And you know, we've been going through this study, and we'll kind of talk about it hopefully at the end, about what this study of these doctrines is supposed to do for us really, and what the results should be as we've spent time considering these things. But as we look at it and consider salvation and how it happens, that's really what we're trying to look at is the study of salvation, soteriology. who it is that's responsible, really, for our salvation. And you know, everybody who's a Christian has this experience of knowing a past in some way or another and having something happen at a conversion where I became a different person. I had a different perspective on God. For some people it's the conversion from a life of absolute rejection of Christ to a following and a believing and a trusting. For some people it's a religious upbringing and a never really rejecting but a never really taking Him as my personal Lord and Savior. And then there's a conversion that that happens, that I see Him as different and recognize Him as my boss and surrender. Because I can accept a lot of stuff in the Bible and not surrender to it. And so, every Christian has this experience. But the Bible then tells us things, and we have different things in different places, where the Bible tells us how that happened, why it happened. right? And so we've been building these doctrines one upon another. And we kind of need to see this pyramid today because we finish it. But when we talk about salvation on page four of this little handout, the first doctrine we talked about was total depravity or inability. This is the Bible's teaching that All men and women are sinners, and everybody's a sinner. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And because everybody's a sinner, there's a death penalty for sin. The wages of sin is death, right? And so how does anybody get saved? Well, the Lord has to save somebody from the penalty of their sin and the power of their sin. Well, how does that happen? Well, the Bible describes man as dead in their sins, as without any sort of ability, without any way or reason to or desire to choose to follow God. There's not really anything in the Scripture presented this way. that this is what we do, but rather He chose us before we choose Him. He loved us before we loved Him. And because He's loved us, then we are saved and then we come. Right? It's an order of operation. How does the Bible describe it? Do we come to God, and then He saves us? Or does He actually save us, and then because we're saved, we come? And we believe this, that we are saved, and then because we're saved, we come. And it's because of this basic foundational doctrine of who is man. He's totally depraved. He's not as sinful as he could be. But he is absolutely sinful and opposed to God. No one chooses God, Romans 3 says, right? God has to do all of this. The next doctrine that builds on that is this idea of unconditional election. So, if everybody is dead in their sins, and they have this spiritual death, and they're fallen, and are unable and unwilling to choose to follow the Lord, how does anybody actually do it? Well, God elects them. God chooses and says, this one will be saved, and this one, and this one, and this one. When did He do that? Before the foundation of the world. He elects them. His words are Bible words, right? What does election mean? Well, we know that it means this, that God picked who was going to be saved. And He did it unconditionally. In other words, it wasn't anything based on what He saw in me that He chose me, but it was just strictly because of His decision, His will. Right? It was just His way of doing it. And so He gets the glory for that. And so the next doctrine that we looked at was a limited atonement. If this is true, that man is totally sinful and God elects them, What does the atonement do? When Jesus died on the cross, He died to pay for sin, but what does that mean? What does it mean that He actually accomplished and who did He actually die for? Well, we read this and we see all throughout the Bible that when He died on the cross, He accomplished all sorts of things that He fully accomplished them, right? He atoned for sin, He redeemed His people, He ransomed them, He paid for them. It opens up with a way that we can be adopted. Right? He justifies us at the cross. He gives us His righteousness at that cross. All of these things happen at the cross. It's a full and complete salvation at the cross that He purchased for all of those who are His. Well, if He bought and purchased and paid for all of these other things, and that's what happened on the cross, if there's people who aren't saved, does that mean that He died for them too and it just didn't work or something? This is a difficult doctrine. We spent two weeks talking about it, right? And really, Christ only really died for His people is what you see in the Bible. It says that He died for the many, He died for His own, all of that sort of stuff. And so we looked at that, and because that's true, and we can see that in the Bible, we know that when He does in time call each one of us to Himself, He does it in a way that He changes us from the inside. The Bible describes that he takes out the heart of stone and puts in the heart of flesh. And with that heart of flesh, then the person decides, I want to follow Jesus and does it. Exercises faith that he didn't have before. Exercises repentance that he didn't desire before. Why does he desire these things? Why does he believe now? Why five minutes ago did I not believe and then something happened and then I believed? Well, God regenerated that person. He gave them a new heart. And so, He gives them grace. This is that unmerited grace, the unearned favor of God in the life, so far as salvation is concerned. And we talk about this like it's an irresistible grace. Because He changes the heart from the inside, nobody with the new heart rejects God because the new heart comes with with the surrender to God, right? And so, we talked about that last week. Now, the fifth doctrine is on the back. We get to this today, the perseverance of the saints. As I've said, we build this pyramid. If all of these things are true, then is it possible for somebody to lose the salvation that they've been given? This is an answer to that question. And you see at the top, That if all of our salvation is dependent upon God, then He will be the one who keeps us. Those whom He saves, He keeps us. He keeps us saved. He doesn't let us go. We'll see this here shortly, but the alternate view, the Arminian position is that everybody who believes that there's actual real Christians who believe, they get saved and it's possible for them to lose their salvation. Either by falling away, changing from being a Christian and loving and surrendering to God, and falling away to a place of going back to being a rejecter, or to some degree or another, and nobody really knows what this line is, falling into a state of serious sin. So if I fall into some sort of sin, maybe if I fall into a certain kind of sin, maybe the Lord would be fed up with me and reject me. Maybe if I stay in it for too long, maybe I would be rejected. Like, all of those uncertain things get tied to this. This is one view, and we'll see why in a minute, because there are these verses in the Bible that tell you that you have to continue. You have to persevere. You have to strive. You do, right? Then there's another set of verses that we'll look at that talk about that God's actually the one who preserves us, and that is why we persevere. We continue because God keeps us. Hey, everybody for whom Jesus died is necessarily saved. They all come to him and because he saved them, they stay saved. And this is really, think about the logic of it. If you follow all the logic of what we've built, how did somebody get saved in the first place? Jesus died for them on the cross. He died for them and paid for their sin in our lives even before we were born. If you're a Christian, you were elected from before the foundation of the world, and He paid for your sin back there on that cross. Now, if He paid for your sin, is there ever a time when God... These analogies all fall apart, but if I pay Chris for something, I buy something from him, I pay for it in full, is He ever going to come back and say, give it back to me? Well, He might, but that's not... Right? Like, no, because I paid for it. Right? If the Christian is fully paid for at the cross, fully redeemed, fully ransomed, set free from slavery, They've been given a new heart, a new nature. Everything's new. God's given them the full, complete package, complete with faith and repentance and everything, even though the Christian life goes up and down and up and down. If they're paid for, is God going to expect payment again? Is He going to refund the devil back something? I mean, you're missing all of these sorts of thoughts in the Bible if this were true. You'd have to come at somehow Jesus didn't really pay very well because He didn't get what He paid for. Right? But because we see these things in the Scripture, He's paying for everybody. Well, if they're paid for, they're paid for. And He paid for me when I was a wicked, terrible sinner. Will He not continue with me when I fall into wicked, terrible sin? And that begs us, there are these questions, and this is why the Armenians have these things. There's a couple verses that sound like it's all on me and not on God, and because experience shows this. We all know people who said they were Christians, who changed their life, who quit smoking and drinking and sleeping around, went to church some, read their Bible, and then they might have been really better Christians than I am. And then they fell away. They totally turned their back on it, rejected it. They're God-cursing, self-proclaimed atheists now. Maybe you don't know anybody quite that extreme, but there are these people out there. Well, what happened to them? Well, the Arminian views that and says they must have lost what they had. And we'll see here that we think more like they never had it in the first place. And we'll try to address that a little bit, because that's a little bit in the Bible. But that's kind of what we're looking at. So these three points as we look at the verses, let's look at these things. The first one is that we must persevere in faith if we are to be finally saved. This is the teaching of the Scripture. We see it in places like 1 Corinthians 15, 1 and 2. I wouldn't mind if somebody else wants to read for a minute. Does somebody have that verse they want to read? Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel, you are saved if you hold firmly to the word I preach to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. Right, so you are saved, or you are being saved, the ESV translates it. Both things are true. You are saved if, you see that condition? There's a condition here. If you hold fast to the Word. If you continue in the faith. Does that leave the impression like there might be some who look like they're in the faith and then they don't continue? And as a Christian, do I look at that and I say, I have to do some effort here to make sure that I hold fast? Because I don't want to have believed for a short while in vain and then have lost it, right? These verses are written in this way so as to put the responsibility correctly on the Christian to persevere. That word persevere means that I will continue. I will keep going. I'm not going to stop. Perseverance is about what I do. We'll talk about preservation, which is what God does, but I'm persevering. And everybody who's a Christian will stand firm until the end. And most of these verses are kind of warnings about that, like in Colossians 1.21. In you who are once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body and flesh by his death, in order to present you wholly and blameless and above reproach before him. If indeed you continue in the faith, stay by us steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you've heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I call Okay, you see that condition again? The conditional if? These things are true if. You have been reconciled in His body of flesh by His death. He did it in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him. These things have happened if. That condition is a big if. It really is. It's not a thing that we gloss over and say, oh, once saved, always saved, and the ifs don't matter. The ifs are there for very good reasons. Because it matters. We really do have to persevere in the faith. We really do have to continue. You have to, if you are a Christian, continue in the faith stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the Gospel all the way until the end of your life, or you are not saved. You prove it. By not persevering, you prove that you're not saved. And in the end, you won't be. These ifs are a big deal, right? And so the Christian, Paul writes these things to Christians in churches during his life to warn them and tell them that you must continue, and you must, right? We really can't say that strongly enough. We have to continue. Mark 13, 13. Polly, you wanna read Mark 13, 13? All right, go ahead. for my name's sake, but the one who endures to the end will be saved. Perfect, right? Jesus says that the one who endures to the end will be saved. There's a few things that we look at, things like this, and we can ask ourselves questions, ask the Bible the questions, right? So does that mean if somebody doesn't endure to the end, what does that mean for them? The one who endures to the end will be saved. So let's say there's some who don't endure to the end. What will happen to them? Are they saved? No. Right? That's one question we ask. The other question we ask is who can do this? Who can do that? Those are huge ifs. You just made my salvation dependent on my continuing in the faith. Who's up for that kind of task? When the temptations of the world come, and you're tempted by the lust of your eyes and the lust of your flesh, and the temptation to rise up in pride in your life, when the world comes at you and the devil launches the attacks, well, how much do I have to continue? What level must I continue at? Do I have to be sinlessly perfect from this point forward in order to say that I endured to the end? Or can I fall into some sin? What if I have some doubts? What if I have no doubt that Jesus died on the cross, but I'm not entirely certain that it was, I'm not sure it was for me, was it? I don't feel like I'm very close to God today. Am I not enduring? All these questions, you look at these and go, these are big questions, right? Oh, praise the Lord. There's great, great news in the Bible about a hope that doesn't just tell you that you have to persevere and continue. These next verses tell you that you will persevere because God will preserve you. Who's up for this? Nobody's up for this. If you had to persevere on your own, you wouldn't make it. We'll see this here. Look in Jeremiah 32.40. These are under this other sort of next step topic of we will persevere because God will preserve us. God will keep us. He will sustain us. Look at how the Bible describes this. God says, I will make an everlasting covenant that I will not turn away from doing good to them. I will put the fear of me in them, the fear of me in their hearts, the fear of God in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. that they will not, that I will make it to where they don't, God says, as part of the eternal covenant. And this is right in this context here of talking about the new birth, that this is the new covenant, the new covenant where He writes the law on the new heart and gives you a new heart and takes out the heart of stone. Those things are all tied together. They're not all right here in this little passage, but all these ideas are all the same ideas about this new covenant idea, the new covenant that he brings in his blood. It's in the blood of Christ. How do we get into this covenant? Jesus died for us and brought us in, gave us a new heart. And when he gives you a new heart, he says, I will put the fear of God. I will put my mother, the fear of me in that heart that they won't turn from me. Part of what keeps us from turning is God continues to give us the awe and reverence and fear and terror of, I can't turn or I know what's going to happen to me. Right? That's part of it. It's also a greater respect and an admiration and a confidence in Him because of the knowing of His love for me. And He puts into us all kinds of things in His heart, but this is one of them. And it's for the purpose of not letting us go. with the ifs and the and putting fear to the people that want to preserve it's in hebrews 10 26 yeah or if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth there no longer remain the sacrifice of sins but a fear but a fearful expectation of judgment and the fury of Yeah, this is one of those scary passage-if type passages. And it's possible to have experienced these things and to have looked like a Christian and to have thought you were a Christian and have everybody else think you're a Christian and it not be true. And to fall away and trample the blood of the Lord under your feet. And if you fall away like that, God is a consuming fire. If you fall away like that, you'll be destroyed by His wrath. Everlastingly destroyed. Like these ifs are there, but then these things are here about how does it happen? How can I do this? So one of the great things about this whole set of doctrines is we can look at these things and say, how and why? Why is anybody persevering? Why does any Christian continue? Well, the truth of the Bible is it's because God does all this work, right? We see it in John 10. Can you see the phrase that he repeats twice there? He repeats it twice, he repeats it. Is that repeating it once or repeating it twice? He says it twice right here. No one will snatch them out of My hand or out of My Father's hand. Nobody will do it. Nobody can do it. Remember we talked about this passage before about how not everybody is of His flock. Right? See the doctrine building on itself? Who's part of the flock of Jesus? It's those wicked sinners who couldn't do anything for themselves who were elected from the foundation of the world, for whom Jesus died on the cross and purchased for them a total salvation package, so to speak. the ones that He called in time who came because He regenerated them when they were His enemies. He made them into those who love Him and follow Him by giving them a new heart. And now He tells us that at the end, He will make sure that nobody can snatch you out of His hand. You can't jump out of His hand. Nobody can snatch you out of His hand. You can't be lost falling out of His hand. He doesn't lose track of where you are and you slip out of the crack between His fingers. None of that happens, right? All of this is right here in this and other passages like it, right? No one's going to snatch Him out. Why? Because you hear My voice after I gave you the new heart with ears to hear. You heard My voice. They came to Me. They follow Me. I have given them eternal life. They'll never perish, and it's not even possible that the devil could come and snatch Him out of My hand. Because he's got the power. A guy that I work with, he's a full-fledged army man, and we were talking about this verse one day. And I said, what do you do with this verse? Because he thinks you can lose your salvation, you know? And I said, no one can snatch a Christian out of God's hands. And he adds this thing, well, except yourself. You can do it yourself. And I said, well, then you're more powerful than the devil, and you're more powerful than God, because he said the devil can't even take you out. So I said, first of all, it doesn't say that, but in conclusion, you're the king of the universe, and you're stronger than everybody. That's right. To be fair, I added that, that you can't jump out. But this is what the Arminian position is. God can keep you and hold you, but you're perfectly able to jump out by the power of your own will. Why? Because by the power of your own will, you jumped in. If you jumped in, you can jump out. Well, when you got the first wrong, you get the second wrong. It's necessary. When you didn't understand how you got there in the first place, He plucked you out when you were His enemy, placed you in the palm of His hand, and He's holding you and won't ever let you go. If you get this plucking thing right, then you get the end part right too. But yeah, looking at this verse, what do you say about this? This is what they say about this. Well, God's this gentleman and He doesn't force me against my will, and He'll let me jump out of His hand. Well, that's the worst kind of gentleman I ever heard of ever. I'm in the 58th story of the burning building and I'm the fireman and I can save your life and I let you jump out? Because I'm a gentleman? And I don't want to override the power of your free will? Yeah, try to get, try to sell that on the media. I had him and he said, let me go. And I just. Yeah. They fell away and it was their choice. So they leave them for a different person. Like you're saying, it was you step out, you choose to go out. If somebody falls away, they did choose that. That part of it is true. If they fall away, what we see in this realm is we watch people and this guy changes his life and quits smoking and drinking, and then he comes to church. Wow, he really got saved. And then he falls away, he goes back to that lifestyle, rejects the Lord and walks away. We see that happen. Well, what happened there? Was he in the palm of God's hand and jumped out? Or was he never in the palm of God's hand at all? I think He was never there in the first place. Can we ever tell who's in the palm of God's hand? We honestly can't really tell that. We can tell the fruit. We can observe fruit. We can see the activity of faith. We can hear about the love and all of that sort of stuff that people have for one another and for the Lord, but that... I mean, this is really true. If anybody's falling away, it's not because God didn't keep them. God never had them in the first place, right? And so if they never came in the first place, truly, they're not going to be able to stay anyway. But this gets a little... You have to draw some conclusions a little bit in these directions about things, right? Right, right. That parable is a perfect example of this. There's many who come and they start growing up and they look like the real deal and then the cares of the world choke them out or whatever it is about the sun scorching them and the devil stealing them away. But there are some that fall on the rocky ground and never sprout up and the gospel goes nowhere. But there's others that it goes somewhere and then they die off. We try. Right. Most of their statements, they have a minimal number of Scriptures that are attempting to say that, like, that's one that I've desired to gather them in like a hen gathers her chicks or some such thing. See, God wants to, but He doesn't. He's restraining His own will because He's a gentleman and they read all this gentleman stuff into the mother hen thing. And so He doesn't want to force anybody. This sort of stuff about perseverance, they look and they say, well, back in Revelation and other places it's talked about your name might be blotted out of the Lamb's Book of Life. Well, that means that your name could be written there and then scratched out. Some Arminians think that can happen once. Some think that there's 700, 800 entries into the Book of Life and they're scratched out and then it's written on another line later. I mean, there's a whole range of views about this. But see, there's these verses like this They say, well, you might be scratched out of the book of life. You read the verse real carefully and it tells you that you won't have your name. It's actually a perseverance verse about if you're His, your name will not be scratched out. But they go, well, see, it sort of sounds like there's a possibility. Well, all these verses sound like there's a possibility. that Hebrews 6 talks about they experienced the benefits or the joys and the benefits of the Christian life. They experienced and tasted of the Holy Spirit. You can hardly get more descriptive describers of a Christian than these guys fell away. I mean you can be a really like, you can go really far in the Christian life and look a lot more like you did than quit smoking and stuff, right? And you could really deceive everybody and deceive yourself and still get there. So why are those verses there if God's preserving His people? Well, part of the way He preserves us is like we read in Jeremiah about He won't let us go because He puts the fear of God in us. Partly we don't go because we read those verses and go, I want to stay as far away from the line as I can. Right, Samantha? With the fear of God kind of comment, if I felt like I didn't believe that God was all-powerful, and kind of going off of Ivan's that I was more powerful, that my decision would be the final way, it's scary to think that, why would I want to serve Him if He's not that powerful? These are good questions. And yeah, Ivan said that. God's the one who's more powerful. Well, are you sure you did the right work then? That if I can just decide to leave it, or that he wouldn't keep it? Ultimately, at the end of the day, if it's not true that God's the one keeping us, then if I persevere, I'm the one who deserves the glory. Because I kept myself from jumping out. Right? Look what I did. Look how I did. And so when I show up there in heaven and there's all these songs about the Lamb who was slain from the beginning of the world, and then there's another song with a second verse that goes, Right? It's just not true. God is more powerful. He proved it when He saved us in the first place. He proves it when He overcomes our flesh and the devil and the world and everything that's working against us to try to pull us away from Him. He proves Himself powerful by keeping us. Not very powerful if He's trying to keep us but doesn't. He tried to convince us but couldn't. Not very wise and all-powerful. Those initial stages of repentance are less evidence that you're a Christian than what happens when you start to drift. That's more of an evidence that you're a Christian. I saw myself starting to go away, and the Lord woke me up and pulled me back and praised the Lord. Now I know He's doing something. I might actually be a real Christian. Yeah, He chastens all. He disciplines, chastens all that He loves. And when He goes after the lost sheep to bring them back, does He get the lost sheep? I mean, He's not seeking lost goats, He's seeking lost sheep. Sheep who have wandered away. And He goes and gets them and brings them back. This is how you are preserved in the fold, in the sheep fold. When you get out of the fence, He goes and gets you. When you wander away, He goes and gets you. Because He's keeping you, right? We read these other places, like in 1 Peter 1-3, It says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. You see all of the things that God's doing? Amen, right? Like, it's according to His great mercy that He caused you to be born again. So if you were born again, does He then put you back to death? He doesn't. Does He keep you from committing spiritual suicide? Yes, He does. Because if He didn't, you would. Right? But you're born again to a living hope. Look what He did. How did He do it? The resurrection of Jesus from the dead. What did the resurrection of Jesus prove that everything He paid for at the cross got paid for? It's the receipt. The resurrection in some ways is the receipt. Paid in full. Paid in full, it says. Everything's done. It is finished, He said to the Father. Then He died and three days later He rose again to prove it. It's proven by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead that we have an inheritance that's imperishable, undefiled, unfading, and it's that because it's kept for us by God in heaven. Our salvation is tied to God and Jesus in heaven, where He is the anchor for our soul, behind the curtain, where He's already finished it. The work is done. He sat down beside the right hand of God in glory, and He said, the work is finished and you are mine. When He says that for you, you can't leave. He's keeping you this way, and He's giving you this, and by God's power you're being guarded. It comes back to what Samantha and Ivan said, right? By God's power you're being guarded. I don't care if He's a gentleman or not. I want Him guarding me by His power. I don't want Him trusting me with my free will. I know what I used to do with that. And I know what I would do again. He preserves us, right? There's this doxology, this last statement in the letter of praise to God. Praise to God. He's able to keep us from stumbling and able to present us blameless before Him in the presence with great joy. It's because He has all the glory, majesty, dominion, and authority. Because He has all that power, it's the same thing. All that power is how you're kept. All of that that he has now and forever. Now and forever. Do you see that? Now and forever. He has those things and he uses them. Not only is he able to keep you, he actually does it. You can't look at this one and go say, he's able, but he's not doing he, he, he's able to save me from the burning building, but he doesn't really, he's able to keep me from plunging myself into eternal damnation, but he doesn't because he's a gentleman in the power of my free will. It's not even like that's not here and it's not true. And that's not why it's written this way. And this passive voice about he's able to keep you from stumbling, praise the Lord. And look at all the glory of majesty and dominion. He has all of that. And he's using it. What's he using it for to keep us. put all these things together, He's using it to keep us. A couple more passages that we want to see this because we just haven't proven it yet. In 1 Thessalonians 5, He who calls you is faithful. I don't care what kind of Christian you are, you're not faithful. I mean, if you can prove yourself faithful to me, I would entertain the notion of watching it for a bit with you. I mean, we all know this. Who's the faithful one? Jesus is the one who's faithful, right? The prayer that Paul says is, may God of peace Himself sanctify you completely. May He bring you completely through whatever process of sanctification that He has destined for you, that He is working in you, may He do that. If you are going to be sanctified and through being sanctified, continue and persevere in those things, if He will preserve you, it's Him preserving you. If you are going to be sanctified, it's Him doing it. He is going to do it completely for you, whatever that means. And may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." Tell me, how did your body, soul, and all of these things here, your whole spirit, soul, and body, he says, be kept blameless. How is it made blameless? If it's blameless, how is it made blameless? Justification. It's by Christ. You've been declared righteous. You've been declared righteous even though you're not, because Jesus died on the cross, took your sin, and gave you His righteousness. And before God, you stand blameless. And you're going to be kept that way. Because you've been declared legally in God's court, legally declared righteous, that's not a declaration that He pulls back and says, just kidding. Now I'm going to declare you not righteous anymore. Despite the fact that we're told that we must continue, if you don't, you're not saved. How does anybody stay with the Lord? It's this. It's this that He keeps you. Romans 8 has this longer explanation or longer sort of churning through this a little bit, but we'll read this. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? And listen carefully to what Paul describes as if we could be lost after we're saved. "...He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?" All things. All things that we need in this life for godliness and to continue with Him and to be kept with Him. Put all things in the category of all things. Right? "...Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Then who is it that can condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. You know what He intercedes for us about? This, being kept, persevering, and other things, but this. You think Jesus gets His prayers answered? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Self-tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, For your sake we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. Knowing all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Doesn't that sound like a really comprehensive list? He's not going to let you go. Praise the Lord. But what of these guys that we know and have seen and have observed, who seem to have tasted of the heavenly gift, who seem to have experienced even the joy of the Holy Spirit, have been a part of the fellowship and seem to be fruitful, fruit-bearing Christians who persevered for sometimes, in many cases, many years, and then they come to a place where they fall away. What of them? Does the Bible tell us anything about that? a little bit, and I just put one verse on here. But in 1 John 2.19, It's described this way that, starting in verse 18, John says, Children, it's the last hour, and as you have heard, that Antichrist is coming. So now many Antichrists have come, therefore we know that it is the last hour. They, some of our disciples, they went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might be complained, that they all are not of us. Now, John is not talking about one church where somebody went from this fellowship to that fellowship and changed congregations. Right? He's talking about those who had fallen away. And Jesus knew of this, right? There were many who had followed Him, and He starts teaching in John 5 and 6 about, I am the bread of life. I am the real food. I am these things. You come to Me. And many thought it was hard teaching and they left. And John watched it in person happen to Jesus. And then John watched it happen in the early churches. And John's explanation about what happened there was, they weren't of us in the first place. Some of them were deceptive and some of them were deceived, but they weren't of us. This is the best explanation, I think, of watching people come to the Lord, it seems, and then fall away. And it begs the question for yourself, how do I know I'm not one of those? Because I read these verses and these passages and I see if I continue in my faith, and it strengthens me to want to continue in my faith. And because when things get hard, I go to the Lord. And when I find myself in sin and He reveals that I'm falling away, I hit the end of the chain, He pulls me back and I come back willingly. I'm not kicking and screaming, but I see it and I'm sorrowful. Even sorrowfulness and brokenheartedness and all of these things aren't enough. You have to be kept and the Lord has to keep you. But as I move through my life and see these things happen, I'm gaining in this confidence partly because of this, but it's mostly because I'm directed back with my eyes to be back on Christ, and I know that it's finished. That I've been justified, I've been bought, I've been purchased. And when I see the Lord, I renew my strength, and I pursue holiness again. Right? I think what bothers me is I seem to want to find out if I'm at the end of that chain. Right. Yeah. Banging the end of the chain, realizing that I'm playing as close to the line as I possibly can, those things. Right? Right up to the edge, as close to what I think is allowable, but I know it's not really in the right spirit, and my motives are off, and all of those things. I know when I'm in that position, I've already crossed the line, but I'm not, you know, I might be at the end of the chain, but the Lord will keep me. And those things always prove that. And I think that there's people who have this, that they will do that sometimes for years, and come back, and come back, and come back, and it'll be years before they actually find out that they weren't actually saved in the first place. And some of those at that point finally make the final surrender to God and they get saved at that point. Others say there's nothing in this and they walk away because they've never had anything other than that experience. Some maybe have that experience their whole lives. I mean, there's no set one way of watching this thing. And so, I mean, I don't know what to say about that really. I know the Lord knows these things, and those who are His, He'll keep. Some of them maybe He keeps really close to the end of the chain, but some people have longer chains than others maybe, but it'll necessarily be that they were kept. Yeah, realizing I'm at the end of the chain, dancing close to the dark lines, and that's when we need to flee back. That's when we really need to redouble our efforts and strive back towards being as close to the Lord as we can. And the Christians do that. Why? Not because they're smarter than anybody else, or because they have 30 years under their belt, or because they're in a good church, It's not because of any of that. It's because God changes them again. He reinvigorates them with the Holy Spirit and draws them back. And that's what's going on. This is how the Lord does it. He keeps us in these ways. It's pretty phenomenal. The results and benefits of this whole thing, the whole study as a whole, not just this perseverance idea. I just want to point this out on the last page. We don't have to meditate on this. There's not verses to look up or anything. But I think that we should see this. When we start understanding these truths correctly, and we ask these questions of the Scripture, and we get the answers like these from the Bible, And we see why things are happening the way they are, how they've been done, what God's doing, why He's doing it, how He's doing it. We can start to see some of these things in the Scripture. When we see these, we recognize more and more and more that our salvation is purely by grace. It didn't even have to do with my decision. The only thing I decided to do was I decided to be a sinner. And then God found me when I was His enemy, it says. Right? What did I bring to the table? When you start to see what I brought to the table, it should create humility. Not this other way where sometimes this has the effect of learning these doctrines and going, you don't read the Bible the way I do, you're an idiot. Is that the right effect of this doctrine? No. In fact, you need to start over at square one if you have that thought, because you have by that action denied the doctrine in your life. You didn't take the doctrine and use it the way that this has come. We never see these apostles doing exactly that kind of thing, right? We should know more than anybody else that for the increase in understanding, or the greater depth of seeing things, or however you want to say it, that we have no reason for pride in those things, and they should never come up like that, because if we have that, it's only by God's giving it to us anyway. the doctrine itself teaches that. So if you understand the doctrine correctly, we know that this should be the effect. And when we see it like this, everything about what God has done through Christ, what's been given to us gets magnified, right? Back when I thought that I was the one who was doing all the choosing and that God was the gentleman and all of these other things that we've kind of talked about over the weeks, back then I knew that God loved me. But I didn't know the depth of the love that he had for me when I was his enemy. And yet he, he came to me and changed me from the inside out. Now that's deeper love, isn't it? It's one thing to save the drowning man who's crying, please, please help me. But it's another thing to save the drowning man who's shooting at you with the bazooka from the water and trying to wipe you out of his life. That's what the unbeliever is doing with God all day long, right? To one degree or another, whether it was so bold and outward as that or not, before you were a believer, that's what you were doing. fighting and rebelling against God. That's the last guy you'd expect to have God want to save. That's the depth of the love. Doesn't it magnify that? And because of these things, if we know these things and they build this way and we see these doctrines added one on top of another, and we get to this one today about perseverance and the fact that the Lord preserves us, we should be able to have an absolute kind of a security. We're told by writers of the scriptures, we're told throughout, John, Paul, others, Peter, that at various times and in different ways, Luke, they write for the purpose that we might know. That's the purpose that they wrote these things down for, that we might know, that we might have a security, an assurance, a certainty. And why would we be able to have that certainty and security? It's because of all that God has done, and it's not about me. I can't have that security if it's about what I've done. And so we can see the basis for our assurance is really on everything that God's done. And when we can see a little bit better about what God's done and how little I did, then I can have greater assurance. The best thing about all of it is that all of those songs that are talked about in the Bible that are predicted about what's gonna be sung in heaven and might be being sung now, all of these things about glory to God and the Lamb who was slain and all power and glory and honor and everything goes to Jesus and the way that things go on in heaven where all the glory is to Him, this doctrine makes it to where all the glory that's going on now is to Him too and it's just all in that vein. All glory to Him and none to me. So why do we even bother with this? Those are the reasons why we bothered with it. So hopefully we've got this and can see it a little bit better in the scripture. Praise the Lord. All right, let's pray. Lord, I thank you for the time that you've allowed us to have over the weeks to look through this and to study these things. Lord, I pray that everything's been presented in the way that your Bible talks about it here, Lord. And I pray that you would help us I know for sure that the right understanding of who You are creates in us a fear and a respect and an awe, admiration and love. Lord, I thank You that we can read Your Word and have all these things worked into our lives. I pray, Lord, that You would increase our faith increase our repentance, Lord, that You would fulfill these things that You promised, that You would keep us and never let us go. We know that we can pray for such things because You make promises to us about these things, and You say they will happen. And so, Lord, we pray in these ways, asking You to do what You said in our lives and the lives of other believers, Lord, I pray that we would do so much more than just barely get in by the skin of our teeth. Somehow we would know that that's not what persevering means, just staying close enough to not be lost somehow. But Lord, that we would do what the Bible says and strive after You and put every effort into our salvation and every effort into our Christian life, that we could be made more conformed to the image of Christ. I pray You'd help us to do that. Lord, help us in our church and we pray that you'll be glorified in the worship we have together this morning in Jesus name. Amen.