Well, good morning and welcome
to our continuing study in the book of Luke. And we've been
in chapter four and for several weeks now we've been focusing
on verse 31 and 32 of Luke chapter four. We'll read those right
now. And Jesus has left Nazareth. He's come into
Capernaum, the city of Galilee. And he came down to Capernaum,
a city of Galilee, and taught them on the Sabbath days. And
they were astonished at his doctrine, for his word was with power."
And we spent some time talking about astonishing doctrines.
And last week we examined the Sabbath day. The Lord of the
Sabbath was right there on the Sabbath day. And as was his custom,
he read and taught from the scriptures concerning himself. And so we've
been looking at these astonishing doctrines. What would they have
considered astonishing? Would it have been astonishing
if you just said, oh, you're all on the right track. Everything
you're doing is perfect. Don't change a thing. But that's
not what we find in the scripture. They did not understand grace.
And it took divine intervention for that to happen. So he taught
them on Sabbath days and they were astonished at his doctrine
for his word was with power. So today we're looking at an astonishing doctrine that
regards the fall. This astonishing doctrine of
total depravity. It's been called It's been identified
by that's not total depravity is not a term found in the Bible,
but it's a terms that describe What happened to man in the fall?
where man lost all ability to anything spiritual and in fact
became as the Apostle Paul wrote he became enmity against God
and hated God, hated anything to do with God. This doctrine
is really just simply not believed except by those who through the
new birth have experienced grace. In religion, they teach us that
we're only wounded by the fall, and we still possess a spark
of life which only needs to be emotionally fanned to bring it
to life. In nature, we learn the core
of man is basically good. and is subject only to change
or improvement based on environmental conditions that affect behavior.
They view it as sin, as just an infection which presupposes
some basic soundness. And in Isaiah chapter 1 verse
6 it says there is no soundness. And there's no soundness at all. But Mambly's, we do enough good,
because we're basically good, we do enough good to compensate
for the bad, and we deny the need for anything else. We deny the finished work of
Christ. Both these concepts are fundamentally
flawed and completely wrong. The natural man cannot understand
or know the spiritual things of God, having lost that capacity
or that ability in the fall of Adam. And it's only through divine
power that we come to know them after the rebirth. The ability
to even know and understand it is gone. And even though the
gospel invitation is plainly declared, they will not and cannot
come of themselves. In Isaiah chapter 28 verse 12,
it is written, to whom he said, this is the rest wherewith ye
may cause the weary to rest. And this is the refreshing. yet
they would not hear. And we spent all last week talking
about the Sabbath of rest. He that has entered into the
rest has ceased from his own works, whatever those works might
be, whatever that were talked into doing to engage Christ for
our salvation instead of depending totally on him. So this astonishing
doctrine of the fall, was it as bad as they say or was it
in fact worse than we can imagine? Was man merely wounded and needs
just a little coaxing to revive? Or is he completely, as it says
in Ephesians, dead in trespasses and sins from the second he is
born? From Ephesians chapter 2 verse
1. Can a man decide for God? Can
a man who denies that there even is a God decide for him? The
term Total depravity was introduced in theological discussions to
describe the effects of the fall on man, and the meaning of depraved
today is viewed as one who is totally lacking in moral character,
who is committed to evil. But biblically, the term total
depravity, these two words, total means a complete departure. Total and depravity is defined
from Webster's 1828 dictionary as a vitiated state of the heart,
which in essence describes an injury of the substance or qualities
or corruption of a thing so as to impair or spoil its use or
value to render defective or to destroy. So that's a pretty
clear definition of what occurred during the fall spiritually. The basis for this is the fundamental
change in Adam as a result of the fall by disobeying God. Change to his very core and not
in a good way. So what does the Word of God
say? Let's turn back to where this occurred back in Genesis
chapter 2. And as we learned in our lesson
on the Sabbath, that the Lord created all things before they
were. The Lord had everything in control. accounted for everything,
even to the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." So
sin, the sin of Adam was not a surprise to him. It did not
take him underwears and he did not, he was not in a reactionary
mode concerning this. He had provided the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world to satisfy his righteousness,
his justice, his holiness. So in Genesis 2, verse 15, and
the Lord God, and this is after he had created man, he took man
and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep
it. And that word keep it there kind of gives the implication
of to be aware, to beware. And we know what he was to beware
of. In verse 16, and the Lord commanded
the man saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely
eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not
eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die. And we skip ahead to verse 7
of chapter 3 of Genesis, after the woman had taken the fruit
after she had been deceived by the serpent and he had lured
her into all those temptations that we talked about in Luke
chapter 4. If you eat of this fruit, you'll
be as gods. You won't die. She cast doubt
on the word of God and he lured her with the temptations that
she succumbed to. In verse seven, they ate and
the eyes of them both were opened and they knew that they were
naked. And they sewed fig leaves together
and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the
Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam
and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God
amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto
Adam and said unto him, where art thou? Not as a, I don't know
where you are, as a... calling attention to where he
was spiritually. And he said, I heard thy voice
in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid
myself. And he said, who told thee that
thou was naked? Has thou eaten of the tree whereof
I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, the
woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree
and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the
woman, what is this that thou hast done? And the woman said,
the serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. So every facet of
man's being was radically changed the moment he sinned. His heart,
mind, and soul corrupted completely. Man went from a state of fellowship
and dependence on God to a state of fear of God and really, I'm
okay. I don't need God. I can cope
with this. I made fig leaves. It said in verse seven, fig leaves
are kind of a scratchy, uncomfortable thing that you would, if you
were gonna make a garment out of something, your fig leaf would
not be something you would probably choose. But the corrupted mind
is able to rationalize things to the point where that's acceptable.
It never, because of this fallen state, it never occurred to Adam
to ask for forgiveness. I'm sorry God. I I know you told
me not to do that and I did it. I'm forgive me Lord have mercy
on me a sinner and No, I made fig leaves. He moved on to self-reliance
and rationalization of the crime. Well It wasn't really my fault
you're to blame man went from a state of fellowship with God
to hiding and He didn't want God to see him. He didn't want
anything to do with God. He said, I heard thy voice in
the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. He knew God before. He had some understanding of
His holiness, His righteousness, His almightiness. And now He
had violated that. And He said, I hid Myself. And
next came blame. Instead of asking forgiveness
came blame. The woman thou gavest Me. It's
your fault God. If you hadn't given Me that woman,
I wouldn't have been tempted. I wouldn't have ate that fruit.
Thou gavest Me. She gave Me. It's her fault too. She's the one that gave it to
me. And I did eat." He blamed God, then the woman, for his
own sin. Next came the work of self-righteousness. They sewed
fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. This kind of goes back to our
view here that His condition was completely changed and the
state in which they were created was not the one that they were
in in one fatal instant. They were changed. God said,
let us make man in our image in chapter 1 of Genesis verse
26. Let us make man in our image.
and after our likeness, and let them have dominion over fish
of the sea, and over fowl of the air, and over cattle, and
over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth
upon the earth. So God created man in his own
image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created
he them. So what was the image of God,
the triune Godhead? Because it says, after our image,
after our likeness. What does that scripture say
about God and those who have even been in His presence briefly
or glimpsed anything about Him? And what was Adam's condition
before the fall? He was in unity with God. It said that God walked in the
garden and they had fellowship. together until the fall. There would have been a oneness,
a unity, a spiritual oneness with God. And number two, one
of the factors that we see in scripture all the time is that
God is light and in him is no darkness from 1 John 1, verse
five. And if we turned ahead in our,
as we go through the book of Luke, we're in chapter four now,
but as we get up to chapter nine, we come to the part about the
Mount of Transfiguration. Luke 9 28 says it came to pass
about eight days after these sayings He took Peter and John
and James and went up into a mountain to pray and as he prayed The
fashion of his countenance was altered in his raiment was white
and glistering And they could hardly stand to look, it was
so bright. And back in Exodus chapter 34, when Moses is interacting
with God, in Exodus 34, 27, the Lord said unto Moses, Write thou these words, for after
the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and
with Israel. And he was there with the Lord forty days and
forty nights, and he neither ate bread nor drank water. And
he wrote upon the tables the word of the covenant, the ten
commandments. And it came to pass, when Moses came down from
Mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses' hand,
when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the
skin of his face shone while he talked with them. Now I'm
assuming that everything else was covered, but his face was
exposed, and it shone. And it was frightening to the
people. And when Aaron and all the children
of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and
they were afraid to come nigh to him. So he had, as it were,
an appearance of light. And I think that's the condition
that Adam was in. before the fall. His covering
was light. And when he sinned, that disappeared,
that light. In Romans it says that he entered
a stage of darkness. A darkness of error, a darkness
of sin. In Genesis 3-7, the eyes of them
both were opened and they knew that they were naked. They said,
where did our covering go? What happened? Things have changed. Not only
their covering, but I think physically their whole being changed. I don't want to spend a lot of
time on that now, but if we looked at the way that our bodies react
and how they age and the way they function and how we consume
things and then dispose of them and everything, I think all that
was not an original portion of our being there. But all that
changed and the visible outer part was just the most noticeable. But their immediate reaction
is, well, and it's like so many of us have an experience with
things change, we cope to try and... get around whatever thing
is against us. And they sewed fig leaves and
made themselves aprons to replace the covering that they originally
had. But Hebrews chapter four, verse
13 says, neither is there any creature that is not manifest
in his sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes
of him with whom we have to do. Adam could not fool God by making
his own covering. He was still naked to the eyes
of God. And what was the state of the
world after sin? In Genesis 3.17 it says unto
Adam, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and
eaten of the tree which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not
eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow shalt
thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles
shalt it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat of the herb
of the field. Anybody that does any garden knows how hard it
is to keep up with weeds. You can't hardly get a plant
to grow that you want to grow, but a weed you don't even have
to plant them. They just come in on the wind
or the bird droppings and next thing you know you're up to your
armpits and every weed issues five million seeds that you can
barely see, but in two weeks they're taking over everything.
Every atom of every single thing was adversely impacted by the
fall. We have corruption. In the business
that I was in, I spent a lot of time fixing dry rot. The wood
was decaying in structures that had been built. From the minute
that I finished replacing them with new wood, that wood was
starting to decay and decompose. In 20, 30 years it would be gone
too. We have disease. We have everything
in a state of decay. the spiritual condition of man
after the fall. Each and every generation, every
single person born from the seed of Adam is described in a litany
of scriptures from the beginning. And we saw what happened with
Adam as soon as he fell. He hid himself and then he blamed
God and then he blamed the woman and everything went downhill
from there. And it's really important for
us to understand that He, in his changed state, that was the
way he was from then on. So when he reproduced, he could
not reproduce anything. He couldn't give birth to a person
that was like he was in his former state. He couldn't go backwards. He could only go forwards with
what he was. He couldn't reproduce anything
but what he was himself. And every one conceived from
that time on was conceived from that seed. And Genesis chapter
6 verse 5, what do the scriptures say? God saw that the wickedness
of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of
the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And not
that it was, well, everybody was planning to steal or rob
or kill or whatever the main part that was evil and the main
part that his heart was engaged in was just a denial of God and
God's righteousness and God's holiness and that God had provided
a lamb slain from the foundation of the world. And then we find
the number one defense is a denial that there even is a God. And
if He does exist, well, He should see things my way. I don't know
how many people I've heard say, well, whenever I meet God, if
I do meet God, I'm going to give Him a piece of my mind. Because
I think a lot of what He has done has been unrighteous, has
been wrong. And they think they're going
to give Him a piece of their mind, and we'll see in the Scriptures
That's not going to happen. Their every mouth will be shut. They'll be on their knee. They
won't be trying to convince Him of anything. In Psalm chapter
14, there's actually two Psalms that
say the same basic thing, but we'll just read the one from
Psalm 14, a Psalm of David. The fool has said in his heart,
there is no God. The there is is in italics and
it's supplied by the, the translators, but actually it makes just as
much sense if it just says, no God. The fool has said, no God,
I won't, I will not have this man to reign over me. No God,
I don't do it your way. No God, I have my own way. They
are corrupt. When something is corrupted,
if you ever have a corrupted hard drive, it don't work good
anymore. If your hard drive becomes corrupted,
you need a new one. They have done abominable works.
There is none that doeth good. The Lord looked down from heaven
upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand. and seek God. Did anyone understand
the ramifications of the fall? Did any of them understand sin? And then seek God and say, Lord,
have mercy on me, a sinner. No, they are all gone aside.
They are all together become filthy. There is none that doeth
good. No, not one. Not that they don't do good in
the sense of physical things, like many people are very moral
and do a lot of right things, but not spiritually. There's none that doeth good,
no not one. Isaiah chapter 1 verse 5 and
6 Why should ye be stricken any
more? You will revolt more and more.
The whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint. From the
sole of the foot even to the head there's no soundness in
it. But wounds and bruises and putrefying
sores, they've not been closed, neither bound up nor mollified
with ointment. That's just a description of
the spiritual condition of man after the fall. and everyone
that's born since then. Isaiah 59, uh, two, your iniquities
have separated between you and your God and your sins have hit
his face from you that he will not hear. Uh, verse seven of
chapter 59, their feet run to evil, not just Meander about
but they're they hasten toward it. They run to evil. That's
their inclination They make haste to shed in some blood their thoughts
or thoughts of iniquity Wasting and destruction are in their
paths the way of peace. I And it's not physical peace
like peace between nations. It's the peace between you and
the peace between you and God. And Christ is the only peace
there is. The way of peace they know not.
There's no judgment in their goings. They've made them crooked
paths. And whosoever goeth therein shall
not know peace. It's just the path that we're
on because of our nature, our sin nature. Our judgment is impaired. We make a path that seems right
to us, but we learn from the Psalms, the Proverbs. Those are
the ways of death from our last lesson. Job said, man drinketh
iniquity like water. That's a pretty sad statement.
But you don't have to read very much of the newspaper every day
to see that that is a fact. Psalm 53-1, again, the fool has
said in his heart, there is no God. Corrupt are they, they've
done abominable iniquity. There's none that doeth good.
Jeremiah said, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately
wicked. Who can know it? The heart that we have tells
us we're okay. We're not really dead in sins
and trespasses. We're just, we're okay and eventually
we'll probably do enough good to overcome the bad or we'll
make God see things our way. Our heart is deceitful and tells
us those things. In Jeremiah chapter 30, verse
12, Thus saith the Lord, the one
that has the final say, thy bruise is incurable and thy wound is
grievous. It's not fixable by human means. And Paul, the Apostle Paul, having
quoted from most of the scriptures we've just listed, had this to
say by the direction of the Holy Spirit regarding our natural
condition. In Romans 8, verse 7, he said that the carnal mind
is enmity against God. It's hatred against God. Romans
3.23, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There's
no one that has escaped sin. No mortal man has escaped sin.
There's none righteous. None that seek God, and of course
he's quoting Psalm 14 and 53 here. There's none righteous,
none that seek God, all are guilty. All need salvation, redemption,
and atonement. None can provide their own. No
works or merit of man satisfies the righteousness and holiness
of God. And that is the basic flaw in
the judgment and nature of man is that he thinks he can supply
those. And only the finished work of Christ on the cross,
the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, that's the only
thing that satisfies God. Only by grace do we enter into
that rest, though we who have believed do enter into rest. And we that have entered into
rest have ceased from our own works. That's from Hebrews chapter
4. And that, not of yourselves,
it's a gift of God, not of works. That's how we get it. It's a
gift. It's something God supplies. Now, in human understanding,
we know that there are many people who seem to be very moral, very
upright, good citizens. They would never even consider
stealing a pack of gum, and yet they would deny the righteousness
of God. deny free grace, deny any of these astonishing doctrines
that we have been talking about. These moral people in their nature,
their very understanding of God, His holiness, His righteousness,
His justice, is compromised by sin. Just as their father Adam's
view of God and righteousness was changed, and he could only
pass on what he himself had. Adam needed that rebirth, the
coats of skin that were provided by God before he came to a right
view. And we know that he passed that
on to his children because Abel offered a sacrifice, a lamb,
to the Lord. The Lord had respect unto that
offering but unto Cable who tried to offer his own Apron so to
fig leaves He had not respect in Ephesians chapter 4 verse
18 In describing what where we are by nature's having the understanding
darkened and In error, that just means wrongness, in error. Being alienated from the life
of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the
blindness of their heart. All these things that have happened
because of the fall. It's astonishing doctrine that
our works and our merit or our excuses, our fig leaves are in
fact worthless. and in fact are worse than nothing.
And they only succeed in placing us further in debt by denying
the finished work of Christ and that it actually was finished.
And so as he teaches these people in this synagogue on the Sabbath
day that are accustomed to, well, we keep the law. I've kept all
these from my youth up. I've done this. I've done that.
I do this. I do that. I tithe. I pray. I fast twice a week. I do this. I do that. It's worthless. The view of religion
that man is basically good and just needs steered in the right
direction that he can be emotionally manipulated into salvation is
just totally wrong. August Toplady, I love that hymn,
Rock of Ages. He was kind of debating back
and forth with the Westlands because they were using all these
emotional manipulations to get people to come forward and be
saved. The top lady took some of the
things that Wesleyan said and turned them into a hymn and kind
of back in their face, here's the true way of grace. He said, could my tears forever
flow? Could my zeal no longer? These for sin could not atone.
Thou must save and thou alone. In my hand, no works I bring."
All these things he countered their manipulation and said it
was, by grace are you saved through faith and that, not of yourselves. Religion still persists in trying
to supplant the finished work of Christ with these formulaic
substitutes for our true Sabbath, our true rest in Christ. The
guy on TV every night says, say this prayer, then extend an invitation
to Jesus to come into your heart, then make a commitment, then
call this toll-free number. And if you do this, then God
is obliged to do that. So you're bartering with God. You're saying, well, I've said
the magic words. You must do this. And Jesus said, well, you know
what? You're just a whited sepulcher.
Then you're just full of dead man's bones. You worship me with
your lips, but your heart is far from me. your old heart is
dead in trespasses and sins. You must be born again. You must
have a new heart. And so those formulaic things,
they don't work. Jeremiah is the same in the Old
Testament. In Jeremiah chapter 6 verse 14,
the Lord is speaking through him and he talks about those
religious folks of the day that were trying to use these same
formulaic things back then, well, you must keep the commandments,
you must be circumcised, you must do this, you must do that.
And if you do that, then God must recognize your worth. And they never said, well, we
know that you don't really keep all that. And Jesus pointed out
many times, well, in your heart, You've broken all these commandments.
What's the greatest commandment? Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy strength and all thy heart and all thy mind.
Well, who has done that? Even a regenerated person cannot
say, I do that all the time. It's sad. We should, but we cannot. In Jeremiah chapter 6, he talks
about them and he says in verse 14, they have healed also the
hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, peace, peace,
when there is no peace. This word slightly means in a
light, easy, trifling manner. It's to make somewhat healed,
on the surface, but not to the saving of the soul. So they say,
if you do this, you'll be fine with God. But in reality, it's
never going to bring peace with God because you know that it's
not. It takes the almighty power of
God to call us out of this darkness that it talks about in Ephesians. Our understanding is darkness.
Our heart is darkened. Our heart is blind. It takes the almighty power of
God to call us out of this darkness into his marvelous light, 1 Peter
2.9. It takes the new birth to understand
the terrible effects of sin in the fall. And until then, we're
just sort of nose blind to sin. We just don't recognize it. And it's not the sin, well, I'm
guilty of stealing, or I'm guilty of this, or I'm guilty of that.
It's the... rejection of the Son of God. It's the rejection of the sacrifice
of Christ, the finished work of Christ that we must enter
into. And to amplify this, we might look
back in Ezekiel chapter 36. I love this chapter and these
verses because it amplifies what God does and what is the result
of that work of God. What does that result in? How
does it turn out? Well, let's read from Ezekiel 36, 22. And if you have a Bible, it would
be good to highlight all the places, what I call the I wills. in Ezekiel 36, verse 22. Therefore say unto the house
of Israel, thus saith the Lord God, I do not this for your sakes,
O house of Israel, but for my holy name's sake, which you have
profaned among the heathen, whither you went. And here we go in verse
23. And I will sanctify my great
name, which was profaned among the heathen, which you have profaned
in the midst of them. And the heathen shall know that
I am the Lord, saith the God, the Lord God, when I shall be
sanctified in you before their eyes." We'll go from being, because
of his action, we'll go from being just a hypocrite that worships
God on the outside, but denies Him in our inner part. And people see that. I will take
you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries,
and will bring you into your own land. And I will sprinkle
clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from all your
filthiness and from all your idols. I will cleanse you, or
will I cleanse you. A new heart will I give you,
and a new spirit will I put within you. And I will take away the
stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of
flesh, And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to
walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments and do them.
And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers,
and ye shall be My people, and I will be your God. I will also
save you from all your uncleannesses, and I will call for the corn,
and I will call for the increase, and will lay no famine upon you. I will multiply the fruit of
the tree and the increase of the field that you shall receive
no more reproach of famine among the heathen. And then here's
the result. Then shall you remember your
own evil ways and your doings that were not good and shall
loathe yourself in your own sight for your iniquities and for your
abominations. Then, it says, then is there
an understanding of the effects of sin, the magnitude of the
fall, and what it took to overcome it for us. Then, only after you've
been given a new heart, only after you've been cleansed, after
you've been given a spirit to know and worship God and to love
Him, then You have a true view of sin and the fallen say, thank
you, Lord, because I would never have come. I would not come,
could not come, had no desire to come until you caused me to
come. Total depravity, the entirety
of the natural man bound in sin the will, the heart, the mind,
no ability to come to God for forgiveness. No desire to come
to God for forgiveness because we can provide our own. I made
my apron of fig leaves. I do this. I do that. I said
this. I wrote this out. not the Lord had mercy on me. And if the Lord causes us to
come to Him, it's because He's given us a new heart. And we
learned that. But until then, total depravity
is just something that we don't much go for. Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem
which killeth the prophets and stoneth them that are sent unto
you. sent with the gospel time after time. How often would I
have gathered thy children together as a hand doth gather her brood
under her wings, and ye would not." John chapter 6, verse 44, the
previous scripture from Luke 13-34. This scripture from John
6-44 speaks to our ability. This word can, everybody understands
the difference between may and can. May is a permission word,
you may. Can is ability. No man can come to me. No man has the ability to come
to me, except the Father, which has sent me, draw him. And I
will raise him up at the last day." What comforting words.
And when we come to Christ, we know that we've been drawn by
the Father, and we have confidence that He's going to raise us up
at the last day. All that the Father giveth me,
in John 6.37, every one that the Father giveth me, shall come to me. And him that
cometh to me, I'll no wise cast out." So we have the confidence
that if God has drawn us by His gospel and caused us to hear
that, intersected us with the gospel, either brings us to it
or brings it to us, and by His Spirit breathes into us the breath
of life, gives us a new heart, We have confidence that we will
not be cast out. That our Savior is, we're in
His hand and nothing can pluck us out of that hand. And we're
in the Father's hand and nothing can pluck us out of that hand.
And so all the Father gives me, well that presupposes that the
Father had some from before the foundation of the world. That
presupposes that He gave some to me, which is Jesus, all the Father
giveth me shall come to me. And we can amplify that a little
bit more if we wanted to look in John chapter 10. And that
takes us to our next astonishing doctrine that we're going to
look at from Luke 31 chapter 4, verse 31-32. the astonishing doctrine of unconditional
election. That simply means it's not conditioned
on anything on our part. No works, no merit, only the
eternal love of the Father. Romans chapter 11 verse 5 and
6 says, Even so then at this present time also there is a
remnant according to the election of grace. And If it's this election,
if it's by grace, then it's no more works. Otherwise, grace
is no more grace. It's not free. It's not based
in no merit. If it be of works, then there's
no grace. Otherwise, work is no more work.
So we'll look at that. And in chapter 9, there's just
many, many scriptures that point us to this election of the Father
before the foundation of the world. Not that any deserved
it, that the children, not even being born yet, having done neither
any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election
might stand. From Romans as well. So we'll look at that astonishing
doctrine in our next segment from Luke chapter four, verse
31, 32. So thank you for your attention.
And as always, my friends, be free.