“Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.”

9 As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.

The bible teaches that God sends out two calls. The first is a general call –

“God commands all men everywhere to repent.”

“If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink.”

“If anyone is weary let him come to me and find rest.”

But no one responds to that call. So he sends out a second, this one is attended by the power of the Holy Spirit, and by it he draws us to himself, encouraging and empowering us to embrace Christ in the Gospel. This call is very personal.

For many of us it takes a long time before we hear the personal call. You may grow up in the church all your life, and receive Christianity as a family tradition. You are trained in religion and you obey it. Christianity for you is what you do, it is your ethnicity, you are a Christian just like you are an American.

But that tradition will never change you. You will never have the experience of knowing Christ personally, you will never have the absolute assurance that God loves you, has your best interest in mind, and has washed away all your guilt, shame and failure as long as your obedience is general.

I love it when you write my sermons for me. I received this email in the last month:

For as long as I can remember I have known that Christ died for me, but I have not believed it. Rather my belief has been of the most insidious kind. That yes Christ died, but that was for all Christians not just me. I mean if for some reason I had been left out Christ still would have died for his people right? NO. That is evil, and that is not how it works. Christ is the good shepherd and will not let ONE of his sheep stray. I, as an individual, am loved by Christ.

Do you know that yet? Have you heard the personal call? Is your assurance personal or simply external?

If you could invent a time machine, and went back to the cross, and asked Jesus “why are you doing this?” Do you know he would say – take heart my son, your sins are forgiven.