This is our second sermon in Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 3, of God's Eternal Decree. We're still in Section 1, and I'll take a moment now and do a brief review of what we had last week. Our doctrine this morning, as you see it there in the bulletin, is that God ordains whatsoever comes to pass but no violence is offered to the will of the creature." Certainly these two things are not easy to reconcile one with another, but let's look at the Confession of Faith 3-1. You should have it there in your bulletin. And let's review what we did just last week. God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordained whatsoever comes to pass, yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures." Last week we took up two points, that God has ordained everything that comes to pass. This is the broad view of his decree, or a general view of it, we're going to talk today some about the salvation of man and how God's sovereign decree relates to our freedom but first we had to get before our view the fact that God ordains all things that come to pass and we spend a good amount of time in Ephesians chapter 1 looking at just that that he is working all things after the counsel of his own will that was our first doctrine and then we looked at a second confessing that it's not so easy to see how these things can be reconciled, and yet scripture teaches it. God is ordained whatsoever comes to pass, but he is not the author of sin. We saw this from James chapter 1, that God is not tempted by sin, has no inclination to it, and he's not tempting anyone else to sin. So you have to seek the source of sin someplace else. but it's not in God. Of course we have to say that he decrees those acts that are sinful and yet their sinful character arises from the agents that are actually working them and not from God himself. Again, that doesn't answer all of the questions to say that God decreed the act but that it takes its sinful character from the human being or angel that's actually doing the act It doesn't answer all of the questions, but we saw how the Apostle Peter had no problem putting these things together when he talked about God's holy, just, and righteous decree that Jesus Christ would come into the world to save sinners and that he would be crucified by wicked men doing wicked things. So you see, Peter has no problem putting these things together. I mentioned several times last week, if we're going to be biblical theologians, even if we don't know how to put the pieces together, we have to first know what the pieces are. And we don't begin to disregard the pieces or discard them simply because we don't see how they go together. The analogy I used last week, it would be like a man who is putting a puzzle together, but he loses his confidence in the person that put the pieces in the box. He doesn't see how some pieces fit, so he starts to discard them. And now he gets to the end of his puzzle, and it's only a partial picture that can lead to a lot of misunderstanding. Well, you see, I see the picture of a man, a human face, but he has only one eye, and no nose, and three teeth. You see, he's come to the wrong conclusions because he can't see the whole picture. He discarded some of the pieces. Today we're going to try to go further in understanding these things, considering the relationship between God's sovereign and eternal decree of whatsoever comes to pass and human freedom. And I would say from the outset that these are normally looked at as contraries. You can either believe in God's sovereignty or you can believe in human freedom, but you can't believe in both. These are not contraries, not in the slightest, but rather harmonize and agree together right well. Having said that, it's not an easy harmonization. And so you'll need your thinking caps on this morning as we take up some work that Jonathan Edwards did. In my estimation, his work on the freedom of the will is probably the most profound treatment of this relationship, divine sovereignty in human freedom. That title, the freedom of the will, as it's popularly called, is something of a misnomer. The full title is, if memory serves, a careful and strict inquiry into the common notion of the freedom of the will. Freedom of the will, for short. because he doesn't embrace what he calls the semi-Pelagian or Arminian doctrine of human freedom. So he wants to take up the common notion of the freedom of the will. Now Edwards as he leads us through this really begins with some careful consideration of the nature of the human will and its free exercise. And this is where we're going to begin because it is most helpful. The will is nothing other than your faculty or ability to choose or prefer one thing over another. Very simple. You prefer one thing over another. You like one thing more than you like another thing, and you're able to act according to that. That's the will. Now this is the real genius of the whole book, which I'm going to be able to summarize in just a couple of minutes, but this is really the whole genius of what Edwards did. First of all he points out that freedom or human freedom is something that the Bible does take for granted and does teach. So we have gone the wrong way in our Calvinism if we begin denying that human beings are free. Just a passage that might be cited in Matthew 17 verse 12, Jesus said, But I say unto you that Elias is come already, namely John the Baptist, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Now that's old English language. They did unto him whatever they wanted. The Greek verb is fellow. to wish or to will something. They did whatever they wanted. But I would say, when you consider the history of theology on this question, don't we see something of a gross disproportion? I hope that you've all been all the way through the Bible and you won't find any great and grand defenses of human freedom. The Bible takes it for granted, but does not seem very zealous in asserting it as a doctrine. and yet we'll find extended passages defending the sovereignty of God that seems to be the accent and the emphasis of the Bible it simply takes for granted the fact that you have a will and you always do the thing that you want most and you know that first hand so we don't need any big long defenses but this is really the genius of what Edwards does here and if you understand it If you can understand it, you'll see how divine sovereignty and human freedom go together. Edward said that a man is free in the exercise of his will, in that he always does the thing that he wants most. Or, if I could put that in another way, he always, or he must, act according to the strongest inclination of his heart. to the observant reader what you will notice is typically determinism and freedom are considered as contraries or opposites but you see Edwards has drawn the whole idea of necessity up into his definition of freedom to be a free human being you must act according to the strongest inclination of your heart and you have an inability to do anything else But you see, freedom and determinism are not opposites, but he takes this whole idea of necessity and says, you must act according to the strongest inclination of your heart. That is what it means for you to be free. There's a lot of things that go into strengthening and weakening motives. Some of you have heard me use this analogy or illustration, but I think it's a helpful one. We know that the will is going to be determined by the strongest inclination of the heart. And then we ask the question, well, what strengthens motives and what weakens them? Well, there's a bunch of factors and it can be pretty complicated, but we know firsthand what a lot of these factors are. Is the object of the will pleasant in and of itself or detestable in and of itself? My favorite analogy is that of a man in an apple pie. You say he might be on a diet and he's trying to lose some weight, but then an apple pie becomes an object of the will. And then the first thing to consider is, is it pleasant in and of itself or detestable? Pleasant. That strengthens it as an object of the will. But there are other things involved too. Is there pleasure or difficulty attending the object of the will? That can strengthen or weaken it as a motive. So I might think to myself concerning that pie, well, there are great pleasures attending, eating that pie. But my wife has already told me not to touch it. It's for the company. So there are difficulties attending the object of the will. And well, I've committed myself to losing this weight, and this will present something of difficulty in that goal. So that will weaken it as an object of the will. Now dieters also know this first hand. All things being equal, we'd rather have our pleasure now than later. So immediate pleasures are stronger motives than distant ones. I should say that this is also one of the great difficulties of the Christian life. and the motivational complex that moves us along in the Christian life because the greatest and grandest pleasures of the Christian life are yet future to us and Paul in Hebrews chapter 12 talks about sins that easily beset present now the pleasures of sin here now available to us now but the great hope of heaven can seem very distant to us sometimes A final thing that's worth mentioning as far as strengthening or weakening motives is the liveliness of the idea of it in the mind. So with respect to the apple pie, to talk to your wife on the phone about the apple pie, well that doesn't make it a very strong object of the will. It's not very lively in the mind. But to see it, well now it becomes much more lively in the mind. To smell it, to see it cut and to see the steam rising from it now it's become a very powerful, oh and to get a little taste very powerful object of the will indeed before you know it the whole idea of dieting has fallen to the ground and you want your pie you see but this is what goes into strengthening and weakening motives this is the way our will works I should also say that biblically speaking We overcome that problem of the primary pleasures of the Christian life being future by encouraging the liveliness of the idea in the mind. This is what David commends to us as psalm singers without to know it. What does David say? I meditate upon thy law day and night so that I will not sin against thee. He encourages the liveliness of the idea of God's law and its righteousness in his mind for overcoming sins. And we return to Hebrews 12, and what does Paul say? He says, yes, there are sins that beset now, but what do I do? I set my mind and my heart upon Jesus Christ, and encourage the liveliness of the idea of Jesus Christ in my mind, so that I might run with a single focus towards them in this life, passing by these sins that so easily beset. So at any rate, all these factors going into what strengthens and weakens a motive now if I can leave my normal order normally I save applications to the end but this is one of the most important applications I think that I can ever give you as Christian people this tells us a lot about what's going on in our hearts when we sin what did you want most when you did that. You see, we can talk a lot about loving Jesus Christ, but what did you love most then? It wasn't Jesus Christ and His righteousness. It was something else. Something else was a stronger motive in our heart. Now we all know in our sober moments, if you ask me, Pastor, do you want to be sinless? Yes, I do. Right now, in this sober moment. But you see, the will is determined by the strongest inclination of the heart right now. You see, in each succeeding moment. And things will present themselves that eclipse our love for Jesus Christ. And isn't that a most shameful thing? I tell you, if you're facing temptation, facing some sin that is so easily beset you, think of it in those terms. What is it that I will love most now? Because I can have fellowship with my Jesus, or I can have this sin, but I cannot have both. What does my heart love? That's the most sobering thing. You also have to humble us to the dust and make us a little bit more circumspect, because I suspect Peter wouldn't be the only one that gets that speech from the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you love me, Peter? Do you love me, Christian? And I suspect he'd have to ask us so many times, just like Peter, that it would hurt our feelings, because our behavior day by day has said something else. that at most we have loved him a little bit and we've let many things cloud and come in the way. We have had other suitors and entertained other gods in his presence. Hopefully that's not just an application for a Sunday morning, but in the Christian life I think there's scarcely anything more important than I can tell you than that. Well, Edwards has set forth his definition of freedom for us, that you are free in the exercise of your will and that you always do the thing that you want most. And then he deals with some contrary schemes or some contrary constructions that have been put on the will. I include these because I think that they're most helpful in showing that Edwards really was right. and that these other schemes don't hold any water. First of all, some have said that the will is free in the sense that it's not determined by any antecedent cause. So most things work in a cause and effect relationship. You look at the mechanics, the physics of a pool table, cause and effect relationships. The human will doesn't work like that. The acts of the will don't have any antecedent cause. And you say, well, that's kind of attractive. But Edwards said, it can't hold any water. If an act of the will is in effect without a cause, then it arose out of nothing, and is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy. You see, it has no cause. It popped out of nowhere. It can't be praised or blamed. And he said, isn't this contrary to our experience of ourselves? When you do things, where does it come from? It comes out of your heart. And you know that. Those acts of the will do have an antecedent cause. So these are the kinds of mistakes that only philosophers can make. and have become strangely self-forgetful. I've constructed my philosophical mansion, but I don't live in it. I live outside in the doghouse. And that philosophy has nothing to do with where I live. Another possible scheme. Some have said that the will is free in the sense that you exist in something of a motivational balance. you could go one way or the other. But Edward said, could you even make a decision? If you were in a motivational balance, no motive was stronger or weaker than any one, how would you make any sort of a decision? And also, again, isn't that contrary to your experience of yourself? Have you ever wrestled with a temptation? Don't you feel strongly Almost like there's an irresistible power in you that can't hardly be put off from that thing. So this whole idea that we exist in some sort of equilibrium is ridiculous and contrary to experience. And probably the most clever of all, some have said that the will is free and that each act of the will is determined by a preceding act of the will. So basically the will ends up being self-determining all along the way. each act of the will being determined by a preceding one. But Enbert said, well, if you run that all the way back to the first one, what determined that? And whatever determined that first act of the will determined all of the other ones. So you have an escape from the whole idea of necessity through these constructions. I don't think that there's any more powerful argument for what Edward says here than what we might call a bit of natural theology. Isn't this the way that we experience ourselves? That we're strongly inclined to do something, strongly disinclined to do others, and that whatever prevails in the heart at that moment, that is what we do. So in the Calvinistic scheme, you see, It's almost like the Armenians convinced us at some point to adopt their caricature. In the Calvinistic scheme, the idea was never that man's problem was that he was a robot, or an automaton, or that he wasn't free. Man's problem is that he is free and sinful. Both of those things. In other words, he's always doing the thing that he wants most, and all he ever wants is sin. That's his problem. Turn in your Bibles with me to Ephesians chapter 2. We're going to do a little work here in Ephesians chapter 2, so you won't want to lose your place. But here Paul gives us some insight if we needed further insight into what is going on in the human heart and how the human life is directed in its sinfulness. And this is basically a demonstration that the chief business of a sinful man's life is sin. The chief motive of his heart, moment by moment, is his own sinful pleasure, described here as lusts of the flesh and the desires of the mind. Here we read, Ephesians chapter 2, beginning in verse 1. among whom also we all had our conversation in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as the others." You see what Paul is saying here. What was the chief business of your life in your sinfulness? Fulfilling your sinful desires. That's what you do. the lusts of your flesh, the desires of your mind and that is the way that you were by nature by nature thus inclined an object of God's wrath a very striking thing now here you get the problem and we're working our way back to divine sovereignty the gospel comes to a man in this condition okay He loves his sins, as we've just seen here in Ephesians chapter 2. And he hates God, God's Christ, and the gospel that's being preached. And he always does the thing that he wants most. What's he going to do? A hundred times out of a hundred, he continues in his sins, because that's what he loves. And that's where Edwards was so acute when he said, man's problem is that he is sinful and free, sinful and always looking to fulfill those sinful desires. Concerning the hatred of God, you'll remember we had it not too long ago, but in Romans 8 verse 7, Paul said that the carnal mind is enmity against God, hostile to him, an enemy. While we were yet the enemies of God, Christ died for us. And you can see this so acutely. Recently I was studying through the Gospels with old Dr. Collinges. And there I was going through Gospel after Gospel and looking at the way that sinful men treated Jesus Christ at his trial. What a striking demonstration of the hatred of man towards God. Not only will they falsely accuse him, lie about him, suborn false witnesses, they'll do all of these things. But here you are in a religious assembly. I mean, imagine such a thing taking place in a presbytery, that they would strike him, blindfold him, mock him. These are the most religious people on the face of the planet. Look at how they'll treat Jesus Christ. And he doesn't get any better treatment from the Gentiles who will blindfold him, strike him on the head with a rod, crucify him. Very clear demonstration that sinful men hate Christ and hate this gospel. Their hatred of him was such that natural affection wouldn't even prevent them from mocking him while he was dying. When you think about, we might say that man has been condemned to death, it's just, it's good that he's being executed. But there is something of a natural sympathy and affection that will keep men from sitting there mocking the man while he's dying. But not so. The Pharisees will follow him out there and mock him as he dies. Striking demonstration of the hatred of God. What's going to happen? Jesus Christ is presented to these people and they can either continue in their sins or they can have Christ. What are they going to do? If they're left to themselves, they're going to do the one thing that they can do in their freedom, which is continue in their sins. You remember that very famous scene among Calvinists in John chapter 6 where Jesus has actually been preaching about these very things, about being bred from heaven and When the people are having a hard time accepting it, he said, well, this is why I said to you that no man can come to me unless the Father draws him or enables him. Very striking thing to say. You're departing now. And I understand why you're departing, because the Father hasn't drawn you. You've been left in your sinfulness. And being sinful and free, you're doing the one thing that you can do, the one thing that you're inclined to do. which is depart and leave grumbling the way that people always grumble when you hear this Calvinistic gospel this is a hard saying who can bear it and they leave well as we look at that passage in the gospel of John you don't have to turn to it because we're going to do some more work in Ephesians but all of the gospel the whole remedy lies in that word accept thanks be to God that Christ did not end with No man can come unto me. Period. Except. That's a great gospel word. Except the Father draw him. Well, we lay it out like this. Of course, we know that there's only one way of salvation, and that is Jesus Christ, in union with Christ. And there's only one way to be united with Jesus Christ, and that's by faith. But as we've already sketched it out, man in his sinfulness has a moral inability to respond positively to the gospel. He cannot respond in faith because he hates it. Nothing less than a complete renovation of his nature will solve the problem. If sinful men are simply left in their sinfulness, the gospel can be preached from heaven by angels or by the incarnate Son of God. And no one will believe that they are simply left in that sinfulness. Now this renewal of nature is variously described in the Bible. Moses would describe it as a circumcision of hearts. that God would cut away the deadness of the heart and make men receptive. I like Ezekiel's image. Ezekiel talks about the Spirit of God reaching into the human chest and pulling out a heart of stone and replacing it with a heart of flesh, warm and receptive to the gospel. Jesus talks about it as being born again. And Paul even uses that theological term that we've all come to know as regeneration, a renewal of the man. But nothing less will do. It's nothing less than a calling of a sinner that is spiritually dead into life, incapable of responding positively, and remaking him so that he can respond. And so we come to verse 4. You remember, In chapter 2, verses 1-3 of Ephesians, we've just had the description of the sinfulness of man. Now, the Gospel, as it's preached all over America, you would expect to find this in verse 4. But man, because he has some little island of righteousness or some appreciation of his need, can reach out and apprehend the grace of God that's been offered to him in Jesus Christ, kind of pulling himself up by his own bootstraps. But that's not what you find here at all. Paul has talked about a spiritual deadness and the remedy that he gives is a spiritual resurrection. Verse 4. But God who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ by grace ye are saved. and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath ordained before that we should walk in them. So you see what Paul is saying here. He doesn't say that there's anything in the man that can respond to this gospel. Sproul did it this way. He drew a couple of pictures that I thought were very memorable. He said the way the gospel is being preached in this day, it's portrayed like you're a drowning man being rushed along in a river. and God comes to the shore there and he throws you a life preserver and he hits you right in the hand and all you've got to do is close your hand on it and you'll be saved or it's like you're a sick man in a hospital and God comes to you and he puts the life-saving medicine to your lips and all you've got to do is open your mouth and receive it and Sproul said well that's not the way that Paul describes it here also the condition is otherwise you are not a drowning man you are a drowned man long dead at the bottom of that river and the spirit of God swam to the bottom retrieved your carcass and breathed life into it while you were dead that's a very different thing if your hands are closing now on that it's because he made you alive You weren't a dying man in the hospital, you were a dead man in the morgue. And the Spirit of God came down there, opened that little chamber, and breathed life into your lifelessness, so that you could respond. Notice here, the response is the response of faith. And Paul couldn't be more clear. For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. So when you respond to the gospel in faith, it didn't come from you. It came from the Spirit of God. Reminds you of what Paul said to the Corinthian Christians. 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Of God are ye in Christ. Why are you in Christ Jesus? Because God put you there. And not because you are wise or smart or anything else. It's very interesting what he says to the Corinthians that apparently thought of themselves as being wise. You know, we ended up in Christ Jesus because we are wiser than another sort of man. He said, Of God are ye in Christ, who has become to you wisdom. You didn't have any before. You became wise when God set you in Jesus Christ. Don't become confused. Now consider. This new nature is created by the Spirit of God, whom we have described in chapter 2 of the Confession of Faith as being omnipotent. Very much like Jesus Christ, the omnipotent Son of God, standing at the tomb of Lazarus and saying, Lazarus, come out! This is the voice of the Creator calling to the creation. There's no debate or anything else. Lazarus comes out, because the Creator has called him. So here the omnipotent spirit of God calls a man out of death into spiritual life and he comes alive. And this new nature that is implanted in him loves Christ and is learning to hate sin. And so now the gospel comes to the man and what does he do? Loving Christ, turning from the sins. He responds positively. This is what Jesus would say in John chapter 6. He says, All that the Father giveth to me, do come to me. And I will in no wise cast them out, and I won't lose a single one, but I will raise them up on the last day. There was an Eastern Orthodox man by the name of Leo Tolstoy who described conversion like this. He said, It's like a man that leaves his house on a piece of business one day only to get halfway there and realize the business is no longer necessary so he turns around to go home only to find that everything that had been on his right hand is now on his left and everything that had been on his left hand is now on his right and so it is with regeneration the Christ that you had hated how strangely and inexplicably you love and the sins that you had loved and delighted yourself in You suddenly hate. And what can explain it? Except a sovereign action of the Spirit of God. You know, the Calvinistic doctrine, when I considered my own conversion, was a very easy thing to believe. I had been playing in a rock and roll band for some time, and I wasn't one of these types, you know, that you could hear all these great stories, they had reached the end of the line, and were all washed up, and all that. I was having a great time. And then suddenly those sins that I love, they're becoming detestable. And I couldn't explain it. And I had, of course, always been a professor. I don't think that I was converted at the time. But the Christ that I had ignored growing up suddenly had a luster that he never had before. And that is why I brought up Tolstoy. I never heard a better description of what happened to me. What had been on my right hand, my sins that I loved were suddenly on the left hand. I hated them. And the Christ that I ignored suddenly became the chief business of my life. I didn't want to do anything else. I eventually left the band and my business because I didn't want to do anything else. I liked being in business and all that, but Every day I wanted to go home and open the word and study some theology. Chief business of my life. I couldn't explain it until I read Edward's book. That's what happened to me. It certainly wasn't anything in me or because I was washed up or because I came to the end of myself or anything else. It was because God by his own spirit arrested me in my tracks and reoriented me. and put me on a very different course well let's consider here now we've done all of this background work and consider divine sovereignty and human freedom as it operates in these things now we first ask the question is God showing himself sovereign over both the reprobate and the elect well if he leaves them to themselves sovereignly decided to leave them in their sins and not help them what's going to happen A hundred times out of a hundred. They're going to perish in their sins, doing the thing that they want most. But if God renews their hearts by his omnipotent power, what's going to happen? Exactly what he intends. They're going to come out of their spiritual tomb into spiritual life and respond But here's the more pointed question, or at least the one that everybody becomes interested in. Was the man always free? Indeed he was. While he was left in his sinfulness, he continued in his sins freely. That's what he wanted most. But when God renewed his heart, he came to Jesus Christ freely, because that is what he wanted most. And you see how brilliant Edwards was. How he tied these two things up. See, divine sovereignty and human freedom are not opposites or contrary. You see how they're harmonized and tied together simply and properly defining human freedom. Part of the problem in the definition, I don't want to get waylaid here, is that human beings usually like to describe their freedom in a very divine sort of way. We are most free. You know, there's nothing, no external factors crowding in upon us, and no inclinations of the human heart compelling us. But God alone is most free. We are free in this way, a creaturely way. And we all know it because this is the way that each one of our wills operates. C.S. Lewis said, you've got inside information here. This is the way you work, and you know it. Well, this raises another question, and we can't answer all of the questions, but this section in your bulletin is entitled Moral and Natural Ability. I think that this is a very helpful distinction that Edwards draws, and I want to alert you to it. He's dealing with a problem. If I have a moral inability to respond to the gospel in my sinfulness, because all I want is my sin, I'm born inclined to that sin, why does God blame me? I was born inclined this way, and now I'm simply working out the fruit of that? Why is He going to blame me? It's the very question that Paul runs up on in Romans chapter 9. Let me make a couple of distinctions for you. First, let's consider moral ability. You have the moral ability only to act according to your strongest inclination. So we've already talked about this in different language, but moral ability has to do with the ability of the will in this regard. you have the moral ability only to act according to the strongest motive and you have a moral inability to act otherwise as Edwards defines it but then he makes a distinction between what he called moral ability and natural ability and by natural ability what he meant is that you have a natural ability to do anything that is properly an object of your will Now we've gone into philosophy land and a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. It's really not that difficult. You do not have the natural ability to fly around this room like a bird. It's not properly an object of your will. You have the natural ability to flap your arms, should you so desire, but not actually to fly around the room. So natural ability refers to things that are properly the object of your will. And what Edwards points out is that blameworthiness has to do with natural ability, not moral ability. And this is actually a distinction that we all work with every day. Let me give you a couple of really mundane examples. You're driving down the road, happiest punch, warm spring day. And you see a guy speed up to you, on your right hand side, let's say you were passing somebody, you're on your way passing him, but they speed up to you, and they actually give you a look over, look over at you, and then they speed up and cut you off. That person had the moral ability to do nothing else than what they did. It was the strongest inclination of their heart at that moment. And they had a moral inability to do anything else. But do you hold them guiltless? No, you don't. Why? Because they have the natural ability to act otherwise. And this is very important. You say, well, why do we hold him blameworthy for that? Because when he does that to you, it gives you insight into what's going on in his heart. Now, we know, we get that kind of insight into his heart. Why? Because we've done those things. You think to yourself, hey, that was weird. You think, how selfish. And you hold him blameworthy, in spite of the fact that with respect to moral ability, he couldn't have done anything else than what he did. Now, you wouldn't hold him blameworthy, let's say somebody sideswiped him and pushed him into your lane. Well then, it could be the exact same external action. But he didn't have a natural ability to do anything other than what he did. He was forced mechanically into your lane, and so you don't hold him blameworthy. But you see here, having a natural ability to do otherwise, you do hold him blameworthy. It's the same way with the gospel. The gospel comes to a man in his sinfulness, and he rejects it. He had a moral inability to do anything else, because he had no inclination to receive that gospel. See that? The moral inability only to reject would be the contrary way of saying it. But he had the natural ability to do otherwise. Coming to Christ was properly an object of his will. It tells you what's going on in his heart. You see, ultimately, at the end of the day, I know we talk a lot about you know we talk a lot about the forms of worship and everything else but never lose sight of the fact that Christianity is always a religion about the human heart and the problem of the human heart when we reject that gospel it shows what we love and we can be as pleasant as punch when we do it but it shows what we love We want to continue in our sinfulness. Even if we make all sorts of things say, that's very interesting, or I think Jesus was a great moral teacher, or whatever, it's revealing what's going on in our hearts. We really love our sins, and we really have no time, no inclination, and no love for that Jesus Christ. It's the heart issue. That's when, if I could just make a note, when you're talking to people about the gospel, This is the issue. And you'll do that, sitting there and arguing with them about stuff that they already know is fruitless. You've got to get at the issue, which is their hearts. The problem is not that they have certain intellectual objections, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The problem is that they hate God. And you'll do them the best favor if you can simply uncover that. See, your problem is not all this smoke screen that you're putting up. The problem is your heart. You know that these things are true, but because you do not want to worship God, you'll get involved in all of this kind of foolishness to try to avoid that. Just consider the theory of evolution. A bunch of really, really smart people sitting around, trying to think of some way to escape from the God of Heaven, so that they don't have to live with the uncomfortable fact that they know He's there, that he's going to judge them for their sins, but they've got to suppress that knowledge so they can live comfortably. So they seek out many inventions, as Solomon says. Many inventions. Well, let's do a bit of application. First, how do we communicate this to our children? This is a very sophisticated bit of doctrine. Well, we can impress it upon our children in some more basic visceral kinds of ways. And the first way, pray with your children. Pray with them every day. Pray with them about everything. It has been well said that every Christian becomes a Calvinist when he hits his knees, and it is true. The most ardent Arminian who thinks that God is not going to make anybody believe the gospel. He's not going to force anybody to it. He's left up to his own free will and everything else. You notice when they hit their knees in their public assembly, God, please save this one and save that one. On the one hand, in their theology, they deny that he can or will do it. But in their prayers, there's no other place they can go for help. And they start pleading with him to do so. And when we start pleading with God in prayer about this thing or that thing, it becomes a very practical demonstration to the children that this God is almighty over all things. And this is where we go for help. A second thing that I think is very important, we've got to be careful that we don't teach our children about God's sovereignty and about providence with one hand and then take it away by grumbling against this providence on the other hand. As if these things were happening to us by chance or the fates have done us foul in this thing and now we're angry at the fates. You see, it's not appropriate for us as Christian people to be grumbling at God's providence. It's a way of treating providence as if its source wasn't in God. Because that's the only way we can justify ourselves in grumbling at it. You see that? I mean, if we believe that this is something that's come from the hand of God, then what do we do? We humbly submit ourselves to it. Consider David's conduct as he is being driven from his throne. He's fleeing and you have Shimei sitting there cursing David along the way. And what is it that David... this man is sinning against him. There's no doubt about it. But what does David say? It's God's providence. God has so arranged things that he would do so. And so he tells his armed men, let him alone. I'm going to submit myself to God's chastening rod at this point. But you see, when we grumble at His providence, we act as if it's not His providence. That we're grumbling at some other God, like the faith, or some sort of abstract happening, chance happening, that we just ran into these events. We're not treating them like they came from the hand of a loving Father. And so we must be careful that we don't teach our children about providence with our words and then deny God's providence in our actions. The second thing, now this returns to the application that I made in the body of the doctrine. Do not draw back from teaching your children their covenant obligations and responsibilities. Indeed, it will be God sovereignly changing their heart that leads them to Christ in faith and leads them to live according to God's law and word. That's true. But they are responsible to do those things, irrespective of what God does. And children, this is a very important thing. You have a responsibility to come to faith in Jesus Christ. living in the midst of this covenant. You have a responsibility to obey Christ in his word. Now, today, and there's no good trying to explain it away or say, I'm going to wait until God changes my heart or anything else. You are responsible for it right now, irrespective of what he does. And so we shouldn't draw back from that. You see, that can be a very mistaken application of Calvinism. Like, well, God hasn't changed their hearts yet. So I'm not going to press them with their duties. Whether or not God has changed their hearts, they are pressed with those duties. And they ought to be so pressed. Day by day, you must embrace Christ by faith. If sinned in this thing or that thing, embrace Christ by faith. It's the only place that you can go for help. And as you impress upon them their duties, the gospel will become a lot more clear to them. Because they will see day by day, and in a million ways, I have broken the obligations of this covenant, and what help is there going to be for me? There's only one source of help and hope, and that's in Jesus Christ. And so those obligations become that schoolmaster that drives them to Jesus Christ. And it should be. It seemed most fitting to me as I was preparing this sermon to to finish with that chief application that scripture everywhere makes of this doctrine, which is very humbling to us and very glorifying to God. Edwards preached a sermon with that very title, God Greatly Glorified in Man's Dependence. And it is so. We can't do anything to help ourselves. You see, if our Calvinism runs into this strain where we start to feel like we're special, Because we're the elect, it's run in the wrong direction. We're among the elect not because we were different. We find in the scripture that God frequently chose the worst sort, and the dumbest sort, and the most backward sort, to make it clear that it was he himself that worked the salvation. Turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. See here we have Paul bringing all of these things together. Now imagine you're in the church at Corinth and you've come to think a little bit about yourself because as a church you guys excel in spiritual graces and gifts. and so now you've come to think a little bit about yourself and about your wisdom and about your understanding of religion so much so that you've become very divisive with your brethren and now Paul wants to talk to these Christians in a very sobering way verse 26 for ye see your calling brethren how that not many wise men after the flesh Not many mighty, not many noble are called. This is not very flattering. He said, you forget yourselves Corinthians. You are the more dull-witted sort. Not the noble sort, but the ignoble sort. You forget yourselves. Consider your calling. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. That foolish things, that's you, Corinthian Christians. And God hath chosen the weak things of the world, you brethren, to confound the things which are mighty and the base things of the world. That would be you. And the things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are. To what end? That no flesh should glory in his presence. You see, that's why I said application scripture makes over and over again is to humble us. We are not in Christ Jesus because we were righteous or wise or smart or clever or anything else. Paul's saying that God usually chose the dumber sort, the more wicked sort, the less noble sort. That's you, brethren. And if you've become anything, and if you've made any advance in religion, sanctification, holiness, thanks be to God for that. What have ye that ye have not received? Verse 30. But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who has made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Don't think that you had those things before. God set you in Christ Jesus and Christ Jesus became to you wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. To what end? It is according as it is written, He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord. Man is humbled in his dependence and God is greatly glorified. I mentioned earlier that Van Til said there wasn't one single doctrine that if you press it far enough will not resolve itself in mystery. Here's a very practical application of that very same principle. There's not a single doctrine of the Christian religion that when you press it ought not to lead you to worship. Because that's what Paul says here is its primary application. You are humbled to the dust to consider what manner of a man you were and God is greatly glorified and it leads to the worship of God. I wanted to take up just the second doctrine very briefly. It seems fitting to just do it here, at least mention it. We're going to do some more with it when we get to the chapter on Providence, chapter 5. But look at Westminster Confession of Faith 3.1 again. Our doctrine is that God ordains whatsoever comes to pass, yet this does not annul the efficacy of second causes. kind of a sophisticated way of saying that God doesn't do everything immediately, but he still uses other causal agents to bring to pass his will. We have that at the end here. It talks about God ordaining everything that comes to pass, but it says the liberty or contingency of second causes are not taken away, but rather they are established. Now, this language has to do with what we will find later, and that's why I said we'll treat it later. In chapter 5, God is called the first cause. He's the first cause of all things that come to pass. And He is the first cause of all these things through the instrument of His decree. He decrees these things to be created, and for all of history to unfold the way that it does. And so when we talk, sometimes we talk about God doing things immediately as first cause, like the creation. It's the most striking thing when you read the creation account. You ever notice that he created light before he created the luminary bodies? Why would he do that? There are several things in the creation account that are like that. To show you that he didn't need means in order to have that light. So he creates it first, and then the second cause to sustain it afterwards. He creates the luminary bodies after he creates the plants. A striking thing. To show what? That although, normally speaking, plants need sunshine and rain and everything else for their being sustained, God can create them and sustain them by his own immediate power, without any second cause. And so Genesis 1, there's many examples of this sort of thing, that God doesn't need second causes, He can work immediately. The miracles are very much like that, where you see an exercise of God's immediate causality entering into history. But there's no doubt about it that God has decreed that most things would fall out by second causes. So, an example of this would be that God, after he made the plants and sustained them by his own power, then created luminary bodies and caused the rain to fall and created a man to cultivate these things, Genesis chapter 2, second causes to sustain them. So God has decreed that they would be sustained and now he creates these secondary causes to do it, to see that it is done. It's very much like this when we talk about salvation. And here we see God as first cause and the secondary cause is coming together and Him using both things. As we mentioned, the regeneration of the heart is the work of the Holy Spirit alone. Immediate causality. A miracle that takes place where there's no secondary cause bringing those things to pass. But God does accompany these things normally with these second causes. The preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments. It's the most fascinating thing that when God decreed the salvation of your soul, He not only knew the hour that He had appointed the Spirit of God to come and vivify you, but He also appointed that same hour for the gospel to come to you. So that you could hear that gospel and respond to that gospel in faith. So God works immediately and he also works in second clauses. It's very interesting that what has become known as hyper-Calvinism is actually less than Calvinistic. You see, hyper-Calvinism was the whole idea, and you do have some Calvinistic churches that are like this, where, well, we don't, you know, go out preaching the gospel and all of that kind of thing, because God's going to save the ones that He will save. You see, but it's actually too small a view of God's sovereignty, rather than too great a view of His sovereignty. God not only has foreordained the end, the salvation of that person, but all of the means that will accomplish that end. That means people like you and like me going and sharing the gospel with this one and that one. You see, God is Lord over more than just ultimate destinies. He's the Lord of everything in between and how we get there. So what has become known as hyper-Calvinism is really not Calvinism at all. I recently read a book on the Synod of Dort. It was almost as if the Arminians convinced some Calvinists that that's really what they believed. That was the Arminian caricature, and some Calvinists ran with it. But Calvinists never believed that. God is Lord over the end, and all of the means to that end. A big view of sovereignty, rather than a small view. Now, just very quickly, there are three types of second causes that the Confession of Faith talks about. We'll treat these at length when we get to Chapter 5, Section 2, but let me just, as they're mentioned here, let me just mention them. There are what are called necessary causes, that God brings some things to pass by necessary causes, and by that they mean mechanical sorts of things. You might call it the laws of physics, the laws of chemistry. That when certain things act together, certain results are produced and God brings the ends that he wants out of those things through mechanical processes. It's an interesting thing, even if you consider the great business of your redemption, Not only was God going to immediately regenerate you, and not only was he going to send a man with the gospel, but there was also the motion of the man to you with the gospel, or the tape arriving where you were sojourning. Mechanical processes going in to your redemption. This is part of the necessary causality that they're talking about. There are free second causes. That's what we spent most of the sermon talking about. the actions of intelligent and volitional creatures, intelligent and willing creatures doing things. So, when God sent a man to you with the gospel, that man was willing to go with it. A second cause, to be sure, but that man, by an act of his will, went and did that. Freely. So it was a free second cause. In 5.2 they will also mention, as they mention here, contingent causes. Now there they don't mean contingent with respect to God, as if God didn't know how these things were going to happen or fall out. What they mean is that the causes that produce certain results are not obvious to us, and so we call them contingent. So for example, if I was to flip a coin, we might call the result of that contingent. And we might assign it a certain probability. 50% of the time it turns up on its head, 50% of the time it turns up on its tail. Now, we only call it contingent or probable because we can't measure all of the factors that are involved on the coin. But if we could, we could tell you how it was going to come out. because they're all mechanical processes, just very, very sophisticated in their interaction. There's a certain amount of force that comes from the thumb with a certain rotational force. What is the pull of gravity and the density of the air are all going to have an influence on it. Do I catch it or do I let it hit the floor? Do I turn it over again before I put it on my hand? Mechanical processes, all of them, but they're so sophisticated in their interaction that we cannot penetrate them. So we say that the result is contingent. But known to God and decreed by God. There's nothing more contingent in life than the flipping of the coin or the casting of the lot. But what do we find in Proverbs? That the casting of the lot is in the hand of the Lord. that he controls all of those things. So that's what they mean by contingent. Not that some things are unknown to God, but rather some causal factors are so complex to us, we just start assigning probabilities with respect to them. Let us pray together. Still Waters Revival Books is now located at PuritanDownloads.com. It's your worldwide online Reformation home for the very best in free and discounted classic and contemporary Puritan and Reformed books, mp3s and videos. For much more information on the Puritans and Reformers, including the best free and discounted classic and contemporary books, mp3s, digital downloads and videos, please visit Still Waters Revival Books at PuritanDownloads.com Stillwater's Revival Books also publishes the Puritan Hard Drive, the most powerful and practical Christian study tool ever produced. All thanks and glory be to the mercy, grace, and love of the Lord Jesus Christ for this remarkable and wonderful new Christian study tool. 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