All right, for the lesson, I have an apology to make. I had planned this Sunday, I told you last time, that I considered the series on apologetics to be over unless you had other questions you'd like to address, questions you've heard from skeptics or unbelievers or seekers. that you don't know the answers to and you'd like to spend a little time looking at those issues. We've looked at the nature of the Bible. How do we know the Bible is an unusual book? We've looked at, is there a God? And we've looked at the problem of evil. Well, I've gotten a few questions that have filtered in by email and stop it in the aisle and that sort of thing. And one of them has to do with baptismal regeneration. Do you have to be baptized to be saved? I told the person who asked the question that this Sunday we'd talk about that. Well, now I have to apologize because Friday I changed my mind. I decided we're not quite done with the problem of evil yet. There's one more thing I want. Last time I said somebody brought up the question of the sovereignty of God and man's free will, and I kind of sloughed it off and said, oh man, we're not going to talk about that. And I decided that that was bad stewardship. We really need to talk about that. So I'm going to devote one week to the problem of the sovereignty of God and man's free will. And we're going to call this little addendum, appendix on the problem of evil. And then next week, God willing, we'll talk about baptismal regeneration. Part of sharing the gospel, you run into people who've come across false teaching. And there are several groups that teach that you need to be baptized in order to be saved. Most obviously, the Roman Catholic Church, which is not very strong in the South, but whose influence here in the South is growing. The major influence in the South is the Church Christ. They've always taught. As I understand it, they don't quite teach baptismal regeneration, but they do teach that you have to be baptized to be saved. And there's a fine distinction there. So next week, Lord willing, we'll look at that one. And if the gentleman who asked the question will inform me if he won't be here next week, I'll be glad to adapt the schedule to his. I feel just really bad. But Friday morning, I was reading on this, and I just said, I can't leave the problem of evil without talking about this question of sovereignty and free will. So let's work on it a little bit, OK? This is going to get a little theoretical, but I'm going to try to keep it very practical. I've said before that if you think you understand this, there's something you don't know. It's kind of like the Trinity. But let's take a look at it as best we can. We have the fact that God is sovereign. Now, what does sovereign mean? It means He does whatever He pleases in the heavens and on the earth. His will is done. And that is an absolute. He isn't almost sovereign. He isn't sovereign in every area but this one. He is sovereign. He gets what He wants. His decisions not only are right and true, but they come to be. Over here, we have this idea of free will. And part of the problem we have here is that this term gets real mushy. You've got to define what you mean by this idea. We'll do a little bit of that here today. There are a lot of people who say, and frankly, everybody who thinks about it would say, if God is sovereign, man's will cannot be entirely free. at least not to the extent that it places limitations on the sovereignty of God. Sovereignty is an absolute, and at least in some uses of the word, free is an absolute. And so, man cannot be absolutely free to do whatever he pleases, yet God be absolutely sovereign so that His will is always done. And that's the big problem. Well, part of our problem, as I've already hinted, is in our definitions of these terms. So let me talk a little further about how these terms work. And then this is going to have some very practical ramifications for you, at least at the end of the lesson, if not before. Okay, so bear with me. First of all, God's will, the term God's will is used in several ways. Most obviously, we have his, what theologians call his decretive will. His will of decree, God says, let there be light. And there will be light. No ifs, ands, or buts, regardless of what anybody else in the universe does, if there was anybody else at the time. I believe there were angels at the time, but people disagree on that. There will be light. He raises up kings and sets down kings. And that will happen despite the desires, if necessary, of the kings and the people who elect them. His will will be done. His decrees will be done. There is also what we call his preceptive will. Thou shalt not commit adultery. That's what God wants. Yet people do commit adultery. Apparently, on some matters, and this is not a weakness in God, and it isn't a limitation to his sovereignty, because this comes from him. He has decreed that He will allow people to disobey Him. And sometimes in that sense, His will is not done. But really, we're using the word will there in a slightly different sense. Don't panic, because as I've often said in here, in every language, pretty much every word has more than one meaning. And we do that interpretation on the fly as we're listening to speech or reading written material. We do that without even thinking about it. And I've talked about that at much greater length earlier in the series. Some people would also, so his preceptive will is what he says he wants to be done, short of decree. And that may or may not be done. Some people have adjusted this idea to what they call the permissive will of God. That gets a little fuzzier, and you're going to find good people who disagree on this. And you'll find good people in this church who disagree on this. Is there a permissive will of God? Does God allow things that He doesn't want? Well, I would say, first of all, He does not allow violations of His decrees. Clearly, on some matters, He has expressed a desire and He has decreed to allow that desire to be disobeyed. If you want to call that a permissive will, I suppose that's fine. Now, over here, on the matter of free will, on our side, first of all, clearly, this is not equal to autonomy. We are not laws unto ourselves. We cannot do whatever we wish. And most obviously, ever since I was a boy, I have wanted to be able to defy the force of gravity. Growing hair would be nice. I can grow hair, just not in certain locations. And being six foot nine would be nice. But we are not completely autonomous. There are limitations on our choices. And I use physical examples here to make that really clear. But in fact, we'll come back to that idea on the moral side. We do have Jonathan Edwards, the great Puritan writer and theologian and pastor, best known for his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, pastored in Connecticut and I believe Massachusetts. He wrote a book called On the Freedom of the Will. And it was actually a very long essay. And one thing about the Puritans is that often the title of the essay is longer than the essay itself. The Puritans have a rule, if you can fit the title on the spine of the book, it's too short. He suggested that man has at least two different kinds of abilities. He has natural abilities. You are able to speak. You are able to walk. You are able to run. You are not able to fly without mechanical assistance. And moral ability. And that's the ability to choose on moral issues. Now, Edwards argues that your moral ability has been lost due to Adam's sin. You have no moral ability. Now, that's a very stern, some would say Calvinistic, view of depravity. You are totally depraved. You are completely unable to do anything good. Edwards himself would say, and the most hardcore Calvinist today would say, that doesn't mean that no lost person ever does anything commendable. Because, in fact, the image of God continues in fallen man. And he is able, sometimes, often, maybe always, without intending to, to reflect that image of God. And so he can be, he can love his wife and he can be kind to the poor and needy. He can be a wonderful conversationalist and great to have at parties. He doesn't, they would say total depravity doesn't mean you're as evil as you possibly could be. What total means is that the evil pervades every part of you. You are all evil. So even when a lost person is kind to the poor, he doesn't do that as an act of worship to God. So it is sinful. See what they're saying? You are unable to do good because good in its most fundamental sense is to worship and honor and glorify God. And this person, this lost person over here, does not do that. Well, what about very pious people? I grew up in a Roman Catholic community, Italian, heavily Italian. I lived between the Virgilios and the Talianis. And I can remember that I was a little irritated because at four o'clock every Saturday afternoon, all my friends would disappear. They had to go to confession and I had nobody to play with. And I've been, I've had a little disagreement with the Pope ever since, taking my friends away from me every Saturday afternoon. Well, I know Roman Catholics who are deeply pious, much more committed to their religion than most of my Christian friends are to theirs. And as I've said before, if you don't think the guys who flew the airplanes on 9-11 were devoted to their religion, you're not paying attention. As depraved as that behavior is, they were absolutely committed to their religious teachings. Well, what about very pious? Now, the Muslim terrorists, of course, we can all tell that that's bad. Nobody would ask this question. But what about the devout Roman Catholic who goes to Mass every morning? Many do. Who prays constantly. who is devoted to Mary and to her son, God, the Christ. Well, these people are, in their own way, attempting to glorify God, but they are coming to Him in ways that He has rejected. And so, that is not glorification of God. That is glorification of something besides God. So, Edwards would say, your moral ability is shot. Ain't got none. Your desirer is busted. You cannot, you can choose to breathe or not breathe, up to a point. You can choose to walk or to sit or to stand or to work or to rest or to play. You cannot choose to do good. That means, and by the way, on what basis do we choose? We choose on the basis of what we want. Edwards would say, you must do that, you are compelled to do that. You choose, at any given moment, you choose based on what you want. When you came in here this morning, you chose where to sit. Let's take a non-moral example. And you may not even have thought about it. You may not even have paid attention and you just, all of a sudden, you were sitting down in the pew and didn't even remember getting there. I need to talk to you after class if that's the case with you. You don't even remember getting there. How did you choose? On the basis of what did you choose? Well, most people want to sit in the back. Most people want to sit as far from everybody else as they can. And you watch a crowd fill in an auditorium and they follow almost predictable patterns. There's a big open section. People are going to sit there instead of clustering over next to the other people. You know, when you're sitting somewhere and there's a whole row and somebody comes and sits right next to you, you go, that's a little weird. You choose based on what you want at any given moment. And if you're lost, your wanter is busted. You will never choose to please God at some level or other. Even if you choose to worship God, you choose to worship him in ways that he has rejected. So, are you free to choose? You are absolutely free to choose anything you want. But you're dealing, the limitations that you find are with your wanter. And when you sin, at that moment, you wanted to sin more than you wanted to do right. And that is precisely the frustration that Paul is talking about in Romans chapter 7. Take a look in Romans chapter 7. I'm going to start reading in verse 15, but it is definitely not out of context. For that which I do, I allow not. For what I would, that do I not. But what I hate, that do I. He's appearing to contradict what I just said, isn't he? That you'd always do what you want most at the moment. Verse 18, for I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. For to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. And he says in verse 21, I find then a law that when I would do good, evil is present with me. So what's going on here? He knows that in the broad sense, he wants to do right. But at individual moments, he, not invariably, but he disturbingly frequently chooses the very thing he doesn't want to do. Is that a violation of the principle I just expressed? I don't think so. At that moment, he wants to do what he chooses to do. His wanter is busted. And so he says, there's this thing in me. He says, I don't like it. But it's the only way I can account for the fact that I'm not doing the very things that I most want to do. We have multiple competing desires in our hearts. And that shows up in the secular decisions, in the non-moral decisions. You may want to sit toward the back so you won't be noticed, but you know that if you sit toward the back you won't be able to hear because your ears are shot. So you have these competing desires. You may want to sit with that person, but he's sitting with somebody that you don't want to sit with. So, do I want to sit over there or not? Competing desires. Well, on the moral side, the same thing happens. There's a part of me that wants to do right all the time, but there's another part of me that wants to do just the opposite, and you have one of those too. Now, for the believer, And for the unbeliever, those two parts are the fallen nature, which he got from Adam, and the image of God, which he has from creation. And so, lost people will feel these multiple desires pulling at them. Disturbingly frequently, we have examples of people going nuts and killing a bunch of people. We had one up in Amish country in Pennsylvania just recently. Notice these guys always leave rambling Suicide notes. I think we ought to give a writing test to everybody in the country right now. And if it rambles, just put them in prison now, because clearly the people who do these things all write rambling notes. You didn't think English class was important. I'm not meaning to make a light of a terrible tragedy. Well, this guy says, you know, I have these horrible memories of molesting people when I was young. And by the way, the people that he molested have no memory of those things happening. Did they happen or not? Were they just something he imagined? It's impossible to reconstruct that. Well, you can tell these are guys who are conflicted. As lost as they are, they're conflicted. They have competing desires. This battle is raging in their souls. and they are unable to side with the right. Now, even lost people can suppress the evil that is in them. They can refrain from bursting out in obscenities in public because they know there's social rejection that would come from that. They don't have to be as bad as they can possibly be. That's not what total depravity means. But every part of them is infected with evil, is fallen. Now, when you come to accept Christ and you become a Christian, He gives you what we call a new nature. Paul calls it the new man. And in many cases, all that does is increase the conflict. Because now you're more sensitive to the evil that is in you. Now the Holy Spirit is convicting you of your sinfulness in ways He was not doing when He didn't indwell you. And in some respects, the conflict increases. Are you free? You are absolutely free to choose. Augustine said it, free will is the ability to choose what you want. Only he said it in Latin. That's pretty good. You are absolutely free. And God is absolutely sovereign. But when I say you're absolutely free, that is within the limits that your nature places on you. God may put limits on you if He desires. Can I say it this way? He doesn't have to, though. He doesn't have to do anything, but your nature raises the conflict in your heart. A thief approaches you on the street, puts a gun in your ribs, and says, give me your wallet. Now, do you want to give him your wallet? Not really, but at that moment, You want to do that more than any other options that are open to you. I mean, you can try to fight him if you want. And as an old martial arts student, I'll say, you'd be an idiot because he's got a gun. Guns beat karate every time. And you can perhaps remember a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark when Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones is watching this swordsman do all his martial arts things. And he just goes, you know, kind of makes the point at that moment. The thing you want to do most is to give him your money that he has not worked for and that you have. That's the best option out of all the options that are available to you, so you do it. I didn't want to. Yeah, there's a real sense in which, yeah, you did. You wanted to. You wanted it better than anything else you could do at the moment. Now, we come to the crux. Once you've become a believer, you have the indwelling Holy Spirit and a new nature, regeneration, new birth. Something is in you that's alive that wasn't there before. And as I've said, in many ways that increases the conflict, but it also makes it possible now for you to act in ways that are fully pleasing to God, where you couldn't do that before because your moral ability was busted. So here's the big question. How do you do that? I think more than once I've done the graph in here, so I'm not going to do it again. The little graph that shows spiritual growth and how over time you're supposed to get more sanctified and your spirituality, however you measure it, is supposed to move up as you grow in Christ. That's the whole point. Turn over to 2 Corinthians chapter 3. I'm going to take you to the key biblical verse on sanctification. Then we're going to talk about how that works on the street, or where the rubber meets the road, or pick your cliche. 2 Corinthians chapter 3, the last verse of the chapter. I think it's very interesting that the previous verse, verse 17, is the one that everybody knows where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. There is liberty. That is in the context of sanctification. It's talking about how free your will is. You are free as a lost person to do anything you want to do, but because your wanter is busted, you are not really free. You are enslaved not to God's sovereignty. Yes, you are, but that's not the point here. You are enslaved to yourself. Now, how do you get a free will? How do you get the ability to choose to do right as well as to do evil? Well, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty. Even though becoming a believer, a child of God, increases the conflict in some ways, it also sets you free now to take sides in the conflict. And so we have verse 18. We all, with open or unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image. What image? The glory of the Lord, the image that we're seeing in the mirror. And what does the glory of the Lord look like? Does that mean we're going to shine, glow like Moses after he met the Lord? No, the glory of the Lord is perfectly expressed in the person of Jesus Christ. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, John tells us in chapter 1 of his gospel. So we're going to be changed into the image of Christ. We're going to look more and more like Him. I found it interesting in reading some of the news accounts. I haven't followed this devotedly because I just haven't had the time. But I've seen a few news accounts about these Amish shootings. And one local reporter there in Pennsylvania said, what you're seeing is Christ-likeness. That's not quite the word he used, but these people are acting the way Christ would have acted in forgiving their attacker and so on. Well, I will say that Amish theology is still heavily works-based and there are some theological problems with it. And I don't know if these people were regenerate or not, but the idea of acting like Christ is exactly right. That's the biblical pattern. You are to look like Christ in your interactions with other people. We're changed into the same image from glory to glory. What does that mean? A step at a time. Step at a time. A little bit at a time. You get better over time. And you work at it your whole life. And in the end, you're still not there. So, He glorifies you and gets you there. Actually, when you die, He puts you in holding for a while because He's going to glorify everybody at the same time, at the resurrection. That's the moment of glorification. But clearly, as You think of the most holy person you know, and he's not there yet. We're all at different stages in this process of becoming more like Christ. And let me tell you something. One of the great joys of the Christian life is to see God change you. Now, it doesn't happen nearly fast enough for any of us, but it does happen. You are not predestined to be what you are at the age of 12 or 17 or 18 or 21 or pick your age. You change. And if you follow the process described in 2 Corinthians 3.18, you change for the better. And we don't typically stand up and say, ooh, this is how God's changing me and this is how I'm getting better because it turns into bragging. And you got nothing to brag about because you didn't do it anyway. But He does change you. He changes the way you think. I've seen the Lord do wonderful things in my heart in just the last months. And yeah, still, oh, long way to go, long way to go. But you can see progress. It's getting better and it's just a little bit, but it's progress. And that reminds you that you're alive and you're not here with a dead moral ability. He's changing you. So, how does the change happen? How can I get more of it? How can I accelerate the process? Can I get on the like the microwave version of this plan? How does it happen? End of the verse, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. The Spirit of God who indwells you is the one who strengthens your new nature, who grows it and develops it and enables you to gain the kind of victory that Paul was pleading for at the end of Romans chapter 7. Turn back there, Romans chapter 7, and you'll find the same author, Romans and 2 Corinthians, you'll find that he gives the same response. He ends chapter 7, verse 24, wretched man that I am. And in Greek, that's wretched man I. It's just an explosion. It's not even a complete sentence. Oh, me, he says. Who shall deliver me from this dead body? I am unable to do what I know I should do and what I want to do in some sense, but my water is busted. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. verse 1 of chapter 8. There is therefore now no condemnation. That's an unqualified statement. No condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. And who are they? Those who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. Same answer. It's the Spirit. It's the Spirit who makes this happen. And if you're to look through chapters 6 through 8 of the Book of Romans, You would find it's all about the process of sanctification. Chapter 6 tells you, you put off the old, put on the new. Don't let sin reign in your mortal bodies. Don't yield yourself anymore. And there's no mention of the Holy Spirit. And in chapter 7, you find out, eh, doesn't work. You can't do that. And there's no mention of the Holy Spirit. And then chapter 8, boom, and you start underlining or circling the references to the Holy Spirit. And what Paul has done is inductively there, he said, OK, here's what's supposed to happen. Now go do it. Having trouble? Can't do it? Aha! Chapter 8, Holy Spirit. That whole section is about the Holy Spirit, even though He's not mentioned until chapter 8. So then, we're changed into the same image, a step at a time, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. So, how do you raise the setting on the microwave? I've talked about this before, so I'm just going to refer to it and remind you. Means of grace, my friends, means of grace. What are they? Tell me. Scripture, prayer, fellowship of believers. Some people think the ordinances, baptism in the Lord's Supper are means of grace. I won't even argue that point. Great, let's say they're means of grace. Let's say they're sacraments and not ordinances. Great, do them too. As often as possible, even baptism. No, I'm not going to say that. You should be baptized every week, means of grace. No. Baptism is a one-time thing. Means of grace. And I'm not talking about, okay, do my four chapters of the Bible so I read through every year mechanically. Ooh, got my four chapters done today. Okay, step one, check that out. And I gotta pray, okay. Acts, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. Okay, supplication. Okay, so I start with adoration, and I do some adoration, and I do some confession, and I do some thanksgiving, and it's a mechanism. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is a living thing. This is a person you're dealing with. You don't deal with your spouse mechanically. You don't deal with God or His Spirit mechanically. You lose yourself in the Scriptures, and you treasure it, and you read it, and you think about it, and you memorize it. Use any version you want. Just memorize it. Fill your mind with it. Think about it. You know what I've done in the last weeks? Talk about how the Lord's changing me, you know, one way? This is going to sound really stupid. When I'm driving by myself, I don't turn the radio on anymore. I used to always turn on talk radio and fill my brain with, you know, whatever the controversy of the minute was. And these are all people who don't have jobs and so they can call talk radio during the day. If you call in, forgive me, I'm just stereotyping here. Here I am alone in this car. I have time to be alone. to be quiet, to think, meditate on scripture, to pray. These are great times. Now, I don't even want to turn the radio on, not even music. Just turn it off. I want silence. Now, I'm not saying that's the key to spiritual growth. But you begin to treasure these things and your times of prayer. And you're not just talking to the ceiling. You're talking to God. And it doesn't have to be long. 15 seconds. Start with 15 seconds. Just talk to God for a couple of sentences. The better you get to know Him, the easier you'll find it is to talk to Him. It's not complicated. Fellowship of believers. Seek each other out. Talk to one another about what God's doing in your life. We don't get up and parade it in front of everybody because that would be proud. Talk to one another. What's the Lord doing in your life? Hey, I'm struggling with this problem. Well, I used to struggle with that problem. Here's what happened. This is how I, you know, build one another up. And over time, little bit at a time, it gets better and better and better. And your will becomes freer and freer and freer. And freedom now consists not in doing what you want when your water is busted. But it puts you right over here. And they're not in conflict. They're not two sides fighting each other. Suddenly, your will and the will of God are in perfect harmony. Well, in glorification they will be. And the conflict disappears. Isn't that slick? There is no conflict. That's how it works. Now, as I've said, just when you think you understand it, that means you have missed something. And sure, it's complicated. But I think this is a map for unifying it. Any questions or comments? I'll take a minute or two here. You're overwhelmed. Yes. Well, that's quite a homework assignment, isn't it? I'd like you to become like Christ this week. Report back to me in seven days. Yes, ma'am. I always hate to ask this after a lovely ending, but given that we are in a false state and our wine is busted and that affects our free will, what about Adam and Eve? Let me recommend a book. Thank you for asking that question. Much of what I've been discussing with you this morning is something I read on Friday, which is why I changed my mind. A book called Following Christ, which I am reading in my devotions these days. And chapter, I believe it's chapter 11 on the will of God. He talks about this and he says, this is not the mystery. This makes sense. The mystery is how Adam sinned in the first place, and he devotes some time to that. I think it's an excellent book. I'm starting chapter 12 tomorrow, so reading a little bit at a time, so I'm not all the way through, but what I've read so far is highly useful. And he has his moments where he says something you would disagree with, but those are not easy to, not difficult to spot and to filter out. Excellent. Following Christ. I recommend it as much as I recommend any other merely human book.