Benjamin Hatch brings a message on 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 as part of our series "God's Power in Our Weakness," a series in the book of 2 Corinthians.
Redeemer Bible Church of Fort Bend
God Has Shone in Our Hearts (2 Corinthians 4:3-6)
(soft piano music) - You're listening to a podcast by Redeemer Bible Church. Come visit us Sunday mornings at 10.30 a.m. or visit our website at redeemerfortbend.org for more information. Thanks and enjoy. (soft piano music) - Second Corinthians chapter four. This morning we're gonna read verses three through six. Beginning in verse three. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God who said let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. This is God's word where all God's people said. Amen, let's pray. God speak to us now from your word and do the work that only you can do. For I can preach, but your spirit must illumine and regenerate and save, and so God, we look to you now and ask that you would be here in our midst and meet with us through your word. And Lord, we pray that we would understand this is not performance art, this is not a lecture, but that we are here to receive from you by way of this sermon, your truth. And we pray God that we would submit to it and grow from the encounter and we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. The great poet of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, wrote about a revival meeting in his childhood church. Quote, "They held a special meeting for children. "That night I was escorted to the front row "with all the other young sinners "who had not yet been brought to Jesus. "My aunt told me that when you were saved, "you saw a light and something happened to you inside "and Jesus came into your life. "She said you could see and hear "and feel Jesus in your soul." I believed her. I had heard a great many old people say the same thing. So I sat there calmly in the hot crowded church waiting for Jesus to come to me. The preacher preached. Then he said, "Won't you come to Jesus, young lambs, "and he held out his arms." And the little girls cried and some of them jumped up and went to Jesus right away. But most of us just sat there. A great many old people came and knelt around us and prayed. And the whole building rocked with prayer and song. Still, I kept waiting to see Jesus. Finally, all the young people had gone to the altar and were saved, but one boy, Wesley and me. Wesley said to me in a whisper, "I'm tired of sitting here. "Let's get up and be saved." So he got up. Then I was left all alone. My aunt knelt at my knees. The whole congregation prayed for me in a mighty wail of moans and voices. And I kept serenely waiting for Jesus, waiting, waiting, but he didn't come. I wanted to see him, but nothing happened to me. Now it was getting really late. I began to be ashamed of myself, holding everything up so long. I began to wonder what God thought about Wesley, who certainly hadn't seen Jesus either, but who was now sitting proudly on the platform grinning down at me. God hadn't struck Wesley dead for lying. So I decided that maybe to save further trouble, I'd better lie too. So I got up. Suddenly the whole room broke into a sea of shouting. Waves of rejoicing swept the place. My aunt threw her arms around me. That night I cried in bed alone and couldn't stop. I had deceived everybody in the church. I hadn't seen Jesus, and now I didn't believe there was a Jesus anymore since he hadn't come to help me. This story is so tragic on many levels. It shows that we must be very careful and precise in how we speak about spiritual things, especially the young people. Because the slightest degree of unmet expectation or misunderstanding can so doubt that causes a lifelong rejection of the truth. It shows us that much that is called revival really isn't. And that if you apply social pressure to people to believe, the result is often a false profession of faith. But I tell you this story principally to illustrate the key point in today's sermon, which is that ultimately salvation is not a result of human willpower or decision-making. Langston Hughes wanted to be saved, but in the end, he wasn't. Maybe that confuses you today. Many of us may not have categories to explain how that could happen. Because contemporary evangelicalism has been deeply shaped by revivalist thought, which reduces salvation to simply a product of human choice, a decision of the will. But today as we continue our series in the book of Second Corinthians, we'll see actually salvation is a result of the sovereign will and regenerating power of God alone. God chooses who he will save. And God accomplishes their salvation by shining the bright transformative light of Christ into blind and dead hearts. And that's what we'll see today in Second Corinthians chapter four, verses three through six, in two points. First, why people don't believe the gospel. And second, why people do believe the gospel. Start with our first point. Why people don't believe the gospel. Over the last few verses, Paul has made two points. First, God has given him a glorious ministry proclaiming the new covenant, which is to say that salvation is available to sinners through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus died for our sins. Jesus is risen from the dead. And all who trust Jesus are made righteous. We receive the Holy Spirit, who secures us, transforms us and enables us to serve God. And second, Paul explained how he conducts this gospel ministry, not like the false teachers troubling the Corinthians, who were deceptive, twisting the scripture, concealing hidden sinful motives. No, Paul preaches the gospel by making a plain statement of the truth, we saw last week. He holds nothing back. He just puts the gospel out there with clarity and boldness. So, Paul is preaching the greatest truth in the history of the world. And Paul proclaims this truth clearly to everybody. But these two points now lead to a hard question. If the content of Paul's ministry is really that great, and if the presentation of Paul's ministry is really that clear, then why doesn't everybody just believe? Well, now Paul tells us, look at chapter four, verse three. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. Although Paul presents the gospel clearly, that doesn't mean that all of Paul's hearers understand it, or see the glory in it. No, despite Paul's clarity, his message remains veiled to some. You say, what's this stuff about veiling? This comes from chapter three. Where Paul talked about Moses, whose face was transformed so that he radiated the glory of God. But Moses put a veil over his face to conceal God's glory from the hard-hearted Israelites. And Paul said this same thing was still happening in His time, because now God's glory is seen supremely, and Jesus, but that glory has been veiled. It has been hidden from the unbelieving Jews of Paul's day. Second Corinthians three, verse 14. For to this day when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. So when the unbelieving Jews of Paul's day, or of our own day read the Old Testament, they don't perceive the glory of God in Jesus, or the gospel. They don't see that the gospel's better than the law. God's glory remains hidden to them. Now here in chapter four, verse three, Paul makes a similar but broader statement. The glory of the gospels veiled to all who are perishing, not only to unbelieving Jews, but also to unbelieving Gentiles. So despite the glorious content and clarity of Paul's message, people don't respond with belief, because they are unable to understand or perceive the glory of the gospel. They remain in spiritual darkness. In fact, this darkness actually makes the gospel repulsive to the lost. If you've been a Christian for very long, I'm sure you've seen examples of this. You're trying to talk about the Bible with some Christians and some non-Christians here about it, and they want to walk away. They get angry if you're talking about church. Friends, this happens. Why? Well, Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 2, 15. We are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved, and among those who are perishing. To one, a fragrance from death to death, to the other, a fragrance from life to life. Just as believers perceive the life-giving power of the gospel and hunger for it, more and more, pulses to those who are perishing, his gospel ministry reeks of death. So not only do unbelievers fail to perceive the glory of the gospel, they're actually repelled by it. Why? Well, the Bible gives us a few reasons. Jesus says in John 3, 19, light has come into the world, and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works are evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. Friends, we're all sinners. Not just by choice, we're sinners by nature. Sin appeals to us. And apart from Christ in our natural condition, we really love sin, which means that we hate God and we hate Jesus and we hate the gospel because the gospel tells us the truth about our sin. It exposes it for what it is, damnable rebellion. So like our first parents in the garden, we try to hide from God so that we can continue in sin free from the truth about who we are and what we do. Similarly, Romans chapter one says, men by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God as plain to them because God has shown it to them in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse, but although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. God has revealed that he exists in creation. On some level, everybody knows God is there. None of us can truly say at the end, well, I didn't really know there was a God. No, nature deprives us of that excuse and yet people suppress the truth about God. We pretend he isn't there and we call it wisdom. Actually, it's folly as we suppress the truth, our thinking becomes corrupted. We call evil good and our minds are further entrenched in darkness. So the Bible tells us the glory of the gospels veiled to the lost because sinners suppress the truth that they know and because they prefer their sin to Jesus. But as we continue now in our passage, Paul shows us one more terrible truth about the natural condition of humanity, which explains why unbelievers are unable to perceive the truth or glory of the gospel. Look at verse four. Paul says, in their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. Why don't unbelievers believe the gospel? Because Paul says they have been blinded by the God of this world. What's he talking about? Let's start with this. The Greek word translated world here does not usually speak about places, but rather time. And Paul uses this word in many of his books to speak about history having different ages. And Paul uses this word to describe our current age like this in Galatians chapter one, verse three. Grays to you in peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age. Our current age is characterized by evil. That shouldn't surprise us. The Apostle John says in first John five, the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. Three times in John's gospel, the Lord Jesus calls Satan the ruler of this world. So that's how we should understand what Paul's talking about here, the God of this age is Satan. Now please understand, Paul is not saying that Satan is actually a God or that he is God's equal. No, Satan is not eternal, he is not all knowing, he is not omnipotent, Satan is a created being, but friends he is immensely wise and extremely powerful. Why is that? Paul tells us later in this book in chapter 11, verse 14 that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. That shouldn't surprise us because Ezekiel 28 and Job one seem to indicate that Satan is a fallen angel. So Satan is not a God and yet Paul calls him the God of this age, why? Because Satan has immense God-like power over our time and world. Now again, please understand, Satan does not have this power because of his strength or victory. The idea is not that Satan has defeated God or rested control of this world from God. No, the authority Satan has was granted to him by God. I might shock us, why in the world would God give Satan power and authority over this world as a judgment on sin and sinners? We see a similar idea in Deuteronomy chapter 32, verse eight. When the most high gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. That is to say, after God judged humanity, sin at Babel and he split humanity into nations, God further judged humanity by turning the nations over to the sons of God. And Moses uses the same language in Genesis six to describe sinful fallen angels. So God gave the nations over to the demons. And we see this in texts like Daniel chapter 10, where nations have demons that stand behind them as spiritual powers. And it seems that in the same way, this whole world has been put under judgment by being consigned to the rule of Satan himself. And how does Satan use his authority? And Jesus said in John 844, he is a liar and the father of lies. Revelation 12, nine calls him the deceiver of the whole world. So Satan uses his deceptive power to cause all the nations and all unbelievers to follow his agenda and join his rebellion. That's why Ephesians two says he is the spirit now at work in the sons of disobedience. All who do not believe in Christ are under his influence. They are dancing to his tune. Now please understand that Satan pipes different tunes to different people. All rebellion does not always look the same. Consider the predominant form of unbelief in our culture. Secular humanism. It says, live however you want, be whoever you want to be, revel in sin because tomorrow you die. That looks very different from the predominant form of unbelief in the Middle East. Islam, a legalistic and restrictive false religion. One approach is licentious. The other is legalistic. In virtually every respect, these two systems of thought are totally incompatible. But what do they agree on? Opposition to the gospel. Friends, that's not an accident. That is because there is one intelligence that ultimately stands behind every human culture and every human system of thought and every false religion and every political movement. Friends, Satan has utterly ensnared humanity in his clutches and he hates Christ and his gospel. And by utilizing his power and authority over this world, Satan has blinded the lost to the glory of the gospel. He has been empowered to enslave and mislead humanity, to hate the truth and love the lie. That's part of the consequence of our sin. Romans 5, 12 says, sin came into the world through one man and death through sin. So death spread to all men because all sinned. Or Ephesians 2 says, you were dead in sins and trespasses. Friends, we are sinners by nature and that means in our innate condition, we are spiritually dead. And part of that means we all begin in the wretched state of being dominated by Satan and therefore spiritually blind. And friends, please understand this blindness is total. It renders us utterly incapable of seeing any goodness or appeal in the gospel so that we would never in our own power make any move of initiative towards God. We are not capable of it because in our spiritually dead condition, we cannot apprehend any spiritual truth. I don't know about that. That sounds extreme. Listen to Paul in 1 Corinthians 2, 14. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Unbelievers cannot understand spiritual truths, period. Now, let me clarify this. When I was in college, our religion department had 10 atheists and one liberal Christian. But every one of them could give you an accurate representation of how evangelical Christianity talks about the gospel. Sin and the deity of Christ and the death of Christ, resurrection of Christ. Intellectually, they understood all of it. So when Paul says the natural man does not understand spiritual things, he's not saying that unbelievers have intellectual difficulty comprehending the words that are coming out of our mouth. Now, what lost people don't perceive is the reality, the glory, the value or the appeal of the things of God. That is the blindness that Satan has put upon humanity. That's why the lost don't believe the gospel because their minds are darkened and blinded by the evil one. But while Satan has immense power, we've got to remember he is not God and he's not God's equal. He's not going to win. His ultimate destiny is defeat, humiliation and torment in the lake of fire. A poll may call Satan the God of this age, but Satan's power is a brief temporary reign subject to God's greater eternal rule. Listen to how Paul talks about God in 1 Timothy 1. He is the king of the ages, plural. Satan may be the God, small G of this age. God is the king of all the ages. Satan may have some authority and rulership now, but it is limited in duration. God still reigns over all ages and over all people. And friends, God will set all things right and he will triumph in the end because he's good and he's more powerful than Satan. First John forces, he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. And yet as we consider the greatness of God, we might wonder why would God come up with this plan? Why would God turn the world over to Satan and let him blind unbelievers like this? Because friends, God is very angry about sin. God judges sin and one way God judges sin is by turning people over to their rebellion, by confirming them in their hardheartedness and ensuring their condemnation. If you have questions about that, listen to what God told Isaiah in Isaiah chapter six about his preaching ministry. Go and say to this people, keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy and blind, their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn and be healed. God told Isaiah, I'm gonna send you to go preach to my people not so that they will repent and believe, but so that they will get bored and confused and asleep and their hearts will be hardened and they will be destroyed. That might shock us to hear. We don't hear much about this in evangelicalism today. But that's what the Bible says. In fact, not only does God say that to Isaiah, centuries later, Jesus quoted the same words to explain why he taught in parables, to obscure the truth from the perishing, to confirm them in judgment. Friends, God judges sin, and this is one way he does it. Now, maybe we don't like that, but we're not God. Reality does not cave to our preferences. God is God, and this is what he has said, and it simply remains for us to believe it. Now, maybe we say, well, what about second Peter 3-9? The Lord is not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach your penance. Doesn't God want everyone to believe? On one level, absolutely he does. That's why we read in Acts 17. God now commands all people everywhere to repent. God has made a good faith offer of the gospel to all the world, but in our spiritual darkness, none of us will respond. Romans 3, verse 10, "None is righteous, no not one, no one understands, no one seeks for God." And that's because they're spiritually blind. This is a somber point, is it not? What should we take from this? Number one, we need to understand the human predicament rightly. Our problem is not just nobody's perfect, or we all make mistakes. Our problem is that we are a fallen race corrupt to the core, utterly bent in opposition to God, and therefore we are a condemned race and handed over to Satan for the judgment of spiritual blindness. This is a truth many people throughout the ages have tried to run from, because it offends us, because humans are proud creatures. Are we not? We don't like to hear about our guilt or our blindness, or our inability. So people come up with more palatable theologies that don't honestly acknowledge what the Bible says. So in the fifth century, the English monk, Pelagius, denied that humanity was sinful by nature. He said, "Well, we're not really spiritually blind. "Our will's not impaired. "We're each born as a blank slate. "We can choose evil, or we can choose good from ourselves. "Everybody has the same fair choice." That might sound very reasonable to us. That might sound very fair to us, but friends, it's not what the Bible says. And the early church condemned it as heresy, and rightfully so. But I would venture to say this is exactly the idea that many, many Christians have today. We deny the extent of our fallenness. We deny that we are spiritually blinded to the glory of the gospel in our natural condition, but that's what the Bible says. So the first application of point here is we need to ponder what the Bible really says about our natural condition, and we need to believe it. And we need to turn away from false understandings of the human condition that minimize our sinfulness and maximize our ability. Number two, we need a more realistic view of the world around us. Tuesday is election day. And I've seen many preachers over the last few years hyping this one up. There's a struggle of good versus evil. And I've heard from a lot of Christians talking about this election in spiritual terms, seemingly believing that if you vote for whichever candidate they prefer, evil will be stemmed and good will prevail and society will be transformed. Friends don't believe the lie. That's what that is. This world isn't gonna change for the better suddenly no matter which candidate wins. There isn't going to be an authentic spiritual revival because this politician or that one takes office because the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. Every culture and every government lies in the power of the evil one. And if you say, well, I don't think that's true. I don't wanna hear that. Listen to Psalm two, the kings of the earth set themselves. The rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his Christ saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. Worldly elites want to be free from the power of Christ, all of them. That's what unbelievers want to. So believing friends, please go vote if you want to but I don't want you to be swept into a frenzy or overcome by anxiety or despair or excessive optimism about any of these things. Or about anything else that's going on in our world around us. Sports or work or hobbies or anything else, all of these are fine things, none of them are ultimate. There's a reason Paul says at the end of this chapter in chapter four verse 18. We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient but the things that are unseen are eternal. Friends, all the stuff and pomp and baubles of this world are passing away. The world wants to tell you, oh, it's all so important. Friends, it won't endure because it's not from God. Don't put your hopes in the things of this world. Stop putting your hope in politicians, economics, environmental activism, social reform, education, whatever it is. Psalm 146 has put not your trust in princes in a son of man in whom there is no salvation. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob whose hope is the Lord his God. God wants you believing friend today to look to Christ and the gospel and eternal realities. That's where our hope needs to be. That's where our priorities need to be on that which will last forever. But this world and its stuff lie in the clutches of the evil one and will not endure but it will all be brought to nothing. I come down to my second point which is why do people believe the gospel? And when we hear the truth about spiritual blindness we might respond like the disciples in Matthew 19. When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished saying, who can be saved? But Jesus said with man, this is impossible but with God, all things are possible. Friends, God does what we cannot do. And that's what our passage now says. Look at chapter four, verse six. For God who said, let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. If people cannot naturally perceive the glory of the gospel, why does anybody ever believe? Because God intervenes. He does what he did at the beginning of creation. Daniel read to us earlier. In Genesis one, darkness was over the face of the deep and God said, let there be light. And there was light at the outset of creation. Everything was dark and then God spoke and the bright light of his glory shined upon the world. Friends, that's what God does in our hearts when we're saved. Initially we're in darkness. Ephesians forces, they are darkened in their understanding alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. But then God who performed the miracle of creation by shining his light into the darkness once performs the miracle of recreation as he shines his bright light into the darkness of our hearts. That was one of the great promises of the new covenant, Ezekiel 36. I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you. Our darkened dead heart and hearts are replaced by something new and alive and connected to God by his spirit. That ancient promise has come to pass for God's people. That's why Paul says in our next chapter, in chapter five verse 17. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. Believers have been made new. This is what theologians call regeneration. God recreates his people. Now, to be sure, the newness God gives us at conversion is not our ultimate glorified experience. We are not yet in our resurrection bodies. We are not yet free from sin, suffering and death. We are not yet what we will be. But we are different than what we used to be. Praise God for that. That's why Paul says in Ephesians 4, 23. He talks about an old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires. And he contrasts this with a new self, created after the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness. Friends in Christ, we've been made new. We are what Jesus in John three calls born again, which he explains means born of water and the spirit. And he's not talking about the rain water. Jesus has given us the new birth born of the spirit. And Paul tells us more about that in Titus chapter three, verse four. When the goodness and loving kindness of God, our Savior appeared, he saved us, not by works of righteousness, not by works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior. So that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. So how are we saved? Number one, by God's grace, it's a free unearned gift. Number two, by God's mercy, as he chooses to forgive our sin. And number three, by God's spirit, who washes away our unrighteousness, who regenerates us, who makes us new, and all of this is because of number four, Jesus Christ who died for our sins, who is risen, and who has sent the Spirit to perform this wondrous work in our lives. Friends, that's how we're saved. That's how we come to saving faith. That's how we're justified, how we are accounted by God as righteous. That's how we become the heirs of eternal life. But how do we obtain these benefits? That is, how do we get regenerated? As Paul says to Titus, it's not by works done by us in righteousness. We don't achieve regeneration by doing anything to earn God's favor. Now, listen to what Jesus says about regeneration in John chapter three, verse eight. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. That is to say, regeneration is not a mechanistic thing. We're not doing engineering here. There isn't a system or a process that we just do over and over that mass produces conversion. That was the error of revivalist theology, which was so big in this country in the 19th century and so influential. The dominant theologian of American revivalism was Charles Finney, and this is what he said. Conversion is not a miracle or dependent on a miracle in any sense. It is a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means. What he's saying is, if I apply the right psychological and social pressure upon people in mass gatherings, I can produce a massive number of decisions to follow Jesus. Friends, that's not biblical. As Langston Hughes's example shows, it doesn't always work. Because as Jesus says here, regeneration is not something that we can direct that comes from the Spirit, and the Spirit does things we could never plan or predict. Because his regeneration of people is directed solely by the sovereign will of God, not us. Friends, from beginning to end, salvation is of God. And that's what Ephesians 2 says. Right after Paul tells us we're dead in our sins. He says in verse four, but God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead and our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved. God intervenes when we were spiritually dead to give us life. And isn't that how it has to be? Because who raises the dead? God's the author of life, we aren't. Who is the creator and the re-creator? It's God, not us. And so it naturally follows that our regeneration and faith and salvation is a gift that comes entirely from God. It is not something that originates in us, our will, or our good decision-making. It is entirely sourced in God alone. So then how are people saved? By God directly intervening in our lives, shining his bright light into our darkness. And understand if God does not do this work in us, we will not respond to the gospel. That's what Jesus says. Listen, this is a lengthy passage. Listen to this, Matthew 11, 25, if you want to follow along. Jesus declared, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to little children." Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me, my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. Those words are incredibly clear. The Father is sovereign over all things, and in His sovereignty, He chooses to hide these truths, that is the truth of the gospel from some people as an active judgment. We've talked about that today. But thankfully, He also chooses to reveal these same truths to other people, and Jesus is empowered to reveal the Father to those that He has chosen. And so it is this choice made by Jesus that ultimately determines who knows the Father in a saving way, who will exercise repentant faith, and who will not. So salvation is not the product of our merit, our excellence, our intelligence, our goodness, our virtue, our insight, our wisdom, our decision-making. No, it is entirely the outworking of the sovereign will of God. That's why some people believe in others don't. Now this is known as the doctrine of election, and this is not a popular doctrine in the American church today. But whether it's popular or not, it's in the Scripture. And so again, the question is, will we believe what the Scripture says? Or will we manufacture some artificial explanation by contorting the Bible to comfort ourselves with an attractive lie? Friends, the Bible says election is true. And I wanna tell you, that's a comforting thing. If salvation was dependent on us, we would all be damned. Because salvation is ultimately dependent upon God, some will be saved. And that's what Jesus says in John 644. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. It doesn't get clearer than that. We cannot in ourselves come to God without his prior action. And Paul tells us in this passage, that action is his regenerating us, his shining the bright light of the gospel into our dark and horns. That's how he draws us to himself. He shows us the truth about Jesus. And that's what this passage says. The light that God shines into our hearts is the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. God gives us knowledge, not just intellectual understanding, but he makes us understand Jesus. That he is, as verse three says, the image of God. That's what happens when God remakes us. He makes us think about Jesus differently. That we understand who he really is. As Hebrews one says, he is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. Jesus is God, and he totally, perfectly displays the divine nature along with the Father and the Spirit. And so what happens in regeneration is God takes our dark, ignorant hearts away. He shows us the glory of God, the Son Jesus, who has taken on true humanity. He shows us the all surpassing value of Jesus and our great need of the salvation available in him, which he has secured by his death and resurrection. And then we repentantly believe in our justified. Now, as we hear all of this, maybe you discouraged your anger. And they think, man, this just sounds so unfair. I want to say to you with all respect and love, Paul gives us the answer to that objection in Romans 9.20. Who are you, oh man, to answer back to God? Well, what is molded, say to its moulder, why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? God is sovereign and holy and just, and the judge of all the earth will do what is right, and this is what he has decreed. And again, friends, I think this is encouraging, because don't we want our lost family members and friends to be saved? And yet if we think about their lives, honestly, and their decision-making, I think each of us knows that if it were really and finally up to them, they wouldn't turn and be saved. Because if it had really finally truly been up to us, we wouldn't have been either. If we want them to be saved, we should be thankful that their fate ultimately rests and the hands of our good, all-knowing God and his good will and not theirs. And we can be thankful and confident of this promise. Jesus says in John 18 verse 9, "Of those whom you gave me, I have not lost one." Friends, God has purpose to save a people for his possession. Ephesians 1 tells us he designated these people from before the foundation of the world, and they will be unfailingly drawn by the Father. They will be regenerated by the Spirit, and they will therefore believe. But hearing that, maybe you wonder, well, then why should I bother to do anything about evangelism? If God's responsible to do all of the transforming and all of the work, where do I fit into that? We'll listen to Paul back in chapter four, verse five. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. Paul wasn't interested in promoting himself or building a cult of personality around himself. He wanted to serve others, and the service he rendered was proclaiming the gospel of Jesus, that Jesus is Lord. That was the earliest Christian confession. What does it mean? Well, the word Lord is the most common way the Old Testament speaks about God. And so to confess that Jesus is Lord is to confess the deity of the Son, that he is God. And to confess Jesus as Lord is also to acknowledge him as our rightful ruler. It is to renounce any other primary loyalty in life. It is to acknowledge that Jesus is the right to tell us how to live, and it is to commit to following him. So Paul serves the lost by proclaiming Jesus, that he died for our sins, that he has risen from the dead, that he is God and man, that he is our rightful ruler, and salvation is available only as we turn from our old lives of sin to follow him. That's Paul's ministry. But why does Paul carry this ministry out? If salvation's ultimately all about God and generating people, why preach? Why plead with people? If in their darkness they won't be able to understand or respond. Because the act of preaching is the earthly means God has ordained to occasion, the regeneration of the lost. Romans 10, 14 says, how will they call on him in whom they've not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they've never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? Faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. God is a God of means, and the means God has ordained to occasion, the transformation and salvation of sinners is the proclamation of the gospel. God's spirit works as God's people speak, God's word to the lost. As to the doctrines of human depravity and election and regeneration, don't destroy our need for evangelism, they explain the importance of our evangelism. Because evangelism is when God's spirit works to transform and save his people. Now what should we take from this second point? Friends, we need to understand evangelism in a more biblical way. Because of the influence of revivalist theology, many Christians have become convinced that we primarily win people into the kingdom by building attractive ministry environments and persuading them through rhetoric or entertainment, 'cause we think it's just like sales, we've just gotta convince you. So we dress the gospel up and we make it seem like it's gonna make every aspect of your life better and we paper over the difficult demands and make sure it all seems non-threatening and we hope people will buy our product. Friends, that's not a biblical understanding of evangelism. Instead, number one, see evangelism as Paul sees it. Last year, there was a study of practicing American Christians and it showed that 50% of those under the age of 40 and about a quarter over the age of 40 believe evangelism to be immoral because you're telling other people they're wrong, you're judging them. Now when we hear statistics like that, we see how pervasive the deceptive power of Satan is even inside the church. How does Paul see evangelism in our passage? As a service. Friends, it is the most loving service we can perform for others. Because if people don't come to Christ, they will remain dead in their sins and will face God's wrath forever. That is a horrible outcome. That is the tragedy of the ages. And friends, frankly, it's garbage if we are afraid of judging other people by telling them that they're wrong. While we sit indifferently before the truth that God will judge them and cast them into hell. If we really care about other people, we must proclaim the gospel in our families and in our friend groups and in church and among our coworkers. Jesus tells us to do this in Matthew 28 when he says, go make disciples. He tells us to do this indirectly when he says in Matthew 22, love your neighbor as yourself. If we want the goodness of salvation for ourselves, ought we withhold that from our neighbors by not speaking the truth to them? If we really love other people, we should pursue them with the truth and plead for their souls. Because that is how God rescues people from this evil age. We need to know evangelism is not optional for the Christian. It is an essential part of what it means to love other people. And it is a spiritual discipline commanded of us. Number two, we must see evangelism as spiritual warfare. The lost are in bondage to the evil one. He has darkened their minds. They cannot come to Christ on their own. They are spiritually blind. And there is nothing we can do in our own power to reverse that. What they need is the action of God. Only God can shine into their hearts. Only God can set them free. And so to evangelize this, to step into the cosmic conflict between God Almighty and the evil one. And it is to war for the souls of the lost who are enslaved by the God of this world. Friends, it's spiritual warfare. And that means we must bathe our evangelism in prayer. Because as in all spiritual warfare, the only way there's a good outcome is if God rises up and defends his people and rescues the lost. And friends, he works through our pleading and regenerates those that we're trying to win. But friends, if he doesn't use us, nothing will happen. But if he does, people will be saved. And that leads to my third point. We must see evangelism as Paul does. We must bathe it in prayer. My third application of point is this. Friends, let us evangelize with a restful spirit. Confident in the good sovereign purposes of God. Evangelism is a huge task. And if we really think about someone's eternal destiny that we're trying to impact, that can overwhelm us and it can paralyze us and it can fill us with anxiety. Am I the right person to speak with my friend about this? Am I persuasive enough? Am I charismatic enough? Am I prepared enough? Have I chosen my words well enough? And then if it doesn't go the way we hope, will we beat ourselves up? Did my poor choice of words just send my friend to hell? Friends, evangelism's important. It's required of us, but I want you to know today you don't need to have any anxiety about these kinds of things. We should do what Paul did. Just put the gospel plainly in front of people as plainly as we can. And then remember the truth of this passage. Ultimately, friend, it's not your persuasiveness or choice of words or winning personality that saves anybody. It's the sovereign power of God. And God can work through the weakest gospel presentation to save the most hardened sinner. Evangelism is not performance heart. It is not sales. Friend, pray a lot beforehand. Speak the truth. Yes, do your best to have an answer if they ask you questions. I'm not saying not to do that. But just speak the truth plainly and let God do what he'll do with it. Your success or failure in your evangelism comes not from whether or not they believe. The only issue is have you made a plain statement of the truth. Whether or not they believe that's God's problem. Just speak the truth. And the glorious promise of this passage is that sometimes more often than we might think, God will use our feeble efforts as part of his way to save the lost. That he will use us to shine his light into darkened hearts and set captives free and bring the lost unto salvation. And so friends, let us approach evangelism with confidence in God's faithfulness and in his great purpose, trusting that he is sovereign and that he can use weak people like us to fulfill his great purposes and let that confidence embolden us to try all the harder to win our children and spouses and friends and acquaintances to Christ. Let me conclude like this. I want you right now to think about yourself. Do you see the value of Christ? Do you see your sin as something evil and hateful and destructive? Do you see the offer of the gospel as attractive, beautiful and glorious? I implore your friend, be honest with yourself. If Jesus has no appeal to you, if all that I'm saying up here just sounds like empty babble or if you're repelled by all of this talk about Jesus and sin or maybe you relate to Langston Hughes experience at the beginning of this sermon, you made a commitment once just to shut some people up and pretend you're a Christian to keep the peace around you and your family. Friend, I want you to seriously consider the very real possibility that you're spiritually dead and that you are on a collision course with God's wrath. And the only thing that can change your life is to hear the gospel. And so I plead with you once more in the hope that God might touch your heart today. Please recognize that a life all about you, doing what you want when you want is rebellion against your rightful ruler, Jesus. And he is right to pronounce that kind of life evil and worthy of eternal condemnation. But out of love and in obedience to the Father, he stepped down into this world as one of us. He died on the cross in our place. He took the judgment we should have endured forever. He has risen triumphant and glorious over sin and death and salvation is available only as we turn from our lives of sin to follow him as our God and Lord. And friend, I plead with you if God is drawing you and enables you to repent and believe, do so. There is salvation in no one else. This is the one and only path of life. Choose life that you might live. And friends, if you do know Jesus today, then let us believe the hard truths we've encountered today. Let us recognize Satan's power in this world and stop clutching the things of this world. Let us plead more with God to intervene in the lives of our loved ones. And let us obey Christ's command to make him known in this world that he might use us to bring many sons and daughters to glory.