And I submit to you that’s exactly what’s happening in America today. God got them saved, but God can’t do nothing else with them. God can save them from Hell, but he can’t save them from the power of sin. I remember…. I had the privilege of sitting under Leonard Ravenhill, and I can remember him saying things like, “So, you’ve been saved. Saved from what? Have you been saved from lust? Have you been saved from greed? Have you been saved from pride? Have you been saved from immorality? From what have you been saved?”
So much of Baptist theology is nothing more than reactionary, a reactionary movement against heresy, but it becomes a heresy in itself. We’re so quick to defend the doctrine of justification that we destroy the doctrine of justification, because, if you have the doctrine of justification without the doctrine of regeneration, you have nothing. The same God who has the power to justify wicked men because His own Son died in their law place under His wrath, that same God has the power to regenerate a heart and make a man not only be a new creature but act like one. Now, in verse 24, look what He says. For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. This is foundational to self-denial. You see that? It’s God. Our brother labored long to talk about our duty, and it is hard. It’s a two-sided coin. Both sides must be kept in their place or you warp both of them. You speak about God and God’s work in that. It’s the same thing here.
Look at this passage. I love this passage. Verse 24. Now, I’m going to put emphasis on the personal pronoun I. For I will take you from the nations; I will gather you from the lands, and I will bring you into your own land. Verse 25. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and I will cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will be careful to observe my ordinances. Do you recognize a pattern there? Salvation is all about the work of God demonstrating the glory of God, and that is why men such as ourselves should guard it so severely and preach it so carefully, because it’s all about God and His name, that His name be great among the nations. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.
When you no longer have regeneration in preaching, you have nothing. Nothing. He says, For I will gather you from the nations. Separation. Separation. I will take you out of there, and I will do it with a strong hand.
If there is no work of separation in your life, recognizable at any point in time, you’re lost. You say, “Oh, Brother Paul, if I say that, they’ll kill me.” Then, die!
“I’ll lose my home.” Then, lose your home.
“It’ll cost me.” Then, make the payment.
Don’t tell me about that. How many Calvinists do we have? How many men who have good theology but they are too cowardly to preach it? “Because it’ll get me in trouble.” What do you expect it to do? All the ones who have gone before us, their blood they shed. You’re preaching to a largely unregenerate church body. What do you expect them to do to you? But how is it going to change except we suffer?
I was preaching at no small school several years ago, and a genuine revival broke out, so they tell me. I am never allowed to be back in that school again. And someone asked me about it. They said, “I don’t understand.”
I said, “This is what you’ve got to understand. Men are too civilized to want revival. They are too proper to want revival. They want everything pretty and clean, and they’ll never get revival, because when revival comes, it’s going to rip everything apart, including us.”
The worst thing that ever happened to a preacher is that he becomes civilized. It’s worthless. Worthless. One thing I noticed about Leonard Ravenhill, and I’d take a Leonard Ravenhill over 20 dead Calvinists. One thing I noticed about Leonard Ravenhill, he was dangerous. He was dangerous. We are to be men of love, men with towels, men who weep, men who serve, but we are to be dangerous about truth.
Do you really expect to get out of this unscathed? Without any scars? Just read Howell Harris, Daniel Rowlands, Whitfield, the two Wesley boys, even Edwards himself. Look what it cost. And it’s the same thing in their day that it is in ours. Do you see that? What was going on? I’ll tell you what was going on? If you’ve been baptized as an infant, you’re in the church. Even though you’re unregenerate, you’re in the church. You’re in the church. You got in. Why? Because you went through some manmade superstitious thing. Southern Baptists are no different. It’s just we don’t have infant baptism. We have that silly superstitious prayer at the end of a Roman road that sends more people to Hell than every brothel in this country. It’s true. It’s true. It’s true.
Look what we do. Just look. It’s no different than the Jehovah Witnesses or something. We deal with a man. We say, “Do you know you’re a sinner?” And usually, we ask him like this. “Now, you know all of us are sinners.” My mother has been diagnosed with cancer. That’s like the doctor walking in a few months ago and going, “You know, Barb, you’ve got cancer.” Do we tarry not in the presence of God so to have His fear upon us? You tell a man, “You know, the Bible says that you’ve sinned.” And if he says, “Yes, I know I’m a sinner,” then we go through the next evangelical hoop for him to jump through. Well, he knows he’s a sinner; now, let’s go to the next question. Well, let me just put this by you. You go talk to the devil sometime and ask him if he knows he’s a sinner or not. He’ll say, “Why, yes, I am. Thank you very much.”
