Let's start with a prayer and then we'll sit down. Lord God, we pray for you to be with us throughout this evening. Through this lesson and through the entire series that we do, Lord, we pray that it's helpful, glorified to you, true to what your scripture teaches and helps each one of us along in our Christian walk that we might obey you and adore you more and more in our lives and be conformed to the image of Christ. We pray as well that you would be with us in this meeting afterwards and in the situations that we are dealing with in each of our lives. Please grant us grace and wisdom and show yourself mighty and powerful to Again, bring repentance, forgiveness, and conformity to Christ as we all desire to be. So be with us now in this evening. We pray it all in Christ's name. Amen. So I've never gotten to do this formally. I'm sure you guys have done this formally at some point, but we are actually going to go through the doctrines of grace, sometimes called reformed theology, sometimes called Calvinism, that sort of realm. We're going through reformed theology. Grace Chapel Reformed Baptist Church, it's in our name. I don't think it's catching anybody by surprise that we hold to Reformed theology. These doctrines do come up, obviously, in preaching because it's in the text. We heard it pretty much a lot in Ephesians. I think something back in maybe 2012-ish, This church went through Romans. I know it's heavy in Romans, but it's all over. We've been going through the Confession for seven years, and so it's here and there, but we're finally teaching on it systematically as a singular doctrine in a systematic way, and then we'll have that as a resource going forward, which is always really nice to have. But it's all over the Bible, so it comes up here and there. We also preach apologetically and doctrinally, which we believe, not exclusively apologetically and doctrinally. hopefully practically, the ways that can be applied to our lives as well, but it's inevitable that when you do that, these sort of things will come up. We defend the doctrines we believe, the beliefs, we defend against progressive so-called Christianity, liberal Christianity, all kinds of beliefs that we hold to, we defend in our preaching. So again, that's inevitable that it comes up. But we don't teach on this necessarily constantly, right? We're not always, that's not the substance of our teaching. We're always talking about Calvinism or reformed theology. Some people think that might be the case because it's one of our distinctives, but it's not necessarily. I mean, you could go weeks at times. We don't really determine it necessarily. It's just when it's in scripture, it's in scripture. And we address it when it's there. But it is one that's probably, people are more aware of it, right? Let's be frank about it, a lot of people disagree with us. We're in the minority at this point in history, in this country. We're kind of the minority, even though there's been surges of popularity here and there on certain aspects of reform theology. I would argue not all of it, but certain aspects of it. The predestinarian part here and there has gotten more attention. But it's one that people disagree with us about, even though it's one of our distinctives. We know that. We're aware of that fact. But I think we can say his decree, God's sovereignty, God's decree, is presupposed in everything that we teach. In all of our preaching, all of our teaching, it's presupposed. This whole series, too, as we go through this, it's meant to be interactive. We want questions. We want to be able to interact. You can ask during, you can interrupt, you can raise your hand, especially if I say something you haven't heard of. I'm hoping that I define anything that I haven't heard of, or you haven't heard of, I'll try and give definition to. But let's make this interactive and feel free to ask questions before, during, after, send them by text message, phone call, write them down on a card, slip them in my pocket, doesn't matter. We want to get to the things that people want understanding on. And one of the things to do is we're going to cover the basics of it, you know, the tulip stuff, the things that, you know, the basics. But we also want to address things like, well, what about this verse? What about this idea? Things like that, all the whatabouts. I've heard it called the whatabouts. I think we're going to plan to do the whatabout verses and the whatabout ideas as well. So this is going to be a little bit shorter tonight. We're not going to get into the meat of it. We're holding off on that, on the meatier portions that we're studying. I thought it would be a good idea and I'm almost glad we get to do this. Why even study it? Why does it matter? Why do we care? Is it worth it? Is there a reason that this is a distinctive of our local church? Or technically this is a, for us at least, this is a reason for ecclesiastical separation, meaning We're distinctly not associated with a church that doesn't hold to these doctrines. And we would not personally go to a church that doesn't hold to these doctrines. And if somebody outright denied these doctrines, we probably wouldn't feel comfortable as receiving them as members. Not necessarily because we don't think they're a believer, but it may not be wise for the peace of the local church as well as for that individual who might not be comfortable and not realize it. So why do we still care? Do we believe this is a primary issue when it comes to salvation or to the gospel? Are we saying Reformed theology is primary? Yes and no. And let me explain that. On its face, no. Not on its face. That is to say, if someone says, well, I don't agree with Reformed theology, that doesn't mean we think they're not a believer. We're not saying, oh, you're a heretic. You're not a Christian. You're affirming a false gospel. No, we don't say that. Of course not. This is not something you absolutely have to affirm in order to be saved. But at the same time. We would say that if the heirs of the positions we oppose with our doctrine here, if they were held to consistently, then yes, it would indeed be a primary gospel issue. It can lead that way, it trends that way. Because the doctrine of Reformed theology gets at the heart of the gospel, how we understand salvation works. It gets at even the doctrine of God, who we believe God is, the acts that he has done, who he actually is. The definition of God's love is part of this, and God is love. I mean, that's a big thing about who God is. So, in some ways, it's akin to asking, if we're asking, why care about Reformed theology, it's sort of like asking, does the Reformation still matter? Well, yeah, I think we all agree with that. Yes, it does. I don't think anybody would question that it did matter. It still matters. Again, because it corrected vital errors that undermined both the gospel itself and the doctrine of God himself. And that matters. So we don't reject it, neglect it, blow it off as no big deal, some thing in history that we study as pure history and that it's interesting. No, we think the content of what actually went on at the time in the 16th, 17th century, we think it really does matter. And when questions arose soon after the Reformation, so the initial Reformation happens and there's second and third generation reformers going on, the doctrine is trickling and dissipating throughout the church and throughout the lands, right? After that Reformation, there were questions that arose regarding specifics about the gospel that threatened to divide the Protestants. The Protestants broke off and now within the Protestants, There's some people saying some things and the church saw some of those things that were being said. I'm thinking primarily of Jacob Arminius and the Romanstrance. They were saying things and the church was saying, that is the Roman heir that we left off. And it was. It wasn't falling back into the system of the papacy, right? There weren't people affirming things about the papacy or the sacramental system that everything got left off. But in terms of how salvation works fundamentally, It was reverting to Rome's synergistic system. I'm going to define that. It's synergistic system, and it was fundamentally abandoning the monergistic system of the Reformation that we had recovered. Again, I'll define both of those. So that is the essence of this debate. You can call it Calvinism versus Arminianism if you want. That's fine. Ultimately, it's not just people that think they're Arminians. It's all synergists. It's monergism versus synergism. That's the fundamental debate that this gets at the heart of. That's what this is really all about. That's the essence of it. Monergism is what we would argue is the correct position. And we're going to seek to show that through scripture. And you can be Berean about that and search it out. Test our exegesis. Text our claims. It is the biblical teaching. Monarchism is the biblical teaching that the grace of God is the only efficient cause in beginning and effecting conversion. Personal individual conversion. It is only grace that does that work. Grace and grace alone. So that grace is effectual. Not like it's necessary. We're saying not only is it necessary, but it actually does the thing that it's trying to do. It actually is powerful enough in and of itself to convert the soul by itself. Not meaning by that that we don't cooperate personally with salvation, but rather that our cooperation itself is a product of the spirit working in us through grace. When we cooperate, when we go along with it, when we pray the prayer or however people get saved, that is a product of grace having done its work in our heart. Not completed, but enough to save us. Now synergism is just the opposite of that. Synergism is the synergistic understanding, right? Both the divine and human wills are active. And they mean that in a different way than we mean it, because we're not saying our will is inactive. They're saying the will is active in effectuating, making it come to pass, bringing about conversion of the soul. So therefore, they must cooperate with each other in order to bring salvation to effect. That's the fundamental distinction. We're not denying that they cooperate, we're saying they cooperate because the Spirit has worked, because grace has done its work. Synergists say they must cooperate in order for grace to do its work. That's the fundamental distinction. So what they mean by that is unless we humble ourselves prior to regeneration, that's gonna be the question. Man, prior to regeneration. They're gonna say, unless you humble yourself prior to regeneration, prior to the spirit working to change you, unless we humble ourselves, recognize our need for a savior, then God will not work to save us. Now he's ready and willing as soon as we give him the permission or the go-ahead. That's what the Synergists would say. He's ready and willing to do all the work of salvation, but not until we do our part, our cooperation of our own free will. We must cooperate of our own free will. So our obedience to repent and believe, our humbleness in admitting that we need Christ, and our understanding of all of this is something that we do ourselves, and then cooperate with grace, and then are saved. That would be the synergistic understanding. That is synergism. And the reformers and their grandchildren rightly saw synergism as reverting back to the same air that they've just rescued the church from. They saw that as going back to the Roman Catholic idea. Again, not the papacy and the sacraments and the whole system, but the fundamental understanding of you work with grace in order to get saved. And that's what they said. And this really does go back to the early church. So in the early church, Pelagianism was an issue. Pelagianism was refuted thoroughly and repeatedly. Pelagius was this fifth century Irish ascetic monk. That means he's in the 400s, early 400s. Augustine's still around. And he eventually came to live in Jerusalem. He exerted significant influence. He apparently was very likable, had some kind of like jingle songs to go along with his heresy, that sort of thing. So he taught heresy, that we're not connected to Adam in a spiritual sense, in terms of sin. We're not connected to Adam. Adam was an example to us, and a bad one at that, right? Don't follow Adam, he's bad. That's all Adam is. So Pelagius taught that we are not born in sin. We're not born with a sinful nature in and of ourselves. Adam's this example. So you and I are not born sinful. That's the idea. We're born neutral. That's the Pelagian era. Thus, what don't you need if you're born neutral? Technically, you don't need grace. Pelagius said that. You don't need grace. In fact, we all have the moral ability to do what is right and live a holy life. That is, you have libertarian free will. Because you can do it, if you just choose to do it. Literally, you can achieve sinless perfectionism without grace, if you would just choose rightly, by your own choice. You can do that. And if you chose to follow the example of Jesus, because Jesus is the good example, Adam's the bad example, choose to follow the good example. That's the Pelagian era. It's easy to see how that directly conflicts with both scripture and the entire gospel itself. No one's going to be taken off guard by, oh, maybe, no. Pelagian was an arch heretic. He's like one of the worst ever. Him and Marcion are like the two greatest heretics in the first four centuries of the church. Augustine opposed him, very well known fact, and eventually the church condemned him. Condemned his teachings at 418 in the Council of Carthage. Pelagius is condemned, he's condemned again at the Council of Ephesus in 431. I think he's condemned like repeatedly over and over and over at almost every church council. And that's great, that's all great. No one thinks Pelagius is a good teacher, Pelagianism is a false gospel. Anybody that teaches that is just like, you're not even in the realm of Christianity. So why do we explain that bit of history? Why is that relevant? Well, it's relevant to monergism versus synergism, still. We're in our context, Calvinism versus Arminianism, because that very idea of libertarian free will actually appeals pretty strongly to our sinful natures. It really does. And what happened was, even after Pelagius is condemned, some people are like, well, he's wrong about what he said about grace, but... He's right about what he said about libertarian free will. And so there was this teaching called semi-Pelagianism, kind of like halfway Pelagianism. And they sought to affirm some of what Pelagius taught about the will, but without denying original sin, the way Pelagius did. So yeah, we're sinners, but, but, you know, we're affected by the fall of Adam, but, Man is not so sinful or fallen as to render him incapable of the obedience to repent and believe, or incapable of humbling themselves enough to admit that they need Christ. That's what the semi-Pelagians said. So in essence, they found an excuse to retain libertarian free will. They came up with some explanation of why that is still the case. Man is not fully in bondage to sin. And they affirmed grace is necessary in salvation, which all sounds great. You know, even the Roman church will say grace is necessary to salvation. When we say, yeah, we know it's necessary, we say grace alone, right? That's why those alones are so important, because they're like, grace, but, then you do this. No, that's what's going on with semi-Pelagians. You know, we have to do our part. God does his part, you do your part. It's really small, but you do your part. You just press the button, and then he does all the work. It's that idea, semi-Pelagian. Again, that's just basic synergism, and this is what we contend against. And the church, to their credit, the church wisely condemned semi-Pelagianism at the Council of Orange in 529. So it happened pretty quick, but 529 condemns semi-Pelagianism. In spite of that, though, the Roman church eventually I mean, they're basically semi-Pelagian. They still are, and they have been for many, many years. In their teaching on salvation, it's basically semi-Pelagian. Now, they add a bunch of stuff to it where it's like you almost don't even realize it's semi-Pelagian because of the sacraments and this whole system and this categorization of being in grace or out of grace. you know, that sort of thing and their elevation of different sins and they can send you to hell and purgatory. It's like they've added so much to it you don't even recognize or pay attention to how semi-Pelagian they are. But they are. They're semi-Pelagian. You do your part. And I'm not gonna do it tonight, but we might do it in the future. We're gonna, hopefully, we'll get a chance to read some of the canons from the Council of Orange where it is condemned, where semi-Pelagianism is condemned. I think you'll be really surprised, because it literally sounds like they are condemning modern Arminianism. It sounds like they take the basic evangelicalism that you find in the American church and be like, no, that's false. So you can do it if you wanna go home, Google Canons of the Council of Orange and read some of them. And it's older language, but you can still tell, like they are just straight up condemning anyone that says, well, we need grace, but we also do this part of our own free will. And they're like, no, no, the early church did not affirm this. A lot of people don't really realize that. Semi-Pelagianism and Arminianism, I don't want to pretend they're identical. They're not technically identical, but they're nearly indistinguishable. They function exactly the same. They're both synergistic to the core. They're both formulated specifically to preserve synergism, to preserve the idea of man's libertarian free will. And we're going to give more definition to that when we get there eventually. But that is the air that the later reformers saw when Arminianism arose, when Protestantism, what was called evangelicalism, when it was challenged, it was monergistic. And they said, this synergism is just like what we left in Rome. And they recognized it. So yes, reform theology matters. It protects the church against this air, synergism. Arminianism or Arminians from following their heir into consistency. I think when we press back, they are more careful not to be consistent. Because if they were consistent, they would be heretics. And I don't think Arminians are heretics necessarily. But if they were allowed to be consistent, I think they would be because it would be necessarily affirming salvation by faith plus works. It would be giving credit to man to some degree. Now, they're not going to say that. I think they're confused most of the time. It's an air that trends towards heresy, is the way that I've heard it put, that I think is accurate. I'm not calling it heresy, we wouldn't call it heresy, but it trends towards it in the sense of like, you're pointed right at it, just don't pull that trigger, because you're gonna hit it if you pull the trigger. So we also recognize this, the vast majority of Armenians do not call themselves Armenians. they wouldn't be able to define what Arminianism is. And if you said, are you Arminian? Most of them would be like, no, I don't think so. I don't know what that is. I've never called myself that. And we're aware of that. So we're not like angry about it or something. I would call their inconsistency a blessed inconsistency. It's a good thing they're not consistent because that would make them worse if they were consistent. Like if you've seen the SPC people that affirm that you can't lose your salvation. I was unaware of the fact that that's pretty widespread. There's a lot of SBC people that agree, you don't lose your salvation, which I just never understood it because it only makes sense if what we're saying is true about salvation, which they all deny. So they're kind of like four part Armenians, one part Calvinists, and that doesn't make sense because it's a cohesive whole. Those four parts, the parts of the doctrine are, it's one doctrine that makes sense altogether. You can't really piece it apart and take parts of it. Some Calvinist tried to do that and they make the same error with other parts of it as well like limited atonement We'll get to that but it doesn't make sense to break it into pieces because it all works together So there's a lot of Southern Baptists down in the south and a lot of them don't think you can lose your salvation And I'm just like you deny free will after salvation. I thought I I thought that free will was kind of like the big thing that you're trying to defend, but then you're saying you get saved and then God takes it away? So you can't lose it? I've never understood it. I think it's inconsistent and I'm hoping that they, I'm glad that they get that part right. But it is what it is, right? We all have errors, we get that. Point is though, the point is as we get into this before we start this extended series, reform theology matters because it clarifies the gospel. Or maybe I would say it this way. It teaches the gospel message clearly the way that scripture does. I think it's clear in scripture. I think it's the clearest teaching of the scripture. That's what Spurgeon said too. He said, you can call it Calvinism. I just call it the gospel. It is what the gospel is. Not saying that if you deny it, you necessarily deny the gospel. Again, I want to be careful, right? I've got plenty of harsh things to say in my heart that I probably shouldn't say with my mouth. So I wanna be careful to not pretend like people that disagree with us are awful, terrible heretics or something like that. But we do wanna recognize that it's an air that trends in a very dangerous direction because it gets at who God is, right? What is God's love? What's it mean to be loved by God really? Does he love the same way we love? Does he love the Canaanite high priest sacrificing babies to Moloch just like he loves Abraham and Moses and the Israelites? Is that love completely equal? Can you put an equal sign between those loves? Or does he have categories of love like we do? Because I love all of you, but there's only one woman here that I love with a covenantal love, and she's sitting right there. I'll get over you guys. I've got a special love for her, right? Well, God loves, that's analogical to God's love. There's lots of questions like that that we're gonna get at that I think just need more attention. And we've got time and we can go slow and we can ask a lot of these hard questions. I don't think there's a single difficult question that is hard for us to answer that the other side doesn't likewise have equal difficulty in answering. And there are hard questions with this, but it's not particular to us. It's just particular to having a sovereign God. And so we're going to handle as much of those as we can, and you can throw as many of them at us as possible, and we'll address them. And it'll be entertaining and hopefully very edifying. And I think I've kept it under 25 minutes, 20 minutes. I'm impressed with myself. It's almost never been done. So feel free to throw stuff out at us. And I don't know what our plan is in terms of logistics right now of how we start this meeting. And do we sing a song? Let's maybe just close with a quick song. Are you OK with that? Oh, yes. Right now, that's a good idea. What am I talking about? Yeah. Any questions before we do the meeting? Yeah Yeah, so in the Reformed We would see salvation is very Trinitarianly applied. I don't know if I can make that an adverb. Justin's question was, how is the Trinity involved? So in Reformed theology, we say the father predestines all things. He elects a people. The son's job, he sends the son to accomplish the salvation that he decreed. And then the Father and the Son together send the Spirit to apply that salvation. So every one of those steps is necessary. You have to be foreknown, elected, and predestined. Then the son has to die for you and impute his righteousness to you and rise again for you. And then the Holy Spirit has to come and convert you. And when he converts you, he's just applying the work of Christ. And then he begins to sanctify you to make you more and more like Jesus, because that's the very thing that the father predestined in the very beginning. You're predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, as Romans 8, 29 tells us. It's all three members of the Trinity are involved, all three do necessary work to save. We say Jesus literally saves, but the Holy Spirit's literally regenerating us so that we come to faith and are saved. But it's all because of what the Father decreed to happen from the very beginning. So not one person is left out. I don't think an Arminian would necessarily have a problem with that, except in the specificity of where they disconnect the specificity of what the Father does versus then they make the work of Jesus universal and then the work of the Holy Spirit, again, specific. And that's where there's a disconnect. We're more consistent there. We say each one is specifically for the same group of people. God has a people for his own possession. They're predestined. They're elected. It's the bride of Christ. It is the church. And every one of those individual people within that bride, within the church, will come to faith. And that's the true church, the true universal church, not necessarily everyone that makes himself part of the church. So that's something that we'll try to give attention to as we go. Anything else? Okay, let's pray quick and then we'll sing a song and we'll get going on this meeting. Heavenly Father, we again do ask that you would grant us understanding as we engage another systematic study. We pray that we come to know you more and appreciate how salvation works. All the more, I pray that we would decrease and you would increase, not only in our own hearts, but in how we live our life and how we love others. Please do that work through this teaching. We pray it in Christ's name. Amen.