Matthew 22:1-14
We continue tonight our study
on the Christian life, and our topic tonight is effectual calling. And I’ve titled it, Convinced
and Converted, because that’s how the shorter catechism speaks
of effectual calling. But we’ve read from Matthew’s
gospel, chapter 22, the parable of the feast the king gives. We’ve read from Romans chapter
eight, verse 30, John 644, and from Acts 16, 14, we’ll also
include some other scriptures as we go along. Let’s start,
though, by, let me read to you what our shorter catechism says
about effectual calling. This is the shorter catechism,
number 31, and it asks, what is effectual calling? Effectual calling is the work
of God’s Spirit, whereby convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening
our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills,
he persuades and enables us to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered
to us in the gospel. Now, this topic of effectual
calling or effective calling is, I think, very helpful for
us to understand as we look at other people, whether they’re
in Adam or in Christ, but it helps us understand how God sends
salvation. Now, did you notice who the agent
of the Trinity is in effectual calling? It’s the work of God’s
Holy Spirit. And so we understand fundamentally
that without the work of the Spirit, we would not see, we
would not hear, we would not believe and we would not obey.
Now, where do y’all hear those words every single Sunday? It’s right before the preaching
of God’s Word. What do we always say? God, help
us to see, help us to hear, help us to believe, and help us to
obey. Because we understand that without
the work of the Spirit, God’s Word falls on deaf ears. Do you
remember Isaiah’s call? God says, who shall I send? And what does Isaiah say? Send
me, but what does the poor guy not understand? He’s not getting
an easy job. Okay, Isaiah, you go, but they
won’t see. You go, but they won’t hear.
You go, they’re gonna have hard hearts. But that is the gospel
ministry. That is our work in evangelism
and preaching and working with our children and trying to bring
them to an understanding of faith. is without the work of the Holy
Spirit. It cannot take place. So effectual
calling is something huge for us to understand. Now we can
have an evangelistic event with rock and roll, sound and lights,
and maybe some of y’all, I know John, you remember this, right
before prom every year, what did they always take us out front
to observe? The wrecked car. Yeah, and all the EMS equipment.
You know, don’t drink and drive because you do, you’re gonna
end up just like this.” And they were relying on scare tactics,
right? You know, we’ll scare the bejeebers
out of you so you won’t drink and drive on prom night when,
you know, a stupid person’s gonna do what a stupid person’s gonna
do, right? Maybe it stops a few. But really, what is the work
that is taking place in convincing somebody to stop what is evil
and what is good? It’s the work of the Holy Spirit. And so Affectual calling, it
says, is the work of God’s Spirit, whereby we are convinced of our
sin and misery. Do you know people that are not
convinced of their sin and misery? They’re fine, thanks very much.
Leave me alone and don’t you judge me. All right, you have
friends like that? Okay, we have to be convinced
of our sin and our misery. Some people are so messed up
in their sin, they don’t know that they’re miserable, and they
really are. You think of somebody with addictions
or mounting debt, or just the compounding interest that comes
from sin after sin after sin. They are living in sin and misery.
So we’re convinced of our sin and misery. Our minds are enlightened
in the knowledge of Christ. They have to hear the gospel.
You know, there’s that old saying, preach the gospel if necessary,
use words. And that sounds pretty good on
the surface, right? We want to be salt and light.
We want our lives as new creations in Christ. We want our lives
as the new humanity to show people there’s a different way. But
guess what? It is necessary to use words. How does Paul say that people
hear? They hear through the preacher,
and then he quotes Isaiah, how beautiful are the feet of him
that brings good news. So we do live the gospel, that’s
a phrase we hear a lot, I’m gonna live out the gospel. But we also
have to tell out the gospel as well. So effectual calling is
the work of God’s spirit, whereby convinced of our sin and misery,
our minds are enlightened into the knowledge of Christ, and
then our wills are renewed. What does God say in Ezekiel
that he’s gonna give Israel? I’m gonna take their hearts of
stone and give them hearts of flesh. He gives us a new heart.
He gives us a will that is not stubborn. He takes away our hardness
of heart and converts us. You know, we hear of various
conversions in the world and we say, no way. I mean, who’s
the democratic strategist that’s always on Fox News? Kirsten Powers. She came to faith under the preaching
of Tim Keller. And we look at that as Christians
and say, boy, she’s a liberal pro whatever we’re not, but you
see the power of the preaching of the gospel. Now she’s not
an ultra right-winger like we’d hope she’d be, but she has a
great faith in Christ. what an amazing thing we know
sanctification is a process. But we see examples of that,
and it’s amazing that somebody with a hard heart toward the
gospel. Or how about Rosaria Butterfield? Have y’all read
some of you her autobiography? And now she’s written a second
book, but left a life of of liberal professorship at Syracuse University,
left an alternative lifestyle to Christian marriage, and now
professes faith in Christ as a wonderful example of godliness
and of how God can change. But she was not looking for Jesus,
she was going the other way. Or how about Saul of Tarsus on
the road to Damascus? God stops us dead in our tracks. He convinces us of our sin and
misery. He lightens our minds in the
knowledge of Christ. He renews our will. And this
is one of my favorite phrases. He persuades and enables us to
embrace Jesus Christ as he is freely offered in the gospel.
Now that is a pretty comprehensive sentence. So let me say effective
calling another way. or effectual calling. It’s an
act of God the Father speaking through the human proclamation
of the gospel, in which he summons people to himself in such a way
they respond in saving faith. It is God speaking through human
means, whether it’s the preacher or the gospel presenter in evangelism,
that we speak the words of Christ, the gospel of Christ to a sinner,
and God gives them power in such a way they respond in saving
faith. Now, it doesn’t matter your eloquence.
It doesn’t matter bells and whistles or the sound
of lights, all those things. We’re so caught up in those trappings,
right? But God speaks wonderfully through
his word. I was reading somewhere, maybe
a World Magazine interview with somebody who was telling about
their conversion experience. And back during the hippie movement,
they got in the back of a VW van and were headed out west,
probably to Colorado to buy some Coors Light and bring it back
here and sell it, something like that. But this person read the
Bible in the back of the van and before they got across the
state of Tennessee, came to faith in Jesus. Just the reading the
scriptures, reading God’s holy word. Remember last week in our
sermon that God has spoken in the past through our forefathers,
through the prophets, but now he’s spoken through his son,
Jesus Christ. And we mentioned 2 Timothy 3, where Paul says
to Timothy, the sacred writings, and at that time it was the Old
Testament, are able to make you wise for salvation. God can save
sinners from Genesis all the way to Revelation with the powerful
word. but it’s an act of God the Father
effective calling is, speaking through human proclamation of
the gospel, where he summons people to himself in such a way
they respond in saving faith. Now, I’m gonna get myself in
trouble here, but that’s okay. How do we speak of coming to
faith sometimes? We say, I gave my heart to Jesus. We invited him into our lives,
but what does the scripture say? He takes your heart. He’s the
king and it’s his to take. We act like he’s passive and
we say, I give you my heart, Jesus. And that sounds precious
and good, but he’s a king and when he commands, when he summons,
when he calls, guess what? We better show up. It’s like
mama hollering out the back door, it’s suppertime, we better come.
but it’s more than that. What comes with mom calling out
the door for supper? Well, you’re hungry, of course
you’re gonna come, and maybe there’s a threat of you better
get in here and eat and wash up first. But when God calls
and when he summons, he gives us the grace to obey him. Now, think of it this way. Almighty
God comes to dead people and tells them to rise. Where do
we find that in the scriptures? Well, Jesus comes to the tomb
of Lazarus. He’s dead. He’s been dead for
some days. And the family is mourning. And
what does God, the son, say to Lazarus? He says, Lazarus, come
forth. And that’s what we need to think
of in this divine summons. A dead person raised to life. because of God’s special word. He speaks and new life to the
dead he receives. There’s a little verse in Romans
chapter 4. If you’re not careful, you’ll skip right over it. But
in Romans chapter 4, I believe it’s verse 17, when it speaks
of Abraham being justified by faith. Romans 4, 17. It says, as it is written, I
have made you Abraham, the father of many nations, in the presence
of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and
calls into existence the things that do not exist. That is how
powerful God in his word is. He speaks and new life the dead
receive. Look, if you will, at your hymn. We sing hymns that match our
theme for the night, and can it be that I should gain? Verse
four says, long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin
and nature’s night. It was dead in sin and trespasses. It says, thine eye diffused a
quickening ray. I woke, the dungeon flamed with
light. My chains fell off, my heart
was free. I rose and went forth. and follow
thee. You see effective calling, effectual
calling in that wonderful verse of the hymn, but it is a divine
summons by the king of the universe. And it’s a call that includes
the grace to come to faith. Now, if you’re like me and you
grew up in a Christian home and you sort of never didn’t know
a day where you didn’t know that there was sin and Jesus and salvation
and all that. But maybe you grew up in a pagan
environment where you knew nothing of God, knew nothing of Jesus.
In fact, you were looking way the other way. You realize that
when you’re not looking for God, he comes shaking the trees for
you. And he comes and he summons.
But it is a powerful summons from the kingdom of darkness
into the kingdom of light. God speaks and he creates. but he also speaks and he recreates. If we are in Christ, we are a
new creation. Now, there’s two calls that we
speak of in our theology or in our biblical understanding. We
speak of a general call or an external call. In our ARP denomination,
we call it the free offer of the gospel. That was one of the
controversies that began our denomination back in the 16,
1700s. Some people back in the day said, we only preach to the
elect. We’re wasting our time if we don’t preach to the elect.
Well, how do you know who the elect is or are? All right, we
don’t. That’s craziness. But we preach
the gospel. We preach the gospel day in and
day out in order that those whom God is working on may come. Do you remember the apostle Paul?
He makes his little missionary journeys geographically. He leaves
Israel and goes around the Mediterranean Sea to the north, comes back,
then he goes a little further the next time, comes back to
Jerusalem, then he goes again, and then there’s the shipwreck
and all that, and maybe a fourth missionary journey, but Paul,
never goes to another city until God says. And you know, there’s
one place in the book of Acts, I can’t remember right off where
it is, but he says, I need to stay and preach here because
I believe God has more elect. There’s more people that need
to hear the preaching of God’s word. Other times he says, I’m
done here. And he sneaks out of town with
his life in his hands, maybe out of a basket or a rope down
a wall, something of that nature. But he understands that God has
him preach where there are people who, maybe theologically as we
understand it, are God’s chosen and he must go preach to them. But there’s this general call,
we preach, we proclaim the gospel, but then there’s also this, not
just this external call, but there’s this internal call. We
read of it in the gospel account of the King’s Feast. Many are
called, but few are chosen. We preach the gospel, we preach
the gospel, we preach the gospel, and we may beat our heads against
the wall preaching the gospel, but we may see some fruit, little
fruit, or grapefruit. You know, that sounds a little
funny, grapefruit. But that’s how it is. You know,
you hear people after the generation of Billy Graham They say, oh,
I wish I could have preached to thousands like him. And I
wish I could have seen many people come to faith like he saw in
his ministry. But you know, God may send you
to a bunch of dullards who won’t see and won’t hear and won’t
believe. That’s what Isaiah’s call was. Here’s an interesting
section in our confession of faith. I’ll tee it up for you
here, Bennett. This is in chapter 10. Under effectual calling,
it says, It says, some may be called by the ministry
of the word and have some common operation of the spirit, yet
never truly come to Christ and therefore cannot be saved. Much
less can men not professing the Christian religion be saved in
any other way whatsoever, be they never so diligent to frame
their lives according to the light of nature and the laws
of religion they do profess, and to assert and maintain they
may, is pernicious, it’s a funny word, detested. And what the
confession is saying there in some difficult language is some
people may respond to the gospel call, and they may bear a little
fruit for a while, but ultimately or finally not be saved. And
where do we hear Jesus teach that same thing? Remember the
parable of the sower? Yeah, he sowed some seed on the
rocky soil, he sowed some among the weeds, and some fell among
good soil. And the seed that fell on good soil It grew and
it reproduced. Some that fell on the rocky,
it just went away. And some fell among the weeds.
And what did the weeds do? It choked them. And he says,
you know, The gospel goes out and people respond to it in different
ways. But what we mean by effectual calling is that those God has
to save, he gives the grace to hear of their sin, to know of
Christ, to receive the gospel as it is freely offered. And
it’s a wonderful and great grace. And what is the proper response?
We’ll talk about it in weeks to come. It’s repentance, it’s
faith, it’s obedience. and it’s a lifetime of following.
One person has said so well that when we come to faith in Christ,
when that effectual call comes, God is kicking the devil out
of the cockpit and putting Jesus in control of your life. But
the effective call is particular, it’s internal, it’s always effective. Just like Jesus calling Lazarus
from the dead or any other event like that where he speaks and
we respond to that voice. Now here’s a couple things to
think of. These are just practical aspects. When you are sharing
the gospel, or I am preaching the gospel, or Tim is preaching
the gospel, men love darkness more than they love light. And
so there is cosmic battle. If you’ve tried to share the
gospel with your hard-hearted neighbor or coworker and there’s
opposition, Well, you should expect it. You should expect
it, but be praying hard that God, the Holy Spirit, would be
at work. Men love darkness. They love
foolishness. And the gospel either causes
them to stumble. What does the Apostle Paul say
about his preaching of the gospel? It’s an aroma to those who are
being saved, but it’s a stench in the nostrils to those who
hate God. And then he says in 1 Corinthians
2, The man without the Spirit does
not understand the things of the Spirit. We need God’s Holy
Spirit to open our eyes. Here’s a really practical thing.
I remember several weeks back, a month or two or three ago,
we had the Sermon on the Great Commission, and the points I
made to you were we should be coming to church, we should be
going out into the world, and then thirdly, we should be bringing
people back to church. What is the greatest thing you
can do for an unsaved person? Get them in front of the pulpit.
Get them in front of the preaching of God’s Word. Yes, evangelism
works. Yes, showing them salt and light and good behavior as
a Christian, that’s great. But the reading and preaching
of the Word is what God’s Word tells us is the most effective
way of convincing and converting sinners. We’ll come to that later
in our study. But the preaching of the Word,
why do you think Billy Graham goes all over the world preaching? It’s because how else will they
hear, Romans 10 says, without a preacher? And so, in light
of that, here’s another thing to think of. This may not be
something you think of. Somebody, while God’s word is
preaching, being preached, might get saved in church. Isn’t that,
now were any of you just, as an aside, saved under the preaching
of God’s word in church? Okay. Like during the sermon,
it just knocked you upside the head. That’s pretty good. That’s
amazing. So think about that when you’re
in church. And think about that when, maybe if you’ve got kids
and they’re disruptive, or you yourself are a little disruptive,
right? That’s pretty important, that
there is a redemptive moment possibly taking place. Now, it’s
not to say that if somebody’s not getting saved, preaching’s
no good, because what is it doing? It’s building us up in our faith,
It’s encouraging us in our Christian life. It’s sanctifying us. It’s
pointing out our sin and all those things. Another practical
aspect is every week we should pray for the effective use of
God’s word. I was glad to hear you give thanks
for John’s teaching during Sunday school. Partially because my
kids are in there. But that is a moment where I
Somebody’s children may come to faith in Christ in there.
You think about that for a moment. You’re not just signing up for
your tour of misery in Sunday school, right? That’s how we
often think of that. I got roped into teaching Sunday
school and I got the second graders. But it could be the moment where
God’s word becomes effective unto salvation to a little one
or a big one. But we pray for the effective
use of God’s word. Lord, help me in my evangelism. Help my preacher in his preparation.
Whoever we listen to, may you use their preaching and their
speaking of your word effectively. But here’s another thing to pray
for. Pray that we would have opportunity to bring people to
hear God’s word. That is the hardest thing in
the world to do, but it’s the greatest gift you could give
someone. One of my dad’s dear high school friends says that he came to faith because
my dad was persistent. in dragging them to a Billy Graham
preaching event. And I’ve heard this story for
years and years and years, and then a few weeks ago at my grandfather’s
funeral, another man came up to me and he said, you know what,
your dad would not quit. He said, he was so obnoxious,
but he wanted us to come to faith. And so we need persistently to
bring people to the Great Physician. You remember what those men did
when they couldn’t get to Jesus with their friend? They pulled
the roof back. and they lowered their friend to Jesus’ feet.
And so friends, let me encourage you, bring somebody to church.
It may be your child, your grandchild, maybe your neighbor, whoever
it may be, bring somebody to church because God uses the breathing
and the preaching of his word. Here’s another thing, and this
is for the elders, but this is also for the congregation. You
never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever let the quality of your
elders or your teaching elders get low. Now some of you have
come from denominations that have gone liberal, maybe some
of you, this church even came out of that originally. But we’ve
seen in America in the last 50, 60 years, the church become liberal
because we had men in our pulpits who did not trust in the sufficiency
of God’s word. And so they brought in humanism
and philosophy and the latest gimmicks and all those sorts
of things. But we need to expect and demand faithful proclamation
of God’s word. Nothing less will do. The rest
is a placebo. It’s just making us feel good
about ourselves. And we’d be better off having brunch with
our friends than listening to that. But we need to demand and
expect faithful and powerful preaching of God’s word. And
we need to understand that it may make some people angry. You
might bring a friend and be all excited. Hey, Pastor Kratz, I
brought my neighbor. And I might make them mad because I preach
the gospel, right? That’s not what we want, but
that could be what happens, but we understand what’s taking place. Here’s a final thing for you
to consider. Know your gospel. Now one of
the reasons we’re doing this class on the order of salvation
is I want you to know how God has worked to save you. And I
want you to understand the ins and outs of how Christ has accomplished
your redemption and how the Holy Spirit applies it to our lives.
But I also want you to be good evangelists. I want you to be
able to say, you are a sinner and Jesus saved sinners. And
I want you to be able to explain the nuts and bolts of just, you
know, in your own way. But we want to be clear gospel
proclaimers because that is the only way people get saved. Now,
if we tell people things that aren’t true, When somebody gets
hurt or they’re in a bad way, we start just feeding them all
kinds of stuff, don’t we? It’s gonna be okay. Somebody’s
laying on the side of the road dying and we pat them on the
head and say, don’t worry about it, it’s gonna be okay. That’s
not true. It may not be okay. But we know the gospel. We know
sin. We know man. We know Jesus. And so we want to know the gospel,
the facts and the promise and the summons. And we want to explain
to people, you are at a fellowship with God, and you must be in
fellowship with God, and that only happens in Christ. And what
a glorious thing it will be to see people respond. Let’s close
by singing how sweet and awesome is the place. And I want you
to notice, it’s a little like Amazing Grace, but notice how
it speaks of God working in us and through us, but how blessed
we are that God has saved us. Let’s stand and sing the song.
And maybe Julie, you should play it one time through just so we
get accustomed to it.