Transcript

Well, grab your Bibles and let’s go back to Luke, the foundation text that we have for our part 2 of “The Unfailing Call to Grace.” We’re continuing the message I began this morning on how God’s sovereign intent to bring his children to saving faith. We’ve seen, what, we’re in the sixth unbreakable strand in the cable of sovereign grace. One of our church members said to me last night, he said, “I don’t know that I understand everything that you’re preaching but I’d like what you’re preaching.” And I said, “Well, I don’t understand all that I know.” Have you understood that as a Christian? You don’t understand. I mean, you can’t with the gray matter between your ears exegete this book and say, “I grasp all of that completely.” It was written by a divine mind, but there are things we can know even though we can’t understand it and we praise the Lord for that.

Anyway, we’ve talked about the first strand in this cable, the all-encompassing purpose of God to manifest his glory. Then God’s invincible love for his children. He has invincible love for all mankind but a very peculiar and special love for those he saves and it’s invincible. I keep saying that to you because I want you to keep making yourself transcend all concepts you may have of what love is. Now we know something of love, we are made in the image of God, but we are fallen and marred and weak. God has a capacity to love that is beyond comprehension. He has the capacity to show this immense God-sized favor to beings that are most radically offensive to him. That’s just wonderful. Thirdly, we talked about irreparable fallen condition of man; that man is totally depraved; man is in such a condition that he cannot fix himself. Every fiber of man’s being is hopelessly polluted or corrupted in sin. Then the fourth strand, God’s bold choice to grant favor to man, very similar to God’s choice to cast his invincible love, but the word grace basically means favor. God chose just to have favor on those who are not deserving, those who are unworthy, those who haven’t merited favor, but he’s that kind of God, he does that. Then in working out that great love and that great favor he has decided to bestow on us, he sent his Son, the Lord Jesus, and he went to the cross and there on the cross Jesus did not die to offer a possibility of redemption, he died to procure and seal and secure the redemption of his children. So it was finished there on the cross. Now we come to today’s message. Now we get down to time and space history for the believer and see how it’s going to be applied to our lives. So we pull some, I think, important truths of two different types of people in this parable of the kingdom, or really it’s a parable of salvation, you could apply it either way.

Luke 14, beginning in verse 16, “But He said to him, ‘A man was giving a big dinner, and he invited many,'” notice he invited many, actually the word “many” can be “all,” probably not best here but it means just a vast number. Verse 17, “and at the dinner hour he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.'” So this is esteemed man gives this great dinner and, again, especially in the ancient world, you were disqualified from going to a royal dinner or a special dinner if you were poor, if you were somehow disabled. You just didn’t qualify. You didn’t fit. You were not either able yourself or you didn’t fit the qualifications to come.

So he’s invited all the folks that humanly speaking should be ready to come and willing to come and able to come, but what happened? “But they all alike,” not most of them, all alike “began to make excuses. The first one said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land and I need to go out and look at it; please consider me excused.'” Verse 19, “Another one said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please consider me excused.’ Another one said, ‘I have married a wife, and for that reason I cannot come.'” Verse 21, “And the slave came back and reported this to his master. Then the head of the household became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city,” this is sort of the outcast areas of the city, and notice the phrase here, not invite but, “bring in,” that can literally mean carry “in here the poor and crippled and blind and lame.'” People that in a Jewish mindset were unclean, ceremonially or religiously unclean and unfit to come to a dinner, and certainly unable to buy the proper attire like they would require at a dinner like a great wedding feast, you had to have the proper wedding clothing on. But he said, “No, go out there and bring those in.” By the way, brothers and sisters, spiritually you and I are the poor. Spiritually you and I are the crippled and we are the lame and we are the blind and God has found a way to carry us in. We come in on the shoulders of his Son Jesus Christ.

Verse 22, “And the slave said, ‘Master, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.'” And verse 23, “And the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the highways,” he said keep going. Here’s a strong word again, “and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled.” He said, “I’m not going to have this great dinner planned and nobody show up. I’m going to have the proper dinner guest here. Go out there and get those people who would never ever be invited, at least not from a human perspective, and compel them to come in here. Bring them in, compel them, but get them in here.”

Then verse 24, I didn’t deal with this this morning but how powerful is this? Now here is the master, the great man that gave the big dinner, “For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner.” The entire group that I first was referring to, that whole vast group was invited, not one of them made it to the dinner but there is another group that he said, “You see to it that those get in.” The slave here represents Jesus Christ. He’s the one who became the servant of his Father to fulfill the Father’s will and he went after those whom have no qualification, no ability, no esteem to enter such a great dinner and Jesus sees to it that we all get home for supper.

Now we’ve been talking about this and we first talked about, well, let me just run through real quickly, I’ll not spend a lot of time here because this is review. We talked about how faith when we understand some basic intellectual, historical facts of the Gospel but also faith must require a personal trust in another person. Jesus is not just a figment of history, he’s a living Lord and Savior and we place our trust in him. I was thinking about this and how we need to be careful not to put images in our mind of Jesus. It’s really impossible to do. You can’t comprehend Jesus in your mind and the Bible says not to make a graven image so we need to stay away from having an image of Jesus. That’s why I’ve never liked pictures of Jesus in the church. If you’ve got one at home, that’s your business, that’s between you and your heart and God but how do you know what he looks like? I mean, it’s just got to be some speculation on our part but my point is he is a person but he is grander and more glorious. Again, he transcends our capacity to understand and grasp. So but we do love him and we do trust him. You have to understand some of the historical and scriptural facts of the Gospel but you put your trust in him whom the Scriptures reveal.

Then we talked about how all of the Godhead is behind our salvation. It is the Father who authored the plan of salvation and chose the elect. It is the Son who executed or procured their salvation as he died and paid the redemption price on the cross. Finished works. The Father did elect us. The Son has redeemed us. Then in time and space history, God sees to it that the Holy Spirit, the sovereign Holy Spirit comes and applies the results of the Father’s plan, the Son’s procurement to our lives. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit all involved in this glorious ministry of bringing us to salvation in Jesus Christ.

Now we talked about some of the statements of faith or the statement of faith that we have as Southern Baptists and how powerfully and clearly even as recently as about 15 years or so ago these things were reaffirmed unanimously and how I think it’s a great travesty that most Southern Baptists have no comprehension what Baptists believe. They basically want to say, “Just tell me what I can understand when I was six years old. I want to jump through a couple of hoops and make sure I’m not going to hell and leave me alone about the rest of it.” That is a travesty. Faith comes by hearing and hearing the things about Christ. Folks, the goal is not to give folks the simplest of truths, the goal is to give people the most truth possible. I want you to have the fullest understanding of the glories and the wonders and the wisdom and the powers and the beauties of our Savior so your faith has more to hang on. The more we know of him, the more our faith can grow and the more we would trust and the more we stand and the more firm we are in our commitment to honor him and love him and serve him.

We’ve said, I. That there was a general invitation to all. We see that in the parable, this general invitation goes out to all men everywhere and we are fully and strongly committed to sharing that Gospel everywhere, urging all men everywhere to repent and believe but, we said, that general invitation sometimes theologians call it the general call though it goes out to everyone, and by the way, that’s something men do not deserve. It’s not like man is just so wonderful God owes it to us to offer us a plan of salvation. No, he didn’t. All he owes you is justice but he put the justice on his Son for those who believe so we wouldn’t have to face the justice. But he didn’t have to offer this great general invitation.

Now we come to new material, II. The elect are called, that’s what theologians call the effectual call. There is a general invitation to all but a different kind of call, an effectual call to the elect of God. This is a specific call and it has an internal effect. In other words, it’s not just something you discern with the five senses; it’s not just something you hear a preacher preach about or something you might conceive with your visible eyes. It’s of the spiritual dimension. Your conversion and the Spirit’s work is of a sixth sense. It’s beyond the five senses and that’s why it’s a mystery. Remember when Jesus was talking to Nicodemus, Nicodemus couldn’t grasp what the Lord was talking about, this being born again and Jesus said, “Well, it is a mystery. It’s like the wind, you don’t see where the wind is coming from, you don’t know where the wind is going and so is everyone who is born of the Spirit,” Jesus said. There’s a factor, you know, you just can’t can this up and put it in a box. It’s bigger than that and we Baptists have done a whole lot of canning it up and putting it in a box and making it sound logical to fallen men’s understanding when we should have never taken the mystery out of it. We should have never taken the mystery out of it. So those whom God the Father elects, God the Son redeems, and God the Holy Spirit effectually calls to salvation, effectual means effective; it means it achieves the result for which it was sent to accomplish. Now listen just for a moment, can you even comprehend that the third person of the Godhead would go out to perform a mission and fail at it? That the third person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, would go out to render the application of the redemption Christ accomplished and man is so powerful and man is so strong that he would turn the Spirit away and the Spirit would not be able to bring that one home to dinner? Well, the parable doesn’t teach that, the parable says they were brought in or compelled to come in.

Now apart from this redemptive work of God, none would ever be saved. Why? Because we are in an irreparable, fallen, corrupt condition. We just do not have the goodness or the virtue to turn to Christ apart from God’s enabling but because of this preemptive work of God, this work of him electing us through his Son, redeeming us, and through his Spirit effectually calling us, when that call comes into your life and I believe it’s instantaneous, then you develop a conviction of sin which leads to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Now don’t get caught up on, “Now which happens first? Does regeneration happen first or repentance and faith?” Well, I would tell you regeneration always happens first but in the experience of it, you can’t separate them. You can’t separate one from the other. A man doesn’t get regenerated of the Spirit when he is 4 and when he’s 16 or 21 come to faith in Jesus. It’s all one package and so sometimes the Bible will speak humanly or purely from a human perspective and he’ll talk about you must repent and you must believe, and then the other times like this abundance, these boatloads of Scriptures we’ve been looking at, God makes us back out of the human perspective and just look from the divine perspective where God is in charge of all of it. And we need that, you need to wrestle with that. You need to be caused to be uncomfortable with that because it’s outside of you. It humbles us but it makes us more in awe of the wonders and the glories and the greatness of our God.

So talking about this effectual call, here are a number of verses I want us to look at tonight. Romans 1, actually I’ll just read verse 6, “among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ.” Now on another occasion he might have said you believed in Jesus Christ, that’s true, but this is also true from the divine perspective. God says, “You’re mine because I called you in Jesus Christ through the merits of Jesus Christ. Because of the preemptive work of redeeming you that’s already been accomplished, you are my called one.”

1 Corinthians 1:9, God who called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ, is faithful. It’s God who called you. When you just pull back and really look at the Scriptures it’s quite overwhelming how thorough these doctrines are in the word of God. When the Spirit calls one and woos us, if you will, that’s when God’s eternal election of us passes over into time. Did you hear that? When the Spirit of God works on a person, they become convicted of their sins and they realize, “I need to turn from trusting in anything and everything man would come up with and trust in God’s hope of salvation, his Son Jesus Christ.” When you have repentance and turn to faith in God, that’s when God’s eternal election passes into time and you are fully and completely saved when you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, but God’s Spirit was calling you to do that.

A few other scriptures here. Acts 16:14. What a powerful and clear verse this is, “A [certain] woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening; and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul.” You just can’t make that mean anything else than preemptively the Spirit of God worked in Lydia’s heart and enabled her to say, “Yes! Yes, I believe that!” There are some of you sitting here tonight and it’s just been in the last few months, maybe the last few years when the lights came on and you said, “Man, it’s hard at times, it’s challenging, it’s radically turning my thinking upside down,” really it’s turning your thinking right side up, “but I see it and, yes, I believe that.” Well, that’s what happened to Lydia, this wealthy woman, a seller of purple fabric which was wealthy in that day, and she was enabled by the Spirit. This is the effectual call to God’s elect.

Well, Philippians 1:29, “For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake.” You are believers and so Paul writes to the church at Philippi and says, “You understand, it was granted to you to have the capacity to believe on Jesus Christ.” He said, “But I also want you to know that God is sovereign and everything is also granted to you that suffer for this new faith in Jesus Christ.” This again, this granting is an expression of this effectual call unto salvation.

Then the verse we’ve looked at several times, Romans 8:30, for “whom He predestined,” that’s in eternity past, these “He also called,” that’s in the present, “and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.” So he says in the minds of God everything from your election or predestination in eternity past all the way to your glorification in eternity future is already settled in God’s mind, but in the middle there is a point in time when you’re living your life and the effectual call comes to your life.

Now combined with this and these are various truths that you’ve got to understand, that in the Scriptures they dovetail together and intermingle, it’s really hard to separate these out and one of these aspects that’s intermingled with the divine call is the giving of new life.

Sometimes we call it regeneration. The Bible uses the phrase to be born or to be born again, or to be quickened, or be brought to life. There’s a lot of wonderful things about this but it’s one of the most beautiful and wonderful things as a pastor to preach and teach and see people that are listening under your ministry. I remember a particular lady who didn’t like me. I know that’s hard to understand but she really didn’t like me and I used to catch her out of the corner… she had to come because her husband made her come… Can I just get off on little bit of a tangent right here? Men, lead your household. Lead your household. Be sweet, be kind but sometimes you’ve got to be firm and say, “Mama, we’re going to church where the word of God is preached.” Not where your emotions feel good all the time but where the word of God is preached. But this dear man kept bringing his wife to church and I remember the day when she went from just sitting there just, to like this right here, and I knew God was speaking to her heart, and it wasn’t a few weeks later she was wonderfully saved. But do you know what the difference was? New life. When God effectually calls, he grants, he gives one spiritual life. There are mysteries there I do not comprehend, I don’t understand it but I know the difference. I’ve experienced it myself when God imparts new life.

John 1:13, “who were born,” birthing, a birthing of life, “not of blood,” it’s not your heritage being Abraham’s children, it’s not of blood, “nor of the will of the flesh,” nothing you choose to do can cause this spiritual birth, it’s not of the will of the flesh. That’s why and I’ve said this to you a million times and I want to be kind and gracious because good men have done this and I’ve done it myself, I don’t do it anymore, I understand why they do it but getting people to do certain things and telling them, “If you do this, God will save you.” That’s just not in the Bible. This is not some superstitious ritual where if you say the right mantra or jump through the right hoops, boom, you get the power. The Holy Spirit is sovereign and he saves under the Gospel and we need to be careful, a lot of people have put their hope in, “Well, I did that.” I’ve heard that many times as a pastor. I’ll be pleading with somebody about their soul, “Well, I did that, pastor, when I was seven.” Well, my question is you may have done something but did God do anything? The Scripture tells us to look for, yes, it’s important that you believed on him but is there evidence of new life? Do you know what one of those evidences is? You like a true church. You like to be in a healthy church. You like to be under Bible preaching. As John MacArthur said, if you pastor a church where you deal with sin, then you’ll have church members who want their sins dealt with. Who in the world wants their sins dealt with? Only those who have new life and say, “I don’t want to be left to myself. I don’t trust me. I don’t want to be just left to my own wanderings and lusts and proneness to stumble. I need to be somewhere where I’ll be helped along.” Well, if you have this new birthing of the Spirit in your life, you will. So it’s not those who are born in the blood nor of the will of the flesh, “nor the will of man, but of God.”

Now John 3:3. Jesus, again, talking to Nicodemus, “Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.'” He can’t see it. Isn’t it interesting that Jesus on one occasion said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” What does he mean by that? He means God’s got to give you ears to hear or you won’t hear. Then he says God’s got to give you the new birth or you can’t see. You’ve got to have the new life. You can take a dead corpse and there are ears on that corpse but it can’t hear. There are eyes on that corpse but it can’t see because life is gone. Well, that’s what God does spiritually speaking, he gives us new spiritual ears and all of a sudden we sit under some preaching and we think, “Well, wait a minute, I like that. I’m drawn to that. It’s challenging some, it’s different than what I’m used to but I’m drawn to that.” That’s the Spirit. He gives you new desires because he births this new life in you.

Ephesians 2:1 through 6, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” And I’ve elaborated, I’ve got whole sermons on all the depravity that is pictured here of man’s fallenness and inward corruption. But notice that glorious conjunctive word in verse 4, “But God.” While we were in that lost, dead, ruined, corrupted state, but God did something. First of all, he’s rich in mercy, and secondly, he has this great love which I call this invincible love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in that awful state, dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. He didn’t say at that point you believed and God made you alive. He said, no, in that state God took the intervention, God took the initiative and God birthed you to new spiritual life. It’s the only way you can explain. In a Gospel ministry, you preach and teach and share and you guys witness and share, and one person starts being drawn, one person is responsive, one person is hungry and thirsty for it, and another guy over here just yawns and, “What’s the ballgame score?” It just didn’t have any effect. How do you explain that? It’s the Spirit. It’s the Holy Spirit, the sovereign Holy Spirit. He “made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).” Now by saying it’s grace, he’s saying that a favor you didn’t deserve. It’s a gift. It’s a grace gift. You didn’t deserve that new life that came into. Then verse 6, “and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” You know, the Bible tells us that we died with Christ, remember this phrase, in God’s mind you were dead before you were born and you are raised up to heaven before you die. You are already seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus in the mind of God.

Well, talking about this, look real quick, I can’t not go here, look over to the Old Testament and let’s show how this was so prophesied in the Old Testament. Look at Isaiah 55. Would you turn there? Isaiah 55, we’ll not go long. I’ll even watch my time because some of you may not have enough spiritual life to hang in here with me very much longer. Isaiah 55, if you would, and I’m just going to sprint through this text. And he’s calling out to rebellious Israel and notice what he says here in verse 1, Isaiah 55:1, “Ho! Every one who thirsts, come.” You’ve got to thirst, then come. “Come to the waters; And you who have no money,” you’ve got to realize you’re broke, then “come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk Without money and without cost.” The point is if something has made you aware that you’re thirsty, “Well, I’ve got plenty to drink. I’m not thirsty.” He’s not talking about that, he’s talking about are you thirsting for the things of God? Are you thirsting to be renewed in your relationship with God? Are you thirsting to be reconciled back to God? Has something happened in you and you are grieved over your spiritual state? Then come, but you can’t just come, you’ve got to be thirsty first. Only the Spirit can make you thirsty for the things of God.

Then he said you’ve got to be broke. You’ve got to come without money or without cause. He said you’ve got to understand that you’re in such a wretched condition there’s nothing you can bring to earn this, and that was radical to a Jewish mindset. They thought everything was dependent upon me bringing the right offerings, performing the right sacrificial rights, and then I’m restored back to God. They said, “No, look, that’s what you think humanly but all those things just represent the things of the Spirit. You are to come recognizing you have nothing to offer.” Only the Spirit can bring a man there. How can a man go from total lostness to total joyous faith and rest in Jesus Christ knowing he brought nothing? The Spirit of God convinces you of that. This is the Holy Spirit working in these people’s lives.

Then zipping on down through there, good night, I’ve got to hurry. “Seek the LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the LORD,” and this is powerful, “And He will have compassion on him, And to our God,” now I’m in verse 7, “And to our God For He will abundantly pardon.” Now notice that, this is God’s compassion and God’s abundant pardon. Who is going to get that? Well, not those who deserve it. That’s why he says in verse 8, “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the LORD.” He said, “You wouldn’t have figured it out this way. You wouldn’t have thought I would forgive this way. You would never have considered that I’d have this kind of compassion, but your thoughts aren’t my thoughts and your ways aren’t my ways.” Thank God for that.

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.” Then he gives an illustration, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.” Now what’s he saying? He’s saying it’s effectual. “When I send out my word to perform something, it’s going to get the job done. Just like the rain comes to the earth and it never comes to the earth without giving the earth some nourishment, so my word when I send it out to do something is going to get it done.”

Well, what particular word is he talking about? People miss this all the time. They make this some real general thing. It’s very clear, it’s very obvious, it’s the word of compassion and abundant pardon. He says, “When I decide to send my word of compassion and pardon out, it’s going to effectually get the job done.” That’s the effectual call. When God sends his Spirit out to you to bring you to Christ, to bring you to faith so that you’ll experience pardon and compassion, it gets the job done every time. Well, how does that work? I don’t know, his ways are higher than our ways; his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. That’s what the prophet said.

Then there’s, let’s see, Ezekiel. Turn to the right almost a quarter of an inch to Ezekiel 37. Ezekiel 37 and we have this vision of dry bones and what a picture, a prophetic picture. Now there are two fulfillments here and you have this almost always in the Old Testament, you have a more temporal, more immediate fulfillment for the nation of Israel but you have a final and ultimate fulfillment in the church, those who are saved and brought into God’s church.

So what is he saying here? Ezekiel 37, beginning in verse 1, “The hand of the LORD was upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones. He caused me to pass among them round about, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley; and lo, they were very dry.” In other words he said, “These bones are graveyard dead. They’re dead, double dead, plucked up by the roots dead.” No life there.

“He said to me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?'” Can these irreparably corrupt, fallen, spiritually dead, double dog dead, dug up by the roots dead bones live? If God brings them to life they will. This will hit some of you tonight about 1 a.m. and you’ll shout and praise God because that’s who you are, you’re dry bones, parched in the sun, spiritually speaking, and God can bring you to life.

Verse 3 of Ezekiel 37, “He said to me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ And I answered, ‘O Lord GOD, You know.'” In other words, “God, if you do it, they will.” If you do it they will. That’s why I always tell you, brothers and sisterss, if you’ve got an uncle or grandfather, a spouse, whoever it is and they’re 97 years old and been the most hateful, arrogant, God-denying, God-hating rebel atheist you’ve ever seen, don’t give up hope. Witness to them again because God can save anybody. But if it’s up to man, I don’t have much hope, but if it’s up to God, I’ve always got hope, amen? He can take dry bones parched in the sun and bring them to like.

Verse 4, “Again He said to me, ‘Prophesy over these bones and say to them, “O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.”‘” How does the Lord bring this effectual call? Under the preaching of the word.

Verse 5, “Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones, ‘Behold, I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to life. I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with skin and put breath in you that you may come alive; and you will know that I am the LORD.'” You don’t know that he’s the Lord until he brings that new life in you, then all of a sudden you do like Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, “Lord! What do you need, Lord?” All of a sudden you can see him. All of a sudden you can hear him but you can’t until he brings you to life.

Verse 7, “So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, sinews were on them, and flesh grew and skin covered them; but there was no breath in them.” Verse 8, do you know what that is? That’s the average Southern Baptist. He’s got the appearance, he’s got the look, he knows the words to say, he’s checked off the boxes, he’s signed the card, he walked down the front, but there’s no breath in there. No spiritual life. Never been truly born of God. Never received the effectual call. No breath in them.

Verse 9, “He said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, “Thus says the Lord GOD, ‘Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they come to life.”‘ So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they came to life and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.” Yes, that is a picture of Israel being revived and restored as a nation but it’s bigger than that, it’s greater than that, it’s a picture of how God brings individuals to life and makes them a part of the great army of local churches around the world until we’re all glorified in one great church in heaven one day in the eternal state.

Now go to the back of the new part of the book, go to Hebrews 8:8. Hebrews 8:8. So the writer of Hebrews is writing to Jewish people telling them how all of their old economy of religion is now obsolete. All of it was a shadow, a type, a picture of what God would do through Jesus Christ and how God would bring men to new life through the power of the Spirit under the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So Hebrews 8:8, “For finding fault with them, He says, ‘Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when I will effect a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; not like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they did not continue in My covenant, and I did not care for them, says the Lord.” He said, “That didn’t last. It didn’t last. I took them out of Egypt, I did these great things, they violated my covenant. It didn’t last.”

Verse 10, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord.” Now this is the day of the church, the day of Christ. “I will put My laws into their minds, and I will write them on their hearts. And they will be and I will be their God and they shall be My people.” He said, “I’m going to do something new. I’m not going to only give them external covenant, I’m going to do something inside of them.” That’s the effectual call. That’s the new birth. That’s granting new life.

Look at verse 11, Hebrews 8, “And they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen, and everyone his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all will know Me, from the least to the greatest of them.” Here’s what he’s saying, he’s saying the way you really know God is when the Spirit reveals God to you. You receive the effectual call. You experience the new birth. New life comes in and you don’t need any man to tell you who God is, you know him then. Now, sure, you’ve got to grow in your knowledge of him but it’s the Spirit that reveals him to you through the new birth. He says, “Nobody will have to teach you that.” In fact, no man can teach you the new birth. Before you were born from your mother nobody went into the womb of your mother and taught you about birth, you just were born.

Then he says in verse 12, “I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” So he says there’s a great pardon and forgiveness when this new life is imparted and it’s always followed with the evidence of our own repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

Now, so many today, the majority of evangelicals and I’ll include Baptists in that, have only responded to the general invitation. They’ve only responded to the general call. They’ve walked down an aisle, they’ve taken the pastor’s hand, they’ve perhaps filled out a card, and they put their names on the roll of the visible church but the key is, is your name on the roll of the invisible church. You see, there are two churches. Obviously there are not two churches, I’m doing this as a figurative illustration. There are two churches, there’s the visible professing church, those who profess faith in Jesus Christ, but unfortunately many of those who profess do not possess new life. Are you hearing me? That’s one church. So that’s the visible professing church. Not all of them are necessarily saved. Secondly, there is the invisible possessing church, the ones that only God truly knows who they are. You can’t really see it with your eyes who exactly is in and who exactly is out but they actually possess the new life. They’ve received the effectual call.

Our church name, Grace Life Church, is that just some cute, clever, creative thing Jeff Noblit came up with? No. No, that’s the most Baptistic name you could possibly have because our Baptist forefathers refused the infant sprinkling of the state churches of Europe and they said, “Wait a minute, we preach a Gospel of grace which means the imparting of new life and a person’s got to be old enough to show us they’ve received the new life by grace. It’s grace that you get the new life. It’s the Gospel of grace and it’s a gift of grace that God would effectually call you.” So we’re looking for people who show us they’ve really received the new life evidenced by they’re repenters now and they’ve got faith in Jesus and then we will baptize them. Grace Life Church, perfect name for a Baptist church. It’s the most doctrinally sound Baptist name you’re going to come up with. I challenge you to find a better one. That’s why we have this name. Not just a cool and clever name, it states what we believe. We reject you can be a part of the true church any other way than if by grace God has birthed you into his family and there’s evidence that he has by your repentance and faith.

Why are you here on Sunday night? Because you’ve turned from other things that get your attention and turned your heart to God, at least that’s true of the great majority of you, I’m convinced. And only new life, the new birth can give you that viewpoint, that “I want to be in on that.” And if you get away from it very long, you’re troubled about it. You’re convicted about it and you say, “I’ve got to get back under that preaching,” because something’s happened and you’ve got new life in you that’s anchored in God and pointed toward God because you’re not just a member of the visible professing church, though you are, you’re also a member of the invisible possessing church.

In like illustration, there are two rolls. Two rolls. There is what I call the service roll. You put your name on the service roll when you join a local church. You’re signing up for service to God. That’s the way you please God. That’s the way you serve God in this world we have today in local churches. That’s the service roll. So many people today want their name on the service roll and they don’t have their name on that other roll and that’s heaven’s roll. You get your name on heaven’s roll, then you put your name on the service roll and not the other way around. Through the history, the great revivals and the great awakenings have been just that, where the George Whitefield’s and the Charles Spurgeon’s and the Jonathan Edwards’ and these great men of God from old preached to church members telling them they must be born again. They’re just going through the motions, they’ve only put their name on the visible church roll and many of these going through the motion church members were repented and came to faith in Jesus Christ showing that they’d been granted new life and great revival was taking place all across the land bringing people off just having their name on the service roll, the local church, and having their name on heaven’s roll and the service roll. You can have your name on the service roll and not on heaven’s roll, but if your name is on heaven’s roll, you always will put your name on the service roll but it always should go in that order.

Now in our profession of faith, the New Hampshire Confession, which again, the Southern Baptists Faith and Message was taken from this New Hampshire Confession. It’s very close, it’s just that this confession is a lot clearer of grace and regeneration. Y’all got that, guys? This regeneration is this birthing of life and here’s what we have said we believe. We believe that in order to be saved, now again, this is written by our Baptist brethren in 1833. They all came together and penned this down to say this is what we Baptists in America believe. We believe that in order to be saved, sinners must be regenerated. Wait a minute, sinners must believe? No, that’s not first. Sinners must be regenerated of the Spirit, or born again, and that regeneration consists in giving a holy disposition to the mind that it is effected in a manner beyond our comprehension. We can’t comprehend all that’s going on by the power of the Holy Spirit in connection with divine truth so as to secure our voluntary obedience to the Gospel. It secures that we obey the Gospel and that its proper evidence appears in the holy fruits of repentance and faith and newness of life. Is that not what I’ve been preaching to you all night? Repentance and faith is shown and there’s a new life in me that is drawn to God and of God and from God.

Now our statement of faith on repentance and faith. I’m not going to do all of this one but, anyway, we’ll do the first part. We believe that repentance and faith are sacred duties but also inseparable graces. How do you come to repentance and faith? Wrought in our souls by the regenerating Spirit of God. The life that comes in you initiated by God brings you to that place where you start becoming a repenter and one who places faith in God.

Then they give a descriptive of what this looks like. Now this would be a full-bore biblically learned understanding of repentance and faith so don’t look at this and say, “Well, I don’t reach up to all of that.” Well, none of us really do. This is sort of the hypothetical standard but that’s one of the reasons why I like this statement of repentance and faith, because it doesn’t let you off easy. This is what our Baptist forefathers at the th th early part of the 19 century, the latter part of the 18 century said we Baptists believe this.

So I’ve shown you with redundancy how thoroughly these doctrines are our heritage and you might say, “Well, I’ve never heard Baptist preachers really preach that and I’ve never talked to Baptist deacons or Baptist leaders who comprehended that.” Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame on the pulpit, then. Terrible disgrace . Let me say something else there, let’s don’t just beat up these preachers because a lot of them are good men of God and they’re just dying under the weight of 1,001 other things the church expects them to do so they don’t have time to dig and pray and preach like they need to. You are one of the very very rare churches that insists your preaching pastor be freed from many other concerns to pour himself into preparing and preaching so that we might know the unsearchable riches of Christ together.

III and we’re done. This won’t take long. There’s a general invitation to all mankind but it’s not effectual, they all reject it. Our parable in Luke 14, none of those men came. None of those men are welcomed to the dinner. Then there is that calling of the elect. The elect receive this effectual call. It actually accomplishes what God sent it to accomplish. They receive new life, they come to repentance and faith. Then thirdly, it’s all to the end of God’s glory. It’s all to the end of God’s glory. You see, this is what helps you. Are you listening to me? If you start thinking from man’s perspective like, “Is this fair for man or is this just for man or is this giving man a fair shake? Well, some men…” You’ve got to forget that. You’ve got to go to God and say, “No, this is about God and his glory.” If God wants to glorify himself by turning the Tennessee River and making it run back toward Knoxville, that’s his business. He does what he wants to do for his own glory, to manifest and show forth his wisdom, his virtue, his goodness, his power, his love, all the glorious attributes that only he possesses and he saves us in this way to manifest that he can do what men can’t even fathom to do.

1 Peter 2:9 as Peter is writing and he’s using a parallelism here, he’s saying this is what Israel viewed themselves nationally but you, the church, you believers in Jesus Christ, you are the spiritual reality of what Israel claimed was theirs nationally. He says, “But you, you Christians, you believers, you’re a chosen race.” Now wait a minute, the Jews always said they were the chosen race? Yes, they were but not in the full spiritual sense. They were just a pattern, they were just a picture of this special true race, this spiritual race, God’s chosen ones to be this peculiar people. That’s you and I.

Then he elaborates on that, a royal priesthood. That means we’ve been saved and by the merits of Jesus Christ, the imputation of his righteousness, we become joint heirs with King Jesus so we become kings and priests. We no longer submit to a kingly hierarchy in a church that’s located in Italy. We now go to God, kings ourselves and priests going straight to God through Jesus Christ. He said, “You’re a chosen race, a unique people separate from the world. You’re kings and priests yourselves, a holy nation,” which means you have the imputed righteousness and holiness of Jesus Christ as what you are standing in before a holy God.

“A people for God’s own possession.” Look, you were not saved to miss hell, you were saved for God. He wants to run you around heaven all the time with his arm around you and saying, “Look what I’ve got here. I did this. He ought to be in hell but I got him here. I elected him. I predestined him. I foreknew him. I sent my Son and he redeemed him. I sent my Spirit under the preaching of the Gospel and he applied the effects of that. He had repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. I sustained him in progressive sanctification and perseverance and now I’ve glorified him in heaven. I saved him for me.” And folks, you and I – listen to me – you can’t comprehend the deep deep love God has for his children. Can you imagine when he gets you in heaven, I think he might look at you and say, “Do you know all I did to get you here? From eternity past I cast my heart of favor towards you and I did everything necessary to get you here and you’re not just in the corner of the city, you’re a joint heir with my royal righteous Son, Jesus.”

How do you sleep at night hearing preaching like this? True story. There was a missionary in an Asian country and he had been thundering the Gospel, preaching this great love of God for sinners, and he preached for a long time and he was getting exhausted and he stopped the meeting and said, “We’ll dismiss now.” And they just sat there. I mean, the room is packed out. I’ll never forget when I was preaching in Romania right after the totalitarian Communist dictator Ceausescu was executed and I told you this before, I’m not exaggerating, a church this size would have 10,000 people in it. I sat there and preached to them, or stood there and preached to them. They’d be right there within 16 inches of your feet. They’d be in perfect symmetry. They would not move a muscle. They would cast their eyes on you and listen to everything you said. They’d been under such oppression they needed the words of life, and that’s the way these Asians were under this missionary and he finally through the interpreter said, “It’s late and I’m tired. I know you’re tired. Why don’t you go home?” One of them spoke up and said, “You just told us how holy God is, you’ve told us how wretched and fallen and sinful and how under judgment we ought to be and you’ve told us he sent his only righteous Son to die on the cross for us and you want us to go home and go to sleep?”

You see, all of us have some contemptible… You could have a better pastor, I know that, and I mean that sincerely, but I’ve worked hard to preach to you the things of God and I believe you and I believe I sometimes have a contempt for it. We’re just used to it. We’re just used to it. Pray God doesn’t let us get used to it. Pray that it stirs us and we marvel over it again and we wonder over it again and we’re slain with humility but joy. Isn’t that the neat thing about how God humbles us? It crushes us but it gives us deep joy at the same time.

“You’re a chosen race. Israel said they were but, no, my church, those whom I have effectually called, they’re my chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession.” To what end? Put it back up there, guys, 1 Peter 2:9, to what end? “T hat you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you,” there’s our word. Second line from the bottom, “to Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” It’s all to the end, middle of the first, that you may “proclaim the excellencies of Him.” Your life is to be a living, professing testimony of the excellencies of the God who secured your salvation. That’s what you’re here for. That’s what you exist for and that’s what you’ll exist in all eternity for, for the praises of the excellencies of this God who saved you, this God who has such a brilliance and a wisdom that he would foreknow you, he would predestine you, he would choose you, he would elect you, all Bible words, then in time and space history he would call you through the preaching of the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit evidenced by your repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Next Sunday’s message: the unfailing perseverance of your faith. He’ll keep you in life. You may slip, you may slide, you may fall, but you can’t stay long. You’ll repent and get back on track. You’ll repent and say, “I need to be back under Jeff Noblit’s preaching.” It doesn’t have to be mine but you don’t have too many choices around here. God can use a better preacher than me but you know what I’m talking about. You know what I mean, under sound preaching. He keeps you through that and then one day he’ll glorify you in heaven. It’s all to praise the excellencies of what he’s done in saving you.

Now listen to me: we don’t praise the excellencies of the pastor, we don’t praise the excellencies of an evangelist or some godly saint in the church, we praise the excellencies of him who saves us. This salvation is a salvation that deeply humbles us and it casts all credit on our Lord and that’s why he saves us the way he saves us. Where is boasting? Boasting is excluded. For by grace, just a favor, for by grace you have been saved, past tense, already settled, you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it’s the gift of God. The new life came and then gave you that capacity to even have the faith. It’s a gift of God, not by works, no aspect of work is involved, lest any man should boast. Where is boasting? It’s excluded. We’re just here to proclaim the excellencies of him who has done this marvelous work in us and to us and for his own glory.