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The sermon teaches that sinners are spiritually guilty and incapable of contributing anything that could merit salvation. God’s saving purpose originates entirely in His sovereign love and is accomplished through Christ’s death and the Spirit’s life-giving call. Therefore, both notorious sinners and outwardly respectable religious people must abandon self-righteousness and come to Christ empty-handed. The proper response to such grace is humility, gratitude, repentance, and immediate faith in Christ.
Theological center: Salvation is sovereignly and graciously accomplished by God through Christ, with no saving contribution or merit originating in the sinner.
Applications: Come to Christ empty-handed · Come as a guilty sinner · Receive Christ’s mercy now · Reject self-dependence
Primary texts: Ezekiel 36:32 · Luke 5:32 · Isaiah 1:18
“Not for your sakes do I this, saith the Lord GOD, be it known unto you: be ashamed and confounded for your own ways, O house of Israel.” Ezekiel 36:32 THERE are two sins of man that are bred in the bone, and that continually come out in the flesh. One is self-dependence and the other is self-exaltation. It is very hard, even for the best of men, to keep themselves from the first error. The holiest of Christians and those who understand best the Gospel of Christ, find in themselves a constant inclination to look to the power of the creature instead of looking to the power of God and the power of God alone. Over and over again Holy Scripture has to remind us of that which we never ought to forget, that salvation is God’s work from first to last, and is not of man, neither by man. But so it is, this old error— that we are to save ourselves, or that we are to do something in the matter of salvation—always rises up, and we find ourselves continually tempted by it to step aside from the simplicity of our faith in the power of the Lord our God. Why, even Abraham himself was not free from the great error of relying upon his own strength. God had promised to him that He would give him a son—Isaac, the child of promise. Abraham believed it, but at last, weary with waiting, he adopted the carnal expedient of taking to himself Hagar to wife, and he fancied that Ishmael would most certainly be the fulfillment of God’s promise, but instead of Ishmael’s helping to fulfill the promise, he brought sorrow unto Abraham’s heart, for God would not have it that Ishmael should dwell with Isaac. “Cast out,” said the Scripture, “the bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman.” Now we, in the matter of salvation, are apt to think that God is tarrying long in the fulfillment of His promise, and we set to work ourselves to do something and what do we do?—Sink ourselves deeper in the mire and pile up for ourselves a store of future troubles and trials. Do we not read that it grieved Abraham’s heart to send Ishmael away? Ah! and many a Christian has been grieved by those works of nature which he accomplished with the design of helping the God of grace. Oh, beloved, we shall find ourselves very frequently attempting the foolish task of assisting Omnipotence, and teaching the Omniscient One. Instead of looking to grace alone to sanctify us, we find ourselves adopting philosophic rules and principles which we think will effect the divine work. We shall but mar it, we bring grief into our own spirits. But if, instead thereof, we…