But I'm going to open up in a word of prayer, and then we'll get started tonight on our Bible study. Father, I thank you for the time that we have together, and thank you for this church. Thank you for the work of regeneration that you've done. Thank you for even the report that we heard about those who have gone out, even today, just to share the gospel. Father, I pray that you would continue to bless Faith Community Church, revive us. May we be a place where the gospel flourishes, where we see the power of the gospel working and changing people's lives and people being saved. I pray that you would give us understanding of these things as we study, really, if we talk about the deep things of scripture, it's this. And so I pray you'll give us understanding of these things. In Jesus' name, amen. Alright, well, again, thank you for coming, and I will try to speak loudly. Usually that's not too much of a problem for me. We're starting a series on what we call the Doctrines of Grace, and the bulletin said we do it every two years. I'm always suspect with my dates, and I'm like, I don't think it's been two years, and then Linda just said it was July. July 8th, so almost exactly two years. We do it every couple of years, not exactly two years, but we do it because it is a very, very important topic to understand. It's so integral to a church. It has bearing on the way we do church. It has bearing on the songs that we sing in church. It has bearing on how we preach. It has bearing on how we share the gospel, like we went out today, guys and gals went out today to share the gospel. It has bearing on doing missions. Basically, it has so much to do with who we are as Christians. and who we are as a church. It's part of our identity. It's part of who we are as a faith community church, and so we like to keep it before us. We have new people coming who may or may not be familiar with these things. Some of you, this may be your umpteenth time you've heard it. Others of you maybe have never heard it before. But when you're talking about truth and for a Christian, A Christian isn't moved by always hearing new truth. They're moved by hearing the truth. They love the truth. And when they hear the truth, they're encouraged and strengthened by the truth. This truth is a truth that, for people that have never heard it, it will help you understand Christianity, I think, so much deeper, so much better. It gives you a greater understanding of your salvation, greater understanding of God, and so many different things. The doctrines of grace answer for us some of the most important questions a Christian could ever ask themselves, or ask, period. The doctrines of grace would answer a question like, why am I a Christian? That's a really, really important question. I don't know how many of you have ever asked yourself that before, but that was a really big issue for me. I'll share about that in a little bit, but why am I a Christian and other people aren't? How does someone become a Christian? What must they do to become a Christian? In a more relevant way, we just finished a series on apologetics, which those of you that heard it, I hope you remember apologetics means defending the faith. And when you are evangelizing, when you're working with people, living next to people, you're going to be using apologetics whether you know it or not. But anytime you share your faith, you're going to be using apologetics. And the doctrines of grace really are the foundation and undergird the whole apologetic endeavor. There are some notable apologists out in our world today, in the United States, great guys, but if they don't understand the doctrines of grace, their apologetics aren't going to be consistent. It's going to be lacking some critical elements, because these things are so important and they undergird the whole endeavor of apology. So let's just say you're going out to evangelize. What are we trying to do when we go out and evangelize, when we share faith? Well, we're trying to get people to believe certain things, right? We're going out, maybe talking to our neighbor, talking to our co-worker, They are, what, unbelievers, and we want to share the gospel so that they will become a believer. We want them to believe certain things. Well, how can we get them to believe certain things? What if your neighbor or your co-worker is not just, like, careless, but what if they're an atheist? Like, no, I don't believe there's a God. Or a Muslim. I don't believe in the Bible. How are you going to share your faith with them? How are you going to get them to believe? Many of us, we have loved ones, people we know who aren't believers or they're straying from the Lord, and we want them to believe. We want them to get saved. And you're like, what has to happen in order for them to get saved? Is there a silver bullet? If I did something right, would that mean they would get saved? Or if I could come up with the best argument that they just couldn't answer and it would immediately be, I surrender, you're right. I'll believe if it is, we'd want to know those kind of things. But the doctrines of grace undergird this whole apologetic endeavor. How do we expect... I just got a text today from David Hallam. He's one of our missionaries in Chad. He read a sign wrong. It's all in Arabic. So he's going down the street the wrong way. gets pulled over by three policemen and they want a lot of money. And he's, the kids are crying, they're going to, they want to, you know, and he was like, please Please pray for me to remind me why I'm here, why I'm going through this. They're there to tell Muslims about Christ, right? And think about what they're supposed to do. They're in Chad in a culture that is Muslim, that's been Muslim for centuries. All your family is Muslim. The society is Muslim. Everything is Muslim. And they're going to go there and they want people to believe What we believe. Believe in Jesus. Believe that He died on the cross. How are they going to do that? How does that happen? Are they going to have some evidence that they could... Should they study textual criticism of the Koran? show them that the Qur'an isn't really the Bible. Well, you can't even do textual criticism of the Qur'an because Muslims don't allow it. You can't even speak against the Qur'an, let alone investigate to see if there's any evidence that it's actually a consistent manuscript. So there's no, you can't go and say, well look, the manuscripts don't add up. That doesn't work. How about if they came up with a logical, we talked about this, the classical, logical arguments for the existence of God. the first cause. Maybe they could come up with some logical argument. Well, Muslims already believe in God. That's not going to help them. How are you going to get Muslims to believe? How are you going to get them to say, you know, you white American, you're right. My whole country is wrong. My parents have been wrong. My grandparents have been wrong. I've been wrong forever. I'm going to believe what you believe. Well, that's almost idiotic to think that they're going to do it, and people just don't do that. What undergirds evangelism, what undergirds the apologetics is the doctrines of grace. And you may not understand, what's the correlation? I hope by the time we're done with this, you'll say, okay, I see why you need to know the doctrines of grace in apologetics or evangelism. But it's really important. I'm going to give you one example in the Bible of the doctrines of grace, the truths that we're going to be talking about, how it affects We'll just say apologetics, okay? So we've looked at this verse before, but let's turn to 2 Timothy chapter 2. 2 Timothy, Paul is writing to Timothy. And basically, Timothy is faced with people who don't believe the way he believes. Like many of you, you have family members that don't believe. You might have neighbors. You might have people that are very hostile to your faith. You may have militant atheists who hate the notion of God, or whatever. They're very hostile. Paul instructs Timothy, this is how you deal with them. 2 Timothy chapter 2, verse 24. The Lord's servant Must not be quarrelsome. Don't get in arguments with them. Don't argue with them. Don't quarrel with them. Be kind to everyone. Don't get mad at them. Don't scream at them. Don't yell at them. Able to teach. Tell them what they need to know. Patiently enduring evil. When they call you all kinds of awful names, don't lash back at them. Just endure it. Correcting your opponents with gentleness. When they say the wrong things, you correct them but do it with gentleness. No, that's not what the Bible says. This is what the Bible says. This is who Jesus is. And then this is why. You do it with kindness and gentleness and not arguing because God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth. The reason you don't get into these quarrels, the reason you don't get angry at them, is because you have one responsibility, it's to tell them the truth. But then Paul says, after that, God has to do something. God has to grant repentance. If God doesn't do that, you're talking to a stone wall. You see, there have been times, there have been people, where if I could physically do something to them to make them change, I would. Like wring their neck or beat them up. That is the most stupid thing. Are you kidding me? This is ridiculous. This is outright rebellion. You want to just shake them. And in fact, if you go back in church history, there was a period of time when they had a very effective method of converting people. It was called torture. It was the Inquisition. You believe? No. Torture, torture, torture. Do you believe? No. Torture, torture. Do you believe? Yes, yes, I believe. Okay, come on, you're fine. Islam practices it today. They learned it from the Christians. That's what the Christians did in the Inquisition. They forced people to convert. That is not Christian. That's not apologetic. We can't make people believe anything. Undergirding that reality is these truths that we're going to be talking about, the doctrines of grace. So it's very important for us to understand these doctrines of grace. I want to start with something very basic that I think everyone in this room would know. I want to start with just this question, how is a person saved? How is a person saved? Throughout the New Testament, I see again and again There are two unique elements that are constantly being brought together when it talks about salvation. What is required for a person to be saved? And I'm going to put that all together because repentance is to change your mind. So repentance would go from unbelief to belief, from loving sin to turning from sin. So faith is clearly one of the elements. In order for a person to get saved, they have to believe certain things. John. Receive and believe, okay? I'm going to put that in there. You have to receive the truth. You have to submit to the truth. There's one other element that we see. This is the word that is usually in scripture. We're saved through faith, and there's one other word. Yes it is. It is believing certain things. What is it that a person believes? You believe Jesus Christ is Lord. You believe that He died on the cross and He was raised from the dead. That's faith. It's not just any faith. That's a really good question because, oh I have faith. No, no. To be saved has to have a certain object of the faith, meaning you are believing in Jesus Christ. He's not just a good guy or a good prophet, but He is the Son of God who died on the cross and God raised Him from the dead. You have to believe that. Muslims don't even believe Jesus died on the cross. let alone in the resurrection. They don't believe He's the Son of God. They said, no, we don't believe that. But according to the Bible, that's what it means to have faith. There's one other word, and almost everyone in here would know it. Logan? Grace. That's the other word, grace. There's one really well-known Bible verse that uses these two words in verse Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. For by grace you are saved through faith. And that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Now my question is, how do these things work together, grace and faith? A person has to come to believe certain things about Jesus and the resurrection, right? We know that. That's clear. But it says, for by grace you are saved through faith. What's the correlation between grace and faith? What does it mean that it's by grace that you're saved through faith? Most people say, well, grace. Well, let's define it. What is grace? Unmerited favor. That's one of the best. Unmerited means you don't deserve it. That's what grace means. You get something you don't deserve. So if somebody has a criminal record, you armed robbery, and you are convicted, and you're supposed to go to the jail, and the judge says, I pardon you. That's grace. You deserve jail and you've just been pardoned. You've been given something freely, okay? So how does grace and faith correlate? I have to get a person to believe. That person must believe in order to be saved. They must believe in Jesus. But it says it's by grace. Now, we know it says it's by faith, not works. So that's a Certainly a correlation, meaning this faith, it's by grace, it's not any works at all. It's not good deeds. It's not trying hard. It's not of works. It's the gift of God so that no one boasts. Well, the doctrines of grace help us to understand the correlation between faith, coming to faith in Christ, by grace. Because it really answers the question, why did Tim come to believe that Jesus died on the cross for his sins and was raised on the third day? Why? Well, if I were reading Ephesians 2.8.9, I could say, because remember Ephesians says, for by grace you are saved. It could say, for by enough evidence, Tim came to believe in salvation. Or it could have said, for by great logic, Tim came to believe in Jesus. But it doesn't say any of those things. It says, For by grace I'm saved through faith." The instrument isn't evidence, it's not logic, it's not my intellectual greatness. It's by grace. Well, the doctrines of grace will help explain what it really means to be saved by grace. I teach apologetics to seniors and at the beginning of the year I usually ask the seniors, most of whom always come from Christian homes, I ask them, why are you a Christian? Why are you a Christian? And most of them will say, well, I believe in Jesus, and I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sins. And that's great. That's good. But why do you believe that? Then I will ask, because most of them I teach in a Christian school, most of them are there because they have a parent or their parents are Christians. I say, how many of you come from a Christian home? Usually all of them raise their hand. And I ask them, Do you think you would still be a Christian if you were born in a Muslim home? Not very many hands go up. They're not sure. So then the question is, are you a Christian simply because you were born in a Christian home? Is that why it is? Well, if you ever studied atheists or read Richard Dawkins, guess what he's going to say about religion. He will note, evidentially, looking around, that there's this strange phenomenon that when you look at the religions of the world, Muslims usually come from Muslim families, and Christians come from Christian families, and Catholics come from Catholic family, and he says, basically, people inherit the religion of their parents, and that's just the way most religions are. Is that why we're a Christian? Well, there is truth to the fact that Muslims have Muslim children and Christians often have Christian children. In fact, the Bible even says that as parents we're supposed to train our children up to be Christians. So there's some truth to that, but the reality is it doesn't always add up that way. There are families, even in this room, who did not come from Christian parents and they're Christians. What about them? Why did they become a Christian? Or what about Muslims who have come to Christ and have rejected their whole family religion? Or even, here's another really hard one, but it's a reality and it's things that we have to talk about. What about Christian families that have children and one child follows the Lord and loves the Lord and the other child doesn't? Same family, same home, same upbringing. One loves the Lord, one is following the Lord, the others don't. What about that? Is it just our upbringing? Is that what determines whether we're going to be a Christian or not? Or is it just our society? Is it just our circumstances? One of the things that I like to do is to have people, I make my seniors do this, I make them study two historical figures, not study in depth, but I introduce them to two people, very unique individuals. Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis. These two guys are fascinating characters of history. Very, very similar guys. Although they were born, Lewis was born after Freud, the similarities in their life are remarkable. Both of them, when they were young, were both born into religious homes. Freud was a nominal Jewish home. Lewis was a nominal Christian home. Both boys grew up in a very difficult setting. They suffered some significant trauma early in their life. Both of them lost their mothers early on. Freud ended up having a nanny who abandoned him after a while and had issues. C.S. Lewis, his mother died and he was sent off to a boarding school at the age of seven. And he was alone in this boarding school, terrified. And it was a Christian boarding school and he talked about the headmaster who would literally beat the kids with rulers and terrified him. And I mean, the story is by the time both of these guys reach early, late teens, early adulthood, they are hardened atheists. Both of them. Both of them have rejected the spiritual worldview, rejected the religion of their parents, they want nothing to do with God, and they are very articulate atheists. And they're both very intellectual, very smart. And then around the age of 30, something happens to C.S. Lewis, and it happens over a period of time, but over a period of time, C.S. Lewis turns from his atheism first acknowledges there has to be a God, and then finally surrenders to Jesus Christ. He's like, he's Lord. He actually describes, it's fascinating, it's in the classic C.S. Lewis, the Lord had been working on him, I'd love to go into how the Lord converted him, but the Lord had been working on him, and he says, one evening, he got on a motorcycle, not believing in Christ, he drove to the zoo, but by the time he got to the zoo, he parked his bike and said, I believe in Jesus Christ. He is who he is. He has to be who he says he is. And he says, I was thoroughly converted at that moment, just while riding a motorbike. Why did Lewis convert and Freud didn't? Freud, as long as anybody, I don't know of anybody who says otherwise, Freud went to his deathbed denying the existence of God, not believing in God, even bitter at God. Lewis, 32 years of age, recants and believes. Was it because Lewis was smarter? Was it because Lewis had more opportunities than Freud had? Why? And that's something I've had my class just wrestle with. Can you tell me why? Because that's something that I wrestled with. Early on, Lori and I had just been married. We moved into a house. And I remember stepping out on my doorstep saying, why am I a Christian? And everyone around me is not a Christian. And at the bottom of my heart, as I was trying to wrestle why I'm a Christian, I was like, well, I'm obviously better than these people. I really thought that. And if not better, at least I was going to say gooder, but that's not a word. I was smarter than them. And then I thought, well, wait a second, my dad was a pastor. Is that fair? Because their dads weren't pastors. I will be honest with you, there was a period of time, I don't know how long it went on, but I was deeply troubled by that question, why am I a Christian and these other people aren't? Because the answers that I was coming up with didn't match up with Ephesians 2.8.9. I knew I wasn't going to get to heaven and go, you're welcome Lord, I trusted you. I know you were so pleased in me. Or, you know, Lord I was obviously not as bad as those other people. I knew that was, all those were terrible answers. I just didn't know why. Why did I believe? And if it was just because my dad was a pastor, that's not a good enough reason for me either. Because I don't want to just believe something just because, well, it's what my parents believed. Well, the doctrines of grace ultimately answered those questions for me. I began to understand why I believe, why I came to believe these truths, and what grace is really all about. I want to give you just an example of this. Turn to Acts 17 quickly. We referred to this on our last meeting when we were talking about apologetics. Paul is doing an apologetics. He's evangelizing. And he's on Mars Hill. So he is talking to some of the brightest minds in all of Greece. These guys are philosophers. They're highly intelligent. They are religious. In fact, they are overly religious. They worship A plethora of gods. If you read in Acts 17, they have idols to every god they could possibly think of, and in case they left one out, they put a statue for the unknown god. They believed in gods. As Greeks, one of the things that's not as well known is that they probably were very influenced by Plato. They had Platonic thoughts. So the Greeks were very interested, their thoughts were very interesting. They believed that the soul, the inner soul, the unseen, was in some ways deified. It was kind of a deity, but it was trapped in this thing we called flesh. And the ultimate goal at the end of the day to reach the state you wanted to do is you wanted to get rid of the flesh. That's what they believe. That's what Plato... You want to get rid of this material and you want to go to the ideal, unseen, spiritual world. And so, they believe that the flesh... Just get rid of the flesh. Who cares about the flesh? What that meant is, they don't believe in resurrection at all. The idea that you're going to have flesh again? That's retarded. That's ridiculous. That's like going backwards. No way. Well, Paul comes. What does he do at Mars Hill? He preaches to them about the unknown God, he says he's the creator, and guess what he does? He preaches the resurrection. It is a clash of presuppositions. These people don't believe like Paul believes at all. And what I want you to see is the response, okay? Verse 32. So Paul says this message to these people. He talks about who God is, He's the Creator, and that there's going to be a resurrection and Jesus is going to judge them. Verse 32, now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. I mean, I can just see it. He says it and then they just go, oh sheesh. Resurrection from the dead, oh yeah, right Paul. They make fun of Him. Others said, We want to hear you again about this. So Paul went out from their midst, but look at verse 34, but some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius, the Arab, I always get that word wrong, you can read it, I don't need to say it, and a woman named Damaris, and others with him. He actually names people. These were people of Mars Hill. I think that Dionysius probably was one of the philosophers He heard this message in which other philosophers were mocking, and said, that's ridiculous. You're telling us things you don't have any idea about. We believe in all these gods. You're talking about one god, and you're talking about resurrection. No way. But Dionysius hears it, and he's, you're right. I believe that. Why does Dionysius believe it, and the others mock? You're saved by grace. What does that mean? Well, we see it again and again all throughout scripture. We see it, any person in this room that's ever been converted, you've been converted by grace. Not because you're wiser or smarter or because you had better circumstances than someone else. Some of you have had terrible circumstances. Some people like me have had incredible circumstances, yet I look at my life and I look at people that have grown up in similar situations. I went to a Christian school when I was in high school. Out of my class, I am a small percentage, and I mean only one or two out of my class that I know of have anything to do with God at all. So I realize, even growing up in a good home, it's a miracle to believe. Whether you come from a good home, a bad home, a Christian home, a non-Christian home, it doesn't matter what the Bible says, we're saved by grace. So we're going to be talking about the doctrines of grace. That's what we've entitled this and I don't mean to be rude but in all my notes I'm just That's a capital G and a capital D in just a little. Doctrines of Grace. So when you see dog, I'm not saying dog, I'm saying Doctrines of Grace, but I'm doing it because that's my shorthand. We're going to be talking about the Doctrines of Grace. There are some synonyms, there are some other words for the Doctrines of Grace that I want you to know about that I don't use. We may refer to, it's called Reformed Theology. That's another name for the Doctrines of Grace. You may hear the word Calvinism. That's another name for the doctrines of grace. If I were to put these on the scale of how I like to refer to these graces, I'd do it on this. I prefer to call them the doctrines of grace. I don't mind calling them Reformed theology because it comes out of the Reformation when the church was turning away from Catholicism and embracing the gospel again, and these doctrines were recaptured. The last thing I like to call it is Calvinism. I prefer not to use that word because there's so many misconceptions about that word that when if I say, oh, I'm a Calvinist, people will go, oh, I know all about you. And the truth is, they don't know anything about me. They have all kinds of misconceptions about Calvinism. They will say things like, oh, you're a Calvinist. You believe all babies go to hell. I know about your kind of people. Well, I'm a Calvinist and I don't believe all babies go to hell. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, one of the greatest Calvinists in the last 200 years, didn't believe all babies go to hell. Oh, I know you Calvinists, you don't believe in evangelizing. You believe that God just forces people against their will to become a Christian. No, I don't believe that either. So, I don't like to use the word Calvinism because people have so many misconceptions about it. I use the words doctrines of grace and people, their defenses don't go up right away. But when you use this word, and the truth is, some people think, oh, you follow John Calvin. No, that's not why I believe these things. It has really nothing to do with John Calvin. So, we call it the doctrines of grace. It can be called reformed theology or Calvinism. I'm going to focus on the time that we have, about 20 minutes. This is just kind of introductory, and then we'll start looking into each doctrine of grace. There are five unique doctrines to this teaching. Tonight we're going to introduce it, and I want to just note four features about the doctrines of grace that I think are helpful to know and to understand. And I'll just begin with them. The word I pick is maybe a little highfalutin-tootin word, but I'll explain it. I use it because it's just one word, and I'm just trying to keep these one words. The doctrines of grace are primitive. What do I mean by primitive? Because primitive, in my mind, doesn't have a good... That sounds like a caveman. Primitive in the sense of, they're not new. They're old. Now this was honestly a big surprise to me. I thought when I learned the doctrines of grace, to me, I was like, I've never heard these before. Where did this come from? It's like, what kind of strange teaching is this? I've never heard this before. It's important for you to know that they are primitive, meaning they are not new doctrines. When I came to understand the doctrines of grace, I was reading them and I was learning them from a guy in the 18th century. I'm like, my word! And then I remember later on reading a book, and he was talking about the Doctrines of Grace, and I thought, when was this book written? And I looked back at the cover and it said 1960s. And I was like, people believe this in 1960? Are you sure? I didn't know anybody that believed these things. I thought they were new, but they are not new at all. I'm skeptical of anything new, especially when it comes to religion, so I don't want anything new. But let me just say this, in the modern era today, in the church today, these doctrines have been overlooked for a long time. They've not been taught in the church. And so when people hear them, they sound new, like, well I've never heard that before, or my church doesn't teach that. It seems like it's new, but it's not new. My dad, there's been an era, we're coming out of there, but there was an era in American Christianity in which the doctrines of grace were not being taught. They were not being taught in the church. They were not being taught in Bible colleges. They weren't being taught in seminaries. My dad went to Bible college, 1979, early 80s. And you know what? He probably knew of the doctrines of grace, but that's not what they were talking about. That's not what they were teaching. Oh, we were talking about charismatics, or divorce, or tongues, or eschatology. Those were the big hot-button issues, but no one was teaching anybody about the doctrines of grace. Last couple of decades, there's been kind of a resurgence. Last 20 years or so, More and more people are coming to understand the doctrines of grace. It's been amazing. When we started Faith Community Church in 1995, we may have been one of only two churches in the entire Northland that would have been teaching the doctrines of grace back in 1995? Maybe. Not many more than that, that I know of anyway. Today, there is a handful or more of solid men in churches who are trying to reform these churches, preaching the doctrines of grace and bringing it right here in the Northland. Twenty years ago, that wouldn't have been heard of. Before 1997, you would have never heard about the doctrines of grace at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. No way. They weren't talking about those things. Do you know what people have attributed to the resurgence of the doctrines of grace more than anything? It's kind of surprising. It's actually Tim Challey that brought this up in a Gospel Coalition article. Tim Challey said that the resurgence in interest and receiving of the doctrines of grace has come about because of the Internet. Here's why. It's hard to imagine a world without the Internet, basically. We do everything on the Internet. Before the internet, your sources of knowledge were very limited. If you were a Christian, you go to church, it would be what you heard from your church. If you were going to go to the Christian bookstore, what's in the Christian bookstore? You might be able to turn on the radio. You could go to the library and search out some old, old, old books and learn of the doctrines of grace, but back in the 70s and 80s, The doctrines of grace simply were not being taught. And you were confined to it. My dad grew up and these were not things that were emphasized in his ministry at all. But the internet changed that. Because now with the internet, it opened up sources of knowledge unheard of ever before. And people who were trapped in certain geographical areas or in churches can now get on the internet and they can hear sermons from all over the place. Or you can get entire books on the internet. You can get Jonathan Edwards works on the internet. You can get all this stuff at your fingertips right here and you reading it. And I see Logan back there, but Logan has a unique testimony. You can talk to him, but Logan got saved later in life and he got saved, his environment was a charismatic prosperity gospel environment. The people led him to the Lord, believed in that health-wealth gospel. He went to health-wealth gospel church. His friends were health-wealth gospel, all of those things. He actually started working in one of the ministries in the church, I think, and he can explain it much better, but he had a number of misgivings. He didn't like what's going on, but his whole world was surrounded by this theology. He got disenchanted with it. He quit Going, eventually, he's at home one day and he gets on the internet and he starts listening to a guy named John Piper on the internet. And all of a sudden he starts hearing truth he had never heard before. Because now there are more avenues available. The internet has certainly opened up. I mean, there's a lot of bad on the internet, but God has used it in a mighty way. It's caused people to say, wait a second, my church isn't teaching this, but there's other churches out there teaching it. There's other godly men out there, churches that are teaching this, because people say, oh this is heresy, this is terrible. Well, it's not primitive, it's not new, but I don't want you to be ashamed if you've never heard of them before, because you could grow up in Kansas City most of your life and go to church and maybe never hear about these doctrines. and you come here and all of a sudden you're hearing them like, I never heard that before, I wasn't taught in my church, and that would be entirely possible, so you should not feel ashamed like, well I don't really know what these doctrines are. That's okay, there's a lot of other people that, I didn't know what they were either. So they're primitive. They're not new doctrines, we need to know that. The second thing we need to know about the doctrines of grace is that they're revelatory. What in the world, I love big words I guess. What I mean by revelatory is, They require revelation. They require them to be made known to you. These are not doctrines that a man would make up. Jesus warned us about man-made traditions. There's a lot of man-made traditions out there. I remember Rusty, I was in a conversation with him and I think, didn't you say you were involved with a group and you were wearing short-sleeved shirts or a tank top or something and you were condemned as, pardon me? Didn't believe in the Trinity and that wearing short-sleeved shirts was a bad thing. Not taught in the Bible. That's the doctrines of men. Somebody made that up somewhere, right? When it comes to the doctrines of grace, these doctrines are of the nature, they are not man-made. You would not be able to invent these doctrines. You would not come up with these doctrines. You would not say, look, let me invent this and it's going to come out this way. This comes from revelation. In particular, it comes from biblical revelation, okay? You would not be able to know these doctrines unless they were revealed to you by God, and He has revealed them, and He's revealed them in the Bible. These doctrines are in the Bible. This is why it's primitive. The doctrines of grace didn't start with John Calvin. The doctrines of grace started with the Bible. They started with God's revelation. These are truths about the Gospel, these are truths about grace that God gave to us that we wouldn't know unless He told us, which is pretty amazing. You were going to hear things about your salvation that you would not know or be able to figure out unless God told you this was true. And that's what it is with the doctrines of grace. They are from biblical revelation. They are not man-made. They're not John Calvin's doctrines. That's why I don't even like to use the phrase Calvinism. People say, oh well, I don't follow man, I follow the Bible. And I say, good, then you'd be a good Calvinist. Because we want to follow the Bible. This is what the Bible says. And here's the thing, I'm not a Calvinist because John Calvin taught this. I'm not a Calvinist because C.H. Spurgeon taught this. I'm a Calvinist I believe in the doctrines of grace because it's in the Bible. I see it in the Bible. And I want you to see this in the Bible. So what we're going to do in this series is not quote from Luther and Calvin and Augustine. As much as those may be great quotes, we want to go straight to the Bible so you see this in the Bible yourself. When you see it yourself from the Bible, then you're like, well, I can either choose to disbelieve the Bible or believe it. But it's not a matter of, well, I'm going to believe it because Pastor Tim does. Well, it's our church, believe it. We don't want that. We want you to see it in the Bible. And you know, when you see it in the Bible, it's amazing how people are willing to Believers love the Bible. True believers do. When they see the Bible, they may have some difficulties with things, but they're like, well, it's in the Bible, and I love the Bible, and I'm going to believe the Bible. Sometimes Calvinists are their own worst enemies, because basically they're jerks. A lot of them are. They're in your face. They can be arrogant, proud, and they give Calvinism a really bad name. They get up and they start preaching about, John Calvin said this, and Augustine, and you know, and people just get a really bad taste in their mouth, and no wonder they don't want to have anything to do with Calvinism. But I have noticed something. If you keep men out of it, And you go to Scripture, and you show people from Scripture, you start laying these things out, that genuine believers are like, I believe that. That's right. It's right there. I have to believe that. One of the wisest things I ever did as a pastor, and there's not many, but this is one of the wisest things I ever did. I was a very young pastor. Started our church in 1995. I made the decision early on that I was not going to use the word Calvinism at all. I was not going to get up and talk about Calvinism. I refuse to do that. I did what I do now, which is I decide I'm just going to We'll take a book of the Bible and we're just going to preach through it. And when we come across those doctrines, we're going to preach those doctrines, but I'm not going to call it Calvinism. We're just going to preach what the Bible says. Some of you guys know, some of you old-timers that have been, can go way back. We had a dear, dear saint way back in the early days of Faith Community Church. His name was Larry Grosko. Larry was a, what a guy. He was saved later in life. He was a brilliant businessman, but just a real down-home kind of guy, no airs about him. Larry came to our church and hated Calvinism. In fact, the guy that had discipled him was a He hated Calvinism and basically it told him all these things, how bad Calvinism was. Larry just came to me right up front and he's like, hey I'm not a Calvinist and I don't even have anything to do with that. But Larry loved the Lord. Larry came Sunday, and the Lord used Larry. When we were young in church, man, he gave to our church and provided in many ways. He really blessed our church. But three years, Larry sat in our church just hearing the Word preached. And the first time that I ever introduced Reformed Theology and Calvinism. I did it on a Wednesday night. So this would have been about 1999. I said, alright, Wednesday night we're going to have a Bible study. We're going to talk about Reformation Theology and Calvinism. And it was pretty packed for back then. And we started through how where the church started, how Roman Catholicism really dominated for 1,200 years, the gospel was almost hidden, and then Martin Luther rediscovered justification by faith alone, and how it sparked this whole new reformation and revival, and then how these doctrines of grace came out of that. And so I went through, I don't remember how many weeks, going through the doctrines of grace, and I will never forget, after the series was over, Larry Groschko came up to me and he looked me in the eye and he goes, well, I guess I'm a Calvinist. It was amazing. And you know why he said that? Because he had already seen these doctrines throughout Scripture. Now that I put a name on them, okay, well, That's why it's so important that if you guys are going to be preachers, preach the Bible and not Calvinism, not some system. Just preach what the Bible says, and if you do that faithfully, and then you come to these doctrines, people, they're not going to have a problem. If they love the Bible, they want to hear the Bible, and they see it in the Bible, they're like, well yeah, it's right there. And that's what Larry was. He was amazed. I guess I'm a Calvinist. I would have never guessed it. My parents are rolling over in their graves. But it's revelatory. It's in the Bible. That's where we get it from. Big words, love them, right? Soteriological, all that means is it pertains to salvation. When we talk about the doctrines of grace, we're talking about the teachings of the Bible that primarily relate to our salvation. There are a lot of doctrines in the Bible. There's doctrines on marriage and divorce. There's doctrines on eschatology. That's what we've been talking about on Sunday mornings from Daniel 7. There's doctrines on angels. There's doctrines on stewardship and giving. There's doctrines on hell. The doctrines of grace deal primarily with our salvation. How we're saved, why we're saved, what is salvation, namely grace. So we're going to be looking at the doctrines about our salvation. When we study the doctrines of grace, I hope you're going to come to understand really what grace means. Okay? The doctrines of grace, you should come away with a renewed understanding of, okay, I know what grace means now. In fact, in my opinion, my educated opinion, It's the doctrines of grace that put amazing in grace. When you understand the doctrines of grace, you'll be like, that's amazing. That's amazing grace. And I don't say that lightly, I mean that, because I've grown up in church. And I've lived part of my Christian life not knowing these doctrines and thinking I knew what grace was, to coming to understand what these doctrines were and going, I didn't have a clue what grace was, okay? So you're going to learn what grace means. You're going to learn about man, who man is, who you are. This is the person that gets saved. When we talk about somebody needs to get saved, well, the Bible tells us the condition of that person, of what they really are like. And what the Bible has to say about man, what the Bible has to say about me and you is not flattering. It's very humbling. When the Bible says that God does not save you on the basis of works, He means it. Because there is nothing in you that is desirable to Him. You're a sinner. You were born a sinner. You were born a rebel and an enemy. And the doctrines of grace teach us what the Bible has to say about man. It also teaches us about things about God. You are going to learn about God. After all, this is God's salvation. This is God's plan. You are going to learn things about God that you may not really know. I don't think you really know God until you know the doctrines of grace. Now I have many dear friends who do not believe in the doctrines of grace and they know God, they love God, but I'm telling you that when you come to understand the doctrines of grace, God becomes God. In a way that you simply do not understand. You may have heard me tell you this before, but the first time I ever physically got down on my hands and knees and put my face on the floor before God. We read about those things in the Bible. People bowing down before God and worshipping Him. The first time I ever did that physically was when I came to understand the doctrines of grace. It was the first time I was in my basement. It was a cement floor. I got off my chair and on the ground, and it was like, you're God, and I'm not. It was one of the most worshipful experiences I had ever had in my life. In fact, many people that come to understand the doctrines of grace often define it as a new birth experience. Even though you've been saved, it's like, this is so wonderful. It's like you just got saved again. It's like, I've learned so many things about it. Maybe some of you will have that kind of experience where you're like, this is amazing, this is wonderful when you learn these things about God. We will also learn things about eternal security. Yes, that's my little eternal security. Before I understood the doctrines of grace, I could never make sense of eternal security. My church, my dad taught me that if you're saved, you'll never lose your salvation. I believe that, I just never knew why. Why can you not lose your salvation? I struggled with that early into our marriage. I was just like, what if I quit believing? When I came to understand the doctrines of grace, all of a sudden it was like, of course, eternal security. There can't be any other way. You can't lose your salvation if this is true. One last thing, the fourth thing, and this is it. I know it's hot. I know this room is cramped. The doctrines of grace deal with sovereignty. Namely, God's sovereignty. Most Christians believe God is sovereign. In fact, I have a hard time believing any true believer would deny that God is sovereign. When somebody who told me, oh yeah, there's a God in heaven, He's trying as hard as He can, but there's just some things He can't do, I'm not going to pat that person on the head and say, oh, you're a Christian, you're just mistaken. I'm like, I don't think you know God. We just remembered 9-11. There was a poem going around 9-11. And the poem was, Where was God on 9-11? I kept this somewhere, I should find it. But the poem went along like, some people ask, where was God when all this was happening? My God was trying to hold up the towers as long as he could so as many people as possible could get out. My God was trying to keep people off the airplane so they wouldn't get on the airplane so it would crash. My God was trying to make people late for work so they wouldn't go into the towers. My God was trying to discourage the attackers from not doing this terrible thing by being nice. It went on and on, and afterwards, I just wanted to throw up. Like, are you kidding me? Your God is trying to hold up the towers, and He's hoping, please hurry, get more people out, oh, I can't do it anymore, and He lets it collapse. That's your God. Seriously. And I'm making fun of this, but it is tragic when people really believe those kind of things about God, and there are people that believe that. I believe most believers know God is sovereign. They're like, of course He's sovereign. That's why we pray to Him. What most Christians don't believe or don't understand is how sovereign He really is. And the doctrines of grace will bring light into God's sovereignty, maybe like I never knew before. I was like, oh my goodness. God is in control. He's in control. He's sovereign. He's sovereign in salvation. And that's what we'll see in this matter. When you study the doctrines of grace, you learn God is sovereign, including salvation. We're going to learn what grace is. It's not works, it's merit. We're going to learn that when we talk about salvation, there's only one person that gets all the glory, and that'll be God. God gets all the glory, and that's what the doctrines of grace do. When you go through the doctrines of grace, you come to the conclusion nobody's boasting, nobody's raising their hands saying, look what I did, We come through salvation and we say, God, you get all the glory. You get all the praise. In fact, that's what the psalmist says in Psalm 40 verse 16. May those who love your salvation say continually, great is the Lord. Let the Lord be magnified. This is all about what God has done. Just quickly, just to give you an idea of what we're going to do, there is a tulip, and I'm closing, I really am closing, I'm done. It's an acrostic. I said that there were five doctrines. We're going to go through these. Some may require two weeks, but the acrostic is known as tulip. Tulip. T stands for total depravity. Marty's going to do that one. That is going to deal with the subject of man. What does the Bible say about man? You will stand for unconditional election. What does that mean? You'll have to come to that one. L stands for limited atonement. Limited atonement. What in the world does that mean? You'll have to come to that one. I stands for irresistible grace. People say, what? How can grace be irresistible? People resist grace all the day long and you're going to tell me irresistible grace? Yes I am, but you have to come back for that one. And then the last one is perseverance of the saints. That deals with eternal security, our salvation. This is the formula that we will be following over the next five, six weeks. Some of these we'll use maybe a couple of weeks, but then we'll go through these and expose you to the doctrines of grace, showing you them from Scripture, not from Calvin or Augustine or Luther. but what the Bible says about these things. And I hope that that will be an encouragement to you and that it will help you even in your apologetics and understanding your salvation. I'll pray and you'll be dismissed. Lord, thank you for this time. It's been a hot room, but thank you for those that have come out tonight. I pray that you would bless this series, and I pray, and I know you will answer this prayer, I pray that you will glorify yourself through the teaching of this series, that we will come away worshipful, that we will come away magnifying who you are, praising the God who has saved us. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. You're dismissed. The Lord bless you.