Who Can Resist Him? | Sinclair Ferguson

well now most of you I'm sure very familiar with the mnemonic that's often used in connection with these five central studies that we're doing over this weekend total depravity and unconditional election and limited atonement or particular Redemption and irresistible grace and the perseverance of the saints and so in our series we've come to the subject of irresistible grace and I want in a sense to combine two things as we do this I want to work with a fairly systematic outline and series of headings but I want to study this theme of the irresistible grace of our Lord Jesus Christ in an autobiographical fashion I don't mean autobiographical in the sense of this was how sinclair ferguson experienced irresistible grace but in terms of how woven into the letters particularly of the apostle paul he gives us an inside view of how he found the grace of the lord jesus christ irresistible and so i want you if you're using a bible you'll probably find it easier to keep your bible close by so that we can look at various passages in paul's letters and if you're using your iphone or some other smartphone that you have sharpened your fingernails and you're able to move around your Ray iPhone with some rapidity from time to time we're going to begin by reading very significant autobiographical section in Paul's letters and Galatians chapter one and we'll read there I think beginning at verse 11 Galatians chapter one and from verse 11 I would have you know brothers that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel for I did not receive it from any man nor was I taught it but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ for you have heard of my former life and Judaism how I persecuted the Church of God violently and tried to destroy it and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age now I think we need to understand that that is the cautious regenerate Paul I think we need to read between the lines that Paul is saying in my own estimation at that time I was advancing beyond everybody of my age but as he looks back he's a converted person now and boasting has been excluded but it's still true that he had advanced head and shoulders beyond others and one of the indications of this was that he persecuted the church so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my father's but when he who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by His grace was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles I did not immediately consult with anyone nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me but I went over into Arabia and returned again to Damascus and then I want you to turn back to the Acts of the Apostles chapter 7 the Acts of the Apostles chapter 7 and verse 51 these are the last words of Stephen the first martyr of the Christian Church they come at the end of an extended address in which he has made his way through the whole of Old Testament redemptive history and he concludes with a word of application you stiff-necked people uncircumcised in heart and ears you always resist the Holy Spirit and then if you will read just a little further on as stephen is martyred we're told in verse 58 that they cast him out of the city and stoned him and the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul and I want to take us our starting place for thinking about the irresistible grace of God but the first time the Apostle Paul encountered a living Christian in any intimate and personal sense among the last words he heard from that Christian were these words you always resist the Holy Spirit so there's something in a sense likely unusual almost paradoxical about the fact that Christians speak about irresistible grace the irresistible work of the Holy Spirit and that much of that thinking and teaching is expounded by the Apostle Paul and yet the Apostle Paul was one of those who had this outstanding young Christian and preacher of the early church say to them you always resist the Holy Spirit and the question I want to pursue as I say in this autobiographical fashion is how is it that Saul of Tarsus who was among those who always resisted the Holy Spirit came to find himself mastered by the irresistible grace of the Lord Jesus Christ through that Holy Spirit we are accustomed I think to watching the outside of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus we're told about it three times in the Acts of the Apostles how he was on his way to Damascus how he had letters of authority to persecute and to seek to destroy the church how he was culpable of the homicide of Christian believers and how Christ suddenly it seems and apparently it seems without prior warning overwhelmed him with this irresistible grace floored him literally to the ground blinded him in the light of his revelation and subdued him and brought him to this living faith in Jesus Christ appointed to be a preacher of the gospel and a writer of so much of the New Testament Scriptures I don't want us to follow Paul's story through a series of systematic headings the first is this that he gives us very clear evidence of and testimony to the necessity that God would work in his life in a way that proved to be irresistible when Paul speaks about himself as he does for example in Philippians chapter 3 he tells us that he was a man with an impeccable religious pedigree he was a Hebrew speaker of a hebrew-speaking family of all he had been brought up outside of the holy land he was someone who when he came of age had radically radically committed himself to the most radical Jewish discipleship and had become a Pharisee and he had evidenced his zeal for the glory of God by seeking to destroy those who named the name of Jesus if anyone could boast both in the privileged position they enjoyed and the level of obedience they had reached then that man was Saul of Tarsus and our very little doubt when he says as we noted in Galatians chapter 1 that he had outstripped many of his generation he really meant that he had outstripped everyone not every Pharisee wanted to persecute the church indeed Saul's own professor of theology Gamaliel was someone who at least that a surface-level said we need to wait and see whether this thing is of God and if it is of God it will continue if it is not of God which presumably is what he actually believed then it will perish but the disciple was far more zealous than the master theological students who are more zealous than their professors often are a source of considerable trouble and saul of tarsus was precisely that he outdid even his master in zeal for the glory of God as he imagined and was determined to crush the church sometimes we think because we have a rather dark view of Pharisees that this was because he was a Pharisee but not all Pharisees sought to destroy the church and so this in many ways from the perverted perspective of the Apostle Paul was the evidence of enormous faithfulness and it seems he had never met anyone who had this kind of zeal the kind of picture that's probably been in many of our minds since we first heard the story of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus as of this young man going out in front of everyone else in his little entourage single-minded blinkered seeking to destroy this new sect that he thought was contrary to the teaching of the traditions and they especially to the teaching of the law of God and yet all of that hid as Paul came to understand what was lurking underneath that vengeance upon Christ and the church but while he was a man with an impeccable pedigree he was also a man with a deeply violent spirit of antagonism against the Lord now there's a kind of psychology there isn't it sometimes zeal is simply a disguise for an angry heart and actually just as a sidebar we need to understand that as evangelical Christians the zeal that has manifested sometimes yes even an evangelical Christians can actually be the expression of a twisted and angry heart that has never been subdued to the gracious lordship of the Lord Jesus Christ impatience with those who do not share our views is often an expression of an angry rather than a submissive heart and spirit and we understand that this was true of the Apostle Paul but he persecuted the church not out of love for God but out of some deep-seated resentment against God and the glimpse that we have of that in the narrative of his conversion is the way in which the Lord Jesus speaks to him and says to him saw it is hard for you to kick against the goads and it's that that raises the question for us what is it that was happening as it were in the prehistory of Saul of Tarsus what is it was happening under the surface of Saul's life that the Lord Jesus would say to him it's actually hard for you to kick against the goads what is this resistance that was in the heart of Saul of Tarsus that was now being overcome and overwhelmed by the irresistible grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and when we get that clue I think we begin to understand but this man who stood in such need of irresistible grace was already the subject of the working of a grace of Christ that would eventually prove to be irresistible in his life no matter how hard he sought to kick against it and to resist it I think he gives us one or two clues that help us to understand that the first is the one that we've already looked at in Galatians chapter 1 he stood head and shoulders above all of his contemporaries in his zeal for Judaism but the New Testament gives us some lose us - what was going on underneath the surface in the background how God seemed to be planting little minds along the pathway Saul of Tarsus was taking that would explode in his face and eventually bring him to bow down in the dust before the Lord Jesus I wonder if it's ever struck you but when Paul speaks about himself in Romans chapter 7 he tells us how it was through the law that he came to the knowledge of sin actually there was a time when this passage made some Christians believe that Saul of Tarsus was actually the rich young ruler to whom dr. Godfrey referred earlier on this morning because you remember what Paul says there he says as a as a person who was bent on destroying the church suddenly he says he discovered his sinfulness when the law came to him well of course he'd known the Lawson says youth in a sense as people used to think if Jesus said to him keep the commandments he would be able to look around his graduating class and say I've kept the commandments far better than all of the others but then he says this I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said you shall not covet but sin seizing an opportunity through the commandment produced in me all kinds of covetousness apart from the law sin lies dead I was once alive apart from the law I think he's speaking about his own estimation don't you I was once alive apart from the law but when the commandment came when the commandment came sin came alive and I died now what's so fascinating as there are 10 commandments yes there are 10 commandments my question is why was it this particular commandment was the commandment that in a sense slew the self-esteem of Saul of Tarsus it was because of this commandment he says it was the commandment Jesus used wasn't it with the rich young ruler you've kept all the commandments well let's try the one about coveting things go and sell everything you have give to the poor do the positive action that contrasts with the sin that the commandment forbids give it all away and follow me and sure that you've kept all the commandments including the commandment not to covet you are a deep died covet oh Jesus is saying to the rich young ruler but my question is this on the assumption Saul of Tarsus was not the rich young ruler and I think that's certainly a demonstrable assumption why was it that it was this commandment you shall not covet anything that is your neighbors seems to have as it were been the the niggle that got hold of the Apostle Paul of Saul of Tarsus and I believe Luke the author of the Acts of the Apostles gives us a very significant clue that helps us to understand the prehistory of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus it's found in Acts chapter 6 and verse 8 in the introduction to the two chapters in which the martyr Stephen features and dominates so this is very significant is very significant because there are details here that seem to be completely incidental to the actual narrative that seemed to be completely redundant as the there is no reason Under the Sun that Luke would give us this information in introducing Steven onto the scene and then leading us to conversion of Saul of Tarsus now here is the detail Acts chapter 6 and verse 8 and Stephen full of grace and power was doing great wonders and signs among the people then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the freedmen as it was called and of the Cyrenians and of the Alexandrians notice this seems to be one synagogue and a flows from Cilicia and Asia rose up and disputed with Stephen now what's the picture here well you're familiar with the picture if you live in any American city of any size there is a sociological Christian reality that emerges in that city there will be a Korean Presbyterian Church in past days there might have been a particular area of the city in which the Italians lived and they would go to the same Roman Catholic Church or in parts of the United States for example in Texas where the Mexicans would go to church and have their own particular Church and it's a simple sociological phenomenon that when we move an ethnic community into another community then we tend to stay together and we think other people do this I remember being stuck one Saturday morning in the airport in Seoul Korea fog had come down and the flights were being postponed and the airport filled up and filled up and filled up there were thousands of people waiting for their planes in the Seoul Airport and the five people who looked like me had all found ourselves together in a huddle in the corner it's a very natural thing to do and it happened in Jerusalem Jerusalem was the center of the world the center of the religious world it was the place where ethnic communities would send their youngsters and inevitably just as if somebody comes to college here from across the mason-dixon line they may say when you go to college and Tampa make sure that you go to Holy Trinity Presbyterian Church because they are one of us down there in Holy Trinity Presbyterian Church now what's so significant here was so significant here is that Tarsus was in Cilicia and that this is almost certainly I think Luke's way of saying without saying anything as you read through the impact the Acts of the Apostles maybe you'll remember this statement but it was in this synagogue that Stephen whose name interestingly is a Greek rather than a Jewish name an outsider rather than an insider in Jerusalem it was within this context perhaps even within this very same synagogue that Stephen came to faith in Jesus Christ as he heard the preaching met the believers in Jerusalem and had the courage in that synagogue to start saying to people I believe we have found the Messiah and he has been crucified and risen again from the dead and the thing that Luke underlines about Stephen as so significant isn't it he was full of grace he was full of power he did wonders and signs among the people and verse 10 none of them could withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking and it seems to me that matters Luke's hint to us you want to understand why saul of tarsus was so riveted on the commandment that said you shall not cover here is the reason but among his contemporaries and his peers as he admit his way through his teens and into his twenties he had never encountered anyone whom he could not best in an argument he had never encountered anyone who knew the Scriptures as well as he did he'd never encountered anyone who manifested the zeal and the courage however twisted and misunderstood it may have been he stood head and shoulders above everyone and then there emerged in this very synagogue that he was attending where he knew the people this young man who not only was more able in the scriptures but whose life manifested the extraordinary power of God which he attributed to his trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and not only so but there was something about this man the wisdom of this man not just the knowledge of this man that was greater than Saul's but the wisdom of this man and as the narrative will eventually tell us the sheer graciousness of this man but brought to the surface in the heart of Saul of Tarsus a deep-seated covetousness for the sheer graciousness this man had which he saw wrongly in Saul's mind attributed to his love for the Lord Jesus Christ and to the extent but Lucas telling us this there is a sense in which he is actually telling the story that's true for very many people who become Christians isn't it I've sometimes had to say to people who find themselves persecuted by those who are not Christ's never forget Saul of Tarsus never forget the fact that this anger and hostility that he expresses towards Stephen was actually in a strange sense a manifestation of the beginnings of that working of God's grace that would eventually prove to be absolutely irresistible to him but in the process something needed to happen he needed to be as Paul seems to say in Romans chapter 7 as the narrative of Luke in the Acts of the Apostles further suggests he needed to be convinced not only of the lordship of Christ by his majestic revelation on the road to Damascus but he needed to be convinced of his own sinfulness and the perversity of his heart and that in his case - this was the beginnings of the working of the irresistible grace of God so that later on in Ephesians chapter 2 he is able to say that he was dead and lost and in bondage to sin like the rest of mankind and this is the narrative of his discovery of what that would mean actually it's interesting if you if you go over to another passage that you'll know very well in 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 where Paul sets this on the large scale of the reconciling work of Jesus Christ he makes this very interesting comment he says we no longer view Christ according to the flesh Cata Sarka although we once viewed him that way he viewed him as the despised Nazarene what was it that brought the transformation yes of course that was this climactic moment on the road to Damascus but there was this movement of prevenient grace in his life that brought him from seeing Christ according to the flesh to seeing Christ and hearing Christ in the testimony and martyrdom of Stephen that's why Luke surely describes what happened or to put it more accurately finds a way of recording details of the martyrdom of Stephen but are deliberately described in a way that will remind us of the Lord Jesus when you remember Stephen as he dies says to the Lord falling on his knees he cried out with a loud voice Lord do not hold this sin against them and when he had said this he fell asleep and you can't read that if you have any knowledge of the Gospels without thinking to yourself how Jesus like how Christ like and you see look as including this detail or perhaps even better he is more must have been said more must have happened but this is the detail Luke brings out because he wants us to grasp what is actually happening here but this hated christ that saul of tarsus knew katha Sarka according to the flesh Saul of Tarsus was now by the power of the Holy Spirit according to the spirit beginning to see however much he resisted and hated that this was a living Christ who was indwelling this lovely young martyr ensuring himself through his sufferings and through this remarkable Jesus like prayer father do not hold this sin against their charge Jesus Prayer was of course answered wasn't it it must have been the father always hears Jesus so Jesus prayer on the cross must have been answered where was it answered well obviously it's answered in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles isn't it they are Simon Peter points the finger he says you crucified Him those who crucified Him are responsible for his crucifixion are the very ones for whom Jesus prays so that it is an answer to Jesus prayer on the cross that the Holy Spirit brings such conviction of sin but on the day of Pentecost they're crying out and saying what must we do and Peter says look to Christ repent of your sins be baptized for forgiveness come into the kingdom be reconciled to God trust in him enter the new life and something of the same order it seems to me is beginning to take place in the life here of Saul of Tarsus Stephens prayer was also answered I imagine we we don't often stop and ask and ask and answer that question doing you know actually part of the reason is because we so often prayer pray ourselves and we don't bother asking the question of my players being answered but was Stephens prayer answered or did the father say on this occasion I have had enough of them I am NOT saying yes to this prayer Stephen I'm sorry to tell you because you are going through such agony but this prayer is misguided it is not according to my will don't you think the Lord had put this Clare into the heart of Steven and don't you think it was in part this prayer that further enraged saul of tarsus I remember a minister telling me that he was called one day by a physician a lady who was in deep distress and a needed help and they arranged to meet for coffee and in the course of the conversation this older minister told me he had her story and then he said to her my dear have you asked for forgiveness she was enraged she picked up a purse and stomped out of the hotel angry high because the notion that she needed to forbid the notion that she needed to be forgiven was tantamount to an accusation of sin and I think that's one of the things that began to work in the mind of Saul of Tarsus I have no way of proving it there are gaps as it were in the external narrative but when you put all this together it begins to it's like it's like painting the conversion story by numbers isn't it as you begin to as you begin to fill in the pieces although not all of the pieces may be in place as you think about the way in which the gospel works you stand back and you say to yourself I think I see the Lord's own hand in this and you think that all the more because this story may also be your story this story may also be your story in a sense in a company like this it is statistically certain if things can be statistically certain but there are some of us sitting here who raged against Christians we knew who argued against Christians we knew who were furious with what Christians we knew believed and perhaps somebody came along to that Christian and said don't be intimidated don't be overwhelmed this may well be the final kicking against the goads and the indication that here we have the cataclysmic moment of resistance against the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in the midst of the conflict that will eventually bring them to their knees and say what must I do to be saved turned on the television in the hotel last night as actually looking for the golf channel to be honest but this particular hotel doesn't give you the golf channel but for some reason or another there was the Australian Open tennis final on from last year it was Djokovic and Andy Murray and I thought surely the camp have got to the final already and of course as you all know Andy Murray lost if you are if you're somebody an amateur who watches say these great Grand Slam tennis tournaments or actually if you watch any competitive sport there's a very interesting thing to notice what happens isn't it you watch the first set and it goes to a tie break and here is the man who is seeded number three playing the man who's seeded number 93 and you see it's just possible this man is going to is going to beat the star as the star going to be toppled and there is this conflict but you see the truth of the matter is that although at Lutz's law they are equally matched the conflict is destroying the pure player and so the great one wins seven six six love six love and you think what happened and something similar happens doesn't it as God works in the hearts of men and women in Jesus Christ by the Spirit draws to himself it really looks as though I might be able to overcome all the overtures of God's grace but then I find myself exhausted by my resistance and the point comes as God has been working through his word as my heart has resisted its truth and then I find I am becoming persuaded by its truth as my soul is at enmity against God and I begin to discover that this God against whom I am exercising all my powers to defeat him is actually the god of grace who has shown such unparalleled love for me so that in every aspect of my being and the way in which I think in the way in which I will in the nature of my affections I I find that there is this concept of gracious working taking place that brings me to the point where instead of antagonism I bow before him and I call him Lord instead of resistance I find myself yielding to him instead of hatred for him that hatred is dissolved by the irresistible working of the loving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and it transforms everything remember how Paul puts it himself I'm sure he was thinking very much about his own experience he said the God who said let light shine out of darkness has shone into our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ and here he is he's a man's stumbling around in the dark his mind is darkened his affections are darkened his will is hardened but then God says let there be the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the mind and the will and the heart and the affections of Saul of Tarsus and the the light begins to dawn although he he seeks to resist it he's like King Canute you know who King Canute was the guy who sat by the seashore and commanded the waves no longer to come in until his kingly throne was floating away and he learned that he could not ultimately resist the incoming of the tide of the sea and the result of that says Paul in 2nd Corinthians 5 is this but when it happens if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation I think actually what Paul means is this not if you're in Christ you are a new creation although that's true I think what he means as this when you are brought into Christ to believe in Christ to repent of your sin to give up your resistance you're brought into a new creation where everything seems new whereas the hymn writer says something lives in every hue that Christ the size have never seen and you look back and you say to yourself the only possible reason I could have resisted this was because of my blindness and my deafness and my hardness of heart and paradoxically instead of saying to the Lord how dare you sure irresistible grace to me ever had a Christian believer say that have you ever had a Christian believer who tells you they don't really believe in irresistible Grace say I'm glad God's grace was resistible by me and we are swept by this grace of the Lord Jesus Christ into his presence into faith and into his kingdom and in the case of Saul of Tarsus and here is a word of marvelous encouragement for us it seems to me in the case of Saul of Tarsus he seems to have been the most unlikely convert in the fall of Jerusalem I remember when I was a minister in Glasgow one of the young girls in the church came to me one Sunday and said with a mischievous smile she said I met somebody this week at a bus stop who said he taught you when you were a little boy in Sunday school oh I said yes she said with a smile we fell into conversation and here is what he told me Sinkler Ferguson he said well last boy in the world I ever expected to become a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ well there's another far better name than Cinco Ferguson who said the same thing isn't there if you remember CS Lewis's words how God brought him kicking and screaming into the kingdom of Jesus Christ the most reluctant convert in all England that's only partly right because at the moment he came to faith in Jesus Christ he was actually the most willing convent in all England and that's the beauty of it that's the mystery of it this transition that takes place in the life of Saul of Tarsus that has taken place consciously it would seem in many of our lives were usually not able to detect those moments of transition from kicking and screaming against the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ to those moments when we bow before him and say Lord Jesus have mercy on me or Jesus once I was blind and now I see be my Savior and so I'm bound to ask you and it's not hard to do because I don't know who most of you are are you resisting the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ or someone who has been brought through to faith in him perhaps you don't even know but are just beginning to understand that what is happening in your life is that Christ is showing his grace to you and everything that is going on in your life is just so many ways of resisting him and pushing I'm back and here is a moment to come and bow before him and say to him Lord Jesus I'm like Saul of Tarsus be my Savior be my Lord rule my life use me for your glory there is nothing more wonderful in all the world and to find the Lord Jesus Christ irresistible I hope you do let us pray our Heavenly Father we thank you for the marvelous grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we thank you too for the ways in which by your Holy Spirit you use some whose lives and ministries seem to be all too short to accomplish in the lives of others things that seem to last forever and we praise you for the places and the roles that you may have given us in the lives of others and for us as we think of ourselves as Christian people we pray that there may be within us those christ-like characteristics yes against which people may kick and scream and struggle but we'll saw display the sheer irresistibility of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ but through our sometimes poor and weak testimony others may see Christ may yield to him may leave aside all their resistance and find him as we have done to be an irresistible Savior and the most gracious of masters and Lords bless us to that end we pray and your word in Jesus name Amen

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Length: 48min 11sec (2891 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 03 2014