Now, let us turn to our text,
Romans chapter 8 and verse 28. I've been speaking from this
text, and I mean that literally. We've not only opened up the
text by the help of the Lord to you, but we've used related
scriptures, and so we shall be doing this again this morning. And referring to a portion of
this 28th verse of the 8th chapter of Romans, we'll be dealing with
a special part of it, a doctrine that's mentioned in it. And of
course when we say doctrine, we mean teaching. That's what
the word doctrine means. A lot of people in these days
feel that doctrine is a hard word and they want to get away
from doctrine. But you can't get away from the
doctrine unless you get away from the truth or teaching of
the Word of God. All of that's doctrine, and the
person of Christ is doctrine, and his work is doctrine. So
it's not a hard thing. Satan has made us feel this. the great consensus today of
perhaps the majority of professing Christians is that doctrine is
something we can do without, that it's impractical, and we
just ought to eliminate that and talk about Christ and about
love and so forth, but that's all a mistake. And if you knock
doctrine out, you take actually the practicality of the Scriptures
out, which is the teaching. and the basis of all fruit and
all service of the Christian life. Romans 8, 28, and we know
that all things work together for good to them that love God,
to them who are the cause according to his purpose. I've already
talked about the great purpose of the child of God, that he
has all things working together for his good. whatever it may
be, good or bad or indifferent, sickness or health or riches
or poverty or pleasant things or bitter or whatever, disease,
sickness, death, things surrounding you in your home, in your community,
at your work, in your church, in your religious life, Whatever
your circumstances are, whatever the events are that are affecting
your life, are all affecting you for good, and even sin. Sin, of course, and disease and
other things, have no merit in them to affect good for us in
themselves. But it is because God, in his
grace, wisdom, power, overrules sin and sickness and death and
all evil things and moves upon them in such a way that they
are made to be good for every child of God. However, this is
indeed a happy case to be in. Do we realize what's bothering
you this morning? What would you like to rid yourself
of? What would you like to change?
Correct. Perhaps a number of things. Well, remember this, that they're
all working for your good. And that thing that makes you
sad and makes you feel bad or disturbed, if you're a true Christian,
God declares in His Word that that thing is working for your
good. Now, isn't that wonderful? That
ought to fill us with joy, because that isn't just something the
preacher said. That isn't something the Church
has gotten up and said, well, this is the way it's going to
be. But this is what God Himself has said, isn't it? We know that
all things work together for good to them that love God, to
them who are called according to His purpose. Now, there are
two qualifications that the Apostle sets, or the Spirit of God sets
in this text for to have all these things working together
for our good. One is to love God. All things work together for
good to them that love God. No one loves God, of course,
but a Christian. And a Christian loves God because
the Spirit of God has regenerated him and made him a new creation
and shed abroad in his heart the love of God. So the Christian
loves God with the very love that God has put in his heart.
He can't help but love God, and therefore he has no room to boast
of it. For if it were not for the saving,
sovereign grace of our God, we, dear friends, would still be
in rebellion and enmity against God as well as the others. So to have all things working
together for your good means first you have qualified here,
by the grace of God of course, that you love God. You love Him. And we've spoken about how you
can know you love God, by the fruit. And we have told you what
those, the fruit of love for God is. We can't go into that
again. But there's a second qualification
to be fulfilled. in those who are to have all
things working together for their good. And that is they are to
be the call according to his purpose. Do you see that? He
says to them that love God first, and secondly to them who are
the call according to his purpose. Now, loving God, if you'll notice
in the text, is put first before the call. But in the actual occurrence
of the experiences here, or the exercises of God's grace, the
call of God comes before actually the Christian is made to love
or brought to love God. Why Paul puts the love first,
I do not know, other than to say the Spirit of God inspired
him to do that. But let us remember that before
we ever loved God at all, we were first called of God in His
grace, according to His purpose. And this is what we want to think
about. In fact, in verse 30, the apostle
in this golden chain of salvation by grace puts in the middle this
link called calling. In verse 29 we read, For whom
he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed
to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among
many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate,
them he also called, and whom he called, them he also justified,
and whom he justified, them he also glorified. Now, there are
five links in that golden chain of salvation that reaches from
eternity past to eternity future. And the first link, of course,
in that chain is formation, or foreknowledge, he said, which,
of course, is formation, or forelove, as we might read it also. And
the second link in the chain is predestination. then the last two links in the
chain is justification and glorification. But in the middle of that chain,
there is the link that is called calling. You notice, moreover
whom he did predestinate, then he also called. Now, beloved, I want to talk
to you about this call of God here. as set forth in the 28th
verse of the 8th chapter of Romans. And I want to speak, first of
all, about the two kinds of call that are set forth in the Scripture.
I want to talk a little while, Lord willing, about the state
of nature that we were in before this special call was given to
us. And then, in the third place,
I want to speak about the means, as the Lord will help me, what
are the means that God uses to effect this call of grace in
the child of God. And if we have time, we may get
into a description of this precious call of grace that belongs to
a child of God through God's gift. So first of all, let me
call attention to the truth that the scriptures speak about two
calls in reference to the exercise of God sending forth his blessed
gospel. There is first what is referred
to as the outward call, and then there is the second thing that
we speak of as the inward call, the call that he's talking about
in this place. Our Lord of Matthew 20 And verse
16 spoke of both these calls in these words. He says, many
are called, but few are chosen, and are called out. So there
you have the two calls of God. One is the outward call. Many are called. And then secondly, there is the
inward call, the effectual call. Those who are in that many who
are called are simply called by the preaching of the word,
by the voice of the preacher. They hear the truth. Perhaps
they're affected by it some way. They feel that they must do something.
maybe make a profession, and many of them do. But they only
have that outward call, and they are moved somehow or another
to do something in reference to religion and in reference
to the Lord Jesus Christ, but they are not truly saved. They
are not truly brought into the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, you might say, then, what
is the purpose of that Outward call. That outward call will
leave every sinner without excuse. Every sinner that comes before
the judgment bar of God, dear friends, will be without excuse
whatever because all have the outward call extended to them.
There is what we call or speak of as the inward call here. Our
theologians call it the effectual call. And the reason they put
that term on it effectually is because this call really does
something for the sinner. It doesn't just call him into
an outward profession, it does that. But it does something for
him inwardly. It really brings him to the family
of God. It brings him into the realm
of God's grace and knowledge and salvation. and justification. In fact, Augustine said God blows
a trumpet in the external call in the ear. But he said by the
internal call, he opens the heart as he did in the case of Lydia. Well, that's a great deal of
difference, isn't it? We've all had the external call
before we were actually saved. We heard the gospel of grace
by the ear, and perhaps we made a profession, but we found out
later that we were not truly in the grace of God. We were
not truly saved until that internal call came to us. So the external
call brings men to profession, but the internal call brings
men to possession of salvation, of Christ. The outward call will
restrain the Sabbath. Many times a lost person will
hear the gospel with his natural ears and he'll feel that he must
quit certain things, he must start doing certain things. So
there's a restraining influence even upon unsaved our restraining that does not
really bring them into the Kingdom of God and into salvation. But
that inward call actually transforms that son, makes him a new creation
in Christ, a new person inwardly. So much then for the two calls,
and I trust you have them separated understandingly in your mind.
Let us look for a moment at the state of nature in which we were
before we were called. We were in that state wherein
all natural men are at the present time. What is that? Well, it
is a state of bondage. A state of bondage to Satan and
to sin and to the world and to themselves. I think that would
just about cover the bondage that a sinner finds himself in.
The Word of God tells us that these natural men and their lost
estate, while they're religious or not, that Satan takes them
or captivates them by his own will. They're under the influence
and domination of Satan and his power. And so they're in bondage,
in slavery to Satan. And again, of course, they're
in slavery to sin. They do nothing but sin. They
do no righteousness whatever. That is in the true sense of
righteousness. All the righteousness that they
do actually is sin. Then they're in a state of bondage
and slavery to the world. They're slaves to the natural
world. They give themselves wholly and
constantly to the attention and to the love of the world. All
natural men do. If they have religion, it's a
natural religion. It's a world religion, not the
religion of the Lord Jesus Christ. Which brings us to that fourth
thing. All out of Christ are enslaved by themselves, by their
own natures. We were talking about that in
our study the other day. We had three other preachers
there about this. Why are men sinned? What causes them to sin? Are
they sinners because they commit sin? Or are they sinners because
they're sinners by nature? Well, of course, you know the
answer to that. Men commit sin because they're sinners. They
commit sin because the root of sin is already in their being,
in their constitution. They're enslaved by their own
perverted affection and judgment and perception. And all the factors,
their will and their minds, as well as their affection, are
all polluting the ship. So we found ourselves in that
state before we were ever brought out of it by the effectual call
of grace. Men are in a state of ignorance
outside of their factual call of grace. Paul says they're alienated
from the life of God by the ignorance that is in them. So they're dead,
they're dead spiritually, and they're in darkness. They have
no understanding of the true and the living God or the truth
of God, really. And then they're utterly helpless.
Paul says in Romans 5 and 6, when we were without strength,
in due time Christ died for the ungodly. Now when he says when
we were without strength, he does not refer to our just being
weak and unable to do great things for God, but able to do some
small things for him. But he's talking about utter
impotency. He's talking about absolute helplessness
to do anything acceptable to a holy God while we're in that
state of nature. Now, beloved, I don't mean to
say that that natural man, dead spiritually, can't do anything.
Well, somebody asked me, well, can a dead man do anything? Of
course he can. To be dead doesn't mean to be
inactive. It does, of course, physically. If a man's dead physically, he's
inactive. He can't speak, he can't eat,
he can't hear, and I suppose he can't smell or walk or do
any of those things physically. But when the Word of God speaks
of dead men spiritually, in the second chapter of Ephesians,
beginning with verse 1, notice how much the dead man can actually
do. And you, beginning with verse
1 of Ephesians 2, have the quickened or made alive who were dead in
trespasses and sin. Notice now, watch this, where
in time past ye walked, so dead men are walking. I mean spiritually
dead men are walking in this world while they're dead in trespasses
and sin, so they can do something. But what way are they walking?
Not according to the course of righteousness, not according
to the way of God in truth, but they're walking according to
the course of this world, this present evil world. According
to the prince of the power of the air, that's the devil. the
spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, so
that, you see then, these spiritually dead people are walking, they're
following a plan, the course of this world, they're following
their master Satan, their disobedient children, as the Word of God
says, as we all were in that state of nature. I remember a
dear old brother asked me as we were feasting together one
night after a Bible conference, Brother McCall, all of you know
him, he's getting up in age now, a dear man of God, But as we
were sitting there in the cafe eating, and he was eating an
onion sandwich, and Brother Alexander and I were eating something else,
Brother McCall turned to me and he said, is the Senator totally
dead? And I said, well, in reply, yes,
Doctor, he's totally dead. I don't mean by that that he's
dead physically, or dead mentally, or dead Well, he came back with another
question. He said, I just, is he really
dead, entirely dead? Well, I gave him one other answer.
I said, he's so dead that unless God raises him from the dead
and makes him alive, he'll never be saved. He'll never come to
Christ. He'll never repent of his sins.
He'll never truly believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as a Lord
and Savior. Well, that indeed is true. He asked
me another question, by the way, in explaining, and I, in deference
to the brother's age, I said, look, Dr. McCall, I should be
asking you questions. Oh, no, no. He said, I really,
he protested, I really want to know. He said, I've had a problem
about this. And I can understand that some of the great servants
of God have problems about some of these basic doctrines. I'm
not saying that I know more than that dear brother, or boasting
in that, but that's a basic teaching of God's Word. And here we have the sinner is
dead, that is not a factual call, but he's walking about physically,
and he's using his mind And his conscience, he is, a lot of these
sinners, dead sinners, are actually moral in a certain sense. There
are certain sins that they refrain from, certain outward wicked
things that they would not do. The Lord Jesus Christ said they
were all inward, full of dead men's bones and rots. This is the state there. There
is that state of rebellion. disobedience to God. As Stephen said to those men
who were persecuting him, he said, you do always resist the
Holy Ghost. He said, your father did it and
you're doing it. I didn't say you're just resisting
the Holy Spirit now and again once in a while, but he said
you always resist the Spirit of God. What does it mean? Not just that crowd resisting
the Holy Spirit of God, it means every unsaved person, dear friends,
is constantly in opposition to the Spirit of God. Whether he's
conscious of it or not, he is. And he will not yield to Christ
as his Lord and Savior. He will not quit his rebellion
until the effectual call is given to him. So, This is a thing that's going
on. I preached on this one time in
a church where they believed in irresistible grace, as we
do. But they were kind of mixed up
on that doctrine, and the brother pastor, whom I know well, had
taught them that nobody ever resists the Holy Spirit. But
when I got that scripture and said, these people were always
resisting the Holy Spirit, and they had a little difficult time
getting the four things together. The truth of the matter is, every
unsaved man resists the Holy Spirit and he's ever doing that. He always does that. Until the
Spirit of God exercises his irresistible power and grace upon him and
brings him in by the effectual cause. So you understand that. I believe that sinners resist
the Holy Spirit. I believe in irresistible grace. That irresistible grace brings
that sinner in and stops his resistance to the Holy Spirit. Then, of course, that sinner
is in a state of condemnation. A condemnation, he that believeth
not, the Word of God says, condemned already. Oh, beloved, every one
of you not believing on Christ or in Christ, not yielded and
surrendered to Christ this moment, you're under condemnation. Do
you know that? You're not only going to be condemned
to judgment, God Christ said you're already condemned. You're
under the condemnation and the wrath of Almighty God. And then
there's that infidelity, which is unbelief. Christ said to certain
men, unless you believe that I am, ye shall die in your sin. So infidelity is a part of everyone
outside of Christ, outside of their factual call. And he's
in a state of pollution. There's so much for this. The
sinner then, uncalled, effectually, not called by the irresistible
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. All of these things are true
of us. And we need to know this, friends, as we walk among men
day by day, as we rub elbows with them, as we do business
with them, as we live with them, if they're out of Christ, they're
dead spiritually. Dead! And they're in rebellion
against Christ. They may be religious and they
may be members of churches. And they may have gone through
the ordinances and so forth and continue to do so, but if they're
out of Christ, they're dead! And understanding these things
would fill our hearts more with compassion for them, wouldn't
it? Not that we excuse them. It is
their own fault. It isn't God's fault that they're
in that state of rebellion and sin and lostness. But we say, if it weren't for
the grace of God, we'd be right there too. We've been in that
state, and my God, dear friend, doesn't just know it, that we'd
still be in that state without the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
being exercised powerfully for us. So I say it gives us a simple
heart for it. And we understand why they act
the way they do. Now, and love them, of course,
and seek to bring them to Christ and the will of God. Be faithful
witnesses to them by our deeds and our conversation. Now, talking about this effectual
call, to them who are the call according
to His purpose, God does use means to call sinners to Him.
What are those meanings? Well, first of all, let me call
attention to the fact that God uses the means of His Word to
call sinners to Himself. The Word of God. Christ said,
my sheep hear my voice. My sheep hear my voice. And what
do they do? Do they just sit there? Do they
say, well, what are they? Is this all that takes place?
No. He said, and I know them, and he said, they follow me.
My sheep hear my voice and they follow me. This is the effectual
call of grace to hear the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ speaking
by the word of God. We gave an illustration of that
some time ago in the case of Lazarus, you remember. There
was a man dead four days to the point that he was There was a
foul odor in that tomb, so that Martha, Mary, didn't want the
stone moved away, lest that foul odor would exude. The Lord said,
take the stone away. That man was dead and wrapped
in those grave clothes. His face was covered with a nothing. He was bound hand and foot. You
remember the Lord Jesus Christ just stood there. He prayed to
the Father first, and then he said with a loud voice, Lasmus,
come forth. And what happened? That dead
man tried to struggle and get loose, tried to walk and couldn't
walk, but the Word of God says he came right out of that tomb,
all bound up, just came right out of that tomb, and he was
alive. Christ said, loose him and let
him go. This is an illustration of the
effectual call of grace, that when the Lord Jesus Christ, by
the Holy Spirit or through the Word of God, speaks to the heart
of a sinner, that sinner will come out of the death of trespasses
and sin. He'll come out of his tomb, and
he cannot help but come out, dear brethren. This is what we
need, isn't it? You and I may cry and plead and
and to converse and argue and debate and dialogue all we wish. And, of course, we ought to do
this with compassion and love for sinners. But unless those
sinners hear the voice of Christ speaking in their hearts, they
will remain in their dead state, in their loss without Christ
and without God in the world. So the Word is the instrument
that God uses. Well, by wisdom do you not, God? It pleased God by the foolishness
of preaching to save and to believe. Now, we look at the preacher
and we may say, well, the message is not going to hit the mark. There's not enough force in it.
There's not enough pleasing in it. There's nothing to appeal
to a lost sinner. And you may be telling the truth.
Oh, if there's in the pleasure of Christ to use his word that
the preacher is speaking to the heart of a dead sinner, you'll
see that sinner come out. You won't have to beat him over
the head with a book and drag him forward and howl at him and
all of that. Prop him up and make him stand. You'll see a dead sinner stand
up and fight. He'll come to Christ because
He's drawn irresistibly and effectually. Let's remember that. How many
of you really prayed that the Word might truly be preached
this morning? And that not only the Word might
be spoken by your pastor, but that Christ might be pleaded
to make it effective in your heart and the hearts of unsaved
people. Let's pray that to that end. And then, of course, the
Spirit of God is used. He is not only the instrument. The Word of God is the instrument
that is used to bring that dead sinner to life. The Word of God
is quick and powerful and so forth. But the Spirit of God
is the efficient cause of conversion. He is the one that applies the
Word of God to our hearts. and draws us unto God, and brings
us actually to Him. You remember in the house of
Cornelius, as Peter was speaking to those Gentiles, the scripture
says, while Peter spoke, the Holy Ghost fell on them that
heard the word. Oh, what a wonderful thing that
is. I heard the word many times with these outer ears, and the
Spirit of God did not fall upon me. Many times at the beginning
of that Word, but there came a time, a point in my life, in
my deadness, I should say, spiritual dead, when the Spirit of God
did fall, when the Spirit of God did accompany that Word,
all of a sudden I found myself alive in Christ. So the Word of God is necessary.
The Spirit of God must bless that world and do the raising
of the dead, of that spiritual dead sentence. Let's remember
that. Pray that His presence might,
that the Spirit of God might be pleased to accompany that
world. Or let's realize, I'm here trying
to speak, but I know this, that I'm just utterly dependent upon
the Spirit of God to do His work. The Spirit of God. I don't mean
to say, brethren, that our prayers are going to make the Spirit
of God do something that He doesn't want to do either. But it does
please God to even use the instrument of prayer. We're told to ask. And of course, you remember,
we're told to ask in the will of God. We're not to ask according
to our own will. But when you get through, you
must never say, not my will, but Thine be done. Well, so then
there's that two-fold call, the outward call and the inward call,
the effectual. And then secondly, there's that
state of which men are before they're effectually called out
of that state of nature and sin and darkness and lostness into
a state of grace, a state that is alive unto Christ. And the
means God uses is His Word, the Spirit, and prayer, the prayer
of the people of God. Somebody said, well, I just can't
reach a certain person. I talk to him, I plead with him,
I argue with him and all that, I just can't reach him. But dear
friends, there's a way we can reach him. We know one who can
reach it, and we can reach that person by prayer. Let's remember
that. Pray for your people that we
can't otherwise reach any other way. Sometimes we come to the
place where certain people say, no use talking about it anymore.
God teaches us that. You've given your faithful witness,
you've done and said all you can say, and done all you can
do otherwise. Now, talk to the Lord about it.
Pray about the matter. And if it's in his good will,
he'll do the work. Well, for a few moments, I'd
like to talk about what this effectual call is. How do you describe the effectual
call? We touched on that just a moment
ago. We called it an irresistible
call. Some of the theologians call
it an invincible call. By those terms, we simply mean
this, that here is a sinner that's dead in trespasses and sins and
rebellion against God, and he just isn't going to quit. There
isn't any way by nature that he can quit, though he's responsible
to quit, and he better quit. But he isn't going to quit until
the Spirit of God comes in an irresistible way, overcomes his
rebellion, breaks down that darkness and takes it away and gives him
light. And while he doesn't bring him
into grace unwilling or against his will, he gives him a will
to come. And this is the sweet thing about
irresistible or invincible grace. that that sinner finds himself
in a place that he's unable to resist the call of God. He finds
himself rather in a place that he doesn't want to resist that
call. He finds himself in the position
where he says, I'm just glad for the call. Isn't that the
way it came to you? One moment you did not want that,
and the next moment you were so glad that God God overcame
your will, and God worked His will in you and brought you to
Him. Oh, thank God for that. For if
this isn't so, no sinner would ever come to Christ. No sinner
would ever be brought to Christ. He'd continue in his abatement.
I don't know if I mentioned Brother Frank Beck, in this regard, you
remember Frank, of course he's in glory now, but one time Frank
Beck, who's a great Bible teaching preacher, he was telling somebody
how he was saved. He said, I rejected him, and
I rejected him, and I kept on rejecting him until he saved
me. And you know, he told the truth.
He really told the truth. This is what the sinner is ever
doing, resisting and rejecting and rebelling and going against
the truth and against heaven and against God until God comes
in His grace and spirit and love and power and brings him to him,
giving him a want to, granting him a want to come. So one may resist that call of
the preacher, he may kill the preacher like he did with Stephen.
Old Saul of Tarsus found that hole in the floor. He was just
glad to see them stone Stephen to death. Stephen would give
him the outward call, but the inward call evidently reached
Saul of Tarsus. if not then, later on, because
he was kicking against the pricks. You remember the Lord said to
him when he revealed himself and his grace to him, a defectful
call, he said, Saul, Saul, why are you kicking against the pricks?
Those pricks, those goads were sticking him and he couldn't
get away from them. And the Lord called him in by
this, what we call, irresistible grace. And Paul telling about
that later on said, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly
vision. Before that he was disobedient. He wanted to kill the preachers
and kill every Christian and wipe out Christianity from the
earth. But when the heavenly call came
to Paul, Saul of Tarsus, he said, I will not disobey you for that.
Why? Because that's the irresistible,
that's the indivisible. Oh, may God be pleased to do
that for some of you here who haven't yet been called. There
can be this good word, call your father's grace. Saul of Tarsus
could no more resisted that call, and you could no more resisted
that call of grace, than the darkness could have resisted
the light in the beginning of time, when there was nothing
but darkness, and God said, let there be light, and there was
light, and that light dispelled the darkness. So when God pleases
to call a center into light, dear friends, that center is
going to come. We thank God for that. That son
of before that was a raging sea, casting up dirt and mark, could
find no rest. All of a sudden becomes calm,
and he's got peace. And he began to study. Where
did all this come from? How did it come? And here we
are studying, and we're seeing how it does come. So scripture
describes the effects of Paul as one that really takes effect. that produces life, that brings
the sinner in irresistibly. And then the scripture describes
the effectual call as a holy call. In 2 Timothy 1 and 9, if
you'd like to look at that, the apostle Paul speaks of the call
of God in this way. I believe it's Yes, one. And verse nine. Oh, that's first Timothy. We
want second Timothy. Paul says, Who hath saved us,
talking about Christ, and called us with an holy call, not according
to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which
was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. So Paul
calls it a holy call. Why is that? Well, it's because
when this call comes, it calls men out of their sins and to
righteousness. It consecrates men and sinners
and sets them apart for God's use and for God's glory, for
God's holy use, for His service. Our God is holy. and the service
he calls us to is holy, and heaven is holy, and all of this leads
to holiness in the child of God and works toward that end. Our
hearts become the abiding place of the Spirit of God. In fact,
the Holy Trinity takes up His abode in our very hearts. This is part of that holiness.
Saints are in the family of God. It's a holy family. They've been
called into it. They're members of the body of
Christ. That's a holy body. They're the temple of the Spirit
of God. God's Spirit dwells in them.
And so there must be hope. God has not called us long-timers,
but to hold us. The world and Satan and sin and
our own corruption cause us uncleanness in that state of nature. But
in the holy call, in the effectual call, God calls us out of sin
into his holiness. Not just in the mere morality,
outward cleaning of the life, but the inward cleaning of the
heart, which will bear fruit in the outer life. You know,
a moral man is just a counterfeit. He may look like the genuine
thing, but he isn't. He's dead in sins and he's rotten
inside, filth and fire. He's still unjustified, still
lost without hope and without Christ in the world. So the Lord
doesn't just call us to to clean up these out alive, we may do
that and still perish, not really truly called. So that is an irresistible
call and it's a holy call. And there are other descriptions
out there. Let me say one other thing. It's
a precious call. Isn't it precious to you? When
the Lord takes a poor, wretched, blind, rabid, deserving sinner,
perishing in his sins and in his state of rebellion, and makes
that sinner willing, sweetly willing, to bow to him, to surrender
to him as Lord and Savior by his drawing power, isn't that
a precious call, friend? Isn't that sweet? Indeed it is. David said, thy people shall
be willing. when in the day of thy power. The reason you're with him, my
friend, this morning, remember, is because God's power in His
grace has been exercised to you. It's not because you have been
placed in a different environment than anybody else. Not because
you have a daddy and mama any different than anybody else,
because, of course, if you do have a Christian mother and father,
that's the grace of God, too, to your benefit. But that isn't
the reason. Because you're better than anybody
else by nature, or have more talents, or you're sweeter than
anybody else, and so forth. There's no merit whatever. So
this call is a precious call. It is the call that Christ brings
to your heart as a dead, lost, unworthy, wretched, blind, rampant,
deserving, hell-deserving son, to call his place. Do you remember what happened
when our Lord passed through Jericho? I believe that was the
last time he went through. Yes, it was, because he was going
to Jerusalem to be crucified. that all things might be fulfilled
that were written in the scriptures of the Old Testament concerning
him," he said. But in his going to Jerusalem,
he passed through Jericho. And there was a man there named
Zacchaeus. You remember the little fellow
that climbed up a tree? A very influential man, an official,
that climbed up the tree. And why he climbed up there,
the scripture says, he wanted to see Jesus, who he was. Whether
they wanted to be saved or not, the Word of God doesn't say it.
But you remember when Christ came to that place, he looked
up and saw Zacchaeus. And he said, Zacchaeus, as the
little children sing it in their song, you come down, for I must
abide at your house today. And what happened? Zacchaeus
said, I don't want to come down. Oh, I'm sorry now that you recognize
me up here. I'm embarrassed. Why are you
doing this to me? All these people know that I'm
a tax collector. Many of them hate me for that.
And now you, before this audience, call attention and give my name. No, the word God said when he
said, Zacchaeus, come down, he slid right down from that tree.
He said, make haste, and he did. He came to Christ and the Lord
Jesus saved him. When the Lord Jesus Christ called
Lazarus' name, he came out of that tomb. When he called Zacchaeus'
name, he came down from that tree. When he called Saul of
Tarsus' name, in effectual grace, Paul yielded to him and surrendered
to him. When he called your name, in
the grace of that effectual call, that's when you really came.
And it's a precious call. It's sweet, isn't it, Mark? Aren't
you glad He gave it to you? Would you rather He hadn't called
you? Sometimes I think we act this way, that we're just sorry
that the Lord singled us out, brought us out from the world,
and by His effectual grace, consecrated us to his own holy use and said,
you're mine and you must be different. You're my child and you're going
to walk in my way. I'll guide you and I'll instruct
you in the way and I'll give you grace. Doesn't nowhere sometime act
like, well, look, we're just sorry now we're separated from
the world. that we'd just love to be back
in that old state of nature and pollution and rebellion against
God and having fun with the world, would you? I say we act like
that sometimes, but that isn't so red in our hearts, is it,
Beth? We are genuinely happy that Christ called us. He did
it not because of any goodness in us or any merit, whatever.
But He did it because He wanted to do it. He willed to do it.
Let's praise Him for it. Let's serve Him. Let's stand
for Him. He stood for us. May it please
Him now to call you, boys and girls, men and women. If He hadn't
already called, oh, we pray that He may call. And that you'll
be ready by the grace of God for surrender and flee to Him. for a young man's sake.