I want you to turn in your Bibles
to the book of Galatians chapter 5, and then we'll go to Hebrews
6. Galatians chapter 5. Let's begin with verse 1. Stand fast therefore in the liberty
wherewith Christ hath made us free. And be not entangled again
with the yoke of bondage. What a horrible thing it is to
be entangled again with the yoke of bondage. fearing under law
and legalism, having no blessed assurance. Behold, I, Paul, say
unto you that if you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing
if you're circumcised in order to be saved. For I testify again
to every man that is circumcised, that is, in order to be saved,
that he's a debtor to do the whole law. You've got to keep
it all. Not only an outward conduct,
but an inward motive. Verse 4, Christ is become of
no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law,
you have fallen from grace. Today I want to talk to you about
the last point of the five points of grace, the perseverance of
the saints. Somebody said, we believe in
security of the believer. Well, the only problem with that,
that phrase is not found in Scripture. We do believe in perseverance
of the saints, but not the security of every believer. Because there
are believers who have never been regenerated. You may be
here and be a believer, and you talk about, well, I'm a believer.
You know, I believe in the big guy upstairs. In fact, in the
second chapter of the book of John, there was a group of people
that believed on Christ, but the Bible says He did not commit
Himself to them. The proof is in the pudding.
A believer perseveres. A believer scratches and crawls,
falls down and gets up. It's a war going on in the heart
of every believer. It's true. Many, many times over
50 years of ministry, this verse has been thrown at me with regard
to the perseverance of the saints. And people have said to me, you
know, the Bible teaches that you can be regenerated or saved,
as they say, and then you can lose your salvation. And they
will go to a passage like here in the book of Galatians and
say, you have fallen from grace. See, the Bible teaches that you
can fall from grace. That's what people have said
to me. But actually what the Apostle was teaching throughout
the book of Galatians is that you folks have left Christ. You
have fallen away from grace. And by the way, when you leave
grace, what is there left? Nothing but law. Nothing but
Mount Sinai. Nothing but thunderings and lightnings. Nothing but you must work your
way to heaven. Nothing but you must be good
enough to go to heaven. Nothing but you must keep the
commandments. Aren't you glad it's by grace
alone? The greatest curse that could fall on this church is
for this church to leave grace. To fall away from grace. The
truth is, my friend, those of us who make it to heaven, it
is God who puts us in the way, leads us along the way, and takes
us all the way. It's grace, grace, grace. It's
God's unmerited favor. Oh, the hypocrisy of the folks
who believe that you can be saved and lose it. It's total hypocrisy. How good do you have to be to
keep yourself saved? What sins can you commit to lose
salvation? How many do you have to commit
to lose salvation? If you miss two Sundays at church,
do you lose it? If you get drunk, do you lose
it? If you relapse, do you lose it? At what point? You, who attend
this church, are referred to as those people. The truth is,
honestly, a lot of folks wouldn't come over here to worship with
us because of you guys. And a little bit me, too. You're those people. But all
of that is hypocrisy. There really is no those people. It's just us. Human beings who
are totally depraved. Human beings who have fallen
into sin. Human beings who are frail and
faulty. Who need the grace of God. Anyone
in here who believes that you can be saved and lost tomorrow? Basically, you're a hypocrite.
You're a hypocrite. Because you know. You have to
judge other people with regard to who can be saved and who can't
be. And you are thinking, if you're
really churchy, I'm saved, but there are people here who've
used drugs they're not. I mean, they've crossed the line. But
honestly and truly, you know the thoughts that have gone through
your mind this week. You're just not being honest about yourself.
You know. You know. You really do know. Go to the book of Hebrews real
quick. Hebrews 6. This is another verse that's
always coming up about losing salvation. First of all, my friends,
remember this. It is not your salvation. It
is God's salvation. It is God who saves people. You
don't save yourself in cooperation with God. He saves people all
by Himself. And that's why I'm so very, very
cautious about who preaches here and what message goes out here
because God only inhabits the praise of His people. He is due
all glory and all praise. He's the Author and the Finisher
of our faith. He's the Alpha and the Omega.
He's the Beginning and the End. And to Him be all the glory and
honor. You ask me why God blesses this
place. You can't explain this place
outside of God. There's no one that can explain
this place. What God is doing here, what's
happening here, you can only explain it when you say, God
is over there. And the reason God is here is
because we take no glory to ourselves. To God be the glory. The chief
end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. How
are you going to glorify God if you don't believe it all by
grace? You're going to take some of the credit. You're going to
try to take some of the credit. In fact, God has said, My glory
I'll not give to anybody else. He's not going to give it to
you. You're not going to get it. You may strut like a peacock
down here, but when you get to heaven, you're going to lose
your feathers. If you get there. Between here
and there, You lose all of that self-glory. I guarantee that.
Hebrews 6, verse 4, For it is impossible for those who were
once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were
made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word
of God and the powers of the world to come, if they shall
fall away. People have always said to me,
there it is. If they shall fall away. So it is possible for them
to fall away. Well, if it is possible for the
believer to fall away, to lose salvation, God's salvation, first
of all, if you lose God's salvation, that makes God a loser. And I'll
tell you right off, my friend, God is not a loser. He's always
a winner. Always. Whatever God sets out
to do, He does. His purpose and His counsel shall
stand, and none shall stay His hand, nor say unto Him, What
doest Thou? He rules. Our God rules. This
world is not a runaway. We have a God who is sovereign
and who is in charge. We do. When I see the craziness
going on in our world and in America, the only comfort that
I have, and it's a great comfort, is my God reigns. My God is in
control. Now watch this, "...if they shall
fall away, to renew them again under repentance, seeing they
crucify unto themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to
an open shame." If you can lose it, the only way for you to be
saved again is for Jesus to come and die. And my friends, that
is not going to happen. If that were to happen, and He
did have to come back and die, that means He failed the first
time, And he would be put to an open shame. Shame on Jesus
if he didn't get the job done the first time. But the good
news is, and he said, it's finished. It's accomplished. It's done.
And I say, Amen. And on the third day, the Father
said, it is finished. Come up hither until I make your
enemies your footstool. And up from the grave he arose
with a mighty triumph for his foes. You see, he would never
come out of the grave had he not have cleared himself of sin
that had been imputed to him. One of the great reasons that
I know that he paid the debt in full is he got up out of the
grave. He would have never come up out
of the grave had he not paid the debt in full. He said it's
accomplished, it's done, it's finished. And it is. And it was. If you're here today and you
have lost salvation, you're going to hell. Because I've got some
bad news, haven't I? Jesus is not coming back again
and be crucified. He came once as the Lamb of God. Next time He comes back, it's
the Lion of the tribe of Judah who shall prevail. What hypocrisy there is in the
message of losing salvation. There's hypocrisy on the part
of the preacher who preaches it. Because he knows he's a sinner. He knows he's not a perfect guy. And then all kinds of questions
arise that I've already asked you. How far do you have to go
to lose it? What sins do you have to commit?
Are there little sins and big sins? You know, if you lie a
little bit, do you lose it? Do you only lose it if you commit
adultery? Do you only lose it if you get
drunk? You only lose it if you use crack cocaine. You know,
at what point do you lose salvation? Hypocrisy. The truth is this. In my flesh dwells no good thing. Is that right? The Apostle Paul
said this 30 years after his experience on the Damascus Road. He said, I'm no good. That's
what he said. He planted churches all over the known world. He
said in Romans 7, I'm no good. He didn't say, used to be no
good. I've heard preachers interpret
Romans 7 that way. Paul wasn't talking about his
present condition. He was talking about before he
got converted on the Damascus road. That's not what Paul said.
He said, what I want to do right now, I don't do. And then he
added this, old wretched man that I am. Not I used to be,
I am right now. That's the confession of every
believer. Don't you mourn over your sin? Yeah, we mourn over
it. That's part of the scratching
and clawing on the way to heaven. That's part of the perseverance.
That's part of enduring to the end. He that endureth to the
end shall be saved. That's right. I've had people
say to me, you know, I lost salvation when I quit. My friend, if you
can quit, you're never worth it. You see, greater is He that's
in you than He that's in the world. The reason you don't quit
is because you can. Have you ever seen people who
smoke and they go like this? The way you people act sometimes,
it almost makes me want to smoke. You act like this. And then you kind of smack your
lips like... Some of you are wanting to run
out of here right now and have a smoke break. I know you are.
And you go like this, I quit six times. You never have quit. That's the way we Christians
are. I can't tell you how many times in 50 years I've said,
I quit. You know, I see Christian people
fighting and church splitting and churches going to sleep.
Oh, next thing you know, I feel a fire in my bones. There's a
burning going on and I cannot stay. And I confess Jesus Christ
as Lord and Savior anew and afresh and again. There's a power in
me like those ever-ready batteries. Listen, when God gives you a
charge, you don't get over it. His charge will take you all
the way to heaven. The reason you don't quit is
because you can't. Ray is here, and Kevin, and Steve,
and we're glad to have you here. But Ray is the one that helped
me publish For Known. And the reason I published For
Known and wrote For Known is because I can't tell you how
many young women have come to me in the last 24 years and said
to me that they were molested or sexually assaulted by someone
in the church. And there was nobody to go to.
And you know Fornone, her dad is a deacon, and her pastor is
her dad's best friend. So here's a little girl being
sexually abused by her deacon father. Think it's going to affect
her life? She knows the Lord, but this
black secret has entered into her life. And as it follows through,
Fornone, in her emptiness, struggles She has abortions. She cheats
on her husband. She runs away and ends up before
God. Looks like she's going to hell
for certain. Anyway, foreknown has been all over the world.
But I got this letter back from a pastor. He's been in prison,
and he got out of prison, was converted while he was in prison,
and he started a prison ministry as well as pastoring a church.
And I think he's going to come up in business. I think he's
somewhere in Kansas or somewhere. But anyway, this is what he wrote
to me. And this is what I want you to
think about. Now I know, I know already some of you are thinking,
Pastor Clark believes that you can live like hell and still
go to heaven. Most of us do in our hidden life.
Oh yeah, everybody here has a hidden life. Yes, you do. Some of you sitting out there
all pious, acting like you don't have a hidden life. It all goes
on right up here. You know the old saying, Pastor Clark
gives people a license to sin. You don't buy a license. You
don't say, God give me a license. You know that. You just do it.
Anyway, this pastor writes me and he said, the end was done
in amazing wisdom. It made me stop and think, am
I really trusting in the atonement alone? Or am I trusting in progressive
sanctification as the result of the atonement? Do you understand
this clearly? There is no comfort there if
you're trusting in your progressive sanctification. I don't know
about you, but I'm not making much progress. Because I take One step forward
and 18 back. That's what the Apostle Paul
was talking about. And just so you know, your flesh never gets
any better. Your flesh is wretched. Thank
God we're going to die someday and get rid of this old flesh.
And Paul compared the flesh to that of... In Roman days what
they did was when a guy committed a capital sin or crime, like
murder, They strapped the corpse to the guy's back. So, until
it rotted off, it was there. Do you know that every one of
us, as God's little children, are carrying around a nauseating,
stinking corpse called the flesh? Oh, I'm conscious. It's always
there. What's that I smell? Oh, it's me. Because in my flesh dwells no
good thing. Do I have a witness today? So
what's going to help me? Am I going to have to go through
life miserable? Wasn't there a lot of joy during
our praise service? There was a lot of joy. You could
feel the joy in here. The Spirit of God was in here.
It was a happy song service. Even with those new modern praise
and worship songs. In our church, You've heard me
say this many times. When I was a kid growing up,
I never had a gym class, because you had to wear shorts. Never
went to the beach. I think I did play Old Maids
a couple of times. Never played pool. We could play
ping pong, but the Phillips family had a pool table in their basement.
I'm going to be in big trouble for that, too. Never danced,
of course. Never went to a dance. Well,
I did sneak out once. And sanctification was all evolved
around that. So, it had to do with what you
don't do. And best I remember, we couldn't
even roller skate. And not too excited about going
to church. Oh, and if you had your hair...
Derek, where is he? Oh, Derek's going straight to
hell with that long hair. I mean, that was the atmosphere
in which I lived. You know, and I remember people
saying to my dad when they would leave church, thank you for stepping
all over my feet. It was like, thank you for beating
me up. And you leave God's house all
bloody and down and miserable. Why would you want to come back?
That's abuse. Let's go over to Isaiah. Isaiah 40, verse 1. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people. You know what I'm supposed to
do? Comfort you. And the way to do that is to
preach the gospel of God's grace to you. Because I just imagine
some of you have fallen this week. Oh, two or three of you,
huh? Everybody in here is messed up
this week. In thought, word or deed. Everybody's in here messed
up. So you don't need me to beat you up this morning. You need
me to comfort you. Plus, I need comforting. Sometimes
I just enjoy my messages so much because they're not mine. They
really come from God. I need to be comforted myself
because I have failed this week. I'm not pure and holy, not yet. Thank God one day. I'm going
to be changed in a moment in a twinkling of an eye. Like that. I'm out of here. But until then,
there's a war going on. And our pastor is going to speak
comfort. We're going to be comforted because
he's going to preach the old gospel of Jesus Christ. That there's power in the blood.
That he's a greater Savior than I am a sinner. that He's able
to save to the uttermost. I'm going to be comforted. How
many of you have gone to church and felt nothing but guilt? Nothing
but guilt. I have been there so many times,
even as a little boy, and feeling so much guilt. You know what
the Scripture says? If the Son sets you free, you're
free indeed. There's no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus.