Effectual Calling

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If you'll remain standing and open your Bibles, we're going to turn to 1 Corinthians, chapter 1, and we're going to be looking only at verses 22 to 24.
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1 Corinthians, chapter 1, verses 22 to 24.
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We are in our series on 1 Corinthians that we started at the beginning of the year.
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And the title of today's message is Effectual Calling, and I hope to, by the end of the service, have you maybe possibly a better understanding of what that means and what that title indicates.
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1 Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 22, For Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom.
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But we preach Christ crucified.
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A stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.
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But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you that now, as I have the opportunity to preach your word, that you have given us such a powerful opportunity to look at this text and to see something here that is often overlooked.
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And I thank you, Lord, for the Spirit of God, and I pray that he would fill me and use me to speak your word today.
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I pray also, Lord, that you would keep me from error, as I know, Lord, how easy it is and how much I am capable of preaching error.
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And I pray that you would keep me from error for the sake of your people, for the sake of my own heart, and for the sake of your name.
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And Father, as we study today as an act of worship, I pray that we would draw closer to you.
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That for those who are believers in Christ, who have, by the very act of your powerful regeneration, come into a saving relationship with him, I pray that they would be drawn closer and that they would better understand their own salvation and the gospel itself And Lord, for those who have not come into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, that today might be the day that you would effectually call them, by your grace, into a relationship with him, whereby they would repent of their sins, place their faith in him, that they would turn from this world and turn to Christ.
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Lord, this is our sincere prayer, and we pray that you would hear it.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
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You may be seated.
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This morning we are going to focus primarily on only one verse.
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We read three verses as our introduction because that's the context that the verse itself falls in, but verse 24 is going to be the focus of the day.
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And some may be saying that, well, we've already looked at verse 24.
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The last few weeks we've been in chapter 1, we've read and talked about verse 24 a few times, and we've examined the context of this section, the overall thrust of Paul's writing and the reason for 1 Corinthians as a book and for chapter 1.
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And some may also be questioning my earlier statement, as I made a few weeks ago, that I wanted to preach through 1 Corinthians in one year, and seeing me stop and go back and now focus on only one verse, you're probably thinking that perhaps I was a little bit untrue, and maybe so, we'll see how the Lord leads, because I did consider moving on.
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I said, you know what, I've already talked about this verse, I'm just going to go ahead and move on into chapter 2.
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But in my heart and in my mind, in my study as I was preparing, I kept going back to verse 24, and there was an urging within me to deal with the fact that there's something that this passage says that is often overlooked and is very important for Christians to understand.
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It regards our salvation, in fact it regards even more so how we became saved.
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And the subject at hand is, as I said, God's effectual calling.
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Theologians have long realized and talked about the fact that in the Bible, there are two distinct ways in which a calling goes out in regard to the gospel.
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There is what is known as the general call of the gospel, and there is what is known as the effectual call of the gospel.
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And I am convinced that verse 24 of 1 Corinthians 1, alludes not to the general call of the gospel, but to the effectual call.
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So my desire today is a very simple desire, I want to outline three things.
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I want to outline what effectual calling means, I want to distinguish it from general call or the general call, and then I want us to understand how this affects our understanding of how men and women come to God and are saved.
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1 Corinthians 1 tells us that Paul is writing to those who have been called.
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Look at verse 1.
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It tells us that he was called, it says, Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus and our brother Sosthenes.
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And then it says in verse 2, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified, that means set apart in Christ Jesus, and then it says called to be saints, together with all those in every place.
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So the book begins with the idea that Paul has been called of God and the church at Corinth has been called to be saints.
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Then in verse 24 he tells us that the calling is what separates those who think the cross is a stumbling block in foolishness from those who believe that the cross is the power and wisdom of God.
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He says the calling, he says, Jews demand signs and Greeks demand wisdom.
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And to the Jews the cross is a stumbling block and to Greeks the cross is foolishness.
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But to those who are called, the cross is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
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Why is it? What's the distinction according to the apostle Paul? What distinguishes? It's not that they're Jews.
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It's not that they're Greeks.
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In fact, he says those who are called of the Jews and the Greeks.
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I'm thankful that God doesn't call only the Jews.
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And I'm thankful that God doesn't call only the Gentiles.
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But that he calls out of both Jew and Gentile, those who are designated as his called ones.
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And I want to make another point.
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The effectual calling is not the primary focus of this passage.
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The effectual calling is not the primary focus of this section.
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But what the effectual calling is, is the answer to the dilemma that's presented in this section.
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You see, this passage presents a dilemma and the dilemma is this.
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There's division in the church.
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The division in the church is among people who feel like they have certain righteous priority over others.
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Because they've said, I'm of Paul.
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Remember, Paul was the one who founded the church.
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Others say, I'm of Apollos.
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Apollos was the great pastor who grew the church.
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Some say, I'm of Peter.
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He was the one that connected them back to their Jewish roots.
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I'm of Peter.
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I'm of the traditional foundational Jewish roots.
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And others say, well, I'm of Jesus.
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And in saying so, they were saying, and you're not.
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So you have this self-righteous pride that has infiltrated the church.
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You have this self-righteous pride that's causing division, cliques, argument, strife, hatred within the church, a body biting itself.
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And the apostle Paul comes in, he says, look, here's the deal.
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When you finally understand that the only reason you're here, the only reason at all you are here is by the unmerited sovereign grace of God, you'll get down off that high horse.
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You'll come down off that self-righteous pedestal you've placed yourself on.
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When you realize that you were a totally depraved sinner and God had to come to you, you didn't go to Him, that robs men of pride.
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I've heard people say, reformed theology creates pride.
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Reformed theology, when rightly understood, destroys pride.
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It tells men that we not only were we unwilling to come to Christ, we were unable.
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We had a moral inability to come.
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And God came to us.
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It absolutely stabs our pride and kills it.
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So as I said, effectual calling isn't the focus, it's the answer to the dilemma.
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The dilemma is the focus.
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The dilemma is all this division in the church.
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How do we deal with it? Humility.
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How do we understand humility? Understand our place under the grace of God.
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So what I want to do today is I want to distinguish, as I said, between the general call and the effectual call, help you understand it better, and hopefully, as I said by the end of today, help you understand if you are saved, how you got that way, and if you aren't, how God does save.
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So let's look first at the general call.
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As I said, I wanted to make a distinction between the general call and the effectual call.
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The general call of the gospel is the one that most of us are accustomed to.
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When we talk about calling, most of us only think about the general call.
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That's when the preacher stands up, gives a gospel invitation, and invites all sinners to repent and believe in Jesus Christ for salvation.
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That's the general call of the gospel.
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Or when we go out to the fishing hole, that's what we call our evangelism booth, we take a booth and we set it up at fairs and at other places, and we go out and we set up this booth and we hand out gospel tracts.
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And while we're handing out gospel tracts, we're telling people, you are a person who needs Jesus Christ.
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You're not perfect, and because you're not perfect, you need Jesus Christ, because the Bible says, Be perfect as God is perfect.
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Because you can't, you need one who is perfect to be your substitute, and that's Jesus.
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So we tell people about that.
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Anytime someone hears the gospel, whether it be by the mouth, reading it on a tract, hearing it on the television, hearing it on the radio, that's the general call of the gospel.
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And the Bible describes the general call in several places.
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In Acts 17.30, when Paul was on Mars Hill, he says to those Athenian philosophers, he said, God has called all men everywhere to repent.
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I can say that to anyone.
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I don't care who it is.
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I don't care how high and lofty a person may think himself.
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I can say, Sir, God has called you to repent.
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God has commanded you to repent.
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That's actually the word, the word there is command.
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God didn't make it an option.
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Repentance is not a multiple choice game.
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God has commanded all men everywhere to repent.
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Jesus said in the Great Commission, Go therefore into all the world and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
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That's the general call.
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We're going out into all the world.
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We're seeking to make disciples of anyone, of all nations, everywhere.
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And in the parable of the marriage feast, if you remember that parable Jesus taught, he talked about men being invited to come and they wouldn't come.
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So what happened? It says they went out into the highways and into the hedges and they compelled them to come in.
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Well, that original invitation in that feast, the original invitation in that parable, that's the general call.
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And that's why that particular passage ends with that very ominous warning where Jesus said, and that's why I say to you, many are called, but few are chosen, because that's the general call.
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Many people received the general call.
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Thousands, millions, billions have received the general call of the gospel.
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And the general call should not be discounted in regard to its importance.
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It is necessary and it is vital.
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The Bible asks this very question, how will they call on him in whom they've never heard? And how will they hear if no one preaches to them? And it goes on to say, and that's in Romans 10, it says, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.
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That's the general call of the gospel.
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When we go out and we proclaim Christ, we're proclaiming the general call of the gospel.
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We are proclaiming to all men so that they will hear, and through hearing, they might be saved.
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That's the general call.
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But then the Bible talks about a second type of calling.
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The second type of calling has been identified by theologians as the effectual call.
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And I'll give you a short definition of what they're saying, what we mean by that.
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The effectual call of the gospel is the internal working of the Holy Spirit, whereby he compels the sinner to come to the Savior.
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I'll say it again.
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The effectual call of the gospel is the internal working of the Holy Spirit, whereby he compels sinners to come to the Savior.
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How many of you remember the acronym TULIP? What's the connection of TULIP in theology? Most people connect it with Calvinism, right? You know, Calvin didn't write that.
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Calvin didn't have tulips in his garden or on his door frames, as we know.
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I mean, he might have, but we don't know.
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So, the whole TULIP acronym wasn't even introduced until several hundred years after Calvin's death.
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The TULIP acronym, I think, is about a hundred years old.
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It's relatively new in the history of theology.
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But in the TULIP, it's an acronym, Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints.
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When we talk about the effectual call, we are talking about the I in TULIP.
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But I gotta say this, if I was in charge of making acronyms, I would have never used TULIP to make the acronym.
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And this is one of the examples as to why.
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Because I, for Irresistible Grace, has caused a lot of confusion that's unnecessary.
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Because when people hear Irresistible Grace, they get a confusing mind when it comes to what it's saying.
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In fact, Al Mohler says this, he said effectual calling is a far more biblical way to express this because Irresistible Grace sounds like a cartoon set up in which there's someone saying, I don't want to be regenerated, I don't want to be born again.
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I don't want to love Christ.
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And yet God is up there overruling and going against their will.
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That's what it sounds like.
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It sounds like some kind of a cartoonish mashup.
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And he said it's not the way that it is at all, but it can be misunderstood that way.
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So effectual calling, and here this is very important, effectual calling is not a forcible overruling of the will, rather it is a loving conversion of the will.
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It's making someone who can only say no because of their nature have the ability to say yes.
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It's changing someone who can only say no because of their sinful, what does the Bible say we are? Slaves to sin.
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Because of the bondage to sin, it's freeing the bonds that enables them to be able to say yes.
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They're bound to the no and God removes the shackles.
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He enables them.
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I love the term enabling grace.
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And again, the effectual call is necessary.
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It's necessary because of total depravity, again going back to the tulip.
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The Bible teaches us without question that we are dead in trespasses and sins.
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We are born D.O.A.
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We are born dead on arrival.
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We don't die in our sins at some point, we're born dead in sin.
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And it doesn't say we're sick in sin.
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It doesn't say we're injured in sin.
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It doesn't say we're drowning, it says we've already drowned.
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It doesn't say we're dying, it says we're already dead.
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And that deadness makes it impossible, hear this now because this is important, because somebody's going to come up and ask me later, I didn't understand, this is the key.
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The deadness in sin we have makes it impossible to positively respond to the gospel call, that's the general gospel call, without a work of God in our heart.
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You say, well where do you get that? From Jesus.
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Now I'm not one of those guys who has a red letter Bible, and if you do I'm not saying that's wrong, I'm just saying I don't necessarily believe that the red letters are any more inspired than the black letters, it's all from the Holy Spirit of God.
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But some people like to hear, well I want to hear what Jesus said on this.
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You know what Jesus said on this? Very simple, no man can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day.
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No man can, that word there, can, is a word of ability.
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And I've told this before, you've all heard me say this before, when you were all in third grade English class and you asked a teacher, hey can I go get some water, she'd look at you and say, well I'm sure you can, but that's not what you're asking.
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You're asking may I go get some water, you're asking for the right to go.
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Can speaks of ability, and when Jesus said no one can come to the Father, or come to me unless the Father draws him, it's a statement of ability.
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We have a moral inability to come unless we are drawn by the Father.
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And the word no one is a universal negative.
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There is no one who can come to the Father, or come to Christ apart from the drawing of the Father.
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Now Jesus says that in John 6.44, he says it again in John 6.65.
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Same chapter, same passage, same context.
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He says, and this is why I told you, that no one, because what happens is Jesus preaches to these people and they all leave.
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He starts out with thousands of listeners, he ends up with his twelve disciples and they're going, what happened? Jesus started the anti-church growth movement.
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Everybody's always talking about how to make your church bigger, Jesus was very good at clearing out a crowd, and he made his church, he made his group smaller, and he preached and he said, he looked at the disciples and he says, are you going to leave too? And they said, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
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And Jesus said, this is why I told you, that no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by my Father.
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The nature of man is not to accept the call of the gospel.
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The nature of man is to reject the call of the gospel.
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The natural instinct of man is to reject and to be repelled by the general call.
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So Jesus said, no one can come unless God does something first.
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No one can come unless God does something first.
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Paul reiterates this in Romans 8.
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He says, for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.
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It does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
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I often ask Arminians when I'm talking to them, I'll say, let me ask you a question.
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I say, does faith please God? They'll say, yeah.
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I'll say, in fact, that's the only thing that pleases God, right? The Bible says apart from faith, it's impossible to please Him.
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Faith is the only thing that pleases God? I'll say, yes.
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I'll say, can man exercise faith in the flesh? And they'll say, well, yeah, no, he can't, because it says right here, Romans 8, verse 8, it says, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
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God has to do something first.
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While a man remains in the flesh, he cannot exercise faith.
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God is the one who has to do something first, or we would not come.
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It's not because God is holding us back.
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That's another thing.
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That's a caricature of Calvinism, by the way.
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People get up there and say, oh, God's up there, and He's just holding you back.
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You want to come, and He's holding you back.
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That's ridiculous.
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Nobody wants to come.
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Nobody's willing to come.
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It's not that God's holding you back.
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You're not trying to get there.
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So God comes to you.
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You didn't take a step toward Him.
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I've heard people say, well, God does 99%.
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You've got to do your one.
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That ain't how it works.
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You didn't even do 1%.
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The effectual call is necessary because we are dead in trespasses and sins.
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And the effectual call is accompanied by the gift of God that we call regeneration.
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Now I know that's a big 50-cent church word, so let me just make it easy.
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When Jesus was with Nicodemus in John chapter 3, Nicodemus came to Him at night, and He asked Him some questions.
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And Jesus said to him, unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
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And then later He said, unless a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
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That term, born again, born again, is where we get the term regeneration.
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That's what happens, that's what the Holy Spirit of God does in the heart of the person enabling them to come to Christ.
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I'll quote Martin Lloyd-Jones on this.
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He says, what is it that the Holy Spirit does to enable those to become believers? To believe the truth? What exactly does He do in order to make the general call an effectual call? The answer, regeneration.
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God takes your debt, and He prayed it this morning.
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He took your heart of stone out.
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He put a heart of flesh in.
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And now you can respond.
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Now you're enabled to respond.
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This is the outline.
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It's very simple.
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If you want to kind of get a picture in your mind.
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A person is dead in his trespasses and sins.
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No desires for the things of God.
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And I hear people all the time, well I know a lot of unsaved people and they want God.
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No, no, no, no, no.
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All you got to do is preach God to them for about a minute and a half and you'll find out how much they don't want God.
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I talked to my wife about this the other night.
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She said, well it seems like there are people who love Jesus.
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I said, read to them some of what He said.
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Jesus said, unless you're for me, you're against me.
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I've heard people say that's psychotic.
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Jesus said, unless you're willing to pick up your cross and follow me, you're not worthy of me.
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People say that's arrogant.
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And you know what it would be if He wasn't God in the flesh? I heard it years ago.
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It said Jesus is either a Lord, a lunatic or a liar.
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Because if He said what He said and it wasn't true and He knew it, He was a liar.
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If He said what He said and it wasn't true and He believed it, He was a lunatic.
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But if He said it was true and it is true, He's the Lord.
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There's only three options.
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But you read what Jesus said and it will attack your sensibilities.
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And the natural man receiveth not the things of God.
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You know why people love Jesus who aren't saved? Because they don't know the real Jesus.
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People who aren't saved have a caricature of Jesus and He's a lot like Santa Claus.
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And He looks like a 16th century Englishman with a beard.
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Because most of us have that painting of Jesus or picture of Jesus in our minds.
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And it's not a first century Jew, it's a 16th century Englishman.
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It's not the Jesus of the Bible.
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And when confronted with the Jesus of the Bible, we will either recoil or we will receive.
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And we will only receive if God enables us to receive.
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And that enablement is regeneration.
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So it says, a person's dead in his trespasses and sins, no desires for the things of God.
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He hears the general call of the gospel and God intervenes.
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God regenerates his dead spirit, makes him alive.
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And he is then enabled, having heard the gospel, to respond to the gospel.
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And he exercises saving faith and we call that then the effectual call.
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The word effectual simply means that which creates the effect for which it was intended.
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And God does that in the heart.
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And it all happens at one time.
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It's not like you get regenerated on one day and then a year later you come to faith.
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No, it's an instant.
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There's a logical progression but it's all happening at the same time.
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And I want you to think of it this way.
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That's why the Bible calls believers the called.
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Because they've not only heard an outward call, but they've been given regeneration and by that regeneration have responded with an effectual call.
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In fact, you'll see that term, those who are called.
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Those who are called.
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It's all throughout the New Testament.
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Those who are called and it always refers to believers only.
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In fact, Romans 8.28.
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Everybody knows Romans 8.28.
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God causes all things to work together for good for those who are called.
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I always like to remind people because people always say God works everything out together for good.
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Not for everybody.
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For the unbeliever, this world is the best you're ever going to get.
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It's closest to heaven you're ever going to get.
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And if you're an unbeliever and you go into death as an unbeliever, you're going to get hell.
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So it's not everything's working out for your good.
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Everything's working out for your judgment.
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But to those who are called, this world is as close to hell as you're ever going to get.
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And from this world, you'll go into a world of unimaginable joy.
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Really, it's that simple.
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So Paul tells us, God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.
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Jude 1, when Jude opens up his very short letter, that one that precedes Revelation there at the end of your Bibles, it says very simply, Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ, a brother of James, to those who are called.
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He's writing it to the church and he doesn't say to the church.
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He says to those who are called.
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1 Corinthians 1.24, we've read it earlier.
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It says to those who are called, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
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Hebrews 9.15, this is one of my favorites because this passage, listen to it.
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Hebrews 9.15 says, Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called, excuse me, try that again.
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Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.
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The them in that passage are the called, the antecedent of them is the called.
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God has provided a mediator for a covenant so that those who are called have in that mediator a promised inheritance.
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If you're a believer today, I want you to hear something, I want you to know something, I want you to take something home with you.
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And it's simply this.
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If you're a believer today, you are a believer, you have come into a relationship, a saving relationship with Jesus Christ because God did a work in your dead heart.
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You were dead in your trespasses and sins, you were unwilling to repent and come to Him, and God chose not to leave you there.
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He sent someone to preach to you, He then reached down into your dead soul and gave you new life, and He then persuaded you in your newly awakened state to look upon the Savior in faith.
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That's what you did, that's why you're saved, but it wasn't of you, it was totally and 100% of God.
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And that's the effectual call on your life.
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And as I begin to draw to a close, I want to share with you two other things about the effectual call that should be noted.
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And I'll begin to draw to a close.
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Two things that you shouldn't forget about the effectual call.
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Number one, along with it being an effectual call, it's also an affectionate call.
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Some people have a problem with the doctrine of the effectual call because they think that God is forcing Himself on people.
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I've heard people say that.
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They said, God is forcing His love, and love can't be love if it's forced.
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Well, let me tell you something.
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God is not dragging people into the kingdom, kicking and screaming.
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God is opening their eyes to the predicament of their sin, and He's lovingly drawing them to the only means of their salvation.
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Remember when Jesus went to the tomb of Lazarus, and He said, Lazarus, come forth.
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You think anybody standing around Jesus said, oh man, look how mean He is.
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He's forcing that dead guy to come out of his grave.
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How hard, that's mean love.
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He's making that dead man come out of the hole.
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Isn't that dumb? No.
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That's what happens when dead people wake up.
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They come on out.
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When God gives life to your dead spirit, you come on out.
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That's what happens.
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We get up, we willingly respond to the gospel because we've been enabled to.
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The same loving voice that said, Lazarus, come forth, calls to our dead souls by the power of the Spirit, and by that Spirit we burst forth from the grave of our spiritual deadness, and we are then able to respond positively to the call of the gospel.
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We were dead, and Christ made us alive.
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Affectionately.
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Number two, not only is it an effectual affectionate call, but number two, it's also an irrevocable call.
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And I'll show you one last verse.
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If you'll turn with me over to Romans chapter 11, this will be where we end.
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If you go over to Romans chapter 11, now I'm going to take the context of this as dealing with Israel, but it applies to all of the elect, and the elect, according to Scripture, is made up of Jews and Greeks.
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The called are made up of Jews and Greeks.
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So when you go to Romans chapter 11 in verse 29, it says very clearly this, the gifts and calling of God are what? Irrevocable.
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Beloved, if God has called you to be His, He's never going to uncall you.
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If God has called you to be His, He's never going to take that calling back.
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Philippians 1 says, I am sure of this, He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
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2 Corinthians 1 says, It is God who establishes us with you in Christ.
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Jesus has appointed us, and who has put His seal on us, and given us the spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
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God put a spirit in you.
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If you're His, He called you, He regenerated you, He saved you, and He put a spirit in you, and that spirit in you is the promise.
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In fact, Ephesians 1 tells us that, it says we were sealed with the Holy Spirit as a promise.
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I like the way that King James reads, it says the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.
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You know what repentance means, right? Metanoia means to change the mind, it means God's never going to change His mind.
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God's never going to change His mind.
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But I know also there are people who wonder, people have asked me directly, Pastor, how do I know I've been called? How do I know? Well, I want to tell you this, if you're here today, you've heard the general call of the gospel, you've heard that you're a sinner, you've heard that you desperately need a Savior, you've heard that Jesus Christ is the only Savior, and you've heard that God has commanded all men everywhere to repent of their sins and trust in that Savior.
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That's the general call of the gospel.
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And if you are responding to that general call with hatred, animus, hard-heartedness, spite, I want to tell you, you're still operating in the flesh, and I pray God would regenerate your soul today, because that's what it's going to take.
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It's what it took for me, it's what it takes for everybody.
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And maybe, maybe that is what He's doing in your life.
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Perhaps you have a drawing that's new.
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Perhaps now Jesus as Savior looks to you as glorious and beautiful, where before He looked repugnant and foolish.
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Perhaps under the hearing of the gospel call, you're experiencing even now the effectual call in your heart.
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How will you know? How will you know? You're going to have a desire to turn from your sins and turn to the Savior.
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You're going to have a desire, a compelling need to embrace Jesus Christ.
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You're going to feel the drawing to place your trust in Him, and you're going to have an urgency to be obedient to Him.
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I ask, does that describe you? I've heard people say that at the moment the pastor prayed, they felt as if they couldn't remain in their chairs.
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They must come, they must find someone with whom to pray.
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They must find some way to receive this Savior, because they felt like they'd literally been pulled to God.
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And certainly that doesn't describe every situation and every conversion, but beloved, perhaps that describes you.
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If you're feeling that drawing, that calling, cry out to God.
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Repent.
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Trust in His Son.
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The Bible says this, All the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes I'll never cast out.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for the promise of the Gospel.
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I thank You for that final promise that I just mentioned, that for those who come, they will never be cast out.
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And I pray today, Lord, if there are those among us who've never come to the Savior, that You might use this opportunity today to save their souls.
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And Lord, for those who do know the Savior, that they would better understand today the gifts and calling of God that have been given to them that are without repentance.
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We pray it, Lord, in Jesus' name and for His sake.
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Amen.
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Let's stand together and sing, and we're going to prepare to receive communion.