You know, balancing heavy Bible reading with a lot of soul wanting to keep your heart right and a warm heart.
Okay, so that you don't just become some kind of a scholar, a theologian that just sits around in a room all day wasting your life away.
Or you could be out doing, doing, doing, but you don't even know what you're doing.
You don't even know how to do it, okay?
And so you've got to have that balance.
And the way to have balance is by having both.
You know, we think that you have to have either zeal or knowledge. Both.
Zeal and knowledge.
Grace and truth. Have them both.
Balance the scale with both.
And so you've got to be balanced in your life.
You've got to have the whole picture, the complete picture here.
But let me hurry up here. It says,
You've not chosen me, verse 16,
but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit.
Now, a lot of people take this verse and they'll try to justify Calvinism.
Who knows what Calvinism is?
Calvinism is the teaching that God chooses who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.
And really, it couldn't be any more false.
Because it does away with the free will of man.
And good night.
This is what's so weird about Calvinism.
People will say, well, God is just the Calvinist's God, which is not my God.
But the Calvinist's God, well, he's just to send people to hell because they're sinners.
And so he just chooses to save some and damns the rest to hell.
That's terrible to just dam somebody to hell without giving them a chance to decide for themselves if they want to be saved or believed.
Well, you say, well, they deserve to hell because they're a sinner.
Well, here's the problem with that.
The Calvinist, believe it or not, this may shock you,
but the true Calvinist believes that God is controlling everything in the world.
In fact, he's controlling every person in the world.
Now, think about all the sick, weird things that go on in the world.
Think about all the people that are hurting people and abusing people and committing violent acts against people.
God is the one that's behind all this, that dreamed up.
I mean, think about all the weird things that are out there.
You think God dreamed up? That's a pretty weird God.
No, but the Bible says that the wickedness of man's imagination is many times set on evil continually.
That's man's imagination that dreams up.
Sinful men who dream up weird, twisted, evil, horrible things.
But they'll take a verse like this, and again, take it out of context.
Rip it out of context and say, you've not chosen me, but I've chosen you.
See, God chooses.
But does he say here he chooses them to be saved?
No, he says, I choose that my disciples are going to bring forth fruit.
I'll prove it to you.
Turn back just quickly to John chapter 6.
John chapter 6, verse 70.
You see, when Jesus is saying here, you have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you.
Okay, see, there's the context.
It says, I've ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit.
Look at John 6, verse 70, and tell me if that choosing is about salvation.
Look at verse 70.
It says, Jesus answered them, have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?
Not only that, but the Bible says that Judas Iscariot, that's who he's referring to, was a devil from the beginning.
That's what the Bible is very clear.
It says, Judas was a devil from the beginning.
I mean, he was never, obviously he was never saved because he went to hell.
And remember, I never knew you, that whole thing.
And so, he says, I've chosen you twelve.
He's talking about choosing them to be his disciples.
He's talking about choosing them to be his apostles that he would send forth two by two and preach the word of God.
He's not saying, I chose that you would go to heaven and someone else would not.
He didn't choose Jacob to go to heaven.
He chose Jacob to be the progenitor of Jesus Christ and the progenitor of the nation of Israel.
He didn't choose Jacob to be saved and Esau to go.
Esau made his own choice.
Esau made his own choice to be a wicked and profane person, ungodly, fornicator, and he got into other weird things later in life.
And the bottom line is that when Jesus is saying, I've chosen you,
you've got to take it in context, he's saying, I chose you to be my disciple.
I chose you to be my follower.
Because he says here, have not I chosen you twelve?
One of you is a devil.
These twelve that he chose, yes, he chose them to be his disciple, Judas.
But did he choose them to be saved?
God doesn't choose who goes to heaven and hell.
We choose.
The Bible says, whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.
And so, the choice here is to be a disciple.
Judas made the wrong choice.
He purchased a field with the reward of iniquity.
He did, it was his doing.
It says, now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity, and falling headlong he burst a thunder in the midst and all his bowels gushed out.
You remember Judas went and hanged himself?
That was his choice.
And afterward it repented him for the choice that he'd made.
And remember he brought the money back to the Pharisees that I've betrayed the innocent blood.
And they said, what have we to do with that?
And they said, get out of here.
He went and hanged himself.
That was his choice. That wasn't God's plan.
God never would have wanted someone to go to hell.
He's willing that all men would be saved.
The Bible says, who would have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
1 Timothy 2.4.
Look down at John 15 again.
He says in verse 17,
these things...