We Must Excellently Counsel Seekers

You're gonna hear More wonderful preaching after me this morning and tonight. And a lot of the emphasis is going to be. persevering through the difficult season. I can relate with Brother Max as he was talking about in effect, Lord, give me one. Um Those of you who've been striving to Build biblically, spiritually healthy churches, i.e., I call them sometimes true churches.

Because after all, if you're not striving to build a true church, what ti what kind are you trying to build? A false one? I get amused at some of these modifiers in front of the word church as you drive down the road. It's just amazing to me. And you might say, well, you've got a pretty clever name.

Yes, but it's thoroughly biblically sound in what we're trying to say when we say grace, life. Our forefathers died for that doctrine. Rather than be sprinkled as babies and just added to the state church, they required that there's a work of grace. in a man's life, repentance and faith, and then he's baptized. The ancient Baptist view.

But saying all that to say, how many years. when it wasn't working. Our numbers were down. The spirit was down. I live in the buckle of the Baptist Bible belt, you know.

And the churches around us were decrying us and condemning us for these reforms. that we thought were biblical. And this went on for years, guys. either plateauing or declining in our numbers. And so literally, I would pray some weeks, Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.

And I, without, Brother John, without exception, when I pray that. Tuesday in the hallway of the church, for example, somebody bump into me and say, Pastor. Over the last four or five months, I think God has saved me. I'd get enough breath to go another Sunday, you know. And Brother Jono is going to share some things tonight.

On his recent experience, and I've asked him to share. Um about staying faithful in the hard season. All right, I'm going to talk to you very practically, hopefully, this morning. We must excellently counsel seekers in our church, and when I talk about counseling seekers, I'm talking about. Those who believe that they have been converted and are seeking baptism.

And others who believe they're under conviction and are seeking salvation. How do we counsel with them? What are some practical things?

Well, let me say this, first of all. That there's no scientific approach. There is no mathematical approach. There's no engineering approach, you know, where. This, this, and this checks off, then this is always true.

It's just not like that. I looked up the the definition for mathematics, for example. finding and understanding the rules For how things repeat and change. Logical steps to show how a rule is always true.

Well, there's not a rule that's always true in counseling seekers. Every one of them's unique, every one of them's dynamic. And you have to wrestle through with the word of God. It's more like an art form to counsel seekers. than it is a scientific formula.

So keep that in your mind. I'll be speaking in a very practical way on church discipline tomorrow morning, and it's the same thing. Every case has its unique nuances and dynamics. And sometimes, as elders, you just wrestle and struggle and have to come to a conclusion and do the best. You know to do.

So, we want to discuss some approaches, if you will, some ways to think, some ways to conduct ourselves in dealing with seekers. in our ministry. First of all, some common objections that we've heard. From people as we begin to do this, and this is decades ago now for us. As we begin to implement a more thorough counseling or examination process, before we would.

Believe someone was genuinely converted, and before we would receive them as a member through baptism. And one of the objections from basically from people outside of our church, well, often inside, but mostly outside of the church is.

Well, how can you judge? How can you be the judge? whether a person is lost or saved.

Now, when they would ask that question in our context here several decades ago. Literally what they were talking about was something like this. If that person said they prayed to receive Christ, then who are you to judge that?

So, really, the only criterion they would be talking about is they said they've received Christ. You're not to examine, well, what do you mean by that? What Christ are you talking about? That's why we have to faithfully preach the word, brothers, so that they know who Christ is.

So they can believe on the right Jesus, if you will.

So they would ask that question: if they've really received Christ, they said they have, who are you to judge that? Very often, and this was the pattern I learned as a non-Baptist in a non-Christian family. I was converted at age 19, just turned 19. And I went into a Baptist church, and this is what I saw. A guy would come down the aisle, the deacon would meet him at the front, they would fill out a card, he would stand up after that.

And the pastor would say, Did you ask Jesus to save you? He or she, whoever, would say, Well, yes. Do you believe that he did?

Well, yes. Then they scheduled him for baptism. That was it. That's what I learned. as a new convert.

In a Baptist church here in the South. And I would say, those of you who have that same background in pilgrimage, that's generally the pattern.

Now, in commendation to my former pastor here, he developed a system whereby there would at least be five or eight minutes of counseling with someone before he presented them. But yet that was to me just a baby step in the right direction. But I do appreciate his heart to say, We've packed our membership roles with the unconverted. We've got to try to do better.

Now you'll never get 100% of your membership role to be regenerate. If Jesus had a Judas, you're going to have some. But we can do better than 70, 80% of them looking like they're unregenerate. Get a good amen there. We can do better.

And that's what I'm striving to share with you: is how we stumbled and bumbled and learned and tried to do better in these areas.

Now we are not priest. We do not possess the authority to bring men to God or to pronounce one saved or lost. What are we? We are under shepherds. We are the stewards of another's property.

It's Jesus' church, it's not ours. That belongs to him.

So we are his undershepherds. Upon this rock Jesus told Peter. I will build my church. Reflecting on Peter's confession that he was the Christ, the Son of the living God, not on Peter, the person. But he said, I will build my church.

And we're to shepherd the flock of God. 1 Peter tells us, according to the will of God. And that's been my passion as an early believer and as a young pastor. How can I get in on this work with God? How can I be on mission with God?

While he's building his church. for his own glory. If anybody in the community talks about what an excellent leader you are and an excellent pastor you are, how creative and how clever and how good you are at strategy and structure and vision and organization, then that's not a good thing. They need to look at your church and say, there's no human explanation for that. God must be doing that.

That's what we want to see.

So we get to have the privilege, brothers. As pastors or elders, of being on mission with God as He builds His church for His own glory.

So he's called men as elders, pastors, overseers of his church. And he builds his church through the ministry of these men, but not. on these men. The historical and early Baptist position was. That a person could be presented before the church as truly converted and as a candidate for baptism and membership when the elders have examined him from scripture.

and are satisfied that he indeed has received the new birth. Evidenced by repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And the church has Has observed enough to be able to affirm the elder's decision. Matter of fact, in some of our older churches, a much smaller setting than maybe I have here, it wasn't unusual that the person would come to the front, the pastors would have worked with them for weeks, months, however long, and they said, We believe he shows solid evidence of repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And then the congregation could examine.

I don't think that's necessarily wrong. But typically, if the congregation has affirmed you as God called elders, they trust you to have done that work. And so they would basically affirm: if our elders are in agreement about this, then we would support this person as a genuine believer and as a candidate for membership by believers' baptism.

So this responsibility of the pastor should lead us to A considerable prayer. and humility and some trembling. A lot is at stake. The soul of the seeker. is at stake.

The health of the church. that we do not continue to add the unregenerate into the membership. And of course, the glory of God. As the most God-dishonoring thing I know of in recent decades, is how many people here in the South parade around town confessing to be Christians and live nothing like a Christian.

So, the good of the seeker, the health and good of the church, and the glory of God are at stake. There's a little phrase in Acts chapter 2 as the Holy Spirit descended upon those believers, and multitudes were being converted. Acts 2.47. And praising God and having favor with all the people, and the Lord was adding to their number. Day by day, those who are being saved.

Is that not our job, brothers, to discern whom the Lord is adding to his church. Our responsibility again as undershepherds is to use the scriptures. to discern who is and who is not. being added to the church by the Lord of the church. We oversee the official adding to the church membership as the Lord's stewards.

The Undershepherds. Working for something and for someone else. and for something else that doesn't belong to us, I should say.

So using the scriptures The pastor's discernment. And the Congregational's agreement are the means of discerning if one is converted. and a candidate for baptism. The verse in Matthew 16:19 is an interesting verse. Or The Lord says to Peter and the disciples, And this is uh Reproduced in the same spirit and the same truth to the other disciples, not just to Peter, if you will, other apostles, I should say.

He says, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven. And whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. That's the future perfect passive tense. And that's why the New American St Standard Spells it out that way.

When you bind something, It will have already been bound in heaven. When you lose something. It will already have been loosed in heaven. In other words, when you follow the scriptures and come to an agreement. on what the scriptures say about this person.

i.e., their status as converted or unconverted, a candidate for baptism or not yet a candidate for baptism. When you discern that using the scriptures, you discover what heaven has already decided.

So, if we examine our seekers by scripture. we discover heaven's verdict. already decided for them. Because human authority does not create divine truth. Authority does not rest in us.

It does not rest in the church structure or system. It rests in God. Yeah.

Now a parallel to this is the ancient rabbis who would perform binding and loosing declarations of things. But the ancient rabbis only declared binding and loosing based on what the law already said. They didn't come up with who was bound. They discerned whom the law says are still bound in their sin or their uncleanness or whatever it might have been. Then, based on the law, the scripture law, they could declare: well, this one is loosed.

They are not under the condemnation anymore because what the scriptural law says about them and their condition.

So, in conclusion, under scriptural-based examination of a seeker, we recognize. And announce a person standing according to God as He's revealed in His Word.

Now, again, it's not a perfect mathematical formula. It's not a scientific checking off certain boxes, and you always get this certain outcome. There is a wrestling in this.

So some people say, well, who are you to say? Whether a person's saved or not.

Well, I don't say whether they're saved or not. I try to discern from scripture what God says. About whether they're saved or not. Because this authority is in the scripture. Not in the man who's called to be an undershepherd.

A second thing you'll often hear is.

Well, but the people in Acts were baptized immediately.

Well, a few things to say about that in Acts 2. Chapters 2 and following, if you will. First of all, we don't know for absolutely certain how quickly they were baptized. We don't know all of the time allotment there. Secondly, This was a unique, once-for-all event, never to be repeated.

Of astounding, unimaginable outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Tongues of fire resting on men. Men speaking in languages that were not their native tongues, and others could understand them in their native tongue. Just amazing, miraculous outpouring of the Spirit that was a once-for-all event. And I believe that Jonathan Edwards, as he describes a lot of the conversions during the Great Awakening, he said: In a very rare, unusual outpouring of the Spirit, it's sometimes easy to discern the genuineness of a conversion rather quickly, but usually that is not the case.

Unusual outpourings of the Spirit, maybe it's clear, but typically it's weeks and months of examination. That's my experience. I think that would be what Jonathan Edwards is talking about, Elberts is talking about.

So We don't know how long they took to baptize one another. This was an unusual time of outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And I don't think any of you have experienced tongues of fire and other languages in your services. If you have, need to talk to me after the service.

Well look at that a little bit. Thirdly. The book of Acts is in the context of severe persecution. It was not culturally acceptable, easy believism that was going on in those narratives. For example, if you if these guys will say, We're just this thing, is it spontaneous baptisms that's been happening lately?

I've been hearing about spontaneous baptisms, and they'll use Acts and say all that.

Well, if you really want to be biblical, We'll load up your new converts on an airplane. We'll take him to the downtown square in Tehran, Iran. And we'll line them up with a loudspeaker, and they can pronounce that Muhammad's a liar. Islam is a lie, and Jesus is God and the only Savior. We're being baptized to profess Him.

That would closely parallel Acts chapter 2. Those people were being baptized knowing it may cost them their marriage, it may cost them their whole family, it may cost them their job, it may cost them imprisonment, it may cost them their life. In that context, you might know fairly quickly if a guy's really saved. If he's willing to be baptized. In that cultural historical context.

So, look, brothers and sisters, just ABC, Dr. Cill, ABC, X of Jesus, you gotta know the cultural context. of interpreting a text.

Now We live, the fourth idea thing here, we live in right the opposite. We live in a God-disgracing. Climate. of millions of professing Christians. who'd never even attend church.

The Puritan fathers, and I forgot the phrases they used, but they had an idea called spiritual common sense. There's some things that are not explicitly commanded in Scripture, but we take the balance of truth and we come to conclusions.

So spiritual common sense, I think, dictates in our climate. that we're careful and more thorough. before we declare a person converted. and ready for baptism.

Now, I want to talk for just a minute about discerning awakening Conviction. And conversion. I can't tell you how many years went by, and I don't know how this happened. Yeah.

I'm just gonna say it this way. That I basically viewed the Holy Spirit The third person of the Godhead as the simplistic, if not retarded, member of the Godhead.

Now, I didn't preach that or say that, by the way, but as I look back on it, I thought, is that not what I was doing? It's like God the Father is this infinite, immense, omniscient God. Dynamic Unlimited layers of wisdom and power and authority and beauty. Jesus, his Son, the glories of his person and his work are beyond understanding. The Bible is just replete with limitless truth about Jesus, but the Holy Spirit only does one or two simple things.

He's just so simple. Who told you that? Who told me that? It was almost like he convicts you, and if he convicts you, he saves you. That's all he does.

No, I'm not introducing signs and wonders gifts this morning, okay? But Is there any biblical text that would seem to teach, or maybe clearly teach, that the Holy Spirit does a lot of work on a lot of people that's not conversion? Can you let him be a little bigger? than just a guy who's a one-trick pony. He only convicts and brings people to saving folks.

Well, that's the that's the the I would say the most important work, maybe, of the Holy Spirit. Couple of texts. To maybe help us break out of an ultra-simplistic view of the Holy Spirit's work in men's life.

Now, let me say up front: there's going to be mystery here. And I have that on good authority. Nicodemus, you're thinking like a man thinks. Nicodemus, you don't understand it completely, but the Holy Spirit's not understandable completely. He's highly complex.

He's got a mind of his own. He's omniscient. He's omnipotent. He goes where he wants to. He does what he wants to do.

He's like the wind. There's some mystery there. Reminds me of the dear black preacher that somebody asked him about preaching. Under the unction of the Spirit. He said, I'm not sure what it is, but I know when it ain't.

That's sort of what Jesus said to Nicodemus. Nicodemus, I can't explain to you in human terms. You can't get it. There's some mystery there, but you'll know if you get it. But Getting off track here.

I'm talking about. How I had to accept the Spirit of God may be working in a lot of ways that I had not thought about in men's hearts and lives, but it's still short of. Conversion.

Well, first of all, I think the Holy Spirit works in awakening men. But it's not yet conversion. Hebrews 6, 4-6. For in the case of those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift. Been made partakers of the Holy Spirit.

Would you hold out that being a partaker of the Holy Spirit doesn't necessarily mean conversion? It means the Spirit's doing something, though. Have tasted the good word of God? The powers of the age to come. And then they have fallen away.

They were on a right track. The Spirit of God was doing something, but He had not brought them to regeneration. That would be my view. I have six messages on that, Hebrews 6, if you want to look at those. It is impossible to renew them again to repentance since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put him to open shame.

Brother Zach's sermon this morning, I think, hit on this quite strongly. A lot happened in some people's lives, but they were not yet converted. And then a parallel passage from the words of our Savior himself. which I think speak to awakening but not yet conversion. Mark 4, 3 through 8.

Listen to this. Behold, the sower went out to sow. As he was sowing, some seed fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate it up. Others fell on rocky ground. It didn't have much soil, and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of soil.

And after the sun had risen, it was scorched, because it had no root, it withered away. And other seed fell among the thorns. The thorns came up, choked it, and it yielded no crop. Could we not be open that the Holy Spirit had done something in these men's hearts? There was some embracing.

But it was no lasting work of true conversion. Because verse 8 of Matthew 4 says, Other seed fell upon the good soil. And they grew up in increased and yielded a crop and produced 30, 60, and 100 fold.

Now you might say, well, are you saying the Holy Spirit's playing tricks on men? He's going to awaken some men and And stir their hearts but not bring them to conversion. Let me say something to you, sir. Anything. The Holy Spirit does to help you in any way is a blessing you don't deserve.

So, if God were to awaken you but not save you, you got more chance than most men probably get. You just proved the depravity of your heart, that the work of God in your heart could not bring you to your own ability to save yourself, let's say. It gets under my skin when somebody starts telling me that God somehow is unfair. His ways are beyond finding out. You can't understand all the mysteries of his work.

But every gift he gives you, even any pre-conversion work of the Spirit, is a wonderful blessing and privilege you did not deserve.

So don't blame God. Amen. It's our own fallenness that's the problem.

So, an awakened interest in the things of God, an awakened interest in the Word of God, an awakened interest in prayer, an awakened interest in other Christians and Christian fellowship, an awakened interest in the gospel, maybe a new respect for the gospel. I think all of these can be awakenings, but not yet conversion. Again, Brother Zach's message, I think, spelled some of that out quite well for us. Maybe some of the old-time revivalists in the South had it right. It was common years ago to have brush arbors and camp meetings.

You ever heard of those? Uh you northern people. You foreign people, you've heard those. Yeah.

Brush arbors and often I've never seen it, but I was told, and I've read it in literature: a guy would come down to the front. You know, you can't get saved without coming to the front. He'd come down in the front weeping and wailing, and some guys would go over to him, and the old-timers say, Leave him alone. Let him pray it through. I think sometimes we run out there to awaken God when he needs to be left alone.

Let him fight it through. He doesn't need your assurance that he's saved. He needs God's assurance. that he saved. Let's go to conviction.

I've talked about awakening. Perhaps, listen, I'm not saying this dogmatically, I'm challenging you to think with me this morning. Perhaps another element of the Spirit's work that's short of conversion is conviction itself. This kind of crosses over to some of the texts we looked at, but maybe you could view it as a separate thing. John 16:8, when he comes, he will convict the world.

Concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. I would ask you a question. Is He the omnipotent third person of the Godhead that's full of beauty and wisdom and dynamic things that we can't grasp? Does He convict every single person in the world the exact same way? And to be ultra simplistic, maybe for our more Armenian-leaning friends.

How do you explain that some people live in America and hear sound preaching all the time, and some people live in parts of the world where they basically have the witness of Nature and the witness of conscience, but not much more. That's not fair, is it?

Well, it's fair if everyone deserves hell. And any witness they get is more than they deserve. But my point is Is it not possible the Holy Spirit of God if the Spirit of God uses the Scripture and a guy lives in a culture without Scripture, he is not going to receive the kind of work of the Spirit that a guy under Scripture in a culture that uses Scripture is going to experience? I'm just trying to say there's a dynamic. Work of the Holy Spirit.

In a lot of people's hearts, that's short of conversion. One thing we do know is he has to convict before we come to conversion. He calls us to salvation. But all of those whom he calls to salvation, he first calls us out as sinners. In conviction.

Yeah.

Luke 18, 13 and 14, the tax collector standing some distance away. the one who would publicly be considered vile and ungodly. Was even unwilling to lift his eyes to heaven, but was beating on his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, the sinner. I tell you, Jesus is speaking, this man went to his house justified rather than the other. Deep conviction.

that did lead to, I think, genuine conversion. When a person is under conviction, I would think of three main things. First of all, under the conviction of the Spirit, they begin to have a deep awareness of their inner fallen nature. Their inner corruption and sin. Jesus said in Matthew 15: it's out of the heart.

Out of the very nature, those are the things that condemn a man. Ephesians 2:3, that's not in the notes you were given, but Ephesians 2:3, we are by nature children of wrath. They begin to grasp under conviction. They begin to see and feel. Everything about my very nature.

is offensive to this triune, righteous and holy God. Only the Spirit can do that. Not only my fallen nature, but there begins to be a grasping of my fallen motives. Romans 3:11, there's none righteous, not even one. There's none who understands, there's none who seeks for God.

They begin to understand that, left to myself, all I seek is my own glory. Left to myself, all I seek is my own pleasure and my own way, and filling my own ego. I see that, and I feel the weight, and the ugliness, and the vileness, and the offensiveness of that.

Now, be careful counseling a seeker who may truly be saved. They may not grasp all of that yet, but you'll see the germ of it there. You'll see the germ of it. I'm getting ahead of myself, but understand: we're not counseling people as to Christian maturity. We're counseling people as to whether or not they have evidences of conversion.

Those are two very different things.

Well, not only is my nature fallen, my motives are fallen, conviction tells me my behavior is fallen. My very acts, Acts 2:1 through 3, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked. According to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. The spirit that's now working in the sons of disobedience. Disobedience, that's an action.

You walk, that's behavior. Among them, verse 3 of Ephesians 2: Among them, we formally live. That's an action. That's a behavior.

So there is this work of conviction that brings about this awareness. At least the beginning, and people will not comprehend this completely. If they're really truly converted, even. But they'll begin to see it clearly. And here's the thing: as you show it to them in the text and explain what the text means, you should start seeing the amen of the Spirit going off in their heart.

That's me. Yes, I agree with that. Don't expect them to be able to disseminate to you the entirety of the doctrine of justification by faith. Like a little child, though, they'll, as you explain it, They'll begin to affirm with the scriptures.

So they see this Under conviction, this greatness of their sin. But also, they see that sin is great because it's against a triune and holy God. Because of who it's against. Then there is conversion. I would hold that you might look that that's a separate thing.

They're linked, they're overlapping. But I believe the biblical texts would show us that there are awakenings that are not yet conversion. There's awakening and even some conviction that's not yet conversion. But conversion is when there's a rising faith within the heart. A faith in Jesus Christ, not just an intellectual assent.

Not just an agreement as to the truthfulness of the Bible.

Some people have the same kind of faith in Jesus as they have faith in the Constitution of the United States. It's just sort of a sentimental affirmation of the goodness of it, if you will. Christ is the object of their faith. He's the new treasure of their soul. At least that's beginning to take place.

Saving faith involves the understanding of the mind. You've got to understand enough of the gospel in your mind. Saving faith uh includes the affections of the heart. I don't believe in this academic, cold, formal reformed movement out here. There's ought to be some warmth and some passion about the truths of God.

Conversion brings that about. An understanding of the mind, the affections of the heart. Thirdly, an abandonment of hope in everything else. Boy, I love that concept. I'm just, Vance, happy to say, shipwrecked on God and stranded on omnipotence.

I have nothing. I come to the cross bankrupt and total despair. I call this primary repentance. Primary repentance is when you look at everything, every person, every formula, every hoop jump, every sacrament, every possibility as hopeless. And in its place, you turn to Jesus.

Then there's secondary repentance. And by the way, I'm also a liar of God. I've also cheated on my wife, God.

Well Quit on quitting time before the boss, and that's secondary repentance. And if you have to repent of all secondary repentance before you can be saved, none of you are yet saved because you don't know how sinful you are yet. But you confess them as you do them, the old preacher says. You become a repenter. All that you know that's sin you repent of.

Primary repentance is, I abandoned hope in everything else but Jesus. And then, as I'm aware of other things, I'll humble myself there too. It may shock some of you, but... I found some sin in my life the last year or two I didn't know was sin. But the Holy Spirit, using the Word of God, reflected on attitudes and motives.

I thought, dear heavens, I'm more sinful than I ever thought I would be. I'm 66 years old, I thought I'd be spiritual by now. And I'm not. I'm just a struggling, wrestling repenter. Faith is the understanding of the mind.

At least something has to do. Don't take that too far, but there's got to be some understanding of the basics, the affections of the heart, the abandonment of hope, and everything else, and the intention of the will. He is my Savior. He is my Lord. I want to follow Him.

A confident resting in Christ as our saving Lord. In hurrying on, a word or two about the altar call or the invitation system. I know a lot of this is kind of a review for many of us, but. Brother John O down here encouraged me some months ago. Pastor, we need to look at the ABCs again.

The foundation stones of kind of what we've all talked about and anchored in truth for actually decades now. Mm-hmm. Salvation has nothing to do with moving geographically from one place to another. Yeah.

Welcome to the front. Welcome to the mourner's bench. Welcome to the inquiry room or the counseling room.

Now, asking if someone feels convicted to come to an area for counseling, I don't have a problem with that, but I'd say be careful with it. Be careful with it. But telling them, if you want to be saved, come to this spot, I got a problem with that. And I'm convinced the Lord of the church has a problem with that. When you start giving them a particular ritual, a particular movement, a particular prayer.

A particular place. Then that smacks of the spirit of Roman Catholic sacramentalism. All it is is a Baptist or a Catholic sacrament in Baptist clothing. And so many people said, I took the preacher's hand, I walked to the front, whatever it may be. Yeah, but biblically speaking, do you show the evidences of the new birth?

Those are two very different things.

Spurgeon often would close his sermon with this statement.

Now that I'm finished, your flesh would love for me to give you something to do.

So that you could feel like you did it and you're okay. He said, I'm going to leave you with Jesus. And that's why we've been doing it here for decades. Because if you get into that Hoop, jump, come to a place mentality. Then, over time, the greatest evangelist is the one with the most persuasive personality.

Are the greatest gifts of manipulation because he can get more people to do the thing at the end of the service than other people can do. The content of the message, whether it was biblically sound, doesn't really matter. Whether he preached in the power of the Spirit doesn't seem to matter as much, as long as he can get many people to move to the right place at the end. And that, brother, I'm telling you, that's predominant. In a lot of evangelicalism today.

You know, When someone's under conviction, as I mentioned earlier, they don't really need to talk to anyone, they need to die alone. I'm a deer hunter.

Somehow In infinite Wonderful, matchless grace. I shot at four deer this year with my bow, and I killed four deer with my bow. Yeah, thank you, brother. Give me a witness. It was a miracle.

It was. Miracles still happen. A unique outpouring. But you know what I found, and I don't know any excepting this: every time I shoot an old buck deer, he runs off and dies alone. If you're going to be saved, you've got to die.

And we need to leave people alone. If you walk up to them, they'll think you're a priest. And they'll think, well, he's got the special word or instruction for me. No, you look. Do you want them to go to...

The judgment throne of God based on what you told them or based on their experience with Jesus.

Well, I've told my people on your deathbed, if I come see you. By the way, if you go in the hospital and I come, you're about dead anyway, but nevertheless. It's fine. If you're on your deathbed and I come see you, please don't say, Well, I repeated that prayer you said, Pastor. I walked to that place.

Here's what I want you to say. Pastor, my hope is totally, holy, and only Jesus Christ. and him crucified. By the way, those kinds of people make great church workers and church servers. But I like long invitations.

You say, what do you mean long invitations? You just said the altar call and the invitation didn't have much validity to it, if any validity at all.

Well, here's what I mean: from the time we start singing the first song until I preach my entire sermon, we're inviting people to Jesus. And then, after they leave the service, the Holy Spirit's going to take the truth and keep inviting them to Jesus. One of the clearest evidences, we had a dear man that was visiting with us, and he comes from a Church of Christ background, a work salvation. He began visiting us, and I preached one Sunday a quite weighty theological treatise on the doctrine of justification by faith. He didn't know anything about that, but he went and got, I mean, the old pickup truck, sat in his truck by himself for 45 minutes, and found Christ.

Aren't you glad we didn't say, well, the invitation's over now? We sang three verses.

Okay. The sovereignty of the Holy Spirit. I would say, in our experience, after we started seriously reforming Grace Life Church, this is not absolute for anybody else, but I would say 98% of all people who were converted and showed lasting fruit of true conversion. came to us sometime other than at the close of the service. Yeah.

People are saved through the preaching of the word, but not necessarily during the preaching of the word. The Bible is abundantly clear that the preaching of the gospel and the power of the Spirit is the chief means of saving the lost. And some will say, well, how are they going to be saved if you don't let them come make a public profession of faith?

Well, first of all, if the omniscient, infinite, all-powerful Holy Spirit invades your life and changes you, you're not going to keep it in. If I have to run you down, get you in a headlock, and beg you to come make a profession of faith, you didn't get it. And some of you do that, and then call me five or eight years from now and saying, I've got all this discipline issues in my church. My people living like the world. And I go back to, well, what's your view on conversion?

What's your view on counseling seekers? Because that's my experience. We were disciplining people here by the hundreds. And then one day, God shook me real hard and said, Your problem, sir, is your view of conversion. And I had to go back.

Most people do it the other way around. They try to get. Their view of conversion, right, and then get church discipline implemented.

Well, I. Nobody taught me anything. I was just trying to figure it out on my own.

So we started doing all this discipline. I was disciplining all these people. We disciplined 500 people at one time. For forsaking church. I don't advise that, by the way.

It was the best I knew to do, but there's wiser ways to walk through that and still be obedient if you don't talk about it. We can talk about it sometime. And then I realized, why is this happening? And I realized your theology is right, but your methodology of receiving new members is not in keeping with your theology. And that's why our pastoral training institute is built on teaching all these types of things where we put shoe leather on our doctrine.

Sound theology, proven methodology. That's the kind of training we want to do for pastors. in the local church.

So they will not go out there. and say the phrase that many of us older guys said. And that is this, well they didn't teach me that in seminary. If you come to the Pastor Training Institute, You're going to be taught all the stuff. That you're going to have to wrestle with and deal with in reforming a church.

My time is gone. Let me quickly say a word about children. Again, in my first 15 years or so, 10 years. maybe more precisely, we would baptize children at least three times by the time they were 21. Because they all held up their hand, they all filled out a card, they all walked to a place, and then they realized they're not saved, or they didn't think they're saved, and so they jumped through the hoop again.

But let me say this about children. And again, not much of what I'm saying is new. Matter of fact, none of it's new. There's nothing new under the sun. If you found a truth and you think it's a new truth, you're wrong.

It's been around. Read the Puritan to somebody, and you can say, Oh, they were already saying that, they were already doing that. That's what encourages me. Is that you realize as you look at things in the scripture and you think, we're not doing this in the church today, why aren't we doing this? I must be crazy because nobody else is doing this.

And then you read church history and realize: no, your early Baptist did it. We just stopped doing it along the way for some reason. Pragmatics usually. But when you're dealing with children in seeking If they themselves are seekers, I should say, you have a unique challenge. First of all, children are foolish.

Proverbs 22:15, foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. Kyle and Dalage, the German Hebrew scholar, says that word foolish means they have pleasure in stupid tricks. I thought, those are sophisticated scholars. That's a crude way to say that, but that's what it means. Children, all of our children, basically speaking, take pleasure in stupid tricks.

They're bound in foolishness. Bound means firmly fixed.

So you're counseling with this child. You've got to remind yourself in balance of scripture. This child may be sincere, but they're bound up with foolish tricks in them. Secondly, they're just immature, very plainly speaking. 1 Corinthians 13, 11.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. In their thinking and in their speaking, they're immature. In their thinking, they can easily equate the Easter bunny. The tooth fairy and Jesus is all serious and important things. That's what children do.

Children are fickle. Ephesians 4:14, we're no longer to be children tossed here and there by every wind of doctrine. Children can say, Oh, I like this, and a moment later, no, I really don't. I like this.

So, with children, it behooves us to understand the balance of biblical truth. And notice and recognize they need some time. Time. And if you take time with children, You'll realize that if it was real for them at one point, it'd be even more meaningful and more real later. If they waited for it, it has value to it.

In our quick fix culture. We need to note that baptism is important by putting some weighting on it. If we rush a child through the motions, It's a disservice to the child. And again, a disservice to the church. and a dishonor to the Lord.

to rust them through that process. And even though I had a lot of opposition to this within our congregation years and years ago. One thing that seemed to stick with my people was when I would tell them, your babies are too valuable for us to rush them through this. Their souls are too precious. And that seemed to help them walk with me through all of these stages.

I don't have time for that. Let's see. Let me just say this. Confession time again. We went from hoop, jump, easy believism.

We jumped out of that ditch, came over here in the middle of the road, and then we jumped in another ditch here at Grace Life. We got too cautious, too weighty, too obsessed with our counseling because we were coming out and left such abuse on the other side. And we're like a pendulum swing, aren't we? We get out of one ditch, we run to the other. And that's where some of you are right now.

And you need to lighten up. Quit looking for 20 years of sanctification proof. You're not looking for that, you're looking for evidences of conversion. And um One of the rem Resources I've used to put things like this together was Thomas Boston had some evidences of spiritual life. And I think those are spelled out.

Matter of fact, let me go ahead and tell you this: if you'll go to the barcode. that you see everywhere. Is that the right word, barcode? I'm a dinosaur. I don't know.

I'm sorry? Yeah.

Who told you that? Oh, the barcode's horizontal. Cool. Yeah.

I have an old sermon entitled, If You're Going to Die and Then Live, You Must Live Before You Die. Which talks about the evidence of true spiritual life. And there's some real practical questions there. With scriptural support for counseling, that I would really encourage you to, if you don't, a lot of you have a lot of this stuff, and that's good, obviously. That's available through the.

QR code. Yeah.

The little booklet Seeking God is woven into all this. That can be very helpful. And then there are hard copies of the booklet Seeking God back there if you'd like to get one of those.

So, brothers, just some admonition here at the very end, don't get out of balance. Because my next session tomorrow. Is going to cover that you will have some false professors, and that's not the end of the world. No, we don't like it. But you cannot have this thing in your mind.

I can have no false professors in my church.

Well, again, Jesus had Judas. Maybe he was teaching us a lesson in that. The Apostle Paul goes to the end of his ministry and said, No one stood with me. He had a lot of people fall away.

So we're going to have some so let's be careful on the front end. But realize that's why he gave us church discipline when we find out some are no longer Giving any real evidence of conversion because they haven't had conversion. That's what discipline is for in the church. And God will take you through cycles of that. But what we went through was great.

seasons of discipline and Great seasons of in-gathering before that, that had a lot of false conversions, and then great seasons of disciplining and removing that. But praise the Lord, praise Jehovah, we're now in a season where it's one or two or three a year. Versus 20, 30 or Be honest, few years 200 to 300.

So learn from our mistakes, hopefully. Because at the end of the day, one thing matters: that our God gets all the glory He deserves through His church. Amen. Mm.