Inspired of the Holy Spirit, Paul declared, “For the invisible things of him [God] from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,…so that they are without excuse” (Rom 1:20). God has provided to humble observers of the universe ample evidence for His existence, evidence available in every culture and time in history. Thus there is no excuse for rejecting the witness of creation. No wonder the psalms twice declare bluntly, “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God” (Ps 14:1; 53:1).
Christians have long pointed to the works of creation as proof of design and thus of a designer, i.e., Creator. Atheists have insisted that science would solve all questions about the cosmos and thus do away with the need for a God to explain anything. And they have persisted in this delusion in spite of the fact that, with each discovery science makes, the evidence for God becomes ever more irresistible.
Every door science opens reveals ten as yet unopened doors. While knowledge of the universe is expanding exponentially, the unknown expands even faster, like receding images in a hall of mirrors. Scientific discoveries overwhelmingly necessitate a power and wisdom, without beginning or end and infinitely beyond human comprehension, which alone could have brought all into existence.
Nowhere is the evidence for God stronger than in life forms, especially since the discovery of the electron microscope and invention of computers. Investigating the molecular level of life, we have discovered that its intricate design and ingenious function are beyond imagination. Reflecting that fact 3,000 years in advance, David said, “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works…” (Ps 139:14). Observing the astonishing design and function even of microbes or insects, let alone human bodies, one is forced to admit that David was right: we could not have evolved, we could only have been created.
Even such a determined proponent of evolution as Richard Dawkins confesses that living things “give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”1 He even admits that the nucleus of every cell (the smallest living unit, of which there are trillions in the human body) contains “a digitally coded database larger, in information content, than all 30 volumes of the Encyclopaedias Britannica put together.”2 Just the mathematical odds of getting millions of letters lined up in the right order by chance is off the possibility chart.
For life, something even more amazing is involved than the chance aligning of billions of chemical molecules in the right order. Dawkins refers to a digitally coded data-base! This is recent terminology never imagined by Darwin. Not only must the DNA molecules be put together correctly, but they must, like letters, express information in a language providing instructions to be followed.
Each person at the moment of conception begins as a single cell. How does that cell know what to do to construct a body composed of trillions of individual cells of different kinds and different functions? Most school children know the answer: imprinted in that original cell are instructions for the construction and operation of the human body—instructions which will be followed unerringly. DNA replicates this blueprint into every cell produced. And every cell, amazingly, will know which part of those directions it is to follow.
Today’s school child also knows that DNA has an incredible capacity for storing information. The information contained in DNA the size of a pinhead would fill a stack of books 500 times as high as the distance from earth to the moon! It would take tens of thousands of desktop computers to store and process that amount of data.
The world’s fastest supercomputer is now being completed. It is called “Blue Gene” and will perform one quadrillion (1 with 15 zeros after it) calculations per second! It is being built to map the three billion chemical letters in the human genome, equal to a 100,000-page run-on sentence of operating instructions for a human being. All put together by chance?
Blue Gene’s first task will be to figure out how the body makes just one protein molecule. To solve that problem it will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for a full year! Yet the body, following the instructions imprinted in DNA, creates a protein molecule in a fraction of a second. Were the instructions which this computer will take a year to understand arrived at by random processes? All this for just one protein molecule! “The probability of the required order in a single basic protein molecule arising purely from chance is estimated at one chance in 1 followed by 43 zeros. Since thousands of complex protein molecules are required to build a simple cell, probability moves…outside the realm of possibility.” 3
It takes many different kinds of enzymes (made of protein) to decode/translate the genetic information encoded into DNA—and the enzymes are independently encoded to do this. So it would do no good for evolution (even if it could) to imprint genetic information on DNA; at the same time it would have to independently encode the enzymes to translate it. DNA and the enzymes to decode it could not “evolve” over a period of time. All must be in perfect working order from the start. At the molecular level evolution is a bad joke!
Years ago the conundrum was, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Now it’s “Which came first, protein or DNA?” It takes protein to construct DNA, but it takes DNA to make protein. Obviously, both were created at once; neither could have evolved.
But the lesson of DNA points far beyond the statistical impossibility of it all somehow falling together through random processes over great time. The three billion chemical letters express information in a language which must be read to be usable! A language necessarily involves ideas framed within grammatical rules and can be created and expressed only by intelligence. This moves us beyond statistics and matter into another realm, involving issues—and issues cannot be comprehended by tissues.
Language expresses thoughts—and thoughts are not physical! They may be articulated in physical form, such as sounds or words and sentences on a page or the coded chemical letters in DNA. Obviously, however, the thoughts being conveyed by the language are independent of the material upon which they are expressed. A sentence may be written on paper, wood, sand, a computer chip, or audio tape, but none of these originated the message. It must have an intelligent, nonphysical source independent of the physical means of storage or communication. The Bible, of course, says that the God who encoded the DNA is a spirit (Jn 4:24).
The fact that life is created and functions by language originating from an intelligent, nonphysical source forever finishes evolution. There is no way that chemicals could put together intelligent thoughts in a language that contains the instructions for constructing and operating even a single cell, much less the trillions of cells in the human body! The fact that DNA is designed to replicate itself precisely and only fails to do so through destructive error eliminates even theistic evolution.
We are driven by science and logic to admit that life in any form can have its source only in a God who is independent of the material universe. That there cannot be more than one source is proved by the uniformity and universality of the language. These inescapable facts refute not only atheism but pantheism and polytheism, the major delusions of paganism.
DNA, of course, does not understand the information encoded into it. It is a mechanism built and programmed by the Originator of the encoded language to follow His instructions automatically. And the most complex mechanism built by DNA is the human brain. More advanced than any computer yet built by man, it contains some 100 billion nerve cells connected by 240 miles of nerve fibers involving 100 trillion connections.
For all of its complexity, the brain no more originates or understands what it is doing than does DNA. The brain does not originate thoughts. If it did, we would have to do whatever our brains decided. On the contrary, we (the real persons inside) do the thinking and deciding, and our brains take these nonphysical thoughts and translate them into physical actions through a connection between the spirit and body that science can’t fathom.
Wilder Penfield, one of the world’s leading neurosurgeons, describes the brain as a computer programmed by something independent of itself—the mind. Science cannot escape the fact that man himself, like his Creator, must be a nonmaterial being in order to originate the thoughts processed by the brain. But man did not originate thought itself. He did not create himself nor give himself the capacity to think. The Bible says that God, who is a spirit, created man “in his own image” (Gn 1:27), that man is a “living soul” (2:7), i.e., a nonphysical being made like unto his Creator, capable of thinking thoughts and making decisions. This ability makes him morally responsible to God. To escape that responsibility is the sole reason for atheism.
Not only has science failed to do away with God, but the latest data from computers and the examination of life at the molecular level confirm what the Bible has always said. Christians have wondered for centuries what was meant by the Word of God dividing even between “the joints and marrow” (Heb 4:12). Now we know that the language God has encoded in the DNA in the act of creation does exactly that. But God communicates to man in his spirit in a higher language which “is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (4:12). This Word of God is “for ever…settled in heaven” (Ps 119:89).
Long before modern science, David wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world” (Ps 19:1-4).
It becomes ever more thrilling and increasingly glorifying to God to allow Scripture to expound upon the essential role language plays in all creation. Genesis 1 tells us that God said, “Let there be light,” etc. The New Testament tells us that “the Word was God. All things were made by him…” (Jn 1:1-2). Later we read, “the worlds were framed by the word of God” (Heb 11:3). And the universe is “by the same word…reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men” (2 Pt 3:7). Jesus said, “the word that I have spoken…shall judge him in the last day” (Jn 12:48).
Man’s capacity to study and understand DNA language is proof that he is a nonphysical being like the Originator of DNA, thus capable of a spiritual relationship with the Creator which is far different from that of any part of man’s body. His ability to form conceptual ideas and to express them in speech allows man to receive communication from his Creator in language which man (but not animals) can understand and obey. And conscience tells us when we disobey. The Bible says that believing and obeying this communication from God is absolutely essential for spiritual life. Moses declared 3,500 years ago, “[M]an doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live” (Dt 8:3).
Since Adam’s rebellion, his descendants are by nature all “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1) and must be born again to spiritual life by the Word of God through the Spirit of God into the family of God: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (Jn 3:6); “Being born again…by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever….And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you” (1 Pt 1:23, 25); “the word of faith, which we preach” (Rom. 10:8). The psalmist said, “thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name” (Ps 138:2).
Miraculously, the children of their “father the devil” (Jn 8:44) can become the “children of God by faith in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:26). Yes, “now are we the sons of God…” (1 Jn 3:2). After receiving spiritual life from Him through believing His Word, we are capable of and “must worship him in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4:24).
One can see the serious error of looking to physical things like baptism and the communion wafer for spiritual life. Yes, Jesus said, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you” (Jn 6:53). Clearly, by eating and drinking He meant believing: “he that believeth on me shall never thirst …every one which …believeth on him, may have everlasting life” (vv. 35-40). As He explained to those who could not understand, “…flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (v. 63).
Man’s existence as a nonphysical being does not end with the death of his material body. For the Christian, death means a temporary separation for both soul and spirit “to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor 5:8). That separation ends when “the Lord himself shall descend from heaven [and] bring with him” the souls and spirits of those who have been in His presence while their bodies have been asleep in the grave. “With a shout” He will call their bodies from the grave to rejoin their souls and spirits, the living believers shall be transformed and “caught up [raptured] together with them…to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Cor 15:50-53; 1 Thes 4:13-18). Fantastic? No more so than creation!
His bride, snatched from earth and taken to His Father’s house as He promised (Jn 14:1-3), after the “judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor 5:10), will be “arrayed in fine linen, clean and white” and married to her Lord (Rv 19:7-8). The One who returns triumphantly to the Mount of Olives (from which He ascended – Acts 1:9-12) leading the armies of heaven as “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS,”…wearing “a vesture dipped in blood,…is called The Word of God” (Rv 19:11-16). TBC
“See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven.” – Hebrews 12:25.
WE ARE NOT a cowering multitude gathered in trembling fear around the smoking mount of Horeb; we have come where the great central figure is the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. We have gathered virtually in the outer circle of which the saints above and holy angels make the inner ring. And now tonight Jesus speaks to us in the gospel. So far as his gospel shall be preached by us here, it shall not be the word of man, but the word of God; and although it comes to you through a feeble tongue, yet the truth itself is not feeble, nor is it any less divine than if Christ himself should speak it with his own lips. “See that ye refuse not him that speaketh.”
The text contains: –
I. AN EXHORTATION OF A VERY SOLEMN, EARNEST KIND.
It does not say, “Refuse not him that speaketh,” but “See that ye refuse not him that speaketh” – that is, “be very circumspect that by no means, accidental or otherwise, you do refuse the Christ of God, who now in the gospel speaks to you. Be watchful, be earnest, lest even through inadvertence ye should refuse the prophet of the gospel dispensation – Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who speaks in the gospel from heaven to the sons of men.” It means, “Give earnest heed and careful attention, that by no means, and in no way you refuse him that speaketh.” My object tonight will be to help you, beloved friends, especially you that have not laid hold on Christ, who are not the children of Zion, who are joyful in their king – to help you tonight, that you may see to it.
And to go to our point at once, we shall have many things to say, and we shall speak them in brief sentences, hoping that the thoughts as they arise may be accepted by your mind, and may, by God’s Spirit, work upon your hearts and conscience. There is great need of this exhortation from many considerations not mentioned in the text. A few of these we will hint at first.
First, from the excellency of the Word of God itself. “See that ye refuse not him that speaketh.” That which Jesus speaks concerns your soul, concerns your everlasting destiny; it is God’s wisdom; God’s way of mercy; God’s plan by which you may be saved. If this were a secondary matter, ye need not be so earnest about receiving it, but of all things under heaven, nothing so concerns you as the gospel. See, then, that ye refuse not this precious Word, more precious than gold or rubies – which alone can save your souls.
See to this, again, because there is an enemy of yours who will do all he can that you may refuse him that speaketh. Satan is always busiest where the gospel is most earnestly preached. Let the sower scatter handfuls of seeds, and birds will find out the seeds and soon devour them. Let the gospel be preached, and these birds of the air, fiends of hell, will soon by some means try to remove these truths from your hearts, lest they should take root in your hearts and bring forth fruit unto repentance.
Give earnest heed, again, “that ye refuse not him that speaketh,” because the tendency of your own mind will be to refuse Christ. Oh! sirs, ye are fallen through your first father, Adam, and the tendencies now of your souls are towards evil, and not towards the right, and when the Lord comes from heaven to you, you will reject him if left to yourselves. Watch, then, I say; see that ye refuse not, stir up your souls, awaken your minds, lest this delirious tendency of sin should make you angry with your best friend, and constrain you to thrust from you that which is your only hope for the hereafter. When a man knows that he has a bad tendency which may injure him , if he be wise he watches against it. So, knowing this, which God’s Word tells you, watch, I pray you, lest ye refuse him that speaketh.
Bethink you well, too, that you have need to see to this, because some of you have rejected Christ long enough already. He has spoken to you from this pulpit, from other pulpits, from the Bible, from the sick-bed. He spoke to you lately in the funeral knell of your buried friend – many voices, but all with this one note, “Come to me, repent, be saved”; but until now ye have refused “him that speaketh.” Will not the time past suffice to have played this mischievous game? Will not the years that have rolled into eternity bear enough witness against you? Must ye add to all this weight by again refusing? Oh! I implore you to see to it that ye do not again “refuse him that speaketh from heaven,” for there is not a word of that which he speaks, but what is love to your souls. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came not armed with terrors to work wrath among the sons of men; all was mercy, all was grace, and to those who listen to him he has nothing to speak but tenderness and loving kindness; your sins shall be forgiven you; the time of your ignorances God will wink at; your transgressions shall be cast into the depths of the sea; for you there shall be happiness on earth, and glory hereafter. Who would not listen when it is good news to be heard? Who would not listen when the best tidings that God himself ever sent forth from the excellent glory is proclaimed by the noblest Ambassador that ever spake to men, namely, God’s own Son, Jesus, the once crucified, but now exalted Savior? For these reasons, then, at the very outset I press upon you this exhortation, “See that ye refuse not him that speaketh such precious truth”, which the enemy would fain take out of your minds: truth which you yourselves have refused long enough already, and truth which is sweet, and will be exceedingly precious to your souls if you receive it.
But now the text gives us:
II. SOME FURTHER REASONS for seeing to it that we do not “refuse him that speaketh.”
One reason I see in the text is this: see to this because there are many ways of refusing him that speaketh, and you may have fallen into one or other of these. See to it; pass over in examination your own state and conduct, lest you may have been refusing Christ. Some refuse the Savior by not hearing of him. In his day there were some that would not listen, and there are such now. The Sabbath days of some of you are not days of listening to the gospel. Where were you this morning? Where are you usually all the Lord’s Day long? Remember, you cannot live in London, where the gospel is preached, and be without responsibility. Though you will not come to the house of God to hear of it, yet be sure of this, the kingdom of God hath come nigh unto you. You may close your ears to the invitation of the gospel, but at last you will not be able to close your ear to the denunciation of wrath. If you will not come and hear of Christ on the cross, you must one day see for yourselves Christ on his throne. “See that ye refuse not him that speaks to you from heaven” by refusing to be found where his gospel is proclaimed.
Many come to hear it, and yet refuse him that speaketh, for they hear listlessly. In many congregations – I will not judge this – a very large proportion of hearers are listless hearers. It little matters to them what is the subject in hand: they hear the sentences and phrases that come from the speaker’s tongue, but these penetrate the ear only, and never reach their heart. Oh! how sad it is that this should be the case with almost all who have heard the gospel long, and who are not converted! They get used to it; no form of alarm could reach them, and perhaps no form of invitation could move them to penitence. The preacher may exhaust his art. They are like the adder that is deaf. He may know how to charm others, but these he cannot charm, charm he never so wisely.
Oh! see ye gospel hearers up yonder, and ye below here, that have been hearing Christ these many years, see that ye refuse not him that day by day during so long a time has spoken to you in the preaching of the gospel out of heaven.
But there are some who do hear, and have a very intelligent idea of what they hear, but who actually refuse to believe it. For divers reasons best known to themselves they reject the testimony of the incarnate God. They hear that God the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and he hath borne testimony that whosoever believeth in him is not condemned. They know but they will not believe in him. They will give you first one excuse, and then another, but all the excuses put together will never mitigate the fact that they do not believe the testimony of God concerning his Son, Jesus Christ, and so they “refuse him that speaketh.” How many, how many here are by their unbelief refusing the Christ that speaks out of heaven?
Some are even offended at the gospel, as in Christ’s day. When he came to a tender point in his preaching they went back and walked no more with him. Such there are to be found in our assemblies. The gospel galls them; there is some point that touches their prejudices, something that touches their favorite sin, and they are vexed and irritable. They ought to be angry – angry with their sin – but they are angry with Christ instead. They ought to denounce themselves, and patiently seek mercy, but this is not palatable to them; they would rather denounce the preacher, or denounce the preacher’s Master.
Some will even hear the gospel, the very gospel of Christ to catch at words and pervert sentences to make play of the preacher’s words which he uses, when they are honestly the best he can find, and, worse still, make play with the sense, too, with the very gospel – and find themes for loose jokes and profane and ribald words, even in the cross. Dicing, like the soldier at the cross foot, with the blood falling on them, so some make merriment when the blood of Jesus is falling upon them to their condemnation. May it not be so with any here present, but there have been such who have even reviled the Savior, and had hard words for God in human flesh – could not believe that he bore the guilt of sin, could not admire the love astounding that made him suffer for the guilt of his enemies – could not see anything admirable in the heroic sacrifice of the great Redeemer, but rather turned their heel against their benefactor, and poured forth venomous words on him that loved the sons of men and died saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
And some have practically shown they have refused him that speaketh, for they have begun to persecute his people; they have maltreated those that sought the glory of God, and anything that had a savor of Christ about it has been despicable and detestable to them.
Oh! dear hearers, I shall ask you, since there are all these ways of refusing Christ, to see to it that ye do not fall into any of them. The grosser forms, perhaps, you would be too shocked at, but don’t fall into the others. Do not especially fall into that indifference which has as much of insult to the Savior almost as blasphemy. Is it nothing to you, is it nothing to you that God should come from heaven that he might be just in the salvation of men, and that, coming from heaven to be thus just, he should himself suffer that we might not suffer – the Christ of God bleed and die instead of the undeserving, hell deserving sinners? Shall this be told you – pressed upon you – and will you refuse it? Will you refuse him who speaks himself, in his own sacrifice, and in the blood which he hath carried within the veil continues now to speak – will you, will you refuse him? Pray God you may see to it that in no form you do.
And now passing on, but keeping to the same point, striking the hammer on the head of the same nail, there are many reasons why men refuse Christ; therefore, see that for none of these reasons ye do it. Some refuse him out of perfect indifference; the great mass of men have not a thought above their meat and their drink. Like the cock that found the diamond on the dunghill, they turn it over and wish it were a grain of barley. What care they for heaven, or the pardon of sin? Their mind does not reach to that. See that ye – that ye, none of you, are so sensuous as to “refuse him that speaketh from heaven” for such a reason as this. Some reject him because of their self-righteousness: they are good enough. Jesus Christ speaks against them, they say; he does not applaud their righteousness, he ridicules them rather; he tells them that their prayers are long prayers, and their many good works are, after all, a poor ground for reliance.” So as the Savior will not patronize their righteousness, neither will they have to do with him. Oh! say not ye are rich and increased in goods; ye are naked, and poor, and miserable. Say not ye can win heaven by your merits; ye have none; your merits drag you down to hell. Yet many will refuse the Savior because of the insanity of their self-righteousness.
Some, too, reject him because of their self-reliant wisdom. “Why,” they say, “this is a very thoughtful age.” And everywhere I hear it dinned into my ears, “thoughtful preaching,” “thinkings,” “intellectual preaching.” And what a mass of rottenness before high heaven the whole lot is that is produced by these thinking preachers and these intellectual men! For my part I would rather say to them, “See that ye refuse not him that speaketh,” for one word of God is better than all the thoughts of all the philosophers, and one sentence from the lip of Christ I do esteem to be more precious than the whole Alexandrian library, and the Bodleian also if you will, so much as it comes from man. Nay, it is the thinking of Christ we have to think about; otherwise our thinking may prove our curse. A man, if he is drowning, if he have a rope thrown to him, had better lay hold of it than merely be there thinking about the possibilities of salvation by some other means. While your souls are being lost, sirs, there is better employment for you than merely indulging in rhapsodies and inventions of your own supposed judgment. Take hold of this, the gospel of Jesus revealed of God, lest ye perish, and perish with a vengeance.
Some reject the Savior from another cause: they do not like the holiness of Christ’s teaching. They refuse him that speaketh because they think Christ’s religion too strict, too precise, cuts off their pleasures, condemns their lusts. Yes, yes, it is so, but to reject Christ for such a reason is certainly to be most unreasonable, for it should be in every man a desire to be delivered from these passions and lusts, and because Christ can deliver us, shall we, therefore, reject him? God forbid that we should be led astray by such a reason.
Some reject him because they have a fear of the world. If they were Christians, they would probably be laughed at as Methodistic, Presbyterian, Puritanic, or some other name. And shall we lose our souls to escape the sneers of fools? He is not a man – call him by some other name – he is no man that flings away his soul because he is such a coward that he cannot bear to do and believe the right, and bear the frown of fashion.
There are others who refuse the Savior simply out of procrastination. They have no reason for it, but they hope they shall have a more convenient season. They are young people as yet, or they are not so very old, or if they are old, yet still life will linger a little while, and so still they refuse him that speaketh.
I have not mentioned a worthy reason for refusing him that speaketh, nor do I believe there is a worthy reason. It seems to me that if it be so, that God himself has taken upon himself human form, and has come here to effect our redemption from our sin and misery, there cannot be any reason that will stand a moment’s looking at for refusing him that speaketh. It must be my duty and my privilege to hear what it is that God has got to say to me: it must be my duty to lend him all my heart to try and understand what it is that he says, and then to give him all my will to do, or to be whatever he would have me to do or to be.
“But did God thus come?” says one. I always feel that the very declaration is its own proof. No heart could ever have contrived or invented this as a piece of imagination, the love, the story of the redeeming love of God in Christ Jesus. If I had no evidence but the mere statement, I think I must accept it, for it wears truth upon its very forefront. Who should conceive it? The offended God comes here to redeem his creatures from their own offense.
Since he must in justice punish, he comes to bear the punishment himself, that he may be just and yet be inconceivably gracious! My soul flies into the arms of this revelation; it seems to be the best news my troubled conscience ever had – God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. Oh! there cannot be a reasonable motive for rejecting the Savior, and I, therefore, impress it upon you, since so many unreasonable motives carry men away, see that ye refuse not him that speaketh, and may the Spirit of God grant that you may not be able to refuse.
But now coming to the text again, we have: –
III. A VERY HIGH MOTIVE GIVEN for seeing that we refuse not him that speaketh.
It is this – because in refusing him, we shall be despising the highest possible authority. When Moses spake in God’s name, it was no light thing to refuse such an ambassador. Still, Moses was but a man. Though clothed with divine authority, yet he was but a man and a servant of God. But Jesus Christ is God by nature. See that ye refuse not him who is of heavenly origin, who came from heaven, who is clothed with such divine powers, that every word he speaks is virtually spoken from heaven, and who, being now in heaven, speaks through his ever living gospel directly out of the excellent glory. Regard ye this, I pray you, and remember well the parable which Jesus gave. A certain man planted a vineyard, and let it out to husbandmen, and when the time came that he should receive the fruit he sent a servant, and they stoned him. He sent another, and they beat him. He sent another, and they maltreated him. After he had thus sent many of his servants, and the dressers of the vineyard had incurred his high displeasure by the shameful way in which they had treated the servants, he sent his own son, and he said, “They will reverence my son.” It was the highest degree of guilt when they said, “This is the heir; let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours.” Then they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. You know how the Savior was treated by the sons of men; but here is the point I aim at; it is this: to reject Jesus Christ, to refuse him, to refuse merely his gospel, if he did not speak in it, might not be so high a misdemeanor, but to refuse him! – I don’t know how it is, but my heart feels very heavy, even to sinking, at the thought that any man here should be able to refuse Christ, the Son of God, the Everlasting and the ever Blessed. But I cannot speak out what I feel. It fills my soul with horror to think that any creature should refuse his God, when his God speaks, but much more when God comes down on earth in infinite, wondrous, immeasurable love, takes upon himself the form of man, and suffers, and then turns round to his rebellious creature and says, “Listen, I am ready to forgive you; I am willing to pardon you; do but listen to me.” Oh! it seems monstrous that men should refuse Christ! I don’t know how you feel about it, but if you have ever measured that in your thoughts, it will have seemed to be the most monstrous of all crimes. If, in order to be saved, the terms were hard and the conditions difficult, I could understand a man saying, “It mocks me,” but when the gospel is nothing but this, “Turn ye, turn ye; why will ye die?”; when it is nothing but, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,” what shall I say? I cannot fashion an excuse for any of you, and if you, after having heard the gospel, be cast into hell, I dare not think that its utmost pains will be too severe for so high an insult to such wondrous love. Ye will not be saved, sirs; ye put from you your own life; ye will not be saved when the way of salvation is plain, easy, simple, close to your hand. “What chains of vengeance they deserve, That slight the bonds of love.” I cannot – I could not – conceive a punishment too severe for men who, knowing that their rejection of Christ will bring upon them everlasting punishment, yet willfully reject him. Ye choose your own delusion. If ye drank poison and did not know it, I could pity you; if you made all your veins to swell with agony, and caused your death – but when we stand up and say, “Sirs, it is poison; see others drop and die; touch it not!” – when we give you something a thousand times better, and bid you take that, but you will not take that, but will have the poison – then if you will, you must. If, then, you would destroy your soul, it must be so; but we would plead with you yet again, “See, see that ye refuse not him that speaketh.” I wish I could raise him before you tonight – even the Christ of God, and bid him stand here, and you should see his hands and his feet, and you should ask, “What are these marks we see there?” He would reply, “These are the wounds that I received when I suffered for the sons of men,” and he bares his side and says, “See here, here went the spear when I died that sinners might live.” In glory now, yet once, saith he, this face was defiled with spittle, and this body mangled with Pilate’s scourge and Herod’s rod, and I, whom angels worshipped, was treated as a menial, ay, worse, God himself forsook me, Jehovah hid his face from me, that I, bearing the punishment of sin, might really bear it, not in fiction, but in fact, and might suffer the equivalent for all the miseries that souls redeemed by me ought to have suffered had they been cast into hell. Will ye look at his wounds, and yet refuse him? Will you hear the story of his love, and yet reject him? Must he go away and say in his heart, “They have refused me; they have refused me; I told them of salvation; I showed them how I bought salvation; they have refused me; I will go my way, and they shall never see my face again till that day when they shall say, ‘Mountains fall upon us; hide us from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne’”? If you will not have him in mercy, you must have him in judgment, and if the silver scepter of God will not touch you, the Christ of God, the man of Nazareth, will come a second time on the clouds of heaven, and woe unto you in that tremendous day. Then shall the nations of the earth weep and wail because of him. They would not have him as their Savior; they must have him as their Judge, and out of his mouth shall the sentence come, “Depart! Depart!”
Now I have to close with the last reason that is given in the text why we should see that we “refuse not him that speaketh.” It is this: that if we do: –
IV. THERE IS A DOOM TO BE FEARED, for if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven.
You hear the din that goes up from the Red Sea when the angry billows leap over Pharaoh and his horsemen. Why is the king asleep in the midst of the waters? Why are the chivalry of Egypt cut off? They rejected Moses when he said, “Thus saith the Lord, Let my people go.” If Pharaoh escaped not when he refused him that spake on earth, oh! dreadful shall be that day when the Christ who this day speaks to you, and whom you reject, shall lift up the rods of his anger, and the lake of fire, more direful than the Red Sea, shall swallow up his adversaries. See you that next sight? A number of men are standing there holding censers of incense in their hands, and there stands Moses, the servant of God, and he says, “If these die the death of common men, God hath not spoken by me,” for they have rebelled against Moses. Do you see the sight? Can you picture it? If they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, how shall we escape if we refuse him that speaketh from heaven? Go through the peninsular of the Arabian desert. See how the tribes drop, one by one, and leave graves behind them as the track of their march. Of all that came out of Egypt, not one entered into Canaan. Who slew all these? They were all slain there because they resisted the Word of God by his servant Moses, and he swore in his wrath that they should not enter into his rest. If they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, how shall we escape if we refuse him that speaketh to us from heaven?
I might multiply instances and give you proof of how God avenged the refusal to listen to his servant Moses, but how much more will he avenge it if we listen not to Jesus Christ the Lord! “Oh!” says one, “you preach the terrors of the Lord.” The terrors of the Lord! – I scarce think of them; they are too dreadful for human language; but if I speak severely, even for a moment, it is in love. I dare not play with you, sinner; I dare not tell you sin is a trifle; I dare not tell you that the world to come is a matter of no great account; I dare not come and tell you that you need not be in earnest. I shall have to answer for it to my Master. I have these words ringing in my ears, “If the watchman warns them not, they shall perish, but their blood will I require at the watchman’s hands.” I cannot bear that I should have the blood of souls upon my skirts, and, therefore, do I again say to you – refuse what I say as much as you will; cast anything that is mine to the dogs; have nothing to do with it; but wherein I have spoken to you Christ’s Word, and I have told you his gospel, “Believe and live,” “He that believeth on him is not condemned,” “He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved.” Wherein it is Christ’s gospel, it is Christ that speaks, and I again say to you, for your soul’s sake, “Refuse not him that speaks from heaven to you.” May his Spirit sweetly incline you to listen to Christ’s Word, and may you be saved tonight.
If you don’t have Christ tonight, some of you never will have him. If you are not saved tonight, some of you never will be. ‘Tis now or never with you. God’s Spirit strives with you, conscience is a little awakened. Catch every breeze, catch every breeze; do not let this pass by. Oh! that tonight you might seek, and that tonight you might find he Savior. Else remember if you refuse him that speaks from heaven, he lifts his hands and swears that you shall not enter into his rest. Then are you lost, lost, lost, beyond all recall! God bless every one of you, and may we meet in heaven.
I do not know, I sometimes am afraid that there are not so many conversions as there used to be. If I thought there were no more souls to be saved by me in this place, under God, I would break away from every comfort, and go and find out a place where I could find some that God would bless. Are they all saved that will be? You seat holders, have I fished in this pond till there is no more to come? Is it to be so, that in all the ground where wheat ever will grow, wheat has grown, and there can be no more? My brethren and sisters in Christ, pray God to send his Spirit that there may be more brought to Jesus. If not, it is hard, hard work to preach in vain. Perhaps I grow stale and dull to you; I would not if I could help it. If I could learn how to preach, I would go to school. If I could find the best way to reach you I am sure I would spare no pains. I do not know what more to say, but if Christ himself shall be refused, how shall I speak for him? If his dear wounds, if his precious blood, if his dying groans, if his love to the souls of men all go for nothing, then my words cannot be anything; they may well go to the wind. But do, do turn ye to him. Cast not away your souls. Come to him; he will receive you; he waiteth to be gracious. Whosoever is heavy laden, let him come tonight. One tear, one sigh, one cry – send it up to him; he will hear you. Come and trust him; he will save you. God bless you for Christ’s love’s sake.
“… that you may know that you have eternal life.” 1 John 5:13
THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAN LIVING This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent. (John 17:3)
THE PROBLEM STATED
On four occasions the Bible declares, “The just shall live by faith”. (Hab. 2:4; Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11; Heb. 10:38) The life God gives is only for the just – but who are the just? The Bible leaves us in no doubt as to the answer:
“For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not.” (Ecc. l7:20) “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”. (Rom. 3:23)
GOD’S LAW DEMANDS!
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself”. (Luke10:27) By that standard we have all broken God’s law repeatedly and are condemned.
Nor is there any way that we, as sinners, could become just. Living a perfect life in the future (even if that were possible) could never merit the forgiveness for sins already committed or deliver from the judgment which God’s justice righteously demands.
Only God could declare a sinner to be “just” – but how could He, when His irrevocable law condemns us? For God simply to forgive the sinner by ‘sweeping his sin under the carpet’ so-to-speak would violate His own righteous law and character. God could be charged with being unjust.
THE PROBLEM SOLVED
Paul, inspired of the Holy Spirit, explains how God can justly justify sinners: “Being justified freely by his [God’s] grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation (mercy seat) through faith in his blood…for the remission of sins…that he [God] might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Rom3:24-26).
Forgiving the sinner and declaring him just comes only on the basis of Christ having paid the full penalty demanded by God’s justice against sin, and the sinner having accepted that payment on his behalf.
It cannot be bought through:
– good deeds – baptism – tears – religious imagery – Church attendance – scapulars – promises – religious festivals – sacraments – prayers – charitable gifts – or anything else
Only the infinite God himself, coming as a sinless man through the virgin birth, could bear, in our place, the infinite penalty we deserved. We cannot even begin to “live by faith” while “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph.2:1), which is mankind’s natural condition. We must be made “alive from the dead” (Rom.6:13) by receiving God’s forgiveness in Christ.
The Christian life of faith is only for those who are “in the faith” (2Cor.13:5). Living ‘a good Christian life’ is not the way to become a Christian. Only those who already are Christians can live that life. Nor is it lived in order to earn heaven. Such a thing is impossible! The Christian life is lived out of gratitude to Christ for having paid the penalty for our sin.
A Christian has been “born again” of the Spirit of God (John 3:3-8) through “the Word of God” (1Pet.1:23) by believing the gospel (Rom. 1:16) and is a “new creature” (2Cor.5:17) in Christ, having been “created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph.2:10). If we trust Him to do so, surely God will open the right doors, guide each step of every Christian’s life, and provide the means of fulfilling the “good works” which He has ordained for each of us.
LIFE BY FAITH – LIVE BY FAITH – WALK BY FAITH
Clearly, one must first enter upon the Christian life by faith in Christ in order to begin to “live by faith”. Paul exhorts us, “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him” (Col.2:6). And how did we receive Christ? As helpless, hopeless sinners who could do nothing for our own salvation but had to look entirely to Christ to save us. In that same attitude of unworthiness and complete dependence upon God for His grace and upon Christ to live His life through us, we live by faith the Christian life.
STRENGTH MAKE PERFECT IN WEAKNESS
Christ told Paul that His strength was perfected in Paul’s weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). We must stop trying to be strong in ourselves, and “be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might” (Eph. 6:10). The battle with the forces of evil, God assures us, will be won “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit…” (Zec.4:6). There is great joy, even in great trials, in trusting Christ and seeing what He can do. That the Christian life is to be lived by faith tells us that it comes supernaturally, not naturally, as we trust God and know and obey His Word. It cannot be by our own direction and strength but only under the leading and by the power of God, who alone is the proper object of faith.
EVIDENCE OF GOD WORKING IN YOUR LIFE – FRUIT BEARING
Yes, the Christian life is miraculous. Expect it to be! Beware, however, of the widespread unbiblical emphasis upon, and insatiable desire for, the miraculous, which foster delusion. The most powerful evidence of God’s supernatural work in our lives is found in the transformation of our character to Christlikeness.
The Lord Jesus told his disciples,
“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the Vine; no more can ye except ye abide in me. I am the Vine ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing”. (John 15:4-5).
Just as the Vine wants to reproduce its life in the branches so God wants to reproduce the life of the Lord Jesus in us. The single most important thing in the life of the believer is an intimate abiding love relationship with the Lord Jesus. The fruit that God is looking for in your life is the moral likeness to His Son. The Apostle Paul says, the “fruit of the Spirit,” is “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Gal. 5:22-23).
The “works of the flesh” (Gal. 5:19-21), no matter how exemplary, are not acceptable to God (Rom.8:8). To live the Christian life, we must learn to “live in the Spirit” and “walk in the Spirit” (Gal.5:25).
This is not to deny the benefit of education, diligence, hard work, prudent investment, experience and sound practice in earning our “daily bread” (Mt.6:11). Earthly success, however, though legitimate, is not the Christian’s goal in life. Christ declared, “…a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth” (Luke12:15);“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth…but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,… for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”. (Mt.6:19-21).
THE TESTING OF FAITH
The fact that the Christian life is supernatural does not guarantee “financial success” nor that we will be free of trouble, sorrow or pain. When Paul was in prison he was able to write, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Phil.4:13); and in the same context he declared, “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content” (v 11). The Christian life is too glorious to be easy. It must involve trials and testings. This was true of Christ himself as well as of the apostles and early church. Jesus said, “In the world ye shall have tribulation (John 16:33)….The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you…” (John15:19-20).
THE PURPOSE OF TESTING
The faith by which the Christian life is to be lived and which is described as “more precious than gold” must be tested by trials and difficulties. Why? So that when the faith by which the just live comes through the fire of adversity it will “be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (1Peter1:7). Of Christ, who “[left] us an example, that ye should follow his steps” (1Peter2:21), it was said, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross…” (Heb.12:2). We are able to endure earthly trials because our hope lies beyond this brief life: “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2Cor.4:17).
Those who have trusted God through deep trial testify that their faith has been strengthened and their joy increased. Having to depend totally on Christ draws us closer to Him and increases our love for Him.
Any counsel, help or support we offer to those in distress should bring them through the trial of faith with their roots deepened in Christ (Isa.43:2), rather than enable them to escape the very challenges God intends and the work He desires to effect in their hearts. By putting us in seemingly hopeless situations, God intends to move us from mere intellectual belief to practical trust in His provision.
THE TRIALS OF LIFE ARE MEANT TO MAKE US BETTER NOT BITTER!
William Law writes, “Whenever a man allows himself to have anxieties, fears, or complaints, he must consider his behaviour as either a denial of the wisdom of God or as a confession that he is out of His will”. Many who call them-selves Christians say they have trusted Christ with their eternal destiny, but seem unable to trust Him in this life – a fact which casts doubt on their relationship to Him. God wants to test our faith now – and for good reason.
Moses told the Israelites, “The Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no” (Deut.8:2-3). Oswald Chambers said, “God wants you to understand that it is a life of faith, not a life of sentimental enjoyment of His blessings…. Faith by its very nature must be tried…. “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him” (Job 13:15). This is the most sublime utterance of faith in the whole of the Bible.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me,” wrote David (Psalm23:4). He did not expect, much less plead, to be given another path that would bypass that terrible valley, but only that God would be with him through his trial. Living by faith involves confronting the difficulties of life, which indeed may have been allowed of God to test and correct. The Christian life includes learning where we have gone astray and being willing to be corrected and brought back into obedience to God and His Word. It is often in times of distress alone that God can break the hold of that which has drawn our affection away from Him, perhaps without our even knowing it.
PRAISE & WORSHIP
As we walk by faith and experience God’s faithfulness in trials, praise and worship well up within us. However, praise and worship is not merely singing repetitive words in an emotionally charged atmosphere. It is far more deeper than that. “Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and making melody in your heart to the Lord”. (Eph.5:19).
SOUND DOCTRINE
Sound doctrine, too, plays a vital role in the Christian life of faith. Paul’s life sets the example for us all. In describing his life to Timothy, he put doctrine first: “But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience, persecutions, afflictions….
Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2Tim.3:10-12). He also warned that “the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine” (4:3). We live in a day when doctrine is despised and entertainment is demanded in its place.
JESUS IS COMING AGAIN !
In the meanwhile, our confident trust in our Lord through the trials of this life of faith demonstrate the reality of our trust in Him for eternity. Let us remember that He is coming back again to rapture every true believer out of this evil world – “and so shall we ever be with the Lord”. (1Thes.4:16-18).
May He give us grace to live by faith as true Christians; and may earth’s trials strengthen our faith, deepen our love for God, increase our fellowship with and joy in Him, and bring honour and glory to Him for eternity!
Several years ago a pastor in Pennsylvania, concerned for the salvation of the many Roman Catholics in his community, invited me to come up and teach a seminar. First he asked me to send some of our publications so he could become more familiar with our ministry. After reviewing our Gospel tracts, he called me to cancel the seminar because he discovered that I teach the assurance of salvation. I explained to him that assurance is what makes God’s plan of salvation “good news.” God promises to save forever those who come to Him through Jesus (Heb. 7:25).
I asked him what good news do you have to share with Catholics if you preach eternal life is not everlasting but can be lost? Catholics already adhere to a “maybe” salvation that depends on what they do rather than what God has done through Jesus Christ. After many exchanges, this pastor was unwilling to believe God’s promise, that everyone who has been saved by grace through faith in Jesus shall be brought to glory.
Those who reject the doctrine of eternal security tend to place more emphasis on the subjective experiences of “professing” Christians than the objective truth of Scripture. They may know someone who was baptized, repeated a prayer or responded to an altar call, then later rejected the faith or turned to a life of habitual sin. These experiences become their proof that salvation has no assurance. But is there any way to know if these people were born again?
Judging someone’s spiritual condition is risky because no one can see a person’s heart. Opponents of assurance focus on man’s failures rather than on God’s divine power. Such misunderstandings can be overcome by discarding human reason and accepting divine revelation. Faith should not rest on the wisdom of man but on the power of God (1 Cor. 2:5).
CONSIDER THE WORD “ETERNAL”
The “eternal” Gospel (Rev. 14:6) of our “eternal” God (Rom. 16:26) promises every believer “eternal” life (1 John 5:13) and “eternal” glory (1 Pet. 5:10) in His “eternal” kingdom (2 Pet. 1:11). The “eternal” King (1 Tim. 1:16) called salvation “eternal” (Mark 16:20) because He has given believers “eternal” comfort (2 Thes. 2:16) by obtaining “eternal” redemption through the “eternal” Spirit who guarantees an “eternal” inheritance (Heb. 9:12-15; Eph. 1:14). According to God’s “eternal” purpose (Eph. 3:11), every believer has been saved from “eternal” judgment (Heb. 6:2), “eternal” destruction (2 Thes. 1:9) and “eternal” punishment in the “eternal” fire (Mat. 25:41, 46).
Eternal life is not only an infinite quantity of time (people in hell will live forever), but an eternal quality of life. It is an intimate relationship with Jesus whereby His life and divine nature is placed in every believer and every believer is in Him (2 Pet. 1:4; 1 John 5:20).
This life begins at the second birth when those who were dead in their sins are made alive in Christ (Eph. 2:4). Eternal life is everlasting because the very life of Christ (who can never die again) has been imparted to believers (Rom. 6:9).
But this leads to a provocative question. Knowing that sin is what brings spiritual death to the soul, what keeps Christians from dying again when they sin after their conversion? The apostle Paul gives the answer. It is because God no longer counts sins against those who have trusted Jesus as their substitute (Rom. 4:8; 2 Cor. 5:21).
God laid all their sins, past and future, on Jesus (Isaiah 53:6).
Our kinsman redeemer “bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness”(1 Pet. 2:24).
“With His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12).
Everyone redeemed has been bought with the precious blood of Jesus and now belongs to Him. Eternal redemption and eternal security are thus one and the same.
Those who reject eternal security must explain why they do not also reject everything else described as eternal, such as the eternal triune God and His punishment for unbelievers. They must also be able to answer—with Scripture—some other relevant questions.
IMPORTANT QUESTIONS
Can those who have been redeemed from under the curse of the law be placed back under it (Gal. 3:13; 4:5)?
Can one, who has been born again of incorruptible seed, die again (1 Pet. 1:23)?
Can a new creation return to what has passed away (2 Cor. 5:17)?
Can one who has been perfected forever be found imperfect (Heb. 10:14)?
Can those whom God delivered from the power of darkness be sent back (Col. 1:13)?
Can those who have been made complete in Christ become incomplete (Col. 2:10)?
Can those who were saved without merit or human effort be lost because of demerits or human failure (Eph. 2:8-9)?
Does any man have the ability to undo a sovereign act of Almighty God (Rom. 8:28-39)?
CONSIDER THE PROMISES OF JESUS
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life (John 5:24). “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one shall snatch them out of My hand” (John 10:27-28). Jesus also promises never to cast out or lose anyone that His Father gives Him (John 6:37, 39). The promises of Jesus to all believers are clear and are guaranteed by His divine power and attributes. Having received eternal life, the sheep will follow the Shepherd who will keep them and protect them. Jesus promises they will never be judged for their sins, will not experience spiritual death, shall not perish and will never be cast out or lost. How can Christians say they trust Jesus and not believe His promises?
CONSIDER THE FATHER’S ROLE WITH THE SPIRIT
God the Father has caused His children to be born again to a living hope. They are now protected by His power and will obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and reserved for them in heaven (1 Pet. 1:3-5). This inheritance has been securely guaranteed by the sealing of the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:11-14). The Father, who calls believers into fellowship with His Son, is faithful and will confirm them until the end (1 Cor. 1:8,9). He promises to glorify those He justifies (Rom 8:30). God’s children have this assurance: “He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6). On that spectacular day, all believers will be revealed with Him in glory (Col. 3:4). Everyone who has trusted Christ can have the same confidence as Paul who wrote: “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day” (2 Tim. 1:12).
CONSIDER THE NATURE OF GOD’S GIFTS
Believers also have the assurance that God’s gifts and calling are irrevocable (Rom. 11:29). The amazing gifts God gives to repentant sinners include eternal life (Rom. 6:23), the Holy Spirit (Acts 10:45) and the righteousness of Jesus (Rom. 5:17). Those who have received these gifts will never again be separated from God and never come into judgment for their sins. Opponents of assurance will say that people can give back the gifts or throw them away. But where is the Scriptural support for this? God has credited the gift of righteousness to the believer’s account. Does man have access to God’s books to change His accounting?
CONSIDER GOD’S CHASTENING OF HIS SONS
The Lord knows those who are His and everyone who names the name of Christ must depart from iniquity (2 Tim. 2:19). But what does God do with any of His children who persist in sinning? He chastens them, as a loving Father, so they will not be condemned along with the world (1 Cor. 11:32). God’s chastening has a purifying effect on those who do not judge themselves. His discipline will continue until there is repentance or until He calls them home. Those who fall away or fall into habitual sin without God’s chastening were never His children (Heb. 12:6-9).
The Roman Catholic Catechism (CCC) teaches that Catholics lose their salvation when mortal sins are committed (CCC, para. 1035). Catholics must do works of penance and merit enough grace to regain their salvation (CCC, para. 1456, 2027). Needless to say, Catholics can never be sure about their eternal destiny because, whenever man is involved in attaining and/or preserving his salvation, there can never be assurance. However, when man forsakes all efforts to save himself and believes the objective truth of the Gospel, he will be more certain of living eternally in heaven than one more day on earth.
There is no way a mortal man can do maintenance on an eternal gift from God. Paul wrote, “For this reason it is by faith, that it might be in accordance with grace, in order that the promise may be certain to all” (Rom. 4:16).
John wrote his first epistle to those “who believe on the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know [Gk. oida] you have eternal life (1 John 5:13).
The Greek word “oida” refers to a positive, absolute knowledge. True believers can rejoice in their salvation with absolute certainty and peace. The question for professing Christians is not “Will God will keep His promises?” but “Have I been saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone?” This means forsaking all other attempts at salvation through sacraments, good works, indulgences, purgatory, the sacrifice of the Mass, obeying the Law and the intercession of Mary.
THERE IS ASSURANCE WHEN SALVATION IS OF GOD
The Father calls and draws men according to His purpose and grace (John 6:44; 2 Tim. 1:9)
The Spirit convicts the world of sin, judgment and righteousness (Jn. 16:8-11)
The Son is proclaimed as the only Savior of the world (Acts 4:12). His Word of truth set captives free (John 8:32)
God grants sinners repentance and gives them the gift of faith unto salvation (2 Tim. 2:25; Eph. 2:8)
The Son exchanges the believer’s sin for His righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21). His blood cleanses all the believer’s sins (1 John 1:7). If the believer sins, He is their advocate (1 John 2:1)
The Spirit regenerates, seals, indwells, intercedes, teaches and empowers the believer (Titus 3:5; Eph. 1:13; Rom. 8:26; 1 John 2:27)
The Father protects, justifies, and glorifies the believer (1 Pet. 1:5; Rom. 8:30)
THERE IS NO ASSURANCE WHEN SALVATION IS OF MAN
¨ The priest baptizes with water which is said to wash away original sin and regenerate Catholics as children of God (1213)
¨ The priest is said to have the power to impart the Holy Spirit through the sacrament of Confirmation (1302).
¨ The priest is said to have the power to forgive sins through the sacrament of penance (986)
¨ The sinner can perform acts of charity (1394) or earn indulgences (1471) to have sins forgiven
¨ The priest is said to have the power to call the Lord Jesus down from heaven to re-present Him as a sacrificial victim for the sins of the living and the dead (1367)
¨ The priest is said to offer the Lord Jesus Christ to Catholics in the Eucharistic wafer (1374)
¨ The priest performs last rites for Catholics for the forgiveness of their sins and to prepare them for eternity (1532)
DO YOU HAVE THE ASSURANCE OF SALVATION ? IF NOT – NOW YOU KNOW THE REASON
“Is not man an absolutely free moral agent?” as one objector insists. He says, “We can quote no Scripture on unconditional eternal security, because there is none.”
I do not know what he means, but of course there is no eternal security that is not based on personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But this writer goes on to say, “When a man is saved, he is on God’s altar to live or die, for service or sacrifice, and neither the devil nor demons can pull him off so long as he chooses by God’s grace to keep himself in that place.”
The fact of the matter is that man is not an “absolutely free moral agent.” In his unsaved state he is the slave of sin “led by the devil captive at his will.” When regenerated he is the servant of Christ, delighting in holiness and indwelt by the Spirit of the loving God. I was not saved by placing my all on the altar. I was saved when I trusted Christ who gave Himself as the offering for my sin. I am not keeping saved by my surrendered life. I am “kept by the power of God.” The same grace that saved is the grace that keeps.
I do not simply “choose” to keep myself in the place where I am secure. God has chosen me, and I say amen to His choice. But if it were possible for me to choose to abandon Christ, would I not perish? Yet the Word tells me that Christ’s sheep shall never perish. Let us look again at the words of the Lord Jesus in John 10:27-29: “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My Father’s hand.”
I wish you would look at verse 27. Who is a sheep of Christ? He is one who hears His voice and follows Him. If a man says, “I am a Christian,” but does not hear the voice of the Good Shepherd and does not follow Him, that man is a hypocrite; he is not a Christian. Jesus says, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” Notice the expression, “I know them.” I pointed out in my former address that in Matthew 7:22-23, the Lord Jesus says, “Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? And in Thy name have cast out devils? And in Thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.” Observe that according to Scripture He never says to any soul in the day of judgment, “I used to know you, but I do not know you now.” He says, “I never knew you.” That ought to clear up the whole question. He says of His sheep, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them.” Therefore, if one has ever been a sheep of Christ, the Lord Jesus knows him. Now if by some strange metamorphosis that sheep of Christ were changed into a goat, one of the devil’s goats, and appeared at the day of judgment among the goats, Jesus could not say to that goat, “I never knew you.” He would have to say, “I used to know you but I do not know you now.” But He says, “I never knew you,” because He gives His sheep eternal life. What is eternal life? One asks, “If the spiritual life of Adam were conditional, how could the life of a believer be secure? Adam must have been eternal in nature.” This shows how little well-meaning people distinguish between the life that God gave to Adam by creation and the life that He gives to us by regeneration. Adam’s life was simply natural life and he forfeited that when he sinned, but God gives to believers eternal life, and that can never be forfeited. It would not be eternal life if it could. So He says, “I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” He puts no conditions around that promise, “They shall never perish.” The word “perish” is in the middle voice, so that if rendered literally in English, you would have to make two words of it, because we do not have a middle voice. The words “perish” and “destroy” are the same in Greek. “I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never destroy themselves.”
Sheep so easily destroy themselves. I was going over the desert when out among the Indians, and as we passed a bridge over a deep chasm, we heard the pitiable bleating of a lamb. We went to the edge of the bridge and saw the lamb about fifty feet down on a little ledge. It was a sheer descent of nearly two hundred feet to the creek below that. We looked to see whether there was any possible way to get down there, and we could not find any. That lamb had been eating and had come to the edge and had looked down. There was that little ledge all green, and so down he went and ate all the green that was there before he found that he could not get back. We tried to lasso him, but were not expert enough to do that. We looked up, and already there were three great buzzards flying around, just waiting for the time when the little animal would give up. That lamb was destroying himself. Jesus says, “My sheep will never destroy themselves. I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish” (in the middle voice, “never perish themselves”). Why not? Because they have the Holy Spirit dwelling in them.
The Word of God says, “Being confident of this very thing, that He who hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Jesus first says, “I give unto them eternal life,” and then, “They shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand.” Some may say, “Well, I know a devil cannot pluck me out, no angel would want to, and man could not, but I might pluck myself out.” Then you would perish, would you not? And He says “They shall never perish,” before He tells you, “neither shall any pluck them out of My hand.” Is man an absolutely free moral agent? He was when God created him, but is he now? Is the sinner a free moral agent? What does Scripture say? “Ye are led by the devil captive at his will.” What? A man led by the devil captive at his will is a free agent? “Know ye not, that he to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his slaves ye are?” (Romans 6:16). Man is a slave to sin and Satan; he is not free. But now the gospel comes to the man, and he does have the power of decision, and when he decides for Christ he gets eternal life with all that that implies, and that life is the same life that is in the blessed Son of God. It is communicated to him, and now he is led captive in the chains of love to the Savior’s feet, and he does not want to be a free agent. He is glad to be a bondman, as Paul puts it, of Jesus Christ.
Question 2 – Matthew 24:13
What about Matthew 24:13? “But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” Weymouth says, “He who stands firm unto the end.”
The writer of this question recognizes that primarily this refers to the great tribulation, but it is a principle that I believe every preacher of the Word should insist on. There is no use in people professing conversion, going forward, raising their hands, going to an inquiry room, joining the church, getting baptized, taking communion, teaching a Sunday school class, doing missionary work, giving their money for Christ’s work, and going on like this for years, and then by-and-by drifting away, turning from it all, denying the Lord that bought them, refusing absolutely the authority of Jesus Christ, and yet professing to be saved. It is endurance that proves the reality of a work of grace within the soul. That is the difference between one who is merely reformed by the teaching of Christianity and one who has been born again. You see this very clearly when you contrast Peter and Judas.
Peter slipped and sinned grievously, but in spite of it all he endured to the end. Jesus said, “I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not,” and though his outward life for a brief period was not what it should be, his faith remained, and Jesus restored him, and he went on to the end of his life until crucified for his Savior. Judas was one of the chosen, he was with the apostolic band but never was regenerated, and so when he sinned and sold his Lord, he turned away an apostate and died a suicidal death. Jesus said of him long before, “Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?” Not, “One of you is in danger of becoming a devil,” but “One of you is a devil.” And we are told: “Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place” (Acts 1:25). Peter was a backslider, Judas was an apostate, and there is a great difference between the two. If a man says, “I am saved,” let him prove it by going on. That is why I say we should not be afraid of the doctrine of the eternal security of the believer. Some say, “But I knew a man who was a wonderful Christian, and now he has given it all up and says he is still saved.” He is only deceiving himself. The next time you see him you tell him that the Bible says, “He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” There is no use your carrying on a profession if your life does not prove it to be real. Men can misuse any doctrine.
Question 3 – John 8:31
What about the Scripture found in John 8:31? “Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on Him, If ye continue in My word, then are ye My disciples indeed.” Is not the condition for permanent discipleship “if ye continue in My word?”
Certainly. Every man who knows the truth of eternal security believes it. There is no use for a person to profess to be a disciple of Jesus if he does not continue. It is this that proves there is a genuine work of the Spirit of God in his soul.
Question 4 – John 6:66
What about John 6:66? “From that time many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him.”
That has happened down through the centuries. Jesus distinguishes between a disciple and “a disciple indeed,” or between one who is only a disciple and one who is a true believer. The Greek word translated “disciple” means “a pupil” or “a learner.” There were many who up to a certain point learned of Jesus, and they were learning more and more every day as they listened to Him. But when He declared, “Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life” (John 6:54), they said, “That is too much for us; we are not going on with this man,” and they went back. It was not a question there of whether people were born again and lost, but whether they who had been numbered among the learners would go on learning and let Him be their teacher, or whether they would refuse further instruction and turn back. We are not told that even those who turned back ever again returned.
Question 5 – John 6:67
John 6:67, “Will ye also go away?” What about this question?
The question and the answer bring out the very thing I am speaking of. He turned now to the apostles, that little group who had accompanied Him so long, and said, “Will ye also go away?” and Peter said what every truly converted soul always says, “Lord to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). If you are really born again, that is always the answer. I remember reasoning on this subject with a dear good brother for something like two hours one day, and he was insisting that a man could take himself out of the Lord’s hand. I said, “Why do you keep insisting on this? Are you sure that you are saved?” He said, “Absolutely.” “How long?” I asked him. “Forty years,” he replied. “And you have been kept for forty years? Do you want to take yourself out of the Lord’s hand that you are talking like that?” “Certainly not,” he answered. “Well,” I said, “you are better than your creed.”
That is just the point. If a man is born again, he never wants to take himself out of Christ’s hand even if he could. Christ alone is the one who satisfies the soul.
Question 6 – 2 Thessalonians 2:3
How about 2 Thessalonians 2:3? “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.”
The word translated “falling away” is “apostasy” in the original. That has nothing to do with the question of individual salvation. It does not touch this doctrine. Can you not see that it is a prophecy of what is happening all about us at the present time? Recently, we were told that seventy-five per cent of the ministers in the church federation in the city of Chicago signed a questionnaire saying that they did not believe in some of the great fundamental truths of the Bible. There you have apostasy. Does that mean that these ministers were all Christians once and now are not saved? My dear friends, I am afraid the whole trouble is that most of them have never been born again at all. They do not know anything of regenerating grace and therefore are quite ready to apostatize from the doctrines held sacred by the great evangelical denominations. I remember when a certain preacher came out with a blatant attack on the doctrine of blood atonement. It shocked a lot of people who had been reading his books, and they said, “Isn’t it strange that a man who was once such a fine Christian now denies the blood of Christ?” I sat down and read every one of his books and found that he never mentioned in any of them the blood of Christ or Christ’s death on the cross, except in one when he spoke of the example of humiliation Jesus set by going to the cross. But there was never one other reference to the death, the blood, or the atonement. Later he stated: “They charge me with giving up the doctrine of blood atonement; I never believed it.” He showed that he was simply an apostate. These things had no place in his heart or life. The apostasy is coming; it is coming fast. The great professing church is going into it, but not one born again person will ever bow to the Antichrist.
Question 7 – Hebrews 12:14
What about Hebrews 12:14? “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.”
That is exactly what we stand for. Anyone who says “I am a Christian” and does not follow peace and holiness will never see the Lord. But I remember how that used to trouble me. When a young Christian, I was taught that when I was converted all my sins up to that moment were put away, and then it was as though God said, “I have wiped off the past and have put you back where Adam was before he fell: if you can keep the record clear from now to the end, you will be saved and you will get to heaven.” I started out and soon began to fail, and then they said to me, “The trouble with you is you have not gotten holiness yet. If you get that you will be able to live the right kind of a life.” I asked, “What is this blessing of holiness?” and was told, “When God saved you, He only justified you.” Only justified you? “He forgave your past sin, but now you have to get sanctified, and that means you must have all your inbred sin rooted out, and you will get true holiness.” I thought, “But it didn’t work very well with Adam,” and it rather bothered me. Yet they assured me that was the thing, and so I went in for it and for six years I struggled. (For a more thorough treatment of this subject, see Holiness: The False and the True, Loizeaux Brothers.)
I was working on a text that is not in the Bible: “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” I heard many sermons preached on it, and sometimes I preached on it myself. I had a large red banner with that text in white letters, and I tried to get holiness. Sometimes I thought I had it, and then something would go wrong and I would have to try to get it all over again. I shall never forget the first time I read, “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.” I thought it said, “Without holiness it is impossible to see God.” I thought I had to get perfect holiness in this life, but what it says there is, if you do not follow holiness you will not see the Lord. Every Christian follows holiness. A man who says “I am a Christian” and does not follow holiness is either self-deceived or a hypocrite. I maintain this with all my heart.
Question 8 – Romans 6:16
What about Romans 6:16? “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?”
I have already spoken of that. Romans 6 is like the book of Exodus. When the children of Israel were in Egypt they obeyed Pharaoh because they had to; when they were brought to God in the wilderness, Pharaoh’s power was broken and they became the servants of God. We, in our unsaved days, were servants to sin; now, as Christians, we are servants of God and we are to walk before God in holiness and righteousness.
Question 9 – Ezekiel 18:24
Ezekiel 18:24: “But when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and doth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doeth, shall he live?”
Is it not strange for anyone in this dispensation of grace to quote a passage like that, as though it had anything to do with the question of the soul’s salvation? Go back and read Ezekiel 18. Of what is it treating? We read in verse 21: “If the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all My statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die.” Is that grace? No, that is law. That is just the quintessence of law. Do you believe that if a wicked man turns from his wickedness he will live? If this is true, why did Jesus die? Would you preach that to sinners? Would you have me stand up and say, “You wicked people, you have been doing wickedness; you start in tonight to do righteousness and you will live”? Would you have me preach that? I would be deliberately deceiving people if I told them that. But you see, here God was testing people under law and said, ”The man that doeth these things shall live. . . .But when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and doeth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doeth, shall he live? All his righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned in his trespass that he hath trespassed, and in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die” And what has happened? Not one man ever continued in all the things that are written in the book of the law to do them. Therefore, they were all under sentence of death. How then were they to be saved? By turning over a new leaf? Oh, no–but by confessing that they had no righteousness. If they had, it would only be filthy rags. But now they find all their righteousness in the Lord Jesus Christ, “who of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.” Do not ever quote Ezekiel 18 as though it were gospel; it is law. And remember the “life” spoken of in Ezekiel is not eternal life in Christ. It is life here on earth prolonged under the divine government, because of obedience, or cut short because of sin.
Question 10 – 2 Peter 2:20-22
What about 2 Peter 2:20-22? “For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.”
Does it say, “But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The sheep is turned to its own vomit again”? No, it does not. It says, “The dog is turned to his own vomit again.” How many of these dogs there are! They escape the pollution of the world temporarily by the knowledge that comes through the Lord Jesus Christ. If you were brought up in a Christian home and taught the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ from your youth, you escaped a great deal of the pollution of the world. But after you have known all these things, you can turn aside; you can take your own way into the world and live in its filth and pollutions. What does that prove? That you used to be a Christian and are not now? That you used to be one of Christ’s sheep but are no longer? Oh, no. What then? It proves that “the dog has gone back to his own vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.” The remarkable thing about this doctrine of the eternal security of the believer is that many of the greatest men of God who have ever lived have believed in it. C. H. Spurgeon, D. L. Moody, Dr. R. A. Torrey, Dr. A. C. Dixon, and scores of others whom we revere believed in it. C. H. Spurgeon said very beautifully, “If this dog had ever been born again and gotten a sheep’s nature, it never would have gone back to its own vomit; and if this sow had ever been regenerated and had the heart of a lamb put in it, it never would have gone back to its wallowing in the mire.” It is not a question of a sheep of Christ perishing. The devil has a lot of washed sows, but they are not, and never have been, Christ’s sheep.
Question 11 – Hebrews 6:4-6
Now we come to the crucial text, Hebrews 6:4-6. “For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.”
Watch this carefully. See if I read it correctly. “For it is quite possible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame.” Is that what it says? You believe that a man can be once enlightened, made a partaker of the Holy Ghost, can taste the good Word of God and the powers of the world to come, but fall away and then repent–don’t you? That is what all the folk believe who do not believe in the eternal security of the believer. What are you going to do with your backslider? If backsliding and apostasy are the same, don’t you see this passage is the worst possible passage in all the Bible for their favorite doctrine?
If those who hold that a man can be saved over and over again will ponder this passage, I am sure they will see how fatally it knifes their theory.
This is the way it reads: “For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted of the good Word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame.” If this passage teaches that a man once saved can be lost again, then it also teaches that if that man is lost again, he can never repent and be saved. In other words, if that passage teaches that a man once saved can be lost again, it teaches that if you have ever been saved and you are now lost, you have a one-way ticket for hell, and there is no turning back. But what is the real question here? It is almost impossible to explain it in a minute or two, for you need to study the entire fifth and sixth chapters of Hebrews together.
The apostle is speaking to people who have the Old Testament and have been intellectually convinced that Jesus is the Messiah but who are exposed to persecution if they confess His name. Even if not genuine, they know that Jesus is the Messiah, and they must have felt the power and seen the evidence of His authority in the miracles wrought. Yet they can turn their backs upon it all and go back to Judaism, and go into the synagogue again and say, “We do not believe Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Son of God; we refuse the authority of this man. He should be crucified.” “They crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame.” The apostle says, “Do not try to do anything there; you cannot, for they have gone too far. They are apostate.” It proves that they are not real Christians. In verse 9 we read, “But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak.” That is, you could have all these things and not have salvation. You say, “I don’t think so.” But look at it: “It is impossible for those who were once enlightened.” What does that mean? Born again? No one could listen to a gospel address without being enlightened. “The entrance of Thy words giveth light, it giveth understanding unto the simple” (Psalm 119:130).
“. . .and have tasted of the heavenly gift.” It is one thing to taste; it is another thing to eat. Many a person has gone that far and never been saved. The angel said to Ezekiel, “Son of man, eat this roll.” But the angel saw that Ezekiel had only tasted it, so he commanded, “Son of man, cause thy belly to eat it.” It was in his mouth, and if his head had been cut off all the truth would be gone, but “God desires truth in the inward parts.”
“. . .and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost.” They were neither sealed, nor indwelt, nor baptized, nor filled with the Spirit. He does not use one of the terms that refer to the Spirit’s great offices, but says, “and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost.” Did you ever see a man in a meeting where the Spirit of God was working in power, and have you ever gone over and talked to him and said, “Don’t you want to come to Christ?” And he has answered, “I know I ought to come, I can feel the power of the Spirit of God in this meeting. I know this thing is right and I ought to yield, but I don’t want to, and I won’t.” And he goes away resisting the Spirit although he was a partaker. So these people described in Hebrews 6 had been in this way outwardly acquainted with Christianity, but they now denied it all. For such there could be no repentance.
Now in order to prove that this is the correct interpretation of the passage, let me draw your attention to Hebrews 6:7-9: “For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God: but that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned. But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you; you have gone farther than these apostates ever did, you have been saved; and so do not think we are confounding you with people like these.” He uses this little parable to make clear what he means. Here are two pieces of grass growing side by side, we will say, just separated by a fence. The earth is the same, the same sun shines on them both, the same kind of rainfall waters them both. When the time of harvest comes, one of these plots brings forth herbs, but the other only thorns and briers. What is he teaching here? This is a message to the Jews, trying to make them see the reality of Christ’s messiahship and His fulfillment of all the types of old. These two plots of ground are two men, they are the hearts of two men. We may think of them in this way to make it all more graphic. They grow up side by side; they both are taught the Bible; they both go to the same synagogue; both wait for the Messiah; both go down and listen to John the Baptist preach; perhaps both were baptized by John the Baptist, confessing their sins. John’s baptism was not salvation; it was just looking forward to the coming of a Savior. Both of them hear the Lord Jesus; both of them see Him do His works of power; both are in that crowd watching when He dies; both are there when the throngs go out to see the open tomb; both are near when He ascends to heaven; both see the mighty work of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost; both of them move in and out among the apostles; and outwardly you could not see any difference between them. But by-and-by persecution breaks out. One of them is arrested, and they say to him, “Deny Jesus Christ, or you will die.” He says, “I cannot deny Him; He is my Savior.” “Then you will die,” the first one declares. “I am ready to die, but I cannot deny Him,” the second man replies. The other one is arrested and they say, “You must deny Christ or die.” He says, “I will deny Him rather than die. I will go back and be a good Jew again rather than die.” “Come out here, then,” they command him.
They had a terrible way of taking him back. I remember reading how in such a case, they took him to an unclean place where a man slew a sow, and this one going back to Judaism, in order to prove his denial, spits on the blood of the sow and says, “So count I the blood of Jesus the Nazarene.” And then they purify him and take him back. Could any real believer in Jesus do that? What made the difference between the two?
Those plots of ground had the same rain, the same sunshine, but there were different crops. What was the difference? One of them had the good seed and brought forth good fruit; the other did not have the good seed and brought forth thorns and briers. These two men were both familiar with the truth, but one received the incorruptible seed, the Word of life, and brought forth fruit unto God. The other has never received the good seed, and the day comes when he is an apostate.
If you will keep in mind the difference between an apostate and a backslider, it will save you a lot of trouble over many Scriptures. The apostate knows all about Christianity but never has been a real Christian. The backslider is a person who has known Christ, who did love Him, but became cold in his soul, lost out in his spiritual life. There is not a Christian who has not often been guilty of backsliding. That is why we need the Lord as our advocate to restore our souls. When backslidden, it is not our union with Him that is destroyed, but it is our communion. You may say, “Why are you so sure that a real Christian does not apostatize?” Because God says so in His Word. 1 John 2:18: “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.” Antichrist means “opposed to Christ.” The apostate is always a man opposed to Christ. A man says, “I have tried it all, and there is nothing in it,” and so denounces Christ. “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.” The words “no doubt” are in italics and really cast a doubt. Leave those words out for they do not belong in the Greek text, and read it, “They went out from us, but they were not of us: for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.” And then he adds, “They went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not altogether (that is the literal rendering) of us” (1 John 2:19). In other words, they were with us in profession, in outward fellowship, but not altogether of us, because they had never really been born of God. This also explains Hebrews 10 which is the next passage brought up here as an objection.
Question 12 – Hebrews 10:28-29
Explain Hebrews 10:28-29: “He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?” People are troubled here, for they say, “Well, this man was surely a Christian, because it says that he was sanctified.”
That does not necessarily prove that he was a Christian. The whole nation of Israel was sanctified by the blood of the covenant; in a certain sense the whole world has been sanctified by the blood of the cross. If it were not for that blood shed on Calvary’s cross the whole world would be doomed to eternal judgment, but because Jesus died for the entire world God says, “Now, I can deal with all men on the ground of the blood of the cross,” and, as we often put it, the great question between God and man today is not primarily the sin question. Why? Because the blood of Christ answers for sin. What is the great question? It is the Son question: How are you treating God’s Son who died to save you? Christ has died for all men, His blood is shed for the salvation of all men, and it will avail for every sinner in all the world if they trust Him. (See John 3:18-19.)
Here is this Hebrew who has followed along to a certain point, and now the question comes, “Will you confess this Christ as your one great sin offering no matter what it means?” And he answers, “No, I cannot do that. I am going back to the temple. There is a sin offering there, and I will not have to suffer as I may if I confess Jesus Christ.” But he cannot do that. God does not accept any more that “there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.” “If we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.” “There remaineth no other sacrifice for sins: is the true meaning. This sacrifice at the altar was commanded by God. He said, “If you sin, you must bring a sacrifice, and I will accept you.” “The life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul” (Leviticus 17:11). “All right,” this Jew says, “I have a sin offering.” But he has met Jesus Christ or heard of Him as the great sin offering; he knows that God accepted Him and raise Him from the dead; he has all this knowledge, but having it all he is afraid to come out definitely and confess Christ as his Savior. He says, “I do not need this sin offering; I will go back and be content with the sin offering of the temple.” Before Jesus came, that was acceptable because it pointed to Him, but now He has come. If you reject Him, there remains no other offering. This passage, you see, has nothing to do with a real Christian turning from Christ, but with a man thoroughly instructed who refuses to accept Him. And how many people there are, not only among the Jews but in Christendom, who are refusing this sin offering.
Question 13 – Luke 9:61-62
The next passage brought up is Luke 9:61-62: “And another also said, Lord, I will follow Thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house. And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
What a terrible thing it would be if this were the way into heaven! How many thousands of earnest Christian people there are who have allowed what they thought was their responsibility to their friends to keep them from fully following Christ. Suppose they went to heaven only on the ground of fully following Him. You see, these Jews were looking for the kingdom, and many said, “I will follow Thee, but my friends have a claim on me.” “No, the Lord says, “I must come first. No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” That is the test of discipleship. But it is necessary to distinguish between salvation by grace and reward for faithful discipleship. The rewards are connected with the kingdom. No matter how faithful I may be as a Christian, it does not give me any better place in heaven than if I were taken there the moment I was saved. Suppose the very instant you were converted you dropped dead–would you have gone to heaven? Yes, you would have gone there on the ground of God’s delight in the work of His Son. Suppose you were converted fifty years ago. There have been ups-and-downs in your life, but you have been saved all those years. Where would you go if you died suddenly? You would go to heaven. On what ground? On the ground of God’s delight in the work of His Son. There is not a bit of change in fifty years. “But,” you say, “I have been a wonderfully faithful Christian.” Have you, indeed? I am surprised that you should think so. The more we serve Him, the more most of us feel how unfaithful we have been. But you insist, “I have been a very faithful Christian.” Does that make you any more fit for heaven than you were the moment you trusted Jesus? You ask, “Does faithfulness as a disciple go for nothing?” It goes for a great deal, but it has no saving merit. You have a place in the Father’s house on the ground of pure grace, but the Father’s house is not the only thing before us. There is also the kingdom of God. “Then shall the righteous shine forth in the kingdom of their Father.” And here there are different rewards according to the measure of faithfulness in this life.
Here was one to whom the Lord said, “I want you to follow Me to Africa or India,” and he said, “O Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. I have an old father here and cannot bear to leave him as long as he lives. After he is dead, I am willing to follow Thee.” And the Lord says, “Let the dead bury their dead.” Of course, if he had the responsibility of providing for his father, that would be a different thing. Because that man has not the faith and courage to make that break, does he cease to be a Christian? He may stay at home, he may be of great value and great use, but when he comes to the judgment seat of Christ there is a reward he might have had that he will not have, because he did not go the whole way with the Lord Jesus Christ. If going the whole way entitled men to heaven, none of us would ever get there. But as we go the whole way, as far as we understand, He is going to reward us. If people could learn to see the difference between salvation by grace and reward for service, this question would settle itself. From this point on, most of these objections really have to do with this very fact.
Question 14 – Hebrews 3:12-14
The next passage is Hebrews 3:12-14: “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end.” That is one of the “if” verses. Another one is found in I Corinthians 15:1-2: “Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.” Another one is found in Colossians 1:21-23: “And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in His sight: if ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister.” I might add others to these, but here are three “ifs.”
What does the Spirit of God mean by bringing these “ifs” in? In every one of these instances He is addressing bodies of people. I stand here to address you as a body of people. If I were to ask everybody who professes to be a Christian to stand, I suppose nearly everybody would rise. Would that prove that you are all Christians? It would show that you profess to be Christians. What would prove that you really are? “If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel.” You profess to have received the gospel; you are saved if you keep in memory what has been preached unto you. If you do not, it just shows that there is no reality.
The faith here is not the faith by which you are saved, it is not the faith by which you believe; but it is that which you believe. Jude says, “Earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3). That is the body of Christian doctrine, and, if a real Christian, you will stand for that Christian doctrine to the end; but if not, you may become a Mormon, or a Christian Scientist, or a theosophist, or something like that. Then you simply show there is no reality. It is a very easy thing to say, “I am saved”; it is another thing to prove it.
Question 15 – 2 Peter 3:17
What of 2 Peter 3:17? “Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye how these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness.”
We come back to what we were speaking of a few minutes ago. There is always a possibility of a real Christian falling, and we need to be warned again and again. How many we have known who at one time had a bright Christian testimony but fell? They were not watchful, they were not prayerful, and they stumbled and fell. Does that mean they are lost? No, not if really born again. If born again, they have received eternal life; and if people thus fall, that is where the restoring work of the Spirit of God comes in. David fell in a most terrible way but he says, “He restoreth my soul”; and sometimes in restoring His people’s souls, God has to put them through very bitter experiences. He loves them too much to let them be happy when away from Him.
Question 16 – 2 Timothy 2:18
Explain this passage. “Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some” (2 Timothy 2:18). A writer says, “We see here the possibility of having our faith overthrown.”
That’s not what Paul is talking about. He is speaking of the faith. Again you must make the distinction. Our faith is that by which we believe. We believe God; that is faith. But we believe the truth that God has revealed to us, and that truth is the faith, and that is what has been overthrown in the mind of the professed believer in this instance. That is the same thing that you get in 1 Timothy 5:15: “For some are already turned aside after Satan.” Some real Christians do that, but what a blessed thing to know the Lord goes after them and never gives them up.
Question 17 – Hebrews 2:1
May we not let the things of God slip away from us? “Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip” (Hebrews 2:1), or, in other words, “Lest at any time we should drift away from them.”
This is the same warning again. You have listened to precious ministry from men of God who have preached the Word to you. You have had such instruction as many never have had. You will be terribly guilty if you drift away from it. You need to “continue in the things which you have learned.” But if we were all to lose our salvation every time we drifted into some erroneous thing, how serious it would be! Is there anyone here who has never done a little bit of drifting?
If sin will separate me from Christ, how much sin? How can I ever be sure how much sin? Is there a Christian here who has not sinned today? Is it not a fact that every one of us sins in thought, or word, or in deed, probably every day of our lives? Is there ever a night that you can kneel before God and say, “Lord, I thank You that I have not sinned in thought or word or deed today?” I am sure no honest Christian can say that. How far do you have to sin in order to break the link that binds you to Christ? You never could be sure that you are saved from one day to another and you would not leave any room for the restoring work of God if your salvation depended upon your personal faithfulness.
Question 18 – Revelation 2:10
What about such a Scripture as this? “Be thou faithful unto death and I, will give thee a crown of life?” (Revelation 2:10). How can you say that a man is saved for eternity when the Lord says you must be faithful to the end?
A crown of life is not salvation; it is reward. There are five crowns: the incorruptible crown for faithfully running the course; the crown of rejoicing for winning souls; the crown of righteousness for those who love His appearing; the crown of life for those who suffer for Christ; the crown of glory for those who feed the sheep and lambs of Christ’s flock. I might lose all of those crowns and yet not lose my salvation. The Word says, “If any man’s work shall be burned. . . .he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire” (1 Corinthians 3:15) But I do not want to be saved that way. I want to win the crown of life. “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”
Question 19 – Hebrews 10:37-39
Explain Hebrews 10:37-39: “For yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry. . . .If any man draw back, My soul shall have no pleasure in him.”
Look at the next verse, “But we (who? real Christians) are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.” If a person has believed to the saving of the soul, there is no danger of his “drawing back unto perdition.” It is a terrible thing to be intellectually convinced and stop there.
Question 20 – Revelation 3:15-16
Now I am referred to Revelation 3:15-16, where the Lord, speaking to the church at Laodicea, says, “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of My mouth.”
Is this an individual who has once been saved and is so no longer? The Lord is talking to a church. Did you ever see a church like the one at Laodicea, a church neither hot nor cold, one where you could not tell whether it was for Christ or against Him? And then the Lord says to that church, “Because you are just lukewarm–there is profession–but you are neither hot or cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. I won’t own you as a church at all.” That does not say that there may not be individuals in the church who are children of God, just as in the church at Ephesus. He said to them, “If you do not repent, I will remove your candlestick.” A candle, you know, is to give light.
Every time I go downtown I pass a church that D. L. Moody used to belong to. It was an evangelistic center in the city in his day, but today it is a very center of modernism and the gospel is never preached there. Every time I look at it I think of the time Moody was there and it stood firmly for the truth, and I say, “Their candlestick is removed.” There may be some true Christians in that church, some of the dear old people who were in it years ago, and maybe their membership is still there. It does not say that they are not Christians because the church as such has lost its witness for Christ.
Question 21 – 1 Peter 4:18
Here is a verse I am surprised to find used to prove the “falling away” doctrine. “If the righteous scarcely be saved where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” (1 Peter 4:18).
What has that to do with the question? What is Peter saying? “The time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?” (1 Peter 4:17). I suppose that God’s children have faults. I know they have to be judged for their faults by the Father in correction, and God will deal very solemnly and seriously with them about their failures. There would be no need of judgment if they were all perfect Christians, but if God heals with His own people in this way and if the righteous be saved through difficulty, “Where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” That has nothing to do with the question of whether the Christian is saved for eternity or not.
Question 22 – John 15:1-6
John 15:1-6 is the next passage questioned. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.”
This chapter is not discussing the question of eternal life but of fruit bearing. There are a great many believers who bear very little fruit for God, but all bear some fruit for Him. There are many people in the vine (and the vine speaks of profession here on earth) who bear no fruit for Him and will eventually be cut out altogether when Jesus comes. There will be no place with Him because there is no union with Him. There are no natural branches in the living vine. We are grafted in by faith. I do not know much about grafting, but I do know that it is one thing to put a graft in, and it is another thing for a graft to strike. It is one thing for a person to be outwardly linked with Him and quite another for that person to have life in Christ. What is the test that proves whether he is really in the vine? The test is if he bears fruit. All who have life bear some fruit for God. If there is no fruit, you can be sure there is no life, no real union with Christ.
Question 23 – Unconfessed Sin
Will any Christian who passes away with unconfessed sin have an opportunity to make things right after death? Is the judgment seat of Christ the time when all misunderstandings and discords among Christians will be made right?
It is questionable if any Christian ever died who did not have some unconfessed sin to his record. While sin might be confessed in a general way, who of us has ever definitely confessed all his sins? But the precious blood of Christ answers for every sin a believer has ever committed. At the judgment seat of Christ, the Lord will go over the entire life since regeneration, giving His mind about every thing, and the believer will then for the first time see each detail in the light of God’s infinite holiness. Everything there will be dealt with so that the believer’s failures will never be referred to again for all eternity.
Question 24 – The Book of Life
Is there any difference between the book of life and the Lamb’s book of life?
Yes, the book of life is the book of the living. It is the record too, of profession. From this book names may be blotted out. The Lamb’s book of life is the record of the eternal purpose of God. Names inscribed there are written from the foundation of the world. In other words, one book speaks of responsibility, the other of pure grace.
No Christian will ever have his name blotted out of the Lamb’s book of life, for all such have eternal life–which is unforfeitable and everlasting.
This is my personal collection of thoughts and writings, mainly from much smarter people than I, which challenge me in my discipleship walk. Don't rush by these thoughts, but ponder them.
Milo 