Total Inability Part 2
Tom Shrader continues his series on God's plan for salvation by examining the biblical doctrine of total inability. Using 1 Corinthians 2:14 and John 6:44, he demonstrates that natural man is spiritually dead and cannot comprehend or respond to the gospel without divine intervention. He addresses common objections about free will and evangelism, explaining that while all people have permission to come to Christ, only those whom the Father draws have the ability to respond.
“Natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, their foolishness to him, nor can he know them.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: God's Plan for Salvation (2006)
Recorded: 2006
Duration: 48 min
Themes: salvation, grace, evangelism, faith, scripture, authority, teaching, truth, new believer, questioning faith, pastor, bible teacher, struggling with doctrine, seminary student, church member, apologetics student
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 2:14, John 6:44, Romans 5:12, Romans 3, John 3:16, Revelation 3:20, James 2:6, Acts 16:19, Psalm 119:18
Theological Themes: total depravity, total inability, soteriology, calvinism, divine sovereignty, biblical doctrine, spiritual deadness, irresistible grace
Full Transcript
You can open your Bibles, if you would, please. You're going to say where, and I'm going to say I'll tell you in a minute, I guess. We're continuing our study titled God's Plan for Salvation.
Ground Rules for Our Study
We laid out the ground rules, and let me just remind you of them. We try to keep them in front of you every week. Number one, the Bible's the final authority in these discussions, and we will also proceed on a very logical basis here. I have deliberately slowed everything down. This is painstakingly slow for me. It's repetitive. I said at the beginning, I have a burden, and the burden is to communicate very clearly to you, and you have a burden, and the burden is to listen.
Somebody came to me this week, and they said, I have a question. I said, were you in church last week? They said, no. I said, did you listen on the website? No. Did you get the tape? No. I said, I'm not going to talk to you about it. We answered all of this. It's all on the tape. We've done that, and that's the point I've kept in front of me, and I said to them, if you want to come back after you listen to it, that's fine, but the burden here is really on you to listen clearly. I'm working very hard to be as clear as I can, but there's a burden on your end, too, to listen clearly, and there is a sequence here.
You're going to have a really difficult time if in these seven messages, you hear the even-numbered ones—two, four, six—because there are going to be huge gaps in there. Many of the questions that you have, and many of the questions that you will have in the whole series will be answered along the way, and those that aren't we'll get together at the end, and we'll answer those questions the best we can. So you have a burden, and I have a burden, and we need to take that really seriously.
Also, inevitably, in this conversation, there'll be things from your background that you go, boy, I was never taught that, or I was taught something totally different than that. What we want to do is go to the scripture and see what the scripture says.
Understanding God's Plan for Salvation
What we're talking about is God's plan for salvation. We're talking about, not that there was this point in time where you made a proclamation of faith—we understand that. The question, really, is why did you make that proclamation?
In fact, we subtitled this series Understanding the Five Points of Calvinism, and you could, I think, legitimately question the wisdom of using the term Calvinism. It is somewhat of an explosive term, which is the reason I've chosen to use it. I have heard over the years, East Valley Bible Church is that Calvinistic church, and I hear people make that almost as an accusation like you're a bigot. I mean, it's like that thing you throw out there and everybody's supposed to respond to, and then when you push a little bit, they don't have the foggiest idea what they're talking about. So since people talk about this and people use that term, why don't we go ahead and understand exactly what that means and see that, in fact, when somebody says, oh, you're a Calvinist, here's what they're saying: Oh, you're a biblical Christian. Well, I got carried away there, but you understand. This is not a term to be ashamed of. This is a term simply to understand.
Historical Background: The Arminian Challenge
We said, just to give you a little bit of history, that this whole Calvinism, Arminianism issue really exploded around 1610 with the publishing of the remonstrous document by Jacob Arminius. In there, here's what Arminius said: He said that God elects, but He does it based on foreseeing who would, in fact, at one point in time, choose Him, and that God's intention on the cross was to save everybody, and that fallen man can't do good, but God helps through the Holy Spirit, and He does that, really, in everybody's life, and that God could, in fact, have saving grace that He wants to extend to you and you could resist it. So that's what Arminius taught.
The church gathered together in the Synod of Dort, 1618, and said, we want to examine that. This is really important—not based on what Calvin says, or Luther says, or Edwards says, or Spurgeon says, or Augustine says, or Schrader says, or Arminius says, but what does God's word say? So they took what Arminius taught, they laid it next to scripture, they compared it, they found that they were not compatible, they rejected that teaching, but said rejecting it wasn't enough, and so they responded to it in writing.
They responded to Arminius's five points in these five points that are identified now as the five points of Calvinism. They were designed, frankly, to hang together—to be accepted in their totality. So you will run into people who will say something like this: I'm a three-point Calvinist, or a four-point Calvinist, and we've said jokingly, you're a two-point heretic, or a one-point heretic. What they're saying is, are we going to accept this or reject this? The Synod of Dort didn't see it that way. They saw these five points as hanging together.
Our Current Focus: Total Inability
What we're doing is working our way through these five points, and the only one of the five that we're going to spend two weeks on is the first, and that's the condition of man. In the acronym TULIP, it's the T—total inability of man, or total depravity of man. What we're looking at is, what's the condition of man as he comes into this world?
If you are very quiet today, you will hear doors slamming shut all around you. I'm not hiding this. We're taking away a whole bunch of options today, because we're really at the core, really, to me, of this whole issue. We're looking at the condition of man. If we understand that, in fact, man is dead in his sins and trespasses, man is dead and he can't respond, then it seems pretty obvious that something has to happen to man. So that's what we're looking at.
We started last week, and many of you have study guides. If you have not yet grabbed a study guide, they told me they distribute something like 3,000 of them.
Not yet grabbed a study guide, you really need that. They'll really be helpful in this process, and all the quotes that we read will be in there.
In the books, Five Points of Calvinism by Steele and Thomas, they offer this insight. The view one takes concerning salvation will be determined to a large extent by the view one takes concerning sin and its effect on human nature. So we're talking about salvation. Who saves, who does this, how does man play a role in that, all the things that go with it. Well, a lot of that's going to be determined on how we see the condition of man.
Four Views of Human Nature
There are basically four ways that we see man. There's one view that says that man's a blank slate, tabula rasa, that you come into the world in neutral, and then people kind of scribble on you. There's the environment, there's relationships, there's things around you.
The second view, probably in our culture the most popular view, is that man is basically good. That'd be really the dominant view in our culture, is that man is basically good. Because man's in that condition, we're always looking for a reason for his sinful behavior. So in that context, here's what we see. Man is always a victim, never a villain. So when man does this extraordinarily evil thing, we're trying to figure out why. Was it the school's fault, was it the parent's fault? Whose fault was it? Because man's basically good, so he must have really got it put to him somehow. Man's always a victim, never a villain.
The third way is that man's got a little bit of both, a little good, a little bad, they're in battle. Don't do this, do this, do this, do this. That's going on all the time in his life. He's just spinning around trying to fix it, and sometimes this guy wins, and sometimes this guy wins.
Then there's a fourth view, and I would suggest to you it's the biblical view, and that is that man is dead in his sins and trespasses. That man comes into the world, and he is a sinner by nature, therefore he sins. It's not that man sins, and then he's a sinner. Do you get that? But he sins because he comes in as a sinner.
Adam's Sin and Its Consequences
That's what Paul had in mind in Romans 5, verse 12. Paul writes this, and he's explaining how he got this way. Therefore, he's speaking now of Adam, just as through one man's sin, Adam's sin, through Adam's sin entered into the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all men have sinned.
Now, Adam was our perfect representative. When Adam sinned, he represented you and me. That through one man's sin, through Adam's sin, all mankind is plunged into sin. We come into the world a sinner, therefore we sin. There are no exceptions to this.
If I read Genesis 2, I have peace and harmony. They're in the garden, they're naked, there's no problem. I skip Genesis 3, I read Genesis 4, there's war and strife and bitterness and anger and murder, and all of this stuff is going on. What in the world happened? Genesis 3. Genesis 3 is the explanation for the world you live in.
The Real Issue: Control and Rebellion
So when somebody says to you, why would God create a world where babies die and all the things that go with it, your answer is, He didn't. He created a place called paradise, but that wasn't good enough for you. You wanted more. You didn't want the place, you wanted to be God. That sin of Adam was not about nourishment, it wasn't about eat the fruit. It was about who's in control. It was about rebellion.
There is something in us, there's certainly something in us now, the minute it says don't do it, we want it. I think I made the comment last week, I've never had an urge for spinach in the last three weeks. The minute they said no spinach, I said I gotta have spinach. Now they're lifting the ban, I'm not interested in spinach, get me that chocolate. But it's funny, isn't that, there's something about that, you can't do that, really.
I tell you, I watch it, I fall prey to it. I can say to you, put a sign on here that says wet paint, and every person that walks by will go, yep it is. We are, what is that? Well that for us is that nature. We want to be in control, so I hear that all the time, so and so's a controller, everybody's a controller, everybody wants to be in control, everybody wants their own way. Some are a little more subtle about it, some hide it a little better, but I don't know anybody that isn't a control freak. That's the most natural thing in the world, I want to control.
Spiritual Death and Blindness
As a result of Adam's sin, here's the sentence that we used last week. As a result of Adam's sin, all mankind is spiritually dead. Unable to comprehend and believe spiritual truths, man is blind and deaf to the message of salvation.
What I want to do today is talk a little bit about that first phrase, and then we'll spend the lion's share of the time on the second part of it. As a result of Adam's sin, all mankind is spiritually dead.
The Universal Indictment
Now in Romans 5, turn a little bit to the left, Romans chapter 3, in Romans chapter 3 you get this universal indictment of mankind. Paul quoting from the Old Testament Scripture writes this, there is none righteous, no not one, there is none who understands, there is none who seeks after God, they have all turned aside, together they have become useless, there is none who does good, no not one.
It's a universal indictment of man, there are no exceptions here. There is none righteous, not one. There's none who understands, not one. There's none who seeks after God, the one true God. We may seek after a God of our own making, but not the one true God. All have turned aside, there is none who does good, no not one.
Now as human beings, we look around and say, well that's kind of counterintuitive, maybe even counter to our experience. I mean this morning at about 7:15, roughly 40,000 gals were beginning a walk, race for cure
Man's True Spiritual Condition
So we'd sit around, I'm sure it'll be on the nightly news, and we'd say, well that was kind of a good thing. You're on vacation for two weeks, you're having a great time. People say, "You know what, we're not going to come to the condo, why don't you just use it for our two weeks." You call the neighbor and you say, "Hey listen, we're not going to get back, would you just watch the house?" You come back and they've cut the grass, they've done a bunch of stuff, and you say, "That's a good guy."
So we look around and say, "Well here are all these good things." God says, "Listen, no one is good." He's looking not at the action, He's looking at the heart condition, the motive behind it. That man in his natural condition is separated from God and needs to be brought together with God, reconciled. Man comes into the world dead in his sins and trespasses.
Now again, very deceiving for us because we look very much alive, but He's not speaking here physically, He's speaking here spiritually. That's the Bible's assessment, and remember what we said as we looked at the rules for engagement here? The first one is the Bible is our final authority.
Truth Versus Personal Experience
That may be counter to our experience, or even counter to our perception, so that you're one day sitting down with a friend and you're saying, "You know what, all of a sudden I just understood who I was and I asked God for forgiveness and God's changed my life," and they'll look at you and say something like this: "I'm so happy that you found something that works for you." I'm so happy you found something that works for you? No, no, no, that's not the point. I don't care whether it works for me or not, I want to find what is true. That's what the scripture says.
So man's always looking for a religion that works for them. If that works for you, stand on one foot, put an orange peel behind your head, and just sing, "Mmm," if that works for you, good, that works for you, that's true, but I'll be sore tomorrow. Not in the shape I used to be. If that works for you, fine. No, no, no, I want to know the truth. I need to know the condition of man.
The Reality of Spiritual Death
Now here's what the scripture says. The scripture says that man is dead in his sins and trespasses. I have a friend over here I want to share with you, hanging around, probably wondering who he is. He's on loan to us today, sit up my man. He's on loan to us today from the fire department. This is resuscitator Andy.
Andy looks pretty good. They put a cheap Hawaiian shirt on him. Actually not, they put a good Hawaiian shirt on him, little East Valley Bible Church hat. Andy has one overriding problem, doesn't he? He's dead my man. Here's what they got, look it, got a little quality old premium water. Predestination and election, Starbucks, I saw that's what they had set up, I didn't think that was enough.
I bought some of my own things for him. I thought he needed nuts, but not just nuts, I got him cashews, Dr. Pepper, Shania, I move these other things away because Shania is what's important. I love Shania. Recreation, he needs a new club. This is how you know you've reached rock bottom, I have a 13 wood in my hands here. So maybe it's just, if he just hits that long and straight, yeah you could see that at a tail on it.
You set this down, here's the deal, all the things that the world would say, and I could throw more at him, here you go, I got dough, I could throw money at him, deed to the house, car keys, it isn't going to make any difference because my man here is dead. And there's only one thing that he needs and that's life.
The Deception of Physical Life
Now what makes it a little confusing for us is that we're physically alive, but we're spiritually dead. So that physical side of us is always trying to get that spiritual side alive by saying, "Just have more of this, or more of that, or there's Shania, or try the golf, or get a new club, or get a new house." If you could just get her, you'd be happy, or if you could get rid of her, you'd be happy, or if you could get that job, you'd be happy, if you got that promotion, you'd be happy, if you had a 13 wood, you'd be happy, whatever it is, you'd be happy. But here's the problem, man is dead.
Now Jesus comes along and says, "Now we got a real issue." Because Jesus says, John 6, or John 3:7, "You must be born again." And this is where we left off last week. We said we've got man dead, and he has to be born again, how can a man be born again? And can a dead guy do this on his own power, because by definition he's dead.
The Question of Natural Man's Ability
Then we talked about fallen man, we defined that. We mean you and me apart from Christ. Can natural man, fallen man, do anything that is spiritually profitable at all? Can natural man, or does natural man have the ability, forget desire for a second, does natural man even have the ability to come to Christ, or to believe, or to respond, or to ask Jesus into His heart, all those phrases that we use?
Now, here's what's important, we got 27 minutes left, here's what's important, we got to focus on this, is the scriptures not silent on this? The scripture speaks to this issue, here's the sentence that I constructed that we're looking at: as a result of Adam's sin, all mankind is spiritually dead. We got that. But I want to go further, he's unable to comprehend and believe spiritual truth. Man is blind and deaf to the message of salvation.
What Scripture Says About Natural Man
So here's the question, can fallen man, can fallen man do anything that's spiritually profitable? We have two verses that we want to camp in today. Let's turn first to 1 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 14. Can natural man do anything that's spiritually profitable? Well, the scripture speaks really clearly to this. Paul writes this: "Natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, their foolishness to him."
In fact, just a little bit earlier, look at 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 18, Paul said this: "For the power of the cross, the power of salvation..."
The power of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. It's foolishness to them, to say that you sinned and your sin has separated you from God and Jesus came. God became flesh, He dwelt here, He lived, He died, He rose again. That's foolish! That's silly! They say this is foolish.
Natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. They're foolishness to him. He cannot get them. That's an even more powerful statement—they're foolishness to him. Look at the second part of the verse: nor can he know them. He can't even know them. He can't possibly get them. You're flying on two different planes. He doesn't have the ability to get these things.
Flying at Different Altitudes
Last year we were on summer vacation and we had a guy that was flying us to a place. I went up front and he had these gadgets out and all the things that were going on. I said, "Listen, you need to know if anything happens to you, I'm right here to take control." I said, "What's that thing? Because it looks like radar." He said, "Yeah, it is." I said, "Well, it shows us—what are those dots? Are those—" He said, "Yeah, those are other planes that are in the area."
I said, "That plane right there in the middle looks like it's coming right at us." He said, "It is." I said, "No, I mean, it looks like it's coming right at us." And he said, "It is." I said, "You know, I'm not trained in this, but that doesn't seem like it would be good to me." And he said, "No, it's coming right at us. It's exactly on the same course we're on. But we're flying east, he's flying west, so we are at different altitudes. So they'll never meet."
Literally, he was above us—literally, his shadow came right over us. It was kind of scary, really. But he said, "Tom, we can't hit him. We're not going to hit him. We're at this altitude, he's at this altitude. Doesn't matter which way we're going. That's the whole grid. That's why these planes aren't running into each other. They're moving at a different altitude."
That's what Paul's saying. You're sitting here talking at this plane, and the other guy's listening at this plane. You're talking here, and he's here, and you're going back and forth, and they're never going to connect. You see what he's saying? Not only are they never going to connect—it's a powerful word—he cannot know them. He isn't going to get them. They're never going to make sense to him. He doesn't have, if you will, a spiritual decoder in him.
The Spiritual Decoder
That's why you can sit down with your friend, and you can talk to them, and they don't know Christ. You talk to them about your life, and how God saved you, and they're semi-listening, sort of listening. Then there's this one thing that somebody said to you, and when they said it, the bells and whistles, everything's clicking, and all of a sudden, you can see them respond.
You thought, "Well, I'll drop this on them," and boom, you sit down, and you go, boom, and they go, "You think it'll rain?" You're going, "What happened here? How can we be..." Here's why. Just think of that.
It doesn't mean that we don't talk to them. It doesn't mean that I'm not sharing. God calls us to, but I'm sharing, and sharing, and sharing, but look at my boy here. He isn't going to hear me. He isn't going to respond, no matter how clever. Look at this—this guy's got issues. He's not even responding to Shania here. This guy's got problems. He cannot respond.
Rather than get mad at them, I'll hear people talk, "I'm so mad." We don't get mad. Why would you get mad at a dead guy because he didn't respond to you? He cannot respond to you.
Study Without the Spirit
Martin Luther wrote this: "The Bible cannot be understood simply by study or talent. You must count only on the influence of the Holy Spirit." I have a guy that I know whose father has written four, five, six theology books, and the last time I asked him about his dad, he said, "We're really praying that he comes to Christ. We're really praying that he'd one day be redeemed." Study—I'm sure he knows this way better than I do—but the Spirit's not in him. He's as dead as this guy. It's just an academic study. It might as well be physics or astrophysics. It could be anything. Medicine—it's just another study. It's just an academic dry thing to him.
Luther continues. Here's what he writes: "Man is like a pillar of salt, like Lot's wife, like a log or a stone. He's like a lifeless statue which uses neither eyes nor mouth nor senses nor heart unless he's enlightened, converted, and regenerated by the Holy Spirit."
Psalm 119 verse 18, the psalmist writes this: "Open my eyes that I might behold the wonderful things from thy law." He doesn't ask the Lord to help him read it. He asks the Lord to help him understand it.
The Key Question: Why Did You Believe?
So remember again what we're talking about. We're talking about natural man. We're not talking about whether there was this point in time whether you made a decision or not. I'm going to say if you're a follower of Christ, there's that point in time where you believe. Got that. That's not the discussion. The discussion is not whether you believed or not. You believe. The question is why did you believe?
So here you go. I'll answer boldly here. Can a natural man understand spiritual things? Boldly—no. Is the gospel a spiritual thing? Can natural man possibly understand the gospel? No. Natural man's never going to get it on his own. He can't get it on his own.
Remember the question? Does man have the ability to come to Christ? So we said there's two verses we really want to look at. The first one you got in front of you—First Corinthians chapter 2 verse 14. Natural man cannot get this. Natural man cannot understand it.
Evangelizing Dead People
So should we evangelize? We'll talk a lot about evangelism. Should we evangelize? Absolutely. We should evangelize and evangelize and evangelize. But we're evangelizing to dead people who will never respond unless something happens to them. So when you're evangelizing, this does a couple of things for you. One, I find great freedom here.
Now I can sit down with somebody and whether they respond or don't respond is not dependent upon me. It does not relieve me of the responsibility to be able to present God's word in a true, honest, graceful way. But it does say that I don't have to try to manipulate or outsmart or say, "Okay, I know they're going to say this and I'll say that." I don't have to go through that. He's dead. He's never going to get it. I still have the privilege of proclaiming the gospel, but whether he responds or not doesn't depend upon me. It depends upon God.
Jesus Teaches About Our Inability
Here's the second verse we want to look at. The words of Jesus Himself. John chapter 6, verse 44. This becomes a huge issue. The reason we spend two weeks on this point, the reason we go over it again and again is when you get this, the rest of these issues start to make a ton of sense because you just repeat right back to these things. You come right back. First Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14, John chapter 6, verse 44. Natural man cannot get it.
Here's what Jesus says. Does natural man have the ability to believe, come to Christ, repent? Here's what Jesus said. "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." He's not speaking, and this is really important here, about obligation or responsibility. He's talking about ability. You get it? "No one can come to me. No one has the ability to come to me. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him."
The Difference Between Ability and Permission
This is about ability, not permission. We learned that at an early age, third grade, Mrs. Gadian's class. I can remember sitting in the class, putting out my hand, saying, "Mrs. Gadian, can I sharpen my pencil?" She said, "Mr. Schrader, I don't know. I don't know if you have the dexterity and the eye-hand coordination to take that pencil and put it in that hole and crank that thing. I don't know. You may give it a try if you'd like." I was asking her, "Can I?" I was talking about ability, and she said, "I don't know, pal. That's up to you. I'll give you permission to try." "May I go to the bathroom?" "Well, I'm going to give you permission, but it's up to you, Tom, to see how this all works itself out." You see the difference?
This is really important. We're not talking about permission. We're talking about ability. So John 3:16, that's a wonderful verse. Great verse to put on a placard, sit in the end zone, and hold it up. "John 3:16, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." What does the verse say? God loved the world. He gave His Son, His only Son. Whoever believes in Him will not perish but will have everlasting life. It's a wonderful verse, but it's not about ability, is it? It's about permission. What's it say? Whoever believes will be saved. Everyone has permission. The call goes out, but on the issue that we're talking about here, John 3:16 doesn't mean anything because it's talking about permission. We're talking about ability.
Breaking Down John 6:44
"No one can come." Look at it. Let's break it down. John 6:44, "No one can come to me," and here's a key word, "unless." It's a necessary condition. Something has to happen before something else can happen. Here's what He's talking about. No one can come to me unless something else takes place first. What is it? "The Father who sent me draws him."
So here's what Jesus is saying. No one's going to come to me in repentance and faith. No one's going to believe in me. No one's going to ask me into his heart, whatever the phrase is, as inadequate as they may be or as accurate as they may be. Nobody's going to do that unless something else happens first. Why? Because we're dead. Something has to happen. And that is, He has to draw him.
Biblical View Versus Arminian View
So if we were to take down these two different theological views, if we were to take the Biblical view, the Calvinistic view, or the Arminian view, here's what the Arminian is saying: God is wooing us, coaxing us, that there's this still small voice, softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling. So let's go back over to our boy, Andy, here. So here you go, Andy, my man. Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling. I'm wasting my time. Because you're dead. He can't hear. It's a waste of time.
The Bible does not teach that God is softly and tenderly calling people. The word that He used here for "draws" is a strong word. It means literally to compel. It's used eight times in the New Testament. But let me give you two instances of it. James chapter 2 verse 6 and Acts chapter 16 verse 19.
The Strong Meaning of "Draws"
James is writing to those who are confused about the way that the church ought to operate. He writes this in verse 6 of chapter 2, "But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppose you and personally drag you into court?" That's the same word. The rich are not taking the poor and wooing them into court. They're not softly and tenderly calling them into court.
You see the same word in Acts chapter 16 verse 19 where the crowd sees Paul and Silas and drag them into the marketplace. That's a picture here of what's going on. God is not wooing you. God is not out here just sending out this quiet call to this whole section. "Come to me, come to me, come to me." Because He can call and call and call and call and call and here's the problem. Our man here is what? He's dead. It doesn't matter. He isn't going to get it. He cannot get it. It doesn't matter what you do.
front of him. Take my dollar back by the way. It doesn't matter what you put in front of him. Well, I saw the look in a couple of these people's eyes over here when that dollar went out. It doesn't matter. Do you see that? It doesn't matter.
So, I can share and share and share. See, we're at the core of the issue here. You've got one side that's saying, "No, you preach to him and he'll figure it out because God's wooing him because He's wooing everybody." You've got another side that says, "Yes, you preach to him but he's never going to respond unless God does something in his life. The Father must draw him, must intervene. He's got to come to life. He must be born again."
What About Revelation 3:20?
Now at this point, what frequently happens, and we've got a little time here so let's do it. Everybody will say, "Well, what about Revelation chapter 3 verse 20?" And I got an email on that. You know, what about Revelation chapter 3 verse 20? Why don't we go ahead and turn there and just make sure we understand exactly what's going on. We'll read the verse and then we'll understand it.
Revelation chapter 3 verse 20, Jesus is speaking and here's what He says: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock and anyone who hears my voice and opens the door, I'll come in and we'll dine with him and eat with me." Pretty popular verse. My suspicion would be, I don't know for sure, but my suspicion would be that you could go to the Christian bookstore over here today and there's probably somewhere in there a picture that would have a guy with kind of long hair in a robe standing at a door with his hand poised as though he's knocking. Then as you looked at the door, there's something noticeably absent and of course that is what? The doorknob. It's supposed to be a graphic depiction of this, is that Jesus is standing at the door of your heart and He's knocking but He really is impotent in this situation. He can't do much more than knock because the handle is on your side and if you don't open it, it isn't going to happen. That's how people for years have interpreted that verse.
I have at home, I went and spoke somewhere and they actually, this is ironic, actually gave me a plaque with that picture on it and a little thank you note. Not sure they knew exactly what was going on.
The Context Changes Everything
But that's not the context here. Listen, if we're in the real estate business, we say the three most important things in real estate are what? Loud. Exactly. The three most important words in understanding the scripture is context, context, context. Who's writing to who about what?
Well, this is part of Revelation chapter two and three where Jesus is speaking to these seven churches. He's speaking to this church body. Here's what He says. He's writing to the church at Laodicea. Verse 15: "I know your deeds. You're not cold. You're not hot. I wish you were hot or cold. So because you're lukewarm, either hot or cold, I'll spit you out of my mouth." He's saying literally to this church, "You make me throw up. You make me throw up. You don't even sin with vigor. There's nothing going on here."
"Because you say I'm rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing and you do not know that you're wretched and miserable." And here's what He says, "You're poor and blind and naked."
Understanding Laodicea's Wealth
In this city at Laodicea, it was the richest of these seven cities and it was rich in terms of culture, a whole variety of areas, but rich materially with three commodities. Number one, there was a medical discovery there of a salve, a kind of revolutionized medicine. They were known throughout their world for that. It was a center of banking and commerce and there was a wool that was grown there and used there and they made the finest clothes.
Now with that background, look at that verse again. "Because you say I'm rich and I've become wealthy, I don't need anything. You don't really know that you're wretched and miserable, poor"—you got all this banking stuff but you're poor—"blind"—you got all this eye salve but you can't see anything spiritually—"and you got this wonderful wool and these fine garments but you're naked."
"I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich in white garments so that you may clothe yourself and that the shame of your nakedness won't be revealed. An eye salve to anoint your eyes that you might really see." See here's what He's coming, "You're looking materially, I'm talking spiritually. I'm talking in a spiritual sense."
The Real Meaning of the Knocking
"Those whom I love I reprove, discipline, therefore be zealous and repent." Now to the church He says, "Behold I stand at the door and knock, if anyone hears my voice, opens the door, I'll come in, dine with him and him with me."
Here's what He's saying: "You got all this church going on and you got songs and power points and videos, you got all this stuff going on but you're dead, you got everything in there but me, let me come in your church." He's not saying "I stand at the door and knock and if you open your heart," that's not what He's saying. See how this begins to take care of itself? We work our way through that? See why this is so important?
Back to the Core Issue
We come back to it again. Can natural man do anything that's spiritually profitable? No. Does natural man have the ability to come to Christ? Absolutely not. And it's counterintuitive to an American.
I'm in the bookstore and I'm just going through these books and there's yet another photography photograph book of John Kennedy. So I'm looking through, I don't know why but I don't know how many of these you can put out but I look at them and there's all these pictures, I've seen them a billion times but I'm just intrigued by it and then there's this little quote in there and the book's thirty bucks. Well, I'm not going to buy the book so I went over to the lady and I said, "Have you got a piece of paper and a pencil because I want to write this quote down and I don't want to buy the book." And she said, "Sure,"
Human Self-Reliance vs. Spiritual Reality
They don't care, by the way. So I wrote it down. Here's what Kennedy said: "Our problems are man-made, therefore, they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings."
Let's break it out. First part: our problems are man-made. That'd be true. Therefore, they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. We're getting in that political time when all these guys are saying the same thing. There it goes. "We got this. We'll get into it. I have a vision."
Well, we're talking about spiritually. Our problem's man-made. We sinned. We can't get ourselves out of it. You're dead.
The Picture of Spiritual Death
This is a beautiful picture. Actually, we dressed it up really too much. But this is a beautiful picture of how we come into the world spiritually—dead. Doesn't matter. Can't respond to any of these things and will not respond to spiritual truth. Can't do any good.
The last time I taught this, it's after the 6 o'clock service. It's dark, and I'm walking out and there's a young lady there—I would guess 13, 14. I get a little paranoid about the gals hanging around just because I don't want anything bad to happen. So I'm walking by and I said, "Hey, what's the deal?"
She said, "I'm waiting." I said, "Did you call somebody for a ride?" "Yes." "Who'd you call?" "My mom." "Is she on her way?" "Yes, she's on her way." I said, "Listen, if she's not here in a minute or two, I want you to move in there by the office and you can find her from there." She said, "Okay."
I'm walking away, and she said, "Tom, can I ask you a question?" I said, "Sure." She said, "I got this all figured out. I'm spiritually dead. I'm never going to respond. There's nothing I can do. I got it. You convinced me."
I said, "I didn't convince you. That's what the scripture says. It says the Spirit of God." That's not me convincing you. She said, "All right, whatever. I didn't get to my question." I said, "Okay." She said, "What about my free will? What about my free will? Where's my free will in all this?"
Understanding Free Will
I said, "Well, what do you mean by free will?" She said, "I don't know." I said, "Well, no. Tell me what you mean." She said, "Well, I just—my free will, my ability to choose." I said, "Ability to choose?" "I don't know. It seems like I should be able to do whatever I want to do. I guess that's what I'm saying."
So isn't that a term that we hear all the time? "What about our free will?" If God's going to come in—because this is where we're going, I'll tip my hand here—you're dead, God's going to come in and God's going to change your heart. We're not there yet because we're moving sequentially. But I do know that in this discussion, you're racing ahead. So every once in a while, let me try to answer the dominant question.
If God's going to come in and do that, what about my free will? Don't I have a choice in this matter? Well, let's spend a second on what do you mean by free will?
Oftentimes I think we say, "What about my free will?" meaning "I'll just go and do whatever I want to do." I'm okay with that. If by free will, you mean doing whatever you want to do, I'm okay with that. In fact, that's Edwards' definition of free will. Edwards said this: "The will always chooses according to its strongest inclination at the moment."
The Bondage of the Will
But if by free will, you mean "I'm going to do whatever I want to do, independent of everything else that's ever happened," the answer to that is no. You don't exist. You can't. Think about it. You came here at 10:30 today for a reason, because that's when the service was scheduled. You didn't sit here because somebody was in the seat. You sat over there.
Here's the key issue here: your will is in bondage to your nature. In fact, Martin Luther wrote the work called "Bondage of the Will." In that, Luther said this: "Free will without God's grace is not free at all, but is impermanent prisoner and bond slave of evil, can't turn itself from good." You're always going to do what you want most.
The Vulture Illustration
Now, for me, there's a friend of mine who gave me this illustration, and this to me is a wonderful illustration about our nature and our will. What the scripture is saying is that we're dead in our sins and trespasses, our will is in bondage to that nature. I'll always choose sin. I'll never choose the gospel.
Let's say, for example, back in the sound booth, we have a vulture. Haven't fed the vulture for a while. Vulture's hungry. Up here on the piano, I place a head of lettuce and a steak. We release the vulture. The vulture spots the food. The vulture flies immediately to what? The steak.
Now you all said that. You seem pretty convinced of that. Do you see how He had freedom? He had freedom of choice. The choice of the lettuce was available to Him. The choice was there, but there's nothing in Him that's attracted to the lettuce.
Well, let's say maybe He's an Arizona vulture. So we get vulture from all 50 states. We release the vulture. The vulture from Iowa goes to the meat. The vulture from Florida goes to the meat. Vulture from Minnesota goes to the meat. The vulture from California—the lettuce, I don't know, torn, confused, not sure—but eventually goes to the meat.
Well, maybe we say it's the continent. So we get vultures from all of North America. From all seven continents. We get vultures from around the world. Every time, under every circumstance, in every condition, without exception, every time the vulture goes right to the meat.
The Application to Human Nature
Here's sinful man. Here's the gospel. Here's man rejecting the gospel. Every time in His nature, unmolested by God, no intervention by God, every time man's going to reject the gospel. There's nothing in His nature that's attracted to the gospel. Just like that vulture. The only way that vulture's ever going to eat that lettuce is to put—
Natural man is dead. Natural man will always choose what he wants most. Do you have free will? Well, if you mean you'll always choose what you want, yeah. Do you have free choice? Absolutely.
Every person who hears this gospel may come, but they won't come unless something happens to that nature. Something has to intervene.
The Heart of Evangelism
Let me say it again. Are we about evangelism? You bet. We have the privilege of sharing Christ with everybody that we meet. And we should. We should be prepared. We should plan. We should know what to say. We should know the gospel.
But we can share and share and share and share and share. And Andy, my main man over here, is never going to respond. He's never going to get it unless he comes to life. That vulture is never going to go to that lettuce unless I put the heart of a rabbit in him. No man is never going to respond to that gospel unless God does something first.
See, that's why we spend all this time on the condition of man. Because now it becomes very obvious, doesn't it? Something has to happen to this man.
The Impossibility of Self-Generated Faith
How can a man who's dead be born again? Is there anything that a dead man can do to facilitate His being born again? And pretty soon these questions become obvious. Something has to happen to them.
Because we have testimony all around this room that somewhere along the way, we who are dead are now alive. We who had rejected now believe. What happened in there? Do you get it again?
The issue here is not whether you believed or not. I'll go ahead and say you believed. The question is, why did you believe? What caused you to believe? Why did you reject, reject, reject, and then one day the gospel makes sense? Are you smarter than everybody else? Do you get a better explanation than other people? The answer is God's working in your life.
Questions of Justice and Fairness
Well, is God working equally in everybody's life? Because now our sense of justice and fairness says, well, if God saved me, then He should save them and He should save those. We'll look at all those questions next week.
Two verses that you need to keep pretty handy: 1 Corinthians 2:14 and John 6:44, because they speak to the condition of man.
Let's pray together. Father, thank You that You have saved Your people from their sin. God, that we are spiritually dead is clear. You did not stutter or stammer. There is nothing we have done or will do in any way to respond unless You do something first. God, that You loved us and shared these great truths with us is a beautiful picture of Your love. While we were yet sinners, You loved us. God, I pray especially for those for whom You're beginning to work and they're going, "Wow, God, let us see this truth." Not so we can go, "I'm smarter than everybody else."