'But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth' (2 Thessalonians 2.13).

The sermon preached by the Rev. Prof. H. M. Cartwright on the occasion of the service of thanksgiving for God's gracious provision of a larger premises for the Society.

It is a great privilege to be present on this occasion of thanksgiving to God for the expansion of the work of the Society which made larger premises necessary. Giving thanks to God for His provision of the premises required, we are thankful not just because the Society is expanding or because premises have been provided, but because of the connection of these facts with the increased spreading of the Word of God in faithful versions.

It is possible, even in the day-to-day work of a Society handling the Word of God so much, to be sometimes forgetful of the eternal implications of this work. We can become so occupied with many things which have to be done that we may not remember as we should the tremendous implications of spreading abroad the Word of God. This Word is the means whereby God the Father brings, through the working of His Holy Spirit, to the Lord Jesus Christ, those whom He has chosen in His eternal purpose of grace.

What reason we have for thankfulness when we consider the significant place which the Word of God spread abroad has in the purpose of the Triune God whereby He brings His chosen people from a state of nature to a state of grace and from a state of grace to a state of glory!

Reasons for Thanksgiving

How thankful we should be that we have this Word of which the Lord Jesus Himself said, 'thy word is truth' (John 17.17)! What a dark place the world would be without the Word of God! The Epistle to the Romans describes man left to the state of nature, a state of utter depravity and godlessness and ignorance. The world even with a Bible in its hand cannot find God, cannot know God, but this Bible is used in the hand of the Holy Spirit to bring what light there is into the darkness. We do not know what portions of Scripture, what volumes of the Word of God that go out from this place, will be used to bring light into the darkness of some poor sinner's soul. But how thankful we should be that this is the means God uses to make truth known, to bring light into this dark world!

How thankful we should be when we think of a sinner being brought to the belief of the truth, because behind that sinner coming to the belief of the truth there is the work of God: God's sovereign election, God the Son's redemption, God the Holy Spirit's regeneration! Wherever a sinner is brought to belief of the truth that is more than a notion, that has conviction of sin and repentance attached to it, that brings a sinner to the end of himself, that brings that sinner to cast himself upon the mercy of God in Christ Jesus, we know that it has been brought about by the Triune God.

We have a picture here of the darkness and delusion that prevail in the world. It speaks of the power to delude that is given to the man of sin, the son of perdition, and we can see how the papal anti-christ is responsible for deluding so many people. There are so many false religions and philosophies and human beings will believe any one of them before they will believe the truth of God. That is the case because, as it tells us here, they have not received the love of the truth that they might be saved. They have pleasure in unrighteousness. Satan is deluding them. God is giving them over to that delusion, but at the very heart of that delusion is their own enmity against God, their inability to love the truth and to receive the truth. Therefore, whenever we see or hear of a sinner believing the truth we find behind that belief the almighty grace and power of God.

Chosen by the Father

To increase our thankfulness we notice that behind that believing there is the eternal, electing purpose of God the Father. 'We are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth' (2 Thessalonians 2.13). If a sinner is brought to belief of the truth in that fact there is evidence of his eternal election by God. It is God and not man who is given the glory of that belief. It is not man who is to be congratulated for believing. It is not man who has resources within himself to produce faith. Even the most feeble faith is a manifestation of all the glorious attributes of Jehovah, because behind its existence in the heart of a sinner there is all that tremendous work of redemption in which all the glorious attributes of God are made known.

If you trace feeble faith to its source, what you find is God. That is what the angels are desiring to look into (1 Peter 1.12). They see in the work of man's salvation a manifestation of the glory of their God they cannot see anywhere else in heaven or in all the work of creation. When we see a believer, we see in that work of faith the glory of God made manifest. We see God's choice of that man, not that man's choice of God. 'God hath ... chosen you'. The Lord Jesus said to his own disciples, 'Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you' (John 15.16). Why is it that one sinner who is acquainted with the truth has no interest in it, rejects it, and another sinner acquainted with the same truth comes to believe it? Sometimes the most unlikely sinner believes the truth, when the person who has been steeped in the Word of God from his youth rejects it. Why did Jacob receive the promise and Esau trample it under his feet? God himself gives the answer to that question. It was 'that the purpose of God according to election might stand' (Romans 9.11). As He said, 'Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated' (Romans 9.13).

The belief of the truth has behind it God's choice for salvation of that individual whom He brings to the belief of the truth, and you notice that His choice is eternal. It does not belong to time, it is not because of anything in time. God hath chosen you to salvation: not from the beginning of your life of faith, nor the beginning of your life of sin, nor the beginning of the existence of the world, but from the beginning. If you go to the beginning of everything that had a beginning, you find that God is there: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. In the beginning was the Word. When you go back beyond the beginning of everything that has begun, there is God alone. 'God hath from the beginning', before there was anything in existence that has been created, from all eternity. Is not that a tremendous thought, that as long as God is God, as long as God has been God, He has had His people in His mind? He has purposed their salvation, and the reasons for that choice are reasons which belong to Him, to eternity, to His own good pleasure: not because of works of righteousness which we have done, not because of anything in our experience, but entirely because of the sovereignty and freeness of His grace from the beginning. There is nothing for the man who believes to be proud of; he has to give the glory of his believing to God who chose him from all eternity.

This choice is characterized by God's love towards His people. 'Brethren beloved of the Lord': it is not a loveless decree, a loveless purpose. It is a decree and purpose in which the heart of God goes out towards His people. 'The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee' (Jeremiah 31.3).

When we think of Bibles going out we know not where, to people of whom we have no idea, what reason we have for thankfulness! The Lord has said His Word will not return unto Him void, it will accomplish His purpose, it will prosper in the thing whereto He has sent it. How wonderful to think of poor sinners here and there throughout the world, whom God has loved with this everlasting, distinguishing love, who are going to be brought through the knowledge of that truth into the experience of God's salvation! What reason we have for thankfulness when we remember that God's sovereign election is coming to expression in the experience of every single sinner who is brought to the belief of the truth!

Called by the Holy Spirit

When a sinner comes to belief of the truth it is as a consequence of the work of God the Holy Spirit in his experience. 'God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: whereunto he called you by our gospel ...' That expression, 'sanctification of the Spirit', includes the whole work in which the Spirit of God engages as He separates those whom God has chosen from the world lying in wickedness: their regeneration, their effectual calling by the gospel, everything involved in the Spirit's work in transferring the object of God's love from the state of nature and ruin to the state of glory. It is the Holy Spirit who performs that work. He has taken in hand, in accordance with the everlasting covenant of God, the application of redemption to the people of God.

It is wonderful that God has not left anything of our salvation to anyone other than the Triune God Himself. Every aspect of salvation has been undertaken by a divine Person. What use would salvation be to us, as it is set before us in the truth of the gospel, if we were left to ourselves to take it or leave it? What would you do yourself, if you were left to take or leave the gospel of the grace of God? Even a sinner on the borders of eternity, knowing there is nothing before him but the wrath and curse of God, will do anything, go anywhere, rather than cast himself upon the mercy of God in Christ Jesus, if left to himself. It is the Holy Spirit who takes that depraved sinner and gives him the spiritual life from which faith and repentance and love and all Christian graces flow.

The gospel of the grace of God, the truth concerning God, sin, salvation, and particularly concerning Christ and Him crucified, is set before us in the gospel. We are told in the Bible that God 'commandeth all men every where to repent' (Acts 17.30) and God invites sinners, burdened sinners, to come to Christ. 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest' (Matthew 11.28). What brings them: is it the persuasion of the preacher, the inclination of their own hearts, that causes them to come to Christ in all their sin and need? 'He called you by our gospel', He spoke with a voice that wakens the dead, and in response to that all-powerful voice of grace they were able to repent and to believe the truth.

Nicodemus thought that if only he was told the truth about the kingdom, then he would be able to understand it and enter into it. He knew the Bible from beginning to end. He came to the Lord Jesus by night and he praised Him; 'we know that thou art a teacher come from God' (John 3.2). Jesus said to him, what you are needing is not someone to teach you, but to be born again. 'Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God' (John 3.3). That is not something a man does for himself. 'Resurrection from the dead', 'created anew in Christ Jesus', 'born again' are terms which tell us that here is a work which God performs when a sinner believes the truth, with belief characterized by conviction of sin, by repentance, by abandoning self-righteousness and self-sufficiency, by coming as a poor beggar to the door of mercy. What accounts for that? The 'sanctification of the Spirit' and the effectual calling of God in that sinner's experience. Many a time the sinner heard the same truths and they made no impression. The day came when the truth was accompanied by power from heaven and he, like Lazarus, came forth from the grave of sin and began for the first time to understand and experience and respond to the truth.

What reason have we for thankfulness when we think of the Bible being spread abroad and realize that this is the instrument used in the hand of the Spirit of God to call sinners from death to life, from darkness to light!

The Glory of the Lord

Whenever there is a sinner who has been brought to belief of the truth there is a sinner who has been chosen to salvation and called 'to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ'. Wherever there is a sinner who has been brought to belief of the truth, there is a sinner who has been chosen to salvation and called 'to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ'. Belief of the truth is part of the sinner's salvation. The sinner who believes the truth has been delivered from the state of sin and misery in which he was born, the state of being completely under the control of his depraved nature, the state of guiltiness and condemnation. We should think more than we do of that pit from which we are delivered by the grace of God! He took me from a fearful pit and from the miry clay and on a rock He set my feet, establishing my way (Psalm 40.2). He took me out of this fearful condition in which I was by nature and put me into a state of salvation through Jesus Christ.

To be saved is to be obtaining the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. To be saved is to have Christ as our own. God has not given us this blessing and that blessing; He has given us Christ and He has given us many blessings in Him. The Shorter Catechism produced by the Westminster Divines in this city [London, England] speaks about the different benefits given to believers. It talks about justification and adoption and sanctification and then about the benefits that flow from them in this world: assurance of God's love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, increase of grace, perseverance therein to the end. Then it talks about the death of the Christian. Souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness and do immediately pass into glory, and their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection. At the resurrection they are raised up in glory, openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoyment of God to all eternity.

What blessings God has given to His people! He has not given them in isolated packages but in Christ Jesus. When they obtain Christ, when Christ is given to them and they are brought to receive Him as their own, they have in Christ all the blessings that are in the covenant of grace for the people of God. Perhaps so often the Lord's people do not enjoy the blessings of their salvation as they might because they are seeking for this and that blessing—for example, assurance of God's love—when they should be seeking for Christ. 'Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?' (Song of Solomon 3.3). That is the lesson, the secret, learned by the Apostle Paul by the teaching of the Holy Spirit. He abandoned the old righteousness; he was depending on the righteousness of Christ. 'I count all things but loss ... that I may win Christ' (Philippians 3.8). I count them dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; that is where his righteousness was. As he said again by inspiration of the Spirit of God, Christ 'is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption' (1 Corinthians 1.30).

Salvation is obtaining Christ, particularly the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Everything about Christ is glorious. As the eternal Son of God, He dwelt with the Father and Holy Spirit in the glorious fellowship of the Godhead. What a glorious person is the Son of God; all the glory of God is His! Every divine attribute and honour belongs to Him essentially, eternally as the Son of God. Think of His glory as the Godman Redeemer of His people, of His Person as God in our nature. 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased' (Matthew 3.17). Think of Him in the work He accomplished; never more glorious than when He hung on the Cross, because He was not there in that state of humiliation, as a mere victim. When Isaiah saw His glory, he wrote of Him in passages like Isaiah 53. When Moses and Elias spoke with Him on the mount and He was shining in His glory, they were talking about the decease He was to accomplish at Jerusalem (Luke 9.31). On the cross of Calvary He was not being carried away before influences over which He had no control. He was offering Himself, through the eternal Spirit, without spot unto God. We see the glory of the Son of God in our nature most marvellously displayed, in the very depths of that humiliation He experienced in our nature on the cross of Calvary.

Think of the glory given to Him as Saviour. The glory of God is His eternally; He took upon Himself the nature of His people that He might save them from their sins. Having humbled Himself to death in the place of His people He has been highly exalted and given 'a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow' (Philippians 2.9-10). The glory of Christ as the eternal Son of God, the glory of Christ in His accomplishment as the God-man Redeemer, is manifested now in His humanity as He is exalted at the right hand of the Father, having finished the work the Father gave Him to do.

Whatever way you think of Christ, what you see in Him is glory; and the saved sinner is obtaining the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord has a glory He will share with none other. The writer of Revelation saw crowns of gold on the heads of the elders, but a little later he saw them casting these crowns before the throne of God and of the Lamb. 'The bride eyes not her garments but her dear bridegroom's face. I shall not gaze on glory but on my King of grace, not on the crown He giveth but on His pierced hands, for the Lamb is all the glory of Emmanuel's land.' How then can we obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ?

There are two things at least. If we obtain Christ all that He is as the glorious Son of God, as the glorious Redeemer, as the exalted Redeemer, is for us. Everything Christ is, and has done, and has suffered, and has obtained, is for the benefit of His people. Christ in all His glory belongs to them. Also, there is a glory which Christ gives His people. 'Glorify thou me ... with the glory which I had with thee before the world was' (John 17.5). He prayed that His people would be given the glory of union with Himself and His Father. 'Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world' (John 17.24). Is riot the glory the Christian is looking for to see Him as He is and to be like Him? When we shall see Him, we shall be like Him (1 John 3.2). That poor believer who has come to the belief of the truth because of God's gracious choice of him and God's gracious work in him has obtained salvation, the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

What reason for thankfulness as we think of the Bible being spread abroad or portions of it or sometimes only words from it, and being used by God to bring to pass the eternal purposes of His grace, to bring poor sinners out of darkness into light and to make heirs of hell heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ Jesus!

Encouragement for Bible Distribution

We are thankful today for this evidence that the Lord has a purpose of grace, an intention that His Word should go abroad. Who but the Lord knows which volumes will be blessed? We find our encouragement where our Lord in His days of humiliation found His. When He was preaching to the congregation about the bread of life and they were rejecting Him, He said (and it was an encouragement to Himself), 'All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out' (John 6.37).

It is a great privilege to be celebrating in thankfulness to God the prospect of that Word going out amongst the nations. We do not know what will prosper, this or that, but we know that the Lord has a purpose of grace for His own people. From places some of us have never heard of they shall be brought with gladness great and mirth on every side, into the palace of the King and there they shall abide (Psalm 45.15).

This sermon has been edited for publication.