Second session together here. I'll turn on my mic first of all. So we start our second session here together. I'd like to read with you from Isaiah chapter 55. We'll read the first seven verses. Isaiah chapter 55. Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and you who have no money, come buy and eat. Yes, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for what is not bread and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to me, here, and your soul shall live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, the sure mercies of David. Indeed, I have given him as a witness to the people, a leader and commander for the people. Surely you shall call a nation you do not know, and nations who do not know you shall run to you because of the Lord your God and the Holy One of Israel, for He has glorified you. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him. And to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. Well, I wanted to read that as a preface because we step now together into really looking at an example of the recovery of the preaching of the gospel in the life of one particular man. Thomas Boston was born in 1676. He was the youngest of seven children. He had four brothers. There were four brothers, three sisters. His parents were named John and Alison Boston. They were godly people, they loved the Lord, and had a devout household in a town called Dunn's in Scotland. Thomas Boston's father's name, John, named John, was a tradesman. He suffered imprisonment in the late 1600s for refusing to conform to the rules that Charles II was trying to push on the church. And so Thomas Boston, as a very young boy, one of his earliest memories was going to visit his dad in prison. In 1687, With the beginnings of the change of government in Scotland and England, the act of toleration was passed, and this allowed Presbyterians to begin to worship in their homes, to hold worship services according to their conscience, but only in homes. And Thomas Boston remembered that his father, who was now released from prison, would take the family along to hear the preaching of a man named Henry Erskine. the father of his friends, Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine. We know the young Thomas Boston went to school close to his home as a young boy. He remembered his school teacher, a lady, who he remembered treated him kindly. Seems he had a kind teacher as a boy. And this woman, often expressed her hope of seeing me in the pulpit, he recorded in his journal. So as a boy, just growing up, going to school, this lady teaching him said, you know, I hope that someday you'll become a preacher of the gospel. And he remembered that. Thomas Boston struggled with going to school as a young child. He was naturally shy. He was very quiet, apparently. He had a passion for learning. He did love to learn and study, but he wrote this in his journal. Initially when he was sent to school, he would cry incessantly. From the time they started to dress him till he was upstairs in the school, which was a few buildings down the road. He would go upstairs to his classroom. So apparently he was one of those children who cried and cried until he was dropped off at school on the first days of going to school. Later on in his journal, and we have Thomas Boston's journal, which is fascinating, his memoirs. So we know all of these things about his life. He says, by the time I was seven years old, I would read the Bible on my own. And I had delight in reading it. I got the Bible sometimes into the bed with me and I would read it there. He would later say, I'm so thankful that it was all made my choice early to read the word and that it became the study of my ripest years. Well, in 1684, Thomas Boston had finished his primary school and he went on to grammar school, which would sort of be the equivalent of junior high, maybe high school here. Probably junior high at this point for him. He recorded that he loved to play soldiers with other boys and took the lead to act as the captain, mustering his fellow school boys. They would do mock military exercises. They would shoot their toy muskets, he said, with as much energy as I have preached. Writing later on, looking back. Well, while he was enthusiastic in reading the Bible and he was surrounded at home and in their church setting with godly witness, at the same time, Thomas Boston would reflect that he wasn't really too concerned about the state of his own soul, until about the year 1687. That summer, he was 12 years old. Sitting under the preaching of Henry Erskine, the Lord really began to work on his heart and awaken him. He became more and more personally aware of the extent of his own sin, his rebellious thoughts against God, his hatred and anger towards others. And he records that my lost state by nature and my absolute need of Christ was discovered to me. And I started to pray in earnest and listen more attentively to the preaching of the word. Around the same time, a young Thomas had two friends who were spiritually transformed. Two boys that he hung out with, Thomas Trotter and Patrick Gillies. Thomas Trotter apparently was a pretty serious kid. He'd always been reading his Bible. He was a pretty good kid. The Lord worked in his heart and really changed him at that time. But the other one, Patrick Gillies, Thomas Boston described Patrick in this way. He was the son of a father and mother ignorant and carnal to a pitch. This is like an evil broken family, a very messed up family. And he said, it made the grace of God in him all the more remarkable. So Thomas himself as a 12 year old is starting to become more and more spiritually aware. Two of his friends are transformed around the same time. And he's really struck particularly by the change in his friend Patrick. Around the same time, both his own father, John and Henry Erskine, continued to play an influential role in his life. After finishing grammar school at about the age of 13, Thomas Boston now begins to prepare to go to university. Things were different in these days. You'd go to university quite a bit younger. And he was hoping to go. However, they were poor. His father wanted him to continue his education, but they simply could not afford the tuition for him to go to college in Edinburgh. Despite every effort to try to find a way, it seemed there was none. At one point, Thomas was asked to write an essay, make an application package, and give it to a man who had promised to pass it on to the principal of the college. with the hope that he'd be able to get a campus job, and through that, be able to study. What happened? He wrote up the whole package, his father helped him, they sent it with the man, and the man forgot about it. Kind of like Joseph in the prison. And he failed to ever get an interview with the principal at that time. So Thomas is really growing disheartened at this point. He's a 13, 14 year old boy. wishing he could go to college, and things just aren't working. Around the same time, another major disappointment hits his life. He's a young believer, an older minister, a friend of his father's is found in adultery. And it really shatters, not only that man's ministry, ends his ministry, shatters his family. It leaves young Thomas shaken, heavy hearted, and deeply disappointed. He looked up to this man. He's a godly man. It shakes him profoundly. And then he writes in his memoirs, in the same year, it pleased the Lord to remove my mother by death. She became suddenly ill at this time. Of course, you've got all kinds of diseases. Sewage is still running in the streets. in England and Scotland. We don't know if it was typhoid or cholera. She became suddenly sick, or whether it was some kind of fever going through. She died at the age of 56. While she was dying in one room in their house, his father was seriously sick with the same illness in another room. And her death, of course, was a tremendous blow to both him and his seriously sick father. His father was too sick to go to the burial of his wife. He himself was near death. And so Thomas, as a young teenager, goes with his brothers and sisters to bury their mom. They meet with some friends on the way back home from his mother's burial, and one of his friends said, well, probably your dad won't live either. Not very comforting. So Thomas recalls that going back to his home, he ran up to his bedroom, where he collapsed, weeping, until his older brother, hearing him crying, came in to comfort him and talk with him. Soon after this, Boston himself becomes sick from the same illness. In God's providence, both he and his father would recover. So in these early teenage years, he goes through some really hard times. And finally, after these deep trials, late in 1691, his father's now restored to health and back to work. And they managed to gain work for Thomas in the city of Edinburgh with a lawyer that they know. And this opens up the way for him to enter the University of Edinburgh and to be able to pay tuition there. Thomas Boston reflected this. He said, this is the way that the Lord in my setting out into the world dealt with me. Obliging me to go to him for the very things I needed. To ask him to do them for me. He brought things about through many difficulties. He tried me with various disappointments. He brought me to the utmost point of hopelessness. He seemed to lay the gravestone on my hopes at the time of my mother's death. And yet, finally after all, he brought me through. And that has been the usual method of his providence with me all along in the matters of the greatest importance. Well, Thomas Boston would later state that he realized that entering college at the age of 15 was abundantly early. But as well, he would marvel at how God so kindly ordered things for him so that in the end he had no debts from his education. He was indebted to no one but God. His first year of college was uneventful. The second year of college, he started to develop spells of dizziness and fainting. He got weak and sick, probably from staying up too late, studying, maybe not eating well. He ended up going home to recuperate. He remembers his father kneeling beside his bed and praying for him. He was restored to health and went back to study again. and continued to study and became more and more in love with the scriptures and the desire to enter the ministry himself. And so coming home from college, he talked to his elders and pastors and they encouraged him to come under care to be a student of theology for the ministry. And this is what happens. In 1695, he now goes back to the city of Edinburgh, back to university to study theology for the ministry. And he enters a season of theological study and he splits it up with teaching in schools nearby to help pay his way through. And he said at this point in his life, again living away from home, he was particularly blessed through the mentorship of older Christians. He notes a Mr. Murray, who was a learned and holy man, and a lady, Janet McLanny, an old and godly woman who was marked by Christian love. I bless the Lord who gave me counsel then and afterwards to seek and to value conversations with serious Christians in the places where I lived. being confident that I've had much advantage from this toward my own preaching of the gospel. And so in his late teens and early 20s, he's having good fellowship with older believers, and these people are mentoring him. Ordinary members of churches just pouring into his life, men and women, in ways that he later reflects were tremendously helpful for his spiritual growth. Now Boston in his memoirs noted that he increasingly wanted to preach the word, but he really wrestled with his call to the ministry. He was a bit hesitant. Am I really called to the ministry? He was also struggling with, am I really a Christian? Do I know for sure that I am a Christian? Around the age of 21, he wrote this in his journal. He said, I found myself helped in prayer to particular trust and confidence. that God would indeed provide and direct me to gospel ministry. He preached a student sermon, was examined before the Presbytery, and then licensed to preach the gospel. And now the young Thomas Boston begins to preach. Sort of like a student for the ministry, he's been recognized in the churches to be able to preach. He's not yet an ordained minister. But he notes that he started to feel that preaching was hard. It was stressful for him. And at one point, he talked with an older minister about the stress he felt in preaching. This is what this older minister said to him. If you entered on preaching Christ, you'd find it very pleasant. If you started preaching Christ, you'd find it very pleasant. Boston said that he took this to heart. This had an effect on me, that I changed the tenor of my preaching the next time I wrote a sermon. I've often since that time remembered that word of Mr. Dysart as the first hint given to me by the good hand of my God towards understanding the gospel. It's interesting that Boston would say this, isn't it? I mean, he's been raised in a godly home. He has got an understanding of sin and salvation of the gospel. But remember, he's growing up in this context that I just ended up talking about in the last talk, where the gospel's kind of confused in a lot of preaching. And there's this kind of what we'd call an experiential preparationism or legalism. This idea that somehow you need to work things up within yourself enough so that you can come to Jesus. You need enough depth of sorrow over your sin to come to Christ and that's the way Boston was preaching and he was wrestling with that himself. That was a real struggle in his heart. And he didn't yet have clarity that we need to come to Christ as we are with all that we are. And we'll see how he comes to that clarity. And so he was really still very much in that mold. Well, in 1699, Thomas Boston is now called to a local church in a town called Simpron. And he'd served here for eight years as a pastor. Before going to another town, Ettrick in 1707, where he would stay till his death. So he pastored two churches in his lifetime, one for eight years, and then the next one until his death, 1732. You can do the math, I'm not a math major. 1707 to 1732, that's 20 some years. Well, a year into his ministry in this first congregation, Boston is still struggling with personal assurance of salvation and wondering how he should preach the gospel. At times in prayer, he felt lifted up with great love for Christ, passionate desire to preach Christ. At other times, he felt totally dejected, spiritually unsettled, felt he was hard-hearted, keenly aware of himself spiritually in many ways. And some of these ups and downs simply are not unusual. When we are convicted of our sin more, that can weigh us down and then be lifted up as we look to Christ. We continue to share fellowship with his father and other godly men. And at one of their gatherings, where these men would get together to pray and to talk, to encourage each other, they would have discussions together. And they would sometimes, one of the older men would pose a question. And then the others would go around and give an answer to the question. And he notes that in one of these gatherings, one of the older men asked the question, what are the marks of true saving faith? And he remembered his father said, love to Christ. Love must be to Christ, not just for his benefits, but for who he is. And Boston really started thinking about that, just love for Christ. And he did love Christ, and he says, the desire of my heart to preach Christ continued all along, but I still was uncertain in it. Not long afterwards, he penned this in his journal. He said, as for the doctrine of grace, how the Lord was pleased to direct my heart to desire more and more to preach Christ and how I became convicted of my own legalism. It became more and more clear. I had heard one preacher speak of being divorced from the law, dead to it. I didn't really understand what he meant. After being settled at Simpron, I started thinking about these things. And some light new to me seemed to break open from the doctrine of Christ. I think among the first rays of light was the understanding that the sins of believers in Christ, even though yet not actually repented of, did not make them, as they are in a state of grace, liable to eternal punishment. He wrote to a fellow minister about his struggles, seeking further advice, but found himself dissatisfied by the man's answers. And it was after this, as he's still continuing to wrestle with and still not clear in his thinking and his theology, he goes to visit this old man in his congregation, this old soldier. veteran of the English Civil War. And he sees this book on the shelf, which Thomas Boston has never read, titled The Marrow of Modern Divinity. He borrowed it, and he was transformed by it. He said this in his journal, I found it came close to the points that I was seeking. And it helped me reconcile things I could not reconcile before. I rejoiced in it. It was a light that the Lord had given me in my darkness. And as he read this book, he started to realize that I was confused, indistinct, and limited in my understanding of the free, open, and unhampered access of sinners to Christ. Well, growing in understanding, Thomas Boston said that now he had new eyes as he looked to scripture. He had a growing delight and peace in Christ personally, and a growing joy in preaching Christ, despite ongoing trials and challenges in his life. Actually, if you read through Thomas Boston's sermons, you'll really see that there's a marked difference between his earlier sermons, which we have in print, And the sermons through this period and afterwards, Christ has proclaimed more and more clearly and fully as all sufficient for every sinner. All sufficient and freely offering himself to everyone without any qualification but to come to him as they are. Some 15 years later, recalling his own struggles with understanding the offer of the gospel, it was Thomas Boston who first recommended this book to the men from the Octorotor Presbytery, this presbytery that had tried to make this vow to set a wall against legalism. And James Hogg, his friend, had taken up and republished it, and it led to this great controversy that took place. Well, Thomas Boston now, At 20 years later, he's very much encouraging other men to read this book, to understand the full sufficiency of Christ. That Christ is totally sufficient in being the savior of sinners like you and me. He's completely sufficient for us. There's nothing that we can add to him for our salvation. He's all that we need. Well, Thomas Boston takes a leading role now in defending this book against charges from its critics and became known especially for republishing the book with very lengthy explanatory notes. He added footnotes to it explaining things. Well, these footnotes doubled the size of the book. And they were actually, some of them are just essays in themselves. If any of you are interested, I don't know if the RHB book table has it here, Christian-focused publications from UK, they sell books in the United States as well, you can get them online. They sell the marrow of modern divinity in a modern English layout with Thomas Boston's footnotes separated out and you can read through the whole thing and see his notes. And so he did that and he continues to do other writing. He's continued to preach and pastor. He's now in the town of Ettrick. Both of these are small country towns. Most of his members of his churches are farmers. Some tradesmen. And he labors in this context. He's married. He has children. He sees suffering in his own family life. It has to bury family members, again, because of sickness that sweeps through. This is a time period where death touches pretty much every family at much younger ages than today. Today, for so many of us, it's more of an unusual thing if someone dies in their 20s, 30s, or 40s, or to have children die. Most families in this time would bury at least one, if not several, or half, or almost all of their children. And so there's great griefs that they go through. You can read his memoirs. There's a lot in there. It's really rich to see how God sustained him and his wife as they walked through these things and gave them grace and blessing. Well, Thomas Boston became known as a man who understood what it was to be saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. It's a man who loved to preach the gospel, loved the riches of the word of God and loved Jesus. Well, now I want to get into with you in the rest of our talk this evening yet, what was the content of this love and passion? How did he understand the gospel? What was the clarity that he came to? So what did he preach? Well, let's start with, first of all, Christ and Christ's work of atonement. In 1715, Thomas Boston preached a sermon called the Everlasting Espousals. Espousals means kind of like engagement, would be the word for being espoused if someone is being engaged to someone. Or it could tie in with marriage as well. And in this sermon, Thomas Boston described the atoning work of Jesus as the means by which the lawful impediments, the things blocking the match between the bridegroom and the bride were all removed at the bridegroom's expense. So he describes salvation as marriage, the bride of Christ, analogy and imagery, and Christ as the bridegroom, and the fact that in this great marriage of sinners to Christ, in this great union, the bridegroom has done everything to take away all of the obstacles And he talks about these obstacles, the just objections to this union, to this marriage. Justice says, he said in the sermon, this bride is my debtor. I won't forgive her. And she cannot pay. So she must be sold into vengeance to satisfy the debt. She's my criminal, says the law. I won't pardon her. The sentence of death is passed on her. There has to be an execution day. She's my lawful prisoner, says the devil. I'm not going to give her up. Thomas Bossett said, these were lawful impediments indeed, which if not removed, would have put an effective stop forever to the match between Christ and sinners. But his heart was intent on the match, and so he sought to remove them out of the way. So he's saying, we have these charges against us. We owe a debt of justice. We are criminals before God's law. We deserve death. We're the prisoners of Satan in our own sin and rebellion. And all of these things are insurmountable obstacles to any union with God in our rebellion against Him. He says, Christ, with His heart intent on us, removed those out of the way. How were they removed? Well, Thomas Boston, in that sermon, talks about Christ as the atoning bridegroom. and the means that he used to remove these impediments. He says, to his hearers, you need to be married to Christ, espoused to Christ. There's no other way for sinners to be reinstated to the favor of God. A covenant has been drawn up with blood, the precious blood of the royal bridegroom. the New Testament in his blood. Behold how he loved his bride, in whom there was nothing lovely. Well the Sermon on the Everlasting of Spousals gives some earlier indications, 1715, 17 teens of the centrality of the atoning work of Christ here. But he goes on in other sermons to talk about this as well. And there's a series of sermons he preached in his first church and then redid in his second church. And in that series, which became a book called The Fourfold State of Man, he starts with us in our sinful nature. He says that in our sinfulness, in our misery, we're utterly unable to recover ourselves. And we're under Adam's headship. We've fallen with him into sin, misery, and we're under the curse. And the reality is we're in a state of wrath. The wrath of God has gone as wide as sin ever went. Who can fully describe the wrath of a holy and angry God? But then in describing the wrath of God against sin and the reality of our sin, its ugliness, its filthiness, what it deserves, how odious it is before God, how rebellious it is, he says this. Consider how God dealt with his own son, that sinners might be saved. He spared him not. The wrath of God seized on his soul and body both and brought him into the dust of death. The fact that his sufferings were not eternal flowed from the quality of the sufferer who was infinite. And so he was able to bear at once the whole load of wrath. And upon that account, his sufferings were of infinite value. He went on to say, Our Lord Jesus Christ has become surety. It's like a guarantee or a sealed promise for the elect in the second covenant. He has put himself in the place of the debtor. He's come under the same covenant of works as Adam did, but he has fulfilled it in their place. In Galatians 4, we read, God sent forth his son made under the law to redeem those who were under the law. So Christ put his neck under the yoke of the law as a covenant of works to redeem them who were under it as such. So he said to be the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes. He brought the consummation, the perfect fulfilling of the law by His obedience and death. How then is the second covenant a covenant of grace? Christ fulfilled the covenant of works, making a proper, real, and full satisfaction in the place of His people. But in Him now is the covenant of the richest grace. In as much as God has accepted his satisfaction, in which he has accepted all that was demanded of them, God has provided the surety himself, and he gives now all to them freely for his sake. And so Thomas Boston, as he's preaching now, he's talking about categories, sort of first Adam, second Adam, covenant theology, place of the law, the gospel, how do these things fit together? What has Jesus done to fulfill the obedience that we need to fulfill, needed to fulfill? What has he done to bear the wrath and curse that our rebellion and disobedience deserve? How has Christ fulfilled all of this and opened the way to God for us? Christ made satisfaction of God's justice by payment of the double debt, the debt of punishment and the debt of perfect obedience. It was necessary that provision would be made for the sanctification of sinners and repairing the lost image of God in him. And as man is unable to sanctify himself, just as he's unable to satisfy justice, the Savior not only obeyed and suffered in his place, but also has the fullness of the Spirit of holiness in him to communicate to the sinner so that his nature could be repaired through sanctification by the Spirit. Well, as Thomas Boston preached about Christ's work, he included this language of the dual aspects of the work of Christ. Paying the debt of punishment, the debt of perfect obedience. Sometimes what's called today the active and passive obedience of Christ. Christ fulfilled the demand of obedience. Under the covenant of works, he made his sacrifice the perfect and complete sacrifice. and secured the accounting to us of His righteousness and His obedience. Edward Fisher put it this way in the Marrow of Modern Divinity, and Thomas Boston loved this paragraph. God did, as it were, say to Jesus, what they owe me, I require at your hands. Then Christ said, Lo, I come to do your will. In the volume of the book it is written of me. I delight to do your will, O my God. Yes, your law is in my heart. Psalm 40. So Christ agreed. And from everlasting shook hands with God to take to himself our nature. to take upon himself his name and enter into his, that's our place, in obeying his father, to do all for man that he, the father, should require. So Thomas Boston commenting on this, he says, Christ is made to us holiness, righteousness, and justification. He has clothed us in all of His merits, and He has taken to Himself all of our sin. So that if anyone should now be condemned for our sin, it needs to be Jesus, who has taken our sins upon Himself. Ebenezer Erskine, Thomas Boston's friend preached this in a sermon around the same time. Christ did everything that the law required. He fulfilled all righteousness in his own person by an active and passive obedience and in all of his members, in all of his people by imputation. And so how does that understanding of what Jesus has done, how he's completed all of this, how does that play into then preaching the gospel? Remember that Boston said in his journals that he was convicted of his weakness in preaching Christ. Well, as we look at Boston's preaching, we see this transition and change and he's starting to explain these things more clearly. and saying things like this. First of all, he said, we need to understand our sin. We do need to understand our sin and our misery of our condition in ourselves. We need to accept those things are true, but we need to turn our eyes towards the Lord Jesus Christ and embrace him as he offers himself to us in the gospel. If you haven't seen your absolute need of Christ and his grace, you do need to grow to see a proper sense of the impotence of your depraved human nature to in any way make yourself right with God. Thomas Boston said that the preaching of the law is most necessary. said if we were to be grafted in to the new tree, we also need the pruning knife. Sinners have many ways to try to keep themselves from Christ. Many things by which they'll try to hold of their natural roots. And so they need to be closely pursued and hunted out of their holes and refuges of lies. Yet, it is the gospel that crowns this work. The law lays open the wound, but the gospel heals it. The law strips a man and wounds him and leaves him half dead. The gospel binds up his wounds, pours in wine and oil to heal them. By the law we're broken off, but by the gospel we are taken up and implanted into Christ. Well, Boston, in his sermon series, he moved through the states of man in this one sermon series. He started with our state in the Garden of Adam, Garden of Eden, so before the fall, our original state. Then he moved to man's sinful state, our fallen state. Then he moved to state of grace, salvation, and state of glory, what we will be. He walked through that in the sermon series. And as he moves into the state of grace, talking to unbelievers in his congregation, to non-Christians who are listening to the preaching of the word, he said this to them. Alas, all of the blessings of being united to Christ aren't yours, because you're not Christ's. The sinfulness of your unregenerate state is yours. The misery of your state is yours. You still don't have part or lot in this matter. You don't have any saving interest in this great peacemaker. But what I can say to you in all of this is that your case is not desperate because it can be changed still. Listen to Revelation 3 verse 20. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man will hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him and will eat with him and he with me. Heaven is proposing a union with earth still. The potter is reaching out to his own clay. The gates of the city of refuge are not yet closed. Oh, that we could compel you to come in. Well, going back to the sermon from 1715, he has some beautiful language in there of the gospel offer, just pressing home the gospel to people in his congregation and the areas where he preached. He talked about, again, this idea of marriage, the bride and the bridegroom. And he described the covenant of grace as being like a marriage contract, drawn up and signed by the bridegroom, bearing his agreement to marry the captive daughter of Zion. Boston said this, the royal bridegroom has signed this. And it's your calling to sign it, too, to agree to take Christ as he's offered to you in the gospel. This is endorsed. It's directed to you, to every one of you. And so you have every reason to sign it for yourself. They had marriage contracts in those days where they would sign the contract. I guess we do today, too, prenuptial agreements. Those kinds of things do exist. Most people probably don't use them, but in these days they were common. And so Boston says this, to those who think, well, he's presented the gospel offer, it's Christ to sign the one side, you're called to sign the other side. Christ is offering himself to you. He said this, some of you will hesitate because you don't think you have the warrant to sign it. You don't think that you're qualified to come to Jesus. And so he says, it's endorsed to every one of you. What's your name? Is your name Thirsty Sinner? Then read your name and see how it's directed to you. Isaiah. 55, hoe everyone that thirsts, come to the waters. He that has no money, come buy and eat. Yes, come buy wine and milk without money, without price. Is your name willing, sinner? Then it's directed to you, Revelation 22. Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. Are you a burdened and weighed down sinner? Rise then, the master calls you. From the gospel of Matthew, come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Is your name promiscuous backslider? You have played the harlot, the prostitute, with many lovers, yet return to me, says the Lord. Jeremiah three, verse one. Are you a lost sinner? The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost. Luke chapter 19. Are you the chief of sinners? Even to you this word of salvation is sent. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. First Timothy chapter one. Well, whatever kind of argument you might try to use to disown any of these names to be your name, certainly you are men, the sons of men. You can't deny that you are men, that you are humans. And therefore, it is directed to you and to every one of you. Unto you, O men, I call, and my voice is to the sons of men. Proverbs 8. And so Boston now is just pressing the sufficiency of Christ home in a way that's saying, whatever kind of sinner you are, whatever your sin is, whatever your weakness is in repentance, whatever is in the closet of your life, Christ is fully sufficient for you and He calls you to Himself. He went to the cross knowing who you are and He calls you to Himself. And His work is totally sufficient for you. He is sufficient for you. Thomas Boston goes on to say this, for those whom He takes to Himself and calls to Himself, It's all of mere grace, absolutely free grace, that he takes notice of them to help them. They don't have anything to cover their nakedness. But observe, the first covering that the Lord cast upon the naked child, baby, was the marriage robe, Ezekiel, the robe of his own righteousness. Christ does not delay his call until the bride is brought into a better condition, a more honorable condition than he found her in. But he takes her as she is in her miserable condition and espousing her He covers her nakedness. I spread my skirt over thee, betrothed thee unto me, and so covered thy nakedness. Oh, the riches and the freedom of grace. This offer is made unto all of you without exception. Christ is willing to be yours. And so in this way, Thomas Boston emphasized the complete sufficiency of the person and work of Jesus and brought that home. He said this in commenting on the marrow, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever, in block caps, whosoever, believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Wherever the gospel comes, this grant is published, the ministerial offer is made, and there is no exception of any of all mankind in this offer. This offer is sufficient for all. Christ's sacrifice is sufficient for all. And so tell every man, tell every man to come to, to believe on, to see that a Savior is provided for him, a crucified and risen Christ is there for him. Christ invites sinners with an enlarged heart. Joy enlarges it. His heart is open to you. His arms stretched wide. You often see Him with sorrow and anger in His face. And this works with you that you will not come. But behold Him, smiling and inviting you now to Himself. sending love looks to lost sinners from a joyful heart within. Christ's heart is set on the work of sinner's salvation. He would have no delays. He holds his hand to the work calling, come unto me. Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is the transformation that we see in Thomas Boston's life. He comes to know Jesus as he is. And while this is hundreds of years ago in a different time and place, different centuries, we have the same Christ today who's totally sufficient for us and who calls us by the same living and enduring word in our generation. And we need to hear these things again because in our own sin and weakness, we often get it confused and muddled and we struggle. And we have our own heart tendencies, all of us, to legalism, to try to polish ourselves up before coming to Jesus, to add things that we ought not to add before coming to Him. And as we'll see tomorrow morning, sometimes we err on the other side as well to lose sight of the riches of who He is and all that He's done for us. And then out of gratitude to love His law, and love walking in new obedience, and delight in life in Him. So tomorrow, that's what we want to particularly take a look at, life in Christ, and really understanding what it means to be united to Jesus Christ by faith. What does that mean, that you are united to Christ as a Christian? You are a Christian tonight. Well, I wanna close our session tonight with Thomas Boston's final words that he wrote that we have to his children. He wrote it in 1730, he thought he was going to die. He ended up not dying for another two years, but he was miserably sick at the time. And he wrote these words. He said, the Lord bless each one of you and save you and cause his gracious face to shine on you and give you peace so that we would have a comforting and happy meeting in the other world. Farewell. Let's close in prayer together. Lord our God, how we thank you for the riches of your grace. How we thank you, Lord Jesus, that you are the one who has paid the double debt You have paid the debt of justice that we deserve. Lord, as we think of our sin, all of the sins committed here in this room, any one of us alone, Lord, we know it is a great heap of ugliness and evil and wickedness. Lord, and what it deserves before your holiness we cannot imagine. And we dread to think of those who have died apart from you, who cannot pay that weight for all eternity. Yet, Lord Jesus, you have come to us in mercy and grace, and you have paid it all. Not only have you paid the penalty, but Lord Jesus, you have perfectly lived in all holiness in our flesh, in this world. You in your full manhood, which you took to yourself as our Savior. And how we thank you that your perfect obedience is what is credited to us as well. so that we are covered, completely covered in your righteousness. And Lord, we pray that you would help us to love you far more than we do and to be so grateful and to see that your ways are good, your law is good. Oh Lord, we know the ways of sin are death. They're painful, they're ugly, they're destructive. They're an offense to you and they cause harm. to all around us and to ourselves. Lord, we know your law is good and it is holy and your ways are good. Lord, help us to love you and to love your law and to love growing in sweet communion with you. Keep teaching us, we pray, Lord, that we better understand what it means that you have united us to yourself in this great marriage by the powerful work of your spirit, by your word. Bless us in that. Be with all of us here tonight, Lord. Watch over us as we go home. And we pray, Lord, that if any among us here don't know you, that you would graciously bring them with us to trust in you. In Jesus' name, amen.