“The gifts and calling
of God are without repentance.” (Romans 11: 29)
“Now from all this he infers that certainly God had great mercy in store for that people, something answerable to the extent of these rich promises: and he proves his inference (Rom 11:29) by this truth: For the gifts and callings of God are without repentance. Repentance is sometimes taken for a change of mind, and so God never repents, for he is in one mind and who can turn him? Sometimes for a change of way, and that is here understood, intimating the constancy and unchangeableness of that love of God which is founded in election. Those gifts and callings are immutable; whom he so loves, he loves to the end. We find God repenting that he had given man a being (Gen 6:6), It repented the Lord that he had made man), and repenting that he had given a man honour and power (1Sa 15:11), It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king); but we never find God repenting that he had given a man grace, or effectually called him; those gifts and callings are without repentance.” (Matthew Henry)
Salvation is always linked to someone else’s merits.
I what you to think about this; do not leave this thought unexplored. It is
imperative that we grasp it with all we have, if we are to be free to serve the
living God, putting pride on the backburner pleasing our heavenly Father.
Let us work through this…
After falling through a crevasse on Everest a
man finds himself lost and disorientated. The treacherous fall had shattered
both his femurs leaving him exactly where he had collapsed with no chance of
self-rescue. It was forty below and it wouldn’t be long before his body total
shut down killing him on the spot. If rescue does not arrive soon he will
surely die! Due to the extremities, his immobile condition and the fact that
all his climbing gear had landed two hundred feet below him. He could not save
himself! He was in dire need of rescue or he would die.
There was another man exploring the Colorado Mountains,
he was agile and he liked the idea of exploring alone. He normally only
ventured out for a couple of hours at a time and then he would return back to
basecamp where he had parked his car. In the heat of the day he came across a
trickery crossing that had disaster written all over it, but as he was up for
the challenge, not much thought was given to the danger he faced and before he
knew it he also found himself caught in a crevasse with his arm wedged between
to boulders. As the sun baked down on him and with only half a bottle of water
left, dehydration was a real concern. No matter how he tried to free himself he
was trapped. For two days he spent most of his time yelling out for help but to
no avail, he was stranded, trapped and alone. Although there were obvious
differences between both men’s scenarios, the observable difference besides the
weather conditions was that the man in Colorado had not broken a bone. But both
were trapped!
The first man was extremely weak and now had a thin transparent membrane lining
his chest wall which doubled back covering his lungs, thereby forming a
continuous sac enclosing the narrow pleural cavity effect his breathing, it wouldn’t
be long now. But just before he gave up the ghost rescue miraculously appeared
as a salvage team descended down the cavity and save him in the nick of time.
His rescue was a merciful act that had saved his life and without it he would
have surely died.
The other man was in a quandary and no
rescue team was looking for him, no one knew where he was, he was alone. What
was he to do? Dehydration had set it and he had to act radically if he had any
chance of survival. Remembering that he had a compact knife in his pocket he
reached for it and with his belt now tightly bound around his arm just above
his elbow restricting the blood flow he began to saw away at his arm. It was
his only hope of escape. After much determination his job was complete and he
was free with this trapped arm still wedged between the rocks he managed to
free himself and with the little strength he had left he climbed out of the
crevasse and began to make his way back to basecamp. On returning he climbed
into his vehicle and made his way to the nearest hospital. He survived the
ordeal. He had saved himself and as his story circulated he received the
praise. He had saved himself.
What is the moral behind both these
accounts? One man had been rescue by another whilst the other had saved
himself. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is all about rescue and until we understand
that we cannot save ourselves we will always look for self recognition; with independence
driving us to a point of survival.
Let me use a final example that Ray
comfort used in his book, “Hell’s Best Kept Secret” to get this very important
point across…
John Wesley said to a friend, in writing to
a young evangelist, “Preach 90 percent law and 10 percent grace.” And you say,
“90 percent law and 10 percent grace? Pretty heavy. Couldn’t it be 50-50.”
Think of it like this. I’m a doctor; you’re a patient. You have a terminal
disease. I have a cure, but it’s absolutely essential that you are totally
committed to this cure; if you’re not 100 percent committed, it will not work.
How am I going to handle it? Probably like this.
“Come in here. Sit down. I’ve some very
serious news for you: you have a terminal disease.” I see you begin to shake. I
think to myself, “Good. He’s beginning to see the seriousness of this
situation.” I bring out charts; I bring out x-rays. I show you the poison
seeping through your system. I speak to you for ten whole minutes about this terrible disease. How long,
then, do you think I’m going to have to talk about the cure? Not long at all. You’re
sitting there trembling after ten minutes, I say, “By the way, here’s the
cure.” You grab it and gulp it down. Your knowledge of the disease and its
horrific consequence has made you desire the cure.
You see, before I was a Christian, I had as
much desire for righteousness as a four-year-old boy has for the word “bath.”
What’s the point? See, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness.” How many non-Christians do you know who are hungering and thirsting
after righteousness? The Bible says, “There is none who seek after God” (Rom.
3:11). It says they love the darkness, they hate the light; neither will they
come to the light least there deeds be exposed (John 3:19–20). The only thing
they drink in is iniquity like water (Job 15:16). But the night I was
confronted with the spiritual nature of God’s law and understood that God
requires truth in the inward parts (Ps. 51:6), that He saw my thought-life and
considered lust to be the same as adultery, hatred the same as murder, I began
to say, “I can see I’m condemned. What must I do to be made right?” I began to thirst for
righteousness. The law put salt on my tongue. It was a schoolmaster to bring me
to Christ.
Charles Spurgeon said, “They will never
accept grace until they tremble before a just and holy law.” D.L. Moody, John
Bunyan, John Newton, who wrote “Amazing Grace” (and if anyone had a grip on
grace it was Newton), he said that “the correct understanding of the harmony
between law and grace is to preserve oneself from being entangled by errors on
the right hand and on the left.” And Charles Finney said, “Evermore the law
must prepare the way for the gospel.” He said, “To overlook this in instructing
souls are almost certain to result in false hope, the introduction of a false
standard of Christian experience, and to fill the church with false converts.”
Saints, the first thing David Wilkerson
said to me when he called me on his car phone was, “I thought I was the only
one who didn’t believe in follow-up.” Now, I believe in feeding a new convert;
I believe in nurturing him. I believe in discipling him—biblical and most
necessary. But I don’t believe in following him. I can’t find it in Scripture.
The Ethiopian eunuch was left without follow-up. How could he survive? All he had was God and the Scriptures. You
see, follow-up…now let me explain follow-up for those of you who don’t know.
Follow-up is when we get decisions, either through crusades or local church,
and we take laborers from the harvest field, which are few as it is, and give
them this disheartening task of running after these decisions to make sure
they’re going on with God. What it is is a sad admission of the amount of
confidence we have in the power of our message and in the keeping power of God.
If God has saved them, God will keep them. If they’re born of God, they’ll
never die. If He’s begun a good work in them, He’ll complete it to that day
(Philip. 1:6); if He’s the author of their faith, He’ll be the finisher of
their faith (Heb. 12:2). He’s able to save to the uttermost them that come to
God by Him (Heb. 7:25). He’s able to keep them from falling and present them
faultless before the presence and glory with exceeding joy (Jude 24). Jesus
said, “No one will pluck you from my father’s hand” (John 10:29).
Signing off
Tyrone
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