Please be with those who are traveling, be with those who are sick, be with those who just simply cannot be here. for whatever the reason be. But for those that are here, Lord, thank you, thank you, and use this time, Lord, to draw us closer to you, help us to trust in you more. And Lord, as we get ready to teach the class, I admit before my whole family that I am strained, that this has been a very tough week, and there is so much to be said about this subject here and about the sermon later today. And I can just admit to them and before you that I am completely inadequate to do that on my own. And I desperately need your help to teach us, to use your word, to guide us, and to guard us, and to protect us, and to help us to grow in wisdom, and strength, and understanding, and patience, and love, and in hope. So please be with us now in this time of study. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. So real quick, if you want to take your bulletin, This lesson, this week is pretty much the same as last week's lesson. There's only just a couple of, we changed the jumping off text verse to Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 tells us that for by grace, by grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not of yourself. It is a gift of God, not of work, so that no one may boast. So that's our jumping off text. And Paul is saying that you were saved by grace. And what is our definition of grace? What is our Sunday school definition of grace? Unmerited favor. What does it mean to merit something? To earn it, right? I merited a paycheck this week. My boss didn't come up to me and give me my check and say, here's a gift, right? In matter of fact, if he would not have given it to me, I would have demanded it, why? Because I worked hard for it and I want my money, you see? But the salvation that we have in Christ is through grace alone. It's by grace alone. And so there's no way that I'll ever be able to demand of him to give me my salvation because I did not earn it. Who earned it for me? Christ did. So Jesus is the one who was decreed before the foundation of the world to come and to purchase a salvation for me on the cross. He completed that purchase when He said it is finished and poured His blood out. He died, was buried and three days later He rose from the dead. He ascended into Heaven and now He is sitting at the right hand of His Father. And the Father and the Son have sent the Holy Spirit now to come down to the earth and and to confirm the redemption that he purchased on that cross in his people. And so as we go around and we proclaim the gospel to all of the world, the call is general. What does that mean? It goes to who? Everybody. We don't make exceptions. We give the gospel to everyone. And as that general call goes out, there is also an effectual call going out. And the effectual call is the Holy Spirit allowing people to hear that truth, to receive that truth and to believe that truth. And the way that they receive that truth, believe that truth and hear that truth is through the power of the Holy Spirit. So it's not my power of persuasion to convince somebody to become a believer. I can't do that. If I can persuade you to believe, then I can persuade you not to believe too. The power of persuasion is the Holy Spirit's power. And what does he do? He comes in and he changes the heart. He opens the eyes and the ears and the mind to see and to receive that truth and to believe that truth. And the Bible actually says that even our repentance, even our turning from sin to Christ, repentance is a gift from God. Paul said that we pray that God might grant the unbeliever repentance. So as I pray for my friend Stephen today, I'm gonna pray that God will grant him repentance. Now, a couple of pastors, we're talking about one of y'all's family members. He is struggling with the death of his aunt. She was, he was really close to her and he's struggling with the death of that ant. Well, he had two pastors go and share the gospel with him this week. So through the sharing of that gospel, a general call went out to this young man. And remember, he's my, young man, he's my age, he's 57. He's 56, all right. You know, age doesn't matter, perspective. But all of his life, God has been sending people to him to allow him to hear truth. And in his own will, in his own determination, he has decided what to do with that truth. And we're almost certain that he has rejected that truth, that he has chosen the path of self-righteousness, self-will, and self-sufficiency as opposed to choosing Christ. Well, God allows a person to see their need for him. And that is the work of the Holy Spirit. That is the work of the gospel. That is the work of the word of God. And so when the word of God goes out and the Holy Spirit opens someone's ears and opens someone's heart to that truth, they turn and they trust Christ and they're saved. But all the work of salvation is the work of God. And so this passage says it is by grace you have been saved through faith. Now, that does not mean that we don't believe. We have to believe in order to be saved. But believing is not a work that merits our salvation. Let me say that again. Believing is not a work that merits our salvation. Believing is a fruition of a saved heart. It is only the heart that has been regenerated and seen the beauty of God and seen his grace and understands his love and his mercy that is willing to turn into trust. So we have to believe. You have to believe. But believing is not something that earns your salvation. Believing proves that you have it. You see? So it's not that we don't have a responsibility. And with that said, it's not saved by faith. It's saved by grace through faith. Notice it doesn't say saved by faith. It's not our faith that saves us. It's God's grace that saves us. It doesn't say you are saved through grace by faith. It says you are saved by grace through faith. Faith is the empty hand that reaches out and receives the gift. The hand in itself merits nothing. It receives the gift from God. Okay, so and it's not of yourselves Salvation is not of yourselves Explain that to me guys. What does that mean? Because this is just plain biblical language salvation is of yourself Okay We didn't save ourselves. He saved us the the sign on the billboard says Jesus saves and God, that's an acronym for grace. God's riches at Christ's expense. That's very true. So it's Christ purchased on the cross that gives us salvation. It's the work of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit that saves us. It is not of yourselves. Jesus saved. So it's not Jesus and then me. And every false religion out there, every religion in the world that you want to talk about, Other than true Christianity has something that you have to do in order to get to God. If you're a Muslim, you've got to practice the five pillars of faith. You've got to make a pilgrimage to Mecca sometime in your life. You have to give alms. You have to tithe. There's all kinds of things you have to do. If you're Jewish, you have to be circumcised. You have to obey the law of Moses. Etc. Etc. Etc. You have to practice the Passover every year on March 14th or nice and 14 if you're Buddhist you have to be really really good so that you don't come back as a dung beetle in your neck life You come back as a white swan or you know, something of a higher order but every religion out there every religion out there always throws in a God saves but you have to do this and And the moment that you insert works into faith, the moment you insert works into salvation is the moment it is now you and God saving you. Now, what's the problem with that? What's the problem with God saving you, but you maintaining your salvation? What's the problem with that? We can't do it. And deep down inside, every one of us knows that. Like even as a child of God, even if you are here today and the Holy Spirit lives in you, you are very aware that this very day on the ride over here, in the last few minutes of your thoughts, you have went out of bounds. You see? So the moment that I begin to trust in myself is the moment that I lose assurance. One of the reasons that we don't have assurance is because we're putting our trust in ourselves and we are assured that we can't do it. Even though we put on nice clothes and try to act like we're all righteous and we do all the right things, we know we don't. We need a savior. He is the one that began, he who began a good work and you will continue it until the day of salvation. That's what the verse says, right? So we have been justified in Christ. We have been, are being sanctified in Christ. And one day we will be glorified in Christ. And all three of those justification, sanctification and glorification are all three works of God. Now they are expressed in your actions. If you have been justified, if you are being sanctified, it's going to show in the way that you live your life. If God is at work in you, it's going to work out of you. But it's not the working out of you that makes you saved. The working out of you simply proves that you are saved. And there are a lot of people that can do good. Our friend Steven, he's a really good dude. Like he would literally give you the shirt off of his back. But most people who are good Samaritans that are, well, not most people, but a lot of people that are good Samaritans are doing something to try to make up for what they know they're not doing. You see? So they're trying to earn it. So we do because it's done. The lost man does it because he knows it's not done yet. And he's trying to figure out a way, some way in his power to do it. So all of the religions out there have, this is the steps that you do to get to God. In Christianity, the law says you cannot get to him. He is holy and you are not. And we learned last week in our sermon that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Sadducees and the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of God. We'll elaborate on that some more today in the sermon. But what it means is you've got to be better than the most holy person that you've ever met. And none of us do it. You all have that saying in your family that you know you're not as good as they were. You see? But the standard of righteousness is not your fellow man. The standard of righteousness is not your family members, or your neighbors, or your pastor, or your Sunday school teacher, or that wonderful pastor that you love that you watch on the TV every week. That is not the standard of righteousness. The standard of righteousness is Christ. And he is perfect. And we are not. And he comes to save us from our imperfection. And so we are saved by grace to faith. It is not of yourself, it is a gift of God. Not of works so that no one may boast. And to boast means to what? Right. So the moment that you put I into the salvation formula is the moment that you've made room for you to boast. We've talked about it in the past. I came down an aisle when I was a kid and trusted Christ as my Lord and Savior. But if I'm depending on a decision that I made to save me, if I'm depending on a ritual, an ordinance of being dunked under some water and coming out of that water to be saved, if I'm trusting in my ability to pray or my ability to teach a class or my ability to understand the scriptures, I'm leaning there on a broken stick. My trust has to be in Christ and his righteousness alone. And for you and I, that is the worst thing that you could tell me because the natural man, the last thing in the world that a natural man wants to let go of is I. It's the last thing. If you don't believe me, go sit at the bed of someone you love who is dying. They do not want to let go. This is all they have. Me, that's all I've got. And salvation comes when we die to self and live for Christ. Salvation comes when we let go of our abilities and our strengths and our want-tos and our desires and turn and trust in Christ alone. And it's the hardest thing that there ever was to do. A matter of fact, it is impossible without the work of Christ. If you're in this room today and you're a believer, you know how hard it is to do the right thing. and you have the spirit of God living in you. Think about your lost loved one who's not saved. That's not a way for you to look down at your nose at them. It's a way for you to have pity on them and cry out for God to show his mercy to them and save them. Because unless God steps in, they'll die and bust hell wide open. We have to learn to trust in God with our own salvation and with the salvation of our loved ones. We don't like to do that either. We don't want to trust God with the salvation of our loved ones. We've gone to the method of beating them over the head with a Bible to get them to believe so that they would be saved. The intent was okay. Like you really do want them to be saved. But the motive and the mode of operation, it will never save them. So we share the gospel, the gospel of salvation, and that salvation is by grace, through faith, and it is not of yourself. It is a gift of God, not a work, so no one may boast. I can't save anybody. And I never take credit for a salvation. A lot of people do. Well, we had three people saved today at church. One of the things that I learned early on in my ministry with admissions is they love numbers. Like when you get paid, they want to pay you, but they want to see results. They want to see numbers. And so my boss would always call me and say, how many people got saved at your service today? And when I first started in the ministry, I'd say, oh, well, we had three people get saved. But then I realized that a lot of those people that were making professions of faith were falling right back away. As soon as they got out of the hospital, as soon as they got out of their crisis, they fell back into their old life again. And so they may have got saved. I can't look in their heart and know that. All I can judge by is what? What I see in their life. So what I've learned to do, and I'm more at peace about this, is I say, we had three professions of faith today. We had three professions of faith. What do I mean? Somebody came up and made a profession that Christ is their Lord and Savior Now it's going to take the rest of their life for that profession to play out in their life but I always felt like that gets me off the hook because if I take credit for a Salvation and they're not saved. I'm lying. I'm I'm bearing a false witness so I leave the the job and the accounting of salvations to God and the Holy Spirit. You see what I mean? So it's just so much easier for me on my conscience to be able to say, Amiyah had a profession, Amiyah came and made a profession of faith. I can't say for 100% for sure that she was saved. In Baptist churches, I hear this more than anything else. Well, when they were a kid, they came down the aisle and asked Jesus in their heart and they got baptized, but they hadn't been to church in 20 years. Like I promise you that I hear that all the time and all the different congregations that I go into. Well, what's the problem with that? The problem is, is that if Jesus has truly worked in the heart, It's gonna show in the life. And I can't judge a man's heart. I don't know what's in his heart. But Jesus said, you will know them by their fruit. So we are actually commanded to be fruit inspectors. Is there love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, meekness, self-control? Is there a love for God and others over self? Those are like check boxes on the fruit inspectors checklist. Think about most kids. Are kids generally concerned about others? No. Yeah. As we grow, we learn to die to self and live for others, do we not? You learn to give for your kids. Is it easy? Is that easy for you, Nancy, Billy? Is that easy for you to give to your kids? No. It sucks because I have to give up self for them. And not only that, they don't appreciate it. Good. And we need to see that when it comes to God, our heavenly father. He does it not because we deserve it. He does it because he loves us. And if a child never grows up and their mentality at 75 years old is mine and no, they've never matured. You see? So what happens as we mature in the faith, as we grow in our understanding of scripture and a knowledge of the love of Jesus Christ and the power of his grace in our lives, we begin to die to self and live for him and others. And we start realizing the fulfillment, the joy of doing for other people instead of having done for me. Right, well, well, it's never gonna, none of us are gonna be, none of us are gonna live to the standard of Christ all of our life. So when it comes to that, my counsel to you would be this. Number one, you're not gonna change them. And number two, if I see it in them, I've got it somewhere in me. And so God allows me to see my neighbors and my loved ones. What I do is I use that as a reflection and say, you know, when I see a kid at work going, you're lazy and you're not doing what the boss told you, I can correct him on that, but he's not gonna listen. He's a 16-year-old kid, he doesn't know that. I'm gonna find him back there texting on his phone two hours later doing the same thing I just got onto him for. But I can use that for self-reflection. Am I lazy? Am I doing what the boss told me to do? And when I start thinking about it, I realize I was just over there texting on my phone too. You see what I mean? So in a situation like that, we can, in love, correct someone. If they're our brother or sister in Christ, we can come to them in love and say, hey, whatever. And, but we need to use it as a point to the only person that we're truly gonna be able to work in is our own lives. And so God will allow us to see the shortcomings in others, not so we can condemn them, but so that we can check ourselves and see if maybe we're guilty of them as well. That's the only way that I've ever learned to use that productively. Because it's very easy for me to go around and nitpick the shortcomings in other people's lives. As a matter of fact, it's a really good self-defense mechanism. Like, as long as I'm worrying about fixing you, I'm not worrying about fixing me. But the point being is that we're saved by grace through faith. It is not a work so that no one may boast. So when we talk about The topic of free will last week we were together and just for those of you who weren't here I want to quickly just review a couple of major Concepts and the idea of free will and then we're going to get in these paragraphs today We got to number one. We learned last week that God is sovereign He is in control and man is responsible So God gave us the Ten Commandments that when God gave us the Ten Commandments Did he believe that we were going to be able to keep them fully? No, but does he still expect us to keep them? So God is sovereign, he said, this is right, do it. So would God ever ask me or you to do something that we possibly cannot do? He gave Adam and Eve a tree in a garden and said, don't eat from that tree, knowing that they were gonna do it. All right, so yes, God, and that was an argument in early church. A guy named Augustine and a guy named Pelagius argued because Augustine made a prayer one day and he said, command what you will and give me the strength to do what you command. And Pelagius come along and said, oh no, God would never ask you to do something that you couldn't do. And that started one of the major arguments in the whole free will controversy. Would God actually command me to do something that I could not do? Well, he commanded Adam and Eve in the garden to not eat from that tree. And we're gonna see in just a minute, he created Adam and Eve in his image, so they were created in righteousness. But he also gave them free will. He gave them the choice to either what? Obey or disobey. And instead of choosing obedience, They fell from grace, they fell from righteousness and they chose disobedience. So God gave them a command and he put that tree there knowing that they wasn't gonna keep it. And so the question for a fallen man on the other side of the bite from that fruit is, why did you do this to me? Why did you put that there? If you wouldn't put it there, I'd have never done that. That was actually Adam's argument to God. Why did you make me like this? If you wouldn't have given me this woman, I would have never ate from that tree. But remember, the woman is a direct expression of him, because she came out of him. But his argument to God was, why did you make me like this? If you wouldn't have put that tree there, if you wouldn't have given me this woman, if you, if you, if you, if you, it wouldn't have happened. So God was declaring his sovereignty by putting a command on Adam. But he also declared man's responsibility when he condemned him for his actions. And Adam can never say, you made me this way, because God did not make him that way. God made him righteous. He created him in his image. So we learned about God's sovereignty and man's responsibility. We learned that our will Our will another word for our will in the Bible is what what is another word for your will in the Bible that we talked about last week Your blanks desire Heart your heart in the Bible is an expression of your will. It's not that muscle that pumps blood around into your chest when David said your word I've hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. He was not talking about the in his physical heart. So in the Bible, your heart is your will, your desire, your want to. That's what will is. Will is your want to. It's an expression of your want to. So when the Bible talks about the heart, it's talking about the inner man, who we are on the inside. And who you are on the inside is expressed in your will and your desires. It's who you are. Oh, I would never do that. Really? And so we talk about, we were talking earlier today about somebody smoking all of their life and not wanting to quit. Right? Well, the reality is, is their want to is to smoke. Now, they don't want to die. They don't want to have emphysema. They don't want to wake up not being able to breathe. But their want to has overridden their don't want to's. And they're responsible for those decisions. And we all are. So our will is our, the inner man is who we are on the inside. And we also learn about Salvation and who gets the glory remember we stand before God one day and who gets the glory in this situation Why should I allow you into my eternal kingdom and you say because I trusted you as my Lord and Savior. Is that true? Yeah, can a believer truly stand before God one day and say because I trusted you as Lord and Savior and Yes, you better believe it. If you truly have a regenerate heart, if you truly are saved, you have trusted in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. So you can stand before him on that day and when he says, why should I allow you into my kingdom? You can say, honestly, because I trusted you as my Lord and Savior. And it's true. And will you get into the kingdom of heaven? Yes, because you trusted him. But the better answer is this, because you sent your son to die for me on that cross, he purchased my soul with his blood, and he sealed me with the promise of his Holy Spirit, and you saved me. Is that true? Yes. Do I get into heaven? Yes. Now, which one of those two statements gives God the glory, and which one gives man the glory? Yeah, the second one gives God the glory the first one you're you're really boasting About what you've done And that's not so by grace. We're saved Through faith. It's not of yourself. It is a gift of God not of work so that no one may boast It's not about bragging and as we learn to live in the salvation that he has given us as we learn to walk in that salvation as we mature as children of God We become more and more and more aware that it's not about us, it's about Him. And as we mature in the faith, we realize that all along it was never about us, it was about Him. But we as Christians, it says, Paul says that we desire meat, but we need milk because we're still babes in Christ. And that's what you get when you get a church that's full of dissension and arguing about what color the carpet is, or how many times we're gonna meet a week, or just silly nonsense. You've got a bunch of I, I, I going on. When the focus is on Jesus Christ and worshiping him, guess what happens to all of that stuff? It goes away because it was never about me to begin with. And not only that, you learn that his salvation, he saved you not just to save you, but so that he could use you to reach others. It's now about your kids and your grandkids and your loved ones and your neighbors and your family and your friends. And so as we grow, we begin to realize that it's not about us, it's about Him. We talked about how free are we really with our will, our desires. Are we really that free? And we learned that there was two things that limit your will. What were the two things that we talked about last week that limit your will? Both of them have to do with self, but what limits our will? What limits my desires? Well, the Holy Spirit limits evil in us. He restrains evil in us. But remember we learned that our nature limits our will. What do I mean when I say my nature limits my will? The way we are. I cannot fly as much as I would desire to. I cannot do it. My will wants to fly. I want to fly to work every morning so I don't have to fight with traffic. But I can't because I don't have feathers. I don't have wings. I'm not designed to do that. Huh? But you can get in a machine. Well, God gives us wisdom and ability to do things. But the point being is if that machine fails, I die. Let's think about, there was a horrible tragedy this weekend. A teen died. down at the beach. He drowned. Why did he drown? Because he was not able to swim. That's what drowning is. It's the inability to swim. Right? Now, do you think it was his desire to drown? No. He was probably fighting for his very life until he took his last breath. And we don't make light of that. I'm not using this as a situation to make it light. But the truth of the matter is, your nature limits your will. Next time you get a toothache, just say, I don't want it to hurt no more. Right? Go to Riverside this afternoon and talk to Jackie. Say, hey, Jackie, get up. That pain, just forget about it. Don't worry about it. Just let it go. And I'm not making light of these situations. This is real. Like, she is in a situation that she can't do anything about it. Her nature has limited her desires. You see? So our nature limits our will. and our knowledge limits our will. Those are two things that limit our will or our ability to choose. So that little fellow running around in the jungle that has never heard of Jesus Christ cannot choose Christ. He doesn't know. So our nature and our knowledge limit our will, okay? And then we talked about the bondage of the will and we'll see that today. When we talk about bondage, we're talking about what? Slavery. You are unable to do something. And so what we're gonna find is that after the fall, man's will became in bondage to what? Sin and self. In bondage to our nature, in bondage to our knowledge, in bondage to self, in bondage to my circumstances. And remember, God sent his angel to redeem the people of Israel, to set them free from the bondage of Egypt. They could not choose to just walk away from Egypt because they were slaves, they were owned by Egypt. And it wasn't their choice, they had to do what they were told. Kelly brought up last week, she said, well, they could choose whether they want to do what this taskmaster tells them to or not. Yes, and they can also get their heads crushed. You see? And so we learn that we are in bondage to sin and salvation sets us free from the bondage of sin. So now we are capable of serving and loving Christ, loving and serving Christ, loving neighbor and loving others as we love ourselves. Once the Holy Spirit regenerates our hearts, The bondage of sin has been broken. The power of sin has been broken. And now I have been set free to serve Christ. Before, when I was in bondage, the only thing that I served was sin and nature and knowledge. I served who? Me. And God sets us free from self to serve him and others. So we talked about all of that last week. We talked about three words, determinism and fatalism and compatibilism. So determinism, all events happening are predestined by God. That's called determinism. Everything that ever taken place, every molecule, every atom in the whole universe is controlled and ruled by God and his decree. And nothing happens outside of his will, nothing. Now you say, well, wait a minute. It's God's desire that none should perish, right? That's God's desire that none should perish. Well, we have a contradiction because people are perishing in hell right now. And so if it is not God's desire for them to be in hell, then something is happening outside of God's. What we need to understand is that in the same way that the gospel has a general call and an effectual call, God has a decorative will and a prescriptive will. What do I mean by that? God's will is thou shalt not kill. That is his decreed will. God's will says thou shalt not kill. Is that an eternal rule of God and an eternal standard of righteousness with God? Yes. But God permitted his son to be nailed to a cross. So when I say his permissive will, what do I mean? He allows things to happen that are contrary to his decreed will. But they are not in contradiction to his decree because he knew that his son was gonna die on that cross. He knew the men's names that were gonna nail the nails on that tree before they were ever born. He knew that Judas was gonna betray him. In the Old Testament, it was prophesied to him. And there was no way that Judas was not gonna betray Christ. Now, some would think, well, Judas could go to heaven when they say, well, you're the one that prophesied it, you're the one that declared that I was gonna be like this. But remember what we learned, God is sovereign and man is responsible. So Judas, just like Adam said, well, if you wouldn't have made me that way, I would have never ate from that tree. No, God is sovereign and you are responsible for your actions. And that term that we learned last week is the term compatibilism. God's decreed will and man's free actions are compatible with one another. God does not force you to do anything that you are not willing to do. And despite the fact that he has decreed everything that is ever going to take place, You are still responsible for what takes place. Now, I can hear the little monkey and the cymbals going on inside your head going, ch-ch-ch. That don't make any sense. Exactly right. Because we can't see things from God's point of view. All we can see things from is our point of view. But what's going to happen is, at the end of time, when we are known as we are known, we're going to be able to look back on this whole life We're gonna be able to see from God's point of view why everything happened that happened and how it happened And what was the purpose behind it and we're gonna you know, we're gonna say then You were right all along. I sat here and argued with you about you being God and you being in control And why did you do this to me? And why did you let this happen and the whole time you had my love and your glory in mind so compatibilism means that God has a decree and man has a free will and those two things compatibly work together and To the natural man it seems completely contradictory. But so does nailing the son of God to a tree and him being buried in the ground and three days later being raised from the dead. That does not make sense to the natural man. So this is something that I want you to wrestle with in the coming weeks as we continue to talk about this. God is sovereign, man is responsible. And so Spurgeon said it this way, you know, how can you reconcile these two things? And Spurgeon said, well, why do I need to reconcile friends? Like it's all happening according to God's plan and God's purpose. Why do I need to sit and struggle with it and fight with it? Know you're responsible and know that God is sovereign. He's God and you're not, and you're still responsible for what you do. and just rest in that. So we learned about that and we talked about fatalism, which means all events are subject to fate. All things are inevitable and we don't control anything that happens. That's fatalism. Well, who cares? Why do I need to go to heaven? Who cares? If I'm of the elect, if I'm God's child, I can do whatever I want and I'm still gonna go to heaven. So why does it matter? That's a fatalist attitude. Your buddy who's dead and trespasses in out there who's living drinking partying booze and doing whatever he's out there doing Well, God will forgive me What does it matter what I do? God will forgive me That's a fatalist attitude It's all gonna work out in the end And that's wrong it's wrong to have that attitude Because what you're doing is you're blaming God for your sin. I Yeah, very true, right? And that's actually reverse pride when somebody said, well, God can never forgive me because look at all the bad things I've done. What they're saying when they say that is that their sin is so bad that even the blood of Christ that was poured out on that cross is not capable of forgiving them for what they've done. It's reverse pride. I'm so bad that God could never forgive me. Now, it'll come across as humility and sadness and brokenness, but the reality is it's reverse product. They're still dependent on something they do. And so we talked about fatalism, compatibilism, and determinism. Now, we're gonna read the paragraphs and then we'll get back into them again next week, but let's read them. And I want you this week, please, take these Bible verses that are quoted here and go in and look and see if these statements are what the Bible says. All right, number one, we believe that God has endured the will of man with the natural liberty and power of acting upon choice. It is neither forced nor by any necessity of nature determined to do good or evil. God has endued the will of man with natural liberty. What does that mean? God has given you what? We had Independence Day this week. We celebrate our independence from England. We have been set free from the tyranny of the English, right? And so we have been endued with choice. Every one of you chose to be here this morning unless your husband or wife or significant other drug you here against your will. But everyone that's here today is here because they chose to. Controversially, everyone that's not here today is here because they don't want to be here. Now, let's think about Miss Jackie. Do you think Miss Jackie wants to be here today? You better believe she does. But her nature is not allowing her to be. Her will is being limited by her very nature. My mom said that all the time. I'd love to go to church, but I'm on oxygen now. And when I get there, I get short of breath, and I hate being there and causing other people to have to deal with my illness. So our nature limits our will. But we do have a choice. So God has given man will, natural liberty, and the power of acting upon choice and it's not forced. And it is not by any necessity of nature determined to do good or evil. So does this statement, does that statement right there say that man has free will? Now one of the things that we get wrong is that when we think about free will, What we're actually talking about is free moral agency or natural choice. By nature, we all have the ability to choose things. Last night, I could choose pistachio almond ice cream or strawberry vanilla ice cream. I chose both. I put two scoops of each one in my bowl, you see? So I acted upon my natural choice. The problem is that I couldn't have chosen Rocky Road because I didn't have any. But I did have a choice. But I only had a choice between the options that I had. Now, I could have chose the guy in the car. Well, actually, I couldn't because it was 10.30. Publix was closed. I couldn't even went and got some rocky road had I wanted some. So our choice, we do have free creaturely choice. But even our creaturely choice, even the decisions that we make are often limited by our nature and our knowledge. And no one can argue with that. I don't think. So the second paragraph says this, man in his state of innocence had, that's a very important word, the freedom and the power to will and to do that which was good and well-pleasing to God. But yet he was unstable so that he might fall from it. God created man and gave him free choice. God put a command on Adam and said, do not eat from this tree. The day that you eat from this tree, you will surely die. So God created Adam in righteousness, but that righteousness was, he was created in the image of God. But unlike God, he was also created with the instability to do wrong. He had a choice between right and wrong, and that's what's represented in that tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Before Adam bit from that fruit, he never knew what evil was. All right? So, in his state of infancy, he had freedom and power and will to do that which was good and well-pleased God, but he was unstable. And then the last paragraph says this, man, by his fallen state of sin, has wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation. So as a natural man, being altogether averse from good and dead in sin, is not able by his own strength To convert himself or to prepare himself there unto so what does it mean? So what what does it end up meaning? God created man with free will But by choosing that tree by expressing that free will and disobeying god His will is now limited by his knowledge and his nature. Now, before he'd been in that tree, he did not know what evil was. Now that he's been into that tree, he knows evil. So just the simple fact that he knows evil is going to limit his ability to choose rightly. And his nature is now falling away from God, so he can't choose God rightly. He is not able in his own strength to convert himself, and that's the whole argument in a nutshell Can you choose to change your will? No your will is limited by your nature and your knowledge and it's the very reason that God has to regenerate your heart because by regenerating your heart he resets it and And he gives you that righteousness that you lost in your rebellion and your sin. He gives you now the ability to choose again because he sets your fallen nature free to serve Christ. You see how that works? So, this week we gotta close with prayer because we gotta get started, but take those three paragraphs and think about what it's saying. We had free will. But by expressing that free will contrary to God's will, We lost that free will. We still have choices every day. Adam had the choice to stay in the bushes and keep the fig leaves or to turn back to God and find forgiveness. But God approached Adam and said, Adam, where are you? It was God that searched for Adam and found him. So, again, I hope this has challenged you to think about things. Like, I hope that this has forced you to think about your relationship with God, and it's forcing you to think about what your salvation actually entails. What is it that God did to save me? And that the base of it is he sent his son to die and shed his blood on a cross and purchase that salvation for you. And he sent his Holy Spirit to regenerate your heart and set you free from the bondage of sin and self. To set you free to know him again. And so there's freedom in salvation. There's bondage in sin. All right. Father, thank you for this time that we've had together. Thank you for this day and thank you for your love and your truth. Lord, I pray that these issues, these discussions that we're having, these topics and doctrines that we're discussing, I pray, Lord, that it will Be used of you and the Holy Spirit to drive us to your word, to force us to realize what a good God you are and what we really have in salvation and what it means to be saved by grace through faith and not of ourselves so that we will not boast. Help us to live our lives in a way that glorifies you. In Christ's name we pray, amen.