We'll just jump right in. If you want to open up your copy of God's Word this evening to John chapter 6. John chapter 6. We continue this series. You ready for this? Our summer series. It's not quite summer anymore, is it? Summer slash fall slash almost winter series on soteriology or the doctrine of salvation. We begin with the five solas and we are now working our way through what is called Five Points of Grace or the Doctrines of Grace. It's very commonly referred to as Calvinism, but you can take the first letters of each of these and spell the word TULIP. So you get the TULIP Doctrines. That acronym is often helpful to help you remember. We've discussed these first three. We move this evening to the eye in the tulip, which is irresistible grace. And we'll do a little reading, and then we'll come back and see if we can use this little board to maybe help a little bit. John chapter six, and I'm going to read verse 37, and then a little more. John six. Verse 37 says, all that the Father gives me will come to me. And the one who comes to me, I will by no means cast out, for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. This is the will of the Father who sent me, that of all He has given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. For the sake of time, let's jump to verse 44. No one can come to me except or unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. And then if I may, again, for the sake of time, verse 63, John 6, verse 63. It is the Spirit who gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you, they are Spirit and they are life. There are some of you who do not believe For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe and who would betray him. And he said, therefore, I have said to you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted to him by my father. Tonight we look at the subject of irresistible grace. Irresistible grace, just to make sure we're all speaking the same language. That term irresistible just simply means that which cannot successfully be resisted. It is irresistible. When Pat and I first met, she found me irresistible. That would not be true necessarily. Irresistible. That which cannot be successfully resisted. That's what the word means. And of course the word grace means unmerited favor. Unmerited favor. Someone has said this and maybe you are already familiar with this. Grace. God's riches at Christ's expense. Grace. God's riches at Christ's expense. And so what I want to talk about this evening, as it relates and falls into the TULIP acronym, is this doctrine of irresistible grace. Now, before we move forward, I'm going to do the same thing that I have done before, and I'm going to offer another title or term for this for this subject. But I didn't want to write it up there yet or just a minute ago. I wanted to wait and try to do it now just to see if I can spell in front of everyone and write sideways for that matter. So just like we said before, rather than just using the term limited atonement, I think there's maybe a better way to understand that, and that is particular redemption. The same thing with irresistible grace. I think perhaps a more articulate way to explain what we mean, and if you could read that, it is effectual, E-F-F-E-C-T-U-A-L, the effectual call. Or you could say effectual grace, that's either way, is the same. And of course, the word effectual just simply means having the power or ability to produce an intended effect. Effectual, the power and or ability to produce the desired effect. So what we're talking about, and I'm going to give you a definition, whichever of these two terms you want to use, I want to give you a definition. And here is what we are speaking of this evening. Here it is. The Holy Spirit will effectually draw every elect sinner to saving faith in Christ. For those of you that take notes, let me walk you back through that. The Holy Spirit will effectually draw every elect sinner to saving faith in Christ. So, my circle, and I know it probably looks more like an egg than a circle, but this circle represents the entirety of the human race. All people that have ever lived or will ever live. And when sin entered into the world, all of the entire human race was affected by sin. All of us are born totally depraved. Again, you can use moral inability. Another way the Bible describes us is that we are spiritually dead. The entire human race was plagued by sin, and that sin has led to the depravity of man. We're morally unable to please God outside of his work in us. We are spiritually dead. We cannot understand, truly understand spiritual truth apart from the enlightening work of God himself. Therefore, if we are ever, if anyone ever is going to enter into right relationship with God because of our inability and our depravity, There has to be a force outside of us that comes to work within us. And that began with God's unconditional election. That began before the worlds were framed, God unconditionally chose, elected a group of people within humanity. The Bible calls them the elect. That within the entire human race, there are those who are His elect people. You can call them the family of God, you can call them the sheep, you can call them, the Bible describes them as those who were given, and that's in our text here, those who were given to Christ, or the elect. How is it that fallen, depraved men are going to enter into right relationship with God? He chose to save a group of people. And then Christ came. Christ came to do all that was necessary to redeem these people, to reconcile them, to purchase their party. Christ atoned for their sins. What we are talking about this evening is this, is that God the Holy Spirit will irresistibly draw every one of these individuals to saving faith in Christ. They were elected by the Father, reconciled or atoned for by the Son, and they will be quickened and converted by the Spirit. So you can see the triunity of God, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. You can see the Trinity at work in our salvation. The Father loved this group of people, this vast, again, it's not a little tiny little fraction, this vast number of people out of every kindred and tongue and tribe and nation. The Father set His peculiar affection on them. And He elected them to be part of His family, chose them. And then Christ, God the Son, leaves the glories of heaven and comes to earth to redeem, to purchase their part and to make it possible that we can enter into right relationship with God. He did what was necessary. And then the Spirit effectually draws all of these individuals in time. Many of these folks are already dead and gone and are with the Lord, right? They're already dead and gone with the Lord. There's some of these who likely haven't even been born yet. I don't know when Jesus is coming and neither does anybody else. It may be tomorrow, it may be a thousand years, I don't know. But the Spirit of God will irresistibly draw, effectually call all of these elect into right relationship with the Father. And we'll get to the P next week. That's next week. We'll discuss the perseverance and preservation of the saints. So the Holy Spirit will effectually draw, irresistibly draw every elect sinner to saving faith in Christ. These are not loaded questions. If you'd like to answer them audibly, feel free to do so. All right? Is the Holy Spirit God? Yes. Amen? The Holy Spirit is God. Does God have the ability to do anything He desires? Absolutely, He does. Hence, does the Holy Spirit have the power to do as He chooses? He is God, amen? So does the Holy Spirit have supreme, sovereign power over men? Yes, He does. Is God invincible? Yes, He is. Therefore, when we think about how lost sinners are brought into a right relationship with God, it begins with God choosing, Christ atoning, the Spirit drawing, effectually, irresistibly drawing us into right relationship with God. Again, if you don't begin with a T, you get all fouled up. I cannot emphasize to you how important that is. Look at these verses we read this evening. John 6, verse 37. All that the Father gives me, what? Maybe? Will come to me. So you see in this, Jesus is saying that there is a number of people that were given to him by the Father. these individuals, given to him. And he says, all of those given to me will, I think maybe the King James still has the word shall, shall come to me. That's clear, it is definitive. You can't twist that to get anything else. All of those that the Father gave in this gift of love, that he gave to the Son will come to him. And that means they will come to him in saving faith. They will receive the gospel. They will believe the gospel. And the one who comes to me, I will by no means cast out. That's getting down here to the peak. Verse 39, this is the will of the Father who sent me, that of all He has given me, I should lose nothing. Again, you see that language of those given to Him. John 6, 44. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. Now I'm interested in that, indulge me, in that little word can. No one can. And that word has the idea of ability. It's really not even about permission, it's about ability. If young Matthew here said, Brother Lewis, I think I can pick up your car, I would say, no, you can't. No, you can't. I see you big guns. I'm not saying that he doesn't have permission. I'm saying you just don't have the ability to do that. And that's exactly what Jesus is saying. Verse 44, no one can, no one has the ability to come to me, again, in saving faith, except or unless the Father who sent me draws him. Irresistibly draw. Effectually draw. Paul, whatever term you want to use, no one has the ability, because we are depraved, we are morally unable, we are spiritually dead, no one has the ability to come to him except or unless the Father, working through the Holy Spirit, draws him, draws him. Now, it is important that we'd sometimes do what I call word work, that we are word nerds and do a little deeper dive. That word draw could be translated compel and it could be translated as drag. This exact same Greek word is used in John when they are talking about Peter and the others out fishing and they draw the net into the boat. They quite literally drag the net to the boat. The same word is also used in the book of Acts when the religious crowd had enough of that gospel preaching, and it says they drew, I'd have to look at it, I think it's Paul and somebody, they drew him out of the temple. They didn't just say, Paul, it'd be great if you left right now. No, they drug him out of the temple. R.C. Sproul tells us, that that same word is used in antiquity, Greek antiquity. And some of you may be, some of you may be old enough to associate with this. Drawing water out of a well, where you send down a pail or a bucket, and you draw water up. You don't say, water, water, water, water, come here. You say that, but it has to be drawn up. In the same way, because we are buried in sin, dead in trespasses in sin, God reaches down and He draws us up to Himself. And He uses the gospel to do that. He uses what Christ accomplished in His atonement, the preaching of that message. That is what He uses to accomplish that. And here's a real good place to throw this out, just so we're all maybe understanding the same thing. Every single time that the gospel is preached, there is a general call for all men to receive that message. I mentioned on Monday night, Pat and I went to that Perry Volunteer Outreach, to that Christmas dinner that they had up here at the fairgrounds. I told her before we left the house, I said, I just guarantee you I'm not gonna get through this tonight without them asking me to do something. I was not scheduled to speak, I prayed last year, that's all. Right before the service began, Larry Wood comes up and says, you know Barney always kept one bullet in his pocket just in case he needed it. He said, do you have one bullet ready to put in your gun, in your gospel gun? I said, I do. So he gave me the opportunity, and I stood up to this pretty good-sized crowd Monday night, seven or eight minutes, and I preached pure gospel, pure gospel, 250 give or take people there. I preached about the greatest gift that God ever gave, and that's the gift of Himself, the gift of saving faith in Christ. And I said, why wouldn't you want to? Why wouldn't you receive this gift? It's the greatest gift anyway. I'm not going to re-preach that. My point is, I was standing there proclaiming the gospel, but men can only make a general call, and only God can make an effectual call. I can stand up here and preach the gospel until I'm blue in the face. But unless God, through the Holy Spirit, takes that message and makes it real to you, you will sit there dead in your trespasses and sins. But when God, the Holy Spirit, does take that message and He reveals to that lost sinner their hopeless estate, shows them their guilt, the weight of their condemnation, of rebellion against God, He quickens them or gives them faith, gives them spiritual life, they will be effectually drawn, irresistibly drawn, called to the Son. They will lovingly embrace Him. All of these individuals What makes the difference? If you're sitting in a service somewhere and there are two people sitting on a pew side by side, both of them hear the same message, both of them hear the same call to repentance, why is it that one just walks out the door and could absolutely care less and another hears that and their life is radically changed? What makes the difference? The difference is what God does with that message. He empowers it in a unique way on His schedule and at His time to awaken that dead sinner and help them to see the beauty that there is in Christ and to embrace His work. I'm gonna erase some of this as much as I know y'all hate to lose that good artwork right here. I don't want to get too far into this tonight, but this is something that you should learn and remember. Regeneration precedes faith. Regeneration precedes faith. And by precedes, I'm not talking so much about chronologically as logically. Not so much about chronologically. In other words, what God the Holy Spirit does is he regenerates that individual. Without the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, a dead man cannot hear. A dead man cannot believe. A dead man cannot see. What is it that Jesus told Nicodemus? Except a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. So the spirit of God comes and he regenerates that individual and he gives to that person the gifts of repentance and faith. Repentance and faith. And so not so much chronologically because regeneration and faith go together, they cannot be separated, but there is a logical order of this. And that is that God, the Holy Spirit, quickens, that means make alive or regenerates or converts. He does that so that the sinner now has ears to hear. eyes to see. He takes that dead, hard heart and he gives that individual a new heart. And they willingly, delightfully embrace the gospel. Delightfully embrace the gospel. Apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, a dead man cannot see, cannot believe, and will never know. Like the other tulip doctrines, like the other tulip doctrines, this one, this truth teaches us that salvation is a gift of God, a gift of grace. It is a gift of God's unmerited mercy towards us. Jim Osman, who spoke for us recently, he not only has a book that God doesn't whisper. He also has a book, God Doesn't Try. And I've only read parts of this, but here's a good part. He writes and says, we have a moral inability to turn from sin and come to Christ. Our impotence lies in our will. Sinners cannot come because they will not come. We're depraved. But then he quotes J.C. Ryle, and I want you to hear this quote. J.C. Ryle wrote, the nature of man since the fall is so corrupt and depraved that even when Christ is made known and preached to him, he will not come to him and believe in him without the special grace of God inclining his will and giving him a disposition to come. Moral suasion and advice alone will not bring him, he must be drawn. Back in our text again, near the end of the chapter, verse 65. Well, you can back up to verse 63. It is a spirit that gives life, the flesh profits nothing. Verse 65, that's why I said to you, therefore I said to you, no one can, no one has the ability to come to me unless it has been granted to him, given him the right by my Father. The Holy Spirit convicts, calls, converts, and keeps every single sinner for whom Jesus died. Again, God cannot fail. God cannot fail. The Holy Spirit never fails to call, regenerate, and save those whom the Father has elected and Christ has redeemed. I concede that the outward call When you share the gospel with some individual, when you tell them about Christ, generally that is rejected, it is perhaps ridiculed, it is hated, it is scorned, but that's because the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. However, when the Holy Spirit takes that message and he convicts this elect sinner, when he convicts them of their sin, he will irresistibly draw them to faith in Christ. For those of you that take notes, 1 Corinthians 1, 23 and 24, you can write that down and look at it. I wanna give you just a couple closing thoughts. Are you then saying, preacher, that people are forced against their will to come to Jesus. Absolutely not. That is not what we're saying whatsoever. People who oppose us, those friends, and again, they're friends, who hold to an Armenian position, who believe that God's grace is resistible, not irresistible, that it is resistible. They say, well, you think that they're gonna be people dragged up into heaven, kicking and screaming against their will. They're like, no, that's not what we believe at all. What we believe is that when the Spirit of God uses the gospel of Christ to convict the heart and birth new life into that individual, that they do not have to be forced to embrace the gospel. They love the gospel. They can't get enough of the gospel. And as God continues to work in us, we want more gospel and more gospel and more. But it begins with the work of God in us. It doesn't begin with us. It begins with the work of God in us. You say someone like Judas Iscariot, he did what was in his heart to do. God didn't force him to do that. He did what was in his heart. It was part of God's plan, part of God's purpose that he would betray the Lord of glory that would lead to the crucifixion, death, and ultimately to the atoning work of Christ at Calvary and then his resurrection. But Judas Iscariot was still responsible for his behavior. So we insist that those who have been regenerated Receive faith, and that faith is in the finished work of Christ. Also, absolutely, we can, even after conversion, we can grieve the Spirit. Old preacher here does that every day. Grieves the Holy Spirit. We do things that are not in accordance to God's Word, and that grieves the Holy Spirit. we can quench the spirit. But that doesn't mean that the Holy Spirit is weak, so weak that he can't overcome our fallen nature. That's not the case. Because the Bible says, our God is in the heaven. Our God is in heaven and he does whatever he pleases. And that includes in the heart and life of every individual. Only God can raise the dead, that's true physically, it's true spiritually. God doesn't, and that's the Holy Spirit including, the Holy Spirit, God himself, doesn't need our permission, he doesn't need our cooperation to accomplish his will. We are made willing in the day of his power. Let me finish where I finished so far. We don't know who God's elect are. We don't know who they are. We cannot, we don't have the ability to crack people's head open and pour Jesus in. We can't do it. If we could, I'd walk around with a hammer. I guarantee. You can't do that. We can't draw, irresistibly draw, effectually draw people, but what we can do is we can share the gospel with full assurance that the Holy Spirit can and does use that message on His time and at His point to effectually call all of God's elect to saving faith in the Son. And what that leads into is that ultimately all of these individuals will persevere, they will remain, so that those who are elected Christ atoned for, the spirit draws, will be in right relationship with God. I'm gonna read one passage and we're done, okay? Romans chapter eight. I've been waiting months to use this, so Romans chapter eight, we'll be done. I don't have to say a whole lot, the book says it for me. You Bible students here are already familiar with Romans 8 verse 28, but look at it just one more time with me. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called. You see that term, the called. effectually called, irresistibly called, according to his purpose. Now here's this golden chain, Romans 8, 29 and 30. For whom he did foreknow, that is, he had a unique, loving, intimate knowledge of a particular, in fact, I think the word could be used, covenant relationship with. For whom he did foreknow, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, those he predestined, these he called." So look, he predestined, he elected. He also calls, effectually calls. Keep reading. And those he called, he also justified. We preached on justification by faith alone already, that is to declare righteous, to declare righteous. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. There's an unbroken link there. Those that God foreknew, predestined, called, justified, and will one day glorify. Glorify. And all of those individuals, all of that didn't begin with them. It begins and ends with God, which is why I begin this study with the Solas. We believe that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, and the finished work of Christ alone for the glory of God alone. All right.