Well this morning I'd like to have you turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 11. This is a wonderful set of verses here and it'll set the stage for our speaking about what I've entitled the sincere offer of the gospel. This is in connection with our study and what it means to be reformed and it's a good It's a good preparative, I believe, for what we will be studying in terms of particular redemption here in weeks to come. The third of the five points of the doctrines of grace, we are in sola gratia of the five solas of scripture, five solas of the Reformation, rather. And I hope that you are enjoying this study. It's been a great help to me to be able to consolidate my own thinking, and especially over the past few weeks when we've been studying common grace. This was a subject that I had not really studied in depth before, but this time I put my mind and my heart to it, and I myself have benefited greatly from it. I hope that you have. And this study this morning flows out of that study. I want to read to you from Matthew 11 verses 25 to 30. It says here, and this is related to Jesus and what he was going through at that time and how he wasn't really being believed in by many people in many different cities. It says, At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in your sight. All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle, and lowly or humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Now here in these last few verses that I read to you, you see the free offer of the gospel being made to those who had been exposed to Christ's teaching. In the verses which precede the ones that I just read to you, verses 20 to 24, You see that Jesus was rebuking these cities that he had preached in, and he had done his mighty works in. Because they didn't repent, it says there in verse 20. It's then, on the heels of these rebukes, that Jesus then gives these profound, some of the most profound words on the whole subject of election and the free offer of the gospel all bound up in one. They are some of the most profound verses that are in the whole Word of God. And the reason for that is that you and I need to understand, according to common grace, that God does strive with people, and the way that he does so spiritually is through the gospel. God is sovereign, we've seen before in our study, over where the gospel goes. That is, it goes to all the nations according to the preceptive will of God, because you have You have people being saved from all the nations, and Christ has broken down the barrier between Jew and Gentile, and yet in the book of Acts we saw before that Paul and Barnabas and others, they tried to preach the gospel in various places, and the Holy Spirit said to them, no. But then they received a vision from Macedonia, and so they concluded they should go there, And, of course, God had people who were waiting to hear the gospel and to be saved, as many as the Lord appointed to eternal life believed, it says there in Acts 13. Now, we need to remember that God is sovereign in salvation, and yet we still have a responsibility, don't we? We have a great responsibility to preach the gospel to the nations and to every creature. But Jesus explains here in his prayer why it is that all men are not saved when they see the mighty works of Jesus and when they hear the truth of the gospel. He says in verse 25, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and the prudent and have revealed them to babes. Wow. That is very profound stuff, is it not? Now, who are the wise and the prudent that he's referring to, and who are the babes, can you tell me? I think it's good for us to think about these things. Who are the wise and prudent, first of all? Well, they certainly are included in that list, aren't they? They thought themselves to be very wise and yet they would reject Jesus Christ to His face. That's not a good thing. The Lord of glory comes and men who are religious and supposed to be wise are rejecting Him to His face and sinning the sin against the Holy Spirit and plunging themselves into eternal misery. But Jesus is speaking here about the people, I believe, not only what you've mentioned, Aaron, but also those people that he mentions before this, in Chorazin and Bethsaida. He talks about Tyre and Sidon. He says, Woe to you, Chorazin, verse 21, Woe to you, Bethsaida, for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, They would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. That's interesting, isn't it, in terms of the Lord's deity, that he can see exactly what would have been under every circumstance. That's very significant to our study. And also, not only to common grace, but saving grace. There's a real interaction, I've been trying to say to you, between God and unsaved people. I think we have sometimes a stilted view of election. That is, somehow God sets his love upon people and he saves them, but there isn't any process that works up to that point of interaction with the gospel. But the gospel is at the very heart of all we're talking about with the doctrines of grace. We can't take the doctrines of grace apart from Jesus. We can't take the doctrines of grace apart from the gospel. Because if we do, we're going to do a great disservice to God's work in the final analysis. We can't have a stilted view of God's work and His grace, which sometimes we have. Sometimes, we who believe in God's sovereignty don't believe that God has a sincere offer of the gospel wherever that gospel goes. How can God be sincere if He is a God of electing love and grace? Does He really offer salvation to people through the gospel? Well, certainly He does. And that's what we're about to study here this morning, because you'll notice here that even on the heels of Jesus' condemnation of Chorazin and Bethsaida and Capernaum in verse 23, which he says there, in you Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say to you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you. Why? Why is that the case? That's exactly right, Davis, because they rejected the gospel. They rejected the light of the truth that came to them from Jesus's words and his works. And they didn't want Christ, so that doesn't mean that there weren't certain people saved in those cities, there were. But what we need to see here is this real interaction that was taking place between Jesus and the multitudes in those cities where He came and did His mighty works. And at that time, it says, Jesus answered, right on the heels of when He says this, He says, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in your sight." And then he says these most amazing words about, you know, verse 26 shows us God's sovereignty. It seemed good in God's sight. We don't know all the reasons why one person is chosen and another person has passed by, but we know that it does take place. And it seemed good to the Father to do this. Now, it doesn't mean that there aren't reasons for people not being saved humanly speaking because we're looking at those now their rejection of the gospel but he says here that behind the scenes in verse 27 you see this all things have been delivered to me Jesus says by my father and no one knows the son except the father nor does anyone know the father except the son and the one to whom the son wills to reveal Himself. The Son doesn't will to reveal Himself to everyone, does He, by consequence of what's being said here? And yet we know there's a general call of the gospel that goes forth, isn't there? And as we've been studying before, there's the shining of the light of Christ in a general sense. So what I'm trying to teach you here this morning is that there is a general love of God for all mankind in the gospel, and there is a specific love of God for His elect, that is, those whom He chooses unto salvation, which in themselves are totally unworthy of the least of His mercies. This is what we need to understand in order to understand the sincere offer. We need to be savingly joined to Christ. That's what I was talking to you about last Sunday in order to please God Now once we are savingly joined to Jesus Christ then by grace we can please God Because we are covered by grace and grace is working in our heart and we begin to change and and we begin to grow spiritually We start out as a little babe The Lord reveals to us truths, and we're like little babes, and we drink in the milk of the Word of God. But what we're talking about is both the milk and the meat, you know, here this morning. What a gracious God that we have. You take Christ as your Savior and Lord, you find grace and mercy and peace and blessing are found in Him. It says here in these verses, you find rest for your soul. Now what does that mean? Can you tell me? What does it mean when you find rest for your soul? This is very important to our study of the sincere offer of the gospel. It could mean that you stop striving, trying to earn God's favor. Yeah, very good. You stop trying to earn God's favor, Rita says, by your own works. A lot of people believe that, that they're being saved by their good intentions or good works or sincere desires, all the rest of it. But you notice here that Jesus says in these verses, he says, come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden. Labor and heavy laden in what sense? Okay, can you explain that a little bit more? When we engage in sin, it affects us. It draws us away from God. It affects us physically, mentally. And it causes us to be very tired. It wears us out because we're striving. We're actually, in that case, striving against God. And if we turn to Him and rely on Him fully, that stuff goes away. David's saying, if I'm understanding you correctly, that the very nature of sin is what weighs us down, is a burden to us. I think we can also add that not only is the very nature of sin a burden, but also when a person tries to be justified or to win God's favor, by keeping the commandments of God or His law, that becomes a burden to us in the sense of it being heavy-laden. We're heavy-laden with it. We're laboring to bring about our salvation, but we can't do it and we can't find rest for our soul. We can't find peace and rest for our souls. And yet in Jesus, He says, here you'll find that. And why do we find that? Why do we find that rest and peace in Jesus? Well we find it because He has fulfilled the law perfectly on our behalf. When we believe in Him or believing in a finished, perfect work which we receive, and thereby we have peace with God and we have rest to our souls. We cease striving to earn our own salvation or to please God by meriting His favor by the works that we do, and we realize that the burden of our sin has gone away, has taken away in Jesus Christ. This is a beautiful thing. You don't look any longer restlessly looking around you trying to find the meaning of life and satisfaction in life. You found it in Jesus. And He gives you all these good things freely, willing to give them to you, willing to reveal Himself to you. And the one to whom the Son wills to reveal, the Father. So the Son reveals the Father to us, so that then when we pray and cry out, we cry out, Abba Father, we see Him as our God. We come to know Him as our Heavenly Father. We realize that He's created us, yes, but now we realize that we've been adopted into His family. Now all this is based in the interaction between God and man through the people who are preaching the gospel. It's based on God's sincere offer of the gospel to all whom the gospel is preached to. Now listen to W. G. T. Shedd, and by the way, I should mention this before I go any farther, but there have been three books that have really helped me here. in my study of Common Grace and the Sincere Offer. One of them is the collected writings of John Murray, his studies in theology, where he has a very good article on the free offer of the gospel in there, which I just think is very, very well written. And then this little book that I'm holding in my hand is called God's Sovereign and Man Free. which is an excellent little book and I'd be glad to show you these books after our time here together. And then finally this book, Dogmatic Theology by W. G. T. Shedd. I think I've learned more from Shedd than any other theologian. on these subjects that we've been discussing. But listen to what Shedd says on the sincere offer of the gospel. He said, it is objected to the doctrine of preterition, that is God passing by and not choosing some to eternal life, that God cannot be sincere in the universal offer of the gospel in Mark 16, 15, going to all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. The first reply, Shedd says, is that sincerity depends upon the intrinsic nature of the thing desired, not upon the result of endeavors to attain it. A parent, he's going to give an illustration, a good one here, a parent sincerely desires the reformation of a child because his reformation is a good thing in itself. He may have little or no expectation of accomplishing it, but this does not weaken his longing or impair the sincerity of his efforts. A miser upon his deathbed desires wealth as a species of good as sincerely as ever, but he knows that he can no longer have it. In like manner, God, by reason of his inherent compassion, may sincerely desire the conversion of a sinner as the sinner's highest good, though he knows that it will never take place. These are very profound things we're talking about here and they're things that people have mulled over many centuries and attempted to come to terms with them, but I'm trying to help you to understand them. Listen to him again a little bit later, he says, God desires that the non-elect would turn of himself. by the spontaneous action of his own will under the operation of common grace. God would rejoice, he says, in such a conversion. The entreaty, turn ye, why will ye die, springs out of this desire. That this entreaty of God fails in this case is owing to the sinner. and therefore does not prove that God is insincere in his desire. Sincerity, we have seen, is independent of the result. If the failure of this entreaty were due to God's own action, then indeed, insincerity might be charged. If God, at the time when he is entreating a man to turn, were at work to prevent him from turning, the entreaty would be hypocritical. But God, instead of hindering the sinner, is helping him with that degree of grace which is called common. He is helping him. He's helping him by the gospel, the way it's preached. He's helping him by the pleading of the preacher. as though God were pleading through him, be reconciled to me, to God, he's saying in 2 Corinthians chapter 5. But Shedd says, surely the fact that God does not think proper to add a second degree of grace to overcome the sinner's resistance of the first degree of grace does not prove that God is insincere, in his desire that the sinner's conversion might take place under the first degree of grace. If a man offer a beggar a small sum and it is rejected, it would be absurd to say that because he does not now offer him a larger sum, that he was insincere in the first offer. A parent wills the payment of a son's debts in the sense of his desiring that his son would, by industry and economy, pay the debts which he has contracted. But he may not will the payment of these debts in the sense of deciding to pay them for him, and the reason being that if he should pay them, he would do injustice. to the other members of his family." Do you see what Chet is trying to say there? That God is perfectly sincere in his offers of salvation to each and every man that the gospel comes to. But God is not under obligation to save each and every person to whom the gospel comes to in common grace He does desire their salvation in and through the gospel. That's why, by the way, He says in Acts chapter 17 that God commands all men everywhere to repent. Well, how could He do that if He's insincere? But He does do it. He commands them to repent. Because He's fixed a day in which He'll judge the world. And the way that He'll judge the world is by the way that men handled the gospel. when it came to them. If they rejected it, this was their own doing and their undoing. And I wish we had more time to go into this. We'll go into this a bit further the next time we're together where I'll attempt to undertake the the objection that if God is sovereign in this way, that he's a respecter of persons, which he is not. And we'll see that next Sunday, Lord willing. Well, let's bow together for prayer. We thank you, Lord, for these studies, which show us the wonders of your love and grace, both common and special. that you strive with men through the gospel, and yet we know that it's only by special and saving grace that the resistance of the sinner is overcome, and they truly then come to the place where they want to trust in Christ and receive Him. O Lord, give us wisdom and insight into these matters, so that we might be united in them in the preaching of the gospel that we might see you striving with all men that they might be saved. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. You're dismissed.