"The Gospel According to the Spirit: Eternal Security" Ephesians 1:13-14 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Well Pastor Steve read verses three through fourteen earlier.

We're only going to look at verses thirteen and fourteen this morning, so I will read them for us now.

Ephesians one, verses thirteen and fourteen.

In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

John Barridge was a minister of the Church of England in the 1700s.

He was an exceptionally brilliant person who was born into somewhat of a wealthy family, although his family did not know the Lord, and he did not grow up knowing the gospel or even knowing the basics of the gospel.

1700s, England is in many ways similar to the United States.

It was very easy to grow up there having no knowledge of God or of his word.

Barridge's family was wealthy, and Barridge lacked what we would call a work ethic, and so his father sent him away to a farm in rural England when he was 14 years old to teach him to work with his hands.

While he was on his farm, he pled with his aunt, who was going to be raising him the next few years, that he did not want to work, but to send him to school.

Back in England, then there was a dichotomy if you were a worker, you didn't go to school, and if you were lazy, you would get to go to school.

And Barridge pleaded with his aunt, who did agree to send him to school, and Barridge would walk to school with a person who lived out there near him, also named John, and the two Johns would walk, and the second John was a believer.

And these 14-year-old kids, the second John, I'll call him after the book in the Bible, shared the gospel with 1 John on their walk, using their names as the bridge to the gospel.

But Barridge was convicted of sin, recognized that he was a sinner, but was not led to faith in Christ.

When his father finally summoned him home from the farm, he was shocked to see clean hands on Barridge.

And Barridge pled with him to send him to school in London, send him to school somewhere else, send him to school where he could have a job in the academic world, perhaps.

And so back then it was to Barridge's father's disgrace that he sent his son off to seminary.

Seminary in the 1700s was not designed for people who were passionate about preaching God's Word.

It was designed for people who didn't want to work on the farms.

So John thought this would be an easy way of living, and he went to seminary, went to Cambridge, actually, where he graduated, surprisingly, at the top of his class, and he had an aptitude for languages.

There's all kinds of Hebrew being discovered during this time, being old manuscripts being brought in from the Middle East in the 1700s, and Barridge became an expert at reading and teaching both Hebrew and Greek.

Soon people were traveling from all over, scholars from all over Europe were traveling up to London to sit under Barridge and have him instruct them on Greek and Hebrew.

He became somewhat well known for his intellect.

After about six years of teaching in the classroom, the Church of England told him that he wasn't being a good steward of his teaching gift and he needed to go be a pastor.

After all, he had graduated from seminary.

This is the Church of England, so go actually preach in a church.

And they sent him to a few different churches, and eventually, because he was so well known, they put him in one of the most significant churches in England, the church in Everton.

And there, Barridge emptied the church.

His preaching was awful.

It was horrible.

It was boring.

And Barridge later would describe why it was so boring.

He said, because he always preached on moralism, which does not make for interesting sermons.

His sermons taught people that lying was wrong and truth is good, that working hard was a virtue and laziness was a sin, that integrity was of the utmost importance.

That's what he preached, which is not a message that changes a heart, which is not a message that draws a crowd.

I mean, people don't want to come to church to hear sermons on virtue.

That's they can get that, you know, being lectured by people, not at church.

And so Barridge had just a deplorable ministry.

But then something changed.

After about 16 years in pastoral ministry, the Lord opened his heart to the truth of his word through the passage that described about the righteousness of Christ becoming our righteousness, 2 Corinthians 5.

And Barridge was soundly converted.

In fact, he made an announcement to his congregation that morning that they needed to come back in the evening because he was going to do something special.

And they came to the evening service, which even fewer came to the evening service then than did do his morning service, but everybody came that evening.

And what he did is in the courtyard of his church, he burnt his life works.

Everything he had written until that point, all of his sermons which he had manuscripted, he set them on fire outside of the church, which is a church growth trick you can only do one time.

And after that, he became known as a gospel preacher.

This is in the era of the Whitfield of Whitfield and of the Wesleys.

The Church of England banned people from crossing parish lines to hear other people preach in other churches because they were trying to confine you to your own area.

But Barridge just took to preaching outdoors.

He moved outside of Everton, out to the edge of it, where there was wide open spaces and fields.

And J.C.

Ryle describes Barridge this way, saying, Every morning when he woke up, there would be up to 10,000 people outside his house, and he would go out and preach every morning to the crowds established there.

Imagine being his wife.

Yeah, there's 10,000 people outside.

That became his life.

He preached to thousands and thousands of people.

Ironically, the Church of England ended up charging him with preaching too much.

They told him he wasn't being a good steward of his academic ability by spending so much time preaching.

And he pointed out to them that the whole reason he was in the pulpit is because they told him he wasn't being a good steward of his gifts by not preaching.

The archbishop told him that there's no way he could prepare enough to preach accurate sermons when he's preaching as frequently as he was.

And so he challenged the archbishop.

This is described in J.C.

Ryle's book, Light from All Times.

He challenged the Archbishop.

He said, Choose any passage at random from the whole Bible.

Give me 30 minutes and I'll preach a sermon on it on the church steps right now.

And he did.

And then he came back inside afterwards and told the archbishop, listen, the truth is I only preach in two seasons, in season and out of season.

And it was a line that was not original with him.

Of course, we'll talk more about marriage at the end of our time this morning.

But I think about his life and I think about the lesson from his life because it demonstrates one critical truth.

There is a big difference between being at church and hearing the word of God and believing the word of God.

Not all those who fill pews, not all those who attend church on the Lord's Day, not all those who are small group leaders in their Bible studies or who are involved in ABFs, not all those who are involved in ministry and the preaching and teaching of God's Word, not all of those who attend, participate, or even lead Christian ministries are truly born again.

It is very possible to spend decades in the Word of God without being converted.

It is possible to be in the church for years and years and years and not be a true believer.

My mind is drawn to Ephesians 1, 13 and 14 that describes this phenomenon by pairing it in a particular way.

It says, in him you also, when you heard the word of truth, and that is not where the period is.

The sentence goes on the gospel of your salvation and believed in him.

There is the hearing of the word of God that has to be paired with the believing of the word of God for the heart to go from estranged from God to reconciled to God through faith.

I joked earlier that it had been several months since we've been in Ephesians.

We were working our way through this one long sentence.

Ephesians 1, verse 3 through verse 14 in Greek is all one long sentence.

Ephesians 1:3

It's broken up into different verses for us.

There's even periods in capitalization, and a paragraph makes an appearance in there in the ESV in verse 11.

It's divided for us so that we can read it more easily.

But this is one long thought from the Apostle Paul.

And Paul is taking us and he's working us through the activity of the Trinity in our salvation.

This is a very theological passage.

He's taking you through the three persons of the Trinity to describe what they do in the believer's life.

How we went from alienated from God to reconciled to God, not just generically to the gospel, but how we went from being enemies of God to friends through the Trinitarian work of God.

Remember, the Trinity is our basic Bible doctrine that there is one God.

There is one essence of God, there's one being of God.

All the attributes of God reside in one being.

There are not three gods, there is one God, one being of God who contains within him all of the attributes of God.

All of the will of God.

There is only one will of God.

There is only one desire in God.

There's only one set of attributes of God, and they are in God.

Yet God is three persons: Father, Son, and Spirit.

All three of them are the being of God.

Yet the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father, they are not interchangeable, but they all subsist within the being of God.

This is the concept of the Trinity.

And Paul is walking you through how the three persons of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, operate in terms of our salvation.

Although God is one and God possesses one unified will, he works in our world through creation and through redemption in those three persons.

And the three activities of the three persons of the Trinity go in an order.

You see this in creation, where the Father speaks.

The Son is the word, and the Spirit hovers upon the waters.

You see this in the baptism of Jesus, that the voice from heaven comes down to the crowd assembled around the Son in the water, followed by the Spirit.

It is always Father, Son, Spirit.

All three persons of the Trinity are eternal.

All three persons exist from before time began, because God has always existed from before time began, and God exists as three persons.

That's what it means to declare that there's a trinity.

One of these chief Trinitarian passages is Ephesians 1.

And I know it's been several months since we've been here, so to bring us up to speed, it was my goal that all these sermons would be preached together so there'd be some kind of continuity, but to bring us up to speed, you understand that in verses 3 down through verse 6, it describes the work of the Father in the gospel.

The Father's work in the gospel is predestining us.

He chooses whom he will save.

And he doesn't choose like divine duck duck goose.

He doesn't make a bunch of people and then choose every fifth person or something like that.

He chooses before he makes anyone.

The language in verse 4.

He chooses us in him.

When we're still in the mind of God, we are chosen in him.

Verse 5, he predestines us.

So this is the authorship of the Father.

He's described as first because he's the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

So he is certainly first, even though all three persons of the Trinity are eternal.

The Father is described first.

He is the originator.

You could say it that way of this plan.

He is the one who chooses and predestines us.

The Son, then in verse 7, is the one who redeems us.

The Father does not come to earth as the Redeemer.

The Spirit does not come to earth as the Redeemer, but the Son comes to earth as the Redeemer.

He is the one that takes on human nature.

He is the one that is born to Mary.

And it, you know, people ask, could the Father have been come to earth incarnate, or could the Spirit have come to earth incarnate?

It's in the Son's nature to come to earth incarnate.

It is in the fact that he is the Son.

If you're going to think of the three persons of the Trinity, which is, which would be born as a human son, it would be the Son of God.

It is the Son who comes and takes on human nature.

And he is the one who dies on the cross, bearing our sins.

He takes our sins on him and he gives us his righteousness.

That is the great exchange.

He is the Redeemer, He forgives us of our sins.

And then Paul pauses his description here.

He backs up a little bit.

He hints at what the Spirit will do in verse 9.

The Spirit's one who makes known to us the mystery of his will.

But this is a plan, it says in verse 10, a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him.

Verse 11, we obtain an inheritance in this.

This is all three persons of the Trinity, according to the purpose of Him, of God, who works all things through the counsel of His will.

And if you remember, we talked about this phrase, the counsel of His will.

It's a Trinitarian phrase.

That all three persons of the Trinity are sharing the same will.

They're all doing this together.

The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are all operating together because they have one will.

It's called a council, but there's three persons.

You wouldn't say this in English.

You wouldn't say, How did you make the decision?

Oh, I took counsel with myself.

I had a team meeting.

I shared wisdom with myself.

Me, myself, and I collaborated.

We had our counsel and we decided this was the best course of action.

So I, yes, I did get counsel from myself.

But it is fitting for God to speak of Himself that way because of the Trinity.

The Father and the Son and the Spirit share one will.

They all operate with one will, and yet because they're three persons, they can collaborate, they can counsel together and then act in the world in that way.

And I'm belaboring this point.

You might think in your mind, why is it that important for me to understand that they share one will and operate in that order?

Because I know the tendency of human thinking.

It's very easy for us to think that the Father has one will.

The Father is mean and wrathful and full of vengeance and lightning bolts, and he's going to come after all the sinners in the world and judge them, and he's on his way to judge sinners, and Jesus like leaps in front and takes the bullet for us.

That we are saved because Jesus loves us and he operates differently than the father does.

The father comes with wrath and Jesus saves us from the vengeful Father.

But that is not the teaching of the Bible.

The teaching of the Bible is that the Father, Son, and Spirit all share the same will.

They all have the same objective.

Salvation is their design.

The Father chooses whom he will save.

The Son dies for those people, and then the Spirit actually redeems those people.

They are not operating with different lists.

The Father doesn't have a list of people he is going to save, and then the Son has a list of people he's going to try to save, and the Spirit has a different list of those whom he's actually going to save.

The three are working with the same list because they have the same will.

The Father predestines and chooses.

The Son dies, and the Spirit comes and saves those people.

They're working together because they have the same will.

That's the lead up to verse 13, where it says, in him, speaking of Christ.

Christ is the antecedent in verse 12.

You heard the word of truth.

It's the gospel of your salvation.

You believed in him and you were sealed.

So I want to describe our conversion with the story of John Barridge in her mind and the work of the Trinity in her mind.

I want to describe our conversion.

I'll give you three descriptions of it.

First, our conversion is signed by faith.

Signed by faith.

Our conversion is signed by faith because it describes in verse 13, you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and you believed in him.

Now hearing comes from the word of truth, it says.

Romans 10 says that faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the words about Christ, by a speech about Christ.

You hear the word of truth, and that leads ultimately to your salvation.

This language is all over the Bible.

You don't hear the good news from other books.

You hear the good news from the very mouth and the very word of God.

The Bible alone, as Paul describes it in verse 13, here, is the word of truth.

He's speaking of the gospel here.

The gospel is the good news that God in the person of Jesus Christ became man, that there was a substitution on the cross where our sins became his and his righteousness became ours.

He took the wrath of God in his own self and then he resurrected from the grave on the third day.

That's the good news.

But that comes to us through the Bible.

That's why it's described as the word of truth.

Colossians 1, verse 5 says there is hope stored up in heaven through learning the word of truth.

Colossians 1:5

The Bible repeatedly refers to itself as the word of truth, the book of truth.

It is truth.

Let this book be true and every man a liar.

That's from Romans, Romans 3, verse 4.

Romans 3:4

Let God be true and every man a liar.

This is the book that measures all other truth claims.

People write all kinds of books.

People make all kinds of declarations, but people cannot write or make a declaration like this.

This book alone is infallible.

Alone it is infallible.

Every other human work has fallibility, has error in it.

The Constitution has error in it.

I'm glad you're sitting down when you hear that.

It is not a perfect document.

Your favorite book has mistakes in it, has errors in it, represents a worldview inadequately.

Every product of the human hand has error.

People lie.

This book doesn't.

And so this book becomes the standard by which you measure truth, because this is the book of truth.

Other books are not.

Psalm 119, verse 142.

Psalms 119:142

Your righteousness is righteous forever, O Lord, because your law is true.

There is no other book that is 100% true.

This book, Psalm 19, verse 7, the law of the Lord is perfect because it revives the soul.

Psalms 19:7

Nevertheless, hearing this perfect book does not save you.

Hearing this perfect book, hearing the book of truth, is not effectual in your salvation.

It does not actually save you.

All kinds of people hear the word of God and yet remain unconverted.

Hearing the sound waves as this book is read, those sound waves do not penetrate the heart.

As I said earlier, you can't be saved without hearing the word of God.

Hearing the word of God is a necessary condition of salvation.

God only saves people who have heard the word.

God doesn't save anybody apart from his word.

The word is necessary for salvation, but the word is not sufficient for salvation.

Not every person who hears the word of God is saved.

This is a big theological distinction in the Bible between the external call of God and the internal call of God.

The voice of God goes out to the whole world.

There's natural revelation.

Wherever the sun goes, there's the declaration of God's holiness, that God is the creator, he is perfect, he is holy.

Your conscience is activated, you're a sinner, you are not.

Wherever the rain falls, Jesus says, you have testimony that God is a loving God and your sin should convict you because you have hatred towards your neighbors.

Everybody in the world who has seen the sun or felt rain should know that God is the creator, God is good, God is holy, and we are not.

And yet people suppress that truth in unrighteousness.

They reject that truth.

They don't want to deal with that truth.

The word of God bounces off of them like toy arrows.

It can't penetrate their conscience.

It can't penetrate their heart because they are hard-hearted.

They love their sin.

Paul preaches the gospel to a large crowd.

Not everybody in the crowd gets saved in Acts 17.

Peter preaches the gospel to a large crowd in Acts 2.

Not everybody who hears the words, hears the gospel presentation, gets saved because hearing the word of God is not enough to save you.

There's no salvation apart from it, but it requires more than it to save you.

Many who have heard the word of God will be lost.

Many who have heard the word of God in church every Sunday for decades will be lost in their sin because they are not born again.

That's the distinguishing feature.

Acts 2, verse 37.

Acts 2:37

The crowd hears Peter preach and they cry out to him and say, What must we do to be saved?

The Peter's preaching cut them to their hearts, and they say, What must we do to be saved?

And Peter didn't say, Hear the word of the Lord.

No, the word of the Lord was designed to break them, but what would save them?

The law is designed to crush, but what builds up, what restores?

That's the gospel.

That is belief in the gospel.

And that's why it is paired in verse 13.

You've heard.

The word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, the good news of Jesus Christ, now it saves you, and then this next phrase is key.

You have to believe in him.

You have to exercise faith in it.

You put your faith in it.

Now, the word believe in the Bible, it is not a superficial external response.

It's a supernatural work of the Lord in your heart, which we'll look at more in a second.

But just know that sometimes the Bible uses the word belief in a non-saving way.

Like there are the people that saw Jesus cleanse the temple and they believed in Jesus.

And John says at the end of John chapter 2, he didn't trust, Jesus didn't trust himself with those people because he knew what was in their heart.

John 2 · chapter mention

It was a kind of a shallow, superficial belief.

It wasn't a saving faith.

They saw the miracles he did and they said, wow.

They saw him clean out the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees and the money changers from the temple, and they said, Whoa, that's neat.

They saw him multiply the fish in the loaves, and they said, Ooh, I want some of that food, but that's not saving faith.

They heard that he raised Lazarus from the dead and they wanted to hang out with Lazarus.

That's not saving faith.

Saving faith is more than saying, whoa, he just raised a dead person.

Whoa, that's nice fish, yummy.

That's not saving faith.

Saving faith is a heart that is converted to Christ, that believes, that is born again, that's regenerated.

That's saving faith.

It is supernatural.

That's the key word.

It's supernatural.

Saving faith is supernatural.

And that's what Paul describes in verse 13 that you heard the gospel, now you gotta believe it.

You understand, don't you, there's a difference between hearing and believing?

I mean, speak to you in a different language.

There's a difference between hearing and listening.

Parents, can I get an amen?

You know, you tell your kid something.

And then you might even follow up.

Can you guys hear me down there?

Yes.

Well, I asked you to come upstairs and there's no movement.

I asked you to get in the shower.

I don't hear water.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we hear you.

Are you listening?

The same thing is true with your heart towards the Word of God.

But just because the sound waves reach your ears, doesn't make it reach your heart.

I had a teacher in middle school that would ask us this all the time.

He would give us some instructions and then he would ask the class, can you guys hear me?

And we would we would all say yes.

And then he would say, But are you listening?

And we would look at each other, well, if we're being honest, no.

With the word of God, do you hear the word of God?

Do you believe the word of God?

Because if you don't believe it, hearing avails you nothing.

So our conversion is first signed by faith.

Secondly, our conversion is sealed with the Spirit.

It is sealed with the Spirit.

This is the end of verse 13.

We were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

The idea of believing and sealing, they're two sides of the same coin here.

The verb tenses of these are contemporaneous.

They happen together.

You know, if you take a coin out of your pocket, it doesn't make sense to say, did you take the head out first or the tail out first?

No, it's uh they come together.

It's a package deal.

And yet, certainly we would understand that there's uh a chronological distinction.

I mean, there's not a chronological distinction, but there's a logical distinction.

The head, of course, comes before the tail.

That's why it's the head and the tail, unless you're walking backwards.

We understand they go in a pair, they're together.

Chronologically, they arrive together, but logically there is an order, and such as it is with salvation, you don't ever want to say that your belief caused the Holy Spirit to regenerate you, that you exercise faith and that caused the Holy Spirit to cause you to be born again.

You don't ever want to say that.

Your belief and you being born again happen at the exact same time.

But there is a logical priority to it, and the logical priority is that the Holy Spirit is the one who is effectual in causing you to have faith.

Here's an analogy the Puritans often would use.

So you have the sun, the rock of the sun, you have the light of the sun, and then you have the heat of the sun.

Those three things exist simultaneously.

As long as there is the rock, there is the light.

As long as there is the light, there is the heat, they exist simultaneously.

One does not exist before the other.

Yet logically, conceptually, we understand the rock produces the light, which produces the heat.

Such as it is with salvation, that God and his Holy Spirit causes us to be born again, which produces our faith.

They happen at the exact same time.

It's not like we're born again and we wait for belief to catch up.

No, they happen at the same time.

They're two sides of the same coin, but there is a logical order to it.

This is why Jesus tells Nicodemus, who Nicodemus is wondering what it takes to be saved, and Jesus says, listen, you can't even see the kingdom of God unless you are born again.

Nicodemus wants to know, what can I do to be born again?

How can I do anything to be born again?

And Jesus says the Spirit goes wherever he wants to go.

He does what he wants to do.

You can't summon the Holy Spirit, you can't cajole the Holy Spirit.

He's sovereign.

He does what he wants to do.

You can't direct him, you can't woo him, you can't lure him.

He is the sovereign agent of salvation.

And when he comes to a human heart, he changes that human heart.

That is the doctrine of regeneration.

The Holy Spirit takes us from death to life, from blindness to sight, from running away from God to running to God, from loving darkness to loving the light.

That's what happens in salvation.

And it is a supernatural work of God.

This is what I mean when I say salvation is supernatural, is that God Himself actually does something to the human heart to open it up and give it faith.

It's a miracle of God that he does this.

Do we believe in miracles?

Yes, we believe in miracles.

God does miracles all the time.

The greatest of his miracles is him saving people.

Because there is no natural explanation for that.

Dogs bark, cats meow, rocks fall, sinners sin.

They run from God.

And yet God sets aside the normal course of the world, sets aside the normal moral laws of the world and how the universe works, and changes hearts and brings them back to him.

And he does this not by works that we do.

This is a Titus chapter 3, verse 5.

Titus 3:5

He saved us not because of deeds we did in righteousness, but according to his mercy, he saved us by the renewal of Christ, whom he poured out richly through his Holy Spirit.

And Titus 3, verse 5, it's washing of regeneration, renewal of the Spirit.

Titus 3:5

That God washes you with his word, and he renews you with his spirit.

It's the same thing in John chapter 3, isn't it?

John 3 · chapter mention

Nicodemus, you have to be born again.

How is one born again?

The Holy Spirit causes you to be born again by water and spirit.

The washing of the word, the word of God washes over you, and the spirit penetrates you and gives you life.

This is from Ezekiel.

The washing is the water of the word, Titus says.

So listen, it's hearing the word of God and the spirit changing your heart.

They work together.

The washing of the word, the regeneration of the heart.

It is water and spirit.

It is to use the language of Ephesians 1, verse 13, hearing and believing.

Ephesians 1:13

The word of God comes to you, the Spirit makes you alive.

They're not believers, they both come to church.

They sit next to each other, they hear the same sermon.

A gospel sermon.

They hear the same call for salvation.

Yet one believes, the other doesn't.

What is the difference between the two?

It's not the rhetorical ability of the speaker.

They hear the same sermon.

What's the difference between the two?

Or a more practical, in in some of your cases, parents who raise two kids the same way.

Two kids get the same devotional life, they get the same awana material, they sing the same songs at night, they have the same holiday traditions, they have the same everything.

And yet one grows up to follow the Lord, the other does not.

Parents often want to find something they themselves did wrong.

What's the difference?

It's not the message, it's not the messenger.

The message is the same, the messenger is the same, but the difference is the sovereign work of the Lord on the human heart.

That's the difference.

It is the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit, whom He draws, and whom He saves.

There is no salvation without the new birth, and human beings cannot coerce the new birth.

I'm gonna say it differently.

I'm gonna give you lots of different ways to say this because I know it's a difficult point to settle in on you, but let me give you another way of saying it.

The efficient cause of salvation.

If you're familiar with that phrase, perhaps if you're an engineer, you might like this phrase.

The efficient cause of your salvation is God's choosing.

It is God's choice before the foundation of time, in the triune counsel of God.

He chooses whom you will save.

That is the efficient cause of salvation.

All salvation comes from that pre-temporal, before time, that decree of God.

All salvation comes from us.

That's the efficient cause.

The material cause of salvation, the cause that actually brings salvation is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That's the material cause.

The instrumental cause of salvation, the instrument by which you receive salvation is your own faith.

Your faith is the instrumental cause of salvation.

Your faith is the empty hand that reaches out and receives salvation.

You're thinking instrumental cause, what does that mean?

Think of it like this: water in your house.

What is the cause?

You turn on your faucet, water comes out.

What's the cause?

Well, the efficient cause is all the water works and the laws of physics and hydrology and all that.

That's the efficient cause.

The material cause is there's pipes in the ground that come to your house.

And the instrumental cause is you turn on the faucet and the water comes out.

The proximate cause, like the thing that is right there that makes the water come out, not just the faucet, but your act of turning it on.

The proximate cause is regeneration and salvation.

And I'll rattle this off again because people asked me after first service for them many times.

The efficient cause of your salvation is God's choosing.

The material cause of your salvation is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The instrumental cause of your salvation is your faith.

And the proximate cause of salvation is your regeneration.

That God makes you alive.

That's what Paul's describing in verse 13.

You heard the word, you believed the word because you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

2 Corinthians 6, verse 18.

2 Corinthians 6:18

God will be to us a father, Paul describes.

And God proves that he will be to us a father by adopting us through his Holy Spirit.

We all have the same spirit.

We're bought into the same body of believers.

It is God's work who does us.

We are his children.

That's what Paul means in verse 13.

The promised Holy Spirit.

Now it is worth asking.

The promised Holy Spirit?

Question mark on the word promised?

The promised Holy Spirit.

Where is the Holy Spirit promised?

What's Paul referencing here?

The promised Holy Spirit.

I mean, the Holy Spirit just is.

He is God.

So what does it mean, the promised Holy Spirit?

Well, I think it's a reference to the new covenant.

That's Jeremiah chapter 31, verses 31 through 34.

Jeremiah 31:31–34

God tells Israel, Behold, the days are coming, declares Yahweh, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with Judah.

I will put my law within them.

That's the new part right there.

Do you see it on the screen?

I'll make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and I will put my law in them.

That is very different than the old covenant with Israel.

The old covenant with Israel, the law was outside of them.

It couldn't get into them.

You know, take your car to the car wash, the fancy high-powered car wash that supposedly scratches your nice cars or whatever, but it gets your car so clean, it's worth it.

You know that car wash?

I mean, it can blast your cars and get all the bugs off your car, but it does not clean the inside of your car.

If it is clean the inside of your car, you're doing something wrong.

That's the old covenant.

It could blast the outside of Israel all day long, but it couldn't vacuum under the seats.

It didn't get inside.

The new covenant gets in the heart.

Now, how does it get in the heart?

How does the law of God go from something you read on paper, argue with in your mind, run from in your heart?

How does it go from that out there to in here?

That's the work of the Holy Spirit.

That's the new covenant.

Then it makes you God's people, it says you're adopted into his family.

That verse carries on.

No longer shall each one teach his neighbor, each his brother saying, No Yahweh, for they'll all know me.

Every person in the new covenant knows the Lord.

This is why we practice believers' baptism, because we're saying every person who is really part of the new covenant is really saved.

Very different than Israel.

Very different than the old covenant.

All of them, from the greatest to the least, Yahweh says, will know me.

I will forgive their iniquity, I'll remember their sins no more.

This is the work of God on the inside of your heart by the Holy Spirit making you alive.

Do you understand that nobody is saved against their will?

Nobody is saved against their will.

Nobody's will is to be saved initially.

Nobody, that's we're total depravity.

We're all born in sins, we're all running from God.

And people say, well, how does God save you then if he doesn't save you against your will?

You know, he doesn't drag you into heaven screaming and kicking.

You know, you're not clawing along the carpet all the way up to glory there.

He saves you by changing your will.

John chapter 6, the Holy Spirit draws you.

John 6 · chapter mention

How does the Spirit draw you?

That's the word for water out of a well.

You know, you lower the bucket in the well and you bring the bucket up.

You're not bringing the water up against its will.

It's not fighting you.

I mean, gravity is pulling it, but you're drawing it.

That's how we're saved, is God changes our desire and draws us to you.

You don't get water going, hear water.

Here, water.

No, you bring it to you.

And that's how God brings us to himself.

And he does that through changing our desires.

That's the new covenant.

Jesus references this before he ascends into heaven.

He tells the disciples when he meets with them that he's going to teach them for a period of time about the kingdom, and he tells them, and he's sending them into the world.

This is the great commission in John's gospel.

After he said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.

Notice again the order of eternity here.

The Father sends Jesus into the world.

Jesus comes, dies on the cross, resurrects from the grave, and the Father and the Son together send the Spirit to their disciples.

We see it in the book of Acts.

Before the ascension, Jesus is teaching the disciples about the coming kingdom.

And then he says that he's going to leave the disciples in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit comes.

The promise of the Father.

Notice that phrase.

Same thing in Ephesians 1.13.

The promise of the Father.

John baptized with water, you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

So this is the culmination of the Trinitarian missions of God.

The Father sends the Son in the world to be the Redeemer.

The Father and the Son send the Spirit in the world.

He is the promised one.

And the Holy Spirit accomplishes their work in salvation.

Signed and sealed.

Do you understand that salvation here is not simply saying a prayer?

It's not walking an aisle.

It's not signing a card.

It's not repeating after me.

None of that is described here.

This is describing the internal work of God on the human heart.

Where he causes people to be born again.

And then thirdly, signed, sealed, and of course, delivered.

Delivered to glory.

Delivered to glory.

Salvation is supernatural, and God saves you, and he saves you by guarding you and keeping you for the rest of your life.

Verse 14, he's the guarantee of our inheritance.

The guarantee of our inheritance.

When I bought my outrageously handsome truck a few years ago, my Nissan Titan, I give a down payment on it, and I get the truck.

But they kept the title.

They kept the title, those railway barons.

They kept the title.

Now I've got to pay every month.

And they're pretty confident that I will pay every month because they have the title.

But two weeks ago, I paid off the truck.

And two weeks ago, I got the title in the mail.

It was great.

I've got it sitting on the table in my office.

I'll sure everybody comes by my office.

Here's my title.

Look at this.

In a totally humble and godly way.

I just want you to know that.

The title was the guarantee of my payments.

Now, of course, people default on trucks and they go, you know, impound them or repo them.

But I want you to see what the agency is here in your own life.

The Holy Spirit causes you to be born again.

You exercise faith in the gospel.

You are now saved.

The Spirit doesn't leave you.

You know, you tell little kids when they believe the gospel that Jesus now lives in you, and it's let's be precise, it's the Holy Spirit who now lives in you.

But, you know, all three persons are part of the Trinity, so in that sense it is Jesus, but it's the Holy Spirit.

What does that mean?

He lives in your heart.

Because kids will grow up and they'll ask that when they get older.

What does that mean when he lives in my heart?

What it means is that he caused your heart to exercise faith in the gospel.

He worked on your heart and caused you to love Jesus and love his word.

And then he doesn't leave.

He keeps ministering to your heart.

He convicts you of sin.

He points you towards godliness.

He provokes you to grow in godliness.

He's working on you, and he will work on you the rest of your life.

That's what it means.

All of creation, Romans 8.21, all of creation groans waiting for redemption.

We groan, waiting for redemption, but we groan with the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, who will stay with us until we acquire our salvation, ultimately, until we are in glory.

He strives inside of us.

He convicts us.

He drives us to obedience.

You might wonder, why did Jesus have to leave?

Wouldn't our life be easier if he was here?

And Jesus Himself, before he ascended, even said, John 16, verse 7, I tell you the truth, it's to your advantage if I go away.

John 16:7

Jesus says, it is better for you if I leave, because if I leave, I get to send you the helper, the Holy Spirit.

And you think, yeah, I'd rather have Jesus than the Holy Spirit.

Well, you would be wrong.

Because the Holy Spirit is inside of you.

Listen, Judas had closed his heart off to Jesus.

Jesus couldn't get inside Judas' heart.

The devil got inside Judas' heart.

Jesus' preaching just hit the ears of so many people.

The Holy Spirit saves you, opens your heart to the truth of the gospel, and stays with you, convicts you, it says in John 16, concerning sin and righteousness and judgment, and he ministers to you the rest of your life.

This is why you can't lose your salvation.

If in your mind salvation is something superficial, like a prayer you say or a card you sing, well, of course you can lose that.

But if salvation is regeneration, being born again through the work of the Holy Spirit, by placing your faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ, you cannot lose that because the Holy Spirit doesn't leave you.

God sent you his son, and his son died on the cross for your sin.

Do you think he's gonna forget about you?

And to prove that to you, because Jesus came and died on the cross thousands of years before you were born, to prove that God's not going to forget you, he gives you his Holy Spirit.

Some seeds will fall on the ground and get snatched by birds, some will grow up really fast and not have roots and die.

Most people were not born again.

But those who are born again, their roots grow deep.

And the sun will be down and the birds will circle overhead, but their faith cannot be snatched.

Real salvation, authentic blood-bought, spirit-wrought salvation, stands the test of time because the work of God on the human heart who guarantees it for us.

So John Barridge, the man I talked about earlier, the pastor I talked about earlier, went on to have an extremely fruitful ministry, preaching the gospel everywhere.

Thousands and thousands of people came to faith through his ministry.

At the end of his life, he began to lose his sight, his speech, his hearing, all of his senses failed him.

And he was asked, Do you think that Jesus will fail you too?

How can you still love Jesus as well?

If you can't preach anymore, you can't read anymore, you can't even listen to people, you can't talk to people.

And he said this, again, recorded by JC Ryle.

Old Adam whispers in my ear.

Old Adam speaking of his fallen self.

I just love that expression.

And says, Your ears are so dull they can't converse.

Your eyes are so weak they can't read, and you can write even less.

What will you do, old Adam says, when you become deaf and blind?

And Barridge says, I tell old Adam, I just love that way of talking.

I tell old Adam, I must think more and pray more, and thank the Lord for the eyes and ears enjoyed for these seventies years, and for the prospect of better eyes and better ears when these ones are finally gone.

That's the kind of faith that takes you all the way to the grave.

And Barridge then went on to write his own gravestone.

Write his epitaph on his gravestone.

I have a picture of it here.

It's in Everton.

I don't expect you to be able to read it, but I'll read it for you.

I just wanted you to see it because he's talking to you in it.

About halfway through, I'll skip the first sentence, but halfway through he says, Reader, art thou born again?

Do you see what he's doing?

He's preaching from the grave.

The guy who's put on trial for preaching too much in life is literally preaching from the grave by writing his tombstone that addresses the reader.

So he's addressing you.

I put it on the screen because you are now reading it.

Reader, talking to you, are you born again?

No salvation without new birth.

Born in sin, 1716, remained ignorant of my fallen state until 1730, lived proudly on faith and works until 1754.

Admitted to Everton, 1755, fled to Jesus alone for refuge, 1756.

The last line, of course, he did not write.

Fell asleep in Christ January 22nd, 1793.

Reader, art thou born again?

I'm not asking you this morning if you are at church.

Of course, you're here.

I'm not asking you this morning if you're part of a fellowship group.

I'm not asking you if you're part of a small group.

I'm not asking you if you value the fellowship of God's people more than the governor's stay-at-home order.

I'm not asking you any of those questions.

I'm asking you, are you born again?

There is no salvation without new birth.

There is no sealing of the Spirit unless you are born again.

If you are not born again, if you've never given your life to the Lord, I pray that you would do so this morning.

Exercise faith.

Believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It's impossible for you to do that unless the Lord works on your heart, but if the Lord is working in your heart, you will do that.

So do that this morning.

Lord, we are thankful that it is your sovereign will, the design salvation.

We would never have invented something like this.

The Father who sends, the Son who goes, the Spirit who draws, this is more than our minds can fully understand.

Yet, what no eye has seen or what no mind has conceived, you have designed and you have implemented.

So I pray for people who are here today that do not yet know you.

I pray that their hearts would be broken, that they would come to faith this very morning.

They would not live proudly on faith and works mingled.

They would not live proudly on their reputation for being a good person, their reputation for coming to church.

But instead, you would break them of their pride, you would humble them, and they would believe the word of truth, the gospel of salvation.

I pray that there would be people who believe that for the first time this morning.

Ask us in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thank you for joining Emmanuel Bible Church today through this resource.

It's my prayer that if you live in the DC area, I'll be able to meet you on some Sunday at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church, you can go to IBC.church.

Or for information on the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource helps you seek God through Jesus Christ, serve the Lord with joy, and share him with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.