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It was about 10 years ago that the governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, you might know him as Jesse the Body Ventura, said this, organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers.
About the same time Ted Turner said this, Christianity is a religion for losers. Do you know all unbelievers think that about Christianity? Now they might dress it up, they might be a little more sophisticated, but in the back of their mind they're thinking it's for weak people, it's for people that need some kind of emotional crutch, it's for losers.
So I've got a question for you this morning. How can some people who hear this message of the cross, this offensive message where this deviant form of punishment that is usually held out for the deviant people in society, crucifixion, how can somebody look at the Christian one day, every day, all the days of their life, as repulsive and repugnant?
But then all of a sudden say, it's no longer repugnant, but it is beautiful. How do you account for that? How do you account for someone who looks at the cross and says, this is for losers and I'm fine and I'm good and I'll just be good and get to heaven that way and let it be.
But then one day they say to themselves, I want to worship that God. I want to worship that God. How do you explain that? Is it fate? Is it evolution? Is it chance? Is it free will? Is it smarts? They finally were smart enough to realize, if I'd like my sins forgiven, I better believe in this.
What ultimately accounts for a person who looks at the cross as offensive one moment and then the next moment they say, it's beautiful. There's basically two approaches. One approach says, it's something in a man or in a woman that says, you know what, I better believe that.
And at the end of the day, they say to themselves, I must believe. And there's another approach and that approach is, the answer lies only in God's will. Which one of these are right? If you're saved, which one describes you?
I believed by myself. That's option one. Option two, I wanted to believe and God helped me believe. Option three, God gave me sufficient grace to believe because Christ died and I cooperated. And option number four, this is the right answer by the way, God brought me to Christ.
He did all the work and He even gave me saving faith. How can a gospel that is repugnant and repellent become beautiful in the eyes of its beholders? And the answer is, we'll learn today from the text, it's not in man, it's not in the world, it's not in Satan, it's in God's will.
Let's turn our Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. If you're a visitor, welcome today. You'll need yourselves a Bible. There should be a Black Pew Bible in front of you. You probably have friends growing up if you're a Christian.
What makes you the Christian and them not? You're smarter, you're wiser, you have more Iwana verses memorized. Is the answer found in you? By the way, I'm glad for Iwana verses memorized. But is the answer found in you or is the answer found outside of you?
And the answer from the text today we'll see in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Is the answer to who goes to heaven and who doesn't? It lies in the nature and work of the triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit.
If you want a title for today's message, I called it in my notes, From Repulsion to Attraction. How do you look at the cross and say, I don't want to follow this Jesus, to I will abandon my life to follow this Christ?
The answer is in you or the answer is in God? We'll find out today. If you'll jump ahead for a moment to 1 Corinthians chapter 6 with me, if you would. Let's even ask the question when it comes to Corinth.
How can you take these kind of people, who used to worship themselves and other people, and then turn them into Christ worshipers? A crucified Christ worshiper no less. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 9.
He's talking about people who live lives like this as a pattern, as a characterizing force in their lives. There are these sins and they don't go to heaven. It says, Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, 1 Corinthians 6 verse 9, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers.
He could have given other names for the list, but these were the pet sins in Corinth. How can you take these people who love these sins, who saw the cross as offensive, foolish, and now they see the cross as holy, precious, wonderful?
The answer is found in verse 11. Such were some of you, but you were by yourself saved. But you were, by your own free will, made a decision to follow the Lord. But you were better than the guy next to you, and you were saved.
But the text here, even as we'll see in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, but you were what? You weren't the active one, you were the receiving one. You weren't the actor, you were the recipient of that action.
But you were what? Washed. The answer lies in God. But you were sanctified. But you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God. If anyone in this room is a Christian, you are a Christian primarily and ultimately because God saved you.
If you're not a Christian, what could ever make you a Christian? You? I know lots of people who have tried to make themselves Christians over and over and over. We're going to see in the text today that God is the one who must call.
If any of the Christians were ever going to be saved, it had to be God. If any of you are saved, it had to be God. If any of you have loved ones who you want to be saved, you will wait a million years until they reform themselves and come up with their own faith, or you will do what you know you're supposed to do.
You pray that the God who saves will save them. Now let's go back to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. The big picture here is divisions are in the church, chapter 1, 2, 3, and 4. And Paul is saying, let's not follow people to cause divisions.
And he's going to say now in chapter 1 verses 18 through 25, if God saves, if he does it all, then why follow Paul, why follow Apollos, why follow Barnabas? You should follow God. If God is the Savior, follow God.
Unless God intervenes, there's no hope for anyone to get saved. And when God does intervene, there's nothing but hope. Look at verse 18. Let's have a little review. I counted the other day. I think we're about 18 or 19 messages into 1 Corinthians.
There are 16 chapters. You can do the math if you'd like. But we're spending extra time in chapter 1. We'll breeze by other chapters because the foundation will be laid. 1 Corinthians chapter 1, 18. For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing, we saw last time, foolishness.
But to those who are being saved, it is the power of God. The doctrine of substitutionary atonement. Someone dies in the place of another. Jesus the God-man dying in our place, being raised from the dead.
That cross word to unbelievers is just moronic. And it's always been that way. Verse 19, the Old Testament is quoted to confirm it. Paul, like Jesus, says, For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever.
I will set aside. No man-made scheme of coming up with how do I get my sins forgiven will ever work. He asks four bullet point questions. Staccato kind of questions, machine gun style. Where's the wise man?
Where's the scribe? Where's the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? T .S. Eliot said, All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance. All our ignorance brings us nearer to death.
But nearness to death, no nearer to God. Where is the life we have lost in the living? How did God make foolish the wisdom of the world? Verse 21 answers that question. Still in review. For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, no human reasoning can somehow get you to know God and to have salvation.
God, He wouldn't have to do this. He didn't have to do this. But God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached, the God-man dying on the cross, to save those who believe. For indeed, verse 22, Jews ask for signs.
We know people like that today. And Greeks search for wisdom. But what do we give them? We preach Christ crucified. But we preach Christ crucified to the Jews' stumbling block and to the Gentiles' foolishness.
How do you dress up in execution? You've heard it said, you can put a lot of lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. And you can take soft lights. Do you ever see actresses and you see the picture of what they look like without makeup or actors, and you go, wow.
And then you see them, soft lights, beautiful matting, wonderful work with photography, and you go, that's pretty good. You take the cross that was reserved for deviant criminals. Jesus dies, certainly as the Holy One, but in the kind of death that would be for deviant criminals.
And you can put soft lighting, backdrop, but you can't make it look any better. Jews stumbled over this idea, but Paul said that is the saving gospel, so that is what he preached. Listen to this from Deuteronomy,.
And if a man is committed a sin worthy of death, and he is put to death, you hang him on a tree. His corpse shall not hang all night on a tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day. For he who is hanged is accursed of God.
How do you take this death, where God even curses that person who hangs on a tree, and then say, that's my Messiah, when I'm looking for some political Messiah? We realize that God the Father has punished God the Son, not for the Son's sins, but for our sins.
Gordon Fee, the great scholar, said, It is hard for those in the Christianized West, where the cross almost for 19 centuries has been primarily a symbol for faith, to appreciate how utterly mad the message of a God who got Himself crucified by His enemies must have seemed to the first century Greek, are Romans.
But it is precisely the depth of this scandal and folly that we must appreciate, if we are to understand both why the Corinthians were moving away from it towards wisdom, and why it was well over a century before the cross appears among Christians as a symbol of their faith.
Isn't that interesting? We accept it as a symbol of our faith. There's a cross that hangs right up there. But for a hundred years the Christians didn't even do that. You can feel the scandal that went along with this crucifixion.
So, back to my original question. If everyone sees the cross as offensive or foolish or somewhere in between or both, what causes someone to believe? How does anyone believe would be a better question?
And here's the answer, verse 24. Here is the answer. But to those who are the, what? Called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
There is more than rejection. I'm happy for that. As a pastor, I'd hate it if I knew all the messages would only forever be rejected. God turns the light on. Look at that name, the called. What a name that is for Christians.
I like it a lot better than the lost, the damned, the sinners. I love that name, don't you? Now I meet people all the time. What do you do for a living? And I say, well, I'm a Bible teaching pastor. Oh, I can feel their words patting my head.
Oh, that's nice. You just stay over there in West Boylston in that nice little suburb there. Oh, that's a nice calling you have. That's a vocation you have. You're called to that. Well, that's what we say, but that's not what the Bible says.
The Bible says this is something that God does. He calls to the called people. The cross is no longer repulsive. It's precious. If God has ordained that man's wisdom can't come up with the cross and how to be forgiven, then God better do something, and He does.
God Himself calls. But to those who are the called, Christ becomes the power of God and the wisdom of God. And we call this theologically what? Effectual calling. When God calls, miraculous things happen.
Now, what happens to the Jews? I'll give you the outline in just a minute. But what happens to the Jews? They say, we want powerful signs. Do signs and wonders powerfully. Jesus doesn't do signs and wonders powerfully, and they think Jesus is weak.
God turns the light on. God opens the heart like He did for Lydia. God says to these Corinthians, the Jews at Corinth, you used to think the cross was weak and despised and a scandal. You want power? You aren't going to get power.
Then God saves the Jews, and the Jews look back at the cross, and they go what? That's the most powerful thing I've ever seen in my life. God raised Himself from the dead. There's power. The Greeks, they say, you know what, we want wisdom.
That cross is foolish. God does a work on the Greeks' heart, and then they look back at the cross, and they go, how could the holiness of God, the love of God, the grace of God, and the wrath of God all be reconciled into one?
At the cross, that's wise. That's wise. The Jews would think about the power of God in creation. Paul says think about the power of God in recreation. Now here's what I'd like to do today. I'd like to talk a little bit about this calling, and then I'd like to look at three passages that talk about that call, the effectual call.
What is the effectual call? Right there in verse 24. Who are the called? So let's talk about the call, and then let's look at three passages today, and I think you'll be riveted when you see these passages and very encouraged, especially if you know unbelievers.
Let's talk about the call first. The call has two components to it. What is the call? The first call is the external call. I'm going to give an external call right now. If you're not a Christian today, you must believe the Gospel.
I'm calling you to faith. I'm calling you to say you'll die one day and stand before God, and then you will be undone unless you have a sin bearer, Jesus Christ, the risen Savior. I'm giving you the call.
That's the first call that's found in the Bible. Does it sound familiar when Jesus said, Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. That's called the call. It's a general call.
It's given to everyone, and it's given verbally. It's given with decibels. It's given with an auditory action. Paul did it. God is now declaring to men that all men everywhere should repent. Certainly, the creation says there's a God.
Your conscience says there's a God. But the two kinds of calls that are out there, the first one is external. We tell people to believe. Repent and believe. This call, by the way, this external call, can be resisted.
Stephen was preaching, and he says, You men are what? Stiff-necked. And you preach the Gospel to your friends, and they go, Forget that. You know what the stiff arm is? Somebody's going to try to come and tackle you, and you just give them one of these right up in the jaw.
Wham! You preach the Gospel, and people say, Forget it. That's the general call. It can be resisted. But there's another calling that's found here in 1 Corinthians 1. It's called the effectual call, the irresistible call, the invincible call, where when God calls you, now not externally, although it is through preaching, but internally, the Spirit of God changes you, and He will not be stopped.
God acts on the person on the inside, and they respond. Why is one person saved and another lost? It is God who makes the difference. Remember, men and women in their natural states are corrupt, blind, depraved, unable to believe.
But when God does something to the heart of a person, that person responds. You say, No, I don't think they really respond. I think something else has to happen, and they have to cooperate. Let's think about creation and then recreation.
When God creates a universe and says, Let there be light, what does He say? Let there be light. And what happens? God's kind of up there tapping His toes, and I'm hoping light's free will will kind of go along with me and cooperate, and so it will all happen.
No, God says, Let there be light, and there's light. And same here with the effectual call when God says, It's time for Lydia, the pagan worshiper, to believe. Let there be light, and the light goes on.
That's called the effectual call. Every year we go to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and sometimes we walk across it, and they have all these huge fences and video cameras because people try to climb up and jump off the Golden Gate Bridge and kill themselves.
There's all kinds of, If you're going to commit suicide, please call this number. There's documentaries about people jumping off. I remember one guy, he finally climbed up over the railing, jumped off, and he said, The second I jumped, I realized that was the wrong thing to do.
He lived. Most don't live. He lived, he broke his neck, and then he tries to tell people, Now, don't commit suicide. Now, you can run up to a person, and if my family and I were there, and we saw somebody climbing up, we could shout out, Don't jump.
We beseech you. Life's not that bad. Eternity's worse if you're not a Christian. Don't do it. And we could probably convince people not to commit suicide. But there is no way in the universe that you can ever go up to a casket with a corpse in it and convince that dead person to live.
So how can anybody ever live? God must call. If you're a Christian today, you're a Christian because God made you a Christian. You said, Oh, I believed. Yes, you did believe. But you believed because God saved you and gave you the gift of faith.
Let me show you three biblical passages that talk more about this. Let's go to the first one, John 10. We're going to look at John 10, Luke 14, and John 6 today. That's my plan. We'll see how far we get.
We're talking about the call, the effectual call. The general call is believe. Some people don't believe. But when God works on the inside through the ministry of the Spirit of God through the preached word, you will believe.
And Paul says, You have received the grace of God. Why fracture the church when you're following God? Now let's look at John 10 and let's talk about this call. Three biblical passages that should help create wonder in your heart if you're a Christian and hope for you if you've got unsaved loved ones.
If you're not a Christian today, then this should all drive you to one point. There's only one person that can save you and that is God Himself and you ought to cry out to Him, Lord have mercy upon me the sinner.
Look at John 10 verse 15 and 16 and then we'll look down at verse 24 and following as well. Jumping into the passage, John 10, 15. Even as the Father knows me and I know the Father and I lay down my life for the sheep, I have other sheep which are not of this fold.
I must bring them also and they will what? Hear my voice. You might want to underline that and they will become one flock with one shepherd. Jesus says, I have Jews in my flock and I'm going to be bringing in Gentiles too and they will hear my voice.
Go down to verse 24 please. The Jews then gathered around Him and were saying to Him, How long will you keep us in suspense? If you're the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you and you do not believe.
The works that I do in my Father's name, these testify of me. But you do not believe because you are not of my sheep. Here it is again just like in verse 16. My sheep hear my voice and I know them. They follow me and I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
My Father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one. True or false? Every person heard these audible words My sheep hear my voice.
Is that what he's talking about? Everybody could hear. It was kind of far away. He was by the Sea of Galilee. It was kind of windy and there was other people talking. Some of the people heard and some of the people didn't hear.
Is that what he's talking about? No. He's talking here about this internal hearing. My sheep hear my voice because I've called them from the inside. The wolves don't follow Jesus. They heard, these false teachers, heard the words of Jesus.
They didn't follow. Goats, these other unbelievers, they heard the words of Jesus and they didn't follow. Only the sheep followed. Why? Because the Spirit of God gave them the internal call and they followed.
The secret special call to his chosen ones. They hear and they follow. John Calvin said, No man makes himself a sheep. Like, duh. No man makes himself a sheep but is created by such divine grace. My sister has goats and sheep and I've never met one goat yet that have ran around and acted goatish for many months and years and all of a sudden one day woke up and looked at that goat and that goat was a sheep and that sheep by self work did the changing.
They alone, the sheep, hear this internal call. So who gets the credit? The sheep? Oh, I made myself into a sheep. I used to be a goat. When the King of the Universe gives the summons, you respond. Goat, I'd really like to turn you into a sheep but I know you love your goatishness and if you'll take the first step, I'll take the next step.
I know, you know, I don't want to mess up your goat will and your free goat will and so what I'd like to do is I've done everything I could. I've given you the Gospel. I've had my son die for you and now we're just waiting because we don't want you to act like some kind of robot goat or sheep so I've done it all.
It just sounds dumb because it is dumb. The effectual call is God acting on a person on the inside. Is the soul involved? Is the will involved? Yes. But the soul and the will don't do anything. The soul and the will experience something.
The soul and the will don't start something. The soul and the will experience that. Of course, God doesn't, you know, believe for you but when God changes you and your heart like Lydie in Acts 16, you respond differently.
That's called the effectual call. The will is involved but as an object not as an agent. John 5, For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will. Whose will determines salvation?
You say, I don't like this kind of talk. Well, of course, none of us like it because we're all, even as we're saved, we're prideful and we want to come and contribute. True or false? Paul said, By my free will I am what I am.
By the grace, the sovereign grace of God, I am what I am. You might know the hymn, I sought the Lord and afterward I knew. He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me. It was not I that found, O Savior, true.
No, I was found of Thee. Thou didst reach forth Thy hand and mine enfold. I walked and sank not on the storm, vexed sea. T 'was not so much that I took hold of Thee as Thou, dear Lord, on me. Do you really believe that God is the author of salvation?
If you do, you will not believe your free will is the author of anything. Passage number two. Let's go to Luke chapter 14. If you think that was wild, let's go to Luke 14. The second passage that we'll talk about this call, this effectual call.
One call says believe and can be turned down. The other call says believe, but when the Spirit of God changes somebody on the inside, that person has to be changed. That person is born from above. You say, what does this matter at all?
For Corinth it mattered because if you believe God saved, you won't follow man. If you believe man is ultimately the king of salvation, then you might follow some of those men. For us, I think everyone who is here today and you think somehow you move first, you will give less praise to God the Father, Son and Spirit for your salvation if you think you allowed God and you thought you were the author.
I'm just trying to contain myself and we'll get into the lack of containment in the next passage. So let's go to Luke 14. Okay, well let's just do it anyway. Why do I wait? The will has been affected by the fall.
If you're an unbeliever, your will with your mind, soul, spirit, whole constitution, your one constituted whole, you've been affected by the fall. And so if that will has been affected by the fall and that will who used to say in Adam, I want to please you God, now says I want to run away from you God, blaming God, you gave me this woman, that's why I sinned.
This will is never going to say, huh, Jesus is wonderful. That will is always going to say, the cross is stupid, it's for morons. So something's got to happen to that entire person, including the will.
And people say, well yeah, but that makes me a robot. Well, let me just ask you a question. Just go home and do all your homework and find all the verses in the Bible about free will. You're not going to find any because you're going to find out as the Reformation told us that the will is enslaved to sin, Romans 6.
Captive to Satan, 2 Timothy chapter 2. And God's will can come along anytime he wants and says, now I'm going to change that person's willer. Is he free to do that? He doesn't have to, but can he do that?
Of course, and to be saved, he must do that. People say, well I have a, my mind is corrupt and my body's corrupt and I have gray hair and I'm balding and I have all these other things, but inside I've got a good island of righteousness, some kind of free will in there that can't be touched.
You know what I call that? I've got a new name for it. This isle of righteousness. It's fiction. I call it Gilligan's island of righteousness. Because as Gilligan and Skipper and Little Buddy were all fake, so too is it that there's this island of righteousness and with the right kind of wooing, the right kind of environment, with the right kind of talk and persuasion, this island of righteousness can now say, well, you know, the cross is stupid and repugnant, but, you know, I think I'll believe in my own free will.
Free will is an idol that I would just as soon stomp out if I could and I'm trying to do it right now. Free will? You mean you're, as a fallen person in Adam, an unbeliever, they have the will to do whatever they want, including to say no to the God of the universe who speaks light into the world?
If you believe in free will, your praise is not sufficient because at the end of the day, I have a friend. Pick the friend you grew up with, your best friend in school. And if they're not a Christian, why aren't they a Christian and why are you a Christian?
My friend was named Scott and I told you before, my friend Scott, he looks like he's some kind of martial arts fighter. Now he's got some big, huge beard and they call him the Anvil, you know, just like a martial arts guy.
The Anvil. Why am I a Christian? And Scott the Anvil is not a Christian. My will, I determined, I did follow Jesus, I did decide to follow Jesus, but somebody decided before and that was God who called me.
How can you take an effeminate, homosexual, adulterer, drunkard at Corinth, one minute they're worshiping themselves and the next minute they sing Fairest Lord Jesus? The answer is not found in the people in Corinth.
If the answer was found in the people of Corinth, then follow those people with a special insight and your church will split up into a thousand pieces. Paul says, you're called by God. You all know this anyway because when you pray for your loved ones to be saved, you never pray a prayer that says, by the way God, work in such a way that you never tread on their free will, you never touch their island of righteousness, coordinate everything so they'll somehow figure it out.
You say what? God, do anything it takes to open their minds, to save them, to give them eternal life. God, save them. Don't you pray that way? And when people say to you, well, you know, God doesn't force anybody to love you.
Friends, that is just nonsense talk. Here's what happens. God calls you, you have a new nature and then that nature says, what I used to find repulsive I now find lovely. You don't have to force a Christian to follow Christ because he's got a new nature.
Think about something like a tiger and you've got a tiger and you keep coming up to the tiger with Snickers bars. You can tell I'm talking about I'm into this no sugar thing and I'm just so dying for a Snickers bar.
Tiger, come on, Snicker bar, Snicker bar, Snicker bar. You can leave that Snicker bar there until Kingdom come and he's never going to have a Snicker bar, dark chocolate or regular. He'll never eat it because it's not in his constitution.
It's not in his nature. He will try to bite your head off for giving him such a foolish object. And only one person in the whole world, the God of the universe, could take that lion and turn that lion into a lamb or a sheep.
And then that sheep would say, now I do love the Savior. I do love His voice. I hear His voice. I like milk. I like little lambs eat ivy. I don't know what I like. God doesn't make any robots. Romans 9 talks about not robots, but clay and the potter's hand and God can do whatever He wants with fallen creatures.
Can't He? The question is why does God do it? The question is why does God do anything at all? The real question is I can't believe that God would change a sinner's heart when they deserve wrath. All right, let's go to Luke 14.
Second kind of call. Passage. There's two kinds of calls. General. Effectual. Look at the grace and the mercy of Christ to invite the unworthy to dine with Him. You're going to be thrilled with God's compassion in this verse.
That God would want fellowship with sinners. Me or you. Look at the context. Verse 15 of Luke 14. And when one of those who were reclining at the table with Jesus heard this, he said, now if you just read it in English, blessed is everyone who shall eat the bread of the kingdom of God.
Here's what's happening. This person is saying you're talking about how this banquet, this heavenly banquet is going to include Gentiles. Don't forget about us Jews. Blessed is everybody like us Jews.
He's kind of dulling this point. It's just a stark point. Listen, a lot of Jews are rejecting Christ and Jesus says, and by the way, I've got a big banquet for Gentiles too. And now this Jew goes, oh, you know what?
But yeah, there's some of us Jews we're going to make it too, right? Blessed is everyone who shall eat the kingdom of God. Us Jews. And now Jesus says, let's prove the sincerity of that point. And He gives this parable.
Verse 16. You can see it in the first word with the contrast. Oh really? Verse 16. But, let's test this out. He said to him, the best storyteller who's ever lived now gives this parable. A certain man was giving a big dinner and he invited many.
Of course, right away you're thinking this certain man is God. He invited many. He gave a general call. At the dinner hour he sent a slave to say to those who had been invited, come for everything is ready now.
Here's the general call. You don't have your little day timer. You can't call people later. And so you have this big dinner. Please come next Saturday. And then on Saturday morning or Friday night you send your guy back out again and say, we're going to have this big dinner.
Please come. Elaborate meal. This big dinner. How many big dinners did you get back in those days? Not many. Banquets that would have all kinds of things. Fish and bread and olives and cheese and honey.
This is a big deal. And here, the passage is, God is calling sinners to fellowship with Him. Come, everything's now ready. Preparations have been made. Soon it will start. Old Testament prophets have told you Jesus is coming.
You better believe in Him. Jesus has told you Himself, I'm going to come and you must follow Me. And now look at these sinful excuses. Who's going to pass up this kind of meal? Verse 18,. But they, all alike, began to make excuses.
Maybe all at the same time. Maybe all the same kind of excuse. By the way, you do this in this culture here with the Arabian culture and it is more than a slap on the face. It could be a declaration of war.
And the excuses are nice. The excuses aren't, sorry, I can't make it to the banquet. I said I could come but now I can't come because I need to go murder some people and I need to go rob some people and pillage some other people.
The excuses are just like the excuses that we used to give before we were saved. And if you're not a Christian, the kind of excuses you give today. Excuse number one, possessions. The first one said to Him, I bought a piece of land.
I need to go out and look at it. Please consider me excused. Business before pleasure, of course. Please consider me excused. Be warm, be filled. How many people go and buy property without looking at it kind of come post-inspection, post-purchase inspection?
Who would do this? It's fake. He didn't want to come and he just gives some kind of excuse. It's flimsy. Look at the next excuse. Kind of with materialism again and business. And another one said to Him, I've bought five yoke of oxen.
I've got 20 ,000 pounds of oxen, 10 oxen, and I'm going out to try them. Please consider me excused. The oxen, I think, will probably be there tomorrow, don't you think? Yeah, probably. It's laughable.
We'd say today, I wasn't born yesterday. You bought some oxen and now you're going to try it and you can't come to my feast? G. Campbell Morgan said, it may be perfectly true that you do not look a gift horse in the mouth, but you do look at the horse you were buying.
You mean you didn't see the oxen when you bought them? Sadly, unbelievers' excuses sound this stupid as well. Look at the third excuse. Natural affection, family affection. Verse 20, and another one said, forget the feast.
I've married a wife and for that reason I cannot come. Literally, I'm in the state of being married. This guy, he doesn't even say, please excuse me. No excuses. You see the text? I don't need an excuse.
I'm married. I'm not trying to draw any laughter at all. And it's kind of cloaked in some clever speech because if you were a Jew back in those days and you were going to join the military, you were exempt for a while to just enjoy your family life and enjoy your wife.
For one year you didn't have to go to war. And by the way, if you have a wife and you're newly married and you could go to something that would be akin to getting invited to the president's dinner at the White House, what would you say?
Sorry President Obama, I can't come. I'm married. This kind of dull, drudgery kind of life in the middle of nowhere 2 ,000 years ago, kind of spice up your relationship with your wife. Cheer up your bride.
These all may be good excuses but none are good enough. Every one of them is I've got something better to do. Every one of them says to the general call of God, God says, repent, believe, trust in the finished work of Christ.
You'll die one day and stand before me in judgment. You need someone else's righteousness. You need a resurrected king who lives for eternity and who can give you divine righteousness. You better believe in that God.
And somebody comes along and says, you know what, but I've got work to do. I've got kids. I'm living with my girlfriend. I've got this going on. I've got that going on. I've got these excuses later. Yeah, it's important but not that important.
I'll wait until I have kids and they grow up and maybe I'll get into religion then. Here God is offering forgiveness and hardly anybody responds. How do you explain that? You explain it because the will is corrupt and the will loves to worship idols instead of the God who grants forgiveness.
But God's not finished. Now we see what we call the effectual call. The call that we saw in 1 Corinthians in verse 21. God's not done. God could just wipe out everybody kind of with fire similar to the flood in Genesis 6.
But no, God is good. That's what the effectual call is, generous and gracious. Verse 21, And the slave came back and reported this to his master. And the head of the household became angry and said to his slave, Go out at once into the streets, big roads, lanes, small nooks and crannies where bad people are, and bring them in here, the poor and crippled and blind and lame.
This banquet's not going to get called off. The riches and mercy of God, it's not going to get canceled because people say no to the general call. The Jewish leaders reject me, but I'm going to go get Gentiles as well.
Here Jesus is the friend of sinners. This was just anger. This was righteous anger. These are people spitting in the face of Jesus as it were. And the solution was not to wipe out the earth. He says, You go find the loiters.
You go find the people who are ultimately sinners, publicans, the worst of the worst. You go find the people that were not allowed to go to the temple for worship because they weren't perfect in their body.
Verse 22, And the slave said, Master, what you have commanded has been done and there is still room. A citywide search and we still have room. This is over the top grace. And the master said to the slave, Verse 23, Go out into the highways and among the hedges, along the hedges, and what?
Here's the effectual call. Compel them to come in. Don't take no for an answer that my house may be filled. Look at the mercy and saving nature of God. Compel them. This is a command. Insist. I insist that you come to this banquet.
It's a strong word. Force them. It's a word that's used to load up a ship. Fill it to the gills. If they've got an excuse because they're too poor, because they're blind, they're lame, they're other things, you say you come anyway because my master has called you to come.
You come. I won't take no for an answer. Medieval Catholics used to tell people that this compelling was you bring them in by special acquisitors even to the point of torture. You bring them to the kingdom of Rome.
That's not what this text is about. This text is the banquet has been provided. God calls everyone to believe. Come to the banquet of forgiveness. Some say no. God says, well, I'm going to act. They say no because they have to say no.
Their corrupt nature says no. So now I go send my messenger and say, you have them come in. It's the effectual call. Urge them to come in. And there's a fateful end for those that reject that general call.
For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner. And lots of Israel experienced that judgment in 70 A .D., just 40 years later. The refusal that men and women give to accept God's gracious invitation of salvation by grace alone would banish them forever from the kingdom until God, through the preached word through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, comes and calls them and regenerates them.
All right, just quickly, let's go to the last passage. Just quickly, John chapter 6. Don't have tons of time, but we want to just make a couple quick questions and answers and comments, rather, on John chapter 6.
We're talking about the called, the called of God. And look at the ministry of the word of God here in John chapter 6, verse 41. Therefore the Jews were grumbling about him because he said, I am the bread that came down from heaven.
They were saying, Is this not Jesus, son of Joseph, John 6, 42, whose father and mother we know? He does not now say, I have come down out of heaven? Jesus answered and said to them, Do not grumble among yourselves.
No one can come to me unless they exercise their free will. It's their God-given right. It's America, after all. No one can come to me like some robot. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me what?
No one, all inclusive. Not one person. No one. Unless the Father who sent me what? Draws Him. The Father that sends the Son is the Father to draw the people that He sent His Son to go get. How can you believe that God is somehow up in heaven trying to earnestly convert every person that has ever lived?
You can't think that. Listen to what Top Lady said. According to this tenet, God is endeavoring to convert sinners and He may, by sinners, be foiled, defeated, and disappointed. He may lay close and long siege to the soul and that soul can, from the citadel of impregnable free will, hang a flag of defiance to God Himself and by a continued obstinacy of defense and a few vigorous sallies of free will, compel Him to raise a siege.
In a word, the Holy Spirit, after having for years, danced attendance on the free will of man, may at length, like a discomforted general or an unsuccessful politician, be either put to ignominious flight or contemptuously dismissed without accomplishing the end for which He was sent.
I ask you this. If God the Father says to the Son, you go get those people for a bride and I will draw them, will those people come to faith? The answer is yes. Don't miss verse 45. Almost everybody I know reads verse 44 and forgets verse 45.
John 6, 45. It is written in the prophets and they shall be taught of God. If someone comes to faith and repentance, MacArthur said, it is because they have been taught drawn by God. Everyone who has heard, John 6, 45, and learned from the Father, comes to me.
If you have heard the gospel and the Spirit of God has applied it to your life and called you, you will come to Him. God is the prime mover. Calvin said of this verse, the whole faculty of free will which the papists dream about is utterly overthrown.
Mark this. Here is the end of my message. The point at the end. God must do something in the sinner to make the sinner willing. And it is a compelling thing that He does, a forceful thing that He does, to overcome sin, Satan, the world, death, and judgment.
If you are a Christian, you are a Christian because God made you one. You will never get to heaven and say to God when you are there, what my brother always says, you will run up to God, will you? And go high five Him and say to God, we did it.
Sin is so bad and devious. You need the God of the universe to come and with compelling, drawing, dragging to take that person up out of sin and make them alive. You say, well you are kind of hot and bothered about this.
God will not give His glory to another. And we live in a culture, everybody you talk to, I dare you this week to go out and say, do you believe in free will? It's like the mantra of the universe. Yeah, could you give me a Bible verse about that?
No, but God wouldn't make me a robot. No, no, I'm talking about what would the scripture say? I'm not talking about robots where you can't force love. I'm not talking about love. I'm not talking about your philosophy of love.
I'm not talking about societal love. I'm asking you, in and of yourself, if you're not a believer, can you make yourself believe? Can you make yourself born from above? Can you regenerate yourself? God alone works in creation, but in recreation, you have to participate.
Is that what you're telling me? It's you and God together. Well, no, you know, but God gave me enough grace so I could decide and all these other things. Friends, at the end of the day, you are saved by the grace of God alone.
I'm not saying if people believe in free will, they're heretics, but if you push them far enough, you would see that the heretical doctrines of works slip in there. And when Jesus says, the Father must draw them, look at the text, John 6, 44.
This is the word to drag. This is a compelling force. It's used in John 21 where you drag a net of fish and the fish are in the net going, excuse me, I've got my free will going on here. Don't pull me up.
I have to agree. We have to cooperate. You pull and I ascent to the pulling. It just sounds dumb. It's used in ancient Greek to drag a dead body by the foot, to drag away a prisoner to jail, to drag a felled tree.
And in none of these cases do you need consent of the draggee. The dragger is the one who takes the draggee in the dragnet and pulls. Compelling force. That force is God. I don't mean God is a force, but God, His power is forceful.
Why can William Barclay then say, God can and does draw men, but man's resistance can defeat the pull of God. God doesn't say, I want everybody to be saved, now it's all up to you. Walk in the way. I love what Donald Gray Barnhouse said.
It was interesting the way he said it. This was the pastor for James Boyce in Philadelphia. If you have made a decision of the will that is according to God's will, it is because God has first jiggled your willer.
Next time I make jello jigglers, I'm going to think of that. Not the labors of my hands can fill thy law's commands. Could my zeal no respite know? Could my tears forever flow? All for sin could not atone.
Thou must save with my free will alone. The will is not free. The will is at enmity with God. God needs no permission to do anything ever. And if you think God does not have sovereign will over the will of man, we're going to look at that next week.
Step back now and think of the big picture. Corinth, why follow men when it wasn't anything to do with the men to be saved? Why don't you follow God? Because He calls you. He saves you. You contribute nothing but sin.
And He's the one that does it, so follow Him. You need to preach to your friends the forgiveness banquet. And if they say no, well, you pray for them that God the Spirit, God the Father, and God the Son would compel them to come in because when God does that, they won't say no.
And then with their new nature, they will gladly believe, worship, and adore the one that they used to find repugnant and now they find precious. Christianity is for losers? And wonderful matchless grace of Jesus?
How do you explain the difference? And the difference has nothing to do with man. It has everything to do with God. The unwilling men and women are made willing. And if you've got unbelievers in your family and you want them to believe, I am glad you do.
And listen to what Thomas Watson talks to you about God. God rides forth conquering in the chariot of His gospel. He conquers the pride of the heart and makes the will which stood out as a fort royal to yield and to stoop to His grace.
He makes the stony heart bleed. Oh, it is a mighty call. Why then do the Arminians seem to talk of moral persuasion? That God in the conversion of a sinner only morally persuades and no more. Sets His promises before men to allure them to good and is threatening to deter them from evil.
Is that all He does? But surely moral persuasions alone are insufficient to the effectual call. God makes people a new creation with the power that raised Christ from the dead. And God puts forth a divine energy.
Omnipotence. It is such a powerful call that the will of man has no power effectually to resist. That is a different God you see in Scripture than you hear about almost anywhere else. That's why our minds need to think about God from this book.
Let's pray. Father, we would acknowledge today that the only reason we are Christians, that we are Your bride, is because You have chose us in eternity past. Your Son has died for us and Your Spirit has regenerated us.
And we have nothing to offer. Our only hope would be eternal torment. And yet now You've given the feast, banquet. It's prepared. You sent Your servants to each one of us who are Christians to tell us forgiveness is found in Christ Jesus alone.
And then You moved in our hearts and You granted us belief. And so Father, today I pray that our church would become more full of praise because of Your sovereign work, Your sovereign grace, Your distinguishing love for us.
And I pray for the unbelievers here today, I pray that they would run from themselves, run from some kind of resolutions, run from wanting to be better, and they would run to You, the only God who saves sinners.
And we'd ask these things for Christ's sake. Amen.