Dennis Tuuri

Revelation chapters 2 and 3, the letters to the seven churches. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Revelation chapter 2 and 3. To the angel of the church of Ephesus, write these things, says he who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands. I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars.

And you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for my name’s sake, and have not become weary. Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember, therefore, from whence you are fallen, repent and do the first work, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. But this you have that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans which I also hate.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give to eat from the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God. And to the angel of the church in Smyrna, write these things says the first and the last who was dead and came to life. I know your works, tribulation, in poverty, but you are rich. I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.

Do not fear any of those things that you are about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation 10 days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death. And to the angel of the church in Pergamum, write.

These things, says he who has the sharp two-edged sword. I know your works and where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. And you hold fast to my name, and did not deny my faith, even in the days in which Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells. But I have a few things against you, because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and commit sexual immorality.

Thus you also have those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans which I hate. Repent or else I will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give him some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it.

And to the angel of the church in Thyatira, These things, says the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and his feet like fine brass, I know your works, love, service, faith, and your patience. And as for your works, the last are more than the first. Nevertheless, I have a few things against you because you allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.

And I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality, and she did not repent. Indeed, I will cast her into a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of their deeds. I will kill her children with death, and all the churches shall know that I am he who searches the minds and hearts. And I will give to each one of you according to your works. Now, to you, I say, and to the rest in Thyatira, as many as do not have this doctrine, who has not known the depths of Satan, as they say, I will put on you no other burden.

But hold fast what you have till I come. And he who overcomes and keeps my works unto the end. To him I will give power over the nations. He shall rule them with a rod of iron, and they shall be dashed to pieces like a potter’s vessel. I also have received from my Father, and I will give him the morning star. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the angel of the church in Sardis, write these things, says he who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your works that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Be watchful and strengthen the things which remain, but are ready to die. For I have not found your works perfect before God. Remember, therefore, how you have received and heard, hold fast, and repent. Therefore, if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you.

You have a few names, even in Sardis, who have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the book of life. But I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia, write these things, says he who is holy, he who is true, he who has the key of David, he who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens.

I know your words. See, I have set before you an open door, and no one can shut it, for you have a little strength, have kept my word, and have not denied my name. Indeed, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are not, but lie. Indeed, I will make them come and worship before your feet, and to know that I have loved you. Because you have kept my command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial, which shall come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth.

Behold, I am coming quickly. Hold fast what you have that no one may take your crown. He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go out no more. And I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God. And I will write on him my new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches, and to the Angel of the church of the Laodiceans, write these things, says the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.

I know your works that you are neither cold nor hot, I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth. Because you say, “I am rich, have become wealthy, and of need of nothing,” and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire that you may be rich and white garments that you may be clothed that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed and anoint your eyes with eye salve that you may see. As many as I love I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come into him and dine with him and he with me. To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with me on my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Let us pray. Father, help us to hear what you would say to this church today. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

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About irresistible grace. We’re talking about effectual calling. We’re talking about the fourth head of doctrine from the Canons of Dort. We have talked about divine election and reprobation. We’ve talked about the death of Christ and the benefits to men that thereby accrue to them. We’ve talked about the depravity of man, his state in the creation and his state in the fall and where he must be saved from if he is to be saved. And we’re talking now about this fourth head of doctrine: irresistible grace as it’s come to be known in the TULIP formulation. Effectual calling may be a better word to use for it.

It’s really very simple what this means and yet it has implications to it that are strong. Hopefully you have the handout for today. It has four pages on it. The first two pages are by way of review but we’ll spend most of the time there. The third page is what I want to talk about today. And the fourth page gives you the points and the Canons of Dort that we’ll talk about on Easter Sunday and then the week following Easter Sunday.

So that’s kind of the layout here. We’re going to now spend specific time as we’ve done at the other doctrines here from the Canons of Dort. I opened it up last week from the scriptures and then we turned to the Canons themselves for their articulation of what those scriptures mean. And so last week we took 1 Corinthians 1, a whole chapter there and we looked at an epistle of correction and we saw in the context of that this strong statement of the effectual call of God’s spirit to a particular people.

Some are called, some are not. Some are saved, some are not. And the scriptures correlate those things. Now there’s a general calling and a special calling. We’ll talk about that two weeks from today. Next week on Easter Sunday, we’ll talk about the means of our conversion as regeneration, as a resurrection, as a new creation, as vivification—life given into our deadness—and then we’ll talk about the general call proclamation of the gospel two weeks from today.

But we’re talking today about the particular call of those who actually come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that faith is a gift of God. So really the articulation of this doctrine is quite simple. Not much to trip on here in terms of our understanding. All it means is all it says is that those whom God foreknew, loved—Romans chapter 8, verses 29 and 30—those whom God foreknew he chose, okay, and he predestines those to be conformed to the image of Christ and those whom God has set his love upon and he chooses us from his sovereign grace and he predestines us to be conformed to the image of the Son that Christ might have preeminence in all things.

Those people he calls. Okay? He effectually calls his people. They will respond to the general call of the gospel as it goes out through the secondary means of the preaching of the word. The Holy Spirit now is in focus. As the Father is in focus in election and the Son in atonement, the Holy Spirit is in focus in the effectual call. It’s the Spirit’s job to come to earth to take the things of the gospel and to crack your chest open and to reach down into your heart and change you, cause you to be born again, give you the gift of faith, and to effectually cause you up out of your deadness.

It’s the Holy Spirit’s job. And he does it. He does it great. He does it wonderfully. He does it—you know, he never misses. He’s got you, if you’re part of the elect, in his laser sights, and he never misses. And those laser sights don’t shoot a beam to kill you. They shoot a beam to revive you instead. And he never misses. It is effectual. This calling of the elect by the Holy Spirit is effectual. It works. It works every time. It works. No matter how stubborn and rebellious we are, it works. It’s sure. It will always happen. It is sovereign. It is supernatural. And it is unmerited on the part of us.

Now, we read about that last week. We read about it in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Paul says that we preach Christ crucified—under the Jews a stumbling block, under the Greeks foolishness—but unto them are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. And why? Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Then he says, “For you see your calling.” He wants you to meditate upon that effectual call. That it had nothing to do with how smart you were or how good you were or how strong you were. And in fact, it’s the sovereignty of God to choose weak things to really drive home to all the created order who watches this and observes it, so that the angels might look and ponder and meditate on this, so that we might look and ponder and meditate upon the fact that our salvation is not of us at all. It’s totally of God. So to do that he decides to call weak people—and you know people aren’t that bright and people that are kind of rebellious and stubborn and all that sort of stuff. That’s what he calls, and he calls us effectually.

Romans chapter 9 says that God might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, that’s us whom he had a fore prepared unto glory. See, a fore prepared unto glory. He knew us in eternity. He predestinated us to be conformed to the image of his Son in eternity. And then it goes on to say in verse 24 of Romans 9, “Even us whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles.” See, it moves on in the same progression as Romans 8 does from this sovereign foreknowledge and choice of us and predestination of us to our calling, our effectual calling in time and space.

Okay, God’s foreknowledge is a guarantee that our salvation is going to come to pass. The atonement provides everything in terms of the atonement for our sins and the positive righteousness of Christ’s act of obedience. Everything we need guaranteed. But historically, in the way things work out in terms of the chronology of it, the Spirit comes into human history as it were and has you hear the gospel and as you hear the gospel he motivates someone to speak the gospel to you and then he goes in there and accompanies that word with the gift of faith and he changes your heart. May take a long time, may take a short time—don’t matter. That is different, but what is not different is that every one of us who have come to a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ have done it as a result of the sovereign, supernatural, and effectual calling of the Holy Spirit.

2 Thessalonians chapter 2:14, “Whereunto he called you by our gospel, the use of the means, the gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions that you have been taught, whether by word or our epistle.” You see, he does the same thing in a little mini form there that I talked about last week in 1 Corinthians 1. He’s going to motivate him to action. He’s going to tell him to stand fast, but he does it very reminding them of their calling. Remember that’s what we said that God does in 1 Corinthians. Same thing. It’s a remarkable thing. It’s going to talk about that as we go on today.

Why that is—we read in 2 Timothy 1:9 that “he has saved us and called us with a holy calling not according to our works and nothing dependent upon us, but according to his own purposes and grace which were given us in Christ before the world began.”

So really it’s real simple what we’re saying. Effectual calling is Holy Spirit gets his man. And there are more things that can be said, and more that will be said, but he gets his man.

Now why did I read Revelation chapters 2 and 3? Because we introduced this topic last week as I said in the context of an epistle of correction. Paul is writing to urge people to more godly action. Why do we come together every Lord’s day? Well, we come together to worship and praise God. What is he going to do for us? He is going to do something for us. What is it? Well, what it is—he’s going to hold up as we read today this yardstick, the measuring stick. You know, the book of Revelation has a measuring stick in several places in it. What is the standard? The standard is Jesus. So he holds up this measuring stick of Jesus to us.

We praise Jesus, but we see that we don’t meet the standard. That’s part of it. But then we also, in the presentation of the standard, are encouraged to meet that standard. That’s why I read the letters to the churches because in each of those letters there’s a picture of who Jesus is, an aspect, if you will. You know, it’s like if you took the light of Jesus and shine it through a prism, then there are these aspects to his perfection. And those aspects are focused on differently to each of the seven churches.

This standard is given in the letters to the churches. If we’re going to understand Lord’s day worship, we better look at this because this is the specific message here that’s to go out to the churches and we’re a church. Well, the message is this: “This is who Jesus is. He says, ‘Here I am. This is who I am. This is what you need to know about me today. You need to know this because you’ve got problems in your life. You know that there are things you don’t match up with. Or maybe you don’t know. But I’m going to tell you today. I’m going to bring you to conviction for sure. And I’m going to do it by showing you the standard of who I am. You’re not very faithful to your brothers.’”

Philadelphia—the church of Philadelphia—doesn’t mean brotherly love as much as the word means loyalty, covenantal loyalty to our brothers. And what does he tell the church in Philadelphia? He says he’s faithful and true. He sticks closer than a brother. You see, you need to live up to the name of yourself as a church. You need to be loyal to your brother. Well, how do you do it? You do it because I’m him and I’m going to give you who I am in worship. The Spirit is going to apply who I am to you. The Spirit is going to do the same effectual work in your sanctification as he did in your salvation, in your conversion, your regeneration.

The Spirit’s going to move you along. And the way the Spirit’s going to do that is he’s going to present to you the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we come to consider Christ, he’s going to infuse Christ’s attributes into you. He’s going to make you different from the inside out. We read, you know, we read that he makes a fleshy heart out of a stony heart. We know that, right? We’re talking about more of that next week.

You know, we’ve got a dead heart, stinking rotten heart. Spirit gets in there through the preaching of the gospel. Beautiful fleshy heart now. New person there. Okay? What—a new person tends to act like the old person a lot. But what does the Spirit do to that heart now once he’s brought you into salvation? He writes the law upon it, doesn’t he? That’s what it says. He’s going to write the law in your heart. That’s a continual action. He’s taking the law, which is the measure of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he’s writing it on your heart. He’s changing who you are. And he’s doing it sovereignly, effectually.

Now, we’re involved in this part of it. He uses means in the original regeneration—we are totally passive. In our sanctification, we do work out our salvation with fear and trembling. But never forget that the message of effectual calling is used in the context of Corinthians and the other texts I’ve just read to be laid alongside of our sanctification so that you’ll remember that if this week you come to church and you’ve been more faithful to your brother than you were last week, or you’ve been more faithful in discipline—that’s what several of these churches supposed to be doing, disciplining people—if you’ve been more faithful to remember your first love, the way Ephesus didn’t, that you’ll know that it wasn’t your works that did it. It was the sovereign grace of the Holy Spirit who saved you and is continually at work in your life, applying that effectual calling in your sanctification. Okay, so that’s why I read these letters.

So let’s talk a little bit about these seven letters to the seven churches. There is a progression here. And I—you know, there’s a lot of neat stuff about this. I’m studying more of the book of Revelation these last few months for the Sabbath school class that I’m doing before church at 9:30, going through Revelation. And as a result, I’ve done more study in this stuff. And there are some wonderful things about this. Let me tell you something briefly here. That really doesn’t have a lot to do with our topic today, but I think it’s good for you. I want you to know—you should know what these seven churches are about. You should know what these messages are about. So important for us.

And let me just give you one illustration of how God has made this progression of letters to the seven churches. See, it appears that God has self-consciously given us these seven churches, which were real historical churches at the time—I’m not saying they weren’t—but they also seem to represent to us a chronology of the scriptures from creation leading up to where we are today in these seven churches. There seems to be these references to each of the seven letters that tie into a particular part of the progression of the Old Testament leading up to the coming of Christ and the establishment of the new city, the church of Jesus Christ.

Let me just explain to you what I mean by that. First, Ephesus. Ephesus is described—the Lord Jesus Christ the attribute. Now the way this works is God gives an attribute. He says, “I know who you are” and he says, “I know what you’ve got to do,” and then he says, “I’ll give you rewards.” So if you look at the structure of these letters—each letter at the center of it has something people are supposed to do. Okay, but at the beginning and end of each letter, there’s a manifestation of who Christ is and then there’s a picture of rewards or another description of Christ’s attributes or rewards to those who overcome.

So the idea again is that the command to change, to do certain things, is in the context of the representation of Christ’s enabling and the Spirit’s application of that to you. It’s grace, not law in the sense of legalism. Okay. But in any event, in the letter to Ephesus, Jesus is pictured as the one walking among the lampstands. The lampstands were trees—they were almond trees. That’s defined from the scriptures, Exodus 37. So it’s like the Lord walking in Eden. Ephesus seems to be related to Eden and the fall of man. They fall from their first love the same way that Adam fell from his first love as well. And then the reward is the tree of life in the paradise of God.

That’s pretty clearly creation language. Yes, that’s pretty clearly Adamic creation language of the garden. And then we come to the church of Smyrna. And there the death and resurrection is really important there in the in the model of the church of Smyrna. Let me just back up just a moment here. What you have in the seven churches is you have the first church and the last church that are faithful churches, but they’re compromising in between those—the second and the sixth churches. Okay, you could be writing this down if you wanted to remember it. The second and the sixth churches are faithful churches who are doing real good. And there’s really no reproof for sin to them. There’s a reproof to the first and last church. But the middle two churches—there’s no reproof.

Now, it’s interesting that one of those churches, by the way, the one we’re talking about now, Smyrna—this church is going to, they’re told, you’re going to have a lot of tribulation. Okay? A lot of tribulation, even though you’re a faithful church. Now, the next-to-last church who are also faithful—they’re told there’s going to be an open door set before them. They’re going to have a lot of blessings. They’re going to grow. They’re going to grow big time. And even your enemies are going to come and worship at your church. They’re going to come through the door. Those people that hate you, they’re going to come right through that door. He says, “And they’re going to come and worship me in the context of your worship service.”

See, there’s a picture here to churches today—that when we’re faithful, it’s no guarantee of blessing. And when we’re persecuted, it’s no guarantee that we’re not doing things right. It’s no sure sign of that. You see, one church—the reward for their faithfulness is more tribulation so that they can shine bright in the midst of adversity. Another church, the reward for their faithfulness is growth and outward blessing. It’s the way it works.

And that’s the way it works with each of us, too. By the way, there are pictures for us here. They’re very important for us. You can think, you know, “Gee, I’m doing really well in life. I must have compromised along the way.” No, not necessarily. So we may see a church of a thousand people and just because there’s a thousand people in that church, we may think they’re a bad church. No. Here we have a church that was faithful and had a lot of people in it. We may think we’re having a bad hard time. We must not be good Christians. No, not necessarily true. Everything may go wrong in your life now to the day you die. Everything may go wrong. But that’s not necessarily because you’re sinning. That may well be because that’s what God’s called you to do. And your particular walk with Christ is to manifest the grace of Christ in the midst of persecution all your life. Maybe that’s what you’re called to do. Now, that’s not a bad thought. That’s a thought that helps me to sustain myself in the midst of tribulations and to be thankful in the time of blessing.

Okay, in the middle of those, we get compromising but faithful churches both before and after. And then you have two churches in the middle—next groups in on either end of the bookends that are faithful: one with tribulation, one with blessing. Then you have three churches in the middle in which there’s a progression of sin. Third church, you’ve got, you’re doing pretty good, but you’ve got those bad people—you’ve got the Balaamites and the Nicolaitans—who are connected to Balaam, the false prophet, and the false king, and you haven’t disciplined them, and I’m going to come with my sword, Jesus says, and cut them out if you don’t do it. Get to work, discipline.

The next church says you’ve got those Jezebel followers and she’s got children now. The Balaamites have become the Jezebel followers in the next church. It’s a progression, a downward disintegration of the church. And now the church that had a few bad people in it have half bad people in it. Okay? And then the next church, Sardis, well, it’s dead. It only has a few faithful left. You see, there’s this progression: from a few bad people, to half and half, and then a few faithful people—in the middle of those three churches.

There’s tremendous emphasis on church discipline. You’ve got to wield the sword or I’m going to wield it against them. And by the time I get around to wielding it, I may take your church totally out, our Savior says. Okay, there’s this progression. And the context of all of this is the way God moves us ahead in our sanctification. And he does it just the same way as our salvation to begin with. That’s my point here.

We are repeatedly required to remember the gospel and apply it to our sanctification. Why? Because we confess that in us, in our flesh—that is, as Paul said—no good thing dwells. It is only in our new humanity in Christ, brought about by the Spirit and empowered by the Spirit, that we mature and progress. The gospel is the means of our sanctification as well as the means of our salvation. And it’s the Spirit’s effectual call here that manifests itself in our growth in grace.

But I did want to go back now and then. So I’ve given you kind of an overview of some of the things in these seven churches that’s important for us to remember. But I did want to just briefly mention this historical progressions. Ephesus starts in the garden, apparently—the imagery there. The church of Smyrna, the patriarchal period seemed to be the model there. There is death and resurrection as the model. Poverty and riches. There are counterfeit Jews who are either to counterfeit Isaac with the patriarchs. There was imprisonment and then elevation to the throne. And you know, every time you think of prison and elevation to the throne, who do you think of? You’ve got to think of Joseph. That’s what he was. So it’s the patriarchal period that seems to be the emphasis in the literary devices used to the church at Smyrna.

To the church of Pergamum, we have references there, as I said before, to Balaam and Balak. We have references to Satan’s environment, the church in Egypt, and then its deliverance. But Balaam and Balak are clear historical markers. That church is somehow correlated to the church in the wilderness where Balaam really did tempt God’s people under the auspices of the beast king Balak to fornication. Additionally, there’s a sword against fornicators which again is a reference to the wilderness church. And in the church of Pergamum, what they are promised is the hidden manna and the white stone. Clear references to the man of the church in the wilderness.

So you see, it goes from the garden and it goes to the patriarchal period and then it goes to the church in the wilderness period, and then in the fourth letter to Thyatira, there are direct references here to a historical personage, Jezebel. Now there are Jezebels today and there were Jezebels at the time of the writing of the epistle, but ultimately they all are drawn back to this historical personage of Jezebel who was in the context of the Davidic dynasty. And so we have this progression.

Now additionally in this Davidic monarchy, there are the bronze legs, and that’s pictured as Jachin and Boaz, the two columns at the front of the temple—the bronze legs of Christ are the manifestation of his attributes, the beginning of that epistle. And then additionally, we have there that the reward to them is kingly rule. Okay, and that was David’s specific quotation here for ruling with the rod of iron, a reference clearly to the Davidic reign in that period.

And then the fifth epistle, the one to Sardis, speaks probably of the later prophetic period because here we have a church that’s almost dead and they’re going to be taken away. They have soiled garments, and in Zechariah 3, the garments of Joshua are talked about as being soiled garments. And so the appearance there seems to be of the church in the late prophetic period in Israel. They were apostatized for the most part. They’re going to be taken away. They’re almost completely dead. There’s only a few people left. And those are the prophets, Jeremiah, with a few people. And those are the only faithful ones left.

So there’s this progression. And then we have the church of Philadelphia. This seems to be the restoration period after they’re restored from captivity. They have the restored Davidic throne that’s mentioned in the context of this epistle to the Philadelphians. They have an open door. They have the reference to false Jews in the restoration period. You have this tremendous period of blessing as the church comes out of captivity under the auspices of Cyrus and Darius and Jerusalem is rebuilt and the temple is reconstructed. All that stuff happens. Esther at that time marries probably Darius. Esther is, you know, picture of the Jews coming out of that captivity portion now exercising rule and authority.

So this great time of the open door, blessing. And then finally the church of Laodicea, where it seems that you have lukewarm Jews of the day of our Savior. And without going into more details, the point is that there seems to be correlations in these seven churches to the whole picture of biblical history. What a wonderful way to teach our children biblical history. Yeah, teach them the seven letters and teach them the correspondences—who Balaam was, who Jezebel was, what the garden was, how Christ came in the garden and walked with his people, walked with Adam and Eve and they were naked. So there’s this progression there. And I wanted you to see that.

But primarily what I wanted—the purpose of drawing out these epistles now was to show you this context of the same way of instruction as we saw from 1 Corinthians 1 last week, that our sanctification progresses the same way our salvation happens: which is a presentation of Christ, the operation of the Spirit, and then through the Spirit’s infusion of Christ’s attributes to us, we grow in grace.

In these things, as I said, Christ offers not just the command to do certain things, but he offers the power to accomplish them as well. You have to make changes to your life. You’ve got to make modifications, but I’m the one who has the seven spirits, Jesus says. I’m the one who’s going to send the Holy Spirit to empower you to do the things I commanded you to do. You’ve got to exercise rule and reign, church. You’ve got bad people in there. You’ve got to discipline. But that’s okay because I give you the sword. Now, exercise the sword of church discipline. Use the words that I’ve commanded you to use relative to church discipline, and exercise that sword in the context of your church. If you don’t, I’m going to exercise it, and that’ll be a shame to you, and I’ll have to cut out a lot more than just those one or two guys originally.

So the whole thrust of Revelation 2 and 3 is really the same thing we said last week. The effectual calling of God’s saints is the operation of the Spirit upon us. And Paul knew that the way to move the Corinthians on to further growth was to humble them by causing them to meditate upon their effectual call by the Holy Spirit. And in that humility, then the Holy Spirit moves in the context of that to take the attributes of Christ and make us shine like the sun. Make us have strong legs so that as we march out of this place, we march in the Savior’s bronze legs, okay? We move forward into life. We have that two-edged sword coming out of our mouth. We’ve got the bright countenance of the sun shining around us as we leave this place. And as we go, then we go in the power of the Holy Spirit who applies the Savior to us. Effectual calling in the context of the application of Christ to our lives.

Okay. Now, I’ve given you some big picture things here and now let’s turn to the specific wording of the Canons of Dort by way of driving this home to us again. So pick up your notes. Article 10: Conversion is the work of God. The fact that others who are called through the ministry of the gospel do come and are brought to conversion must not be credited to man as though one distinguishes himself by free choice from others who are furnished with equal or sufficient grace for faith and conversion, as the proud heresy of Pelagius maintains.

So he says no, it’s not us. Some respond to the call—the general call—in obedience to it. They come forward and walk in newness of life. But it’s not up to us. This shouldn’t be credited to man as though you distinguished yourself from the guy that didn’t respond by a free choice. No, it doesn’t say that at all. Instead, it says it must be credited to God. Just as from eternity, he chose his own in Christ, so within time, he effectively calls them, grants them faith and repentance, and having rescued them from the dominion of darkness, brings them into the kingdom of his Son in order that they may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called them out of darkness into the marvelous light and may boast not in themselves but in the Lord as apostolic words frequently testify in Scripture.

See, they’re saying the same thing that Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1 here. The reason why some Jews and Greeks respond is not because of themselves. No, it’s because of God’s choice. And they’re saying that—see there are many who are saying, “You Calvinists, you guys are full of pride. You’re the chosen of God. He chose you by sovereign grace.” But they’re saying, “No, wait a minute. Properly understood, effectual calling humbles man before God because we know that it had nothing at all to do with us. And in fact, if it was up to us, we would have said no. We were saying no to God until the Holy Spirit effectually used those jaws of life—not on the automobile, but on our chest—cracked us open and did his work.”

They’re saying Pelagius and Armenians who think that people have this ability to make this choice—that’s where pride comes from. And if you want to kill sanctification, you build up pride. It’s only through humbling ourselves to the Lord Jesus as he comes and gives the letter to us personally and says, “This is what you’re like. I know who you are.” But he doesn’t start there. He says, “Remember who I am. I know who you are.” He humbles you first, and then he gives you the word of exhortation that you might be built up to do it in the power of the Spirit. So humility here is central to the Church Fathers as they speak about effectual calling.

Okay, he effectively calls them. Then it moves so that’s effectual calling. Then it moves to the means whereby this occurs in Article 11: The Holy Spirit’s Work in Conversion. When God carries out this good pleasure and his chosen ones are worked by his true conversion in them, he first of all not only sees to it that the gospel is proclaimed outwardly. So one, in effectual calling, the means that he uses to create that change in you is one: proclamation of the gospel. Two: he enlightens their minds powerfully by the Holy Spirit so that they may rightly understand and discern the things of the Spirit of God.

Remember, our intellect is active rebellion, but he changes that. He changes our mind. And three, by the effective operation of the same regenerating spirit, he also—and now here’s what the Spirit does in addition—he makes the gospel preach to you. He changes your understanding of these things. And here’s what the Spirit does: He penetrates into the innermost being of man. He opens the closed heart. He softens the hard heart. He circumcises the heart that is uncircumcised. That’s really a repetition of the closed heart. Circumcision is a closure. Your ears are circumcised or stuffed up. Your heart is uncircumcised rather, so it’s stuffed up, and God circumcises it by opening up. That’s what the Spirit does sovereignly.

You don’t cooperate in that. That’s something he does to initiate the whole thing. He reaches into your heart through the preaching of the gospel and he moves things around. He reforms you. He takes your obstinate heart and makes it willing. He takes your closed heart and he opens it up. He takes your stone heart and makes it into a fleshy heart. Changes you. He infuses new qualities into the will, making the dead will alive, the evil one good, the unwilling one willing, and the stubborn one compliant. He activates and strengthens the will so that like a good tree, it may be enabled to produce fruits of good deeds.

You see, here’s how it works: Effectual grace works. Effectual calling works this way. God has the gospel preached to you. And the Spirit then changes your will. And the Spirit then also changes your heart. He affects a reversal of your stony heart. And he effects a reversal of your demented will. Remember, the Arminians—the Arminian will is neutral. Not so, to the Christian. The will was created holy. When it fell, the will actively suppresses the truth of God and righteousness.

The only way out of that is not by an operation of your will. Every time your will works apart from the grace of the Spirit, it’s going to do the wrong thing. It’s going to say, “No, no, no, no, no.” So the Spirit infuses new qualities into your will. And your will, which was once evil, is now good. Your will, which was once unwilling, is now willing. And your spirit—that was your will that was stubborn—is now compliant.

That’s the means that the effectual cause is worked in.

Now, Article 13 says that this is not fully comprehensible. In this life, believers cannot fully understand the way this work occurs. Meanwhile, they rest content with knowing and experiencing that by this grace of God, they do believe with the heart and love their Savior. Now, don’t see another can argue here against Calvinists, maybe against you: “You know it all. You’ve got it all figured out. You’re prying into the secret things of God.” We say by this the Fathers said, and we say we don’t know all of this stuff. I don’t know when that happened. I do not know the moment in time when the Spirit did that to my heart and will. Don’t know. Lots of things about this we don’t know, but there are lots of things we do know because the scriptures say this is what occurred.

The scriptures say the difference is effectual calling. The scriptures say the Spirit gives you a new heart. The Spirit says that he makes you willing. We know that much, and we’re going to say that much. We’re going to say we don’t know everything, but we know a lot, and we’re going to say what we do know. And even in the stuff we don’t know, we’re going to rest content knowing and experiencing by the grace of God they do believe. Not that by the grace of God they could believe if they wanted to. We rest in the knowledge that by the grace of God we do believe. He gave us that new heart, and the new heart can’t kill itself. Okay? So we rest in the sovereign God.

Article 14: The way God gives faith. And this, the emphasis here is on faith. “Of course, in this way, therefore, faith is a gift of God, not in the sense that it’s offered by God for a man to choose, but that it is in actual fact bestowed on man, breathed and infused into him.” Nor—we’ve read this last week—”it ends, and it says, ‘It produces in man both the will to believe and the belief itself.’”

So here, see—they talked about effectual calling. This actually happens. They said the means whereby it happens is the Holy Spirit changing your will in your heart, completely reversing it—new creation. And we don’t know anything about this, but we know a lot about it. And one of the things we do know about it is that what the Armenians say—that faith is an action as opposed to a quality—is wrong. Scriptures say faith is a gift of God. And so God gives us faith. Okay, that’s one thing we know, and distinguish themselves from the Armenians there.

He produces in man both the will to believe and the belief itself. And then the effect of this—however, just as by the fall, man did not cease to be man endowed with intellect and will, and just as sin which has spread to the whole human race did not abolish the nature of the human race but distorted and spiritually killed it, so also this divine grace of regeneration does not act in people as if they were blocks and stones. This is one thing, another thing we know about effectual calling: God doesn’t force you violently against your will. Now you say, “Well, now wait a minute. I thought you said that he effectually calls us to himself.” Yes, he does. But he doesn’t force you against your will. He gives you a new will. You see the difference?

He draws you to him, but he does it in such a way as the Spirit works to produce this regeneration in your heart, give you a new heart, a new will, and make you willing and compliant to follow him. You see the difference? So they’re saying here—it’s very important to get this down. You do not represent biblical teaching or Calvinism versus Armenianism correctly if you say that God forces men to obey him. Uh-uh. What God does is he makes you willing to obey him. He gives you a new will. He gives you a new heart. You see why it’s important to spend a couple weeks talking about how this is accomplished? Otherwise, we’re going to have it