The issue that we're going to
deal with today is eternal security. For us who are those who adhere
to the gospel as the doctrines of grace, we understand that
the preservation of the saints is a vital doctrine. That means
that those whom God calls, he justifies those whom he justifies,
he glorifies. And in that context, we know
that he does keep his church. Security is something that we
all need. It's something that we all want.
When we go to bed at night, we want our home secure. We check
the doors. We lock them. We check the windows
if they're shut that someone might not peek in and see what
we're doing. We check our cars when we get
out that they might be secure. We want to prevent something
from happening to them. We want to feel easy and secure
about knowing that what we own and our families are okay, are
safe from harm. They're safe from disaster. We like to have security. Children
like security. They have security blankets.
They have security bottles. They have security binkies. Security
family members. Security television shows. Security
whatever. And then from that point of being
a child where we're looking for security, we never outgrow that. We never really outgrow the need
for security. And so, as we are now in the
body of Christ, that need does not go away. Just because we're
told by Scripture, you are secure in God, by God's power, as we
were in 1 Peter 1 last week, and we saw that God, by His power,
guards us, who are the church, for what? in heaven by His power
to a heavenly inheritance. We do not have to worry. So we
read it, we know it, we hear it preached, we remind ourselves
of it, we affirm it in our own hearts and minds, we teach it
to ourselves, to our children and to those people around us.
But all the while, there are many times in our lives where
we do not feel secure at all, in many areas, much less in our
eternal life. We know that it is true, but
there are times when we feel as though it is not. And so today,
my prayer is that I can help you understand by seeing that
the Scripture does teach it. Also showing how Jesus speaks
of eternal security in the Gospel of John, I like to define security. There are many ways to define
it. We know we could go to Webster's, but my definition of security
is knowing with confidence the outcome. So it doesn't always
have to deal with safety. We know the outcome. We feel
secure in what is going to take place. We understand that there
is security in knowing the due date of a child. But it doesn't
mean that we know the due date. But when we do know some sort
of a due date, we go, well, there's some movement there. There's
some pain there. We're close to the due date, so it may be
labor. At the same time, there's some insecurity when there's
early pains and early movement and early things. So we want
our homes to be secure. We want security systems. We
want to know the outcome that when we go to bed in the morning,
that when we wake up, we'll still be alive. We'll still have the
things that we laid out on the dresser, that our children will
still be safe. We want to know the outcome of
the next day. So we secure our homes. I would like to say that
we like financial security because we want to know the outcome.
If things are bad, then we have a box with money in it so we
can buy our grits and groceries from the box. So I'll be secure
there, we say. We want to know the outcome of
what would happen if things were bad. We want to know what tomorrow
will hold. And that doesn't just go with
our homes and our blankets and our boxes of money, if we dare
have them. I would not suggest doing that, but if you do, oh
well. But I will tell you that there it goes beyond that. We
want national security. Nothing's more talked about other
than the national debt than national security. We want to be safe
from foreign enemies. We want to be safe from domestic
enemies. We want to be safe from terrorism. We want to be safe
from this. We want to be safe from that. We want national security when
it comes to our economic status and our job creation and all
of these things. Everywhere we turn, someone is
looking for security. Now, I would suggest to you that
there are two types of security in the world. The first type
of security is the security that the world offers. These things
that they put in place, these philosophies that they hold,
that the world says, I will secure and hold to these things or do
these things with a hope to prevent something, to accomplish something
or to obtain something. So that's the way I look at security,
number one. And then there's a second type
of security, and that's the Lord's guarantee. So the world has its
secure issues and its secure promises. Governments, people,
marriages, children, politicians, return on investments, ADT people,
they all give you a guarantee. But there is no guarantee in
this world. There's no guarantee in the world system, in the world's
way. There's no guarantee that anything that we put in place
in the flesh will secure us to any degree except by the sovereign
pleasure of God. And so if all the security features
of this world that we live in are under the pleasure of God,
then the second part of security, as we should look at it as the
church, is the Lord's guarantee. The Lord's guarantee, if He is
the Lord of even all of man's security, then shouldn't we put
our faith in Him instead of everything else in this life? There's a
word that we use a lot of times in the church, and the word is
hope. Everybody wants hope. The cults
use the word. Jehovah's Witnesses will knock
on your door and ask you, can they speak to you about hope?
Who doesn't want to talk about hope? I think it's mighty lying
of us to say we don't want to talk about hope. We do want to
talk about hope. We just don't want to talk to
anybody else about hope. But in the church, we use the
word hope. We like the word hope. We say, oh, we hope in Christ. But we then use the same word
as, oh, I hope it snows. When we say, we hope in the sovereign
grace of God. Well, I hope my car cranks. I
would suggest we probably should change that word. And maybe we
should use the word wish or desire or would be pleasantly surprised
if. Because hope to me in Christ does not be pleasantly surprised
if, or wish, or desire. It's an absolute certainty. So
hope when it comes from the Scripture, from God's mouth, is an absolute
certainty. No wonder we're so crazy worrying
about our eternal security. Worrying about God's hand and
His sovereignty in our lives, in all areas of our lives. Because
we have taken the word hope, which is certain and absolute,
and we have blended it with the definition of wish. Crossing
one's finger. Crossing one's leg. Knocking
on wood. Throwing salt over the shoulder.
Whatever the wives tale might be, we have watered down the
gospel of Jesus Christ to a wish upon a star. See, hope for the
world is a wish. Hope for the world is a dream.
Hope for the world is something they look at with their fingers
crossed and they hope it comes to pass. But hope for the church
is certain. It is without fail. It will come
to pass. There is no other option. If
we are to hope in Christ, it shall be. The word Amen, or Armin,
or Armein, in the Greek, it is so, so be it. It is translated
very often in the text, especially in John, where Jesus speaks truly,
truly. Armein, Armein, Amen, Amen. It is true. It is certain. It
will not fail. Jesus is the great Amen. God
is the certain One. The difference today in how you
see things is going to lie in how we look at our salvation.
If you are here today and you have struggled or are struggling
with your eternal security, and what I mean by that is knowing
that you do have eternal life and that your eternal life is
in Christ and that when your body dies, and it will, you will
be with God. And also that when Christ returns,
your body will be resurrected forever, eternal, immutable,
perfect, to be with Christ and all the church forever. You see,
we say we believe that, but oftentimes we live as though we wish it
were true, and we're hoping that it's true, but deep down in the
core of our gut, we're not very certain that it's true. Now,
some of us may be here today and we are absolutely certain
in our eternal security. We are absolutely certain in
our eternal life in Christ. But there probably has been a
time or there will be some time in the future where our confidence
in the security of Jesus Christ will fail or fade or waver or
stumble. Let me correct my own words where
I said fail. It may fail in some sense by
fall or falter, but it will never fail. For those who are in Christ
never reject the gospel. They never completely abandoned
the faith, for the Scriptures, as we'll see today, teach that
those who abandoned the faith never were of the faith. And so the difference is going
to lie in how one looks at their salvation. First, to the sovereignty of
God, and then to the character of God. God's character is not
one that can be manipulated. God's character is not the character
that can be secured based on human actions. So, in other words,
we can't come to God and say, well, I'm secure because I did
what God required of me. Therefore, I'm secure. But what
if you do something that negates what you've done that God requires
of you? Then where is your hope? Then where is your security?
What if you are blinded? What if you miss something? What
if I told you that the Scripture teaches that if you had obeyed
the law from birth, you'd still go to hell? Because you cannot
be saved by obeying the law, for it's a teacher and it's a
guide and it's the holiness of God and a reflection of His absolute
worth. So therefore, because we are descendants of Adam, we
are damned already. There will be no eternal life by obeying
the law. If so, Paul, in his own words,
says that he was justified by words, if the law would save. For he was blameless and above
reproach before all men before the law. But yet, the chief of
sinners was the greatest of the apostles. Those are his words. God's character cannot be manipulated.
It is solely based on the reality of who God is and what God desires
to do. Let me give you some thoughts.
The world has security that is actually no security. Thought
number one. The world has security. There
are many people who walk around with some incredible confidence,
and that confidence will get them to nowhere. That confidence
will get them to the same place it will get every person, even
the insecure people, even the unconfident people. So the proud
and the meek will stand in the same place, except those who
are in Christ that, by the way, will also be meek. I saw a young
man earlier today walking around as though he were the king of
the world. Not barely eleven years old. And I thought to myself,
somebody will knock that kid down a few notches. And if they
don't, God certainly will. And then God reminded me that
I probably needed to be knocked down by thinking that. So there we are. The world has
security that is no security at all. And another thought is
this. The Lord also gives no hope for
us in the flesh. So anything that we put our security
in, any security that the world offers that we put our confidence
in, even if it's from a spiritual realm, God has destroyed that
security. He said, do not put confidence
in the flesh. We must realize when we see that, because confidence
in the flesh, security in what we can do and what we've accomplished
and what we've prepared is actually condemnation, not salvation.
It's actually death, not eternal life. It's actually disaster,
not peace. It's despair. Hope in the flesh
is considering something that is corrupt to be good. So when
we act and respond and do and we put our faith in those things,
we're putting our faith in something that is corrupt. So why would
we eat something that was corrupt? Why would we bathe in water that
was corrupt or drink things that were contaminated? The same is
true with our flesh. When we put our faith in what
we have done, then we have put our faith in something that is
corrupt. and said that it is good. We put our faith in something
that is dead and said that that dead thing would give us life.
We put our faith in something that is supposed to guide our
lives, but it has no eyes to see. And this is seen in several
ways in our own lives, probably in yours, I know in mine, I've
seen it in my own heart. We put confidence in the flesh.
We put our security in our flesh when we see security in our morality.
When we see security in our morality, in other words, when we look
at our lives and we say, look, I'm not sinning like I used to. I'm
OK. We're already on the brink of destruction. We're already
on the edge of the precipice of falling over that cliff of
self-righteousness because we are feeling confident in the
fact that we're not sinning like the rest of those people in the
world. And we see that very example in the Gospels where Jesus says
that man is condemned for praising God for his morality. We see a security in the flesh
when we see security in our worship. Oh, I came to church today or
I worship God today or I listen to the song today or I read the
Bible today and I feel good about it now. You ought to feel good
about it, but don't put your hope in it. And even anyway,
you ought to probably not feel that good about yourself, but
rather feel good about Christ. We see security in our worship
when we See security in our methods of worship, or our styles of
worship, or our places of worship. Well, I worship at this church,
so I know we're worshiping greatly. I know we're worshiping better
than those that worship at that church. Or my church sings songs
that are more doctrinally sound than that church down the street,
so I'm pretty good. Or that pastor over there doesn't
preach from the Scripture the way that this pastor does, so
this church is pretty good. We put security there, we failed.
We see security in our spiritual fruit of maturity. We've put
our faith in the wrong thing. In other words, we look and see
just how much we've grown in Christ and we go, hey, I'm not
where I used to be. Look how good I'm doing. We have
fallen. We put our faith in the fruit
of our faith. And so, in other words, we put
our faith in our own self, in our own actions, in response
to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And this is a death sentence.
And sometimes, and all of us probably fall into this next
one, we do this when we see security in our own feelings. Well, I
feel I feel pretty good today. Well, what about the day you
wake up and you don't feel pretty saved? Or what about the time where
the anger or the sin inside of your mind and your heart and
your flesh has boiled up to the point when nobody can see it?
But you know what's there. How do you feel then? We put
hope in the flesh when we see security in our decisions. Our
decisions to serve God, our decisions to follow Christ, our decisions
to believe, our decisions to repent. We can't put security
in those decisions. Security is never there when
it is placed apart from God's faithfulness. It is a misplaced
thing. We cannot be secure by trying to prove or move God conditionally
by making our work in the flesh a means of boasting. What are
you talking about? If you understand what I'm talking
about, you understand what I'm talking about. There's some wisdom
in that. And if you don't understand what I'm talking about, it might
be because it's the first time you've heard of it. Let me break
it down this way. You might say to yourself, I know that I have
eternal life because I did X, so God will do Y. I know that I'm going to heaven
because I did X and God will do Y, because I did X, God will
do Y, because I did this and God will do that. And so we play
the hand of God. against our motives and our movement. And we take sovereignty that
is His alone and we put it in our pockets and we go to heaven
with it and go, see there God, I did what I needed to do, now
You do what You've got to do. It sounds really pompous to say
it that way. And none of us think that way,
but in some sense we've been trained that way. Our culture
produces, the American culture produces that type of gospel
response. Our churches now have adopted that and they pump it
out. We are not voodoo doctors or
witches. We cannot do chants and dances and rub salves and
say words and all sorts of things and move God. We cannot move
God with our clothing or morality or righteousness or integrity
or character. We don't move God through our
music and our voices and our talents. We don't move God in
our discipline and our affections. We don't move God except by his
mere pleasure that he moves. And that's even unto salvation.
See, we have a large God that created everything by the word
of his mouth. We don't have a God who is desiring and hoping with
His fingers crossed, wishing people would come under the rightness
of His grace. God moves and He saves. God cannot
be moved apart from His eternal decrees and His perfect and sovereign
choice. So security is important. That's
what this introduction is all about. I want you to see that.
Security in your faith is important. Security in eternal life is important.
We need it. We desire it. It satisfies us. It brings us
to a place of peace and rest in the Gospel. And I'll be seriously lying if
I said that I didn't also suffer with this problem. Not all the
time, but sometimes. We suffer with this. Just when
you think you're strongest in the Lord, you will come to the
conclusion that you're probably lost. I'm lost. There's no way I can be saved.
Look at me. I'm walking with God. Man, I just got through preaching
the best message ever! Cried. You see? And all of a
sudden you walk next to a plate glass window with a reflection
and you go, oh my gosh, is that me? That man needs to repent. Look at that sinner in there.
And you look at him and you go, wow, that's my reflection. And what do you
do? You go, I am nothing but a Pharisee. I'm lost. Where does my hope
look? Look at all the good I was doing
five minutes ago. Now look, I'm wasted away. I'm lost, God. Have you ever
prayed, God, I pray that I'm not reprobate. I prayed that. What does that mean? Been turned
over to sin and sealed for destruction? I prayed that. I prayed that
recently. Then I thanked Him that He's
given me confidence in Christ, not me. Not in my parenting,
not in my pastoring. not in my pulpiteering, not in
my relationships, anything, but in Christ alone. Some of us today
may be saying, I don't feel secure. And I believe that that's a good
thing. Because when we feel insecure, then we can know true security
in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And I want to show you that today.
But there may be others here saying, I know I'm good. And
I want to caution you that that's not a good thing. Except that
you follow that up with, I know that I'm good because God has
declared me just through Christ Jesus. And you need to be fighting
a battle with that, not just sort of sitting around in some
easy way of dealing with it. Let's look at Ephesians 1, verses
11-14. I'm going to remind us of something here because we
are in Ephesians as a text, and then we're going to talk, and
then we're going to move to John. Ephesians 1, verse 11. It says,
in Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according
to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel
of His will. So some of that stuff I said in the introduction
about God does all things for His own pleasure and for His
own choices and His divine and sovereign decree, that's where it comes
from. I mean, I'm not making this stuff up. You should test
everything I say according to Scripture. according to the purpose
of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so
that, or in order that, we who were the first to hope in Christ
might be to the praise of His glory. Just a reminder, church,
that's why we exist. To praise His glory. In Him,
you also, when you heard the word of truth, listen, you heard
the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed
in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is
the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of
it, to the praise of His glory. Now, you remember this. As a
matter of fact, many of you were not in the church or part of
our fellowship when I preached that. Many of you were not here. That was the very beginning part
of this year. So we weren't even meeting in
this room. We're still meeting in our living room. And so I
want you to see one great thing. There's many great things. But
one great thing that will give you some assurance and security.
We're sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee
of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it. See, there's
several things you need to understand. You are saved if you are in Christ,
by God's grace, through faith, which is a gift, not of your
own doing, today. Right now, presently, we who
are the church are saved. But we have not obtained our
salvation. Because our salvation is not
just to walk around and miserably, with joy, suffer. Our salvation
is that we're done with these bodies, we're done with this
world, and that God will correct all sin, judge all wickedness,
and restore all the saints with Christ. That's the fullness of
our salvation. The second coming, the judgment,
the restoration forever. Time will be no more. We will
wear watches because we like the way they look. And that's
a joke. They will not work in eternity. I hope. I hope there's
no time. There is no time. There's no
time. It's just eternity. It's eternal. So last week we looked at 1 Peter.
In chapter 1, where Peter just praises God for like ten verses. Blessed be the God and the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has caused us to be born again to a living
hope in Christ Jesus through the resurrection of Christ from
the dead. You see that? To an internal inheritance that
is undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven by you, by God's power. or being guarded. For what? For
inheritance, for faith. We are guarded by God. And so, that's the point there
I want you just to reflect there. We saw the outcome of joy, our
salvation brings joy. It's one of the measurable things
that we look at in our lives. That's one of the things we as
Grace Truth Church, we hold as one of our top eight most important
things. The joy in Christ. Holiness also. And eternal security is another
one. So it was there even last week. So as we read the text,
we see that we are guaranteed to be saved. The problem comes
when our flesh does not agree. See, here's the issue. God commands
all men to be holy. Every single human being. Man,
woman, child, infant, fetus, zygote, cell, embryo, however
you want to call it. Every human being is commanded
to be holy. And no human being can ever be
holy, for they are condemned at conception. In the context
of the Adamic nature, we are descendants of Adam. Because
we're human, we sin. We are sinners and then we sin.
So we believe in total radical corruption and depravity of the
human body, of the human mind, of the human heart, of the human
action, of the human will. And so it is bound and it is
a slave to sin. It is a slave to the flesh. It
is a slave to wickedness. And so we know that God commands
all men to be holy. This is His decree. There is
no debate. If a man is not holy, he is going
to die. The problem is no man is holy.
We all in Adam have fallen, and even if we keep the law from
birth, we are still condemned because Adam, our father, is
condemned. And all who are in Adam die.
The solution, though, is this, that Christ, born of a virgin,
not of man, perfectly human, perfectly God, without a sin
nature, without the corruptibility of Adam's race, came to be like
the creation in order that God's holy command to humanity would
be fulfilled by a human. Then, this perfect man willingly
and passively gave his life after living a life for thirty-three
and a half years of holiness and obedience to the Father and
to the law. He fulfilled all the righteous requirements of
the law. So then, he comes to the place
where he willingly gives his life as the Lamb of God. Then,
God destroys him, then satisfies God's judgment against humanity
so that God could forgive me, and you, and still be righteous. God put forth Christ as propitiation,
Romans 3.21, in order to display His righteousness. So, the Gospel
is God's plan. Jesus is God's Person, Son. And it's all for God's pleasure.
And then it's given to God's people. So what's the problem?
The problem is that we're the problem. The reason we fail in
our confidence in Christ is because we're the problem. What does
1 John say? Some of us think, well, we're
pretty good. Well, he says, if we say we've not sinned, we make
him a liar and his word is not in us. 1 John 1, verse 10. So we're in trouble. Our hope
and our minds, we put stock in our perseverance, we put stock
in what we've done, and we feel good then about our sin because
somewhere deep in the belly of our soul, we know we're saved
and God understands our sin. Friends, that's a very dangerous
place to be. And most of us at some point,
whether it's a nanosecond or nine months or nine years or
however, we have been in that location. And I pray by God's
grace we would not go back there. Well, we feel good about our
sin and we feel good about our righteousness and then other
things. And then the question then comes to my mind, well,
isn't that the point to feel secure? Well, yes and no. If our joy and satisfaction is
in Christ and his sufficiency to save us, then yes, we ought
to feel secure. If our hope at all is measured and our eternal
security is measured at all in anything the flesh accomplishes,
we should tremble because we will be condemned. And so this,
according to Scripture, is idolatry. We worship something other than
the sufficiency of Christ. When we feel confidence and satisfaction
in other things, then we are idolaters. Listen to the words
of the writer of Hebrews. It's impossible in the case of
those who have once been enlightened. who have tasted the heavenly
gift and have shared in the Holy Spirit and tasted the goodness
of the Word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then fall
away to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying
once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding Him
up to contempt. 1 John commands in chapter 2, verse 15, Do not
love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves
the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is
in the world, the desires of the flesh, And the desires of
the eyes and the pride of life is not from the Father, but is
from the world. And the world is passing away along with its
desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. See,
the text that we've seen in Ephesians 1 doesn't say that we're sealed
with the fruit of our faith, does it? It doesn't say that
we're sealed with our moral obligations. It doesn't say we're sealed with
our faithfulness in Christ. It says we're sealed by the Holy
Spirit, who is our guarantee until we obtain inheritance that
we've been promised. Nothing else. So the seal of
our hope is God alone is the power of God who guards us through
his power, giving the Holy Spirit so that we know for sure we have
eternal life. So do you have the spirit of
God? So what does it mean, the seal of the guarantees sealed
in the Holy Spirit? Well, have you ever bowled? Do
you own your own bowling shoes? No, you usually rent them, don't
you? And you rent them for three bucks, and you have to leave
a credit card or a driver's license or a car key in order to take
these really nasty, grody shoes that other people have worn.
They spray this stuff in there. It's not good enough. And then
you go, like, you're going to walk off with those shoes. But
you leave something of great value, like the keys to your
car, the keys to your house or your wallet or something absurd
so that you can wear some grody shoes. And you won't steal them. Those people at the gate or at
the counter know you're coming back. Because unless you're bankrupt
and have hijacked somebody else's keys, you're not going to swap
a car or your bank account or your driver's license for a pair
of grody shoes. Now, where's the parallel? Well,
the parallel is not there. But the understanding of what
a guarantee is. God has given His Holy Spirit guarantees He's
come back. Why? Because He wants His church.
You hear that? He's coming back for his bride. That's the whole purpose of our
tarry and worship here today. That Jesus died to secure absolute
certain salvation for the church. Apart from their failure and
their faithlessness, for he cannot deny himself, Paul says to Timothy,
so he remains faithful. So. What does this do for me? Turn to John 10, four verses. John chapter 10. Verse 27 through 30. I hate to do this, if you want
to get more in depth with John's gospel, come to Eugene at 7 o'clock. And Jesus says these words in
verse 27 of John 10. My sheep hear my voice. Listen
to this. And I know them. And they follow
me. I give them eternal life and
they will never perish. And no one will snatch them out
of my hand. My Father who has given them
to me is greater than all. And no one is able to snatch
them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one. Beautiful. Beautiful, eternal security. Let me break it down for you
this way. We see some characters here. We see the sheep. We see
the son. We see the father. Now, what
I want you to understand briefly, there's a lot more here, and
I normally wouldn't preach this whole thing, but for the purpose
of our view of eternal security, bear with me. We see Jesus name
people. He calls them, My sheep. Who
are they? They're sheep. Whose sheep are
they? They're His sheep. My sheep. The nature of these
sheep is that they belong to Jesus. The other part of that
is that they have need. What are sheep? Sheep are absolutely
dumb animals. I hate to tell you, but the Word
of God uses sheep to compare us to sheep because we act the
same as sheep. I had the opportunity to see
some sheep the other day, and it began to rain. And the sheep
stayed in the rain until the mule that was out there with
them came into the shelter, and then they followed the mule.
And I thought, that's exactly like me. We need shepherding. We have
a need. And so these sheep belong to
Jesus. Why? He created them. He created
them. See, when you read this, my sheep.
Yeah, this is a metaphor, OK? But he's talking about the church. And so when we see that Jesus
calls them His, it means that He is also inferring or relating
the unspoken reality of Himself as the Creator of all things.
He also created these sheep, and if they weren't born sheep,
they were made sheep. Do you see that? How were they sheep? Were they once goats? Yep. Pigs,
dogs, snakes. and everything else. Wolves.
There's a lot of those people. And then they come to the sheet
gate. And they climb over the wall.
And other people come in and pick them up and throw them over
the wall. And they're all mixed in with us. That's the point
of this in John 10. Jesus calls the Pharisees thieves
and robbers. So Jesus is saying He created
the sheep. He created them, therefore He owns the sheep. They did not
become His on any part of their own. They did not come as a dead
thing, let's just say a dead pig, and come up dragging their
corpse like a zombie to the gate and say, please make me a sheep.
It doesn't work that way. That would be a horrifying picture. I'm sorry about that. My sheep. Now, what does He say about His
sheep? His sheep hear. His sheep hear and listen. They hear what? They hear His voice. We see a
certainty of the action of the sheep. Jesus didn't say, My sheep
should hear. He didn't say, My sheep, please
listen. He said, My sheep hear My voice. What does that mean? They do.
If we are sheep, we hear His voice. You know, one of the greatest
things, one of the greatest realities, don't put your confidence in
this, but one of the greatest realities of being a child of
God, of being a sheep, made and owned by Christ, is that you
have conviction of your sin and the failure of your faith. It's a good sign, but don't put
your faith in the sign. Put your faith in the Son. It's
a big difference. My sheep hear. They hear. Do you have ears to hear? Jesus
asked that question in the Gospel of Mark. Jesus asked that question
in Revelation. Do you have ears to hear? Let
them hear. Do you have ears to hear the Christ? Or is your truth
and your traditions and your faithfulness and your focus and
your doctrine and your stuff causing you to be deaf? The true
sheep do always hear the voice of God. Now, it doesn't mean
we don't want to hear it. It doesn't mean we might as well
pluck up our ears. We might quench and resist and fight and the
flesh takes war. But we always hear. And eventually,
what else? We always listen. We always walk.
We always follow. But they hear the voice. Can
you imagine what other places the Scripture brings us to this
realization? Where is it in Scripture that
we see that by the Word of His power, He upholds the universe?
Except pointing to Jesus Christ in Colossians 1. Instead, all
things that were made were made by Him and through Him and what? For Him. He owns it all. The Word became flesh. The Word
spoke and the universe that we know leapt into existence. God
spoke into being. And that same voice that gives
life to creation gives life to dead men. And He makes them sheep
by speaking life into their lives. We don't have that power. We're
not creators. We can't speak things into being.
We can't do it in the name of Jesus, and we can't do it with
the faith of Jesus. God is the Creator. Jesus is
God. And therefore, Jesus is the One
who speaks life into people. We can't save them. Christ does.
How? Through the words of Christ.
Romans 10, 17. Faith comes through hearing, and hearing through
the words of Christ. It doesn't say the Word of God.
It doesn't say the Scriptures. It says the words of Christ. The
word Logos and the word Christos. They're in the text in Romans
10, 17. The words of Christ bring people to life. And so, in the
beginning, God created and spoke all things into being. He creates
and upholds the world by the word of His power. And God spoke
into nothing and created all things. And God, therefore, then
speaks to His sheep and creates them. And what do they do? They follow. The sheep were created
by Christ. They're owned by Christ. And
what's the next phrase there? They follow Me. I give them eternal
life, and they will not perish, and no one will snatch them out
of My hands. But look what He says, My sheep
hear My voice, and I know them. I know them. Does Christ know
you? See, that's the question. We
ask too much time in the evangelical world. Do you know Jesus? Do
you know Jesus? And people say, yeah. And we
go, that's good. And we move on. Oh really? What Jesus do
you know? Do you know the Jesus who went
into the very temple during the Passover, the point of the end
that disrupted the very flow of people's economic status and
ruined their lives by thumping out their tables and throwing
their money and moving their animals and then beating them
with a whip and turning over their tables? Do you know that Jesus? Do you know that Jesus? Do you
know that Jesus who says in John's Gospel, chapter 11 and 12, that
the Jews could not believe because He had hardened their hearts
and condemned them to destruction? Do you know that Jesus? Do you
know that Jesus in Isaiah 6 who spoke to God, who spoke to the
prophet Isaiah and said, go preach to them, but I'm not going to
let them hear and I'm not going to let them see. And then in
John chapter 12, Jesus says that that, Isaiah 6, was fulfilled
in the hearing of the Word that day in front of the Jews. Is
that the Jesus you know? You know the Jesus in John chapter
3 who said God loved the world in this way, that He gave His
only Son, the one that He had, so that all the believing ones
would not perish but would have eternal life? It's a guarantee.
But those who do not believe, those who are not the believing
ones, are already condemned? For the judgment of God remains,
for this is the judgment, that the light came into the world
and that people love the darkness rather than the light because
their works were evil. They didn't love, they weren't hidden. They
don't want to come into the light because their works were evil.
If they come to the light and their works were evil, their works
would be exposed. So they stay out of the light.
Why? Because they love the darkness.
But those who come to the light, come to the light so that it
would be clearly seen that their works have been carried out in
God. What's the primary work there?
What does Jesus say in John chapter 6? What must we do? They said. Give us this bread
always. What must we do to be doing the works of God? And Jesus
says very plainly, the work of God is this, that you believe
in the Son whom He has sent, the bread that comes down from
heaven. Please don't miss that. Doing the work of God is not
doing what we call ministry. It's foundationally believing
forever in Christ. Don't fall hard for a deception. See, these sheep are known, and
the idea of, I know them, means that they've been singled out.
They can be seen. They're visible to Christ. He knows them. They
are His. These sheep... are never goats,
and they're never pigs, and they're never dogs, they're never snakes,
they're never wolves, they're never serpents. These sheep are
sheep and they will always be sheep. And Christ will always
know them. Jesus will say to those who think
they're sheep and they stand before Him, He will say to them,
depart from Me, I never knew you. So it's just not about us
knowing Christ, though it is about us knowing Christ. But
most importantly, if we know Christ in eternal life, then
it's Christ that knows us. And so the question is, do you
know Christ? And you say, yes, I know Christ.
And the next question is this, do you know the Christ of the
Bible and does He know you? You may know Christ, but if it's
not the Christ of the Bible, that Christ isn't going to be
there to usher you into eternal life. Your Christ doesn't exist. It's an idol. It's a false God.
If He's not the Christ of the Bible. If He's not the Gospel,
if He's not the Good News, Elohim, Lord, El Shaddai, if He's not
the Alpha and the Omega, the Creator of all things, if your
Christ is not the very absolute sovereign God who purposefully
and willfully created all things that He might come to be like
those creations so that He could down the cross and suffer, so
that He could fulfill the righteous requirements of the law, so that
He could actually forgive those whom He selected before the world
began, to be saved, and gave them grace, and gave them faith,
and gave them eternal life. If that's not the Christ that
you believe in, you believe in a false gospel, and that gospel will
usher you straight to the true Jesus, who when you say, I believed
in you, and I preached, and I served, and I loved, and I gave, and
I wept, and I worshiped, if you say, depart from me, you workers
of iniquity, into the lake of fire prepared for Satan and his
demons, get away from me, I never knew you. That's what He'll say. It's not said to pagans, folks.
Jesus doesn't say those words to pagans because pagans aren't
running up going, Hey, I am. They're running the other way
already. They're not running to Jesus. It's the religious
zealots of the world. It's those Christians who believe
that their confidence and their eternal security is in what they've
done, and what someone has taught them, and what their mama said,
and what their grandma said, and not in what the Scriptures
say. And so these people are going to stand and be surprised
at judgment when Jesus says, Get away from me. Depart from
me. I don't know you. And I never
knew you. Because when Jesus knows you,
you're always known. See, don't miss it. The ones
whom Jesus is going to say that to are those who preach and those
who teach and those who serve and those who worship and those
who give and those who feed and those who do all sorts of good
things. And they will be absolute masters of morality and displays
of sovereign righteousness. But their righteousness is worthless. These are professing Christians,
but they have not been possessed by Christ. They are not his possession.
They are not his sheep. being known as having approval,
being known as the joy of the Lord. God rejoices in His sheep. What a beautiful song. You know,
we didn't orchestrate this music or the reading of the Scripture
today about any point, but God's Word is absolutely thorough and
fluid and full. And the Gospel is there when
we put it out in every aspect of our lives. My sheep hear my voice and I
know them. And what does he say? They follow me. They follow me. See, part of security is seen
in the following of the sheep. So we do measure that. We do
look at our lives. We can't say, John says, we can't
say we're in the light and we walk in darkness. That makes
no sense. But we don't put our hope in the fact that we're walking
in the light. We put our hope in the fact that
Jesus is the light. Sheep must follow. This text
here does not say, OK, my sheep obey me. Jesus doesn't say that. Jesus declares that they will.
My sheep hear my voice and they follow me. They follow me. And so do we follow Christ? All men are required to obey,
but only sheep do. Only sheep will obey first and
foremost in repentance and faith daily forever, but then also
in every aspect of life. Why? Because we've been born
again. We've been made new. We've been become new creatures.
We've got a new heart that's united in Christ by the power
of God. So how do we follow Christ? Well, let me give you some ways
we don't follow. We don't follow Christ by following men. We don't follow
Christ by following traditions. We don't follow Christ. By doing
anything that is secure in our own flesh and in the world, even
in Christendom and in the church. But we follow Christ by following
Christ. With our heart, mind, soul and
strength. With our eyes. With our hearts, with our minds.
We see, we want to look at things that Christ would want us to
look at. But most importantly, we see through the eyes that
Christ has given us to see. And we don't see people the way
our flesh sees people. We don't regard anyone according
to the flesh, as Paul says. We regard them according to the
Spirit of God. So we see them for who they are. We look at
them with compassion. We give our lives for them. We
are put off and put out with joy for their account. The love
for the brethren. Spurgeon says that sheep cannot
be secure in following holiness. and following morality or following
integrity, but they must at all times follow Christ. Jesus says
in John 15 that if we abide in Him, then He will abide in us.
That means that we stay close. I like the illustration of this
as a child that gets lost in the mall. Just a few steps away
in the grocery store when they're real little. Knee high. And you
can see them, but they can't see you. And then with horror
after the lucky charms has lost their zeal, They look around
and they scream, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy! And you step into sight. And they run and they hug your
leg and they never let go. And you have to move them off
so you don't pass out from the ephemeral already being restricted.
That's abiding. So as we walk and we see and
the flesh rises up with confidence, we recognize that by the grace
of God in us, through the Word of God that we've been given
and we continually seek, and treasure, and then what happens
then is we embrace Christ. We constantly run to the feet
of our Savior, our Shepherd, and we hold on. And it's a long
time running before we step around the cereal aisle again. So where is the security? Last
thing, I promise. My sheep hear My voice and I
know them and they will follow Me. They follow Me. Look what
He says. These aren't conditional statements. I give them eternal
life and they will never perish. I give them eternal life. Christ
is the life and He has the life to grant life to those who are
His. He is the eternal life. He is the resurrection and the
life. Sheep receive the life that is
given to them and there is no way around it. Those who are
Christ have life, period. And this life is not just any
life. It's not a worldly security. It's not a fading hope. It's
an eternal life with an absolute inheritance, an inheritance that
never perishes, never fade and is undefiled. It's righteous. Christ is the life. They will
never perish. And look what he says, and no
one will snatch them out of my hand. No one will snatch them. Romans 8. See that? 38, 39. Life nor death, height
nor principalities, darkness, angels, demons, nor any other
created thing will be able to separate us from the love of
God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing can snatch
us away from the Son. We're His. The sheep will never
perish. Remember the story of the sower
and the seed? And we see those four soils,
and we see people throwing the soil, the seed, the Word of God,
and people throw the Word of God, and it falls, and sometimes
it takes root, but then it gets blown away, or the roots choke
out, or the birds pick it away. And you know what Jesus said?
Jesus says, all but one of those soils were lost. They never were
saved. They received the Word of God
with joy, but then when the lust of the world came along, they
abandoned it. I want pride and prestige and things. They abandoned
the Word. And the birds were symbolic of
what? Satan coming and being allowed to take the Word of God
from the hearts of these people who had it. But they weren't
the sheep, so God let him take the Word from them. Is that the
Jesus you know? And Jesus then explains, He says,
It has been given unto you to have ears to hear and understand
these things, but to them it has not been given, so that they
may not see eternal life. Remember back in 1 Peter we talked
about last week, who by God's power are being saved? The Spirit
is our guarantee of our inheritance. This text shows this. And look
at the ultimate thing. Maybe you're saying, well, you
know, Jesus, that's great, but where does it really fall? What
if, what if, what if? We don't put what ifs there.
Look at the centrality of the gospel in this next portion of
this text. No one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father
who has given them to Me is greater than all. And no one is able
to snatch them out of the Father's hand. And I and the Father are
one. So those who are in the hand
of Christ are also in the hand of the Father. The Father gave
the sheep to the Son. He created them to be sheep and
gave them to Him. And they hear His voice. They
know His voice. And He knows them. And they follow Him. And
He gives them eternal life. And they will never perish. How
much more security do you want? There's no mights, maybes, wishes,
hopes, if you, conditional statements, none. There are plenty of conditional
statements about enduring to the end. But how do we endure,
church? Because nothing can take us out
of the hand of God. And if we didn't endure, guess what that
means? We weren't in His hand. We didn't have eternal life to
begin with. We thought we had. What does Jesus say in the parable
of the sower? Even what they think they have,
I'm taking away from them. So we're secure by the power
of God. God gives. God is the one who is greater
than all, and Christ and the Father are one. Therefore, Jesus
argues that if no one can snatch His sheep from the Father's hand,
then surely no one can snatch them out of His own hand. And
what happens? God gives. The sheep come. Have
you come to the Father? Are you in His hand? Do you believe
and continually repent and believe and trust in the sovereignty
of God in Christ Jesus who gave you eternal life? And then the
Son receives all that the Father gives Him, and the Son holds
them, and the Father holds them. See the hand of God? It's the
hand that secures. God's hand secures all things,
church. He secures salvation for his sheep and his hand secures
judgment for all others. In Romans 1, it teaches us that
the hand of God turns over those who reject the gospel to reprobate
mine into destruction. That same hand is the means to
security. So what does that mean for us?
That means we need to live out that which God has done and has
established by His mighty hand in Christ. We need to realize
that we are safe in the intimate, precious hand of Christ. And
we don't run to sin because we're safe in the hand of God. We run
from sin. And we abide. I want you, church,
to see the hand of God securing you and holding you forever.