Thank you, Tim. This morning,
as you can see on the screen here, the title of the message
is Commands to the Unable. Now, what made me start thinking
about this a few years back is you always hear individuals say
that sinners are dead as this piece of wood here, as far as
believing the gospel. They say, you know, they're dead
as this piece of wood. And then some individuals say,
well, we're not dead as that piece of wood. We can hear and
we can understand what the preacher's saying concerning the gospel. So we're not dead like that piece
of wood. But as I thought about that, you know, concerning spiritual
things, concerning believing the gospel from the heart, we
are as dead as a piece of wood concerning that. We make decisions
constantly, all the time in this life. You made a decision to
come here today. You have a will, but that will
is in bondage to that sin nature that we all have by nature. And
so I was looking over the internet a few years back, and I saw a
sermon right here, Commands to the Unable, that Pastor Gary
Shepherd had delivered. And I decided to hold on to it. And so the other week when Bill
asked me to get a message together, I decided to go ahead and use
it and to deliver it. And so this morning, the main
text, as you can see, John 11, 43. Here we have an occasion
where Jesus is standing here at Lazarus' death. is standing
before the tomb of Lazarus. And in this 43rd verse here,
where John says, and when he, when Christ thus had spoken,
he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. Now, I don't know
of a better scripture to use, a better picture and type, whereby
we can see the condition of being dead, and this state and condition
that grace meets. and that the gospel meets, because
Lazarus here is commanded to do what he cannot do. And the reason he can't do it
of himself is because he's dead. And in the gospel, men and women
are commanded to do what they cannot do, and that is to believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. Now we're talking about the true
Christ of Scripture. And the reason they can't do
it is because they're spiritually dead. That is the state that
the Bible describes all men by nature as born of Adam. But to
show further this spiritual deadness, men logically say that God would
not command us to do something that we cannot do. But that statement
in itself is just another evidence of that spiritual deadness. And
it is the very logic that forms the basis for such foolish notions
as free will of religion and provides the basis for all modern
decisionalism. That is, when preachers tell
men and women that Christ has done all he can do, and now it's
up to you to make a decision, to accept it. But that is the
very thing that is taking place all the way back to Exodus when
Moses is up on Mount Sinai and God is giving him the law, while
at the same time, at the bottom of that mountain, those Israelites
are disobeying the very law that God had given. So to say that
God would not command us to do or require of us that which we
cannot do is just not the answer to this situation. One might
say, well, some of them tried to keep the law, but that is
not what the law says. The law says to do and live,
disobey and die. And man's idea of free will is
definitely not the biblical view of how God in grace and mercy
has dealt with this situation of God's commands and man's inability. So there goes on this debate
whereby set against each other on the one hand is God's sovereignty
and on the other hand is man's responsibility. But we have to
be careful when we talk about man's responsibility. Lest we
forget that there's really no ability in man's responsibility
as it relates to man making spiritual decisions. Just because man's
responsible to God and responsible to obey and responsible to do
these things, that does not mean automatically that he has the
necessary ability. And that's why salvation has
to be all of grace. That's why salvation has to be
all of the Lord. That's why it has to be all of
God's saving power. Because if you look back in John
6 here that Timothy read, Our Lord made two statements that
show the absolute deadness and inability of a sinner to do anything
positive toward God spiritually. Here in John 6, 44, it states
this matter of inability. Christ says no man can. Now there's
a difference between may and can. May having to do with permission. May I do this? May I do that?
and can having to do with ability. John 6, 44 says, no man can come
to me except the Father which has sent me drawing. And I'll
raise him up at the last day. And after he says that no man
can come to me, some immediately murmured, as Timothy read. And by that murmuring and unbelief,
they demonstrated just the very thing that Christ has stated
in verse 44. So he goes on just a little bit later and restates
in John 65, Christ again says, and he says,
therefore said I unto you that no man can come to me except
it were given unto him of my father. And you would think that
these two statements as well as some others were not even
in the Bible that most of modern religion carries so religiously.
He simply said, no man can of himself, by himself, come to
me or believe on me. So why does God command men and
women to do what they cannot do? Well, a number of reasons. I believe the first one is to
show us our helplessness and our inability to do the least
thing in saving ourselves. God also does it to show us his
power. He does those things which bring
glory to him and him alone. Now, and he does it also, as
scripture says, to magnify and to glorify his free grace. To
show us that salvation must be all of God's free grace. And
he does it to show us that he's God and he alone makes the difference
between saved and lost. Men say God loves everybody. They followed that with Christ
dying for everybody. Then they followed that with
the Holy Spirit's trying to save everybody. So the difference
in salvation, according to this kind of teaching and doctrine,
is if God has done all he can do, that would leave the difference
in salvation in your hands, or my hand, or the hands of any
other rebel sinners, such as we are by nature. But God makes
these statements, as we have in John 6, as he says these things,
to show us our helplessness and to show us that it's God alone
that makes the difference in salvation, not us, not by works. Paul said to those believers
in 1 Corinthians 1, Chapter four, verse seven. For
who maketh thee to differ from another? And what hast thou that
thou didst not receive? And if thou received it, why
dost thou glory, as if thou hast not received it? If you don't
have anything except what God alone gave you, if you cannot
attribute your salvation to anybody but God in Christ alone, That
means that you and I can only make our boast in the Lord. We do not believe that God purposed
to save every person. And while it is obvious that
the gospel has not gone out to all men without exception, we
do believe that scripture commands us, and as God directed us, that
as far as we are enabled to do, we are to preach the gospel to
every creature. We do that because God commands it. We do it because
God gives glory in the preaching of his son. And we do not believe
that any sinner is born again without and separate from the
gospel being preached. That's because the object of
that faith that God gives us is in the new birth. The object
of that faith that is revealed in the gospel. is the Lord Jesus
Christ. We also do not believe in gospel
regeneration. That is, we do not believe that
simply because the gospel is preached that men and women will
buy it or believe it. Look at how many of our family
members, our friends, and just people in general that we have
told them about this true gospel of how God saved a sinner and
seeing them rejected and even get upset and mad in certain
cases. We know that the gospel that's
preached must be attended by divine power. You must be born
again, Christ told Nicodemus. The gospel goes out as it is
proclaimed in this world. And I'm talking about the true
gospel now, not a false gospel. I'm talking about the gospel
wherein the righteousness of God is revealed, declared, made
manifest, but that gospel is truly preached as it might be.
And I do pray, and we all do, that it be more clearly preached.
But if God does not send his spirit to regenerate and give
spiritual life to that sinner, that gospel will fall on the
ears and in the minds and in the hearts of all who are of
themselves, still spiritually dead. God must make his elect
willing in the day of his power. We are preaching to spiritually
dead men. We are commanding things from
God that they are unable even to hear spiritually, much less
believe. We do these things at God's command. And we know, like the old hymnal
writer wrote in his hymn when he says, all is vain unless the
spirit of the Holy One come down. That is my prayer for these days
in which we live. I know that there's not a lot
of true gospel preaching today, but while I know that there's
not a lot of gospel preaching, as it's compared with all the
false religion that's out there being taught today, I'm yet thankful
for the amount of the true gospel preaching that's going on in
our day. God has not left himself without a witness. And one thing
that always encouraged me about our ministry here at Eager Avenue
Grace Church is that God has laid that burden on our hearts
for sending the gospel out into the world and has encouraged
us to make great efforts to send forth and proclaim the true gospel,
that gospel that gives all the glory to God and none to the
sinner. But as we send it forth, as we
proclaim it, and I pray that it's joined and attended with
the power of the Holy Spirit, especially in this technical
age in which we live, we're able here to send the gospel forth
to those that hear it through the internet, And it may not
even be possible in this lifetime for us to meet those believers
or to see them that have come in contact with this gospel that's
out there. And me and Randy's talked about
this many times. That might not be a bad thing
that we are not able to see them. They may be located in a foreign
land, but by virtue of the internet, they're able to hear the gospel
and God graciously saves them by his grace. So my prayer is
that God would attend the preaching of this gospel by his spirit.
I know that the success of the preached gospel does not depend
on our ability or our inability. It depends on the ability of
God the spirit to awake these dead sinners just like he woke
us up and reveal Christ in our hearts. You see, God gives the
enablement to his people. and his elect in the hour that
God has appointed are unable to do what they would otherwise
be unable to do, and that is to believe this gospel. Lazarus
here was dead, and he could not do on his own what was commanded
by Christ to do. Our Lord spoke to this man who
had been dead so long that even his sister said, well, by now
he sure stinks. And how it must have seemed foolish
to them for Christ to stand before Lazarus' very tomb, this man
dead and rotting, and say to him, Lazarus, come forth. You
see, when God speaks to his people, it's a very personal and effectual
call. In other words, it accomplishes
something when the Holy Spirit comes. Christ said, Lazarus,
and when God speaks to a sinner through the gospel, and by that
all-knowing, all-wise, and all-mighty Holy Spirit, when he speaks to
us, there's no mistake about it, about who's talking to us.
We cannot, in any activity of ours, we cannot in any working
or doing or whatever it is, nothing can drown out the sound of the
Holy Spirit. speaking to our hearts through that preached
gospel. There is a saying that we may
run, but we can't hide. Well, that's surely the case
when God calls his elect to himself in his own time. So he speaks
effectually to Lazarus, and Lazarus could not do on his own what
he was commanded to do, but he did because the command was attended
by divine power. and by the enablement and quickening
power of the Holy Spirit of God. If you look back in verse 26,
and this is what our Lord said to Martha. He says in John 11,
26, and whatsoever liveth and whosoever liveth and believeth
in me shall never die. Believest thou this? You look
at that verse and you tell me what the order is. Religion says
if you will, Believe, you'll live, but when you say that,
it would be like saying to a dead person, left to themselves, if
you believe or if you move your hand up or wave your little finger
or something like that, you'll be made alive. No, it says whosoever
lives, God must make you alive before you'll believe this true
gospel. This spiritual life that God
gives must precede or come before God-given faith because God-given
faith is the evidence of that life. And you've heard our pastor
give this analogy many times. When a baby is born, we don't
expect that baby to cry in order to have life. We rejoice when
he cries because by that cry, we know it has life. and that's
the way it is with faith. When a person is brought to forsake
all other hopes and to cease from their own works of righteousness,
which is called dead works in scripture, and believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ, when we find an individual who believes and
trusts in the blood and righteousness of Christ alone and forsakes
all else, we rejoice. We know that these evidences
are signs of life because the Spirit of God has attended the
preached gospel. When God makes alive, all believers
do something that by nature none of us would do, and that is to
look outside of ourselves and to look to the one who we had
never seen before, and we rejoice in him and trust our whole salvation
and eternity in him. This one that, because of our
deadness and blindness, we had never seen before. Now, all of
us that have been in false religion, we thought we'd seen him. We
thought we believed in Christ, the Christ of the Bible. We thought
we did. We thought we knew him. But really,
we'd never seen the true Christ before, never seen him, until
God awoke us out of that deadness by his Holy Spirit. Now, how could we do that? How could we one day hear in
the gospel about the true Christ of the Bible and change our whole
minds about this whole thing? Well, it's because the Spirit
of God not only commands us, but he enables us in that command
to do what we otherwise could not and would not do. You see,
we, by nature, will not turn loose of having sole control
over our destiny. Turn over to Matthew 9. We'll
look here. This is another occasion of one
of the miracles that Christ performed. In verse 5, he says to those
standing around this paralyzed man, this man sick of the palsy,
he says, For whether it is easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven
thee, or to say, Arise and walk, but that you may know that the
Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins, then saith he
to the sick of the palsy, Arise, take up thy bed, and go into
thy house. And he arose and departed to
his house. Now this man with a palsy could not do what Christ
had commanded of himself, that is. It would be like me or you
walking into a hospital and seeing someone laying in the bed there,
paralyzed from the neck down, and say, you get up, get out
of your bed, take the bed and go home to your house. Well,
this man with a palsy couldn't do that of himself. But when Christ commanded him
and joined that command with that power, he arose and departed
to his house. You see, God alone has absolute
power. And when he commands, he has
the power to overcome all the obstacles in order to make it
happen. This man with a palsy was commanded
by Christ to do what he was unable to do, of himself, but he did
it. And why? And why did he do it? It was because of the one who
gave him that command. Now, let's look at Luke's gospel
in chapter 7. This is another miracle. This
is an occasion when a funeral procession was passing our Lord.
In verse 12, it says, now when he came nigh, speaking of Christ,
to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried
out, the only son of his mother. And she was a widow, and much
people of the city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he
had compassion on her and said unto her, weep not. And he came
and touched the beer, which is the frame on which that coffin
sits. And they that bear him stood still. And he said, young
man, I say unto thee, arise. Now, a lot of people see these
miracles that Christ performed, but they only see them with the
eyes of the flesh. And they're impressed by all
the miracles. And in scriptures, it talked one time about a lot
of them followed Christ because of the miracle. But they're impressed
with the things that Christ did while he was on this earth. They
say, well, he raised people from the dead. And he did, but I tell
you something, that miracle is nothing to compare with the power
and the glory of the event when God raises a dead sinner to spiritual
life. Now, that's a miracle of grace,
because by nature, We won't believe this gospel. Y'all know that.
Y'all been confronted, men, throughout all this time we've come to the
gospel. But they're spiritually dead. And then it says in Luke 7, 715,
speaking of this dead man, it says, and he that was dead sat
up and began to speak. Once again, that can't be, can
it? He was commanded to do what he, like Lazarus, was unable
to do, but he did it. And his inability did not alter
or diminish Christ's ability. We need to always understand
that as we preach the gospel, we call upon people to do what
they cannot do of themselves. By nature, they cannot and will
not come to the true God of the Bible. because we're all born
with that natural enmity in our hearts toward everything about
God and his truth. Webster defines this enmity as
hatred or ill will. Christ talked to his disciples
and he told them about, he said, they'll hate you. They'll throw
you out of the synagogue. As those Pharisees were told
by Christ, who was live himself in John 5, 40, you will not come
to me that you might have life. That verse alone shows the foolishness
of sinner's so-called free will. Christ himself said, you will
not come to me that you might have life. This reminds me, and
some of you have heard this before, reminds me of what someone said
a number of years ago, a believer. He says when he was talking to
a person that believed that a sinner is born with a free will as it
relates to spiritual things. He said that that person promoting
free willism said that the gospel is like a big chocolate cake.
All you have to do of your own free will is just reach out and
take a piece of that chocolate cake. That's how that free will
person described that. Well, the believer answered back
and told the man, that there was just one thing wrong with
that analogy. And that is that sinners by nature,
born under this earth, don't like chocolate cake. In fact,
they hate chocolate cake. And that's what scripture says.
You see, all men by nature just don't want salvation God's way.
By nature, we're all spiritually dead. This is a fact, all men
born of Adam are of themselves spiritually dead. We all died
in Adam, and only believers are made alive in Christ. As a matter
of fact, all the miracles that Christ performed in the gospel
accounts were given as examples to show the spiritual condition
of a sinner. Spiritually dead, spiritually
deaf, spiritually blind, spiritually paralyzed, and spiritually putrefied. Now, but we preach as commanded,
and we preach what's commanded, knowing that we have no power
of ourself, knowing that the most talented preacher, the most
learned preacher, the most gifted preacher, as far as the ability
to define and to explain the gospel, it'll all be in vain
if the power is ours alone. The one that gives ability is
God alone, salvation of the Lord. God will attend his gospel with
power to every one of his elect, his sheep, because he says, my
sheep hear my voice and they follow me. If they're in this
awful condition, if they are by nature unwilling, if they
are unable of themselves to do anything, anything, any of these
things that we're talking about, even what men say is the most
simple thing, which is to believe on Christ, the true Christ. Know this, that God says in his
word in Psalm 110, verse three, thy people shall be willing in
the day of thy power. God is able to make his people
willing in his own time and by his spirit. The apostles, just
like today, they preached Christ and him crucified to the spiritually
dead. And God brought them to spiritual
life. God tells us in John 6, 44, where
Christ says, no man can come to me except the Father, which
has sent me drawing. Now you ought to go home and
do a little word study on that word draw, which it talks about
in this verse here. Because in religion, you may
think that that means something like God invites you or exerts
a little influence on you or woos you to come to the gospel. The word draw is the same word
that's used when Peter drew out his sword and cut off the high
priest's servant's ear. It's the same word that's used
when they drew the nets. that were overfilled with all
those fishes. Now, Peter's sword did not just leap out of his
own free will. Peter, he had to draw it. Now, it says here, except the
Father which has sent me, draw it. But even before Christ said
that, he stood there in the face of those Pharisees who totally
rejected him, and he says in John 6, 37, all that the Father
giveth me shall come to me. And he says, come to me, and
him that comes to me, I will no wise cast out. Let me show
you one more passage, and then we'll close. And I'm sure you're
all familiar with this. It's Ezekiel 37. Here's another
scripture, long before Christ came, The same situation with
the prophet Ezekiel. Scripture says in Ezekiel 37
1, the hand of the Lord was upon me and carried me out in the
spirit of the Lord and sent me down in the midst of the valley
which was full of dry bones. Every gospel preacher that has
ever stood the priest, the true gospel has stood just like Ezekiel. All God's called preachers stand
in front of a valley of spiritually dry bones. And then it says in
verse 2, it says, And caused me to pass by him round about,
and behold, there were many, very many in the open valley,
and lo, they were very dry. They'd been dead a long time.
Then in Ezekiel 3, And he said unto me, Son of man, can these
bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou
knowest. It seemed as though Ezekiel was
saying, Lord, if it depends on me, they can't, but you know. Then in verse four, and again,
he said to me, prophesy upon these bones, preach, preach to
them. Declare any, he said, declare
my message upon these bones. And I said unto them, oh ye dry
bones, hear the word of the Lord. They can't hear. They've been
dead a long time. You're preaching to a graveyard,
Ezekiel. Then God says in verse five,
Thus said the Lord God of these bones, Behold, I will cause breath
to enter into you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon
you, and I will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with
skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live. And what's
going to be the evidence that He made them alive? Well, at
the end of verse 6 here it says, And you shall know that I am
the Lord. I'm the Lord. Now that's the
evidence that they've been made alive. And so I prophesied as
I was commanded, and I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold,
a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone, and
when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came upon them,
and the skin covered them about, but there was no breath in them.
Then said he unto me, prophesy unto the wind, prophesy. Preach,
son of man, and say to the wind, thus saith the Lord God, come
from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain,
that they may live. In scripture, you know that the
wind is symbolic of the Holy Spirit. Now, the last verse here,
verse 10, says, so I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath
came into them, and they lived. and stood up upon their feet
an exceeding great army. These dry bones did what they
couldn't do of themselves. They did what Ezekiel could not
do for them. He issued the command God gave
him, just like preachers of the gospel, declared the message
God put in his heart and mind, the word of the Lord. He preached
it to a bunch of dead folks and the Spirit of God made them alive.
And they acknowledge Christ as the Lord because it says at the
end of verse six, and you shall know that I am the Lord. Now
these things ought to encourage us, those of us who stand up
here and deliver these messages, those of us as believers who
also witness to friends and co-workers and such, and who bear witness
of the gospel, all of us.