Today we're very privileged to have Dr. Ron Allen, pastor of Bible Baptist Church in Matthews, North Carolina, as our chapel speaker. Pastor Allen has four children who've attended here at BJU. One is currently a student, Jen Allen, and really appreciate their family. And his wife Janice is also here with us today and appreciate her being able to make the trip here to Greenville to be a part of chapel as well. But really appreciate Pastor Allen's ministry. He is a very gracious, godly individual, served in several different capacities. He's been a Christian school administrator. served here on staff teaching in Bob Jones Academy Bible and was also a residence hall supervisor. In fact, he was my residence hall supervisor one year as well, though he looks much, much younger than I do. So really appreciate the fact that he's here today and look forward to what he has to share with us from God's Word. So Pastor Allen, if you'd come. Thank you, Dr. Weir. It's such a blessing to be able to be back here again on the campus of Bob Jones University. My wife and I first came here as freshmen in 1978. We met here at school. Our four children have all graduated or almost graduated from here Our sons, John and Jordan, both their spouses attended, got their training here. And this place has meant a tremendous amount to both Janice and me for many, many years. It's had a tremendous impact in our family and in our own individual lives. I could take you to many different places on the campus, including places in this building where God just really stirred in my own heart through the ministry of the folks here at the university. and I count it a great privilege to be back with you. I appreciate so much the ongoing ministry of the university as well. And we had this past weekend at our church as several men from Beta who came up as they've done several years now and did some work projects around the church and then stayed overnight at the gym and had a bunch of fun in there and then attended our services this past yesterday morning. And so we really appreciate their faithful ministry to us. And I'm so thankful to be back here again to open up the Word of God to us today. The theme that we have this year in our church at Bible Baptist in Charlotte is growing in the gospel. That's been our theme this year. And throughout that theme, we've been trying to do three things. There are three goals that we want to accomplish this year. One is to firmly grasp what the gospel is. And then we want to fruitfully grow in the gospel and then to faithfully give it. To help us accomplish that first goal of firmly grasping the gospel, we put in our auditorium four one-word banners. And each one of those banners gives one motif, if I could use that word, of the gospel story that we see revealed to us in the scripture. Those banners are God, sin, Christ, faith. And we begin that story saying, where did it all begin? It all began with God. God made His world and everything that He made perfect. When we look around our world today and we say, well, you know, there are a lot of things in the world that aren't perfect. Well, what went wrong? Sin introduced into the garden and what God had made so perfectly, sin marred so profoundly. Well, what is gonna make all of the wrong right? Before the foundation of the world, God decreed that it would be his son, Jesus Christ, who would be the answer to the problems of man. And he's the only eternal answer for us. Well, how can I be made right personally? That's by my faith and the work of Jesus Christ alone on Calvary. That's been our theme this year. And in our relational world in which we live today, I find myself most often now when I'm giving the gospel to people, I give them the gospel that way. Just speaking the gospel story in those four motifs as they're rebuilding the scripture. But in addition to firmly grasping the gospel, we also wanna fruitfully grow. And my burden has been for our church family this year is that we not treat the gospel like we do our training wheels. When we tried to learn to ride a bike, many of us here, we had training wheels to help us. And we used our training wheels for a while, but once we got going with our bike and we got the balance thing down, we took our training wheels off and hopefully we never put them back on again. And sometimes we treat the gospel like our training wheels. We feel like that they are the training wheels of my Christian life. And I did that a long time ago, but I got rid of my training wheels, the gospel. I've been there, I've done that. That's really not a part of my life anymore. I've graduated to greater things now. And my burden for our church family has been this year is that we grasp that the gospel has an integral relationship with everything that we're doing in our Christian life. When God says to a husband, husbands, love your wives, how do you love your wife this way? Even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. When we have messy relationships and our sin problem reveals itself in the struggles that we have with relationships, how do we get those things right? Well, we are to be kind and tenderhearted and forgiving one another. Well, how do we do that? Even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. The gospel informs every aspect of our Christian life, including the one I want us to consider this morning, and that is this, a gospel-informed assurance. a gospel-informed assurance. I have found over the years in my ministry, both here at the Academy and up in Chicago and also in Charlotte where we are now, that many, many genuine believers live their Christian lives plagued with doubts. And sometimes the doubts bring an individual to the point of absolute despair, particularly given the eternal weight of this subject. We want to be absolutely certain that we have been eternally saved from the wrath of God. And sometimes people really struggle about that. And the gospel informs our assurance. And I want you to see that this morning out of Romans chapter 5. Let's turn there, if you would, please. Romans chapter 5. We're going to begin there and then go over to one other passage. As we look at Romans 5, I want to unfold this morning both what I'm calling the objective and the subjective nature of our salvation assurance. And you may be here this morning and you may be one of those people that you have throughout your Christian experience, you have continually struggled over the matter of whether or not you really belong to God. And there are periods of, and maybe perhaps days and months in your life where that's okay and you're feeling good about it. And then there are times in your life where just deep down, I mean, you have an intense battle going on in your heart over whether or not you really belong to Jesus Christ. I hope that the word of God today will encourage you. When we think about the objective nature of our salvation, we're talking about the facts of security. We're talking about the facts of security. When we speak about objectivity, we're speaking about something outside of ourselves. We use the word objective to describe someone who can look at a situation and step outside of that situation and analyze all of it without bringing in his own biases to the situation. And we say of that person, he's a pretty objective person. And on the opposite side, someone who brings all of their biases in and their personal feelings into any situation, we look at that person and say, well, they're fairly subjective people. Well, when we talk about here, the security that we have in Christ, we're talking about the objective nature of our salvation, which we see in Romans chapter five and verse one. Notice the scripture here. There's first of all, a factual premise that the scripture teaches us, therefore being justified by faith. That's the factual premise here. I am justified by faith. That means I have believed the gospel story. God, sin, Christ, faith. I have understood that. I have accepted that. I've embraced that. I have believed that. And the result of that was I got justified. I got this legal standing before God that will never ever change. And my justification comes from something outside of me. It's not from something within me, it's something outside of me. I have believed the truth of the gospel. And when I did that, I got then a new position. My former position was I had this position, I was under the wrath of God. But because I am justified by faith, because I believe the gospel, I now have a new and a fixed position. And the fixed position that I have is this, I have peace with God. That happened the moment I trusted Jesus Christ as Savior, I got this fixed position that gave me forever peace with God. Now there's a difference between the peace of God and peace with God. I get the peace of God as I follow what God tells me to do in the scripture. For example, when I am careful for and be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. When I follow that, when I decide the way God wants me to decide about everything in my life, I'm gonna worry about nothing, I'm gonna pray about everything. When I follow that, I have the peace of God in my heart, even though sometimes when I don't follow that, I don't have the peace of God reigning, though I still am at peace with God. Because my peace with God is based on something outside of me. It's my faith in what Jesus Christ did, so I am justified by faith, I have peace with God, and then notice that that peace is focused on a person. That peace comes to me through our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the means of that position. Our salvation is secure because of what Jesus Christ did for me on the cross, and I have believed that, and I am going to have forever, no matter how I feel about it, I am gonna be secure in Jesus Christ. That's what Romans 8, a few chapters over in our Bibles, tells us. In Romans chapter 8 and verse 1, there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, those who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. There's no more condemnation to me. Ever is that going to be the case, never. Because Jesus Christ died for me, and I am in this secure position in Him, and that'll never change. Never. Matter of fact, when Paul speaks of this in Romans 8, you know Romans 8, 28. You memorized that a long time ago. For we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them where they're called according to His purpose. But what about these next verses? For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called. And whom he called, them he also justified. And whom he justified them, he also glorified." If you're here today and you've asked Jesus to save you from your sins, you were foreknown by God. You were predestined by God. You were called by God. You were justified by God. And Paul is so certain about your eternal salvation that when he writes this, he already writes it as though you have been glorified. None of us yet, in this case, in this auditorium today, have been glorified. But when Paul writes about your salvation and mine, he is so certain of it, he says this, you have been glorified. That's the way he puts it. That is a secure position. and it rests in the person of Jesus Christ. It does not rest in your own faith. It doesn't rest in what you have written in the flyleaf of your Bible. I talked to so many people who struggled over, they doubt their salvation because they struggle over whether or not I had enough faith whether I had a sincere faith. And they base their eternal destiny on the quantity or the quality of their salvation, of their faith. And their salvation does not rest in that. And when they come to me and say, well, pastor, I just don't know. And I struggle about this. I say, what do you believe right now? You are staking your eternal destiny on something right now. What is it? Are you trusting in Jesus Christ and Him alone? Are you trusting in your own self or in something other than Jesus? We have a secure position in Christ. That's the objective nature of our salvation. It will never ever change. You say, well, pastor, I don't feel so secure. Sometimes I feel like everything in my Christian life is falling apart. I don't feel very secure, and that leads me to the second area I want us to consider, and that's the subjective nature. And we have to note the difference between the security of the believer and the assurance of our salvation. Though they're related, they are distinctly different. Security deals with objective fact. Assurance is how I feel about those facts. And my feelings change from time to time. And there are certain things that happen in my life that cause me doubt. What are those? What are the causes of doubt? Can I just give us quickly five causes that can often create doubt in our lives? Here's one, strong preaching. Sometimes strong preaching causes us to doubt. a strong message that highlights God's holiness and His absolute righteous standard by which He judges. And that can strike fear and sometimes doubt in a genuine believer. And by the way, if you're in a church, if you're privileged to be in a church where your pastor is a strong preacher, And by that, I mean this. He is committed to stand up and open up his Bible, and he's going to preach out of that book what that book says. And he's speaking as the oracles of God, the utterances of God. If you're privileged to be in a church like that, you ought to thank God for it. There's so many places you can go where you will not find that. But if you have the joy of being able to be in an assembly somewhere where your pastor, you have absolute confidence saying, when you go there on Sundays, you're going to hear the Bible. He's going to tell you something that God says, and he's going to cut it straight. You ought to thank God that you have the privilege to be in a church like that. But sometimes he can stand up and preach a message, and he may go to the Sermon on the Mount, and he may preach from Matthew 7. Where Jesus is preaching and he says, now, not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven. And you step back and you begin to say, am I one of those? Strong preaching sometimes causes doubt. Guilt sometimes causes doubt. Sometimes we can be so overcome with guilt in our lives, and we can't figure how God could possibly forgive us. Our conscience begins to work over time. That necessity that God gave me in my life that works when I don't go the way God wants me to go, and it begins to afflict me about that. Such a precious tool that the Lord gave to us, but sometimes it can create doubt in me as a genuine believer. Sometimes the devil, the accuser of the brethren, who knows nothing about the grace and the forgiveness of God, only condemnation, and he does everything he can to hide the gracious love of God, and my guilt can just compound and compound and compound, and I really begin to struggle. Do I belong to God? Sometimes uncertainty causes doubt. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed with, I just can't, I just can't remember. I know I was told to write it in the flyleaf of my Bible. And sometimes I go there and I open that page and I want to get assurance out of what's on the flyleaf. And sometimes it helps me. And then sometimes I say, it's just words on a page. I go to my mom because she was there when I was a five-year-old child, and I bowed my head and I asked Jesus to save me, and she's recounting this story to me, but I can't remember that story. And I'm struggling about that in my life. Sometimes the uncertainty creates doubt. Sometimes temptation causes doubt. Sometimes I think, how can I really know Jesus and be thinking what I am thinking? How can I be dealing with, I must be the only one who deals with that kind of wickedness in my mind. And that wicked thinking, that temptation causes doubt and sometimes disobedience does. That's the most obvious reason for doubt. Hebrews 10, 22, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. You cannot have a high degree of assurance and have a low degree of obedience. It won't happen. You have a low degree of obedience and you're gonna struggle with the assurance of your salvation. Well, how do I deal with doubt? What's the cure for it? Two quick thoughts and we'll be done. Number one, our assurance is grounded in the gospel. It's that objective truth that I have believed, I have placed my faith in what Jesus did for me on the cross, and that is where I find my security and assurance there. I love what the Apostle John writes in 1 John 3. And hereby we know that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before him. For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then we have confidence toward God. It's all grounded in the gospel. That's where we get our assurance. It's not in the flyleaf of my Bible. It's not in what I have been told or what I can remember, it's the fact that I have believed in what Jesus did for me on the cross. But then in closing, can we just go to 2 Peter? I'm gonna close right here. In 2 Peter 1. and tell us that our assurance is governed by our growth. It's grounded in the gospel. You're gonna be secure and have the feelings of assurance the more you look to the gospel and what you have believed that Jesus did for you. But your feelings of assurance are gonna be governed by your growth in Jesus. And that's what Peter is talking about here when he writes, I wish we had time to read all of this, but look at verse three when he says, according as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, but that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. And beside all this, grow. Give all diligence to grow. Add to your faith virtue, and then grow in this way. Virtue, add knowledge, and then grow in this way. Add some temperance, and then grow in this way. Patience and godliness. and brotherly kindness. For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things, the one that's not growing, the Bible says he's blind. That's the word myopic. He cannot see afar off. And you know what he's done? He's forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. He's forgotten all about that. And the reason he forgot about it is because he was not growing. That's why I say our assurance of our relationship with Jesus Christ is governed by our growth. So can we just rest in the objective truth this morning that we are secure in Jesus Christ and what Jesus has done for us? And then if we want to feel more and more assured about that, then the key to that is going to be for me to look at the gospel and for me to govern my assurance by continually growing in my walk as a believer. That's gonna be the key. And if you're here today and your assurance has been something that just has continually assailed you, you're continually struggling with doubts, My prayer is that God will use his word today and really encourage us about the great secure position that we have in Jesus. Let's pray. Dear Father, thank you so much for giving us a savior. Thank you then in your plan of redemption that it didn't have anything that we would be doing in it. We're just trusting what you have done. And by doing so, we rest securely in the work of our Savior, Jesus. May we go in confident assurance that we belong to you in Jesus' name. Amen.