All right, so we'll just be continuing on this evening in our study through the Westminster Confession of Faith. We've done three lessons, I believe, already on Chapter 3, entitled Of God's Eternal Decree. And so now we are going to be on Chapter 3, paragraphs six, seven, and eight. And we won't get into paragraph eight, I don't think much tonight, but I think we'll probably circle back around and wrap that up next week and probably as well move on to chapter four. All right, so I'm gonna just start out by reading chapter three, paragraph six, and then we'll jump into our lesson. This is what the Westminster Divines have written for us. As God has appointed the elect unto glory, so has He, by the eternal and most free purpose of His will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ by His Spirit working in due season. are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by His power through faith unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only. So that's chapter six of, I'm sorry, paragraph six of chapter three of our confession. So this is a massively important word from our fathers in the faith that we have before us here. Based on the crystal clear testimony of scripture, the confession here reminds us that God not only ordains and predetermines the ends of all things, how things are going to end up, that we will finally be saved on the last day, but that he also ordains and predetermines all of the means by which we get to those ends, how we get to the ultimate goal of salvation in Christ Jesus. So God has not only ordained that a certain number of people would be saved. He didn't just elect it and then move on. He didn't just say, well, these people, they're gonna have their sins forgiven. They're gonna go to heaven and be with Christ when they die, regardless of what happens in the meantime. That's not at all how it worked out. Rather, God has ordained the ends and the means. He's planned every single step of our salvation. And remember the title of chapter three, if you can remember back when we first started chapter three, four lessons ago, the title that we've been, of this chapter we've been working through is Of God's Eternal Decree. Now, if we're not careful, we can slip into thinking that God's eternal decree only refers to his decree of election. A lot of times when we talk about our election in Christ, we talk about how God decreed our election, which is absolutely true. But God's eternal decree does not only include those who will be saved and those who will be damned. God's eternal decree is all of the things that happen that work toward our salvation. It is not only an eternal decree of an election. He has also eternally decreed how that election would play out in time, eternally decreeing that we would, in fact, be drawn in faith, that we would, in fact, be justified and sanctified. All of this is part of God's eternal decree. And that's what the divines make very clear here for us. I want to read that opening sentence, just that first sentence of paragraph six one more time. So God has chosen a particular people to be saved and that those people, you know, no one can be added to that number and no one that's part of that number can be taken away. That number is a fixed number. He has ordained a particular people, but he's also chosen and willed exactly how they will be saved. we're not only saved by election. There are non-Calvinists who sometimes get confused about what we believe. They think that our salvation in the Calvinist mindset equals election, that that's it. God decided to save us and that's it. There's this doctrine that's totally wrong. It's not scriptural, it's called that we've been justified from all eternity. We haven't been justified from all eternity. We've been elected from all eternity. We were not justified though until Christ died for our sins and rose again for our justification. So we do believe that salvation is something that began in eternity that reached its culminating point prior to the new heavens and the earth in Jesus Christ and then is being worked out and applied throughout time all the way until the end of time whenever that might be. So we're not only saved by election, and that's the end of the story. That's not the only link in God's golden chain of salvation. He elected us in eternity past, yes, and then Christ redeemed us 2,000 years ago. And then in our lifetimes, at some point on earth here, he calls, justifies, adopts, sanctifies, and saves each and every one of his children. And if we wanted to add to that, following scripture, we could even add some other very important aspects of our salvation that the Bible brings up at various times. We could also say that God regenerates us in time, that God baptizes us with his spirit, or to use other language, he circumcises our hearts. We could say that he has sealed us. That's what Paul tells us in Ephesians 1. He has sealed us with his promised Holy Spirit as a guarantee of our inheritance. So we have his seal set upon us that can't be broken. That once we're born again, we won't be unborn again. We could say that God glorifies us, which has not happened yet in our lifetime, but it is part of our salvation that in the new heavens and the new earth, we will be glorified. So this list that the divines give us here in paragraph six is not exhaustive of every aspect of our salvation. There are more things we could add to this list, but this does represent these items that they've listed. It represents the totality of God planning, accomplishing and applying Salvation knows people. That's what they're saying here. God did not only plan, but he accomplished and he applied our salvation in every respect. God did it. God the Father, we can see it's very Trinitarian. God the Father is the one who chose us. He is the one who decreed, properly speaking, in eternity past. And then our salvation was accomplished through Christ's perfect obedient life, his sufficient death as a sin offering for us, taking away our guilt, taking away our shame. and our debts to him. And then God is currently applying this great salvation to us that he has already planned and accomplished through his spirit. All of this is done by our triune God. We do not plan our salvation. We do not accomplish our salvation. We do not apply our salvation, not any part of it. And thanks be to God that we don't have to because we couldn't do it. And another thing that I decided not to go into great detail about as we're working through this, but the divines are very clear to point out that no one else except for the elect is redeemed, affectionately called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved by Christ. No one else. There's not going to be people that experience justification and then are cast away. There's not going to be people that are affectionately called and then are cast away. And this is one of the problems with some of the things we dealt with very early on as a church plant with the federal vision. It starts to get very confusing and messy on, well, if being regenerated means being part of the church, if that happens at my baptism, if there's justification and efficacy there in that way, how could I then be cast away? How could there be anyone that is apostate? How could there be anyone who doesn't have true and living faith if they've been part of the church? But of course we know that that's not the case. The Bible is very clear. You can be part of this visible church. You can be a recipient of God's temporal mercy and grace. You can receive the means of grace. You can be baptized and hear the word, and you can still not be part of God's elect because Christ wasn't in your heart. So it's important to realize that the divines did not believe some of the nonsense that people like Jim Jordan say is true. That's a novelty. That's a theological novelty or a pullover from another non-reformed system like Roman Catholicism. Now we're not going to go into detail tonight really at all about all these steps that the divines list. What does it mean to be called? What does it mean to be justified? What does it mean to be adopted or sanctified? We could spend a ton of time on defining what those terms mean. But the Westminster Confession has whole chapters devoted to each one of those topics. So we're just gonna have to wait until we get there. But the important thing that we're learning here in chapter three about that golden chain of salvation is that God has by himself lovingly, sovereignly, and flawlessly designed our salvation by an eternal and changeless decree. That's the important part. Now we do have to respond to his grace But even this response is something he enables us to do. God, as the confession reminds us, is the one who calls us unto faith in Christ by his spirit working in due season. We can't generate the faith within ourselves. It's not like God does all this stuff and then just waits for us to just reach up our hand and express faith on our own. No, God actually works the faith within us. So everything, all of our salvation, all of it is God. The only thing we contributed was the sin that made the salvation necessary. We fell in sin in Adam, the confession reminds us, and out of this great mass of sinners, everyone fell in Adam. Out of this great mass of sinners, God has elected a certain group unto salvation, but he did not elect all sinners to salvation in Christ. And that's what paragraph seven picks up on here as we move into the next section here. Paragraph seven of chapter three says this, the rest of mankind, God was pleased according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extends or withholds mercy as he pleases for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures to pass by and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin to the praise of his glorious justice. And I didn't read the proof texts for paragraph six, the first paragraph we went through tonight, not because they're not important, but because a lot of them we've already worked through in our previous lessons on chapter three here. And because we just don't have an infinite amount of time, but I am going to read through all the proof texts for paragraph seven here. The reason is because this paragraph that talks about God's wrath and passing over and being ordained to dishonor, this paragraph is harder for us to accept sometimes. It's nice and happy and easy to hear about how God has saved us and God has done these wonderful things for us and how he's been merciful. It is harder for us to hear about God's wrath and how God has ordained certain people for dishonor and for destruction. Now, if we're being honest with ourselves, I don't actually think it's harder at all to understand why God would send some people to hell, or as the confession says here, why he decided to ordain some people to dishonor and wrath for their sin. I don't think that's hard for us to understand at all. Our hearts testify within us that we do deserve punishment for our sins. That makes a lot of intellectual sense. We have sinned. We have all sinned. The wages of sin is death. Therefore we deserve punishment. We deserve God's wrath. I think that's easy. The hard thing intellectually might be why do we get to go to heaven though? We don't deserve heaven. Clearly we don't deserve heaven. We deserve the wrath. Nevertheless, I think the heaven aspect of things is easier for our hearts to accept. And hell is much harder for our hearts to accept. It might even in some sense be easier, like I said, for our heads to understand, but it's difficult. And it's something that we don't like to talk about all the time. And there are whole groups of Christians who really just ignore the concept of hell altogether. It's common in larger evangelical churches today, even. They'll talk about salvation, but the conversations around salvation are always a, what are we saved to? unless what are we saved from? Or if they talk about what we're saved from, it's, well, we're saved from separation from God, because that's a more muted, easy, digestible way to say, oh, we're saved from the eternal outpouring of God's wrath, or we're saved from destruction, or we're saved from the second death, or we're saved from the lake of fire. Those things are a lot harder for us to accept. And so we don't want to mute God's word, and we don't want to soften things that God doesn't want softened here, even if it's hard for our hearts to accept. So we should just be able to say with the Westminster Confession of Faith here, that God has ordained some people to wrath. But I wanna show that this is clearly established from the Bible and not just something that our forefathers made up 400 years ago. So I'm gonna read through these proof texts they've given us. And there's a lot more that they could have picked and drawn from, but they've just picked a few of these here to point out. So starting out Matthew chapter 11. Beginning in verse 25, at that time, Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and has revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. So Jesus here is not only acknowledging that God has not chosen every single person for salvation, but he actually thanks God that God has hidden the truth of salvation from some people. He's thanking God that God has chosen not to reveal his gospel to some of his creation. That is a mysterious, and heavy word. That's what I'm talking about. That's hard for us to understand in our hearts. We might even say, well, yes, of course, some people are going to go to hell, but it's hard to think that Jesus himself thanked God that he has hid things from the wise and from the prudent. Both God's salvation and damnation we see here are for his glory. and for the good of his people. It is, Jesus says, that it was good in the sight of the Father to hide certain things about salvation from those that are wise by the world's standards. But we learned something here. We can thank God for all of his wondrous works. Everything that God has done, we can and should thank him for, even if we don't understand them, or we think, I just, my heart feels strange you've been hearing some of these things. That's okay. The apostle Paul said that he could wish himself accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of his brethren according to the flesh. You can have a heart wrenching yearning for people that you know that are not trusting Christ to be saved and still thank God that he is the one that has chosen to reveal certain things to people and to hide certain things from people. We can trust God that he did right and he chose a good plan. He's executing a good plan. So we can thank him for that. And we learn that here from what Christ does. Next, the next proof text after Matthew 11 that the divine site here for paragraph seven is Romans chapter nine. And that's a key chapter for understanding God's eternal decree. This is a chapter that's constantly appealed to both by people that believe in election as we do, and those who think it's a terrible monstrous doctrine. Romans nine is a place that we need to dial into. So this is what Paul writes in just one section. It says, for the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will, he hardeneth. Hath not the potter power over the clay of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor? What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction? So this is also a very weighty text here. But we learn that God shows his sovereign power through damning some sinners to hell. And he shows that power through their damnation in a way that were he not to do that, his power would not be shown to be so awesome and so great. God doesn't do anything pointlessly. There is a purpose even in his foreordination of some people to hell. And the purpose is for his glory and even for our good. God exalts himself through exacting vengeance. Vengeance isn't for us, but vengeance is something that is proper for God. And he exalts himself through enacting exacting vengeance and justice upon his enemies. And then it's not only, remember, for God's glory, it is actually for our good that some people are damned to hell. That also is very difficult for us to hear in our hearts, but it is for our good. Why is it for our good? How do we know that? Because everything works together for our good. There's nothing that's excluded from that. But we might think, well, how though? How can this, how can some sinners being damned to hell, how can that work for our good? It is because His saints, God's saints, His chosen children, both on earth and much more perfectly in heaven, will praise God all the more when they realize the horror that they were spared from. The fact that hell exists is a reason to praise Him and thank Him all the more that we didn't have to go there, that God created a place of punishment and he spared us from it should cause us to praise him more than if there were no such thing as punishment. If there was nothing called wrath to ever be saved from, if it didn't exist, then we would not thank God as much. Remember, he who's forgiven much, loves much. We have been forgiven a lot. Not only forgiven the offenses against God, but the penalty that carried with them has been wiped away in Christ. So if hell didn't exist, then we would not appreciate Christ's work of salvation as much as we will in the age to come. Then we have Paul again here, this is our next proof text in 2 Timothy 2, beginning in verse 19, Paul says, nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his, and let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. But in a great house, there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some to honor and some to dishonor. Paul says here that not all of the vessels in this house, in this earth, are for honorable use. Not all of the pottery was created for good and wonderful, happy, pleasant, honorable purposes. Some men and angels are in fact vessels for dishonor and destruction. And then the last two proof texts that the divine cite for paragraph seven are Jude four and first Peter chapter two, Jude four. For there are certain men, for certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. That's Jude. And then first Peter says, in a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, even to them which stumble at the word being disobedient, whereunto also they were appointed. Now on these last two proof texts from Jude and from 1st Peter, I want to highlight something I think especially important for us tonight. So the last Lord's Day, one of the things that I preached about was that God may withdraw his offer of mercy from someone. Remember, we've learned in the gospel according to John, that even though the elect are a fixed number of people, there is still a free offer of Christ that goes out into the world. There's a free offer of the gospel that goes out. But we learned last week that someone, last Sunday, someone could sin against grace so much that there comes a point where there is no longer forgiveness available for that person, even if they were to ask for it, that the offer has been taken off the table. But we also know that all who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. and there is no contradiction within God's word. These things work together. That is a promise laid down in concrete. All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Everyone that believes in Christ will have everlasting life. It's over and over we see promises like this. So how do these things work together? If you live your whole life sinning against grace, turning from Christ, blaspheming his name, hating his law, and then you truly repent and call on Him from a heart that has been open to His love, will you be saved? Yes, you will be saved. You absolutely will be saved. The thief on the cross is a clear example of this. We don't know all about his life, but we know that even right up very close to the moment of his death, he was cursing and blaspheming the Son of God. He wasn't just neutral to Christ. It's not that he hadn't heard of him and he didn't have much of a thought of him. No, the thief on the cross was cursing God very close to his death, maybe an hour or 30 minutes or 15 minutes even before his death. And then at the last moment, we know he repented. And Jesus said, he will be with him today in paradise. Today, that thief on the cross is in heaven. He was a Christian for minutes, perhaps, and he knows more about Christ and is more godly and perfect than any of us here, because he is in Jesus's presence. But as Puritan pastor Thomas Brooks wrote, though true repentance is never too late, yet late repentance is seldom true. I'm gonna say that again because I think this is important to remember. Though true repentance is never too late, yet late repentance is seldom true. Means there are a lot of people that make deathbed confessions, but how many of those people truly are born again at the last moment and how many just have a fear of what might be waiting on the other side? How these things work together, that there'll be some who would call on Christ for mercy and yet not be saved, and all who call upon the Lord will be saved. How these things work together is that many will call on Jesus insincerely. Many people will call on Jesus insincerely. It is possible to call on Christ in true desperation for forgiveness and salvation, but not in true faith. Even unbelievers don't wanna go to hell. And even unbelievers in their heart of hearts believe in hell. Their conscience bears witness against that. But we know that people can call on Christ insincerely. I mean, I think probably, at least for the adults in this room, we might even know this from experience, that we've known people who either have said they're a Christian and every fruit they've ever borne that we can see looks like bad fruit, or they've said they're a Christian, they might even live somewhat of a Christian life, but then they're dramatically converted, perhaps years later, and they confess it was all a lie. Now, some people there can be confusion about when I was really born again. But the fact of the matter is you can call on Christ with your mouth and have a desire to be forgiven, but be insincere. So the answer is that all who call on Christ sincerely from a transformed heart will be saved. And that those who are insincere, who want to get out of hell free card, but have no desire to submit to Jesus as Lord and King, they will not be saved. That's the answer. That's the answer. Now, why do I bring that up now? Well, first, I'm not up here teaching abstract doctrines. I don't view myself primarily as a teacher. I don't think I was called to Boone to be a teacher. Rather, I'm primarily a pastor who's been called to a specific flock of God's people and a preacher of God's glorious word. And I want to make sure, as I was just going through that last Lord's Day, I just want to make sure we understand this difficult, meaty doctrine that we were discussing. It is a hard thing to wrap our minds and heads around that there could be some who an offer of Christ has been taken away from, and they could make some type of confession asking for salvation and be denied it. That's a difficult thing for us to understand. God withdrawing any opportunity for true, genuine repentance is things that, it's a thing that scares us when we hear it sometimes. but we know the solid gospel promises. God will not despise a broken and contrite heart. He hates profession of religion with your lips, with your hearts far from him. He hates that. but he will not despise a broken and contrite heart. God will not give someone the gift of faith and then revoke it. He will not give someone a new heart and then refuse to hear their cries for help. God will save, and this is what election is all about. This is the comfort of election. God will save every single one of his children by faith. There will be those, Jesus himself describes, who say, Lord, Lord, on the last day. There will be those who call out Father Abraham. These people are in covenant, in the visible covenant of God that believe that Jesus is Lord. Say, Lord, can we not enter the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus will say, depart from me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you. So that's kind of the first reason I bring all this up again tonight. I want to make sure we understand this difficult doctrine. And then the second reason here is something that the proof texts highlight for us, I think is very related. It's drawing naturally from this. Many people, probably many people you will meet in this life have been, as Jude tells us, ordained for condemnation. You know people in your life that are ordained for condemnation. but they have not been ordained for condemnation without cause. Remember, God works everything according to the perfect, unchangeable counsel of his will. His will is perfect. His will is not arbitrary. Remember, we're all sinners. That's how this paragraph six opens, is that we are all fallen in Christ, and God is saying, I'm sorry, we're all fallen in Adam, and God has saved some of us in Christ. We're all sinners. God does not save and damn morally neutral people. It's not like he arbitrarily says, I'm gonna create this group of people, I'm gonna send a bunch of them to hell, and I'm gonna send a bunch of them to heaven. No, no, no, he created this group of people, all of us decided hell, we all picked hell, everyone chose sin, and he said, out of that mass of people, remember that picture of them running toward a cliff that they're gonna fall off, God, out of that mass of people, chose graciously to save some. Others he leaves in their sins, he passes over, and he condemns them to a justified wrath. Jude says that these people were before of old ordained to this condemnation, but he also says that they are ungodly men, they are people that have turned the grace of God into lasciviousness, they are people that have denied the only Lord God, and that have denied our Lord Jesus Christ. Their condemnation is not arbitrary. Their condemnation is perfectly just. Peter says that these people are condemned because they are disobedient. So God doesn't just condemn morally neutral people. He saves sinners and he damns sinners. And the way he chooses that, that is his, according to his unsearchable, as our confession says here in chapter three, unsearchable and immutable will. There will be no one who has a true heart toward Christ who God turns away. Those who he condemns are disobedient, God-hating, hard-hearted sinners who have not received the new birth, who have not truly repented, who have not been justified, who have not been sanctified, who have not been given the gift of faith. To be clear, without faith, without all those things, without justification, without sanctification, all of which are gifts of God, without these things, everyone is one of those disobedient, God-hating, hard-hearted sinners. No matter how cute the little old ladies look and baking you cookies and whatever it is, if they don't have a new heart, they are God-hating sinners. Apart from Christ, everyone is a hell-bent, God-hating sinner. God doesn't just condemn the worst of the worst. That's another common thing that you might encounter as you talk to people who are not believers, or who maybe they are believers, but they haven't been taught well, haven't read their Bibles much. Think, well, of course, there's a hell for Hitler. You know, everyone will admit that. Sure, some people go to hell, but I think that's really only for the worst people. It's the thing I encounter a lot at App when we're doing outreach. People will admit that maybe, maybe there's a hell for like the worst of the worst. But what about people that just don't believe in Christ, but just kind of live good lives? It's not a thing that doesn't exist. Why do you call me good? There is only one that is good, God. Without the gift of faith and union with Christ, everyone is a God-hating sinner. And all those people will be condemned without the wonderful grace of election and subsequent salvation. The good news is that no one, no one, no one who has true faith in Christ will be condemned. It is not possible. God will not condemn someone who his son has loved and paid the sin debt for. Romans 8 verse one, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who in Christ Jesus. And then chapter three closes out this way and we won't get into this much, but I'm just gonna read this paragraph and have a couple of comments on it. This is paragraph number eight. The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care that men attending the will of God revealed in his word and yielding obedience thereunto, may from the certainty of their effectual vocation be assured of their eternal election. So shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence, and admiration of God, and of humility, diligence, and abundant consolation to all that sincerely obey the gospel. That's my favorite paragraph out of all of chapter three. This is a doctrine of comfort, it's a doctrine which brings us to humility, it's a doctrine which brings us to praise. And we are going to go over that more next week, God willing, but I just want to touch very briefly on one aspect of something from paragraph eight here. Many people, especially when we talk about things that we talked about last Lord's Day, that someone could say, Lord Jesus, save me. And Jesus could say, no, I don't know you, depart from me. Many people struggle with the doctrine of election because they think, well, what if I'm not one of the elect? What if I'm not one of the elect? And they'll just rend their garments and cry and they think, I'm not elect. It's because they know how awful of sinners they are. Everyone, even if no one else knows, you know some of the things you've thought, that you've never uttered, how could a Christian think these things? I certainly would never say them. You know some of the things you've done when no one else was watching or when no one else was with you. You know what a terrible sinner you are. Your heart convicts you in that way. The spirit convicts you in that way. And you know, perhaps even for years after walking with Christ, you still struggle with some of the same sins that you may have when you were first a believer or when you first began to grow in your faith. And you think, well, how could I be saved though? Maybe I'm just an insincere believer. Is my profession of faith false? I think Most believers think through those things at some point in their lives, and some people have that dominating their whole Christian life. One of my great heroes, John Bunyan, his whole life almost, was dominated with, maybe I'm not really saved, because how could a saved person think the thoughts that I just thought, say the things that I just said? And he struggled with the doctrine of assurance his whole life. But God wants us to be assured of our salvation. He doesn't want his children to live in constant fear and anxiety. So just two good and related questions to ask yourself that will help you discern whether you are a true believer or not. And then we'll close here. Number one, ask yourself, what makes you think you're a believer? And then number two, why do you think God will welcome you joyfully into his presence when you die? Now, there are a lot of answers people could give to these questions. a lot of wrong answers. I'm just gonna focus on the right answer. The right answer to these questions of what makes you think you're a believer and why do you think God will joyfully welcome you into his presence when you die? It's something like this, my only hope for my salvation is the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, my resurrected Lord and King. He is my only hope for heaven. I believe that his blood is more powerful than my sin. I believe his word is more reliable than my doubts. I just have to believe that he will save me. He revealed himself to me. He has given me a desire to submit to him To be true to Him, I fail Him constantly. I don't live up to His law every single day. I don't always feel sanctified, but I believe His word, and I'm just gonna submit to that. That's the answer. All your eggs have to be in the basket of Christ. If your answer is, well, I think I'm a good person, or I'm really working hard to conquer these sins, if that's your grounding of why you think you're a believer, there may be reason to doubt. But if your grounding at rock bottom is, I'm just taking God at His word. Jesus died for me. Jesus rose again. All who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. If all your eggs are in that basket, that's a very, very, very good sign. And you should take comfort in that. You should take comfort. I was telling someone recently, Sophie Scholl, she was a resistance fighter against the Nazis in Germany during World War II. She said that I will cling to the rope that God has thrown me in Christ Jesus, even when my numb fingers can no longer feel it. You might not feel saved. Do you have his word? That's what it is. Do you have his objective, perfect, solid word? Not your feelings. Sometimes you need to tell your feelings what to feel based on the facts of God's word. I don't feel saved. Do you believe that all who call upon the Lord will be saved? Do you believe that Jesus rose again for your justification? you're in a very good place if that's the case. So that's just one aspect of what the Westminster Divines mean when they write that attending the will of God revealed in his word and yielding obedience there unto, you may have assurance of your eternal election. It doesn't mean am I perfectly obeying everything in God's word and then I can know that I'm saved. It means, do you see what God has revealed in his word and are you submitted to those truths? Are you submitted to his gospel? So we have to attend to what he has said and believe that above anything and everything else in the world. All right, so we'll stop there for tonight. I think that's a good stopping point. And then like I said, God willing, we'll talk a little bit more about chapter three, paragraph eight next week, and then move into chapter four. What questions do we have? I know that was a lot. It's a good question. I think it's just because they are theologians. Like my degree, one of my degrees that I have is a Master of Divinity. I don't really like the title, but that's just what they're called. So yeah. A divine, I guess, is like a pastor theologian. And maybe something that was less strange 400 years ago. I mean, people were still calling each other Lord at that time, too. So it's just ways that we don't talk to each other anymore. But it wouldn't have been strange, you know, for two Christians if one, you know, was in the nobility to call him Lord. What else? I do find that very comforting, your final statements there. Because that's it. That's it. That's it. That's all it is. I'm going to take God at his word. I'm just going to submit to that because these can be very anxiety inducing and stress inducing things, but not because God designed it to be so, but because our sin confuses us and leads us down wrong paths, paths that seem right in a sense, but just only end in sadness. It might also be said that We as humans and as believers don't know who those are that are, as you taught on Sunday, beyond grace. Right. Like, for you to do your work of evangelism or for any of us to live our lives with, our whole lives with someone who has shown no fruits of repentance, yet God can. And so our duty may still lie to still proclaim and give grace because we as humans aren't aware and King Manasseh is one that comes to mind. Right, right. Yes. Almost the exile, you know, himself. He will imminently kill babies and just practice every kind of wickedness. And yet, God says, he at the end was human. Absolutely. You know? Right, right. He didn't want him to be, but he was. So our duty as believers might be just to continue to pray, continue to proclaim. Absolutely. Yes, I think these warnings about people being beyond grace are not, you know, for us to judge other people about. They're for us to remain humble about ourselves, that we shouldn't Think, well, of course, I was baptized, or I walked an aisle 20 years ago, or I'm a member of the church. I'm all good. They're warnings to people. Don't sin against the grace that you were given. Don't presume. Your grounding should only be, I believe in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, he bled and died for me. That's it. But you're right. And there is great hope. There is great hope. Manasseh is a perfect example. And we can even think of examples in our own lives. Like one more recent, I mean it was a few decades ago now, but Bernard Nathanson, one of the most, he was an abortionist and a very aggressive in the abortion lobby, helped in a lot of ways to get abortion legalized and pushed through with Roe v. Wade. But he repented and came to Christ. He's a believer and he spent the rest of his life seeking to end abortion, to undo the work that he did. Or Chuck Colson. He's very well known in evangelical circles, especially of a previous generation. And he was a bad guy. And I think he was converted in prison. And a lot of people are converted in prison. Yes, don't presume that someone's beyond grace. In fact, another one of my heroes, Ian Paisley, he a powerful, powerful preacher and evangelist. He founded the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. in Northern Ireland. And he said their goal when they planted a church was to, their goal was to see the worst sinners possible converted. They went to the worst. They didn't go to the low-hanging fruit. They began their evangelism with the worst. And God honored that. And they saw people converted and brought out of terrible, terrible lives of sin. There's a lot of comfort here. Any other questions, comments, or thoughts? All right. Well, what prayer requests do we have tonight?