Divine Grace in the Sinner's Heart

Because of Adam's fall in the garden, every mother's son born into this world is born with a rune nature and bent towards sin. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? So says the prophet Jeremiah.

Because of his natural condition, man is at enmity with God and hates all things holy. He cannot lay hold of the Christ of the Gospels, for he has no desire for Him. A self-ruled man will die in his sins and be brought down to hell, where his soul will suffer eternal damnation.

1 Corinthians 2.14 declares, But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. What that means, friend, is unless God performs a miracle of divine grace in your heart by way of regeneration, you will die in your natural state, as Isaiah 57.20 describes all those tortured souls in perdition and hell. But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.

To better appreciate that verse, one must live by the sea, to witness times of storm and hurricanes. I live in the state of Florida, and often in hurricane season, I will go down by the seashore and look out at the turbulence taking place in the ocean. At times the water looks like a boiling pot, with the waves tumbling up with a violent force and then crashing down upon the rocks below.

It is all unrest. Mire and dirt are brought up to the surface of the water by those storm-tossed waves. That is a vivid picture of a tortured soul in hell.

Never a moment's rest, and like the troubled sea, it is constantly in turmoil. The title of my message today, friends, is Divine Grace in the Sinner's Heart, and my text can be found in the book of Ezekiel in chapter 11 and verse 19. Here now is the word of God, and may the Spirit of the Lord attend the reading of His holy word.

And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you, and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh. This speaks of the supernatural work of God's Spirit in the heart of the sinner, called regeneration, whereby divine light being imparted to the soul, the sinner can acquiesce to the demands of the gospel and close with Christ. By this divine light in the sinner's heart, imparted by the Spirit of God, the soul is finally brought to unite with the revealed Christ by faith, and to be reconciled with God by giving up of oneself to God, to love Him and live to Him forever.

And like the good ground hearers in the parable of the sower and the seed, they heard the word and understood it. When God works divine grace in the sinner's heart, he is enabled to have repentance and faith. In the act of regeneration, we receive this divine light, which is a new spiritual sense of things.

Our eyes are opened, and we are brought out of darkness into this marvelous light, to where we have a right view of ourselves, a right view of God, and a right view of Christ. To be saved means we receive a revealed Christ and are united to Him in a living faith, but God must turn on the divine light upon our soul if we are to receive salvation by free grace through Him. Jesus said, No man can come to me except the Father, which hath sent me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day.

If you get saved, friend, it's because God gave you saving faith. I know the majority of our Baptist churches don't believe that or teach that anymore, but the majority of our Baptist churches are in deep spiritual apostasy. The spiritual illumination of divine grace lays the foundation for repentance and faith.

The way of salvation is spoken of by the apostle in Acts, a repentance toward God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. Repentance and faith always go hand in hand, as the gospel calls sinners to repent and to believe in Christ. Because of the false gospel that is prominently preached in the modern church, many are deluded into a false hope of heaven because they have no repentance and do not turn to God with all their hearts.

This devil's gospel has deceived millions of baptized individuals into an empty religious profession. They have never been awakened to their lost condition, never come under Holy Spirit conviction. They are strangers to regeneration and strangers to repentance and faith, and therefore are strangers to Christ Jesus.

He will say to them on that day, I never knew you, depart from me ye that work iniquity.