God's Sovereignty in Evangelism

If they say, yeah, there's a God, but I don't really care. Fantastic. Then let me tell you what Jesus did, what he said. Let me tell you about the gospel and the need for repentance and faith. You see, this is an important element I think sometimes we miss.

The Limits of Apologetics and the Need for Regeneration

And it looks something like this. Sometimes people will say, well, Pastor Jeff, I did the examination of the worldview, refuted their position, and they essentially said, oh, well, yeah, I know I can't do science, I know I can't do logic, and yeah, I admit that, and I don't really care.

And I didn't know where to go with that. Well, here's something we need to, I think, recognize, that when you get somebody to that place where they essentially give up, and they say, yeah, I admit that my position is completely fallacious, and I don't really care.

You've done your job. You've done your job. It's not my job to be the role of the Holy Spirit in their life, to bring them to life and to open their eyes. My job is to herald the truth, to proclaim the truth, to defend the truth.

And when I've done that, and I get the person to a place where they say, well, yeah, okay, I'm completely refuted, and I really don't care. That's where that rebellion is now rearing its head. Now you see that the problem isn't that they don't have enough evidence for God's existence, that they don't have enough evidence that Jesus is who he says he is.

It's that they're a rebel against the king, and they don't want him. And it's not up to me to get them. I don't need to put them into an arm bar or a choke to say, you submit to Jesus, and we're not going to do this until I win.

Planting the Seed and Letting God Work

Sometimes we need to plant the seed and let God do his perfect work. I can't tell you how many times I've preached the gospel out on the street, and then God brings that person to me six months later or a year later or five years later and lets me know that it was after we talked that something that I had said to them was weighing on them, and they battled with God for a long time.

Sometimes it's our job to preach the gospel and to let them wrestle with God. I think when we demand of ourselves or the person that there's a conversion that takes place in front of us, I think we're unrealistic in our expectations.

We need to let God do his perfect work. And so I believe that God is completely and utterly sovereign over salvation. He's the one that grants faith, and he's the one that grants repentance. It's up to him.

Philippians 1:29 and the Gift of Believing in Christ

One of the things I didn't get to get to near the end there was the condition for success, and this is right with what you're saying. The conditions for success in apologetics, it's really about the gospel, is first Philippians 1 .29 says, To you it has been granted not only to believe in Christ but also to suffer.

A lot of times we'll say, I'll take the first one, you can keep the second one. It's been granted to you to believe in Christ. It's been gifted to you to believe in Jesus Christ. That's a gift from God.

It says in Ephesians 2, verses 8 -9, By grace are you saved through faith, and that, not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not according to works lest any man should boast. What is the gift of God?

The grace and the faith. That, tuta in the Greek, points to that preceding sentence. By grace you've been saved through faith, and that, the grace and the faith, not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not according to works.

In that very passage in Ephesians 2, it says you were dead in your sins and trespasses by nature, children of wrath, but God made you alive together with him. By grace you've been saved. Did you know that?

That Paul's definition in that passage of by grace you've been saved is this. You were dead, but God made you alive. You didn't make yourself alive. You didn't figure it out. You were dead by nature, hostile, child of wrath, dead in sins and trespasses.

God made you alive together with him. By grace you've been saved. Christians love to talk about grace all the time, amen? And we ought to. But by grace you've been saved for Paul was you were dead and God made you alive.

That's the grace. And the faith? Gift from God. And so the conditions for success is God. It has to be regeneration. It has to be a move of the Holy Spirit. And that ought to take away our abusiveness and abrasiveness in conversation.

It also might put us in a place of peace so we can preach the gospel with confidence, with clarity, and with grace because we recognize it's God. One more passage for the condition of success. 2 Timothy 2, 24 -26 says the Lord's servant must be patient when wronged, able to teach, and it says, in humility correcting those who oppose themselves.

And it says, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth. Now watch. This is huge. And I hope it blesses you like it blesses me. If perhaps God grants them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.

We often think that people have to have a knowledge, a full knowledge of the truth to repent. But none of us will actually submit to truth unless we have a repentant heart. People are getting truth constantly.

God is bombarding them with it. It's not a lack of truth they have. It's a heart that is hard towards God and not wanting to receive it. So what's first? Repentance and then comes a knowledge of the truth.

Repentance, the Sovereignty of God, and Leaving the Results to Him

So the conditions for success is ultimately God. And you might say, oh, Jeff, I wanted more than that. I can't give you more than that. That's the nature of the gospel. That's the nature of our condition.

So if somebody says, well, I believe in God, I just don't care. I'd say, then you really need to repent. Can I please just tell you how serious this is, that Jesus said that he was God. He says that whoever commits sin is a slave of sin.

And he says that if you don't believe that he is, I am, you will die in your sins. That whoever has the Son has life. Whoever doesn't have the Son does not have life. But the wrath of God abides in him.

Christ came that you would have life. Come to Christ and live. Turn to Christ. Give him the call. Tell him about the need to repent and believe the gospel. And then leave the rest to God.