Competency and Sovereignty

It's been a great joy to be here. The fellowship has just been delightful. The conversation has been edifying. The presentations on Bunyan and Dag have been so helpful and encouraging. I'm going to go back and read Dag all over again. It is such a blessed literature. Tonight I'm speaking on soul competency. and divine sovereignty. And for the text, I want you to turn with me, please, to the book of Luke, Chapter 4. Luke, Chapter 4, we'll be looking at verses 14 through 30. It is? Yeah, I turned it on. Am I not up high enough here? I just have such a delicate voice. And Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through all the surrounding district. And he began teaching in their synagogues and was praised by all. And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as was his custom, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read. And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him, and he opened the book and found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of all the synagogue were fixed on him. He began to say to them, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. And all were speaking well of him, and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from his lips. They were saying, Is not this Joseph's son? And he said to them, no doubt you will quote this proverb to me. Physician, heal yourself. Whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well. And he said, truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown. But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land. And yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian. And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things. And they got up, and drove him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went his way." It's a powerful prayer. how deep the love must have been that prompted you to send your eternally beloved son, the one who is the radiance of your glory and the exact representation of your person, your being, your character. into a world that treated him so. How astounded we are that the one who is the Lord of Glory was hated from the very first moment of his public ministry. And murderous threats already were being poured out against him. And plotting as to how to get rid of him began. But did not culminate until his time had come. Until his hour arrived. What great obedience Did the Son show to you when He said, Behold, I am come to do your will, O God? To come into a world in which He would be treated this way, the world that He had created, the world that He sustained, the world that was justly under the wrath of the Son. The psalmist already had said, Kiss the Son lest ye become angry. The Son is the Lord of glory. The Son has all the gates of splendor open to Him, and those in heaven say, Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in. And yet this King of glory, speaking truth, teaching the words that He inspired, was disbelieved and hated. So Father, we pray that as we consider this passage of scripture, you will help us to see something of our own heart and our own soul. You'll see something that we would see something of the grace that has operated in us to save us. To save us from such blindness and deadness and hardness of heart, to save us from such hatred and variance, such malice. And to save us from a deserved wrath that could very easily have lashed out at each one of these on this occasion. And yet, probably many of these who desired to cast him off the cliff in that first instance were among those who were converted upon hearing the gospel later. So we ask that you would attend to us and you would teach us about your spirit. That as we look at this scripture, we would be more conformed to Christ and more appreciative of your saving grace. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Now, I've selected this passage of scripture for this topic, soul competency in divine sovereignty, because within the passage of scripture we very clearly see the issue of divine sovereignty set forth. This was Jesus' intent in moving to the Old Testament examples that he used after having announced his own messiahship, and he is at least implying in his using these examples that his messiahship will partake of the same kind of discriminating sovereignty that has always been exercised by God in his dealing with his sinful people. But it might not be quite as clear as to why I'm saying that this has something to do with soul competency. Well, the reason that I selected this scripture for that is because it indicates precisely that which is in the heart of every individual. It indicates precisely that which constitutes our moral reactions to the presence of the holiness of God and to the statement of God's prerogative. It is a clear presentation of how we respond with our whole being to the truth when it confronts us. It shows us, perhaps more clearly than any event that I can think of, with the exception of course of the crucifixion itself, but so early in the life of Christ, this particular narrative shows us just how desperately evil we are and how all of our being Our heart, our mind, our understanding is directed towards selfish ends and away from the glory of God. Everything that constitutes our moral responsibility is turned in hostility to Him and in rejection of His truth. And if we are to be saved, then what we see pictured in this passage of scripture about our moral nature must be reversed. We stand in need of forgiveness. We stand in need of justification. Those things are true and those things are obvious and those things are received by most evangelicals. The doctrine of justification, though it is undergoing some attack now is in the confessional history of virtually all evangelicals, the necessity of substitutionary atonement and forgiveness is clear across the board, even in those that are not Reformed and not Calvinistic for the most part, but the issue of Our moral responsibility and the nature of our soul and what God must do in order to bring us into conformity with the demands of the Gospel is not quite so clear in the minds of many evangelicals or in the confessional tradition. But this passage indicates to us something about what we can expect in the history of Jesus' ministry from this point forward in the Gospels. as to how he would be treated and it is a continued historical narrative of the moral disposition we have and exactly what grace must accomplish before we will believe the gospel that Jesus preached and then of which he becomes the principal and exclusive subject. How does God change our internal moral propensities. What happens inside of us that changes from people who had cast Jesus off the cliff simply because he tells us the Bible truth into those who will repent of sin and mourn for sin and hunger and thirst after righteousness. As well as the story of divine forgiveness and propitiation and removing us from condemnation, this is a story of moral renovation. And it is no less accomplished by divine sovereignty than was creation and the entire plan of salvation from the beginning. The first hint that we have of what Jesus is confronting is after he has announced that he is the one who fulfills these prophecies out of Isaiah chapter 61. He had closed the book. He gave it back to the attendant. He sat down. Everyone's eyes were fixed on him, and he said that this scripture was fulfilled. In their hearing. The spirit of the Lord is above me. Because he anointed me. To preach the gospel to the poor, he sent me to proclaim release to the captives. Recovery of sight to the blind. To set free those who are oppressed. to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. Now, there are implications of this, of course, for social action of various sorts, because the gospel does affect us in that way and can have those implications. But if we look at the entirety of the New Testament, we realize that what Jesus has in mind mainly in fulfilling of this prophecy is that there are deeper captivities than simply a physical captivity. There's a captivity to sin. And it's much more difficult to release people from death than it is simply to declare an incitation in a physical way. And recovery of sight to the blind. Jesus demonstrated his power over sight and he gave many people a recovery from blindness, but that blindness that he had in mind mainly was a spiritual blindness that has eyes to see and cannot see and refuses to see. And those who are oppressed, There is all kind of political oppression and there is injustice in this world and Jesus' teachings can be used to try to set right some of these things. But from the entire gospel narrative and from the explanation of this in the epistles, we learn that that oppression that is the most difficult to overcome, in fact, that is impossible with men to overcome, is the oppression of covetousness that we have in which we place our interests above any other interests. The oppression of sin. And Jesus is the one as Messiah who can relieve us from that oppression. And the favorable year of the Lord, to find God favorable toward us, to find an era of time in which we enjoy His favor rather than His wrath, in which we actually embrace Him and love Him and find His presence to be something that is joyful. rather than crying for rocks and mountains to fall upon us and cover us in the wrath of the Lamb, that when He comes again we will find this to be favorable, to be wonderful, to be joyful. How does this come about, that the Messiah can bring all of these things? He has announced Himself as the One who does this. And at first they were speaking well of Him, but He says immediately, No doubt. You will quote this proverb to me, physician, heal yourself. Whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well. If you're claiming to be the Messiah, prove to us you are the Messiah. Do the things you did in other places. Do something fantastic. Do something wonderful. Prove that you are the Messiah. Prove that what you have claimed about fulfilling this prophecy actually is true. And Jesus says, No doubt, you will quote there, no doubt you will have that reaction. Jesus knew what their reaction was going to be. Now, this is not the only time in his ministry when he knew that a reaction would be that way. You recall when there were many that were following him at the end of the second chapter of John and he was doing a great many miracles. The text says that Jesus did not commit himself to them because he knew what was in man. And then immediately in John 3, Nicodemus comes to him and says, Master, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no man can do the signs that you're doing except God be with him. And Jesus has the same sort of interaction with him that seems abruptly to change the subject or even perhaps insult the spiritual inside of the person talking to him. Here they are saying things. Oh, this is wonderful that he's saying these things. Is this not Joseph's son? And he seems to be rude. No doubt you will quote this proverb to me. And with Nicodemus, Nicodemus says, oh, you're a teacher come from God. No man can do these things except God be with him. And Jesus says. Truly, I say to you, you cannot see the kingdom of God unless you're born again. You cannot understand the things of the kingdom, you cannot see them, you cannot even grasp the issues of the kingdom. You have no concept of what they are, what holiness and justice and truth and righteousness and humility and repentance and faith and the glory of God and the love of God. You don't have any grasp of that and you cannot have it unless you're born again. This seems to be a rather curt and short response and a rather abrupt and rude change of the subject, but it was right on target with what Jesus knew was in man. The whole history of Israel had been this way. In Deuteronomy 30, when Moses is giving the law to them again, and he asked them, will you keep this? And they all say, oh, yes, yes, we will keep that. We love this covenant. We will do it. And then you get to Deuteronomy 31, Moses saying, you won't keep this after I'm dead. You're going to get other idols. You're going to disobey this. You're going to fall away. You're going to do all of these things. And then after that, subsequent to the time of Moses, we have the history of Israel simply as one event after another demonstrating the truthfulness of this hardness of heart so that we could draw the conclusion that not even God Himself can change them by merely external application of discipline. God chastises them, God brings drought, God brings famine, God brings punishment, God brings captivity, He brings death. He makes them sick from the top of their head to the sole of their foot. They are putrid. They have no comeliness about them at all, and still they will not repent. And then we go into the book of Revelation, and we see the plagues coming up on people and scorpions stinging them, and they're hating, and they're crying out, and they know it as judgment from God. And what do they do? They do not repent. So from the beginning of Scripture to the end of Scripture and all during the ministry of Jesus, we see demonstrated that no matter how much external revelation is given, no matter how much external light is given, no matter how clear it is, no matter how much discipline comes, no matter how many prophets come, no matter how many demonstrations of patience and demonstrations of external mercies come, they will not repent. And Jesus knew that would be the case with him in his own ministry. He knew that he had a cup to drink and that an hour his hour would come and that he would be rejected. And finally, the attitude that they saw that they demonstrated right here would come to culmination in his crucifixion. And so he says, no doubt. You will quote this proverb to me, Jesus was under no delusion. as to what was going on and what would happen in his ministry. This, no doubt, is not simply his knowledge of what his hometown crowd was like. It was not that he knew all of their personalities and he had grown up with them and he would point to them and I'd say, oh, I know you're a skeptic and I know... He was talking about human nature in general and what the response would be to him as Messiah, the one who is the incarnate presentation of the prerogative of God over His creatures. This is a universal human condition. Paul, in the book of Romans, as he is describing, all of the advantages that we have being made in the image of God, the advantage of nature, the advantage of conscience, says that we suppress the truth in unrighteousness. And then the advantage of the revelation of the written law comes. And they turn this into a badge of honor for themselves, thinking it gives them righteousness simply because they had it, but they fail to obey it. And the conclusion is that the whole world is found guilty before God. There's none that does good. There's none that does right. There's no fear of God before their eyes. They do not seek God. The poison of the ass is under their lips. Their feet are quick to shed blood. In the way of truth, they do not know. And so Jesus saying, no doubt, You will quote this proverb to me was an indication of the spiritual condition that they were in. Now, every minister should realize this also in the present day and the condition that many churches are in. Due to some of the programmatic. Delusions that we have been involved in, sometimes you have the world in the church and you can expect that no matter how careful you are and how loving you are and how pastoral you are and how much you try to avoid offensive language or offensive words or things that, because they're misunderstood, will inflame, no matter how much you try to do that, still sometimes you cannot avoid trouble because God's prerogative in the giving of His salvation is a matter of hatred. to people. So Jesus knew that as his messiahship unfolded as the kind of messiah that he actually was became clearer and clearer that they would reject him. And so he is going to demonstrate to them why he is so confident that they will not accept this claim that he has made that they're wanting some evidence of his Messiah ship that will benefit them that will be to their advantage. And so he tells them two stories. Or reminds them of two Old Testament stories that they knew well. And the point of these stories is. Twofold. First of all. The Messiah. is going to come to give his benefits to people beyond the nation of Israel. It is not simply to restore the glory to Israel. It is not simply a nationalistic thing. There are still some delusion of this, even in the apostles after the resurrection, when they asked Jesus, are you at this time going to restore Israel? But he is announcing here that that is not the purpose of his work. It is a redemptive work. It is not a work of restoration of national glory. And the second point that he makes in these stories is that God is absolutely and utterly sovereign in the dispensing of the blessings of salvation. And so the stories he tells, he says Elijah. In the days of Elijah, there were many widows in Israel. And they would say, yes, there were many widows in Israel. And they would be remembering the story of Elijah as to how he had been by the brook Cherith and he had drunk from the brook and he had been sustained by God there. The brook dried up and he was told to go to Sidon, outside of Israel. And there a widow, who was not a Jew, he would meet her and she would take care of him. He did that. You remember the story as to how he went to this widow. He said, could he have some water? She was getting him some water and said, oh, by the way, when you're in there, bake me some bread. And she said, I have just a little oil and a little meal. I was going to bake the bread. I was going to be sick so I could cook it and then we're going to eat. My son and I were going to die. He said, well, just go ahead and do it anyway. Bring me the bread first, then you and your son can eat. I don't know why he did it in that order, just to see if she would actually do what he said, and so she did. And sure enough, she did this, and the crews of oil continued to produce oil, the meal continued, and as long as the drought was there, the prophet was able to eat, and the family was able to eat, and the widow did not die. Eventually, the son died, and Elijah restored the son to life. But this is a strange thing. God could have done that for any widow. in Israel. He could have restored many dead sons to life in Israel. It was a time of drought that God Himself had set upon them and He has mercy on a widow who is not an Israelite. And then He said, and what about There were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian. This is just one of the most charming, best historical narratives in the Old Testament. 2 Kings 5, I think. A beautiful story. Naaman's a valiant warrior, but he was a leper. And on one of his raids into Israel, he's taken out some captives, and a young girl who is an Israelite is one of his servants. And evidently, she has grown to love the family. She knows that Naaman is a leper, and she goes and she's talking to the family. She says, Oh, if my master could only know the prophet that is in Israel, he would heal him. And Naaman hears this, and Naaman goes to the king. My servant girl said that there's someone in Israel that can heal me. Can I have a little time off? and go see about this. And the king says, that's great. Take this gold and take this silver and take these changes of clothes and go down there to the king and I'll give you this letter of recommendation. Give it to the king and say, get me well. So he takes all this stuff and it goes down there to the king and the king runs his clothes and says, oh, what are you trying to do? Start a war? Do you think I can heal a leper? Why do you bring this to me? Well, Elisha somehow hears about this, so he sends the king and says, tell Naaman to come to me that he may know there is a prophet in Israel. Well, Naaman goes down there. Elisha doesn't even come out. He sends his servant out there, tell him to go and dip seven times in the Jordan River. Naaman is offended. Why, he should have come out and should have waved his hand and said, begone leprosy. And then I would look down and I would see it all dissolve in front of me. A magic trick. And aren't the rivers of, I think, Abaqa and Farfar in Damascus much better than this muddy river here in Israel? Well, I'll just go and dip in those rivers. So he starts to walk away and his servants say, is this You're a big warrior, you fight against people. Is it too hard to just go and dip yourself seven times in a river? Can't you do that? He consents, he does it, dips himself seven times, he's healed. Of course, you know the rest of the story. He wanted to reward Elisha. Elisha wouldn't take it. Gehazi is greedy and Gehazi goes and gets the clothes and the money and Gehazi gets the leprosy. But weren't there many lepers in Israel? Wasn't this something that was even more reprehensible to an Israelite than it was to a Syrian? I mean, this is ceremonially unclean. This is something in which they have to separate themselves. He would never have been a captain active in military campaigns in Israel. Wouldn't it be more beneficial for an Israelite to be healed of leprosy? And yet this enemy of Israel, this non-Israelite, this Syrian, is healed of leprosy. Why? What was Jesus' point? His point was that if you will just think about the revelation you have, if you'll think about your own history, you will see that God has been discerning and distinguishing in his grace from the very beginning. And that is the kind of Messiah that I am. It seems that they caught on because the text tells us the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things. Filled with rage. Have you ever seen anyone filled with rage when they hear the truth? Now this was, Jesus was introducing his ministry this way because this was precisely how he had come. Even as God sent Elijah to a particular widow, the Father sent the Son to gain for himself a particular people. And Jesus didn't hide this during his ministry. In John 6 he says, all that the Father gives me will come to me and he that comes to me I will know I have cast out. No man can come to me except the Father draw him. He taught them this and sure enough when he taught this they forsook him, they left him, they followed him no more. In John 10 when the Pharisees have come and have asked him if you are the Messiah tell us plainly. And he says, I've told you and you do not believe. The works that I do in my father's name, these testify of me. But you do not believe because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I will release the captives. I will set free those who are oppressed. I will open the eyes of the blind. My sheep hear my voice. And I know them. and they follow me, and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I am the Father of one." The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Now, they stoned him because he was making himself equal with the Father. But in making himself equal with the Father, he was claiming to have all the prerogatives of Messiahship in the sovereignty that he has set forth before them. And so they pick up stones to stone him. This is not the kind of Messiah we want. If it is true that he's one with the Father and he's setting forth the truth, then all of our preconceptions about how the Messiah is going to benefit us as the religious leaders are going to fall to the ground and will be nothing. In John 12, Jesus is talking about his coming crucifixion. It entered Jerusalem. There was a great display of emotion on the part of many people. Others rejected them and said that this is a bad thing. They go plotting against him still. In verse 19 it says, You see, you are not doing any good. Look, the world has gone after him. And immediately after this, John introduces this idea, I think, picking up from the concept that the world has gone after him. Now there were some Greeks among those who were going up to worship at the feast. These then came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and began to ask him, saying, Sir, we wish to see Jesus. Philip came and told Andrew, Andrew and Philip came and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, saying, The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Now, there are many, many people who are much more alerted in the whole issue of gospel construction and gospel theology, and I enjoy reading that kind of material. of when I can. There is a theology that's in each one of these Gospels. Just because there's a theology that's constructed doesn't mean it's not true. It is true. There are many different truths that we learn from the life of Jesus. And each of the Gospel writers constructed the Gospel in such a way to bring out particular aspects of the ministry of Jesus and how we are to understand who He is as Messiah and the character of His atoning work. But I think that John is constructing this out of true historical material, these things really happen, but he selects these particular things, I think, to show that this whole idea that we have in John 3, 16, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him, that all those believing in Him, would not perish but have everlasting life. And now we have, after this triumphal entry, the Greeks coming to Him and immediately Jesus says, the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. The world is seeking Him. And this death, the culmination of His Messiahship was not to restore the glory of Israel in the way they anticipated it. to make them the kingpins of the world. But it was first of all and foremost redemptive for people from every tongue and every tribe and every nation. And Israel would see themselves merely as the channel through whom the Word of God had been communicated, through whom the human nature of Jesus was established, through whom the prophecies were given. There are theological reasons for the establishment of that and there are apologetic reasons for all of that, but this does not give them righteousness in itself. This does not make them more susceptible to the saving work of Christ. This did not have the effect somehow of softening their hearts to receive the Messiah. If anything, in their sinfulness, they turned it into a disadvantage when it should have been a great advantage. But now Jesus, hearing that the Greeks are coming to Him, This concept of the world has come to fruition, and John records this, the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. And then he says, in verse 31, now judgment is upon this world, now the ruler of this world will be cast out, and I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself. It's a redemptive work that includes not just the Jews, but includes the Gentiles. There were many widows in Israel, but Elijah was sent to a widow in Sidon. There were many lepers in Israel. But Elisha, he'll name him the Syrian. There are many people in Israel who think that the special privileges they have had from God, even though they've abused all of them, constitutes their righteousness. But when the Messiah dies, he will draw all men to himself, not just Israelites, but people from every nation. And that the reason I have come, the reason, that which constitutes my glory, is not to lift Israel to a place of dominance, but to bring redemption that honors and glorifies the holiness and the justice and the law of my Father. And so Jesus is setting forth Himself. He is sent on an errand of mercy to seek and to save those the Father had given Him. Now, whether the Jews understood that he was saying all of that or not, I don't know. But he is clearly indicating that God sends his saving emissaries to people of his own choosing. And Jesus' indication that this at least includes those outside of the Jewish nation was offensive to them. Now, what is behind the rage here? Our text tells us that when Jesus had given them these two examples, the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things. They got up and drove them out of the city. What about this truth filled them with rage and fills us with rage? Well, one of the things, as I've already mentioned, two things that Jesus was indicating is that we all want to be in a position of privilege. We think somehow that we have gained merit before God, that we can do acts of righteousness to commend ourselves to Him. We have a sense of entitlement, a sense of personal self-righteousness. And when we learn that God can be absolutely arbitrary in the dispensing of His grace, when we learn that He would be just in condemning all of us, and that it is mercy in any single instance when anyone is saved, and that we have nothing in ourselves to commend ourselves to God, we have no righteousness. In fact, lest through ourselves we continually are hostile to Him, and many times hearing the gospel message of The loving kindness and the mercy of God is the very thing that inflames our sense of self-righteousness and entitlement against Him the most. It is just not fair, we say. God wouldn't do that to us. We don't even have a chance. We're just puppets. We're just robots. And so, we make of ourselves things that God never says we are and never treats us that way. In fact, the very reality of God's wrath is a demonstration that he considers us as morally competent. In our rebellion, in our depravity, in our deadness and trespasses and sins, in the alienation of our affections, in the fact that we do not seek God and that we pursue unrighteousness, that we seek the things that are our own and not those things that are others or Christ Jesus. All of these things exist in a heart that God considers responsible and competent to be judged. But we reject that truth. We don't think sin can co-exist, or this kind of sin can co-exist with our responsibility. We think that any kind of sin that predisposes us to love evil, therefore, somehow diminishes the responsibility we have. If we are so hostile to God that we cannot love Him, that means that we are not sinners and that God cannot judge us. If we have an internal predisposition to hate the gospel and to hate the law and to hate all of the things that God has said we should do, and we will not come to Him that we might have life, and we have eyes to see but see not, and ears to hear but hear not, if that is our condition, then God is unjust to judge us. But the Scripture tells us all the way through that the very core of our sinfulness is the disposition we have against God. It is that we are captive to the world, the flesh, and the devil, and to our own lusts. We refuse to receive the love of the truth. God treats us, even in our sin and our captivity, as morally competent beings. And then when he comes to us in sovereign grace, and sets before us the reality that unless there is something that He does in us, as well as outside of us, we will never come to Him. It is a doctrine that we hate. And so there's a sense of entitlement, a sense of personal self-righteousness that is the back of this rage, both in the time of Jesus, we can see it in the ministry of Paul, We can see it in his personal life as well as in the reactions of people against him. And we see it in the ministry of Jesus. But another thing that we see is that we have a very truncated view, a very truncated grasp of redemption. Now there are many discussions about exactly what kind of righteousness the Pharisees had and studies about that that try to say that they did not really believe in a works righteousness, but I think if we align ourselves simply with what the scripture says about the Pharisees and Jesus' evaluation of them and Paul's evaluation of his own life and his look at how the religious leaders of the day actually looked at the law, they believed that they could gain a righteousness before God by their obedience to the law. When Paul described his own righteousness, he said, concerning the law, blameless. That is, if he evaluated himself from the standpoint of being a Pharisee. But all things that were gained to me," he said, "'I count them as loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.'" So when we look at the issue of righteousness, I think that each one of us would say, oh yes, there is no righteousness that will avail us except the righteousness of Christ. There is nothing that can do us any good in our redemption except the righteousness outside of us. We would loathe the idea that there is someone else's righteousness that can contribute to our salvation. Or we would say, is there another intercessor? Can someone be an intercessor besides the Lord Jesus Christ? And we say, oh, no, no, no, no. We're not medieval Catholics who believe that there's the intercession of the saints and the intercession of Mary and the intercession of all these other things. That's pure idolatry. There's only one intercessor. That's the Lord Jesus Christ. Do we think there's anyone else who is a mediator except the Lord Jesus Christ? No, we reject the idea of a co-mediatrix in all of this. Jesus alone is the mediator. And when we look at these things and we Think, is there anyone who can participate with Christ in being our Redeemer? We would quickly say, oh no. Or is there any other originator of the whole idea of salvation? Is there anyone who was with God and served as His counselor? Who was with His Spirit and told Him what to do? And as he presents those questions to the Israelites, and Isaiah 4 to the answer, obviously, no one was there, no one can be your advisor, no one is your counselor, no one was with you when you created the world, no one was with you when you decided the actions of your providence. And we could just as easily say no one was there with him when he established the covenant of redemption. Even if you did not believe in unconditional election of particular individuals of salvation, you still would say that the plan of redemption is one that is a completely sovereign plan on the part of God that he established in his own mind, out of his own mercy. No one participates with him in that. And we would think it heresy to say anyone was there to participate with him in it. And so on all of these aspects of redemption, we see that there's a unilateral action and wisdom and plan and purpose on the part of God. But then when we come to these ideas of the necessity of an internal work of grace, that is just as much a part of the whole redemptive plan and the necessities of salvation. It's one of the aspects of sin that God deals with when he saves people. We would never say we can die and be crucified with Christ to aid us in our salvation, but we will say we can aid the Holy Spirit in changing my corrupt and dead heart to respond to God. We cannot participate with the throne, oh, but we can operate as a co-equal with the Holy Spirit. Well, Jesus, throughout his ministry, as well as pointing to himself as the one who comes to give his life a ransom for many, and is the one who is the shepherd of his sheep, who lays down his life for the sheep, also points to the necessity of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is the one who convicts of sin and righteousness and judgment. And the Holy Spirit is the one who raises us from death to life. And the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the things of Christ and shows them to us. And the Holy Spirit is the one who enlivens our mind to embrace the gospel. The Holy Spirit has no helper in his operation of releasing us from our oppression and bringing us to Christ. The work of redemption is a work of the triune God, and he has had no counselor in it, and he has no co-equal in it, and he has no helper in it. And when Jesus sets this prerogative of God before the people in his first public sermon, they looked at him with rage, took him outside the city, and tried to push him off the cliff. Well, what should our response be to this? First of all, our response should be one of deep humility and repentance that we see ourselves in this reaction to the Son of God who came in such mercy to save sinners. When He speaks the truth to us, we hate Him. We are no better than they are. And many times we had that same sort of response until there was the gracious operation of God's Spirit to show us Christ in His loveliness and His beauty. So it should bring us to repentance. Second, it should bring us to a deeper appreciation of the invincible purpose and grace of God. If He did leave us simply to our own devices and leave us to our own insights and leave us to our own spiritual powers and simply lay before us the case and say, now you may choose it for yourself, our response always would be, I hate that. He calls upon me to conclude that I am a guilty sinner deserving of hell, that I am under condemnation, that I need a propitiatory sacrifice of the Son of God to save me. I can't be that bad. It would be unfair of you to condemn one of your creatures. And yet the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ shows us that we cannot be saved apart from coming to a conclusion about ourselves that we are absolutely and utterly under the just condemnation of God and He can do with us as He sees fit and be completely fair and equitable and just in doing it. Only the Spirit of God can lead us to Christ in such a way that we see His atoning work as something that says many things about ourselves to bring us to proper repentance. And the third thing that we should see in this, we should have great encouragement. If the success of the gospel was dependent upon ourselves, Our manipulations, our devices, our understanding of human nature, our ability to create the climate which people can more easily make a decision. If they were dependent upon that, if God called us to do that, we would be miserable failures. And when we try to do that, we show just how miserable failures we would be. But. He promises us. That in the preaching of the word, there will be people saved. He has sent his son to save sinners. He will not see his son's death. Fail. He delivered him up. He spared him not. And if He spared him not, how shall He not with him freely give us all things? He will give us faith. He will give us repentance. He will call us. He will justify us. He will give us perseverance. He will bring us to glory. He will give us all things. And those ministers that are called by His grace when preaching His Word have the promise that when they lift up the sun, when they glorify the sun, God is pleased to honor His Son and the Spirit is pleased to glorify Christ. He loves to glorify Christ. The Spirit just, in eternity, is taking the glory and the wonder of the only eternally begotten Son of God and transferring and communicating to the Father the glory of this Son that He loves. And the Spirit loves to take all the plans and the purposes and the character of the Father and show them to the Son and be this constant source of love and glory between Father and Son. The Spirit loves to honor the Father's will and loves to glorify the Son and loves to take the word that he inspired to show us Christ. And when you preach the Bible and you preach the Lord Jesus Christ, the Spirit loves to take that and convict sinners and bring them to Christ. And he will do it. And until the Lord comes again, there are more people that are going to be saved. You can consider the patience of our God as salvation. And so you can be encouraged. God is going to save sinners through the preaching of the Word. That's the reason Christ came. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. A lot of people are going to be sad when Jesus comes again, but a lot of people are going to be very happy. And they will be happy because they have heard the Word of God preached through your ministries and the Spirit has taken that truth and brought them to Christ. And He then conforms us to His image so that we, with perfect freedom, the freest we have ever been, the most human we have ever been, The most competent we have ever been, we will be able to do nothing that is unholy, nothing that is unrighteous, nothing that is not in conformity with the will of God, nothing that does not glorify Christ and enjoy him forever. May God be praised. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your grace that you sent such a Savior. Lord, we are humbled that though there are many all around us, perhaps many who have not gone into deeper sin as we did, many not as self-righteous as we were, many apparently more favored than we, and yet you had grace upon us. We pray that we would see your gracious operations and the salvation of many in our ministries from this day forward. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.