Session 8: Q&A

I've tried to separate these into categories, and we're going to give all the hard ones to certain individuals.

No. I'm going to take ones that are directly pertainable to the topic at hand.

I'll do those first. There are some other questions that are just general questions. So the first one, first question is this.

Can an Arminian, in response to the contradiction of praying for someone to be saved, say, because we are commanded to?

As Calvinists reply for what, for why we pray when all is decreed, we'd like to address that question.

Oh, we're on already. Can you repeat the first part of the question again real quick? Yes. Can't an Arminian, in response to the contradiction of praying for someone to be saved,

I think that was, you brought that point up, that that was a contradiction. Right. So are they saying that maybe the

Arminian could say we're called to pray for unbelievers because that's what we're commanded to, even though we hold to our view of free will and stuff like that?

That's it. Okay. Well, there's a contradiction there in that if you say we're called to pray for unbelievers nonetheless, you're actually then praying for something that, according to your theology,

God can't do anything about. You see what I'm saying? So if God is trying to save someone as much as possible, but God can't actually successfully save the person unless the person extends their free will, what's the point of saying, well,

God asks me to pray for them anyway, even though I'm praying for something that God himself cannot do, according to my theology.

So you have an inconsistency with the theology and the practical outpouring of what that looks like when we're praying for unbelievers.

And it's so much easier and more biblical to assume that because God changes the heart through the work of the Holy Spirit and that God uses means, then it makes much more sense for us to pray for unbelievers because our praying is the very means by which

God uses the spirit to soften the heart, remove the heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. All right.

This one is, this would be a general question to anyone here. If we get the doctrines of grace wrong, how will this, how will, or can that minimize the way that God gets glory?

Bruce. Okay. So as I covered in my section on the unconditional election, it's critical that we get the gospel right because if we play a role in it, then we get credit.

All right. Which means the shared glory. God will not share his glory with another. To make sure that the glory is exclusively going to God, justification must by necessity monogistic.

It must be monogistic. It has to be God doing all of the saving, all of the justifying, making a sinner righteous.

Or else again, the glory and the credit will be shared, but God will never share his glory with another.

I was just, would add to that, that anything that we do that's contradictory to scripture, right, is in some way diminishing the glory of God.

And so I would say yes, there's no question that when you put anything into the hands of man, even if it's just allegedly turning on the last switch, in some way that takes, that would take away from God's glory.

But I would also say that there are a lot of Arminians who act and live the way

Calvinists should act and live based on the theology that we have and put us to shame in our actions. And I think we fail to bring

God glory when we become caged stage Calvinists or frozen chosen, those kinds of things.

When we allow the doctrine of God's sovereignty to affect how we view the means that he uses to reach the lost, and we don't faithfully preach the gospel the way the apostles preached the gospel.

And when we use one doctrine to contradict the other, we also take away from God's glory. So I guess

I want to say that we need to be careful that yes, but at the same time, across the board, every

Christian in some way is failing and falling short of God's glory. Okay, this next question.

How do you answer someone who says you can lose your salvation because they know devout brothers and sisters and family members who fell away?

Micah? Okay. It's related to perseverance. Did the disciples know

Jesus was going to fall away? He appeared to be devout. That's why he was one of the 12 disciples.

So I would say we have to be careful that we are not assuming we know ultimately someone's heart.

Only God knows the heart. So someone may have the appearance of fruitfulness, but the extent and course of their lives reveals, unfortunately, as it revealed with Judas, they never had the root of the matter in them, as the way the

Puritans would put it. Jesus says broad is the road to destruction, broad is the way to destruction, and many enter, go that way, and straight and narrow is the gate, and few enter.

So the question is, what do you find on Broadway, actors? You find people who talk the talk, who walk the walk, and unfortunately are mimicking other

Christian beliefs. They may truly think that they believe, but they don't. So that's why they need to be in a church where the gospel is constantly preached.

We need to preach the gospel to ourselves every day, because the only reason anyone gets to heaven is a five -letter word called grace.

It's not by what we do, it's by what God has done for us. The person may sincerely believe that going to church is going to help him, read his

Bible is going to help him get to heaven. Those things do help you in your sanctification, and we need to emphasize that salvation is justification, sanctification, and glorification.

So when we say somebody is saved, we mean that they are justified, are being sanctified, and will be glorified.

That's salvation. So somebody cannot lose that if he never had it to begin with.

And think about it. Would God now, after he adopts someone into his family and calls them his child, make them work for his love?

Once I gave birth, once my wife gave birth... This goes back to total depravity, see?

Once my wife gave birth to our children, they will always be my children, regardless of what they do.

Now they'll either be my good, obedient children, or my disobedient children. Either way, they're still my children.

There's nothing that they can do in and of themselves to change their nature and not be my child.

Same is true for a true believer or a true child of God. Okay, according to the doctrines of faith, would we argue that God ordained the fall of man?

I'm just going to say quickly and then pass the mic over. This is why you need to get a copy of my book in the back.

And yes, we believe that God ordained the fall of man. There's a lot more to say about that, so I'll pass it to Eli, and you can read my comments if you want to in the book.

I mean, yes, we believe that God ordains everything that comes to pass. And that sounds shocking to some people, but that's the reason why everything has a purpose.

If God does not ordain everything that comes to pass, then there are things that occur within time and space that are random and have no purpose.

And I don't know about you, but I rather trust in a God who allows things for a purpose than a God who has no control over certain things that are occurring.

We believe in a sovereign God who works out all things after the counsel of His will. And so that's why we can rejoice in good times, and we can rejoice in times of tragedy, because even in times of tragedy,

God is working out good purposes. Even when we don't know what those purposes are, right?

And I think that's something that, you know, we need to see from a biblical perspective. We have to remind ourselves, right, that we can't just focus on the things we observe in front of us.

We need to be able to be mature enough to step back and see the broader picture in Scripture, that even in the details where we're struggling, where we're suffering,

God is working out a purpose, and that we trust Him. And God does not ask us to trust

Him with no evidence. God gives us evidence in Scripture of His faithfulness to people who are going through suffering.

And that even though God doesn't tell me why I'm going through a specific suffering at this time, I can look to the

Scriptures and see God's faithfulness and be encouraged in the midst of my suffering. Just to add, we have to be careful, too, to remember that while God ordains all things,

He is not the author of sin. Evil is not the creation of God. It's the absence of God.

Evil is the absence of God because when it comes to man, remember, we all rejected

God in the Garden of Eden, Romans 5 .12. In Adam, we all sinned, meaning we all made that choice through Adam and Eve.

Hence, we brought evil. So every evil thing, yes, God has ordained it through allowing man to reject

Him in the Garden of Eden and the consequent, continual rejections of God in his life.

So we just have to be careful there that we do not make God the author of sin. Okay, so let's look at this from the other option.

God didn't ordain it. Did it take Him by surprise? Now we have to institute plan

B. Is this the God you want to trust in, who can't accomplish

His purposes? How is that going to make you feel when you're going through a trial? Oh, He didn't ordain this.

Well, who did? Is this Satan's work and now God cannot counteract it or overcome it?

He didn't know that this was going to happen? The sovereignty of God could be the scariest doctrine or the most comforting doctrine if you understand that He's in control and everything that this

God does is good. There's nothing that He does that is evil or wrong, okay?

So even in the evil that happens in this world, we know that God has a good intent in it.

Look at the crucifixion. If this is not arguably the most evil act in all of history, predetermined by the foreknowledge of God to bring about the greatest good that humanity could ever see, that's the

God I want, the one who's in control, not the one who gets surprised and has to revert to plan

B. If that was the way He handled my life, we'd be on plan triple

Z by now. And I would just add this one thing.

Whenever we face questions like this, did God ordain the fall? We just as well could ask, let's go back further.

Did God ordain the fall of Lucifer, right? Why does

He allow the devil to still exist? Wouldn't it be great if after Christ had died on the cross, rose from the dead, and we all come to faith in Christ, wouldn't it have been great if at the cross

God just destroyed Satan and we had no satanic foe to deal with, right?

But He didn't do that. He didn't do any of that. He ordained the fall. He ordained Satan. He allows

Satan to continue to live and to oppose His people. And why? We can never answer specifically about all the purposes of God.

But the one thing we know, and this is really the overarching purpose, He does all things for His glory.

So in some way that we don't understand, God gets more glory by ordaining the fall than by not ordaining the fall.

He gets more glory by allowing Satan to exist than by not allowing Satan. And really, everything

He does that we wonder about, why would God do that? The right answer, a right answer is always because He gets more glory by doing that than by not doing that.

We may not understand it. We don't understand it. We can't figure it out. But really, it's always about the glory of God.

If synergism is a works -based soteriology, where do we draw the dividing line in terms of having fellowship with folks who profess

Christ and yet hold to synergism? Oh, well, for those who are hearing the word synergism, they'll be like, what's that?

Just in case you don't know. There's a distinction, two theological terms that are very important, synergism and monergism.

Synergism deals with two energies or two efforts involved in the salvation process.

God does His part. Man cooperates with God. Monergism, mono, one, there is one acting in salvation, and that would be the

Protestant reform position, where we believe that God is the one who saves and we do not contribute to our salvation.

Now, from a synergist perspective, you have to understand that in a synergistic system which claims to hold to salvation by grace through faith alone, they will not see something like faith as a work, as a meritorious work, whereas some people might see faith as a meritorious work, and so to believe that one exercises faith by their own free will is kind of a form of salvation by works.

So while we disagree from the reform perspective with our Arminian brothers, they are not affirming that salvation is gained by their works, even though we might argue the exercise of faith independent of the regenerative work of God is, in a sense, a work.

So they are affirming salvation by faith even though in an inconsistent and unbiblical fashion. And so in that sense,

I think Arminians and Calvinists can both be Christian, it's just that we would see the inconsistency at that point, and that's why we have these kinds of talks and conversations.

To add, just as what Eli was saying, it's a point of maturity, it's a point of understanding.

Arminianism is an incomplete, I'm being favorable at its best, Arminianism is an incomplete understanding of grace, okay, and the nature of faith.

It's not seeing it in a mature way, and that's why Spurgeon said famously that all

Christians start off as Arminians, because we all think we chose Christ. We don't realize that Christ chose us, right?

John 15, 16, right? When Jesus told his disciples, you didn't choose me, I chose you. So again, we just have it backward because of our immaturity, and as we grow and as we mature, we say, wait a minute, oh, that's right, no, that's right, the

Holy Spirit actually revealed Christ to me. And in fact, we come into a better understanding as we grow and mature.

So it's really an aspect of maturity. I don't kick out the second graders and the kindergartners in my school district.

We're all a student body. Just because the 12th graders and 11th graders understand physics and chemistry, and the kindergartners and second graders don't, no, we're still a body, we're still all students.

Just some students know more than others. So we have to maintain the unity of the faith, and at the appropriate time, just encourage the

Armenians to, as they mature, to look a little deeper and see what grace and faith really means.

Okay, how would you answer someone who says, God is big enough to allow free will as part of his creation and plan, and not conflict with his sovereignty?

It's just not in the scripture. I would say that it's, I mean, honestly, one thing

I would say is, we can make all kinds of comments on what we think God can be and can't be, but from a scriptural standpoint, which is our standard, that's just not what the scriptures teach.

Secondly, I would be more concerned about a God who relinquishes his will in any sense, and leaves anything in the hands of some kind of lower life that he creates.

I would be more concerned about that than a God who is ordaining all things and who is doing all according to his will.

And personally, understanding these doctrines and understanding where we are, I would be more concerned.

But ultimately, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what I think or what concern I have. We've got to go by what the scriptures say, and it just doesn't teach that.

I was going to say basically the same thing. That's not what we find in scripture, and I think that's clear from everything we've heard in this conference.

We've heard Arminians make that argument, that yes, we believe God is sovereign, and in his sovereignty, he has sovereignly chosen to let man make that final decision.

And that may sound okay to some people. That may allow them to go on believing in their

Arminian doctrine, but that's clearly not what scripture teaches. It's actually incoherent,

I think, that if God were to sovereignly give up his sovereignty, he would know what you would do because he knows all things.

And so in a sense, by choosing to do that, he's already made the future decision certain. You see what I'm saying? So I don't think it's an issue of, well, could

God do it? I think the very concept itself, you can't avoid a sovereign decree. Because if God were to say, for example,

I'm going to create a world where people have libertarian freedom, okay? Now, you guys have to know a little bit about that kind of freedom.

By doing that, it already makes certain the future since God already knows how people would use their free will decisions.

So you can't escape certainty of specific events. From the reform perspective, we just believe that God decrees because he desires a specific end to be accomplished, and that God is in control of that.

It's kind of an incomplete and incoherent notion that creatures would be the final determiner of what happens at the end of the film, so to speak.

I also think because total depravity is true, the T is true, most people don't even realize that they're slaves to sin.

They think that they're free. In John chapter 8, Jesus says, if you know the truth, the truth will set you free.

The Jews answered him, we are the offspring of Abraham and never been enslaved to anyone. Have you read the

Old Testament? Enslaved to the Egyptians, enslaved to the Assyrians, enslaved to the

Babylonians, enslaved to Cyrus and the Persians, under Roman occupation and in slavery to them.

It's a denial of the clear truth that they're not free. So because total depravity has affected every part of our will, intellect, and emotions, there's still this denial in ourselves that we're not slaves of anyone.

And then Jesus goes on to say, no, if the Son set you free, you are free indeed. You first have to acknowledge the fact that, yes, because my will has been stained by sin,

I am not free in all of my actions. Here's a question for you. How many of you want to sin next week?

No one. How many of you will sin next week? There you go. Just one other thing to add too is,

I think if you follow the consistent logic of that idea of God chopping off his sovereignty or submitting it to the man in some sense, you wind up having to come to a conclusion of an open theist conclusion where God, he also ordains to not know the future, that he doesn't know what's going to happen in some sense in the future.

You wind up coming down to that. And at the end of the day, when you follow all these doctrines, you start chipping away at God at who he is and you make man

God and God man, well, God less than man. It's just it's reversing the roles when you carry these things out.

Logically, you take more and more away from his attributes, from who he is. God cannot relinquish his sovereignty.

He can't without not being God. It's impossible. Was the hardening of Pharaoh's heart passive or active on God's part?

I'll take a stab at this one. So God is never passive. Things don't happen to God.

But to affirm what Bruce said earlier, God's not the author of evil. So his activity,

I think it's helpful to think of God's hardening Pharaoh's heart as judicial abandonment. I think

Mark basically got this point. But when God chooses to release someone to their own devices, that's not passive.

That's active. But it's not active in the sense of God has this big potion of evil, and he uncorks it and pours it all over Pharaoh just to make sure he's not good anymore.

Also, to add to that, in the whole cascade of God hardening, then

Pharaoh hardening, God hardening, Pharaoh hardening his own heart. Notice in the very beginning, OK, it says that God hardens

Pharaoh's heart in Exodus 4. So that whole chain starts with God hardening Pharaoh's heart.

All right, so that's the emphasis. That's the primary hardening agent. And remember, we're starting out with understanding that God is intentionally, actively restraining all of mankind, right?

That's an act that's always in place. God is holding our molecules together every second, right? So he is actively removing restraint when he's giving people over to the nature of their own heart.

That's why I said he's not guilty of the actual actions. He's not, as Micah said, he's not making somebody do the evil, but he's removing his intentional restraint to lead them to do the very evil that he knows that they'll do right, that he's ordained, that he knows is the direction of our hearts and so on.

OK, how can we apply the doctrines of limited atonement and irresistible grace to our everyday life?

It keeps you humble to know that you were a dead sinner and God got a hold of you and softened your heart and gave you a new nature, and that he did what he did in Christ to purchase you.

This is the great contradiction in my mind as to how some reformed folks, while preaching the doctrines of grace, can come off so arrogant in the way that they denounce, rightly, false doctrine in many ways.

And it is a walking contradiction to be reformed in your theology, but to be arrogant in the manner in which you teach it and walk through it with people.

These doctrines are practical because they remind us and they force us to understand that salvation has nothing to do with me.

God did not choose me because I was more special than someone else. And we need to constantly remind ourselves that and actively employ that truth in our everyday life, how we interact with people, how we engage in relationships, and how we look at people in terms of the lost.

That we don't just look at the lost and, oh, there's just, you know, this world's going to hell in a handbasket. No, we trust that a sovereign

God can raise spiritually dead sinners, and we actively pray for them, and we recognize that it's by God's grace alone.

That's all. Nothing that we do. Yeah, if you hold to the doctrines of grace, you have to seek to be the most gracious person in the room, right?

It's a contradiction in terms to say, I hold to the doctrines of grace and then be arrogant at the same time.

Jude tells us, show mercy to those who doubt, right? Be gentle, respectful in all things.

These are people who are created in the image of God. And like I had said last night, and just repeating the scriptures, what do you have that you did not receive?

And if you did not, if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not? So even the revelation of the doctrines of grace is a gift of grace to you.

Do not use that as a hammer to hit people over the head with, okay? If you love your neighbor as yourself, you want to share these doctrines with them.

Scripture says, don't be quarrelsome. Be patient with people. Guess what?

That's part of your sanctification if you understand the doctrines of grace, right? So we want to be gentle and respectful when sharing these things with other people, and not use them as a club to hit them over the head, to raise yourself up over the other person.

Remember, knowledge puffs up, love builds up. Not only does doctrines of grace free you to truly love

God and others, because again, true love has no expectations. It's merely giving at the expense of self for the betterment of the other for the glory of God.

But also there's another practical application that we have to look at as well. As Anthony just correctly quoted 1

Corinthians 4 -7, what do you have that you do not receive? That also applies not just to our spiritual wealth, but also to our physical wealth as well.

There's a thing called the Protestant work ethic that came out of the Protestant Reformation, where your estate in life, the class you were born into, meaning your economic class, and even your calling as to your vocation, is also seen as a gift from God.

So the very fact of your wealth and the socioeconomic class you are called into is also a gift from God.

And you have to be good stewards of the wealth that God has entrusted to us, being that it is graciously given.

And that also includes the government, the civil government that we're called to participate in, to affect for the glory of God, and move the needle closest to justice as we possibly can as well.

Because this is another gift that God has bestowed to us. We've been very graced in this country as to those two things, economics and politics.

God has been very gracious, and it's only because of the Protestant Reformation you even have a United States of America, where you have capitalism, which is the correct biblical model for an economy, not the socialism that you're seeing propounded today by the

Democrats. And also a republic, meaning that there's a government of checks and balances overgirded by a constitution that has biblical principles in it, so we also have that as well as a practical application of grace as well.

Great question. I'll try to give two just quick applications. We've got a missionary couple in our church who are in Indonesia.

They've been there for a few years now. They had to learn another language. Two weeks ago, the wife had malaria again.

One of their favorite passages is that Christ has redeemed people from every tribe, tongue, language, and nation.

The confidence and certainty of Christ's work gives them staying power in a very difficult place to follow the

Lord. That's meaningful. Second, on a more everyday kind of note that we would face here,

Colossians 3 tells us, put on therefore, as the elect of God, bowels of compassion.

How can we become so frustrated with others who aren't continually criticizing us, family members, co -workers?

When we think about the mercy of God that we've received, that should really thought about and dwelt upon, if God's given us eternal mercy, we can extend compassion to someone else who's a bit critical of us.

And one other application, which surprisingly I don't think has come up in this entire conference. Maybe it was just assumed, but not just the two doctrines that were just asked about, but all five doctrines of grace.

They are very important toward our assurance. It's very easy.

I know for me, I'm sure for most of you, I mean, we all struggle with sin. And when those struggles become difficult, it's very easy to start to doubt.

And I know some people are more predisposed to doubt than others, but it can be crippling. And it can be very distressing and depressing.

And, you know, as long as we see, and they can be false assurances, but as long as we see evidence of the Holy Spirit's work in us, in ways that he doesn't work, obviously, in the unsaved, when, you know, those struggles with sin and with doubt become strong, we can just look to the doctrines of grace.

I mean, what can be more assuring than the belief, the truth that Christ died for me, for me, as a substitute, right?

One -on -one, he died for me, right? He drew me irresistibly by his grace.

He unconditionally elected me. We need to, you know, build our lives around those truths.

And they are tremendous weapons against doubt when it arises.

Okay. What is meant by Jacob, I loved, Esau, I hated, does

God hate? And then there's a follow -up question to that. Yeah, I think when you define hate, right, it would be helpful, right?

When we think of hate, sometimes we think of all the emotions, the physical emotions that are attached to it. The, you know, there's that, we have this rising within us, and this rage, and this fury.

We know God doesn't have uncontrollable emotions. God isn't like us. He's not physical. He expresses things in language and scriptures that we can relate to.

But when you look at hate, you look at the way that he treats individuals, right?

What he says about them. And you go back and trace that passage from Romans 9 back to its

Old Testament context, and you see the way God speaks against Esau, against the

Edomites. Basically, that he's not going to show them mercy, that he's going to destroy them and wipe them out. That would be the opposite of love, right?

I mean, love is you're going to do, you're trying to do the best good for that individual. You're extending yourself in some ways to meet their needs.

Justly, the Edomites, just like the Israelites for that, just like Jacob for that matter, they all deserve

God's condemnation. But God is gracious to Jacob, but he is not to Edom.

I mean, I don't know how I can see how people can say or try to say that it means love less because of the hatred is used in another text about hating your parents, and we know it doesn't mean the same thing.

But again, you got to go back to the context of where that text is taken from. And I don't know how else you can define hatred in a better way than you're not going to show the mercy, you're going to wipe them out and destroy them, and there's going to be jackals living in their land.

God did that to the nation of Israel at times too, but he always restored a remnant, right? So it's seen in the actions, and it is

God has a holy hatred for sin. So I think we get confused because we think of hatred in a bad sense because we know that we have an unsanctified way that we can exercise hatred.

We know that it's uncontrollable, it's a wrath that's not just and righteous oftentimes.

That's not to be associated with God, but there is, God does have a wrath where he pours out, and it's described as fire and brimstone and so on.

And you get a picture of that in Sodom and Gomorrah. I mean, when we say God loved Sodom and Gomorrah at that point, when he loved them in any effectual sense, he loved them and gave them life and so on.

But he expressed his divine hatred and wrath toward them when he rained down fire and brimstone.

Okay. All right. The follow -up question to that is, why should we preach the gospel if God chose his people?

That's a great question. So we talk about God predestining people from before the foundation of the world. So the number of those that are predestined are set in the mind of God.

And so someone might say, well, what's the point of preaching the gospel? He's got his frozen chosen, right? That'd be a good

Calvinist ice cream flavor too. God ordains the ends, but he also ordains the means.

And the means whereby the ends are met is the preaching of the gospel. So just because God has his set select chosen people doesn't mean we don't preach the gospel because God has also selected that the proclamation of the gospel is the means whereby his elected will act, their salvation will be actualized, right?

That's very, very, I think an important thing to keep in mind because Calvinism does not teach fatalism.

Fatalism is this idea of what will be, will be. It doesn't matter what I do. That's not Calvinism. That's not the reformed understanding of providence and sovereignty.

It does matter what you do. And that's why we are obedient to the command of God to proclaim the gospel, praying that God uses us as a means to work towards his end.

Also, in every major decision, every major guidance, God always gives two or three confirmations.

In the mouth of two or three witnesses, every fact is confirmed, scripture says. So you have the voice of the spirit, okay, that's regenerating you, that's depositing faith and repentance in your heart.

And then when the spoken word is speaking, the Logos word is spoken and preached, you're going to latch onto that Jesus that you heard preached, okay, from the word of God.

And there's your two witnesses. The witness of spirit, the witness of the word. So again, as a bare minimum, in addition to what

Eli is saying, God always uses two or three major witnesses to confirm the truth of a particular situation.

The situation of your salvation, obviously, is that serious, that he's always going to give at least two witnesses, if not more.

I think it's helpful if we think of it like this. Instead of saying, God elected or chose before the foundation of the world who would be saved, or God chooses, let's say it this way,

God elects before the foundation of the world who will be saved, right? That's true. But let's take it a step further, and let's say it this way.

God elected before the foundation of the world who would be saved by the preaching of the gospel, right?

He chooses those who will be saved, and that salvation is always by the preaching of the gospel.

You know, we give the impression, I guess, or we allow ourselves to think that because God chose who will be saved, well, they're going to get saved.

But how are they going to get saved? This is what we mean when we say he ordained the means as well as the end.

He chose to save a people, or he chose a people to be saved by the preaching of the gospel.

And just to say, too, as well, and that's why it's important for people who embrace Calvinism to, again, embrace both the doctrines of how

God saves and the means, as our brother just said, because there are Calvinists who are afraid to use the words that would put the onus on people to respond.

No, we have to look. You need to believe. I have no problem saying that. You need to believe.

You need to come to Christ. You need to repent because they do need to do that. Now, again, does

God have to be the one to open their eyes to give them the faith? We know that that's true, but it's through the means of the preaching that God saves.

And we could even say, look, if you reject this truth, which they willfully do in acts, right?

They talk when Stephen, I think, is preaching. He says, look, you guys are a stiff neck people. He doesn't say, well, God, you know, he says, you guys are a stiff neck people.

And you always do the same thing that you've done all along to the prophets. You reject to God. You reject that truth.

And so people will be accountable for rejecting Christ. There will be a greater judgment for those who have heard the gospel than those who have not heard the gospel.

There'll be a greater judgment for those who have rejected, willfully rejected the gospel. And we need to put that to the conscience of people and not be afraid to give choice words in the sense of recognizing that that's the means that God uses and that they're still accountable for their choices.

Just to add quickly, Paul said in Galatians 1, whether we are an angel come preaching, you know, in Revelation 14, you see the angel preaching.

So the main means that God uses is his church, but he's not limited to his church. He can send an angel to preach the gospel.

And today in the Muslim world, God is visiting Muslims through dreams and visions as well. We're in a leading ways. Iranians, there's a huge revival in Iran right now where God is visiting.

Now, I'm not saying every dream or vision is from God. Of course not. But some are. So God himself, like Saul on the road to Damascus in Acts 9, you could get

God himself bringing the gospel to you. But either way, he'll reach his elect. Paul says,

I do all things for the elect, right? 2 Timothy 2. The elect will hear the gospel between here and the last breath, whether it's through a human means, an angel, or God himself.

Just one other thing to add to say to that is William Carey, when he wanted to go to India, he had this desire, this strong desire to go to India to preach the gospel.

And he was in a very Calvinistic setting. And the people we met with the council who would send him basically said, look,

God will save the people, however he'll save the people. And William Carey, again, knew that there's a means.

In Romans, it says that very clearly that how will they hear unless somebody's sent? And so the general sense of scripture is that if we don't go, they're not going to hear.

They're not going to be saved. I mean, God is not going to save. I don't believe he's going to save through angelic beings.

It's going to be through the preaching of the gospel. Romans, if you don't go, how will they hear? How will they believe this message unless someone goes?

So I'm only saying that not to create a debate with Brother Bruce here, but just to say that I don't want us to become lax in Calvinism to say, well,

God will reach the ends of the earth however he wants, even if it's through angels. That is not the normal means. In any sense, it's through people going and risking, and many people have died before they even got to those lands in the 1670s.

Look at how many people died, didn't make it. We don't hear about them as much, but they went. And that should be the mindset.

We need to go. They need to hear the gospel. We need to go. And I think just to bring it up now, because it's related, one of the accusations, objections, accusations leveled against Calvinism, and it's a false accusation, is that Calvinism quenches evangelistic zeal.

And nothing can be further from the truth. A correct understanding of the doctrines of grace fuel an evangelistic fervor.

And if you look back at the missionary movement, the greatest missionaries, the founders of the missionary movement,

William Carey and others, they were almost all Calvinists. Historically, they were Calvinists, and the understanding of the doctrines of grace compelled them to go and to preach the gospel.

So keep that in mind when someone brings that accusation against you.

Yeah, the other thing that we can be confident in is when we preach the message of the gospel, that's all they need to hear.

We do not have to bring them to a carnival. We don't have to do pizza, movies.

We don't have to... It helps, doesn't it? It helps, right. Well, look at me. I know it helps. Hey, I'm questioning his salvation right there.

Arnzen, Chris Arnzen, right there. He says he's my brother, and then he laughs.

I'm always kidding. No, think about what people now do in order to give them the gospel.

They got to do all kinds of worldly things, create this atmosphere, create this thing so that they come and then tell them to ask

Jesus into their heart. No, if the gospel isn't repent of your sin and believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ, you're not preaching the gospel. Asking Jesus into your heart is not a biblical notion.

Creating an atmosphere, an environment that's going to tingle their senses and work them up into an emotional response is not the gospel, because guess what?

Once somebody does truly repent and trust in Christ, their life may not get better, right?

We're cautioned to count the cost. Why should we count the cost? We have Jesus. Why? Because the world's going to hate you.

Because it hated him first. It's going to hate you. You have to be ready for that. So why not preach the gospel the way the apostles preached the gospel, okay?

Let's look through the book of Acts. You know how many times the word love appears in the book of Acts? None, right?

Why? I thought it was God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. That's not the gospel.

It's not that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. It's your life for his wonderful plan.

You have to put it in correct order. Repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. You have to confront people in their sin.

Not like with a hammer, you know, sometimes it's gently, sometimes it's a rebuke. But that's the gospel.

Repentance comes first. Okay, we have one with a name on it for Eli.

Okay, you've been singled out. Can you explain what you were referring to in 1

John 2 .2? Sure. Okay. So 1 John 2. That the certificate of debt was nailed to the cross.

And so if he propitiated for the entire world, then he nailed the certificate of debt of their sin on the cross.

And so everyone gets saved. Are you going to be a universalist at that point? I don't think that that's the proper understanding of that text.

What I think is very interesting is that 1 John also wrote the gospel of John. And there is a parallel passage here that has a similar linguistic construction.

John chapter 11 verses 49 through 52 says this. Now I want you to keep in mind 1

John 2 .2. He's the propitiation for our sins and not ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.

And then you have in John chapter 11 verses 49 through 52. But a certain one of them, Caiaphas, who was a high priest that year said to them, you know, nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people and that the whole nation should not perish.

Now this he did not say on his own initiative, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation and not look at the look at the linguistic similarity and not for the nation only, but that he might die also to gather into one, the children of God who are scattered abroad.

1 John 2 .2 does not necessarily mean he dies for everyone without exception, but it definitely implies that he died for everyone without distinction,

Jew and Gentile. And those that are out in the world is not meant to be understood as every single person in every, you know, every single person on the planet.

Otherwise you have universal atonement. I think because the gospel of John and 1 John were written by the same person, the clarification comes in the gospel of John that the world out there is referring to the lost and scattered sheep because Jesus doesn't propitiate for people who aren't his sheep, right?

If you're not a sheep, you're a goat. If you're a goat, you're not saved. If you're not saved, your sins are not nailed to the cross with Jesus.

You see how that works? So there's a necessary logical connection there. Is the drawing referred to in John 6 .44

synonymous with regeneration? If not, does the drawing precede or follow regeneration?

What? All right, one more time. Is the drawing referred to in John 6 .44

synonymous with regeneration? Yeah, I would say no. I'd say it's justification. You're justified when you confess

Christ as Lord and Savior. You regenerated prior to that. So I'll say no, but I'll defer to my colleagues over here on the tables.

Well, without having thought a lot about that, I would say that we are regenerated.

Once we're regenerated, we're made alive. And now we have the capacity to respond.

So I would say, I would agree with Bruce there. We are regenerated, and once regenerated,

God draws us to himself. Think of it. If we're not regenerated, well, it also depends on what drawing means.

But if we're not regenerated, we're still dead in our sins. So why would

God be drawing us if we're dead in our sins and unable to respond anyway, right? So he regenerates us, and then the drawing, he draws us.

Now, maybe it happens all at once. Sometimes we put these gaps, but who knows how all of this really works out.

Maybe we're regenerated and drawn at the same time, but I would say definitely the regeneration would precede the drawing.

I don't know if anyone else agrees with that. Yeah, I think this deals with the issue of what comes first, right?

Regeneration, and then faith, or faith and regeneration. Well, it can't be faith prior to regeneration because faith is a spiritually good act in which the

Bible clearly says that the natural man cannot please God. Is putting faith in Christ pleasing to God?

Yes, and so logically, you can't do it. So it has to be regeneration preceding faith. However, and this is where you get into a very important philosophical distinction, that when we say that faith precedes,

I'm sorry, regeneration precedes faith, it is not necessarily a chronological proceeding, that you have regeneration, and then some time passes, and then faith.

Then you run into the problem with regeneration occurring, and someone is saved without actually exercising faith.

So what happens if someone's regenerated, gets hit by a car before they profess faith in Jesus? You get into some sticky philosophical weeds there.

I would say that faith, I'm sorry, regeneration logically precedes faith.

A friend of mine gave an example with a light bulb, that when you turn the switch of the light bulb, you have the electricity, right?

So the electricity is present simultaneously when the switch is pulled. So you have regeneration, the spiritual rebirth, what will be present with that is a saving faith.

And so they can be understood simultaneously in one sense, but there is a logical proceeding of regeneration to faith, not necessarily a chronological proceeding, if that makes sense.

Yeah, well, if God draws us in order for us to come, we already are responding. And so the drawing has to be coupled with some sort of regenerative work.

Otherwise, we would not actually walk, if we're going to use the analogy, walk towards Christ, because the walking towards Christ is the being drawn.

That is going to be done after regeneration, in a sense, since the natural man is not going to be drawn to the words of Christ, unless there is that heart of stone removed and the heart of flesh given.

That's what I was going to say. Okay, all right, let me see if I get this.

What do you say to someone who would agree that the unsaved not only are capable of good works outside of Christ, example, feed the hungry, give generously to the church, etc.,

but often show more love and kindness than those who profess to be

Christians? And then there's an example there. It says there's a website where many waiters have posted complaints that they hate working on Sundays, because the church people are not only the worst and worst customers, but also the worst tippers.

Real quick on that one, I would just say you're only going to know a true action by its intention, okay?

And you need to look into somebody's heart to see what's going on. What's their real intent, okay?

So we're going to be judged by the motives of the heart, meaning the true intent of the heart.

And that's not always manifested outwardly. So we have to be very cautious with that.

So I think it's pretty common knowledge that, yeah, often the heathen seem to do a lot of good works, even perhaps better good works than many professed

Christians. But again, what's the intent? Are they doing it to get their name in lights?

Are they doing it to get a tax deduction? Are they trying to leverage more good works in their conscience to justify their continued sin in their life that they're trying to suppress as they run away from the knowledge of God and so on?

So again, you really can't judge somebody's heart. We're not able to do that.

Only God can judge somebody's heart as to the true motive, the true intent. And that's why that question really becomes a non -question, because we could never judge somebody's heart to that degree.

And I think if we ask the question simply, can an unbeliever do good? The simple answer to that is yes.

However, there needs to be a very important distinction made between what I would call horizontal goods and vertical goods.

Horizontal goods are good actions as proceed from man's perspective. So when an atheist walks an old woman across the street, that's good from a man's perspective, but he's not earning points with God because the natural man can conform to the law of God externally.

He could act certain ways, but to truly conform to the law of God is both external, obeying the law, and internal, doing it with a proper heart, right, with the intent of honoring and glorifying

God. The natural man cannot do that, all right? So in terms of vertical goods, from our perspective up to God, no man does good.

No one is righteous. No, not one. In regards to horizontal, you know, it's the same thing.

You have this example with justification in the book of James. When you have the idea of justification by works in James and justification by faith in Paul, you have in Paul, how are we justified before God?

By faith alone, apart from works. But how are we justified before man? You see, not by faith alone, because my actions will demonstrate the intentions of my heart.

And so there's that horizontal aspect in relation to man and that vertical aspect in our relation to God.

So unbelievers can do all sorts of things, and we as Christians would applaud that. But in terms of spiritual good, that has no purchase with God because the heart of the unbeliever is not in the direction of honoring

God in the actions that they perform. And I think also this comes back to the issue of God's common grace and the restraint.

Imagine if we live in a world where only Christians could do good. If the unbeliever could not do good in the sense that we're talking man, the way man sees good, kindness toward one another.

Again, that would be a miserable place to live. So God graciously allows the unsaved to do acts of kindness, compassion, and the like.

And then that's really for the benefit of us all. Okay, only a few more questions.

Does man have free will? How is man responsible if he cannot believe? Explain then when

Jesus said, many are called, but few are chosen. I'll do the last one.

Many are called, but few are chosen. We heard earlier about effectual calling.

That's the inward call. But in scripture, sometimes we use the language of call in a way that suggests just the general call of the gospel or the outward call of the gospel.

So in that outward sense, many are called, as many are invited by gospel preachers, come, believe, hear, not all are chosen.

But those who are called by the spirit of God internally, they hear, they receive, they believe because they are chosen.

I'll take the one about free will. And this is, I think, where a lot of reform people get a little sloppy in terms of even reform scholars.

I mean, they'll be like, well, we don't believe in free will. You know, those dirty Armenians, they always, you know, focus on free will.

Calvinism, reform theology teaches we do have free will, but not in the sense that the non -Calvinist perspective holds.

I can choose to do anything that is consistent with my nature, and I am not forced externally to do certain things.

No one forces me to choose red socks over blue socks, and I wear neither of those. I wear black socks or white socks. Those are terrible color choices, but we have choices.

Now, when we take a look at freedom from the perspective of God, God is free in the sense that He can choose to do that which is in accordance with His nature.

I'm made in the image of God, and so I have a similar kind of freedom. I can choose to do what is consistent with my nature.

Now, people sloppily define free will like this. Free will is the freedom to do whatever you want.

That's false, because if that's what free will is, and you start with that man -centered definition, or not do what

I want, sorry. If you define free will as the ability to do anything, right?

I freely choose to do anything. That would be an inappropriate definition, because that would exclude God, because there are certain things that God cannot choose to do.

Namely, He cannot choose to sin. That's why you don't define freedom with man first.

You define it first with God. If God chooses that which is in accordance with His will, and in accordance with His nature, then we have that same kind of freedom, but then we need to make distinction in regards to salvation.

Is it within my nature to choose Christ when I hear the gospel, independent of being transformed spiritually by the

Holy Spirit? No, it's not. It's not part of my nature. While my will is free, there is a paradoxical truth that it's also in bondage to sin.

Because I only freely choose that which is in accordance with my nature, and my nature is sinful, I freely choose to do different sorts of sins, unless God changes my heart, gives me a new nature, and then my freedom then entails that I am free to do other things that are consistent with my new nature, namely exercise faith in Christ.

We do have free will. We're not forced to do anything, but there's an issue of being enslaved to our natures, and that's why we need our natures changed, so that we could exercise faith in Christ.

Can you ask the first part of the question? But first, I'd be interested to see what color socks Chris Hansen's wearing right now.

Does man have free will? That was the first part of the question. Okay, there are a few more questions.

I'm only going to bring two more questions because that's bringing our time to a close. This is a question about irresistible grace.

If grace cannot be resisted, in one sense, did Stephen in Acts mean this? You stiff -necked people, uncircumcised and hardeneers, you always resist the

Holy Spirit. Yeah, the fact is grace can be resisted.

We resist grace all the time. Those of us who have been redeemed, we've been regenerated, do we not have the grace to obey

God in everything, right? Do we obey God in everything? No. So we resist

God's grace. Remember, irresistible grace is a term created by man to describe this doctrine, which is why, you taught on this, didn't you?

I did. Oh, you taught on it, I'm sorry. And you referred to it as? Effectual grace or effectual calling.

Or effectual calling. That's a better term. God's grace in salvation will always prevail in the end.

It will always effectually call us. By his grace, our nature will be changed. We will see

Christ in a whole new light. We will be effectually and irresistibly drawn to him.

All right? But that does not mean that God's grace, the grace we receive every day, to live, to trust, to obey, to walk as Christians, won't be resisted.

So in that sense, his grace in the sense of his calling us to himself is effectual and irresistible.

So we don't want to confuse those two aspects of his grace. That's why

I like to call it invincible grace, because it puts the power with the person who's exerting it,

God. His grace, when he bestows it on the person whom he chooses, whom he decides to have mercy, it's a grace that will subdue the heart, change the heart, and bring it to life.

So it's invincible grace. The sinner, the unregenerate person, when the gospel is preached to them, if they're not chosen or receive mercy, they're going to naturally resist it, continually.

And but for God restraining the evil in their hearts, it would go worse. So those whom

God has chosen in Christ before the foundation of the earth will receive mercy.

There's only three things that people can receive, and I think this is really important to understand. Justice, mercy, and grace, right?

What is justice? Getting what you deserve. What is mercy? Not getting what you deserve.

What is grace? Getting what you don't deserve. In all three of those, not one of them is unjust.

So if God gives justice to any one person, is there anything wrong with that?

Is God not glorified in the just condemnation of sinners? If a judge went lenient on a man who raped and murdered 10 women and let him go on two years worth of jail time, would we say that he was just?

No. He would put that person behind bars forever. Same thing with a sinner who's committed spiritual crimes against God.

All they get is what they deserve, no more, no less. It's going to be perfect justice. So when you think about election, election is mercy, and there's only three things that the person can get.

So I forgot where I was going with this. Okay, that'll be the end of it.

Just to add also, in terms of resisting God's will, and again, when it comes to salvation, that would be the non -elect.

So what are they resisting? They're resisting the intellectual knowledge of God. For example, the spoken word of God, either by reading it or having it preached in a synagogue or the temple,

Acts 7 .51, Matthew 23, you know, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you stole the prophets, et cetera. You know,

I long to gather you, but you were not willing. So yeah, the

Israel that's not redeemed, Israel that does not know God, right? Not all of Israel is Israel. Well, the

Israel does not know God because their hearts have never been circumcised by the Holy Spirit, whether in the old covenant or now in the new covenant.

Okay, where Jews and Gentiles are included in the body. Yes, you can resist the intellectually attainable will of God.

Absolutely. And to what extent the spirit is dropping those thoughts into an unsaved person's mind.

Those can be resisted, right? But when it comes to actually giving birth from death into life, where there's a dead spirit now being made alive by necessity, all right,

God's power can never be overcome by a mere creature. So that which he wants to bring to life will, in fact, definitely come to life and definitely do what that life was programmed to do.

For example, a baby's programmed to breathe. No one teaches it to breathe, it just breathes because that's the actual essence of its life.

That's the very nature of its life. A regenerate person is going to receive Christ because the

Holy Spirit's breath of life into that dead spirit is the gifts of faith and repentance. And when the word is preached, they're going to receive

Christ as Lord and Savior. And I think the nature of the question also shows the weakness in the acronym

TULIP. It's just the letters don't capture the biblical truth.

And that's why we've modified our terminology, limited atonement, particular redemption, right? Total depravity gives the impression that someone is as bad as they possibly can be because it's total, and that's not necessarily the case.

So we want to be very careful. We don't want to call something irresistible grace and then have to explain, well, it is resistible, but use the biblical categories when explaining.

These acronyms are helpful in getting the doctrine out there, but we want to try our best to defend them biblically and not just use some of the reformed catchphrases, right?

We want the scriptures to be the standard by which these doctrines are formulated and expressed. Okay, and then the last question.

What is the importance of expository preaching? Can you be fed on only topical preaching? If a topic's biblical, then you can be fed.

I think you could be fed through topical preaching, but topical preaching independent of expository preaching is going to be deficient.

That's why the manner in which we preach needs to be holistic. We need to be able to, you know, I'm a teacher. We teach differentiated instruction.

There are people who learn differently, and so the way I teach, I need to be able to cater to the different kinds of learning.

People follow topics and themes very easily, and not all the time do they follow great detail and vice versa.

So as the teacher, we need to be able to present these truths in a way that is helpful for all the sheep to learn.

But we can't just feed you topics. Eventually, you're going to have to dig into the weeds of the text itself and get over that kind of allergic reaction of having to actually boil down and get to the details of the scriptures.

Here's the thing. If you're a Christian, the Bible is the most important book in your entire life. If you don't like reading, get over it.

And I mean that completely seriously. It's hard. Not everyone likes reading. It's difficult. But if something is really, really important, you're going to take the time to plow through it, especially if you're digging through the

Word of God, which has treasures within them that once you grasp, they will have a powerful influence in your life and in your ability to share and proclaim the gospel to people around you.

So we need to dig in, get down and dirty in the text, and pray through God's grace that he grants us understanding.

In that question, I'm not sure if by expositional preaching, if the person means a sermon where you make the main point of the passage the main point of your texts, or if they mean preaching through books of the

Bible, sequentially, verse by verse, like Calvin did. I do think it is helpful to preach through books of the

Bible. One of the advantages, I think I was talking to someone here, and they said they felt like Arminian churches always have their go -to text they're preaching on, and Calvinists always have their go -to text they're preaching on.

Well, if you preach through books of the Bible, you're going to preach on John 6. You're going to preach on 1

John 2 too. You're going to have to hit it all and explain it in its proper context. So preaching through books of the

Bible, and expositional in that narrower sense, does force you in a good way to let

God's word be here and you're under God's word. I would say in general, expositional preaching should be the norm, and it's really the dinner that's fed to the sheep in the congregation.

And topical preaching is the dessert. Both are necessary, but one is definitely primary, and that's expositional by far.

Any church that's all topical, yikes, that's a problem. Yeah, I would agree.

I think topical preaching in certain instances is excellent. There's certain topics, like what we're doing now in this conference, it's topical, right?

But think of what you would miss if you didn't go through books of the Bible expositionally.

Let's say you're a Stephen King fan, right? And you get his latest book. And someone comes to you and says, listen,

I'm going to read chapter 21, paragraph 4. And they talk to you about chapter 21, paragraph 4.

And he says, next week, I'm going to read chapter 3, paragraph 10. And the next week, we're going to read chapter 17, paragraph 1.

How long would it take you to understand the plot line of this new Stephen King book? It would take forever.

So when we go through the books of the Bible expositionally, we're trying to get the whole counsel of God and the theme of the book, the thought of the author, bringing us from beginning to end.

It's so important that we have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and don't hopscotch all over the place.

Picture, I have kids, right? And we buy them puzzles. And usually, the puzzle pieces are all over the floor, right?

Think about trying to put together a theology by these little puzzle pieces here, there, and everywhere.

If you don't create the outline first and then start filling it in systematically, you're never going to build the whole puzzle.

You're going to have pieces all over the place. And that's what I see with most people who are in topical preaching churches.

They know a little theology here, a little theology here. And like before, like Eli was saying, all these things are connected, but they don't know how they're connected.

And when you hold one doctrine here that contradicts another doctrine here, you have an issue. So all these things have to be connected.

And the solution for that is to go through the book expositionally. It's real easy. Yeah, just to add to that as well.

I agree 100%. I think, as you said, there's a place. Sometimes you fill in a topical message here and there, in between.

If you go to another church, obviously, you're going to have to pick one section. But even then, you should always preach the text within its context and not just focus on an individual verse out of its context.

But I think there's a big difference, even when you do that. Obviously, if you come and you visit a church, you're preaching from Matthew chapter 10, whatever verse, this and this.

There's a difference between when you do that at that church, how you preach that, and then when you've preached the first nine chapters of Matthew and come today.

It's just you can't do the same thing. It's different in that sense. But so I think it's important to preach expositionally, to work through a book.

It doesn't put the determination of what's going to be conveyed to the people of God in the hands of the preacher, even, in the sense where they're always choosing topics that they may be favorable towards.

There's a lot of texts I would not have preached if I wasn't preaching expositionally. I can tell you right now, on widows and all this,

I would just be like, wouldn't know where to go with some of it. But you have to do that. I also want to turn it on you guys and say that I think you should read the

Bible exposition. I think you should read. Sometimes you have these Bible plans where it's like a chapter in Genesis, and then tomorrow it's

John, and then Psalms, and all over the place. Read the Bible from cover to cover.

Just go straight through and go passage to passage. Go right in order. If you want to do one in the new, one in the old, fine.

But you should read the Bible, the whole letter. These letters have a broader context.

They have a forest as well as individual trees. And if you're just focusing on individual trees all the time, you're going to miss the general theme of redemption and all that's taking place, and get lost in that.

So I think you should read, in that sense, systematically right through the Bible as well.

Okay. If I can just pick up on the analogy. I was actually from Martin Luther. Martin Luther used the analogy of coming to the

Bible as coming to a forest. And at first, all you see is a sea of green.

And then that's the Bible as a whole. And then as you get closer, you start to see individual trees. There's an oak tree.

There's an elm tree. And then you want to get closer. He says, so as you get right to the tree, now you start to see the branches.

You see the chapters. You climb up in the tree. And now you go out on a limb and you start examining the leaves. And then you see the grains in the leaves.

So you're examining the verses in detail. And sometimes, especially as Reformed people, we get too stuck out on the limbs, examining the leaves.

And once in a while, you've got to climb down from the tree and back up and see that verse in the whole context of the forest.

And so I think that's some good advice. Let's just thank all of our presenters.