Before the preaching of the Word, we're going to read... It's going to be a bit more of a topical message today on the topic of free will. I'm going to read from two separate passages here before we pray and before we look at that. The first one is going to be from Romans chapter 9. I'm just going to read Romans 9, verses 14 through 16, and then we're going to jump to the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22, verses 16 and 17. So, I'll read Romans 9, beginning at verse 14 through 16 now. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion. So then, it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. And then Revelation 22 verse 16, I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright and morning star. And the spirit and the bride say, come. And let him who hears say, come. And let him who thirsts come. And whoever desires, or whoever wills, let him take the water of life freely. Amen. Well, let's pray. O Lord, we again come to you to appeal for your spirit to give, to bless, to give aid in the preaching of your word. Lord, we pray for clarity. We pray for the power from on high that we might learn of you, your sovereignty, your majesty, your glory, and how you have created man and how you have, how you redeemed man for yourself. Lord, may you bless us. May you encourage us today. Bless your people here. Open our hearts to receive the word as it is preached to us, we pray. In Jesus' name, Amen. So, last week we looked at Christ as mediator. Specifically in those three Old Testament offices as prophet, priest, and king. And we noted that Christ as mediator provides as prophet, priest, and king, supplies everything that we lack. We were ignorant. We were without that intimate knowledge of God. But Christ, as our prophet, reveals God to us, and He brings us back into that union with God. We are unclean before a holy God. Christ, as our priest, sacrifices Himself as an offering to atone for our sin, and presents us as clean before God. We are unwilling and we are unable. Christ, as our King, makes us willing in the day of his power and breaks us free from our bondage and brings us into his kingdom. So as we move on, then, we're following the pattern of the London Confession. It's presented Christ the mediator to us and then it's going to, chapter 9, we move on, it's going to present man, or the state of man, helping us to understand why were we ignorant, why were we unclean, why were we unwilling and unable before Christ saved us. And then why we're not immediately perfect And immediately, you know, of a perfect complete knowledge and immediately clean and all of these things once he saves us. But rather that process as we saw this morning somewhat. And all of that, that whole, all of that is rooted in the doctrine of, the concept of man's free will. So man's free will. One of those, one of those topics that has, that has, you know, sparked a lot of controversy perhaps over the past many years in the church, you know, does man have free will? And what exactly do we mean by free will? That's where 90% of the controversy comes in. What do we mean? We're with a misunderstanding of what we mean when we talk about free will. So what exactly is free will? So the will, the will In simplest terms, it's just our chooser. The ability to make choices. The confession defines it as the natural liberty and power of acting upon choice. So that's the will that we have. We have the power to act upon choice. I can choose to pick up my notes or not pick them up. I can choose to take a drink of water. I can choose whatever I want. I have that, I have the ability whatever, not whatever I want, but you know what I mean. Have the ability to make choices and take action as a result of those choices. Everybody agrees with that. Now, but what about free will then? What do we mean by free will? And what we mean when we say man has free will, because the confession affirms, yes, man does have free will. The title of the chapter is of free will. Man has free will. What do we mean when we say then that man has free will? It means that man's will, his chooser, his choices, are never forced, are never coerced, by outside forces. Nothing outside of ourselves forces our will. Nothing outside of us forces us and can control our will and make choices for us that we don't want. That's the concept of free will. So God does not force our will. Confession, when we talk about God's decree, remember we talk about God is sovereign over all things. But yet, God carries out His decree, not by, or He says here, without violence to the will of the creature. So God does not violate our wills. God does not violate our ability to choose. He does not make the choice for us. Satan does not force our will. You know, the devil made me do it is You know, that's bogus. Nothing outside of us forces our will. Rather, man's will, what determines man's choices, is internal. It was within man himself. So that's what we need to understand. The Reformed have never had a problem, an issue with the concept of free will. That man's ability to choose without external coercion in any way. Ersinus, Zacharias Ersinus, he said, he calls it foul slander to say that we take away the power of choice. And we still hear that foul slander all the time against, you know, the Reformed or Calvinism. you know, that man just becomes a robot. Absolutely not. We affirm that man can choose, and we affirm that man will always choose as his heart desires. We'll come into that in a moment. So when we talk about, in the Reformed doctrines, when we talk about things like total inability or total depravity, the will, man's chooser, is not the issue in question. It's when we say man is unwilling, unwilling to come to Christ or unwilling to come to believe in the Lord Jesus, it's not because his ability to choose is broken. His chooser is not broken. The chooser in itself has not been compromised. Something else about man has been compromised. And so then to understand that, then we have to understand, okay, the constitution of man. What are we? We're human beings, but what is a human? We have a soul, or spirit, and we have a body. We're dichotomous. we call that. Man is made up of, constituted of soul and body. And the soul consists of our mind or our heart. We're going to keep this fairly simple. I think there's, you know, we can get into some technicalities and distinctions, but the mind or the heart and our will, our chooser. That's what constitutes the soul. The mind and heart are generally used interchangeably in the Bible. So that's how we're going to use them now. Jeremiah 17, 10, I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind. See that parallelism there? That explains, the second line explains the first. So that's You know, so that's what we need to understand. We have body and soul. Soul is made up of mind and will. And from our heart, or from our mind, proceed desires. The heart produces desires. And those desires determine our choices. So our will is not determined by something outside of us. It's determined by something inside of us. So when we say free will, we don't mean absolute free will. There's still something determining how man is going to choose. If we have the ability to choose A or B, if we had absolute free will, that means our will, we would just choose at random because nothing would be controlling the will. Nothing would be determining the will. We would just choose at random. You know, when my kids were young, they tried to claim, they probably still do, they tried to claim absolute free will. I don't know why I did that. It just happened. I didn't want to do it. I just hit my sibling. And my kids don't do that. They're wonderful. You know, I didn't want to. It just happened. No, that's not how it works. You don't have absolute free will that just, that you made a random choice that was not determined. Your will is determined, our choices are determined by the desires that proceed from our heart. And that's what free will then is. That free will is man, he can and he always will freely choose according to the desires of his heart. So the heart, the will is determined by the heart. That's what Martin Luther meant when he wrote the book called The Bondage of the Will. We say, well, we have free will and Luther says the will's bondage. What are we talking about? We're talking about two different things. The will is not absolute free. The will's free from external coercion. But the will is in bondage in one sense because it's in bondage to our heart and to the desires that our heart produces. So what we could say then is the state of our heart or our mind determines how we will choose. So we see that in a non-spiritual sense right now. Just think of that in a non-spiritual matter. Let's say you just lost your favorite pet. The family pet just died. And you're sad about that. And then your friend or somebody calls you and says, hey, come, let's go. Let's hang out tonight. Let's go for dinner. Let's do something fun. But in your current state, your heart is sad. And you're not, you know, your emotions, your desires are not wanting to go out. They're not producing desires that make you want to go out and go out for dinner and have fun with your friend. So you see how that happens. You know, you would, you'd rather, you know, you turn down the invitation. You choose to not go because you don't have any desire because of the state of your heart, because of that situation in your life. So the state of our mind, the state of our heart, determines how we choose. I think of Navy SEALs, for example. So much mind training goes in to create strong minds so that they can make good choices. And let's say they get captured by the enemy and they're tortured. What's the enemy trying to do? Trying to break down their mind. Because then the mind will, so that, and bring them to the point where their mind determines, you know what, this is not worth it anymore to withhold this information or whatever it is. And then they say, okay. And they, you know, they release the information. So that's just on a non-spiritual level. You see how the mind or the heart produces the desires that the will then chooses according to those. Now let's bring us back to spiritual matters. And really, the question on the table with this topic is, will man choose for God or not? Will man choose to obey God or will he not? That's the question. Can we choose to obey God? Will we choose to obey God or not? And the answer is, it depends on the state of your heart. And so the chapter in the confession, gives us the initial paragraph stating that man does have free will, but then it has four paragraphs after that describing four different states of the heart that then determine how man is going to choose. And then the actions, obviously, that will proceed from those choices. So, that's what we're going to look at here. The four... And again, we're going to go through this fairly quickly. The four states of man's heart as it concerns his relationship with God. The first is the state of innocence. That was how man was created. In a state of innocence. And then the state of sin. When man sinned against God in the garden. And then the state of grace. when Christ saves a sinner, and then the state of glory when he dies and he's perfected in glory. The goal for which we were created and redeemed. So we'll see those four states of the heart and then how that's going to affect the choices that we make and affect the will. So first then the state of innocence. State of innocence. Ecclesiastes 7.29 says, God made man upright, but they sought out many inventions or many schemes. God made man upright. God did not make man righteous, but he made man upright or innocent. And as we've been seeing, when God created man, he breathed his spirit into man, which gave man that intimate knowledge of him. That intimate union with him gave him the knowledge of what was required of him. As the image bearer of God, of how he ought to live, what he should do. So they had that ability then. They would take a situation that was presented to them, filter it through, that knowledge of God that they had on their hearts, and then choose to obey or not. So in this state, we could say that they were able not to sin. So they had the ability to avoid that sin. To avoid sin. In general, they had that ability. God had given them everything they needed in order to live righteously and in order to choose the good. When he breathed his spirit into them, they had everything they needed. But unfortunately, the serpent comes along and the serpent presents something to their innocent hearts, presents something to their innocent hearts, something as good And it was better, actually, better than what God had determined was good. So they knew better. Adam and Eve knew better. Because they had everything on their hearts to know how to make the right choice. But Satan came, and Satan presented something. And he said, look, it's so much better. It's actually better than... God said, this is good, but this is even better. Do this. And in Genesis 3, verse 6, you get a glimpse into Eve's mind as she is looking at this fruit on this tree, and she's deliberating. And then she determines, yeah, indeed, it is. The tree is good for food, and it's pleasing to the eyes, and it's desirable to make one wise. So she took of the fruit and ate and gave it to her husband. So you see how that works. She had everything, Adam and Eve. Everything they needed. They were innocent. They weren't righteous yet, but they were innocent. Everything they needed to make the right choices, but yet when the tempter came along and presented something as better, they chose that instead, the great sin, or the fall that we call it. And it was a fall that changed the state of their hearts. changed the state of their hearts. They were told that the day that you eat of this fruit, you will surely die. And remember what that meant. That meant God cutting them off, His Spirit departing from them, no longer knowing Him, no longer having that intimate connection with Him that enabled them to make good choices and right choices. from the knowledge that they had of Him. It was gone. And this state we call the state of sin or the state of depravity. I think Thomas Boston in his famous Fourfold States of Man book calls it the state of nature. And in this state, Dan, there's nothing in the heart of man because they're devoid of the Spirit. There's nothing in the heart of man that produces any desires that are godly, any desires that are for the true good, any desires to please God, to obey God, to choose for God. There's no desire coming from the heart. And therefore, the will is never going to choose for God then. No good works. No believing the gospel. Nothing. See, so the will isn't broken. The ability to choose is still there. Man can still choose. But the heart is broken. And the heart is not producing any desires that will make the man choose for the good. Romans 8. Verse 1, we have a very clear, clear statement here. And especially as it concerns the Holy Spirit as well. Listen. There is therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made us free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh on account of sin. He condemned sin in the flesh that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death. but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is at enmity against God and is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be, so then those who are in the flesh cannot please God." In the flesh means in the state of sin. In the state of sin, or the state of nature as Boston calls it, where the heart is not producing any desires that would make man choose for God, or choose anything to do anything good. What the, verse 3, what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, because of the flesh. The flesh is not, the heart, the sinful heart is not producing anything that will make man want to live and choose the good. So, and what Paul's saying here with the spirit, there's no spirit, no knowledge of God, no ability to keep the law, no ability to do good, Because there's no desire. And not just law keeping in the sense of obedience to moral law, but obedience to the gospel as well. No desire to please God. No desire to obey the gospel. Or to believe in Christ. So again, this is when we're talking about man being unable, or man being depraved and unable. It's not that he's unable to choose. His chooser's not broken, his heart is broken. His heart is devoid of the Spirit of God, and therefore he has no desire. There's no desires produced by the heart that accord with any type of godliness. and he will never choose the good. Natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them because they're spiritually discerned." 1 Corinthians 2.14. One must have the Spirit of God in our hearts to know what is good and to have godly desires and to be able, and therefore, choose. So man in the state of sin is man without the Spirit and he'll never do what is good. In this state, then, we say that man is not able to not sin. Not able to not sin is a double negative. It means all he does is sin. And that's the unfortunate reality of it. That in our state of sin, all we do is sin. Even when you do outwardly, societally good things. Your neighbor is sick and you bring them chicken soup. It's societally good, but it's not good in God's eyes because it wasn't done out of a desire to please Him and a desire to serve Him. So that's the reality of it. So if anyone's going to be saved, then the only possible way is if his heart is changed. He needs to have a change of heart. And that's not something that man can do. Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard change his spots? No. Else then, you would be able to do good, who are accustomed to doing evil. Comes from Jeremiah, but I can't remember the exact reference. We can't change that. All we do is evil. We can't change it and start doing good. We need a change. And that's what Paul's getting at in Romans 9, when he speaks about not of him who wills or of him who runs, not of the one who desires or the one who acts, but of God who shows mercy. Because there's no one who is going to desire, no one who's going to act as a result of those desires, because hearts have been hardened, because they've been turned as hard as stone. As dead as stone. That's his point. Because they have no... The Spirit of God is not in them. And that's why he says it's of God who shows mercy. If man is going to be saved, it is only because God shows mercy to that particular man. And that... must begin with a change of heart. And that's what we call regeneration. The heart has to be made new, has to be revived, regenerated, made new. Again, rebirth, the Spirit of God breathed into the dead heart. And when that happens, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, that we have received the Spirit who's from God, and he says, and therefore we have the mind of Christ. So now, again, the Spirit is breathed into us and the heart is changed. Now, the heart is in what we call the state of grace. That's the third state. State of innocence, state of sin, state of grace. Now, And in the state of grace, the confession says, God frees him from his natural bondage to sin, and by grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good. So now, the redeemed sinner, he's freely willing to do that which is spiritually good. That applies to believing in Christ. In the London Confession, Chapter 10, Paragraph 1, it says that Christ, by His almighty power, effectually draws them, yet they come freely, having been made willing by His grace. So, believing in the Lord Jesus, that initial act of faith, is an act of the will, where man freely wills to come to Christ. And that man, in his regenerated heart, he sees his need of a Savior. And he sees Christ as that Savior. And so, of course, he's going to choose Christ. We call that irresistible grace not because, you know, man is forced, dragged into believing in the Lord Jesus. No. Because his heart has been changed. And now he sees Christ as exactly what he needs. He realizes his sin problem. And Christ is the solution. And of course he's going to come to him. That's exactly what he needs. So, we can say man will choose to believe in the Lord Jesus. It's okay to use that language. I know sometimes the hair on the back of our neck stands up when we say that, but we have to remember. When we're using that language, we cannot forget that the choice was only made possible as a result of God changing the heart. If the heart is not changed, nothing changes. God changes the heart, then man can and will choose the good. So he's able to do that. And we can continue on then to choose that good. To do good in our subsequent life of obedience after that. Problem is we don't do it perfectly, do we? We still choose to sin. All too often, every day, we choose to sin. Why is that? Because we still have some of that what we call remaining corruption. Our hearts were corrupted at the fall. When the spirit comes back into us, it's not an instant, complete... Yeah, how do I say that? We are renewed, but yet it's a process. That process of sanctification that we saw this morning. Of the renewing of our hearts. It's a process. The renewing of our minds. That Christ is at work and by His Spirit. So we still have that remaining corruption. And because we have that corruption, we have hearts that are still partially corrupted. We're still producing desires that are ungodly. As well as, you know, our heart is producing desires that are godly, we have both of those. And that's where we kind of get that tension that Paul talks about in Romans chapter 7, where he's feeling that internal battle. He has desires to obey God's law, but yet he's choosing at times to disobey God's law and to sin. Why? Because his heart There's a war going on in his heart. He says another law. I delight in the law of God. I desire to do what's good. But there's another law, another standard. His old nature is telling him, just like Satan in the garden, there's something better, a different law, my way. He has God's law and he has his law, the law of sin. And they're both in his heart. And those desires are being produced and sometimes he chooses according to the ungodly desires rather than according to the godly ones. And that's why he says, oh, wretched man that I am. Who shall deliver me from this body of death? That's a reference to that fleshly nature and to its desires. He says, I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord. We will be delivered from that. We all feel that internal struggle. We want to do better. And again, we've sinned. And why did we do that? The devil didn't make you do that. You chose to sin because of that corruption that remains in your heart. And you willingly chose according to those desires rather than the godly ones. And we fight that battle, don't we? But there's a day coming when we'll be delivered from that. And that's the last state of man called the state of glory. So I should say, maybe then, in that third state, man is able to not sin. So, In the garden, able not to sin. So able to continue on and avoid sin. In the state of sin, then we're not able to not sin. So everything we do is sin. In the state of grace, we're able to not sin. So we go from sinning all the time to actually being able to make choices that result in non-sinful actions. And then when we come into that state of glory, we come into a state where we're not able to sin anymore. We'll see what that looks like here. In that state of glory, the last state, when we die, The last of that corruption, that remaining corruption that remains with us is gone. It's removed. Our mind is completely renewed, has been completely and fully transformed. The process is complete. The Spirit of Christ, as we saw this morning, who's been working at us from the beginning, has now completed his task. were perfectly filled with His Spirit, perfectly set on His laws, perfectly... And therefore, because of that perfect union, that perfect filling of the Spirit and completion, nothing, nothing in our heart will ever produce a desire that would cause us to choose to sin. In that state, we're not able to sin, not because we're not able to choose, but because our hearts are unable to produce any desire contrary to the will of God that would make us choose to sin. That's what we have to look forward to. Perfect unity. It comes from that perfect unity with Him, that unity of the Spirit. Perfect intimacy with Him. That's what Jesus is bringing us to. John 17, Jesus is praying to His Father. And in verse 22, He says, the glory that you gave me, I have given to them. and that they may be one just as we are one, I in them and you in me, and that they may be perfect, be made perfect in one. It's amazing that the oneness, the unity, perfect unity, unity of mind, unity of soul, unity of spirit with our with Christ, so that we'll never ever produce one desire ever contrary to His mind and His will. And then, therefore, we'll never sin. That's what we have in glory. So, That's the four states of man. We're in the state of grace if you're a believer in Christ. As we saw this morning, we're a work of Christ who's transforming us and glorifying us, bringing us to that final state of glory where we perfectly image Him, perfect unity with Him, perfect oneness of spirit so we will never again sin against Him. What a hope we have to look forward to. But I want to address one thing here briefly before we close. What about salvation again? I read Revelation 22, verse 17 to 18 at the beginning. So if you're not a believer, and this doesn't go even if you're a believer, how to think towards those who are not believers. Do we reason? Do we look at this concept, and do we say, well, okay, since I can't believe without a change of heart, and since this person that I'm witnessing to and sharing the gospel with, you know, they need a change of heart. So then I can't believe, or I can't call that person to believe. I need to, you know, instead, we need to wait. We just need to wait for the Spirit to change their hearts. Or I need to go home and I need to pray for a new heart. Is that what we're supposed to do? Is that what we're supposed to conclude from this? And the answer is no. Jesus said the wind blows. where it wills, where it wishes, and you don't hear the sound of it. When he's talking to Nicodemus about the new birth, about the necessity of regeneration, we don't know. We don't wait. We can't feel the inner workings of the Spirit changing our hearts. We are called to believe. The Bible tells us to believe in Christ. And that's why I read Revelation 22. Whoever wills, whoever desires, come. Let them take freely of that water of life. So if you have a desire to be saved, you see your need, and you have a desire to be saved, what ought you to conclude? That that's only possible because God has made you willing. Because He's changed your heart. And if He's made you willing, according to Romans 9, it's because He's willing. So if He's willing, and He's made you willing, then believe on Him. Spurgeon says to take that water is simply to trust in Christ and to rest in Him. And he says, oh that you would do it now. You are willing because God has made you willing. So come and drink because God wills it. Trust in Jesus because God wills it. If you will it, it's a sign that God wills it. That's how we need to take this doctrine. Whether it's as believers, evangelizing to people, we call them to believe. And when they have a desire to believe, It's because God has changed a heart. And again, if you're not a believer, come and drink. Come and take of this water of life freely, if you're willing. It's because He's made you willing, because He's willing. We sang that 393, I think. He is able, He is able, He is willing. Doubt no more. If you're willing, it's because He's willing. So believe on Him. And then we drink. And then we look back. And we say, it wasn't because I willed. It wasn't because I ran. It wasn't because I desired. But it was because of God who had mercy on me. And God who changed my heart and enabled me to believe. That's the doctrine of free will. And that's how we need to apply it in our own lives, in our lives of evangelizing. Takes a change of heart. There's no negotiation on that. Very clear. God must change the heart for a sinner to see his need and come to Christ. But if you are willing, any willing sinner comes to Him because he's been made willing by a God who's willing. Let's close there in prayer. Lord, we do pray that you would make this clear for us, pray that you would help us to marvel at your plan of salvation, marvel that you would save sinners who so justly deserve to stay in the state of sin forever, cut off from you. But Lord, you are a good God. You're a God of delights and mercy. And because of your mercy, you make men willing in the day of your power. Lord, we pray that you would bless this to our hearts. May we be encouraged by this. And may we leave here rejoicing in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It's in his name we pray, amen.