We want to, in this last session
now, talk about how one is born again, how one is brought into
the family of God, and we have been looking at the work of each
person of the Trinity, that God the Father, before time began,
chose His elect, gave them to the Son, sent His Son into this
world to lay down His life for the elect, the Son has received
this gift from the Father and has come into this world on a
specific mission, not to do His own will, but to do the will
of the Father, to lay down His life for these given ones. He laid down His life for His
sheep. He laid down His life for His friends. And so now we
come to the application of the death of Christ to those who
are chosen by the Father. We come to how this takes place
within time. The Father chose us in eternity
past. Christ laid down His life 2,000
years ago, and now on a daily basis around the world God the
Holy Spirit is carrying out His work of birthing these chosen
ones into the kingdom of heaven. So let's walk through this, and
I invite you to take your Bibles again and follow with me in the
gospel of John, and if you would, let's turn back to the prologue
to John chapter 1. One thing, as you're turning
to John chapter 1, one thing that is amazing to me is how
these doctrines of grace are so often front-loaded at the
front doorstep of these books in the Bible. They're not hidden
in the back of these books. They are put at the very beginning. You take the book of Ephesians,
chapter 1, verse 4, He chose us in Him before the foundation
of the world. You take 1 Corinthians, it talks
multiple times about we've been called and we have been chosen.
I could just go on through the epistles of the New Testament.
The gospel of John is very much the same. As we look at the gospel
of John as we now think about sovereign regeneration, it's
immediately before our eyes. You can't open the gospel of
John without being immediately brought face-to-face with this
truth, and it is found in verse 13, John chapter 1 and verse
13, And I want to begin in verse 12. I know I've already read
verse 12, but to say it one more time, verse 12 is from a human
perspective. Verse 13 is from a divine perspective. Verse 12, as many as, no more,
no less, as many as received Him, referring to the true light,
Jesus Christ, to them, and the idea is to them only. He gave
the right to become children of God, and with the right to
become children of God, you are brought into the family of God,
even to those who believe in His name. Now the question is,
how did these become children of God? How did they enter into
the family of God? They were on the outside of the
family. How did they come into the family? And verse 13 gives
the answer, and it could be easy to pass over verse 13, but here
it It says, who were born. Stop
right there. He will tell us in chapter 3,
verse 3, to be born again, to be born from above. It's not
referring to physical birth, but to spiritual birth. This
is the doctrine of regeneration. in which it is the act of God
by which He imparts new life to the spiritually dead soul.
That's what the new birth is. It is the life of God in the
soul of a man, in the soul of a woman. We were spiritually
dead in our trespasses and sin, John 5, 25, and it is the new
birth that imparts eternal life and spiritual life to the one
who was spiritually dead. This new birth gives a new heart. It gives a new mind. It gives
a new disposition. It gives new affections. It gives
a new nature. It gives a new life. The old
things passed away. Behold, new things have come.
So, how does this birth take place? He goes on to define this
with three negatives and one positive. The three negatives
are very emphatic. And as I've told you earlier,
a good teacher will state things in the negative and in the positive.
Negative denial, positive assertion. This is how it does not happen.
This is how it does happen. There can be no room for any
misunderstanding. There are three negatives. such
that John is belaboring the point, so that you and I will understand
how the new birth takes place. So here are the three negatives,
and you'll see in verse 13 the word not, the word not, the word
nor. It is not of blood, meaning it
is not of your physical descent. It's not of your biological descent. In other words, just because
your parents are born again does not automatically mean that you
are born again, just because your grandparents or your great-great-grandparents. And in this day and time, the
point that was being stressed was to those within Israel, just
because you are a part of the nation, Israel, does not mean
that you're born again and that you're in the kingdom of heaven.
You can be the citizen of this nation without being in the family
of God. So, he begins at the broadest.
He says, not of blood, not of physical descent. And then second,
he says, not of the will of the flesh. That means it is not by
human efforts. It is not by religious striving. And now comes the knockout punch.
It says, not of the human will. In other words, it does not originate
in the will of man, the new birth. you do not exercise your will
and then you are born again. It's the total opposite. You're
born again and then you exercise your will. So it does not originate
in the will of man. It's not determined by man's
choices. And I could ask you the question again, what did
you do to be born physically? The answer to that is nothing.
Did you choose to be born? No. You appeared. And that is
the point that John is making here. It's not of blood, nor
of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but we're
a conjunction of total contrast but of God." Here's the positive. We are born again, not by our
own will, but by the will of God. We are born again, not by
our own working, but by the work of God. It's abundantly clear. The choice originated within
God, and it was the work of God to birth us into the kingdom
of God. come to John chapter 3 and verse
3, and we see that it is what I want to call a monergistic
regeneration. And I'll define the word monergistic
in just a moment. But Jesus taught that the new
birth is a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit that is performed
within God's elect. John 3, verse 3, Jesus answered
and said to him, "'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born
again," that can be translated either born from above or born
a second time, "'he cannot see the kingdom of heaven.'" Nicodemus
said, how can a man be born when he is old? A man cannot enter
a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he? Jesus answered, truly, truly,
I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit." I take
that to refer not to water baptism, but as a metaphor for the work
of the Holy Spirit. I take this to be translated,
I say to you, unless one is born of water, comma, even the Spirit,
comma, He cannot enter into the kingdom of God." There are two
metaphors being used here for the work of the Holy Spirit.
One is wind, in verse 8, and the other is water, in verse
9. The working of the Holy Spirit in the new birth is revealed
by the analogy of wind and water. Wind in verse 8, water in verse
9. And this is exactly how Ezekiel
36, 25 to 27 uses water as a cleansing by the Holy Spirit. that which is born of flesh is
flesh, and that which is born of spirit is spirit. Do not be
amazed that I say to you, you must be born again." That was
the message George Whitefield preached so powerfully during
the Great Awakening. He preached the nature and the
necessity of the new birth again, and again, and again. And one
time a woman came up to him after he had preached on the new birth,
and he said, Mr. Whitfield, she said, why do you
keep saying to us we must be born again? And he said, because,
dear woman, you must be born again. Well, I say the same to
you. Except you be born again, you
will not see the kingdom of heaven. You must be born again. And now
verse 8 gives a fuller explanation of the ministry of the Holy Spirit
in the new birth. Verse 8, the wind blows where
it wishes. Man does not determine where
the wind blows. The wind itself determines where
it goes. In reality, it's the invisible
hand of God. And you hear the sound of it,
but you do not know where it is going and where it comes from.
In other words, you feel the wind, You cannot see the wind. You see the effects of the wind.
You ought to live where I live. It's called Hurricane Alley,
where the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico build up to Category
5. And when they make landfall,
and I live right in a city that's on the coast, And you have to
evacuate. The power is just pancakes, houses,
and trees. Well, I never see a hurricane
in the purest sense because it's invisible. But the power of it
is extraordinary. It's overbearing and overpowering. And you go stand in your front
yard and you feel it, but you don't see it. This is the parallel
that Jesus is making, and there is no way that we can control
the wind. We can't direct the wind. We
can't divert it away. It has a mind of its own. It will go where it goes. So
at the end of verse 8, He says, so is everyone who is born of
the Spirit. It's very clear, the parallel
here, that the working of the Holy Spirit in the new birth
is a sovereign operation. man cannot control it, the preacher
cannot direct it, the evangelist cannot manipulate it. It is the hand of God that directs
the wind, and it comes with such a force. It is unseen. The Holy
Spirit is in this room right now, but He is unseen. But as I am teaching, He is working
in my heart, and giving passion to my soul. I feel the working
of it. And I trust that you feel the
working of the Holy Spirit right now within your mind and within
your heart. And some of you under conviction,
and others of you being lifted up, would, to God's sum, would
be birthed into the kingdom. That's the parallel that Jesus
is making. James Montgomery Boyce writes
at this point, clearly God uses this image because it alone shows
that the initiative lies with the father entirely and not with
the son or daughter who is engendered. What did you have to do with
your birth? Did you say, I would like to
be a boy? I'd like to be born to Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They seem like
such a nice couple. Did you say, I'd like to be a
girl? I want to be five feet, six inches tall, and I want blonde
hair. Of course you did not. You had
absolutely nothing to do with it. Instead, your father met
your mother, and between them, they produced you, and you only
realized what had happened afterwards. It is obvious, therefore, that
when God uses this image, He does so to show that He alone
is responsible for your salvation, and that you believe only because
He first created the life within you to do so. A monergistic regeneration. The
word monergism is not a word that we use in our day-to-day
conversation, but it's a theological word that communicates much.
The word mono means one, monothematic meaning one theme, erg, e-r-g
is a Greek word from which we derive the English word energy
or a working, monergistic or erg means a unit of work, monergism
refers to only one agent doing a work. Monergistic regeneration
communicates the truth that only one agent is active in the work
of regeneration and that one agent is God. The new birth is
a saving work produced singularly by God the Holy Spirit. The Spirit
alone is active. Man is passive. Conversely, the Arminian sees
a synergistic regeneration. Syn, S-Y-N, means together with,
like synthesis. You bring things together. Synergistic
regeneration claims that there is not one but two active agents
in the new birth, God and man. And so this Arminian A semi-Pelagian
view of the new birth sees two equal powers, God and man, and
requires joint cooperation between God and man, and the one can
veto the other. So it's a two-party view of the
new birth, that man must cooperate with the Holy Spirit, and man
can resist the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit must cooperate
with man." Well, nothing could be further from the truth. It
destroys the entire meaning of the analogy. that in reality,
it's what 1 Peter 1, 3 says, blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has caused us to be born again
unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead. It is God and God alone who causes us to be
born again. So, how is the definite atonement
of Christ applied to the life of the one the Father has chosen? And the answer is by the new
birth, where God initiates sovereignly the impartation of life, and
when God does that, God gives the gifts of repentance and faith. that enables the one birthed
to believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. The Scripture does not
teach, believe and be baptized. Excuse me, believe and be born
again. You are born again and then you believe. The new birth
precedes saving faith. The new birth produces saving
faith. And it all takes place at a split
second. There are not people walking
around who are regenerated, but who have never believed upon
Christ. It all takes place chronologically at the exact same moment, yet
logically or theologically, the new birth precedes and produces
saving faith. Yet it all takes place in the
twinkling of an eye, in an exact moment. When I look at my passport,
it does not say that I was born in the spring of 1951. It doesn't
even say I was born in the month of 1951. It says, I was born
on April the 13th, 1951, and I know that it was at 1013 at
night. There was a moment, there was
a time when I was birthed into the Kingdom of Heaven. And I'm
so glad that my mother was not in labor for a month. And the
same is true spiritually. You may not be exactly aware
of when this all took place. It was in a general period of
time in the course of a couple weeks, but in reality, with God,
it took place at a point in time. Well, come with me to chapter
5, verse 25, and I want you to see that it's not only a monergistic
regeneration, but it is a spiritual resurrection. This is a verse that we looked
at last night, and in John 5, 25, Jesus taught that the elect
are spiritually raised to life by a powerful resurrection from
the grave of sin to believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact,
if you look first at the previous verse, verse 24, this is another
instance where there is human responsibility, verse 24, divine
sovereignty, verse 25. They're like two hands that clasp
together. They're like the heads and tails
of the same coin. So verse 24 is the human responsibility,
and it's the free offer of the gospel to all who read this. "'Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who hears My words and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life,
and does not come into judgment, but is passed out of death into
life.'" So we would ask the question, how is it that someone comes
to believe in Christ? We would ask the question, how
is it that someone comes to be the recipient of eternal life?
We would ask the question, how is it that someone comes to hear
His Word? And the answer is in the next
verse, which also starts with the same signature formula, truly,
truly, I say to you. An hour is coming and now is,
meaning this very present moment, when the dead, those who are
spiritually dead and trespasses in sin, will hear the voice of
the Son of God. He's referring to the effectual
call of the shepherd when he calls his sheep by name to come
to himself. the dead will hear the voice
of the Son of God, and those who hear will live." Here, regeneration
is pictured as a resurrection. being raised from the dead. God imparts life to the spiritually
dead soul. They are raised, and in that
split second, now that they are made alive, they call upon the
name of the Lord for salvation. Dead people don't call out for
salvation. Dead people lay in the grave. That's why God must first raise
the one who is spiritually dead to life in order that the very
first thing that they do is believe upon Jesus Christ. Only someone who is made alive
can call upon the name of the Lord. Someone who remains dead
in trespasses and sins cannot call upon the name of the Lord. And we could use the illustration
here of Lazarus, who was dead and in the grave. And Jesus came
in John 11, and He says, Where have you laid him? And they take
him to the tomb. And Jesus said, Lazarus, come
forth. And Lazarus was raised roll away
the stone, take his grave clothes off, and he came walking out. Now, if Jesus had only said,
come forth, the entire graveyard would have been emptied. But
He said, Lazarus, come forth. and it was only Lazarus who was
raised from the dead and came forth." That is a picture of
every new birth by which God calls to the dead, and they are
raised to believe upon Jesus Christ. You remember in Ezekiel
37, The prophet was taken by God to a valley of dry bones,
and he said, "'Son of man, can these bones live?' And Ezekiel
was wise enough to say, "'Lord, you know all things.'" That was
a total evasion of answering the question, "'Lord, you know.'"
And so God said to Ezekiel to do something that, humanly speaking,
seems irrational. He said, prophesy to the bones.
And as Ezekiel began to preach to the dead bones, the four winds
of heaven began to blow. Does that sound like John 3,
verse 8? Representing the Holy Spirit. And there was a resurrection,
and the dead bones were raised, and they became connected together,
and they stood on their feet. And it is a picture of the salvation
of Israel in the last days, when Romans 11 says, "...and all Israel
will be saved." This nation of spiritually dead bones, an apostate
nation, living in unbelief in the last days. They will be raised
by God to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and they will embrace
their Messiah, and they will weep over Him. as one would weep
over their firstborn as they realized that it was they who
put the Son of Man to death. This is what the new birth is. It is the resurrection of the
spiritual corpse to life and to believe in Christ. And so
when I stand to preach, I'm aware that in a large crowd like this,
it would be naive of me to think that everyone is a believer here,
and that as I go through this and preach the gospel, I stand
before a valley of dry bones, and I am dependent upon God while
I prophesy, while I preach, for God to send the wind of heaven
and for God to resurrect the one who is spiritually dead and
trespasses and sin. I don't know who that is. And
so I just preach to all, and I issue the free offer of the
gospel to all, trusting that God will send the wind of heaven,
the powerful working of the Holy Spirit, and that God will raise
the one who is spiritually dead and trespasses and sin to new
life. in Jesus Christ. John 5, verse
25, those, the dead, will hear the voice of the Son of God,
and those who hear will live. Again, in contradistinction to
verse 28 and 29, which is the resurrection of the body at the
end of the age. We'll come to John chapter 6
and verse 37 yet again. I want you to see sovereign drawing
the divine power that guarantees that the elect will come to faith
in Christ. In verse 37, John 6, look at
it one more time with me, "...all that the Father gives me..."
Please note the next word, "...will." They will come to Me. God will overcome their resistance.
God will not take no for an answer. God will bring them to Christ,
and they will come to Christ. How do I know? How do you know
that they will come to Christ? Look at verse 44. No one can
come to Me unless... Now, here's how they come. The
Father who sent Me draws them. Do you see that? This word, draw,
we need to pull over and park here just for a moment. This
is an important word. It's a very strong word. In the
Greek, it's helko, H-E-L-K-O, or helkuo, H-E-L-K-U-O. And it carries the idea of dragging
an object or a person by force. The word was used of someone
hauling bricks, a very heavy load, and it had to be stronger
than the load of bricks. It is used in the Bible of towing
a heavy load. I want to give you some cross-references
for this. Acts 16, 19. It was used when
Paul was in Philippi preaching the gospel, and they literally
drug him into the marketplace. They apprehended and overpowered
Paul, and they drug him into the marketplace. Acts 21.30,
it was used of dragging Paul out of the temple. Acts 18.10,
it was used of, excuse me, John 18.10, it was used of Peter drawing
his sword out of his side, or sheath. In John 21, verse 6,
it was used of Peter drawing the fishing net that had caught
153 fish and dragging the catch of fish onto the shore. In James
2, verse 6, Helcuo is used of when they would physically drag
the poor before a judge. It's the very word that is used
here in John 6, verse 44. that the Spirit of God, as the
gospel is preached, drags the elect to faith in Christ. It means far more, this word,
far more than merely attract someone, or urge someone, or
incline someone, or invite someone. It means to forcibly and powerfully
apprehend that person and drag them to where you want them to
be. That is the work of the Holy
Spirit of God. As we all, like sheep, have gone
astray, each one of us has turned to his own way. We were enemies
of God, aliens from His kingdom. We were resisting the gospel.
we were pushing it away from us, we were hostile towards God,
we were at enmity with God, and God literally drew us and dragged
us to Christ, and in the drawing took out our heart of stone,
put in a heart of flesh, such that in the process we desire
to come to Christ, and we come humbly running to Christ in the
process. It is a very strong word. And would you note again in verse
37, it says, they will come because God is greater than man, and
the will of God is greater than the will of man, and the power
of God is greater than the resistance of man. And verse 37 says, "...they
will come." Someone may say, well, I will not come. Well,
if you're one of God's elect, you will, and He will make you
willing in the day of His power. Charles Haddon Spurgeon was once
preaching out of Matthew chapter 8 on the text, "...many will
come from the east and the west, and will sit down with Abraham
and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." And Spurgeon just
gloried in the triumph of God's powerful, drawing grace. Spurgeon said, oh, I love God's
wills and God's shalls. There's nothing to compare to
them. Let a man say, he shall do something, or I will do this. And what is it good for, Spurgeon
says? He never performs it. When a man says he will do something, what is it good for? But it is
never so with God's shalls. If He says, shall, it shall be. And if God says, will, it will
be. Now, He has said here, many shall
come. The devil says, they shall not
come. But God says, they shall come. Their sins say, you can't
come. God says, you shall come. You yourself say, I won't come. God says, you shall come. Yes,
there are some of you here who are laughing at salvation, who
scoff at Christ and mock at the gospel, but I tell you, some
of you shall come yet. What, you say? Can God make me
become a Christian? I tell you, yes. For herein rests
the power of the gospel. It does not ask for your consent,
it gives consent. It does not say, will you have
it, but it makes you willing in the day of God's power. The
gospel does not want your consent. It gets it. It knocks the enmity
out of your heart. You say, I don't want to be saved.
Christ says, you shall be. He makes your will. Turn around,
and then you cry, Lord, save me. And he concludes this, "...they
shall come, they shall come, they shall come. You may laugh,
you may despise us, but Christ Jesus shall not die for nothing. If some of you reject Him, there
are some who will not reject Him." If there are some who are
not saved, others shall be saved. Christ shall see His seed, He
shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord will prosper
in His hand." And then He concludes, "'They shall come, they shall
come, and none in heaven or in earth or in hell can stop them
from coming.'" This is the only explanation.
For Jesus sang, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades
will not prevail against it. As greater is he who is in you
than he who is in the world. And whatever opposition the world
may put up, Satan may put up, demons may put up, human hearts
may put up, no matter how corrupt the society may become in this
country or in my country, Christ will build His church. and every
one of the elect will come to faith in Jesus Christ, and not
a one will be left behind. And however many he has elected
in this generation shall be brought to faith in Jesus Christ, all
that the Father has given me shall come to me." I want to
tell you, if that doesn't light you up, I think you're woods
wet. I don't know what it would take
to awaken you from the slumber of your sleep. We have a triumphant
Savior, and the Holy Spirit is sovereign. and the work of God
will carry forth victoriously. In fact, we will prosper the
most in days of persecution and adversity than in days of prosperity. The church has never flourished
in prosperity. We have always advanced the strongest
when the winds of resistance have howled against the church. And so, as we are living in times
in which the sun is setting on this age, and darkness is beginning
to shroud the land, and we are being veiled with unprecedented
debauchery. It is the doctrines of grace
that is our hope, is our assurance that God will be performing His
work. And it should make us want to
be a part of what God is doing, because this is going to happen.
I want to be a part of what God's doing. I want to get in on it.
I don't want to be sitting on the sidelines. I want to be out
on the field. I want to be on the 50-yard line. I'm part of
what God is doing. Come to John chapter 10. I want you to see sovereign calling. John chapter 10, we began looking
at this last night, and there's only some parts of this that
I want to draw to your attention, but I want you to note the effectual
call of the shepherd to the sheep, and they will come. John 10, verse 1, "'Truly, truly,
I say to you, he who does not enter by the door," referring
to false shepherds, the Pharisees, the false leaders of Israel,
"'he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep,
but comes up some other way, he is a thief and a robber.'"
And Jesus said this to the Pharisees. He is calling them out as thieves
and robbers as He says this. He's not in a seminary classroom
teaching systematic theology. He is on the front lines of life,
out in the mix of people addressing those who are scorning and scoffing
this blind man that He just saved in chapter 9. So verse 2, he,
referring to the true shepherd, Jesus, the true owner of the
sheep, he enters by the door, meaning he came lawfully with
messianic credentials and Old Testament prophecies. He enters
by the door. He is a shepherd of the sheep. I don't need to belabor this
anymore, but you know who the sheep are. They're the elect of God. They are the ones chosen by the
Father. These are those given to the Son. These are those for
whom the Son lays down His life. So note verse 3, to Him the doorkeeper
opens, possibly John the Baptist is intended here. And the sheep,
listen, the sheep, all of the elect, they hear His voice, and
He calls His own sheep by name. and leads them out. Verse 4, He puts forth all His
own. Not a one of them is left behind.
He puts forth all of His own. He goes ahead of them, and the
sheep follow Him because they know His voice. Verse 5, a stranger
they simply will not follow, but will flee from Him because
they do not know the voice of the stranger. Listen, they will
not follow the voice of Brigham Young. They will not follow the
voice of Muhammad. They will not follow the voice
of the Pope. They will not follow the voice of the false prophets.
They will follow the voice of their one true shepherd, and
it is God the Holy Spirit that will cause that voice to resonate
within their soul, and He will raise them and draw them and
bring them to Christ. A. W. Pink says, "...let a man
of the world hear two preachers, one giving out the truth and
the other putting forth error, and he can discern no difference
between them It is far otherwise with a child
of God. The child of God may be but a
babe in Christ, unskilled in theological controversies, but
instinctively he will detect vital heresy as soon as he hears
it. And why is this? Because he is
indwelt by the Holy Spirit and has received inuction from the
Holy One, 1 John 2, 20, How thankful we should be for this, how gracious
of the Lord to have given us this capacity to separate the
precious from the vile." Listen, when the sheep hear the voice
of the shepherd call them, though they are grazing in the
community sheepfold, that little head pops up, and they go, that's
my shepherd who's calling me. And the other sheep don't hear
it. The other sheep just continue to graze. The other sheep just
continue to go about their business. But the Lord Jesus, as He stands
at the community sheepfold, He begins to call out His own sheep
by name. Brown nose, white face, black
ear, and he calls this sheep by name. And as soon as they
hear their name called, that head pops up, and they instinctively
know, that is my shepherd who is calling me. And they begin
to separate from the other sheep, and they are drawn to their shepherd,
and they now follow their shepherd as he leads them out into green
pastures and beside still waters. That's what God did in your life
whenever it was you came into the kingdom of heaven. And at
that moment, you may not have been aware that it was all of
grace and all of God that was doing this, but when we look
at texts of Scripture like this, it becomes abundantly clear that
it was a supernatural, sovereign operation of God in your heart
and in your soul, by which you were raised from the dead, by
which you were birthed into the kingdom, by which you were given
ears to hear the call of the Shepherd, by which you were drawn
to the Lord Jesus Christ. And He is so powerful in His
drawing that there is no resistance, there is no fight that you could
put up. That's why it's called irresistible grace. Are you not glad that God would
not take no for an answer from you? Are you not grateful beyond
words that He made you willing in the day of His power? And
it is only when we understand the doctrine of total depravity
and radical corruption, how bad we were, how dead we were, can
we truly appreciate and understand the miracle for anyone to come
to faith in Jesus Christ. So, this is a working of the
Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit, in perfect unity and perfect
harmony, the Father electing those whom He will save, giving
them to the Son, the Son laying down His life and actually saving
them, actually reconciling them, actually redeeming them. And
then the Holy Spirit sent into this world by the Father and
the Son to call out of the world and draw to Christ these whom
the Father chose and these for whom the Son died. There's a
fifth doctrine of grace, which we don't have time to cover.
It's the eternal security of the believer. Let me just put
it to you this way. If you could be a Christian for
five years and then lose your salvation, you would have had
five-year life. If you could be a believer for
ten years and then lose your salvation, you would have had
ten-year life. But what kind of life does He
give? He gives eternal life, and that
which is settled for eternity cannot be undone in time. You will never perish. None of
His sheep will ever perish. Why? He's the Good Shepherd. A crummy shepherd would lose
his sheep. A fumbling, faultful shepherd
would lose his sheep, but the good shepherd loses not a one
of his sheep. That, in a nutshell, is the eternal
security of the believer, and the perseverance of the saints
means that those who have been truly born again in the family
of God will pursue holiness and will pursue godliness and will
be marked by obedience to the Word of God. that you will live
your life in such a way as to bring glory to God, because God
is at work within you, both to will and to work, for His good
pleasure. You will know them by their fruit,
and the elect will be known by the fruit of repentance and obedience,
love for the brethren, decreasing love for the world, the pursuit
of active righteousness, etc., etc., all the many different
evidences of the new birth. This one will persevere in their
faith and in their trust. Sometimes we see someone who
gives the appearance of being saved, and they join the church,
they start out on fire for the Lord, and then they fall away
and we never see them. And so the question is, were
they once saved and then lose their salvation? Or how do we
explain this? And the answer is, they were
never saved to begin with. The faith that fizzles before
the finish had a flaw from the first, and they were shown to be false
disciples. and never truly born again. John 8 and verse 31 says this,
and I'll close, if you continue in my word, you are truly one
of my disciples. Therefore, if you do not continue
in his word, you were a false disciple, not a true one.