God of the Gospel pt2

Intro

Good morning and welcome all again to Iglesia Bautista Horeb’s English service. Thank you all for joining us as we celebrate and remember our amazing God who loves us and meets us where we are. Today I’m going to hit hit on three Points, that Good calls us irresistibly, that God sustains us faithfully and a final conclusion to give us a whole sense of what our aim is again, to show us that the heart of the church is to be the Gospel! something that we’ll never grow out of.

Last week priscilla walked us through this first portion of who the god of the Gospel is. That he is just, sovereign and effective and that in all these things he is good. Not good the way we think of good. But good good, what it truly means to be good, holy and righteous. As a reminder, since we are in a topical sermon series we will be skipping around.

Lets see how this good God, our good God calls us and sustains us.

God Calls Irresistibly

John 6:37–44 ESV

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

With that I can end my sermon here, but I wont. God calls us irresistibly. Something irresistible is something that is too attractive and tempting to be resisted or something too powerful or convincing to be resisted. I believe that in the case of God’s grace both of these are true.

Psalm 34:8 ESV

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!

I want us to consider the ordo salutis. This document essentially takes what scripture teaches on how someone is saved and lists it out. If you look into it please do not turn it into a salvation checklist or a todo list. It’s just meant to be an illustrative tool. and even then if you look at it, how many of these steps do you actually perform? Getting back to it, I want us to consider regeneration and conversion. Some equate the two terms though they happen simultaniously, they are different. God by his spirit opens our eyes, ears, minds and turns our hearts to flesh in this we can’t help but say Amen I believe! AMen I see my need, amen Jesus is My savour, hossanah!! the lord saves, hallelujah I am his.

at its simplest I look at it this way. I love ramen, Jason and nat know I love ramen, they invite me and priscilla out to eat a new ramen joint that is supposed to be super good, that we’d love it and so on. I am hesitant, first cause anyone who knows them, knows they like food spots in Long beach then also I have a spot I love to go to cause I can find exactly what I want. I remember saying, man I’m not driving to long beach to soup today. We didn’t go. Then one day priscilla and I are starving after service one, we decided to order from this spot because we kept hearing how good this place is, then boom! we’re hooked!

in a very reductionistic sense this is what happens, we kept hearing about how great this Jesus guy is and how we’re missing out on salvation and grace and that he’s not to far, by God’s grace and by the work of his spirit we get the chance to taste and see and now nothing measures up to Hiro Nori’s pork belly and pork broth. Now nothing can measure up to goodness of God, though we still sin, it ends up reminding us of how nothing measures up...

Though from depravity to heaven, or glorification, it is technically linear, and here we see a mountain top, it feels more like this...

God’s grace is irresistible because we get a taste and know that it is so good that we can’t say no.

“The Spirit of God has often subdued stubborn wills and made men willing in the day of His power. He uses no force but that of love, and this is the conquest which brings most glory to God.”

Charles Spurgeon

Jesus says in our verses today, all that the father gives me will come to me, and later, no one can come to me unless the father draws them. By the father’s grace we are drawn in to see that he is good and we are kept to eternity.

God sustains Faithfully

Another way I say this is that we are carried to eternity. Jesus eloquently says, “And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.”

John 10:27–28 ESV

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

Paul says this:

Philippians 1:6 ESV

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Family, we are carried into eternity. we will persevere. To persevere is to continue in a course of action even in the face of difficulty or with little or no prospect of success. If anything, this sounds more like God’s work. lol. We are such hopeless creatures. Theocast says, God perseveres us. This illustrates that even in our unfaithfulness, God is faithful. Which is why Jesus said what I read earlier and why paul reminds the church at philippi and why a couple weeks ago I said that I’m convicted to believer that sanctification is God’s work alone and we walk in the results.

Joe thorn says:

“No doubt, true believers will struggle with sin. They can and will fail—and sometimes in serious ways. But God will give them the divine help they need so that their faith remains intact and that learn repentance.

I love that joe gives us the bare minimum. That their faith remains intact. No qualifiers. He is saying that no matter how far off someone might be even after a profession of faith God will bring them back to the fold. I love that Joe reminds of what the Second Lndon baptist confession says.

They may fall into grievous sins and continue in them for a time, due to the temptation of Satan and the world, the strength of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of means of their preservation.9  In so doing, they incur God’s displeasure and grieve his Holy Spirit;10 their graces and comforts become impaired;11 their hearts are hardened and their consciences wounded;12 they hurt and scandalize others and bring temporary judgments on themselves.13  Nevertheless, they will renew their repentance and be preserved through faith in Christ Jesus to the end.14

In other words, in jesus words, They will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

Romans 8:29–30 ESV

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

We are kept safe and secure in jesus christ. These subjects show us that God is faithful, gracious, good, loving, merciful, just and ultimately our father.

These weeks we learned about the history of the Gospel, Justification, forgiveness, faith and repentance, reconciliation, good works, and more recently the God of the Gospel. This is all to inspire us to love deeply as we are loved deeply. Why learn any of this? so that we see the mountain that was flattened in order for us to be made sons and daughters of God our father!

“The gospel is the heart of the church. It is not simply one thing we believe, but the defining truth for the Christian and the church. The gospel makes us who we are and the church what it is. In the gospel, we see the glory and grace of God. God’s love for sinners, Christ’s death for sinners, and the Holy Spirit’s conversion of sinners is the outworking of the grace of the gospel.

If the gospel is not the heart of a local church, then something else will be. Something good but less important will become our focus, and we will lose sight of who we are in Jesus, what He calls us to be, and how He calls us to live together as the church. But when the gospel is the heart of the church there is the fruitful life of worship, fellowship, and mission. May the gospel be the defining truth in your life and church always.”