My name is Ricky Jones. I want to welcome you to River Oaks Presbyterian Church. I'm really glad you came. We're in the middle of our summer series on the the story God's story of redemption. God's story of creation What he is doing with history and yet last week we counted this overview and And then after that I answered questions. We had a question to answer today that the specific question we're looking at is how did you get into this story? How did you how did you get made a cast member and so it's more kind of a lecture give and take format something kind of a little bit more relaxed to do in the summer?
So I'm enjoying it. Hope you are. Let's pray and then we will dig in. A few years ago, I was dropping my son off. It's great For any other test that day and you get you get driven to sixth grade. I feel like that's just all to be a rule. You know, it's awful enough. Everybody I think there's a universal consent that sixth grade was the worst year of the life. And so, you know, you get driven. That's the rule. And I was dropping off my son and he was just terrified Had a test and he'd been kind of struggling and this was the first year he really had to study very much. And so He was just so nervous. And I looked at him just as we pulled up into the parking lot and I saw how nervous he was and I said, Hey, I just want you to know if you fail this test, I'm going to have to ask you to move out. You're done. And he rolled his eyes, which is about as affectionate as the sixth grader gets and he says, Oh, Dad, I know you love me. No matter how great I make on the test. I said, Yeah, I do. And that's kind of important. So no matter how you do, you're going to have a place to stay tonight. You're going to be fine. It's just a test. Don't treat it like anything more than that. Now, what if, what if the sovereign, all powerful Lord of space, time and dimension knew your name. And what if he loved you specifically you, I'm not talking about this kind of big warm amorphous, worthless, warm fuzzy love or God loves you and he loves Adolf Hitler and he loves birdies and he loves everything. And you know, it does no good for anybody. I mean, I'm talking about a very specific love where he says I know you. I know you by name. I know everything about you. I know you so well that I have, I have super intended world history so that you would exist and I have super intended events of your life so that you would hear the gospel and I have brought you into my church and I'm never going to let you go no matter how you do on a test. No matter what sins you might commit today, no matter how you may feel about me today, what if that were the one steady thing in your life. I'm excited to talk to you today about this weird scary people, the scary philosophy out there called Calvinism. I'm I'm excited to talk to you about these things called election and predestination because I want you to know that understood rightly. You just understand what we're trying to say. The these doctrines open the door to you for freedom and joy these doctrines will get you off the emotional roller coaster of Christianity and give you the freedom to fail and the freedom to succeed. In the freedom to enjoy your life and live your life without fear of what God is going to think of you today. That's what we're talking about. We are talking about the absolute joyful freedom that comes from knowing that you specifically individually are known by God and loved by God powerfully and unchangeably. That's what I want you to know. And God wants you to know it too or you wouldn't be here this morning. So let's dig in. Please read with me from John chapter 10 verses 22 through 30, very familiar passage. But one that you can hear a thousand times and and and miss something so let's look at it. This is part of the longer passage if you've ever studied the I am statements of Jesus. This is the passage where he talks about I am he says I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep I lay down my life for my sheep and and the Pharisees were getting very angry with him for using these words about himself. And then he kind of comes back to them later and he says this at the time of the feast of dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter and Jesus was walking in the temple in the colonate of Solomon so that Jews gathered around him and said to him, how long will you keep us in suspense if you are the Christ tell us plainly and Jesus answered them. I told you and you do not believe the works I do in my father's name bear witness about me. But you do not believe because you are not among my sheep my sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me and I give them eternal life and they never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand. I and the father are one. That's far the reading of God's word and he give us the grace to understand it and apply it. What I want to do today in the next 20 minutes is show you an exit ramp to get you off the Christian roller coaster. Okay, this is this was my life. Let me explain to you a little bit about what my Christian life was like in the early days. I was converted and I began to really take Christianity seriously when I was pretty young. But when I got to college I decided I was going to pursue after Christ. And in my heart of heart, I believed at that time that the best thing that could have happened to me would have been if I had died when I was converted. Because when I was converted, Jesus liked me. But in the days that follow the weeks, months, years, it's kind of tapered off and then I went to this Christian camp. Right. But right before I went to this Christian camp, I was out in a car making out with a 13 year old girl but that doesn't ignore that. And then I went and I went to this Christian camp and I was awesome and I was actually, you know, I was actually a pretty good camp counselor. And people loved me and I met Christian guys for the first time and they liked me. And I was close to Jesus and people, you know, gave me positive feedback for how well I was able to teach the Bible for the first time and I loved it and it was great. And I was close to Jesus but I didn't die at camp. I should have died at camp but I didn't. And I came back and in between camp and summer, I looked up the 13, I mean, school, I looked up the 13 year old girl but I couldn't find her. So I went back to school and at school, there was this enormous dichotomy between what I really honestly wanted to be. And what I knew that I was. And when I did everything right, when I would do weeks of doing everything right, when I was not missing my quiet time. So when I was, you know, staying away from the evil, lustful thoughts, I was the only person who ever struggled with lust during that period. But when I was doing everything right, I found the spiritual pride creeping in on me that made me just despise the fraternity guys and all the people who weren't just didn't get it. And then I would fall off and I could have in my quiet times and I would give in to my lustful desires. And I found this spiritual apathy, this not apathy, this self-loathing, hatred of myself. Why couldn't I be better? So that at the best of times, I felt like I had this evil twin, this sin that was my shadow saying, well, you sure are better than all those other people. And at the worst of times, I had this huge shadow saying, you know better, you're awful. And I became this, what Nate Larkin calls, this piece of dust at the center of the universe. I was extremely important in my mind. I was the centerpiece of everything that was going on in history, but at the same time, I was a huge failure in a disappointment. And I couldn't get off that rollercoaster and I kept working harder and harder so that the next summer, I couldn't go back to that Christian camp because it was a middle class white kids. And if you're a sold out Christian, you wouldn't care about the rich white kids, you would go care for poor people. And so I went into the inner city and I killed myself trying to help these kids. And I was a terrible inner city volunteer. I was awful. I threw a basketball out of the kid. I couldn't do it. I begged him to throw a punch at me. You didn't. And then I came back to school and I was supposed to be the up front speaker for a campus crusade. And I was kind of the known one of known Christians on campus, but I was a mess. And I couldn't get myself right. And at the top of it all off, I hated my father. And the Christian can't hate his father. I mean, that seems like step one. And so I was just a mess. And my answer to everything was work harder, memorize more scripture, try harder, try harder. And I kept failing worse and worse and worse. And finally, I went to see my campus minister. Now I dumped everything on him. I've just dumped on y'all. And he looked at me and he asked me this question. He said, why aren't you so much better than everybody else? He said, you told me that you were the only Christian you knew growing up. Was there no, not anybody in your whole hometown who had as good a family as you did? I said, yes, several of my better family's not dead. Wasn't there anybody in your whole hometown who went to a better church than you did? I said, yeah, a lot of them went to better churches than I did. Why are you a Christian and they're not? You say you can't forgive your dad. When he abandoned the family, why didn't you go with him? Now, you know, there's times in your life when what you should have said was nothing. My answer to every one of those questions was because I was better than them. But I knew the Bible well enough to know that can't be the answer. And so what I said was nothing. And he began me studying this doctrine called Calvinism, where I finally came to understand that while I'm weak and helpless, while I'm being haunted by spiritual pride, while I'm being overwhelmed with my own failures, while I am helpless, God loves me then. And not just kind of love me with, you know, who I love you. I hope you get better someday. You know, the kind of love I have for flowers. I'm not going to water you, but I love you. But he loved me enough to get into this muck with me. He loved me enough to direct and care for me and tend me. He loved me enough to send his son to die for me specifically. He loved me actively right then. And my actions did not increase his love for me. My actions did not change his opinion of me. All my actions have ever done is they have been an outworking of what he was already doing in me. That's what we're talking about today. So let's take a step back and ask the question, why are you a Christian? If you're a Christian, if you're in Christ, if you have trusted Christ, if you're going to be saved, if you are saved, the reason why is this. You have repented of your sin. You've turned away from your sin. You've realized that a life of sin is leading you to destruction. You've turned away from that and you have thrown yourself onto Jesus Christ alone for salvation. And I say that because of this, I want you to understand that Calvinists are not some kind of whacked out weirdos with some of us are, but that's not because of this. Calvinists believe the same things that everybody else believe about salvation who is an orthodox Christian. If you are saved is because you have trusted Christ for salvation. We are not, please get this. You're going to misquote me, misquote me about something else. Don't miss this one. We are not saying that if you are elect, you will be saved no matter how you live or what you do. And we are absolutely not saying that if you're not elect, you can't go to heaven no matter how much you love Jesus. And I say all that because inevitably you will run into somebody who, if you say the word Calvinism in front of them, that's what they're going to think. Okay, we trust, I promise. We don't believe that. We believe the same thing that every orthodox Christian believes. You are saved by coming to Jesus. The question we're trying to answer is why did you do that? Why did you do that? Why do some people not do that? But you did. That's what we're looking at. And what we're seeing is the answer is that we come to Jesus because we are his sheep. John 10, 26, 28 says you do not believe because you're not among my sheep. He doesn't say you're not one of my sheep because you don't believe. Now that would make sense, right? That's what we all think. You become one of my sheep by believing. But he says the opposite of that. He says you don't believe because you're not my sheep. What do my sheep do? My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. If you were one of my sheep, you would be following after me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. Why did you believe? Why did it make sense to you? Why when you went to the Christian camp and you're 12 years old and everybody in your whole youth group gave their life to Jesus? Why were you the one that 10 years later are still going to church when they're not? It's not because you're better. It's not because you're holier. It's not because you're smarter. It's not because you're stronger. It's because you're one of his sheep. He's at work in you. You belong to him. Jesus preached on chapter six. He preached one of the worst sermons it's ever been given. And I say that because we all know this. If you preach a good sermon, you'll have more people at church next week than you had the week before. Everybody knows that, right? If it's a good sermon, your crowd's going to increase. It's a bad sermon. Your crowd's going to decrease, right? So Jesus preached the sermon to 5,000 people and by the time it was over, he had 12 left. It was terrible. And he said, and they began, you know, just fussing at him and he said in grumbling and he said this, all that the father gives me will come to me. Whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. No one can. No one is able to come to me unless the father who sent to me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day. Why? Why did the 12 disciples stay in the 4,988 leave? Because the father had drawn them to Jesus and everyone that the father draws comes to him and everyone who comes to him will not be cast out. That's why that's what we're looking at. Why do you believe? How does it look? What what happens? When we begin to look at what the Bible teaches about why we're saved, we see three, we see that the Lord works as a Trinity. He's working in three as all three persons. First of all, we're elected by the father. John, chapter 10, verse 29 says, my father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand. The father has selected his people. He knows them. This is not some kind of random reaching into a bag and grabbing out a few and leaving everybody else. That's not the way the Lord works. He's not random about anything. It is, these are his people. They've always been his people. And he's been directing the course of the universe to gather his people. And that is the answer to all the hard questions, actually. Why is the Lord continuing to tolerate sin? Why doesn't he just send his Jesus back now? Why doesn't he just eradicate evil now? He tells the martyrs who are asking that question. Right now in heaven we're told that there are people asking God that question. Why are you waiting so long? His answer is I don't have them all yet. I've not brought all my children home yet. They're mine. And he's waiting to all of his are here. Ephesians 1, 3 through 4 says it like this, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love. He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. Now we're going to be patient on this. It took me a good six months of studying very hard. I kind of ignored everything else and examined only this and took a long time. And so and that's pretty fast actually. So I'm not expecting to convince anybody who came in here unconvinced. But I just want to pick it a couple of things and one of the things I want to pick at is this even if you don't believe that even if you read this and you think that can't mean what he says it's meaning. He's twisting that even if you believe that what I want you to see is this you have somewhere deep in your heart this desire for it to be true. And you know why I know that because every one of you girls loved Cinderella. Why do you love Cinderella? Is she got picked? She got picked by the prince of the whole kingdom. And you want to be picked by the prince of the whole kingdom. But she got picked because she's beautiful and that's not fair because some of us just ain't. But what I'm telling you what this text is telling you is you were picked by the lord of the universe, not because you were the most beautiful. But because you're his he loved you he picked you. I look I was 48 84 pounds as a junior in high school. Okay I know how it feels to be the last one picked. I know how it feels to just see the end of the draft and to not been picked at all. And I'm here to tell you it feels good to know that you're picked. You were you were selected you were special. It's also you want this to be true because you know implicitly that it's healthy. It's healthy. The idea that you are loved despite your sin, despite your weakness, despite your ugliness, you are loved. That is healthy. My son playing on baseball team a couple of years ago. And the coach's kid was amazing. He was a foot taller than everybody else in the team. I could just smash a baseball could throw a curveball that was just unfair for a nine-year-old. And when he actually 11, sorry. And one time he was up to bat. You know we really need to school runs were getting killed by a team that was much better than us. And he just hit a laser. I mean just bow. Everybody wasn't even watching the game turn around. And the laser went right into the second place. That was baseball. Sometimes you hit it hard into a glove. Sometimes you hit a blooper and you get on base. That's baseball. His dad met him halfway to the dugout screaming. I told you not to swing at that pitch. Aren't you going to listen to me? Is that healthy? Is that what you want? Do you want love that is based on absolute obedience? If you know enough to know that that is not a healthy way for a father to treat a 11-year-old, don't you think it's probably not a healthy way for God to treat you? And yet, we don't even make that connection. We think God's love for us is surely based on performance. It's not. It is not. Your performance is a fruit of his love for you. It does not, it does not increase his love for you. A wit. He loves you when you're still dead and your trespasses and sins. I got a role here. You're elected by the father. You're redeemed by the son. Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me. And just as the father knows me and I know the father. And I'll lay down my life for the sheep. Jesus, God has selected his people. And Jesus lays down his life for them. They're his sheep. The ones that God has given to Jesus. They are his. He dies for his sheep. What does that mean? It's a very specific thing. What does it mean? It means that when Jesus died, he wasn't dying for this warm fuzzy mass of people. Let's hope this works. He was dying for you specifically. He was dying for your specific sins. If you could build a time machine, which you cannot do, so don't try. But if you could build a time machine and go back to that day on Calvary, and if you could look at Jesus and say, why are you doing this? You would say, I'm doing it for you. I'm doing it for Ricky Jones. Because on August 23rd, 1997, you're going to drink too much. And you're going to look at something on the Internet that you shouldn't look at. And for that sin, you're going to break your wife's heart. And you deserve to go to hell for that. But you won't. Because I'm paying for it right now. I'm doing it for you right now. You're real sins, not just ambiguous idea, not the thought of sin, not sin with a capital S, general sin. He died for your specific sins because he knows you. You're his sheep. And if you would stay there while he's on the cross, his final words that you would hear would not be, let's hope this worked. Well, the door to heaven's open now, let's hope somebody comes through it. His final words are, it is finished. I've done the work. I've paid for the sin. I've paid for the sins. You don't have them anymore. God selects his people when he gives them to a son and his son dies for his people. And then the Holy Spirit comes to us in history and our place in history. I told you a big scope, right? Before the creation of the world, God knew you and loved you and chose you. And then in 2000 years ago, Jesus died for you. And then in your lifetime, the Holy Spirit comes to you and he regenerates you. I can't put it any better than this. Ephesians chapter 2, verses 4 and 5. But God being rich and mercy. Why does He save us? Cause of the great love with which He loved us. Even when we're dead in our trespasses. Made us alive together and cried. The Holy Spirit came to you and made you alive. That's why you responded. Not because you happen to be listening that day. Not because you had too much pizza the night before and you couldn't sleep. And so you were really awake for a sermon for the first time in your life. But because the Holy Spirit made you eat too much pizza. And he woke you up and he caused you to listen to the sermon. And for the first time in your life, it made sense to you. And he responded. He opened your eyes so that you could see that the room around you was burning. And he showed you the exit. And he said run for the door and you ran for the door. And he came to Jesus and you were saved because you came to Jesus and you received life and you received forgiveness and you received joy. And at some point, you went to a Presbyterian church and they said, but why? Because the Holy Spirit worked in you while you were dead. I just want to hammer that because you got to get it. If you're going to get off this roller coaster, then you have to understand that God's love for you started while you were dead. You can't make it get better. You can't make it go away. You can't be deader than dead. And he saved you then. And he stays with you. And finally, you see the results of salvation. I'll wait and see if you'll ask that's a question. I'm not going to answer questions. You're not going to ask. You're all going to ask it. So I'll just get to it then. But the results of salvation are this. The saints persevere. The saints persevere. You don't walk away from it because it's a living thing. God has put something alive in you. And that life is strong. And it is very careful in the kind of the classic depiction of this whole thing is the tulip. The pee and tulip is perseverance to the saints. And some well-meaning people want to change that to the preservation of the saints because it's the Holy Spirit that's preserving you. But we call it perseverance for a reason. And the reason is this. The Holy Spirit is in you so that you will what his good pleasure is. You persevere. You persevere because he's alive in you. But you persevere. You stay with him. You continue with Christ. You continue doing the things of him because he's alive in you. And he won't let you get away. There's this fear of love out there. It's kind of funny and sad. But the question you always get is, well, this unconditional love thing is true. But why don't I just sin all I want? Well, it's funny because it's just like, yeah, we're just going to go and, you know, go do the opposite of God because he loves us. It's sad because it makes me think you've never been loved. If you really think that being loved is going to make you go and disregard the person who's loving you. If you really think that, you know, my wife loves me so much, I'm just going to commit adultery every night. You just, you've just never experienced it. I'm sorry. I mean, I said that with a laugh. I mean, that with all my heart, you don't know what it means to be loved. Love doesn't make you want to go be an awful person. Love doesn't make you want to go and hurt the person who loves you. That's not how it works. Love makes you better. Love makes you want to be with them. And the more you grow with Christ, the more you've realized that this is the only place I'm going to find this kind of love. Why don't I want to go anywhere else? And so you don't, you don't leave. So that is unconditional election. That is predestination. That's all those bad words. Weird as it sounds, and as hard as it may be to swallow, it just, like I said, it resounds within us. There's something in us that wants it to be true. Back in the 70s, there was this long-haired guitar playing liberal named Dan Fogelberg. Thank you for laughing. It was important that you laughed at. And he wrote this song. The first line of the song is called Longer. The first line of the song is Longer than there have been fishes in the ocean. Higher than any bird ever flew. Longer than there have been stars up in the heavens. I've been in love with you. Isn't that awful? I mean, it's just unforgivably schmaltcy to begin with. And secondly, it's just dumb. It's not true. I haven't loved Bianca longer than there have been stars up in the sky. It's just dumb. I wouldn't even say such a stupid thing. Well, you would say such a stupid thing because somewhere in your psyche, you want that to be true. You want it to be true. You want to have been loved before you did anything to honor it. Do you think Dan Fogelberg has a better concept of love than God does? Do you think the love that Dan Fogelberg imagines is better than the real love you have in Jesus Christ? God has loved you since before he put the stars in the sky. That's the gospel. That's the freedom. And I want you to come and enjoy it. Please pray with me. Before you get to the first question, let me just say I do think this is important. I think the rollercoaster Christian life is a real issue for a lot of us. And most people just never get off of it. There seems to be two ending places for the rollercoaster. You have two kinds of people who get exercised regularly in those who can't. And for those self-disciplined type A personalities, they end up in a place where they just do it. They don't mischurch and they don't miss their Bible study. And they're great people who love Jesus. But it seems like they just kind of develop this air of spiritual pride to them like, yes, I've done this and I just don't understand why you can't. And for those of us who couldn't, who kept falling off the rollercoaster, most of us just kind of end up in a place where we're going to quit trying. So we're going to kind of be Christians, but we're just going to make that a little less important in our life. Because when I really, when Christianity was really, really important in my life, I was heading towards suicide. I was just, I was a failure. So I'm going to kind of put that on the back burner and I get too serious about it. Go to church three times a month, but what really matters is going to be my hobbies or football or whatever. All right. That is not on my screen. Well, I got it. I got it. No, it's not there. Wait, is that it? The death of salvation? Yeah, you make it work. Do you have to believe in Calvinism to be a Christian? No, absolutely not. I do want you to know it's not, it is not a, it is Calvinism is a small percentage of present-day belief in American Christianity is growing significantly because so many Southern Baptists are becoming Calvinistic. The president of the Southern Baptist Convention is a Calvinist right now and one of the bigger seminaries is Calvinistic. Matt Chan learned some of the newer voices are Calvinistic. But in America, it's still pretty a small slice of the pie. Historically, it's not, historically, it's a larger slice of the pie. It's not something new. St. Augustine certainly taught election and total depravity. John Calvin of course, Martin Luther, names of the Reformation. The English Reformation was led by a lot of reform leaders in American Christianity was very affected by George Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards. So it's not a small thing, but you absolutely don't have to be a Christian. Bill Graham thought this was just thinking a little bit too hard and he's a Christian and to be a believer and to be a member of this church, you do not have to buy into this. You have to believe on Jesus Christ if he said you have to believe that you are a center and you deserve punishment and Jesus has taken that punishment for you. That's what you have to do. Getting into heaven is not a theology exam. So I think it's helpful to have to believe it, but it's not necessary to be a Christian. Why did God create people he knew would eventually suffer in hell isn't that cruel and capricious? I don't know and it's not cruel and capricious because God is not cruel and capricious. You don't answer to that question. It's a real question. I get it. It's a very real, weird question. It's important to understand that we're not saying God has given the highest men to people. He's not stiff-forming people. He openly opens his arms and says anybody who throws an economy and drink, he says to the ends of the earth, look to me and be saved. It's honest and it's true. The problem is nobody comes. If you want to see this in a parable form, look at the parable of the wedding banquet. He sends out the invitation. Everybody receives invitation and nobody comes. And so he sends out his Holy Spirit to force people to come. That's what the text literally says. The man says to the servants, go force them to come and so they force the son to come. The second part of that question isn't it cruel and capricious to create people who are going to hell? There's no getting off that hook. If you believe God had bare foreknowledge. New that there were going to be some people in the world who were going to do bad things and we go to hell and if you believe in hell, then God created them anyway. Ditching predestination, ditching election is not going to get you off that hook. That's a problem for everybody. I don't understand it. I don't understand it. I don't understand it. God is just and he is faithful. And again, I said this last week and I'll probably say it every week. Our understanding of hell is shaped a lot more about Dante's and Ferno and legends and traditions and stories that come out of the middle ages and the dark ages and Roman Catholicism. Of that period, I'm not saying of today, a whole bunch more comes from there than comes from the Bible. You can read your whole Bible for pitch forks and levels of hell and all this stuff and you won't see a word. It's just not in there. And so hell has been a way from God and ultimately he is giving people what they want. Those who he's calling out to people to be saved. Those who turn away from him and want to get away from him. At the final judgment, he's saying, okay, you can be away from me. Sorry. It is thanks persevering the same as once saved, always saved. Yes and no. Yes, in the sense, you know, it's unbelievable. Yes, I would say if you've ever been saved, then you're going to be saved. But it is saying, though, that this nuance that is bringing out is this. Once saved, always saved, just like the preservation of the saints can be really abused and to say, you know, this person made a profession of faith when he was 12 and never went back to church and was an awful human for the rest of his life. But he's going to heaven because he made a prayer. Well, you know, that's not how the Holy Spirit works. The Bible tells us that he who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it. Third John talks about those who have left the church and he says they were never one of us if they had been one of us that would have not left. So what perseverance of the saints is stressing is that those who have, there's going to be a lot of people around the church. The more powerful the church is, the more popular the church is, the bigger the church gets, the more people who are going to come to it who are not in Christ. And that's why throughout history, you see times of purging and martyrdom and that kind of thing. If the church were the most popular thing in the world, there would be no church. Everybody would just join it for political reasons. So what perseverance of the saints is stressing is that the people who are in Christ have something alive in them and they're not going to that true, their true metal will show. They won't be, they won't bail. How do we answer critics of Calvinism? How do we answer critics Calvinism who say that God not electing some is inconsistent with his loving nature? Well, there's a lot of answers to that. But the best answer to that is to say God loving God electing those who are his and ordering all of history to bring them to himself despite how much they don't love him unveils the beauty of his loving nature. To say God just loves everybody, but he's not going to do anything to help them. You know, I mean, it's kind of like the problematic question that some people have. What about those who never hear the gospel? You know, what about the kid who's born in Southeast Asia and the 1500s and everybody had a chance to hear the gospel? You know, that person doesn't have an equal chance to respond to the gospel as a kid who's born in the 1990s in America and in evangelical church. And just say somehow they haven't equal chance to just crazy. Well, you know, you were born in a church because the Lord had elected you. He ordered that. How is it loving to say the Lord loves these people, but he's not going to do anything to save them? He's just going to, I mean, that to me waters down his love. It kind of makes it useless. It's like being an old man who really loves his birds and hates the squirrels that get into the bird feeder. I'm not going to do anything about it. God's love does something. And so it's a much more powerful depiction of his love, I would say. How can this affect how we approach people professing Christ who refuse to repent? That's tough. I think you can just, you know, be honest with them. It makes you. This is important. I'm glad this question came out. One of the things that teaching the sovereignty of God and salvation does. It means that you're not the sovereign one. Right? So if God just kind of lays salvation out like a buffet table. And this is kind of the depiction some of us get. God's salvation is like a buffet table. There's meat, potatoes, vegetables, dessert. You how much to take. Right? So there's some of us who just want a little bit of Jesus, we want to get to dessert. And I mean, we're going to send every Saturday night and we're going to go to church every Sunday and ask for forgiveness. And nothing's going to change. And if God's just kind of made salvation possible for you to kind of come and take it, then that that kind of makes sense, honestly. But if God is sovereign, if he's the Lord and he determines who's saved and he's not. And it is interesting every time you look at the passages about election, they always have the word holiness connected. So if you look at Ephesians one, the passage I read about the Father choosing us. This is God chose us in him that we might be holy and blameless. He's not going to fail. He's not choosing us to go to heaven and be a simple jerk who never repents. And so if someone says, well, I'm in Christ, but I'm not going to repent. My response is what in the world makes you think you're in Christ then? I mean, there's not a single reason for me to believe you're in Jesus if you're not going to repent. If you were in Jesus, then you would not be able to not repent. He's living. He's active. He's in you. Another way of looking at Jesus, some people want to say, you know, well, if God just loves us like that, then we can just send how we want. And I think I think you're confusing unconditional love with being a codependent, right? A codependent wife is the wife of an alcoholic who refuses to put up any boundaries and force her husband to deal with his alcoholism. God's not codependent on you. And if you just run off into sin, you know what's going to happen? You're going to get caught because you're in Jesus. So, you know, I told my son one time that these girls came to us and said, you know, your son called me a bad word on the bus. No way to talk to him about that. And I looked at him and said, but you need to know that Jesus loves you. And because Jesus loves you, you're always going to get caught. He knows how to discipline his children. Because God loves his children, he disciplines them. You're going to get caught. You know, there will be, how many people are in Tulsa? A million, almost a million people. There will be 400,000 of them who drink too much next weekend and get behind the wheel of the car. But if you do it, you're going to get a DUI. Why? Because God loves you too much to let you do it that often. He's going to put it in your face and go, stop that. That leads to destruction. But I'll do it. He's not codependent. He can deal with it. How do you explain it first on? First on two, two that says Christ died for the sins of the whole world in light of what you said about Christ specifically paying for our sins. That's tough. I don't know. That is one of the passages it causes that does seem to contradict what I said. It also seems to be honest with you, that's also the passage that every Christian universalist I know applies to appeals to. Because it specifically says Jesus died as a propitiation for the sins of the world. And so if that means every person in the world, then that means that God cannot punish anybody for their sins and everybody's going to go to heaven. It just has to. If it means Jesus died for the sins of everybody in the world, then everybody's going to heaven. That's what the guy who's done it. Hard to mention Carlton. That's what he said. This is his verse. Okay. And he's right. If that's what it means, if it means every Jesus died as a propitiation for every human in the world, then every human in the world is going to heaven. That's he appreciates. He appreciates that doctrine every Sunday. That verse every Sunday. There's a lot of different other things it could mean if it's it could mean that he died for all the tribes of the world. That's what I think it means. I think it means that Jesus did not just die for the Jews. John was a Jew who was writing former Jews. He said he didn't just die for us. He's died for all the whole world, which to us, you know, 2000 years later in America, former Celts or whatever we used to be. That's like obviously he didn't just die for the Jews. But if you were in, you know, 20 years, 10 years after Jesus died, 30 years after Jesus died. That's radical news. You don't have to be a Jew to be saved. What? It's crazy talk. So I think that's what it means. Mine to be. I may be wrong. In this whole term, I may be wrong. We're all going to heaven. And when we get there, you can say, I told you and I'll be like, I don't know what you know. But if I'm not one of a sheep, what if I'm not elected? What if he doesn't draw me to him? Well, if he doesn't, I'll say this. If you're asking this question, you're one of the sheep. And I mean that. If you're not one of the sheep, you don't care. If you're not one of the sheep, the only thing on your mind right now is lunch. Which is fine. And I'm not saying, if you're thinking about lunch, you're not one of the sheep, I mean. We had seven people get up and walk out during this term. And it was a new record. But they're all probably going to be in heaven. One of us will be right. One of us will be wrong. No, it was okay. But I do mean this. Unbelievers, non-Christians, atheists, don't struggle with assurance of salvation. I don't care. If you care, you need to ask yourself, why do I care? Oh, God must have put his seed in me. I must be the Holy Spirit working in me. That's what this whole thing gets back to. That's the number one. One of the great ways to get assurance of salvation is ask yourself the question, do I care if I have assurance of salvation? If I do, then I'm probably saved. Because most people who aren't saved, they just, I've had hundreds of conversations with believers and non-believers over the last 20 years. I've never had a non-believer come to me crying over assurance of salvation. I've had many believers. So they just don't. Do you have an issue with a doctrine named after a man? It treated those who disagree with him in such an evil manner. Roman Catholics would call this doctrine Paul leanism. Okay, they're possible. Different people have different names. Calvin disembodied things. He did some cultural. He committed some culturally acceptable sins. It was very culturally acceptable to persecute heretics in his day. We don't persecute heretics in our day. We do other bad things. I'm not going to list them because that would give away a political position and some of you would get up and leave. But every generation, and we are getting better. That's one of the arguments I have for how the gospel is going through the culture and we are actually getting better. Christians in the 19th century, pastors had to preach sermons against dueling. Think about that for a second. It was an expected way for you to settle differences to go out on the street and draw guns and shoot at each other. I haven't had to preach that sermon. In the 19th century, and every century before then, slavery was fully accepted and expected acceptable. It's not anymore. In the 15th century, persecuting heretics was fully accepted and expected and acceptable. And Calvin did it and he shouldn't have. And I'm not going to make any apologies for when he shouldn't have done it. And I'll get to heaven to find out all the things I shouldn't have done and be appalled and love Jesus for saving me.