If I can turn in a copy of God's Word to Ezekiel Chapter 11, and we're going to begin reading at verse 13, verse 13 through to the end of the chapter. And while you're flipping there, I'll just take the opportunity as I hear pages turning to say something very briefly. I know that camp is a rather full-on time for all of us. Kids are running around and they've constantly got to be watched and so on. Yet, the Lord has called us here to hear his word preached, I guess I could say lectured on five times. And I just hope that nobody's passing by the spiritual significance of this. simply for kind of the temporal enjoyment of it. And I know it's a balance that's hard to keep. I'm just encouraging you, think about the word preached, be reading the word yourselves personally daily, be praying. I know it's busy, but don't let those things pass you by. So anyway, Ezekiel chapter 11, beginning at verse 13. And it came to pass when I prophesied that Peltahia, the son of Benaniah, died, then fell I down upon my face and cried with a loud voice and said, ah, Lord God, wilt thou make a full end of the remnant of Israel? Again the word of the Lord came unto me saying, son of man, thy brethren, even thy brethren, the men of thy kindred, And all the house of Israel, holy are they unto whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, get you far from the Lord, unto us is this land given in possession. Therefore say, thus saith the Lord God, although I have cast them far off among the heathen, and although I have scattered them among the countries, Yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they shall come. Therefore say, thus saith the Lord God, I will gather you from the people and assemble you out of the countries where ye have been scattered and I will give you the land of Israel. and they shall come thither and they shall take away all the detestable things thereof and all the abominations thereof from thence. And I will give them one heart and I will put a new spirit within you and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh and will give them a heart of flesh. that they may walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances and do them, and they shall be my people and I will be their God. But as for them whose heart walketh after the heart of their detestable things and their abominations, I will recompense their way upon their own heads, saith the Lord God. Then did the cherubims lift up their wings and the wheels beside them, and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above. And the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city and stood upon the mountain, which is on the east side of the city. And afterwards, the Spirit took me up and brought me in a vision by the Spirit of God into Chaldea to them of captivity. So the vision that I had and then I spake unto them of the captivity, all the things that the Lord had showed me. I ask you to turn now to Ephesians chapter two, Ephesians chapter two. When you get there, we will be reading the entirety of the chapter, Ephesians chapter two. And you, hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all, we had our conversation in times past in the lust of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we're by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, by grace ye are saved. and hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. Wherefore, remember that ye, being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by that which is called the circumcision in the flesh made by hands, that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ, for he is our peace, who hath made both one and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us. Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in the ordinances, for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace, and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby, and came and preached peace to you, which were afar off unto them that were nigh. For through him we both have access by one spirit unto the Father. Now therefore, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and the household of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord, in whom ye also are builded together for inhabitation of God through the Spirit. And there ends our reading. Let's look to the Lord in prayer. Oh, heavenly Father, hallowed Lord, be your name. We, oh God, have read your word about the wonderful work that you do in the hearts of your people, where you call them from death to life, and where, oh Lord, you bring them out of the world from being children of disobedience, children, oh Lord, of wrath, and you take them out of Adam, and you bring them into the Lord Jesus Christ. You make them a new creation, oh Lord, so that they, And oh God, this morning we plead that you would bless our study of that precious doctrine of effectual calling, where one who is dead in trespasses and sins, where one that is a child of disobedience is given a new nature, is made a new creature in Christ Jesus and comes, oh Lord, to be a child of God. We plead, O Lord, that we would understand this doctrine better and that we would be able to apply it to our own lives, asking ourselves, have we had the gospel of Jesus Christ effectually applied to us? And also, Lord, may it stir us up to pray. that that effectual application of the redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ wrought in the heart of a sinner by the Spirit. We pray that that redemption would be all the more common here in Tasmania. We pray for revival in our own day. And oh Lord, we ask your blessing and we ask the forgiveness of our sins in Jesus' name, amen. Well, this morning we are going to look at the doctrine of effectual calling. And before we really dive into this, I sort of want to set the stage a little bit by looking back at what we established yesterday. Yesterday, I think we established that man needs to be born again, that man needs to be converted. And his state before God, apart from that special converting work of God's grace, his state before God is that of misery, that of sin, that of spiritual death. And so what must happen is the Spirit of God must come. And we approach, or we looked at, how we are to approach that in light of the relationship, the special relationship that God's church has with him through the covenant of grace. And so I hope that yesterday morning you were able to clearly see that everyone must be born again, that as I said several times yesterday, quoting Matthew 18, verse three, except you be converted, you will not see the kingdom of heaven. Now as we're looking at conversion, We obviously know it needs to happen, but I suppose the question is how does it happen, right? It's one thing to know that you need a medical procedure done, but how exactly that procedure is gonna be done is another matter. And so what we're gonna do this morning, as well as tomorrow morning, is we're gonna look at the how. And we're gonna look at this how from two angles. So the first angle this morning is dealing with effectual call. I'll say this and then I'll qualify what I mean. We're gonna be looking at effectual call, that's really from God's side, right? That's what God does in the conversion of the sinner. But also, the sinner is being converted. Now, I said I was gonna qualify this, so let me say, conversion is not something that happens because man in any way contributes to it. Conversion is not, I'm not trying to say that man in any way contributes to his salvation, or that man in any way cooperates with God. But in the way, if you will, of experience, we have to understand that man actually does believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. That there's a union that occurs with Christ. And from this union, benefits flow to that new Christian, begotten by the Holy Ghost. So this morning we're gonna see it from God's side, Tomorrow we're gonna look at the Philippian jailer and we're gonna see it as it were from man's side, right? So we're gonna see how God this morning draws the sinner to himself and what he does. And tomorrow morning we're gonna look at what it means to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. What it means to receive all of the benefits of the Lord Jesus Christ. appropriating them to oneself, of course, by faith, by the empty hand of faith, taking it and receiving the great gift of the Lord of salvation. Now, beginning this morning with effectual call, our text is Ephesians 2, verses 4 and 5. mercy for His great love, wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, have quickened us together with Christ. By grace, ye are saved. And particularly, I want us to look at the words, even when we were dead in sins, have quickened us together with Christ. And that's really the work of effectual calling. Effectual calling is this quickening, and young people, that means to be made alive. Effectual calling is the work by Christ through his Holy Spirit where a sinner is made alive. Now we're gonna look at this in three, or four points, forgive me, four points. The first point is, how does God call? How does God call? The second point is, that call made effectual. That call made effectual. Our third point is, when is the Lord pleased to call? When is the Lord pleased to call? And fourthly, we'll try to apply this doctrine to ourselves. So beginning with how does the Lord call sinners to himself? Well, the Apostle Paul, opening up Ephesians 2 here, he paints quite a stark picture. We saw that yesterday where he says that, in verse one, that they were dead in trespasses and sins, but he goes on and he speaks about how they were children of disobedience, how they had their conversation in times past in the lust of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as others. And we established also yesterday that man, can bring forth nothing good to God. There's no spiritual good in him. So the picture that we have of man is of basically someone that is dead, that has no life. And how is God going to bring this dead sinner to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, the answer simply is by the word. by the word. So obviously, we're gonna get into this more in our second point, but God has elected a people unto salvation, right? And out of the whole of the mass of humanity, there are God's elect people that need to be gathered together. And what is the means that God is ordinarily pleased to use? I hope you know, it's the word, or particularly, the preaching of the word of God, right? So when we speak about how God calls a sinner to himself, it's the word of God, it's the preaching of the word. So how do we understand this? Well, I suppose basically we could begin with what the Lord Jesus Christ says on the day that he ascended to heaven when he gave the Great Commission, or sorry, he didn't ascend then, but when he gave the Great Commission, or the day that he ascended to heaven in Acts chapter one, verse eight, he speaks about how In the Great Commission, the disciples must go and they must baptize and teach all nations. In Acts chapter one, verse eight, he says that the gospel must begin in Jerusalem, then it will go into Judea, and then into Samaria, unto the ends of the earth. So what did Jesus do? He set aside 12 men, apostles, but mainly they were preachers. And their job was to go and proclaim God's message of salvation to sinners. Now fast forward. a couple thousand years to right here and right now, and God still uses that means. He still sets aside men for the office of the ministry, the word of God is still preached, that message of salvation still goes forth, and it's out of that message of salvation that God calls sinners to himself. We think about the gospel, we need to think about the gospel sort of in two ways, right? So let's begin with the first way. You can think about the Apostle Paul on Mars Hill, it's Acts chapter 17, I believe verse 30. Paul gives that famous line to the Athenians that all men everywhere are now commanded to repent and believe the gospel. So understand this first and foremost, my friend, that when the gospel is preached, it comes to you as a command. God expects of you, if we may say it this way, he demands of you your heart. You have no right to refuse that offer. The Apostle Paul makes that very clear to some of the most pagan people in the world. He says, you've never heard, basically, he says, you've never heard this. I've come and I've told you something of it, and God's expectation of you is that you would receive this message, and not only is it an expectation, but it's his direct command that you would repent, that is, turn from your sins and believe the gospel. And in a sense, I want the force of that. to come to us all, and I think that's very important that we understand how forceful this command to repent and believe is. Now, on one hand, you might be tempted to say, well, I know. I'm dead in trespasses and sins. I can't repent and believe, so what's the point of sort of laying on this idea that God has commanded? Why should we make a big deal out of this? The reason why we should make a big deal out of this is because it's the Lord's will. Right? We don't let someone that commits murder simply walk away and say, well, I'm totally depraved, so I murdered someone. It's not really, you know, we obviously expect of them that there would be justice served, that they've done something wrong and they're culpable for their actions. And that's how it is with the gospel. Every time the gospel is preached to you, and if you are dead in your trespasses and sins, God commands you to repent and believe, and you will be held culpable for that action of unbelief. of God. And that is a fearful and a dreadful thing. That is a fearful and a dreadful thing. But it gets sweeter. And I suppose also, in a way, it gets a little more, for lack of a better word, a little more fearful. It was just already austere. Now the Lord not only commands you to repent, but he invites sinners to himself, right? He says, come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. You see, the way that God is pleased to gather in his elect is by, as our forefathers said, this promiscuous proclamation of the gospel, that Jesus Christ is inviting sinners to himself. And you might say, hang on. What about election? Can Jesus invite the non-elect to come to himself? Would Jesus really mean it? Here's what I would say to you. We think about the offer of the gospel. We think about how the gospel is preached. We do not believe there's two contrary wills in God. We don't believe there's two contrary wills in God where God desires in some way the salvation of the non-elect and in another way he's decreed to do the opposite. We reject that because that doesn't comport with our understanding of God. But on the other hand, I think we have to take God at his word. There is an invitation that is given And when I say invitation, I don't mean that God has any will towards the non-elect to come, but there is an offer given. There's Christ saying, come to me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and he will not cast them out. And we have to take God at his word. And when I say we have to take God at his word, what I'm saying is we have to let those words come to us, and we have to see that to any sinner that comes to the Lord Jesus Christ, He will in no wise cast them out. He will receive them and he will pour his blessings upon them. Now on the other hand, we know theologically in the background, it's the Spirit of God that enables one to come to the Lord Jesus Christ. But this gospel is to be proclaimed, again, promiscuously. And that, I think, is the great thing that the Bible presents to us. The Bible does not present to us a question about election when it comes to the preaching of the gospel. Rather, I would say the paradigm that the scripture gives to us when it comes to gospel proclamation is that Jesus Christ is proclaimed to sinners, and those that are God's elect will respond by way of the Spirit, enabling them to come to faith. So there you have this general call. And I want to make it very clear, by the way, as I was preparing this lecture, I looked through a lot of different dogmatics. A lot of them began, when they spoke of the effectual calling, they began actually with the general call. Because that is the means that God uses, right? So we're moving on to our second point, which is actually the effectual call. But understand that you can't be effectually called without this general call of the gospel. But what does it mean to be effectually called? There's a lot of theologically going on. Before I get to the theological, I want you to understand something about the effectual call. It is something that is personal. It is applied personally. It's not that the entire church as a group is effectually called. It's not as if families are effectually called. The Holy Spirit comes to a sinner as an individual and works in their heart, changing them into a new creature in Christ Jesus, we read in 2 Corinthians 5, 17. But it's in this effectual call, my friend, that the gospel really comes home to you. And maybe you know something of that by way of your own experience. you know what it's like to suddenly realize the forgiveness of sins offered in Christ. Where in days past you might have understood it on an academic level, but all of a sudden the Spirit of God brings it home to you, and on one hand you see your sin so clearly illustrated, on the other hand you see the blessed salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ and you look outside of yourself and you see a savior that comes and has offered himself for sinners and he receives you and all of a sudden, for lack of a better way to say it, it becomes real. In the United States, we have a saying that this is better felt, frankly, than tellt. Now, it might sound all very good, but how Does the Spirit of God do this, right? Now, I wanna say, we're really dealing with something mysterious. Yesterday morning, we were looking at Nicodemus, and I think it's in John 3, verse 6, that the Lord Jesus tells him that the Spirit is like the wind, and basically, it blows where it blows. We really can't know it. There's something, we can't know it. We don't fully grasp it. We see it by its marks. We don't fully understand the mysterious operations of the spirit of God. So what we have to look at is we have to look at what the scriptures present to us about what happens in this very mysterious, really this miracle of effectual calling. So what is the picture that the scriptures paint? But first, we need to understand that effectual calling, this is very important, this is a work of God's grace and a work of God's power. Again, I said man in no way cooperates with God in bringing him to salvation, right? So have this clearly before your mind, that in effectual calling, God, almighty, sovereign, all-powerful, is working on a dead man and bringing him to life. And we have to understand this. I think that has to be in the forefront of our thought when we're dealing with this doctrine, is that God is almighty and all-powerful, and he's doing something, it's gracious as well. It's an undeserved action. It's unmerited, right? And he's bringing that sinner to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, So it begins, it's an action of God's power. So what actually happens then? Well, the Spirit of God comes to a sinner dead in trespasses and sin and gives them a new heart. Now, we have two places in Scripture where we see that language used. The first we read yesterday morning, Ezekiel 36, 26. This morning we read, there might be other places, but there's a bunch of places I have in my notes anyway. We also see it in Ezekiel 11, verse 19, this idea of the Spirit of God coming and giving a new heart. In Ezekiel 11, we saw that the heart is a heart of stone, and out of that heart of stone comes a heart of flesh. You might say, okay, that's very well and good, but we've sort of balanced back and forth. We've looked at election on one hand, we've looked at the gospel. Can you give it to me in a timeline? on the timeline, but can you give it to me in order? And I'll try to do that right now. So let's begin first in eternity with God's eternal decree. God's eternal decree. So God has elected sinners to be saved, right? We understand that? Now, when God decrees the salvation of a sinner, that in no way changes their state. They are born in this world in their trespasses and sins, and our confession and our catechism when dealing, or catechisms, when dealing with effectual call and dealing with justification, speak of these things as occurring in time. One time I was having a discussion Actually, I was teaching through the Westminster Confession of Faith, and we came to a factual calling, and I remember it was a Sabbath school class, and there was all of this confusion, all of a sudden, that erupted. Because it was sort of like, okay, how can God decree that something is gonna happen and make it happen in time? What if... What if, for some reason, God's elect were to die? And really, it was a misunderstanding of God's sovereignty. And you might say, well, we understand God is sovereign and God has decreed all things. I'm just trying to remind you of this. That when we say that God has elected the sinner to salvation, and that God will bring that sinner to faith in time, Understand that there's nothing contrary that can happen. God's decree of election is eternally sure. God cannot lie or deny himself. Let every man be found a liar and let God be true. God is true in election. So there's no elect sinner that can perish. Every elect sinner will be brought to faith, will be brought to faith in the way that God has intended. divine plans. Let's first understand that. But secondly, let's also understand that this individual, this elect person, though they are elect, in this life until the Spirit of God comes and works in them and gives them a new heart, they are a sinner, right? So when we talk about the effectual calling, we're really talking about a sinner elected to eternal life that the Spirit of God and works in and brings about into a new state. Now let me go on further from that. So the Spirit of God comes and works and gives you a new heart and you become a new creature in Christ Jesus. That is what we call regeneration. It's regeneration. When the heart is made new, when spiritual life is given to the soul by this power of God. Now from that regeneration, And this is a most mysterious thing. I sort of shudder to describe it, but I'm reminded of Psalm 110, verse three, where God's people are made willing in the day of his power. It's in that text that we see, I think, a picture into how this working of God's spirit in the heart happens, because God's people are made willing. And this is very interesting. If you think about faith for a moment, We read, of course, we read in Ephesians 2 that faith is a gift of God. But on the other hand, faith is uniquely your own faith. And so what happens in the effectual calling is, Basically, man is renewed in the will. And faith is a gift of God, because God has renewed his will, and all of a sudden, out of that renewed will, out of all of the faculties being made new, because remember, 2 Corinthians 5, 17, man is a new creature in Christ Jesus. Out of that comes faith. And faith, friends, is always exercised towards an object. And that object is the Lord Jesus Christ, right? So you have this order. The Spirit of God comes, renews the heart. Faith is exercised in the Lord Jesus Christ. And faith, of course, in faith we reach out with an empty hand, right? It's a gift of God. We wouldn't have faith without the Lord's work. But we reach out with an empty hand and we receive all of the benefits of the Lord Jesus Christ. And there, you have this idea of being brought into union with the Lord Jesus. And it's out of union with the Lord Jesus Christ that all of the benefits that the child of God enjoys flow. justification, adoption, sanctification, of course, eventually glorification, right? All of that comes out of this blessed union with the Lord Jesus Christ. And I wanna emphasize this point. If we have Christ, or if we lack Christ, we're missing the whole part of the matter. When we think about salvation, I think it's very tempting, if you think about it theologically, to think about divine decrees, to think about effectual calling, to think about all of these things. But I want you to put that aside for a moment, and I want you to understand that the believer is quickened together with Christ. It's what Paul says in our text, Ephesians 2.5, there's that whiff. There is this made alive with the Lord Jesus that the believer, the child of God, as our catechism, larger catechism says, is mystically joined with the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is, that is the root out of which every fruit of the Christian life arises. If we are not in union with Christ, we have nothing. John 15 where he says, I am the vine. He's bringing forth all of that work in his people. So I think we've given the big picture. Let's zero in now on a moment on this new heart and what exactly goes on there. And I don't There's quite a lot of, I guess, big theological books written on this, but let me sort of try to simplify. When we speak about the new heart, again, understand man is dead in his trespasses and sins, and the Spirit of God comes. We have that language of the stony heart being made a heart of flesh. We have the language of being dead and now being revived, or being dead and now given life. And we have 2 Corinthians 5, verse 17, which says that every man is a new creature in Jesus Christ. So what happens when you receive a new heart? Well, you're renewed. You're renewed after the will of God. You're brought, of course, into union with Christ. All of these benefits flow to you, but there's a lot that happens, so I'll give you a couple of things. The first thing is, The new heart gives man the principle, a principle of spiritual life. And man is able, all of a sudden, to discern the things of God. What once felt like a dead letter to man, all of a sudden becomes real. That's what Paul is describing. 1 Corinthians chapter two, verse 14, right? It says, the natural man receiveth not the things of God. But when you're made alive in Christ, All of a sudden, the things of God become real to you. Those promises that were once so abstracted, they don't only become real to you, but they frankly become your own. The promises that were so far off, they're promises that you by faith take to yourself and apply. You cling to them and you grasp them and they are yours. Furthermore, man's affections begin to run, as it were, in a right course. Now what I mean by that is, right now, if we are dead in our trespasses and sins, we can bring forth no good fruit to God. For example, there is no love, no true love towards God in your heart. Another example would be, is you do not keep God's law with love in your heart. Love is a big thing in all of this. And all of a sudden, when the Spirit of God comes in all of this, act of effectual calling happens you don't do it perfectly because you have an old man there's a war going on in your flesh but all of a sudden those affections those things that you feel they become genuine and they start to run as it were towards the Lord and through the process of sanctification and ultimately glorification and through at the final resurrection that work will be made complete but understand it's In effectual calling, sanctification begins and the whole of the Christian is beginning to be made renewed after the image of God according to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I want us also to understand that in effectual calling, God calls, of course, the center to life. And that's the beginning of, I guess you could say that's really the beginning of your Christianity, isn't it? That's how it all begins. There's a question that arises in many people's minds. And it's a question that I thought needed to be addressed, so I'm going to try and do that now. And that question, is when is the Lord pleased to call? Or maybe we better ask, how is the Lord pleased to call? And I'll recommend this book to you, The Christian's Great Interest by William Guthrie. And if you haven't read it, I strongly encourage you to do so because it deals with questions of assurance, whether one is in Christ, so on and so forth. But within about the first 50 pages of this book, Guthrie lays out an absolutely brilliant, a way to understand how God draws sinners to himself. So I'll go ahead and admit this. Of course, nothing I preach is really original to me, but I basically just pulled this straight from Guthrie. And so Guthrie says, look, God works normally in two ways. And the two ways he gives are those that are called without conviction of the law, and those that are called with I'm gonna go ahead and head off something right here and right now, because it's a question that I think a lot of people ask about. If you read old books sometimes, old biographies, David Brainerd is a really good example of this, where there's a lot of conviction, right? These guys, it really seems like the Lord works them over for their sins, and they see how black they are in the sight of the light that is the Lord Jesus Christ. And you might be thinking to yourself, well, I've never really had that experience. You might be thinking to yourself, I've never been so convicted. I've never, if I've read, again, Brainerd's diary, I've never felt as vile as Brainerd seems to have felt. So how am I to understand this? Well, look, this is what I would say. Different people have different temperaments. And it's almost like going to the doctor, okay? So sometimes you ask people that at the first sign there might be a problem, they will immediately pick up the phone and they'll ring their GP and they'll try to be there that day. And then there are other people that will stubbornly wait nearly to see, or really, it seems like almost to see how bad it will get with them before they will dare ring their doctor. That's how it is with knowledge of sin. Right, so the gospel comes to everyone proclaiming to him, I would say two things, that you are a sinner and that there is a savior. Now the knowledge of sin that you are required to have is no more than enough to get you to the doctor. You see what I mean? You need no more knowledge of sin than enough to get you to go to for mercy. So Guthrie says, look, this is the way it works. God sometimes works without the law and he works sometimes with the law. He gives three subcategories of people that God works seemingly without conviction of the law. The first are infants from the womb and young children. And the example he gives is John the Baptist. You could also look at the prophet Jeremiah. There are other places. But he says that God can call sinners to himself in this way. That you can be effectually called by the Spirit of God, that you can be renewed in your mother's womb. The question might be, You're renewed in early childhood, or you're renewed in your mother's womb, I think a natural question arises, well, how do you know? If you've only known, right, if you've only known the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ throughout your whole life, seemingly as long as you can remember, how do you know that you actually know it? I guess it's sort of a difficult question, but if you've always felt that you've known the Lord Jesus, if somebody asks you, how are you really sure? You don't have some great conversion story, so how do you see it? Well, I think again, it comes down to fruit, right? The Bible gives us this paradigm of fruit. We can't know if the Lord has worked. The Spirit of God is like the wind, but we see the effects of the wind, and so we see It's a saying I have, I've said it a lot in Ulverston, but everywhere the gospel takes root, there is absolutely going to be fruit. So where the gospel takes root, there's fruit. And so children converted early in life, we're going to see fruit in their lives. If they're converted in their mother's womb, we're going to see in the ordinary course of things, fruit. We have to understand they're children, they're not gonna bring forth as much, but some of these key and I'll recommend another book to you here, Archibald Alexander's Thoughts and Religious Experience. I highly recommend that book. It's a tremendous book, but what you're gonna see in the life of a child is you're gonna see a desire. Now, it's gonna be a limited measure, but it's gonna continue to be growing as the child grows in maturity. There's gonna be a desire to glorify God. They are going to, whereas other children and other, particularly teenagers, are gonna be running towards all sorts of sort of disobedience sort of unwise decisions, if the spirit of God has worked in the heart of that child, we should not see that. It's not to say it's gonna happen in every case, but as kind of an ordinary rule, the spirit of God has worked in the life of a child, they shouldn't really have rebellious teenage years. Other things we're gonna see coming forth in the life of a child, it's not to say, by the way, they're not gonna rebel as teenagers, but there's going to be a restraint, there's going to be a maturity, But another thing we should see is we should see a reverence, a love toward the things of God. Now again, it's gonna be small in measure. It's going to look different than an adult's love, but we should see a general stirring, a general striving in the direction of God, a general desire for the Lord. The second category that Guthrie gave was mature, people in mature age coming without conviction in the law, the Lord Jesus Christ, and there, he actually used the example of Zacchaeus in Luke chapter 19. And of course, we're all familiar with Zacchaeus who's climbing up the sycamore tree, and basically what happens, the Lord Jesus comes by him and says, this day, Salvation has come to you and your house, right? And that's another example. In a sense, it's gentle. He doesn't have all of this great conviction of the law, but he's brought to see the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ comes and literally visits him and brings him in. The third example we see is near death, and Guthrie there gives the thief on the cross, and I always think when we speak of the thief on the cross, J.C. Ryle's warning is particularly apt. J.C. Ryle, of course, says that the thief on the cross, we have one example of a man dying, basically being put to death for heinous sins, being brought to repentance at the last minute to remind us that God is gracious and God can do it, but it's only one example to remind us that it's not the ordinary course that God chooses to work. We see that without the law. Now with the law, with the law. And Guthrie does illustrate this point. He doesn't argue for any sort of, you must have a certain level of conviction, but he does say this, and I thought this was good, that law conviction is going to be common with people in the church because they know the law, right? So it's not to say you have to have a certain level of it, but all of a sudden, if God is working on you, you're going to be more aware than the secular person on the street that you're a sinner. that you have trespassed God's law. Now Guthrie gives two examples of this. He says first, there is the kind of the hot flash of conviction that brings one to the Lord Jesus Christ. And the example he uses there is of the Philippian jailer. And the reason why he draws that conclusion, as you recall, in Acts chapter 16, we just read it this morning, actually. But as you recall in Acts chapter 16, the jailer rushes in after that earthquake, and he pulls his sword, and he's about to thrust himself through. Children, he's about to fall on his sword to die. He's going to commit suicide. And what? to Paul and Silas Saviason. They say, do thyself no harm. And according to Guthrie, there must have been conviction there at the sin that he was about to do. So what happens? The jailer is confronted with his own sinfulness, and he cries out. He says, what must I do to be saved? Isn't that a resounding, wonderful answer? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. Now then, you have those where the law sort of more tediously works, I suppose we could say, those that are more convicted over a period of time. And the example I would give to you of that is probably the prodigal son, where you wander off into a far country, and as the Lord is bringing you back, you're confronted over and over again by the consequences of your sinful actions, and you're convicted of these things, but ultimately you're brought back into fellowship. with God the Father, right? But again, there's this idea that God is working through conviction to bring you back to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I realize probably for many of you there might be a question here. Sorry, you've given us two categories and several subcategories. How does it ordinarily work? And I would say, I'm not going to conjecture. I'm going to say that this is what I see in the scripture. I see certain patterns in the scripture. I think that those patterns are generally safe guides. I'm not going to conjecture at how ordinarily what we should look for to know if someone is being effectually called and if the spirit of God is truly working in their lives because I understand the spirit is like the wind and I see what the spirit does not. How it does it. So, I think that brings us to the point where we can begin to apply this gracious work of God of effectual calling to ourselves. The Lord Jesus Christ makes a point in his earthly ministry, a very sobering point, and it's a point about the general call of the gospel. He says that many are called, but few are chosen. He makes this point when he says that, that gospel preaching, as I said earlier, is promiscuous, that the gospel goes out indiscriminately, calls all men to repent and believe. But few are actually chosen that hear that gospel message. I know yesterday I brought this up, and I'll bring it up again. We have the parable of the sower. Three out of the four types of soil ultimately do not bring forth true gospel fruit. So there has to be something sobering about this when we think about the call of the gospel and the effectual operation of God's spirit. We have to ask ourselves this. Has that call of the gospel been made effectual to us? Have I? by the Spirit of God, had my heart worked in, where I've believed on the promises of God and the gospel, and where I've been brought into union with Christ, and I've taken hold of all of these wonderful benefits, as it were, with an empty hand, and the Lord has just heaped upon me blessing after blessing. Do you know that for yourself? And I do, I earnestly plead with you, my friend. Do not be happy with merely having a general knowledge of who God is. Do not be happy with understanding that you hear the gospel preached, but actually labor to know if the gospel has been personally applied to you. Eternity hangs in the balance. You need to know. that Christ is yours and you are his. You need to know that Christ is your beloved and he sees you as his beloved. You need to know that Christ died for you and now you're in union with him as a new creature. The second thing I would say is Do you think much about the work of the Holy Spirit? I sort of said this in an unassuming way, but I've probably said it nearly a dozen times, that the effectual call is the work of the Spirit of God, whereby He renews the heart. Do you think much about how much of the work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian religion. Do you realize that it is the Holy Spirit that comes, again, as I've said, and knits one together, that brings one into union with Christ? Do you realize that it's the Spirit of God that is referred to as the comforter? It's the Spirit of God that's referred to as the one that will come and convict the world of their sins. Paul tells us in Ephesians 4, 30, not to grieve the Holy Spirit, right? The Holy Spirit, And the work of the Spirit of God in the individual as well as in the church is absolutely vitally important. And when we realize that it's the Spirit of God that brings us from death to life, and it's the Spirit of God that works in us to sanctify us, all of a sudden the Spirit, not breathing the Spirit, understanding as best we can the work of the Spirit and trying to cultivate Do you see your need of the Spirit of God working in you, and do you desire the Spirit of God to work in greater and greater measure, or do you grieve the Spirit? Honestly, you know the answer to that more than I do. And you know what you do in the secret places. You know the thoughts and intents of your heart. You know if you serve the Lord with fear and in trembling, and you know If it's all an outward show and really there's much hypocrisy in your life, I don't know it, you know it, I'm asking you to examine yourself and see whether the Spirit has worked in you. The third thing I would say is generally to the church, this doctrine of effectual calling should be quite encouraging because here's the reality. God is sovereign, man is not. We live in a very dark day. And then for some reason, we sort of sit back in despair and think about how bad it is in the world around us, and frankly, how bad it is in the church, and how bad everything is. And yet at the same time, we believe that it's God that works to save the sinner. We seldom ask God to do that work in our own lives, to sanctify us, in the lives of our family, in the lives of our friends, in the life of our nation, we seldom seem to ask God to come by His Spirit and give men new life. And it's sort of, It's sort of surprising to me how little emphasis this gets, because we do put a lot of emphasis on the sovereignty of God. We put a lot of emphasis on the promises that God has given to us in his word. We put all of these emphasis on these things, and I think it's sort of like two plus two equals four. And I think when we put all our emphasis in the right places, we should be very encouraged to pray for revival, because God can bring revival, and yet somehow, I'm just as guilty of this as anybody in this room, and somehow we fall so far short of it, yet we have every reason to expect that if we cry out to God, he will work, and we know that it's not our work, it's God's work, and there's great news in that, because that means we can't mess it up. Do you think about that? I mean, really. I mean, I understand that You know, God uses human means, but everyone whose name is written in the book of life will be called to faith. And the devil can't stop it. You or I, through our own foolishness, stupidity, lackluster, lethargy, we can't stop it. Nobody can stop it. And so if nobody can stop it, and we don't know who the elect are, why aren't we crying out that the whole state of Tasmania, that their names would be written in the book of life, that God would work in our state, that God would come and do a mighty work as he did in days past? If it's God's work to convert the sinner, we should have no shame, no qualms about pleading with God to do it. So, as I conclude, let me just draw out A couple of, I guess, let me tie this off. So we see that the renewing of the heart, that the begetting, the being born again of a Christian is the work of the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God comes into the heart of the sinner. gives them new life, and brings them into union with Christ, and out of that, all of the graces of the Christian life flows. Ordinarily, the Spirit of God uses the Word of God as the outward means to bring Christians to life. And that's how it is. He's ordained the ends that his elect are to glorify him. He's ordained the means, the outward means of the word, and he's ordained the inward means of the spirit of God working. All of it is God's work. Let me just close by giving you one example of how the effectual call works in unexpected ways. John Flavel, I trust some of you have heard of him, is a Puritan preacher in England. And the Puritans were being persecuted, and some of John Flavel's congregation left and came to New England in the United States. One young man, his name was Luke Short, came with his parents to the United States at the age of 12. He lived to be over 100. As he was, I think it was 100, maybe it was 99, 100, somewhere in that area, He was walking through a field, so he's a 99-year-old man, walking through a field. The Lord had not worked in his life, and all of a sudden, he saw the beauty of the sunshine in the field, and he was drawn back to a sermon he heard when he was 12 years old by John Flavin. And it's at that moment, on the recollection of that sermon, that God saved Luke Short. And the Lord gave him about another 10 or 12 years of life where he proved to be steadfast in his profession of faith. So I want you to understand this, right? We speak about the effectual call. We're not just saying that it happens immediately as you hear the word preached. We're saying that God uses the word And it can be through the recalling of a verse of scripture, it can be through the recalling of a sermon, it can happen how the Lord will do it, but ordinarily God is pleased to use his word to regenerate, to give new life to sinners. Let's pray and then we'll open it up for questions. O most high and gracious God, we do plead that we would strive to know the Lord Jesus, that we, O Lord, would seek after this personal application by the Spirit of God of the redemption of Christ, that we, O Lord, would be renewed after the image of the Lord Jesus. We pray, O God, that we would also be stirred up to seek it and to ask for it in the life of others, and so, O Lord, I do that now. I pray that everyone that hears my voice in this building come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. I plead, oh God, that you would call them to yourself. I plead for the whole state of Tasmania. Though there is much wickedness afoot, oh Lord, you could come in a moment by your spirit and you could put it all to an end and you could save the whole island. And so God, I plead that you would. I plead that you would make us believers, that the spirit of God works mighty wonders and has great power. And I pray also, Lord, that you would forgive our unbelief. Because so often, it seems that we are not truly taken up with the profundity of these truths. That, oh Lord, we are so lethargic and spiritually lazy, and Lord, we know that you work, but we don't even ask for you to further work. It's a shame to us, and we pray that you'd forgive us for that, in Jesus' name. Amen. Questions? Yeah, you, there. When we think of regeneration, So, here's what I would say to that question. When we talk about effectual calling, we're speaking about really the process whereby God is by the Spirit drawing a sinner to himself. When we speak about the work of regeneration, It is that, it's a moment in time, you can't really know the moment, but it's the moment in time where the principle of spiritual life is implanted in you. And I would say that ordinarily that's immediate. So when I say that, what I mean is that the Spirit uses the word of God in order to draw sinners to himself. So, I don't wanna get off into this whole sort of field of weeds, but you have some people, John Gill, I think, is a good example. He was a Baptist, wrote some decent commentaries, but he believed in sort of a, He believed that basically pagans could be elected and could be immediately regenerated apart from any God-ordained means and could have eternal life, and it was very odd, and I just would say we should probably steer clear of that oddity. But that's, Isaac, you and I are probably speaking five levels above. Anybody else? children who have grown up with a sense that they've always loved God and had respect for God from perhaps very young, should it be expected that somehow down the track that they would then come to a I think some people in the past have argued along those lines. Boetsius? Boetsius was a Dutch guy in the 1600s. I think he argued for some of that. Not that history is our theological guide. Here's what I would say, I guess. The Lord is pleased to work in his own sovereign way. I think quite often Christians come into seasons of heavy conviction because everybody's growing sort of in their knowledge, right? So you come and you're convicted when you realize that you've been sinning or you understand God's law on a greater measure. So it's kind of this constant growth, as it were, in conviction and sensitivity to sin. I think sometimes that does happen with young people. where the Lord is pleased really to sort of impress upon them particular truths. I just wouldn't, I wouldn't make it ordinary, I guess, and maybe you're not asking me to make it ordinary. I feel like this is a very sort of awkward thing, because we're talking about how the Spirit of God works, and yeah, it's hard, but I appreciate your question. I think, I'll try to do a bit more. I know in my own experience, I grew up as a young child, sort of always sort of had a tender conscience and I always believed in God as far back as I remember. But it's sort of, I wonder now whether it's sort of just something that was ingrained into me by my family's teaching and instruction and perhaps a little bit of a hypocrite, or something that wasn't genuine. But later on, God did bring me a sense of real knowing my sin. And instead of, as I sort of became a believer, I didn't see it come better, I seemed to become worse, as God showed me. I still don't know to this day whether I was genuinely saved as a child or when I was somewhere in that area of 16. So the Lord did bring me to a genuine faith in Christ. What you were trying to say before was to actually know that and prove that later on when I was perhaps about 16. for the Lord, but should it be something that then, as they know it, test and prove to be true? I think that, yes, so I think every Christian has a responsibility, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 13, 5, examine yourself and see whether you be in the faith. lest basically you prove yourselves to be reprobates. So I think there's a responsibility, whether it's someone that thinks they've been, I say thinks they've been, not to doubt your or anybody's profession if you're sort of speaking generally, thinks they've been regenerated very early in childhood, or somebody that was, you know, a drunk and lived the worst possible life that was regenerated later in life. That command to examine oneself and look for fruit and understand the way that the Lord works, all of that is still there. So I think it is important that we would be calling every one of us, right, to examine ourselves and see where we stack up with what the Lord has outlined in scripture in terms of coming to faith, how we came to faith, what we know of the Lord Jesus Christ, what fruit God has brought forth in all of that. Is that the benefit of being in a covenant community, that you grow up knowing the law? And for my own experience, maybe somewhat similar, that you grow up knowing what's right and wrong, in a very strong sense of knowing what's right and wrong, but I guess it's only later in your life that you really rely on Jesus to go to the strength to do that. You do them, but then you grow. You talked about a daily conversion yesterday, and it is a bit like that, but yeah, do you know that what you did, you know, doing the right thing when you're a kid. Is that a converted thought? Is, you know, yeah. Yeah, so I think that's good, and we're gonna dive into that a bit tomorrow with the Philippian jailer, but I'm gonna do you all a great disservice of quoting Latin to you quickly, and then I'll unpack it. But normally if you read a good systematic theology, they're gonna speak of faith kind of in three ways. You have, Noatia, which is basically knowledge. You can think of it as a notion about something. So you have knowledge of something. They speak of it next as a census, which simply means assent. And then thirdly is fiducia, or faith, right? So I think it's helpful we kind of use those categories as an outline. So I would say, if you meet somebody who's an atheist on the street, and they've never heard anything about God, they don't even have level one, which is knowledge, right? So they've not been informed about anything relating to God. Covenant children are basically brought up being spoon-fed that. Like everything from catechism to Bible stories to the call of faith and repentance, all of that is given to them throughout the course of their childhood. So they have a very strong notion or very strong knowledge of God's truth. And then secondly, Because their parents take all of this stuff, all of these notions, if you will, to be true and factual, they are also inclined to take them to be true and factual. So I'll go back to the atheist for a moment. I may go to the atheist and I may explain to him the gospel. And he may say, well, I don't believe Jesus is a historical person. Well, he has he has knowledge in the sense that he's heard about it, but he hasn't assented that this is true. Now, most covenant children right out of the gate are going to have one and two. So they're going to have the knowledge of it. and they're gonna assent in the sense that it's factual, it's true. So they're gonna be able to say, Jesus is the savior of sinners, not necessarily their own savior, but they're gonna understand that that's who he is, that's what their parents believe. So then there comes this third step, which is fiducia, or faith. which is basically built on this testimony. So you've got knowledge and assent as a testimony. You think of Hebrews 11, there's a couple other places in the scripture to talk about this, but basically if you exercise faith, it's on the basis of the testimony of the scriptures. So you've got these two things as testimony, and you're looking outside of yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ. So that's really what faith is, is it's looking to salvation outside of yourself, on the basis of a credible testimony that you've received. And so I would say that most young people in our churches, at least it would be my hope, is if we look at the three categories I've just gave you, they've got one and two, and we want God, because it's the sovereign work of God, to work three, which is faith, and we want them to be given true faith. Does that help at all? there can become a sort of a formalistic, depending again on personality type, whether you comply and sort of just become a bit relentless in a sense, and keep the outward things all around, because the law of God convicts. But in a sense to always teach the necessity of a unity in Christ, and so that the law is dealt with by the law. And I think that's helpful, too, when you think about teaching your children the law. Again, there's all these threefold things, right? So I'll give you the three uses of the law, right? So you've got, the first use is kind of the general use of restraining evil, it's how society is governed. You have your second use of the law, which is conviction driving to Christ. And the third use is the rule of life for the Christian, right? So I always think with children, You want to instruct them in God's law to restrain them from evil, and you want the Lord to work in them so they keep God's law as a rule of life. But you can't, and it's for yourself too, this is true, you can't leave out that second usage of the law in convicting and driving to the Lord Jesus, because it should be the same for the Christian, because that's where the humbling happens, and that's where the turn of repentance and faith is. So I think there always has to be a constant sort of Every time you look at the law, maybe we can put it like this, every time you look at the law, you not only look at what your duties are in terms of keeping the law, but you also look and see how you've failed and repented, and that's really good at keeping you humble. Anything else? Yeah, yeah. Atheist, that's a good question. So A means kind of not, Theos is God, and atheist is someone that does not believe in God. So literally it means not a believer in God. You mentioned earlier our recognition of the Holy Spirit and His work, and in listening to a series of lectures on the Westminster Confession, a commentator made the point that in our Westminster confession was there's no chapter specifically devoted to the Holy Spirit. He pretended that the last nine chapters of the first section of the confession are on the Holy Spirit. I mean, yeah, those chapters 10 to 19, because they all deal with the work of the Word of the Spirit. Well, I think that's fair. I think that, I mean, I'm struggling because there was an interesting debate in the US, of course, a great country where I come from, at the end of the 1800s, about whether or not the Westminster needs to have its own unique chapter on the Holy Spirit. And I would say it's sufficient as it is, obviously, but I think you're right in the sense that Certainly, going back to John 3, the spirit kind of is like the wind, and so the confession looks at the spirit more through how it ordinarily operates, and the work that the spirit does, and perhaps devoting a chapter to it. That used to be made, actually. Lighter editions of the confession added a chapter at the end. Well, in the U.S. that turned out to be the case. I mean, they added all sorts of weird chapters to the confession after a certain amount of time. Anything else? Yes? You mentioned that every, like, sinner is brought to faith, to God. So, I mean, when you're looking at infant dying in infancy, it's quite a mysterious thing. And so I would say that I actually wanna, I just wanna use the Confessions language on this, because it's, I think it's, yeah. So it says, elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when and where and how he pleaseth, right? So you go back to Isaac's question about immediate on the word or immediate, right? Ordinarily it would be immediate on the basis of the word, and infant, infancy, it would be immediate. But we're saying the sovereignty of God. That's the best answer I can give to that. John the Baptist selected the womb of the Virgin Mary when Christ came into his presence. That's a good point. I hadn't really thought about that. See, that's what happens when you give me a Q&A. I've had weeks to prepare these lectures and now I'm in trouble. But you're right, so there is something of that, where obviously there was some sort of apprehension he must have had of Christ, of the Savior. And so yeah, I haven't really thought much about that, but. Was there also a famous sign from the Savior? Well, he said that he would basically see him again. It was the hope, yeah. All right, I think that brings us to lunch. Oh, yes? So, I would say it's the Word, and our confession says ordinarily it's the preaching of the Word or a catechism, so I can just really quickly, let me just give you the shorter catechism. I'd rather give you the catechism if it sounds better than I do. when I try to explain these things. Well, you'd look at Romans 10, right? So how shall they hear? Well, they have to have a preacher, right? And you see the whole biblical model is Christ sets aside men and he tells them to go and preach the gospel. So we would say, I would say the biblical pattern is that the word of God is the means by which God is most often pleased to regenerate sinners, and particularly that of the preaching of the word. So the preaching of the word is the means of grace. So we mean that God is particularly pleased to use that means. And so question answer 89, and it's got all the scripture proofs too, so I could give those to you, but, how is the word of God made effectual to salvation? The spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the word an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation. So there really is, for lack of a better way of saying it, I would argue taught in the scripture something special and prime about the preaching of the gospel. And I could, yeah, that's a whole, we could do a whole series of lectures on preaching, which would be a lot easier than. Yeah, well, so anyway, anybody else? All right, well, let's go get lunch then.