God's Work in Evangelism

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The old writers used to talk about the external call and the internal call, the external call being the preaching of the gospel, the explaining of truth, you know, to our children, to the churches, to your co -worker, your neighbor.

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And that is an essential part. But there is also another aspect, the Godward aspect, what

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God is doing inside a person when the gospel is being preached. You know, you think of the book of Acts with Lydia, and God opens her heart, her eyes, opens her mind to the gospel.

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So that she could receive that. And that is God's work in evangelism, in a sense, while we're doing the outward call.

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Even John Wesley believed that there had to be this aspect of grace.

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There had to be something that God did in you before you would ever be willing to choose

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Christ above yourself. So even in Arminianism, there is that, that prevenient grace.

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You know, that grace that preceded everything else. The difference between Wesley and Pemberton would be that Wesley felt that it was kind of like God giving you a ticket, that you would get on a train, and you could use the ticket or not.

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Pemberton, I believe, much more biblically, shows that when God begins to deal with a person in this way, it is effectual.

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It will have the effect God desires. It will bring men and women and young people to God through the gospel.

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Yeah, and this truth, along with regeneration, which you've said are kind of twin truths, both of them are terribly humbling to a person.

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Our pride rises up against it. Who wants to think that they are not able to choose what's best?

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Or, you know, best for me. And yet, experience shows us that we're not. We look at ourselves, we can look around us at a world that rejects

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Christ. So it is humbling to think that there needs to be this work applied to me.

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Yeah, and I think that this is one of the most practical areas for the application of what often gets called

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Calvinism or Reformed theology. Because it's one thing to talk about God's choices in eternity past, you know, in this just kind of a fog of mystery.

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And we can say, well, I believe God is sovereign. Well, that's good. But it really becomes practical when you think about how

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God sovereignly deals in souls while you're laboring to bring the truths to bear on their lives.

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You know, you're wanting to say it in a way that is the most clear, the most attractive. So as you're doing that, what is

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God doing? It's so practical to have a good understanding of that. So as to avoid kind of the wrong idea that, you know, the two different edges that we want to avoid.

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One cliff edge is that if I just said it more convincingly, it would have saved him.

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The other cliff edge is I don't have to say it at all. God will just do it all. And, you know, a fatalistic

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Calvinism, which is very unbiblical. So Pemberton guides us between those. I think this is a good place, too, to add that what we're talking about in many of these doctrines is not something that we can necessarily lay out in our experience and say, well,

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I can check that off. I see that that has occurred. But it is what God is doing from his perspective.

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And it happens, but we don't necessarily say that this happened in this order. And so I can check that off now, and it's time to move to the next step.

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Yeah. So the sermon here is going to investigate exactly how God, in the effectual call, deals with us so as to make us willing in the day of his power.

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And that was the verse, you know, he used from Psalm 110. In the day of God's power, his people be made willing.

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In the day when God exercises his extraordinary spiritual influence upon our souls, making us alive to him, waking us up from that death.

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How exactly does that result in us embracing Christ? One of the things he starts with is that God makes us willing as rational creatures.

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And that's the old way of saying God does not deal with us as kind of in a mechanical way.

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A robotic way. God does not turn us into a pawn on the chessboard. But as Hosea says,

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God draws us with the cords of a man, with the bands of love. That is what we talked about in Regeneration.

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God opens our mind. You know, he takes away the lie from our eyes so that we can see the truth.

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He frees our heart from that enslaving desire for self so that we can love what's true.

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And then he frees the will in this new nature to choose the truth.

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But then, having done that, we are enabled to respond. And we are responsive.

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We do make the choice. We believe. We turn to him. We turn away from the emptiness of sin and the emptiness of our own righteousness.

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And we embrace Christ or we choose Christ. We put the hand to the plow forever.

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So God is dealing with us as rational creatures, convincing, enticing, drawing.