Okay, turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 5. Romans chapter 5. I'll be taking a break this week from the series on election, but I had been thinking about this issue and been writing about it, trying to write something pretty good size on this. It's slow going, but the title of this message, for sake of lack of a title for now, is Are You Missing the Gospel? And if it was to be subtitled, it would be Calvinist and missing the gospel. And I'll explain as we go. Romans 5. I want to just jump down to verse 19. Romans 5 19. For as one man's disobedience, speaking of Adam, many were made sinners. So by the obedience of one, which is the Lord Jesus Christ, many shall be made righteous. But the law entered so that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. So that as sin has reigned to death, even so might grace reign through righteousness to eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. I was going to start this first sentence out with a question, but I'm going to make it a statement because I know it can be a fact. It is possible for someone who claims to believe the doctrines of grace, sovereign grace, reformed theology, Calvinism, so-called, but yet not know Christ or the gospel of Christ. This right here is so important to me because I was in that number of people who claimed to believe these things, but I didn't know the gospel. And I was converted about four and a half years later. And the longer I live and meet people, I keep finding other people that went through that same thing. In my opinion, This is going out on a limb, and I know some people that aren't familiar with this ministry or not familiar with me are going to be shocked by this statement. But in my opinion, I believe that most, the majority, who claim to be in the Calvinist camp are ignorant of the gospel of grace, wherein grace reigns through righteousness. If you have any familiarity with theology or theologians, some in the past have made statements like, Calvinism is the gospel. I know C.H. Spurgeon, who I'm not a big fan of, had a message that just dealt with that subject, calling Calvinism the gospel. Now, let me say this before I get my head cut off. There are certain aspects of the gospel in Calvinism, and there can be if it's taught right. That's the whole issue of what I'm talking about today. Sometimes there's all this doctrine and theology about these historical views of Calvinism, Reformed theology, sovereign grace, but it's absent of the gospel. It's absent of Christ. And that's what we want to dig into and look at. I'm going to go through the tulip, the five points and show where I think stress ought to be on those so that we can see the gospel in the doctrines of grace. So it's about the righteousness of Christ in relation to the doctrines of grace. These things have to be held together. We can't divorce them. Otherwise, you have Christless Calvinism, Christless sovereign grace. I know it sounds weird, but I see it all the time. So what good it here? Here's another thing just to think about just practically and logically. What good is it to say that Calvinism is the gospel? and then turn around and say, another gospel that counters it, another gospel, quote unquote, that counters the doctrines of grace is a legitimate form of the gospel that God will use as the power of God unto salvation and save people like John Wesley or Billy Graham or use John Wesley or Billy Graham's so-called gospel to save other people. Makes no sense. People have not faced that fact, that that makes no sense. It is a contradiction. And when people come to grips with that point, the question has to be asked sincerely, who do you have more concern for? The glory of God's character? Are you concerned for the reverence and the glory of God's character? Or are you more concerned about the glory of man? and the glory of their flesh, of their famous ministry. Galatians 6.14 says, God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that is the rule that the new creature lives by, glorying in the cross of Christ. Above all else, everything else gets behind that. Famous preachers, famous theologians, tradition, I realize that this is controversial. There's a lot of at stake here as far as people's reputations, people's pride, people's tradition, people's money. So are you promoting the flesh? Do you have confidence in the flesh? What you think about these things will tell that. Christ in the gospels mentions, if anyone loved their mother, their father, their sister, their brother more than me, is not worthy of me. You know who else you can put in there? Billy Graham, John Wesley, John Piper. You can put those people in there. People are more concerned about the honor of men than the glory of God. In a verse in one of the books of Thessalonian, it talks about these people that will be damned because they received not the love of the truth. People talk about truth and they give lip service to the truth, but right here is where they, they turn over. They sacrifice God's glory right here. It's either man's honor or God's glory. And it has to do with the love of the truth. Do you love the truth or are you just giving lip service to the truth? So I want everybody here and everybody listening on the different media outlets to diligently, soberly consider where your allegiance is. This is not some obscure point. This is pretty basic right here. It's pretty basic. It has to do with allegiance. to God, his glory and the truth. As Elijah said, choose you this day who you serve. That's not a free will statement that is soberly setting your mind on. Am I going to compromise the truth or am I going to be faithful to the fateful one? By God's grace, I hope that we can say as for me and my house and for this church, We shall serve the Lord right here, right now. And through this message, as these points come up, we need to make that determination. So I want to run through what's considered the doctrines of grace or the five points of Calvinism or reform theology or sovereign grace and You know, like I said, I'm trying to write a book on this. So, you know, an hour message is not going to exhaust this. I'm going to try to go through it and just hit some high points of what me looking back, showing what I was missing as I was a Calvinist, a five point Calvinist, arguing with Armenians for sport. And I did not know Christ and did not know the gospel. Total depravity. the T in TULIP. When we think of total depravity, a lot of times you'll see arguments on social media or YouTube or in person. And usually total depravity is just or the sovereignty of God connected with total depravity. It's just like predestination versus free will. It's an intellectual, philosophical argument about you don't have free will. And total depravity does say you don't have free will. It clearly spells that out. But there are some gospel aspects that are more clear that should be pointed to that I don't hardly hear about, and they should be stressed more. And they are at least in three points. Number one, we're very familiar with Romans 3, 10 through 12, four nuns. None righteous, none good, none that understands, none that seeks after God. The gospel aspect here is that total depravity focuses on this idea that people by nature are void of a righteousness that answers the demands of God's law and justice. They're in need of justification. They don't have that righteousness. They don't meet that standard. They're in need of a righteousness so that they can meet that standard. That is a chief proponent of total depravity. And that's their greatest need. And they don't even know it. We know that Christ himself is the standard of righteousness. God the Father demands absolute perfection. He demands that you be just like his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ came and he showed that standard. by obedience to the law, perfect obedience to the law. He who knew no sin. He was born under the law. He kept the law. He fulfilled the law. He magnified the law. He satisfied the law. And he died paying the penalty of the law, which we'll get to in the atonement here in a minute. But he is the standard of righteousness. He himself is the very glory of God for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. That's Christ. Christ is the glory of God. and you got to be like Christ. And right away, total depravity says you can't do it. Therefore, you're in need of some good news for some information that shows how you can get to that point. How can I get that righteousness? It's demanded. How can I get it? Secondly, under total depravity, we have to see that Adam's sin Imputed to our account is the very ground of condemnation. This is our problem when we come into the world. And it's because of Adam. And it's come to us because of Adam. We have sin on our account before we're born because of Adam's sin transferred to our account. And the fruit of that is this sin nature. We are corrupt. We're morally corrupt. Verse 19 of Romans 5, for as by one man's disobedience, Many were made sinners. We were born sinners because of one man's disobedience. Now, that's very important to see, and we should love this because the way we get out of this problem is by somebody else's obedience. God set this thing up wisely by two representatives, Adam and Christ. But the ground of condemnation is Adam's sin. just like the ground of justification is Christ's righteousness. Thirdly, under total depravity is that the chief evidence of total depravity, bar none, the chief evidence that is acted out in the mind of the sinner, the activity of the sinner, the mouth of the sinner, the motive of the sinner is self-righteousness, dead works. which is fruit unto death. The sinner by nature does not even know that he's doing this. He thinks it's the best thing he can do. The conscience that was imparted to man at the fall can detect immorality. It can detect when you do something bad, immorally bad, the conscience bothers you. It can detect those sins. You know what sin that it can't detect? Self-righteousness. It cannot detect it. The conscience that has not been cleansed actually promotes the sin of self-righteousness and churns and churns to produce a righteousness of your own. The conscience, even without the Holy Spirit, can detect immorality. That's why we have false religion. False religion is based on unregenerate sinners who are guided by their conscience alone to produce answers in getting a righteousness. They don't even realize what they're doing. They're deceived. So this sin of self-righteousness, it's the worst sin because it competes with Christ. It is the most deceiving sin that cannot be detected, and it takes the gospel concerning the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel to explode this idea of self-righteousness. There are ministries that promote today, promote legalism in many different forms because of this doctrine of repentance from self-righteousness is not talked about. It's not recognized. As a matter of fact, this going about to establish a righteousness of their own to make up for the bad that they have done is the very thing that they'll look to as evidence as their regeneration. Very deceptive. Unconditional election. Number two, unconditional election. This is what we've been going through in our series. It would have been part five today if I would have done it. We're going to do at least 20 parts easy. So we're going to be wearing this out. But I've talked a little bit about it in the series about how that election is called the election of grace. Election is tied to the gospel and the election, unconditional election, must be seen in Christ. With Christ having the spotlight, election is conditioned on Christ. Election is unto salvation. So election is part of salvation. We cannot remove election from salvation. It is part of salvation. You look at any group out there that looks at unconditional election and they talk against it. They fight against unconditional election. These people, they don't know God. They hate the God of election. Election, as we have been talking about in our series, it's all through the scripture. It's all through there. The Jews knew about election. They gloried in it, which was a precursor to the church. And we glory in the God of election. And we see that it is not conditioned on us, but it's conditioned on Christ alone. We are chosen in Christ because of Christ for his sake. And this election unto salvation takes us to the cross. That's where this election is taking us. It's taking a people to be represented by Christ at the cross. And then thirdly, under this head of unconditional election. Unconditional election is not merely about sheer, raw sovereignty of God, just as in shock value. I used to do it. I know people, I see it all the time. Election, it's just, again, going back to the idea of predestination versus free will. It's about raw sovereignty. They want to make it. But they don't point it to Christ. It's not related to Christ. It's not Christ-centered where Christ has preeminence as he represents the elect. So we'll talk more about that in the series as it goes on in election. L in TULIP, the centerpiece, the one that so many people want to compromise on and allow to be taken away. That's kind of weird to me. The death of Christ, the atonement of Christ, is the main thing in the gospel. It's the very main thing. And so many quote-unquote Calvinist reformed sovereign grace people, they'll turn a blind eye to people who reject the atonement. This one I can't figure out. Why will they allow the atonement to be divorced from the gospel? It can't be done. So the atonement, number one, is effectual. I wish there was some type of another acronym. I've seen other acronyms that try to spell out some of these points, but limited atonement I don't really care for the term. I agree with it in connection with election. Of course, it's limited in the number of people or who it's for. But the gospel focus of the atonement is that it is effectual. That's where we ought to concentrate. If you can talk about effectual atonement and explain what that is, the extent of the atonement is going to take care of itself. We're going to know who these people are when we see how his death works. The atonement is effectual, in other words, Whomever Christ laid down his life for, they're going to be saved because of his death alone. It's sufficient in and of itself. The sufficiency and the effectualness of the atonement works by itself to do the saving alone. It's actually what does the saving. And we know the false gospel says, well, Christ died for everybody. to merely render all people savable potentially based on what you do further in producing conditions to finish the work. False gospel. Billy Graham's gospel, John Wesley's gospel, the vast majority of false religion out there has that failed atonement by that failed Christ that is not effectual but is based on conditions. Verse 19, the second part goes on there and says, by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. A little bit more deeper or more technical that might take longer to explain is some in Reformed theology talk about justification by faith. Some are OK on it and they're right on it, but some what they mean by that is that faith is a condition and faith is the righteousness. This is subtle and it's dangerous and it's false. By the obedience of one, many are made righteous. Being made righteous is being declared righteous based on the obedience of one, not by what you do with that obedience. Our faith is right there. It's in this one. But we don't have faith in our faith. Faith is not the perpetuation. Faith does not satisfy God's law and justice. Do not put your eyes on your faith. Your faith puts your eyes on Christ alone. Some would go further and say, faith alone is never alone. Watch out what they say next. Be careful when they say that sometimes they are saying, we're going to turn it back in again and look inside. The Atonement is effectual. I had mentioned it's sufficient in and of itself. We see so many aspects of things going on and so many facets in the atonement, imputation, satisfaction. That's my next point. The atonement is satisfactory. As the father took the sin of the elect and charged it to the account of Christ, imputed it to Christ. transferred it legally to the account of Christ, Christ then bearing responsibility for that sin, God viewing him as guilty of that sin that was not his. He paid the penalty under God's strict law and justice for the penalty of that sin until it was completely satisfied. And he said, it's finished. That is propitiation. that results in reconciliation. Verse 20 of the text says, but the law entered so that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. It's the idea of hyper, much more. It hyper abounded. it was more than the thing before it that caused the problem. Whatever fixes a problem has to be more than the thing before it. Well, Christ took that sin of his people and by grace he abounded to put it away and to satisfy law and justice against that guilt and condemnation for that sin of his people. And he finished it. He finished it. In other words, the work was done. We know in the old covenant, we see that those priests every year had to do the same thing because it wasn't finished. They had to do the same thing every year. And in the temple and all those activities going on when they did those sacrifices, the priest did not sit down. Well, Christ finished it and he ascended and was exalted and he sat down showing his rightful place in his mediatorial lordship as the mediator, the God man. And he sat down and he is considered the king of righteousness. He sits on his throne of righteousness, holding his scepter of righteousness because grace reigns through righteousness. And he finished it. And we cannot forget that we're talking about a person who did this work. When we consider the person of Christ, there's all this information about who he was, not only what he did, but who he was as the God-man. His character attributes that we've been talking about recently, how that he is the express image of the person of the Father, equal in all the character attributes. This is the sovereign Christ who did not fail. This is the one who satisfied justice so that God could be both a just God and a savior. I'm God and there's none else. This is the way I do salvation. Any other form of salvation is no salvation. You're believing a false God if you don't believe this salvation, he says. He did not fail. He is the Lord, our righteousness. That's his name. You shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. The person of Christ is to be seen and honored. in the gospel. Anything that comes against the person of Christ or his work, we need to spring up and defend it. If we have a love for the truth, as the scripture says. If we don't have a love for the truth or for the gospel, we don't care. We're going to let it slide. We're going to compromise. The I in TULIP, irresistible grace. The elect are regenerated in order to see the gospel promise of salvation conditioned on Christ alone. That's the focus of irresistible grace. They're born again to see Christ. They're born again to believe the gospel. We know plenty of verses that kind of tie in irresistible grace to total depravity. And here we get the ability through the Spirit saving us monergistically, powerfully, the same power that it took to raise Christ from the dead. We're given eyes to see what Christ's resurrection was all about. It was because he finished the work. He finished the work. So the Holy Spirit's job is to testify of Christ. said he didn't come to testify himself. He's there to point people to Christ. That's the spirit's job, and the spirit, I believe, likes that job. The father has seen fit to put Christ out in preeminence. The spirit doesn't say, hey, wait a minute, I'm kind of jealous of that. Let me focus on me and make everybody talk about instead of the work of Christ for them, let me try to make people think about my part, the work of the spirit in them. And maybe I can make them think that that's the ground of salvation, right? Because that's what a lot of false religion is based on. It's not based on the work of Christ for the sinner. They want to take the work of the spirit in the sinner and put it ahead of the work of Christ for the sinner. But Christ has preeminence. The fruit of the spirit is because of something that preceded it. the ground of salvation, the work of Christ for the sinner. Now, we have to have the spirit. We love the spirit. We worship the spirit. We walk in the spirit. But if we look at the spirit in a wrong way that doesn't match the scripture, we dishonor the spirit. Spirit's job is to testify of Christ. Irresistible grace concerns this activity of God whereby the sinner is now justified based on the righteousness of Christ imputed to them because of the effectual atonement. And then life is given and the eyes see the proper object of faith, Christ alone. And I stress both Christ and alone. In verse 21 of our text, it says so that as sin has reigned to death, Even so, in other words, in the self same way, just like sin reigned unto death, just like that. Also, grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life by Christ Jesus, the Lord. This righteousness is the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel as spoken of in Romans 1 17. Verse 16 says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ because it's the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. Verse 17, for there in that gospel is the righteousness of God revealed from faith, from that message to the faith of those that believe. And the righteousness of God, as we've said many times, is not just and only the character attribute of God's righteousness, because if we say, okay, the gospel of the righteous God revealed in the gospel is God's attribute of righteousness. The total depraved sinner, not believing, looks at God's attribute of righteousness and is scared to death. He shrinks back. I can't get there. That's against me. So the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel is this message, and you can see it in the rest of Romans, It's this message whereby it talks about the elect being able to have a righteousness by Christ coming and establishing a righteousness, meriting it, earning it, and imputing it or charging or transferring it to the sinner so that he can be righteous, so that God, when he declares him righteous because of that, can be both a just God and a savior and be faithful to his own character, not cheating, not saying, I'm going to bend my law and justice going to let you slide because your sincerity or your obedience or whatever type of commands or laws that you're keeping and wherever you failed, I mean, you're doing the best you can. So I'm going to let you slide because I'm so sovereign. I can do that. God does not do that. He's both a just God and a savior. He demands absolute perfection. You must have perfection. The only perfection is in the Lord Jesus Christ that's spelled out in the gospel. All that hath heard and learned of the father comes to Christ because they know the father demands only the standard of Christ perfection, the very glory of God. So that righteousness is what is going to be looked for at judgment. We approach judgment. And we can't plea anything else except the person work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We can't plea what we think is the work of the spirit in us. But Lord, Lord, didn't I do this, that, and the other. The Pharisees said, I even thank God and I'm not like other men. Are we going to plead that at judgment? Things that we think God, even giving credit to God, that God did in us. I fight all types of false religion, even under sovereign grace reform, Calvinist umbrellas that still say, but it's God that works in me. And then they can still make it conditional in the end. They bring it in the back door. Grace reigns only through righteousness, this righteousness that we're talking about that's revealed in the gospel. This whole chapter. 12, the section 12 through 21 is not talking about regeneration. It's talking about justification. It's talking about the work of Christ for his people. The most subtle of all self-righteousness is this view of conditional salvation under sovereign grace reform Calvinist theology. It's the most subtle of all, in my opinion. Being a five pointer in conditioning salvation on something that you do, even if you're claiming it's the work of the spirit in you. Fourthly, under this point is, we alluded to it before, is repentance from self-righteous dead works. This idea is in some ministries just totally absent. It's just not there. Whether wittingly or unwittingly, I don't know. And I guess it really doesn't matter. It's just not there. And sometimes they'll give lip service to little parts of it here and there and they'll move on to just undo it with conditions that they put in anyway. As I said before, any form of self-righteousness, whether it be at initial conversion, during salvation or for final salvation, any parts of self-righteousness that involves conditions, it competes with the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the wickedness of it. The Father has set Christ forth in preeminence and he is looking for absolutely perfect obedience. And you come in and you condition your final salvation or any part of salvation on your obedience. You're looking at the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the most precious thing to the father and the most magnificent thing that we see that the son did. And you're hocking up a big old goober and you're spitting right in the eyeball of God. You're getting piles of dong, putting it up to his nostrils. You're getting menstrual rags and you're spitting in the face of God. You're smearing that in his face and saying, this is good enough. Your son. Yeah, that's part of it. But I have to and then add a condition. They're blind to it. They don't see that they're doing that. Ignorance is no excuse. What is it? We read in Romans 10, 1 through 4, Paul is praying for his former colleagues in false religion, what he used to be in. And he says, I pray that these people will be saved, which heavily implies they're lost, right? There's no getting around it. He says, I bear them record that they have a zeal of God. They're excited about God. They have fervor for their religion. They're zealous. They're moral. They're serious. They're sincere, but not according to knowledge. What kind of knowledge? The knowledge of the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel, which is the power of God into salvation. And that's the reason it's the power of God into salvation, because the righteousness of God is revealed in it. Well, these people Paul's praying for that were in false religion that he used to be in. is saying they're lost because they don't know about this or have not submitted to it this righteousness of Christ. So they're lost. I mean, they're getting nuts, getting crazy, working, doing all kind of stuff. They look clean on the outside so much that everybody in the world saying if they're not saved, who can be? Right. Christ said Christ was saying these guys are self-righteous religious hypocrites. They're they're whited sepulchers inside. They're rotten. And everybody looking at him that looked up to him as honorable religious people, the go to guys for the law. They said, if these people aren't saved, it's like there's no hope for me because look at them perform. In another place, Christ said, accept your righteousness, exceed these. The righteousness of scribes and Pharisees. you shall in no wise, no case, enter the kingdom of heaven. A couple thousand years later, here comes a Calvinist that's a theologian that gets paid who knows how much, that pastors the church and writes books and preaches at conferences saying, this righteousness that Christ is talking about that must exceed the righteousness of scribes and Pharisees is your personal righteousness that salvation has been conditioned on. If you don't get busy with your personal righteousness and exceed the righteousness of scribes and Pharisees, You shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven. Get busy. I'm telling you, whoever says that they're false prophets and you need to run from them and expose them. There is no personal righteousness that's worth a crap or worth minstrel rags. Matter of fact, I know a couple of dudes that said that. Paul said it. He counted his as dung, Isaiah said. All my righteousnesses are just like filthy menstrual rags. But later, somehow, thousands of years later, people can talk about this and get it over on people. And they lap it up. And if you point it out, you're the devil. Should it surprise you? Christ? pointed it out. He said, if they hated me, they're going to hate you. Repentance from dead works and self-righteousness. Philippians 3, when you get time, look at it. Paul lays it out beautifully. I think he's the model for repentance from dead works and self-righteousness. Look at all the books that warn about it. Colossians, Galatians, Hebrews, it's all in there. This is what's called walking by the spirit. People want to take Romans 8, they'll run to Romans 8 and they'll talk about the flesh and they'll make the flesh there become immorality. It's talking about self-righteousness. And if they get that wrong, they get it wrong all the way through. This is called living by faith. The just shall live by faith and their faith is in the proper object of faith, Christ alone. Fifthly, and lastly, the P in tulip. And I use preservation. I'll talk about perseverance here in a minute. But I use preservation because of another P. Perversion has taken place under this last P. And I've talked about it most of the message. But this is talking about God's people, the saints, those that have been sanctified or set apart are secure. and assured based on the finished work of Christ. Can't get any more simple than that. That's what it is. They're preserved because of something outside of themselves, no matter how good they do or how bad they do from day to day, from hour to hour, from minute to minute. They're preserved based on an objective righteousness outside of their selves that's been charged to their account, so much so that they're under even a new state. They're under a state of righteousness. And the other side of that coin is they're in the state of the non-imputation of sin. Sin cannot nor never will be imputed to their account. God won't do it and God can't do it. And gladly so. Not just gladly for me. God himself glories in it. He's faithful to his character. Secondly, under that point is preservation. And some of our text talks about that. I mean, if grace is going to reign over sin and death, there's not going to be any problem. Let's go to Colossians. We've looked at several times before, but Colossians one will end it with this. Colossians one, verse nine, the context is talking. There's all kind of good stuff about Christ right before this. The context is talking about Christ. I love this chapter. Verse 19. For or because it pleased the Father that in him, in Christ, all fullness should dwell. And through him, through Christ, notice this, having made peace through the blood of his cross. Reminds me of Stephen Lawson. It will cost you everything talking about Purchasing the terms of peace with God and he's not talking about this It's by what you do We've talked about that in the Lordship salvation series Very blatant very clear. There's no getting around it. It's terrible looks bad. I Would like to see what he would say about Someone pointing that out to him. I would venture to say he would double down and not retract a word. It's passed around. That section of video that I put up is like 11 minute video. It's to a larger video is passed around the Reformed Sovereign Grace Calvinistic circles as the thing to look to in living your life. I'm thinking this is what to look to, to avoid because peace is found through the blood of his cross. It pleased the Father to reconcile all things to himself through him, whether they be things on earth or things in heaven. And you, Paul's talking to the church at Colossae, the saints, the believers, he says he's getting personal with them, and you who were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works. Now, we know this could include all kinds of things, wicked works. But we know that we cannot forget and we should put in the forefront that mainly it's talking about self-righteous fleshly works of trying to get salvation, maintain salvation, and attain final salvation by conditions, by what you do. That is the most wicked thing on the face of the earth. Yet now he has reconciled. How did he do that? Verse 22, in the body of his flesh through death to present you progressively holy, depending on what you do. Anybody see that in there? I don't either. How can we get that out of there? How can we extract that from that? Beings, there's no text in the whole scripture that says that. in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy separated consecrated purified apart from the others that he did not do that work for making peace by the blood of his cross that's where it came from by the way and without blemish let me insert one more goofy thing talking about a man that was involved with a ministry called I'll Be Honest. It seems like he's he's coming out of it. And Tim Conway, I guess it's the main guy, is in a video and talks about how that talking about John Wesley's view of perfectionism. And he poses the question, is it possible for a believer to eventually attain A life of not sinning ever. I couldn't finish the video, but he was pretty favorable toward it. He was, I think he was getting there. I need to watch the rest of it today. But you heard questions from the congregation. One guy in the back that sounded like he knew what he was saying. He was talking about the standing, the legal standing. He had the right idea it sounded like, but he said, no, I'm not talking about it. He said, let's forget about that for now. I'm thinking, yeah, you've forgotten about it. Your whole ministry. If you're honest, I'll be honest. No. Paul said to Galatians, do you hear what the law says? You're not hearing what the law says. I'll say the same thing to Tim Conway. Do you hear what the law says? Obviously not. What does it demand? Perfection all the time, every time. No exceptions. without blemish and without charge. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? Romans 8. Rhetorical question. Nobody. It's God that justifies. Yea, rather, it's Christ who died to make it happen. Peace through the blood of his cross. I brought us to this text for right here. We will end with this verse 23. and the conditionalists camp out on the word if, right? And they distract you with if so much so that when the rest of the sentence is read the focus of what the rest of the sentence said is on something else and not by what it actually says in the sentence. If indeed you continue in the faith The faith is that message, that body of doctrine, the gospel. What does it say in Jude? That we are to contend for the faith. That message, that body of doctrine that we believe it's the means to our salvation. The righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel from faith, from the message to faith. to the faith of the one believing. So it's a message. If you continue in that message, right? Christ said, you're my disciples if you continue in my word. You're my disciples indeed if you continue in my word. This is what he's talking about right here. Perseverance in the faith. Now he's not talking about, let me just stop right here. Because the ones that like to look at the if, The conditionalists, they want to say that it's something that comes out of the faith, things that you're doing, and they want to inspect those things. You're not doing enough. You're not progressing enough. It's not about the faith anymore. It's about you. Right. That is the focus that some of these ones that talk about perseverance of the saints, They want to talk about a sainthood that you hope that you have in the end. It's almost like Rome. We have a committee of other legalists that vote on whether or not you ended up being a saint, which means if you did, I guess your justification was OK. This is what it's become. It's ridiculous. If you continue in the faith. So you just believe some little watered down gospel and you move on. Now, the faith, the only faith, the only gospel, and not only that, you're grounded in it and you're settled in it. The text says grounded and settled. You're a believer. You're grounded and settled. If you're not grounded and settled, you're going to be like a leaf. And somebody comes along and says, yeah, Christ is fine, but you got to be circumcised to like in Galatians. If they weren't grounded and settled, you know what they went. with the Judaizers. Or Christ's okay, you've got to be baptized too. So you're going to be some form of baptismal region, or you're going to be like a leaf going that way. Yeah, yeah, Christ is fine, but if you have a habit of sinning, then you're not persevering in the gospel. You know, and then you say, well, do you sin? Christ said, they say and don't do. Right. You ask them, do you still sin every day? Oh, yeah. Yeah. But I repent. What's that lean back on? You're doing the best you can. Nobody. First of all, nobody does the best they can. They're liars. If you're a human being, you don't do the best you can. You're a liar. If we all go to judgment and God judges us based on the best that we're trying to do. We're all going to hell. You know what? The best we can do is not propitiation. It's the best that Christ did. It's finished. If you take your eyes off that, you're not grounded and settled in the faith. And are not moved away from the hope of the gospel. The word hope, it's not I hope, I hope, I hope it's not that. It's a confident expectation. Believers believe the promise of salvation condition on Christ outside themselves. Their hope is not inside themselves, even if they attribute it to the work of the spirit in them. Hope in the gospel, going back to that faith, continuing the faith. There's no contradiction in this if here. It's bringing it back to the ground of salvation. Because I could turn right around and say, if you don't continue in the faith and if you're not grounded and settled, and if you move away from the hope of the gospel, you're lost and you never were saved. It's easy. A lot of true colors are coming out this week over the death of Billy Graham. I mean, it's just bleh, it's just coming out. Their heart is exposed by what their mouth says about what they claim they believe. And I think I've covered most of it right here today. And I'm asking that anybody that holds to sovereign grace, Calvinism, reformed theology, consider, examine yourself. Right? You hear that a lot. Examine yourself in these issues. Any comments or questions? And I'm really close to getting a message up on Sermon Audio. I know there was a long gap there. I had problems with my computer. I've got a stack of them to put up since, I think, I want to say September. All right. Got a question. Maybe you can have a spokesperson if you don't want to ask it. Go ahead. Yeah, I should clarify that, yeah. If Christ has done something for somebody, the Spirit of God will do something in somebody. No doubt about it. That's the fruit of that work. That's why And I want to assure you of this point right here. It should be the strongest point that I can make on this. False religion says that Christ died for everybody. But then most of those people end up not believing and they go to hell. That contradicts that whole point that you're bringing up. If Christ has done something for you, the spirit will work in you. All that the father gives me, Christ said, John 6, 37, all that the father gives me in election, They'll come to me. That's the work of the Spirit in them. And he that comes to me, I will in no wise cast out. And they'll be grounded and settled and not moved away from the hope of the gospel. The scripture says, Philippians 1, 6, I believe it is. He that begun a good work in you, Spirit of God, will finish it until the day of Christ. So the Spirit comes in a person, regenerates them, comes into their, dwells in them, gives them a new heart and mind, takes out the old heart. Other places call this the mind of Christ. And we grow in the grace and nods of Lord Jesus Christ because of the spirit. The spirit of God works in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure, energizes us constantly and does that until the very end. So, yes, your answer to that is yes. But having said that, We don't take the work of the spirit and make that the ground of our salvation. The ground of our salvation is the work of Christ for us, establishing righteousness by who he is and what he did, imputing it to our account, and the fruit of that, the spirit is enabled then to work because of that. Scripture says a few different places, but in Romans 8, 10, it says the spirit is life because of righteousness. so one produced the other so hopefully that helps