God as it set forth, at least for
the time, in Ephesians, the first chapter.
Let us pray.
Our Father, we ask that Thou wilt open
the eyes of our understanding, that the eyes
of our understanding may be opened, that we
may know there's so much that Thou want
to have for us.
And Father, we would have a holy greediness,
a desire to have and appropriate and use
everything that in Thy grace Thou didst see
we need to bring glory and honor and
praise to the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so to that end, we ask now
that Thou wilt speak to our hearts.
As we think, as we study, as we
listen and speak, grant our Father that we'll
sense that Thou art here, ministering directly to
us.
We ask it in Jesus' name and for
His sake.
Amen.
What we have seen so far in Ephesians
might be summarized in this fashion.
Before the foundation of the world, God as
Father planned and purposed our salvation.
In the fullness of time, He sent His
Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Lord
Jesus Christ on the cross provided everything that
the Father had planned and purposed.
Now the Holy Spirit, God the Holy Spirit,
is ready and willing and certainly abundantly able
to perfect in us everything that the Father
planned and purposed and that the Son provided.
Thus it is that the Trinity, Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, are all involved in our
salvation.
But if you'll notice verse 6, having in
verse 5, having predestinated us under the adoption
of children by Jesus Christ to Himself according
to the good pleasure of His will, what
was the outcome?
To the praise of the glory of His
grace.
That's what it's all about.
That we should be to the praise of
the glory of His grace.
Now that's why the Father planned what He
planned.
That's why He purposed all that He purposed.
That we should be to the praise of
the glory of His grace.
Now He didn't put in anything unnecessary.
He didn't leave out anything that was necessary.
Absolutely everything required for us to be to
the praise of the glory of His grace
is included.
To the praise of the glory of His
grace.
In verse 12, we've got to go back
to verse 11, in whom Christ also we
have obtained an inheritance being predestinated according to
the purpose of Him who worketh all things
after the counsel of His own will, that
we should be to the praise of His
glory who first trusted in Christ.
Everything that the Son provided by His death,
His life, and His death was again that
we should be to the praise of the
glory of His grace.
And in verse 14, we're speaking now of
the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Let me read the 13th verse.
In whom ye also trusted, after that ye
heard the word of truth, the gospel of
your salvation, in whom also after that ye
believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit
of promise, which is the earnest of our
inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession,
unto the praise of His glory.
So what's the ultimate purpose?
The glory of God, to the praise of
the glory of His grace.
Therefore, any thought that salvation is basically you
and me centered we're definitely involved.
But the end, the ultimate end of it
all, is the glory of God.
Therefore, for one to say, well, I am
forgiven.
I am pardoned.
I know that if I die I'll go
to heaven.
There are other things in the Scripture.
There are other heights for the eager to
climb, other plateaus for the zealous to reach.
But as far as I'm concerned, I'm satisfied.
I'm forgiven.
I'm pardoned.
I know that if I die I'll go
to heaven.
You know, there's something dreadful about that, isn't
it?
It's a perversion.
It's missing the whole point that God was
so careful to explain here that everything that
as Father He planned and purposed, everything that
as Son He provided, and everything now that
as Holy Spirit He wants to affect and
complete in us, is to the end that
it should be to the praise of the
glory of His grace.
Not our comfort.
Not our convenience.
Not our pleasure.
But to His glory.
His praise.
You know, there's a way that you can
preach the gospel with about the same moral
quality as instructing someone how to hold up
a filling station.
Why does a person hold up a filling
station, if they do?
Well, the answer is to get something for
nothing.
To take the results of someone else's labor.
To steal, if you please.
To garner for oneself that which they've not,
don't deserve, don't own.
There's a way to preach the gospel that
has the same moral quality to it as
instructions in how to hold up a filling
station or rob a bank.
If we lose sight of the fact that
sin is a high, heinous crime against God,
and sinners are criminals, we think so much
about the fact of the congenital aspects of
sin.
That we are born of fallen parents, we
have fallen natures.
You know, a person who has congenital syphilis
may feel terribly sorry for themselves, but they
can never feel guilty.
The parent who acquired the disease can feel
guilty, but the child can only feel self
-pity.
And if sin is nothing more than a
congenital disease inherited from parents, there is never
the possibility of one feeling guilty.
But sin is not a disease, sin is
a crime.
Reaching the age of accountability, the, in the
person, chooses, deliberately commits themselves to a course
of depriving rightful sovereign of the worship and
adoration and obedience that he deserves.
And thus everything in the scripture treats sin
as a crime and sinners as criminals.
Well, look at it for a moment.
What is it?
Well, first, sin is treason.
It's denial of rightful sovereignty and rightful government.
Secondly, it's anarchy.
It's refusal to submit to any government.
I'll do what I want to do.
The sinner is a traitor.
The sinner is an anarchist.
More than that, he's a rebel.
He lives in lifelong defiance of right and
proper government.
As long as he lives, he lives as
a rebel in rebellion.
And then it's also transgression.
When the fence is there to keep him
from someone else's rights and privileges, the sinner,
with high disregard of rules and fences, transgresses,
cuts a cross.
And it's worse, another element that gives to
all of these crimes an insult of the
highest order.
Sin is enmity toward God.
The carnal mind is enmity toward God.
It's not subject to the law of God.
It can't be because of what has happened
in the very essence of sin, which is
a treason and rebellion and anarchy.
I'm going to do what I want to
do.
Now, when you once see that, then you
understand that God's plan and God's purpose has
to deal with all of the ramifications of
this thing of sin.
Has to deal with them.
God is the one now who has to
deal with the sinner and his crime.
So everything that the father planned and purposed
was designed to deal with the sinner as
a criminal.
In the sense that even his son identifying
himself with sinners was treated as a criminal
by society, that in which he was born
and lived, the Jews, the Romans.
He died a criminal's death.
He died on a cross and the cross
was reserved for traitors against the government of
Rome.
Rebels against government.
Anarchists.
Was only used for such.
And yet, from the Old Testament it had
been prophesied that he would die on a
cross.
In fact, you remember when David brought the
ark back after it had left the Midianites
and they had set it on a new
cart with oxen that had never pulled a
yoke?
And David thought that was a pretty smart
way to go.
So he had a cart made and he
put the ark on it.
And you remember how it started to tilt
and Uzzah put his hand out to touch
it and instantly died.
Well, why?
It says, and David was wroth with God.
Angry with him because he died.
David was trying to do a good thing
but he didn't understand.
And so he left it there and went
back to Jerusalem and then he got the
scripture.
What did he find out?
He found out that with God's people there
was the right way to carry the ark.
To the praise of the glory of his
grace.
That was the only way to do it.
How?
Well, it had to take young men, 30
and not yet 50, Levites, and it took
two staves.
One stave through the rings on one side
and one stave through the rings on the
other side and it was carried on their
shoulders.
And what are the two staves?
Well, if you take those two staves, what
do you have?
You have a cross.
Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.
Now, why?
Because the sinner was a traitor.
The sinner was a rebel.
The sinner is an anarchist.
So everything God planned and purposed was to
show the sinner the nature of his crime
and to deal with that crime as it
is.
Now, for one to present the gospel to
a person and imply that sin is only
a disease and not a crime and to
do it in such a way that that
sinner is never awakened to his estrangement from
God, never convicted of his crime, never changes
his mind about who is to be, because
if he doesn't know that the crime is
defrauding the rightful God of the worship and
the honor and the obedience that he deserves,
if he doesn't understand that, how can he
change his mind about it?
How can he change his mind?
How can he repent if he doesn't understand
what his crime has been?
If he thinks it's only a congenital disease,
then he's going to simply feel sorry that
he had parents such as he had all
the way back to Adam and Mother Eve.
But if he realizes that the age of
accountability he committed himself to a life of
crime, a life of treason and anarchy and
rebellion, then awakened by the Spirit of God,
convicted through the Word of God by the
Holy Spirit, and brought to repentance a change
of mind this one now.
So there is, I say, a way by
which we can preach the gospel that demeans
the grace of God and means the response
of the person so counseled will be one
of simply further selfishness for one to have
immunity from justice while continuing in the crime.
So everything that God does, he does to
the end, what?
To the praise of the glory of his
grace.
That's what the Father purposed and planned.
That's what the Son provided.
Now that's what the Holy Spirit is going
to perfect.
So what are the ministries of the Holy
Spirit?
Well, the first we find is the ministry
as the spirit of bondage against the fear.
Not that he produces bondage or creates fear,
but he is the Holy Spirit that reveals
to us as sinners that we are in
bondage to the God of this world because
of our crime of treason and rebellion and
anarchy and that there is good grounds for
us to fear.
And that is the awakening ministry of God
the Holy Ghost.
Now God does this, God the Holy Spirit
does this without any response on the part
of the sinner.
The sinner doesn't have to ask God to
do it.
The sinner doesn't have to know about it.
There are some things that are to be
done, however.
There are some things that must be done,
but not by the sinner.
And it's with him we're dealing for the
moment.
So the first ministry of God the Holy
Spirit is a ministry of awakening in which
the Holy Spirit reveals to men their bondage
and the grounds of their fear, the reason
why they should be afraid of God, because
of their crimes.
And the second ministry that happens is conviction.
When he, the spirit of truth, is come,
he will convict.
Now the sinner doesn't have to ask the
Holy Spirit to convict.
He doesn't have to pray for conviction.
This is something he will do.
He does it in his sovereignty.
There are responsibilities of others.
We'll deal with those.
Right now we're talking about the sinner in
relation to the Holy Spirit's work prior to
the awareness of forgiveness.
So the first is awakening.
The second is conviction.
And the third is repentance.
It's the Spirit of God that reveals that
this is a, through conviction, reveals that it
is a crime, that at the age of
accountability one did choose to rule in his
own life and play God in his own
life and sit on the throne of his
life, a throne that was made for the
Son of God himself.
And so it is the work of the
Spirit of God to incline our hearts to
repent and to quicken us.
Now the reason why men don't repent is
not because they can't repent, but because they
won't repent.
They have everything requisite and required to repent.
For repentance is a change of mind.
And the only one thing God has given
us total control over is our minds.
The only thing we can totally control is
our thoughts.
And the reason why sinners don't repent is
not because they can't, but because they won't.
If they would, they could.
And it's the work of the Spirit of
God.
You've sung it for years.
It is incline us to repent and our
sins lament.
That's the work of the Spirit of God.
Awakening, conviction, repentance.
Now faith.
Here again.
How many different kinds of faith do we
find if we search carefully?
Well, we find that there are at least
four, maybe more.
The first I call a head faith.
Namely an intellectual assent to what is written.
A function of the intellect.
This is the Bible.
Okay, sure, that's the Bible.
It's an old book, yes.
God inspired it, yes.
It says, do you believe it?
Sure, why don't you?
I shouldn't, I believe it.
Why not?
A function of the intellect.
That's a head faith.
And then there's a dead faith.
Which is an appropriation of religious rituals and
taboos.
My wife and I found that among the
Muslims in Africa.
They had memorized the Koran, a book as
large as the New Testament from Matthew through
1 Peter.
They'd memorized it.
And they believed it intellectually.
They had no argument with it.
But if you were to ask them, does
that make you alive?
Does that give you life?
What do you mean life?
No, of course it doesn't.
It gave rules, it gave instructions, it gave
obligations, but it didn't give life.
Nor did their observance of the rules and
the instructions give peace.
Dead faith.
Then there's a third kind of faith.
I call it the devil's faith.
Namely, an emotional response to what is written.
I'm cornered.
Sure, I'm a traitor and a rebel.
And yeah, God has said that the soul
that sinned in it shall surely die and
have their part in the lake of fire
and brimstone.
Well, that's not a particularly appealing situation.
What's the alternative?
Well, here's heaven.
Hey, that's a good deal.
What's it going to cost me?
Well, Jesus paid it off.
I like that.
I like the terms.
What do I do?
Believe.
What does believe mean?
Well, here it is.
Do you believe?
Sure, I believe.
What have I got to lose?
I've got everything to gain.
I'll believe.
Believe.
Of course, I'll believe.
It says that the devils believe and they
tremble, but they remain devils.
Why?
Because they have that kind of faith.
Then there's a fourth kind of faith.
And that is heart faith.
And the Scripture says, with the heart man
believeth unto righteousness.
And the heart is the totality of the
being, the entire being, the mental, the emotional,
the volitional aspects, the total, totality experience.
And that heart faith, oh, it has elements
of intellectual quantity to it, of course.
There are appropriations to be made and there
is an emotional concomitant, certainly.
But there's an entirely different quality to it.
And that's what we find here when it
says that, in this 13th, in whom he
also trusted.
After that he heard the word of truth,
the gospel of salvation, in whom also after
that he believed.
That's heart faith.
For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness.
Heart faith.
And that's based upon awakening and conviction and
repentance.
That's why Paul said, he was in Ephesus
from house to house, night and day, teaching
what?
Repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord
Jesus Christ.
They went that way.
They could not be saving faith without real
repentance.
Repentance and faith.
Now, I grew up with a type of
teaching that says repentance was Jewish.
It was a work.
It has nothing to do with the period
of grace.
But Paul was talking to the Gentiles and
telling them that he was with them for
a period of months, house to house, night
and day, teaching repentance toward God and faith
toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
They were Gentiles, and so there isn't any
question at all, and I don't believe anyone
else is arguing to the contrary today, though
they did at one time, that there is
less than the requirement of repentance as a
prerequisite for heart faith.
Now, here we have it.
In whom also that ye believed, ye were
sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.
Now, let's look at that for a moment.
Now, you're familiar with the Wesleyan revival in
England in the early part of the 18th
century.
In a church where his father had been
rector for many years.
Now, what was his crime?
Why would the...
And he was an Anglican clergyman, an ordained
Episcopal priest.
Why was it he couldn't preach in an
Episcopal church?
They've closed throughout the country to him.
Was it that the Episcopal church at that
time was modernist and he would believe the
truth?
Oh, no.
Have you ever read the 39 articles of
the Episcopal church?
Well, if you haven't, I recommend them.
They're very good reading.
Those 39 articles are about as orthodox and
as kosher as theologically you'll find anywhere.
Wonderful.
Indeed.
A marvelous statement of truth.
But why was it then that they closed
the church?
I'll tell you.
John Wesley said that it was fine, there
was no problem about having children baptized.
See, everybody in England was a member of
the church of England.
That was excellent.
Surely they came under the watch care of
the church, certainly.
But no one had the right to claim
that they had been forgiven of their sins
and were children of God unless they had
experienced the witness of the Spirit.
That's why they closed the door of the
church to John Wesley.
Well, that is, see, but they would, they
might say that, in the years among them,
I would find that they're just as opposed
to what I am saying as anyone else
was, as the Anglicans were.
Because whether that person makes a verbal statement
when they're 12 or 50, or whether they
are baptized as infants is not significant in
light of what Wesley was teaching.
Namely, that no one had the right to
think themselves a child of God unless they
had the witness of the Spirit.
The witness of the Spirit to the new
birth.
This was the not without which.
And the church of England closed its doors
to Wesley and drove into the fields.
And so who did he preach to?
People that had been baptized as infants in
the church of England.
What did he tell them?
He told them repent and believe.
He preached the law, the holiness of God,
the righteousness of God.
And what happened?
Well, as he preached, people were awakened.
They call that a time of awakening under
Wesley's ministry.
Awakened.
And they were convicted.
Of what?
Of their crime against God.
And they repented.
And they believed.
And what happened?
They received the witness of the Spirit that
they were born of God.
And he took those people that had this
thus experience and put them into a little
group, a little class meeting he called it,
eleven with a leader.
And they would meet every morning or once
a week or twice, whatever they could, usually
at five in the morning.
And by the way, he always gave an
invitation when he preached.
He always did.
He never preached without an invitation.
You know what his invitation was?
If the Spirit of God has awakened you,
if you are convinced of your crime and
you desire to repent and receive Jesus Christ
as your Lord and your Savior, meet with
me tomorrow morning at five o'clock.
I'll tell you.
Oh, that's going to sift a lot of
the chaff out of the wheat, isn't it?
Anybody who just got emotionally excited is going
to find a reason to pull the covers
up and just give me five minutes more.
The only ones that are going to get
up at four o'clock and go four
or five miles down the road to meet
with John Wesley in some cold room in
England are the ones that say, I must
have peace with God or I die.
And these that did come and these that
did have the witness of the Spirit, he
put in these little class meetings.
But that was why the churches of England
closed to him.
I remember a pastor some years ago who
had heard that I was proclaiming as I
am what I am for forty years, thirty
-five at least.
It took me five years to find out
what to preach and he stood in the
pulpit.
I was sitting over in the side and
he reached over.
There are some people that go around saying
that the only way you'll ever know you're
saved is that you have a tickling under
the fifth rib.
An emotional excitement and stimulation.
That's heresy.
The only way anyone will ever know that
he's saved is because he takes a verse
of Scripture and he stands on it.
And the people said amen to him.
Well, first thing, the witness of the Spirit
is not a tickling under the fifth rib.
Not a tickling under the fifth rib.
What is the witness of the Spirit?
Well, Job gave us the key.
The part of a man that knows the
things of a man is the spirit of
man and it's in him.
All right.
I'm not going to embarrass you.
I'm going to ask you a series of
questions.
Don't respond because you would be embarrassed.
But I just want you to get the
point.
How many of you are here?
Raise your hands.
All right.
How many of you are married and know
it?
Raise your hands.
What part of the man is it that
knows that you're here?
Your feet?
Your seat?
Your back?
Your eyes?
What part of a man knows you're here?
What part of a person knows they're married?
Job said it.
The part of a man that knows the
things of a man is the spirit of
man that is in him.
What part of you knows your name?
What part of you knows your education?
What part of you knows whether you're working
or retired?
What part of you knows all these things?
That's your spirit.
The Word of God says it.
Now, when one is dead in their sins,
their spirit is estranged from God.
And they know it.
They know it.
There is no peace, saith my God, to
the wicked.
The wicked are like the troubled sea, cast
up by iron dirt.
Continuous seething in the spirit of the wicked.
You mean to say that God did not
know that there is no peace to the
wicked?
He said it and it wasn't true?
Of course it's true.
What is spiritual death?
You go to your television and sit and
you turn, put the power on and there's
no picture and no sound.
What do you say about it?
It's dead!
What's that mean?
All those workings inside rusted down to powder?
Has no form anymore?
No shape?
It just sort of self-destructed?
What does it take to make a television
set dead?
Just one little transistor out.
One little connection broke.
It's surrounded by television impulse but it isn't
receiving it.
So sinners live in the presence of God
but their receiving set is broken and they
know it.
Or at least they're not getting any broadcast
from God.
They are dead.
What does that mean?
That they cease to have human personality and
human capacity?
No!
It means that there's no communion between God
and that heart.
They're without communion.
Without contact.
Does that mean God isn't there?
No!
Paul said, in Him we live and move
and have our being.
He's not far from every one of us.
But in the sinner the receiving set's dead.
Why?
Because of the crime.
Self-love.
Selfishness.
I will rule my life.
I will be God.
No.
Awakened to the danger.
Convicted of the crime.
Changing one's mind and believing what happens?
They are, as we said here, sealed with
that Holy Spirit of promise.
What happens?
Well, it's re-soldered.
Where that wire was broken the Spirit of
God re-solders it.
And what happens?
They begin to get the broadcast from the
antenna of Calvary.
And what does it say?
When they hear that broadcast what does it
say?
It says you can call Almighty God before
whom you tremble Abba Father.
When you were speaking about working in New
Jersey when I was pastor in New York
City there was an inter-varsity staff worker
by the name of Harriet Marsh.
We were talking to this point at an
inter-varsity alumni gathering up at Cedar Campus
in Michigan.
And when we finished Harriet said I'd like
to give a testimony.
She said I was a student at Douglas.
Then it was Douglas College and Rutgers University.
I came on the campus from an agnostic
home.
I considered myself an atheist, an intellectual atheist.
And I happened to see a young woman
who had the most radiant smile and the
most shining face of any person I'd ever
met.
I knew nothing about her but I said
I'm going to find out, I'm going to
have her my roommate.
I want to find out what it is
that makes her translucent, glow.
And I got her name, found out who
she was, and applied, asked if I could
become her roommate.
I had some connections there and so it
was arranged.
And I found out that she was very
active in the Christian group on the campus,
that she loved Jesus Christ with all her
heart.
And just seeing her and being with her
and her roommate won me and I professed
faith in Christ.
But I had one professor that thought that
I as a young intellectual and an atheist
was too good to lose and so he
kept putting pressure on me for many, many
months that I was throwing my life away
associating with these freakish evangelicals.
And finally he convinced me that this was
just an emotional something that had happened to
me.
So I went one day to the prayer
meeting that I usually attended and I told
them I wouldn't be praying with them anymore
and I wouldn't be attending the Bible studies
or the groups anymore.
That I had decided that I had been
deceived, self-deceived, not by them, that this
whole Christian thing was a myth, had no
relevance to an intellectual life and that I
was throwing it all over.
I would be happy to be with them
as friends but I wanted them under no
circumstances to talk to me anymore about Christianity.
And they with tears in their eyes agreed
that they would still be my friends and
they wouldn't talk to me about Christianity.
They never told me they wouldn't talk to
the Lord about me though.
And I knew better than to ask them
that.
And I didn't think if what I was
saying was true that wouldn't make any difference
anyway.
Well, I saw them, I continued, they respected
what they'd promised and the months went on.
Still a roommate, still at the university college
but never attending their groups or involved in
any way.
One day in the library I was reading,
I came across the agnostics prayer and it
made an impression on me.
You know what it is?
Oh God, if there be a God, save
my soul if I have a soul.
Well, I wrote it down and I was
walking home and this was going through my
mind and when I got to my room,
my roommate who I expected to be there
wasn't there and I know she'd be gone
through the afternoon and the evening and so
I was alone.
I locked the door.
I didn't want any of her friends bumping
in on me and I decided that I
would give this a try.
Now this was an agnostics prayer.
I coached it, I got it and then
I was going to sit there at the
desk and pray and I said no, that's
not really fair.
We knelt when we prayed so I'll kneel
and so she said I knelt and going
over this prayer in my mind and then
she said well some people fold their hands
so the least I can do is fold
mine won't hurt anything so she said I
knelt and I folded my hands all the
while repeating those words and then she said
I opened my mind and I said dear
father in the fullness of
time God sent forth his son made of
a woman made under the law to redeem
them that were under the law that we
might receive the adoption of son and since
we are sons he has sent forth the
spirit of his son to our hearts whereby
we cry dear father in heaven.
Abba father.
Sealed with that holy spirit promise whereby we
say of almighty God Abba father.
Dear father.
The witness of the spirit.
What is it?
It's the part of a man that knows
the things of a man.
The part of a man that knows that
almighty God is his father.
That's what Wesley told England and it was
that message that brought England from the abyss
into which France would fall.
Pulled it when it was over.
Pulled it back and saved it.
Perhaps it's that message that's needed in America
today.
With 50, 80, 100 million people that claim
to be born again and only a handful
that can cry Abba father from the heart.
Father in heaven we come to thee in
the name of Jesus Christ.
Thou sovereign of all grace thou God of
all grace.
Thou who has ordained that thy holy spirit
would be the spirit of adoption that no
one in the universe has the right to
usurp the sovereign prerogative of the third person
of the trinity who alone has the right
to tell one who's been the child of
the God of this world that he's been
taken out of the family of death and
put into the family of the father.
Oh what crimes we've committed father in our
zeal by telling people before they had an
opportunity to hear from thee how many have
been stillborn.
We ask thee father today that we may
recognize the sovereignty of God the holy ghost
that he alone has the right to see
you and witness and certify that men have
passed from death to life.
Oh that we might take that time that's
required with those father to whom thou hast
given us the privilege of ministry.
That they might at the very beginning of
their Christian walk learn from thee passed from
death to life.
We can tell them how bad they are
and how gloriously holy thou are.
We can tell them what they have done
and tell them what thou hast done.
We can tell them what they must do
and what thou will do but only thou
can tell them when it's done in their
hearts.
So to that end father we ask again
that we'll respect the sovereignty of the holy
ghost in those areas that he has reserved
to himself.
We thank you now for this time together
and for this people and ask that something
from this hour may redound yet to the
glory and honor and praise of Jesus Christ
in whose name we ask him.