(part of a sermon, after looking at Ephesians 2:1 “And you were dead in [your] trespasses and sins” …)

 … people say, “Well, yes unbelievers are dead in their sins, but they still have a free will.”

Do dead people have a free will? Well, for the sake of argument, let’s say they do. OK … after church, go down to the cemetery and yell out as loudly as you can: “Come out of the graves you people! You are free! No one is stopping you - go ahead!” Even if they are free to come out of those graves, they won’t, because they can’t.

Don’t confuse freedom with ability. If I have a pet bird and clip its wings and then say, “Go ahead little birdie, fly away.” It won’t. The problem isn’t freedom, it’s ability. Dead people don’tchoose Christ, they don’t believe the Gospel, because they don’t have the spiritual apparatus—

1Corinthians 2:14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

Does not because he cannot. But it’s even more than a lack of ability, it is a lack of desire: the unbeliever has absolutely no desire to love and obey God. By nature, he is set against God, with no desire to change—no exceptions—

Romans 3:11 no one understands; no one seeks for God.

Romans 8:7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.

Does not because it cannot.

The unsaved are free to receive Christ, but it’s like the freedom of water to run uphill. They are free to hear the Gospel, and free to trust in Jesus Christ – God isn’t preventing them. But they won’t because they can’t, and they don’t even desire to do so. It’s not in them. Freewill is the unbeliever’s worst enemy. Their free-will is chained to their nature, which is spiritually dead, so as long as it’s up to their free will to determine their spiritual destiny – they are doomed. As long as salvation is up to them, as George Whitefield said, “Man has a free will to go to hell, but none to go to heaven.”

That’s deep doo-doo. Deeper than we ever imagined, deader than we ever thought. If we take God at His word, unsaved people can’t come to Christ and be saved. And Jesus Himself said this, and He said it twice:

John 6:44 “No one can come to Me;” and v.65 “no one can come to Me.”

And that would be the end of the story – unless – and there is an unless:

“No one can come to me, unless the Father who sent me draws him” (v.44).

“No one can come to me, unless it is granted him by the Father” (v.65).

Who is on the other side of the “unless?” Not you and your free will – but a loving, merciful God. We can’t change our hearts of stone, but He gives new hearts. We can’t change our sinful nature, but He can cause us to be born again. And we are dead. Dead. But He raises the dead. Beloved, as surely as He raised His Son from the dead, God is still raising the dead.

From the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646):

 ”The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequences may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.”

From The Cambridge Declaration (1996):

“We reaffirm the inerrant Scripture to be the sole source of written divine revelation, which alone can bind the conscience. We deny that the Holy Spirit speaks independently of or contrary to what is set forth in the Bible, or that personal spiritual experience can ever be a vehicle of revelation.”

(letter to my flock)

Part of a shepherd’s duty is to protect his flock. This includes warning the sheep when they are tempted to feed from dangerous pastures. I’m talking about the History Channel’s 10 week mini-series, The Bible, now airing and receiving rave reviews. I could talk about all of its inaccuracies, or the bogus faith of its producers and actors (Roma Downey, from “Touched by an Angel,” I mean, c’mon), but I’ll spare you and be brief and blunt:

It’s not the Bible. It’s a movie. Read the Bible. Don’t watch the movie.

I know people will say that millions of people are watching this movie and are now picking up the Bible to read it for themselves, and it has been endorsed by so many well known people, e.g., Glen Beck (a Mormon) and Joel Osteen (a … uh …?). I don’t care, it’s not the Bible. It is in fact, a misinterpretation and a misrepresentation of the Bible. We would be appalled (or we should be) if this series showed up in written form and billed itself as The Bible, so why aren’t God’s people equally appalled when God’s Word is distorted, edited, and portrayed in both sight and sound and branded into the brains of millions of clueless people who feel suddenly more spiritual because they have turned off the The Simpsons for a few night to “watch” The Bible?

Most people who watch the movie haven’t read the Bible from cover the cover, and will, therefore, believe a plethora of false ideas about God’s Word. And Christians who haven’t read the entire Bible, but who (instead) watch this series, will also believe false things about God and His Word as a result – what a shame! We allow the world to tell us Bible stories? Read the Bible.

Honestly, I don’t care for any Jesus movies, or Bible movies. I hearken back to Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of Christ, and how excited Christians were – this movie would bring about spiritual revival! (Apparently that revival made a detour around Mel himself.) But at the time, I expressed my belief, which I still hold to, that all Jesus movies should be avoided because they violate the intent of the Second Commandment. Let me quote from Richard Bennett, a former Catholic priest, very familiar with the idolatry of Rome. Read this carefully:

“By using the expression “I AM”, the Lord identifies Himself as the God revealed in the Old Testament, the “I AM THAT I AM”, the self-existing, eternal God who spoke to Moses and gave the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai. The Second Commandment totally prohibits making material representations of His person. In creating images of Christ in books, videotapes, films, stained glass windows and other artistic mediums - all things of “man’s device” - men have gone beyond Scripture in their attempt to add to the biblical revelation of who Christ is. The Lord God explicitly warned against adding to His written Word and He warns just as explicitly against adding visual images of the Godhead.

Creating a visual representation of the Lord Jesus, by definition, is to portray “another Jesus.” The Lord Jesus in His Person, character, and work is divine and perfect. No Savior other than the One proclaimed in Scripture is permissible. Those who claim they are only depicting the humanity of Jesus Christ fall into the grievous heresy of Nestorius, as they wrongly attempt to divide the humanity from the deity of Christ, ending up with idols produced by the imaginations of their own hearts.

The Lord God gave believers a Wordbook, not a picture book. The Gospel is at stake—for the Scripture states that “faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation as it is written, read, preached, and spoken one to another. The power of the Word is that it is God’s revealed propositional truth. Rather than subjective imaginations created by man, “The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

It is God’s revealed propositional truth that has the power to change the hearts and minds of those who live in the darkness of their own imaginations, for His light through the Written Word will shine on their evil hearts and the thoughts and deeds that flow from them. It is through this method that they will be convicted of their need for a true Savior and ready for the Gospel of God’s grace alone in which to trust by faith alone. The visual works of a man’s devising, for all their emotional power, are too dull a tool to bring to the individual conviction of sin and the explicit Gospel of grace that the Written Word and the truth preached bring.”

So, maybe you think I’m just a curmudgeon. Why can’t I just see the good in this series? Because I see the bad. The Bible (the book, not the movie) has no bad. Zero. It’s the pure, undefiled Word from our God to His people. The Word which alone can save and sanctify. Why sort through a manure pile to try find a pearl when you can open the treasure chest and find riches beyond measure?

So I’m sticking to my story – unless I get touched by an angel or something – it’s not the Bible. It’s a movie. Read the Bible. Don’t watch the movie.

Oh, and just so I don’t have to send another e-mail when Bill O’Reilly’s dumb book “Killing Jesus” comes out: Don’t read that book either. Duh.

Pastor Doug

Long ago, before there were men or angels or a universe of stars and galaxies, there was only God, existing as Father, Son and Spirit, in a perfect relationship of love. God needed nothing, but He desired to show off the glory of His Being by creating a universe on which to display all the facets of His glory. He would create human creatures who would reflect His image. And He would allow these creatures to fall into sin because it would only be against the backdrop of sin and guilt that He could reveal the glory of His love and mercy on some, and the glory of His justice and wrath on others.

And still, before He had created anything, the Father chose certain ones from this fallen race that He would set His love upon. He would give them as a special love gift  to His Son. They would reflect His glory and eventually share His glory for all of eternity. But their sins would need to be removed in order to have fellowship with Him. It was decided that the Son Himself would come to earth and become one of them that He might be a Substitute for these chosen ones and take away the guilt of their sins by His own death in their place.

After the Son returned to the Father, the Holy Spirit would then move throughout history and around the world, calling these chosen ones to come to faith in the Son. At just the right time He would cause them to born from above so that they would hear the Good News about Jesus, believe, and become the children of God. The Spirit would seal them, transform them by degrees into the image of the Son, and send them out to preach the Good News to others, so that God’s chosen ones would hear, and the Spirit would gather them into God’s family too. And when God’s family was complete – history would also be complete, and all the glory would belong to God alone.

It’s true. Those horrible Republicans who are urging President Obama not to appoint Susan Rice to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, well, it’s obvious that they are motivated by ugly sexism and racism. After all we know that no Republican administration would tolerate a black woman named Rice for Secretary of State … wait a minute … wasn’t the Secretary of State previous to Clinton a black woman named CONDOLEEZZA RICE??

Their being discouraged by their sins will cost them many a prayer, many a tear, and many a groan; and that because their discouragements under sin flow from ignorance and unbelief. It springs from their ignorance of the richness, freeness, fullness, and everlastingness of God’s love; and from their ignorance of the power, glory, sufficiency, and efficacy of the death and sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ; and from their ignorance of the worth, glory, fullness, largeness, and completeness of the righteousness of Jesus Christ; and from their ignorance of that real, close, spiritual, glorious, and inseparable union that is between Christ and their precious souls.

Ah! Did precious souls know and believe the truth of these things as they should, they would not sit down dejected and overwhelmed under the sense and operation of sin. God never gave a believer a new heart that it should always lie a-bleeding, and that it should always be rent and torn in pieces with discouragements.

 Thomas Brooks
Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices

Below is an article that was on the FOX News site on 9/20 – less than two weeks after the slaughter at the Libyan embassy, concerning the $70K that the State Dept. spent on an ad to be run in Pakistan featuring Hillary Clinton and Obama coming out against the “Mohammed movie.” The link below that is the actual ad which is very short.

Question: If the Administration’s critique of Romney is that he “shot before he aimed” but that they waited – and are still waiting – to see what really happened – how is that they thought it was too soon to denounce terrorism, but soon enough to put out this groveling ad? Even the President of Libya knew immediately that this so-called movie wasn’t to blame. But even if our Administration didn’t know that the whole ‘riot over the movie’ story was a sham, which is very hard to believe, isn’t this a clear embarrassing case of “shooting before they aimed?” Why isn’t Romney bringing up this ad??

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/20/state-department-spending-70g-on-pakistan-ads-denouncing-anti-islam-film/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Fpolitics+%28Internal+-+Politics+-+Text%29

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTXHkpVVbHw