Dear congregation, a night like tonight, New Year's Eve, is a call to look back on the year that is now about to close. And it's time to take stock of what we have done and what we have left undone. And it's a time also to look at what the Lord has done. And he never leaves anything undone. And we have so much that we can look back on over this past year, 2019, in our world at large, in our nation, in our own lives, in God's providence. We have been upheld and protected and provided for. And spiritually, too, the Lord has provided in so many ways and in great abundance. So much so that we ought to eternally thank Him for even the Bible, the gospel, and the preaching of that as we have been privileged to receive that for 52 Lord's Days and some additional services through the week. And it's good to sometimes just let that sink in. So many in our world don't have that benefit. I heard of a woman in Africa who walked four hours to hear gospel preaching. And she was asked by someone, why would you walk four hours? She said, I would walk four weeks to hear a gospel sermon. We take so much for granted. And the Lord's days come and the Lord's days go. And the question is this, has what we have heard Has it sunk down, not just into our minds, but into our hearts? And has it made a difference in our lives? Because whether we know it or not, wherever the Word of God is faithfully preached, God is at work. The Spirit is striving with consciences, with minds, with hearts of sinners everywhere. The Bible makes that clear. And we want to reflect on that with the Lord's help tonight from a passage in the first book of the Bible, Genesis 6. You may want to turn there, Genesis 6 and verse 3a. This is just before the flood. The sons of God, and by that is meant the professing church of God, was intermarrying with the world, and there was violence in the world, and so much other sin, and the Lord makes this pronouncement, and we want to reflect on this with the Lord's help tonight. Verse three of Genesis 6, 3A, where we read these words, and the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh. Thus far our text. We'll see what the Lord's help. My spirit shall not always strive. We'll look first of all at the God who is striving. Secondly, the ways in which he strives with us. And then thirdly and lastly, the limit. the limit to the striving. My spirit shall not always strive. The God who is striving, the ways in which he strives with us, and the limit to this striving. Well, as we mentioned here, the context of our text passage is the flood. during the times of Noah. And the New Testament makes very clear in passages like Matthew 24 that what happened on the eve of the flood is a type of what will happen in the end of our world. People were eating, drinking, giving in marriage, and going about their normal business when all of a sudden the then known world was covered with a flood and came to an end. And in those moments there was this stark division between the eight souls that were saved in the ark, Noah and his family, and the rest of humanity that perished. And when you read chapter five and six together with the whole of the scripture, we learn that in those days leading up to the flood, for 120 years in fact, there were preachers. I don't know if you knew that, but there were preachers preaching the word of God. One of them was Enoch. who was called a preacher of righteousness in Jude 14 and 15. Or even told some of the things that he told the people, he warned them of judgment to come. And another such preacher was Noah himself, also a preacher of righteousness. And the way this has often been pictured is that as Noah was working on the ark for 120 years, with every hammer blow, He was not only visibly enacting the fact that judgment was coming, but he warned the people and he preached righteousness, God's just judgment for sin and a way of escape through God's provided ark. And so over this nation, over the world at that time, these warnings and this gospel preaching went out to many who were in the earth at that time. And it was not just Noah and Enoch that were preaching, but really behind them, the Spirit was striving with men. That's what our text says, my spirit shall not always strive with men. In other words, the spirit was striving during those days. Well, let's look at who is this spirit, my spirit. Well, this is none other than the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity as we know him. And this is the spirit of God. This is God, God himself. the third person of the Trinity. The spirit who had creation moved over creation, over the deep, and was involved in creation. And was part of that council too when God said, let us make man in our image and after our likeness. So the spirit was there at creation. And now this spirit is here operating in the preaching of Noah and Enoch and perhaps others as well. My spirit, the Lord says. His own spirit. Think of that for a moment. Just let your mind settle on that this is God, the Holy Spirit, striving. with men and women and young people and children. None other than God himself in the preaching of the word. My spirit, the spirit of the father and the spirit of the son. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, he says, no man knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of a man. In other words, nobody knows a man from the inside out except that person's own spirit. And then Paul goes on to say in 1 Corinthians 2 verse 10 and 11, no one knows God like the spirit of God knows God, yea, even the deep things of God. And that's the Holy Spirit who was at work at this time, striving with these people. My friends, how we need this Holy Spirit. Do you know that? Do you believe that? Do you know something of how much you depend personally on the Holy Spirit of God? or God, the Holy Spirit. You know, without the Spirit, we are dead in sins and trespasses. Without the Spirit, we have no life. The Bible tells us that the Spirit quickens or gives life. The flesh profits nothing. And when we look back over this year, people of God, when we think about what the Lord enabled us to do, If there was any good in it at all, it was because of the Holy Spirit in you, operating in you, giving life to you, enabling you to believe, helping you to walk in God's ways, producing in you the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, longsuffering, and so on. Without the Holy Spirit, none of that would be there at all. And the same is true with the preaching of the word. If there were no spirit of the living God, no matter what preacher stood here, no matter his gifts, no matter his mind, no matter his empathy, it would be nothing. without the Holy Spirit, how we need the Holy Spirit and how we should thank God the Holy Spirit and never be forgetful that we owe everything, all life, all grace in us to the Holy Spirit. And how careful we should be, this is all of us, how careful we should be not to grieve the Holy Spirit. Not to sin against the Holy Spirit. You should make a study sometime of all the different sins that are possible against the Holy Spirit. Let me just list a few of them for you. Grieving the Holy Spirit. Grieve not the Holy Spirit, Paul says in Ephesians 4. And he says in 1 Thessalonians 5, he says, quench not the Holy Spirit. Despise not prophesying. Don't, as it were, blow out the Holy Spirit as he is burning in the preaching of the word, and as it were, take your fingers and quench him. Or resist the Holy Spirit. You do always, Stephen says, resist the Holy Spirit. Acts 7. And then there is the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit in Matthew 12. Or Paul says in Hebrews 10, doing despite to the Holy Spirit or injuring the Holy Spirit or vexing the Spirit. There's at least six ways in which we can sin against the Holy Spirit. How careful we should be not to grieve The Holy Spirit. Whatever distinctions there are between these different sins against the Holy Spirit, none of them are good. We shouldn't want any of them. We shouldn't do any of these sins. And the Bible makes clear that the Holy Spirit is like a dove. Think of this, children, a dove, a bird. Imagine that a bird was here in this church, right here. Now, a bird, and especially a dove, could easily be slighted, easily be provoked, and it's a gentle bird. And we need to be so very careful lest we would drive away the Holy Spirit. I know of a minister who stood on this pulpit a long time ago, and he said for about two and a half years he felt the power of the Holy Spirit in preaching, until one time he stood behind this pulpit, it was the previous building, and he said he remembers the very moment where his words were just his own. And that week before they'd had a congregational meeting in which harsh words had been spoken from the one to the other. And he said, I was grieved by that, but I didn't think much of it. But he came to the pulpit the next Sunday and the power was gone. The spirit had been grieved. How careful we should be not to grieve the Holy Spirit by slighting Him, by vexing Him, by injuring Him, as the Bible says. Well, as we leave our first point congregation, do you personally respect the Holy Spirit? Are you concerned not to grieve Him? Do you know what you owe to Him? Think about this. The Lord Jesus Christ humbled himself to come among us, to walk this earth of ours, to move among this sin-sick world. But you know that the Holy Spirit also humbles himself. He humbles himself to come among us, to dwell among us, to work among us, to strive with sinners. Oh what love there is in the heart of the Holy Spirit. Even in dwell vile sinners like myself and like you people of God. Oh the love of the Holy Spirit. But we want to look secondly at the different ways in which the Holy Spirit strives. Because notice what our text says, my spirit shall not always strive. What is striving me? What does it mean when the Holy Spirit strives? Well, the word really literally means to contend or to prosecute. or to argue a case. It's really a legal term or a judicial term, something that you'd find a prosecutor doing. And what does a prosecutor do? Well, a prosecutor makes a case against a defendant and arraigns witnesses and shows the crime for what it is. And that's exactly what the Holy Spirit does when he strives with our souls. All of us know what our conscience is, I trust. It's that voice inside of us that warns us when we sin, when we come short of the glory of God. That conscience is a gift of God. It's a remnant of the image in which he made us. And the Holy Spirit comes and awakens that conscience and speaks through that conscience. And through his word, he strives with souls, convicting them. of their sin and of the righteousness that awaits them, the judgment that awaits them. And how does the Spirit do this? Well, the Spirit can do this even in providence. When all of a sudden, out of the blue, a dark providence comes over us and we're shook up. Or a friend is injured in an accident or even dies, as happens. And then you come face to face with someone that you were with last night and that person's gone. And something happens inside of you. It's your conscience that begins to say, you know, you have to prepare for that day. You know, things are not well with you. What if that had been you? And that's the spirit that is striving with us and awakening our conscience. But more to the point, and this is what's happening in our passage, the Spirit strives with people in the preaching of the word. And so as Enoch and Noah were preaching, and as Noah was building this giant ark, which served as a visual aid, really, of the fact that there was only one way of escape, Noah was preaching. Judgment's coming, judgment's coming, judgment's coming, but here is the only safe place. And as he was preaching, the Spirit was striving with the people at that time. In fact, if you read 1 Peter 3, it tells us that Christ was speaking to those people at that time. Through the Spirit, through Noah, he preached unto the spirits in prison. That's how these people are pictured here, as really prisoners of Satan, which all of us are by nature, which sometime were disobedient when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was a preparing wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved by water. And what that means is that even in the time before the flood, Christ was there preaching to the people. So eager was Christ to announce salvation and to proclaim a way of escape that through the Spirit, through Noah, through Enoch, he came to those people and was striving with them. And this is what the Lord still does today from heaven through his Spirit, through the preaching of his word. Who of us have not at some or other moment in our lives experienced the striving of the Spirit? Have you never been convicted in a measure of the shortness of time? Have you never seen and felt that someday soon life would be over and you would stand before the great white throne of God to give account of everything you ever did, said, or thought. Have you never, ever been stopped in your tracks to realize that God's law is real and that every one of God's commandments is a blazing fire that never will be put out and that those who disobey these commandments will pay for their disobedience either by themselves or by another. Has it never happened when even in your home as you saw your father or your mother or someone else pray, maybe you watched them, maybe you came in on them praying, have you ever felt in your soul, you know, my father's God is real and I will one day meet with him? Have you never had those convictions come over you? or under a serious sermon, felt that you could very well walk out of church and the earth could open up before you and life could have come to a close. My dear friends, this past year, has the Lord never striven with your conscience, with your heart, giving you a sense of the brevity of time, the length of eternity, the sacredness of God's law, and even the exclusivity of the Lord Jesus Christ as the only Savior. You see, the Spirit doesn't just convict concerning the law. He does that. But he also convicts concerning the gospel. He makes sinners to realize that's the only way of escape. If I don't go that way, I won't be saved. Over this past year, the Lord has been striving under the preaching here and in other places as well. What has all this striving done in your life? What have all these words done for you? What have you done with them? This is the pressing question as the year 2019 is almost in the books. Never to appear again except in the judgment of God when this year will stretch out before you and you will see in eternity all the many times in which God clearly, plainly, was striving with you. This brings us to our third and final point and that is that there is a limit, a limit to the striving. My text does not say my spirit shall always strive. Our text says my spirit shall not always strive. Why does the spirit stop striving? If you look back at our text, you'll find the answer. My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh. And by that, it's meant not just that he is a body and has a body, Though that's true. What this means is that man by nature is fleshly. He's carnal, sold under sin. He is, as Romans 8 says it, he is carnally minded. He minds the things of the flesh, the appetites of our body and of our sinful mind. And that's what man does by nature. He walks after the flesh. And to be of the flesh is to be at enmity with God and is death. And that's what people have always done. They did it in the times of Noah. They do it today. And what that means is they spend their resources You spend your breath, your strength, your energy, your money, your mind on the things of the flesh, the things that you can see, touch, and handle, and all the different pleasures and appetites that the world is so quick to put before you in which your own mind and your own heart serve up to you as well. Stuff, self, sin, materialism, pleasure. And so what the Lord is saying here is, my spirit will not always strive with man because if he goes on in his sin and is pursuing the lusts of the flesh, he can only do that so long. And I will withdraw because though the Lord is patient and long-suffering, His patience and His long suffering knows an end. Think about that. All that the Lord gave you in 2019, all the breaths that He allowed you to take, all the thoughts He allowed you to think, and what did you spend your energy on? And is not the Lord just to say at one point or another, enough is enough? You're taking my oxygen. You're taking my strength. You're taking all the good gifts that I'm giving to you and you are using them for sin. The Bible tells us in many different places that there is an end to the Lord's patience. Proverbs 29 verse one has these solemn words. He who often being reproved hardens his neck shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy. And that's what happened in Noah's day. He was preaching for 120 years. He was preaching, wide is the gate that goes to destruction, narrow is the way until salvation, but strive to enter in, come into the ark, there is safety. And people scoffed and they mocked. And one day that door of the ark, which had been open an hour before then, was shut. And it was too late. And the spirit stopped striving. And that was not just true in the days of Noah. Think of someone else in the New Testament. Do you remember Herod, King Herod? He heard John the Baptist gladly. He would go down to prison to hear John the Baptist preach the word of God. And he heard him gladly. But one day, his flesh, his sin, gained that final foothold in his life, and John's voice was gone forever. And Herod simply had a gnawing conscience, but never more the preaching of John the Baptist. God's spirit stopped striving with Herod. Or think of Felix to whom Paul reasoned regarding righteousness and temperance and judgment to come. And he pled with Felix to be reconciled unto God. And Felix trembled, an evidence of the fact that the Spirit in that moment was striving with him. And Felix said tremblingly, he said, I will call for thee at a more convenient season. But did that season ever come? No. The spirit who had striven with Felix would strive with him no more. And Felix lived out his days without conversion, without a change, without being reconciled unto God. Or think of King Agrippa, likewise. Paul is preaching, and the Holy Spirit is present, and there is the striving of the Spirit with Agrippa to the point that Agrippa cries out, Paul, you almost persuade me to be a Christian. In other words, Paul, I'm this close to being a Christian. Close, but never in. And the spirit stopped striving, and a grip was hardened. My friends, when the spirit is striving with your conscience, don't delay. Don't push it away. God is patient, as I said, but His patience knows an end. He is jealous of His honor. And when you take His words, and when you take His breath that he's giving you and you spend it on sin and you spend it on the pleasures and the loss of your flesh. The Lord may strive, but his striving will reach an end. And he's calling you to utmost seriousness tonight. Congregation, it is scriptural that there are seasons in the life of a church and in the life of people in which the Lord's Word comes so close. There is conviction that is tangible. It's felt. Have you never had it that the gospel door seemed open even to a sinner like you? And people were pressing into that gospel door, and you knew that if sinners could be saved, then you too could be saved. And yet you tarried, you lingered, you thought of your friends, you thought of your family, you thought of the future, you thought of what this might cost you, you suppressed it with vain hopes that this will all come back. But my dear friends, you can't be sure it will come back. There are people who have been in the midst of seasons like that. And personally also, they have had the striving of the Holy Spirit so near, so close. And later they went back to the same sermons and something had changed. They didn't speak anymore. They didn't sound the same way anymore. And what had seemed to be so real, so near, so close, was gone. And the Lord Jesus Christ, when he was on the earth, he said this to Jerusalem and to the cities of Capernaum. He said, if thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace, These are things that belong to your peace. And elsewhere he says, you knew not the time of your visitation. I was among you. I was walking inches away from you with my arms stretched out wide saying, come unto me, all who labor and are heavy laden. I was among you. with wide open arms. But you would not. You wanted your sins. Well, my friends, what are your sins worth to you? Will they save you? No. Will they give you pleasure? Perhaps momentarily, but they'll bring you a lot of guilt and a lot of misery. And in the judgment, they will not help you. They will damn you. if you are not redeemed in the time of grace by God and the gospel of his son. My dear friends, things are serious. I want to remind you one last time this night that yes, very soon we're crossing a threshold into 2020, but one day it won't just be a threshold into another year. It'll be a threshold into eternity. And you don't choose that. The cold hand of death will come and pull you across that line. And you and I and all of us will meet our maker and give account of everything we've ever done. And not just give account of how we have sinned against the law, but we will give account of how we have sinned against the gospel. That's worst of all, against the overtures of God's mercy, against His Son, and against His Holy Spirit. And my dear friends, in that moment, there won't be any second chances. There won't be that middle category where you have believers and unbelievers, and then you'll have a big, vast category in the middle in which you can somehow hide. No. And let me tell you, presumption, Simply to presume that all will be well in that day won't cut it. Or pretending, just kind of looking like a Christian on the outside. You won't get in that way. The things that you can cover up now, you will not be able to cover up then. They will all be stripped away by the light of the glory of God. Well, what must we do? Three things. We must stop striving with God. You know, my text here says, the spirit shall not always strive with man. You know, our sin is we strive with God, we contend with God, we argue with God. What is this all that, Lord, later, Lord, maybe later, I'll take thy words seriously. This is the debating, the arguing, the striving that we do towards God. And God says in his word, woe is him that striveth with his maker. We need to stop it. Stop striving with God. And we need, secondly, to repent of all our delays, of all our excuses, of all our sins against the Holy Spirit and against Christ and against God, the many times we have grieved Him and resisted Him. We need to fall on our faces before God and acknowledge these sins as sin and confess them and cry out to God, God, have mercy on me. and repent all the way, not just half-hearted, not just a quick prayer, not just a few sins, but a wholehearted repentance. Turn me and I shall be turned. The Bible says loud and clear, repent and be converted, that your sins might be blotted out. Wouldn't that be the most wonderful thing if on the last night of 2019, your sins were blotted out as a thick cloud by the blood, the all-atoning blood of Jesus Christ offered in the gospel. Stop striving. Repent and cast yourself upon the mercy of God in Jesus Christ. You know, when the Spirit comes striving with our minds and consciences and hearts, what is He saying? But turn unto Christ. Christ was speaking through Noah, and He would have said the same things He said when He was here on the earth. Come unto Me, look unto Me, fall before Me. Come to me and I will in no wise cast you out. You see, dear friends, we need more than this spirit striving. Let us be clear about that. It's not enough simply to have some convictions about eternity or about God or about the judgment. You know, some people, they rest in convictions. That's wrong. No, the Spirit's striving is to lead us to the feet of Christ because once we are at His feet, once we fall to Him and submit to Him, He will never leave us. He will never forsake us. He cannot. He will abide with his people forever, and his sacrifice will avail. The Lord will never cut short that work whatsoever. He will always remain with his people. But as we close tonight, I wanna speak especially to those of you who have made it through 2019 under much of the striving ministry of the Holy Spirit under gospel preaching. And I just, I would to God that you would have this bound upon your heart. Even this word eternity. Eternity. It's not just a million years. But when a million years are done, It'll just be like a minute because it will be forever and ever and ever. Thomas Watson said this, he said, eternity to the godly is a day without a night. To the wicked it is a night without ever a sunrise. Well my friend, eternity is real. Hear His voice today. Harden not your heart. God is seriously calling you. His words are well-meant. He never tricks when He speaks seriously about His Son. How could He? He is the Savior, as we remembered just days ago. He will save sinners from their sin. If you are a sinner here tonight, Jesus Christ is the Savior of you, no matter how young you are. See, some of you young people, you're listening to me tonight. Oh, that you would have come to Christ, that you would fall under Christ and live out of Him. There's nothing barring young people at all. In fact, the Lord says, seek me while you are young. It could be so very different. And don't cast in your lot with your friends. Don't worry about what they will think. They need the same thing you need. Don't listen to the whispers of Satan or the whispers of your own heart that someday you'll seek God. Someday you'll be made right with God. Do not delay. That's Satan's favorite word, delay. Tomorrow, when Christ says in the gospel today, If you hear my voice, harden not your heart. John Owen says, become a sworn enemy of unbelief. See it as your greatest enemy and danger and fall upon God and Jesus Christ in the gospel. Oh, people of God, we've reached the end of this year. I pray that God would not stop striving with sinners here in this place and throughout the city and throughout our world. Bend the knee and cry for God to renew his work, to revive his work in the midst of these years. And know, dear children of God, the Lord will never forsake the work that he has begun. Even if you read here in this scripture that the Spirit will not always strive with people. The Son of God will always intercede in heaven for you, His child. He will never stop, He cannot. He's graven you upon the palm of His hands. He will never do a half work. and he will carry you across this threshold into 2020, and whatever meets you in that year, he is with you, he's promised it, even in the valley of the shadow of death. I will be with you, I cannot leave you, I will not leave you. Dear friends, do you hear what the Christian has? If you are without Christ here tonight, you must have Christ. I would to God that you would have him tonight. With Spurgeon I would say this, and I'm sure all God's people would say this, if you must perish, if you must go to hell, I would cast myself at your feet and plead with you, do not perish. Do not perish. Hell will be worst for those who have heard the gospel. and have had the Spirit striving with them. Oh, my friends, do not perish under the sounds of an open heaven and a freely offered Christ and a rich gospel for sinners. No matter who you are, Give God the glory by falling at his feet. And my friends, you will never be disappointed. You cannot be. But you will rejoice now and forever. All glory to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But don't delay. For God's word says, my spirit will not always strive. Amen.