We're going to go ahead and start
reading in Psalms 118. And we're going to read until we get to
Psalm 119, and then we'll flip over to Psalms 51. O give thanks unto the Lord,
for he is good, because his mercy endureth forever. Let Israel
now say that his mercy endureth forever. Let the house of Aaron
now say that his mercy endureth forever. Let them now that fear
the Lord say that his mercy endureth forever. I called upon the Lord
in distress. The Lord answered me and set
me in a large place. The Lord is on my side. I will
not fear. What can man do unto me? The
Lord taketh my part with them that help me. Therefore shall
I see my desire upon them that hate me. It is better to trust
in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust
in the Lord than to put confidence in princes. All nations can pass
me about, but in the name of the Lord will I destroy them.
They can pass me about, yea, they can pass me about, but in
the name of the Lord I will destroy them. They can pass me about
like bees, they're quenched as a fire of thorns, for in the
name of the Lord I will destroy them. Thou hast thrust sore at
me that I might fall, but the Lord helped me. The Lord is my
strength and song and has become my salvation. The voice of rejoicing
and salvation is in the tabernacles of the righteous. The right hand
of the Lord doeth valiantly. The right hand of the Lord is
exalted. The right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly. I shall not die but live and
declare the works of the Lord. The Lord hath chastened me sore,
but he hath not given me over into death. Open to me the gates
of righteousness. I will go into them and I will
praise the Lord. This gate of the Lord into which
the righteous shall enter. I will praise thee for thou hast
heard me and art become my salvation. The stone which the builders
refused has become the headstone of the corner. This is the Lord's
doing. It is marvelous in our eyes.
This is the day which the Lord hath made. We will rejoice and
be glad in it. Save now, I beseech thee. O Lord,
O Lord, I beseech thee. Send now prosperity. Blessed
be he that cometh in the name of the Lord. We have blessed
you out of the house of the Lord. God is the Lord, which hath showed
us light, buying the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns
of the altar. Thou art my God, and I will praise
thee. Thou art my God, I will exalt
thee. O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his
mercy endureth forever. Now we'll turn to Psalm 51, and
I'll read a few verses in Psalm 51, and then we'll pray. In Psalm 51 verse 9, we'll start. Hide thy face from my sins, and
blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O
God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from
thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore
unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit.
Then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be
converted unto thee. Deliver me from blood guiltiness,
O God, thou God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud
of thy righteousness. O Lord, open thou my lips, and
my mouth shall shew forth thy praise. For thou desirest not sacrifice,
else would I give it. Thou delightest not in burnt
offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken
and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Do good in
thy good pleasure unto Zion, build thou the walls of Jerusalem.
Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness,
with burnt offering and whole burnt offering. Then shalt thou
offer bullocks upon thy altar. What a statement. Grace greater
than all I have seen. I turn with me this morning to
Ephesians chapter 2. One old writer I was reading
this morning concerning Ephesians chapter 2 called his study sweet
contemplations, and indeed it is to all who believe. I know
of no other place in the word of God where the doctrine of
Christ, the way of salvation, is stated more clearly. It's
stated throughout the Word of God. But I know of no place where
it's stated more clearly than it is in Ephesians chapter 1
and chapter 2. So much so that when Paul was
forced by the providence of God to leave the church at Ephesus
and go to what he believed would be his death, he said, I've kept back nothing
from you. Nothing profitable, but it showed
you and have taught you publicly and from house to house, and
I take you to record this day that I am free from the blood
of all men, for I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel
of God. If you read Ephesians chapter
1 and Ephesians chapter 2, you've read the whole counsel of God. And in summing up his ministry
in Acts 20, 24, he said that it was to testify, now listen
to this, the gospel of the grace of God. If you preach his gospel,
you're going to preach grace. There's no other way to preach
it. It's the gospel of the grace of God. And that's exactly my
intent this morning. If the Lord will grant me the
ability to do so, I want to preach from Ephesians chapter 2, 8 and
9, the gospel of the grace of God, or as it's plainly stated
in my text, salvation by grace. I don't see where there's room
for an argument. He says, by grace are you saved. Where's room for argument with
that? Oh no, we're saved by works. Where? Where does it say that?
Every time I read about those things, it says, not by works, lest any man should boast. Salvation by grace. And I know
by the Word of God, and by my own experience, and by the time
I sat and learned under gospel preachers, that I'm addressing
two groups of people here this morning. I'm preaching to a few
people who are being saved. God's been working in them. He
intervened in their lives. They heard the gospel. He sent
them a preacher. They believed. And the goodness
of God led them to repentance, gave them this wonderful gift
of His grace. He gave them faith to believe.
And ever since, they've been listening to Him and being taught
taught of God. They're being saved. They heard
the gospel in power and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance
than they have been and are yet today shut up to Christ as their
hope of glory. There's no other hope. You talk
to them and they'll very quickly tell you what their hope is.
My hope is Christ. My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness. He's the basis. He's the foundation. He's all they have as a reason
for hope. What's your hope before God?
We had a dear friend who died yesterday. And I say died, she
didn't die. She went to be with the Lord. And what a sweet contemplation
to see this child of God go to be with Him. Isn't that our hope? We're shut up to Christ, that's
our hope. When we leave this world, to be absent from the
bodies, to be present with the Lord. That's my hope. They're here today, they're rarely
missing when we gather for worship. They love one another and they
feast on the gospel. messages most Sunday, not always,
but most Sundays, somebody will come to me and say, that was
really good. You know, you set a meal before
somebody and what you're waiting to hear at the end of the meal,
boy, that was good. Good, I'll fix it again. And
that's my hope in preaching the gospel. If I get it across and
it goes home to you, I rejoice. I hope I can do it again. But
they love one another. They feast on the gospel of Christ.
But there's another group present here today. They're always present
in every church. I'm not trying to pick on anybody
this morning. There's another group present today who've heard
the gospel, but not in power. They've heard it with these ears.
They've heard it with this mind. And they've thought about it.
And they've made some decisions. And they've laid hold, in a sense,
of the truth of the gospel, but not in the heart. Is there
a difference? Oh, my soul, what a difference! It didn't come in power, not
in the revelation of God's Spirit where you could see His glory
and fall down before Him in awe. You've heard the words the expressions,
the illustrations, and you've mixed them in with natural reasoning,
and come away with some kind of philosophy, but have not been
moved to confess Him, obey Him, submit to Him, bow at His feet,
and sing of His glory. And you get disturbed every now
and then, but you're not desperate. You never get desperate. You
just get disturbed. You care, you're a little concerned
about eternity, but actually more concerned with this world
and the things of it. And there may even be some here
this morning still wrestling with whatever religious traditional
ideas that you were raised in, I did for years. As a servant
of God, I watch for you souls. I stand here week after week
and not only lay out the way of salvation, but warn you to
flee the wrath to come. Judgment's coming. And if you
think if I don't think about it, it won't bother me, I got
news for you. Judgment's coming. It's inescapable. It's an awful, eternal, final,
Judgment. There's nothing else past that.
And yet some of you live as though there were no God. I'll do what
I want. And I'm so sick of hearing this.
Just don't even tell it to me anymore. Well, that's just the
way I am. And that's just the reason God's
going to send you to hell because you're just the way you are.
Grace changes a man. It doesn't work in him. He's
not the same. He's a new creature. That's how
it describes him in the scripture. He's a new creature. He's not
what he was. He's not what he's going to be,
but he's not what he was. And if there's been no change
in you, if there's been no work in you, no change of direction,
no change of mind, to be saved is to have the mind of Christ.
The revelation of the glory of God, we see it in the face of
Jesus Christ. If we don't have that, then don't
talk about being saved because you're nowhere near being saved. Grace is not just a word, a point
of doctrine is what I'm trying to tell you. Grace comes from
the sovereign. It's sovereign grace. If I was
going to change anything on our sign this morning, it would be
that. It's not just grace. It's sovereign grace. It never
fails. It's effectual. Salvation by grace, and make
no mistake, grace is the issue. God has already, in a sense,
judged this world. He judged it in the garden. He
put a man there named Adam, the first man, a representative man. And mankind was in his seed like
a forest is in an acorn. If you plant an acorn off an
oak tree, it's not going to grow up and have peaches on it. It's
going to be an oak tree. That's what it's going to be.
And we're of the seed of Adam, a fallen man, a fallen nature,
totally depraved. That's all he can produce. In
Adam, this representative man, he sinned. Listen to this, Romans
5, 12. Wherefore, by one man, sin entered
into the world, and death by sin. And so death passed upon
all men. How is that possible? We're his
seed. And how are we? Well, we follow
them by nature. What he did is produce more of
the same. Natural men, carnal men, fallen
men, call them what you will, in Adam all die. Sin entered
and death passed. Spiritual death, and then physical
death. And then after that, there's
another death. It's called the second death. Eternal death. everlasting death. Well, what
is spiritual death? Well, let me give you three things
this morning. Spiritual death. I know one man left here and
went home and he said, dead, dead, dead. That's all that man
knows is dead. No, I'm telling you what the
scripture says. You have to quicken who were
dead. We can't get to our text without dealing with that, can
we? That's how he begins the passage. Spiritual death is insensibility
of the heart to the things of God. And insensible
means unaware. It means numb. It means unaffected. It means indifferent. It means
insensitive. Paul talked about the conscience
being burnt, being scalded to the place where it had no nothing
affected it anymore. Spiritual death, secondly, is
a condition. It's pictured in what the scripture
calls a lunatic. You know, every man who comes
to Christ to be healed, that's a picture of what spiritual death
is. The leper, paralyzed, demon-possessed,
you name it. And you know what he said, and
who else came? Lunatics. The heart of the sons of men,
Solomon said, is full of evil and madness is in their heart
while they live. And after that, they go to the
dead. It's a condition. And then thirdly, spiritual death
is a sentence. As Barabbas was held awaiting
his physical death for his crimes, so we're held in the chains of
darkness awaiting us. After a man can't break through,
he's in a cell. Well, he's got a free will. No,
he don't. He's free to do anything he can do inside his little cell.
And that cell is his nature. And his nature is full of sin. By nature, he says in Ephesians
2, a child of wrath, even as others. God drove out the man from the
garden lest he put forth his hand and take of the tree of
life. And that's what people are pretending to do today. By
their own will, they're going to reach out and take that tree
of life. They're going to, without honor
to God's glory and without grace, just by their works and by their
mind. Well, I decided I'm going to
have eternal life, so they'll just reach out and get it. No,
no you won't. No, God put a seraphim there,
and He guards that with a flaming sword that turns every way. There's
no way you're going to touch that tree. That tree is the gift
of God. He gives it, and He gives it
to whom He will. And that way, my friend, is the
way of grace. Man's only hope from the fall
is the grace and mercy of God. Ephesians 2, verse 3 says, We
have been quickened by God. We who have been quickened by
God were by nature children of wrath even as others. So here's
God's message to all of us this morning for this hour. By grace
are you saved through faith. It's faith. Now listen to it. And that not
of yourselves. Is that where you're looking
this morning for salvation? in yourself, I'm going to find
it. I'm going to search every corner.
I'm going to find this life. No sir, you're not going to find
it in you. It's not of yourselves. It is
the gift of God. Now listen, not of works. Work
all you will, you're not going to find this grace. Grace is
a gift. God comes as He will according
to His good pleasure and He gives His grace. Now what will you
do with it? God's preacher's here this morning.
His Word is here. His Gospel's here. Here's the
gift. What will you do with it? Will
you receive it and rejoice or just toss it aside? Well, I'm going to tell you something.
If you don't receive it with joy and rejoice, you've trodden
underfoot the Son of God, done to spite unto the Spirit of grace,
and I don't even know how to express what you've done to God
the Father. trampled on his love, trampled on his provision. Read Proverbs chapter 1. I'm
going to tell you something. Another thing I'm sick of is
hearing this, sending away a day of grace. You can't send away
a day of grace. You can send away a day of mercy.
And that's what Proverbs 1, he said, you would none of my counsel. I would have reached out and
gathered you in, but you wouldn't have it. You took my gift and
threw it down. That's what the Jews did. Tossed it away. The stone that
God made head of the corner, you disallowed. You looked at
it and it didn't fit your building, so you threw it down. You called
it out. Oh my. I have four things I want
us to consider. And may God be pleased to make
them effectual to you this morning. First of all, I want us to see
the source of all grace. Grace is not something common
in this world. Grace is not like a glass of
water that you can pick it up and take a drink. Grace is of
God. It's His very nature. It's a
perfection of God. His grace. And boy, ain't nothing
gets my... Feathers up like somebody looking
at the Pope and calling him my grace. Oh my soul. Grace is the name of God. And if you really want to know
the truth and you search it in the scriptures, you want to talk
about the glory of God being manifested, it's the glory of
His grace. The glory of His grace. Moses
said, Show me your glory. And God hid him in the cleft
of the rock. That's Christ. And he passed
by before him. And here's what he told him.
The very first thing. I'll be gracious to whom I will be gracious. You want to see my glory? Here
it is. My grace. God is the source of all grace. And grace comes from God. Grace
is His. which is His very name. And that
one and only name given among us whereby we must be saved is
the name of grace. The law came by Moses. Grace
and truth came by Jesus Christ. Now I want you to think about
something. Christ came down from heaven.
That's what He said, isn't it? I came down from heaven not to
do my will, but the will of Him that sent me. Grace came down
from its dwelling place. That's in God. And it came by
Jesus Christ. Grace. It comes from God. It's His name. And that one and
only name given whereby we must be saved. Grace came down from
its dwelling place in God. And the Bible calls our God,
listen to me, the God of all grace. People talk about grace like
it's a little speck of something. It's the very character of God.
Grace. I'll be gracious. And I don't care what it is you're
talking about. In talking about God's providence
dealing with us, oh, before our birth and up until the time of
our regeneration. He calls it preeminent grace.
Prevenient grace, I'm sorry. Grace for grace. The Spirit given to us of God
at Pentecost poured it out on His church. In Zechariah 12.10,
listen to this. He said, I'll pour out my Spirit
of grace. You mean that's the name of the
Spirit? Yes, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of grace. And He's
the God of all grace. There's no grace apart from God,
and listen, there's no God revealed apart from Christ. John 1.18,
He said, No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten
Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared
Him. By grace are you saved through
faith, and that, that faith, not of yourselves, it's the gift
of God. All right, what will you do with
it? All right, here's the second
thing I want us to see concerning this grace that saves its objects. The grace of God in salvation,
like the love of God, is particular. Well, he's gracious to everybody.
No, he's not. He's merciful. He's merciful. Anything this side of hell is
mercy, isn't it? So there's a sense in which he's merciful to all
men. He lets men hear his gospel. He didn't have to. He could shut
them up in his providence like natives over there in the middle
of the African jungle and let them dance around a totem pole. worship some kind of fire god
or something, or whatever it is they worship. It's particular. God said to
Moses, I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious. It belongs
to him, it's given of him, and it's given to whomever he will.
God's grace is purposed as is the salvation that He gives
to us. And it's effectual. But it's only effectual to His
elect. Oh, God could... You look at
somebody and you think in your mind, I don't even know why we
think this way, but we do. We see how a guy acts and say,
you know, He can't be saved. Where's the soul that grace can't
save? I remember reading a story about
Spurgeon and one of his friends came to his house and he said,
Brother Spurgeon, he said, Oh, such and such down there in the
county of Bath, the Lord saved him. He said, I'll never despair
again of salvation since the Lord saved him. And Spurgeon
told him, he said, I've never despaired of salvation since
God saved me. Paul said, he saved me first. Chief of sinners, he saved me
first. So everybody else had good hope. If God can save Paul,
he can save anybody. That's what Paul wrote with his
own hand. Set me forth as an example. God chose two boys. They were twins still in their
mother's womb. Hadn't done any good or evil.
Hadn't been born yet. And here's what he said on the
matter, Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated. Now I ain't got any trouble,
maybe you do, but I don't have any trouble understanding why
God hated Esau or why he hated me. I don't have any. But here's where I have a problem.
How could he love Jacob? Huh? the deal maker. Oh, I'll tell you why, because
it was a gracious love, a love filled with provision. Faith
is the gift of God, and faith leads us to repentance. A man
who don't believe, he's not going to repent. He don't know what
to repent of. And then watch this over here
in Romans chapter 4 verse 16. Therefore it is by faith that
it might be by grace to the end or for this cause that the promise
might be sure to all to see. What if faith wasn't a gift of
grace? What if it was of work? Nobody
would be saved. All of those given to Christ
shall receive the gift of God's free grace in Christ. They'll
be sent a preacher, they're going to hear, they're going to believe,
they're going to repent. They'll gather with God's saints,
they'll grow in grace and knowledge of Christ, and they'll persevere
unto death. These all died in faith. That's
what the scripture says. God's grace is particular. Alright? And here's the third thing about
salvation by grace. The effects of it. God's grace
is effectual. Sometimes. Now, all the time. If God sends His grace, it's
going to do its work. So much so that the commentators
all call it saving grace. That's what it is, saving grace.
And if what you think is grace doesn't affect a change in you,
it's not the grace of God, because His grace never fails. Having expounded on the way of
salvation by grace and the attitude and conduct produced by it, it
says over in 1 Peter 5.12 that what he had written to them is
the true grace of God. Read it for yourself. 1 Peter 5.12. This is what God
really does and how God really is. Paul prayed concerning his infirmities. And he prayed and prayed and
prayed. And nothing happened. And finally God said, My grace
is sufficient. How come you have infirmities?
God sent them. God gave them to you on purpose. Can you imagine the apostle Paul,
he wrote half the New Testament. Can you imagine what a big head
he would have had if it wasn't for the infirmities that God
gave him? And that's what God told him.
He gave them to him to keep him from swelling up. Oh, our infirmities, our inabilities,
they're like mountains. And what are those I preach to?
Are they not plagued with inabilities? Sure they are. But here's the good news. My
grace is sufficient. It's sufficient. I'm not sufficient,
but His grace is. So what kind of ministry would
we have without the grace of God? Who could I preach to? I remember Henry Mahan saying this
to us years ago at the church. If you're looking for the perfect
church, When you join it, it won't be perfect anymore. What kind of a life, what kind
of ministry could we have apart from the grace of God? And what
kind of life will we live without the grace of God? What kind of
fellowship could we have apart from the grace of God? I don't know, maybe you think
fellowship is people thinking like you do and acting like you
do. I'm going to tell you something.
Without grace, there could be no fellowship. And that grace
is in Christ. If you're in Christ, you have
that grace. And that grace is why you can
have fellowship with Him. And it's why you ought to have
fellowship with everybody in His church. Grace is given to save. It's given to overcome your attitude
and conduct, to give you what sin has denied you, to save you
from yourself. And the effects of grace is a
new creature, a clear mind, the mind of Christ, able to see things
that this world can't see. Now that's just a few examples
of grace and some with the lack of it. And then here's my final
point, very closely related to my last point, the success of
grace. False religion lasts at the little
assemblies called grace churches spread across this world. They
compare them to the modern cathedrals that take up city blocks and
are numbered in the thousands. But this is not how success is
measured. The success of grace is measured
by what goes on in the heart and the mind. What God does with
you, in you, for you, and sometimes by you. By grace are you saved. Salvation
is a work done for you and in you. And God's people, from the
time of their regeneration, grow in grace. and knowledge of Him. Well, how do I know if I have
grace? Are you growing in the knowledge of Christ? Do you see
Christ clearer now than you did the first time you heard me preach?
That's grace working in you. Saving grace is sovereign grace,
and so Paul writes to the Hebrews in chapter 12, verse 28, Wherefore,
we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, Let us have
grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and
godly fear. How are you going to do it? With
grace. No other way. No other way. Grace triumphs over everything.
It triumphs over suffering. 1 Peter 5.10, he said, But the
God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by
Christ Jesus, after that you suffered for a while, make you
perfect, establish and settle you. And then listen to this
in Philippians 2 verse 12. Wherefore, my beloved, as you
have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much
more in my absence, work out your own salvation. How are you
going to do that? Well, you're going to do it with
fear and trembling, and here's why. It's God that worketh in
you both to will and to do of His good pleasure. That's the
only way you can make that statement. Is grace a work? Yes, it is.
Yes, it is. And if that grace is in you,
it'll work that salvation out. Here's the success of grace,
God working in you. And notice this, our text doesn't
say by grace you might be saved. It says by grace are you saved. You can't even picture in your
mind a God that's wringing his hands looking down at somebody
and they went to church for a little while and then they got mad over
something and left. And God's just wringing his hands
over that failure. He sent that grace but it wasn't
effective. You can't even picture that in your mind. God doesn't fail. Our text doesn't say by grace
you might be saved. It says by grace are you saved
through faith and that not of yourselves. It's the gift of
God. Now listen to this. Lest any man should boast. Boy,
if we had just a dot in the work, we'd brag on it for all eternity,
wouldn't we? We'd be up there telling the
angels, look here what I did. I can remember the day and the
hour. How many times have you heard that in church? But after that, he says this
in Ephesians 2, for, or for this reason, were his workmanship
created in Christ Jesus unto good work, which God hath before
ordained that we should walk in. This grace is sovereign grace. It's particular grace. It is
the very character and glory of God's name, and it cannot
fail. There's a troublesome passage
maybe some of you have dealt with over in Hebrews chapter
6. Yvonne was asking me about it
this week. It seems to indicate that the true believer will somehow
perish under certain conditions. You can read it on your own time
over there in Hebrews chapter 6. But that can never be. What
Paul's talking about here is men like Judas and Demas. The men like, well, at the end
of the passage he said, these are like thorns and briars. They're
the curse, right? That's what thorns and briars
are. And they're the curse of God upon this earth. But don't
they receive the rain and the minerals from the soil? Same
as the herbs and same as the fruit trees? Yes, they do. But
their end is to be burned. In the end, they're going to
be rejected because they don't have that true grace of God.
And I know it says they've tasted, okay? Well, let me tell you something
about tasting. I've tasted stuff. And didn't like it. Haven't you? I get it. Boy, somebody will
just brag and brag and brag. Boy, you got to have some of
this. And they'll give it to me. And it had the effect I already
knew it was going to have. I didn't like it. My mom for
15 years trying to get me to eat liver. I don't like liver.
Well, you just never did have it fixed right. Yeah, I have.
I've had it fixed right. And I still don't like liver. Keep your liver, I don't want
it. But men taste, but what they're tasting of is not the true grace
of God. Over in 1 Peter, he said, if
so be you tasted that the Lord is gracious. Huh? What's that mean? That means
God has shown His grace to you, and now you know something about
grace. There's a true work of God in
the heart that's irresistible. It's a sovereign work, and it's
an effectual work, and God Himself, by trials and suffering, proves
that work that He did in you, proves it to be of Him and not
of man. These trials are not so much
for you as it is for God. God's going to prove His work
in you. Satan said, yeah, you had no job about, but you let
me have it. see what happens. God said he's
yours, go ahead, just don't take his life. Boy, he did everything
to Job that humanly possible. He lost his family, he lost his
riches, he lost his holdings, he lost everything. Even his
friends were miserable comforters. They come over there and said,
you need to confess. We know you did some horrible
sin. You need to confess. In the end, of the book of Job,
it says everything Job said was right and everything these men
said was wrong. And it made those men come and
ask Job for his forgiveness. Many who claim to be partakers,
who hold offices in churches and do wonderful things, you
know, that's one of the things our Lord said, you're going to
say to men that day, had not we done many wonderful works
in thy name, There are people who do that. They do that. Oh, but here's another one on
Hebrew 6 that they like to challenge you with. What about Judas? The Lord said
he was partaker of this ministry. Huh? So was Billy Graham. I heard the interview. Mr. Graham said, didn't you once
hold and preach the doctrines, what they call the doctrines
of grace, Calvinistic doctrine? Oh, yes, he said, I did. And
he said, well, you don't preach them now. He said, no, sir, I
don't. He said, well, how come? He said, they were ruining my
ministry. But you're not going to get away
with pretense with God. Judas didn't. Demas didn't. Nobody
is. There's a true work of God in
the heart. It's irresistible. It's sovereign. It's effectual.
And God himself is going to prove the work. And many who claim
to be partakers and hold offices in churches and do wonderful
things, held in high esteem, they do fall away. But Paul said,
we're not of them who draw back under perdition. We're of them
who believe to the saving of the soul. How come? Grace. God's effectual grace. Oh, may He teach us something
about His grace. We're talking about the success
of grace. Grace cannot fail because it
comes to us from the sovereign Christ, and He's not willing
that any should perish. but that all should come to repentance. And our hope is in Christ who
has not and cannot fail. And if any part of this work
was owing to the flesh, it'll surely fail. I warn you of it
right now. It'll fail. But not so with God. And what I'm laboring to do this
morning is to show you that grace is the gift of God no matter
what it is that's being given. If it's His Son, if it's His
Spirit, if it's faith, if it's repentance, whatever it is, it's
by His grace. Salvation by grace. Almighty Lord teach us something
of His great work.