Calling

We're going to get into calling and this second lesson of Soteriology that we were just introduced to. When we think about calling, I really gravitate to the idea of authority. Of authority, and like we went over last lesson, a lot of these doctrines that we've done have kind of led up to this. So there are many, many, many, many assumptions with various doctrines that we have got to. But if I could try to sum up one of the key themes and central points of various doctrines, this is the idea of authority when we're talking about how do we understand calling? And so when we think about authority, we're ultimately looking at God's authority and God's word. So when we look at the doctrine of Scripture, we're looking at the doctrine of God. These are the first things that we studied in this systematic theology. So we must get that right before we get anything else.

Do we start making assumptions with this and that? We come with many different previous teachings that may pollute our minds when we think about very important doctrines like we come up with here tonight, where we're going to be zeroing in on various aspects and various angles of the doctrine of calling in the aspect of salvation. So turning to Bibles, we're going to start out with this idea of authority in Genesis 1. It goes back to the very, very beginning. In Genesis 1, this is where we see the first calling, where we have day one and day two and day three where God calls something, and He does it with authority. In Genesis chapter 1 and verse 5, He calls the light.

In verse 5, "He called the light day and the darkness He called night."

Like there was no one to say no, that was not going to be the case. No being, no spiritual force, no nothing — He called it, and we see the authority of that calling there in verse 5. The next one is there in verse 8 where "God called the expanse heaven." That was it. That's the name. That's the everything that comes about with the name and the purpose. The purpose of the expanse is wrapped up into this name of heaven.

The same with the light and with day and the darkness and night. The next calling there in Genesis 1 is in verse 10, day three. And in day three in verse 10, He says, "God called the dry land earth."

These are very important names. And so when we kind of flip over and look at how this relates to salvation, we have the full Scripture here. We can go to 2 Corinthians chapter 4.

And we see how this creation authority ties into salvation.

The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 6, it says, "For God who said light shall shine out of darkness." Right? This is in the direct doctrine of calling where he says, "light shall shine out of darkness." He referenced Genesis 1. He said, "is the one who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." And you can read a few verses above and a few verses below that to be able to get the full context of that verse, but that's just kind of zeroing in on this concept of authority.

So now go with me to your worksheet. We're going to go over the blanks in this first point.

The first point is: calling is that act of God by which men are invited. Invited is the first blank. Calling is that act of God by which men are invited to receive through faith.

The salvation provided by Christ. So invited and faith are the blanks.

Now here's where you kind of start explaining this calling. The general or external is the blank. The general or external call of all men through God's providence, word, and Spirit is distinguished in Scripture from the special or internal. Call — internal is the blank.

These are two different ones that we're going to explore: the external and the internal call. Call given to God's elect, whereby they are made alive in Christ. If you're already kind of there in 2 Corinthians, you also have it on your worksheet. 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 23 and 24.

It reads, "But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called." We see the distinction here.

There's a preaching of Christ crucified to everybody. But then it says, "But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."

So we see this distinction here between the external call — where we preach Christ crucified, whether you're in church or evangelizing, whether you're doing outreach or talking to your closest ones, or even when you're maybe going through suffering, you're still preaching Christ crucified and being an external call.

The internal call is those called by Christ. And this right here in this particular verse teaches us that it is the power and the wisdom of God.

Or these are the attributes here for this internal call. And so the application for this particular point here is: have you believed the gospel and been made new in Christ?

The blank is made.

Have you believed the gospel and been made new in Christ?

All, I and every human being, when we were to go out and do an external call to everyone, if we're not preaching Christ crucified, we're not really saying anything. We're not doing any kind of calling. When you go to hear any sort of teaching in a church or community place or whatever the case is and they're teaching something from the Bible, if they're not calling out Christ crucified, they're not doing an external call. There is no message being sent out. And so they're virtually preaching nothing.

They're not doing a calling out. There may be a call to love or a call to do this, but it's not an external call to come to Christ. So we kind of see that difference there.

This important part of this application here: if you're hearing this and you're not a new creation in Christ, if you're not repented of your sins and run to Christ for His saving grace, then you are even more responsible, for now you have heard an external call. We're going to go through, we're going to hear Scripture after Scripture after Scripture. And if you have not responded to that external call, you are more responsible for that rejection. And so we're going to see how that becomes very much of a large responsibility as we go through this. I think sometimes we get into a Christian kind of rhythm and we kind of forget the responsibility that we have of the call that we hear. And sometimes maybe when you hear a real call, it will distinguish when you hear other types of teaching where it's not really an external call. So maybe that will help out. But the weightiness of an external call is so important to be able to get right. This application question, hopefully that kind of rings a bell for you. It's like, when if you were in other churches, when was the last time that you've heard that application question be impressed upon, and maybe even after it was said, it's like, okay, now I'm just going to stop and let that sit.

Right. People walking out the door, you know, with a lot of the churches that we have here. All right, point number two.

We're getting into a little more detail here with the general call. It says the general or external call begins in general revelation and reaches clarity in special revelation.

If you have a little side note, you can kind of make a comment.

General revelation leads to conviction and then special revelation leads to clarification. Okay.

Continuing on with the point — general revelation convicts all men as guilty before a holy God. Special revelation reveals Christ as Savior, the holy Lamb of God slain for sinners. The hearing of the word presents God's special revelation to men. So we've got three blanks: guilty, Savior, and word. Okay.

So like I said here, we're going to briefly expand the idea of general revelation and special revelation here. General revelation convicts, and the truth is all around us with the general revelation. We went through that earlier on in our theology study. Our culture likes to ignore even this — the general revelation that's plain as day, that's common sense. I've seen it on weathermen. Weathermen that get on and explain the news, they'll talk about things with Mother Nature very rarely — in fact, probably not at all. I'll be very surprised if you actually hear the words "God brought this storm over here" or something like that. You don't hear that. This is general revelation. This is in creation, where God has revealed the truth of who He is and the authority that He brings as far as the truth of who He is. And the special revelation brings clarity. Okay, general revelation convicts and the special revelation brings clarity.

Our culture today likes to confuse even that clarity. Sometimes when you read Scripture, it can be very clear, but when you try to tie things together, it can get a little complicated. That's why we need the teaching. That's why we need the continuous preaching. That's why we need to learn how to study God's Word for ourselves and be able to get study Bibles and commentaries and be able to help bring that clarity of that special revelation.

R.C. Sproul has said — there'll be a couple of R.C. quotes, and it's not going to help me — R.C. Sproul said, when you say that the truth is important, it gets slain in the street. When we talk about general revelation and special revelation and we're like, okay, this is truth, we're going to stand on this, and the truth is important, right? It gets slain, doesn't it? Like it is difficult to stand on that, and that makes it even so much more rare to be able to hold on to. I mean, look at us today. We're a strong church and not many people are going to come here. When a church stands for truth, it is hard to keep that. It is very rare. And so it's like we hold on to this truth with very much of a preciousness. Personally, I'm here at this church — this is like a bunker, getting away from the world and coming here and stirring up and getting this special revelation clarified and understood. So when I go out, I'm going out strong and I can stand for truth, and it won't be slain in the streets. And so it's very much important to be able to hold to this truth of this general revelation. This general revelation brings conviction and the special revelation brings clarification. Well, that leads us to our application. As we think about going out, when we think about this truth: "In how shall they hear without a preacher?"

"In how shall they hear without a preacher?"

Right, each and every one of us — when we're talking about a preacher, what Paul's talking about here in Romans chapter 10 verse 14, he's not just talking about one man in a church. He's talking about the believer. He's talking about going out and preaching and evangelizing

and telling people about this truth, pointing out to the trees. God made those trees. Let me tell you about general revelation. I'm going to preach the sky today, right? And I'm going to preach like my dad is going to get into beetles. I'm going to preach to you beetles. You know, it's just like that's the general revelation — the intricacies of things, the minuteness of stuff, points to the authority of God, which brings conviction. You see that? And so how are people going to hear if there's no one to preach that? To preach the general revelation that's going to bring conviction, to preach the special revelation that brings clarity. When we talk about evangelism, I like to give four simple truths. We talked about the truth about God, the truth about someone's sin. Those first two should be general revelation.

Everyone says, you know, nobody's perfect. Translation: everyone sins. So this is general knowledge that we've also learned in Romans 1, where it's general, so no one has an excuse. And so this is general revelation. So those first two truths when you're evangelizing bring conviction: the truth about God brings conviction. There are many aspects of God that will bring encouragement, but when you have a fallen person getting a confrontation with a holy God, that's going to bring conviction — it should.

And then the next two truths when you're talking about evangelizing, the truth about Jesus Christ and man's response, well, that's found in special revelation. That's found through many Scriptures — not just one or two, but it could be if God says it once, that's enough. But there's a plethora of Scriptures that talk about Jesus Christ, the person and the work of Christ and man's necessary response to that gospel message. And so when you're going out and preaching, think about maybe those four truths as a practical sense — bringing conviction early and then bringing clarification.

Conviction — you could talk about the law too, but I like to keep it simple: the truth about God, the truth about sin. There are very many aspects of various doctrines that you can apply there.

There's a — we've been reading, not to get on a tangent — we've been reading 1 Corinthians and Paul talks about being those under the law. He tailors his messages to the people that he's talking to. I believe it was 1 Corinthians, were we on chapter eight recently? And that came — so that wasn't in my notes, but a little bonus there. But that's how Paul evangelizes: he tailors doctrines and various things. But we can kind of keep a general concept of how we evangelize in that way.

All right, point number three, the general or external call goes out to all men. All is the blank. It goes out to all men — this external general call goes out to all men who are responsible to God for the revelation given to them.

Here's where I wanted to pull the trigger on Psalm 19:1. It's written there in point two — it could apply to both points — but Psalm 19:1, "The heavens are telling of the glory of God; the expanse declares His works." What a tremendous truth it is about the external call there.

One of the most common beliefs in religions that are outside of Christ is this belief of works, right? When we think about that and the external call, this is a very easy point to be able to point out what is wrong with someone who holds that view. That's the reason why you have the exclusivity of Christ — anything that's not of that, chances are when you think about various false religions,

you're talking about a works-based system. And so there's a need to do something. And so you can point out that there's an acknowledgement that you fall short, because even in all these other religions, it doesn't need to be Christian, but it's very obvious even to non-Christians that they fall short of something, they need to do something. And so there's this general revelation that is even telling them, there must be something to be done. So the application of this is that we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.

We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.

We're reminded every day — I just look at creation, and every now and then when I see a sunset I remind myself, wow, this day is ending.

What have I done today? Has it been valuable? But most importantly, what God is reminding us every single day, the way the sun goes up and the sun goes down, is that there is a beginning and there will be an end. And this application here is that we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. That is as certain as the sun will go down.

And so this is very important. We can kind of see this gradual sense of urgency of the gospel when we think about the weightiness of hearing this external call. It's all around us. It's not like, well, we've got to find this somewhere in special revelation. It's all around us — this general revelation tells us that there will be an end. And Ecclesiastes chapter 3 verse 1 — I did not know what this meant until fairly recently, I mean like several years ago, but older than when I was younger — Ecclesiastes 3:1, it says, "There is an appointed time for everything."

And it talks about, to every event under heaven, there is an appointed time. So we think about God's authority and being at the judgment seat of Christ that we will eventually get to.

Just be encouraged, but also be awakened by the fact that there will be an end. And there will be an appointed time when we will sit before the judgment seat of Christ — or sit or stand, however the case is — we will be judged in that way.

So general revelation reveals that there are beginnings and there are endings. We see not just in the sun, but we see flowers budding and flowers fading, grass getting really green and then fading away. We see it all around us, the people that we love. We know them for a time. And then there's a time to say goodbye.

I'm always — not always, but sometimes, ever since I've been a father — thinking about the reaction of little children when they say goodbye.

They realize this is a major event: saying goodbye, breaking fellowship for a time. It's like it could be eternity for a child.

But we get used to it, don't we? And we get numb to it, and we get callous that there's an end, and we kind of get wrapped up into certain things. But coming into the reality that there is an end — like there really will be an end to our life and to the time where we will face Christ — that is a conviction, right? For those, when we receive general revelation, it's a conviction to those who do not put their faith in Christ. And we'll get into that here in a little bit when we get into the internal call.

But number four, the first blank is rejection. Rejection of this general or external call leads to eternal ruin.

Rejection of this general or external call leads to eternal ruin.

In ourselves, we default to this rejection. We're born unholy. We're born in this — we are on this path of death. Right when we're born, it could be at any point where God appoints our death. And so there is this default to being under the penalty of sin. And so we feel like we must have to do something to earn some kind of favor. Even the idea of saying a sinner's prayer really, really sincerely, like trusting in our own righteousness, our righteous acts of attempting to believe — we maybe hold on to one particular event in our life where we said yes to Christ and then doing whatever after that. Well, you ask yourself, am I living an unrepentant life? Am I still remaining in my own desire to sin?

This can be very much of a grace to receive conviction — for this reminder that if you are still dwelling in your own sin and the desire to sin, this is a gracious call to be able to turn from that. And if you find yourself callous and not repenting and not turning from that sin, if there's not some sort of angst or something's not right here, and you're resisting that — that's a problem. And that's something that you need to think about. This particular point here is for you. There've been seasons in my life where I have done that, and I know exactly what you're feeling right now. But rejection of this general call leads to eternal ruin.

And let this point simmer in your minds for a little bit.

The application of this point is: will those who reject Christ ever escape His presence? Will those who reject Christ ever escape His presence? It's a resounding no, right? And it is terrifying. There are a lot of people in this world, when you talk to them, who will be like, well, that's not for me. And it's like, well, you're going to get a lot of it when you die and you don't repent. You're going to get a lot of that one that you don't like. He's going to be all around you all the time, as the Scriptures say about the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. And that's the part where the special revelation can help clarify, right — to be able to clarify after this general revelation.

Turn to the back or turn your Bibles to 2 Thessalonians chapter 1.

We're on point four. So look under number four. It's on the top right of your sheet on the back. 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 verses 7 through 10. It says, "When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, these shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power." When He comes in that day, let that not be you or me — if you're hearing this tonight or if you're hearing it on a recording. Let that not be you, and that you would run to Him. And we're going to get into here in a second where you may be where God may be speaking to you directly in an internal call.

Point number five.

God's gospel call to all men is sincere. God's gospel call to all men is sincere despite the moral inability found in the perversity of man's evil will.

So the first blank is sincere and the second blank is will. God's call to all men is no less sincere than His command to all men to love Him perfectly.

If it is proper to publish the demands of the law, it is proper to publish the invitation of the gospel. One may be perfectly sincere in giving an invitation which he knows will be refused by others. Refused.

The only obstacle to compliance of the call of the gospel is the sinner's very own evil will.

So explain a lot of that. There's a lot of statements in there.

You can go back and think about it, but this is kind of like the way that we're going to try to understand God's position — that it's not a contradiction of His nature to be able to have an external call. And yet there are sinners that are not even able to respond to that. There's not a contradiction there. One of the analogies I like to do is to the way that we understand sin.

We went through the doctrine of sin a couple of lessons ago. Sin — we know — is an archery term. And so sin, it's like God calling sinners up. He's like, step right up, take your shots. You know, bring up your bow and arrows. And so you have sinners coming up and then failure after failure after failure. Well, God is still calling people to come, but they're coming and they're failing every single time. Okay, it doesn't mean that God is making them miss or responsible for having a failure in the first place. He is calling them to the place to be able to shoot, to be able to live their life, right. But this analogy kind of helps explain that — to be able to say how many times the sinner will come up and shoot their arrow and miss, right. So the law is, we shall love the Lord our God with all your heart, soul, and mind. That's the bullseye. Every time that we're firing, we're all over the place. We may hit that bullseye one out of a million times if we shoot as many arrows as we can. But even that doesn't measure up to all our heart, soul, and mind and strength, right. And so that's why it glorifies Christ, because every arrow that Christ shot was a bullseye, right. And so He's the only one. We're not going to get into detail because we already went into Christology and all these other types of doctrines that help explain that. But I think that analogy may help us understand that there's not a contradiction in God calling people up to be able to take their best shot, right. But we miss. And so when we keep spending our time missing, it kind of leads to our application here.

It says, "Why do you spend money for what is not bread?"

"Why do you spend money for what is not bread?"

Think about the continuous times that we try this and try that. But we fall short. Our best acts are filthy rags, right? It says so in Isaiah. But here in Isaiah 55:2 — I believe you have it on the front.

We're in point five, yeah, in Isaiah.

Well, the next few verses in Isaiah 55 are there. But this application comes right from Isaiah 55 in verse 2 there.

Where it talks about coming to the waters, coming to Jesus, how He's the only one who has perfected the law. And in Psalm 14:1 — the only thing — this is on your sheet — Psalm 14:1, where it talks about, "The fool says in his heart, there is no God."

When I received this teaching about this particular verse, it made me understand that this is like an atheist saying — the fool says in his heart, like he sees God before him and he says to himself, no God, I see You right there, and I say, no, I don't want any part of that. So that is what it means: the fool says in his heart, "No, God." And that's something where when we try to do things of ourselves in our own way, that's like spending money for what is not bread there in Isaiah 55:2.

Point six now. It says God's will of disposition — or God's will of nature — God's will of disposition is spoken of in 1 Timothy chapter 2 verse 4, where God says He "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth."

The meaning is not that God decrees or purposes all men to be saved, but that He desires all to be saved.

Desires is the blank — but that He desires all to be saved through heeding the gospel.

God's will of disposition is revealed in Scripture — revealed is the blank — and is perfectly consistent with God's hidden and unrevealed will of decree.

So we have desires, revealed, and unrevealed.

I'll read that last sentence together after we've written stuff down. God's will of disposition is revealed in Scripture and is perfectly consistent with God's hidden and unrevealed will of decree to bring about salvation of His elect.

We get so enamored by God's gracious nature that we come to demand God's grace. We come to demand God's grace. We almost think that God owes us mercy and owes us grace. And this is extremely heretical. This is something where God does not owe us grace. We owe anything; we owe everything. We must understand and come to grips, through general revelation, that we are the ones who fall short, right. We just talked about other false religions. We all understand this. We all understand that we fall short.

And so we must not come to the point that God owes us something. The truth is that no one perfectly shoots perfect arrows. We may think that the nicest people in the world, or in your family, shoot pretty nice arrows. But compare that to Christ. Okay, nothing. Their arrows are nothing. And so we must understand this. And we think about God's hidden decree.

God's hidden decree is what sets me free from the slavery of my own sin. And that's what we find, as we mature in the studying of our Scriptures — we find out that this revelation was all of God, right. There's been explained to me that when you realize that you need to be saved, that you come to faith, you don't know that you need to jump out of a burning building at the time. Say there's a burning building and you realize, after you take that step of faith and you jump out of that burning building, you turn around and you realize, wow, my sight changed. How do you know the building was on fire? Right. Or you realize that it was God who revealed that to you and in essence caused you to jump out in faith. And so this is something that we learn through Scripture. So the application of this, knowing that it is revealed through Scripture, that it is all of God, this application here is: "Go into the highways and as many as you find and invite to the wedding."

This is found in Matthew 22 verse 9.

The word is many — and as many as you find. The way that we proclaim is jumping up and down preaching the gospel. Christ crucified. We say, "God saves sinners." That's all. That's all you need to say.

So the way that we are going to be able to do this is to go into the highways and as many as you can find and invite to the wedding.

Number seven is now where we get into this aspect of the internal call. We've kind of dwelled on the general call, the general revelation and external call. Now we're going to get into what this special revelation and internal call go into. So point number seven: the special or internal call is given to God's elect, whereby they are made alive in Christ. Alive in Christ.

The Spirit's inward call creates in man a new disposition of the heart and a new activity of the will by which the sinner accepts Christ. It is not man reviving his own will, nor is it mere cooperation with the will of God. It is an almighty act of God. That blank is almighty.

It is an almighty act of God.

It is an almighty act of God in the will of man by which the freedom to choose God as its end is restored and rightly exercised. And what a glorious step of faith that is. And going back to the authority of God, God calling the light day, as He has shown in 2 Corinthians 4:6, right? Go back to those verses.

When you think about being a new creation, I think it's more of a miracle to be the new birth than the actual creation itself. It is a tremendous miracle to be able to — I think, you know, to be able to speak things from nothing to something is a pretty amazing miracle. But to bring the dead to life spiritually — now that you're awakened, now that you know that you're a sinner, now that you know who Jesus is and what He's done, and you respond to that, and you know who you once were — that is a very glorious miracle.

I mean, it's something that is quite amazing. So on your sheet there, if you want to turn to Romans 8, Romans 8 verse 28 through 30. This is where we have the connection between the called and the elect in Romans 8:28–30. Let me read that.

"And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose, for whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son."

That He — meaning Christ — that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Among many brethren, like being brothers in Christ, the brethren with those who are called here according to His purpose. "Moreover, whom He predestined, these He also called, whom He called,

these He also justified, and whom He justified, these He also glorified."

These are very precious verses to dwell on, because what this does is that it looks away from who we are and has its focus on Christ. Even though it says, you know, you are someone who I've called — those who have responded to the gospel, I can say in the word "you" — you are one of these. You are one of these who are called according to His purpose.

It's just an amazing thing to be able to just pause and to receive that blessing. In Matthew 5, the Beatitudes, they're all about the called. The Beatitudes: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." All the ones who are blessed are the elect, are the redeemed, those who know that they're sinners, those who have received the free gift of the crucified Christ.

"Blessed are you," Matthew 5.

In Psalm 51:10, David has no other way to be able to get rid of his sin except to pray, "Create in me a clean heart." It's a creation. It's a new creation. "I need a clean heart, God. I am ruined. I need a clean heart and renew a steadfast spirit within me."

And so it is by the power of His word where God justifies. We're going to learn about justification — you know how that's a declaration by God's word. It's a declaration. And so we're going to learn more about that as we learn more about Soteriology. Don't want to steal thunder there. But if this doesn't sound like God is just to you when you're thinking about this, I would go back — like we were hinting at at the beginning — go back to the doctrine of God and go back to the cross. That's not fair? God sent Himself, and the knife came down into His Son, right? And so when we think about what's fair or what's just, go back to those two doctrines. Very simple. It's not complicated. We can help get that clarified real quick. If Romans 8:28–30 is a problem for you, go back to the doctrine of God and go back to the doctrine of all about what the cross is — the person and the work of Christ and what He did there.

So this leads us to a very positive application: pray that you will know the hope of His calling. Pray that you will know the hope of His calling.

If this is a worrisome application for you, go back to Ephesians chapter 1. Patrick Casey had a very great series in Ephesians chapter 1 for a few weeks there in Ephesians 1, where this application is very well understood. But pray that you will know the hope of His calling, where Christ is the object of our faith. We study Him. We know Him. We remind you, we teach Christ. We remind yourself of Him. He is the object of our faith — to be able to put our hope into. He's a person that existed, that did work. So we don't lean on ourselves. We don't lean on something that we have done. We lean on Christ. And we know the conviction of general revelation, but we hear the word of the Lord in the teaching of special revelation.

When God speaks through His word, we hear it, we respond to it, and we put our hope in Him, right? We can take both, right? As Christians, we can take both the truth of general revelation and the truth of special revelation. The point is Scripture — to be able to come around to these truths that we can go full truth of the law and of Christ, because it's what He has done.

All right, point number eight. The special or internal call originates in God for His own glory. The special or internal call originates in God for His own glory. The roots of our theology go back to who God is, like what we were talking about earlier. This word originates is referring to no other calls before it. This was something that originated within God, right. Without God, there is no salvation, right. And it is not something where Satan prompted it and then God responded, right. Circumstances did not prompt it and then God rolled with it.

Man certainly didn't demand it by one, even by one special work, and then God reactively granting it. No. The special or internal call originates in God for His own glory.

The application for this is: as being called into union with Christ, live for His glory. As being called into union with Christ, live for His glory.

Okay. Another R.C. Sproul quote — I think this is number two. It's not too much.

I've said this before, but I feel like if I say it enough times, we'll get it and understand it. Because I think this is — even the quote here reminds us of the essence. And pretty soon maybe you all might even say it while I quote it. But to be a Christian is to be forgiven. The essence of the Christian faith is grace. The essence of the Christian ethic is not arrogance, but gratitude. And so when we think about Christ and when we think about what He has done, it's grace. We are forgiven. And so we respond with thankfulness and we live for His glory. We have so many Scripture verses to be able to get into. We don't have the time to be able to read all the Scriptures, but let that be an encouragement — all these Scriptures in 2 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 there. And even on the back there some.

All right, point number nine. The Spirit's inward call infallibly accomplishes. The word accomplishes is the blank. The Spirit's inward call infallibly accomplishes — infallibly meaning it does not fail, right. There is no authority that can flip this accomplishment. The Spirit's inward call infallibly accomplishes its end of leading the sinner to new life in Christ. His saving grace and effectual calling are resistible, right. This is the point where we think about the TULIP and we think about irresistible grace. We're going to help kind of clarify what that really means. Real quick, I'll kind of do this before I read the rest of this. A better phrase than irresistible grace is effectual grace. And this is the effectual grace where it's an effectual grace that does not fail, that brings the result it was intended to bring. And so we know that — well, let me read this and I'll explain a little bit more. Where His saving grace and effectual calling are resistible, but they are never successfully resisted. Never is the blank. It is resistible in the sense that we can and do resist it in our fallen nature. But effectual in the sense that God's grace is always greater.

God's grace is always greater — greater being the blank — and prevails over our natural resistance to it. Some use the term irresistible grace, but this implies a coercion.

A compulsion that is foreign to the very nature of God's work in our soul. And you can look at Psalm 110 verse 3 there.

One verse that I would like to read is in Ephesians chapter 2:1–5. You have it on your back. It says, "And you He made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy" — this is where it kind of gets to this point here — "but God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved."

So this is where it points out that God makes us spiritually alive. He doesn't appoint their spiritual death again for any reason. The person and the work of Christ is sufficient and enduring. The application for this point here is: stand in grace and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Romans 5 verse 2. Stand in grace. When we think about this and we think about Christ crucified and we're standing in that grace, it is one of the hardest things to be able to come around to, but we receive it with thankfulness. We receive what God has done — became a God-man and all the things that He did that we learned about in Christology — with the incarnation, coming into us as a regular man, and He shot those arrows; all the works that He did were perfect. And so we have to be reminded to be able to stand on the rock. What He did on the cross, it doesn't make sense for us to be able to stand on Him, but we must. That is the call today: to stand on the rock, to stand as conquerors on the cross, to stand on the grave. It's an open grave. It's a grave where He has walked out. The only way to receive His punishment for our sin was to do what He did. So it doesn't make sense to us, but this is something that we must do — stand in that grace. It's really hard. I mean, we're evangelizing at UCF, going around, and someone we were talking to couldn't come around to the idea of someone paying the penalty for his sin.

He just — he's like, I don't — he's like, I can receive the responsibility for what I've done. And we're telling him, you know, you can't do that. What you must do is you stand and believe on Christ. He's the only one. He's like, no, no, I don't accept that. But we must, we must do that. We must stand in grace and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

All right, last point. Point 10 is that we must humbly call all men everywhere to come to Christ. We must humbly call all men everywhere to come to Christ. On the front there, we have 2 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 15 through 16.

Read that with me here. "For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing."

"To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other, the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things?"

That's just a little tip to be able to tip the iceberg there, to be able to understand who we are. Whoever we talk to, we are an aroma in some sort — an aroma where we're leading someone to life, or an aroma of leading someone to death. And we need to be prepared for that. We need to be prepared for both. And so by this study that we see in Scripture, there is an external call. Now also in Scripture, we see the actual belief of faith originates in God and for His glory.

And this is in the response of this internal call that only God can perform. And that He does perform in whom He calls, and those whom He calls will come.

So may we all have this desire for the Lord, embrace His arms, the arms of our loving Father. Amen.

The application — oh, I'm sorry — the application for the last one is: say, "Come, whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely."

That's in reference to Revelation 22 verse 17. Say come. All right, thank you.