Total Depravity Part 2

Tom Shrader continues his series on the five points of Calvinism by examining total depravity and man's inability to respond to God. He explains that natural man is spiritually dead, unable to understand or desire spiritual things, and cannot come to Christ unless God intervenes. Using John 6:44, Shrader demonstrates that God must draw people to salvation, comparing this to dragging rather than gentle wooing.

“You are a Christian today by an act of His will, not your will, by His move of His Spirit, not by something you do.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: God's Plan for Salvation (EVBC) (2002)

Recorded: June 09, 2002

Duration: 1 hr 19 min

Themes: salvation, grace, depravity, inability, drawing, conversion, sovereignty, election, questioning salvation, new to reformed theology, confused about doctrine, longtime church member, seeking biblical truth, struggling with sovereignty, pastor teaching doctrine, elder defending beliefs

Scripture: John 6:44, Romans 5:12, Romans 3, 1 Corinthians 2:14, John 3:16, Revelation 3:20, James 2:6, Acts

Theological Themes: total depravity, spiritual death, divine drawing, calvinism, doctrines of grace, total inability, regeneration, biblical authority

Handout Link

Full Transcript

Today is session three of our series dealing with God's plan for salvation. Let me remind you of the ground rules that we've established. Number one, the Bible is our final authority. We're going to quote great men, we're going to quote great thinkers, we'll talk about Calvin and Luther and Edwards and Augustine, we'll quote all sorts of people, but the final authority for us is the Word of God.

We will proceed in what some of you may consider a painstakingly slow process, but we'll move logically and deliberately through what we've called God's plan for salvation. We'll move through there logically. There are lots of rabbit-trail discussions. We are not going to go down them. We're going to try to stay as close as we can to the logical sequence.

You have questions. If there's anything I've learned in this series, in this material, is that you have questions, and they're legitimate questions that deserve legitimate answers, so we're going to give them to you at the appropriate time. For some of you, your background is an obstacle in this study. I've been through this whole process enough to watch somebody come in and to listen to this and say, I never heard this before. I've been in church for 30 years and I never heard this. And they move from questioning to honest investigation to all of a sudden seeing what we're talking to you about is biblical, and then they get angry and say, how come I never heard this in 30 years? Well, I can't help you with that part. I'm just rejoicing that God's opened your ears and your heart to hear it now. So for some of you, it means just clinging to what the Scripture says.

Embracing the Doctrines of Grace

Having said that, here's the title, God's Plan for Salvation, and we subtitle it, Understanding the Five Points of Calvinism. I know that it's a deliberate choice on my part to include that term Calvinism. I know all the baggage that comes with it. I know all the negatives, but the reality is when you circulate in this valley, you are constantly barraged with the fact that East Valley Bible Church is a Calvinistic church. Many of you have come and said, your friends have come up to you and said, wait a minute, you're going to that church? It's a Calvinistic church, and you're going, I don't ever hear about it. I don't know what you're talking about.

So rather than just pretend it doesn't exist, let's go ahead and embrace the fact that the doctrines of grace are a cornerstone of what we believe here at East Valley Bible Church. So if you want to talk about Calvinism, let's at least understand what Calvinism really teaches. If we're going to get that label, let's make sure that you understand what these people are responding to. And in most instances, people are responding to a caricature of an idea rather than the idea itself.

What we've used, and again, I'm not going to go back. I can't do that every week and give you the history of how we got here. Pick up the tapes or just go on the website and the information's there. What we're going to use for our study on God's plan for salvation are the five points of Calvinism. The response of the Synod of Dort to the aberrant teaching of the day.

The Critical Issue of Man's Condition

We're working our way through these five points. We look last week and again this week at total depravity or a total inability. What we're talking about here is the condition of man. Most people who call themselves Christians would gather together and they would say, we believe that God saves people. Amen, amen. We believe God's the one who does the work. Amen, amen. Now we say, okay, God does the work from beginning to end. Amen, amen. God's the one who initiates salvation. Well, I don't really know. It's odd to me that as we begin to define these terms that everybody embraces, all of a sudden we have a disagreement among people on what we believe. Most often that disagreement flows from some philosophy rather than the Scripture itself.

Here's what we saw last week. This is really an important issue. David Steele and Curtis Thomas in their little book, The Five Points of Calvinism, say this, the view one takes concerning salvation will be determined to a large extent by the view one takes concerning sin and its effect on the human nature. What's the condition of man when we come into this world? Are we a blank slate and we become the product of those things that make impressions on us? Are we people who are basically good and we move through life basically good, making some bad decisions? Are we torn, we do some good things and some bad things? Or is the nature of man that man has fallen and sinful?

Recommended Reading

I mentioned that book. Let me just again remind you, because the first week we sold out and we have a couple hundred copies of this little book yet, The Five Points of Calvinism by David Steele and Curtis Thomas. It's a great overview, obviously not a thick book, jammed with Scripture, filled with Scripture and a brief history on this.

The second book we're featuring this week is The Doctrines of Grace by James Montgomery Boyce. Boyce died about halfway through the writing of this book. This is a magnificent book, a little more in-depth than this, and one of the, to me, overwhelmingly significant parts of this book is Boyce's talking about why Calvinism, why the doctrines of grace are important to evangelicalism today. This is really a helpful book. Both of them are out in the courtyard and available to you.

Understanding Spiritual Death

Here's what we said last week. When we examine biblically the condition of man, we see that fallen man is dead. Now what I've added to that this week, based on Monday night's discussion so we clearly understand this, fallen man is dead to good things. Fallen man is alive. Fallen man's wants and fallen man's choices are taking place all day long. Natural man is making decision after decision after decision, but He's dead to the things of God. He's spiritually dead. There's nothing in Him that desires anything that is good.

Paul writes this in Romans 5:12, just as through one man sin entered

into the world and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all have sinned.

If Steele and Thomas are correct, and my experience is that they are, that when we try to grab hold of the topic of salvation, our view of the condition of natural man is crucial. When we use that phrase "natural man" or "fallen man," we're speaking of how we come into this world in our natural condition. If that view of salvation is important, and it is, then our view of the condition of man will have a profound effect on how we arrive at our conclusion of what the Scripture says about salvation.

The Biblical Assessment of Mankind's Condition

When we talked about total inability, we said this: as a result of Adam's sin, all mankind is spiritually dead. Paul said it this way in Romans 3. In Romans chapter three, Paul is issuing a blanket indictment of all mankind. Paul says this: "There is none righteous, no not one. There's none who understand this, there's none who seek after God, they've all turned aside, they've spiritually become unprofitable, they're pursuing false gods." Here's His summary statement: "There is none who does good, no not one."

Now we want to argue with that. We look around and we have all sorts of illustrations and examples of people who do good. We look at this and say, "Here, look at what they did here, look at them feed the hungry, look at them clothe the naked, look at a neighbor—they heard that their neighbor was sick and they went over and cut the grass." We see people doing good all over.

This is so key, we talked about it four or five, six times last week. This is God's assessment of man, not man's self-examination and conclusion. You and I have a very difficult time as we try to examine other people, because we can't see their motive, we can't see their heart. They may do things that on the surface look very, very good.

Is feeding the hungry good? You bet it is. But if I do it with the wrong heart, I can't do anything that is good in God's eyes. That's what we're after here. What's the biblical condition of natural man? And Paul tells us, nobody does good.

Man's False Search for God

Nobody's seeking after God, and you say, "Wait a minute, there's people all over seeking after God." No, they aren't. They're seeking their caricature of God. When you share with them your faith, here's what they say: "I'm so happy that you found something that works for you." No, it's not that it works for me, although it does—that's not the issue. The issue is, is it true? Is it right? Is it what the Scripture teaches?

Don't stand there and say, "We believe the Scripture," and now we get to the condition of man, and somehow you go out and say, "Well, philosophically, here's what needs to take place." What's the Scripture say? What does God say? How do I know how God views man? The only way I can know it is to go to the Scripture and see what God says in His Word. And here's what He says: there's no one who's righteous, no not one, and there's no one who does good. He is dead in His sin and trespasses.

The Need for New Life

So we asked the question last week: what does a dead man need? Well, that's easy. A dead man needs life. Jesus said it this way: "You must be born again." You must be born again. Why? Because you're spiritually dead.

The condition of man is that he's dead in his sins and trespasses. He's very much alive to evil. He very much loves sin. He's enslaved to sin. Sin is the desire of his heart, to be sure. He's dead to things that are spiritual, things of God. He cannot, will not get them. He must be born again. That's what Jesus said.

Critical Questions About Man's Ability

Well, that raises a whole series of questions and that's where we stopped last week. Here they are: How can a dead man be born again? Is it possible for him to do this on his own? Can a natural man do anything that is spiritually profitable? Does a natural man or fallen man have the ability—we would use along with that, simultaneously—the desire to come to Christ? In other words, can a natural man believe these things? Does a natural man have the ability, does a natural man have the desire to receive Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior?

Now, I don't think the Scriptures are silent here. Again, going back to what we looked at last week, as a result of Adam's sin, all mankind is spiritually dead. All mankind is unable to either comprehend or believe spiritual truth. Man is blind and deaf to the message of salvation.

As you sit at a coffee shop and you're across from somebody and you're sharing the gospel with them, in their natural state, they're unable to understand it. They have no way of comprehending it. They have no desire to believe it. They're blind and they're deaf to it.

The Biblical Answer

Now, I believe that when you look at the condition of natural man, there is really only one biblically accurate answer to the question, and that is that man is dead. Dead to good. So here's the question: Can fallen man do anything that is spiritually profitable?

Here's what Paul says, 1 Corinthians 2:14: "A natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. They're foolishness to him." Paul has just gotten done saying, to those that are perishing, the cross is foolishness, the crucifixion is foolish. They don't get it. They're perishing. It's silly to them. They have no desire to receive spiritual things, and they don't have the capacity to do it. They cannot know them. Why? They're spiritual things and they're spiritually understood.

Natural man, by definition, lacks the Spirit of God living in him. They can study and study and study. By the way, it doesn't mean that they don't know these things in terms of intellectual knowledge. Some of the greatest pagans in the world know the Scripture far better than I do. They're teaching religious studies at universities. There's a difference between studying this and passing a test and knowing it in that sense, and knowing it in the sense where it radically changes your heart.

Martin Luther writes this: "The Bible cannot be understood simply by study or talent. You must count only on the

Total Inability of Natural Man

Natural man in his natural state cannot receive spiritual things. He cannot know these things. This gets back to the whole issue that we're talking about: How does a natural man become a spiritual man? Who does the work? Does man choose God, or does God intervene and choose man?

I know it's very popular to say, "That's a really profound truth, and it's true in both ways." Well, what does the Scripture say? Here you go, a couple easy questions. Number one, can natural man understand spiritual things? No. Is the gospel a spiritual thing? Yes. Therefore, is it possible for natural man to understand the gospel? No. They'll never get it. You can talk and talk and talk and talk and talk, and they're never going to respond in and of themselves.

The Question of Ability vs. Permission

Here's the question we asked last week: Does natural man have the ability to come to Christ, the desire to come to Christ, the capacity to understand this spiritual truth? Do they have the ability to make decisions? Sure, they have the ability to make decisions. Were they going to make a decision for Christ? Jesus answered. He says this: "No one can come to me unless the Father draws him."

What we're talking about here is a distinction between ability and permission. Here's what Jesus says: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." We're not talking about permission. We're talking about ability, desire.

As a youngster, you learn this truth very quickly. I remember in third grade, putting up my hands and saying, "Mrs. Gadiot, can I sharpen my pencil?" And she said, "Well, I don't know. I don't know if you have the ability and the dexterity to take that little stick and insert it in that little hole and crank this thing and pull it out with a sharp point. I don't know if you can sharpen your pencil or not. You may try." "Mrs. Gadiot, can I go to the bathroom?" "Well, Tommy, we don't know if you can go to the bathroom or not. You certainly have my permission to walk down there and try."

The big difference between "can I do something" and "may I do something." The whole world has the permission. They may come. That's the call: John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him shouldn't perish but have everlasting life."

The Universal Call and Our Evangelistic Obligation

We make the call all through the world. We call to everyone, "You may come. Come! You have the obligation to come. If you don't come, you'll perish. But if you believe, whoever believes, if you believe, you'll have everlasting life." We honestly, openly declare that truth. We believe that.

We believe God's the one who does all the work and God's the one who opens the eyes and God's the one who gives us the desire, but we also understand our obligation to evangelize. We wouldn't be having a Bible study on Sunday morning to a Hispanic-speaking community if we didn't believe that the gospel needs to penetrate every culture. This church is all about evangelism. There are people all over this church who God is saving as our message here is being declared, and we're proclaiming the gospel.

The Necessity of Divine Drawing

Here's what He says: "No one can come. No one can come unless something has to take place." No one can come to the Father—keyword—unless something happens, unless the Father intervenes. "No one can come unless the Father who sent him draws him." It's a necessary condition. Something has to happen before someone will come.

No one can come unless there's a pre-existing condition that takes place. There's a prerequisite. Something has to happen. No one can come unless the Father who sent Him does what? Draws him. The Father has to move, or draw means to compel.

Challenging Popular Evangelical Views

Here's at least the evangelical environment I was raised in, and it went something like this—I was only in this a short time. That God woos. There's this still small voice. "Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling." In fact, when my kids were in a salty production, one of the songs was, "The Holy Spirit is a gentleman. He always knocks."

In fact, Monday night this question came up: What about Revelation 3:20? "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I'll come in, and I'll dine with him, and he'll dine with me." A couple of problems, and we pointed that out. Number one, that text has really very little, if nothing, to do with evangelism. It's written to a church that's struggling. It's written to believers, but it's a verse that's become very popular in evangelical circles and frequently used in the process of evangelism to say, "Jesus is standing at the door and knocking."

The Inadequate Picture of Gentle Knocking

In fact, somebody sent me a picture years ago, and here's this creature—I think it's supposed to be Jesus—and he's poised, ready to knock on this door, and here's this setting, and absent from the door is a handle. What this picture is trying to communicate is Jesus is there, rat-tat-tatting on the door, softly, tenderly, gently knocking, but there's no handle. He can't open the door. It's a beautiful picture, extraordinarily manipulative. It's a beautiful picture, but it's not spiritually accurate.

See, if we want to picture that's spiritually accurate, we need a two-panel picture. We need Jesus knocking on the door, and then we need a picture of a corpse on the other side of the door. We're dead. We can't respond. We have no desire to open that door and to let Christ in. Our desire is just the opposite. It's to throw Him out.

If Jesus doesn't kick that door in and rip out our heart and put a new heart in it and give us the desire to come, we'll never come. No one can come unless the Father moves, unless the Spirit moves. No one can come unless something happens to change us.

unless the Father draws him. It means to compel. That word, just so we clearly understand it, that word's used two other times in the New Testament. James uses it in James 2, and Luke uses it in the book of Acts.

James 2:6 says, "But you have dishonored the poor men. Is it not the rich who oppose you and personally drag you into court?" Do they woo you into court? They seize Paul and Silas and they drag them to the marketplace. They grab a hold of them and they drag them. They bring them.

Do I come kicking and screaming to Christ? No! He gives me a new heart and He compels me to believe, and at that point of decision for Christ, there's nothing I want more than Christ. But God has put that desire in my heart. It's not something I generate, it's something that God did in me.

God's Intervention in Our Dead State

God intervenes. Listen, in your natural state, you were lost, sick, dead. You desired sin, not goodness. You were repulsed by God, but God intervenes. He drags you to Him. He gives you a new heart. He causes you to be born again.

You are a Christian today by an act of His will, not your will. By His move of His Spirit, not by something you do. Ultimately, you respond, but that response is entirely to a work of God.

You are dead. You have no desire for Him. You are repelled by spiritual truth. When you hear the gospel, you say, get out of here. I remember the first time Susan and I were at somebody's house, and they started to share the gospel with us, and we ridiculed them, we made fun of them, we mocked them, and we went sprinting out of there.

Well, what happened a few years later? Did we get smarter? Were we more clever? Was the presentation better later? No! God, all of a sudden, intervened, and He turned our desires from sin and evil to holiness and a righteous God. God did all that work.

The Natural Man's Inability

So can a natural man do anything that's spiritually profitable? That's the question we ask. No! Can a natural man have the ability, the desire, to come to Christ? No! A natural man can't understand these things.

How come when you sit down and you share the gospel with two of your friends who don't believe, and one responds and the other doesn't? They heard the same presentation. Is one smarter? One got a better background? No! God's working in one life, and at least at that point, not in the life of the others.

Between services, after we do communion, I always go back and get some hot tea for my throat, and it's good earth tea, and they always have little sayings, and they're not Bible verses. Here you go. This is great. I mean, God is so good. I go to get the tea for this hour. Here's the quote: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world," Mahatma Gandhi.

You must be the change. See what he says? You're the one who has to be the change. How anti-biblical is that? You can't change! You cannot change yourself. You desperately need change, and you desperately need to be changed. You desperately need a new heart. You desperately need new desires, but you cannot, on your own, ever change.

The Question of Free Will

Well, this raises all sorts of questions, and to every thinking person, the first question is, do I have free will? I left service a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday night. It was a young lady out front, not old enough to drive, and she's waiting, sitting, waiting for somebody to pick her up. And I get a little nervous at night, especially when the gals are out there waiting, and people starting to leave, and now they're in, and I just said, you know, honey, I don't want you sitting here. You know, it's getting late.

And she said, oh, I know they're coming. They're on their way. I said, okay, I'm all right with that, but I, you know, be careful here. If they're not here, and people start to get out of here, you go back in to the lobby, and you wait where somebody can be there with you. She said, all right, I'll do that.

I start to walk away, and she said, let me ask you a question. I said, all right. She goes, if all that's true, what about my free will? If all that's true, I'm enslaved to evil, all this stuff, what about my free will? That's a great question. We get that question all the time.

Defining Free Will vs. Free Choice

And to me, the answer is somewhat in the definition. Most people, when they talk about free will, I'm not sure have anything in their mind clearly that they're thinking about. This is what I guess they mean: it's the ability to make choices without any prior prejudice, inclination, or disposition. In other words, I'll do whatever I want to do.

So when somebody says, what about my free will, or do I have free will? I'm saying, well, we better define exactly what you mean. If by free will you mean you'll do whatever you want to do without any other effects on you, your environment around you, your climate around you, relationships around you, prior thing, if that's what you mean by free will, we ask the question, do you have a free will? Then the answer to that is no. You don't have a free will. Free will doesn't even exist in that definition, in that sense.

What we mean, I think, is free choice. Can you do whatever you want to do? Absolutely. Not only can you do whatever you want to do, you'll always do whatever you want to do. Absolutely. But you'll always choose in line with your deepest desire. That line of deepest desire is always going to be in line with your nature.

Luther's Understanding of Enslaved Will

Here's what Martin Luther says. He says that this will is enslaved. It's a permanent prisoner, a bondservant of evil.

Let me see if I can illustrate it. It is an illustration that was given to me by another gentleman, and I love it because to me it just goes BAM when we talk about free choice. Let's say for sake of illustration, I take a vulture and put him back in the sound booth, and I put a slab of meat here, and I put a head of lettuce here, and I get that vulture good and hungry, and I release that vulture. The vulture spots the lettuce and spots the meat. The vulture races to the front of the worship

Center. Where's the vulture going to go? Where do you think the vulture is going to go? The lettuce or the meat? How do you know he's going to go to the meat?

Let's say we just got lucky in that experiment. Let's say we get 50 vultures, and we go through this experiment, and we do this 50 times. All 50 of them are going to the meat. We do a hundred of them. We do a thousand of them. We do the same vulture over and over again. That vulture is always going to go to the meat.

The Vulture's Nature Determines Its Choice

Here's what I want you to see. Is the vulture free? You bet the vulture's free. Does the vulture have the ability in terms of capacity to go to the lettuce? Well, it's no longer a flight to the lettuce than the meat. The vulture is flapping away. The vulture has all this capacity.

Here's the problem. The vulture has no desire for the lettuce. The vulture has no desire to go to this lettuce. There's nothing in the nature of the vulture that attracts him to the lettuce. The vulture is irresistibly attracted to the meat.

He is free to choose and has a free choice, but he doesn't have a free will. His will's in bondage to his nature. If I take a sinner, a natural man, an unconverted woman, a student who doesn't believe in Jesus Christ, and I put sin here and good here, and I release them 50 times, they're going to go every time to the sin. Are they free? Well, they're free to choose. Do they have a free will? No.

The Will Always Follows the Strongest Inclination

Here's what Jonathan Edwards says, very simple. The will is always choosing in accordance with its strongest inclination at the moment. You'll always do what you want most. Each and every time, in every instance, we always do what we want most.

If I'm walking down the street and a guy comes up to me and he says, "Your money or your life?" and he sticks a gun in my throat, I'm going to give him my money. You may say, "Well, he coerced me out of that." I don't know if he coerced you or not. All I know is at that moment you wanted your life more than you wanted your money. You always do what you want most.

The problem with natural man is he doesn't want what is good. He has no desire for the things of God. He's dead to spiritual things. He can't understand them. He doesn't get them and he doesn't want to understand them. He doesn't want to begin to understand them and get them. The things of God appear silly and foolish to him.

The Condition of Natural Man

That's the condition of man. The condition of natural man is that he loves sin more than he loves good, and he loves sin in every instance. In every example he will sin. He may not always choose the worst sin. He's not as dark as he might be. He still may not commit in terms of sin as many acts of evidence of this lostness.

But he'll always sin. Even when he does something that on the surface appears to be good, it's for his own self-exaltation or self-satisfaction. He will help another person who's hurting. Why? So he feels better about himself. Pride—the utmost evil in our life.

I may not know you from a post, but I can tell you what your number one sin is: pride. And it's so subtle and it's so hidden and it's so deceptive. Oftentimes we can't even examine our own hearts. But natural man will always go to sin.

How Can a Dead Man Change?

Well if that's true, then that brings a whole other series of questions. How can a dead man change? How can a dead man be born again? Jesus saying you must be born again. How can that happen if I'm dead? Does it require the intervention of an outside source?

If that outside source is God, if God indeed is working in people's life, is He working in everybody's life equally? So somebody might say God indeed is drawing. He's drawing everybody equally. There's seven billion people. He's drawing everybody equally and some are going to respond and others aren't.

If in fact God is going to choose some for salvation, does it become an injustice for Him not to choose all? When we talk about the five points of Calvinism and God's plan for salvation, you can't wait to talk about election. Now we're ready—taking us three weeks to get here, but now we're ready. Now we'll talk about election. Now we'll talk about God's role in this.

Man's Contribution and the Need for Divine Intervention

Here's man's role: you bring one thing to this party—your sin. That's all you bring: your sin and your repulsion at the things that are good and the absolute lack of desire on anything that's good.

So from you to begin, it seems to me it's self-evident at this point, for you to have a thirst for spiritual things, something outside of you has to come in and change you.

Teaching Schedule and Question Sessions

Here's the teaching schedule for the remainder of the series. After all of these sessions we'll meet on Monday night at 7 o'clock. We had a terrific session, I felt, last Monday night. If you have questions, we'd love to have you there.

That's the question I got midweek: who should go to this? If you've already settled all these issues, you're more than welcome to come. I find it hard for you typically to come because you so want to participate in this, and we're not going to answer every question exactly like you'd like them answered. And you always have something—some new insight or nuance to contribute—but it's sometimes hard, but man, everybody's welcome.

What we're really targeting are those of you that are sitting there right now, and it's all you can do to keep from screaming. You want to come right out of your seat and say, "That doesn't sound right to me. What about this?" Now you're the target market. Or if you're somebody that's saying, "I think I got it, but I'm not really sure. I just need it tweaked a little bit"—you're who we want. Or if you're saying, "I buy this but I've got friends and they're asking me this question. Let me ask it for them. I don't know"—that's who we're looking for.

It's not a debate or discussion. We've done this for I don't know how many times. Last Monday night was terrific. You know this is not a debate session. It's not an adversarial session. It's people saying, "What does the scripture say about these things? And what does this mean and how do we get our arms around it?" We really would love to talk to you.

We'll be here tomorrow night at 7 o'clock and then we'll be here Monday night after every one of those sessions, the teaching sessions that are on the screen. As we close and before we pray, let me just remind you out in the courtyard that list, a prayer list that you can be praying for us. May I remind you to join the people that'll be here next Wednesday morning at 7 o'clock to pray for the church. Let me remind you of these resources that are available to you. Please grab this. Please do some work in God. I think and pray will honor that work.

A Prayer for Truth and Transformation

Father, help us see this truth. We have a desire it seems to want to fight against this, and I guess it's because this is so contrary to what we think and what we feel. God, I pray especially for those that are here today who know this stuff cold, got it all figured out. God, I pray they would always be humble and thankful and grateful before You, that they would be extraordinarily patient with one another and they would never lose their zeal for evangelism.

God, to those who are struggling, those that have questions, let them know how much we love and care for them. Let them know how we understand this process is sometimes a very difficult process. Sometimes You are breaking down walls of background that have been in place for decades.

What We Know to Be True

Here's what we do know, God: this is true. We know this. In and of ourselves naturally, we're never going to understand spiritual things. And we know this, that nobody can come to You unless Your Father draws them.

That's what we ask. We pray. We pray that You would take this truth and let it transform our life. And when it does, it transforms this church. We become a God-centered, worshiping, praising church. This is all about You.

The more and more I look at this, the more I'm reminded of how sinful I am and how awful and how foul that sin is to You. God, thank You. Thank You for not standing at the door knocking because I would have never responded, Father. Thank You for coming in, for taking out a heart of evil, a heart that desired only evil, and putting in a heart that is good, a heart that desires You.

Seeing by God's Grace

God, we see this because You opened our eyes to see it. Father, we praise You and worship You in Jesus' name. Amen.

We remind you again that these guys are here to talk to you about anything or to pray with you about any need you have. See you next week. See you in two weeks.

I notice this transcript appears to be in Welsh and contains repetitive phrases that don't seem to relate to the sermon title "Salvation 3 - Total Inability and the Need for Divine Drawing." The content appears to be about members, food, workers, and thanks for watching a film, with significant repetition at the end.

This doesn't appear to be an English sermon transcript about salvation doctrine. Could you please provide the correct English transcript for the sermon on "Total Inability and the Need for Divine Drawing"?