Introductory Comments
1. Faith is not necessary for our salvation. Instead, faith is the result of our salvation. In case you did not hear me let me say this again. Faith is not necessary for our salvation. Instead, faith is the result of our salvation.
2. This is what I hope to teach you this morning. If you take your faith seriously, your first reaction might be to disagree with me. How can I say that faith is not required for our salvation? Is that not against the teaching of the Bible
Heb 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
3. Am I going to teach a heresy this morning? I hope not, but listen carefully to make sure I don’t.
4. The one thing I must clarify is how I am using the word salvation. Not as a process but as the point at which we become children of God. The time at which we are regenerated, given a new heart.
Teaching
1. In the passages from Ezekiel, God is talking to the people of Israel. They knew about God. They had heard of His faithfulness from their fathers. They knew that they were His chosen people. They had seen His hand of judgement upon them when He took then from their promised land and made them captive in Babylon.
2. And yet they were lost. Their exile in Babylon represented their exile from God’s kingdom. They were lost in their own sin. For they put their trust not in God but rather in the work of their own hands. They lived to satisfy their own desires rather than to please God. They only loved themselves and they did not love God and their neighbour as He had commanded them to.
3. God had tried to warn them and tell them that they were lost. He showed them by their exile.
4. But they just could not get it. Why? Because they had hearts of stone. Hearts so hard that they could not receive or absorb what God was trying to tell them. Even when their hearts were crushed, the small broken pieces still remained hard and unreceptive.
5. We are no different, at least in our natural, fallen state. Our hearts are hardened to the call of God to repent and put our trust in Jesus. To have faith in Him. We have seen how there is no good in us. How, left to our own devices, we are lost. We cannot even receive the gift of eternal life on our own.
6. And yet as we have seen in the past few weeks that, just as the people of Israel - at least a remnant of them, had been chosen or predestined by Him, so we also have been predestined to be His children.
7. How then are we able to do that which we cannot do? How can we say yes to the gift of grace that God offers to us? How can we believe, to have faith in God?
8. We cannot? And so God does to us that which He did to the people of Israel. He gave them a new heart, a heart of flesh. A a soft heart that is able to be receptive to His Word and His Spirit.
Ezek 11:20 Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.
Ezek 36:27-29 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow mydecrees and be careful to keep my laws. You will live in the land I gave your forefathers; you will be my people, and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness.
9. He says that He will move them to follow His decrees. To love him with all their heart, mind and soul. To trust and obey them. And He will save them from the uncleanness. He will justify them and make them acceptable to God.
10. This promise is to us as well. The promise is that He will call us to salvation. This is not outer call that God makes to all people . Instead it is the inner call that God makes only to His elect, as we saw last week.
11. We need to choose how to respond to this call, to this prompting of the Holy Spirit to repent and return to God.
12. And , as we will see, we have no choice but to make the choice to come to new life. We are not talking about the choices we make as Christians but the choice to be a Christian. God calls us to new life, to life itself.
13. Do we really play any part in our response? We read in Ezek 36, that He moves us to respond. Can we assist Him in making the response? What is our initial role in responding to the gracious call of God?
14. In Ezekiel 37, we have a vision of dry bones that God gathers together and gives them the breath of life. What was the role of the bones? What could they do? They were broken and dry and lifeless. They could do nothing.
15. When God decrees life, that which receives life cannot assist in the process?
a. We see that in creation, as said last week - nature did not or could not decide whether to cooperate with God. Creation did not assist God in its own creation.
b. We see that with Lazarus. He was completely dead. Lazarus had not part in his resurrection. He did not help Jesus to bring Him to life.
c. And we see the same with our Lord Jesus. God brought Jesus to life and Jesus played no role in assisting God. It was completely up to God. That is why Jesus said, into your hands I commit my spirit
16. In the same way, wer can we assist what God is doing in changing our heart from a lifeless stone to a heart of flesh that is spiritually alive.
17. We cannot assist God. But can we resist Him.
18. We cannot for His call is effectual. It accomplishes what it was set out to do. When God calls us, we must come to Him. Just as the dry bones, the creation and Lazarus came to life. God commanded them into being and life and they had to respond.
19. This is what we mean by the Reformed doctrine of Irresistible Grace. That when God call us to Him, we must respond.
20. We have no choice and yet we do.
21. The best example of this in my life is not the mysterious work of salvation but my call into ministry. This call is not the irresistible grace but it illustrates it. After not going to church for years, God brought me back into the fellowship. The more I got involved in the work of the church, the more I started feeling a calling to go into ministry. Finally we set up an appointment to visit WTS in Michigan. I remember driving down with Margaret and her mother. As we got closer to Holland, the reality of what we were doing started to hit me. I liked my life. We lived in a good neighbourhood with good Christian friends all around us. The children had lots of children their age to play with. We were active in church. Life was very good. I had a good income with little pressure at work.
22. Did I really want to change all that. To leave that which was safe and go into the unknown? Would I be able to learn? Would I be able to be a good minister? How would the children and Margaret react to leaving friends?
23. The more I thought the more I wanted to turn around the car. I knew that if we were on a journey that was God’s will. In a way I did not want to go on the journey. But God put such a strong love for him and desire to serve Him that all these other things were less important. As much as my old self wanted to turn the steering wheel, I could not. My heart would not let me
24. I could not resist the call but I did not go in fighting. Because God changes our heart to a heart of flesh we cannot resist the call. But that does not mean that we go forth kicking and screaming because God forces us to go with Him. He makes us willing and desirous to live for Him. We have a choice and yet we have to chose to trust in Him.
25. This work of God’s grace in our hearts is hard to understand unless you have experienced it.
26. John Calvin describes it as:
"The very origin of conversion itself, which is in the will. God begins His good work in us, therefore, by arousing love and desire and zeal for righteousness in our hearts; or to speak more correctly, by bending, forming, and directing, our hearts to righteousness
27. Other description:
The grace of God is irresistible. You understand what the term "irresistible'' emphasizes. Do not think that irresistible grace is some sort of blind force which simply drags the struggling, rebellious sinner into heaven against his will -- as a policeman might drag a rebellious prisoner to jail. The grace of God is not such a power that compels to enter into heaven those who would not.
That God's grace is irresistible emphasizes the idea that not only does grace bring His people to glory, but it prepares them for this glory and works within them the desire to enter into glory. Grace is irresistible in the sense that by it the knee is bent which otherwise would not bend; the heart is softened that otherwise is hard as stone. Nor is there anything which can prevent the accomplishment of that purpose of God to save His people by His grace.
All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, He is pleased, in His appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by His word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God; taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them an heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by His almighty power determining them to that which is good; and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ; yet so as they come most freely, being made willing by His grace.
28. What is this change, the irresistaible garce God bestows on us?
29. What is this change?
a. A regeneration (Titus 3:5b)
He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit,
b. A spiritual resurrection (Ephesians 1:19, 20)
That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms,
c. A calling out from darkness to God's marvelous light (I Peter 2:9)
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
d. A passing out of death into life (John 5:24)
"I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.
e. A new birth (John 3:3)
In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."
f. A making alive (Colossians 2:13)
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ.
g. Taking away the heart of stone and giving one of flesh (Ezekiel 11:19).
I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.
30. To be saved we need faith. But when God calls us in effect we are saved because His calling is effectual. It cannot be resisted. And as a result, we have faith.
31. These lessons on TULIP are difficult. Can discourage us. Are we chosen?
32. Remember: Faith is not necessary for our salvation. Instead, faith is the result of our salvation.
33. We worry is our faith good enough. Is it real? Is it enough? Our faith is not a requirement for our salvation but a result of it. Therefore we can rejoice that God has saved us or else we would not trust in Him.
34. Thank you God for changing my heart to believe in you!
