Amen. Turn in your Bibles to the book of Hebrews chapter three this morning. And we're looking at verses 17 through 19. Important text for us today. And what we're going to do, let me give you an overview of what we want to accomplish with this this morning as we study this text. The subject of the text is Today Harden Not Your Hearts. And what we want to do is prepare you to two issues here. If you are here today and are trusting in some form of ritualism or moralism for your salvation, or if you have some a corrupted view of the gospel. We wanna help you get a right biblical view of the gospel. Everybody wants that, right? We all want that, but otherwise our eternal destiny is dependent upon believing and trusting in the gospel. And so we have to make sure that the gospel we're trusting in is the gospel of the book, right? And then as well, we have a lot of people out there who are in evangelical Christianity, who profess to be saved, but are holding to very broad views of the gospel. We have to see that the gospel is, in fact, a very narrow truth, and biblical responses to the gospel is very definitive. And then we have the broader stream of quote unquote Christianity out there who have trusted in a form of salvation which is progressive salvation in the corruption of the new covenant. And we wanna prepare you and teach you how to use the book of Hebrews to help those people. They will come kicking and gouging and fighting all the way to the cross, amen. but you're gonna have to be effective and able to take the word of God and show them and help them how to be saved. And so they already are going to church someplace and probably are very faithful in their attendance. But what does it matter if they have all this religious stuff and end up standing before the great white throne and Jesus says to them, depart from me, you workers of iniquity, for I never knew you. And that's a tragedy. So, although credited, often credited to Winston Churchill, George Santayana once wrote, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Of course, this is often, I said, credited to Winston Churchill, but this is certainly true of Reformed and Covenant theologians. who do not understand the theological failures of the priesthood of Israel and their corruption of the Mosaic Covenant. And with its first 300 years of the history of Christianity, the doctrine of the church ecclesiology and the priesthood of all believers was almost completely corrupted. Sadly, it's still very much corrupted even within much of Baptist, many Baptist churches. the Northern Baptist Convention, the Southern Baptist Convention, the General Conference Baptist Convention, the Bible Baptist Conference, all of these have very much corrupted views of ecclesiology. And of course, so it's not simply liturgical Christianity that has church doctrine corrupted. By the way, we're teaching on the local church. in Sunday school, if you want to come and be discipled in that, we invite you to come. We could use a few more bodies there. Now in turn, the doctrine of salvation, which is the doctrine of soteriology, was corrupted into the sacramental purgation of sins, ritual purgation, water washing away your sins, and also co-redemption, by adding the works of moralism and ritualism to the necessities of salvation. Coredemption is that God in Christ has paid for some of your sins, and you can come and be introduced into salvation in the process of salvation by believing in Jesus, but in baptism, confirmation, all the other issues of belonging to some denominational church, and other issues all become part of the process of your salvation. And of course we understand that salvation is an event, right? Constantine must not like the preaching this morning, amen. But maybe Jim, was you the one that was crying or was it Constantine? Oh, okay, good. We want to make that clear. But we want to make sure that we're up front about all of these things And we don't want to pull any punches, amen? You can't help people by not telling the truth. And just by, you know, glossing over all of these issues. You have to confront these issues if we're going to help people. And sometimes people view that as negative. And we're not trying to be negative, we're trying to be very positive. But in order to deal and help people, sometimes you got to expose the error in order to correct the false theology. And that's important. So just as in the Corrupted priesthood of Israel, salvation is corrupted to where it was only available through the temple and its priesthood. Within the church today, in ecumenicism in many cases, salvation is only available through the sacraments of the clergy and through the local church. This is equally as much a corruption of the new covenant as was their corruption of the old covenant. Now all of this progressive corruption is recorded in the volumes of church history through the writings of what have come to be known as the Church Fathers. I have the whole collection of the Church Fathers. I think there's about 80 volumes in it. Right now they're all packed away in boxes. I don't need to have them on my shelves anymore. You can download it all by PDF. If you wanna read through it all, I have read through most of the church fathers and understand much of what was taught. But the fact is the writings of the church fathers is a history of evolving progressive corruption. And these great theologians were in fact the fathers of theological corruption. And had these early church fathers understood the Levitical failure, they would not have sought to replace the old covenant corruptions with new covenant corruptions. And when this fountain of doctrine is corrupted, all that flows from that fountain is corrupted, and that is what happened with both the doctrine of the church and with the doctrine of salvation. I invite you to stand as we read verses seven through 19 of Hebrews chapter three, and remain standing for a word of prayer. Hebrews chapter three, verse seven. Wherefore, now notice it's in parentheses, now if you see that, And the parentheses is extended. As the Holy Ghost sayeth today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts as in the provocation, the day of temptation in the wilderness, when your fathers tempted me, proved me and saw my work 40 days. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, excuse me, and said, they do always err in their hearts and they have not known my ways. So I swear in my wrath, they shall not enter into my rest, end of parentheses. A whole statement after wherefore there is in parentheses and it's added to the text by God to give us context. So God's bringing all that Old Testament context, we're gonna look at that this morning, into this text, dealing now with the birth of Christianity and its very early forms of corruption. Look at verse 12, take heed brethren, lest there be any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. So it was about departing, that's what the parentheses and now he's saying, take heed that you do not depart from the living God, but exhort one another daily while it's called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deepness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence, Steadfast unto the end. I'm not talking about losing your salvation. It's about confirming your salvation unto Christ. So we got this on, there we go. And then verse 15, while it is said today, if we will hear his voice, harden not your hearts as in the provocation. For some, when they had heard it, did provoke, albeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses. But with whom was he grieved forty years? Was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness? And to whom swear he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in because of Now, we'll go to chapter four later on and we'll see there remaineth there for the rest of the people. Otherwise, there is still the option available of salvation. Father God, as we bow before you this morning and we look at this wonderful portion of scripture, we'll thank you for its specifics, its directives, and Lord, for its definitiveness regarding the instruction that it gives. Help each of us to grasp these truths For those here who need to get saved, we pray that you help them grasp, so they better understand the gospel, what it is and what it isn't, that they can be born again. And then for others here today, Lord, who have friends and family who have been deceived, that they can help them and minister to them effectively. In Jesus' name, Amen. You may be seated. Look there to Hebrews 3.19. You look at the end of that text. It says they could not enter in because of what? Unbelief. Now notice it says could not, not would not. Otherwise, God would not let them enter in. They were not allowed to cross that Jordan. And again, we must reiterate that the book of Hebrews was written to professing Jewish Christians who are about to go back to the temple sacrifices and the abrogated old covenant, Mosaic covenant system, intermixing the old covenant practices with new covenant faith. That was a no-no, you couldn't do that. But that is exactly what the vast majority of Christianity has done. They brought the old Mosaic covenant into the new covenant and have corrupted it all. So God is using the well-known history of one particular Jewish failure to exemplify that these Jewish believers professing faith in Jesus were replicating this same thing. And although The nation of Israel repeatedly tested God in their numerous instances of unbelief in the Old Testament. At the rock, at the time of manna, giving of the manna, at the time of Sinai. at the crossing of the Red Sea, murmuring and complaining against God over and over again. Numerous times God is referencing here a pinnacle of unbelief in what happened at Kadesh in Numbers chapter 13. We're going to look at that in a little while. But what happened there at Kadesh? 12 spies, one from each tribe, were chosen to enter the promised land to evaluate the resources and strength of those who are occupying the promised land. And they were to spend 40 days there to make their evaluations, and 11 of the 12 spies returned with an evaluation of unbelief. Those occupying the land were too great to defeat. Now, you're going to say, well, there was actually two that didn't. I'll show you that there were 11 in a little while that came back with a false report, a report of unbelief. And we'll show you where that is. And the two that, of course, were faithful. but they were to spend 40 days there making their evaluations. 11 of the 12 spies returned with an evaluation of unbelief. Those occupying the land, they said, they're just too great to defeat. They're giants in the land. They're much greater than we are. And so their evaluation was one of unbelief. Now here's why, because they failed to enter in God into the factor of their deliverance. In other words, they thought their deliverance was some degree dependent upon their numbers and their abilities. And that is a corruption of a view of God, and it's a corruption of salvation. You do nothing to save yourself, you do nothing to keep yourself saved. Amen? God saves you and God keeps you. And that's a promise of God. Now, the question might be that you're not saved. And that's a legitimate question, to question whether or not you really are saved. But if you are saved, God saves you and God keeps you. And that's the promise of the Word of God. Now their failure was unbelief because they believed in what we call co-redemption. Co-redemption is when you do part of what in partnership with God in your salvation or your deliverance. So we're looking at this Old Testament type that the Apostle Paul, I believe the writer of Hebrews, as brings to light now to reflect this same issue about believers who believe that they have to also not only trust in Christ, but they have to also do rituals and they also have to have holy days. By the way, almost all of ecumenical Christianity has a liturgical calendar. And by the way, that's all part of the process of salvation. The liturgical calendar is all part of that. Now the corruption of the Mosaic covenant by the Levitical priesthood of Israel involved two main theological issues. Write these down. Both corruptions are repeated in church history by leading theologians of the first three centuries. They corrupted it. And that was because they disregarded the warnings of the book of Galatians, the book of Romans, and the book of Hebrews. These are three critical books in the Bible to establish doctrine regarding the gospel of Jesus Christ. Very critical books. What were those? First one, ritual purgation of sin through sacrifices. Today this takes the form of sacraments in today's Christianity. So sacrifices are replaced with sacraments, ongoing sacraments. There are no sacraments in the Bible. Not you, not word. I think I told you this story before, but I was witnessing to a Lutheran man and his homeland. And he said, well, we have to keep the sacraments too. And I said, well. You know that the word sacraments is not found in the Bible. He says, well, I don't think that's right. And he went and he got from his room the biggest concordance I've ever seen in my life. That concordance was like this and it was about this thick. I'd never seen a concordance that huge. And he brought it out and he paged through the book and comes to the S's and he's saying, sacraments, sacraments, sacraments, sacraments. I said, here it is. I'm wiping the sweat off my brow, and he says, sacraments, a word not found in the Bible. I said, hallelujah to the Lord. You know, there are no sacraments. There are no sacraments to replace the sacrifices. And then the second one is ritual sacerdotalism. Sacerdotalism, a big word, don't be afraid of it. But it refers to a priesthood to offer those sacrifices for the forgiveness of sin, This takes the form of clergymen women, or women today, through which God's grace is conferred through the hands of ordained clergy to those who participate in various sacraments. So the whole issue of this sacerdotalism is that there has to be an ordination of orders. And the reformed people said, well, we dropped the ordination of orders, but they did not drop the issue of ordination. And we believe in the ordination of pastors and even of evangelists and missionaries. That's not the issue, but the corrupted view of ordination is that Christ ordained the apostles. And when he ordained them, he conferred to them power. So when the apostles ordained other clergymen, then the power of their hands was passed on to these other clergymen, who when they ordain other people, the laying on of hands is viewed as the passing of grace to those individuals. Now, how does that apply in the congregation? That individual intercedes on behalf of the congregation. And so when the instruments are ordained, the pastor is ordained, and for instance the elements are ordained, or they have been either consecrated to the place where in the Lord's Supper, The elements are transubstantiated, they're changed into the body and blood of Christ through the hands of the ordained clergy as he invokes the name of Christ, Hocus Christos over the elements. Then those elements are passed on and distributed and through the hands of that pastor and those elements, grace is being conferred. That's all a bunch of hooey. Now, it's nowhere in the scriptures, it's all manufactured. It's all corrupt. And all of this stuff goes in various degrees within liturgical Christianity, and that's a corruption of the new covenant. So the same way the priesthood had corrupted the old covenant, Mosaic covenant, the clergy today has corrupted the new covenant. Now, as Baptists, we don't believe in clergy laity. Okay, every believer is a believer priest. Now you have a pastor who is ordained of God to, otherwise he is examined for his qualifications to be able to teach and lead, to buy that local churches that ordain him, not some group of clergymen to do that. That is unscriptural. In fact, I was participated in an ordination service where they did not even allow any members, this is in a Baptist church, did not allow any members of the church to question the candidate being ordained. Not even the deacons or anyone else were allowed on the council to question the pastor. I raised my hand. Aren't any of the members of the church going to be allowed to ask any questions? And it was immediately silenced and said, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to have all of these pastors do that, and then we're going to make a recommendation to the church. And I said, well, I don't think I've ever heard of that before in a Baptist church. But that went on, and by people who you all know here today. So now, these two things are important, OK? This is a corruption of the new covenant. Now up to this point in the epistles of the Hebrews, God has shown the complete superiority of the new covenant in Christ and the total inferiority and abrogation of the corrupted Mosaic covenant. Now he begins to give some very hard and serious warnings to these professing Jewish believers and to anyone down through the centuries of the church age who will not abandon the corrupted Mosaic covenant types and practices. That would be equally true then today of those who view divisions in the clergy laity, which Christ says is the doctrine of the Nicolaitans. Nicholas means conqueror, laity means people, overlords of the people or the conquerors of the people. Christ hates the doctrine of the Nicolaitans. Not allow that in the church. And second, we have this other issue of sacraments and salvation through the church. Christ hates all of that as well. So, all of that whole Mosaic Covenant types were to be abandoned and all of the priesthood was to be abandoned for the priesthood of all believers and the completeness in Christ. Now, God begins to equate what they are considering doing, what these believers here in the book of Hebrews who profess Christ about to go back to the temple, go back to the priesthood, go back to the sacrifices. He equates to what they are considering doing, what they are doing, and what they have done with some instances of Jewish history of which they would all be familiar with. All the Jews would have known these. So these historical instances and the consequences that resulted It will be used to warn centuries of professing believers who fall into similar theological traps and confusions. So, although they are different in description, they are very similar in their scope, their corruptions. So these Jews were being careless about their beliefs. And the point is that when you follow the teachings of theologians without comparing what they teach according to the scriptures, you put your soul in jeopardy and this is a dangerous thing to do. Look, I have told you this many times before, do not take what I teach you as the gospel. Amen. Now I'm going to study the word of God and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure I teach you the truth of the word of God. And hopefully you can trust me. Would you trust a man with your soul? Don't trust men with your soul. Make sure that what they are teaching is coming from the word of God. Be like the Berean brethren who were more noble than others because they searched the scripture daily to see if what Paul was teaching them was according to the scriptures. Now look, folks, I tell you, the day and age is that when your beliefs are all authority, all authoritative beliefs, you're in trouble. Otherwise you'd say, well, I'm very sure that this is what the Bible says because Pastor Ketchum said so. You better be very sure that this is what the Bible says because you've studied it and researched it yourself. And I've given you the tools to do that with. I've taught you how to interpret the Word of God and how to exegete the Scriptures to arrive at the conclusions of what the Word of God says. And you find that I not only, when I teach you the Word of God, I not only show you what I got, I show you where I got it from and how I got it. So you can do the same thing. It's very easy to stand up to you and say, here, believe this, do this, believe this, do this. And that's what I want to say. I want to say, let me show you what God's Word says. so that you have foundations upon which you can believe. And you can not only see that what I say, you can see why I say it, where I got it from, and how I got it. That's a lot of work. That's laboring in the word and doctrine. By the way, that kind of man is worth double honor. We got church business coming up here this few months. Being facetious, you folks take very good care of me. Now, God is inclusive as who can believe, whosoever will, but exclusive as to the means of a person's salvation. For by grace, as you say, through faith and not of yourself, it's a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good work. very exclusive as to the means of a person's salvation. Now in the text before us, the word of God is being used to convince this type of professing believers, Hebrews 3.7, that if they abandon the new covenant for the old covenant, in any way, they also abandon salvation by grace alone through faith alone. You can't take the middle road. It's an either or. choice. So doing so reveals that their profession in the finished cross work of Christ is a false profession based upon misunderstanding and resulting in misbelief. By the way, let me tell you this. Be careful. Misbelief is no different than unbelief. What do you say? What do you mean? Well, misbelief is no different than unbelief because it brings the same results. If you're believing in the wrong things, it's no different than completely unbelieving because it gives you the same results. And that's what false doctrine does. Misbelief is misplaced faith in anything other than the finished work of Jesus Christ. Perhaps there's no book in the Bible that speaks more emphatically against this type of theological inclusivism than the epistle to the Hebrews. And there is no ritual or moral work that needs to be added to what Christ has finished through His death, burial, resurrection, glorification. Nothing needs to be added to that. That's a finished work. And salvation by grace through faith is faith in Christ's work alone and nothing else. Not faith in your work. It's not faith in the church's work. It's not faith in any other aspect of anything else other than the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary and His death, burial, and resurrection. You can add nothing to it or you negate all of it. Look with me over to Galatians chapter five. This is a very, very detailed text. If you wanna read a book on the Galatians out in back, there's a commentary on the table. You're welcome to pick one of those up on the book of Galatians, going verse by verse through the whole book of Galatians. And it's important about all of this. Now, verse four. Christ is become. That's an oris passif verb. What that means, God has rendered your faith of no effect. So it's not something that you do, but by the fact that you are trusting in some kind of justification through works of the law, he says, God, Christ has become, God has rendered your faith of no effect unto you. Otherwise it's nullified, it's void. Whosoever you are justified by the law, you are fallen from grace. Literally, you have abandoned the sphere of grace. When the sphere of grace is all that God does and is doing to save you. But you are abandoned that. When you are trusting in the realm of works, whether it's moralism or ritualism, you will step out away from The grace of God that saves you and you move into the sphere of co-redemption. But you're not getting closer to being saved. You're moving farther and farther away from being saved. So it's only within this sphere of grace that you can be saved. Works doesn't add anything to that, it moves you away from it. He says, verse 5, For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. What's he talking about? Glorification. For in Jesus Christ, neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love. So circumcision, now circumcision, those who believe in covenant theology believe that infant baptism replaced circumcision. So on the eighth day, they baptize their infants, they sprinkle a little water on them. And circumcision was not in any way part of salvation, it was a sign of the covenant. It was directly connected to sanctification, otherwise that child had been set apart from paganism, heathenism, and from the pornographic culture of paganism, and so was set apart. If it was salvation, then only the boys could be saved, not the girls, because girls weren't circumcised. You can see why it's not salvational. And so infant baptism neither has anything to do with salvation, neither does adult baptism have anything to do with salvation. It's connected to your sanctification, not your salvation. But faith which worketh by love, this is verse seven. You did run well, otherwise you had a good start. Who did hinder you? Who cut in front of you with false teaching? Who tripped you up? That's what it's saying here. Who hindered you that you should not obey the truth? He says, you were on your way to being saved, you had to grasp a little bit of what Christ was, but someone got in front of you, someone tripped you up, and you never crossed that finish line of full faith in Christ. You were trusting in your works. So this persuasion, it says, cometh not of him that calleth you. God didn't do that. He says, a little leaven, leaveneth the whole lump. Now what's he talking about works? How much work does it take? A little leaven, leaveneth the whole lump. The smallest little bit of false doctrine regarding co-redemption leaveneth the whole and corrupts the whole. The smallest amount. You say, Pastor, you're just being really narrow about this. I don't know how you could get any more narrow than that statement. A little leaven, leaveneth the whole lump. I didn't say that, God did. I'm just a messenger boy, but God said it. And a little leaven, leavened the whole month. In the context, he's talking about works. The smallest amount will leaven your faith and corrupt it all. Now, the first thing we want to notice in Hebrews 3, 7 through 19 is a repetitive use of the word or the term today. Look here in that text. It's used in verse 7, verse 13, verse 15, and if you go over to chapter four, it's used in chapter four, verse seven twice. So remember chapter divisions in our Bible are not inspired. They're just intended to give us some divisions so we can find our way around. And sometimes they help, sometimes they don't. But the word today leads us out of the past of the Mosaic covenant and its ordinances into the present of the new covenant and its ordinances. So today, He's talking about the New Covenant. So today, in the New Covenant, don't harden your heart by trying to incorporate aspects of the old Mosaic Covenant into the New Covenant. It won't work. They're oil and water. They won't mix. They're not acceptable any longer. God has set that all aside. And so, the seriousness today lies in this principle of abandonment of a profession in the true New Covenant faith. So to continue in the practices of the Old Mosaic Covenant, rituals, those insufficient animal sacrifices, various holy days, would actually manifest a false faith. What's that mean? Unbelief in Christ's finished work of redemption. The seriousness of this issue builds in a crescendo to Hebrews chapter 6, verses 1 through 8. Go over there to that and get the context. We're looking at Hebrews 3, 7 through 19, but this builds up all the way to chapter six. This is a text that's often used to confirm that you can lose your salvation. That's not what it's talking about at all. Actually, it's about a warning against reprobation. Reprobation is the abandonment of the faith for corruption. And so there comes a point in time when God will give you over to a reprobate mind. And that's a warning here. Verse one, therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, the principle, the elementary issues, the foundations of the gospel of Christ, of this doctrine of Christology, let us go on unto perfection, that's full maturity. not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith towards God. The dead works he's talking about is all the ritualism and moralism of the law. That added nothing to your salvation. The Mosaic covenant was added to the Abrahamic covenant because of transgressions and to keep the people who were already redeemed within the parameters of righteousness. Otherwise they are bounties of righteousness for saved people. They weren't any means for someone to get saved. That was corruption of the gospel. So he says, no, let's not lay again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith towards God. Now he talks about these dead works of the doctrine of baptisms. That's a dead work of the laying on of hands and of the resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permit. Now look at verse four. 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 were to come, if they shall fall away, otherwise move back out of the realm of grace, and into the area of works, if they do that, to renew them again under repentance, seeing they crucified themselves to the Son of God and fresh, and put Him to open shame. Otherwise, when God brings you to the full understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ, he brings you to the taste of all of these issues and to understand them all, you abandon them and reject them and return to something else, God says it's impossible to bring them back. Why? Because God's not going to do it. You reject it, God says, I'm not bringing you back. You reject the ministry of the Holy Spirit, which leads you to understand your sinfulness, leads you to understand that Jesus Christ has satisfied the wrath of God for every sin you've ever committed in your whole life. He has propitiated God, and that God is giving you the gift of the righteousness of Jesus Christ in the indwelling Holy Spirit, And that by simply repenting of sin, believing the gospel, confessing Jesus Christ to be Jehovah God, and calling on the name of Jesus to be saved, that you are eternally and once for all and forever saved. If you abandon that understanding, God is never going to bring you back there again. When I have people that I have shared the gospel with and I say, would you like to get saved? They said, I'm not ready. I'm not ready to get saved. I always say, today is the day of salvation, now is the accepted time. And immediately there is a fear that grips my heart for their souls. The hair on the back of my neck begins to stand up. in fear for their souls. I will not be ever able to tell you how many people at that particular junction in their life has walked away from the gospel of Jesus Christ and never ever, ever was willing to listen again, at least from me or anyone else that I knew of. Maybe they did later, I don't know. But as far as I know, they never did. You see, that's what Paul is warning about here in this text. Now, the culmination of this warning regarding continuing in the New Covenant faith, ordinances and practice, is that failure to do so may constitute apostasy, manifesting that the event of salvation, having been born again, never really happened. That's a serious, serious issue. These Hebrew believers were under enormous pressure and persecution by apostate Israel to come back to the Mosaic Covenant, the simple sacrifices sacerdotalism of the Mosaic Covenant priesthood. Those of the temple order did not care if people believed in this Jesus as long as they kept tithing to the temple and continued to offer sacrifices because the priesthood kept the portions of the sacrifices that were not burned up and sold those pieces of meat for their own profit. So long as they didn't care what you believed, as long as you kept, the cows kept coming to the barn, and they kept getting to milk the cows. God calls that using God's people as merchandise. I'm more concerned about your soul than anything else. That's why I'm gonna tell you the truth always. Not gonna pull punches for you. I can't help you by giving you half the truth or misrepresent the facts. I might scratch your back a little bit as I'm telling you the truth and try to ease you and make it as easy as possible for you, but I can't compromise the message and so I hope to help you. If you're this far away from being saved, you're still lost. And if you were to die today, you'd spend eternity in hell. This close, you might as well be this far away. And there are so many people who sit in church services every Sunday under a delusion of salvation and do not have enough sense to fear God. because they have been deluded into thinking that they are saved when they have misplaced faith, which is really no different than unbelief. Are you saved today? You've heard me say this many times, and I'll say it many times more. We're not choosing upsides for a touch football game. This is serious, serious business. you