Alright, brethren, let's turn
to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Now the
Scriptures are very clear that it's not the believer that begins
believing the Lord, that shall be saved. It's the believer that
continues unto the end, resting in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
who shall be saved, the one who continues to the end. Have you
ever, believer, have you ever thought to yourself, wondered
to yourself, will I continue to the end? Will I continue trusting
Christ or will I fall away? If we were left to ourselves,
every believer knows this, and I'm sure every believer here
knows this. If we were left to ourselves without a doubt, we
would fall away. We would fall away. When I look
at myself and I consider myself just in myself, I think I could
see very easily where I would be a castaway. Very easy. But if God has begun a work of
grace in us, if He has truly begun a work of grace in us,
God will finish what He has started. That is certain. And our confidence
for finishing the race, our confidence for persevering in faith, is
not our ability to persevere. Our confidence is this right
here, 1 Corinthians 1 verse 9. God is faithful. God is faithful. By whom you
were called unto the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our
Lord. Now Paul didn't say, here's my
confidence in you Corinthian brethren, you are faithful. He
didn't say, my confidence that you'll continue in the faith
is that you have faithful pastors. He said, here's my confidence,
God is faithful. God is faithful. All who persevere in faith, all
who persevere in faith, until the end, will do so because God
is faithful. We'll do so because God is faithful. Now I want to look tonight at
God's faithfulness. And I want to look at this in
three ways. Number one, God's faithfulness in calling us to
faith in Christ. We'll go back to the beginning.
We'll look at God's faithfulness in calling us to faith in Christ. And then number two, we'll look
at God's faithfulness to confirm the gospel of Christ in us. And then thirdly, we'll look
at God's faithfulness to preserve us until the end in Christ. Now, first of all, let's look
at God's faithfulness in calling us into faith in the beginning.
Now, by whom did you begin trusting Christ? Well, I'm taking for
granted we have some people here who say, I believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ. Okay? By whom did you begin trusting
the Lord Jesus Christ? Paul says in verse 9, God is
faithful by whom? By whom you were called unto
the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Now many speak
of how they began in faith by doing something for God. Many
speak of how they did something to put themselves in the faith
to have life and to trust Christ and all of this. Some speak of
it as being a co-effort between them and God. Some say the Holy
Spirit regenerated them, but then He left them the choice
to either choose God or reject God. If anybody, whoever they
are, thinks that they began in the faith by something they did,
they haven't yet begun in the faith. They're trusting their
works. They're not trusting God. They're
trusting what they've done, not what God's done. What they've
done for God, rather than what God's done for them. Now, listen
to the Scripture. All God's true children begin
in the faith the same way. God is faithful. By whom you
were called unto the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our
Lord. That's how all God's children
begin in the faith. Now, the circumstances may be
different. God may, He spit in one man's
eye, and He rubbed mud in another man's eye. One man was given
sight immediately, another one gradually got his sight. That
may be a little different, but this is always the case. God's
the alpha. God is the beginning. God is
the giver. And it's by God that we're called
unto the fellowship of His Son. Now that's the case. And so therefore,
now here's what's important about that, brethren. All the glory,
all the glory from the very beginning, all the glory goes to God. It
all goes to God because God called us to faith in Christ. We didn't
do it. God did it. God is faithful by
whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ
our Lord. Now, can you confess that? Can
you say, can you confess and say, my faithful God called me. That's how I began in the faith.
God called me. He called me into the fellowship
of His Son. When I was dead in sin, I was
thinking on this, my whole being was enmity against God. That
doesn't mean that you go around, you know, crying out blasphemy
against God and you go around evidently hating God. Here's
how my whole being was enmity against God. Just the mention
of the Scriptures bothered me. I didn't want to hear anybody
even bring up the Word of God. I sure didn't want to be asked
a question about the Word of God. And then, I went to church,
but I didn't want to go to church. I went to church because my mother
made me go to church. My grandfather made me go to
church. I didn't want to go. If I would have had my brothers,
I wouldn't have gone. That's enmity against God. What
made you not want to go hear the Prince of Life? enmity against
God. That's what it was. I couldn't
hear it, and I couldn't understand it. I couldn't look into the
Word and understand what they were talking about. I could get
little glimpses here, but it was like a puzzle with all the
pieces missing. I couldn't get it. And I didn't
like it. It all sounded strange to me. You try to read any other book,
you start at the beginning, you go right to the end. You try
to read this book, you start at the beginning, And you just
can't get through it. It just didn't make any sense
to me. There wasn't a good storyline to it. It didn't have a good
plot. I couldn't understand it. And I'll tell you something else.
I oppose the truth with my own vain reasoning. I would look
at this book, if I heard anything spoken of about divine election,
I always put myself on the side with those who were not elected.
and said that's not fair that God chose them, didn't choose
me. Anytime I heard the Bible declare that God created the
heavens and the earth and that He did that to picture how God
creates a man anew by His work and saves him by His grace, I'd
renounce both of them. I denied both of them. I would
reason and try to figure out a way that both of them were
false. I reasoned against God to my own demise. That was enmity
against God. I had no love for God the Father.
I had no love for the Son. I had no love for His Gospel.
And I had no love for His people. All I had was enmity against
God, hatred against God. But at some point, at some point,
that Gospel was being preached and God spoke And He said, Lazarus,
come forth. And He gave me life. He gave
me life. And for the first time, I began
to hear something of my sin. And I began to believe God. That
yes, it's true. I see what He says about me.
I see how sinful I am. And it's true. I began to see
I need a Savior. I can't save myself. I need a
Savior. And I began to see the Lord Jesus
Christ is the righteousness of God. He is the holiness of God. He is the wisdom of God. I began
to see Christ high and lifted up. And I began to see myself
undone. And I began to see all my works
as vanity. And in time, in God's time, God
called me into the fellowship of His Son. I met Him who is
my peace. And oh, I'm so thankful now.
That was God all along giving somebody the heart to put up
with my mumbling and my grumbling to make me go and hear the gospel
preached. Don't give up doing that, Cheryl.
You want to sometimes, don't you? But don't. That's God doing
that. God was calling me. And He made
me here. That's God. That's God. When
I came forth, I had a lot of grave clothes on me, just like
Lazarus did when he came forth. Grave clothes. Didn't understand,
didn't see clearly, but he kept on teaching me, kept
on teaching me, kept on teaching me. Do you remember when he first
began to call you? Now let me ask you, who did it? Was it you or was it God? Who
did it? You or God? All God's true children. give God the glory that He called
me. And He called me not to doctrines. So I get wearier hearing folks
say, well, I was saved in this lie and that lie, or what have
you, but then I came to the doctrines of grace. God calls His children
to Christ, to fellowship in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And
He does it with truth. He's the God of truth. God of
truth. Now Paul's declaring here, remember
what Paul's declaring here, he's showing us that we're going to
continue in faith, we're going to be confirmed to the end by
the faithfulness of God. Now, if God's the one that called
us in the beginning, we can believe, we can trust, we can rest assured
God's faithful and He's going to continue to keep us to the
end. You know, when men argue and say, I want to have some
part in bringing myself to faith in Christ, and I want to argue
that I had a part in that. You don't want to argue that,
because if you do, then you're going to have to keep yourself
until the end. And if you know anything about yourself, you
know, I can't do that. I can't do that. I'd fall away.
I can't do that. But when God calls you, He's
going to keep you. Look here. In the very beginning,
what calls God to call you to faith in Christ? Verse 4, I thank
my God always on your behalf for the grace of God which is
given you. The grace of God which is given
you. Now, when God When God chose
to call you, did He do it because He saw some merit in you? Did
He do it because He saw that you would believe on Him? And
so then He said, I'll call that one. They don't believe on me,
so I'll call them. Do you know how backwards that
is? That's trusting works. That's trusting my work, my merit,
instead of God's grace and God's work. And that's backwards. No,
that's not how he calls his child. All God's true children begin
in faith by the grace of God which is given you. The grace
of God. Wasn't that a profitable message
that Donnie preached Sunday? The nature of grace. Telling
you all about what grace is. God's grace is free. It's free. Free grace. The very word grace means it's
free. It means God did not put any... He didn't look for any merit
in you. He didn't look for any merit in me. He didn't see anything
in us worthy of saving. God freely chose His people. He freely gave grace to His people. And then God's grace is sovereign.
God has a right to do with His own what He will. God made all
of us. And we all sinned in Adam. And
all we deserved was damnation and condemnation from God. That's
all we deserve. God chooses whom He will and
He passes by whom He will. The reason that's important is
we've got to be brought to see this thing don't revolve around
us. And we're not God. We've got to bow to God. We've
got to bow to the one who is God. It's true that you won't
ever worship any God but a sovereign God. Any other God, you're going
to let Him do what you permit Him to do. That kind of God's
got to worship you. The only God we'll worship is
a sovereign God, and His grace is sovereign. And His grace is
irresistible. It's invincible. And I'll tell
you something about it. When God's grace begins to work
in a sinner, God's grace makes it so you don't want to resist
His grace. You don't want to resist it.
It's too good to resist when He begins to work His grace in
your heart. It's not like you go kicking and screaming to Christ. You go willingly because He makes
you willing. His grace does that. You can't
resist it. Now, if there was absolutely
nothing in you to cause God to call you in the first place,
He did it all by His grace, then rest assured, the way we're going
to be preserved by God to the end is by God's grace. God's
grace is going to do it. God's grace. And then, by whom
did God give you grace? By whom did God give you grace
and give you this calling? By whom? Look at verse 4 again. It says, "...the grace of God
which is given you by Jesus Christ." God chose His Son. He chose His
Son. Divine election begins with God.
with His Son. God chose, He elected His Son.
He chose His Son to come forth and represent a people that He
chose in His Son. God chose His Son to represent
the people God chose in His Son. And Christ came forth and represented
all God's elect and He finished the work God gave Him to do.
And therefore, God's just to give us all spiritual blessings
because He gives them to us in Christ Jesus. They all come by
Jesus Christ. Through His merits and through
His work, He purchased the blessings. He can give us the blessings,
and God's just to give them to us because He's doing it in a
way that's according to His justice. Now, let me try to illustrate
this. I've been going at this from
all different angles, but let me try to illustrate this again.
Now God's going to either charge us in the court of our conscience
with sin, or He's going to, and that's going to be by grace.
If He does that by grace, He's going to save you. Or in the
day of judgment, we're going to stand before God and He's
going to charge us with sin in person. And that won't be a day
of grace. That'll be a day of judgment.
But one of the two, we're going to be charged with sin. Now,
is God just to charge you with sin? Does God just say, I'm going
to impute sin to you, and it's not really a just charge? That's
not really what you are. Or are you really sin when He
imputes sin to you? Well, you really sin. How were you made sin? Well,
number one, we were in Adam when he broke God's law, and so we
broke God's law. There's our unrighteousness.
And number two, we were conceived of Adam, so we were born with
Adam's ungodly nature. There's our ungodliness. So,
when God charges you with unrighteousness and with ungodliness, as being
unholy and unrighteous, it's a just charge because that's
what Adam made you. That's what Adam made me. But
see, grace is given us by Jesus Christ. Now, apply that to Christ. God's elect were in Christ when
Christ fulfilled the whole law of God and made it honorable.
And so we all fulfilled the law of God and made it honorable
in the Lord Jesus Christ. There's our righteousness. There's
our righteousness. And then our Holy Redeemer was
formed in us when we were born again so that now we have His
holy nature dwelling in us. There's our holiness. There's
our righteousness. And so when God forms Christ
in you, and this grace is given to you by Jesus Christ, and He
charges you in the court of your conscience by grace, saying,
you're righteous and holy, it's not pretend, it's a just charge,
because that's what Christ has made you. He made you righteous
and holy. righteous and holy. You see,
God wasn't pretending when he said we were made sin by one
man's disobedience, and God's not pretending when he says we're
made righteous by one man's obedience. We're made that, brethren. We're
made righteous and holy by Christ, and all this grace is given us
by Christ. It's given us by Christ. Now,
do you rest Do you believe on Christ, rest in Christ, trusting
that all God's grace is given you in Christ Jesus, by Christ
Jesus? Do you? Is that your hope? Well then listen, if you believe
it's because God called you, that He called you by the grace
of God, by Christ Jesus, if you believe this, if you rest that
it's all by God's grace given you freely by Christ Jesus, I'm
telling you, you can rest assured, for the sake of that Son, for
the sake of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, God will confirm
you to the end. God will not lose one for whom
Christ died. The blood of His precious Son
is too precious for God to lose one to count that blood vain.
And that's what He'd have to do to cast away one for whom
Christ died. And not only that, God's glory,
God's justice, God's holiness, God's character, God's... everything God is, is too high
and too holy for God to lose one that He's justified. It will
not happen. God is faithful by whom you were
called unto the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
Now that's how we started. That's how we began. All by God's
grace, given us by God, Christ Jesus our Lord. Now, secondly,
I want you to consider God's faithfulness to confirm this
gospel in us. Now, try to stick with me here.
This is a Thursday night. I know that the preacher don't
preach as well on Thursday nights. But try to stay with me and think
on this and get this. Try to get this. By the same
grace of God, from the very beginning until now, from the very beginning
until now, Verse 5 says, In everything you are enriched by Him. In everything
you are enriched by Him. Now you just think of this. You
imagine creating a new man out of nothing. Imagine creating
a new man out of nothing. You go back there to the garden.
When God made Adam, there was nothing. He had the heavens and
the earth and the things He had made, but there was nothing There
was no man to make him from. There was nothing there to use
to make Adam. And He made Adam from nothing. From the dust.
Well, when God makes us new, He's not just remodeling what's
there. He's not just reforming what's
there. He's making an entirely new man. And so He's making that... There's nothing there to make
that new man out of. Not in you and me. He's got to
make that new man from Himself. Not from anything in us. And
so therefore, brethren, in everything, you're enriched by Him. That's
what that scripture was saying you just read. He said there
before, you look at a child, in the verse right before, you
look at a child. You can tell by that child, what that child
does, whether he's right or whether he's wrong, and he says, then
the seeing eye and the hearing ear is of God who created him. And that's so here. That's what
he's saying here. Now let me make this statement
before we start. Paul's not telling us here to
look for assurance that we're going to continue in faith. He's
not telling us to look for assurance that we'll continue by looking
at the gifts God's given us. That's not what he's saying.
He's telling us to look to the giver. That's what he's telling
us. If you want assurance, look to the giver. That's what he's
saying. We're enriched by Him. What do
you have that you didn't receive from Him? Now, let's start where
our experience of grace starts, in verse 6. He says, "...even
as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you
come behind in no gift." Now, God confirmed. The word confirmed
means established, made firm, made sure. God established, He
made firm, He made sure. And He did this, He confirmed
the testimony of Christ. That's the gospel of Christ.
He confirmed, He established, He made sure the gospel of Christ
in us. He does this individually in
each of His children and He does it in His local church. In the midst of His local church
too, just like He did at Corinth. But He confirms this gospel in
us. Now this confirming, this confirming
means God established the testimony of Christ in us, enriching us
with gifts, as He did it, so that He made it evident that
He truly made us rest in Christ. Let me say it again. When He
confirms us, He confirmed the gospel in us, He gave us gifts
as He did it to make it evident that God had effectually, certainly
made us rest in Christ. That's what this means. He made
it evident. Now let me show you what I'm
talking about. God confirmed the gospel of Christ in us by
enriching us with the gift of faith and repentance. Those were
gifts we were enriched by God with. He gave us faith and He
gave us repentance. Those were gifts He gave us. Ephesians 2.8 says, By grace you are saved
through faith and that not of yourselves is the gift of God.
It's not of works lest any man should boast. He did this by
the gift and it was by Christ. The scripture says, Him God exalted
to His right hand to be a prince. That's how He's going to make
it effectual. Power. And a Savior. That's how He's
going to forgive us and save us. He made Him to be a Prince
and a Savior to give repentance to Israel. That's what He does
as a Prince. And forgiveness of sins. That's what He does as a Savior.
And He did this. And through faith, God enriched
us with so much more. He enriched us with the gift
of everlasting righteousness in Christ our Lord. He enriched
us with everlasting life in Christ our Lord. He enriched us with
eternal redemption in Christ our Lord. He enriched us with
an eternal inheritance in Christ our Lord. And every bit of it
was the gift of God as He confirmed this Gospel in us. Through faith
He gave us all of this by giving us Christ in our heart. And along
with those gifts, He gave us the gift that will never perish. He gave us the gift that will
always be with us. Do you know there's one gift
that will always be with us? Every other gift God gives, we're
going to see Paul say this, they're childish things. And one day
when we become a man, we're going to put away childish things.
But there's one gift He's going to give us that won't be put
away. That's love. That's love. That will always
be with us. One day we won't need faith.
We're going to see Him. One day we won't hope anymore.
Hope will be reality. One day we won't have to preach
anymore. We'll be in His midst listening
to Him preach. But love will always be with
us. He gave us love. He gave us a true, genuine love
for Christ, for God, for our brethren, and even for all sinners. He gave us a love for Him. This
is what He did when He confirmed the gospel of Christ in us. And
then look at this. Let me make this statement. When
He did that, when He gave us repentance and faith, God confirmed
in us His faithfulness. God confirmed in us His power.
God confirmed in us His grace. God confirmed in us His love.
God confirmed in us His righteousness. And it confirmed it all in Christ. We, for the first time, experienced
the power and grace and love and faithfulness of God in Christ
whenever He confirmed this Gospel in our hearts. That was all through
the gift of faith. He turned us from our vain way
and our vain works and He turned us to rest in Christ. And it
was evident He did it because we realized I can't trust in
anything about me or about my vain works or my vain religion.
My salvation is Christ alone. And we beheld His power by this
confirmation. And then He gave us the gift
of The tongue of the learned. Verse 5 says you're enriched
by Him in all utterance and in all knowledge. We're going to
see a bunch more gifts that was given to the church at Corinth.
Apostolic gifts that we're not given. But now listen, we couldn't
have confessed Christ publicly. We didn't have a tongue to confess
Christ publicly. We didn't have a tongue to preach
and bear witness of the gospel of Christ. Not until God gave
us a tongue. Not until He put His words in
us and confirmed this Gospel in us. We didn't have our heart
to do that. Not until He taught us this Gospel. We were ashamed
of His Gospel. We're not now. Are you? Are you still ashamed of His
gospel? No. We were afraid to speak publicly
and say, Christ is my all. We were ashamed to say that because
that's confessing we're nothing and we're sinners. Now we're
not. He gave us a tongue to do that. And He did it by giving
us the gift of knowledge. He gave us an understanding of
our Lord Jesus Christ. He made us to see who Christ
is. He made us to see the truth. Christ the truth, formed in us.
We began to behold Him, our wisdom. We're given the mind of Christ
to know the things God freely gave us. Now, when we experience
that, when He confirmed that gospel in us, here's why we're
not ashamed of it anymore. Here's why He made it so evident
that He effectually did this work. We saw that by the testimony
of Christ, by the gospel of Christ, we experienced the power of God. We experienced His faithfulness
to call out His people and His grace and His power. We experienced
it. And that's why now it gives,
look here over at 1 Corinthians 2. This is why Paul, he experienced
it. This is why Paul said, my speech,
verse 4, my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of
man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power."
How did he know that Spirit and that power? Because God sent
somebody to him, Christ called him, and He sent Ananias to him,
and he sat there and declared to him this, and he experienced
that power firsthand from Christ. speaking to him in his heart.
And so he knows the power of God to work, and he does it through
the testimony of the gospel. And so he just stood up, preached
the truth. Preached the truth. And he waited
on God to work it. He said this, that your faith
should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
That's the tongue that he gave us. That's the utterance he gave
us. And then he gave us this knowledge. And look down at 1
Corinthians 2. Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect,
we speak true knowledge among them that are perfect, yet not
the wisdom of this world, not of the princes of this world,
that come to nothing. That's not what we're preaching.
Is there something going on? That's not what we're preaching.
But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden
wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory. He
ordained we were going to hear this and be given this knowledge,
and He confirmed it in us. And so now verse 12 says, we've
received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is
of God, that we might know the things that are freely given
to us of God. Now what's the result when He's
confirmed that gospel in you? Verse 13, which things also we
speak. which things also we speak, not
in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost
teaches compared to spiritual things with spiritual things."
You see, the point is this, by confirming the Gospel in our
hearts, by confirming the Gospel in our hearts, by giving us these
gifts, faith and repentance, being enriched in everything
by Him, he that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness
in himself. We got the record in ourselves
that God has given to us eternal life and this life is in His
Son. We have this witness in us. We know all things because
we know Christ is all. And when you know Christ is all,
you know all things. You know everything there is
to know. You know the whole counsel of God when you know Christ is
all. Because He is the whole counsel of God. And now, brethren,
that Christ that was revealed to us is the Christ that dwells
in us. And by His quickening, sanctifying
power, Christ in you is the hope of glory. That's where the gift
of hope came from, Christ in you. Where did the gift of faith
come from? Christ the faithful formed in
you. Where did the gift of wisdom come from? Christ the wisdom
formed in you. Where did the gift of righteousness
come from? Christ our righteousness formed in you. All these gifts
came through Christ being formed in us. He's a well of water springing
up into everlasting life. Now, how's that made evident? How's that evident that God did
this by His faithfulness? Well, life proves itself, doesn't
it? Doesn't life prove itself? We
don't question the reality of our physical life, do you? You know, you stand, you get
up in the morning sometimes and you say, I just, I don't know
if I'm alive. I don't know if I'm, I don't
know if I'm really a human being. I don't know if I'm going to
continue living. Why? Because you walk and you
get up and you stand and you talk and you blink your eyes
and therefore you know you're alive, don't you? Well, spiritually,
by the faithfulness of God, God's confirmed the gospel in our hearts,
demonstrating Christ's power to give eternal life to as many
as God gave Him. And only God, by His faithfulness,
could give us this life and these gifts of His Spirit. And so we
know we're born of God. I know I'm born of God. I couldn't
believe God otherwise. I couldn't rest in Him otherwise.
I couldn't hate my vain works otherwise. I couldn't detest
hearing people speak evil of my great God and my great Savior. I couldn't hate men speaking
up man and speaking down God if it wasn't for God giving me
a heart. Couldn't do it. Now, apply this
to the point of God's faithfulness to keep us to the end. Look there
in verse 7. He says, by God's faithfulness,
you come behind in no gift. Would you tell me one gift, believer,
that you come behind in? Is there one gift that God is
not giving you that you need right now? I'm not talking about,
you know, somebody will be smart and say, I don't have dying grace.
Well, you ain't dying right now. When you need that, He'll give
it to you. But right now, everything you need, do you have it? Everything
that you need, God's given you, so that you come behind in nothing.
From the beginning to the end, it's just that way right now.
Now consider what you are. You're justified. God, God, the
all-seeing God can look you over, believer, and He can't find one
sin, past, present, or future, to charge you with. That's so
in Christ, by what Christ did. You rode from head to toe in
Christ's righteousness so that God can't find a spot in you.
Nowhere. Nowhere. That's true of His people. And I'll tell you something else.
Not only are we joint heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ
so that we're going to inherit eternal life one day, I'm immortal
right now. You're immortal right now. You
who believe God, you are immortal right now. That's what it is
to have eternal life. Immortal. Death is just going
to be a laying down of this body. That's it. We're going to go
be with God. That's all. God's continued to
enrich us so that we don't have a lack of anything. He's grown
us in faith. Do you believe God more now than
you did when you were first called by His grace? He grows us in hope. Do you have
a more full hope in Christ now in what He's done and what He
shall do than you did when you first began? He grows us in the
grace and the knowledge of Christ. Do you know Christ better now
than you knew Him when you started? He grows us and He keeps enriching
us. And that's all by God's faithfulness. We began in the Spirit and we
continue in the same Spirit. We don't do this by our flesh.
It's all by the Spirit of God. Turn to 2 Timothy 1. I want to
show you something. Try to illustrate this. Or just
show you this. 2 Timothy 1. I don't know if I'm getting the
point across or not. 2 Timothy 1. You know, a believer will say,
well then why do I sometimes have doubts and fears? I'm going
to tell you the number one reason we have doubts and fears. Number
one, we're looking to try to find assurance in the gifts in
us rather than in the giver and his faithfulness. That's the
number one reason. The number one reason. I get
folks call all the time talking about that and every time you
sit and listen to them talk, they're telling you about what
they've looked over and what they've done and what they haven't
done. Well, you won't ever find assurance there. You know the
scripture says Christ gives us gifts according to the measure
of the gift of Christ. He don't give us a full measure
of faith. He don't give us a full measure
of hope. He don't give us a full measure
of these things. If He did, you know what we'd
do? We would look to our gifts for assurance and we'd walk around
strutting like a peacock thinking, oh, we got it made in the shade.
No, He gives you enough faith to trust Him and He leaves you
in this body of death so that sin's mixed with your faith so
that you can't ever look to your faith for assurance. You've got
to look to the giver. You gotta look to the giver.
That's what he does. Peter said this... Well, let
me just read this to you and you can look it up later. But
you remember in 2 Peter when Peter said, you've been made
partakers of the divine nature by the exceeding great and precious
promises of this gospel. He confirmed it in you and you've
been made partakers of the divine nature. He said, now grow in
grace. And he listed all those things
to grow in. And then he made this statement at the end. He
said, if these things be in you and abound, They make you that
you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful. And most people stop
right there. Most people look to those fruits
and look to those gifts and try to look to those gifts to make
sure that they're not barren and unfruitful and to make their
calling and election sure by looking to the gifts. That's
not what he meant. He said they make you that you
won't be barren or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord
Jesus Christ. They make you see Him. And if
you have a gift that's not bringing you to the feet of Christ and
making you rest everything in Christ, God didn't give that
gift. Somebody that's trying to turn
you from God might have given it to you, but God didn't give
it to you. God's gifts bring you to the feet of Christ. They
increase you in the knowledge of God, in the knowledge of Christ
Jesus the Lord. Now look here. Now that's what
Paul's reminding us here. He's giving us a sure confirmation
of God's faithfulness by saying, God in faithfulness confirmed
this gospel in you. Now he's saying, you continue
in it. Don't be ashamed of it. Continue
in it. Because haven't you experienced
the power of it? Don't you know what it'll do?
What it's done in you? What it's continuing to do in
you? And what it'll do in those who hear you? You've experienced
that. So don't turn from God's faithfulness
to work this through this gospel. Now look here. He puts this in
simple language. 2 Timothy 1.7. God's not given us the spirit
of fear, but when He confirmed the gospel in us, when God gave
us the spirit, He gave us the spirit of power and of love and
of a sound mind. We learn that God's faithful.
We learn that God's powerful. We learn that God's able to save
to the uttermost when He confirmed this gospel in us. Now look at
verse 8. Be not thou therefore... Look this up. Get your Bible
out and look this up. Be not thou therefore ashamed of the
testimony of our Lord. He's saying, This was given to
you. This power, this grace, this
faithfulness was made known in your heart by the testimony of
the Lord when He confirmed the testimony in you. So don't be
ashamed of the testimony of the Lord. Don't be ashamed of the
Gospel of Christ. Look. Nor of me, his prisoner, but
be thou partaker of the afflictions of the Gospel according to that
very same power of God. He said, speak the truth of the
Gospel, Timothy, and rest and trust in that very same power
of God that worked in you when He confirmed it in you. And look
here now, "...who hath saved us, and called us with a holy
calling, not according to our works, but according to His own
purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before
the world even began, but is now made manifest by the appearing
of our Savior Jesus Christ, by His appearing in this world and
by His appearing in our hearts, when He was confirmed in our
hearts, who has abolished death and has brought life and immortality
to light through the gospel, both on the cross and in our
hearts, when this was confirmed in our hearts. We're immortal. He made us just see that. Now
look, Where unto this very same testimony of Christ, this gospel
of Christ, it did all this in us, and now I'm appointed a preacher
of it, and an apostle, Paul said, and a teacher to the Gentiles.
And for this cause, for this gospel called me, this gospel
saved me, this gospel confirmed the truth of God in me, this
gospel showed me the power and faithfulness of God, and now
I'm sent to preach this gospel, and it's for this gospel now
that I'm being persecuted and rejected. This gospel's something,
ain't it? It does all that. I'm being rejected,
he said. Look at this. He says, I suffer
these things, nevertheless I'm not ashamed. I'm not ashamed
of this gospel. Why? Because it's by this very
gospel that Paul could say, I know whom I have believed. And I am
persuaded that he is able To keep that which I have committed
unto Him against that day. Now, that's what God taught us
by confirming the gospel in us. You see what a wonder this word
is? He confirmed it in you to make you preach it. To show you
the power of it so that you just now preach it and wait on God
to work that same power in somebody else. The same way we receive
mercy, by His power confirming us, that's how we speak. And
you can tell, you listen, you can tell if a man's experienced
the power or not by listening to the way he preaches the gospel.
If he's trying to hide it from a man, he ain't experienced the
power. But if he's experienced the power, he'll just stand on
his hind two legs and say, this is how it is. This is how it
is. And God will do the saving. Now
lastly, and I'm done, I'm done. God's faithfulness to confirm
us to the end. If He did that in the beginning
and He continues to do it now, enriching us up to this point,
will He do it to the end? Look at verse 8. who shall also
confirm you unto the end that you may be blameless in the day
of our Lord Jesus Christ." The first thing we looked at were
the calling of God. The second thing we looked at
was the gifts whereby the gospel was confirmed in us. You know
what God says about His gifts and His calling? They're without
repentance. God won't give His gifts and
His calling and then take it away. He says, I will ransom
them from the power of the grave. I will redeem them from death.
O death, I will be thy plagues. O grave, I will be thy destruction. And repentance shall be hid from
mine eyes. That's our God, brethren. Being
confident of this very thing, Paul said that he which hath
begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus
Christ. We're kept by the power of God
through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last
time. Spurgeon said true religion is supernatural at the beginning,
supernatural in its continuance, and supernatural to its end.
That's God. Now, if you haven't experienced
this in the beginning, I'm not trying to give you comfort to
confirm you in a lie or in rebellion against God. If you haven't experienced
His grace in the beginning, I don't want you to be confirmed in a
lie. No, sir, this applies to those that were called by His
grace, who had this gospel confirmed in our hearts by His grace, who's
been enriched in everything by His grace. He says, I'm going
to keep them. But now let me say this to you.
This happens a lot. I find this happens a lot. A
believer will right now be called. He'll be called and he really
believes God. He trusts God. But he keeps looking back to
when he made his profession. And he keeps looking at all his
life and what a mess he's made of it. And he thinks, I don't
really think I was saved when God called me back then. Well,
it don't really matter if you were saved when God called you
back then. What matters is God's called you now. And if God's
called you now, let go of that false profession, quit looking
at it, and repent, believe the Lord, be baptized, and follow
Him in faith. If I'd never confessed Christ
in believer's baptism, if I did it in a false profession, I'd
want to be baptized and follow Him. Just believe Him and follow
Him. Confess Him, if He's given you faith. And for us that He's
done that to, He's going to make babies in Christ to be fathers
in Christ. He's going to root you in Christ
and build you up in Christ so that you're rooted and grounded
in the love of Christ. He said, I'm going to make you
like a tree planted by the water so that your leaf won't even
wither. That's what God said. He's going to grow you more and
more and more in His grace. Our flesh is going to hinder
us. Our dark valleys that lie ahead are going to hinder us.
The sinful world, we've got to contend with it. And death is
going to await us at the end. And then we're going to stand
before God in judgment. But none of that's going to stop us, because
God says He's going to confirm you to the end. The same God,
the same grace, the same Jesus Christ that called you in the
beginning, that confirmed you, and has kept you, is going to
keep you to the end. He'll confirm you to the end
that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
How can I be sure? I don't see such and such in
me. Stop looking at you. Verse 9.
God is faithful. God is faithful. That's how I
can be sure. God is faithful. Amen.