The invitation goes out,

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28 KJV

In short, it says, “Come.”

There is no “coming” unless the “come” invitation reaches to the one who is coming.

God invites first and we respond.

But one person responds to the call and the other ignores it. Why?

I don’t know about the latter but the former one responds because the Holy Spirit quickens his dead spirit so he can respond to the call.

Why is this step of quickening the spirit needed?

Since the fall of Adam, the human race has been dead. A new born baby comes out of his mother’s womb as a dead person, dead for the things of God.

After the fall, no one among humans seek God.

The word of God says,

“God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.” Psalm 53:2-3 ESV

So if you preach the Gospel to the dead person, he sees you as a fool who has no meaningful thing to do in life except preaching the Gospel. Why? He is dead!

Dead person needs a miracle to come back to life so he can hear the call “Come.”

Lazarus’ story is a good illustration for this.

“Take away the stone,” (John 10:39) is the example of “Gospel preaching.” God invites those who are already awakened by the spirit of God to take part in the work of waking up dead people and bringing them to life.

Taking away the stone won’t bring the dead Lazarus to life but the Spirit of God.

Then the call or the invitation goes: “Lazarus, come out.” John 11:43

Some people say, “Lazarus has free will at this point to say to Jesus, “Well, I thought about it and decided not come to life. I am okay with me being dead for eternity. So thank you Jesus but no, thank you! Bye!”

What they forgot here is this fact: Lazarus, or Adam, was created with “free will,” but at the fall, he lost all his sensitivity to the Spirit of God. That does not mean Adam lost his free will. No, Adam did not lose his free will. But the free will he had after the fall is only free to do everything but that which glorifies and magnifies God.

So when the dead Adam comes to life, in our case, Lazarus comes to life, he is not coming back to the original Adam who was innocent of any form of sin, but he is coming back to life in the form of “resurrection,” was dead but now alive by the power, miracle, grace and mercy of God. But this Lazarus is not “an innocent Adam” but “a righteous Lazarus.”

Still we cannot ignore the fact that it was Lazarus who walked out of the tomb, not God or an angel of God on behalf of Lazarus.

Though we see the sovereignty of God in raising up a sinner from the dead, we also see the responsibility of man in responding to the call.

(By the way, trying to mix these two, the sovereignty of God and man’s responsibility, is wrong and trying to mingle them up in a way to make a story that makes some sense to us leads us to heresy.)

The gist of the message is this: The invitation is already out!

God says, “Come.”

Do you hear/read that invitation?

If you do, respond today, respond to God now for “now is “A FAVORABLE TIME,” behold, now is “A DAY OF SALVATION” 2 Corinthians 6:2
NASB

Christ calls, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” – Matthew 11:28 ESV

The word of God says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” Hebrews 3:15 NIV

No one can save us! You and I cannot be saved from this hopeless and dark world by anyone. No one saves us from the fire of hell that is waiting for all who have not responded to Christ’s call. No one! Only Jesus saves us!

No other savior! None! ///