Lesson 3b
Romans 1:19-23 · Courtney Hemenway · Mar 4, 2018
Romans (2018-21), No. 08
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926198577943

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

I wanted to say before we prayed, there were some great ones in the Hungry Heart this week. I've been talking a lot about our last class and faith and just the thoughts about faith and how much that is in when you look through the epistles. The basis of the Rock is always on faith. There were a couple of kind of cool things and it was on 3.2 in the Hungry Heart. Just about faith and some of these things we're talking about when we pray and all that.

Faith does not create or produce, but rests and rejoices in what God has already done. And I thought about that. How many times we pray that if I just pray harder or I have greater faith this is going to happen. And I like that. Faith does not create or produce. It rests on what God has already done. I like that.

And then the other one. A great many people have faith that seeks, but they have not a faith that rests. 3-2. Yeah, it's 3-2. It was both. It was a rest thing. I'd read the whole thing, but again, it was pretty good about faith and again, how many times we think if we have more faith, this will happen. It's like faith rests. It doesn't produce or create. And I thought that was pretty good. It rests in what God has already done.

Anyway, we are in the Romans class. We are in Lesson 3, and it's in Discussing Romans 1, Chapter 1. We got through Question five last week and basically kind of summarize because it leads into question six is what we're going to get into today and If we finish that Michael start on lesson four, but let's question five How total is the darkness and worthlessness of man's heart and reasoning we went through that and I read in in Romans 3 10 through 18 that that great summary of what swell people we are in Adam and And just that there's not one who doesn't seek evil, doesn't seek after God. Everyone is included in this.

And it's basically showing how utterly dark or dead we are. And so with that, we get to question six. And Mike touched on this a little bit last week and leading into this question about if we're so dark and dead, how can we ever come to faith in the Lord? So, question six, does this mean man cannot believe God's message without first being regenerated?

Again, actually, Ingrid had the question on the way in. What does regenerated mean? Reborn. Okay. Any others? So, kind of an interesting, does that mean man cannot believe God's message without first being reborn? And that's kind of, basically a couple of different positions we'll look at.

In the Reformed doctrine, basically, I read, today there are those of the Reformed persuasion who teach that regeneration precedes faith. They would say a person must be born again before he believes. They would say that a person must have God's life before he can believe on Christ. C.D. Cole states it this way, The Calvinist says that life must precede faith and is logically the cause of faith. Faith did not cause the new birth. The new birth caused faith.

So what do we think of that? Wow. I don't think I've ever been buzzed like that before. That's a new one. So I'm taking the buzzing that that is incorrect or is that correct? So why is that incorrect? We saw in question five how depraved we are, that there is no not one that seeks after God. So how does that speak with respect? Well, let me go on. I'll go to the other one, kind of explaining more about Calvinism.

Extreme Calvinism put the new birth before faith, since they believe that spiritually dead humans cannot exercise faith and therefore need to be born again before they can believe. The doctrine of man's total depravity has been carried to the extreme by some Calvinists, resulting in wrong understanding of man's inability. They believe that a sinner is dead in sin and therefore he is like a corpse, totally unable to do anything.

They believe he first must be regenerated and have life, and only then will he be able to believe the gospel. So... What did you say? They need to believe and then be regenerated? Yeah, they believe he first must be regenerated and have life, and only then he'll be able to believe the gospel. So, you've got to be regenerated or rebirthed before you have faith to come to Christ. What's wrong with that? Can you back it up scripturally? Y'all buzzed me so hard. So now you have to give me an answer with scripture.

What is death? We all know that. We can all probably say that. So if you need to be regenerated in order to believe, they believe death means something different than what we believe. Right. Death means separation. And we'll get into that a little bit. Death means Well, we'll touch on that a little bit more in that if you're dead-dead, how does a corpse respond? How can it ever respond? So if you're dead, I mean, dead-dead, how do you respond to new life?

Doesn't make sense. So are there any scriptures that you can pull out that would say contrary to that you have to be regenerated. What do you have to do to be saved? Belief. So, do you have some verses for that? I think the thief on the cross is kind of close. That he'll see you in paradise or what? Yeah, he'll see you in paradise. Because he didn't have, he was just standing there all of a sudden. Well, he realized who was beside him. He knew who he was.

Other scriptures. There's one that came right to mind with me. Well, I'll get you another one. Yeah, well, faith comes by. But we're talking about new life. and that you don't have to be regenerated before you come to know Christ. The Calvinists, the Reforms say, yeah, you're dead. So you have to have new life before you can come to life. Kind of an odd thing. So we're looking for scripture that does not be given life then belief. We're looking for belief and then be given life.

Right. So we find scripture that communicates those things. Right. I'll give you one. John 20, 30, 31. But these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, excuse me, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. So what is the operative? It's not that you're reborn, you're not anything. What is it that you have to do to have new life? Believe.

See, that was the one that came to me. first glance at this question was, or in refuting Calvinists and Reformed, is John 3.16.

So let's read it this way. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever is regenerated or chosen by Him shall not perish but have eternal life. Is that what it says? Yeah. Whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. So it's not that you're pre-selected and God says, I'm going to give you regeneration so you can believe. It's you believe. So how does that fit with Calvinist view? It doesn't. You have to, as I said, you have to go to whoever is chosen by Him and regenerated by Him, then shall not perish and have eternal life. the righteousness of God. How so?

Well, His throne, His holiness, His righteousness. See, I think if righteousness a little bit would be somewhat in their camp in that He's righteous so He can't accept you, so you're dead. What I go through is you have to look at Scripture. You've been saved by grace through faith. Believing. That's another one. You've been saved by grace. It was His free offer by faith. It wasn't by regeneration. It was by believing. You believing. And I think that's what brings out His righteousness. You're believing. two sides to the coin, God's side and my side. Well, my side is just mine is simple belief. That's it. And accepting what He's offered to me by grace.

Again, we go back to the thing that on the cross, all the sins were paid for, for everybody, all time, everywhere, all. So, judicially that was taken care of. All the sin penalty was taken care of. But does that get you saved? It's Him offering salvation through Christ. It was done, it was paid for, but salvation is by grace. He has offered us now salvation through His Son. Sins were all paid for.

Now you have to accept that gift. So, again, it's the believing part. It's not anything prior to that. It's you believing. The other which always kind of comes up in salvation that I always find is, you're an alcoholic, you need to change, you need to repent and get rid of that alcohol. You have to get rid of the alcohol before you come to know Christ.

Is that valid? Why is that not valid? Maturity, but why is that not a valid... Well, it doesn't depend on you. It's legal. It's legal. Where does it say in Scripture that you've got to change all your ways in order to come to Christ? There's no grace there. But where does it say you have to change everything in order to... What is it?

Just believe. Believe the simple gospel message. The good news. That's what it is. If we put so many legal things on it that say you need to change, you need to get rid of your behavior, that's all wrong. It's simple faith. And again, kind of in this is that you don't have to be regenerated prior to your accepting. It's by, what is there? Faith in the facts and the tracts and the... whatever that is. I can never get it right. I just should hang that.

Facts, understanding, God's Word. It kind of goes back to what we started with originally with Romans 1 about all creation says what? That there's a God, all his attributes, he's powerful, but does it say anything about Christ? No. So, you have to know the facts about Christ, which are revealed in Scripture. And then, after you have the facts, you have faith. Believe in those facts, and you have salvation. So, that's the path. It's not anything about having to be regenerated, or new birth, or anything. It doesn't fit Scripture. Another one we can look at is the Philippian jailer. Remember him?

He once asked, what must I do to be saved in Acts 16.30?

If Paul had been an extreme Calvinist, he might have said, you can do nothing to be saved, absolutely nothing. You are dead in sin and a dead man can do nothing. That's if you take the extreme Calvinist one. If God doesn't regenerate you, then you're doomed.

How different was Paul's answer? He gave, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and then thou shall be saved. Again, Even though the covenant said you're dead, you have to contort all these scriptures to say something about being regenerated. It doesn't fit. It's simple faith. Believe. And for us who are spiritually dead, and it goes back to, J.D., what you're saying about what death means. What is that death? Are we corpses? Are we dead? How are we dead or separated? Spiritually. Spiritually we're dead.

We're separated. So now how do you get out of that separation? This goes back to our identification classes. If you're identified with Adam, how are you identified? Spiritually dead. So how do you get out of that? Spiritually alive. And how do we get there? Co-crucifixion and Burial and resurrection. Then now we have, are we separated spiritually then? No. No, we have new life.

So again, I think J.D. has a good point is that the interpretation or what death means is critical in here. And that it's spiritual death. They think it's dead, dead, you can't do anything. You're like a dead person. They call it total inability. Total inability. Which means you're out on a slab. Your will is not functioning whatsoever. You can't choose anything.

You have to be chosen. You have to be given a new life. You have to be given the gift of faith. Then you have to believe. Then you're saved. So there's four things that have to happen for a Calvinist before you actually get saved. All four of those things have to function and it starts with God choosing you. Right.

Because you're totally unable. And that's true in the sense that we're totally unable to believe without the ministry of the Holy Spirit. But with the ministry of the Holy Spirit convicting us, we can't utilize the will that God gave us to believe. And that's the whole reason for a will. And that's the whole point of it, is to believe.

And the Calvinists will also take Ephesians 2.1 and say, and you were dead in your trespasses and sin.

So you were dead. So what does that mean to them? Dead, dead. You can't respond. To us it's spiritual death. You have a spiritual separation from God that happened when Adam sinned. It was separated. We were separated from him spiritually. But now we have new life in him spiritually. through our co-crucifixion, our death, burial, and resurrection. So, we went through all that, spiritual, and what death means, and separation.

But Paul in Ephesians 2.1 is speaking of spiritual death, and to compare spiritual death with physical death is problematic. A person who is physically dead cannot speak, cannot breathe, cannot laugh, cannot walk, whatever. But a spiritually dead person can do all of those things. It's wrong to say that a spiritually dead person can do nothing.

Even a Calvinist would have to admit that he can reject Jesus Christ, he can pray, he can read the Bible, he can sin, he can even do good works in a vain effort to try to earn his salvation. His ability to do all these things, he has an ability to do all these things. So if they're dead dead, how can he still do all these things?

So again, the Calvinist point, or the Reformed, I guess. Is Reformed just straight Calvinist? It's Calvinist, which is to most cases true. The issue here is to recognize, I think, the majority of Christians you're going to run into in your lifetime. for Calvinist or Reform.

This is what they believe. This is at the core of where they are. So you have to understand that they are there. And so grace is not something they're going to be all that open to. Yeah, which we'll get to a little bit later on how grace fits in here. So why don't people come to Christ? Thank you, we'll meet you after class and we'll discuss these things. So, why don't they come to Christ? They think they have to do something to earn it. Okay. What do we have to do to gain? Believe. So, they're unwilling to believe.

So in John 5, 39 and 40, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is these that testify about me, and you are unwilling to come to me so that you may have life. So it's the ability to come to Christ is due to their refusal to come to Him that they might have life, or unbelieving.

That's what it is. It's not death or dead or whatever. The unbeliever is unwilling to come to Christ or believe. It's not about that he's spiritually dead and he can't. He's unwilling to come to Him. That's the choice. And again, the only reason why we have a will is to make that choice.

Believe or not. And so the unbeliever is unwilling to come and believe the facts. I think it's also helpful that not only are they unwilling, they are willingly suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. It's not just that they haven't had enough information. Like we said, there's no neutrality here.

They are suppressing constantly the truth and unrighteousness, and that ministry of the Holy Spirit is ineffective because of their choice to listen to their own will about suppressing the truth and unrighteousness, as opposed to the truth that the Holy Spirit is convicting them of. So there's a struggle. They're constantly in struggle with the truth. But yeah, they're never going to believe while also who cast that jacket of mocks, that colonel in the truth of God in that box constantly. But that's where they are. They're actively doing something that is deserving of God's wrath, right? Yeah. You know, it sounds like us and them. Where were we all? We all were there. It wasn't those guys over there. We're really special.

We all came to that same position. Somewhere we decided, through the conviction of the Holy Spirit, to believe the facts of the Bible. Every one of us had to make that decision, that willing decision to believe in what the Gospel message is. So, it's not like an us and them. We were all there. And we all probably suppressed the truth for some amount of time. And through the constant working of the Holy Spirit convicted us. Finally, we understood and by our choice, our will, we believed what the Gospel message was. We were all there. Every one of us. You know what else it does?

It takes the responsibility off a man. A Calvinist can stand before God and say, well, you didn't choose me, so... How can you condense it? The whole idea of Romans 1 is to put the responsibility right where it belongs, right on the top of man's head.

It's the insanity of this, and it shows the strength of the old man. The old man is just going to be fighting until the last inkling. to convince you that you need to do something, this and that, and it's always about, you gotta do, oh no, it can't be that simple. Oh, you gotta do something, you gotta do something, and it's always working against, you know, what the scripture says. And, you know, I think about this, that, you know, the Holy Spirit is constantly working on you. When he brings the gospel message to you, The Holy Spirit is going to be working on you all the time and you have to willingly suppress that and deny it. From a believer's standpoint, maybe this is very myopic, but it's like how crazy is that? Here's a free gift, you don't have to do anything, you just have to believe. And what do you receive from that?

Eternal life in Christ. Maybe a better deal on this earth than that. I mean, you either have to pay, you have to work, you have to do, and it's only temporal. This is something where all you have to do is believe, and you have eternal life in Christ. And Ephesians says, we've been blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies. Comes with kind of that little additional icing on the cake. All blessings, but life in Christ.

But, the old man is minute by minute, moment by moment, fighting that. And telling you it's not real and you have to work for it, you have to do everything. You have these new Calvinists and all this, you know. And the other thing I always go to is rest. I don't think people that are unbelievers will ever have rest. The world cannot provide rest. And because they're always denying this, they're always fighting it.

And they know the truth there is a God and they have to actively suppress it all the time. So I don't think there's ever the peace and rest that we have as believers. And it's promised in the scriptures. That we have peace and rest and strength and comfort and all those things through Christ. The world can't offer that. And I think they're always going to be struggling. They'll never have the rest that we have in Christ. So with the Holy Spirit, does everybody have the Holy Spirit in them all the time?

Not in them, but the Holy Spirit working on them. We do, as believers. We have the indwelling. At all times. Never to leave. I think the Holy Spirit is working on unbelievers, Not indwelling them, I don't believe, but working on them. I don't have the indwelling spirit before I'm a believer. But once I do it, then it's... Never to leave. But he's still kind of working on them from the outside.

Yeah, working at convincing and convicting. You know, that's where I think, you know, where the Calvinist says, oh, you're so dead, you can't... Well, the Holy Spirit is working to convince and convict you of these things. That's the whole job of the Holy Spirit. So as an unbeliever, it's constantly bringing these facts to you, and you willingly deny them, suppress them, whatever.

And that's why I was saying at the beginning of this in Romans 1, there's the deepest, darkest Africa or the jungles of Indonesia where they haven't seen, everybody knows that there's a God. And if there's a heart that is seeking, God will provide the knowledge of Christ to that person. If God can't do that, you serve a very limited God that who can't bring scripture to somebody who has a hungry heart or somebody who is seeking, to have new life in Christ. But every single person believes, or knows that there is a God. John 16, Mark 7-11, where the Spirit's job is to convict the world of sin because they don't believe in Christ.

Well, if you look for empirical evidence, he's not doing a very good job. But if you believe the Scripture, he is about the business of every non-believer. of moving them across and convicting them of their position. He is. It doesn't matter where they live. Yeah. You know, I disagree somewhat in that there are millions and billions of believers. So he's very successful. But he's also got a lot of hardened hearts that reject. And I think that's the whole point. Paul is making through 1, 2 and 3 that the onus is going to be squarely on man.

That God did his job and you've rejected it. And not only have you rejected it, you hold it down so that others won't try to keep others from hearing the truth. God is... I've often thought that not a single person at the Great White Throne Judgment will ever say to God, well I didn't get a chance. Right. Yeah. Yeah, everyone. And that's where I say, I think, you know, God will make it known. I mean, everybody knows there's a God. And if there's an inkling of life, or an inkling of desire to seek Christ, God will provide it. There's never a time where he said, you know, I missed you. You were out on Friday and I didn't see you and I'm sorry about that. It just doesn't happen. He will make it happen.

Yeah, I was just going to say there's also another component to this for Calvin. To be honest, I struggled with this for a good long time and actually believed it for a fair bit of my young Christian life. It's a really great system. It works really well and there's a massive amount of content supporting this. And the large amount of theologians and seminaries support this. This is where they stand. So, we have to recognize that this is a very big movement and system.

Larger than identification troops by far, right? I mean, we're a needle in a haystack in comparison to the Reformed theology. Almost all homeschooling curriculum is based on Reformed theology. They produce more literature than any other form of Christianity.

So, it's very convincing because of the system that it creates, and it's that tulip concept. Not to derail us, but they believe that faith is a meritorious act. So, in other words, I can't believe because that would be a positive step in the right direction. I must be alive because I'm sinful. I can't do anything right. And faith is a meritorious thing to them. So we have to realize that from a biblical perspective, faith cannot be meritorious. It has no good or bad associated with it. It is a decision of the will that is the only decision that is non-meritorious. Exactly. And without that, you need to be chosen, you need to be regenerated, you need to be given the gift of faith, because otherwise... It's not possible. It's not possible, right?

So identification truths, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding, is the system that replaces TULIP, right? That's the system, because it's biblical. TULIP is outside. It assumes things outside of the scripture to be true that govern God's sovereignty over God choosing people. Those things are not supported, but they have to be assumed, right? So the system gets out of the scripture, it gets lofty and high in the heavens and assumes things that we cannot assume or prove from scripture. So where we stand, at least in Holly Hills, that identification truths are this is the system that that counters the concept of the Calvinists.

Right. So why are we constantly going into death, burial, resurrection, you know, see ascension, seeing. So those are because You know, it came from a Brethren background and not where, you know, they'd wandered way, way from the teaching of the Brethren. But, you know, I'm amazed at how blinded you can be to what the Scripture says and how you can miss and go by things and somehow justify them.

And that's what I think the Calvinist view does. from mine, just a lot of the different things about identification. And I go back to, I think there's millions of people who have a lot of baggage and add things and do things, but the simple gospel message, they believe in Christ, death, burial, and resurrection. And the seeding ascension in that, I think, is more on the position that we have. But the simple gospel of death, burial, and resurrection, I think millions of people have. They have all sorts of baggage and they throw it on. My thing, my opinion, is that they just don't grow. They're going to be in the nursery forever because they started on a wrong foundation and they've added this baggage, but they're believers.

Now, again, I look at it and I say, how did I go by, and I've said this several times, how did I go by Galatians 2.20? I've been crucified with Christ and it's no longer that I live, but Christ lives in me. And the life that I live now is, you know, how did I get by that? How do you understand that?

Or, again, Corinthians 5.17, we are new creatures in Christ. You know, we are new creatures in Christ. How did I read by that? How did I interpret that? There's so many clever workarounds that they provide, though. But that's what I'm saying. But I can't throw rocks in a glass house. Right. It's difficult. I'm only trying to bring out for you guys in the sense that it's a lonely place to be in terms of the camp of identification truths.

I could look up Galatians 2.20 by a hundred Reformed theologians and give answers to all these questions. The problem is, they're not scriptural.

But you have to be of a Berean mindset to get to that place. Because when you're reformed, your camp is huge. And you can hear and find whatever it is you need to stay in that boat. And believers as they are, in the nursery, and working really hard to maintain their salvation, so as to never be confused with not ever having it, really is where their Calvinist is, right?

I guess I'm just putting the... No, I just want to put a spin on this, not only that. I mean, I've been in that boat where I think I was in the nursery for a long time. And it's by my misinterpreting scripture or contorting or doing or bypassing or something.

And yet, if you look at scripture, you know, the identification and all these things just go like gears together. They all fit. when you really look at it from the identification perspective. And again, it comes down to faith. Do you believe what scripture says?

Isn't it that they really don't understand what the wheel is? I think it's really basic in the sense that they won't look at scripture unless scripture teaches them. they're always putting in the scripture and looking up verses to corroborate their doctrine rather than what, and that fits. man is in Adam. He's independent and he wants to make up his own mind. And so he is not prone to believe what God says. He's more prone to adopt his own viewpoint and then go try to find backup for it. You know and it's amazing just the different positions and different things and it comes down to the facts. looking at the facts and believing in the facts.

You know, I think it was one of Nick's co-workers one time, he's a believer, a strong believer, but then he was like, Christ was not fully God. Well, I think both fully man and fully God. Fully God, yeah. And yet, what, Colossians clearly, clearly says fully man, fully God.

Clearly says it. But he goes off and so, It's just, I think the old man is so powerful in trying to push you to make himself of some worth. That you have to do something. You have to perform. You have to, you have to, you have to. Which gets into, maybe we'll get into this, actually. Let's move on to seven. There's some other stuff we can get into about, from some of the verses, but we're getting close.

Do you think this is a strange introduction to God's grace? Okay, if you know with all these verses and it's basically looking at Romans 1 Let me see here, it's back up here ways The Romans let me go back up to the top here Romans 21 through 23 for even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations. Their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures." So, is this a strange introduction to grace by saying that man exchanges the incorruptible God for this and all.

Is this kind of weird that we start introducing grace by saying all these horrible things and different things? Do you know how God uses in the Bible connected words like what he says for the wrath of God? basically tells the gospel and why this is by faith. So just before that he says, this is how you save, but this is how men respond. Man and Adam respond.

You can look at the results, they became vain, ineffectual, they became futile in their speculation, their foolish heart was darkened, professed them to be wise, they became fool, exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God, all these different things. I think the thing is you have to get to this point to understand grace. You have to understand who you are in Adam and what the old man is to understand what grace is. You have to understand your total depravity and that the best thing that ever happened to you was our co-crucifixion on the cross.

That there wasn't anything really good about us that needed to be saved. That it was, you know, I'm a swell person, you know. I'm really good. You know, I kind of have some rough edges, but I'm okay. Is that what all these scriptures have said? Romans 3? That I was a swell person in Adam? No. Were you?

A non-believer presented with the gospel of who he really is in Adam sets him up for grace. He doesn't understand it. But if he understands that he really is condemned, and there isn't anything in him that is acceptable to God, not anything, then he has to rely on grace because he runs out of his own attributes. What's he going to do? God is very careful here to make sure that there isn't anything, any remnant of man hidden any place that makes him redeemable. Well, I think this is a struggle and a lot of the hungry heart goes to it. We understand the Gospel message and we understand this and all. I think the hardest part is seeing who the Adamic or the sin nature and knowing that That's the hardest thing for a believer to identify.

When you first become a believer and you're excited and all this and all that, then you suddenly realize, why am I doing these dumb things? Why did I sin? Why am I doing that? Why? And why am I struggling? Why don't I have rest? Why don't I have peace? Why don't I have all these things?

And I think it's us, as believers, not understanding what that old man, that sin nature, is so contrary to what grace is, the free gift from God. Once you start understanding that, I think grace rises more to the top. That it's not, I can't do anything. I'm just, in Adam or my sin nature, there is nothing good. And that by grace, grace is all God, nothing to me. Our definition, unmerited, unlimited blessings. Unmerited, there is nothing I can do. But the old man never wants that known. Never. He wants us struggling all through our life to give himself worth.

So I think the hardest thing for a believer is to start understanding that sin nature. still in us and understanding what that sin nature wants to do. It's the hardest thing to look at. Yeah, I think it's a believer's hardest thing to look at. And that's why I think you go through a period and then once you start growing, you start to see the old man come out more. Struggling, because he does not want us growing as growing believers, maturing. Because that diminishes him.

Okay, um, let me, what aspect, oh, yeah, you want to just do that last question? Okay. Which is, actually, what aspect of God is mentioned here, and it's really, if you want, that's referring to verse 23, 1, 23, and change the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. So that's what, look to that verse to see what aspect.

Alright, let's close. Heavenly Father, we thank you again for this time to open up your word. We thank you again just for your revealed facts, your revealed truths. And we just rest upon the Holy Spirit convincing us and convicting us of these truths. And just understanding that in this old man's sin nature, there is nothing good. and again just to focus on you and our life in you in your son and again we just we thank you for how clear your scripture is about salvation is by grace through faith and that is nothing of ourselves it is a free gift from you and it's just our simple believing in the truth of the death burial resurrection and ascension and seeding of your son, and that the sins were paid for on the cross, but not only that, but our co-crucifixion, our separation from the old man, and the sin nature, the power of it, and positionally now we have a position in Christ that is eternal, and that we just thank you for that position that we have now, and again, We just rest in your truths and the facts that you have laid out in your scripture, and we just rest in the Holy Spirit convicting us of those truths. And we just, excuse me, uplift, learn in the next meeting, again, just to accurately bring forth your word and prepare hearts to receive it. We thank you for all these things in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.