When a Rebel Surrenders to Grace

I've met some folks who want to be saved from the consequences of their sin, but do not want to be saved from the love of sin. I believe, friends, there are a good many church members today who gladly took Jesus as their Savior, but are unwilling to bow to him as Lord. They want a free ticket to heaven, but they still want to sit and rule on the throne of their heart, and they still hug their sins.

But, friends, this is turning the grace of God into lasciviousness. Charles Spurgeon warned his students, if the professed convert distinctly and deliberately declares that he knows the Lord's will, but does not mean to attend to it, you are not to pamper his presumption, but it is your duty to assure him that he is not saved. Do you imagine that the gospel is magnified, or God-glorified, by going to the worldlings and telling them that they may be saved at this moment by simply accepting Christ as their Savior, while they are wedded to their idols and their hearts are still in love with sin? If I do so, I tell them a lie, pervert the gospel, insult Christ, and turn the grace of God into lasciviousness.

Listen, friends, a gospel worker must be studious to present the gospel in its purity and proper order, and be cautious not to deceive souls into making a false profession. Too many today have merely walked an aisle and made a decision and joined the church, yet sit upon a false position of carnal security. The trouble with much of modern evangelism is that we offer folks the remedy for sin, without first showing them why they even need a remedy in the first place.

We just ask folks to accept Jesus as a passport to heaven, without explaining to them that if they do so, and continue to live in the practice of sin and rebellion against his laws, they are yet unsaved. The title of my message today, friends, is When a Rebel Surrenders to Grace, and my text can be found in the book of Acts in chapter 9. You can turn in your Bibles there now. Our passage deals with the conversion of the apostle Paul.

We'll be in verses 1 through 6, and our passage begins in verse 1 with Saul breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the Christians. Here was a man who was zealous in his cause to go out and capture and arrest every Christian he could lay his hands on and throw them into prison. Saul the Tarsus hated Christ, hated all Christians with a passion.

But something happened. He had an encounter one day with the risen Lord, and it changed the course of his life. And after that encounter with the Lord Jesus, he was never the same man again.

And that's what a true conversion is, friends, an encounter with the risen Lord. And when you encounter him, he changes your heart. You were under new management for your life is no longer your own to live as you please.

But you now want to live to please him and bring glory to the Father. He becomes a complete master. Do you believe that? I hope you do.

But many today do not. Many pastors today don't preach that kind of salvation. They preach an easier variety of the gospel that allows you to take Jesus as your savior and still stay in your sins.

I believe our main problem with modern evangelism today, friends, is the sad fact that we have elevated man higher than he should be, and we have lowered God lower than he should be. We put both man and God on the same level. And in this viewpoint of the gospel, we can take Jesus when we're good and ready.

And when we do take Jesus, we can take him on our terms and still gain heaven. That's the gospel of your day and mine, friends. That's it in a nutshell.

But if we present the gospel in its purity and proper order, we will then be preaching it in the full counsel of God. The gospel of our day is so diluted of its power, it can't save a flea. But when we preach the unvarnished gospel of the Son of God, we will talk about the ruined condition of man and the high and lofty position of a risen Lord who sits at the right hand of the Father.

And to earn that right by way of a bloody cross, we will not elevate man to a higher position than he deserves and center the gospel presentation around his needs and his happiness like most preachers do today. Rather, when we speak of man, we will refer to him from a biblical standpoint that man is born under a curse. And because of his ruined nature, there is nothing in man which makes him acceptable to God.

No amount of good works can help him, nor good character. He cannot approach God because of his character or his works. He's not acceptable to God because God views man as a guilty rebel who's broken his strict law.

And as a guilty rebel, man deserves punishment for sin. Did you hear me, friend? Punishment for sin. Yes, God is a God who will and must punish sin.

God sends rebels to hell. Listen, dear friend, there are no rebels in God's holy heaven, but there's plenty of rebels in the devil's hell. So man is alienated from God because of sin.

Listen, friend, you're not a sinner because you sin. Rather, you sin because you're a big sinner. My Bible says that man drinks iniquity like it's water.

So if we tell folks that if they want to go to heaven, all they have to do is to accept our Jesus, then we fail in our duty to proclaim the pure gospel in its entirety. And we do people harm by making them false converts who just join a church, but don't change their lifestyle. And this makes me think that the church is kind of like a big pig pen full of unconverted individuals who fit the description of Proverbs 30, 12, which declares there is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet it's not washed from their filthiness.

You see, friends, a rebel must surrender to a conquering king, and Jesus Christ conquered sin on a bloodstained tree on a hill called Calvary. That cross had Christ's blood all over because of sin. My sins, your sins, are filthy, wretched sins.

It is the blood of Christ that washes sins away. Not you walking an aisle or even joining the church. You must be joined by faith to Christ in a living union with a living Lord.

You cannot take Christ and divide him, divide him into two halves, Savior and Lord, and take the one for now and contemplate taking the other at some point in the future when you feel more like it. No, friend, true repentance means a full surrender, and that's why the title of my message is When a Rebel Surrenders to Grace. Listen, friend, if a person has passed from death to life, then that person has had an encounter with a risen Lord like Paul in our text.

He's thrown down a shotgun of rebellion at the foot of a sovereign and has declared, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? I want to read us our passage of scripture from Acts at this time. I'll be reading from Acts chapter 9 and verses 1 through 6. You may follow along as I read us a striking passage so we may see the power of the gospel in the person of Jesus Christ, the risen Lord. And Saul, breathing out threatenance and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went on to the high priest and desired of him letters to Damascus, to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.

And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus, and suddenly there shined around him a light from heaven, and he fell to earth and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? I will stop there.

Here is a man, a Christ-hating Jew who hates all followers of Christ, and he is living his life in direct opposition to the kingdom of God and Christ Jesus. Jesus tells him, I am Jesus whom thou persecutes. This man Saul has a real encounter with the risen Lord, and it knocks him off his horse, so to speak.

He is brought to see his lost condition. He is brought to see his own wicked heart and its rebellion to this Jesus. And Paul comes as a in surrender to grace and declares, Lord, what will you have me to do? And God changes Saul, the persecutor of Christ, into Paul, the messenger of Christ.

He is a man who has experienced change, and it is God who brought it about. Listen, dear friend, we do not save ourselves. It is God who changes the heart of stone into a heart of flesh.

Listen to the apostle Paul as he speaks of this marvelous grace as found in Ephesians chapter 2. And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we had our conversation in times past in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy for his great love, wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ by grace ye are saved. Did you hear that, friends? God quickened sinners, dead in sin, who were before that objects of his wrath because of sin.

Our text describes man in this way, were by nature the children of wrath. So when we present the gospel to a person, we must start there, that man is unacceptable to God the way he is. God views him as a guilty rebel who deserves punishment for sin.

But we see the grace of God in this passage in the salvation of souls. But God, who is rich in mercy for his great love, wherewith he loved us. Listen, friend, when a rebel surrenders to grace and true repentance from this world and sin, then he becomes a new creature.

Old things are passed away. But if he does not turn in true repentance toward God, then a verse from 1 John describes this condition. If any man loved the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

We present the gospel all wrong today by showing people of Jesus before they ever see any need of him. They believe they are good enough to get into heaven on their terms, and we cater to them by giving them a diluted gospel that's easier for a sinful man to swallow, but it's void of any saving power. I want to end this message with a poem by the author of Amazing Grace, John Newton.

The title of Newton's poem, which became a hymn, is called The Rebel's Surrender to Grace, and the text is our text, Acts 9-6. Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? Here now is that poem, friends, and may we see in it the true gospel of the Son of God as it is applied to the human heart. Here now are John Newton's words from The Rebel's Surrender to Grace.

O Lord, thou hast won at length thy yield. My heart, by mighty grace compelled, surrenders all to thee. Against thy terrors long I strove, but who can stand against thy love? Love conquers even me.

All that a wretch could do I tried. Thy patience scorned, thy power defied, and trampled on thy laws. Scarcely thy martyrs at the stake could stand more steadfast for thy sake than I in Satan's cause.

But since thou hast thy love revealed and shown my soul apart and sealed, I can resist no more. Couldst thou for such a sinner bleed? Canst thou for such a rebel plead? I wonder and adore. If thou hast bid thy thunders roll and lightnings flash to blast my soul, I still had stubborn been.

But mercy has my heart subdued. A bleeding Savior I have viewed, and now I hate my sin. Now, Lord, I would be thine alone.

Come, take possession of thine own, for thou hast set me free, released from Satan's hard command. I see all my powers waiting stand to be employed by thee. My will, conformed to thine, would move on thee.

My hope, desire, and love in fixed attention join. My hands, my eyes, my ears, my tongue. Have Satan's servants been so long? But now they shall be thine.

And can I be the very same who lately durst blaspheme thy name and on thy gospel tread? Surely each one who hears my case will praise thee and confess thy grace invincible indeed. So, friends, I hope this has helped us to better understand how to witness to folks as we present the gospel of the Son of God to lost sinners. Let us not elevate man and lower God, but let us show man his own wicked heart in that he's a rebel who loves sin because he has a rude nature which is bent toward sin.

And let us show him his great danger of dying in his sins and being cast into a place of eternal misery called hell, which is the punishment for sin. And that God is the Almighty God who dwells in a high and lofty place and whose very name is holy. And there's nothing in man that makes him worthy of God.

There's nothing in man which makes him acceptable to God. No good works or good character can save him. He's a sinner who needs pardon for sin in the person of Jesus Christ.

And that if he wants Christ in a saving way, he must come to him where he is. He is a risen Lord who sits at the right hand of the Father, and he earned that right by way of a bloody cross. That man must get his sins under the blood.

He must be born from above and have experienced change, change like the Apostle Paul did. Then when a rebel finally surrenders to grace, he throws down his weapons of rebellion and submits to a conquering sovereign. Then we must live a crucified life as we follow our crucified Lord.

Well, let us go forth with a new passion to share our faith with others and do so with God's favor and attendance. And perhaps we can be the human means through which God brings another rebel to surrender to his marvelous grace.