HoHum:
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! These famous words were said by President Ronald Reagan in a speech at the Brandenburg Gate near the Berlin Wall on June 12, 1987. 29 months later the wall was torn down. Interestingly, these famous words were originally written by Peter Robinson, a presidential speech writer. President Reagan liked them and insisted on saying them despite some opposition from other advisors. Isn’t that what preachers have been doing for millennia? Taking the words of Scripture and repeating them and this produces results in sinners unto their salvation. Speech writer is the Holy Spirit and preacher is the president and the sinners are the Soviet Union.
WBTU:
Last Sunday night we talked mainly about the Day of Pentecost and the new age of HS
In the OT era the HS main work was to equip selected individuals for roles of service for God’s people. The HS came upon people but He did not necessarily stay. In the NT the Holy Spirit lives within us as those who have obeyed the gospel commands.
Tonight and the next few weeks the saving work of the Spirit we will attempt to explain. Tonight we are focusing on what the Holy Spirit does in the life of a sinner in order to bring that sinner into a state of salvation. Sinner tonight- an unsaved person.
How does the HS work upon the heart of the sinner? Must divide this into two parts:
How does the HS work to bring a sinner to faith and repentance?
How does the HS work upon the heart of the sinner during the moment of conversion?
Tonight we are focusing on #1. How does the HS do this? Two ways:
For instances:
HS works through the Word
Ephesians 2:8: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith (also called belief)
Two parts to belief
Assent- judgment of the mind that a statement is true. Believing that something is true.
Trust- a decision of the will to act upon the truth to which the mind assents. Personal surrender to the consequences of the truth. Assent aspect is about the person and work of Jesus Christ, the trust element is a commitment or surrender to Jesus as Lord and Savior
Repentance. Literally means a change of mind. A change of mind about sin. Two aspects
An intellectual act- accepting the truth that we are sinners and under condemnation to hell.
Act of the will- change of our attitude toward sin. An inward hatred of sin and a desire to be rid of it; a commitment and determination to forsake sin.
What is able to generate such faith and repentance in the hearts of sinners? The primary instrument by which this is accomplished is the Word of God, all of it both law and gospel.
Romans 10:17- Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ.
John 20:31- But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
How does the Word of God generate faith and repentance? It informs us so that we are able to give assent to the truths concerning sin and salvation. It also moves us and stirs us to act upon, to trust in, those truths. The message of how Christ died for our sins and arose from the dead has the power to stir our emotions and prod our wills to make the decisions that are necessary elements of faith and repentance. Without the Word of God, there would be no faith and no repentance, and therefore no salvation.
What does this have to do with the HS? God the Spirit is the author of everything in the Bible. Whatever is accomplished by the Word is ultimately accomplished by the Spirit.
John 16:8: When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment. The word for convict means to expose, to bring to light, to convince. Here the HS plays the role of prosecuting attorney agains the world, exposing its sinfulness and convincing it of its need for a solution to God’s righteous judgment.
How does the Spirit do this? This teaching of the convicting of the Spirit immediately follows Jesus’ promise that the coming Spirit would guide the Apostles into all truth (John 16:12-15), that is, through his activity of revelation and inspiration.
This is linked together as cause and effect. The Spirit will convict the world by the means of the inspired teachings of the Apostles and Prophets.
The connection between the work of the Spirit and the power of the Word is seen in Acts 7:51-52. This implies that when the Word of God is resisted, the Spirit himself is also being resisted. On the other hand, when the Word succeeds in producing faith and repentance, it succeeds as an instrument of the Holy Spirit which he prepared for that very purpose.
The Spirit influences the hearts of sinners by working on them indirectly through his own inspired Word. Indirectly is an important word because some believe that The Spirit zaps an individual while hearing the gospel and so they are enabled to repent and come to salvation. Has nothing to do with their minds. That is not what we are saying.
Holy Spirit works through special providence
Does the Spirit ever work directly upon a sinner’s heart? Yes, but only through special divine providence and never apart from the Word.
What do we mean by “special divine providence? First, what is providence? God has knowledge of and is in control of everything that happens, both in the natural world and in human history. The majority of events are simply monitored and permitted by God and this is sometimes called “general providence.” However, if God so chooses, he may intervene in world events and cause things to happen that would not have happened without his intervention. Some of these things are miraculous, in other words they break the laws of nature. Others are not contrary to the laws of nature but still take place only through God’s special intervention. These can be called God’s special providence.
In acts of special providence God may manipulate natural processes, such as he may cause a drought or bring rain, or he may heal a sick person. God may work without a person’s thought processes by bringing forgotten ideas or facts to one’s consciousness, in order to influence that person toward making a certain decision.
Must clarify this by saying that this is providential activity of God, not just the Holy Spirit.
God may confront the sinner with circumstances that disturb him, or that cause him to think seriously about his life, or that “put the fear of God” into him, near death experience. natural disasters, accidents, tragedy involving a loved one.
Here is an example of special providence. This was told by a missionary who was active in China when the country was taken over by communists. The missionary was arrested and subjected to severe questioning and mental torture. Throughout the procedure he would continually utter a quotation from Psalm 31:15, “My times are in your hands.” In what he describes as his “final ordeal,” he was offered a knife and tempted to take his own life. He responded, “My times are in your hands.” He reports, “The screaming voice of the interrogator demanded to know where the words came from and he threw a Bible before his victim. The Bible fell open at Psalm 31. In the midst of this open Bible was the very quote the missionary had been saying all along: My times are in your hand. This was too much for the superstitious interrogator who fled the room.” The missionary was then released and allowed to go home. The interrogator did not come to saving faith as far as we know, but he clearly was convicted of sin, righteousness, and judgment. How do we explain this? Just chance, dumb luck, God had nothing to do with it? We better not say that. God has the power and He did this. Not all providential acts will be this dramatic.
We speculate that the devil tempts us by bringing evil ideas into our consciousness. If this is true, then the Holy Spirit can also cause certain memories to haunt our minds, pressing us to conviction. Devil is not stronger or more powerful that the Holy Spirit.
Not sure of the state of his salvation but “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”, # 28 in our hymnal, was written by Robert Robinson. He wrote it early in his life. In stanza three, Robinson speaks of being "prone to wonder, prone to leave the God I love". This seems to be a forecast of his later life, when he lapsed into sin, unstableness and involvement with Unitarianism. There is a well-known story of Robinson, riding a stagecoach with a lady who was deeply engrossed in a hymnbook. Seeking to encourage him, she asked him what he thought of the hymn she was humming. Robinson burst into tears and said, "Madam, I am the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had now, to enjoy the feelings I had then." Just chance, dumb luck?
How about Lydia? Acts 16:14: One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message.
This does not mean that Holy Providence and the Holy Bible will irresistibly produce faith and repentance. Look up Amos 4:6-12. Purpose of all of this was to lead them to repentance but they closed their minds and hardened their hearts. God working upon sinner’s hearts is universal in our day but also resistible. Irresistible grace is not true.
IF we don’t believe that God uses special providence to bring people around, then why do we pray for the lost? What do we expect to happen? Romans 10:1: Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.
If we do believe this, then we can trust that God will bring about the desired results from our evangelistic efforts. Maybe not respond now but the Lord will use our efforts to bring them to respond later. Also, the other side of this coin is that we should not believe that it is because of our winsome presentations that someone responds. Maybe they were just ready like Lydia.
