OK, Bonnie, you can start the
stream. Oh, wait, did you ever? Oh, you already did? Oh. Yeah. I'm glad I didn't say anything,
you know, that we don't want public. OK, the book of Philippians,
chapter 2. continuing our series on the
fundamentals of the grace of God. Now, when man, well, let's pray
before we get started on the lesson. Our Father, we come to you in
the name of your Son this morning and ask that you would extend
your grace to us again. and work in us that which is
for our eternal good. And we pray this in the name
of Christ, amen. Now when man fell in the Garden
of Eden, he lost all spiritual capacity. He can't do anything
as a positive response to any word from God. Now, he can hear
the words God has said, he can read the words that God moved
his prophets and apostles to write down for us, and he can
understand the intellectual aspects of what are being written. But
what man, natural man, cannot do is actually perceive what
those things mean, he cannot respond in faith to what he reads. Now this, the answer to man's
utter spiritual depravity is the grace of God. So far we have
seen that it is God's grace that has performed every aspect of
the salvation and restoration of sinners. It is God's grace
that determined there would be such a thing as salvation. It
was God's grace that determined how this salvation would be accomplished. It was God's grace that sent
the Son into the world to perform the purpose of grace, and it's
God's grace that restores a person to spiritual
life, enabling him to understand and believe the gospel. Now that's
how far we've gotten in this study of the fundamentals of
the grace of God. If we were looking at this, you
know, historically, and this kind of, the way we've arranged
it here, it does kind of fall out in a historical fashion.
It begins way in, the eternity before the world began, when
God determined all things that would come to pass. There's the
historical event of the death of Christ, and then there's the
historical event within the lives of each of God's elect, where
the Spirit of God comes to them, gives them spiritual life, they
are born again, and therefore they are able to perceive and
to enter the kingdom of God. But the experience of grace at
the moment of the new birth does not finish the work of salvation. You see, the end point or the
perfection, completion of salvation, is that the elect of God will
be conformed to the image of God's son. And salvation is not
complete until that happens. Now, every part that has already
been done is complete. I mean, God's making a purpose,
that's complete. Jesus Christ paying the redemption
price, making the atoning sacrifice, that's complete. And that's what
he meant when he said, it is finished. I've heard people say,
when Christ said it is finished, all salvation was accomplished. Why? I'm not like Christ yet. There's more to be done. Now
everything, when he said it is finished, what he meant was his
work in being the substitute for God's people and paying the
penalty they owe, that was done. And nothing more needed added
to that. All legal obstacles to the salvation of God's people
were remedied once for all, right then. And there's nothing to
be added to it. And when the Spirit comes at
the point determined by God for each of God's elect, when the
Spirit comes and gives life, spiritual life to that person,
it's done. He has spiritual life. He'll
never be more spiritually alive than he is at that moment. He may grow in grace and in the
knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, but he never is more living.
You know, it's kind of like when a baby is born into the world.
It's alive. He's going to continue to develop.
There's going to be some changes in him, but he never becomes
more alive than he was actually at the very moment he was conceived. And therefore, when we are born
again by the Spirit of God, we are as spiritually alive as we
will ever be. That's done. But there is more to be done in order to make us like the
Lord Jesus Christ. So, there's more to this business
of salvation than what we have already experienced. Now listen
to several scriptures here. Beginning in Mark chapter 13,
verse 13, the Lord said to his disciples, everyone will hate
you because of me, but the one who stands firm or endures to
the end will be saved. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15,
verses one and two, it says, now brothers and sisters, I want
to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and
on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel, you are
saved if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise,
You have believed in vain, or I think it would be better to
say you have believed, or you have vainly believed. Your faith
is a vain faith, an empty, useless faith. several verses from Hebrews chapter
3 we have verse 6, but Christ is faithful as a son over God's
house and we are his house if indeed we hold firmly to our
confidence and the hope in which we glory. And then we skip down
to verse 12 of Hebrews 3, see to it brothers and sisters that
none of you has a sinful unbelieving heart that turns away from the
living God, but encourage one another daily as long as it is
called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's
deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ
if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the end. So these three scriptures, and
there are others that would teach the same thing, they're telling
us that just because at one moment in a person's life he makes a
profession of faith, he claims, he says he believes, and he does
believe after a fashion, that does not mean that in the end
he will be saved. Now, we say that and that sounds
very strange to us. It almost sounds contrary to
grace. It's not. What we learn is that any faith
that stops was not that faith that is the gift of God. It's
not like for a while that person was in a condition of salvation
and then he lost his salvation. That can't happen. Or really,
I once said, can a man lose his salvation? Yes, he can. And the
sooner he does, the better that he might lay hold of God's salvation.
But what I mean is there's no such thing as coming into a state
of grace before God and then later being out of that grace. There's no such thing as having
your sins forgiven, and then at a later time, your sins are
charged to you again. However, there is faith that
is a vain faith. And it's proven by this. It eventually
fails. They eventually quit. Now, the Bible often addresses
people, not according to their spiritual reality, but according
to their profession. And like in the book of Hebrews,
it was written to Jews who profess to believe. And he said, all
right, you profess to believe. Well, you will come to share or we
have come to share in Christ if we hold fast. So we can say this without fear
of scriptural contradiction. Any person who quits believing
is lost. Now, like I said, our slavish adherence to systematic
theology will make us try to come up with some kind of explanation,
and we've sort of already given it. If a man quits believing,
well, whatever faith he had was not that faith which is the gift
of the grace of God. It was simply a mental conviction. You argued somebody into it.
or it was some response to an emotional manipulation. But it is required, according
to these scriptures, that a person persevere to the end, endure
to the end, in order to be saved. Now, it's at this very point that some who are slaves to works,
will try to insert works into the scheme of salvation. And
they will begin to describe this perseverance in terms of how
you act or the very fact that you keep believing, you know.
And what they do, when they insert it that way, they cause people
to profess can keep professing they believe when they don't
really believe. But that interpretation ignores
what other scriptures teach us. It is true that believers must
persevere to the end in order to be saved, but the scriptures
also teach us that every true believer will endure to the end. And more importantly, it tells
us why. There are two passages from the
book of Philippians that teach us this truth as clearly as any
other scriptures teach us this. And what truth do I mean? That
all believers, all true, honest believers do persevere to the
end and that their perseverance is not the product of their own
energies, but rather is the product of the power and grace of God.
Now, Philippians chapter 2, and let's see. Well, Philippians
chapter 2. And beginning in verse 12, therefore,
my dear friends, as you have always obeyed, not only in my
presence, but now much more in my absence, continue to work
out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God
who works in you to will and to act according to his purpose. Now, It requires work to get
us from what we are presently, as believers, as those who've
already been born again. It requires work to get us from
what we are to what we shall be when salvation is perfected. By birth, by nature, by practice,
we are not fit to inherit the blessings stored up in heaven. We are not worthy of them because
we are sinners, nor do we have the capacity to enjoy them. I think one of the reasons that the glories of heaven are never
literally described to us in the scriptures is because we
do not yet have the capacity to understand what those glories
are. It would be like showing the Mona Lisa to a dog. Well, he can look at it. He can
see what's there. But to him, it's no different
than any other piece of paper or rag or whatever kind of canvas
da Vinci painted on. And he's as likely to grab it
and tear it up. as he is to sit there and adore
it. In fact, he's more likely to
tear it up than he is to stand there and go, ooh, that's beautiful.
Dogs don't have the capacity to understand artwork. And we,
even in our present state, do not have the capacity to understand
what God has reserved for us. Eye has not seen, ear has not
heard, nor has entered into the mind of man what God has prepared
for those who wait for him. That's what the scriptures teach.
And Paul saw it, and he said, I can't tell you what I saw.
I just can't. I need a way to describe it.
So something has to happen to us between now and then. If we are to be permitted into
that place, And if we are able to enjoy that place, that situation,
however you want to describe it, to enjoy it once we're there. Now, this work that is required is
God or is done by God. We are his workmanship. We are not our workmanship. Our
workmanship did not get us to where we are now, and our workmanship
is not going to get us to what we shall be. He says here, it
is God who works in you. Now, I refer to the original
languages to see if there's any little tidbit I can extract from
them that might not be so evident here. I like the way that it
is written out in Greek. It says, God it is who is working
in you. He put, you know, the word God
right at the beginning of that sentence. And one of the things
that I did learn in Greek class is when, especially if a word
seems to appear out of order, it means that the writer's trying
to emphasize that word. So instead of it saying, it is
God who works in you, God it is, who works, or I like this,
is working. It can be translated that, is
working. This is not a one-time effort on his part. The word
that's translated work there is a word we get our word energy
from. It's where the, you know, the
famous equation, E equals MC squared. Well, the E stands for
erg, E-R-G, which is a unit of energy. And that's where the
word, actually where the word energy came from. And that's
what's being used here. Energy, work, effort. power expended, and it's God
who is doing this. When we stand in glory, having
been made glorious like the Lord Jesus, there shall not be the
slightest bit of that glory that is attributable to our efforts. Not a bit of it. We do not participate
in making ourselves to be like Christ. God does that. We strive to live our present
lives in a manner consistent with the gospel. We endeavor
to love one another like we should. And God's grace teaches us that
denying all ungodliness and worldliness, we should live our lives in a
self-controlled, decent manner in this world. Grace teaches
us that. You find that in Titus 2, verse
11. But none of those efforts on
our part contribute anything to our final condition. None of our efforts in bringing
our attitude and conduct in line with the gospel actually makes
any change in what we are. We are still the same thing we
were at the very beginning. We may act differently than we
did then. By the grace of God, we may have
been able to restrain some outbreaks of sin which once were characteristic
of our conduct. We may find that as time goes
by, we are more devoted to the things of God than we were at
the beginning, but the fact of the matter is we're exactly the
same person we were before. Nothing about our essence has
changed. I said, you know, we do those
things, but none of them make any actual change in us. None
of those things are actually conforming us to the image of
Christ. It's the work of God that does
that. This work of God is an inward work. It is God who works in you. It's not always, this work is
not always evident to others. We're so prone to judging, aren't
we? I can't see any work of God in him. Well, of course not,
because you can't see in him. You don't know what's going on
in there. That's why God said to Samuel, he said, man looks
on the outward appearance, God looks on the heart. And why?
That's where he's doing his work. He's not doing anything to the
outside. How do we know that? We still grow old and die. He
will eventually do something with regard to these bodies,
but he's not now. The Bible says that one day we
will, these vile bodies will be replaced by a glorious body
such as our Lord Jesus has, but that hadn't even started. Christians
aren't healthier. Christians don't live longer
than other people do. The work is an inward work. This work begins with the new
birth, but as the tense of the verb here shows, it's a continuing
work. Now, this does not mean that
he is continually improving upon our spirit. The part of us that's
been born again can't be improved upon. What it means is he continues
to sustain it in a condition of life. He works in us that we always
do, always will and do according to His good pleasure. Now, this work of God results
in us willing and doing what pleases Him. Now, once again,
that sounds strange to our ears because we commonly say we can't
do anything to please God. You have to understand the word
please doesn't always mean the same thing. There's nothing that we as sinners
can do to please God the judge. That's why Jesus Christ came. But having been delivered from
the law, God is no longer a judge to us. Peter says we address
him as father. Now, we've all, you know, everybody
here has had children. And, you know, if we were to
judge our children or deal with our children the way a judge
deals with those who break the law, our children would have
a really tough time in our home, wouldn't they? If we were to judge their efforts
to do what we want, we would always be saying that was not
quite good enough. Now probably everyone has had
the experience of a young school child coming in the door at the
end of the day and they got this piece of paper and they whip
it out and they hand it to you and there on it is a very crude
drawing of what you recognize must be your family. Because
there's one person about this tall, and then another person
about this tall, and then there's people about this tall, and they
number the same as the children you have. You know it's an attempt
to draw the family. Now, if you judge that like an
art critic, well, seeing some of the works of art I do today,
they may think it's wonderful, but if you were going to judge
that by its likeness to the family, You'd say, that's awful. But what do you do? It goes right
up on the refrigerator. You express how pleased you are
with what your child has done, even though as a piece of artwork,
it would fail. Why? Because you aren't looking
at the artwork. You're looking at the heart of
your child. And the love for the family that
is in that heart caused him to draw that picture. And when the Lord sees our efforts
to do what pleases Him, He's not looking at them as a judge
would look at the conduct of a criminal. He's looking at the
efforts of his dear children as from a loving heart they do
the best they can to please their father. And it is written in
the Psalms, as a father pities his children, so does the Lord
pity them that fear him. He knows that we are dust. And that means he deals with
us as dusty people. He doesn't expect us to be gold. So when it talks about walking
according to his good pleasure, it's not meaning that we're walking
in a perfectly righteous way. But it does mean that we desire
to do what pleases Him, and we do it the best we can. And in
particular, when we were yet dead in our
sin and living in unbelief, God worked in us to desire Christ
and to choose to trust our souls to Him with the resulting action
on our part that we actually do call upon His name, we actually
come to Him. Now, some people who claim to
believe in sovereign grace, they say, well, you know, if God has
chosen a person, that person's going to be in heaven whether
or not they ever believe. No, sir. The Bible does not teach
that. What it teaches is that every
one of the elect of God, God will work in them to choose to
trust their souls to Christ and they will actually do it. They
will will and they will do what he was pleased for them to do. And it pleases him. It is his
good pleasure that we continue to trust him, to desire to trust
him and to actually do it. and he keeps working in us to
do that very thing. If he didn't, what would happen? If God were
to stop this work, the moment he stopped that work, you would
stop willing and doing according to his good pleasure. You see,
the saving grace of God is not just a bucket of grace dumped
on us at a particular point in our lives. It is the power, so
far as our experience of the grace, it is the power of God
working in us to change us from what we were by birth to what
we shall be by the new birth and by his continued work as
he brings to fulfillment predetermined destiny for us to be conformed
to the image of His Son. And He's not going to quit until
that happens. Now, time says we have to stop
there. So then that's only one of the
texts of Scripture from Philippians that teaches us this. Next week
we will look at the text of Scripture that shows us that how it is
we can be sure. that this work is going to happen
and be successful.