Conversion to Jesus Christ (8)

I always have more message than time on a day like this, but increasingly

I have to be mindful that these notes are read by others than just us too.

I send them out now to about, I think about a hundred and twenty -five addresses a Sunday, and maybe a couple dozen of those are pastors in South Africa and India now and other parts of Africa.

I received a nice note from a pastor in Kenya this week and he asked if he could take these notes and translate them into his native tongue and distribute them.

It's amazing these things get around and so thank the Lord for that. Now today we'll consider another aspect of God's work of grace that he performs in unconverted people, in non -Christians, by which

God prepares them for the day, for the time when he will cause them to be born anew, that is regenerated, born again.

Of course it's only upon God creating new life in him that the sinner experiences transformation.

He's only transformed when the new birth occurs and not before, but God does a work before in preparation to the time, the occasion in which the sinner is born again.

I want to begin this morning by reading about the fall of man into sin. Why don't we stand and and as we read, as I read

Genesis 3 1 through 8 for us please. So let's stand please with regard to God's Word.

Here we read of the sad beginning of it all. This was the cause of Christ having to come and die.

This is the source and cause of all the trouble that our poor world faces and encounters.

Now the servant was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made and he said to the woman, has

God indeed said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden

God has said you shall not eat it nor shall you touch it lest you die. And then the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die for God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil.

And so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

She also gave to her husband with her and he ate. And then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the

Lord God among the trees of the garden. Father we ask that you would help us now as we consider the teaching of your word, respecting your work of grace in souls.

We pray that you would better equip us our God to know how you work so that we might better know how to represent you and witness on your behalf to those souls about us for whom we are concerned.

Moreover we pray that we would have a better understanding of your own dealings with us as we consider this important subject conversion to Jesus Christ for we prayed his name,

Amen. Be seated please. Thus far we've given seven

Sundays to this important subject, conversion to Jesus Christ, today being the eighth

Lord's Day to which we've given ourselves to this matter. And I'm not certain how long this series will be.

It may be short or it might be prolonged. We might have called this series true and false conversion.

In fact I think that's probably how it's listed in the bulletin isn't it? And actually I kind of prefer that title rather than just conversion to Jesus Christ because that's been our emphasis attempting to clarify true conversion from its counterfeit false conversion because false conversion plagues our churches.

There are many in the churches that have never truly been converted to Christ and they need to be informed and corrected so that they might truly experience salvation in Christ.

We gave our first three Sundays of course to answer the question are we converted? To show how it's easy to be deceived about this matter.

And then on the fourth Sunday and the fifth Sunday we sought to show the teaching of God's Word that sinful man is unable to convert himself.

Rather conversion is wholly solely a work of the sovereign grace of God. Unless God does it, it's not going to happen.

God saves his people according to his sovereign will. And yet we showed also how the transformation of the sinner into a child of God begins with God's work in regeneration.

In other words the sinner is not changed. He has no love for Christ, no love for the Word, no love for holiness until he is born again at that moment.

He's dead prior to that. He doesn't believe, he can't repent, he doesn't want to repent, he doesn't want to obey.

When he's born by the Spirit of God, that all changes. God imparts and plants within him a true love for God, love for his

Word, love for God's people, love for holiness. He's a new creature. Old things have passed away, all things become new.

And so the transformation of the sinner begins with God's work of grace in regeneration. The new birth results in a sinner repenting of sin and embracing

Jesus as Lord and Savior in faith. Of course regeneration is just one element in God bringing a sinner to salvation, and so a couple weeks ago we addressed the matter of the order of salvation, known by the

Latin phrase the ordis salutis. And here again is the order in which we see regeneration of the new birth set in the fifth place.

And actually I'm not, if I can say this right now, I'm not comfortable with number four and five in the order and even the fact that they're distinguished from one another entirely, but that's another matter.

But we have this order of salvation in which God saves his people, of course originated in God's purpose in eternity when he elected a people that he was going to save.

The whole human race, you know, regarded as being fallen in sin through Adam, but he purposed that fallen, the fallen world would not perish.

He would save a people out of that fallen humanity for himself, and he determined he would do so in eternity.

And so he chose, he elected certain ones, not because they're better than anybody, in fact oftentimes it could be argued they were the worst.

We are the worst, but God elected us and then he predestined us that one day we'll be like Christ.

And then of course Christ secured our salvation when he died upon the cross, the atonement for our sin.

And then as God begins to apply salvation to us, we hear the general call, the call of the gospel.

It really goes out to every creature, to all the world. It's a sincere offer. If any sinner anywhere will repent of sin and believe on Jesus Christ, he or she can be saved.

And yet we know that general call is not sufficient to save anyone, because sinners don't want to be saved.

They want to be forgiven. Everybody wants to be forgiven, but nobody wants to be delivered from their sin unless God puts it within their soul to desire that.

And so another work of grace, an inward effectual call, not a general outward call, but an internal effectual call must be given by God.

And this is the call of the Holy Spirit, the effectual call. The general call is the call of the preacher, the call of the gospel.

And I can't save anyone, but the Holy Spirit uses that general call, the preaching of the word, to summons internally, effectually, his people for them to come unto salvation.

And it is in that effectual call, we would argue, that regeneration occurs. And so they're really not to be distinguished from one another entirely, but a regeneration is when

God imparts spiritual life to the sinner. And as a result of the new birth, the sinner repents of sin, he's converted, he believes the gospel, he's justified, seventh.

And when that sinner is justified, when he first believes the gospel, he receives the immediate and full pardon of sin from God.

And that believing sinner is thereafter regarded as righteous before God, no longer guilty but righteous.

And of course this state of justification, which is through faith alone and Jesus Christ alone, will deliver the true believer from condemnation on the day of judgment.

We're not in fear of the day of judgment if we're thinking rightly as Christians. In fact, we'll have boldness in that day, because we're not standing in our own righteousness, but in the righteousness of Christ.

And our lives will testify that he is our sweet Savior, he is our Lord. And then after justification, of course, there is this work of progressive sanctification that God performs in the life of the believer.

This is also part of salvation. Justification delivers us from the penalty of sin,

God's sanctification delivers us from the power of sin, whereby we become more like Christ, Lord willing.

Now where justification is a state of the person who believes, and it's the same for every one of us.

You can be two days old in the Lord, or 70 years old in the Lord, and you are equally justified with one another, because it's outside of us.

It's because of Christ, and who he is, and his obedience, and his death. But with regard to the sanctification of the believer, no two of us are alike.

And we are, you know, sanctified to different degrees, depending on several things.

Not only how long you've been a Christian, but how responsive you've been as a Christian. And so somebody in the

Lord, who's been in the Lord 10 years, may be much more sanctified than somebody who's been in the

Lord 30 years, if that person has been consistently applying, you know, the means of grace that God has appointed.

And so sanctification varies, but it is progressive, and it will continue, and it will finally be completed when we pass from this life, and we experience our glorification.

And that's when the Christian is saved entirely from the presence of sin.

And that'll be a glorious day, when our full and final salvation is realized. And so I've already intimated, but actually there's a difference of opinion on the nature relationship of God's effectual call, number four, with God's act of regeneration, number five, of the soul unto salvation.

And many Reformed theologians have equated these two as the same, effectual call and regeneration are one and the same.

And some of the earlier Reformers had that understanding. However, if they may be distinguished, and I think they can be to a degree, effectual call and regeneration can be distinguished from one another.

Perhaps a treatment of Louis Burkhoff should be considered. He was a great theologian, wrote a systematic theology standard in Reformed seminaries for a hundred years, it would seem.

And I gave a setting forth in an appendix to these notes, we're not going to cover it, but he set forth the relationship between effectual call and regeneration, and I found that helpful when

I read it, and so I included that for you, that for your consideration at a later time.

Now we've been, of course, considering God's preparation of the center for regenerating grace for the new birth, and we did so on the last occasion in particular.

Three Sundays ago, I was gone two Sundays, when we considered this matter, which is really not listed in the

Ordo Salutis, the order of salvation. We began to address God's preparation of the sinner onto his salvation.

In other words, although the new birth is the first act of God by which he begins to do a work in the sinner, and the sinner's changed, in order to transform him into a repentant, believing, obedient disciple, the new birth actually is not the first work of God in bringing that sinner to salvation, for prior to the new birth, prior to regeneration,

God prepares the sinner to encounter salvation. God prepares people by his grace for the grace of regeneration.

As our Lord taught, those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick, and if you go out into the world, everybody's well.

Nobody needs Christ, at least as we present him. I remember a preacher, 25 -30 years ago, one of the best

I've ever heard, Henry Mahan from Arkansas, and he wrote, he gave a sermon

I heard on California called, Not Many Sinners, and he said, you can't find a sinner, go out and find one.

Well, we respond, well, all of sin, everybody's sinner. No, they aren't. Go ask them. Go find one.

You know, not someone who just says, oh yeah, I sin once in a while, you know, and I, you know, I don't do everything

I should, but go out and find a lost, hopeless, undone, helpless sinner who knows he's damned, and he needs the grace of Christ, and you can't find one.

They're scarce, and then he quoted that hymn, first time

I ever heard it, that hymn that Charles Spurgeon used to quote, a sinner is a holy thing, the

Holy Ghost hath made him so, and that's that's basically right.

What we have to do is cause people to see that they are in reality sick, and they can only be healed by the great physician, for people do not see themselves that way.

They think they need some help, some assistance, some advice, maybe counsel, maybe a little grace from God, but they don't see themselves as sick, and the

Lord Jesus said, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. The problem is, sinners do not see themselves as sick in need of the great physician, and so we would argue that God's preparation of the soul onto his salvation is a work of grace, revealing to the sinner his great need for Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and in fact you come to a person on whom the

Holy Spirit has been working before they're born again, they may be so overwhelmed with a sense of sin, you can't convince them that God will receive them.

They will have doubts about the merit and sufficiency of Christ on the cross, because they see the guilt and death that their sin deserves, and so even a understanding of the glory of the grace of Christ takes a work of the

Holy Spirit, sometimes to convince a guilty sinner that he can be pardoned freely and fully through faith alone, and so God does this work of preparation.

We considered in this light the testimony of the Apostle Paul, of course.

Now, he was converted on the road to Damascus, transformed, and yet although he was transformed on that day,

Jesus appeared to him, and remember the voice of Paul saying to Jesus, who are you

Lord? And then Jesus responded, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.

It's hard for you to kick against the goads that's recorded in Acts 26, actually not in Acts 9, except in the

King James, New King James, and so Paul, trembling and astonished, who said

Lord, what do you want me to do? Paul, you know, had the work of God going on in his life.

God was goading him before he saw Jesus preparing him, and by the way,

Paul references the Lord twice, in two places. In verse 5, we read of Paul's words, who are you

Lord? And then in verse 6, the very next verse, we read Paul's words, Lord, what do you want me to do?

Our friend Dr. Vickers, just the other day at our NERF meeting, said that between the first Lord that Paul expressed and the second

Lord that Paul expressed, Paul was born again, and I think he was right when you think about it.

Paul was born again at that moment. Again, in Paul's recounting of this event in Acts 26, he revealed the

Lord Jesus said these words to him upon appearing to him, it's hard for you to kick against the goads, and although the new birth is the first act of God by which

God begins to do a work of grace in the sinner in order to transform him into a repentant, believing, obedient disciple, the new birth is not the first work of God in bringing that sinner to salvation.

God, over the course of time, maybe a short time over the course of a sermon, or maybe it was in my case over the course of several months,

I was a blatant sinner laughing at the gospel in November of 1971, and I was calling out to the

Lord to save me in the second week of January 1972, and so over the course of about 10 or 12 weeks, things changed.

Spurgeon underwent years, I believe from the age of 10 until he was 17, although raised in a

Christian home, reading the Puritans in his grandfather's pastor's library from the age of four, he was lost and had no hope of relief for seven years, tormented until the

Lord revealed himself savingly to him. And so God prepares a sinner.

Now, again, it's important to understand that the soul's preparation is in no way meritorious, nor does it qualify the soul for regeneration.

God can do it immediately, and the sinner shouldn't be waiting and looking for signs of preparation necessarily, but rather the sinner, every sinner, should immediately turn from sin and believe on Christ.

You don't have to go through these steps, but God oftentimes takes people through these steps.

This is commonly how God deals with souls. But the

Lord must prepare the soul, otherwise the hating rebellious sinner would not hear and respond to the grace of God in the gospel.

If God hadn't done a work preparing me over those course of many weeks, I would have never embraced

Christ wholly, fully, without reservation in January of 1972.

A lot of work had to have been done to bring me to that place. Now, in speaking of this work of grace by which

God prepares the sinner for regeneration, we surmise from Paul's life that God had revealed to Paul his guilt of sin, and he indicated that, of course, in the epistle to the

Romans. God had seen, had revealed to Paul his sin. But today

I would like us to focus on another work of preparation that God must perform in a soul, in a preparation sense, or with view to his conversion to Jesus Christ.

I would argue that this is an essential aspect of true conversion to Jesus Christ, without which one may suspect that he's been deluded by false conversion.

And so what is this aspect or work of preparation that we want to give attention to?

And I would summarize it by saying this. God must humble a sinner, bring him to see his helplessness, that is, his inability to affect any change in himself that would commend him before God.

And so it's not just seeing his guilt, but seeing his helplessness, his inability to save himself, so that he finally comes to the place, he looks outside of himself to Jesus Christ as his only hope.

The sinner must come to see that he is powerless and thereby wholly dependent upon the mercy and grace of God to do for him that which he cannot do for himself.

And in view of salvation, God prepares the sinner, brings a sinner to this realization.

The importance of this matter is great, and the origin of this need may be traced to the passage that we read in Genesis 3, 1 through 8.

There we read of the fall of Adam and Eve, our first parents, their fall into sin, thereby plunging, of course, the entire human race into a fallen state of sin.

For God had originally created Adam and Eve upright. He had created them in his image.

They were holy creatures. They were in fellowship with God, their Creator. They lived out their daily existence.

I don't know for how long, but they had lived out their daily existence in fellowship with God, doing the will of God, caring for and tending that paradise as servants of God.

And so God had governed them by his law, which would have resulted then in their eternal blessedness, not only for them, but also for all their posterity, if they had not sinned, if Adam had not sinned.

But we read in Genesis 3 of their fall into sin, the devil tempted Eve and Adam through Eve to act in ways contrary to God's Word.

The serpent tempted them to be the determiners of their own existence, to usurp the authority of God as it were.

Satan says, you eat of this, you will be as gods. You can be God, a god to yourself, knowing good and evil.

In other words, he basically, you'll be able to determine for yourself what is good and evil and what you'll want to do, rather than having

God rule over you and telling you what is good and right and true. You can decide for yourselves what is true, right, and good.

And so rather than live in obedience to God, they chose to determine for themselves how they might live.

And when they sinned, of course, they were confirmed in their sinful condition.

They became sinners. They became fallen human beings. And then fallen men and women who descended from them have been characterized since then by this same, and this is a difficult phrase, but it's an accurate phrase, a pervasive assumption of human autonomy.

What does that mean? A pervasive assumption of human autonomy.

The word autonomy is derived from two Greek words, auto meaning self, that's a Greek word for self. Nami, okay, autonomy, is from the

Greek word namos, it's for the word law. And so a person who has pervasive assumption of human autonomy believes that he is a law unto himself, that he's the lawgiver, he's the one who determines for himself what kind of rules he's gonna live by.

He doesn't feel he needs to obey God as he needs only to obey what he wants to decide for himself, and that was one aspect, a major aspect of sin when it came into the world.

Adam is now Lord of his own life. He desires to control his own life, determine his own beliefs and values, and choose to live in the manner that he desires for himself, and that's how each one of us are born into this world.

That's why it's with difficulty you train children. That's why it's difficult through the teenage years, because teenage boys and girls begin to see the weaknesses and the flaws and the failures of dad versus mom, commonly, but then dad, and therefore they assume, they think,

I can make decisions for myself just as well as they can, in fact better than they can. And so then you have this difficulty in this conflict because there is this underlined pervasive assumption of human autonomy.

I want to be the one who controls my life, and that's what sin is, essentially.

More specifically, fallen man as a sinner assumes human autonomy, in other words, insists to have his own way, human autonomy, in several ways, and there are three, actually.

First, fallen man believes in his intellectual autonomy. He thinks that he has the ability to see and understand things rightly and assess what is true.

Fallen man thinks that way. I see things clearly. I think I see things rightly.

They're all wrong. I've been fascinated over these months reading all of these notes at the end of these columns over this whole

Tom Brady thing and the vitriol.

As well as the justification, it can go both ways, but the statements that are made in the light of this event, the guy's a guilty cheater, you know.

No, the guy is a, you know, innocent person who's been abused, and to read these, but everyone, it comes forth so vehemently, everybody assumes they see things rightly, and they state their words so strongly and forthrightly, and it just, it amazes me to read this reflection or this manifestation of what we have here.

Fallen man believes in his intellectual autonomy. He thinks he has the ability to see and understand things rightly and assess what is true, and they can even see into your heart and tell you that you're a wicked person because they know you're evil and you're arrogant, when there might really be no external evidence that suggests that.

Oh yes, this person might think he needs some assistance, but with the right tools and resources before him, fallen man thinks that he's competent to understand himself, to understand his world, and how he may get along in the world.

Oh yeah, I can use some help, but for the most part, I can do it. I'm a strong guy,

I've got a strong will, strong character, I don't need anyone. And he doesn't need to rely upon God, except when he might need some assistance when things really get tough, you know, as they as they say, there are no atheists in foxholes.

Well, that's the way it is. When we all, you know, have difficulty, we tend to call upon God for assistance, but once that, you know, once that passes, then we're back in our old ways.

I'm sorry, but I can't help reflecting upon a movie I saw 30 years ago, entitled

The End by Burt Reynolds. I won't go into detail because of the children present, but at the end, he's swimming out from the shore to sea, to do himself in, and then he gets out there quite a ways, he has reservations.

He starts singing, he starts fighting, trying to swim back to shore, and all of a sudden, he's making these great and glorious promises to God.

God, I'll tide, God, I'll serve you, as he's, you know, languishing out there and drowning, and as he's getting closer to the shore,

Lord, I promise I'll start giving to you next month, you know, and his commitments kept diminishing, and I thought, well, that really does reflect how some people are when they're in straits.

They call out to God, but somehow, when they're delivered, they soon forget the grace of God that's been shown to them.

That's just the way we are. Intellectual autonomy. There's an assumption that we can get along quite okay, and that's a nature of sin, part of sin, and that has to change.

God, in order to bring a person to become a disciple of Jesus Christ, has to destroy that sense of intellectual autonomy.

I am ignorant. In fact, I mess everything up. I put my hand to it.

I don't see things clearly, and so God, in various ways through experience and whatnot, reveals just how helpless and ignorant we are, to the point that we know that we need

Christ as a prophet to guide us and instruct us in how we should view the world, and how we should view ourselves, and how we should live in the world.

The sinner, before he comes to Christ as Lord and Savior, has to be emptied of himself, of this of this insistence that I know,

I understand, and I see rightly. That has to go, and I would argue that God deals with a person and rattles their cage and brings them to a place where they see this.

Well, secondly, however, there's a second aspect of this assumption, pervasive assumption, of a human autonomy, and fallen man believes, and I don't like to use this word, but because it's it's not commonly used, but fallen man believes in his metaphysical autonomy, and what does that mean?

Well, intellectual autonomy speaks about the way he thinks, but metaphysical autonomy speaks about the way he views himself as a person.

This essentially speaks how a person views his human nature, or the essence of his being. Fallen man has lost his sense of creaturehood.

Fallen man does not see vividly that he is principally a creature of God, who owes his existence to God who created him, and that life should be understood in its meaning in our relationship with God.

That's gone, but rather there is this metaphysical autonomy.

He sees himself as an independent, isolated individual apart from everything else, and that is a product or aspect of sin.

He's lost his sense that he is a creature of God and responsible to God, and so he views himself chiefly.

The one who becomes a Christian sees himself chiefly as being created by God. The Christian sees that the whole meaning of life comes from his relationship with God, his purpose for life by his knowledge that God had created him, but as a fallen man, a sinful man, he doesn't inherently possess this knowledge of being created by a personal

God. He doesn't view his existence, he doesn't see the meaning of life in relation to God who made him, but rather he is independent in of himself.

This is what metaphysical autonomy means. Oh yes, he may identify his personhood as, say, the product of evolution, or perhaps he might identify himself as the offspring of a particular ethnic or national group.

That's where he sees chiefly his identity, but he does not naturally see himself as a creature of God from whom he derives his identity, his value, and his purpose.

He doesn't think in those terms. The Christian does, or at least should.

We should view every human being with dignity and show regard for every human being because God made that man, that woman, that boy, that what ethnic group, no matter what color skin,

God made that person as his image, and therefore that image, that human being has dignity and character, and we should treat that person in that way, and I hope,

I try, I've for years, I try and regard human beings just that way.

It would solve the problem of racism. It would, it would solve so many issues and problems within our culture, within our society, if we simply saw one another as God intends us to see one another as set forth in the

Scripture, were created in the image of God. Now, that in no way gives people an out for their sin.

In fact, we would argue that although you treat people with dignity because they're created the image of God, that actually aggravates their condemnation.

God created you in order to reflect who God is, what he's like to the world about you, but what have you done with that image?

You've defaced it, defiled it, and instead of people glorifying

God by looking at your life, they're like the Jews. They blaspheme God when they see your life, and so it actually aggravates condemnation and will on the

Day of Judgment, but with regard to how we regard and, and, and value other people, every human being is to be regarded with respect and treated with dignity.

Amen? God help us do that, but the sinner doesn't see himself that way.

It's me and mine, and I am an individual, and oh yeah, I've got my family, but it's ultimately, it's, you know, how they bring benefit and fulfillment and joy to me and what's mine, but when a person is converted, that changes.

The Christian, if he's thinking rightly, sees himself and his identity, his value, his purpose, and meaning of life all in relation to God who made him, and so what

I'm saying is that God, in preparation to conversion, to regeneration, deals with this matter.

And then thirdly, fallen man believes in his ethical autonomy, not only his intellectual, his metaphysical, but his ethical autonomy.

He is a law unto himself. Since the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, fallen sinful man established, has established for himself what he thinks to be standards of right and wrong.

He may choose to adopt the standards of others. He may pick out the golden rule out of the

Bible and apply to himself with the Ten Commandments, or so he thinks, but it's because he decided that he would do so, not because there's some divine authority outside of him that requires him or would cause him to do so, because he believes that he himself is his own

God, and that's what the devil, the servant, promised Adam and Eve. You will be as God's, knowing good and evil.

You'll be able to determine for yourself, and that's what happened after they fell into sin. Thereafter, they were their own lords.

They would determine for themselves what is true and right. We see that played out in the world today, don't we?

People demanding, insisting that you accept their standards of morality, what they have determined what is right and wrong, and woe is you if you do not celebrate the laws that I have established for myself.

And so the fallen world in which we live is attractive to these aspects of man's sinful condition, and so this has to be changed.

Conversion brings about a great change in this way. The Apostle John spoke about living this way as a fallen man, fallen woman, for all that is in the world, this fallen world.

The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life is not of the Father but is of the world, and the world is passing away and the lust of it, but he who does the will of God abides forever.

And if we had time and the need to do so, I think we could show how these three aspects of the fallen world appeal to the three aspects of the sinner's pervasive assumption of human autonomy that we have already described and set forth.

The fallen world resonates and reinforces the sinner's intellectual autonomy, the lust of the eyes, his metaphysical autonomy, the pride of life, and his ethical autonomy, the lust of the flesh.

But if a sinner is to become a Christian, this has to change. The Christian is not governed by these desires, although the

Christian continues to be tempted by these desires. The Lord God has declared that he will condemn all on the

Day of Judgment who have ordered their lives according to this world that we've just described.

As James wrote, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? See, their whole being is not just opposed to God, it's at the very opposite, it's enmity with God.

To insist on, you know, my existence to myself and nobody else, and to assume that I have the ability to sort things through and know how to govern my life apart from God, that itself is opposed to the very existence and nature of God.

And he says on the Day of Judgment, no more for them, they're gone. Perish.

Everlasting punishment. Everlasting fire. And so again,

James wrote, do you not know friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

If you order your life according to these things that we've just described, this self -rule, this autonomy, a law unto yourself, your fate is damnation.

You need to consider very carefully whether you've ever been converted, because when a person is born again, those things change.

I'm not my Lord. Jesus Christ is my Lord. I used to fight against him in order to do my will.

Now I fight against me in order to do his will. I don't trust my judgment whatsoever.

Whenever somebody asks a question, what's your opinion, I immediately think, what does God's Word say about a matter?

Because I know I'm not competent to assess the least of things, but God's Word is full of wisdom.

Christ is full of wisdom to direct us in the course that we should take.

And so God prepares us, and when we're converted, we embrace this way of life.

The people in their fallen state assume they're competent to govern themselves. They think they're just quite well.

Oh yeah, God loves me. After all, I'm so lovely. And yet that's not how we come to Christ.

We need to come to see that we are fallen creatures and have no claims upon God.

He need not receive us. He won't receive us unless we come to him through Jesus Christ alone.

He is my prophet who instructs me. He is my priest who cleanses me.

He is my king who directs and empowers me. No autonomy there is there.

It's Christ and Christ alone, and that's what true conversion affects in a person.

And only the new birth can bring that about, and you can't cause yourself to be born again. It's a work of God, a sovereign work of God.

Now, you might not be born again, and you know what? Well, you can't change it. Yeah, you can ask

God, God be merciful, cause me to be born again, but really what your attention and focus should be, get to Christ.

Turn from sin as God enables you, and trust Jesus Christ for every aspect of thinking, of being, of living.

Christ alone. Christ is Lord of all. Amen? Let's pray.

Thank you, our Father, for your Word, and we thank you, our God, for the salvation in which you've delivered us from ourselves and brought us into a glorious relationship with you, our

Father, through your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. We pray, our Lord, that you would bless your

Word as read and taught, and that the Blessed Holy Spirit would convert souls,

Lord, truly and fully to the Savior. We pray, our God, that people would even now,

Lord, begin to see and witness, perhaps, that new life that you impart by revealing new desires, our

Lord, in their souls, desires to know you and to walk in a life pleasing to you, and to be aligned with your people.

And so, be merciful and gracious, and help us all, our Lord, to be more effective witnesses for Jesus Christ in representing him and the true salvation that's set forth in your

Word. For we pray in Jesus' name, Amen. Well...