Sunday School | Q&A with Tim on Bible Part II

This is the very last day of our months long series on the New Testament. We've looked at every book in the New Testament. And when we did, I created these guides for you of each book, and they're all up here. I printed them more this morning to make sure that we refreshed whatever we're out of. So if you are getting the whole collector set, they're all up here. If you're missing anything, feel free to come grab them before or after class. This thing will be available forever basically.

As you recall, what we did last week and what we're gonna do this week is just Q&A. I have literally exactly nothing planned. So, Mickey, if you don't have a question, it's gonna get boring. Hopefully, there's something anywhere between Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians that you're curious about that we can take a look at. Anything from the lessons that we did that you didn't understand the way I summarized it or even just a passage in any book in the New Testament—it's all fair game. We'll take a look at it.

Schedule Ahead

I put up on the screen what I tried to tell you last week—it's just gonna be really helter skelter here for the next month or so. Right? So today is the twenty-first. Next week, Will and Becky are gonna be here, which is so great. We love Will and Becky. They've been serving in Cambodia, and they're going back to Cambodia, but they're just here for a little bit. So Will is gonna preach, and Will and Becky will teach this class and talk about their time in Cambodia, and then Will will preach again.

And then we have nothing for May 5 because of VBS training. So if you're in VBS, if you're to be a volunteer in VBS, we're yielding the space to those folks. You can come and get trained, but you probably want to sign up to be a volunteer. Otherwise, there won't be any class per se.

And then I'm gonna do a two week little gig on feminism. I'm curious—has anybody gone back to watch the Barbie movie yet? All right. Some of you did? Okay. I'm going to keep all my powder dry about that, but we're going to do that in a few weeks. We're going to talk about Barbie, talk about some really interesting broader cultural trends within Christianity, and then Memorial Day, VBS, and then summer Sunday school.

Maybe you don't know—I don't think I mentioned this last week. For essentially what is that, June, July, and August, I'm not gonna be teaching my class. We're gonna have a bunch of other classes going on during the summertime. I don't think I've taken a summer break in like nine years. We're gonna have a bunch of other classes going on. Brian and Barbara teaching, Andy Fetzer is teaching, Alan Janney is teaching. We've got a bunch of fun things going on. We'll have more details about the schedule of that starting in June 9. That's what you can expect in this room for the next couple of months.

Open Q&A

Without further ado, let's talk about the New Testament. Wide open, any questions that you have, anything we did in the summaries, anything in any of the books, and you can set the agenda. What you got?

Bob, go ahead.

Bob: How about giving your take that you did with the Vince Bible study on Acts 15, the four elements of the Jerusalem Council of the letter they sent out, especially with the local Christians?

Okay. So Bob is referring to something that I did a week ago and I have absolutely no idea what I did a week ago. So we're going to Acts 15. I remember Acts 15 and teaching on the Jerusalem Council. But when you refer to a four point, what was that?

Bob: Basically summarized four things that you guys should have stated for.

Oh, that. Okay, yes. Okay, very good. Now I'm loaded up.

So if you go to Acts 15. Okay. So the book of Acts—what do you guys think the book of Acts is about? If you remember what it's about? What is Acts?

Audience member: Early church.

Excellent. What else?

Audience member: The spread of the gospel.

That all we get? Spread of the gospel, absolutely. Alright, the gospel—the gospel of the kingdom is going to go to the whole world and we're going watch it go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth. Yes, that's all true. But do you recall there's like an enigmatic mystery that is kind of explaining how on earth did we get to hear? The Gentiles. Who are all these who brought the Gentiles to this thing? Like what is going on, right?

So when you get through the book of Acts, the beginning of the book of Acts, Christianity is almost exclusively a Jewish concern. The Jewish Messiah has come.

He's finally come at long last. All the Old Testament is fulfilled and here he is. And by the end of Acts, there's like majority Gentile in like a thirty year span. It's majority non-Jew. And the book of Acts is largely written to explain how on earth do we get to here from there.

You can see that at a bunch of key points. Go to Acts 28, the very end of the book. Look at verse 28:25. Let me start at 25.

They disagreed among themselves and began to leave after Paul had made this final statement. The Holy Spirit spoke the truth. He's speaking to the Jews. The Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your forefathers when he said through Isaiah the prophet, "Go to this people and say, 'You will be ever hearing but never understanding. You'll be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people's heart has become callous. They hardly hear with their ears. They've closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.'" And here's the punchline, verse 28:28: "Therefore, I want you to know that God's salvation has been sent to the Gentiles and they will listen." So for two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house, welcomed all who came to see him boldly and without hindrance. He preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ. — Acts 28:25-31

The end of the book is Paul saying, "Listen, we're going to the Gentiles." There's just been this struggle all the way through. Now, what happens at the end of the book is that this is for the Europeans and the Africans and the Australians and the Americans. It's going everywhere. And it's so puzzling. How did we get to here from there?

The Jerusalem Council

Right in the middle of the book, Acts 15 is the center of the book, and in the centerpiece, Luke records this monumental decision. We usually call it the Jerusalem Council. It's the first time and one of the most foundational times that the leaders of the church were facing a thorny issue. They all get together and they say, "What are we going to do about this problem?" And the problem is the admission of people like you into the party.

So there's this sense, they get this begrudging sense: okay, okay, okay, we're going to let the Gentiles in to the Jewish club. But once the Gentiles are in the Jewish club, we're like, "Yeah, but we should make them do stuff that we do." Gentiles can come to the party, but they better act like Jews. That's the question that's going on.

In Acts 15 the Jerusalem Council meets. All the leaders of the church meet and they consider this question and they decide not to make all the Gentiles do Jewish stuff. And in particular, the heartbeat of that is circumcision.

Now, a guy named James—not James of Peter, James, and John, that guy is dead—it's James the brother of Jesus. He's going to basically give a judgment here. Look at verse 19.

It is my judgment therefore that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Meaning we shouldn't make them be circumcised. Instead, we should write to them telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogue on every Sabbath. — Acts 15:19-21

That list of four things shows up in the letter they actually write. They write a letter, basically what he just said.

It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements. You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell. — Acts 15:28-29

What's curious about that letter is many things. One, it doesn't say anything about circumcision. The whole thing was about circumcision and they just don't talk about it. Instead they talk about these other four things.

So the four things that we Gentiles are told not to do are these things: abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. That list gets quoted again in chapter 22. So three times in the book of Acts you get that list.

You with me so far?

The Four Requirements from the Jerusalem Council

Now all that is background to what I think Bob wanted me to tell you. So those four things are a little bit strange. Like if we had the Roanoke Council and said, "Do Gentiles need to be circumcised or not?" and we just decided no, we don't think we need to, then we would say, "But is there anything we think maybe they should do?" We might come up with a list saying, "Yeah, if some Roman or Greek non-Jewish person becomes a follower of Christ, maybe these would be four good things to do." We probably wouldn't come up with this list, and we probably wouldn't state it this way.

The list actually, if you understand what he's talking about, has three things that make total sense and then one thing that's kind of weird. Here's what he means. The language they're using isn't all that clear to us.

Number one: Food sacrificed to idols. That's actually pretty clear. Don't participate in idolatry. That's what they're saying. Idolatry is the number one sin consistently throughout the scriptures—the worship of other gods.

You shall have no other gods before you.

We are not to enter into idol worship. That one's a little funny because Paul elsewhere is going to say, if somebody offers you meat offered to his god, then you don't eat it. But if there's meat in the marketplace and you know full well that it's been offered to some false god, it's like, no big deal, just eat it because they're lying anyway. There is no god they're offering to. It's fake, it's imaginary. So we have on the one hand permission to eat meat—just eat it—to the pure all things are pure, no big deal. But if it's being represented to you as idolatrous meat, then say, "Yeah, thanks, no thanks, I'm out." So it's a little more complicated the way Paul impacts it, but here it's don't participate in idolatry. That's great.

Number two: From blood. What does that mean? To avoid blood? Do you know what he means by that? Want to guess? Like Samson was told not to deal with—Samson was a Nazarite. He had taken this special vow that he couldn't touch anything dead. So it's broader than that. And really what it means by blood here is the best way to read that would be bloodshed. He's saying don't participate in idolatry and don't murder anybody. I was like, okay, fair enough. You all down with that? You get to keep your foreskin, but you can't kill anybody. Good enough.

Number three: From sexual immorality. That's also pretty clear. And that little trifecta is a very sensible trifecta. Here's the thing: if you want to be a Christian, no idolatry, no sexual immorality, no murder. You do that, you can come to our party. Okay, does this make sense?

Now these aren't salvific things—we're saved by grace through faith—but these are very much like the Bible will sometimes do in Proverbs, I think it's in one of the minor prophets, I forget which one:

Three things the Lord hates. Four things he cannot stand.

These three things—murder, idolatry, and sexual immorality—this is very reasonably the big three. And so when you read through that list, that's what he's talking about. Murder, idolatry, sexual immorality—yeah, yeah, yeah. We stay away from those three things.

The Fourth Requirement: The Translation Problem

And then there's the fourth one, and the fourth one is weird. What your Bible says is "from the meat of strangled animals." And that's the weird one.

Here's what's weird about it: that's not what it actually says. When anybody translates the Bible from Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic into English, they've got to do some interpretive work. And in this verse, they did a lot of interpretive work and they got it wrong.

If we were to pull up the English and then show you every Greek word that occurs for each of those things, there'd be a bunch of white space. Because what it literally says is: you are abstaining from the food of sacrifice to idols, from blood, from strangled, and from sexual immorality. The word "meat" does not exist and the word "animals" does not exist. It's simply not there. It's being supplied by the translators.

So what they're saying is abstain from idolatry, from murder, from sexual immorality, and from strangulation. That's what it says. The translators are guessing that what they think they mean by strangulation is the meat—didn't say it—of animals—doesn't say it—that you strangled. It's just: avoid murder, avoid idolatry, avoid sexual morality, and avoid strangulation.

So the question is, what are they talking about? What is the strangled sacrifice? Methods of sacrifice?

This is uncomfortably close. But I'm going to be a little more pointed in a second. Anybody else want to guess what strangulation is? Probably. You can put this with an asterisk by it. If I ever tell you something that might not be true, I might be wrong about this. Okay? But I might be right about this. If you're interested, I can send you an article that makes the fuller case.

What this very likely is, what I think this is talking about is infanticide. This is infanticide. It was incredibly common in the Greek Roman culture to not abort a baby because that's hard. That's just difficult to accomplish. But once the baby is born, what you would do is you would just expose it. You just leave the baby out and let the baby die. But that takes a little while and it's a rather unkind procedure. And so if you want to hasten the death by exposure to an infant you do not intend to raise, you would smother it. You would strangle it.

That's what this is saying: Hey, Gentiles, we know there's you guys are Gentiles, you want to follow Christ, that's cool, but there's a few things you should know that you all do that we don't do. You're going to need to leave that behind. You can't worship your false gods anymore. No more, right? The sexual morality that defines your very worship, stop that. You don't get to murder people. We value life. Oh, and by the way, you don't get to kill your babies. Those of you that are exposers or smotherers that participate in strangulation, that's incompatible with being a follower of Jesus. That's probably what he's talking about.

I don't think he's talking about meat, strangled meat. It's just simply not present in the text. If you're either interested in that or you disagree with that, just let me know. I don't know how I'll do it. Just email me, timchsroanoke.com. Timchsroanoke.com. And I'll send you a pretty academic, pretty boring 20 page journal entry that explains a very strong academic case for why what I'm saying is accurate. But it is possible that it's mistaken. But I think it's compelling and I think that's what he was talking about. Okay? So if you're curious about that, email me and I'll send you an article and you can chase it down and see what you think.

Alright, Jesse. Would that article address the question why that would just be lumped in with blood?

Yeah. Yeah. Very good. So Jesse is saying, well, if it simply means the murder of a child, why isn't that included in murder? And I think it's because probably two things. One, it's a very particular case that was very common. And just like in our day, where many people would say abortion is murder, so to say that abortion is murder is redundant—it's like saying murder is murder. Of course, lots and lots of people, like half the country, would disagree with that assertion. So sometimes you pull it out to say no, no, no, this thing that you might deny is murder, we're telling you don't do that. Right? I think this has been a controversial thing for millennia. Right? And some people look at it and say, obviously this is murder. And lots of other people look at this and say, obviously this is not murder. And so I think it just required that clarification. It would be my best guess.

Okay? Alright, Chris. In the Passover season, I'm wondering about a conversation between Jesus and Peter when he's washing the disciples' feet. And this is in John 13. Speaking about John, our Christ being the God. And he says, you know, not just my feet, but also my hands, my head. And that connection, I believe, has to do with what we just went to a seder yesterday talking about, you know, what the priests do when they would sacrifice in the Old Testament, they would bless the food by washing their hands, washing their money. And then Christ says, no. It's good enough. It's just your feet.

I'm wondering my question is, was that put in the scriptures to talk about how—and this is kind of a big wrap up, but well, okay. Stay, stay, try to jump to the question and then we'll backfill it because I think we need to know where we're going.

Is John trying to tell us that Christ still has to do work in this world first before—because everyone at that time definitely had thought that once Messiah comes, I'm gonna come in with a loud trumpet and just save the whole world. Christ is, or John is now showing, is John doing that to show that Christ tells us to do something in the present first and then that coming back, that triumphant roar that we've learned about, all the Jews have learned about in the Old Testament is gonna be a secondary thing, that when Christ comes back the second time?

Okay. So I'm not sure exactly where we're going.

Let's look at John 13. In John 13, Jesus washes the disciples' feet. A curious thing about John's gospel is that he doesn't include the Last Supper. Everything you know about the Last Supper comes from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John doesn't mention it—it's really a curious omission. Instead, he demonstrates that on the night the communion meal took place, Jesus washed his disciples' feet.

As he washes their feet, here's what happens in verse two:

The evening meal is being served, the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, that he had come from God, was returning to God. So he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, wrapped the towel around his waist, and after that he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with a towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter and said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" Jesus replied, "You don't realize now what I'm doing, but later you will understand." — John 13:2-7

Simon Peter asked that question with a sense of, "That would be ridiculous. You're going to wash my feet? Absolutely not." And then Jesus says, "Peter says, 'You shall never wash my feet.' And Jesus said, 'Unless I do, you'll have no part of me.'" And then Simon, who was just so all in—he's that way all the time. He said, "All right, give me a bath." And Jesus is like, "You don't need a bath. Everything, just calm down. Follow me. Lord Simon, not just my feet, but my hands as well."

Jesus said, "A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet. His whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you," for he knew who was going to betray him. That's why he said not everyone was clean. — John 13:10-11

The Meaning of Foot Washing

So what is Jesus doing here? What's the point of this whole event? It's about service. He's teaching them that the one who serves—"I'm the Lord, but I'm willing to serve." The Lord did not come to be served, but to serve, to give his life as a ransom for many. He's giving a very particular expression of the mandate. Remember we talked about Maundy Thursday? What does Maundy mean? Commandment Thursday. What's the command? Love. Love one another. And how is Jesus manifesting his love for them? By washing their nasty feet. That's what this whole thing is all about.

Peter's Extreme Response

Now, the question is: why does Peter say "wash all of me"? I think it's because of Peter's nature. Peter is very much on the loud and not very thoughtful side. There are introverts who are quiet and thoughtful, and then there are extroverts who are sometimes loud and not very thoughtful. Peter's on the loud and not very thoughtful side. God bless him, he's the only guy that's ever walked on water in human history besides Jesus. But the cost of that is sometimes he just does stupid things.

But this isn't really a stupid thing—it's just Peter being Peter. None of the other disciples argue with Jesus like Peter does. Jesus even said to him, "Get behind me Satan." Jesus grows weary of Peter at some point. He's like, just enough. So I think there's not a great deal of meaning in it besides the display of Peter saying, "I want none of this. Okay, fine. I want all of this." He's a man of extremes.

Peter is entrusted with great things because he's always down for it—he's down, he wants to go. But even there, you see the same feature of his personality. He is both the vanguard of welcoming the Gentiles to the party, and he is the one in Galatians 2 that Paul has to rebuke because he's not letting the Gentiles come to the party. Peter is not lukewarm. He's always hot or cold. He's all that he is. He's a man of great extremes and he's often out of balance, but God uses him. He is the central figure as the church gets planted in Jerusalem. So he's a pretty big deal.

This kind of falls into the conversation around predestination and free will.

I'm curious, like in scriptures like Ephesians 1 and Romans 8, if you see a difference between being chosen and then the salvation that occurs. Israel was chosen, but were all of them therefore saved? Curious if you have a perspective in scriptures that kind of helps.

Okay, so let's see. I probably have to give a little bit of context to this question. So there is a doctrine of salvation. As we try to understand, how does it work? Like, okay, so Ali is a believer. But what happened to bring this about? Right?

One option is that Ali is just a little smarter than the rest of us and she figured this out. She said, "That is a good deal. I'm gonna take that deal." Another option is that God mercifully chose Ali out of her rebellion to believe.

Then there's two different perspectives on this. As folks try to wrestle through, at the end of the day, how much of any individual salvation is about human responsibility and responsiveness, and how much of it is about divine mercy and initiative? These are difficult questions to kind of tease apart.

I come down on the side that would be considered reformed or Calvinistic. I believe in predestination. I think that God initiates and that when he initiates, we respond.

Okay, so let me show you first that, and then we'll address the Jewish side of it. So this is a little bit absurd because we could spend hours and hours and hours on this, but I will just for the sake of having some touchpoint to kind of get into your question—it's a great question.

If you go to Romans, you mentioned Romans 8, Romans 8:28. We'll start in verse 29.

For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called, and those he called, he also justified, and those he justified, he also glorified. — Romans 8:29-30

What Paul is describing there is these steps in the process. I want you to notice that Paul does not describe this as a winnowing process. It's not like he foreknew a billion, and he predestined 500 million, and he called 250 million, and he justified 100 million, and he's going to glorify 50 million. Right? There's no winnowing. It's those who he did this, he did this, he did this, he did this. So you have this very clear sense that everyone that he calls, he will justify, he will glorify. There's no loss down the line.

Okay, so that's my answer. However, that answer raises the second part of your question, which is exactly where Paul is going to go in his argument.

The very first step is that God foreknows some. Okay? So when it says, "Those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son," some people have suggested that what he is foreknowing there is who is going to believe. He looks down the corridor of time and he sees, "Okay, this one's going to raise her hand, and this one's going to raise his hand, and this one's going to raise his hand," and he picks those that he knows are going to pick him.

That does violence to grammar and vocabulary. It doesn't say that he foreknew what they would do. It says that he foreknew them. It's not that he peeked around the corner to see the result and then wrote it down and cheated. That knowing is relational knowing. It's what David talks about in Psalm 19:

Before you formed me in the womb, you knew me. — Psalm 139:13

There's this relational knowing with us. That is fixed. He foreknows, he predestines, he calls, he justifies, he glorifies. There is no loss.

And then Paul, in the next three chapters—chapters 9, 10, and 11—he's going to work out his own argument. He's going to argue with himself and say, "Yeah, but what's up with the Jews?" Because as we just saw in the book of Acts, there's so many Jewish people that aren't responding. So did he or didn't he? Did they or didn't they? And this is how he addresses this.

Are you with me so far? You okay? I'm arguing to you that every single one he foreknows, he predestines, and every single one he predestines, he calls, and every single one he calls, he justifies. And then Paul is going to say, "Well, what about that?" Because what he's grinding over—you go to 9:6. This is the whole argument in Romans 9, 10, and 11, but at 9:6 he says:

It is not as though God's word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel, nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. — Romans 9:6-7

In other words, Isaac as opposed to who? Ishmael. Isaac as opposed to Ishmael. Right?

In other words, it is not the natural children who are the children, but it's the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring. And then listen to verse nine, it's the same idea as up above.

For this is how the promise was stated, at the appointed time I will return and Sarah will have a son. — Romans 9:9

Sarah as opposed to who? As opposed to Hagar. Right? And then he says, not only that, but Rebecca's children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. Yet before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad in order that God's purpose and election might stand. This is not so that his purpose and election could be thwarted, but so it might stand. Not by works, by him who calls.

She was told the older will serve the younger just as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. — Romans 9:12-13

So he goes from this argument of like, every one of these goes into one of these, and every one of these goes into one of the known are predestined, are called, are justified, are glorified, there is no winnowing. And then he goes over and he looks at the family tree of Israel, and he's like, yeah, but in the family tree there is a winnowing. There is Abraham, but not all from Abraham, just from Isaac. And not just from Isaac, but only Jacob. And not just from Jacob. But you know, and so there's a winnowing on the tree, but there's not a winnowing of this.

Which means, where Paul is going to go is that in the final analysis, God has particularly foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and one day will glorify a particular subset of this family tree. And none of us can see it, none of us know. This is the Kelly and I will often quote Charles Spurgeon on this point where he said, listen, if the elect had a yellow stripe on their shirt tails, I would be running about the streets of London untucking shirts. But as it is, they do not, and so I preach the gospel to all men. We are not smart enough to see who he's foreknown. And so we share the gospel broadly with everyone, imploring them to stay. Right?

So Spurgeon was simultaneously a fantastic evangelist who used all of his powers. The dude would preach to 10,000 on a Sunday without a microphone. Right? He would do all that he could to implore men to believe the gospel knowing that God had in his mercy foreknown some. He just couldn't tell who they were. So that's the way I see and you see the same thing in Paul's life. He endures all things for the sake of the elect that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus. He literally writes the book on God's sovereignty and salvation and he gets his head kicked in week after week after week preaching the gospel to them who may or may not believe.

So we just have to get our arms around both sides of it.

Tim Tim.

Okay. Yep.

Does that mean that God does not choose every human being?

Yes. Yes. The elect is a subset. The offer of the gospel is broad to all. But not everyone. Unless you are a universalist, meaning unless you believe in universal salvation, and I don't. I don't think the scriptures support that. If there are some who do, I think it's a very hard case to make, but I would not say that all are called. I'd say that all who are called will believe. And I'm too stupid to tell the difference. And so we will know that story when the story is all over. But yes, there is a broad offer to all.

But unless—and this is okay. Whenever you teach on Calvinism, there's one thing you have to do first and we didn't do it first. Okay? And it always burns us if we do this. Before we can really understand what's churning—I mean, I can see your gears churning on this. Okay? What you have to do first and what you didn't do first is ask the question, what happened in the fall? When the fall took place, when humanity broke, what sort of a thing did we become?

The Doctrine of Depravity

And the reformed answer to this, we call it total depravity. We became the sorts of creatures that will not come to him. Will not what? Come to him. Okay? So this is incredibly important that you—if you're like, I hate everything this guy is saying. Okay? That's fine. No problem. But go back. Well, here. And in fact, let me do this for you guys. Let me try to do this more efficiently if I rattle through some scripture here.

The passages when the Bible—hang on a second. I can't talk and scroll at the same time. So let me do this. Let's see if I go here. Okay. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to read you a whole bunch of Bible. You can jot some of this down if you want to. Under the Doctrine of Depravity. You can jot these down. Go look them all up. I'm just going to rip through them.

Genesis 6: Every inclination of the thoughts of his heart is only evil all the time.

Jeremiah 17:9: The heart is deceitful above all things.

John 3:19-20: Men love the darkness and won't come into the light.

John 5:39-40 — "People refuse to come to Me to have life."

John 6:44, 65 — "No one can come to Me."

John 8:34 — "All who sin are slaves to sin."

John 8:42-47 — "You are unable to hear My voice and you carry out the desires of your father, the devil."

Romans 3:10-20 — "No one is righteous, no not one, they have together become worthless. No one seeks God."

Romans 6, 6:16-22 — "We're slaves to sin."

Romans 8:5-8 — "The sinful mind is hostile to God and it cannot submit to him."

1 Corinthians 2:14 — "The gospel is foolishness to him."

2 Corinthians 4:4 — "The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel."

Ephesians 2:1-3 — "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. Dead. Dead men don't get up."

Ephesians 4 — "Darkened in their understanding, they have hardened hearts."

Colossians 2:13 — "Dead in sin."

2 Timothy 2:24-26 — "The devil has taken people captive, captive to do his will."

Titus 3:3 — "We were foolish, disobedient, deceived, and enslaved."

I would suggest to you that the overwhelming picture of the New Testament is that the nature of fallen man is that we cannot come to him. We will not come to him. We are deaf, we are blind, we are dead, we are enslaved. And yet, despite all of that language of inability, there's this other layer of willful refusal. It's not only that I cannot, but if I could, I wouldn't. I will not.

That is the reality of mankind, and God with inexplicable mercy reaches into that rebellion and says, stop it, look at me. And sometimes, millions of billions of times, he has overridden our rebellion.

What is not the biblical picture is a caricature of it where there's all these lovely people who would love to come in, but he just says no. They want him and he says, I don't want you. They are seeking his face and he's like, well, too bad. It's nothing like that.

The biblical picture of humanity is that we don't want him. And in an act of grace, he has countless times overridden that rebellion and said, come to me. And every single time he does that, it's effective. His grace, when it's poured out with the intention to redeem, he never fails at his mission. Jesus says, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. When he does it, he always wins. But he has not chosen to save everyone in the world. But I don't know who he did. I'm grateful that he saved me, so I'm gonna preach the gospel broadly in the hopes that God will grant repentance, leading them to a knowledge of truth, that they'll come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil who's taken them captive to do his will.

Why does he save any? Why does he save some? Is that one of those that will be answered in heaven?

Yeah, it surely won't be answered today. Maybe a more pointed question is, why did he save me? I don't know. He saved me. The closest answer I get, but it is admittedly incomplete, is in Ephesians 1.

Ephesians 1:3-8 — "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and his will, and here's the reason: to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding."

Notice, by the way, if it's not obvious, consistently he is the subject, we are the object. And he is doing the verb. He lavishes on us, he pours out on us, and it's in his pleasure. He does all these things.

Ephesians 1:9 — "He made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times have reached their fulfillment to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ."

Ephesians 1:11-12 — "In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him, who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory."

And there it is again, for the praise of his glory, for the praise of his glory, for the praise of his glorious grace.

And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession, to the praise of his glory. — Ephesians 1:13-14

Why does he do it the way that he's done it? To the praise of his glory, to the praise of his glory, to the praise of his glorious grace. How has this particular path best the accomplishment of that? I don't know. But whatever he's doing, he's doing to the praise of his glory, that we would magnify his supremacy of grace to the undeserving.

I think his grace is broader and wider than we think. Like I said, I'm not a universalist. I don't think that all will be saved. But if he chose to do that, that would be to the praise of his glory. Right? He can do whatever he wants to do. It does seem that he has chosen out of all of rebellious humanity an unreasonable number of people to behold his glory for all of time. But I don't know why in the world I'm in the list. I don't know.

That's the question. And the game is not over yet. Right? And many of us in this room have this—this is a very live question for me and for many. My hope for my children and probably for yours is that God in his mercy would include them in Christ. Right? And we will pray to that end and labor to that end and hope to that end to the very end of the game because God is merciful and he loves to draw praise to himself through the extension of grace to undeserving sinners. That's all we get.

Now I look through a mirror cloudy, but then when I see face to face, everything will be explained. — 1 Corinthians 13:12

Diane is pointing to 1 Corinthians 13, which has this promise that now we see dimly, but then we will see clearly. Yeah. I mean, I have a good friend, Pro Team Adecari, who said the day will come where we will say all your ways are just and true. Right now we're like, I don't know, some of your ways, but some of the things you do don't make any sense to me. The day is coming that we will be able to say all your ways are just and true. Right? I don't think you're going to spend eternity being like, man, you kind of blew that. I think when we know what he was pleased to show us, we will, like Job, place our hand over our mouth, say you're smarter than I am, and we're grateful to live under your grace.

Okay. I think we got to be done. Okay. We good enough? Alright. So next week, I don't even know what we're doing next week. I wrote it down and so you might have written it down too. Will and Becky. Will and Becky is next week. But maybe watch Barbie. We'll talk about that in a couple of weeks. See you.