Summary
Tom Shrader concludes his seven-week series on God's plan for salvation by reviewing four key truths: natural man cannot understand spiritual things, God chose to save His people according to His good pleasure, Jesus' substitutionary death satisfied God's wrath against the elect, and the Holy Spirit regenerates and guarantees believers' salvation. He addresses common objections and emphasizes that salvation magnifies God while humbling man, providing believers with complete security in Christ.
“If you're a Christian today, you are as certain of heaven as the saints that are already there.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: God's Plan for Salvation (EVBC) (2002)
Recorded: July 28, 2002
Duration: 46 min
Themes: salvation, grace, security, election, redemption, regeneration, assurance, sovereignty, new believer, doubting salvation, seeking assurance, questioning faith, struggling with sin, pastor, bible teacher, mature believer
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 2:14, Romans 3:10-12, Ephesians 1:4, Ephesians 1:11-12, 1 Thessalonians 1:4-5, Matthew 1:21, 1 John 4:10, Titus 2:14, Titus 3:5, Ephesians 1:13, Philippians 1:6, Romans 8:35-39, John 10:27-29, Romans 8:28, Romans 9, Romans 10:13-15, 1 Corinthians 3:5-6, Matthew 18
Theological Themes: soteriology, substitutionary atonement, total depravity, unconditional election, irresistible grace, perseverance of saints, divine sovereignty, trinity
Full Transcript
This morning we conclude our series that's titled God's Plan for Salvation. Some of you have been waiting to buy tapes until they're done. We'll package that this week. There are some sets of the last time we did this study available, but we're going to clear those out so everything beginning on Wednesday will be all new stuff. Or Thursday, sometime this week, all new stuff. So I'd say just be patient and next week you can pick up that tape series. It'll be available over in the bookstore.
Understanding Salvation from God's Perspective
God's Plan for Salvation—what we're trying to look at is salvation from God's view. How we were saved and what that looks like from God's perspective. Not your view of what happened or my view of what happened, but what God says happened. So obviously we go to His word for that.
We have spent a week in introduction, then five weeks looking at this topic, and today we summarize it. Anytime that there is a speaker, we ask you to ask three questions of yourself of him. Number one, what did he say? Number two, is it true? Number three, so what? And that's what we're going to do today. We're going to go back and ask those three questions about the material that we've covered over the last five weeks. We're going to ask, what was it I said? Is it true? And then the so what of it. We'll spend the last 15 minutes or so this morning looking at the so what of it.
The Central Truth: God Saves Sinners
Here's what we said. God saves sinners. You are very familiar with this sentence at this point, that the triune God does everything pertaining to life, everything pertaining to our salvation. It's entirely His work in our life, that from beginning to end, God saves sinners. We've also used the phrase natural man or fallen man to speak of sinners. God saves those who are helpless, powerless, unable to do His will.
When we talk about God working, we're talking about the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at work. The Father chooses those that will be saved. He does that before the foundations of the earth. Jesus Christ comes and dies on the cross for that specific group of people, and the Holy Spirit then causes that group of people to be born again. We see the beautiful harmony of the triune God in salvation. Salvation is entirely a work of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
What Did We Say? A Summary in Four Sentences
When we ask, what did He say, if we were to take these last five weeks and summarize them down into a paragraph, here's what I wrote, four sentences. And I remind you, too, some of you are great note-takers, and I admire that. Please do. But anything you see on the screen is on the website, and you can lift those notes off of there.
Natural man does not understand any spiritual thing, including the gospel. God determined, according to His good pleasure, to intervene and save His people from their sin. Jesus' substitutionary, atoning death satisfied the wrath of God against the elect. The Holy Spirit regenerates, washes, and guarantees the believer's salvation and glorification.
The Spiritual Condition of Natural Man
Here's what we're saying to you, that natural man, every person that comes into this world, is naturally separated from God, and they will never, ever, ever understand on their own anything that's spiritual, any spiritual truth. And obviously, the gospel being a spiritual truth, natural man cannot possibly understand the gospel.
So God intervenes. God could have well sat back and said, I'm not going to save anyone, or He could have said, I'll save everyone. But what He decided to do, what God's decision was, was to save a specific group of people. He intervenes and He saves them, and here's why He saves them. For His own good pleasure.
God's Choice Based on His Pleasure Alone
It has absolutely nothing—this is so important—nothing to do with anything you have done, are doing, or will do. God's choosing the elect was not based on anything in man. He didn't look down the corridor of time and see somebody that would choose Him, and then choose that person. If He looked down the corridor of time and saw people, He'd never see anyone choosing Him. Why? Spiritually dead, they can't possibly make that decision.
Jesus, substitutionary. In other words, Jesus died in the place of His people. Jesus' substitutionary, atoning death actually satisfied the wrath of God against the elect. The word is propitiation. God's wrath is satisfied. When Jesus died on the cross, it didn't just make salvation possible, it guaranteed salvation for that specific group of people. Then the Holy Spirit comes along, causes us to be born again, washes us from the guilt of sin, and guarantees that one day we will be in heaven. We are as certain of heaven—if we're Christians—we're as certain of heaven as the saints that are already there. That's the truth. That's what we've been saying.
Is It True? The Scriptural Foundation
So when we're talking about what have we said over the last five weeks, there it is right there. Is it true? Well, obviously, I think it is. I think it flows from the Scripture. It's not true because I say it. It's not true because the greatest theological minds in history—men like Augustine, and Luther, and Calvin, and Edwards, and Spurgeon—it's not true because those guys said it. It's true because the Holy Spirit inspired the writers of the Scripture to put this down, to write this for us, and this truth flows from that.
So what I want to do is take each one of these sentences and show you the scriptural passage, at least a portion of what we use to talk about it being true. Here's the first thing. That natural man does not understand any spiritual thing, including the gospel. There are certain verses that you find yourself going back to again, and again, and again. There are certain spiritual truths that you should just—they're bedrock. You have to have them.
First Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14 is one of them, and what it says is this. A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. They're foolishness to him. He can't understand them because they're spiritually appraised. In other words, natural man
Being dead, being fleshly, cannot understand spiritual things. They're moving down two parallel lines, and two parallel lines, no matter how much we play with them, are never going to intersect. That's the definition of them. Natural man, spiritual things are running along, and they're never going to come together. Natural man on his own, in that state to which natural man is born, natural man will never get, can't possibly understand the things of God because they're spiritual.
So he's dead in his sins and trespasses. That's what we looked at that very first week. Man isn't just mostly dead, man is dead. He's unable to save himself. He's unable to even respond.
Paul says it this way in Romans chapter 3: there is none righteous, not even one. There's none who understands. There's none who seeks after God. All have turned aside. Together they have become useless. There is none who does good, not even one. That is God's assessment of natural man. There is not one person who does one good deed.
The Problem with Our Perspective
Now for us, at least initially, that rubs a little against experience because we look around and we see men and women who don't care anything about church or anything about the Bible, and we'll see them go and take food to the hungry, or we'll see them stop and help somebody that's in distress, or they'll hear that their neighbor's sick and they'll go over and shovel their walk. I just threw that in there to see if you were listening. It'd be more the grass here, but just to play it up and to see if you're tracking with me.
So we see them do this thing. We look at that and say, isn't that good? God looks at that and says, no one does good. The difference is this: we're looking at the action and evaluating it by our standard. God's looking at the heart of the actor and saying, that's a heart that's desperately wicked, and God evaluates that action on the heart of the actor, and He evaluates it by His standard.
There is none who is righteous on his own. There's none who does good on his own. There is none who seeks after God.
Now we see people all over. If you go over to Borders or Bookstar or Barnes & Noble, you'll see this ever-growing section on spirituality. We've become a very spiritual country. There's people out there looking and seeking all over. What they're not seeking for is this God that we study here in this Scripture. They're seeking for a God made in their own image. This is a blanket indictment against all of the world's religions as being false and nothing more than man's attempt to escape the wrath of God and somehow appease his own conscience.
No one seeks after God. They have all turned aside. It means to move in the wrong direction. It was used in Greek literature to describe a soldier that was deserting or running away. That's the condition of natural man. Is it true? It's absolutely true. Natural man is not going to get on his own spiritual things.
God's Sovereign Choice
Here's the second thing that we taught you: God determined, according to His good pleasure, to intervene and to save His people from their sin. Before the foundations of the earth, Ephesians chapter 1 verse 4, He chose us in Christ before the foundations of the world. From the very beginning, God chose us.
That word choose there in the Greek, the verb behind it connotes the idea of us being chosen by Him and for Him to His own praise and His own glory. God chose us that we would be holy and blameless. That's the result of His choosing. You today, if you are a Christian, if you've come to Jesus in repentance and faith, you were chosen before the foundations of the earth, and His choosing, and your being born again, and your repentance in your faith demonstrates that you are now holy and blameless before God because of the work of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Ephesians 1:12: in Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose. He saved us for His own purpose, that we would bring praise and glory to Him.
Paul writes back to this church at Thessalonica in 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, and he says, knowing, brethren, beloved by God, His choice of you. Some of your translations will say His election of you. He said, we know that you were chosen by Him. Our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, in the Holy Spirit, with full conviction.
You were chosen by Him. How do we know you were chosen? Because the Holy Spirit comes in, causes you to be born again. We see the effect of that. The fact that you believe today is evidence of God's choosing.
The Importance of Christian Character
Now He adds this in verse 5, and I want to spend just a second on it, although it doesn't directly deal with what we're talking about here. He said, just as you know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. Paul said, we came with our gospel, not meaning he created this gospel, meaning only that he owned it, and it was the gospel by which he was saved. He says, you know what kind of guys we were.
One of the authors writes this: the quality of the message was confirmed by the character of the lives of the preachers. Paul's exemplary life served as an open book for all men to read, establishing the credibility of the power and grace of God essential to making the message of redemption believable to the sinner.
The story goes that at one point in his life, someone was sharing their gospel with the philosopher Kierkegaard, and he waits, and he said, what's your response to that? And Kierkegaard's response was this: if you want me to believe in your Redeemer, you must look a little more redeemed.
It's so important to understand this: because we believe that we are saved by the blood of Christ, that belief affects our behavior, and our life must change. Here you go. How should it change? What we tend to do at this point is focus on specific actions. Forget those. Here's what should be present in your life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and
self-control. That's the fruit of the Spirit. That's what we do. That's the game we try to play. Well, if you're really a Christian, here's what you'll do. You can have all sorts of guys that are having their quiet time and their prayer time and teaching here and singing here, and they have no love or no joy in their heart at all. There's nothing but turmoil around them.
Is that the fruit of the Spirit? Rather than focus on a specific action, though we know there's things we need to do, we focus on these characteristics, these qualities. Love, and joy, and peace, and patience, and kindness, and goodness, and gentleness, and faithfulness, and self-control. Is that evident in your life?
That's what he's saying. He's saying, listen, if you stand here and you tell this, here's what we can say. Our life backed up what we said. But his point was, you were chosen.
Jesus' Substitutionary Atonement
Here's the third thing. Jesus' substitutionary atoning death satisfied the wrath of God against the elect. Remember what the angel said to Joseph when he discovered that Mary was pregnant? The angel said this, "And she will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sin."
We said before, there's certain verses you go back to again, and again, and again. 1 John 4:10 is one of them. Packed with rich, important teaching. "In this is love. Not that we love God, but that He loved us." Do you see? He's the initiator here. If you love God today, it's because He first loved you. Your love for Him flows from His love for you.
This is love. He moved first. He initiated, and He continues, and He persists until the very end in our life. He sent His son, there's the word, to be the propitiation, that is, to satisfy the wrath of God against His people.
Every sin ever committed must be judged and must be paid for. The wage of sin is death. Somebody has to pay for that sin. It's going to be one of two people. Either A, the person who commits that sin, or B, Christ on the cross.
That's what happened at that moment on the cross. Jesus Christ didn't make salvation possible. He didn't make salvation potential. He guaranteed our salvation. He died, and in His death we have life.
He died, and He satisfies God's wrath when He cries out on the cross, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?" At that moment, there's this divine, mysterious transaction where our sin, the sin of His people, is thrust onto Christ at that moment, and we trade our sin and our guilt for His righteousness. He died in your place, substitutionary atonement. He got what you deserve. You receive mercy, not justice at this point. You receive mercy. God's wrath is satisfied.
Titus 2:14, Jesus gave Himself up for us. He redeemed us. Again, He didn't just make our redemption possible. He guaranteed our redemption.
The Holy Spirit's Work in Salvation
And here's the last point. The Holy Spirit regenerates, washes, guarantees the believer's salvation. He saved us. Here it is. It can't be any more plain than this. Titus 3:5, not on the basis of our deeds, nothing we have done or are doing or will do. He saves us not because of us, but in spite of us, according to His mercy.
We're saved by His mercy. He'll have mercy on who? He'll have mercy and compassion on who? He'll have compassion, and for some reason, for His own good pleasure, for His glory, He's decided to save you and me, if we're believers. He's decided to save us, not on the basis of anything we've done, but His work in us.
We were washed. We were regenerated. We're born again. We're renewed by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit lives in us, dwells in us. He has, here you go, Ephesians 1:13, sealed us.
In ancient times, they would take a document or a letter, and they'd have a hot wax, and they'd take a signet ring, and that signet ring would be pressed into that hot wax, and it would guarantee authenticity and ownership, authority. The Holy Spirit seals us for the day of redemption. We are absolutely secure and certain there.
Philippians 1:6, "I'm confident in this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will continue it, will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus."
The Security of Salvation
Spend a second on this. What he's saying is, if you're a Christian today, you are as certain of heaven as the saints that are already there. I'll bet you've had this experience. I have. You share the gospel with somebody, and they say, wait, let's make sure I understand this. You're telling me that if I come to Jesus in repentance and faith, and I commit murder, I still go to heaven?
See, at that point, what you know is that you have explained grace. We're as certain of heaven as the saints that are already there. We cannot out-sin God's grace.
Now, we need to be very careful here. That security is not to become a point of license for us. That doesn't mean that we can go along and say, we're going to do whatever we want to do, however we want to do it, and God is obligated to save me. He's got to save me, so I'm just going to go ahead and sin. There are going to be some rough times, but I'm going to sin. God, You bring on whatever You want. You can't do anything but forgive me.
Church Discipline and Pastoral Reflections
Last Sunday, we dealt with a church discipline case in here. It's been an interesting week. By far, the majority of the comments in the letters have been very, very positive. I did a getting-plugged-in class on Thursday night, so that's all new people. And when we were all done, I said, let me ask you, what'd you think of that last Sunday?
And with a couple of they said, I found that very comforting, very securing. Obviously, you're serious about sin. And the others just simply said, I have a question. I've never seen that done before. Why'd you do that? Is it just divorce? Is that what you guys go after? You've got a church where you only have people who've been married once. Is that what that's about?
No, not at all. Let me give you something that'll be really helpful to you. On the website, you'll find a message that
The Question of Church Discipline
I did when we were studying 1 Corinthians 5, okay? So you got to go back a couple of pages on the website. The date on it is April 29th, but 1 Corinthians 5, and the message was how to handle sin in the church. We talk about the very thing we did last week.
It's not just because I had a couple of really interesting emails. How come everybody that disciplines, it's always about a sexual sin or divorce or something? Would you ever discipline people for other sins? And the answer is absolutely yes. That happens to be because this is very serious business. You do not want to get in areas of speculation here. That happens to be because the evidence is so concrete, the easiest to deal with.
We would discipline somebody who was unrepentant. That's the key word here. It's not that you've been divorced, or it's not that you're involved in sin. Everybody in here sins. Everyone in here is sin. But when you sin, you're broken over that sin. But if you're somebody who's confronted with that sin, and you deny it and deny it, I don't mean deny its existence. I mean you simply say, I'm just going to go ahead and live this way. I'm happier this way. And you've got a period of two years in this. At some point, you have to move.
Understanding Biblical Judgment
It's typically going to be, when you talk about areas of discipline, sins like that. It's hard to prove covetous. I'm very confident right now that every one of you are coveting this shirt. I'm sure of it. I'm sorry. I know that. I mean, that seems reasonable to me, but I can't prove it. It's really hard to prove. It's hard to prove some of those other areas. But it's very serious.
Didn't Jesus say, judge not lest you be judged? Sure He did. He's saying, don't you take your artificial rules and shove them on me. But He also says in Matthew 18, this is how we deal with one another. For brother's sins go to him. If he refuses to repent, to go to him. If he refuses at that point, take it to the church.
What prompted the message on how to handle sin in the church in 1 Corinthians 5 is Paul saying, I told you not to associate with immoral people. Well, obviously, if that's true, I'm going to have some judging. How do I judge? By God's standard. God gives us the prescription as a body on how we handle that. Very, very, very serious business.
The Security of Salvation
But here's what we know. If you're a Christian, even if you refuse to repent and you're truly a Christian, you're sealed for the day of salvation. Now, I would say if I'm out there living in an unrepentant way, I'm on pretty shaky ground. I don't know that I have any biblical assurance of my salvation at all.
This is something that brings us great joy, this assurance of our salvation. By the way, it's not assurance we give to each other. I can't assure you. You know in your heart. That's an issue between you and God, that assurance. It's sealed there.
Reviewing Our Understanding
So what did he say? We said, natural man does not understand any spiritual thing, including the gospel, and God determined according to His good pleasure to intervene and save His people from their sin. And Jesus' substitutionary atoning death satisfied the wrath of God against the elect. The Holy Spirit regenerates, washes, guarantees the believer's salvation and glorification. That's what we said.
I believe it's true. I think it flows from the Scripture. I cannot imagine an argument that would change my mind. But so what? What difference does this make? You need to know, if this is just some arbitrary, ethereal, academic exercise, I'm not that interested in it. But let me tell you the so what, and then give you a couple of dangers. We'll take 10-12 minutes on this.
God Is Magnified
So what? Number one, we've said to you all the way through, God is magnified. When we understand that salvation is from Him beginning to end, all of a sudden, God gets bigger and bigger and bigger, not disproportionately large. We as humans are never going to magnify Him to the point He needs to be magnified, but He gets larger, bigger. We understand God's in control of everything, including our salvation.
In his classic work, The Sovereignty of God, A.W. Pink writes this: "The Scriptures affirm again and again that God is on the throne of the universe. The deceptor is in His hands, and that He is directing all things after the counsel of His own will. The Scriptures affirm not only that God created all things, but also that God is ruling and reigning over all the works of His hands. The Scriptures affirm that God is the Almighty, that His will is irreversible, that He is absolute sovereign in every realm of all His vast dominions. And this surely must be so."
Pink continues: "Only two alternatives are possible. Either God must rule or be ruled, sway or be swayed, accomplish His will or be thwarted by His creatures, accepting the fact that He is the Most High, vested with perfect wisdom and illimitable" — that's not a word we use very often, it means unlimited — "unlimited power, and the conclusion is irresistible that He must be God, in fact, as well as in name."
God, as we look at salvation, God is entirely, wholly, completely in control from beginning to end, and God is magnified. And that really runs counterculture. God is magnified.
Man Is Minified
The second point is man is minified. I'm falling in love with that word. I like that word, minified. That's a great word. God is magnified, man is minified. John the Baptist said, Jesus must increase and I must decrease.
You live at a time and in a culture and in an environment where God is minified and man is magnified, and nothing gives greater evidence of that than the proliferation of the Arminian doctrine of salvation that throws the burden and responsibility, the privilege, the authority, all for salvation, all on man, that man does the choosing, man does the initiating, man does the work.
George Barna, after surveying some statistical data gathered among those who said they're born-again Christians, wrote this paragraph. Consider how we have repositioned
The Nature of Modern Spirituality vs. Biblical Faith
Faith used to revolve around God and His ordinances and principles. The faith that arrests our attention these days is the things we're believing now, which revolves around us. We have demystified God, befriended Jesus, abandoned the Holy Spirit. Few Americans possess a sense of awe, fear, or trembling related to God.
When we study these truths of how God saved us, our God is magnified. Our God becomes almighty and all-powerful, and we are small, getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And we worship not the creation, but the Creator. We find security in this.
The Security of Our Union with God
What can separate us from the love of Christ? And the answer is absolutely nothing. Remember we looked at that last week. I'm convinced, Paul writes, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor heights or depth, nor any other created thing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Nothing can separate us.
My sheep hear my voice. I know them. They follow me. I give eternal life to them. They shall never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. We are absolutely secure in the hand of the Father. Nothing can separate us from Him.
Our union as believers, our union with the Father, is absolutely secure. It's unbreakable. Undoubtedly, there'll be times where the communion, the vitality of that relationship, will be deeper than at other times. Undoubtedly, there will be times when we feel ourselves so immersed in Him, and who He is, and His grace, and His presence, that communion will be much more vital than at other times. But we know this: we're absolutely secure in this.
The Comfort and Joy of Divine Security
That becomes a great source of encouragement for us. There is comfort in us. There's joy in our life. We know this: God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.
Everything that comes into your life, God will always give you what you need. He may not give you always what you want, and the reason would be because He's got something else for you. He knows what you need better than you do.
I assume that when you pray, you share what your requests are, what your desires are, what you think you need. You share them. You tell them. But always with the idea that, God, Your will be done, not mine. God, here's what I want, but if that's not what You want, and if that's not what's best for me, God, it's the last thing I want. But based with my limited knowledge, God, this is what we seek.
Even when things come into our life, we kind of scratch our head and say, how can that be? Why would He do that? What's going on? We know this: God causes all things to work together for good. To the whole world? No. To those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Is that you? What comfort and encouragement and joy there is in that.
Addressing Dangerous Misunderstandings
There's some dangers. Let me just deal with them very quickly. The first one is something called double predestination. In other words, the idea is this: double predestination is the idea that God has predestined or chosen those that will be saved and intervened in their life to make that happen. At the same time, He's intervening in others' lives to make certain they'll never come to Christ.
That's not what's happening at all. We don't believe in double predestination. We believe what we've taught throughout this series, but as it comes to the non-elect, God doesn't intervene and push them away. God simply lets them go their own way. That's what happens to every person. God simply - that's a natural man. He will naturally move to the satisfaction and desire of his own sin.
Addressing Questions About Desire and Responsibility
There's a couple of little subsets of this, that there's some people condemned to hell who desire to come to Christ. We get those questions. Well, what about those people who really wanted to come to Christ, but they weren't chosen? They don't exist. Natural man will never desire to come to Christ. Only those who are chosen by the Father will have a desire to come to Him.
There's kind of a sister side of that, and that is, well, if that's the case, then man's not responsible. Well, we need to understand that Paul hangs these things there. In Romans 9, as God says, Jacob I love, Esau I hated, Paul anticipates us saying, that's not fair when he says, what should we say? There's no injustice with God, is there? God says, I'll have mercy on you. I'll have mercy, compassion, and I'll have compassion.
You and I stand before God guilty, and our guilt is an extension of our being responsible. We wouldn't be guilty if we weren't responsible. We're responsible before Him.
The Reality of Coming to Christ
One of the other misnomers or dangers is that somehow people come kicking and screaming to Christ. In other words, they really didn't want to come, but they just have to come because they're chosen and they really didn't want any part of this, and they're kicking and screaming. Exactly the opposite is true.
Natural man is running away from God, and then the Holy Spirit opens their eyes, their ears, their heart, and they begin to see this truth, and they don't run kicking and screaming. They come scratching and clawing. At that moment, there's nothing they desire more than an intimate relationship with the Savior.
The Question of Evangelism
Here's another danger: that somehow it gets into this area of evangelism, that somehow, well, we don't need to evangelize anymore. God's going to do whatever God's going to do. Let Him do His own thing. He's going to save whoever He's going to save. Let Him do it. Why should I evangelize?
By the way, if it's just a natural question that kind of flows out, that's one thing. If it's something that comes from somebody that's really studied this through with a little bit of rebellion, that's a very arrogant statement. Why should I do anything anyway?
J.I. Packer writes this in his book, Sovereignty, Evangelism and the Sovereignty...
The Power Behind Our Evangelistic Work
Of God, it is God who brings men and women under the sound of the gospel. It is God who brings them to faith in Christ. Our evangelistic work is the instrument that He uses for this purpose, but the power that saves is not in the instrument—it's in the hand of the one who uses it.
You're just instruments. That's what Paul said. He's writing back to Corinth, and in Corinth, they're arguing in this church: "I'm of Apollos, I follow him, I follow Paul, I follow Peter." Paul writes back in 1 Corinthians 3:5 and says this: "What is Apollos, and what is Paul? Servants through whom you believe, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but it's God who causes the growth."
Equal Faithfulness, Different Results
If I've got two people here and they go out today and they share the gospel with friends—this person shares with a guy and he says, "I don't care." This person here shares with somebody and they say, "I've been waiting my life, tell me this truth. What do I do to be saved?" We ask in theory this question: who is God happier with? Which one of these two is God more pleased with?
You know the answer. He's equally pleased with both. Why? Because there's nothing you can do to save anybody. I was listening to this guy speak the other day, and he said, "I just led so-and-so to the Lord. I love leading people to the Lord. I love being on a plane and leading people to the Lord."
You can't lead anybody to the Lord. All you can do is declare the gospel. Whether they respond or not has nothing to do with you and everything to do with Him.
The Need for Evangelism
So now there's a need for evangelism, why? It's that impeccable logic of the Apostle Paul. "Whosoever will call upon the Lord will be saved," Romans 10:13. Then he asks a question: "How then should they call upon Him whom they have not believed, and how will they believe in Him whom they have not heard, and how are they going to hear without a preacher?"
God has ordained that some will be saved, and He's ordained the method, and it's evangelism. God has people all around this world. "If I be lifted up, I will draw all peoples to me." That becomes a driving motive for missions. There are people all over this world that God has chosen and God will save, and our evangelism is the instrument that He uses. We're just an instrument He uses.
The Final Danger: Arrogance
Here's the last danger, and I really don't think it's that big a danger properly understood, and that is that somehow this creates an arrogant believer. I don't know how you could listen for these seven weeks and be prideful or arrogant. We've stripped you away from anything that has any credibility on your part at all.
I'll tell you what's arrogant, to my mind: to think that God chose me because He looked down the corridors of time and saw that one day I would choose Him on my own. "God chose me, but you know why? Because I chose Him first." Now that, my friend, is arrogant.
What You Actually Brought to Salvation
If you're arrogant after this, you don't understand what we're talking about. You did nothing. He did everything. The only thing you brought to salvation is your sin. That's all you brought.
You're separated from Him, and in that natural state, you would die that way and be separated for all eternity. But God, in His grace and His mercy, decided to save you in spite of you. Now that, to me, ought to change the whole depth of your relationship with Him. Doesn't it?
We wanted to change things just a bit today and close our time of study with communion, focusing again on His words that He spoke the night before He died and on this truth that God saves sinners.