Alright, brethren, we're going
to continue in Philippians chapter 1. Let's just read the first six
verses just to refresh ourselves and we'll get to our text in
verse 6. Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ,
to all the saints in Christ Jesus, which are at Philippi, with the
bishops and deacons, grace unto you and peace from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God upon every remembrance
of you. always in every prayer of mine
for you all, making request with joy for your fellowship in the
gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this
very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will
perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. There is a doctrine that we've
all heard, that we believe, called perseverance of the saints. It means that the Lord's people
will persevere in faith, trusting the Lord Jesus Christ to the
end. You read Hebrews 11. And you
have that great roll call of faith, and it says, these all
died in faith. They began trusting Christ, they
continued trusting Christ, and they finished trusting Christ. But brethren, perseverance of
the saints is only due to preservation by our Lord God. It's God keeping
us. That's the only way that you
and I persevere trusting the Lord Jesus Christ. It's God keeping
His people. God keeping His people. Preservation
is God keeping His children so that all shall continue in the
faith trusting Christ until the day of our Lord Jesus. That's what Paul is declaring.
He was confident in his brethren. Not confident in them, confident
for them that the Lord Jesus, he said, confident of this very
thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform
it until the day of Jesus Christ. He. He. He which begun the work. He will finish the work. He began
it, He will finish it. Now that's the assurance every
believer has because that's the Word of God. That's the truth
of God. If He's begun the work in you,
He will finish the work. He will finish the work. Now,
I want to look at three things here. First of all, how we begin. and why that's so important.
Secondly, look at some scripture that shows us that God shall
preserve us. He will finish the work He's
begun. And then thirdly, I want to ask
a question and try to give an answer to it. Here's the first
thing we see. How we begin in faith is so very,
very important. How we begin in faith determines
who our confidence will be to continue to the end. How we begin
determines who will be our confidence to continue to the end. Paul
said, being confident of this very thing, that he which hath
begun a good work in you. We'll perform it until the day
of Jesus Christ. We'll finish it until the day
of Jesus Christ. He who began a good work in you. Paul said, and I believe it was
Paul, but in Hebrews 3.14, he said, we are made partakers of
Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto
the end. the beginning of our confidence. Now, whoever is the beginning
of our confidence, whoever we are persuaded has begun the work. Whoever is our confidence in
the beginning will be our confidence as we continue. For those truly called, the beginning
of our confidence is Christ. God our Savior who began the
work in you. The confidence of God's saints
is not ourselves. Our confidence is not in ourselves. It's not in our flesh. Our confidence
is not our brethren's fleshly strength. When Paul is in several
places, he says, I have confidence in you, brethren. But if you
read each one of those passages in context, it's not confidence
in them, it's confidence in the Lord working in them. And that's what he's saying here.
Our confidence is the Lord Jesus Christ. We have no confidence
in our flesh, in our sinful flesh. Now how did you begin to have
the gospel preached to you? How did you begin to have the
gospel preached to you? How did Paul preach the gospel
at Philippi? How did these brethren at Philippi
begin even having the gospel preached to them? Acts 16.6. Let's look over there. Acts 16.6.
I won't be able to turn to all these scriptures, but we'll turn
to a few. Acts 16.6. It says, now, when
they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and
they were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the Word in Asia.
After they had come to Messiah, they assayed to go into Bithynia,
but the Spirit suffered them not. And they passing by, Messiah
came down to Troas, and a vision appeared to Paul in the night.
There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come
over into Macedonia, and help us. And after that he had seen
the vision. Immediately we endeavored to
go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called
us for to preach the gospel unto them." Did you come to the gospel? Did you come to the preaching
of the gospel? Did you come, as so many say,
to the doctrines of grace? You'll hear folks say they were
saved through the lie of Arminianism, and then later they came to the
doctrines of grace. That's vanity, brethren. How
did you begin under the preaching of the gospel? Did you put yourself
under the preaching of the gospel, or did Christ send it to you?
I know you got in a vehicle, you drove to a place, more than
likely, but who brought that gospel in your vicinity? Who brought it to you? Who planted
and established the gospel where it is, where you were brought
under it? Who did that? If our confidence
is that we put ourselves under the preaching of the gospel,
If our confidence is that we studied ourselves into the kingdom,
then brethren, our confidence will be that we can just put
ourselves under the preaching of the gospel wherever we choose. But if our confidence is Christ,
if He sent the gospel to us, and He established the gospel
in this place, and He planted you in this place, then our confidence
will be Christ will keep us under the preaching of the gospel.
He started the work. He began the work. Where we begin
matters greatly. Lydia was the first one called
to faith in Philippi. How did she first believe? How did she first believe? Back
there in Acts 16.14 it says, "...whose heart the Lord opened,
that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul, whose
heart the Lord opened." Now, did you make yourself be born
again? Did you open your heart? Did
you pray through? Did you walk an aisle? All these different things men
say they did to be, quote, born again? Or did the Lord open your
heart? Did He give you a new heart?
Did the Spirit of God come and empower and quicken you and regenerate
you as the Scripture declares? That's how God begins to work
in His people. Christ said, you must be born
from above. That which is flesh is flesh.
A believer is a miracle of God's grace. A dead man alive? No dead man can do that for himself. A deaf man being able to hear?
A lame man being able to leap for joy? That's a miracle of
God's grace. If our beginning was something
we did, If it was something we did to be born again, if it's
by our will and our wisdom or our works or anything we did
to be born again, then as we continue, our confidence will
be ourselves unless God intervenes in saving grace. Who sanctified
these brethren? That's really what we're talking
about here, a work in you. Who sanctified these brethren?
Who separated them and consecrated them for God's holy use? That's
what it is, sanctification is to be separated out from death
and the power of darkness and from the dominion of the devil
and our sin nature and to be translated into the kingdom of
God's dear Son, into Christ Himself. Who separated you and consecrated
you to Christ? Who made you holy? Was it something
you did or did the Lord begin the work? These brethren here
would say exactly what the Apostle Paul said. Paul said, when it
pleased God who separated me, sanctified me from my mother's
womb, and called me by His grace to reveal His Son in me, that
I might preach Him among the heathen. Immediately I conferred,
not with flesh and blood." Paul said, the Lord sanctified me
from eternity. He sanctified me from my mother's
womb. He sanctified me from the womb
of the morning. And then when he was pleased,
in the time he predestinated, he called me, revealed His Son
in me. These brethren at Philippi were
taught what Jeremiah was taught. The Lord told Jeremiah, Before
I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee. Before thou camest forth
out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet
unto the nations. You know, brethren, Folks who
deny that this work is entirely of the Lord, they deny the very
way our Lord Jesus as the servant of God was sanctified. You know,
He was set apart as God's choice. We saw that Sunday. He said,
Behold My servant whom I uphold, Mine elect whom I choose. The
Father chose Him, separated Him to be His servant. Our Lord Jesus
said in Isaiah 49.1, He said, Listen, O Isles unto me, and
hearken, ye people from far. The Lord hath called me from
the womb. That's what Paul said. He separated
me from the womb. From the bowels of my mother
hath he made mention of my name. He said, Now saith the Lord that
form me from the womb to be his servant. to bring Jacob again
to Him. He said, Though Israel be not
gathered yet, shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and
my God shall be my strength. Now if Christ as the servant,
representing all God's elect, serving God as the righteous
servant of God, if He said that God was all His strength, are
you and me going to boast that we separated ourselves and that
we're our own strength? How we begin? and this thing
of being set apart, sanctified, made holy, that's going to have
a bearing on who our confidence is throughout. Scripture says
Christ is our sanctifier and our sanctification. It says in
Hebrews 2.11, both He that sanctified, that's Christ, He that sanctified
and they who are sanctified, that's those He separates to
Him. He said they're all of one. All
of one. All of one righteousness. All
of one holiness. All of one redemption. All of
one purpose of God. All of one spirit. All of one. For which cause Christ is not
ashamed to call us brethren. We had to be holy for Him to
call you brethren. He is the sanctifier and the
sanctification of His people. What does that mean? What does
that mean? He sent Paul to those he redeemed. And through the gospel, he said,
I'm sending you, and Christ is the one that does this work through
the Spirit. He said, to open their eyes, to turn them from
darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God, that they
may receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among them which
are sanctified by faith that is in me. sanctified by faith
that is in me." When Christ sanctifies us inwardly, He sends the Gospel,
and He says, I'll pray the Father, and He sends the Spirit of God,
and the Spirit regenerates us. Christ is formed within us. He's the holiness that sanctified
us. He's the holiness that made you
holy within. There's a new man, all of His
creating, He made us holy. Now what happens when He does
that? He's the sanctifier in that sin. He sent that Gospel
and He blessed that Word to our heart and He separated us. from
everything we thought was true and what we were holding on to,
from everything. He separated us. What did He
do? He turned you to behold Him on the cross, crucified in the
room instead of His people. He turned you to behold Him seated
at God's right hand because God's satisfied, because He accomplished
eternal redemption for His people and justified His people and
made us the righteousness of God in Him, perfecting us forever. And when He makes you do, see
that. He makes you see that it's by
Christ fulfilling the will of God, as Hebrews 10.10 says, that
we're sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus
Christ one time. For by one offering he perfected
forever them that are sanctified." Christ is our sanctifier. He
sent the gospel, the Spirit of God, and he blessed the word
to our hearts, and he did so by turning us to behold He alone
is our sanctification. This is the paradox of sanctification. When you're truly sanctified,
you stop depending, having your confidence in works you do to
sanctify yourself. You're separated out from that
darkness. You're separated out from those
who believe in trusting their own righteousness or really trusting
unrighteousness. You're separated out from that.
You're separated to Christ and you behold your sanctification. Your holiness and righteousness
and wisdom and redemption is seated at God's right hand. And
so you start following Him. And He keeps you. And since the
Father predestinated us unto sanctification of the Spirit
and belief of the truth, and He called you by our gospel to
the glory, obtaining the glory of the Lord Jesus, since the
Father did this, Paul said in Colossians 1.12, we give thanks
unto the Father, catch this word, which hath made us meet, fit,
right now. From the moment He sanctified
you and made you holy, made you meet to be partakers of the inheritance
of the saints in light. If you died right then, just
like the thief on the cross, he had the holiness without which
no man will see the Lord. And he had his hands and his
feet nailed to a cross. He made you meet, fit, holy,
separated, sanctified, who hath delivered us from the power of
darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear
Son. That's sanctification. Separated
out from darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son. He hath done
it for you in whom He's begun this work. in whom we have redemption
through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins. And He said, And you
that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked
works, yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through
death to present you holy. and unblameable and unreprovable
in His sight, if you continue in the faith, if you continue
trusting He alone is the one in whom you have redemption,
who you have forgiveness of sin, who alone shall present you holy
and unblameable and unreprovable in His sight, if you continue
trusting Him alone. grounded and settled, and be
not moved away from the hope of the gospel," Paul said, which
is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Do you get what I'm saying?
Christ is our sanctification in that He's the one, the sanctifier,
in that He enters in. and sanctifies us. But when He
does it, He doesn't turn us to ourselves and to mind the things
of the flesh. He turns us from ourselves to
Him to see He is our righteousness and our holiness. And He's going
to keep His people looking at Him. Why does Paul say, He that
begun this work will continue this work? It's not, brethren,
that He's growing you and you're getting more and more holy and
less and less sinful and one day you're just going to be ripe
so that you just bust heaven wide open. He's teaching you
and me more and more to have all our confidence in Christ
only. and no confidence in our flesh.
That's what He's teaching us. That's what He's teaching us.
This is what Paul prayed. Listen to this. The very God
of peace sanctify you wholly and I pray God your whole spirit
and soul and body be preserved blameless. unto the coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ. Now listen, faithful is he that
calleth you, faithful is he that begun the work, who also will
do it. He's the doer of it. He's the
doer of it. But if the beginning of our confidence
is that we separated ourselves, we sanctified ourselves, we made
ourselves holy, and or that we made ourselves righteous, then
our confidence for holiness and righteousness will continue to
be self. And every sinner matures in life. Every sinner does. Unregenerate
men do. Unregenerate men, they don't
carry on like they did when they were younger. But if a sinner
thinks that he sanctified himself in the beginning, as he matures
naturally in life, He'll look at that and he'll be more confident
that he sanctified himself. And that he sanctified himself
in making himself more holy and more holy. And his confidence
will be in self. And that head gets bigger and
bigger and bigger. And that's to go farther and
farther and farther into unbelief. You know, all the children of
Israel were separated and came out of Egypt. All of them did
in body. They all came out of Egypt. They
were all separated from Egypt, all delivered out of Egypt, all
came out of Egypt. But not all were sanctified and
came out spiritually in the heart. And the beginning of their confidence
was self. Those that weren't separated
in heart by the Lord and the ones that the Lord didn't begin
to work in, their confidence was self. And so when they got
to the land of promise and they saw those giants, they wouldn't
go in. You know why? They didn't have
confidence in self that they could overcome those giants.
But the Lord began the work in Joshua and Caleb. He separated
them, He sanctified them, and they knew He was their sanctification,
and their righteousness, and their wisdom, and the power of
God for them. And they said this, if the Lord
delight in us, then He will bring us into the land and give us
a land which floweth with milk and honey. Their confidence wasn't
in themselves, their confidence was in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Who's your confidence in? Who began to work in you? That's
going to have a bearing as we go. You know, if you take a line
and it's off just a little bit in the beginning, by the time
it gets on out there, it's going to be way off the mark. Who began
to work? God's people have been made to
know. We are miracles of God's grace. I was a dead dog sinner. I couldn't give myself life anymore,
and I gave myself life in my mother's womb. You know you're
born of the Spirit of God. It's the Lord that sanctified
you. He sanctified you in divine election. He sanctified you on
the cross. He sanctified you in the new birth. He began the
work. And He's going to keep you holy,
blameless in Him and preserved in Him because He continued the
work. Now secondly, that brings us
to this next point. Since He begun the work in us,
He will finish it. Christ is the believer's confidence.
Paul said, being confident of this very thing, that He which
hath begun a good work in you will perform it to the day of
Jesus Christ. God is holy. He's holy. That's why He sent the Lord Jesus
Christ His Son into this world to perfect His people. Because
He's holy, He won't receive anybody unless they're the righteousness
of God. Holy is God. Righteous is God. He can't receive us. He's holy. He's of two pure eyes to even
behold sin. The heavens aren't pure in His
sight. And He sent His Son because He's holy. And the Lord Jesus
Christ accomplished the redemption of His people. He accomplished
putting away the sin of His people on the cross. He accomplished
making us the righteousness of God in Him. He accomplished justifying
His people by laying down His life on the cross. He did not
lay down His life just for Anybody and everybody, he laid down his
life for a particular people. He said, I laid down my life
for the sheep. He bore the sin of a particular
people. He paid the wages of sin for
a particular people. He bore the curse for a particular
people. And he justified a particular
people. He reconciled a particular people.
He accomplished the redemption of a particular people. Now there's no condemnation.
There's no judgment to them that are in Christ Jesus. And when
He's begun this work in you and made you to see what He did,
you start walking after the Spirit and not after the flesh. Most
people preach that, you know, that's minding sin and living
for the world and sin and all. Well, if that's how you live,
then you hadn't been called of it. Because God's people hate
sin. We don't want to live in sin.
But if you read the context of Romans 8, Paul is saying, mining
the things of the flesh, is thinking you can do what it took God sending
His Son to do. What we couldn't do, we couldn't
fulfill the law because of our sinful flesh. He sent His Son
and took our nature and He accomplished the righteousness of the law
and made us righteous before the law. And He turns you from
minding the things of touch not, taste not, handle not, and He
makes you set your affection on Christ above. And there's
no condemnation for them that are in Christ Jesus. Well, because He accomplished
that work, God's not going to punish sin twice. He already
did it in His Son for His people. Judgment settled. And so that
means He shall call each one When Peter said he's not willing
that any should perish, he's talking about God's elect, who
Christ redeemed. He's not willing that they should
perish, but that all shall come to repentance. You know what
that means? They're all coming. He's going to seek to it. He's
going to send the gospel to them, just like he did at Philippi.
He's going to send the Spirit of God into their hearts, just
like he did at Philippi. He's going to give them faith,
just like he did at Philippi. He's going to separate them unto
him, just like he did at Philippi. and He's going to keep them separated
unto Him, trusting Him alone for our salvation. My sheep hear
My voice, He said, and I know them, and they follow Me, and
I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish,
neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand. My Father which
gave them Me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck
them out of My Father's hand. The Lord will not forsake His
people for His great namesake. He's holy. He satisfied justice. He redeemed His people. His glory
is attached to the salvation of His people. He will not forsake
His people for His great namesake because it pleased the Lord to
make you His people. But is He able? We see that His
holiness demands it, but is He able to keep us? Is He able to
finish this work? Our Savior is God. The God-man mediator. He is God. He spoke heaven and earth into
existence. He upholds all things by the
word of His power. He fulfilled the everlasting
covenant for His people. He was able to call dead sinners
like us to life by His Word and make us willing to trust Him. He's able to keep His people
to the end. God our Savior is immutable.
He doesn't change. He can't be changed. This man,
because he continueth ever, Speaking of Christ, hath an unchangeable
priesthood, wherefore he is able to save them to the uttermost
that come to God by him, trusting him alone to represent us to
God, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. God cannot lie. He made an everlasting
covenant, ordered in all things insure. When He called you, He
wrote this on your heart. He made you to know this, and
this is His promise. He said in Jeremiah 32, 40, I
will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn
away from them to do them good, but I will put my fear in their
hearts that they shall not depart from me. He's not going to depart
from His people and He's not going to let His people depart
from Him. His promise is the same as it was to Jacob. He said,
I'm with thee and will keep thee in all places where thou goest
and will bring thee again into this land for I will not leave
thee until I've done that which I've spoken to thee of. That's
His promise and He can't lie. He shows us by grace. He's not
going to change. His love doesn't change. He's
holy. His name's attached to this.
He chose us by grace, He redeemed us by grace, He regenerated us
by grace, He sanctified us by grace, and He's able to preserve
us by grace. Listen, God is able to make all
grace abound toward you, that you always, having all sufficiency
in all things, may abound to every good work. So where was
Paul's confidence? It was in the Lord who began
the work. He who has begun a good work
in you will perform it to the day of Jesus Christ. Now, let
me come to this last thing. Why did the Lord leave us in
this sinful body of death in a wicked world? Why did He do
that? When He began the work and made
us meet, why did He just take us right into glory? Well, He's
got other sheep He's calling, for one. He's so wise. And He's going to do it through
the preaching of this gospel. So He assembled us together to
preach His Word. But as we're going through all
the trials and tribulations that we go through in this world,
He said you must, through much tribulation, enter the Kingdom
of God. It's a must. Because as we go through these
things, He is growing us, not like the world talks about growth. They talk about growth in holiness
as getting more holy. We talk about growth in holiness
as growth in a state of one who is already made holy. It's just
growing, and here's what it is. It's growing to have more confidence
in Him and less confidence in self. Because you see more and
more of your sinfulness, more and more of your weakness, and
more and more that Christ is all. That's true growth in grace.
That's true growth. It's growth in the grace of Christ
and in the knowledge of Christ. That's what it is. Everything
Christ brings to pass in our lives, He works all things together
for good to them that love God, to them who are called according
to His purpose. Everything He's bringing to pass
in our lives is for this purpose. Together with the preaching of
the Gospel, which He blesses to our heart, it is to teach
us to have no confidence in our flesh and only in Christ Jesus. We are the circumcision, a true
Jew circumcised in heart. We worship God in the Spirit,
we rejoice in Christ Jesus, and we have no confidence in our
flesh. Not in ours or any other man.
In all the trials we go through in the life, God's teaching you
and me, in my flesh dwells no good thing. That's what He's
teaching us. Put no confidence in your flesh. Don't put confidence in another's
sinful flesh. Put all confidence in the Lord
Jesus Christ alone. That's where Paul's confidence
was. Brethren, there could be no perseverance of the saints
was it not for God preserving us. That's just fact. If God
didn't allow Satan to fire his darts at us, Does he permit Satan
to do that? Look at Job. The Lord's the one
that called the devil to him and said, Have you considered
my servant Job? He said, You can go do this and
this and this, but you can't do that, that, that. The devils
can't do anything but what Christ permits them to do, but He only
permits them to do it to show you and me. If we never had His
fiery darts fired at us, we would think we had some strength in
ourselves. But He uses that to show you and me how weak we are
and how Christ is our strength and our shield. He left us in this body at death.
And we don't want to sin. We're not to sin. And believers don't want to sin.
He makes you to put away sin. But that's not what made you
holy. And that's not your holiness.
Brethren, Christ is your holiness. But He even uses that sinful
flesh of ours to show us Not to trust in ourselves, not to
have confidence in ourselves, to have all our confidence in
Christ. Above all, take the shield of
faith. Now, it's not faith itself, it's
the one faith beholds, the one faith trusts, Christ, whereby
you'll be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
It's only in Christ. What time I'm afraid, I will
trust in thee, the psalmist said. Who is he that overcometh the
world, but he that believeth Jesus is the Son of God. He's
the one that's saving. Be sober, but be vigilant, because
your adversary the devil is a roaring lion walking about, seeking whom
he may devour, whom resist steadfast in the faith. Look to Christ. Know that Christ is going to
save you and He's going to keep you and He's going to make you
stand. Look to Christ. That's the only way you can resist
the devil. And it's Christ that will give
you the faith. It's Christ that will strengthen your faith. It's
Christ that will surround you as a fortress. It's Christ, Christ,
Christ doing the work. And know this, that the same
afflictions are being accomplished in your brethren who are in the
world. Don't get mad at your brethren. The Lord is doing the
same work in them that He's doing in you. And He's accomplishing
it. But the God of all grace, who
has called us into His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after
that you suffered a while. That's true in every individual
trial, and that's true this whole life. After you suffered a while,
He'll make you perfect. He'll teach you. You'll get the
lesson. He'll establish you. He'll strengthen
you. And He'll settle you. To Him
be glory and dominion forever and ever. And that's what you'll
say when He's done it. When the Apostle Paul was opposed
by that entire city of Athens, go to 2 Timothy 4. I'm running
out of time. I'm going to have to wind it
up. 2 Timothy 4. When he was opposed by that whole
town, And when he was taken to Italy and put in prison, it got
to a point with Apostle Paul that nobody stood with him but
just a few. This is what Christ will teach
you and me. This is what he taught Paul right
here. 2 Timothy 4. Paul said, at my first answer,
no man stood with me, but all forsook me. I pray God that it
might not be laid to their charge. Notwithstanding, the Lord stood
with me. and strengthen me, that by me
the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles
might hear, and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion,
and the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will
preserve me unto His heavenly kingdom, to whom be glory forever
and ever. Amen. I know when you see a brother
go through a trial, you want to pull him out of that trial.
You want to get him out of it. Listen to me. We have to go through
trials to learn this. Let patience have a perfect word.
Watch and pray. Believe Christ and pray for him.
And if he opens the door, remind him of these precious promises
of our Lord Jesus and of his power and his wisdom and his
strength and what he's done for us and is doing for us. And pray
for him to bless it and wait on him to bless it. He will make
every one of His people, in every one of the tribulations, He will
make them understand why He sent it. And it is always for this
twofold purpose, to make you know that in your flesh dwells
no good thing, put no confidence in you, and have all your confidence
in Christ. He's able to succor them that
are tempted. He's been tempted. He's able
to comfort and keep them that are tempted. He's their master. He's their master. And they shall
be held up because He's able to make them stand. Abraham was
fully persuaded that what he promised he was able to perform.
Are you? Paul said, I'm not ashamed of
this suffering I go through. He said, I know whom I have believed
and persuaded that He is able to keep that which I've committed
unto Him against that day. What have you committed to Him?
What have you committed to Him? Everything. It's all in His hand. Is anything in your hand? No,
it's in His hand. salvations of the Lord. I've
committed my entire eternal well-being, my temporal well-being. My whole self is in His hand.
And I'm persuaded He's able. Now, right now, brethren, I believe
Him. I believe He is. Tomorrow, I might need you to
remind me. If you'll remind me, I'll remind
you. But let's remind each other this. Go with me to Jude. We'll
end with this. This is our confidence right
here. Jude. Listen to this. Verse 24. Now unto him that is
able to keep you from falling, he'll keep you from falling away.
You're going to fall in this world. Don't think you won't
sin. You're going to. but He'll keep
you from falling away. And to present you thoughtless
before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. To the only
wise God our Savior be glory and majesty, dominion and power
right now and forever. Can you say amen? Amen. Alright, brethren.