Patience, Lord, no tender voice
like thine can peace afford. I need thee, oh, I need thee. Every hour I need Thee, O bless
me now, my Savior, I come to Thee. I need Thee every hour,
stay Thou nearby. Temptations lose their power
when Thou art nigh. I need Thee, O I need Thee. Every hour I need Thee, O bless
me now, my Savior, I come to Thee. I need Thee every hour,
enjoy your pain. Come quickly and abide or life
is vain. I need thee, oh, I need thee. Every hour I need thee. Oh, bless me now, my Saviour. Your I come to Thee. I need Thee every hour, Most
Holy One. O make me Thine indeed, Thou
blessed Son. I need thee. Oh, I need thee. Every hour I need thee. Oh, bless me now, my Savior. I come to thee. All rise. A man who says he doesn't need
the Lord is a fool. Hand number 208, please. 208.
208. Great is Thy faithfulness, O
God my Father. There is no shadow of turning
with Thee. Thou changest not Thy compassion,
they fail not. As Thou hast been, Thou forever
will be. Great is Thy faithfulness. Great is Thy faithfulness. Morning by morning new mercies
I see. All I have needed Thy hand hath
provided. Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord,
unto me. Summer and winter and springtime
and Harvest sun, moon, and stars in their courses above. Join with all nature in manifold
witness to thy great faithfulness. Mercy and love. Great is thy faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness. Morning by morning, new mercies
I see. All I have needed thy hand hath
provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord,
unto me. Pardon and sin and Peace that
endureth, thy own dear presence to cheer and to guide. Strength for today and bright
hope for tomorrow. Blessings all mine with ten thousand
beside Great is thy faithfulness Great is thy faithfulness Morning
by morning ? New mercies I see ? All I have needed Thy hand
hath provided ? Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me Amen, he is faithful. We're not faithful, but he is
faithful. How about hymn number 175? We'll
sing that, and if anybody has a song, or a solo. If anybody has a song, we'll take
that. Near to the heart of God. There is a place of quiet rest
near to the heart of God, a place where sin cannot molest, near
to the heart of God. O Jesus, blessed Redeemer, send
from the heart of God. Hold us to wait before Thee,
near to the heart of God. There is a place of comfort sweet
Near to the heart of God A place where we our Savior meet Near
to the heart of God O Jesus, blessed Redeemer, send from the
heart of God. Hold us to wait before Thee,
near to the heart of God. There is a place of full release
near to the heart of God. A place where all is joy and
peace near to the heart of God. O Jesus, blessed Redeemer, sent
from the heart of God, hold us who wait before Thee, near to
the heart of God. Red, purple, and blue. 203. And
the old school handbook. My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest
phrase. But wholly lean on Jesus' name
On Christ the solid rock I stand All other ground is sinking sand
All other ground is sinking sand When darkness seems to hide its
face I rest on his unchanging grace In every high and stormy
gift My anchor holds within the veil On Christ the solid rock
I stand All other ground is sinking sand All other ground is sinking
sand His oath is covenant, His blood support me in the well-being
flood. When all around my soul gives
way, He then is all my hope and say. On Christ the solid rock
I stand, all other ground is sinking sand all other ground
is sinking sand when he shall come with trumpet sound oh may
I then in him be found dressed in his righteousness alone fall
as to stand before the throne That's the gospel right there.
His blood and righteousness is our only foundation. Does anybody have a song? No fun? 26. What? 26. 26 in the
old school? No fun. Come by fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace. Strings of mercy never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise. Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above. Praise the mount, I'm fixed upon
it, mount of thy redeeming love. Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither
by thy help I'll come, and I hope by thy good pleasure safely to
arrive at home. Jesus saw me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God. He, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood. O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be Let thy goodness like a fetter Bind
my wandering heart to thee Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it prone
to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, oh, take and
seal it, seal it for thy courts above. Three flats kill me. All right,
anybody else got one? all right Turn with me this morning to
Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11. We'll take a little break from Galatians
this week before we move into chapter 4. Hebrews chapter 11. But I'll be looking at the first
verse there, chapter 11, Hebrews 11, verse one. It seems to, on Facebook, if
you ever pay much attention to people as what they discuss and
debate back and forth and everything like that, it seems like certain
topics kind of go round and round though. hit on something for
a while, then everybody would get on that bandwagon and be
talking about it. And then pretty soon, a few months
later, a year down the road or something like that, it'll come
back up again. And this seems to be one of those topics that
is often talked about and discussed among the people, at least the
friends that I have on Facebook and everything. There's a lot of different understandings,
I guess I should say, about what is found in this passive description. Let's go ahead and read it. I
want to talk today about faith, hope, and assurance. Faith, hope,
and assurance. But let's read the scripture
and then go to the Lord in prayer. It says, now faith is the substance
of things hoped for. and the evidence of things not
seen. It's the substance of things
hoped for. And it's the evidence of things
not seen. Heavenly Father, we thank you
for this day. Beautiful day that you have given
to us. We thank you for the rain that we received yesterday, Lord.
We pray that you'll be with us today as we see that you'll be
bringing storms through later this afternoon, that you might
be with the people of Joplin as these go through. Lord, we
pray this morning as we gather this morning that we gather together
in spirit and in truth to worship you, the one true God, the sovereign
of all things, the creator of the universe. He who is wise
and just and holy and righteous. He whose name is above every
name, that at that name, every knee shall bow and every tongue
will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Father, we gather in
your name. We exalt you today in our preaching
and our singing. At least we pray and hope that
is the case. We ask that you send the spirit
to us to help us in our worship so that we might be able to do
that rightly. Father, we need you here in our
midst. We need you to help us. We need
you for our understanding. We need you for our ability to
preach and to listen and to understand and to learn. And Lord, we just,
we truly are beholden to you for all things. Lord, we just
pray now as we look at this passage of scripture, that you might
be our teacher, that you might encourage the brethren here that
you might grow them in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And Father, we just thank you
so much for Jesus. We thank you for all that he
is for us as our mediator, that all that he is for us as our
substitute, that what he did on the cross for us that guaranteed
our salvation, that secured our justification, our sanctification,
our glorification, all the promises that are of God are yea and amen
in him. And so we exalt him today. We
are so thankful that we have been called by God and that we
have been given life and life more abundantly. So Father, we
just praise you today. And we ask that you would glorify
yourself through the preaching of this word. In Jesus name we
pray. Amen. Let me just kind of give a little
background on one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this
and basically why originally I did a kind of a study on this. I grew up in an Armenian background
most of my life. And so in that Armenian background,
a lot of what we hear and learn and at least the way that we
think in that, was that our assurance that once we were saved, we were
always saved. We believed that. And our assurance
came by, well, we have to look at our attitudes. We've got to
look at our actions. We've got to look at our law
keeping. We've got to look at our good works. Those are the
fruits of what we look at that tells us or assures us that we
have been born again. And so what do we do? We become
what some would call fruit inspectors. We're looking at the things on
the outside to see whether or not we are born from above. But
the fruits of the spirit are not outward things. They are
inward things. They are spiritual things. The
fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, love and suffering,
gentleness, meekness, temperance, And then in that is faith, okay? These are things that are not
seen that are things that are done inwardly. Now, do they have
effects on the outside? If I'm joyful, is that going
to show on the outside? Yes, it's going to show on the
outside. If I'm long-suffering, is that going to show somehow
outwardly? Yes. If I'm not long-suffering
to you, I might get in your face and get mad at you easily because
I'm not long-suffering. However, these works are works
that God does in us, and it's not seen. It's inwardly. It's
things that's done inwardly to us. And one of the gifts, one
of the works of the Spirit is faith. And that word faith, we're
going to look at that here in just a minute, but faith that
is given to us as a gift is something that is internal. It can't be
seen. Now does it produce things on
the outside that might be seen? Yes. And I just want to say at
the outset, one of the reasons that I think, and I think this
word faith here in verse one, it can mean not only the God-given
faith that we have been given in the new birth, but also it
is talking about Christ himself. Okay. Remember in our study in
Galatians, we found that the Bible, that God uses the word
faith in conjunction with the very person of Jesus Christ.
That He Himself is faith. Faith is derived from Him. He
is the only faithful one. None of us are faithful. He is
the faithful one. Faith, if there is a picture
of faith, it is not Abraham, it is not Isaac, it is not Jacob,
it is not David, it is not Paul. All these men are not faithful. Only Christ is faithful. To be faithful means to have
perfect faith. Anything less than faithful is
not faithful, right? We are not always faithful, but
He is faithful. And so I believe that this word
can mean Jesus Christ, and I especially believe it can mean Jesus Christ
because It says, now faith is the substance of things hoped
for. Our hope, we just sung it, my hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness. Jesus is the substance of things
hoped for. He himself in his person is the
only hope that we have. He is the hope of our reconciliation
to God. He is the hope of our forgiveness
of sin. He is the hope of our justification,
our sanctification, our glorification. He is the hope of our perseverance,
our preservation. He is the hope of eternal life. He is the hope of everything
that is promised in the covenant of God. He is the hope of everything. in the perfection of God. He is the hope of the law. He is the hope of the new covenant. He is the hope of everything
to the child of grace. And so he himself, his person,
is the substance of things hoped for. It is in him that our foundation
is laid. He is our foundation. The Bible
says that he is the chief cornerstone, that he is the one that on him
everything else is built. Okay? And it says that faith
is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things
not seen. Jesus Christ in his person is
the evidence that God has not only elected a people, but that
he has accepted those people in Christ Jesus. How? Through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. Jesus Christ being resurrected
from the dead is proof to us that everything, the evidence
of things not seen, all the promises of God that we have not seen,
that we can't see, that we don't know, that we don't understand,
all those things we see are given to the elect of God and God accepted
Christ's sacrifice on behalf of those elect in raising Christ
from the dead. That was the proof that God has
given all things to his people because of Christ Jesus. So do
I believe that faith here talks about Christ Jesus? Absolutely. But I think it has a two-fold
meaning here. It's not just talking about the
Lord Jesus Christ, but the faith of Christ that's given to us.
And the reason I say that is because of the context. If you
look at the context, you'll see after that, you'll see how that
by faith, through faith, in faith, without faith, All these people
continued and did certain things by the Lord's prompting, by the
Lord's enabling, okay? And so this is talking about
something that they looked towards, that they hoped in, and because
of that hope, because of that faith, they did these certain
things. They continued in this walk.
They continued in these things. And so, I believe that has a
twofold meaning. Not only can we lay that to the
feet of Christ himself, but also the faith that is given to us
in the new birth. And that's what I want to kind
of talk about today. So I always assume whenever you
hear me talk about these things, that it's always on Christ Jesus
and it's never our internal or our fleshly works. Okay. It's never our works. Now, As
I said, I wanted to tell you a background on why this study. There has been, and I've been
associated with different groups of peoples of sovereign grace
believers from different kind of cliques, I guess you could
say, or different groups of denominational Baptists or different things.
They call themselves by different names, okay? And we here, we don't, seem to
latch on to any of those. We just, we're a church. We believe
that we are Baptists, not by name, but by ministry. We're Baptists in the fact that
we are immersers. We believe that we ought to immerse
disciples before they become members of the church. We continue
the ministry of not only John the Baptist, but all the apostles,
whenever the church was first being when the church was first
formed, in the fact that we preach the gospel, we baptize those
who are disciples, and then we bring them in and teach them
all things whatsoever Christ has commanded. And that's exactly
what was the operation during Jesus' time here. But there are different understandings
of this. If we go to the Arminian side, the Arminian is looking
to the outside for assurance. They're looking for the things
that they do. Did they make a commitment to the Lord? Did they make a
profession of faith? Did they repent, truly repent? Were they baptized? Did they join the church? Did they give their heart to
Jesus? Whatever the case is, did they believe on the Lord
Jesus and thus get saved, and now are they living right before
God? If you're not living right before
God, then that's a sign that you weren't born again. They're
looking to the outward thing. So that's one far direction. But let's go the other direction.
Let's go to the sovereign grace direction. There are even those
within the sovereign grace direction that believes, especially among
the reformed, who's still looking to the outward fruit. They're
looking to what our life looks like, our law keeping, our assurance
is based upon our law keeping, how well are we walking according
to the Word of God. Okay? But then there's another
segment within Sovereign Grace Believers who believe, well,
we can't have any assurance. We can't have any assurance.
All we can do is hope that we have salvation. And they take
that word hope as in a, oh man, I hope so, and not necessarily
looking at that word hope in the biblical way that the word
is used. The word hope in the Bible is
used as like an earnest expectation. You know, I have a hope, you
know, like if my mom and dad said, hey, we're coming today
to visit you, okay? And we'll be there at like four
o'clock, okay? Well, as the time approaches,
when 3.30 rolls around, I'm looking out the window. I have an earnest
expectation, I have a hope that they're gonna be here at any
time. not a maybe so, but I know they're coming and that they're
supposed to be here at four o'clock. And so I'm waiting patiently,
earnestly looking for them to arrive. So hope in the Bible,
isn't this something that could happen by chance? It's something
that is secure. It is something that we know
for a fact because the Bible gives it to us. And we have a
hope that that is for us. We have an earnest expectation
that that's going to happen to us. Or we have an earnest expectation
that that is for us. Okay? Do you understand what
I'm saying? I hope I'm not making that more
cloudy than it sounded in my mind when I just said it. So there are some that says,
well, we can't have that assurance because we can only have a hope.
And matter of fact, I had a dear brother in Christ who completely
disfellowshipped with me. We had great fellowship for a
couple, two, three years, I guess it was. But he disfellowshipped
with me and wouldn't allow us to come back to their, they had
a home church as well, wouldn't allow us to come back to their
home church to fellowship with them or anything because I believed
that we could have assurance. And he didn't believe that you
could have assurance. And he said, if you say that
you can have assurance, it's because you're looking on your
outward works of the flesh. And I told him, I said, no, no,
no, no. I said, you can have assurance, but not be looking
at the outward works of the flesh. And so I began to realize, well,
there's a group of people that believe that we, I mean, they
believe that we have faith, and they believe that that's given
in the new birth, and they believe that we can have a hope but they
don't believe that we can have an assurance. Now, do you have
to take one side or the other? Do you have to go over here and
say our assurance is based, if you say we have assurance, it's
based upon your works. Or I don't have any assurance
and I just have a hope. I'm just sitting here waiting
and I have a hope, okay. Is there a balance in this teaching? Absolutely there is, and I believe
this verse is that balanced teaching. Now faith is the substance of
things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. That word
faith there in the Greek is a word that means to convince. It's
the word pistis. Okay, it's the word pistis. And
it's a word that means to convince. It's a word that means to assent. to give assent to. It's a word
that means confidence. It's translated confidence. Okay. It's a word that means to persuade
or to trust. Okay. So whenever that word pistis
is found in scripture or whenever we see that word faith there
and the word pistis, the Greek word behind that is if it's pistis,
it means to have confidence or to assent to the or to trust
or have confidence. Now, to me, that sounds like
assurance, right? If I have an assurance, I have a confidence,
right? I've been convinced in my mind,
I've been convinced that whatever the gospel has said to me, it
has said that it's for me. It's not just about Jesus, but
it's about Jesus and me. What Jesus did, he did for me. That's what the good news is.
I mean, the good news is not good news if it doesn't have
good news to you, right? If I came and I told Kevin, I
said, Kevin, guess what? I have good news. Kevin's like,
hey, all right, what's the good news? I said, man, I found $500
this week laying on the ground. He's like, well, that ain't good
news to me. I wish I would have got there
before you, right? That was good news for me, but
it wasn't for him because he didn't get it, right? Good news,
if you're out there just saying, hey, Jesus died for the elect
of God and everything that God requires, Jesus did for them. If that's good news, if it doesn't
apply to me, if it isn't felt by me, if it isn't experienced
by me, if it isn't given confidence to me that that's for me, then
it's not good news for me. That's just another set of facts
that we learn, right? The gospel becomes good news
whenever it becomes good news to you. Do you believe that what
Jesus did, he did for you? If you did, not only is that
God-given faith, but that's also an assurance. It's also an assurance. The word faith means now, and
I want you to remember that, the word faith means to convince,
to assent to, to have confidence, to persuade, to trust. But in
Acts chapter 17, I want you to turn there with me, because I
want you to look for yourself. In Acts chapter 17, the word
pistis, faith, that's where we get the word faith, the word
pistis is also, by God, translated as assurance. God uses the word as assurance. Now, if God uses the word as
assurance, I think it's all right for us too. I think we can use
the word assurance and not be, you know, deemed as people who
are trusting in our own flesh. We're not trusting in our flesh,
and I hope to make that clear as we go through. Look with me. Acts 17. Look with me down at
verse 31. It says, Because He hath appointed
a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by
that man whom He hath ordained, whereof He hath given assurance
unto all men in that He hath raised Him from the dead. Now that word assurance there
is pistons. It's the same word that is used
in Hebrews 11.1 when it says that faith is the substance of
things hoped for. That's the same word. And here
the Holy Spirit translated that word as assurance. Okay. Spanish says faith. Spanish says
faith? Yes. Okay. He has given faith unto all men
that he has raised him from the dead. Is that how it says in
Spanish? Okay. So see that's interchangeable.
It's interchangeable. Faith and assurance is interchangeable. So we find that faith and hope
and assurance are all intermingled, are all inseparable. You don't
have to hold one over the other. Now, we don't have to base our
assurance on the flesh, nor does it cover flesh. We believe what
Philippians 3, 3. Let me read it. It says, For we are the circumcision,
which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus,
and have no confidence in the flesh. Now Paul, by the Holy
Spirit, wrote that. Okay? Paul also was the one who
wrote that faith is the substance of things hoped for. Paul is the one who wrote and
spoke about faith and assurance. And we're going to see that here
in a minute. We do not believe that we have
any confidence in the flesh. We shouldn't have any confidence
in the flesh. We've been talking about that in Galatians. We cannot
rely on law keeping to make us right before God because no man
can keep the law. No man can perform a righteousness
before God that will be acceptable to God. Any righteousness that
you put forth to God is always going to be knocked down and
said not good enough. Okay? So we don't believe that
we have any confidence in the flesh. So anything that we produce
outwardly by doing any kind of quote-unquote good works is not
the ground or the basis for our assurance. Why is that? Well, I can tell you. For I don't
know how many years, I lived, I grew up in a house, and we
went to church every Sunday, every Sunday night, every Wednesday
night. We went to all the revivals,
we went to all the special meetings. We had, you know, I was there
everywhere, every time. We had, in the middle of the
week, my parents and grandparents would have meetings in their
house, and they would listen to preaching on tape, and they
would do all these stuff. I mean, I was inundated with
coming to church and religious activities and things like that.
And I, myself, I believe that all the works that I was doing,
you know, was proof that I was His. And it made me feel good. It made me feel right, okay?
The more that I did for Jesus, the more I thought, hey, I'm
doing okay, I'm doing all right, okay? Until the Lord opened up
my understanding to that all my righteousnesses, not all my
unrighteousnesses, but all of my righteousnesses are filthy
rags. That everything that I put forth to God for righteousness
to please Him is filthy rags. The only thing that's accepted
of God and looked at in my position, in my place, to my account, is
the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And so, whenever I begin to understand
that, then I begin to say, You know, there's something about
this. I've told you all before how often I would sit up at night
because I hadn't been doing a lot for Jesus. And how I set up and
I was trying to think of all the things and praying to God,
I'm sorry, I should have done this. I should have done that.
I should have done this and forgive me of this. And I can't remember
all my sins. And I'm trying to think of all
the sins because I, you know, I had this understanding that,
you know, you have to confess your sins. You gotta, you know,
be confessed up. I used to hear that all the time
in churches and in my family and everything. You know, you
gotta be confessed up. You know, it's like, are we Catholics?
You know, do we go to the priest and make sure that we're confessed
up? Jesus has cleansed us of all
of our sin. He's forgiven us of all of our
sin. And that includes all of our future sins. And we will
sin, every sin that Jesus died for that we have not yet sinned,
we're gonna sin those sins That's not to tell you to go out and
do as many sins as you want to do, but I'm just telling you,
those sins have been covered. And so my righteousness isn't
dependent upon how much I do or do not do. God's going to
determine how much I do and do not do. God's going to determine
how much I know, how much I trust, how much I have faith. God's the determiner of that
because He is the one who gives the measure of faith. So know
that God, I'm not saying that everything that we're talking
about here is all controlled by us inwardly. Know with the
assumption that I teach and preach and believe, and I think this
church also in a whole believes the same thing, that all things
are predestined and predetermined by God. And by His providence,
He is bringing everything that He has decreed into place by
His providence. That he is working out his predestinating
decree. So not one thing. I'm watching
out here. The wind's picking up. All those
trees are moving and those leaves are moving. Some are falling
down. Listen, not one leaf is moving in a direction that God
has not already preordained. Not one of those leaves has fallen
to the ground that God has not ordained, not only that it fall,
but the time in which it falls and how long it took for it to
get from the limb to the ground. I believe in predestination that
much. Everything. Absolute predestination. So whenever
we talk about these things, we believe that God is the determiner
of all things. We believe that our flesh is
not the thing that we look to for assurance. And so here in
Acts, we see that the word assurance and the word faith are intertwined. It's interchangeable. And so
it's okay to say that we can have an assurance and not be
looking to our outward appearances of the flesh, our outward works
of the flesh, that we can still be looking to Christ alone and
have assurance. Okay? There is a false assurance. looking to the outward appearances
of false assurance the other reason i believe that we can
have it you know this false assurance is because even the reprobate
can act like a christian i mean he can come to church he can
pray he can give money he can uh... he can go out and feed
the poor he can go out and uh... uh... you know, do good things
for people. He can even memorize scripture. He can even stand up and take
the scripture that he's memorized and apply it with the wisdom
of man that he might have and try to apply that as a preacher.
I preached for several years before God converted me to the
truth. And what was I doing? I was preaching from the wisdom
of man. I was interpreting the scripture
in man's wisdom. And yeah, it may have sounded
good. I may have been able to put an outline together. I may
have made a delivery together. And I'll tell you this for a
fact. This is kind of telling on myself. A lot of times, some
of my messages that I would do, I would intentionally make it
more emotional driven. I would intentionally, you know,
bang the pulpit, you know, to get a response. I did that. To my shame, I did that. before
learning that it isn't about those kinds of things. You know,
those are circus things, you know. People go to a circus to
see a show, okay? But they come to church to worship
God and be preached the word of God, okay? And the word of
God is in and of itself the truth. You can't make it the truth,
it is the truth. And you can't make it say something that it
doesn't say. And you can't take it and twist it and it be of
any benefit to the people who actually can understand the word
of God. If I come into a church of true believers and I take
the word of God and I begin to twist it. It's not going to be
food for the sheep. It's going to be something that
is going to make the sheep angry, upset. Don't give me that. You
know, I don't want that. That's not true. And what are
they going to do? Eventually, they're going to
run me out on a rail. OK, so we we don't believe, you know,
the reprobate can act like a Christian. I acted like a Christian for
a long time. People thought I was a Christian for a long time.
Then the Lord converted me. And then the ones who thought
I was a Christian, after I began to believe all this, then they
was like, I don't know about you, now you're a cult, you know. We do know that there are false
assurances and that the natural man is always gonna look at the
outward things. But whenever we speak of the
faith and assurance that is given by God, it's an inward divine
work of the spirit that gives us that hope. The hope that endureth,
we sung that. The hope that endureth this morning,
we sung that. And the hope that endureth is
something that is divinely given. It's not given by what we see
on the outside. Look with me at Hebrews chapter
6. Hebrews 6. Look with me at verse
11. It says, "...and we desire that
every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance
of hope unto the end." So here the Apostle Paul is exhorting
the Christians to show the same diligence to the full assurance
of hope unto the end. Now this word assurance here
is a Greek word that means entire confidence. It means confidence. Full assurance here means entire
confidence. Now didn't we just learn earlier
that the word pistis, one of the things about one of the words
or one of the meanings of pistis was confidence? So here we see
assurance and faith both mean to have a confidence, to have
a full, and here it says a full, full or a complete or an entire
confidence. Let all your confidence be upon
Christ. Not upon your works, but upon
Christ. Our full confidence is in Christ,
not in ourselves. But again, this full confidence,
this assurance is not a natural thing. It is not something that
is looked on from the natural on the outside of things that
we do. It's a divine assurance that
is given to us that is apart from ourselves. It's a gift of
God. It is a work of God in us to
tell us that what you heard in that gospel is yours. Abraham
believed God and accounted it, the seed, unto him for righteousness."
That's assurance. That's assurance. He's seen what
was said in the gospel and he said, that applies to me. That
applies to me. That is an entire confidence. Now the word hope here, it says,
and we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence
to the full assurance of hope unto the end. The word hope here
is a word that means to anticipate. It means to anticipate. It means
an expectation. It too means a confidence. It
means a confidence. So even though these words are
slightly different, they do have a bond between them. in that
the faith given in the new birth is the foundation of one's hope. Faith is the one that is the
foundation of our hope. When God gives us faith, he gives
us faith to believe that what the gospel says is ours. And so in that, we have a confidence
that we will receive that blessing. We will receive that promise.
We will receive the inheritance. Now, we've been talking all about
this in Galatians. We've been talking about the promise. We've
been talking about the inheritance. We've been talking about being
heirs of Christ Jesus. And listen, an heir knows that's
mine. If there's a will out there and
that will says, I'm going to leave to my children, blah, blah,
blah, then that child knows, hey, I have confidence that whenever
my pop dies, hey, That's mine. In the New Covenant, the Bible said that with the
shedding of blood, there is remission of sin. And if we have been given
faith to believe that, we believe that the shedding of blood was
the remission of my sin. But there is forgiveness before
God. I believe that I'm forgiven by
God. By the death of Christ Jesus,
in that promise, he promised that he would reconcile us to
God. I've been reconciled to God. It said that I would be justified
before God. The Bible says that by my righteous
servant, he will justify the many in Isaiah 53. So what does
that gospel tell me? Well, it gives me an assurance
that that is mine, that I have been justified by his dying. The Bible says that He is our
sanctification, that He is our wisdom, that He is our glorification. If the Bible says that, it says
it to me and faith is given to me so that that faith will be
the substance of things hoped for or the undergirding or the
foundation of my hope. Why do I hope that that's mine?
Because God has given me the faith to believe it. And if He's
given me the faith to believe it, that faith is a full assurance. full confidence. It's a full
stomach. Now, with that being said, let
me just pause here for a minute. If somebody does doubt their
salvation, that doesn't mean they're lost either, right? And
just because somebody may have a full confidence that they're
saved doesn't necessarily mean that they're saved, right? Because
there's a lot of people that die thinking that they're saved
that aren't. And there's a whole lot of people
that I believe that are saved who sometimes think that they're
not, but they are. Matter of fact, when I first
come to pastor this church, there was a gentleman who was attending
the services here. And he was probably one of the
most gentle, most kind men that I'd ever met. Had a wonderful
understanding of the word of God. And I mean, probably one
of them, if you say godly men, probably one of the most godliest
men I've ever met, okay? But he struggled with assurance.
He never had any confidence that he was truly saved. He truly
struggled with that. And, you know, I told him, I
said, well, you know, I can't give you, he would always ask
me, and I said, I can't give you confidence. I can't give
you assurance. That assurance has to come from
the Holy Spirit. It has to, he has to give you
that confidence. He has to give you that assurance.
And I said, now, as far as outwardly looking at it, brother, I said,
you show every sign that I think a Christian would have. But I
said, that don't mean anything. I mean, we can all, you know,
I can, I can, I can mimic Christians. I can parrot them. I can say
what they say. I can do what they do. But that
don't mean that I'm truly saved. So someone can be a Christian
and doubt it. Someone can be a lost man and
have confidence that they are. But brethren, to those who are
the elect of God, they truly have been given an assurance.
They truly have been given an assurance. Without faith, there is no hope.
And where there is hope, there will be faith. Like I said, even
though they're slightly different, they are intertwined. They do
mean pretty close to the same thing. And so this is why Hebrews
11 says faith is the substance of things hoped for. Now, this
is where I'm hoping to tie all this together so that you might
see. For those who say, I have a hope in Christ and that's all
I can have. I can't say I can have an assurance.
I hope you understand that the Bible says, yes, you can have
an assurance. You can have an assurance. And
don't go walking around cocky saying, hey, I'm going to like
to God, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, that's not that because
God also says a meek and contrite heart is what I desire. He wants
somebody who, you know, he, he, his people will be meek and contrite. They won't be boastful in their
salvation. Okay. Matter of fact, the Bible
says, for by grace, or you said through faith and that not of
yourself, It is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should
boast. If you start boasting about your
salvation, it's because you're boasting something that you're
doing, or that you've done. You're boasting of salvation,
and it may not even be any action you've done, you're boasting
in the fact that I'm of my position. I'm the elect of God, sorry.
And I see that a lot in debate circles. Guys just running the
reprobate down, just running the reprobate down, and just
saying, you know, Listen, the reprobate is what it is. And
listen, we better be on our knees thanking God because it is only
by the grace of God that we're not reprobate. It is only God
who causes us to differ than the reprobate. OK, so we should
never boast about that. But look with me if you would
back to Hebrews 11.1. Look at this word substance here.
Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for. I did a little
study on that word substance. Now, that word substance is used
a lot of different ways in the Bible, okay? Matter of fact,
I was studying this morning a passage of scripture when I talked about
Jesus in the Psalms whenever he says, he saw my substance
before it was able to be seen, okay? He, that word substance
there, Hebrew word was golem, it means an undefined lump, okay? An undefined lump. But here,
the word substance doesn't mean that. It means something different.
The word here is a word in the Greek that is a compound word,
and it means setting under. Faith is the setting under for things hoped for. Now you say,
well, what does that mean? What does that mean? Well, as
I begin to look at it here, this word setting under, this word
substance, it means a support. It means a support. It's kind
of like you have a bridge and underneath those you have the
girders that go underneath there that hold that bridge up. It
supports the bridge, okay? That's what faith is. Faith is
the support mechanism for hope. If you're one of the ones who
says, I have a hope but I can't have an assurance. Listen, you've
been given faith as the support for your hope that you can have
full assurance before God. You've been given faith to have
a full assurance before God that that hope is not in vain. That
that hope is not just a hope so, but a truly earnest expectation. The word is support. It means
concretely. abstractly assurance. So see,
even the word substance itself means an assurance. It's a foundation
of assurance, is basically what it's saying there. So faith,
which we've seen was a confidence, is the support or the assurance
of things hoped for. Whenever we are trusting in Christ,
it is the assurance or it is the support, it is the foundation,
it's what holds up my hope that what I'm hearing by faith is
mine. It's mine. So see how they intertwine? Now, we read in Hebrews 6.11
a minute ago that it is a full assurance of hope, right? Now,
look here with me. Look at Hebrews chapter 10 and
verse 22. It says, let us draw near with
a true heart in full assurance of faith. Now, it's not only
full assurance of hope, but it is a full assurance of faith. So you see, the Holy Spirit uses
all these words, faith, hope, and assurance interchangeably. Maybe not directly synonyms,
but so close together that you can't have one without the other.
If you have faith, you have hope. If you have hope, you have assurance.
If you have assurance, it's because you have been given faith, and
that faith has an assurance for your hope. It's all intertwined
together. draw near with a true heart and
full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an
evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water." So there
we see what is the full assurance of faith? Well, the full assurance
of faith is having our hearts sprinkled with water, having
a clean conscience before God. that He has forgiven me of my
sins, that He has made me right before God, that He has justified
me, that He has sanctified me. It is cleansing our conscience.
That's why we study the Word of God. The Bible says, you know,
sanctify them by thy word, thy word is truth. How are we being
sanctified by the truth? How are we being cleansed by
the Word of God? How are we being set apart by
the Word of God? It is because the Word of God
is cleansing us. What else does the Bible say?
It is renewing our mind. It is telling us that you are
no longer this. You're this. You're not a servant,
but you are a child. You are not a reprobate, but
you are an elect. You are not unforgiven, but forgiven. You are not lost, but you're
saved. You are Christ. You're forgiven.
You're redeemed. You're loved. You're given eternal
life. You're given a hope that one
of these days He's coming back and He's coming back to get you.
I mean, all these things is given to us and faith is that support
that is given. Now, He gives it again by measure,
but He does give it. And that faith is what supports
our hope so that we can have that assurance. Look if you would
with me at Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8. I want to look
down and start in verse 14. It says, For as many as are led
by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. They don't become
the sons of God if they start being led by the Spirit of God.
They already are sons of God. For as many as are led by the
Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received
the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the
Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." Okay, so
the Spirit has been given to us. The Spirit is the Spirit
of adoption. The Spirit is given to us to
tell us, that's your Father. The Spirit has been given to
tell us, you're His child. You've been adopted. Okay? Now, verse 16. This is the reason
why I believe that we have assurance. If not any of it, all that stuff
that I've already taught this morning with using all those
words, using all the definitions behind those words, showing you
all those verses and how they link together and how faith and
assurance and hope all work together and how faith supports hope and
that how hope is an assurance even if we didn't have all that,
this one verse should tell us that the child of grace can have
assurance. It says, the spirit itself beareth
witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. One of the works of the spirit
of God is to tell, to teach, to assure the child of grace
that they are the children of God. Thereby they can cry, Abba
Father. Thereby they can come boldly
before the throne of grace. Thereby they can have faith and
a hope. They have faith that everything
is told and given to them. I have faith that all the inheritance
is mine, and I have a hope that it will be given to me, that
it is mine. The Spirit, now listen, if we're
not told that we're a son, we don't have any hope that the
inheritance is ours. You cannot even have a hope if
the Spirit has not assured your heart and soul and mind that
you are a child. So this hope-so hope does not
exist according to the Bible, but the hope that is a full assurance
does. It says, The Spirit itself bears
witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And
if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ,
if so be that we suffer with him, that we may also, that we
may be also glorified together. So it seems to me that the letter
of the scripture and the spirit of the scripture are both saying
that faith and hope are inseparable and that God grants this inward
work in all his elect. An assurance that is not built
on the works of the flesh, but an inward experience of grace.
That's what assurance is. An inward work of grace. Now, the consternation, the problem
is this. Just like Paul said, I will serve
the law of sin with my flesh, So I will have no confidence
in my flesh. But with my mind, I serve the
law of God and have confidence of what Christ has done. Why? Well, because in the new birth,
we are given the spirit of God and the faith of Christ. In 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse
12, the Bible says this. Now we have 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. If you've
been born from above, the Holy Spirit is given to you to teach
you to know that there have been things freely given to you of
God. That's the inheritance. That's the promises. That's the
new covenant promises that all those have been given to you. Now, this is not me saying this.
This is not from experience saying this, I'm telling you what the
Word of God says. The Word of God says that He
sends His Spirit into His people. So if you're His, the Spirit
of God is in you and the Spirit of God is testifying to you that
you have been adopted of God and that you are His child and
that everything that is promised in the inheritance is yours as
much as it is Jesus's. So it's saying you are His son
He is your Father, and that all the things that have been freely
given to you are yours. Now, brethren, that's an assurance.
That's an assurance that is given on the inside, not from the outside,
not from what we do, not from what we try to accomplish, not
from how we try to look to everybody else. It's an assurance that
comes from the work and grace of the Holy Spirit in us. The
faith that undergirds hope is found throughout scripture. Now,
I don't expect you to follow me along. If you want to write
them down and look at them later, I'm just going to read through
some of these verses, but I want to show you it's not just in
these, it's all over the Bible. It's all over the Bible. And
so I'm going to read a few verses here and then we'll conclude.
Isaiah 32 verses 15 through 17 says this, Until the Spirit be poured upon
us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the
fruitful field be counted for a forest, then judgment shall
dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful
field, and the work of righteousness shall be peace. And the effect,
here it is, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and
assurance forever. Did you get it? Isaiah 32, 15
through 17. Notice what it says here. The
effect of righteousness, whenever we receive, whenever God has
imputed righteousness to us in Christ, right? Whenever we receive
that in the new birth and conversion, whenever we are converted by
the truth, whenever God brings us to believe the gospel, The
effect of that righteousness that Christ has given to us is
that the people will have quietness and assurance forever. The effect
of righteousness is quietness and assurance. Isaiah chapter
40 verses 1 through 2 says this, it says, Comfort ye my people,
sayeth your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem
and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity
is pardoned, for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for
all her sins." Now let me ask you, if we don't have an assurance,
how can that be a comfort to us? Right here, this is telling
us to cry to the people of God and tell them that their iniquity
is pardoned. And whenever they hear that,
that becomes a comfort to them. Well, it can't become a comfort
if faith hasn't given you a hope that that is yours. Romans chapter eight, verses
14 through 16 says this, for as many as are led by the spirit
of God, they are the sons of God. For you have not received
the spirit of bondage again. We just read this. I'm sorry.
We just read that one. I won't read that one again for
time sake. 2 Timothy 4 verse 8, it says, henceforth, there
is laid up for me. This is Paul speaking to Timothy,
right? He says, therefore, there is, not there might be, not that
I sure hope so. He says, there is laid up for
me, not just the elect. He said me, he applies this to
him. He says, there is laid up for
me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous
judge shall give me at that day. And not to me only, but unto
all them also that love his appearing. Paul himself had an assurance
that the inheritance was his. Brethren, the spirit bear witness
to the child of God that they are. truly children of God. Those who this witness is not
given, not children. If they're not given that witness,
they're not children. Only the ones who are the children
of God are going to be given the witness that they are His. Not based on false securities
from outward things, but from inward things. And so faith is
a substance of things hoped for. It's the evidence of things not
seen. Brethren, does your faith undergird
or support your hope so that you might have a full assurance?
Well, that's what the Holy Spirit has given to you for. And I pray
that you might have that assurance. Any questions or comments? Well,
I wanted to ask one verse from the Philippians chapter one and
verse six. Second word. What's the second
word in that verse? Being confident. What does it
say in the Does it say confident in the Spanish Bible? Yes, more
like the insurance. Sure, sure. Being confident of
this very thing that he which hath begun a good work in you
will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. We surely can
be confident that if Jesus starts that he's going to finish it.
If he's given you faith that he's going to give you Everything,
all the promises of God are yay and amen in Christ Jesus, right?
Being confident of this very thing. And then there's one more,
and I guess it's Jordan. Chapter one, verse 24. Now unto him that is able to
keep you from falling and to present you faultless before
the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. What was the first
part I did here? to keep us without the evil. There we go. And see, that's another aspect
of assurance that can be preached on in the fact of perseverance
or preservation. These last two verses that we've
looked at have to do with continuing in the faith, to continue believing
these things, not letting us fall away. But to some, and I
guess to the point of my main point of why I brought these
passages up today, is the fact of even knowing that we're even
saved. Some people don't believe that what Christ did was for
them, it's just a hope. They believe, they believe in
sovereign grace, they believe in the church, they believe in
all these things, but they say we can't have a confidence that
we're truly that person. We just can have hope that we
are, so we won't know until the very end whether or not we're
elect or not. But as of right now, we just
have a hope given to us. Whereas that hope that we have
is given to us by God as an assurance that we are his children, that
the Holy Spirit is gonna tell us. And somehow, I don't know
how, all I know is somehow the Holy Spirit is inwardly, spiritually,
in my mind or in my heart, however he does it, is going to convince
me that I'm his. And that what he said is true
and what he said is true about me. And as Kevin said, because
of that, if that's the case, if that's the case, if we are
his children, then we can be confident that he who began that
work is going to finish this work in us. And we're not going
to fall away. You know, some people believe
you can be saved and lost. You know, you can lose your soul.
That's because they don't understand. They have not been given an understanding
of how salvation is gotten to begin with. They still believe
that you get your salvation by something you do. Therefore,
you can lose your salvation by something that you do. But here,
as Kevin pointed out in these two passages, we can be confident
that He is keeping us, not we're keeping ourselves. that he is
that, and he's the one who is, as he said, powerful, and I like
how the translation there makes it powerful. Now unto him that
is able, or him who has the power to keep you from falling, to
present you faultless before the presence of his Lord. See,
it still isn't nothing about anything we do outwardly. It's
all about his work inside us, and for us. What he's done for
us in the cross, and by his Spirit, what he's doing inwardly to us,
by renewing our mind, keeping us from falling away, keeping
us from turning away, keeping us from apostatizing. Now, does
that mean that we won't wander from him? No, we're going to
sin. We're going to come into seasons
of sin. There are going to be times that we feel like we've
wandered away from God, but he's never wandered away from us.
He's always there with us. And so, amen on those passages
of scripture. And maybe one of these days we'll
do another study on perseverance and preservation. I believe it's
preservation more than perseverance. We're told to persevere in the
faith, but the only reason we persevere is because we've been
preserved by God. And that's the same coin, two
sides. Our perseverance is because God's
preserving us. And so he's the one who keeps
us, therefore we persevere. But we may do another study on
that. We did that not too long ago,
so that's why I didn't get into that aspect here. But we'll do
that again sometime. Anybody else got any questions
or comments? Any other points that you might wanna make? All right. Praise the Lord, I
pray that that's been a edifying word for you guys today. All
right, anybody have any prayer requests or anything before we
dismiss? I want to thank you guys for continuing to pray for
my grandmother. Update on her. She is going to be going back
to her home on Monday, I believe it is. They were able to work
out. She's taken in the hospital because
of pneumonia. She's been in there and they've
got her hydrated. They've got the pneumonia gone.
And now they've got a home health company that's going to come
in and set up stuff in her house. and have kind of round the clock
care there for her where she's able to do physical therapy.
They're hoping to get some physical therapy where she at least can
get up on a walker again. So that's what they're gonna
do there at her house where she lives in Bristol, Oklahoma. So
be in prayer for them and all the people involved, for my family
and everything like that. We just, we wanted to keep her
here might be committed to take care of her as long as she's
alive. But with all the stuff that she
needs now, because she's bedridden, we don't have any room here for
her. The hospital bed, the lift that
lifts her out of the bed, and all that kind of stuff, we don't
have any room for that here. So they decided that it would
be best for her just to stay down there. And if she gets rehabilitated,
then maybe she can come back here. Anyway, keep praying for
my grandma. Keep remembering the Carlson
family and Brother Ed. We heard from him this week,
finally, and they still haven't made the decision on what they're
gonna do with his son's body. Was it still in Texas? Is that
what they said? Have they got it back here yet? I don't know
yet. All I know is that they were gonna do some sort of a
memorial. Yeah, they were gonna do a memorial down in Texas at
his daughter His daughter was handling all of the stuff. But
he is on his way back home, or back home, and has a grandson
that's staying with him. And we're assuming that it's
his daughter's son and not his other grandsons. His other grandsons are in prison,
I think. All right, anybody else got anything?
Nope, all right. Heavenly Father, we thank you
again for this day. We thank you for the Holy Spirit
that you give to your people to give them hope, a true hope,
not a hope so hope, but a true hope that is a confident expectation
that the promises that have been promised in Christ Jesus have
been given to us. So Father Lord, we are so thankful
that you have done this work because truly, if we look with
spiritual eyes, at our flesh and the things produced by our
flesh, we can see that they are not worthy, that they are not
able to make us right before God or keep us in good standing
with God. And therefore, Father, our faith
would wane. But Lord, because you give us
a supernatural faith, a divine faith, and that you've given
us an assurance of hope, Lord, we are preserved. We continue
to walk in the spirit looking to Christ alone. So, Father,
I'm so thankful today for Christ Jesus and what he's done for
us that we might receive the benefits of all that he has done.
And so, Father, we just ask that you be with each person here
today as they leave, that they might walk in that truth of God's
word. Father, that that might be an
encouragement to them this week as they live. And we pray that
you give them safety, throughout the week and that Christ would
be exalted and honored through our lives as he moves and works
and we find our being in him. Lord, we just ask that you might
continue to be with this church, that we might be a place of refuge
for those to come who seek the truth, who seek fellowship and
love of a congregation. Father, we pray that those who
are in Joplin or the surrounding areas that believe these truths,
Lord, that you might draw them and bring them to us as we find
encounters here and there or wherever, or just supernaturally,
Father, out of nowhere, that you might bring them to us, that
we might be able to worship and to fellowship together in the
labors of the gospel. Father, we just are grateful
once again that you've given us life and life abundant through
the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's all because of him that
we come this morning and we exalt him and praise him. And it's
in his name that we pray. Amen.