For our scripture reading tonight, I invite you to turn with me to Romans chapter 8 as we read just a few verses. Romans chapter 8 as we read verses 5 through 11. We read this in connection with the Canons of Dort, article 3. Of course, again, we understand that the third and fourth heads of doctrine are considered together. I'll ask you to turn there in a moment after we read these verses. But the third head of doctrine, of course, which you remember is dealing with the corruption of man, his conversion to God and the manner thereof. The corruption of man, total depravity. And we began to consider that two weeks ago. And tonight, in a sense, we want to consider or answer the question, what about free will? We hear a lot about free will. And that's an important part of this third head of doctrine. So that's what we want to consider tonight. Romans chapter 8, verses 5 through 11. Hear now the Word of God. Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who lives in you. There ends the reading of God's Word. If you would turn in the back of the Psalter hymnal to page 102. On page 102 and 103, we will read the first three articles together, and then I'll have you turn over to the Rejection of Errors section on page 107. And I encourage you to keep this open, especially the Rejection of Errors. I want to refer back to that, a few other paragraphs in there a bit extensively tonight. And it's good to have it in front of us because this language is sort of difficult to understand. If you just read it, you kind of read it and you go, well, what is it talking about? It is difficult. And so if we read it together and have it before our eyes, I think that would be helpful. Page 102, Article 1. Man was originally formed after the image of God. His understanding was adorned with a true and saving knowledge of his Creator and of spiritual things. His heart and will were upright, all his affections pure, and the whole man was holy. But revolting from God by the instigation of the devil and by his own free will, he forfeited these excellent gifts and in the place thereof became involved in blindness of mind, horrible darkness, vanity, and perverseness of judgment, became wicked, rebellious, and obdurate in heart and will and impure in his affections. Article 2, Man after the fall begat children of his own likeness. A corrupt stock produced a corrupt offspring. Hence all the posterity of Adam, Christ only accepted, have derived corruption from their original parent, not by imitation, as the Pelagians of old asserted, but by the propagation of a vicious nature in consequence of the just judgment of God. Article 3, Therefore all men are conceived in sin and are by nature children of wrath, incapable of saving good, prone to evil, dead in sin, and in bondage thereto, and without the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, they are neither able nor willing to return to God to reform the depravity of their nature or to dispose themselves to reformation. And then turning to page 107. This is the Rejection of Errors section. Paragraph 4, I would draw your attention to. The first little paragraph before paragraph 1 says, The true doctrine having been explained, the Synod rejects the errors of those, in paragraph 4, who teach that the unregenerate man is not really nor utterly dead in sin, nor destitute of all powers unto spiritual good, but that he can yet hunger and thirst after righteousness and life and offer the sacrifice of a contrite and broken spirit which is pleasing to God. For these things are contrary to the expressed testimony of Scripture, ye were dead through your trespasses and sins, Ephesians 2, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, Genesis 6 and 8. Moreover, to hunger and thirst after deliverance, for misery and afterlife, and to offer unto God the sacrifice of a broken spirit is peculiar to the regenerate and those that are called blessed. Well, beloved in Christ the Lord, many people don't like to be told that they are not able to do something. They don't like to be challenged in that way, and as soon as you do, at that point, many of them will try, They will set out to prove the challenger wrong. Now, when it comes to the truth of total depravity, this is where many well-meaning Christians are divided. Really, in a sense, we call it tulip. The canon covers it in the order of all tip. But in a sense, the T really does work first. It really does begin with total depravity and man's condition because only God's grace in unconditional election and in limited atonement answer to the needs of the totally depraved sinner. So this is where those who embrace the reformed understanding of Scripture part company with those who embrace, and many of them ignorantly, but those who embrace the faulty Arminian understanding. Because total depravity, as we said, which means that though man is not absolutely depraved, though man is not absolutely as bad as he can be all the time in everything, yet absolutely every part of man is affected by sin. Every part is stained with sin. Every part is fallen, including his thoughts, his words, his actions, his desires, his motives, his reason, his will. Every part. Totally depraved. And that means, then, that man, fallen man, is totally unable. For what? Well, sometimes total inability is exchanged, is used in the place of total depravity. Now, when we say total inability, it does not mean, we do not mean that man is not able to think, or to reason, or to exercise his mind, and to exercise his will to make choices between one thing or another because we do that every day. Each and every one of us. We make all kinds of choices. We do exercise these things. We exercise our will and we make choices. What time am I going to get up in the morning? What am I going to have for breakfast? What color socks am I going to wear today? What lane am I going to drive on the freeway? All kinds of choices that we make. And that's because man is what we call a free agent. He is able to think. He is able to reason. He is able to make decisions and to exercise His will in this life and to do so not forced by anything outside of Himself, forcing Him to make choices against His will, unless, of course, someone is pointing a gun to His head. But fallen in sin, the choice that man is unable to make, he is still able to make choices, But the choice that fallen man is unable to make is the choice for God. The choice for His Son. For salvation. For spiritual good. Man does not have a free will to choose to believe in Jesus Christ. Now, of course, we all know, I suspect, that this is a very hotly debated and argued topic by professing Christians, especially by those not of the Reformed persuasion. Many of the high school kids here or those who used to go to the high school at Calvin here, I know that in doctrine class, you probably engaged in arguments or debates with classmates who do believe that there is such thing as man's free will. It's a very hotly debated and argued topic. And I believe it is because as believers, for some, it is just simply so hard to fathom, isn't it? It's so hard to fathom because certainly I believe. I trust. Because I decided to follow Jesus. Didn't I? I mean, after all, it makes reasonable sense. When we do something, it is because we chose to do it. And therefore, if I believe in Jesus Christ, it must be because I chose to do it. We decided to follow Jesus, didn't we? Well, in a sense, we can say yes, but very quickly we must add the question, but why? Why do I believe in Jesus? How do I believe in Jesus? Now you recall, many of you, I trust, that a couple of weeks ago we said that the five points of doctrine, the five points of the doctrines of grace, tulip or altip, they all stand or fall together. They are very tightly knit together. And the same is true for the five Arminian statements. And as we said, even though their statement with regard to the corruption of man, even though it sounded like they believe in total depravity, as we do, Even though it sounds like they believe that man is completely sinful through and through, yet their teaching is that man's will is not. That man's will is not totally depraved. And you see, in their theology, it couldn't be because in order to maintain their theory of conditional election, that man must meet certain conditions and of universal atonement, that everyone has the opportunity to be saved, they needed the kind of man who was able to fulfill the conditions. They needed one who was able, as that paragraph 4 on page 107 says, who can hunger and thirst after righteousness and life and offer the sacrifice of a contrite and broken spirit which is pleasing to God. That's the kind of man they needed to fulfill their theology, their teaching. Yet, Scripture's truth of total depravity, beloved, is a crucial truth with regard to the biblical, reformed doctrine of irresistible grace, or we might say effective grace, that it is all of God. It must all be of God. God's grace alone answers to our plight. There is no hope for you and me if it is not all completely of God. And so what about free will? Well, when it comes to this topic of free will, The Bible teaches the bondage of man's free will. Sounds a bit like a contradiction, doesn't it? But the Bible teaches of the bondage of man's free will, as Luther expressed it in one of his writings. The bondage compared, first of all, with its origin. We notice again man's created condition in Article 1. Man was originally formed after the image of God. His understanding was adorned with a true and saving knowledge of his Creator and of spiritual things his heart and will were upright all his affections pure and the whole man was holy his heart and his will were upright adam enjoyed as we said a couple of weeks ago he enjoyed true knowledge true righteousness and true holiness his direction was toward god and that which is pleasing to him he delighted in god he desired god his heart was set on god with a mind and his affections and with an upright will, he chose for God. That origin included man's free will. Indeed, Adam and Eve had a completely free will, as article 1 also says. His will was not bound. His will was not forced to go in a certain direction. But he desired God and in sinless perfection he was inclined in God's direction yet he was also able to sin. Some of you may remember how Augustine describes the fourfold state of man. Before the fall, Adam was able to sin. He was created upright, perfect and holy yet he was able to sin. After the fall, Augustine says, man is not able not to sin. In other words, when it comes to spiritual things, when it comes to the things of God and salvation, the only thing man can do is sin. But then the regenerate man, by the power of the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus, is able not to sin. No longer is he only able to sin when it comes to the things of God. He is able not to sin. and then one day in glory man will not be able to sin. So that fourfold state, before the fall, able to sin. After the fall, not able not to sin. In Christ, able not to sin. And in glory, not able to sin. Before the fall, Adam was able to sin. Adam and Eve were free to either follow or not follow God and His law. They were free to either sin or not sin. and they chose to exercise their freedom by not following God's probationary command to keep from eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. No one, nothing, forced or coerced them. Tempted, yes. But not even Satan could make them sin. But they chose freely to reject God and the result is they lost their freedom to choose not to choose, generally speaking. Man did not lose his ability to exercise his will, but he lost his ability to be willing to choose for what is holy. To choose for God. To choose to exercise faith in Jesus Christ. Man's free will became bound, and that bondage was, in the second place, secured in the false. cemented we might say in the fall set firm created man was without sin again he was upright in every way but when sin entered his heart he lost that true knowledge true righteousness and true holiness so that no longer did he have the ability to choose spiritual good over evil and now as Augustine would say, he was not able not to sin when it came to spiritual things and things of God. Well, again, of course, we know that this is rejected by many. The Arminians taught, if I could ask you to turn back to page 107, back to that section of Rejection of Errors, reading again the first part of paragraph 4, they taught that the unregenerate man is not really nor utterly dead in sin, nor destitute of all powers unto spiritual good, but that he can yet hunger and thirst after righteousness and life, and offer the sacrifice of a contrite and broken spirit which is pleasing to God. Now, what was their reasoning for that? Well, let's back up to paragraph 2. You see, this rejection of errors is what they taught. Paragraph 2, the first paragraph there, they taught that the spiritual gifts or the good qualities and virtues such as goodness, holiness, righteousness could not belong to the will of man when he was first created and that these therefore cannot have been separated therefrom in the fall. In other words, they teach, they taught that man's will was not upright, that it was not holy, nor was it sinful. They taught that man's will was created neutral, kind of like a credit card that needs to be activated yet. And therefore, as paragraph 3, move down to paragraph 3, that first part there, they taught that in spiritual death the spiritual gifts are not separate from the will of man since the will in itself has never been corrupted but only hindered through the darkness of the understanding and the irregularity of the affections and that these hindrances having been removed, the will can then bring into operation its native powers that is, that the will of itself is able to will and to choose or not to will and not to choose all manner of good which may be presented to it. Now that's a mouthful, isn't it? All of that. And maybe you notice right from the beginning that they lessen the severity of sin. It's just a hindrance. It's just a little bit of a problem. Very simply, beloved, the Arminian theology separated man's mind and his affections and his desires from his will to act, from his will to carry these things out. They took a part of man's created being and separated it out and said that it was unaffected. These other things, man's mind and affections and desires, these things indeed were disturbed and darkened in sin so that man now does evil more easily than he does good. But man's will itself is untouched by the fall. It keeps its power to choose or not to choose the good. And therefore, as we read, man is not really, he is not utterly, he is not totally dead in sin, but he is still able to hunger and thirst for righteousness. And if and when he hears the good news of Jesus Christ, he is able of his own to recognize its benefit, to desire it, and to choose to believe. Man is able, of his own free will, to cooperate with what they call God's grace. Which really isn't what we call God's grace, because for them, God's grace needs the assistance of man's free will. Okay, that is what they teach. But very simply, beloved, this is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches the bondage of man's free will secured in the fall. Scripture testifies to that. You see, the problem is the problem of man's nature. One commentator says, although man's will is not free, willing is free. Now listen as he explains. Man does have the power to choose whatever he wants. And that's the key word there, wants. But the truth is that left to himself, man will always choose the wrong. Man always chooses that which is in harmony with his nature. Man's nature in the fall changed from being upright and holy and directed toward God to being deformed and depraved and totally sinful and directed away from God. That's what man wants. Now, Paul contrasts two classes of people in Romans. For example, in chapter 5, he contrasts those who are dead in Adam versus those who are alive in Christ. In chapter 6, he contrasts those who are slaves to sin versus those who are servants of righteousness. In chapter 8, he contrasts those who live according to the sinful nature versus those who live according to the Spirit. And of course, in all three of those couplets, the first one points to man by nature in sin. Now, the Bible teaches, as we know, that the heart is the spiritual. It is the ethical center of the entire man, of the whole man. From the heart flows the issues of life, the Bible says. The heart governs man's mind and his will. You cannot separate man's mind and his will. The will, we might say, is like an engine. and the mind, the affections and the desires are like the fuel in that engine. And that engine goes in the direction of the mind, of the desires. Like a good tree that bears good fruit or a bad tree that bears bad fruit. Man goes in the direction based on the nature of his heart. Now Paul talks about man's mind beginning in verse 6. The mind of sinful man is death. But the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. Man's mind is hostile to. It hates God in sin. And that is because man's heart is dead in trespasses and sins, as Paul says in Ephesians 2. It is dead to the things of God. And therefore, it is also blind to the things of God. It is blind to God, to the benefits of God. It is blind because it is without the Holy Spirit. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, verse 14, the man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Without the Spirit, man is completely blind to spiritual things. And instead, as John 3, verse 19 says, light has come into the world, but men loved the darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Man's heart is dead. Man is spiritually blind. And man's heart is also a slave to sin, as Paul says in chapter 6. It is bound to sin. It can only sin when it comes to spiritual things. It is under the dominion of the power of sin. Beloved, Paul clearly describes man's sinful nature. Dead, blind, bound in slavery to sin. It doesn't get any more graphic than that. And that describes man's will. Dead and blind and bound in sin. Paul says in verse 5, Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires. But those who live in accordance with the Spirit to have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. And the idea there behind those words set on means to be most deeply interested in, to constantly talk about or desire, to be engaged in, to glory in. And therefore, the mind that is set on the sinful nature is most deeply interested in, engaged in, glorying in sin, hostile toward God, wanting nothing to do with the things of God or His salvation. Jeremiah in Jeremiah 17 speaks of the condition of the heart. He says, The heart is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked. As we considered from Genesis chapter 6 before, every inclination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil all the time. Beloved, if that is true about the heart, and it is, And if the heart governs all of life, man's thoughts and words and actions and mind and will, and it does, then the bondage secured in the fall results in man's inability. He is unable to choose for God. He's still able to choose. But not for God. He is unable to choose for his salvation in Jesus Christ. And it's not only that he will not because he is stubborn, but he cannot. Maybe this illustration that I found will help. As the bird with a broken wing is free to fly, but not able. You see, there's nothing outside of itself that is keeping it from flying. So the natural man is free to come to God, but not able. Again, there is nothing outside of himself stopping him, only his sinful self. As Article 3 says again, Therefore all men are conceived in sin and are by nature children of wrath, incapable of saving good, prone to evil, dead in sin, and in bondage thereto. And without the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, they are neither able nor willing to return to God to reform the depravity of their nature or to dispose themselves to reformation. Their will is free to act, but not to act in every direction. It is bound by the condition of man's nature. Jesus said in John 5, verse 40, you refuse to come to me. You will not come to me, as one translation says, to have life. In other words, you won't because you cannot. It's not what you desire. It's not what you want. You see, man freely does what he wants. We choose, even in this life, We choose what we like, whether it's good or bad. I suspect that for the foreseeable future, I will always choose a meaty, cheesy pizza over a platter of vegetables. Apart from faith in Jesus Christ by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, when it comes to spiritual things, man only chooses what his nature wants, what it desires, and that is sin. So if you want to talk about free will, if you want to insist, as some do, about free will, then all we can do is say that man will only choose what is consistent with his nature, and again, in sin he will only choose against God. He can only choose against God, never for. He is bound to choose against Him. And that's no freedom at all. But the bondage of man's free will in the third place is loosed in redemption. It is freed in redemption. The sinner is not free to seek after God unless God gives this freedom. And God gives this freedom by the power of the Holy Spirit. Notice what Paul says beginning at verse 9. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who lives in you. God gives this freedom by the power of the Holy Spirit. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12.3, no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. You see, man is not simply sick in sin, but he is dead. He is totally separated from the favor of God. He is destined for eternal destruction. He is not just on life support, but he is completely lifeless. He is incapable of anything. We know that no dead person will ever cry out for help. We know that no one who is dead will ever react if you poke them with a needle. Certainly, as Paul says, no one who is controlled by the sinful nature can please God. It is impossible. But for the sake of the work of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit regenerates God's chosen people. He gives new life to the dead heart to recognize the holiness of God and to recognize my utter unholiness and to see my need for the justifying work of Jesus Christ and to embrace Him by faith. And as Paul says in Romans 8, to set my mind on what the Spirit desires. To submit to His direction. It is the Holy Spirit of God who enables us to please God. Beloved, the Holy Spirit alone gives new life to that which was dead. He gives new vision to that which was blind. He gives new freedom to that which was bound in slavery. And in Christ Jesus, as Augustine would say, now we are able not to sin. We still do, sadly, but we are enabled not to. And we are also given the comfort of all of our sin being paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ. Well, again, this third head of doctrine, total depravity, and the fourth head, irresistible grace, they always go together. Total depravity, pointing out man's desperate condition. but God did not leave him there. God comes and redeems man and gives life. He actually saves. He gives His chosen people a new nature including a new will. Having been chosen by God before the creation of the world, He makes that will alive, that will directed toward Him, that will to desire and follow Jesus Christ, to will to do the things of God, To desire and to seek that which brings honor and glory to God and follows the path of righteousness. And beloved, we know what this means for us, don't we? That there is only one reason that you and I believe. There's only one reason that we believe. The only reason we need, and that is because God has given us the freedom by the power of His Holy Spirit. He has equipped us. He has given to us that gift of faith. As believers, you and I believe not because we chose to exercise our will to do so. That was impossible. And praise be to God, because if getting saved is up to you and me, even a little bit, then we must also say that we can also lose it. Because we are still prone to wander, we are still prone to sin. But God has worked powerfully by the Holy Spirit so that in Christ we are no longer dead and blind and bound, but we are free in Him. And He continues to work in you and me and He promises to continue that work until it is all completed. And because His work is perfect and unfailing, we can be assured that that new life that we have been given in Christ Jesus for the sake of His work, we can be assured that that new life will never fail. It will never be lost. Beloved, without the truth of total depravity and the bondage of the will, man does not completely need Jesus Christ. Yet then we have no confidence because He said, no one comes to the Father except through Me. He didn't say through you and Me. He said except through Me. He alone was freely able to please God with His perfect obedience for all who would believe in Him by the grace of God, for each and every one. And He has paid for every bit of our depravity from totally depraved to totally saved. Not because we wanted Him, but because in His great love, He wanted us. Beloved, equipped, empowered, and encouraged by the Holy Spirit with minds set on what the Spirit desires, may our desire be to please and to praise our God and Him alone, for Jesus' sake. Amen. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, once again tonight as we consider these truths of Your Word, we are amazed again by Your grace, by Your love and compassion in not leaving us in the desperate, despicable condition into which we've cast ourselves. But You have given new life. You have rescued a people for Yourself. You have included us as believers in that company. And we humbly thank You for that. And Father, we pray that You would continue to instruct us and equip us that we might be better able to speak of these things. To show the truth to those who don't yet quite understand. We pray that you would work in the hearts and lives of all of your people to have a clear and a sure understanding of the truth of your word. Father, we thank you again for your blessed word for our life. In Jesus' name we pray these things. Amen. Thank you.