THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE: (3 of 12) TOTAL DEPRAVITY

TWELVE 5 CHURCH

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THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE: (4 of 12) UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION

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Who was able to read all of the assignments? Man, a big chunk of you actually did it.

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That is awesome. So the gospel of John, the first six chapters, what did you see?

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What's the big theme in John, especially there in those first six chapters? Jesus is

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God, right? We see the beauty of Christ in the midst of that. That's John's purpose. And a defense of Calvinism by C .H.

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Spurgeon. That was a fairly decent article read, a fairly good size, but that's one of the easier things by Spurgeon to read.

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Did anybody, did you enjoy it? Did anybody have a hard time getting through that one? A little tricky. Yeah, it's hard, especially when you're reading something old like that.

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What about the abstract of principles? Y 'all enjoy that? That one kind of makes some sense, doesn't it?

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The importance of historical Christianity. That one was only a page and a half.

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That one's pretty easy. Was that helpful in kind of confirming and reminding you of what we talked about last week?

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Because that's the whole point of it, right? It's reestablishing and really kind of giving you more of a foundation of the week before so that you're ready for the next week.

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Anybody have the suggested memory verse memorized? Last week, last week you were able to quote the memory verse.

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Anybody else? Anybody got the memory verse down, Pat? You may tell me what it is.

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You have it memorized, don't you? Okay. Okay, hey, that's good.

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All right, and I've already been told by a couple people that y 'all got that suggested book by Tom Nettles and that is an excellent resource for history.

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What's that? You ordered it too? Awesome. I think it'll be helpful. It's not an easy read, but I think it'll be helpful for you.

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All right, well, let's pray before we jump into lesson three tonight. Dear only Father, Lord, we thank you for your grace.

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We thank you for how you've brought us back together tonight as a church body. Lord, may the distractions of the world just kind of take a back seat and allow us to focus on fellowship, to focus on just learning more about you.

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God, as we speak on this topic of total depravity and as it encompasses original sin and all of the state of humanity in Adam, God, I pray that we could be precise with it.

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Lord, I pray that it would edify, that it would encourage. I know there's a lot of folks in here where quite a bit of this is going to be a recap for them, but God, I know that we desperately need reminders of some of these things.

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We can clarify and we can refine and grow in our knowledge and fear of you through it.

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Lord, be honored in it. We thank you. I thank you for this people. I thank you for their hunger to learn more about you.

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May you be honored in tonight in Christ's name. Amen, amen. Well, lesson three, total depravity.

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We've gotten through the introduction. We've gotten through some historical perspective and some of those terms we'll be bringing up tonight in this lesson as we jump into the first of the five tenets of Calvinism, which is?

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What's the second one? Unconditional election. Wesley's got it down.

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All right, I love it. Well, guys, as we jump into this, we want to first,

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A, the Pelagian controversy. Who knows what that is?

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Can you remember from last week? Who is this named after? Pelagius, yes.

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From what time period? Fourth, fifth century, yeah. And so Pelagius, he is combating who?

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Augustine, that's right. And what he's doing is actually, as a matter of fact, I think page 11, number three gives you that understanding.

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If you want to write that in your notes so you can go back and look at that, the Pelagian controversy. This is a person that he's a rationalistic and naturalistic heretical doctrine is what he espouses.

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And it emphasizes human free will as the decisive element in human perfectibility.

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And he minimizes or denies the need for divine grace and redemption. And there's reasons for that.

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And we'll talk about that here in just a moment. But let's break this down here. And this, again, this is repeat.

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Number one, this is a repeat from last week in a sense. If a person understands and embraces the doctrine of total depravity, the other four points fall into place.

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Remember how I said last week that these rise, all stand and fall together.

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And if total depravity is not right, then the others fall. They crumble.

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You cannot have perseverance of the saints. You cannot have unconditional election. You cannot have limited atonement. You can't have any of it.

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If total depravity falls, they all fall. And if total depravity is true, what we will see is that they all must be true.

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Okay, I'm gonna reaffirm that completely over and over again as we go through this. So the other four points fall into place.

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The doctrine of total depravity, this first became a matter of controversy during the teaching ministry of, as Chase said a moment ago,

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Augustine, his favorite theologian, right? That's right. During what has become known as, again, the

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Pelagian controversy. Again, we go back to the historical perspective.

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I keep telling you, we need to look back to the church. These are our forefathers. These are our brothers and sisters, and they've already worked through a lot of these things.

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So we don't have to go back to the drawing board in some cases. And so this was the

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Pelagian controversy. So what does that look like? Pelagius protested a statement in a prayer by Augustine.

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He protested a statement in a prayer by Augustine. This right here tells you kinda where Pelagius was in his thinking about God.

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So Augustine's prayer was such. You see it there? You can highlight it, underline it so you remember.

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He says, command what thou wilt, and grant what thou dost command. Seems like a good prayer, doesn't it?

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Pelagius objected to the second part, grant what thou dost command. And what was his reason?

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Saying that it assumes that the creature is not morally able to do the will of God.

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Augustine's saying, grant what you command. Grant us the ability to do the will of God.

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Do your will, is essentially what he's saying. And Pelagius says, no, no, that can't be right, because if that's right, the creature is not morally able to do the will of God.

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And his assumption was most certainly correct. Pelagius' assumption was correct.

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That if we are praying, God, do as you command, that it assumes that the creature is not morally able to do the will of God.

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And here's where it all stems from. Number three, the heart of the controversy was the doctrine of original sin.

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Original sin. This is, this has been a long debated topic as to what original sin is, what original sin does, and who is under the consequences or the outworking of original sin.

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As a matter of fact, groups like the Church of Christ, they're predominant in our culture, they deny original sin.

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They believe that when you're born as a child, you are righteous and innocent.

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There is, you have no need of forgiveness for sins, because until you reach an age of accountability, you are not a sinner.

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Only when you can cognitively affirm sin and start acting on sin, and they have different ages, but this is an old heresy, started with Pelagius.

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Basically, our Church of Christ neighbors and friends are Pelagian, that's just the fact of the matter.

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They do not believe in original sin. Original sin, let's look at this, B. Well, let's see what this is.

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Original sin does not refer to the first sin. Who thought that original sin referred to the first sin?

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A couple of you, yeah. It does not refer to the first sin. Instead, it refers to the consequences of the first sin upon the human race.

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It refers to the consequences of sin upon the human race, and if you were with us in our systematic theology over the past year and a half, we covered that.

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We talked about that pretty extensively. We learned all about original sin and this being the consequence of that.

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Number two, the consequences. The whole human race fell, and because of that, the whole of human nature is influenced by the power of sin.

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And as you write in there, human nature, I want you to circle or underline the word whole, whole of human nature, and then underline in circle or circle influenced by the power of sin.

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This word influenced, I went back and forth from using this in the notes. I think that you could say dominated.

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You could say enslaved by the power of sin. Paul said in Psalm 51, when he is praying his prayer of confession to God for his sin with Bathsheba, he says, behold,

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I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

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David is not saying my mother was in the act of sin by the act of conceiving me.

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No, he's saying that I was born a sinner at conception.

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I was an enemy of God at conception. That's hard for us to get our brain wrapped around, isn't it?

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You look at our sweet little babies. You know, you go to the hospital, and a newborn is there. I'll go to, sometimes people in the church will have a baby or one of my friends, and I'll go to the hospital, and I get to hold that baby, and they're so sweet.

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They look so innocent, right? They seemingly haven't done anything wrong. And so we go, well, there's innocence.

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But that's not how Scripture defines it. They're born under the influence of original sin.

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Why is that? Well, let's keep looking. The next page, number three.

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Original sin has to do with the fallen nature of mankind.

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Original sin has to do with the fallen nature of mankind. As a result of the fall there in the

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Garden of Eden, we are not sinners because we sin.

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We sin because, why? We are sinners. You see the distinction, right?

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We are not sinners because we sin. That is a denial of original sin, is thinking, well, okay, well, this child is innocent until they're 13, 14 years old, and they have the mental capacity to really understand that they are enemies of God if they sin, and then we've given them the law of God, and then they carry that out.

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If that is the case, then why do we ever go to any of the nations and tell them about Jesus?

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Because we've now left everybody under an age of accountability if that's the reality, right? But that is not the reality of Scripture.

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We sin because we are sinners. And one of the ways that we can really be affirmed in understanding this is in the doctrine of the virgin birth.

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If you were with us during the systematic theology thing, I really hit on this point. Have you ever stopped and wondered, why is the virgin birth an essential doctrine?

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Why is it so important? God did lots of miracles, right? It's not just the miracle of a virgin birth that's the reality of why that doctrine is so vital.

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If somebody denies the virgin birth, they deny the gospel. Why? That's right.

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That's right, Christie, do you wanna speak? Okay. So Christ could not have an earthly father because the seed of Adam would have been passed down to him and Christ would no longer be sinless because of original sin.

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The influence and the consequences of Adam's sin are passed down to his posterity and it is passed through the seed of the man.

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And Adam, Adam sinned. Jesus is the true and better Adam.

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He was miraculously created and he didn't have any sin. That's why it's so important because original sin has to do with the fallen nature of mankind.

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Every infant that is ever conceived outside of Jesus is stillborn in sin.

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Dead in their trespasses and sins. And not because they sinned. They ended up sinning because they're sinners.

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This is an important element of understanding original sin. And if original sin is not real and is not biblical, well now we can take total depravity and throw it out the window.

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And again, we'll see why. Let's look at the next section C. The definition of total depravity that feeds from original sin.

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What it does not mean, okay? It does not mean that every human being is as bad as he or she can be.

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It's also called utter depravity. Does not mean that every human being is as bad as they could be.

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Hitler wasn't even nearly as bad as he was capable of being. That seems extreme, doesn't it?

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God has his hand of restraint on mankind. And so we are not saying when we say total depravity that the whole of the human race is just killing themselves and wreaking havoc and destroying everything.

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We would have no societies if utter depravity was the definition of total depravity, right?

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Or if total depravity is the definition of utter depravity. Like we wouldn't be able to gather in here because the depravity of man would have killed all of us already because of its selfishness and its sin.

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So it is not utter depravity. That's important to identify that. What it does mean, that the fall is so serious that it affects the whole person, body, mind, and will.

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And before you get too excited, Don, I'm not a trichotomist, sorry. That's not what

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I'm getting at, okay? Body, mind, and will. This is the whole person affected, everything.

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As a matter of fact, down below that, you will see these little sections, these little breakouts with passages, cross -references for us to get our brains wrapped around what this means, okay?

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And the first one is, of course, body, okay? There in Romans 7, the wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

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The fall is so serious that it affects the whole person. Who will deliver me from this body of death?

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Our bodies decay and die, don't they? Adam's didn't in the garden.

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There was no death. There was no decay. There was no brokenness. There was no warring against you, and there was no enslavement.

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He was free. We're not. We're enslaved. Our bodies are subject to the consequences of death, which are the result of sin.

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The second one, mind. In our minds, Romans 8, Paul says, for the mind that is set on the flesh, it's hostile to God.

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For it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot.

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It cannot. The mind is hostile towards God. So now we have this body of death that fights against us.

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We can't make ourselves younger. No matter how much cosmetic surgery that you do, or how much makeup you put on, or how many miles you jog, or how many weights that you lift, your body is fallen and broken, right?

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It's a result of this depravity. The mind is also. And finally, the will.

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John 6, 44, we mentioned this verse last week. Jesus says, no one can come to me.

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No one can, unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

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This is not speaking of ability, but desire, remember? We put that in our notes last week.

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When he says no one can, he's not talking about ability. He's talking about desire.

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No one desires to come to me. He can't. His will is distorted by depravity.

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And number three, the whole person. The whole person has been infected and corrupted by the power of sin.

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The whole person. It's kind of a scary thought, isn't it?

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It's kind of hard to think. Well, Pastor, there seems to be some goodness in some people that are unbelievers.

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There seems to be some kind of desire to serve others, or desire to help others, or desire to do good.

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That's why we would not say utter depravity. But here's the point.

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Them desiring to do something good is not righteous in the sight of God, and meriting favor with God and salvation.

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For that, their best efforts, their most righteous acts, as Paul says, are as filthy rags.

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That can't be the case. But they still can do things that seem good.

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We reap the benefits of it, right? We all know what it was like to have a pagan like Donald Trump in the office.

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We experienced some of the good things that he put into place that benefited all of us, right?

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Am I wrong? Even though there's most certainly no righteousness in someone like Donald Trump.

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But still, we're not speaking of utter depravity. We're speaking of something different that's tied to that original sin.

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And number four, the controversy. This is the issue. The Pelagian controversy centers on the degree of corruption.

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Centers on the degree of corruption. This is important. Are we?

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Are we corrupted? Body, mind, and will? Is that how scripture defines it?

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Well, then it's gonna be kind of hard to get around total depravity, isn't it? It seems that scripture is giving us this understanding.

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No one does good, no, not one. All has turned aside, right? We keep going back to these texts that are just so concretely black and white that we say, okay, so total depravity.

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This must be the case. Next page, section

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D, radical depravity. Yeah, I like this term.

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So when the acronym was put together, and we talked about that at week one, but when the acronym was put together, you're kind of stuck.

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Like when I put together a sermon on Sundays, sometimes I like for my points to all be, like start with the same letter or something that's memorable, so I have to go through a thesaurus and go, this is the word

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I wanna say, but it doesn't match the other word. Is there another word that means that word that goes here? And sometimes I find it, and I'm like, well, it doesn't really mean that, but I can maybe twist it over there.

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That's the idea of total depravity. The term itself is not hard and fast.

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It's the idea behind the term. They just simply wanted an acronym that could be utilized well.

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So when we say total depravity, we really mean something different. It's because of the connotation of the word total, because it leads us to think in terms of utter depravity.

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I think a better term is radical corruption. This word radical just means relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something.

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That's far -reaching. Adding to and affecting the foundational nature of something, number two.

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Most people believe that man is basically good. I think we see that most of the time.

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When people don't understand these doctrines, when we don't teach the whole counsel of God, when pastors get up and they just, they try and avoid certain texts.

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Have you ever seen a church go through the book of Ephesians, like us? How many weeks did we spend in Ephesians?

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We're not done yet, but how many? It's well over a year. Yeah, I think we counted 68 weeks, and I feel like we're flying at warp speed.

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But I watch other churches, and they'll jump in Ephesians, and they'll do it in the next eight weeks, because they need to skip over some things, because we're not really gonna pinpoint some of those hard truths that allow us to think in terms of having our minds renewed by God's word so that we can comprehend the truth at any level.

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And what it leads to is people believing that man is basically good, and that sin is peripheral to his nature.

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Again, let's go back to the idea of original sin. We think like children, but even as adults.

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We look at our neighbors that, again, they seem to do decent things, and we go, well, they're basically good, and then the evil one dangles this carrot of sin over there in the peripheral.

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Yeah, they get drawn away by it. Well, that's different. That text in James that we're drawn away by our own desires and enticed, that's talking about us, right?

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And we're desiring some sin, but when he talks about the state of humanity in that text, he's saying, well, that's their nature altogether.

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We've been given a new desire, a new nature that wars against that nature of death that is within us, but the unbeliever, there is no good.

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No one does good. No, not one. Our Arminian brothers like to say all means all.

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Well, we say no one means no one. Sin is worse than hell.

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It's a weird statement, isn't it? Why do you think that a momentary sin deserves an eternal punishment?

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What's that? It's against an eternal God. It's against an eternal God. Now, that punishment equals, but it takes eternity to carry out that punishment.

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We only think of hell as unfair when we diminish the rebellion against God that is in our heart as an unregenerate person.

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You get that? We only think hell is unfair when we diminish the rebellion, the cosmic treason against an eternal

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God. Again, that's why it's so important to look at these truths and know them, dive into them because we need to have a firm foundation so that we don't get tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine and then all of a sudden come up with our own doctrine that says, well, man is basically good.

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And then we are like Pelagius. And we hear a prayer of somebody actually praying that God's will be done.

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And we go, no, no, no, no, no, no. God is subject to me. That's essentially what he's saying, isn't it?

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It's bad theology. It's not God's word. Which phrase?

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Yeah. We only think hell is unfair when we diminish the rebellion against God that is in the heart of the unregenerate.

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Number three, the reform view is that the fall penetrates to the core of man.

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It's right to his heart. I don't know if you remember a couple of weeks ago, I talked about the breastplate of righteousness and I was speaking about how the organs, particularly your heart kind of represent your emotions or they represent who you are as a person.

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And so that's the same idea that we're using here. It penetrates, this view penetrates to the core.

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It gets right to the person, right to who they are. I have a quote here from Lorraine Botner.

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It's actually in the article that you have for this week's homework. So you'll read this quote, but I wanted to read this real quick to you.

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He says, this doctrine of total inability, which is total depravity or that radical corruption, which declares that men are dead in sin does not mean that all men are equally bad, nor that any man is as bad as he could be.

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It gets back to what we talked about radical corruption. Nor that anyone is entirely destitute of virtue, nor that human nature is evil in and of itself, nor that man's spirit is inactive and much less does it mean, doesn't mean that the body is dead.

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And it does mean that the body is dead. The body is dead. It gets right to the heart.

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It doesn't mean that we see the evidence of total corruption. We won't see their true intentions and their true heart until they're suffering under the wrath of God in hell and railing against him and his goodness.

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We see glimmers of it. We see war. Look at the disgusting aspect of war.

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Look at the inhumane industry of the prison system. Look around you.

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Human depravity is everywhere. You see it. It's not as bad as it could be, but it is most certainly there.

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And why? Because the scriptures teach us that we are corrupted to our core.

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It's a heart matter. Number four. Actually, we have a box there of the abstract of principles.

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I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but look at the last, roughly the last half. It says original holiness and righteousness, and it says whereby his posterity and nature corrupt and wholly opposed to God and his law are under condemnation.

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And as soon as they are capable of moral action, become actual transgressors.

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Adam, we just got through talking about that very thing, right, the fall of man. God has created us.

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So what does this mean there in the abstract of principles that a child is conceived, born in sin, right?

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They're under the influence and the corruption of original sin. They're born in Adam.

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And that infant isn't necessarily doing terribly unrighteous actions, are they?

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But you can rest assured that they will. Why? They're against God.

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Their heart is corrupted. They will sin. We are not sinners because we sin.

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We sin because we're sinners. They will act on their nature. Number four, therefore, what is required for man to be conformed to the image of Christ is not simply some small adjustment or behavior modification.

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Now, that's how a lot of churches preach the gospel, don't they? Quit smoking, quit drinking, quit dancing.

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And I forget the quote. And don't hang out with those that do or whatever. Come down the aisle and pray the prayer.

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You know, get yourself right, right? I got it all wrong. I got it backwards, now angels laughing at me.

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All right, you get the point though, right? Yeah, but nothing less than renovation from the inside.

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Regeneration by the Holy Spirit. Everyone that's gone through our new member class, you've sat through an extensive conversation about that.

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Regeneration preceding faith, right? This is why. They must undergo regeneration of the

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Holy Spirit. The only way to escape this radical corruption is for the

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Holy Spirit to change the core, the heart of man, as R .C. Sproul says. That's the only hope you got.

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Now, you're beginning to see the pieces fall into place now of all the other points of these five tenets of the doctrines of grace.

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Because now if total depravity is true, if it's grounded in original sin, now we must, there must be something outside of ourselves to come and give us the power to do righteous, to be righteous, and that takes regeneration.

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It's the Holy Spirit, right? Number five, man is so radically corrupted by sin that even, and there's the word again, regeneration, the new birth, does not instantly vanquish sin.

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This is important here because doctrines of grace will fundamentally denounce perfectionism.

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We are not perfected this side of glory. Why is that?

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Look at the passage in Romans 7 that Paul puts here. We quote this quite a bit here, right? For I delight in the law of God and my inward being, right?

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My heart's been changed. My heart has been awakened to life, that heart of flesh that was in rebellion against God under the influence and the corruption of original sin, the sin of Adam has been replaced by a heart of flesh that loves your law.

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But I see in my members another law. What's that other law?

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That law of the flesh fighting, waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

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Wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death. So regeneration doesn't instantaneously vanquish sin, right?

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Every person in this room can attest to that. There's no such thing as perfectionism. That's why we don't carry around a heavy sledgehammer of condemnation on each other for falling prey to sin in the flesh because even

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Paul did. We greet each other with love and compassion and call each other to righteous living.

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Number six, total and final eradication of sin awaits glorification in heaven.

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That's good news. It will go away one day. But here we still are suffering under the influence and consequence of having been born in Adam, right?

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That depravity is fighting against our flesh. We've been made a new creature, but we will not see that into fruition until glory.

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Section E, the twofold debate over free will. Number one, one aspect of this doctrine concerns the relationship between God's sovereignty and man's ability to act freely.

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We talked a little bit about free will last week. We talked about the idea that most people when they refer to the term free will, they're referring to libertarian free will, that you can choose just in and of yourself outside of any influence.

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And we were able to dismantle that completely. Like that's not possible. The second aspect of this debate concerns the relationship between the fall, which there's that original sin and the consequences of that fall, and the power of human freedom, the power of human freedom.

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And this is a tough question to answer. This is the debate. I mean, this is basically the core of the debate.

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Once the original sin camp comes in and just bombards you with all the scriptures, it's hard to stand.

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You have no standing anymore. So now they'll pivot and say, okay, so those scriptures are right. Original sin is correct.

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But I don't like total depravity because let's now talk about free will. And this is kind of the approach that they take.

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Number three says the Second London Baptist Confession, which again, that's not our

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Bible. We believe it to be a summary from saints of what the Bible teaches, which became one of the foundational statements of faith that's used by the

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SBC founders affirm that man has completely lost his freedom in the area of spiritual goodness.

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If you notice the last sentence down below there in the 1689, it says that he is not able by his own strength to convert himself or to prepare himself there unto.

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Man is not capable. He's completely lost his freedom in the area of spiritual goodness.

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That's a hard pill to swallow, isn't it? No one does good. They're not going to.

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Their will has been corrupted. Their mind, their body, their will, all corrupted, all under the consequence of the fall.

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I gotta move through. We got 15 minutes, yes. Yeah, that's a great question.

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I do not believe that there is such a thing in all of the created universe as libertarian free will.

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I believe that God ordained for everything to be so, yes. Otherwise, he wouldn't put the tree in the garden.

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He wouldn't have planned on bruising his son from eternity past. He would not have set his love and affection upon all of us from eternity past.

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He had already planned it all. I do not believe there is such a thing in the created order of libertarian free will.

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That being said, theologians do affirm that Adam and Eve both had the ability to sin and also had the ability to not sin.

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That's like a brain twister, isn't it? The ability to sin and the ability to not sin, but according to scripture now that we're born in Adam, we lost the ability not to sin because we've been corrupted.

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Number F, or the section F. What's that? Oh, that's somebody that questioned.

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The question of moral inability. Number one, according to Pelagius, Adam's fall affected only

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Adam. Adam's fall affected only

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Adam. That's it. Number two, the semi -Pelagian position, which are those that wouldn't go quite as far as Pelagius, but they go far enough to be outside of the realm of reality in scripture.

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But the semi -Pelagian position says that man was affected by Adam's sin and that he is born with a corrupt nature.

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They can't get around the scriptures. They have to say that. But there remains a remnant of original righteousness, basically a power in man's will that can cooperate with or reject the grace of God.

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So Adam did have an original righteousness. He was sinless. He didn't have any, he had no sin.

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He had not committed any sin. He wasn't born in himself that had already sinned.

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He's sinless. He had an original righteousness. Otherwise he would not have been able to walk with the

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Lord. He would not have been able to commune with God because God would not be with someone unrighteous and commune with them.

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But that this is the position that they would hold. Their final analysis, why some will come to Christ and others will not is rooted ultimately in human decision through the power of that which remains of original righteousness.

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That's the position. And what we would say is, and they would tie that to being made in the image of God.

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They would say, well, man is made in the image of God. Well, yes, but sin has marred that image, right?

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Well, number three, according to Augustine, Saint Augustine, the fall was so profound and the power of sin so strong in man that only

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God can change the disposition of his soul. Only God can change the disposition of his soul.

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And underneath there, you see the words of Jesus, right? There's that passage again in John six.

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He said, this is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the

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Father. And what happened when Jesus said that? He had all these followers, everybody follow him, seeing the miracles, seeing all the things he'd done.

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They are physically, they physically have eyes on Jesus and all the crazy, amazing things that he did.

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And it says, after this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. Why? Because it had not been granted by his father.

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That's the point. God must change the disposition of the soul.

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All the evidence in the world about who Jesus is and about the Bible being true and about all of these other things, all of that will have people who may follow what you have to offer for a season.

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But when push comes to shove, they will leave because they're not there because they're of a heart change.

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You can't change anyone's heart by evidence, by miracles.

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And all the things that those people sell, only those whose disposition has been changed by God.

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The words of John, in John chapter one, verse 12 and 13, but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man.

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How were they born though? But of God. He's not man. And this one's near and dear to us lately, the words of Paul in Ephesians two, right?

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And you were dead in your trespasses and sins. You were unable, unable to come to him.

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The fundamental issue you see written in that box there on the next page, does fallen man have the moral power to incline himself to God's offer of help?

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Or is it absolutely necessary for God to do an initial work of recreation, that regeneration in the soul, before the person has the moral power to say yes to the gospel?

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Is it supernatural assistance or supernatural regeneration? This is the fundamental issue, isn't it?

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You see, again, if total depravity falls, all the rest fall. If total depravity is right, you're kind of stuck with limited atonement.

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You don't have an option. You're stuck with unconditional election. You're stuck with irresistible grace.

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And you get perseverance of the saints. Because it's God. Section G, the divine initiative.

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Before a person comes to Christ, God works unilaterally, monergistically, independently, and sovereignly, by changing the soul of the sinner, which is by nature dead in sin and morally unable to resurrect itself.

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So if total depravity is true, if original sin has corrupted and influenced the whole person, well, now, it must be, the fact is that we are morally unable to look to Christ, to do righteous, to do anything good.

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People would say, well, the free gift of God. Jesus is a free gift.

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You have to reach out and take a gift. We're not talking about our child that we're handing a gift to.

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We're talking about a corpse in a coffin. Unable to reach up and grab the gift.

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Yeah, we're not, they're not capable. We were not capable. We would not. We refused to.

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Because our will was one of rejecting that gift. Because we hated righteousness.

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God gives spiritual life, which enables a person to come to Christ.

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That's that regeneration, right? And we've got some proof text there. Again, Ephesians two, even as you were dead in your trespasses, says he made us alive.

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He alived us. Right? That's right. And together with Christ, by grace, you've been saved.

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It's not of yourself, right? And he tells us that, so that no man could boast, right?

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Otherwise, we'd have something to boast in. John 6, 37. All the

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Father gives me will come to me. That's the demand that the

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Father must give. The Holy Spirit must awaken and then we will come. There's that irresistible grace.

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We'll talk about that later on. Irresistible grace, you see Christ, you run to Christ. There's no rejecting

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Christ because you don't want to reject Christ once you've been awakened. But before you've been awakened, you will not accept

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Christ because you are corrupted by original sin. Acts 13, 48. And when the

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Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord. And as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.

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I don't know how you get around that text. As many as were appointed to eternal life? It doesn't say as many as chose eternal life.

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No, they were appointed to eternal life. Section H, monergistic regeneration.

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Let's talk about that for a second. You all understand what I mean when I say monergistic.

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You have monergistic, you have synergistic. What is monergistic? One, mono, singular, synergistic.

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Working with, right? A lot of Christianity today has a synergistic version of the gospel.

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It's God and me. You ever heard the phrase, hey, I see you white knuckling down there at the pew, say one more stanza, the organ's playing, right?

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You take the first step and God will take the rest. Synergistic.

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You, you have to take a step. You only have to take one step, you take the rest. You don't see that in scripture. You see a monergistic act of God.

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That person sitting in the pew just heard the good news and the Holy Spirit blew in like a wind and gave them a new birth and their heart rejoices and now they see

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Christ for who he is. They don't need an aisle to run down. They will repent and believe and be saved.

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This is the gospel that we proclaim, right? Number one, regeneration is a work of God alone.

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I keep repeating this in the homework so you keep writing it because I want it stuck in your brain. Regeneration is a work of God alone.

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Number two, grace is by its own nature alone. There is nothing a man can do to earn or merit it.

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Grace, we talked about grace at the very first week, right? Grace is unmerited favor.

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If you play a part in grace, it's no longer grace because it's merited because you received it.

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You played a role in it. That's synergism. This is a monergistic act of God. John 6, 63 through 65 there, it is the spirit who gives life.

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The flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life but there are some of you who do not believe.

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For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe and who it was who would betray him.

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And he said, this is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the

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Father. There's a little bit of a breakdown here. I want us to walk through that briefly here, okay?

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The flesh is no help at all. What does he mean by this? There's no innate power within man which inclines him to God.

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The flesh is of no help at all. If the flesh had an original righteousness, there is some help. There is something in there that would give you a desire, the flesh would be of help.

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And Jesus says, the flesh is no help at all. As a matter of fact, it's a hurt. Your flesh will war against you and fight against you here.

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That phrase that he says in that last line down there is no one. He says, no one can come to me.

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It is a universal negative proposition. It says something negative about everyone, okay?

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No one, no one. Not a few, not most, no one, okay?

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The word can means ability or power in which no man has to come to Christ.

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Come to me, no one can come to me means to embrace Christ in faith. This is what a man has the ability or power to do.

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Or this is what no man has the ability or power to do, right? No man, no one can come to me, which all who are weary come, right?

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Who are weary? The ones that realize they're weary. The ones that have been awakened to the truth.

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Unless, no one can, unless points to a necessary condition. It's important.

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There's a necessary condition that must be met before the desired situation is realized. Unless, they must come to me.

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All who confess with their mouth and believe in their heart will be saved. Who will?

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Who's gonna do that? There's a condition. Who won't do it? Man, all men other than the ones that are chosen and have been regenerated to do so.

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And he says, it is granted him by my father is the necessary condition. God has to enable a person to come to Christ.

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He must. This is what scripture teaches. Man has lost the moral ability to come to Christ.

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We've got, let's see here. How much farther have I got? Oh, I got a good amount. Let's get through this, guys. We're gonna fill it out.

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Section I, the bondage of the will. Number one, man still makes choices, but only according to his nature.

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Man still makes choices, but only according to his nature. It's what he desires, right?

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Again, no one understands, no one seeks after God. The heart is deceitful above all things.

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Ephesians 2, 2, in which you once walked following the course of this world from the prince of the power of the air, the sons of disobedience.

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Number two, the very essence of freedom is the ability to choose according to our desires.

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If you wanna say free will is your ability to choose based on your desires, then

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I would say yes and amen. On that we agree. If that's what you mean by free will, then yes.

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I'll give you that if you choose based on your desires. Ephesians 2, 3, among whom we once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind as we talked about a moment ago.

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Number three, the problem is moral bondage. The problem is moral bondage.

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Now this one, I don't have time to hash this out. This is actually a big deal. 18th century theologian

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John Witherspoon and Francis Tritarian, I never pronounced his name right.

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I think 17th century. These guys really kind of hashed this out and went back and forth.

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But in the block there, he says man's bondage of the will is called moral inability, not natural inability.

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We don't have the power or the ability to love the good. We are slaves to our own desires.

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So when we say that, what does that mean? Moral inability, natural inability? Well, I found this quote by Jonathan Edwards.

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I thought, man, what a good job of kind of defining it so we can kind of get a preliminary understanding of what this means.

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He says, a drunk is certainly able to put down his beer. That's natural ability.

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But it may be that he does not have the spiritual capacity to refuse another drop. This is moral ability.

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This is what we mean when we make this distinction here. I have another quote here. I'm not sure if we have time to hash this out.

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Benedict Pektek, he's a Geneva Reform theologian, says he argued that the impotence, that's a word that just means lack of power, of the sinner does not excuse him in sinning.

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What he means by that is his lack of power of being a sinner, him being a sinner by nature, by being born in it, is not an excuse, that does not excuse him in sinning, since it is not involuntary and merely physical, arising from a defect of natural power, but voluntary and moral, arising from a depraved nature.

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What is he saying? He's saying moral inability to come to God. God is not setting up fences to where we can't physically climb over them.

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God has set up spiritual fences and standards that we do not have the moral capacity to obey.

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That's an important distinction. We are not robots. God is not creating robots and saying, and just making them sin and making them move.

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Right, this doctor and a lot of people that don't understand what we're trying to say here, they'll actually accuse God of injustice.

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They'll say, well, God's the author of sin then. God's making you sin. No, this is moral inability.

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This isn't a natural inability. It affected the heart, and the heart affected the body.

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The body's gonna do what it wants to do. It's like I said last week, I said the free moral agents, we're like a person that jumps out of a plane,

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I can do flips, I can do somersaults, I can do jumping jacks, but I'm still falling.

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I have no power to pick myself up and put myself back in that plane or safely on the ground, right? Number four, by nature we have no desire for Christ or the things of God.

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We freely reject God unless God changes the desires of the heart. I'm Ecclesiastes 7, but they have sought out many schemes.

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Isaiah 53, one to his own way that everyone's turned. Isaiah 59, but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your

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God. Psalm 14, three, they have all turned aside. Together they have become corrupt.

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There is none who does good, not even one of them. Paul quotes that in Romans three, right? All have turned aside.

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No one does good, not even one. Man if left to himself, right? Man if left to himself, there in Romans two, four and five, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance, there's not a physical barrier, there's a spiritual barrier.

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But because of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourselves, your desires.

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This is the doctrine of total depravity. Your heart, your body, your mind has all been affected.

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Your will, I should say. Your will has been affected. You would not choose

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God apart from that regenerating work because of total depravity that is grounded in the doctrine of original sin.

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I wish I had some time for questions. If you do have questions, I'm gonna be here. Let's chat.

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Hopefully I can get to as many of you as I can. But let's cover our reading assignments.

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If you flip the page there to page 32, we have more homework, guys. Y 'all love homework, don't you?

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This is important. This kind of gives you a better understanding. In an hour, we're flying through a lot of information tonight.

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If all you're doing is focusing on tonight, you're not getting enough. These readings are important.

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Go back to John. I want you to read chapters 10 through 17 this week. I want you to read there in your appendix the 1689

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London Baptist Confession, chapter nine. That one's a short one, that's an easy one. You can just read on free will.

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It's just a few paragraphs. And then Total Depravity. This is an unknown author, but it's there in the appendix under lesson three.

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Very good. I went back and read it this afternoon. I thought, man, that's a really, I wish I knew who wrote it.

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It's really well written. And then you have a suggested memory verse. And then additional resources.

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If you want to know about this controversy in greater detail, and you want a little bit of historical perspective, the

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Bondage of the Will by Luther is an excellent, excellent resource. It's an excellent read.

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I think you would enjoy that. But this is the doctrine of total depravity, grounded in original sin.

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Everybody got it? Everybody a pro on total depravity now? All right. We're just scratching the surface, aren't we?

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All right, guys, let me close in prayer. Lord, thank you. Thank you for not leaving us to ourselves. God, you are so good.

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Lord, we were born in iniquity and sin, but you and your good grace set your love on us.

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You chose us before the foundations of the world. Lord, you sent your son to pay for us.

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And even in our own corrupted will and desires, we would never choose him. Oh, but the

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Holy Spirit breathing new life into us and giving us a heart of flesh to be able to receive that glorious truth.

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Oh, Lord, we thank you for it. And we thank you for having an elect from every tribe, nation, and tongue that you will save.

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And that we have brothers and sisters all over. You are a good, gracious, loving God. And you have revealed yourself, not only through your word, but also through creation so that no one is without excuse.