Well today we're in session four of this Discover Grace new members class and we're wrapping up our doctrinal section on the doctrine of salvation and specifically this morning we're going to be covering irresistible grace and the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. Let's kind of review where we've been so far. Last week we talked about the atonement. We pointed out that Christ's atonement actually atones for the sins of the elect. It doesn't make atonement a possibility, a potentiality. It actually atones for something. It actually accomplishes something real. Now if Christ's atoning work actually atoned for the sins of the elect, then all of the elect will be saved. There's nothing left to condemn them if Christ indeed has atoned for their sins. But this salvation has to be applied to the one being saved, to the individual. It has to be applied experientially and subjectively. Going back to our analogy of adoption that we used last time, we said that a couple can decide to adopt a child, and that decision would correspond to the doctrine of election. God has decided to save sinners. But then they must go through a meticulous and expensive legal process to make that decision to adopt an actual reality. And that process, that legal process, corresponds to the atonement. Christ made an actual legal transaction on the cross with His blood. He didn't make a promise to do something, He actually did it. He signed the papers. He didn't put something on layaway, He actually purchased something. But now what if a couple decides to adopt and they take care of all the legal and financial obligations involved in adopting a child? You know, it would be unthinkable if after all of that, the couple just walked away and left their adopted child at the orphanage. Parents don't do that. They don't walk away from their children. Folks, God doesn't do that either. God didn't elect sinners to be saved and send His own Son to die for their salvation only to walk away from them in the end. The fact is, every person God the Father has chosen to save and every person God the Son has made atonement for will be saved and will be kept saved to the end. God doesn't leave His adopted children at the orphanage. He brings them home. What we've been talking about up to this point is kind of the behind-the-scenes aspects of salvation, transactions that have really occurred within the private council of the Trinity. And if we've done our job, if we've established biblically that man's situation from birth is one of spiritual helplessness, that salvation must be initiated by God, and indeed is initiated by a God who does all that He pleases, and that when Christ went to the cross to redeem sinners, He actually redeemed them, then the next two points that I want to try to make today really shouldn't be difficult for us to accept. In fact, they should be expected. I'm really just going to be stating the obvious if you've been persuaded up to this point. What we're going to talk about today is this subjective side of salvation. At some point, those private divine transactions must become actualized in the lives of real people, individuals. They must have practical effects on people. After all the legal necessities have been dealt with, there comes a point where God applies this salvation experientially, subjectively, practically to an individual. And we call this third step of salvation by various names. Sometimes we speak of it as conversion, being converted. becoming a Christian, trusting Christ, being born again. We use different different terminologies, but the point I want to make is that God will not abandon those whom he has redeemed. He will save them and he will keep them saved. So let's consider this first truth that I want to present this morning. Truth number one, The Holy Spirit will bring 100% of those whom God the Father has elected and God the Son has redeemed to a point of saving faith and repentance. Scripture describes the Holy Spirit's role in saving sinners as a work of grace that always succeeds. It's a work of irresistible grace. It can't be thwarted. It can't be denied. Now let's think about this word irresistible. You know, there are many things in life that are irresistible. Creation, for instance. is irresistible. Creation from nothing is just about as irresistible as it gets. Was there any chance that non-existent matter would defy God when He summoned the universe into being? It's the same with grace. 2 Corinthians 4, 6 speaks of saving grace as an act of creation. It says, For God, who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ. The God who summoned light from darkness at the beginning, without consulting the wishes of the darkness, is the same God who summoned the light into our souls, the light in our souls, rather, into being. He brought our dead spirits to life, just as He brought creation out of nothing. There's another irresistible process, the process of birth. I was born in 1973, but I don't remember being consulted about this in 1972. I was born a boy and not a girl. I was born in Oldham and not a smith. Scripture describes our entry into the kingdom of God as a new birth. John 3, verses 5 through 8 in particular, Jesus says, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who was born of the Spirit." See, this new birth that we call salvation is mysterious, it's unpredictable, it's unmanipulated. And it's as irresistible as the birth process, as irresistible as the blowing of the wind, as irresistible as creation itself. Resurrection is yet another irresistible reality in God's world. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, he didn't first have to secure the cooperation of Lazarus, did he? Instead, the miracle resulted in the cooperation of Lazarus. It's not that Christ was outside the grave pulling while Lazarus was inside the grave pushing. Lazarus was dead. Grace in our lives is described in terms of resurrection. Romans 6 verse 4 and verse 8, we were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. It's a resurrection. James 1.18, of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. 2 Corinthians 3.6, the Spirit gives life. Titus 3.5, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration. Regenerating something means giving it new life. by washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit." And then I also think of the passage in Ezekiel 37, the vision of the valley of dry bones, where Ezekiel was taken out to a valley that was knee-deep in dead, dry bones, no hope of life. God asks him, can these bones live? And the end result of the story is yes, they could when God's Spirit breathed on them, performed an irresistible process of resurrection. The point is this, if you have been chosen by God and your sins have been paid for by Christ, then you will inevitably, irresistibly come to a point in your life when you'll repent of your sins and exercise faith in Christ's work. Now this is the Holy Spirit's role in the salvation of sinners. We talked about the Father's role in our session on the doctrine of election. Last time we talked about the Son's role in our discussion of the doctrine of atonement. Today we're considering the Holy Spirit's role in the salvation of sinners. Now many of us have probably heard all of our lives that the nature of salvation is like this. God does all he can to save everybody. He sends his son, the son dies, he sets up a church to go and tell the world about the gospel, but ultimately a person has to decide for himself if he wants to get saved or not. God's salvation in a person's life comes down to whether or not that person chooses to repent of sin and respond in faith to the Gospel message. Now, the Bible makes it very clear that faith and repentance are necessary for salvation, but we need to understand that faith and repentance aren't like the coins we put in the vending machine of our salvation to get our product. Faith and repentance, and we've said this before, are the result, not the cause, of salvation. They are part of the free gift of grace. It is the Holy Spirit's job to ensure that everyone whose sins have been paid for by Christ hear the gospel and are given the power, the ability, to respond to that gospel in the right way. That is, to respond with faith and repentance. That's the Holy Spirit's job. And He will perform this job 100% of the time. If you have come to faith in Christ, it's proof that the Holy Spirit has done this work in you. If a person dies having never come to a point of saving faith in Christ, then it's proof that the Holy Spirit never did that work in them. Now, theologians use a couple of terms that I think are helpful. These terms aren't in the Bible, but they're attempts to describe what the Bible teaches concerning this activity of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit's role in salvation. Now, the terms are general call and effectual call. Let's talk about these for a minute. The general call of the gospel occurs every time the gospel is presented to a sinner. an evangelistic tract, an evangelistic sermon, a one-on-one presentation of the gospel. All of these are general calls to sinners to respond to the gospel message. But not all of these gospel presentations result in lost people getting saved. Have you ever witnessed to somebody and there's just no response, there's no faith, there's no repentance, there's no conversion? Why is that? Well, it's because lost people are spiritually dead. We've already talked about that, haven't we? They have no inherent interest in responding. They are by nature, Romans 5 says, enemies of God, enemies of the gospel, enemies of Christ. So just because the gospel is shared doesn't mean all those who hear are going to respond in faith and repentance. Matthew 22, 14 says, Many are called, but few are chosen. That concept of many being called, it relates to the general call of the gospel every time the gospel is spoken in word. It's a general call for a sinner to respond, but it doesn't always result in a conversion. So we have a second category then. We call it the effectual call of the gospel, and it's just what its name indicates. It's a presentation of the gospel that is effective. It results in a changed heart. It results in the conversion of a lost person to faith. I think 1 Thessalonians 1.5 describes this effectual call. Paul says, our gospel came to you not only in word, that would be the general call, but listen to this, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. An effectual, effective call. Now what's the difference between a gospel presentation that accomplishes absolutely nothing in the heart of a sinner and a gospel presentation that results in the conversion of a sinner? It's not the sinner that makes any difference. It's not that some sinners are better than others and so they make the right choice. It's not that some sinners have their head screwed on right while others don't. The Bible says we're all dead in our sin. The difference is that the Holy Spirit has resurrected something inside some people that is dead in other people. The Holy Spirit has allowed the general call of the Gospel to be accompanied with a radical, irresistible change in nature. And the result, then, is that the Gospel call becomes an effective call in the life of that sinner. Those who are called with this effectual call will come without exception. John 6.37, Jesus says, all that the Father gives me shall come. And he that comes to me, I will in no wise cast out. Romans 8.30, those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. Notice that none of those who are predestined miss out on the glorification. Let's do this same little diagram we used in a previous session. This circle here on the board represents those whom God predestined in Romans 8.30, that is, those whom God elected to salvation. How many of those whom God predestined will be called according to Romans 8.30? All of them. How many of those that are called will be justified? All of them. How many that are justified will be glorified? That is, they'll go to heaven when they die. They'll be saved in the end. And again, the answer is all of them. So the conclusion we draw from Romans 8.30 is that all of the elect will be called by the Holy Spirit, will be redeemed by Christ's death, and will ultimately be brought safely to heaven when they die. Nothing can stop this from happening. Now, as we contemplate this reality, this doctrine of irresistible grace, a lot of times objections come up. We have questions that we want to try to answer. I think one of the big ones is this. If the salvation of the elect is inevitable and irresistible, doesn't that make us robots or puppets by removing man's will from the equation? Aren't we responsible for making a choice regarding our salvation? I would say, absolutely, we are responsible for choosing Christ. The problem, however, is this. Our sin nature has taken away our taste for grace. The sinner has no appetite for spiritual things. So left to ourselves, we would never choose Christ. Yes, we're responsible to choose Christ, but we would never choose Him. Romans 3 says, as it is written, none is righteous, no not one, no one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. So left to ourselves, we are responsible to choose Christ, but we are also incapable of choosing Christ because of our sin nature. How does God get us from the state of inability to a state of ability? How does He get us to a point where we will choose Christ? Here's what I don't want you to miss this morning. The Holy Spirit doesn't get us to a state of faith and repentance by somehow bypassing our will or short-circuiting our mind or our emotions. We're not mindless robots who are programmed to act a certain way. We're not puppets on a string who have no volition, no will in the matter. What the Holy Spirit does is He changes the nature of our will. He changes the nature of our minds. He gives us the capacity to see things differently. He births us. He recreates us. He resurrects us. We call this change in the spirit of a sinner regeneration. And through this process of regeneration, the Holy Spirit gives the sinner an appetite for God where before there was no appetite. He gives the sinner a desire for truth where before there was no desire. He gives the sinner a heart that begins to hate sin and love Christ. And with this newly awakened appetite, the sinner freely chooses righteousness. Let's think about, again, the resurrection of Lazarus. Was Lazarus a passive participant in that process? Up to a point he was. He was dead. He couldn't do anything until God initiated something, until God gave him new life. But then at some point, God calls Lazarus to come forth, to come out of the tomb. Once Lazarus had been resurrected, it was inevitable that he would come out of the grave. His will was involved. He had to choose to come out of the grave, but it was inevitable. Living men don't stay in graves. Living spirits who have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit don't remain in the lost state. They choose Christ irresistibly. So what we've seen is that if God unconditionally elects sinners, Christ makes definite atonement for those sinners, and the Holy Spirit irresistibly applies that atoning grace to those sinners, they will be saved. My last point regarding the salvation of sinners is really, again, stating the obvious. If all that we've said is true, then it's also true that sinners who have been saved will remain saved for the rest of eternity. Nothing can undo the work that God has done. If God has done the saving, then nothing can reverse that salvation. So truth number two I want us to see this morning is because God has done the saving, Christians can be sure of their salvation. Let me read several verses that speak of the assurance that Christians can have. Isaiah 54 10, for the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed. Matthew 18, 12 through 14. What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who was in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. John 6, 37, and 39, all that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. This is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day. John 10, 27 through 30, my sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, I guarded them, and none of them is lost. Romans 8, 38, 39, For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. A couple more promises of assurance of our salvation. Ephesians 1, 13 and 14, in Him you also were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance. And then finally, Jude 24 and 25, now to Him who was able to keep you from falling and to present you without blemish before the presence of His glory with rejoicing. to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever. You see, folks, over and over again, the Bible tells us that because God has done the saving, Christians can be sure, certain, absolutely certain of their salvation. But that's not all. There's a third truth I want us to see this morning, and it's this. Because God has done the saving, Christians will bear the marks of salvation. Not only will they be saved, they'll bear the marks, the evidence, the proof of that salvation in this life. That is, they will persevere in faith and good works as proof, not as the grounds or the cause of salvation, but as proof of the genuineness of their salvation, of their conversion. 1 John 2.3 By this we know that we have come to Him if we keep His commandments. 1 John 2.29 If you know that He is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of Him. 1 John 3.14, we know that we've passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. There's a practical evidence, proof, that we've passed from death to life. 1 John 5.18, everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, does not habitually sin. Ephesians 2.10, we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. You know, I do my best to make sure my kids are obedient and respectful. honorable little oldoms, but I fail. They aren't always obedient, respectful, honorable little oldoms. But folks, God never fails to produce the fruits of salvation in the lives of His children. If God has truly saved an individual, that person will look like Christ. Doesn't mean they'll be perfect immediately, doesn't mean they'll achieve sinless perfection in this life, but they will have an increasing aroma of Christ about their lives. They'll be progressing toward greater and greater holiness. They will be sanctified in this life and ultimately glorified in the next life. Now, does this reality mean that Christians won't struggle with sin? Does this mean that Christians are off the hook? They can chill out and not worry about trying to obey? No, it doesn't mean that. The whole point is that if God has truly saved you, you'll want to obey. Part of the proof of salvation is that an individual delights in pleasing God through obedience. Philippians 2, 12, and 13, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. There's effort involved. For it is God who works in you, both to will and to do for His good pleasure. But that effort is a result, an evidence of God's work in you. 2 Peter 1.10, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never stumble. So there is a responsibility on the part of Christians to pursue holiness, to be sanctified, to be pursuing deliberate conscientious obedience to the will of God. But undergirding all of that is a delight in obeying God that's grounded in the grace of God at work in your life. Now again, sometimes there's an objection that comes up. What about those who who fall from grace? If salvation is guaranteed for all the elect, what about places where Scripture seems to be teaching that there are those who have salvation and then lose it? And I'm thinking of places like Hebrews chapter 6, verses 4 through 6. The writer of Hebrews says it is impossible in the case of those who have once been enlightened who have tasted the heavenly gift and have shared in the Holy Spirit and have tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the age to come and then have fallen away to restore them again to repentance since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding Him up to contempt. And then Hebrews 10, if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. So what about those who apparently are falling from grace? I think the short answer is that they were never in grace. First John 2.19, is an insightful verse that I think is helpful in understanding this concept. The Apostle John said, In other words, they were, at one point, associated with the church. They were professing Christians, but they left. They abandoned the faith. And he says, they went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that they might be made manifest that none of them were of us. When God saves a person, He saves them completely. And there will always be visible, demonstrable evidence accompanying a genuine conversion. This doesn't mean every Christian will be at the same place in their level of obedience. It doesn't mean we'll achieve sinless perfection in this life. But it does mean that every believer will be trending towards Christ-likeness in practical ways. The trajectory of his life will be one of increasing obedience. to God and increasing love for God. Well, we've spent three weeks now looking at this simple creed, God saves sinners. Hopefully we've come to a fuller appreciation of what this means for us. I want to close by just simply highlighting several implications of these truths that we've been looking at. First of all, I want to point out that In light of God's salvation of sinners like us, we should be filled with a profound gratitude. Our situation was grave. It was impossible. It was miserable. But God, who is rich in mercy, took dead sinners and made them living saints. And this ought to just fill us to overflowing with thankfulness to God. The second implication of these truths, we should find rest in God's work on our behalf. Folks, our salvation is all of grace, even the maintaining of that salvation. It doesn't depend on us for a minute. And so these doctrines should fill us with sweet, sweet assurance that God will not let us go. Thirdly, we should gain, I think, a new zeal and boldness for evangelism. Salvation depends on God, not on our ability to reason or debate or argue or persuade someone into the kingdom. When we witness, God will save. And so there ought to be this zeal for evangelism and boldness, courage. in the task of witnessing, bearing witness to this gospel before the world. And then finally, we should experience a new freedom to rely on God's means of grace rather than on man's devices. You know, before I learned the doctrines of grace, I felt a tremendous pressure in my ministry to others to be trendy, to be culturally relevant, to be polished. And you know, there's nothing inherently wrong with being trendy or relevant or polished. But the doctrines of grace remind us that those things really are secondary matters, aren't they? Our effectiveness in ministry depends on our faithfulness to the gospel. Paul doesn't say that our presentation of the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. He doesn't say our ability to adapt to culture is the power of God unto salvation, or that even our distinction from the culture is the power of God unto salvation. He says the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. we can rely on the message that God saves sinners, because that message really does change things.