“Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power.” (Ps. 110:3).  In Psalm 85 and Psalm 110 we see the results of conversion in the heart and conversion in many numbers of people. Since Jesus lives and reigns as King the church will always flourish. He sits and all his enemies will become defeated under his footstool. But on want to focus on these willing souls coming to Jesus. Who are these willing people? The simple term “willing,” is very expressive. It denotes the beautiful condition of people who consent to the Holy Spirit’s work. God will beautify them with holiness because they do not hold back from him. Psalm 110 is a picture of the great numbers who will come under the influence of Christ. They are fresh like the mysterious dew of the morning, sparkling, full of life and the church is refreshed by them and made to thrive.

They are as the dewdrops which come mysteriously from the womb or birthplace of the morning. As the dew is new every morning, so is there is a constant string of new converts that give the church uninterrupted youthfulness. David declares that countless descendants shall be born to Christ from his womb and they will spread over the whole earth. They will be gathered out of a world lying in ruins, and inhabited by the unwilling children of wrath regenerated by the Spirit of Christ and by the word.

Before Christ regenerates the human soul they are dead in sins and transgressions (Eph 2:5). They are the focus of God’s fierce anger against sin. Today, many church leaders do not preach certain parts of the Bible that exposes the true condition of people because they do not see that people are this way, or people are not ready to hear it, and people are too hurt and on and on. But God looks with a terrifying gaze upon the souls of people. This is how he convinces them they are sinners. He compares his holiness, his law to their lives. We find then that His holiness has been violated by the sinner’s very existence.

In Romans 3:10-18 Paul weaves together scriptures throughout the Bible that uncover the condition of the human heart. God sees people as they live in a destructive, miserable, darkness. Their throats have a stench of a dead decaying body, their mouth is full of poisonous cursing and foul bitterness and they have no desire to seek after God, but go in the opposite direction, they are murderous, the way of peace they have not known and they do not fear God and act as if there was no God. It is hideous to God. The sinner seems impenetrable until they come under his influence.

God must open the hearts of people or they will be both unwilling and unable to receive the gospel. In Acts 16:14 it says, “And a certain woman named Lydia…whose heart the Lord opened.”  This scripture teaches that before she heard the gospel the Lord opened her heart. This was God’s work. God gives us both the desire and power to obey him. Like Matthew Henry says,

“An unconverted soul is shut up, and fortified against Christ, straitly shut up, as Jericho against Joshua (Josh 6:1). Christ, in dealing with the soul, knocks at the door that is shut against him (Rev. 3:20) and, when a sinner is effectually persuaded to embrace Christ, then the heart is opened for the King of glory to come in–the understanding is open to receive the divine light, the will opened to receive the divine law, and the affections opened to receive the divine love. When the heart is thus opened to Christ, the ear is opened to his word, the lips opened in prayer, the hand opened in charity.”

But when salvation comes to someone’s life, God’s glory and presence lives in the heart that was devastated by sin. Christ works a beauty of holiness in the sinner by sowing or planting the precious truth in their hearts.

In the gospels Christ declared to his disciples he was among people like one scattering seed in all kinds of soil. He taught them that human heart is like earth, dirt, soil and it will bear fruit depending to its reaction to seed. The seed Christ plants is the message about the Sovereignty of God. That means he has permanent power, absolute freedom and supreme authority over everything and everyone in the universe! That is the heart of the message of Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God and coming under his influence.

There are different kinds of soil or hearts, seed was thrown to the hardened heart, seed thrown upon the superficial heart, and seed thrown upon the heart overwhelmed with worldly cares and then finally seed upon the receptive heart. Three out of four of the soils were unproductive. Only one received the seed. But who tilled, plowed, and cultivated the soil of the heart that was saved? God is the one who prepares that soil. In salvation, we are not the farmers; it is God alone who is the husbandman or the gardener (John 15). It is only after he tills the soil of the heart for eternal life in heaven can we tend to the garden of our own hearts for holy living here on earth.

God says, “For, behold, I am for you, and I will turn unto you, and ye shall be tilled and sown.” (Ezek. 36:9). The message of the cross is the plow that God uses to till and soften the heart. It called the  rod or sceptre of God’s strength in Psalm 110! The cross is the manifestation of both the love and the justice of God (Rom. 5:5 3:25-26). That cross cultivates the heart and makes it ready for the seed of the Word. God was in Christ, and his beautiful softening power was there in him. God came to us in Christ, loved us first by sending Christ to save us and we came under his influence.

The beauty of redemption must first be seen in its ugliness. Jesus had to drink from the repulsive cup of God’s wrath against sin. On his way to Calvary, Jesus face was so disfigured you could not tell if he was human (Is. 52:7). People surrounded him and ridiculed and spit their hatred at him. They plucked his beard and punched him in the face.

His hands and feet were pierced with nails as they stretched out his body on the old rugged cross. He head throbbed with pain as thorns were forced upon his head. His heart was poured out like water as they punctured his side. Yet the scandalous message of the cross is God’s power and wisdom that brings salvation!

 

That is what Jesus meant when he said, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” (John 12:32). If he is lifted up he will draw people from every nation, kindred, tribe and tongue. Jesus said, “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out…No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him. Every man therefore that hath heard and learned of the Father cometh unto me.” (John 6:37, 44-45). A person comes to Christ not for their own eternal welfare, safety and happiness but they come to Christ as a reward for his suffering!  We are not saved because we are so special but because Jesus is mighty to save!  Yet he is gentle beyond words in his calling. You been drawn with an everlasting love that was focused on you before creation until the day you were born and up to this present time. The heart that produces the fruit of regeneration has been taught by God and desires to come to him in complete surrender and come under his influence.

When God brings people to himself he does not employ some sort of blind force which simply drags the struggling, rebellious sinner into heaven against his will–as a policeman might drag a defiant punk to jail. The grace of God does not twist men and women’s arms against their own desires. We need to realize that God’s grace not only brings His people to salvation, but it prepares them for salvation and works within them the desire to be saved long before their will bends to follow Christ. God by his grace softens hearts that would be otherwise hardened. When God wants you, there is nothing that will stop him. He has already been working on you. That is what it means to be saved by grace, it is all grace. The problem with preaching today is that grace is treated as God’s assistance, not God’s resurrection of dead souls.  

How does this happen? In the human heart mercy meets truth!  Righteousness greets peace with a kiss! Righteousness comes down like rain and truth springs forth! The truth of the word is planted in the heart and the mercy of God causes the soil of the heart to produce the fruit of salvation. Our hearts were like stone in deception and evil. We needed holy precipitation before salvation. “My doctrine shall drop as the rain; my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass.” (Deut 32:2).  When Christ was on the cross with strong crying and tears God kept Christ’s tears his bottle. Oh the scripture says, Jesus wept (John 11:35)! God was satisfied with death of Christ and saw his tears. Jesus death on the cross satisfied God and extinguished his wrath against us. He tenderly allows mercy to trickle down, pity like tears of compassionate dew, kindness like rain and showers of forgiveness to soften any resistance against him as they come under his influence!

Another tender scene takes place right in the soul. The human spirit becomes so sensitive to the touch of Jesus it is described as righteousness and peace embracing and kissing on the scene of the heart. “And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever.” (Isaiah 32:17).  Both the operation and result of Christ’s death for us is the fruit of peace in our hearts.

The springing of truth out of the earth, and the looking down of righteousness from heaven.  Righteousness was so far from us as “the heavens are higher than the earth” so is the distance between Gods ways and thinking and our ways and thinking. We were utterly destitute or truth and righteousness so it looked down from heaven and then it sprang forth in earth of our lives. Jesus became our sin we became his righteousness, “For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” (Isa. 55:10-11).  Truth will spring up in the garden of the human heart.

Salvation seems immediate to us but the tender drawing of God has been over the years beckoning to us, breaking us down until we are ready to “hear the message and accept it with good and honest heart, and go on steadily producing a good crop.” (Luke 8:15Phillips) and come under his influence.