The Diversity of Conversion

Introduction: The Common Denominator of Diverse Conversions

0:04 The following message was delivered on Sunday morning, May 31st, 1902.

0:11 May I ask the question, and already I can see by the look on some of your faces you are asking it, what do all these five incidents have in common?

0:23 Well, from the despised tax collector, to the dying malefactor, to the proud Pharisee, to this woman named Lydia, to the Philippian jailer, the common denominator of all five of these biblical incidents that I have given you in thumbnail sketch form in your hearing is that each of them, according to the Scriptures, was soundly and genuinely converted. Each one of them was taken from being a hell-deserving son or daughter of sin and wrath, and was made by the God of the world. The grace of God, a heaven-bound son or daughter of forgiveness and grace. Well, you may further ask, well, what does that fact that the common denominator of all five of those incidents is that they were converted have to do with the preaching of the Word this morning? And I answer that in the course of our present series of studies, we are examining those biblical incidents, those biblical truths and principles that have been both the skeleton giving shape and form to our 25 years of life together as a church,

1:49 but have also constituted the very heart and lungs giving life and breath to that skeleton during that same period of time. And in the course of isolating those truths, we are considering the ninth, of those truths, and I have expressed it in this way. We are determined to maintain a balanced New Testament perspective in our teaching and expectations concerning conversion, the Christian life, and the mission of the church. After stating last week that the first focus of our study will be upon the matter of conversion, I then gave you an explanation of what I meant by this attempt to set forth a balanced New Testament perspective in both our teaching and our expectations concerning conversion. And then in the time that remained, I sought to persuade you from three basic passages in the New Testament concerning the absolute necessity of conversion. And then in the time that remained, I sought to persuade you from three basic passages in the New Testament concerning the absolute necessity of conversion. The absolute necessity of conversion.

3:12 And we looked at Acts 26, 16 to 18, Matthew 18, 1 to 3, and 1 Thessalonians 1, 9 and 10. Passages which teach us if there is no conversion, there will be no forgiveness of sin, no inheritance among the sanctified. No conversion, according to Jesus, there will be no entrance into the kingdom of heaven, but only exclusion in the place of outer darkness. And we saw finally from 1 Thessalonians, no conversion, no grounds to believe we are elect, no right to assume the word has come to us, not in word only, but in power and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance. Now having, I trust, persuaded your judgment from the word of God of the absolute necessity for conversion, I now want to take up over the next couple of weeks the second strand of our consideration of this vital doctrine, the essential elements of conversion.

4:27 If conversion is an absolute necessity, if we would enter the kingdom. Absolutely. If we would have forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among the people of God, if conversion alone validates our election and demonstrates our calling, then surely we ought to be concerned with this question, what are the irreducible elements, according to scripture, that I have reason to believe indicate that I have been genuinely converted. It's not an academic study on the doctrine of conversion.

5:02 It's a life and death study on whether or not I am a converted man or a converted woman. All the difference in the world. We are not in a biology class or an anatomy class. We ourselves are those who are under consideration as to whether or not we are dead or alive, heirs of heaven, or those who will be cast into outer darkness.

Constructing the Canopy of Caution and Qualification

5:32 And so this morning, I want to begin with you a consideration of the essential elements of conversion. And I hope to open up that subject under four major headings, unless God gives me further light in subsequent preparation. But this morning, what I want to do is, before opening up those four essential elements of conversion, I have one object in view this morning. I want to construct.

6:02 I want to construct in your presence, from the word of God, that which we could liken to a blanket or a canopy that will be arched over everything that is said under these four headings of the essential elements of conversion. And the reason I'm taking an entire message to do this is best expressed in the language of Ezekiel 13 and verse 22. And I would ask you to turn to this passage with me, Ezekiel 13 and verse 22. In one of the lesser known indictments of the false prophets, Ezekiel 34 of the false shepherds is a well-known passage. But here in a lesser known passage, the false prophets are indicted. And notice what their peculiar impact was upon the prophets. Notice what their peculiar impact was upon the prophets.

7:07 Notice what their peculiar impact was upon the prophets. Notice what their peculiar impact was upon the people to whom they ministered. Ezekiel 13, 22. Because with lies you have grieved the heart of the righteous, whom I have not made sad, and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way and be saved alive.

7:27 One of the terrible indictments against the false prophets was this, that with their lies pronounced in the name of Jehovah, they were grieving and making sad God's true people, whom he had no desire to make sad. And on the other hand, they were strengthening in carnal assurance the hands of the wicked, who ought to have been sad, who ought to have mourned and grieved and cried to God for mercy, but instead they were hardened in their impudent self-deception by the ministering of God. This is the mystery of the false prophets. Now the principle is this, not that I fear I'll be a false prophet and speak lies, but that through failure to set out this canopy that must overarch everything that is opened up from the scriptures on the essential elements of conversion, that the result of the teaching of the false prophets would to some degree be realized in this place. This canopy of caution and qualification, as I'm entitling it, is vital, Lest some of you who are truly converted will take what is preached and draw the conclusion,

8:53 well if those are the four essential elements and I can't just give them out in one amorphous glob, I've got to give them out 1, 2, 3, 4, I've got to get them out in discernible packages in some kind of order, I fear that unless some of you get hold of this canopy of caution and qualification, you'll go home sad when there's no intention in my heart or in the heart of God to make you sad. And some of you will be grieved who ought not to be grieved if I did not take the time to give this canopy of caution and qualification. On the other hand, there are some of you who ought to be sad, who ought to be grieved, who ought to be in the language of this text returning from your wicked ways and saved alive. And if I do not give this canopy of caution and qualification, you'll go through these things and because there will be mental ascent and the semblance of an echo in your experience, you'll assume you're converted and go out hardened in your damning presumption. And out of pastoral love and concern for the former class, the true people of God who ought not to be grieved, and out of evangelistic passion and concern for the latter class,

10:20 I'm committed this morning to take the remainder of the time to construct in your presence this canopy, this blanket of caution and qualification, which is thrown over everything that's said and throughout the opening up of the four, the four categories which constitute the essential elements of conversion. I'm going to make reference to this again and again and again. I hope not ad nauseum. I hope unto your edification and to your salvation.

10:53 Well then, of what is that blanket of caution made? And as I enter this, I feel like a neurosurgeon who's going after a tumor embedded, deep in the brain of his patient. And he knows if he cuts just a wee bit too much, he'll kill the patient. If he cuts a wee bit too little,

11:22 the cancer will kill the patient.

11:28 And this is spiritual neurosurgery. Once you get into the realm of what is called experimental religion, that is, how is it that the soul is actually wrought upon by God in grace, both at the beginning and throughout the Christian life, you're in the realm, you see, of experimental theology. That is, theology that touches human experience. And so I trust you will cry to God that I may have a deft and delicate and spirit-guided hand, that I may not cut too deeply,

12:04 and that I may not cut with something less than what is necessary to deal with the cancer. All right? Of what then? Of what is that canopy made?

First Caution: Genuine Conversions Need Not Be Circumstantially Identical

12:18 Four simple heads. The first is this. Keep this caution, keep this qualification before you throughout the succeeding weeks. Number one, genuine conversion need not be circumstantially identical.

12:36 Genuine conversions need not be circumstantially identical. Now what do I mean by the word circumstantially? I refer to the time, place, surrounding, and the specific instruments used of God in the conversion of a sinner. And so by saying genuine conversions need not be circumstantially identical, what I'm saying is that the time, place, surrounding, and instruments operative in producing genuine conversions need not be identical.

13:17 So imagine the confusion if any of the five mentioned in the introduction earlier this morning took that position. Someone comes to Levi and says, explain to me how you were converted, and he tells them. I was a mercenary of the Roman government. One day I was sitting at my place of business and Jesus of Nazareth came by.

13:40 I had heard many things about him. I had attended upon some of his preaching and teaching, and he gives some of the details that are not. They are not listed in Scripture. And then he says, He cast his eyes upon me, and those eyes both withered me with the sense of my sin, and yet filled me with hope that there might be mercy since he commanded me to follow him.

14:04 He was not rejecting me for what I was, but in grace and mercy was willing to receive me as I was. And then he goes on to tell about his subsequent banquet in the house, and the person says, Why, that's an amazing thing. The transformation that occurred. Levi, did that transformation occur to me?

14:23 Oh, yes. Well, what do I do? Well, you must first of all go to the local Roman proconsul and tell him you want a job as a tax collector. And furthermore, you must then go out in some place where Jesus is presently ministering and hope that he will come by and stop by your place of toll, cast his eyes upon you with his back to the west, and say these words.

14:50 And if he does, there's hope you may be converted. Now, what kind of a soul-winner would you call Levi if he told an inquiring person such nonsense? You'd say, sir, you've got it all mixed up. You are making the circumstances of your conversion essential to the conversion of another man.

15:11 That's nonsense. And it would be nonsense. Suppose the thief were one of those who was resurrected after the resurrection of Christ. For it says many of the saints were raised up after Christ's resurrection and appeared in the city.

15:24 Suppose he was one of them. And people see him and say, weren't you the character that was impaled on the cross? Oh, yes. Well, what happened?

15:33 Well, haven't you heard? In my dying moments, I saw who he was. He was a king. And he would not stay upon that cross.

15:41 He would come to life again. And he would one day come in the full manifestation of his regal glory. He would come in his kingdom. And I asked him to remember me.

15:51 And he said, today you'll be with me in paradise. And I was with him for those days until I was raised up again. Oh, that's an amazing story. You mean Christ forgave you and made you fit for heaven?

16:05 Yes. Well, what must I do to experience such a change? Well, go on out and hold up the First National Bank. And do it in broad daylight.

16:15 Make sure you get arrested. Make sure you commit a capital crime. Because, you see, you've got to first of all get up on a cross. And then, you see what I'm doing?

16:25 Now, you can go right through all three of them. How foolish it would be for Lydia to say, you've got to go into the purple selling business. And you've got to be a Christian business. You've got to be a traveling salesperson, saleswoman.

16:41 And you've got to be sitting by a riverside and praying. That's the only way to get converted. You say, Pastor, you're talking nonsense. No, no more nonsense than has been taught in the church throughout her history on this matter.

16:54 Genuine conversions need not be circumstantially identical. Now, they may be. Acts chapter 2. Three thousand people are converted on the same day, in the same place, in identical circumstances.

17:14 Hallelujah. Wonderful. Even 30 would be converted in this place, in these identical circumstances today. God can do that.

17:29 But the point I'm making, and listen with the ears of your soul as Jesus said to his disciples in Mark 7. Genuine conversions need not be circumstantially identical. They can be. They may be.

17:48 But they need not be. All right? You say, Pastor, you've made the point. Now move on.

17:55 Well, wait a minute. Not quite so quickly. I make this point because especially, especially since the days of Charles G. Finney, who established what was called the anxious seat in his evangelistic meetings.

18:12 The anxious seat was a place in the church, usually toward the front. Toward the front. That was marked out either verbally or with a rope. Roped off like we rope off a section for the parents training their little ones.

18:28 And people were told, if you're anxious about your soul, show it by remaining behind in the anxious seat. And then Mr. Finney and others who were belaboring with him would address people in the anxious seat. And bringing his own defective theology into expression in a methodology would seek to batter them verbally into immediate subjection to Christ.

18:58 That was his great terminology. And I don't say that from secondhand sources. I've read everything that I've been able to put my hands upon that is extant of the writings of Charles G. Finney, including his systematic theology from cover to cover.

19:13 And that was his great terminology. And that was his great terminology. Bring the will to submit immediately, then and there. Well, from that moment on, in American evangelicalism, with various expressions of it that grew out of camp meeting experiences, the Salvation Army with what it called a penitent form.

19:35 I grew up, see that's a term many of you say, that's another language to me. But the term penitent form was part of my childhood vocabulary. That was like a bare low bench at the front of the Salvation Army Hall. And if you wanted to receive Christ, especially on Decision Sunday, which came once a quarter, it was called that, Decision Sunday.

19:56 I didn't read this in books, folks. This was me, part of my spiritual heritage. And you were urged to come to the penitent form and there to sing choruses such as, Into my heart, into my heart, come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Come in today, come in to stay, come into my heart, Lord Jesus.

20:22 And to pray until you felt you had prayed through and were converted. But it was at the penitent form where God would convert you. Never once do I ever remember hearing, sitting there, young man, conscious of your sin and undone-ness, knowing there is no hope in any but Christ, looking to Him. You will be saved where you are.

20:46 Embedded in my whole psyche was, if I ever get converted, the circumstances of the penitent form will be involved. So don't tell me that people don't really believe this stuff and aren't really affected by it. Other parts of church history, people who generally got converted or professed to be converted got the shakes. You ever hear of the shakers?

21:11 That's a whole denomination that grows out of the circumstances of physical shaking. Other people were called, excuse me, Pastor Barker, the Barkers. Because supposedly when the Spirit of God came upon them in converting grace, they would poop and bark like dogs. You say, Pastor, you're kidding.

21:34 No, I'm not kidding. This is too serious. This is neurosurgery, folks. I'm not kidding.

21:38 What happened in all of these instances, right down to today's notion, that if you raise a hand and the evangelist will pray for you, if you'll walk forward and go into the prayer room and let the counselor go over a few verses and you pray the prayer after him, you're saved. What has happened? People have walked in converting grace to circumstantial factors and turned those factors into a kind of sacramental grace, which has led on the one hand to horrible self-deception, and on the other hand to crippling defeatism for people like myself who went forward almost every decision Sunday, and I made enough decisions and prayed enough times that the Lord would come into my heart to make me a cynic before I was 12 years of age. And I blessed God for His grace that spared me becoming a cynic. Dear people, I would spare you. I'd spare the children of this church.

22:49 I would spare you. I'd spare you whatever your religious background is. As we move into the biblical teaching on the essential elements of genuine conversion, remember this blanket of caution and qualification. Genuine conversions need not be circumstantially identical.

23:10 Don't we get the message of the entirely different circumstances of the conversion of Levi by a toll booth? At the feet on the cross? A common felon? Saul of Tarsus knocked to the ground at noonday with a bright light and a voice out of the heaven?

23:33 A traveling businesswoman sitting by a riverbank in a prayer meeting? She doesn't get the shakes and the twitches. The whole thing seemed to be almost blasé. Whose heart the Lord opened and like a flower gently opens to the sun.

23:51 So her heart opened to the Son of Righteousness. When he rose in the preaching of Paul. The Philippian jailer? God had to knock him about a bit.

24:02 And shake him up until springing up he cries for a light and comes in trembling. Having contemplated suicide and he cries, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? But not everyone converted cried out trembling. Not everyone was simply by a riverbank with a heart that just gently opens to the sun.

24:24 Just gently opens to the truth like a flower opens before the sun. What's God saying? God's saying to us, get the message! Genuine conversions need not be circumstantially identical.

Second Caution: Genuine Conversions Need Not Be Conceptually Identical

24:38 Secondly, genuine conversions need not be conceptually identical. Genuine conversions need not be conceptually identical. Now I'm using the word conception in the same sense in which it is defined the act or the process or power of conceiving something mentally. Or if you prefer the word perception you could use genuine conversions need not be perceptually identical.

25:16 Perception is the mind's grasp upon an idea. When your mind grasps an idea, you have had perception. Now what I'm saying is genuine conversions need not be conceptually identical. Now why do I make that point?

25:34 Well listen carefully. In the process of conversion God uses his truth as his instrument. That's established in passage after passage. I give you just one to remind you of it.

25:48 Faith cometh of hearing and hearing by the word of God. Romans 10 and verse 17. Well if in the process of conversion God uses truth, if in the language of Acts 26.18, Paul's commission, he is sent to the Gentiles and will be delivered from the people and the Gentiles to open their eyes, then it's obvious no one is converted without the truth hitting his ear and inner perception coming to the spiritual eyes by the influence of the Holy Spirit.

26:24 Now if that is so, then we're going to see in subsequent messages there are certain truths that cluster around God's work by the Spirit, by means of the truth in bringing sinners to conversion. There are truths that cluster around the production of conviction of sin. There are truths that cluster around the production of hope that there is mercy in Christ through the gospel. Truths that cluster around the summons to repentance and faith and discipleship.

27:00 And truths that cluster around the necessity of the fruits that must flow out of the professed faith and repentance. But as we deal with those truths and deal with them in that order, please remember this canopy of qualification and this canopy of caution. Genuine conversion. Human conversions need not be conceptually identical.

27:31 The measure to which any one of these clusters of truth is grasped at conversion differs in almost every single genuine experience of conversion. Some people by virtue of their background and upbringing and God's peculiar dealings with them have an unusually enlarged sense of their sinfulness before they are ever converted. Others, because of ignorance of the word of God and a number of other factors, may be at conversion not so much conscious of their sin as defiance of God and the breath of the law, but they're conscious more of the results than in their consciousness. That God-shaped hole, that aching void, they hunger and thirst, for they know not what, except they know they've drunk in every fountain offered by the world and it's been brackish and left their mouths parched and dry and their stomachs growling with emptiness and frustration. And when they hear Christ saying, I am the bread of life, I am the water of life, he who eats, he who drinks,

28:54 shall never thirst, shall never hunger. They're marvelously converted, but their conception of sin is far more in terms of the Spirit making them face realistically the emptiness of a godless, Christless life. And eventually they will be brought to see that the root of that emptiness was alienation from God and bona fide guilt, but in their conversion that was not dominant in their thinking. Look at those examples that I gave to you.

29:31 There is no indication that Levi was on his face by the tollbooth crying out, Son of David, have mercy. Whatever was the state of his mind, there's not a shred of indication that he was under what we would call a deep and a pervasive awareness, an intense and almost crippling consciousness of guilt and shame. But not so with the thief and the cross. He began out, he began as a blasphemer and a mocker, and then he began to rebuke his fellow thief and said, don't you see this man's hanging here innocent?

30:12 We are suffering the same judgment at the hands of the Roman government, but justly this man has done nothing amiss. And all he can do in the sense of his own sin and unworthiness is say, Lord, remember me. He doesn't have boldness to say, forgive, accept me. He just says, cast some thoughts in my direction when you're coming with me.

30:42 And the Lord says, today you'll do that. Lydia, she doesn't tremble. Doesn't say when Paul came and started to preach, she trembled and she trembled herself right into the river, and Paul had to drag her out and revive her. She's sitting there by a river bank and she's listening to the gospel for the first time and no indication of great thrones of conviction, not great ecstatic heights of joy.

31:10 Her heart just opens and she says, if you judge me to be faithful to the Lord, come, say with me. If you judge that what I profess as a response to the gospel is that of a genuinely converted woman, use my house as your base of offerings. You see what I'm emphasizing? And we could go on with many other examples, but I trust these have been enough from the scripture to convince you.

31:38 Genuine conversions need not be conceptually identical. And you say, Pastor, why do you make the point? Well, for this simple reason. If you begin to think that there must be a certain measure of conception of sin, of the gospel, of repentance and faith, and the terms of discipleship, and the fruits of true faith and repentance, and you arbitrarily set up a measuring line and say, beneath that, no one can be converted, therefore I didn't have that conceptual understanding when I thought I was converted.

32:19 And you'll start to doubt all that God has done in your life, not because I went beyond the word of God, but because you didn't listen this morning. I want to know if anyone is grieved who ought not to be grieved, it isn't my fault. I don't want to be a butcher. I want to be a spiritual neurosurgeon.

32:40 I don't want to take the knife of God's word and gouge a brain. I want to take the scalpel and cut carefully the skin for your good. And so it's essential that you understand genuine conversions need not be conceptually identical. Now, they may be.

33:01 They may be a group on the day of Pentecost. They were all part of the same activities. So Peter could say, you took him, and by wicked hands, you crucified, you slew him, and now the one you've slain, God is raised from the dead, and he has sent forth this which you now see and hear, and it says, when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and they cried out, men and brethren, what shall we do? And then Peter gave them a mini answer and said, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, unto the remission of your sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

33:36 And then he says, this promise of the Spirit given to the penitent believing, openly confessing sinner, is to you, to your children, to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. And then it says, with many other words, he testified and exhorted them, saying, save yourselves from this crooked, this perverse, this scolios, this twisted generation. Now, they were converted with almost identical conceptions. Why?

34:05 Because in the same place, in the same circumstances, listening to the same preaching, being indicted with the same sins, obviously, as they compare their testimony, there would be great similarity of conceptual attendance upon their conversion. And therefore, if God is pleased to do that wonderful job, wonderful thoughts, the point is, genuine conversions need not be conceptually identical. And I tell you this to avoid skepticism, because some of you, as you look back, you say, I sure didn't know much, but as best I knew, and what I knew, there was a change, and the change has lasted to this day, and all the new light God has given me, I sought to embrace it, and walk in the light of it. I don't know whether I was converted here or there. My friend, why bother? If you know that you are, why are you fussing about it?

35:08 What point did you become? Suppose you got a knock on the head this morning, and you forgot your birthday, and then somebody destroyed your birth certificate, and the hospital burned down where the records were, and Trenton burned to the ground where the formal records are kept if you're born in New Jersey. Nobody knows when you were born, not even you. Your mother's dead, your father's dead, all your relatives, they don't, they didn't care enough to even ask.

35:36 My friend, if you get up in the morning, with bad breath and scruply hair and all, and go in the bathroom, and use your scope, and take your shower, and come to church, it doesn't make much difference whether you know when it all got started. You're alive! You're breathing, you're seeing, you're feeling, you're touching. Nobody can tell you you're not alive.

36:04 That's what's important, and that's why I emphasize that genuine conversions need not be conceptually identical, lest some of you be undermined in your confidence of God's work, you become skeptical of God's previous work, or there may be an unwarranted coveting and really discontent with how God brought you in. Suppose Lydia hears about the jailer and she says, I didn't get no work quick. God must love the jailer more than he loves me. How did you get an earthquake?

36:41 All I got was a preacher talking. He found my heart open. I didn't get an earthquake. You see how stupid that would be?

36:55 May God help us then, not to be guilty of a sinful coveting. This can happen when you read the biography of someone that God dramatically saved, like a John Bunyan. You say, Oh, if going through what he did would make me what he was, why didn't God bring me through the throes of deep, deep conviction for so long a period of time? Well, for one reason, it would have killed most of us, and the rest of us, it probably would have made us so intolerant of anyone else who's getting converted any other way, we'd have been a nuisance to the church.

37:28 The Lord saved you exactly the way he knew he'd get the most glory to himself in saving you. And it's time you said, God, you can do your business better than I can. That's at the root of the issue. And then as we pray, what are we expecting God to do?

37:46 Must everyone be able to recite the full definition of the Ten Commandments from the Shorter Catechism before we have any reason to believe they know anything of conviction of sin? Ought we be able to recite the full definition in the Shorter Catechism? Yes! But the point I make is, we dare not come up with a doctrine of cruelty.

38:14 There was a pamphlet written called The Cruel Doctrine of, and let's call it, I'll call it myself, frankly it wasn't written about me, they took the man's name and they put ism after it. The Cruel Doctrine of Martinism. Well, what was the doctrine of Martinism though that was not the name? Well, it was the doctrine of a man who'd been an unconverted preacher for I think about two decades.

38:39 And then he came under deep conviction about his hypocrisy and his shallowness and under deep and lengthy prying of the Spirit of God into his heart and then a tremendous upheaval and conversion. And then he locked God's dealings into the framework of his own dealings with him and made it almost a rule for everyone else. So he assumed anyone who professed to know Christ, who hadn't gone through the unmasking of being a hypocrite for a while, he was suspect of their conversion. And this petrified into a whole approach to dealing with people that then someone felt they had to expose it in this booklet.

39:19 The Cruel Doctrine of. And it was cruel because it was making sad those whom God was not grieving. It was strengthening the hands of some whom God had not converted. For at the end of the day, the proof of conversion is not what you felt when you thought you were converted but how you live now in the present hour and what you feel now and what you see now and what you long for now.

Third Caution: Genuine Conversions Need Not Be Sequentially Identical

39:54 So that's the second big patch in the blanket. The second big piece of material in the canopy. Genuine conversions need not be conceptually identical. And then I hasten to the final two and will be more brief.

40:10 Genuine conversions need not be sequentially identical. They need not be circumstantially identical. They need not be conceptually identical. What we know at the time of conversion and genuine conversions need not be sequentially identical.

40:33 Now what do I mean by that word sequentially identical? Well, when things are in a certain sequence and a certain order because without that sequence or order you can't attain a given end then we say they are necessarily sequential. Some of you kids have learned this the first time you went to bake a cake. Your mom said, all right.

40:57 You want to try it on your own? Yep. You're one of those brave people. Some of us by nature are always very timid.

41:03 And we've got to have somebody help us the first few times. Some of you are naturally more aggressive. Oh, that looks simple. So you've got down the recipe.

41:10 So you've got to get this and this. You've got out all the things. And then you start throwing them together in any sequence. And you throw it in the oven.

41:17 And what came out ain't what comes out when mom does it. And so mom had to say, well, dear, this is what happened. You had all the right ingredients but you didn't put them in in the right sequence. You say, Pastor Martin, I'd like to call you during the week.

41:33 What's your telephone number? I jot it down. Yes, 2564560. You say, okay, good.

41:38 To remind myself there's one, two, one, four, two fives and two sixes and a zero. So Monday morning you sit down. Not Monday, because I'm not in a study on Monday. On Tuesday and you dial 0246655.

41:52 You say, I've got all the numbers. One, zero, one, two, one, four, two, sixes and two fives. So you crunch it in. 0246655.

42:01 You know what you're going to get?

42:05 You have dialed an unreachable number. Will you please hang up and try again or seek operator assistance? You see, the desired end to get a hookup through the connections there in Passaic, you've got to dial those numbers in a certain sequence. And the sequence is essential to the desired end.

42:27 Not just the right amount of numbers and the right numbers, but in a certain sequence. Whether you know it or not, that's what those pilots are doing up there in the cockpit when they're sitting there long before you get on the plane. You wonder what they're doing. You think they're in there just sipping coffee and chatting.

42:44 Oh, no. They have a big, long, what's called pre-flight checklist. And those things are in a specific sequence. They are to carefully monitor all of the systems.

42:57 And if they just went in there and said, hey, let's reverse the sequence, let's reverse the sequence today, I'll tell you one thing, I'm never flying that airline again. Because the safety of that aircraft, its efficient operation to take people safely from one place to another, is bound up with what? Not just going through the checklist, but the checklist in sequence. Now, have I illustrated enough to make it plain?

43:25 What I'm saying is genuine conversions need not be sequentially identical. Now, in teaching on the essential elements, I've got to have a one, a two, and a three, and a four. I'm sorry. I can't give it up in just a clock.

43:43 And the order will be both theological, logical, and, listen carefully, it will be a reflection of the ordinary process of the mind in contact with the truth of God when God is converting the sinner. But because I teach it in sequence, and because there may be a more general pattern in sequence, please do not assume that I am saying, or that the Bible is teaching, that every conversion is sequentially identical. If you don't come under deep conviction of sin by the law first, then any professed repentance and faith is invalid. Go back to the Biblical identity, the Biblical examples. What was the big issue with Saul of Tarsus? Well, as I've tried to study the record, in Acts 9, and then again in Acts 22, and Acts 26, and the little snippets one gets from other epistles, and particularly the large snippet in Romans 7, verses 1 to 13, the sequence seems to be that Saul of Tarsus was first of all confronted with this issue.

45:05 What is the identity of Jesus of Nazareth? That was the issue. He was convinced he was an imposter. That's why he was breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the church.

45:17 He believed he was a blasphemer. And that's why he says, later I found out I was the blasphemer. Because I was trying to convince men he was not the Messiah. He was simply a man.

45:29 Until I realized that he was all he claimed to be and saw that I was the blasphemer. So in the initial dealings of God with Saul of Tarsus, it's the identity of Jesus. He hears a voice. And he knows it's a theophany.

45:45 It's a manifestation of God. Brightness above the brightness of the noonday sun. So what does he cry out? Who art thou, Lord?

45:54 Identify yourself. And the voice comes back, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. And once he had this issue of the identity of Jesus of Nazareth straight. He was a changed man.

46:07 He said, what wilt thou have me to do? Think of it. Subjecting himself to the one up till now he regarded as an imposter. And the Lord tells him what to do.

46:19 And somewhere in that process and we don't know where, he then came to Jesus. He then came under a deep plow work of the law of God. And he said that that tenth commandment began to burn in my conscience under the light and heat of the Holy Spirit until I, proud Saul of Tarsus, who could look at the checklist not only of God's law and its external requirements but all my pharisaic additions and say, blameless, blameless, blameless. Suddenly he said, I saw my heart was a veritable artesian well of wickedness.

47:00 Now what came first? Coming to clear views on the identity of Jesus or deep conviction of sin? Well it seems in Saul of Tarsus' case the order was the identity of Jesus. Then deep conviction.

47:17 But we see other instances. Look at Lydia. She may have even been what we call an Old Testament saint for all we know. She may have already been regenerated and converted.

47:29 That's why I said a New Testament doctrine of conversion. She certainly, the least we can say is she comes into the possession of salvation in its full New Testament glory as Paul preaches. But there's no indication that she undergoes days of deep inner heart searching. What do we learn from this?

47:54 That genuine conversions need not be sequentially identical. Therefore I give you these two warnings. Beware of any preaching which ignores this reality. Thank God I know of no such preaching that's ever gone on in this place over twenty-five years.

48:12 But I'm telling some of you that will be here to guard the integrity of this pulpit when some of us are gone. Beware of any preaching that ignores this reality because it will produce self-deception. People will think, good, I've got everything in sequence therefore I must have reality. No.

48:33 And then it will produce needless self-doubt. People who are truly converted will be always shaken under preaching it says unless you have a deep workable law upon your conscience bringing you as your paramount awareness, your guilt, your hell deservingness. That must be dominant before you can have any reason to believe your repentance and faith are genuine. No.

49:01 You can't prove that from the Bible that a person must have a felt sense of sin beyond anything produced by nature. Yes. Yes. Yes.

49:11 Yes. But how much? In what way? As we shall see radiating from what place?

49:20 Sinai? Or can God bring that radiating from Golgotha? Beware of preaching which insists upon a secret sequential understanding and experience in conversion. And then be careful in reading literature which appears to overlook or contradict this caution.

49:48 Beware of reading literature that appears to overlook or contradict this caution. You see some books especially our esteemed Puritan books listen carefully now most of them saw the light of day first as sermons. Sermons that were part of an overall pulpit ministry. Sermons which like this one have a particular limited focused intent.

50:21 You take this one sermon out of the context of the whole series on conversion and take the series on conversion out of the context of the strong emphasis from this pulpit on justification by faith alone based on the imputation of the righteousness of Christ and you could get a distorted view of this ministry. Well often when we pick up a Puritan treatise they were pastors above all else and wise pastors wise physicians and they saw the beginning of a spiritual disease and they were giving some very potent 500 milligram Cipro spiritual antibiotics. And if you just take that in isolation and make that the beginning middle and end of truth you get in trouble. So if a book shakes you up before you let the book be the oracle will you check with someone who might be able to help put it in its context. Now it may be that after putting it in its context it shakes you up even more. Hallelujah.

Fourth Caution: Genuine Conversions Need Not Be Emotionally Identical

51:26 Good. But we don't want to see people grieve whom God is not grieving because you read a book and you allowed the emphasis of that book to be taken in isolation from its original context. And worse yet from its biblical context. Fourth and finally and even more briefly here's the last piece in the campaign.

51:50 Genuine conversions need not be emotionally identical. Genuine conversions need not be emotionally identical. Now in conversion God saves the whole man the whole woman the whole boy the whole girl and the emotions of necessity are involved in every true conversion. You hear me?

52:17 If God converts the whole man from darkness to light from the power of Satan unto God He converts him at the emotional level. So I'm not talking about emotionless conversions. Listen to what I say. I'm saying that genuine conversions need not be emotionally identical.

52:39 I'm assuming all of them have a measure of an emotional register. But not an identical register. No one can contemplate the issues of who God is and what man is. Of sin of wrath of heaven of hell the cross the open tomb forgiveness to rebels the gift of the spirit the status of a son a justified criminal.

53:07 How can anyone contemplate those things and say oh that's great. No the Bible says the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking but righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. And whatever the righteousness may be and that's debated I have my own convictions one thing is clear joy and peace are sanctified emotions. The fruit of the spirit is love joy peace.

53:36 Now how in the world can anyone experience any of those qualities in any sense? Any sense of reality stripped of their emotional content? They are more than emotions but they are nothing if they don't include the emotions. But what I'm saying is read your Bible and you see that the emotion of joy in Levi didn't cause him to do cartwheels or do like David did stripped down to the bare essentials of modesty and dance before the Lord all the way to his house.

54:15 No indication that Levi danced but he did go to his house steward and say hey get all the fatted calves and bring out the best wine and get the best goods and we're going to have us a feast. Jesus of Nazareth has called me to himself. And he showed his joy not by dancing but by taking of his wealth and pouring it out. How did Zacchaeus show his joy that the Savior would say come down I must abide at your house.

54:49 Today is salvation come to this house. How is it manifested? A conscience that got very sensitive about economic inequities. Behold Lord half of my goods I give to feed the poor and if I've taken anything wrongfully I restore it fourfold.

55:06 God says you got the real thing. His joy expressed itself in the expressions of determination to make restitution. The Philippian jailer his emotion showed itself in love with the apostle whom he'd helped perhaps to beat. And he washed his wounds and made him comfortable and fed him in the house.

55:31 You see the diversity that's the point I'm making. Genuine conversions need not be emotionally identical. And in circles where that is not recognized there's a stereotypic expectation and if you don't rise to this particular level you're suspect and in others they say if there's any kind of emotion you're suspect. Well some of us can no more think on God's truth and have that thought warmed and illuminated and influenced by the spirit without showing it in volatile emotions then we can stop breathing and kill ourselves by willing not to breathe.

56:14 Long before that happened you'd pass out and start breathing. That's the way God's made us. But some of you can be shouting happy and only God's eye of omniscience would find the slightest trace of that. You can have a face that's like a stoic but your heart can be bursting with joy in the Holy Ghost.

56:38 Now who's to say that if you're truly converted you're gonna put a joyometer on a man and say whoops it's come up to 50 he must be for real. You're gonna put a smileometer or a shoutometer. And yet this is done dear people. It's done to this very hour in differing circles.

Conclusion: The One Essential Non-Negotiable

56:59 And by the grace of God and the word of God I would spare you the tyranny of this. Here's the canopy. You see it before you now. It spreads over all that will follow.

57:10 This canopy of caution and qualification whatever is taught from the scriptures about the essential elements of a genuine conversion. Never forget genuine conversions need not be circumstantially identical conceptually identical sequentially identical or emotionally identical. But I tell you except you be converted you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven. And whatever the circumstances and whatever the degree and order of the conceptions may be and whatever the emotions may be you better make for sure that you are indeed converted with a conversion that has no explanation but that God himself has made you a new creature in Christ. That's the one essential non-negotiable. May God help us so that we shall listen to these things and not be grieved if God does not intend to grieve us and not be comforted if God does not intend to comfort us. By the grace of God have the truth help us either to get into the kingdom or to solidify our confidence that we are in and increase our gratitude to the one who put us in.

58:32 Let us pray. Our Father we thank you again for your holy word and for the sufficiency of scripture to guide our thinking and oh Lord you know how grieved we are when we read in the history of your church the horrible results that have come from even well intended well-intentioned men when they have failed to heed these cautions that your word sets before us. May the Holy Spirit write them upon the hearts of all gathered in this place today that as we in your will would be privileged to continue to examine what is that conversion which is essential to our entrance into life we would not go beyond nor fall short of the balanced peace of the teaching of the scripture. Hear us and dismiss us with your blessing we pray in Jesus worthy name. Amen.