truly there, the God who truly exists, the holy God who has demands upon all of our lives.
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It is one thing to seek for God. It is another thing to seek for the benefits that come from God. And I would submit that most of those you see who talk about being on a quest for God are actually on a quest for various and sundry benefits, feelings, advantages that come from a belief in God without actually dealing with their own sin and dealing with the holy
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God who exists. Paul says in Romans 1, all men know that that God exists.
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They are actively involved in suppressing that knowledge. Shall we say, sticking their fingers in their ears, closing their eyes as tightly as they can, doing everything they can to suppress the truth that they know in their hearts
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God does exist and they are a rebel against him under his wrath. There is none who understands.
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There is none who seeks for God. There is no fear of God before their eyes.
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These are the words of the apostle Paul as he summarizes what the Old Testament teaches about the fact that there is no person who does not fall into the condemnation of sin.
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And once he has placed all of mankind under the condemnation of sin, then and only then can he, beginning in verse 20 of chapter 3, begin to introduce us to the good news, to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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He didn't start with the cross. He didn't start the book of Romans, his thought out presentation of the gospel, with a message that God loves you.
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He started out the gospel according to Paul, written to the Romans, if we could call it that, with the bad news.
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The bad news that there is none righteous. The bad news that no matter who you are, whether you were the pagan
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Gentile who tried to come up with the excuse and said, well, I didn't know. He demonstrates you're without excuse.
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Or whether you're the religious Jew that says, well, I'm right with God because I have the covenant. And Paul says, no, you're not.
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It is not the possessors or the hearers of the law who will be justified. It's the doers of the law.
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And you don't do the law, so therefore you will not be justified just because you have it. He rips away every pretense of righteousness and concludes by saying, there is no fear of God before their eyes.
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Now we know that whatever the law says, verse 19, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God.
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Everyone's in the same boat. Everyone has the same problem. We're all sinners. We're all under the wrath of God.
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And any person who tries to plead his own righteousness is a person who has not yet in God's mercy seen themselves for what they truly are.
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And it is only then, after preaching the bad news, the very part that we don't want to preach in our land anymore because polls and surveys demonstrate that it won't be effective.
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Only after preaching the bad news does the apostle get to the good news.
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Here's the problem, now here's the solution. So often in our land, we're guilty of presenting a solution without a problem.
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And we wonder why there are therefore so many inconsistencies, heresies, perversions of the gospel.
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We shouldn't be because we've only been presenting a part of it. And truly, the power of the gospel, the power of the cross is most clearly seen only when we recognize the depth of the sin and the guilt from which we've been delivered.
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We cannot be flippant about the sacrifice of Christ. We cannot be flippant about the atonement when we understand the tremendous wrath of God against sin, when we understand the depth of our own depravity, when we think of the
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Lord Jesus' example, his parable that he gave us, when he talks about the one who is forgiven the great debt and the one that is forgiven the small debt, and he says, which one will love more?
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Well, it's the one who's been forgiven the great debt. And can we wonder at the lukewarmness in so many places in our land because the fact that we have not preached the fullness of the gospel that speaks of the great debt that we owed, the depravity that was ours, the lost estate that was ours.
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Once we recognize how tremendously sinful we were before Christ, then we can understand what he accomplished in saving us.
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And we see that the greatest miracle that God could ever perform is to take a God -hater and turn him into a
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God -lover. People run around looking for all sorts of miracles and raising the dead and so on and so forth.
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I tell you, the greatest miracle that God could ever produce would be to change a heart that is opposed to him and hates him and take that heart and make it one that bows before him in love and adoration.
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That is the greatest miracle of all. And God is still, thanks be to him, involved in doing that.
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Taking rebel sinners and making them lovers of God. And you might say, what are you talking about?
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Haters of God? Where do you get stuff like that? Where does the Bible teach that man's a hater of God?
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Well, in the very same passage of Scripture, Book of Romans, Romans 8, the
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Apostle Paul said these words, For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the
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Spirit, the things of the Spirit. There's a clear distinction that Paul draws in this passage between those who are according to the flesh and those who are according to the
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Spirit. And you may have been taught at some point in time in your Christian life that he's talking here about different kinds of Christians, but that's not what he says.
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He says, the mind set on the flesh is death. This is Romans 8, 6.
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The mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace.
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Because the mind set on the flesh is what? Hostile toward God. Hostile toward God.
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For it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so.
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And those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Do you hear what he's saying?
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The mind set on the flesh, death. The mind set on the Spirit, life and peace.
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Total differences between the two. Those who are according to the flesh, those who have not been regenerated, born again, made new in Christ Jesus, their mind is set upon all it can be, that is the flesh.
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But the mind set on the Spirit, life, peace, those are things that only the regenerate truly enjoy.
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Because the mind set on the flesh is what? Neutral toward God? No. Oh no.
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And yet so much of our evangelism, so much of our apologetics is based upon assuming that the mind set on the flesh can at least bring itself to be neutral about God's claims.
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It's not possible, my friend. If we take the Bible's teaching seriously, we have to recognize that the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God, hostile toward His truth, hostile toward His gospel.
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And that mind will use every element of its power, its intelligence, its training to twist that truth, to avoid that truth, to in some way, shape or form, avoid having to deal with the
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God that that mind knows is actually there. So often people talk to me and they're so frustrated.
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They've talked to a person, a lost person, and they've used all the right methodology or so they've been taught.
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They've answered all the questions and they've quoted all the verses. And they've done everything they thought was supposed to bring about the expected result.
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And all of their efforts have been based upon the idea that, well, in reality, the lost man is neutral toward God's claims.
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It's just a matter of showing him all my data, showing him all my arguments, and he's just going to fall down and accept what
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I have to say. And it simply isn't what the Bible teaches. Man is not neutral toward God's truth.
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Man is not neutral toward the gospel. Outside of God changing the heart of man, every man on this planet would reject the gospel of Jesus Christ, would reject
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God's truth, because that mind is hostile toward God.
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Paul says that it does not subject itself to the law of God. It's in rebellion.
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That law demonstrates to man what God's perfect will is.
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And until you are a regenerate man, until you're a regenerate woman, until God and his grace breaks in upon you and softens your heart and gives you a new heart, upon which he writes his law, so that you love it rather than hate it, you're going to hate what
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God says. Oh, you may mask it under religiosity. You may be a very religious person today, and yet you still hate
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God's law and will not submit to it. I'll never forget talking to one lady, a very religious lady, a religious lady involved in a religion that calls itself
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Christian. And yet when I presented to her the holiness of God and the sovereignty of God, I'll never forget her looking at me and saying, if God is really like that,
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I will never worship him. I would never worship a God like the one you just described.
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And you know what I said? I said, you're right. You wouldn't. You couldn't. Because you're in rebellion against that God and unless he's merciful to you and grants you repentance, you will always rebel against that God.
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Religious person, but that mind not subject to the law of God.
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And notice the next line, for it is not even able to do so.
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Inability. Inability. We often talk of man's abilities.
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The Bible speaks of man's inabilities. Incapacity.
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The unregenerate mind cannot subject itself to the law of God, cannot do what is pleasing to God.
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Until God first moves and changes that heart, that man is without hope.
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That woman is without hope. And you say, I don't hear a lot of people talking about this.
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I mean, I've heard a lot of preaching from Romans 8, but I haven't seen a lot of people focusing in upon the statement, those who are in the flesh cannot please
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God. In point of fact, most preaching I hear is based upon trying to get people who are in the flesh to do something that's pleasing to God.
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Aren't we busy trying to get people to do something so that they can be born again?
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Do something that's pleasing in God's sight? Well, that does seem to be what we're involved with doing.
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Maybe one of the reasons it doesn't work so well is it isn't biblical. It's not what the Holy Spirit's revealed.
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Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. They cannot do anything that's pleasing to Him.
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And I would submit to you, and we'll discuss this more at another time, but I would submit to you that includes having true and saving faith, true and saving repentance.
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Both gifts of God, both requiring the work of God within a person's heart.
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And yes, I know exactly what I'm saying. If you take this to its logical conclusion, salvation must be of the
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Lord. Salvation must be something God does, not man. And you're right.
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That is exactly what Paul's going to preach in the book of Romans and in 1 Corinthians and in 2
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Corinthians and Galatians, Ephesians, and actually in every book of the New Testament. Each of those authors is going to bring out the fact that it is
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God who brings about salvation. It's God who saves us. The mind set on the flesh, hostile toward God.
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Enemy of God. Totally opposed to His truth. And that means that mind will do everything in its power to embrace anything but the truth.
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It'll embrace something close. It'll embrace something that looks like it. It'll embrace anything to salve that conscience and to keep that person from having to really come face to face with this absolute need of a perfect Savior, a perfect gospel.
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But that mind set upon the flesh, that one who has not been regenerated, that individual will not embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ until something radical takes place.
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And that radical thing is regeneration. God reaching down His mercy and grace and changing that heart.
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Wow. It really changes how we look at ourselves. It really changes how we present the gospel because we're talking here about a gospel of a powerful
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God. A gospel about a God who saves, not just tries and normally fails, but a
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God who really does save and has the power to do so. That is a tremendous
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God. That is the God of the New Testament. We're going to keep looking at what the
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Bible says about man's deadness and sin. But before we do so, we need to take a break.
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I hope you'll grab your Bible, stick with us here on The Dividing Line looking at the depravity of man. It is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he is first looked upon God's face and then descends from contemplating
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Him to scrutinize himself. So what happens in estimating our spiritual goods?
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As long as we do not look beyond the earth, being quite content with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue, we flatter ourselves most sweetly and fancy ourselves all but demigods.
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Suppose we but once begin to raise our thoughts to God and to ponder His nature and how completely perfect are
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His righteousness, wisdom, and power, the straight edge to which we must be shaped.
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Then what masquerading earlier as righteousness was pleasing in us will soon grow filthy in its consummate wickedness.
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What wonderfully impressed us under the name of wisdom will stink in its very foolishness. What wore the face of power will prove itself the most miserable weakness.
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That is, what in us seems perfection itself corresponds ill to the purity of God.
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We're looking at the subject of the depravity of man, not exactly a popular topic these days.
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There are many who would say that it is a topic that we should not address, even if we happen to believe it to be true.
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And certainly we find ourselves in a minority to believe it to be true. But we are forced by weight of Scripture to deal with what the
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Scriptures teach. And we've been looking at what the Bible says about this. It is certainly something that comes across all through the text of Scripture.
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As early as the book of Genesis, the Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.
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Genesis 6 -5. Genesis 8 -21 says, Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.
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Genesis 8 -21. Passages of Scripture that clearly indicate to us that this man is indeed dead in sin, evil from the time of his birth.
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And we'd like to invite you to take part in the program this afternoon. Maybe you don't agree, or maybe there are some passages we haven't even gotten to yet that you want to point out as well.
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1 -888 -TALK -960. 1 -888 -TALK -960 is the phone number.
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You can call and become a part of the program this afternoon here on The Dividing Line. 1 -888 -TALK -960.
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You know, a long time ago, the prophet Jeremiah said, Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots?
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Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil. How many people there are who believe that it's within the power of man, even though he's evil, to all of a sudden make himself good.
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But the Scriptures in Jeremiah 13 -23 says, Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil.
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Jeremiah, especially if you want to have a deep insight into the heart of man, a deep insight into the problems of man's constitution,
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Jeremiah seemed to have a really good grasp of what evil lurks in the hearts of men, to use an old radio phrase there.
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In Jeremiah 17 -9 we read, The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.
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Who can understand it? Do we really believe that? Do we really sense within our own lives how our own hearts are deceitful?
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How our own hearts lead us astray? How we need an external guide.
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We need an objective standard to which we are conformed. Do you have that desire in your heart not to trust in your own feelings?
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Oh, there are so many today who would talk about the need to trust in your feelings.
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You need to trust yourself. You need to trust in that little voice that talks to you. And I say, don't you dare.
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Don't you dare trust that little voice that talks to you. Trust instead the voice of God found in the
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Word of God. Trust the Scriptures because they don't change.
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They're preeminently balanced and they are God's Word to us to guide us and to direct us in the way that we should go.
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You know, in Ephesians chapter 2, the Apostle Paul utilized a certain phraseology to describe fallen man.
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He says, And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
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Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
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There's Paul's starting point, shall we say, in the gospel. Dead in sin, child of wrath.
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We all, he says, were there. That's where you've got to start to recognize what the need of the gospel is.
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What does it mean to be dead in sin? A lot of people like to say, well, to be dead in sin means that you need
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God's help. That you need God's help, some assistance along the way.
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Well, I've never quite figured that out. In fact, I did a debate about two years ago now back on Long Island.
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And I debated a Baptist minister, in fact, on the subject of total depravity.
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And I remember very well that one of his strong points was that man really isn't that dead.
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You know, what Paul's talking about isn't really being dead dead, it's just not quite that dead.
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And I've always wondered exactly how does that work? How is it possible to be only a little bit dead?
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Dead is sort of an absolute state, I would say. And in a book
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I wrote a number of years ago called God's Sovereign Grace, a biblical examination of Calvinism, which we do make available through our book ministry still, even to this day, despite its rather bland cover that I take every responsibility for having designed.
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But anyways, I told the story in God's Sovereign Grace of something that I used to do back when
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I was in college. I had a strange double major when
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I was in college. I majored in Bible and biology. And Bible and biology are an interesting combination, and sometimes
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I would go from demonstrating cadavers as department fellow in anatomy and physiology into Greek class, and it was a pretty fast transition there,
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I will have to admit. But we did work on cadavers when
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I was in college, and I had the opportunity of demonstrating these cadavers to high school students who would be coming in who were thinking about attending our college.
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So if any of you are old enough to remember the old Quincy television show, you remember that Quincy was the medical examiner and he would draw the sheet back and these big strong policemen would collapse and faint and stuff like that until there were none left.
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And I sort of got to do the same type of thing, though I was instructed not to try to do that to the poor high school students who were attending.
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Well, anyways, we had two cadavers that we worked on, and their names were
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Willie and Clara, and those were actually their names. Believe it or not, we actually knew what their first names were.
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And we could do anything we wanted to Willie and Clara. We could demonstrate the heart and the lungs and the brain and the liver and the whole nine yards.
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And in all the times that I used Willie and Clara to demonstrate anatomy and physiology, not once did they ever object.
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Not once did they ever object to what I was doing. And you know why? Because they were dead.
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They were cadavers. Cadavers do not object to what you do because they're dead.
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And I can guarantee you, had they objected, I would have taken immediate notice because this would have been highly unusual.
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Well, the Bible is very plain in teaching that we are dead in our trespasses and sins. And that unless God, and that's
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Ephesians 2, 4, if you want to see where this comes in, but God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, unless God by a miracle raised up Willie and Clara, they could never object to what was being done to them because they were dead.
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The Bible makes it very plain that until God, who is rich in his mercy, makes us alive in Christ Jesus, we're spiritually dead.
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We're slaves to sin, as Jesus says in John 8, verses 31 through 34. We're not spiritually alive.
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And I think really fundamentally, it's not an issue. It's not an issue of the exegesis of Scripture.
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It's not an issue of what the Bible actually teaches. It's simply we don't like it to be revealed that we are totally, completely, and utterly dependent upon God, totally dependent upon God for everything we have, for everything that we could ever become.
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We're totally dependent upon God for our salvation. I think that's really the only reason fundamentally that people object to what the
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Scriptures teach about the subject of man's deadness in sin. You, you were dead in your trespasses and sins
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Paul says, but the good news is God made you alive in Christ Jesus.
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We didn't make ourselves alive. It's not as if God walked through the cemetery of the world and was walking along amongst the rows of headstones with the cure of eternal life in his hand.
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He says, all you got to do is raise yourself up from that grave, reach out, and I will give you eternal life.
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If we were to do that, my friends, if we were to develop the vaccine that you could, you could inject it into a casket and the person inside will come out whole and young and new.
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And yet all we had to do, all we could do is walk up and down those rows and say, all you've got to do is raise yourself up and you'll have life.
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Would that accomplish anything? No, it wouldn't accomplish anything at all. Unless we ourselves can give that spiritual life, that dead person can never reach up to grasp it.
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I know you've heard the story. I was going down for the third time in the great sea and along came the good ship
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Grace and threw a lifeline to me as I struggled that last third time. I would submit to you that that's not true.
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That in point of fact, you weren't struggling at the top of the sea. If you've received
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God's grace, you were at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. You were shark food. You had gone down a long time ago.
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You were down there with the Titanic and all those other ships that we're all fascinated about. And God raised you up.
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That's why all glory and honor goes to him. Never a particle of it to us because salvation is of the
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Lord. We have some calls on the line. We'll get to you right after we take this break here on The Dividing Line.
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And welcome back to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. We have some callers online. And I'll tell you, somebody must have a super -duper radio because Jim is in Balfton Lake, New York.
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Is that right, Jim? Yes. Wow. Well, welcome to The Dividing Line. How are you doing? Okay. Well, actually,
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I had a question on sola scriptura, not necessarily on the sovereignty of God.
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Well, anybody who calls outside of Arizona state lines gets to bend the rules just a little bit.
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How's that? Okay. I wanted to ask a question. Now, I understand sola scriptura teaches that only doctrines that are taught in the
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Bible are binding on the believer. And I want to ask, though, how can we consider the canon as binding on the scripture?
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Like, why should the believer believe these books are biblical since it really doesn't name the canon in the
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Bible? How can that be considered binding? We addressed that issue rather fully in our
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December 5th radio program. And just for everyone's benefit, if I could, since we only have a few minutes here and we have another caller online,
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I'll have to be brief, but I'd like to give you the reference to that. That can be found...
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I listened to that. It didn't really seem to address the question that fully.
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Okay, well, I certainly thought that it did, but very briefly, it seems that you are identifying the canon as some separate revelation from the scripture?
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No, I'm just saying that if it is taught, only what is taught in the
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Bible is binding. Well, in other words, only what comes from God, specifically in the sense of that which is theanustos,
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God -breathed. Yes, so where does the Bible teach what is theanustos? That thing that says, all scripture is
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God -breathed doesn't say what it is calling all scripture. No, the
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Bible does not contain a canon of lists, but the canon is not a doctrine like justification by faith.
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The canon is not a doctrine like the deity of Christ. That's why
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I asked you, do you believe the canon is some sort of separate revelation from God? Normally the question is this, that without some sort of external authority, such as the magisterium of the church, you cannot know for certainty what the canon of the scripture is.
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Obviously, I would say that there is no one who has that external authority to begin with, and it's a circular argument, because you're simply moving everything backwards.
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It is not a doctrine in and of itself. It is an artifact of inspiration, and that's what
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I tried to explain in that program, is that God determines what the canon is by limiting inspiration to a certain number of books and not inspiring all books.
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But how do we know which ones those are without them being taught in the Bible? The same way that the believer 50 years before Christ knew that Isaiah or 2
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Chronicles was scripture. It was not by reference to some infallible magisterium or anything like that.
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The Lord Jesus, I'm sure you would agree, held men accountable to what the scriptures said, and yet there was no external, infallible source of authority that contained a quote -unquote canon.
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I believe that he held them accountable on the basis of that simply due to the fact that Christ's sheep hear his voice, that God's people are guided by God in their recognition of his word.
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It was not an infallible revelation from some other source. It was simply a recognition that God's people will hear
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God's voice. So then, is our canon not infallible? Well, when you say our canon,
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I'm not sure which canon you're referring to. Like, the books we have in the Bible, is that not an infallible list of what is scripture?
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Well, as I said in that program, I pointed out the fact that R .C. Sproul, for example, in the book
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Sola Scriptura, which we present through our ministry, describes the canon as a fallible list of infallible books.
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And he does that only on this basis, that our knowledge of the canon is fallible because we are fallible.
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The canon itself is not fallible, but we ourselves are fallible. So the only reason he emphasizes that is because if you say it's an infallible list, first of all, you have to define which one you're talking about.
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I would say Rome's canon list is quite fallible and quite historically inaccurate as far as the apocryphal books go.
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But if you call it an infallible list, you are giving to the Church the ability to define things infallibly and hence making her a source of revelation.
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So our list, our knowledge of what books are in the Bible, would then be fallible, and we might not have an infallible
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Bible. We might be wrong on that. It does not follow that if you do not add the article of infallibility that you are saying something is incorrect.
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You're simply saying that the power that defined it... No, we're saying that the power that defined it is not in and of itself divine.
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If you're asserting that you have to have infallible knowledge... So then without divine authority telling us what should be recognized as Scripture, how do we know for sure what it is?
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Well, we do. It's God who tells us what Scripture is. That's how the sheep understand what His voice is. But if you're saying that you have to have infallible knowledge of something to have sufficient knowledge of something, do you have infallible knowledge of the
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Trinity? No, I wouldn't say that at all. You're misrepresenting what I'm saying. What I was saying was that to have an infallible
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Bible, you have to have an infallible knowledge of what is in that Bible.
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Because you have to have something infallible born of something fallible. Okay, Jim, can
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I ask something? Are you a Roman Catholic? Yes. Do you have infallible knowledge of the teachings of Roman Catholicism? No, but I have a living voice that can correct me when
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I'm wrong. Then you're not a Roman Catholic, because you just said, I have to have infallible knowledge, but you don't hold yourself to the same standard.
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You're misrepresenting what I'm saying. No, well, Jim, let me just ask you something. If I have to have infallible knowledge of the canon, to have a sufficient knowledge of the canon, and I'm not claiming what you're trying to make me claim, do you have infallible knowledge of everything that Rome teaches and everything that Rome has defined infallibly, yes or no?
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No, because I have a teaching... Then, Jim, you're holding me to a different standard than you're willing to hold yourself to, and that just simply isn't going to work.
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We've only got just a second or so here. Dennis, really quickly, are you with us? Yeah. Hey, Dennis, how are you doing?
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Pretty good. Before I get to the scriptures real quick, have you ever seen the movie The Princess Bride? I was thinking
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Miracle Max, you know, the big difference between dead and almost dead. Actually, I have seen the end of that, and I think
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I know what you're talking about, but some friends of mine in the other room who have seen it much more often than I have are laughing hysterically at me, and undoubtedly are going to make comments about how
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I need to see things like that more often so I don't miss these analogies as they come in.
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I was just looking at Psalm 5, and I remember once going to this after I heard the wife of the
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Calvary Chapel pastor say, God never says He hates anybody in the Bible. I'm like, wait a minute. I was just noticing while I was waiting.
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The first three verses are, you know, Give ear to my words, O Lord. It's right up to verse 3, it's a little song that I was giving in church.
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It's funny how they don't go on to the next three words. It says, For you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, nor shall evil dwell with you.
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The boastful shall not stand in your sight. You hate all workers of iniquity. You shall destroy those who speak falsehood.
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The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man, even if he is President of the United States, and waves the Bible around. Well, that's one of the reasons we desperately need to have a theology that comes from all of the
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Bible, from all of the canon of Scripture. Dennis, thank you very much for your phone call, and I appreciate that. You're quite right.
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We need to look at all the Scripture says, and it says that as well. And I really, really appreciate your phone call today.
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Well, we're out of time for this afternoon on The Dividing Line. I hope you'll look at the passages of Scripture that we have presented to you this day.
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I hope you will take an opportunity of looking at the Bible, thinking about what the Bible says on these particular subjects, and be with us again next week here on The Dividing Line.