Election - Article 21

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Well, let's read the article, then we're going to look at Article 21, which is on the doctrine of election as it is stated in our version of the Confession, but understand that our version of the Confession includes titles.
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These titles were not part of what was written in 1646.
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These titles were added later.
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So I want to show you why I think this comes where it does, because this, even though it's about election, this is actually continuing the same thought that came from the articles before it, but we'll read it first.
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Jesus Christ, by His death, did purchase salvation for the elect that God gave unto Him.
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These only have interest in Him and fellowship with Him, for whom He makes intercession to His Father in behalf of, and to them alone doth God by His Spirit apply this redemption unto, as also the free gift of eternal life is given to them and none else.
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Now, first of all, that is a very simple explanation of the doctrine of election.
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I would even go as far as to say it is, though true, I would say it is almost too simple, because the doctrine of election is one of those doctrines that inspires a myriad of questions.
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So the way that I've set up tonight's lesson is we're going to talk first about why this lands right here in the Confession, then we're going to talk about what it says, and we're going to look at also the two articles in the appendix that go with it, and then if time allows, I want to ask a question at the end, and this is the question, if you want to start ruminating in your minds, the question is, what are some objections to this doctrine that people have? What are some objections to the doctrine of election that people have? So let's start first by looking at the language and figuring out why it's here.
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We know, as Brother Andy taught last week and the two of us taught the week prior, that we are in the subject of Christ's mediation.
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So if we're thinking of Christ as mediator, the Bible says he mediates for his people in three ways.
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In what ways does Christ operate as mediator? Prophet, and that is he brings God's message to us.
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He is priest, and that he presents us to the Lord, he provides a sacrifice on our behalf, and he exercises that act of mediatory work.
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And then what's the last one? King.
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King.
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So he has king, he is sovereign, and that's the last one that we looked at.
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We looked at prophet, we looked at priest, and then, as Brother Andy looked at last week, was king.
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And here's the point of why election in the Confession follows this argument.
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Christ is all of this, but he is all of this only for his people.
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So these three things he applies only to the elect.
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Now one might say, wait a minute, Pastor, I don't want to argue with you, but I do, because everybody likes to argue with the pastor, and that is, isn't Christ everyone's king? Indeed he is, he is the king of all, but in the exercise of kingly mediation, there is a distinction in how Christ operates as king for the believer, distinguished from the unbeliever.
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For instance, if you think of a king with his kingdom, he has his subjects, and he has his enemies.
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Now he may be the king of the entire realm, but his enemies are not in the same relationship with him as are his subjects, neither do they enjoy the benefits of his kingliness in relationship to blessing because of their relationship of being his subjects.
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You see, someone can be under Christ's authority and reject it.
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Wouldn't you say that is where the majority of the world is? They are under the authority of God, and what do they do? They spit on the authority of God.
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Now God will only tolerate that so long, and one day they will face the wrath of God on behalf of that spitting in his face, but he does allow it.
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He does, in his sovereign mercy, does not crush every one of us the very moment we reject his authority, but we see the distinction of the kingly mediation between Christ and his subjects and Christ and his enemies.
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All are under his authority, but not all are inheritors of his blessings, and so that brings us to the conversation of election.
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We're looking at the mediation of Christ, prophet, priest, and king, and who does he mediate for? He mediates for the elect.
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Here's the thing.
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I've heard people say, I don't want to hear about that doctrine of election.
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I say, well, how do you read your Bible? All throughout the Bible, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, but the New Testament more so, uses the word elect to describe the people of God.
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They are his chosen.
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By the way, that's what the word elect means, right? The word elect means chosen.
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When we think of, when we talk about the candidate elect, when someone is elected to a position, we're saying that's the candidate that has been chosen to that particular office.
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Just yesterday, I was, well, I was a little disturbed when I found out that the SBC had voted in a new president.
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That is the Southern Baptist Convention.
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That was what, I did a podcast on that today, because who I thought was going to get it did not get it, and the man who did get it, I have some concerns about.
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But he is the president elect of the SBC, meaning he is the president chosen by only a few hundred votes out of 14,000, but he is the president elect of the Southern Baptist Convention.
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He was chosen by a very small margin, but he was chosen.
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So when we talk about elect, we are talking about God making a choice.
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And so our spiritual ancestors, these men who wrote this confession, want to define for us who these people are and why.
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So let's look first at what they said.
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It begins with, of course, the mediator himself, Jesus Christ, and it says, by his death did purchase.
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I got to thinking when I read that, I was like, boy, that sounds like a hymn.
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You know, I don't know a hymn that uses that direct language, but by his death did purchase would be a great hymn title.
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If I ever choose to write a hymn, I may steal that line from the confession.
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Because isn't that a great line? By his death did purchase.
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Because that's what he did.
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He redeemed us, you know, the language of scripture is redemption, and the word redemption is the word for making a payment.
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It comes from the word, the agora, which is the Greek marketplace, where the slaves were auctioned and purchased, and the picture there is Christ having made a payment on our behalf.
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Oftentimes, when we're talking about salvation, we talk about Christ paying our sin debt.
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When I teach the gospel to our kids in our karate program, I teach it to them in an acronym.
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G-O-S-P-E-L.
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God created us in his image.
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Our sin separates us from him.
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Sin cannot be repaid by our good works.
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That's the sin cannot be repaid by our good works.
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P, paying the price for sin.
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Jesus died and rose again.
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And then it's everyone who trusts in him alone will have life forever, and life forever is with Jesus in heaven.
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That's the six statements we teach that to little kids so that they know at least the basics of the gospel.
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God created us in his image.
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Our sin separates us.
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Cannot be repaid by good works, but the one who paid the price is Jesus.
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He did make a payment that we could not pay.
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And so Jesus Christ, by his death, did purchase salvation for the elect that God gave unto him.
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Again, if I stop at every line, I won't have time, but I just love the language here because they're drawing this right out of scripture.
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What's interesting to me is it's not one of the ones they listed, but the scripture that comes to mind for this particular passage, John 6, 37, all the Father gives me will come to me.
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And the one who comes to me, I will in no way cast out.
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So he says, it says in here, it says the salvation for the elect that God gave unto him.
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I've preached this before, and if you've heard me say it, I hope you understand the importance of redundancy in this regard.
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We need it.
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The, when we think about salvation, God gives the elect to the Son as a gift.
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You know, you hear people say, well, I'm no gift.
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And you know what that means.
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You know, I'm nothing special.
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And I've said that before.
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You know, well, I'm no gift.
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You know, I'm not God's gift to anything.
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But I am.
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I am God's gift to Christ because God, in ensuring that his son would have a people, chose a people before the foundation of the world to be his son's inheritance, that his sacrifice would not be in vain.
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Remember this.
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Remember this, the parable of the wedding feast.
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What is the parable of the wedding feast? It says that the king made a feast for his son, and he sent out his servants to go and invite people.
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And every one of them had an excuse.
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I have to go away on a trip, or I have to do this, or I have to do that.
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And the king said, you go out into the highways, into the hedges, and you compel them to come in that my son's banquet will be full.
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You know, that's the Holy Spirit goes, and he compels.
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He's the one, he draws them.
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We're going to be talking about this in a few weeks when we do our sermons on the on on the five points of Calvin, its irresistible grace, the spirit compels, he draws us in so that the son's banquet, the marriage supper of the lamb will be full.
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He will not be there with by himself.
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You see, that's the thing about Arminianism that really is so ugly.
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If Arminius was right.
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It could come to be that no one would believe, in fact, no one would because no one wants to turn.
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You know, Arminianism is based on the idea that people will want to turn.
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The Bible tells us that no one wants to turn.
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The Bible says that you can't change a Ethiopian skin.
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You can't change a leopard spots.
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Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil.
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But God is the one who takes out the heart of stone and gives the heart of flesh.
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God is the one who compels us to come in and we become a gift from the father to the son.
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And in that.
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We are a blessing to the son because it shows that his work was not in vain.
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His work was not for nothing.
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God chose to ensure that his son would have his inheritance.
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His work is done.
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So again, I'm taking my time here, says these only who is these these elect only have interest in him.
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And I understand in the in the 1600s, the word interest, if I say only we have interest in him, you think like interested, you know, and the concept that we might think of with that sort of simple.
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But the interest here is the idea of investment.
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Think of something that bears interest, right? It's not just some.
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There are a lot of people who are interested in Jesus, right, but they don't have an investment in Christ.
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They don't invest in him.
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These only are invested in that sense in him and have fellowship with him.
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True fellowship for whom he makes intercession again.
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He's mediator.
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He's intercessor to his father in behalf of and to them alone, that God by his spirit apply this redemption unto as also the free gift of eternal life is given to them and none else.
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Remember, Christ mediates only for the elect.
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Remember what he says.
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He says, my sheep.
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Hear my voice.
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I know them and they follow me and I lay down my life for who? For the sheep.
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Jesus said, I lay down my life for the sheep.
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That is such an important passage.
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You know, people say, oh, you Calvinists, you only rely on three verses.
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I've heard that.
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I've heard people say, you only rely on, you know, John 6, 44 and Romans 9, 13 and a few other passages.
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I say, no, we have whole chapters.
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We have whole books of the Bible.
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What can you explain about the life of Job, if not the sovereignty of God, who at the end of the book and all the sufferings, Job cries out for understanding and God says, where were you when I laid the foundations of the world? Can you put a hook in the nose of Leviathan? Can you can you battle the behemoth? No.
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You know, these are the things God reminds us of his sovereignty and whole books of the Bible.
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So it's, you know, the idea that it's only in one or two verses, it's ridiculous.
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So now let's for a moment just jump to the appendix, because the appendix, again, reaffirms and clarifies the confession.
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And the reaffirmation is in there is actually three.
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It cites three articles, article four, five and seven.
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But we're not going to look at seven tonight, because seven is actually on faith.
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And that's what Brother Andy's going to talk about next week.
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So I imagine he's going to probably reference the article seven.
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So we'll let him who will let him have that next week.
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But we'll look at four and five.
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And I won't have as much time as I did with the confession, but I do want to read these.
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Because again, Cox is here, the man who wrote the appendix is he's clarifying for our sake what is meant by things like election.
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And he says this.
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He says, we teach this page 34, by the way, we teach that they only do or can believe in Jesus Christ to whom it is given to believe in him.
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And by a special, gracious and powerful work of his spirit.
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And that this is and shall be given to their or excuse me to the elect in the time appointed of God for their effectual calling and to none but the elect.
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And then it references John six, Philippians one, Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36, Romans eight and John 10.
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This we hold against those who do maintain a free will and sufficient ability and a man to believe and do deny election.
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You see, you have to understand this.
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And a few weeks when I preach on total depravity, I'll get more into this.
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But the the whole concept of election is based on the inability of the person who is dead in sin to respond positively to the gospel.
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You know, we think about Lazarus in the tomb.
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And and I realize some people say, oh, this is you shouldn't use this example because this isn't about salvation.
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It's about resurrection.
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But I think the illustration is very good.
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And for those who would say you shouldn't use it, I would say I think it's a clear picture.
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Because when Jesus goes to the tomb of Lazarus, you roll the stone away and he says, Lazarus come forth.
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Lazarus had to be raised by a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit before he could respond.
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So too does the unbeliever have to receive a miraculous work of the Spirit in the heart to be able to respond.
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Now it is still the the unbeliever who responds and I have to point this out.
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People say, well, does that mean God believes for you? No, God does not believe for you, but he enables you to believe in the same way.
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Jesus didn't go in and pick up Lazarus and carry him out.
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He said, come out.
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And Lazarus came out, you know, he was walking wrapped up in the in the in the bindings that he had.
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So he probably was walking a little awkwardly, but he was walking on his own two feet.
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But he couldn't have stood up on his own two feet if God hadn't brought him back to life.
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You understand? So that that work of the spirit is a necessary precursor to the person coming.
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So if a person says, no, I came to Jesus, then he gave me life.
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I say you got it backwards because if he hadn't given you life, you'd still be in the tomb.
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You know, the picture that most people have of salvation is a person's drowning and you throw him a life preserver and they grab the life preserver and they get saved.
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That's not the picture the Bible gives.
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The Bible gives a picture that the person has already drowned.
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They've already sunk to the bottom of the river.
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They've already begun to decompose.
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And God gives them life and they come out of the water alive.
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They are dead and now they are alive.
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That's the picture.
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Right.
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And that's the picture that we have of salvation.
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Now, read the other article here.
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It is particular redemption.
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Now, this one, I'm sad I won't be here to hear Brother Mike or Brother Andy preach.
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My wife and I are planning to take our children to Kentucky.
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So we'll be away.
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But Brother Mike's going to preach on particular redemption, which sometimes called limited atonement.
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And this is what this is what it says.
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We affirm that as Jesus Christ never intended to give remission of sins and eternal life unto any but his sheep and a lot of passages to back that up.
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So these sheep only have their sins washed away in the blood of Christ.
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The vessels of wrath, as they are none of Christ's sheep, nor ever do believe in him.
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So they have not the blood of Christ sprinkled upon them.
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Neither are partakers of him and therefore have all their sins remaining upon them and are not saved by Christ from any of them under any consideration whatsoever, but must lie under the intolerable burden of them eternally.
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The truth of this appears unto us by the light of these scriptures compared together.
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And it gives you several passages to look at and then read and recites Article 21, which we just read.
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Particular redemption is true.
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Because hell is true.
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If a person tells me they don't believe in limited atonement or particular redemption, I tell them that then they must not believe in hell.
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Because if anyone is in hell, then it is clear that they are paying for their sins in hell.
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I've heard somebody say Jesus paid for all their sins.
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And I say, well, why are they in hell? Well, they didn't believe.
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I say, is unbelief a sin? Yes, unbelief is a sin.
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All right.
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Let's start over.
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Let's start because because you missed something that you were you were you were going along well.
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And now let's start again.
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Did Jesus pay for all their sins? Yes, he did.
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Are they in hell? Yes, they are.
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Why are they in hell? Because of unbelief.
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Is unbelief a sin? Yes.
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OK, we'll start again.
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This is why in the book, the death of death and the death of Christ.
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Great Puritan work.
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It said Christ either died for all of the sins of some men or some of the sins of all men.
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And the Armenian believes Christ died for some of the sins of all men did not die for the sin of unbelief.
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That's a problem.
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Because unbelief is actually the sin that leads to all other sins.
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Unbelief is the very sin of sins.
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In fact, our initial repentance is a repentance of unbelief.
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We repent from unbelief to believe we stop unbelieving, stop disbelieving and we believe.
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So, that is my thoughts on the confession.
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And now I want to ask you for the last maybe 5 or so minutes that we have, maybe 10 minutes if you give me an additional few.
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Tell me what are some of the objections that you have or have heard regarding the doctrine of election.
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OK.
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Yeah, I got a shotgun.
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We'll start with the lady first.
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Miss Wilmer.
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Was you the one who said? God is unfair.
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Oh boy, coming out hard and fast.
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God is unfair.
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That's a very, very, I don't want to say it's a good argument because I don't think it's good.
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But it certainly is an appealing argument.
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Because people, if they want God to be anything, they want God to be fair until you explain what fair means.
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Because if you say, what would it mean for God to be fair to you? If a person said that to me and said, I don't believe in Calvinism because that means God's not fair.
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My question then would be, how would God be fair in your perspective? And oftentimes they say, well, he has to give everybody a chance.
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I say, OK.
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Well, let's just back up for a moment.
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What about people who never hear the gospel? And oftentimes the response is, well, they have some other way of hearing.
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I say, OK, where do you get that? Immediately, their whole, the wheels start falling off the cart.
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When you just plug, when you just poke a hole, and immediately the dike begins to leak and eventually it bursts.
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I tell people, I say, when we deal with fairness, was it fair that every child in Egypt that was the first born died? They might say, well, I don't like that.
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I didn't ask you if you like that.
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I asked you if it's fair.
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They would say, no.
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OK, so you don't think it's fair that God chose to do that? No.
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Or they might say yes.
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And if they say yes, I'll say, why? Why is it that only the Egyptians' children died? Well, they were dying on behalf of Pharaoh.
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They didn't do anything wrong.
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They didn't make Pharaoh's decisions for him.
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So immediately we begin to start dealing with the question of fairness.
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And I say, the question is not whether or not God is fair.
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The question is whether or not God is righteous.
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Because when we deal with fairness, we start getting into the concepts of equity and equality.
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And I really don't have time to get into it.
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But as I said, this is a good one.
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Because, Wilma, when people say that about fairness, I always joke, I always throw a joke out.
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I say, a fair is a place you go to ride the carousel.
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I say, that's what a fair is.
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I say, what you're really talking about is righteous.
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I say, and is God righteous to do with his people that he created what he chooses? If God is righteous to do with us as he chooses because he created us, then really we can't argue about fairness.
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And if we all got what was fair, we'd all go to hell.
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But we do have to start with the question of what do you mean by fair? Do you mean equitable? Because the modern concept of fairness really gets down to, and I hate to get into politics, but it really gets down to this whole communistic idea of equal opportunity slash equal outcome.
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Everybody not only deserves equal opportunity, everybody deserves equal outcome.
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And it'll never be that way.
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You know, I was born in America, freest land that has ever been.
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That's not fair when you think there was somebody born on the same day I was born in Iraq and have lived their whole life in a world that isn't free.
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So you want to talk about fairness.
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That's not, and again, like I said, whole argument.
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But go ahead.
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I was just going to say, what my son said to me was, I don't want to believe in a God that lets children die before they ever hear the gospel, which is what you just explained.
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Different things like that.
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Why would, how would God let people be born just so they could go to hell? And my response, can I offer, can I proffer a response to that? Because if somebody asked me that from the Arminian perspective, I would say you have the same problem.
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If your question is why would God create someone knowing they were going to hell, that is not a problem with election and predestination.
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Because if God is all knowing, whether or not they are predestined or they make the choice on their own, God knows whether or not they're going to go to hell.
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So that's not a problem for our side.
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That's a problem for everybody.
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Why does God create and reprobate? For his own glory.
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That's the answer.
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But at the end of the day, that's not a problem for us.
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That's a problem for the concept of hell in general.
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Why would God create anybody knowing they were going to go to hell? So like I said, I've dealt with this for so many years because I've had so many people present this argument in different ways, but I'm really glad you asked about fairness because that is a very common one that people need to be able to address.
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And the issue of, like you said, the issue of why would God create hell? Why would God create people knowing they were going to hell? Understand this, and this may be hard to take, but this is true.
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God is going to be glorified in the salvation of the elect and in the damnation of the reprobate.
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God will not, not the same type of glory, but he is still glorified.
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And I say not the same type of glory.
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Why would I say that? Because the Bible says God does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked, but he does take pleasure in the salvation of his elect.
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It tells us that there's joy among the angels.
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One of my professors pointed that out one time.
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It doesn't say the angels are rejoicing.
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It says there's joy among the angels, which in my professors, I thought this was neat.
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He said it's God who rejoices, you know, and the angels are there.
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I thought that was kind of cool, you know, the way of thinking of it, right, because it's among the angels.
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It's in the presence of the angels God is rejoicing when the elect are redeemed, you know, because that's what he's glorified in that.
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And so I don't think that God receives the same glory in one or the other, but he is glorified in both.
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Now, Brother Mike, you mentioned evangelism.
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Oh, I'm sorry, free will.
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So, I'll make it short and sweet.
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If somebody asked me that, if they were to say, I don't believe in Calvinism because I don't believe in, because I believe everybody has free will, I would begin a longer conversation about the concept of will, and I would try to help them understand that Calvinism does not deny that men make legitimate, meaningful choices.
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Because that is something that I think is a caricature of Calvinism, that we believe people are puppets or robots, and we don't teach that, and certainly the Confession does not teach that.
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So, we do believe men make legitimate, meaningful choices, but in the best way, for the simple, if it was an elevator conversation, I only got 30 seconds to answer a hard question, I would answer it the way R.C.
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Sproul does, and R.C.
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Sproul says that I am free, God is more free than I am, and when my freedom runs into his freedom, I lose.
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You know, God, you know, we talk about free will, but God has free will, and people want God to be bound and us to be free, when really it's the other way around.
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God is free, and we are the ones who are bound to his freedom.
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You know, I think that's a simple way, on a much broader topic, we can talk about moral agency, we can talk about absolute foreknowledge and things like that, but ultimately, I have freedom, you know, I'm going to choose when I go home whether or not I'm going to get a pre-dinner snack, you know, because every once in a while, on my way home, I get a pre-dinner snack, because I can, I'm a grown up, and I have my own debit card, so I can stop and get a snack if I want one.
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I shouldn't, because it's not good for me, but I will make a free will exercise of choice to do that, and yet God has so ordained it that he not only knows what's going to happen, but it is part of his decree, and I can be confident in both being true.
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All right, well, we are close to the end of our time, but Lee, if you want to...
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One other common one is the discourage of evangelism.
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Yes, thank you, and we'll end with that, because of time.
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When it comes to election and evangelism, I have to remind people that when we discuss the concept of evangelism from the perspective of election, there is always going to be the question, well, if God has already predetermined who will come and who will believe from the foundation of the world, then that makes my work meaningless, and here's my typical response, again, the elevator, 30-second response.
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I usually say, do you believe that your birth was ordained by God? I never met a good Baptist who wouldn't say that their birth was ordained of God.
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Psalm 139, fashion me before I was in the womb, and that passage, right? I say, if my birth was ordained by God, did that mean that my parents didn't have to have intercourse? Now, that may sound crude, but that was necessary to bring about my birth, because God uses means to produce his ends.
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Now, you might not like the crudeness of what I just said, but I tell you what, they won't forget the response, because what I just showed is that even though something is ordained of God, there are means that bring about that end.
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Therefore, the means of bringing about the salvation of God's elect is the preaching of the gospel, hearing with faith.
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The Bible says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
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No one gets saved that doesn't hear the word of God preached, so my job is not to save people, but to preach the word of God that the Holy Spirit might bring them to salvation.
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So, I hope that was helpful.
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That's one of my favorite subjects to dive into, and I really enjoyed being with you guys tonight.