Part four of the faith that God gives we've been using Ephesians 289 I think most of you have that one memorized and Just because you do have it memorized it's it's loaded a couple verses and it's got a lot in it but we emphasize this verse especially the first week when we dealt with this and referring to faith as a gift, you know, that it comes from God, supernaturally spiritual, that we don't have anything to do with attaining ourselves. For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. The first week it was, faith is a spiritual gift produced by God. And the second one was, how does faith work? I think I brought maybe some newer ideas or maybe went into more depth than I had before on how does faith work? We talked about how that God creates faith by the power of the spirit through the preached word, that faith is created out of that mix. And just as he created the world by speaking it into existence, he creates the new creature by the same way. He creates faith out of the message, which is the message is called the faith. And it's created. And it's kind of a big deal. It's a powerful event. It's the same event that's associated and equivocated with the resurrection of Christ. The same power that it took to raise up Christ from the dead is the same power that he operates in the believer to cause him to believe. Which, of course, think of our introductory text, how that it's not by works and not of ourselves. You can't do anything with free will. I mean, it's out the door. When you see that it takes that much power to raise Christ from the dead, that same power has worked in the sinner to believe the gospel. So there's no credit at all taken by the sinner when he latches onto Christ by faith. And then thirdly, which we started last week, just at the tail end, to come to this point that faith has a specific and proper object. And then the next message should be, faith is what God's people live by. The just shall live by faith. So faith has a specific and proper object. And really, this is what the gospel ministry is all about. is preaching Christ and Him crucified and making sure, collectively, as we come together to worship Christ, we're edified by the teaching of the Scripture. We know the warnings in Scripture of people missing Christ or being distracted from Christ. And we know all the exhortations that Christ is the remedy for all problems that we have. I don't know if you've ever talked to people and they say, can you kind of put together a package for me to deal with a Jehovah's Witness? Or deal with a Seventh-day Adventist? Or deal with a Catholic? It's the same package. Christ and Him crucified. There's no variation. It's the same thing. So this answers the vast majority of questions, any questions that could be raised. And that's what I want to do is bring it into focus of what it's all about. As far as even in evangelism, especially in evangelism, we have to be clear on this because how many of you had heard evangelistic presentations, or maybe before you were converted, added something to an evangelistic presentation. I mean, if you've got Christ, who he is and what he did, you're not going to have time for any kind of side issues to bring in. I remember back when I just toyed around with some doctrine when I was a Baptist, raised up a Baptist, I would kind of add to it on the tail end, you know, hey, you got to be a Baptist, which is stupid, has nothing to do with the gospel. And there's all kind of other ideas that people add in there that, you know, they make sure they get their advertisement in on Christ's toe, like a tag, like, if you take him, you got to do this too. So this is very, very important. It's Christ alone with no distractions at all. And we kind of, on the tail end of last week's message, it's quoted a few verses. One is up on the board here, the one that we had our, one of our Christ-centered conferences concerning the preeminence of Christ. Christ is preeminent in so many different things, creation, salvation, and all these things. And Colossians 118, that in all things, he might have preeminence. You can go to multiple denominations and look at the problems in those denominations that disagree with what the scripture teaches. And it's against what we teach. And I guarantee you, every one of their problems is because they don't see Christ as having the preeminence. They have diverted off somewhere. And something else is focused on, and the leadership of the church is directing people's minds somewhere else besides the proper object of faith, which is Christ and Him crucified. Galatians 6.14, God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you remember, when we went through Galatians, we taught on that and spent some time on that. And verse 16 of that same chapter talks about, and you who walk by this rule, peace and grace be on you. The rule is, God forbid that I should glory except in the cross. That's the believer's rule of life. is counting on, trusting in Christ and Him crucified for all your merit, that He brought in salvation, all of salvation is conditioned on Him alone, and that's our boast. Our boast is outside of ourselves. It's not by what we do. So that's the rule we live by. Some of these reformed Calvinistic sovereign grace people will divert from that, and they'll say that the law is the rule of life. It violates this verse right here. They might as well just say, God forbid that I should glory except in the law of God. They might as well say it. I mean, when I read their articles, and that's what they imply all through their articles. And you kind of get in there and talk with them. And what do they do? They defend really what they're implying. Paul went to the church of Corinth, and some of you know what the multiplicity of problems that was going on. There were all kind of problems in the church of Corinth. It was the craziest church in the New Testament times. And he didn't come with some kind of bullet points and say, you know, I'm going to have a symposium and a seminar on marriage, economics, child rearing. He didn't go through. He said, for I have determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. You know, until that is straight in people's minds, they might as well not even start trying to do anything else. That has to be straight, because if that is not straight, Any work done, if that's not straight, any work that's done is a dead work, unacceptable to God. And all you're doing is heaping condemnation on yourself by trying to establish a righteousness of your own. So anything that we look at that's a practical teaching, whether it be marriage or child rearing or anything to do with the government or money or anything, it is done and it's filtered through the gospel. It's taught by using the gospel as a foundation. And we've talked about that before. We've done that before. So that's what I'm getting at. Everything in the scripture points to Christ and in reference to salvation, the proper object of faith is Christ. We're going to get into more into that here in a second. Now, I just want you to think a little bit, just basic thinking. And I just want to throw this out here. Since God is the giver of faith, You gotta kinda build on our messages so far. The first message was he's the giver of faith. We read the text in Ephesians and there's a lot more that shows that he gives faith and we have nothing to do with meriting faith, being smart enough, being crafty enough to be smarter than the other guy that doesn't have faith. It comes to us. It's just a supernatural thing. It happens to us. He works it in us. Since he's the giver of faith, He will make sure that this impartation of faith, this gift of faith is directed toward the proper object. Now, do you think that he can do that? I mean, it is not hard for God to do. And, you know, objections like thinking that we require somebody to have perfect theological knowledge. This is all I'm saying right here. God is powerful enough, he's wise enough, he's faithful to his own character enough to supernaturally direct people's eyes to the proper object. That is not hard for him to do. The hard part's already over with. Christ went to the crops, that was the hard part. But this is, he just makes it happen by his power. He is all powerful. He has decreed it to happen. And we know all the verses there. We know about election. He's chosen this to happen. And his people shall be willing in the day of his power. Psalm 110, four. All that the father gives me shall come to me by faith. He that comes to me, I will no wise cast out. So this is, it's no problem for God to do. And he does it. And he doesn't fail at it. Just as God didn't fail in election, just as Christ didn't fail on the cross, In conversion, this experience that happens in time when each one of the elect come under the preaching of the gospel, every one of those instances, God is successful in bringing his people to Christ, to himself through Christ. My sheep hear my voice and they follow me. I mean, he didn't waste words there. That means something. It's true. But that point right there, I mean I get more objections over that than part of anything else. So faith is made to look solely and exclusively to the Lord Jesus Christ. What he did to save his people and he is the one that did it. The person and work of Christ. Who he is and what he did to save sinners. I think there to tail end what we left off here was talking about some synonyms. We use that phrase, the person and work of Christ. What is the gospel? The person and work of Christ. We just read from Galatians 6.14, the phrase, the cross of Christ. That means the gospel. Christ and him crucified. We just read that out of Corinthians. And again, the faith, the way. Sometimes the message is called the way. Christ himself said, I am the way. So all these things go together. And they pretty much mean the same thing. They're directing our minds to Christ. Now, obviously, we've said this before, labored to say this, and I hope everybody understands this. Doctrinal distinctions obviously include theology. It's a no-brainer. Somebody says, don't tell me about doctrine, just tell me about Christ. Well, if you tell anybody about Christ, the first thing out of your mouth, I don't care if you're talking about his name, you're gonna start talking about doctrine, the teaching of what his name means, or about anything about his attributes, or about anything that he did, his incarnation, his two perfect natures, his virgin birth, all of his attributes, you could name it. We did a series on 25 attributes. Anything you start to talk about Christ, what's going to come out of your mouth? Doctrine and theology. You can't get around it. And there are doctrinal distinctions, and God loves distinctions. He's proved it in his own word. When he says, I'm like this, I'm not like that, what he's doing is he's distinguishing himself, separating himself from idols. And we know that he is said to be a jealous God. And we know that that's even one of his names. So that's a big deal to God. Have any of you ever had people confuse you with somebody else or confuse something that was done and somebody else did it? And if it's bad, it's not fun. And sometimes people are hard headed. They don't believe you. go the extra mile and explain today, that was not me. God, if you think about it in the idea of the gospel, when religion now talks about God, they are talking about a different God. And if God would speak to them audibly and we could hear him, he'd be saying, that's not me, wrong God, false God, idol. You pray to a God that cannot save, he said in Isaiah. I mean, that's the idea. So these doctrinal distinctions are in place primarily for him, first of all, for his glory and for our benefit to learn and to cause us to worship him more because there is a learning process. The more we learn, the more we, we, our understanding has opened up. We appreciate him more. And of course, the more we see ourselves as sinners and The older we get in the faith, the weaker we see that we are. Unlike these whatever type of games these people think they're gaining in holiness and improvement, so much so that after a while they're not really looking at Christ, they're looking at what they're doing and saying that they've improved so much, and they're looking at you and saying, you know, what's your problem? So doctrinal distinctions are in place for God and for us. Now, we're going to move forward on this message here, but I want us to know this, and I think you already do, that many people are confused on the subject of faith. We know that, especially on whether faith is a condition or not. I think we touched on that kind of early on in the series, but I just want to hit on it again before we move forward. faith, whether or not it is a condition. And I had mentioned one of the statements I always talk about in the gospel that the promise of the gospel is salvation conditioned on Christ alone. That's the promise of the gospel. The fact that as a distinction is made between the new and the old covenant, The old covenant was like conditional. You had to do all kinds of stuff. You had to jump through hoops. And the people that were doing these things, most of them didn't see Christ. Only a remnant were shown Christ in these types and pictures and shadows. But in the new covenant, Christ, the high priest, the mediator, he shed his blood of the new covenant. And it is shown that all the conditions are laid on him. And it's a finished work. And he is a priest that has sat down and he doesn't work anymore to attain the salvation. He's seated at the right hand and all he's doing now is making intercession for the people he did the work for. So all the conditions are taken care of. This is a covenant or a contract that was made and he has fulfilled the conditions and the terms and the promises. And when we enter in by faith into this covenant, We, our understanding is open and we see, okay, this is a deal where it's taken care of. The conditions are on him. It's actually free, believe it or not. And that's the hardest thing really for, well, the human mind can't believe that. They have to be forced graciously by God. And the way that they're forced is their eyes are open and it's irresistible. And they say, oh, okay, I got it. You'd be stupid not to go to Christ now that we see that it's free and that's the way it's understood and all the conditions are on Him. So they have a doctrine, a lot of religious people, and even people that claim to believe what we believe, they have a doctrine that that has added conditions on the tail end, or maybe on the front end sometimes, of this gospel. But we know that Christ finished the work and we can't add anything to be a catalyst. He's part A, we're part B. That's not the way it works. And there's no conditions that we need to help him finish his work. It's done. It was done before we were born. What is required for salvation? Perfect righteousness. God, because he's holy, because he's just, because he's righteous, he perfectly demands all the time, perfection from everybody all the time. And we know we can't attain that. So we have to get that from an outside source, which is Christ. And he has said to establish a righteousness and that righteousness is given to his people. So that's how that basically works. We've talked about the ins and outs of that for years. But what people are doing, they're saying that faith is the righteousness. It's sometimes a sneaky, subtle thing that they do, but faith is not the righteousness. If you make faith a condition, faith an offer, you can go down that road. And that's why we're so guarded there of showing that faith is not a condition. Faith, again, is a spiritual gift. He works in you. It happens to you. It's not like you cooperate and there's something in between you and faith. It's some kind of faithful act like I will take that offer of faith and you merit something and get the ball rolling. No, there's no cooperation. It's irresistible. It is something that is effectual. It's effective. God does it. It's a powerful act. So faith is not the righteousness. And it even gets more confusing, and people kind of mix it up by saying, well, we're justified by faith. And they point back to the Reformationists. Wasn't that what the Reformation was? It was all about justification by faith. Well, I mean, it depends on how you define that. If you make faith the righteousness that you're justified with, we don't believe that. Scripture doesn't teach that. Faith has been perverted to mean that the sinner is bringing something to the table. That's not what the scripture teaches. That would be faith looking to itself. Now go back, I asked the question. Here's this all powerful God, created the world, chose a people, Christ came, everything was done perfectly. And it comes to this part here where human beings are involved. And somehow religion has let human beings dictate what happens during this conversion experience. That's not the way it works. God is really careful in this area. When he gives faith, he doesn't give faith that looks back to oneself. Faith is not in faith. Now, I'm an expert at this because that's what I used to believe. I believed that for at least 10 years, at least. I was deceived that faith was in my faith and I thought about it all the time. And it took the power of the gospel to explode that idea out of my mind and get rid of it. It was the altar call thing, the sinner's prayer, come down the front. I mean, I don't know how many times I did that. And, you know, rededicated and been baptized a bajillion times. But the gospel took care of that once and for all. Just like I was elect once and for all, Christ died once and for all, and it doesn't matter how many false conversion experiences you've had, when God comes to you in power and shows you what Christ did and who he is, that's the last conversion experience you're gonna need, because that's when it takes. That's when you come to Christ. You're introduced to him, and it's like, all right, here's the covenant, or here's the deal, as we say today. You ever meet somebody, you're getting ready to talk about a plan, you say, here's the deal. Well, that's what God did to us. Powerfully woke us up and said, here's the deal. It's all on him. Is that all? That's all. The faith of a little child can see it's all on him. Now, there's some particulars in what that means, but that's it. You mean I don't? Yeah, that's what I mean. You don't. Stop. Shut up. You mean my grandma that was doing this for a second? Yeah. Forget about grandma. It's all on him. You mean I don't have to? Not for the ground of salvation. Christ accomplished the ground of salvation. It's too late for you to add to the ground of salvation. It's done. So, faith doesn't look to itself. The object of faith cannot be Double-minded. The scripture warns about double-mindedness. I think it's in Proverbs, I think, that a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Look here in 2 Corinthians where I ask you to turn. Now remember here, Paul, he said earlier in his letter, his first letter, that he's determined not to know anything among these people where there was craziness going on in this church except for Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And this is after he said that. He said, I would, in verse 1, I would that you were bearing with me a little in foolishness, but indeed bear with me. This is Paul pleading with this church about these issues here, and he's going to get into some particulars about, please pay attention to what I'm saying, because I know there's other people that are grappling for your attention. So there were other influences that were saying different things than Paul was saying. He said, look, I've spent some time here with you people. I've labored. He just spent time saying, look, I'm sincere. I'm not here to rip you off. And you know how often we try to tell people that, look, don't believe what I say. Go to the scripture. I'm not here for your money. I don't care. I don't, I'm not here for fame. I care about your soul. And this is the most important message in the world. Please listen. You know, that's, that's the attitude that Paul's coming with. 2 Corinthians 11, now verse two, it says, for I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy. Now, we know that jealousy is a sin, but the kind Paul's talking about here has nothing to do with his pride. It has to do with his care and concern for these people's souls. He says, for I've espoused you to one man, speaking of Christ, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I fear, verse three, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness, so your thoughts should be corrupted from the simplicity due to Christ. I think some verses say that is in Christ, the simplicity that is in Christ. Now, I don't have time to spend too much time on this verse, but I just want to say this. This does not mean that all you do when you preach the gospel is just use the name of Christ without any other explanations. Just come up by saying, believe in Christ. What's that mean? Who is he? What did he do? The word simplicity here in the original language means singleness, singleness. Our topic is, and this point that we're on, is that God gives faith and he directs it to the proper object, capital O, Christ. It's not Christ plus something, it's the singleness of Christ. I don't care what earthly example you use, it's not gonna match what we're talking about, but sometimes I have cash and I can tell Some of the people you give money to if it doesn't tell them up there how much to give back I mean I exercise myself when they tell me how much it cost I Right away. I think like how much I get back easily It doesn't take long to figure that out and some of them people were open up the cash register You know, they don't have some kind of help sometimes they do they still can't count money and And you know, a dollar, a one green dollar bill is one single dollar bill. Everybody knows what it is, it's the same. But if it's like, we're out of dollar bills, and we're out of quarters, so they have to patch money together that is a multiplicity of coins, it might be confusing for them. Now, our ministry talks about, God says that faith is demanding. If you don't believe you're condemned, we also believe that God provides what he demands. We explain that, that it's not a condition. He gives it to us, works it in us. That's simple. Faith is directed, our message today, to the singular object of Christ. This, what we always talk about is very, very, very simple. It's just not liked. And it's not very much talked about in the world. It's very rare. When we bring it up, it's like, it's unbelievable. That's too free. And when you get into the details and proof and show that it's Christ alone without you, people get mad. Because they've got to have something to do as to the ground of salvation. It's very simple. It's just not liked and it's not popular. But they are the ones saying that we're muddying it up with technicalities. No. No. Most of the technicalities are explaining why the people we're talking to are holding to the wrong thing. And the more time goes on, evil men shall wax worse and worse, being deceived and deceiving others. There'll be a time when they shall not endure sound doctrine, but they shall heap to themselves teachers having itching ears. You know what I mean? Those verses like that talks about as time goes on, it's more and more difficult. The waters get more muddied every single day because religions are starting up every single day. And the volume of garbage, when you go into a bookstore, you go to the Christian section, theology section, and you think, what theology is here? This is like new age, liberal, watered down, And it's like, oh, there's a needle in a haystack. And well, that guy's not the greatest, but compared 50,000 volumes in this bookstore, it's become ridiculous. And it's very taxing. And our job is hard to have to sometimes undo the wrongs that's being talked about, about the gospel against our savior. It's simple. That's what it's saying. It's simple. But Paul goes on here in verse 40 and says, for if indeed the one coming, talking about, he's saying, look, these other people are coming from an outside source besides me. And I'm kind of jealous because, not because I want to be more popular than this guy, but this guy's lying. These other people are lying to you. I'm not lying to you. And they're bringing to you, it says in verse four, another Jesus, one we have not proclaimed. And if you receive another spirit, which you did not receive, or another gospel, which you have never accepted, you might well endure these. He's saying, he's pretty much saying, why do you let these guys slide? I'm sitting here laboring with you, explaining that here's Christ. And these people come out from an outside source. And they're telling you something else that's not a singleness. And you're letting them go. I mean, what is it? And what kind of influence do they have? And it could have been a multiplicity of influence, whether it be money, fame, power, influence. You all had friends that listened to and looked to other ministries besides this church. And there's probably all kind of different reasons why. I know we're not a mega church. I watched a documentary last night called The American Jesus. It was ridiculous. It was interesting, but it was bad. And I kind of knew most of what was being said. You can kind of predict the trajectory of the problems. It was a head shaker, you know what I mean? It's like, man, it's bad. It's really bad. But some of them, especially in the megachurch talk, It's like, that is the evidence that God is with me because I'm in this church and it's so big. This documentary showed like, kind of like a backstage view of everything that was going on. I mean, it was a Hollywood production. It was, I mean, there were lights. They were just, it was nuts. It's over the top. And people go there. It's like, they're entertained. And the guy that they're interviewing about that church said, no wonder people are putting as much money as they're putting in the plate, because they are getting something out of it. They're entertained. It's like they feel obligated, like just don't go to free concerts. They feel obligated not to pay the musicians and the cameraman. And I was like, man, I really had a good time. I'm gonna come back next week and get jazzed up again. You gotta keep getting that high. Their ministry is not simple. It requires the lights. It requires the music. It requires the emotional appeal from the pastor that he has studied. He's probably got a PhD in some different things, especially psychology. But they know how to sell, and that was the issue of this movie. It's a commercial industry that they have to continually look around at their competitors and keep selling Jesus. another Jesus, as it says in verse four here. If you ask those people, getting information from the pulpit, the ones in the pew, you know, what is it about? It's hard telling what you would get for an answer. You know, mainly feeling. You know, it's about, so they talk about, it's about a relationship. It's not about doctrine. Jehovah to Sid Canu is his name, that name that's used in the Old Testament, which means the Lord, our righteousness. That's his name. That's his very name. So to put it more simply, the object of faith that justifies is not faith itself, but the Lord our righteousness. Faith is not the righteousness. The Lord our righteousness is the righteousness. So faith is not what justifies. The object of faith is Christ and Christ justifies. That's very, very simple. I think you can remember that. You need to explain that to people. So it's a very big deal. I mean, it's a very deceitful thing if that's not explained to people. And I just about bet you that probably 95% of those that call themselves Calvinistic Reformed Sovereign Race haven't stopped to explain that to people. Because these legalistic ideas that come in, progressive sanctification, and these different things where people are looking to themselves for assurance because of their works and all this thing having to do with the law. Conditions, in other words. They'll add the conditions after conversion. The Armenians add the conditions at conversion or before conversion. Doesn't matter where you add them. Conditions of condition. A work is a work. If you add works to grace, grace is kilt. I don't care where you put it. I don't care how many there are. One is all you need to add. So, they want to not explain these things. They think, you know, some of them say, there's got to be a tension. We need to keep a tension here. A tension between grace and the law. We got to make it to where we scare you to death so you'll behave. And then you can thank God when you behave because you've fulfilled a condition. That's about what it amounts to. So we see through the gospel that the cross made the difference, the only difference between saved and lost. The spirit, his job, his office is to testify of Christ. There goes the whole charismatic movement right there. You see how that some people make faith in their faith. The charismatics make the Holy Spirit testify to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit testifies to Christ. When you have God-given faith, faith doesn't look to itself, it looks to Christ. I'm telling you, all these errors is because of this main error right here. They're not looking to the proper, specific, singular object of faith, Christ. Here's some facts. The object of faith is what you will glory in, right? Your object of faith is what you will glory in. You'll boast about, you'll brag about. God forbid, that's a glory except in the cross for our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, if it's something else, you're going to glory in that something else. And that's not the singleness of Christ, that's double minded person adding something to Christ. The object of your faith is where your assurance will be. You're gonna glory in where your assurance is, and you're gonna be assured of what you glory in. And that is the object of your faith. And for us, it is Christ in whom we're crucified. And if somebody is doubting their salvation, first thing I say is, why are you doubting your salvation? And they'll say, I've done it with many people over the years, they'll say, well, it's because of me. I'm not, it's because of me. and my sin. My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin not in part, but the whole was nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul, it is well. I'm counting on that. That's the gospel. Well, I'm doubting myself. Well, you know, I hope so. Isn't that why you came to Christ? Get rid of that idea. That's because you went back to the law. When the Holy Spirit used the law as your schoolmaster and tutor and showed you that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness, for some reason you didn't, you wanted to bunk up with the schoolmaster. He's not in your house anymore. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. So if anybody makes faith a condition, instead of seeing that the gospel has Christ fulfilling all the conditions, then that's not God-given faith. If you are making faith a condition, and that's where your faith is directed, God didn't give you that faith. It came from your own darkened, hell-bent mind, It's a satanic, antichrist influence. It's just your self-righteousness producing something in itself to look to yourself. God-given faith never makes the object of faith, faith itself. It's obvious that this is major, this is a major point that people are just, they don't hear, they don't know, and if you talk about it, they're just glossed over. because it's not the main thing they're talking about. And if you think about Romans 10, one through four, Paul says, you know, my heart's desire and purpose is that they might be saved. I bear in record that they have a zeal of God. They're excited about God. They have a fervor. They're sincere. They're excited. There's a lot of frenzy and flurry going on, a lot of work. But not according to knowledge, that zeal is not according to knowledge for they being ignorant. of the righteousness of God are going about to establish one of their own, having not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. That's how important it is. He says, my prayer for these people that are doing this religion is that they be saved. Paul's saying these people are lost. They're lost because they're ignorant. Because their faith is in establishing a righteousness of their own, not in Christ. We can talk about this forever and for weeks and weeks, and I always bring up the idea of doctrine and theology, and we talk about there's offshoots of doctrine and theology that are around this. Whenever we talk about doctrine and theology, do not be mistaken here that this doctrine and theology is not just like for sport. It defends this person that we worship. If we have a doctrine that does not line up with scripture, doesn't defend Christ, or doesn't guard this gospel foundation I'm talking about, we need to get rid of it. Some people say, well, why do you have a blog called Superlapsarianism? Because it deals with this issue. I don't even know how to spell it. Well, you don't know what it means. Who cares whether you can spell it or not? Give me five minutes and I can show you that the only reason I bring it up is because it glorifies God and points people to Christ. Otherwise, I wouldn't be messing with it. Talk about effectual limited particular redemption. Talk about that online. Which is the heart of the doctrines of grace, that is the first thing people want to say in the doctrines of grace, that's the one you don't need. It's the main thing. How ridiculous is that? They have divorced the doctrine of the atonement from the gospel. The gospel is the atonement. So when we talk about these things, let's not forget, this is hooked up and identified with this person. Our whole ministry is about Christ. It's about Christ. And when you're talking with people, on the outskirts, whether it be online or friends or family or whatever, co-workers. And they kind of like start to hear that we're talking about something that has a foundation and that has a little bit of depth and breadth and stuff that they've never heard of. But again, it's simple. They start thinking that we're not talking about Christ. Oh, you've got to have a PhD to understand what you're talking about. It's simple. You hate it. That's all. You just hate it. Can you understand these English words? And you tell them, yeah. Well, you don't hold to that? You don't agree with that? No. Well, you understood what I said. You just hate what I said. And then you ask them, you ever hear anybody else say this? No, you're the only one. The scripture just over and over and over hits the same nail on the head. Every book in the Bible points to the same thing that we point to. In closing, go to John chapter six, verse 44. I think this section here is familiar to most of you. It's a pretty strong sovereignty of God section. This verse 44 indicates total depravity here. Just give you the heads up. Christ speaking, he says, no one can come to me. And that's by faith, by the way. That's the only way to come to Christ is by faith. That's what he's talking about. No one can come to me unless the father who has sent me draw him. And I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets talking about the Old Testament. And they shall, this is a quote from the Old Testament, and they shall all be taught of God. Therefore, everyone who hears and learns of the Father comes to me. Now, this is Christ, the Lord speaking, the creator. The one who accomplished salvation, the one who was the first elect and everyone that is elect is electing him. This is the one that has all permanence in all things. It's recorded in his own word. And he says this thing, they shall all be taught of God. And he that's taught of God is gonna hear and he's gonna learn of the father. And when that happens, they're gonna flee to Christ. They're gonna flee to me. They're gonna see that the father is absolutely holy. He's perfect. And he cannot look on sin without punishing sin. And the Father has said that he has sent me and I'm the mediator, I'm the way, the truth, and the life, I'm the only way of salvation. I've accomplished redemption, it's over, the battle is over, I've won. Look to me, all the ends of the earth, look to me. Come let us reason together. Though your sins may be as scarlet, they shall be white as sun. I did that, I accomplished that, I completed that. So look to me, come to me. Because if you don't, look to the Father, he will kill you. I'm the mediator. I'm the safe zone. Flee to me. City of refuge, however you want to say it. I'm your advocate. I'm your judge. I'm all these things. I'm the end of the law for righteousness sake. Come to me." And when those elect hear that message about the terror of the Lord, and they see his justice and all that, and they sees the justice that the Father poured out on Christ, and they say, that's my way out right there. Justice was poured out there. If I'm not judged right there at the cross, I'm gonna be judged in hell. Therefore, my eyes are open. I see it now. I got no place else to go. Why would I go anyplace else? Peter said, when Christ said, after it's in the same chapter, all those people left, somewhere around verse 60 something, and Christ said to the twelve, He said, will you guys go away? Peter said, no, I got no place else to go. You have the words of eternal life. Those are the words that we talk about every week. This doctrine, this theology, all these different things. That's what we talk about. The words of eternal life coming from God's word. So it's prophesied in the Old Testament this will happen. Christ repeated, this is the way it's going to work. All the elect are going to be taught by God. God's going to draw them. They're going to hear and learn of the Father. And they're going to come to me. Case closed. It doesn't happen any other way. This way it's going to happen. Verse 46, not everyone has seen the Father except he who is from God. He has seen the Father. He's talking about himself. Truly, truly, I say unto you, he who believes on me has everlasting life. And what did we learn that everlasting life was? John 17, three. This is life eternal, that you may know me, right? That you know God. How do you do that? By hearing the gospel, God giving you faith, giving you an understanding as we learned how that faith works. You're given an understanding to see, to believe, to understand. And after you see that, you think nothing else in the world makes sense but this right here. This is the most logical thing that God has ever done. How that he can take a sinner and make a sinner clean without making himself dirty. He did it in Christ. Christ satisfied law and justice. Now, do you think that the all-powerful, wise, eternal, sovereign God that's faithful to himself, first and foremost, can he get that done? Can he convince minds? Or is just free will too strong? He is able to say to the uttermost, and that's the way he does it. I'm gonna stop there. Any questions, comments?