Calvin's Applicatory Preaching.

Calvin moves seamlessly to application of the crucial point.  Let me quote his words:

"let us note carefully ... that when the Gospel is preached it will be a mere useless sound until our Lord shows that it is He who speaks: for He does not bestow that blessing upon all."[1]

Calvin is stating a theological fact, and an observable reality: much of our preaching is “a mere useless sound”!  Nothing much happens, at least not so far as we can see.  There is no power.  We are preaching in a valley of very many dry bones,[2] and to spiritual corpses.  All our learned discourses are mere noise. Yes, they can hear the words, but they cannot hear the Word.[3]  If, as Paul says, "the Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes",[4] where's the evidence?  Where’s the fruit?   If, as Jesus commands us, we are to "go and make disciples of all the nations,"[5] where are they?  Where are the disciples we have made?  Where's the fruit?

 
No, my Friends, there's been a lot of noise from our pulpits, but no fruit.  What is needed?  The breath of God.  That's what we urgently need in our pulpits today.  The wind of God to come sweeping through us.  

The fire of God to consume the dross, the garbage, and the rubbish.  We need the spiritual and religious garbage to be removed from our lives and from our churches for the Spirit of God to come upon us, and do His work.  "Prophecy to the wind, that these very dry bones may live."[6]

Calvin states it clearly: "Until the Lord shows that it is He who speaks,"[7] all our preaching will be vain, useless, unproductive.  He must do it.  He must empower His Gospel before sinners will bow to His Majesty.  "The arm of the Lord" must be revealed[8] and laid bare in all its power.  The Spirit must come, the fire must fall, the wind must blow!

He continues: "the power of God is hidden from the reprobate, and therefore is a privilege that God confers on a few (those whom He has elected and adopted to attain to eternal life) when He declares to them that the Gospel is the message of salvation ..."[9]  But what is Calvin saying here?  The one thing, and only one thing, that guarantees the success of evangelism is election.  This is what gives the Gospel its irresistible power in and over the lives of the elect!  Nothing else!  Yes, so hard is the unregenerate heart that it can resist God's power in the Gospel.  And that is truly amazing, is it not?  That's why not all believe and receive the preaching![10]  It is darkness to those who do not believe!  Reprobates are incapable of discerning what is at stake when they reject Christ as He is "freely offered in the Gospel."[11]  The Gospel is the message of salvation. 

It is this truth, says Calvin, that ‘keeps us keeping on.’  Once we focus our attention on men and their response to the Gospel, we can only become disillusioned.  His estimation, however based, is that "hardly one in ten" will believe the Gospel.[12]  So if we fix our eyes on men's response to the Gospel, we can but be cast down.  This whole ‘Jesus’ thing is a failure.  The Gospel does not 'do what it says in the (Bible).' It's a failure.  It can't be believed.

”No no,” cautions Calvin.  Fix your eyes upon Jesus, the Redeemer of the world. He was humbled, humiliated, entered this world in poverty, undesirable, without beauty, and rejected by the majority; but God has "highly exalted Him, and given Him the Name that is above every name, that at the Name of Jesus, every knee should bow … and every tongue should confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."[13]  He's the One!   The devil will try and get us down, try to get us to lose faith and heart, try to destroy our hope.  "But you must not hear him, though 'tis hard for you to resist the evil and the good to do."[14]  There is a "wicked spirit" in the world, you know.  His job is to discredit Christ and His work.  He wants us to focus on men - a disastrous thing to do.   Look at how few who have believed.  This Gospel is not right, not true.

"But," says Isaiah, "Look to the Redeemer, for He will prevail." 

What a needed antidote this is to today’s unfaithful church, and decadent world!  How our souls need to be reminded of the loving power and gracious purposes of God to save His elect unerringly and eternally.  How careful we need to be to maintain the Bible’s own divinely given balance!  How easily we can slip into the very error we oppose by concentrating almost exclusively on the universal sufficiency of Christ’s death on the Cross, and forget that what guarantees the success of this mighty Gospel is divine election from all eternity.  Calvin, and Isaiah before him, wants us to fix our eyes on the sovereign Redeemer God, whose purposes cannot be thwarted by rebellious men.  Truly, God’s revealed will in Scripture tells of that He “wants all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth;”[15] but it is God’s secret will that guarantees that this will infallibly happen.  What a blend of precious saving truth! 

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[1]   Sermon 2:50.

[2]   Ezek.37:1-11.

[3]   Acts 10:44.

[4]   Rom.1:16.

[5]   Matt.28:19.

[6]  Cf. Ezek.37:1-11.

[7]  Sermon 2:50.

[8]  Isa.53:1.

[9]  Sermon 2:50.

[10]  Isa.53:1.

[11]  Shorter Catechism No. 21.

[12]  Sermon 2:41.

[13]  Phil.2:9-11.

[14]  From the children’s hymn, “Do no sinful action.”

[15]  1 Tim.2:4.