Irresistible Grace

I went ahead and covered the last part of the Bible study because I wanted to finish what we were talking about. But at the next Bible study, I will recover the last part of that Bible study. It was a Bible study subject that we don't talk about much. But it sort of led into this sermon because I realized this is a subject I haven't covered in years.

What we're going through, of course, is the book of Ephesians. And in Ephesians, we've looked at how the introduction to the book, the city of Ephesus, what it was like, what the people were like, the world they lived in, and in some ways it's similar to the world we live in, and how the church there started with Jews and then became predominantly a non-Jewish church as more and more people came into it.

And Paul then, we had to go through two studies just on what Paul meant by the mystery of the gospel, because he has all these mysteries in the book. He calls them mysteries, and what that means. And of course, the word mystery that Paul uses, the Greek word, isn't the word that we use. A mystery is something you've got to figure out the solution, right? The mystery in Greek literally means information that can only be revealed through divine revelation.

It's a mystery to human beings that can't be solved without some divine revelation. So we went through two whole studies on looking at what that means, because as we go through it now, we have a reference point.

But also, in that letter, he talks about predestination. Paul talks about predestination a couple of times. It uses that specific word. And we had to go through what predestination is, which is one of the most common debated doctrines, even in Christianity today. And so we did a lot of digging into history and discussed what Augustine taught, and became the Catholic foundation of the doctrine. And then we went through how Martin Luther and John Calvin created what we came then, the main teaching of Protestantism, about predestination, and took the Catholic version and extended it into a remarkable level of harshness towards God.

Puritans were Calvinists. That's why they could burn people at the stake. But then another theologian came along, a Dutch theologian, Jacobus Armedius. I just like his name. I don't think I'm pronouncing it right in Dutch, but Jacobus Armedius, who came along and said, wait a minute, there's all kinds of problems with this.

And so he had a new explanation, which was picked up by the Methodist, many of the Baptists, and now you had this division in Protestantism over this doctrine. So we went through that to show, here's all this argument, so what do we believe? And actually, most Sabbath-keeping churches believe a lot of what Armedius taught.

His teaching really fits the Scripture more. But then we take it a step further that has to do with multiple resurrections. So we actually have an understanding that's even different than the Armedians, which most evangelicals now, that's why they want to preach the gospel. If you believe in what that definition of predestination, it is a church mandate to preach the gospel. And the reason the Calvinists aren't so interested is because God chose everybody before you were even born.

He chose you to go to hell or to heaven. And in that, there's the concept of irresistible grace. And we're going to talk about where that leads to a certain subject that has to do with us in the church, in our relationship with God. Irresistible grace. What the Calvinists teach today, even today, and I looked up, even watched a sermon by a Calvinist, who was a short sermon, to see, you know, modern Calvinists, well-known, to see, are they teaching anything different than no?

When God created humanity, He already knew who was going to, He was going to decide what to have it in hell. So God has irresistible grace. You can't resist God. He's too powerful. He's too sovereign. He decides everything. So He looked out over time, and arbitrarily, not arbitrarily, He's made the mystery of His mind, picked who He was going to save and who He wasn't.

And if He decided not to save you, there's nothing you can do. There's people who are Christians who worship God their whole lives, and they're going to hell, according to Calvinism. But there are true Christians, who are Calvinists, obviously, and they get to go to heaven because they're pre-picked.

And there is no such thing as free will. Well, they explain free will is, once God changes your will, you choose Him freely. So once God changes your will, you now only have one choice, and that's to follow Him. Well, there's a problem with that. But their argument is that you believe God is weak. You don't believe God is all-powerful. You don't believe God is responsible and all-knowing. You believe that human beings can literally make a decision against God, and God puts up with it.

And they can resist His grace. Human beings are so powerful, they can resist the power of God. Well, no. What we believe is that God is so powerful, He can create somebody and say, I can make you do this, but I'm not going to.

I'm going to let you participate. That means He has the power not to do that, but He chooses to actually give us a certain amount of free will. Now, we understand, as I went through at the Bible study, that even free will is limited until God does something.

We call it calling, right? Well, I didn't know the truth until God called me. People say that all the time. Which means that you didn't have free will because you didn't know there was a choice. I mean, you had free will, but it didn't mean anything. So we understand that free will only has meaning if God comes into your life. That's why we believe in the great white throne judgment. That's why we believe not everybody is called now. That's part of our belief in predestination. Because until God does something, the Calvinists say, well, of course, but He chose not to do it.

He's just sending them to hell to show how wonderful He is. That's the argument. For the glory of God, the overwhelming majority of humanity spends eternity in hell. For the glory of God. So if we don't believe that, we believe we do have free choice once God calls us, then we have to come to the conclusion, wow, we can resist God's grace. He lets us do that. Not because He's so weak and we're so powerful. It's because He literally lets us do that.

So if God lets us resist His grace, what happens if He calls us? What happens if we receive God's Spirit? Can we lose salvation? Of course, a Calvinist and a Catholic would say, no. Well, I say that. Some Catholics say yes, because they realize there's a problem if you take this far enough. But the Calvinists, which used to be, by the way, the great majority of Protestants until the last, less than 100 years.

For hundreds of years, this is what almost all Protestants believed. God chose you, you're saved, don't worry about it. Or God didn't choose you, and you don't know it, but you're going to hell anyways.

So we believe that God has given us this remarkable ability, which He chooses to hold back His power. He chooses to hold back His will and say, I'm giving you, you know, each one of us, He gives us this, I don't know what to call it, privilege to destroy ourselves if we want to. But He gives us this ability to say no to Him. Now, He still gets His sovereign will done. Guess what happens to everybody who says no to God enough times? It's called the Lake of Fire. See, this doesn't erase God's sovereign decision-making. It just says He gives us this ability to make a decision.

Now, in going through that, once we receive God's spirit, can we commit what is often called the unpardonable sin? Can we commit a sin that God won't forgive? I mean, if you receive God's spirit, it's because you've been justified, you've been forgiven, you've been sanctified, He's given you His spirit, He's working. The very power of God is put into your mind, right? Do we have the ability to resist that?

Well, let's look at something here, because that's what we're going to talk about. As people with God's spirit, do we have the ability to resist God's spirit? And if we do, that means can we lose salvation? First John 5.

Now, when I talk about Calvinists, Armenians, they all have scriptures to support their point. I mean, in Philippians it says, God promises to complete the work that He started in you. Calvinists say, see, you can't lose it. It's a promise from God, and God never lies. But then you put other scriptures together, and it seems to appear to say something else, and that's why they have started with a premise that doesn't work. So the Armenians stack up their scriptures, and the Calvinists stack up their scriptures, and the Catholics stack up their scriptures, and they have three different viewpoints. And more and more Christians are saying, we don't care. This is ridiculous. First John, chapter 5. And let's go to verse 16. He's talking to the church here, so that's what we're dealing with today, not predestination of people outside the church. We're talking about, is God's grace irresistible to us? If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin, which does not lead to death, he will ask, and he will give him life for those who commit sin, not leading to death. There is a sin leading to death. I do not say that we should pray about that. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin not leading to death. Now, we do know that there's other places in the Bible that talks about sin leads to death.

So why would John be saying, well, you know, would that be saying, well, okay, stealing doesn't lead to death, but killing does? What you have to understand is what he's looking at here, and if you read the letter that John wrote, he's got this big viewpoint. He's talking about what Revelation says is the second death. There is a sin that can lead to the second death, which is a permanent death. It's permanent. All human beings, except those alive at Christ's return, will die. Those who are alive at Christ's return that are Christians will simply be changed. Everybody else dies. Adam, or look at all the righteous people, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Mary the mother of Jesus, Paul, they all died, right? Physical death is the result of having a corrupted human nature, living in a corrupted world, and sin. It kills us. And God offers us eternal salvation. But there is a second death. It's also called the lake of fire. So the real question comes down to, then, if I am a Christian, could I suffer the second death? Is that possible? Because that means I can resist God's power. I can resist the Holy Spirit. Well, let's look at a little bit, just review a little bit on relationship with sin, and then we're going to look at two places in the New Testament that define this issue, which Armenians would agree with and Calvinists would say, oh, you have no idea what that means. You're misinterpreting that entirely. First John 1.

There's no need for you to know the teachings of John Calvin and Jacobus Arminius, unless you're going to actually have someone discuss this with you or you have questions about it. The other reason why is the world we live in, those men who lived hundreds of years ago, have a profound effect, as does Augustine, who lived in the 400s. Their writings are taught constantly in churches today, as the explanation of this. Like I said, Arminius is much closer to what we believe. Some of the Adventists, Church of God's Seventh Day, they all consider themselves Armenians. We actually take it further because of what we understand, and I covered that in the Bible study, so I won't cover that here. But 1 John 1, back here in 1 John again, and look at verse 8. Here is our relationship to sin. Are we sinless? Well, John says if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Of course we're still sinning. We're wrestling with sin all the time. And if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So God is faithful to forgive our sins. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us. So if we go around saying, oh no, I'm perfect, I don't sin, well then God's not with you anymore. My little children, these things, this is chapter 2, I write to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. And He Himself is a propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also the whole world. Now this is real important because Calvinism teaches that Jesus only died for the people God chose. If He died for the people He condemned to hell, then God failed. Why would Jesus die for people He had already condemned to hell? You see the logic problem they put themselves into? So they have to deny statements like that. Oh no, He died, not for the whole world, but for the whole world that were already predestined. That's the only people He died for. Of course, we don't believe that. We believe He died for the whole world. Everybody gets an opportunity. But if everybody gets an opportunity, and some people fail, in their minds, that means God failed. No, it means we failed. There's the issue. It's we fail. God never fails. He says, I will complete the work I started in you. That's a promise unless we do certain things. That's a promise. You can hold on to that when you're really discouraged. You promised. It's when we don't go hold on to the promise that we get in trouble.

So this is our relationship, the sin, that God continued to forgive us because of this relationship. And you know, this is the one thing that I never read in Augustine, and I've read some of Augustine's writings on the... Not entirely, because it takes two volumes of what he wrote on this. I've read some of Calvin. I've read some of Arminius, even Luther a little bit. And you know what they never talk about? They never talk about our relationship with God. It's all this sort of this legal thing they're going through. They also almost never talk about Satan. As I said in the Bible study, we're corrupted because God let Satan be the God of this age, and we all became corrupted. They never talk about Satan, or hardly ever. So, is there a sin that's so terrible that it could sever us from our relationship with God? And immediately what people usually do is, well, let me tell you about this sin. It's probably this sin. It's probably this. It's probably that. Okay, let's see. Paul set up tribunals that took true Christians, put them in prisons, and Roman prisons were not good places, or killed them. That's about as low as you get. God forgave him of that. David committed adultery and then had the husband killed. God forgave him of that. You can start going through all these... Abraham lied and ended up having his wife become betrothed to a king because he lied, and now he was going to lose his wife because she was now going to have to marry this king. God forgave him of that. So you say, what's the individual sin? What is it? Then when God says, no, you committed that one, I will never forgive you. Instead of looking at just the individual sin, what we need to look at is something greater, and then come to the conclusion, is God's grace irresistible? Or can we resist it, and in therefore doing so, sin and sin unto death, unto the second death? Is that possible? And like I said, even in Christianity today, although I have to say most Christians don't care anymore, but among the theologians, this is really argued. This is really argued today because it determines how you see everybody else. It determines the value in which you see other people, right? You can look at people that you disagree with, people who commit abortions, and you can say, you're murderers, God's going to put you in hell. Calvinists can say that. And I don't want anything to do with you. You're disgusting. A Catholic would say, you can be saved, but you have to do all these rituals to do it. That's why there's so many rituals, by the way, in Catholicism, is to help bring about salvation. That's why you take the Eucharist all the time. It's why you confess to the priest. It's to keep the salvation process. Because even though they think you're somehow predestined, they believe you can lose it. Where, if you get into our medians, they're all saying, preach the gospel, preach the gospel, preach the gospel, because everybody gets to make a choice, and you don't know who God's calling right now. And we're the tools by which God calls people. You see, that's three different viewpoints of all the people around you, isn't it? Three different viewpoints. So we have a viewpoint that every person has value. Even the most despicable sinner can have value to God because they will get an opportunity. That's what predestination is. It's when you get your opportunity.

But God chose us to be here now. So can we lose it? Okay, Hebrews 6. Let's look at the two places and sort of flesh them out here.

This is one of those sermons I want to stop and say. Any questions? I will. Any questions? I mean, whose Jacob is our medius? Well, I want you to know how this is a major issue in the Christian world that we sometimes are so sort of withdrawn from. We don't realize what's going on. And they have fought each other, excommunicated each other over this issue. So it is important. But I want you to understand that the work and effort these people put into these conclusions and how deeply they believe them. So any questions so far? Okay. Hebrews 6.4. I know it's uncomfortable to ask a question in a sermon, but sometimes you have to know, is there a question before we go on here? Because there's no dumb questions, especially in something that seems complicated in many ways. It's not, but well, yeah, it is. There's a few scriptures. I know the beginning from the end. See, God knows everything, and He determines who's going to get...go to hell, and who doesn't. Okay. You have to look at that in the context of all the scriptures, which is what we do. All the scriptures have to come together. So there is a death and there is a second death. And we do have input of whether we get there or not. Now, because we work out our own salvation by our works, it's because we say yes to God over and over and over again. Or we say no to God over and over and over again. And that's what matters in the end. Hebrews 6, verse 4. Paul writes, because we don't initiate any conversation with God. So God, through His grace, through His favor, calls a person, interacts with the person, enlightens the person, because you can't even come into enlightenment without Him helping you, and have received the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good Word of God, and the powers of the age to come. In other words, by receiving the Holy Spirit, we are, in a very limited way, experiencing what it is to be in the Kingdom of God. He said, so it is impossible for a person who has gone through all this, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.

In other words, they have been forgiven by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. So when the Calvinists say, He wasn't sacrificed only for those who are predestined to make it, this says, no, there are people who have accepted that sacrifice and received the Holy Spirit who won't make it.

Now, the Scripture doesn't say this is a majority or anything like that. It just says it's possible. So God's grace can be resisted. It's not because He's not sovereign. It's not because He doesn't have all power. It's because He just says, I'll let you do that.

I will allow you to do that. There. You get that choice.

And then He judges us by those choices. You know, that's really scary. I'd give up my free will to do sin, and it'll hurt me if I do how, because, man, just give that up, and I can't sin anymore. I'd do that just like that.

Because He says, I give it to you. Now, you're responsible. I don't want that responsibility. I'd give it back to Him, which is basically what we're doing. We're giving back the ability to sin. That's what conversion is. That's what the change is, the transformation at the end. We give up the ability to sin. We give it to Him. You take responsibility for that. He says, okay, you can't sin anymore, because I'm going to live in you forever.

See, God's going to live in us forever.

But now, in this process, we get a choice. The idea that there's irresistible grace, think of a starving man out in an alley someplace, and a man walks over and says, here's some bread.

And the man reaches out and takes it. Then we say, oh, that man saved himself by taking the bread.

The guy has to shove the bread in his mouth and then make him swallow it. You see? Literally, God has to make us be saved.

And we can't even reach for the bread. If we reach for the bread, it's only because He made us reach for the bread.

That is not the interaction God has with us. And this Scripture shows that it is possible to resist God's grace because He gives us the privilege to do so. He gives us the right to do so. And that should frighten us.

Actually, what it does, it frightens us just to throw ourselves before God.

You're will be done. You help me. You guide me. You change me. You do it. Because I can't. And God says, ah, you finally figured that out.

You finally figured out you are not strong enough to save yourself.

It's not possible.

2 Peter 2.

So you say, well, what is that sin?

What you start to look here and you realize it's not a particular sin. The particular sin may be the result.

It is the result of resisting God's Holy Spirit and downplaying the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

You resist God's Spirit to the point where you just say, no, enough that it's impossible to renew you.

So what is the unpardonable sin? In reality, the unpardonable sin is any sin you won't repent of.

So we'll look at somebody and say, well, that person has lived such an immoral life.

That must be the unpardonable sin. I mean, they have just been a sexual pervert.

They could never, you know, ever be forgiven by God.

And that's not true.

Now, what's scary is you could be incredibly self-righteous and think you're superior to everybody else, put other people down, stab them in the back, gossip about them, destroy their lives, and pretend to be a great Christian and end up resisting God's Spirit.

Right? We went through 1 Corinthians 13.

You can spend your whole life resisting 1 Corinthians 13. Oh, but I keep the Sabbath, I keep the Holy Days, and I know I'm better than everybody else. It's like, no, this is... Yeah, you're supposed to do these things, but there's something that happens inside of us. And so we can appear to be very good and do lots of good things and be resisting God's Spirit. And God can take the most terrible sinner and transform them into somebody else.

The difference is that whether He wills it is whether we say yes or we say no.

Over and over again, we say no, no, no, no, no.

Until we literally take God's Spirit and it just goes away from us.

2 Peter 2, 18.

Peter says that He's talking about people who come into the church and teach false doctrine. So this is real important. Just like what we've read in Hebrews, this isn't talking about people outside the church. It's talking about people inside the church. For when they speak, these false teachers, great swelling words of emptiness, they allure through the lust of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped those who live in error. He says, so here's people that come into the church, teach false doctrines, take the people who have actually escaped from the world and take them back into it.

While they promised them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption. For by whom a person has overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage.

They bring them back into the bondage of sin.

For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome. The latter is worse for them than the beginning.

For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it to turn from the Holy Commandment delivered to them.

But it has happened to them, according to the true proverb, a dog returns to his own vomit and a sow having washed to her wallowing in the mire. In other words, can you imagine what he just said? It would be better if this person hadn't been called yet.

It would be better if this person hadn't been called yet, and God would call them at another time. Because to be called at whatever time God chooses you, that's called election, we've gone through the doctrine of election, it's that you're predestined now to be his child.

To go through all that and then return to the world, he said, it's better that God had never called you at this time because of what can happen.

This is all a little frightening when you start working through it. But remember, this isn't to make you fearful of, you know, oh no, I'm going to come at the unpardonable sin. God will complete... I'm going to quote Calvinist scripture, you know? Well, they quote, God will complete the work he started in you. God promises to give you the inheritance.

There's all kinds of promises from God. It's saying yes to the promises. That's all we have to do. I say all. That's huge, right? If you say yes, then you have to become Christlike. If you say yes, you have to live a certain way. If you say yes, we have to have such a relationship with God that we will obey Him.

Obedience, law, all these things become important. Not because we're earning salvation, but because we're saying yes to the only power that can give us salvation. We're saying yes over and over and over again. And sometimes paying a price for it. And having the stress and difficulty of changing our own nature as God changes who we are into His children. It's not easy to be changed from what we are to what we're going to be.

That's the process. It's saying yes to that process over and over and over again. So we don't have to despair, Oh, I sinned. I had a bad thought. Or I did this. Or I lied about something. Or whatever. I stole something. Well, that's bad. God's upset with you. And you have to go repent again. And we already read, if we repent, right, and confess, we're restored. We keep getting restored into the process. Because what are we doing? Yes, I was wrong. I have to go talk to you about this, and I have to repent of it. And we change, and we change, and we change.

That's the positive part of it. But there's always this warning, don't go back. It'd be like telling the ancient Israelites, You want to go back to ancient Egypt, right? You're out here in the desert, and you want to go back. Go ahead. What happened when they got to the Red Sea? They couldn't cross it. They couldn't go back to Egypt. They would die. You would starve to death, or be killed by Amalekites, try to build a boat, cross the Red Sea, and drown. It doesn't matter. You couldn't get back to Egypt. You would die. That's the point.

That's where we are. We can't go back to Egypt. We will die. Can't get there. And if you did, you'd just be a slave again, and you will die. See, the analogies really work together. Mark 3. Jesus talks about this. Mark chapter 3. Armenians would be saying, Man, this guy's good. Calvinists would say, This guy doesn't know the Scripture at all. Augustineians would be saying, He's getting it partly right and partly wrong. But the Scripture's pretty clear. So there has to be a resistible grace. Mark 3. Verse 20. Let me see what I want to do here. Well, Matthew has a point in this.

Let's go to Matthew's, because I don't want to... I don't want to go too long here. Matthew 12. I was going to read Mark's account and then Matthew's account. Now let's just look at Matthew's. Verse 31. Let's just look at sort of the end of the story here. Mark 12.31. Therefore I say to you, Jesus says, Every sin of blasphemy will be forgiven of men.

In other words, God says... He says, God will forgive people of sin as long as they're repenting, as long as they're in this process of having Him change us, of Him develop in us this Christ-like attitude in mind. But the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Now the reason He's saying this, and that's the story there that was in Mark, but it is also here in Matthew, but the reason He's saying this is there were Pharisees saying, Jesus was healing people through the power of Satan.

Now Jesus was healing people through the power of the Holy Spirit. And He's talking to people who are not baptized. He's talking to people who don't have God's Spirit. And He tells them, when you take the obvious power of God, and you say that's of Satan, you are in danger of not being forgiven by God. In other words, you've been exposed at a remarkable level. I just healed somebody. You know, Jesus says, I just... I'm raising people from the dead. Oh, that's Satan doing that. Satan can't do that. He can't raise people from the dead. So his argument is, you don't have God's Spirit, but you've seen it in such a dramatic way that you are held accountable to God.

He says, verse 32, Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven him. But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or the age to come. In other words, we're talking about the Great White Throne Judgment. We're talking about the second death. You don't actually have to have God's Spirit in you to commit the impartable sin. You could be exposed to God at such a level, like these people were. I mean, the Son of God is talking to you. He's walking among you. He's raising people from the dead. Ah, that's Satan.

He said, no, you know better. You know better. The Old Testament's filled with Scriptures of what the Messiah would do. He was doing everything the Messiah was supposed to do. Nobody had ever done what he was doing. Nobody had ever done what he was doing. And they could see that. And he said, you know better. You're just doing this because you're stubborn. You're saying no to God, no to God, no to God, and you're real close here to a sin that will not be forgiven.

So, we'll look at one other Scripture here in Hebrews 10 that defines this. Hebrews 10. Verse 26. For if we sin, speaking to the church again, willfully, after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins. Now, people all the time say, well, I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I couldn't help myself.

I knew what I was doing, but I couldn't help myself. I kept thinking, this is what God wants, but I just couldn't help myself, and I did it anyways. Okay. Willfully means I willfully did it, and I'm willfully going to defend it.

I'm willfully going to say, no, I was right. Or, no, it's God's fault because he didn't stop me. That's always a strange one. This is, I willfully have done it, and I willfully will not stop it. Because all of us at times, our own will is so weak, and we're so far from God, we can do the stupidest things. Things that we know that are wrong. I know I shouldn't have another beer, which in me sometimes it's, you know, the second half of one beer, because it will put me to sleep. That's why I don't drive if I have a beer. It just, I hardly drink beer, but one beer will put me to sleep.

It's just age, I guess. So I don't drive if I, you know, have a beer at someone's house, and you keep thinking, why is he staying so long? When we had dinner and had a beer, I'm going to wait about two hours before I get in the car. But what if you have a different tolerance, and you drink that third or fourth or fifth beer, and you know you shouldn't do it? So after you do that, and you wake up with a little bit of a hangover, and you say, oh, I've sinned willfully.

God's going to now just put me in the lake of fire. No, you said no to God, and He's saying, come back here and say yes. Come back here and say yes right now. You have to repent of this, and you've got to do something to make sure you don't do this anymore. But there's always this, come back and say yes. Come back and participate in what I'm going to do, because He can do it.

But we have to participate in it. We have to say yes to it. So willfully here is, you've said no to God, and it's just a permanent no. But here's what you expect, because Christ's sacrifice isn't applied to you anymore. But a certain fearful expectation of judgment and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment do you suppose will be thought worthy, who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which He was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of Grace?

Now, this cannot apply to people that God has not called, or people who have not received the Holy Spirit. This can only apply to people who have received the Holy Spirit, right? Because they were forgiven by the blood of God, or the Son of God. God made a covenant with them, so they were baptized. They were now sanctified, made holy, and they had received the Spirit of Grace.

He says, how can someone that way now just say no to God? And God's Spirit is no longer there. And you want to see the perfect example of that? Look at King Saul.

King Saul, it says God withdrew His Spirit from him, and he went insane. Why do you think David, when he committed his great sins, went to God and begged him, please do not take your Spirit away from me? Because if you do, I end up insane.

Please don't take it away.

He said yes to God. Even after all those sins, he went back and said, I'm worthless. I need help here.

And God didn't take His Spirit away from David. He did with Saul.

So here it is. In fact, verse 31 says, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. And then he said some very positive things. He said, so just remember how God's worked on your life. That's basically what he says for the rest of that chapter. It says, okay, before you get too discouraged here, remember, okay, maybe you have sinned. Maybe you have fallen down. Maybe you've done something you shouldn't do. Maybe you've had a bad day and treated everybody terribly, and that's not right either, right? Okay, you didn't steal or lie or cheat today, but maybe you were just someone everybody hated today. And that wasn't right either. That wasn't a good example of what a Christian should be. Okay, well come on, come to me, and say, yes, Lord, I need help, and I need forgiveness.

That's what he says. And that's the rest of that chapter. Come back! Keep coming back! Keep getting better! Keep letting God heal us all the time.

So we have all different ways we can do this. It basically comes down to our self-will. Actually, there's two things. Self-will, we just are going to do it our way, and we're going to give in to what we want, and we just resist God until he's no longer involved. Or we drift.

You know, I've sat down with people and I've said, wow, you've really drifted away from God. You're doing all kinds of wrong things here.

How much are you praying? Oh, I've prayed two years.

How much are you studying your Bible? I probably haven't studied the Bible in five years. Well, no wonder you are where you are.