One more week on this little section and then we'll move on and try to finish up chapter 8. For we know Romans chapter 8 starting with verse 28. And we know that for those who love God and all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose, for those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined, He also called, and those whom He called, He also justified, and those whom He justified, He also glorified. So on last week, we finished up with this statement. I'm going to repeat it. The purpose of God is not just to save us. His purpose is to change us, to conform us to the image of his son, to give us a new life, holy and acceptable to him. He foreknew us. He predestined us for that confirmation, for that change. He called us to come out of the world and come to him so that he might declare us justified and ultimately bring us into glory with him forever. Practically everyone receives the general call, and some even play along for a while, but there is no mistaking those who have received the effectual call. The power and purpose and glory of God would never allow it to be so. So we're going to continue this morning with some notes on what it means to be affectionately called. And I did learn that Hannah's doing a thesis on affectual calling, so if you want to... Oh well, okay. Some notes on what it means to be affectionately called. Again, we know that all men receive the universal call to repent and believe. We also know from life experience and from scripture that very few do come to repentance and belief. Apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, in fact, no one comes. God, through His Spirit, makes us alive who were dead in our trespasses and sins. The Holy Spirit puts within us a new principle of life or a new disposition. He changes us from being natural to being spiritual. As a result, we begin to see the truth and we begin to desire that truth. That which we once thought of as foolishness, we now regard as being most precious. What was once offensive has now become our glory and delight and we have a desire to know and understand it more and more. This is how the Spirit acts within us to make the call effectual. Now, does this mean that our wills are forced? Not quite. Our will is still our will. It will always be our will. The difference comes in what it is that controls our will. Our will was once controlled by the world, the flesh, and the devil. And we acted according to that will and desired what? The world, the flesh, and the devil. But now the Holy Spirit reveals those things that are spiritual to us and we desire those things instead. No man is ever saved against his will. We, again debatably, if you remember, saw at the end of chapter 7 that a wretched man cannot be changed unless and until that which drives his will has been changed. Regardless of how much he desires it to be so, or how much outside force or coercion is exerted on him, Nope. Through the Holy Spirit we are given such a view of God and salvation that we want it with the whole of our being. That is how the call becomes effectual. That which you once loved, you now hate. And that which you once hated, you now love. Okay? You have been given new affections, as Paul Washer says. The point being introduced here is that it is God who brings this to pass. If we were left to ourselves, none of us would ever desire it. Apart from God's foreordination and predestination being worked in us, we would still reject it as utter foolishness and would remain carnal and continue in our hatred of God. Apart from the effectual call, not one single human being would ever have believed the gospel. Now, there are some who say, Well, that is just Paul. Now, you ever notice that the reprobate and immoral somehow always get around to discounting Paul as being somehow contrary to the rest of the Bible, okay? That's the first thing you've got to do. You've got to get Paul out of the way before you can move into heresies and all sorts of stuff. You've got to get him out of the way. Well, as a few points of reference to the truth, Jesus said in John chapter 6 and verse 44, No one can come to me unless what? Unless the Father who sent me draws him. Clearly meaning that a few with really strong godly wills can still come, right? Not going to happen, okay? No man can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. Now, how many does he say can come? Only the ones who the Father draws, okay? Jesus tells these Pharisees, in essence, he's talking to the Pharisees, he's telling them, you are where you are and you are what you are because you have not been drawn to me. When you see all of the stuff going on in the world around you, that's the one thing that you can remember. Those people are where they are and they are what they are because the Father has not drawn them to him, okay? To which he immediately adds, Jesus says, all those who are drawn to me, I will raise them up on the last day. Preservation of the saints and ultimate glorification, right there. Everybody who the Father draws, I will raise them up on the last day and they will be glorified. Acts 13, 48. And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord. and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. So Paul's preaching in Antioch, same gospel to everybody that was there. All heard the same thing. Some believed, others rejected it. Difference being what? Some were appointed to eternal life. Now, some translations say ordained, others say marked out. Here it says appointed. All the same meaning. The ones that God foreknew and predestined for eternal life are the ones that believed. God is the one who did this. Acts 16-14 One who heard us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. So a couple of things here. Lydia was already a worshipper of God. That's going to get her into heaven, right? Not going to happen, okay? That will not get you into heaven. Only repentance and faith in Jesus Christ will get you into heaven. Otherwise, there would have been no need for God to do what he said he did to her right here, which was open her heart and open it so that she could hear what she needed to hear in order to be saved. Had God not opened her heart, she would have continued on her merry way thinking that being a worshipper of God was good enough. God is the one who did this. Acts chapter 11 verses 17 and 18. Peter's in trouble for baptizing certain Gentiles. The Jews did not like that because they did not like the Gentiles. But Peter tells them, he says, if then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way? And when they heard these things, they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, then to the Gentiles also, God has granted repentance that leads to life. God granted them repentance. They would not have come to that on their own, no matter what. God is the one who did this. 2 Timothy 1.9, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began. God's foreknowledge, God's predestination, God's calling, and God's purpose. God is the one who did this. Finally, Saul of Tarsus, who was foreordained to become who? The Apostle Paul. Hated Jesus Christ with a passion unmatched. Hated Christ's followers with a passion unmatched. And then one day Saul, in the midst of breathing out threatenings and slaughter, that's what scripture says that he was doing, breathing out threatenings and slaughter against Christians, Saul woke up one morning and suddenly decided that this was not right and so after four courses of I have decided to follow Jesus, Saul decided to believe in Jesus Christ. Is that how that happened? Did he just wake up one morning and decide to accept the message that he had been attempting so violently to try to trample out? We know what happened. Jesus Christ appeared to him. The Holy Spirit revealed Christ to him in all his glory. Saul's will, there's the will again, Saul's will was no longer driven by self-righteousness. That's what was driving him through all of his threatenings and slaughter. That's what was driving him was his own self-righteousness. His will was no longer being driven by self-righteousness. It was now driven by a desire to know Jesus Christ and to fulfill God's purpose. So what was God's purpose for Paul? Acts 9 15. He says, He is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. for I will show him how must he much suffer for the sake of my name. It is God who did that. Such is the relationship between the foreknowledge and the predestination on the one hand and the calling on the other hand. God's plan for his people in eternity becoming reality to them in time, in God's good time. Galatians 1 15 Paul speaking says but when he who had set me apart before I was born Long before he was born and who called me by his grace Was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles Foreknown predestined and then in God's timing called at a particular moment and in time on the road to Damascus to preach Christ among the Gentiles. It is God who did this. All the same goes for us. God foreknew us, God predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son, and then at some particular point in time, He called us effectually to come to repentance and faith in order that we might be justified in His sight. in order that we might have peace with god and in order that we might want that we would one day be glorified both body and spirit in heaven we see these as steps we have to see these as steps because we are bound in time but all of this already happened at once at one all of us in time page got called a long time before i did Okay? But it happened all at the same time. Alright? We see it as steps, but it's already happened. Before the foundation of the world. This is Paul's goal. To make us understand that all of these blessings are not dependent on us. Again, we're talking about assurance. Have been since chapter 5. Okay? This is his way of saying, this is your assurance. None of this has anything to do is not dependent on you, not upon what we may or may not do. They are according to His good pleasure and purpose, God's good pleasure and purpose. We are fallible. In my case, that's an understatement. We fall into sin. We are prone to error, always ready to complain and grumble in our troubles. None of that changes the end, says Paul. In spite of you, God is going to bring his great purpose to pass. You cannot see it now, but you will see it ultimately. Now, did you ever look back on your life? Now, some of you grew up in good Christian homes and maybe didn't have to endure all of this. But for others, it's a different story. Did you ever look back on your life and see God's intervention? Maybe through some trial or some affliction. Maybe not even your own trial or affliction, but somebody else's that still had an impact on the direction your life was heading. I remember the first time that I ever heard the word Calvinist. I had no idea that there was even such a person. Okay? I was having a discussion with a youth pastor who had been to seminary and he was pretty well educated in religion. And we were discussing this very thing as to why some people receive the call and some never do. Why some people, it seems like they hear it and accept it and then they don't do anything with it. So I made the statement that I knew of certain things that had happened in my life. Certain people that had been placed in my life at crucial moments. uh... and that had that not happened had those things not happened i would most certainly have been lost his response was he says well that's very calvinistic of you never heard of that before had no idea what it even meant uh... later on as a pastor i would begin a wednesday night teaching through romans And while studying for that, I came upon people like John Calvin and Martin Luther. And I've got to tell you, I hated those guys with a passion. Just being just as upfront and honest as I could be. Hated those guys with a passion. Hated everything about what they taught. Wrote Paul off as being misinformed. Contradicted everything that would leave God more in charge than I. with regards to my salvation. There is nothing that proves this doctrine of foreknowledge and predestination more clearly than people like myself who do not believe these doctrines. In spite of my stupidity, I was still saved by the grace of God and would eventually come to see the truth. In spite of myself, there is no greater proof of the doctrine that I once denied. And there is also no greater proof, as we've already said, that understanding this doctrine is not necessary for salvation. Are you not glad that we are not saved by our understanding of every doctrine in the Scripture? If understanding were a requirement for salvation, then we would all pretty soon be lost again. The reason we are saved is because God purposed it to be so in eternity past. It is not dependent on us. God's purpose guarantees our ultimate glorification. God foreknew, God predestined, God called, God justified, God glorified. All of those are written in Aris tense. All of them. That means that they all already happened. We've already been glorified. We have already been seated in heaven. No one can take that from us. Our own actions did not place us there. Therefore, our own actions cannot remove us from there. Our actions do offer proof of our effectual calling. Okay, you get that? Our actions do offer proof of our effectual calling. They do show forth the power and the glory of God in our confirmation and transformation, but they are not a benefit nor a hindrance to that which has already taken place. It is God who did this, it is God who is doing this, and it is God who will do this. The only thing that matters then, from our standpoint, is to be sure that we are in the purpose of God. Do you know that you have been called? We went over a few tests in one of our past lessons, but the most important of all is this one. Do you accept God's verdict, and this is basically the pledge you make when you join the church, okay? Do you accept God's verdict on yourself that you are a sinner, vile, unworthy, and deserving of nothing but hell? Do you see that if you worked around the clock for the rest of your life in an attempt to live a godly life, you would still be as lost as you are now? And that your only hope whatsoever is that Christ died for you and your sins and that God clothed you with his righteousness and gives you a new life. If you do believe this, if you do believe this, then what? You are called. It's as simple as that. It is only the called who accept God's verdict. The natural man hates the very idea of it all. If you believe what the Bible tells you about yourself and about the only way to be reconciled to God and to come to a knowledge of God, you can rest assured. Again, this entire thing from Romans 5, from chapter 5 on, is about assurance. You can rest assured that you are called. And if you are called, you are justified. And if you are justified, you are glorified. No matter what may come, no matter what the world, the flesh, and the devil may do to you, nothing can change your position. Now, for a most interesting fact, founder should I say not found here, Did you notice a word missing from this list, as it were? Predestined, called, justified, glorified. What is missing? 1 Corinthians 1 and 30. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, meaning justification, and sanctification, and redemption, meaning glorification. So what supposedly comes between justification and glorification? Sanctification. So why does Paul omit sanctification here? Is there a reason? Well, surely there must be. The explanation is that sanctification is not a vital step in what Paul has in mind at this point. It's not a step at all. It is a process. If it were a step, it would be included here. Our sanctification makes no vital difference at all with regards to our status or standing. Justification has changed our position already and that position is assured. That's one thought. Secondly, Paul feels no need to mention sanctification here simply because sanctification is inevitable because of justification. As we have said, the moment a man is justified, the process of sanctification begins. Justification implies sanctification. God's glory and honor would not allow it to be otherwise. The very fact that we now have a new nature, that we have a new outlook, that we have new affections, that we are dead to sin and alive to Christ, guarantees sanctification. It's the proof or the evidence of who and what we claim to be. Proof for ourselves and proof for those who would question us. Thirdly, glorification guarantees sanctification. Sanctification is our preparation for glorification. As John says, all who have it have hope in him, purifies himself even as he is pure. purifies himself, that's sanctification, even as he is pure. Any person who truly believes in ultimate glorification is going to be of necessity concerned with sanctification. He wants to be sanctified. He strives to be sanctified. He strives to cleanse his mind and body from impurity. He kills the sin in the members of his body, as we studied at length in lessons past. Belief in glorification and desire for sanctification are implicitly tied together. They cannot be separated. So, fourthly, it would be quite unscriptural to make sanctification a separate step in and of itself, as if it could happen without the others. Sanctification can't happen without the others. Or worse, that the others could take place and leave it behind. If you are in Christ, then Christ is in you and he cannot be only partly in you. Christ cannot be divided just as you cannot divide or separate sanctification from justification and glorification. It would be the same as the heinous thought that Christ has the power to save me and bring me to heaven So this is what the majority of your friends believe, whether you know it or not, that Christ has the power to save you and bring you to heaven, but he doesn't have the power to change your life. As Paul warned Timothy about certain people, 2 Timothy 3, 5, he says, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. you live in translation without which I have often confessed upon this for put it this way it says they will act religious but they will reject the power that could make them godly that's the majority of Christian America acted religious reject the power that could make them godly so the addition here sanctification is quite unnecessary especially to the audience that Paul is talking to. These that have proven their sanctification by their lives. He already commended them for it at the very beginning of this letter. If justification and glorification have occurred, then sanctification is a given. If sanctification is absent, I knew I was going to say that one too many times, If sanctification is absent, then justification and glorification are absent as well. Whoever has hope in Christ purifies himself even as he is pure. Now, all of that being said, we would be remiss if we did not at least mention some of the arguments put forth against the things that we have been discussing. There are those who hate the thoughts of foreknowledge, predestination, calling, and election, and even the final perseverance of the saints. I should know that there are people who hate that because I have said often enough that I was one of them. Well, where does that hatred come from? Mostly from a prideful heart, at least in my case. It stems from a wrong philosophical view of God that cannot be reconciled with what paul is teaching here not to make excuses for myself but there are many such that reject this teaching those people outnumber us by a huge margin huge margin and that margin is ever widening vast majority of the modern commentaries if you get a commentary of anything after nineteen Thirty-five, I think it is. Nobody mentions what we believe, okay? The vast majority of the modern commentaries are against what we as Reformed believers hold to. They do not believe in the unique inspiration of the Bible, even though they claim to do so. So here's how they approach Scripture, and I can attest to this from experience. So what you all don't appreciate is the amazing intellect that sits in front of you this morning. You didn't know that I was, you have no idea how amazing I am, all right? You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Because I used to know it all. All that mattered anyway. I knew everything that mattered. So do these people. And so we would approach the Bible with our intellect and our knowledge and our philosophy. And if there is anything in the Bible that agrees with what I think, that is what I accept. If there is anything that disagrees, then I, of course, have to reject that. For instance, how do you reconcile this teaching with the idea that God is love? Therefore, this teaching has to be wrong. can't god is love this is not love this has to be wrong so that means i must declare war against it and so i did and so have uh... they in commentary after commentary uh... they've declared war against what we believe okay the fundamental problem is not the idea of predestination or of perseverance it is a wrong view of the Bible and it is a wrong view of God and both of those being something that a prideful heart is not readily prone to giving up. There is nothing more dangerous than a Bible teacher who believes that he has it all figured out. Y'all get that? There is nothing more dangerous than a Bible teacher who believes that he has it all figured out. Always ready to give an answer for the hope that lies within you. I was good at that. It didn't have to be the right answer. Okay? I gave you an answer. It didn't have to be a biblical answer. But always ready to give an answer. It doesn't have to be the correct answer. It just has to be one that sounds good and matches what I already believe. Pride will not allow a person like that to even begin to accept an alternative viewpoint. And so we have to start on the common basis that the Bible is the divinely inspired and inerrant Word of God. Apart from that, there is no basis for a discussion. If you are confronted with a person who does not believe that the Bible is inspired and inerrant, you just need to wipe your feet and move on. Okay? Because there's no use in talking to that person. These teachers, as I did, they do grant that Paul clearly teaches the doctrines that we have been studying. No doubt about it. There is no doubt about it. I knew that Paul taught these doctrines. Paul was mistaken. He wasn't as smart as I was. He was, after all, still a Jew and still under the influence of that Jewish teaching. And so he brought much of his old legalistic notions with him into Christianity. Or my favorite one, the one that I used most often, was the Apostle Peter, 2 Peter 3.15. Peter says that Paul was sometimes hard to understand. Y'all remember that scripture? Peter says, Paul is sometimes hard to understand, and so the ignorant and unstable people took his teaching and twisted it to their own destruction. That was my workaround. For anything that Paul said that did not match up with my own presuppositions, just declare anyone or anything that disagrees with you as ignorant and unstable and headed for destruction and then you can go home with your pride still completely intact see how that works anything that I didn't agree with those people are ignorant and unstable and they're headed for destruction so that's my confessional now moving on there are those that have legitimate difficulties and with these there needs to be patience. Most of these stem from humanistic philosophies. My biggest concern, apart from my own pride, was that this teaching was going to lead people into antinomianism. Being a legalist, I for sure did not want people to be taught that they could repent and be baptized and that whatever they did thereafter did not matter. So from a legalistic standpoint, that is what this doctrine sounds like. Y'all get that? That you can repent and be baptized and then it doesn't matter what you do after that. Actually, about 90% of the churches in this county, that's what they preach. That's what they believe. And they're not even Calvinist. that their final destination was guaranteed no matter what. Once saved, always saved was the most blasphemous idea and one that I could not wrap my mind around. As Jude says, are they not just going to take God's marvelous grace and use it as a license to live like the devil? Are they going to do that? not if they are effectually called. Therein lies the difference. They won't. They can't. The divine seed is in them. They cannot do such a thing. On the other hand, those who have decided to follow Jesus after four courses of just as I am or whatever, done so of their own volition, will do exactly that. That's exactly what they will do. They will take God's marvelous grace and use it as a license to live like the devil. That's exactly what they will do. Why? Because the problem is not the doctrine. The problem is entirely in the people who love their sin and have no desire to leave it. They are not in Christ. They do not have God's Spirit dwelling within them. They have not been given a new heart and a new life. They have no choice but to continue in the sin that still holds them captive. They have no choice. Their will is still being driven by the world, the flesh, and the devil. And there are others. Some people ask, well, doesn't this teaching imply that God has also predestined some people to damnation? This is known as double predestination. It's a heinous thought to some people that God would do such a thing. Martin Lloyd-Jones teaches against it vehemently. So here is your question. We mentioned it a couple of lessons ago. Did God predestine some to be conformed to the image of His Son and the rest predestined to damnation? Or did God just allow the rest to continue on the path that they were already on? having been born in adam and headed for destruction anyway that's the two sides me personally i believe they're the same thing some people don't believe that i think it's semantics i think it's the same thing my opinion i also know that if they are not the same thing i don't have the understanding to make a determination one way or the other because to me they're the same thing, and I'm okay with not understanding. That's something the old me would never have said. The Bible does not come out and tell me for certain, so any position I might take would hinge on my own thoughts and my own feelings, and those are not reliable in any situation. The secret things belong to who? Don't remember that verse? Deuteronomy 29, 29. The secret things belong to God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever. We are revealed what happens to the predestined for being conformed to the image of his son. We're not revealed about the other. That belongs to God. The secret things belong to God. What's being revealed here? What is being revealed here is that God works all things together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. That is who and what is being addressed here. Not the natural man. He has no place here. He's not even mentioned. This is assurance given to believers. This is assurance given to believers. This is a small tidbit. of the mind of God given to those that desire to know more and more about the one they love. This is a tiny glimpse, so tiny, a tiny glimpse into God's purpose and how he has worked out that purpose from the foundation of the world. The revelation that I see here is not predestination versus double predestination. What I take from this is that I am thankful that I am one of the called. And I pray to God that my children and my grandchildren and all those that I love are also among the foreknown of God. That's what is revealed to me here. Okay. So we all know this one, the biggest difficulty in accepting this doctrine. How do we reconcile this doctrine with the love of God? How can God set his affection on some people and not on others? Anybody heard that question? Anybody had that question posed to you? How many thousand times? How can God set his affection on some people and not on others? So, my carefully reasoned answer, after many hours of study, and with all the scriptures to back it up, is simply this. I don't know. I do not understand it. I do know that I'm not called to understand it. If I were called to understand it, it would be given to me in this book. It is not given to me in this book. Okay? This is the mind and the heart. there are the background I came from use NOAA use Abraham also use NOAA because they were obedient that's not what the book says obedient yes that's not that's not what this book says NOAA found what? grace okay Somewhere, according to biblical scholars, somewhere between 5 and 7 billion people that were on the earth at that time. We see these, you know, y'all remember Sunday School and the flannel graphs and Noah's Ark and like seven people standing over here getting ready to be drowned and seven people on the ark. Biblical scholars say there was somewhere between 5 and 7 billion people on the planet at that time. 5 and 7 billion, OK? take a that many generations with that kind of lifespans and with a command the only command you have from God is to be fruitful and multiply it's not hard to go along with that five to seven billion people out of that many people Noah found grace didn't say that Noah was better than any of How does that work? I don't know. Why did it work? I don't know. This is the mind and heart of the eternal God. He is infinite and He is absolute and the Lord of all the earth will always do right. Okay? We are not in a position to understand the ways of God that are as far above hours as the heavens are above the earth. This is where faith shines through. This is what faith is all about. Faith meaning that we are content in not knowing all things and yet still believing. Can you be content in not knowing all things and yet still believing? After all, if we had all the answers, where would faith find a place? These things are high and infinite and absolute and eternal. I am small and I am finite and I am sinful. All we can know for certain is that we are, is what we are told in God's Word. That's the only thing that is 100% true, what we are told in God's Word. And simply to accept that as fact because it is God's Word. There are so many things that I do not understand and yet Believe it or not, I am far happier now than when I knew it all. Did God elect some and not others? Yes, the Bible tells me so. Why? I don't know. But I also don't know why He elected to save the some. Why would He save anyone? All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is none righteous, no, not one. All are at enmity with God. Not a single person has ever in all of history deserved to be saved. God would have been perfectly justified to consign every soul ever born to eternity in hell. What about so-and-so? They did this. Anybody here ever knew a good person? What about them? No, not one. What about those really good people? No, not one. The thought that ought to be at the forefront of our minds always is not, why were certain people not saved? Our thought should be, why is anyone saved? Especially me. Let's pray. Father God, I thank you for your purpose. Lord, I thank you that I am included in your purpose. I thank you that these, my brothers and sisters, are included in your purpose. Lord, I pray for my family, for my upcoming generations, that they are also included in your purpose. Lord, I thank you for the assurance that you've given us in your word. that this is all on you. It's not dependent on me. Never has been, never will be. This is all on you. Therefore, we have the assurance that it's going to be fulfilled. Lord, be with us as we commune with you this morning. Draw us near to you. In Christ's name, amen.