Hello, everybody. Before I get
started, or before I turn this little thing on here, I gotta
say one thing. Hi, Mom. I love you. She wanted me to
say that, so I can't hear you, but you can hear me. All right, Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10, we're just
gonna look at one verse. Verse 14, this has always been
one of my favorite verses. It gives us a straight ahead
definition of salvation from beginning to end pretty much.
Hebrews 10 verse 14, for by one offering he hath perfected forever
them that are sanctified. The title of my message, Eternal
Perfection in Christ. Eternal Perfection in Christ.
Salvation is not what most people think. It's been pretty bad most
of my life. I've straightened up, got baptized,
and from that point on, I'm a Christian. Truth is, if you're a Christian
now, you've been a Christian eternally in Christ. One with
Him, perfect in Him, eternally. And we're going to, it's in this
verse, and we're going to look at four points that I want to
look at. I know there's more to it in
here probably. I've got four points from here, and they're
all concerning salvation. Salvation is perfection. Salvation is eternal. Salvation
is for sinners set apart in eternal election. And salvation is only
by the one offering of Christ on that tree. This is all truth
about salvation. I know there's probably a lot
more in that verse, and one of these days we'll be able to see truly
what it means, but for now we'll deal with what the Lord's given
us. Firstly, salvation is perfection. The word perfected in this verse
means completed, accomplished, consummated. And really, we've got standards
that we try to achieve. Now, I know in religion, as in
all things, man's standards are much lower than God's, much lower. Standards are perfection. I've
never used one, but I've heard about them. It's these books
that maybe farmers have that give the details of an animal,
listing all the traits that require it to be a good animal. It lists
all the bad traits. It's called standards of perfection
for horses, for cows, for whatever. We've got a standard of perfection
for us right here. Man says do your best As long
as you got more good works than bad works, God can accept you. But God in his standard of perfection
says this, Leviticus 22 verse 21, whosoever offereth a sacrifice
of peace offerings unto the Lord to accomplish his vow or a freewill
offering in beefs or sheep, it shall be perfect to be accepted. There shall be no blemish therein. Perfection. And it's pretty cut
and dry with God. If you're guilty of one sin,
if you're imperfect, that's eternal death. You have to be perfect
to enter heaven. You have to be perfectly holy
or you will not enter heaven. And man's standard is so much
more different than God's standard. Man says keep more laws than
you break and you'll be okay. God says you break one law and
you've broke them all. James 2 verse 10, for whosoever
shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, he is
guilty of all. We couldn't keep one law in the
Garden of Eden. Don't eat of that tree. We couldn't
keep one law. How do we expect to keep 613
laws in the Old Testament? I didn't count that up. Somebody
that's got more time to look at useless stuff looked that
up. 613 civil, moral, ceremonial, sacrificial, all kinds of laws. We couldn't keep one, you wanna
try to keep 613? No thank you. And since the Lord requires perfection,
we're in trouble coming right out of our mama's belly because
we're born liars. The wicked, Psalm 58 verse three,
the wicked, me and you, are estranged from the womb, they go astray
as soon as they be born, speaking lies. When I came out my mama's
belly, I was a liar. Couldn't say a word. But God
looked on, God looks on the heart. And when he looks on the heart
of a newborn infant, he sees a sinner. And that newborn's
a sinner. And that brings us to the ultimate
question. If God requires perfection, and I'm born imperfect, how can
he be just and give somebody what they deserve, and yet justify
someone evil like me? Well, let's see what he says
in his word. Romans chapter three. Romans
chapter three, verse, 24, Romans 3 verse 24. Being justified freely by his
grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. That's
how a sinner is justified before a holy God. Now, and we need
to make sure we understand what that word justified means. We,
or I did, used to think it just as if I had never sinned. You
could take the word justification, use some of the words and say,
just as this, I have never sinned, but that's not really. That's
not really true because there's no just as or ifs with God. You've never sinned or you're
all sinned. There's no in between with God. You're either completely perfect
or you're completely evil. That's what justified means.
It doesn't mean you've committed sins and they were paid for and
now you're okay. Justified means you've never
sinned. And it's hard for us to grasp
that because I'm up here sinning as I'm talking to you. But we're talking about perfection
and justified and never sinning. And we're going to look in scripture
and show where it talks about this perfection. Psalm chapter
50. Let's look at Psalm 50. Verse, let's see, verse two,
Psalm 50. We're talking about perfection
required to enter into glory. In Psalm 50, verse two, now Zion
is a church, every believer. Remember that. Out of Zion, the
perfection of beauty, God has shined. There's his description
of every believer in his church, the perfection of beauty. Every member of this church is
perfectly beautiful and righteous to God in the righteousness of
Christ. And it's shined, it glorifies
God. We are in Psalm, turn back to Psalm 37. Verse six, I think Claire read
this. somewhere today, but Psalm 37,
verse 6. Now we're talking about this
perfect righteousness that we've got in Christ. And he shall bring
forth thy righteousness as the light and thy judgment as the
noon day. Now this righteousness, this
righteousness of Christ that he gives to his people, it is
the fine linen, clean and white. And that white means bright,
and bright is light. And so he's talking about this
righteousness that is holy and white and light. But I like to
look at it this way. God's justice is a bright light. and he can shine his light of
justice on every believer for eternity and never have sinned
once. And he talks about that in the
last part of that verse. And thy judgment as the noon day. Thy judgment for every believer
is justified. And noon day is when the sun
is like right there, straight on top, there's no shadows. where you can maybe fool somebody
in the evening or in the morning, get away with some stuff under
the shadows. Noonday is when everything is exposed and he
looks at noonday and he declares all of his people righteous and
beautiful. And I want to show you that.
I'm talking like that, but I want you to see God's word on that.
Ezekiel 16, Ezekiel chapter 16. talking about the beautiful righteousness,
the perfection that he gives his people. Look in verse, let's
see, Ezekiel 16, verse 14. Speaking of his people and his
church, and thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty,
for it was perfect. through my comeliness, which
I had put up on thee, saith the Lord God." Perfect and beautiful
through the comeliness, through the righteousness, through the
beauty of Christ that he put upon his people. And we are perfect
and beautiful. Jeremiah 51 verse 10 says, the
Lord hath brought forth our righteousness. Come and let us declare in Zion
the work of the Lord our God. It's his work. This righteousness
is his work. He gives it to us freely, justifies
us freely by grace, and he makes us perfect. And back to Psalm
50. I just want to close up this perfection section with a couple
more comments out of Psalm 50. These verses, In the Old Testament,
we're saying the same thing as the verse in the New Testament
that says, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption
that's in Christ. Justified, in verse two, the
perfection of beauty, never sinned. Verse five, gather my saints
together unto me, those that have made a covenant, there's
the grace, the covenant of grace. With me, by sacrifice, there's
the redemption that's in Christ Jesus. Everything we talked about
in Romans 3 is in the Old Testament. The whole Bible just declares
the righteousness of God, that he's given his people, that makes
us beautiful to him, and it's a perfect righteousness, and
thank goodness. Because God requires perfection,
and Christ provides perfection in his righteousness and his
sacrifice. So salvation is perfection, and this perfection is eternal.
Salvation is eternal. It says perfected forever. Most people walk down an aisle,
except Jesus, and from that point on, they're saved, but not before
then. Well, scripture paints a much
different picture than that. It declares, as believer, salvation
is eternal, which it must be, because in Jeremiah 31, verse
3, when he talks about this everlasting love that he loves his people
with, that's an eternal love, and he could not love someone
eternally if they were not holy eternally. He can only love one
who is holy. Now I know scripture talks about
God loving sinners, Christ dying for sinners. But these sinners
in time, where we are now, have always been saints in eternity. For they were saved in the lamb
slain from the foundation of the world, this eternal lamb
has always been our salvation. It's not just from a point forward,
it's eternal. Our eternal surety took eternal
responsibility for his people, agreeing in the eternal covenant
of grace to provide all things necessary to save his people
and justify them in his eternal blood. It's all eternal. I know it's hard to comprehend
all this, that before time and creation, we all had some kind
of existence before God. But whatever state that was,
it was an eternal state of existence as one of God's elect in Christ.
And we're gonna look at some verses that talk about this eternal
salvation. And it's kind of, I appreciated
Claire reading from Ephesians chapter one, because that's where
we're going. Turn to Ephesians chapter one. But sometimes when
we look at the same verses, Over and over, we feel we, I know
that verse. I've read it, understood it.
We're going back to it again. I'm just going to drift off in
this little time here and, you know, I've heard it before, but
let me tell you something. There's nothing like Ephesians
1. There's nothing like a lot of these verses in the Bible. It's good that we cover the same
verses over and over and over, because these are good verses.
And the Apostle Paul addressed this issue. He said in Philippians
3 verse 1, to write the same things to you is not grievous,
but for you it is, does anybody know the next word? It is safe.
It's safe to write and to read and hear the same things over
and over and over. And that word safe means necessary.
It's necessary to say the same things and to read the same things
over and over because the next verse he talks about false prophets.
They're always around. The main reason is because of
the unbelief and the forgetfulness of our flesh concerning spiritual
things. By the time we get in our car,
99% of what we just heard is gone. Or in my case, it is. I'm getting a little older. Maybe
you can retain some stuff for a little bit longer than me.
But our flesh is just terrible at remembering the gospel or
anything spiritual. I try to go home and think back
on the messages we heard so I can chew on them a little bit. And
I'm sitting there. What? I just, it's, boy, our
flesh is so sinful that we have to read these verses over and
over, and don't let them get to you. I've heard it, I've read
it, I don't want it. If you're a sinner and you hear these words,
this is good news. I mean, this is good news. Verse
four, according as he hath, remember, we're looking at the eternal
things here. According as he hath chosen us in him, when? before the foundation of the
world. That we should be holy and without
blame before him. So here we've got eternal election
before the foundation of the world. We've got holiness, eternal
sanctification. We've got without blame, never
sinned, eternal justification. Going from verse four to five,
in love, having predestinated us, eternal love, eternal predestination,
unto the adoption of children, eternal adoption, to himself
according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of
the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted, eternally
accepted in the Beloved. Everything is eternal. And this
is glorious verses here in Ephesians 1, and to think that we could
maybe get tired of hearing the same verses over and over. It's
just pathetic, really. These three verses describe all
of our eternal election, our eternal justification, our eternal
sanctification, our eternal adoption, eternal acceptance, eternal love,
eternal redemption, eternal blood, eternal forgiveness. I am so
glad it's eternal, because if it was in time and up to us,
we would be in trouble. But when God saves a man and
woman in time, they find out in the eternal gospel that they've
always been viewed and saved in the eternal Lamb slain from
the foundation of the world. So, we've seen salvation is perfection. God requires perfection. We've
seen it's eternal. If you're saved now, you've always been
saved. There's no time than when you began to be saved. And we'll see now that it's for
sinners set apart in election by God the Father. Let's turn
to Jude, right in front of Revelations. Jude, verse one. Now, salvation is for sinners
set apart in election, and the word for that is sanctification. Sanctification, you take something
common, ordinary, set it aside for holy purposes and use. Now,
if we look in Jude, verse one, Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ
and the brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God
the Father in eternal election, preserved in Jesus Christ, who
redeemed them on the cross and declaring them holy, and called
by the Holy Spirit in regeneration, making them holy, all three members
of the Godhead in this sanctification or salvation. Jonah put it, salvation
is of the Lord, plain and simple. In other words, sanctification
turns sinners into saints. First, in eternity, in God's
purpose, and then second, in time, in God's providence. In
eternity, in the eternal covenant of grace, when Christ, the Lamb
slain, agreed to put away their sin, and in time, in providence,
when Christ came down here and actually walked this earth and
was nailed to a tree. So the lamb slain in God's purpose
in eternity became the lamb slain in God's providence in time.
And now he's the lamb slain in heaven. He's always been the
lamb slain. And now in heaven, we're gonna
sing a song one day, even though it's being sung right now. Worthy
is the lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and
wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing, Revelations
5, 12. Now man's religion turns sinners
slowly into saints over their lifetime. We're going to buckle
down, we're going to conquer this sin, we're going to start
doing that and conquer that slowly, but surely we're going to turn
from a sinner into a saint, a little holier each day. That's called
progressive sanctification. Not in the Bible, but a lot of
people use it and believe it, but let's turn to a verse that
discusses that, Galatians chapter three. Galatians chapter three,
and that's what Paul was talking to these Galatians about. They
were believers, they'd been saved by grace, but they had turned
back to the law and were wanting to add their works to the work
of Christ. Now look in Galatians three,
verse three. Are you so foolish? He calls
them fools. Having begun in the spirit, are
ye now made perfect by the flesh? God started it, I'll finish it. A man's religion makes themselves
partners with God. He started it, I'll finish it.
But believers with a new nature know that their flesh and their
spirit are mortal enemies, and we know that our flesh has nothing
to do with our salvation, except it provided the sin that killed
our Savior. That's about all we can get good
out of our flesh. And that's not really a good
thing, but our main text does not say far by one offering and
your works, your prayers, your changed life. It says, by one
offering, he hath perfected. It's finished. It's complete. Quit working on a finished work. The arrogance of our flesh is
so ridiculous, we think we can help God the Father, God the
Son, God the Spirit save us. This flesh is no good. Now, if there's any doubt left
who Christ came to save, let's look at one more verse that's
one of our favorite and one we looked at a lot before and one
that's gonna be familiar, so don't start drifting off. 1 Timothy chapter one. Everybody
knows probably the verse 15. Then we're gonna look at 1 Timothy
one, verse 15. This is a faithful saying. and worthy of all acceptation,
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom
I am chief." I saw somebody with that bumper sticker on their
car the other day, and it kind of shocked me. But it said, Christ
Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He left the, of
whom I am chief, off of there. You know, he didn't want to go
down the road, making everybody think there was a child molester
driving down the road. I'm the chief sinner. You know,
he just wanted to make sure he'd get out. But Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners. Now, sin, as a believer, it just,
it hurts me. I hate myself for constantly
sinning against a God that has only been good to me. And yet,
every day I wake up and I continue to sin against Him. And I hate
being a sinner. But in this one verse, this is
the one time in Scripture the Lord allows us to rejoice in
being a sinner because that's exactly who He came to save.
And it says, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
Christ Jesus is God. If he came to save sinners, he
did what he came to do, and he saved us. Now, these sinners, once again, we're talking about
the difference in man's standards and God's. Man's standard was
sin. They think sin is when I do a
bad thing. I punched my kid, hmm, pretty bad. That was a bad
sin. That's man's standard. God's
standard says anything you do in the flesh, think, talk, breathe,
eat, sleep, preach, it's sin because I did it and I'm a sinner. And anything we do in this flesh
is sin. Peter put it this way. He told the Lord to depart from
him because he is a sinful man. That word sinful means devoted
to sin. Job put it like this, we drink
iniquity like water till we're sin full. And that's what we
do. I mean, any chance this flesh
gets to sin, it jumps right at it until we're sin full. And
we're sin full already. We're sin full. If you don't
believe it, the word of God says that we are full of sin, but
that's exactly who he came to save. And a sinner, any sinner
that meets God's description of a sinner, he saved them. As a matter of fact, he's already
saved them because they wouldn't know that they were this sinful
unless he's given them a new nature. But he came to save sinners,
thank goodness. All right, so we've seen, for
by one offering he hath perfected forever and are sanctified. Salvation
is perfection. Salvation is eternal. Salvation
is for sinners set apart in election. And lastly, salvation is only
by the one offering of our Savior on that tree, and he perfected
us forever. Now, man has come up with so
many ways to enter heaven. You know, just go to a Franklin
Graham concert, whatever you call that thing, and get a pamphlet
and you're saved, or recite the sinner's prayer, join the promise
keepers, sprinkle holy water, on and on and on. Every athlete
or anybody you see on TV, when they talk about somebody they
lost, they're there. Everybody's in heaven. Yeah,
I don't know who's in hell, but everybody you talk, everybody's
in hell. There must be a million ways to heaven, but there is
only one way, our precious Savior. He gave the offering. Now that word offering means
one or more living creatures slain and offered to a deity
in worship. And in this case, the living
creature sacrificed is the creator. And that amazes me that God,
the God-man that created everything and all of us, would be the creature
sacrificed to save us. And that's love and that's his
offering. It's hard. We're entering holy
ground here when we talk about Almighty God coming down to this
earth to live and die for It's a pretty hard thing to grasp. But I just
want to look at some verses that have this word offering in them,
and we'll get some sense into how it happened. Ephesians, chapter
5. Ephesians, chapter 5, verse 1. Ephesians 5 verse 1, be ye therefore
followers of God as dear children and walk in love as Christ also
hath loved us eternally and hath given himself for us an offering
and a sacrifice to God for sweet-smelling savor. That word given is surrender,
to give yourself into the hands of another. And Christ the Son
gave himself willingly into the hands of the Father to his justice
And he was, Christ was our great high priest that offered his
own body as a sacrifice on the altar of his body. He did it
all. He did it all on that tree. And he, Christ loved in deed
and in truth and not just in word only. And I pray we could
do that. You know, we come up with lots
of ideas to help people this and there, but they kind of fade
away. I pray the Lord would make us more caring of each other.
When thoughts come to our head, let's carry them through. Just
think if Christ hadn't carried this through. He carried it through,
thank the Lord. Hebrews chapter seven, verse 27. We're looking at verses
that have the word offering in them. Hebrews seven, verse 27. who needeth, and this is talking
about Christ, who needeth not daily as those high priests to
offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins and then for the
people's. For this he did once when he offered up himself. Under the law, there was millions
of sacrifices that didn't take away one sin. Under the gospel,
there's one sacrifice that takes away all the sin of his elect. that one offering. Hebrews 10,
verse 10. By the witch will, by God's will,
we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus
Christ once, period. The for all's written in there,
once. That word once means upon one
occasion, That singular event of God nailing God to a tree
for the sin of His people is a one-time, totally completed,
never-to-be-repeated act, and never-to-be-added-to, it's finished,
it's completed. We can rest in Him in this one
offering. And now we've come back full
circle to verse 14, for by one offering, He hath perfected forever
them that are sanctified. It's a special verse because
it describes a special savior, that he would freely offer his
body as a sacrifice for his people in eternity, as a lamb slain
from the foundation of the world and making them his people at
that time, eternally accepted. made him holy and without blame,
remember in Ephesians chapter one. And then to come in time,
take on flesh, take on sin as a lamb slain on that cross and
fully complete the salvation of his people, perfecting them
in holiness eternally. All done freely, all done by
himself, all done for his people's salvation and all done for the
glory of our great God and Father. Amen. Thank you.