The following is a message given at Sovereign Grace Bible Church in Worland, Wyoming. Let's begin with a word of prayer. Father, we want to thank you for bringing us together again for one more week, Lord, another week of our sin and our failure, but a week of your faithfulness and your mercy. And Father, we pray that you will meet with us now in your word. Instruct us and change us and give us hearts that love you and trust you more. We pray this in Jesus's name. Amen. I just want to begin by reminding you where we're at and what we've been doing in our preaching for the last several weeks apart from taking a break last week because we had a baptism. We've been in the middle of a mini-series asking the question, how do I know if I'm a Christian? And so we started several weeks ago by first asking the question, am I a sinner? At the very base root level, a Christian is someone who's willing to admit I'm a sinner. And from there we moved into the second week and we saw that a Christian isn't just someone who admits that they're a sinner. A Christian is someone who has heard the true gospel and responded to the gospel in the way scripture tells them to, namely by repenting of their sins and putting faith in Christ. And then we moved from there and we saw that people that have done that evidence that. They show that in lives of holiness. And so we saw that the writer of Hebrews told us holiness without which no one will see the Lord. And two weeks ago we saw that a Christian is not just a sinner, a Christian is not just a person who has heard the gospel and responded in faith and repentance. A Christian is not merely a person who is becoming holy. We also saw that love for other Christians is one of the evidences of a true Christian. But this morning is our fifth sermon in this series, and we're gonna be in Matthew chapter 24, and we're gonna see that a Christian is also someone who endures until the end. So if you have a Bible, let's turn together to Matthew chapter 24. Matthew chapter 24, and I'm gonna read verses one through 14. Matthew 24, starting in verse one. Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple and his disciples came to show him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said to them, do you not see all these things? Or assuredly I say to you, not one stone shall be left upon another that will not be thrown down. Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately saying, Jesus answered and said to them, You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you're not troubled by all of these things, for they must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines, pestilence, and earthquakes in various places, and these are the beginnings of sorrows. Then they will deliver you to tribulations and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will be offended and will betray one another and will hate one another. And many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations. And then the end will come. Well, we're going to look at those 14 verses this morning under three main points. They're on the screen. They're also on the back inside page of your bulletin. First, we're going to see the world in which we live. Then we'll see the caution we are given. And then we'll see the grace that we will be shown, or the grace that we're promised. Let's begin, though, by looking at the world in which we live. Matthew 24 is the second largest of Jesus' teaching periods recorded in Scripture. It's the second longest, just by words, of any of Jesus' teachings recorded in Scripture. And Matthew 24 is called the Olivet Discourse. It's called the Olivet Discourse because Jesus and his disciples, as you can see, are on the Mount of Olives when Jesus begins this teaching. And if you look in verse 3, you'll notice that Jesus is actually giving this teaching because of a series of questions his disciples have asked him. Notice in verse three that the disciples ask Jesus, tell us when will these things be? And what will the sign of your coming be and of the end of the age? There's some dispute about whether the disciples are intending to ask two questions or three questions. We'll leave that discussion for another day. But for now we have to notice that they are asking at least two questions. When will these things be and what will be the sign of your coming? The reason that's significant is because their first question, when will these things be, is a reference back in verse two to where Jesus predicts the destruction of the temple. But as you see, the disciples in their mind, they realize the destruction of the temple must also mean something else. And so they not only ask him, when will this temple be destroyed? They also ask him, what will be the sign of your coming and what will be the end of the age? And so the reason all of that's significant for us this morning is because as we look at Matthew 24, Some of what Jesus is saying is going to be fulfilled in the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, but everything else that Jesus talks about is also simply signs that we should expect to see in every subsequent generation during the end of the age. You have to understand that the ascension of Christ back into heaven marks the end of the age. And so we are living in the last days in biblical thinking. We're not waiting for the last days to happen, we're in them. And so what Jesus is doing through the rest of this section is he's instructing the disciples, these are the things that you should expect to see during the last days. And notice the first thing Jesus tells them that will characterize the last days. Look again at verses four through eight and verse 11. It says, Jesus answered and said to them, take heed that no one deceives you, for many will come in my name, saying, I'm the Christ. They will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. Nation will rise up against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines, pestilence, and earthquakes in various places. And these are the beginnings of sorrow. And many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. So in verses four through eight, Jesus tells the disciples before the end of the age, between the time of his first coming and the time of his return, there will be many false teachers who will spring up and they will try to deceive the people of God. And Jesus tells us they'll deceive the people of God in two ways. For one, many of them will claim, I am the Christ, I am the Messiah. Jesus is telling us that one of the signs of the last days is that there will be people who go around claiming to be the Messiah and will lead people into following them. Unfortunately, these people are around today. In 1979, there's a guy named Alvaro Thies who was fasting and he was praying and he believed that he was the Messiah. He thought he was the Christ and so he quit his job, he quit using the name given to him at birth, And he bought this compound and built a wall around it and he got 12 disciples to follow him and they carry him around and they put robes and crowns on him. It's not surprising that 10 of his 12 quote-unquote disciples are women. And he believes he's the Christ and he's deceiving these people. And Jesus tells us this is one of the things we should expect to see in the day and age we live in. False teachers rising up, claiming to be Christ, and drawing people away with them. But false teachers don't just show up claiming to be Christ, they also show up in verses six through eight, making doomsday predictions. Claiming the end of the age is here, they're looking at all the signs and all of the earthquakes and the famines and the wars and the pestilence and all of this stuff going on, and they're trying to pinpoint dates to claim this is when the end of the age is gonna happen. We see this a lot more than we see false Christs, don't we? Harold Camping was a false prophet who made as many as 12 predictions about when the end of the age would happen. In 1992, he published a book predicting the end of the world would be 1994. That was a long time ago. The world is still here. When he realized he made a false prediction, he started making more predictions. His most famous prediction was for May 21st, 2011, a date that he thought was exactly 7,000 years after the biblical flood. When that date passed and the world didn't end, he said his math might have been a little off. So he then said it would be October 21st, 2011. That date has also come and gone. And so has Harold Camping, but the world is here. These guys are popping up all over the place. They send you emails. Check your spam folder sometime. Don't open them, but check your spam folder sometime. You'd be surprised some of the things that go in there. They send you books in the mail. They publish books. They go on radio programs. They have blogs. They have websites. And all of them claim to have some kind of secret knowledge that even Christ didn't have. Even Christ didn't know the day or the hour. And all these false prophets rise up and say, we know. We know when Christ will return. But these false prophets don't just claim to be Christ, they don't just make failed doomsday predictions, they also, in verse 11, will just be false teachers, spreading their heresy, spreading their false teaching to anyone and everyone who will listen. Notice again, verse 11, it says, many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And so what's going on in verse 11? There's not just false prophets claiming to be Christ. There's not just false prophets making false predictions about when the end of the age will be. There's false prophets coming around saying all sorts of things, trying to deceive God's people. And unfortunately, professing Christians aren't immune to this deception. In the church we used to attend up in Powell, there was a family who looked like any other family. It looked like anyone here this morning. They came faithfully to church. They seemed to believe in the Lord. They seemed to be growing. And then overnight, from our perspective, it wasn't, but from our perspective, out of nowhere, they quit coming to church. They sent a letter to the church saying why they had left. Some cult in town had got ahold of them, given them all this false teaching, and they swam the Tiber into a false religion. But they didn't just do that. They also then started sending letters and literature to all the people in the church trying to deceive them and get them to go with them. This stuff happens. And so these warnings Christ is giving us are not merely for the dark ages. They're not just for times when men like Marcion and Arius are roaming the earth. There's false teachers today. And Jesus tells us this to warn us so that we as God's people will be on guard. There's another sign of the world we live in, though, in verses nine and 10. Verses nine and 10 say, they will deliver you up to tribulations, they will kill you, and you'll be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will be offended and betray one another. We're gonna look at verses nine and 10 in a little more detail in a minute, but notice Jesus is telling us the last days will be marked by persecution. They'll be marked by God's people experiencing tribulations, murder, and hatred wherever they go, by all the nations. This persecution will take place all over the place. There'll be people from within the church who will be offended. What will they do? They will turn against the church, and they will also attack the church, and that's why he says they will betray one another. Even this week in Canada, a faithful pastor was arrested for conducting worship services in the midst of a so-called pandemic. He's been in jail all week. He's in there indefinitely until a trial is going to happen or until he agrees to sign a piece of paper saying he'll no longer hold worship services. I read a thing last night from his wife saying, I love him for the fact that he won't sign it. This is persecution. This is happening in the world in which we live, and it's happening close to us. In the same town where that guy pastors, the liquor stores are open. The marijuana dispensaries are open, which means marijuana and alcohol are more important to the Canadian culture than the gospel. This is the persecution Jesus is warning us about, and it's becoming increasingly common. But there's another sign associated with the last days. Notice also verse 12. This is because lawlessness will increase or abound, the love of many will grow cold. Verse 12 says, one of the other signs of the last days is that during the last days, lawlessness will increase and the love of many will grow cold. The word lawlessness is the Greek word anomia. It's the same word we looked at a couple of weeks ago in 1 John 3, 14, where John told us sin is lawlessness. The idea is a disdain for the law of God, an unwillingness to obey and submit to the laws of God. a rebellion against the law of God. And so what's interesting is that Jesus says, not that lawlessness will be present. That's always true. He actually says lawlessness will increase. Lawlessness will become even more prevalent. And so there's a sense in which lawlessness is always the state in the world in every human heart apart from Christ. But what Jesus is talking about is that although, yes, that's true, there is lawlessness in every heart apart from Christ, The world is not as bad as it could be. And what Jesus is saying is that in the last days, lawlessness is gonna increase. It shouldn't surprise us that sin is increasing and becoming more and more prevalent and accepted around us. The evil in the world around us is seemingly unrestrained and you don't have to be a great cultural commentator to realize that's the world in which we live. We're living in a day like never before where evil is called good and good is called evil. According to the CDC in 2018, we, America, we are a country that murdered over 600,000 infants in one year before they were born. That's just the number that was recorded with the CDC. We would actually expect that number to be higher because many abortions aren't actually reported. If that's not evil enough, if that's not evidence that we live in a lawless age, we also live in an age where if you publicly speak out against that, you become the freak, you become ostracized, you become the bad guy, and you become marginalized for speaking against that evil. Just for fun, on Monday, I googled the question, how many genders are there? You know the way Google works. You start typing a question, and it starts auto-filling the question for you. You know what the first two questions that it auto-filled for me were? The first one was, how many genders are there in 2019? The second one, how many genders are there in 2020? To us, it seems weird that we'd ask both of those questions, right? But you understand why Google is suggesting that to me. It's suggesting that to me because we as a culture have bought into an idea that says sexuality and gender are fluid, and there's this ever-increasing number of sexual perversions and gender identifications out there, and that as I discover new and more perverted ways to express my sexuality, I need culture to recognize that, and culture recognized more in 2020 than it did in 2019. Sexual lawlessness of our culture is also seen in another statistic that says only 12.3% of young ladies graduate from college still retaining their virginity when they graduate. We are a lawless culture. We're also seeing an increase of lawlessness in our day and age in people like Bill Maher, who on a late night show recently made the argument that many of the people who stormed the Capitol were Christians. He then went on to say this, The inconvenient truth here is that if you accord religious faith the kind of exalted respect we do here in America, you've already lost the argument that mass delusion is bad. Do you hear what Bill Maher's saying? He's saying if you give religion any place in society, you can't argue against mass delusion because by being religious, you have already bought into a mass delusion. He then went on to make a connection between the fact that we are people of faith and because there were professing Christians who stormed the Capitol who also bought into a mass delusion, Christians are therefore dangerous. You see where this is going, right? So, there were some professing Christians who stormed the Capitol. All Christians buy into mass delusions. Therefore, all Christians are capable of storming the Capitol and doing dangerous things. Therefore, we label all Christians as dangerous and we marginalize them and we call them evil. That's not just the feelings of people like Bill Maher. That's the feelings of most of our culture towards the people of God. They want to accuse us of violence and conclude we are dangerous and therefore we no longer have a voice. And as we look at the world around us, what we realize is we live in a lawless age. We live in an age that calls evil good and we live in an age that calls good evil. And Jesus knows that's what the world is gonna be like So what he does from there after describing this is what the world is gonna look like in the last days, he then moves on to give us a caution, to give us a warning. That brings us to our second point, the caution given. In verses 12 and 13, Jesus gives us a caution, and it takes place in the form of describing first what, first describing what some people will do in light of the world in which we live, and then by telling the people of God what we must do in light of the world in which we live. Look at verse 12. Verse 12 says, because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. Notice that in verse 12, Jesus uses the word because. The word because is causal. It's a word that's showing us that one action is leading to another action. And so lawlessness is increasing. That's the state in the world in which we live. And what's that doing? What's that causing? It's causing the love of many to grow cold. In other words, Jesus is teaching us that there will be many people who respond to the lawlessness of our culture and that will lead them to a lovelessness in their own heart. But we have to ask, cold and unloving to who? To be unloving requires that there is someone who is not loved, and so we have to ask, are we talking about not loving the Lord, or are we talking about not loving the people of God? If you look at the surrounding context, It seems to me Jesus actually has both in mind. A love for our fellow believers as well as a love for Christ. Notice verse nine. It says, then they will deliver you up to tribulations and kill you and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. Notice what the lawlessness is doing in response to the people who are following after Christ. They're being delivered over to tribulation. They're hated and some of them are even being put to death and Jesus tells us this is happening, why? For his name's sake. Which means that the people of God are loving the Lord and the people around them see their love for the Lord and they're responding by what? By hating the name of the Lord. They're persecuting them on account of their love for the Lord. In other words, these people are suffering because they love Christ. But notice verse 10, verse 10 tells us, Many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. This was their love for Christ, and as Christian's love for Christ is evident, it also presents another danger. says there will be many professing believers in verse 10 that will respond by betraying the true people of God and then turning against them and hating them. That's what's going on in verse 10 when it says they will betray you. So there's these Christians and there's these professing Christians all together and his lawlessness increases, exposes who's a true Christian and who's not and the false Christians betray the Christians and turn against them and they hate them. And so Jesus is telling us that in the last days, there will be people who commit apostasy. There will be apostates. There will be people who leave their love for Christ, who leave their love for the people of God, and they will forsake both, revealing they were never the people of God. John says something almost identical to that in 1 John 2, 18 and 19. Little children, it's the last hour. And as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many Antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. 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 so that it might be manifest that they were not of us. What's John see happening in the last days? He sees the same thing Christ predicts. People are falling away from their love for Christ, and as they fall away from their love for Christ, what are they also doing? They're forsaking the people of God. They're falling into apostasy, hating the people of God and hating the God of Scripture. And that's a danger we face. As the temptations of the world press in against us, as evil increases, as hostility against us increases, as persecution becomes more prevalent, as false teachers ramp up their heresies, this is the danger the people of God face. Growing cold in their love for the people of God and growing cold in their love for the Lord. So what should we do? Notice verse 13. Verse 13 says, he who endures to the end will be saved. And so Jesus has already told us that in the last days false prophets will arise, sin will increase, many who profess to love Christ will grow cold and fall away, and now he turns to his 12. Now he turns to his disciples. And he says, if you, what's interesting is that as you read through Matthew 24, you see the word many will do this, many will do that, many will do this. And now he turns to the disciples and he doesn't say many. He makes it personal. If you endure to the end, you will be saved. Notice that verse 13 is a conditional statement. Jesus says, if you endure to the end, if you continue loving me, if you continue being faithful to me, that condition will result in an experience and it will result in the experience of you being saved. We have to recognize that Jesus puts salvation here not in the present tense, not in the past tense, but in the future tense. It's not that you have been saved. It's not that you are being saved. Those things are true of God's people, but that's not how Jesus is talking here. Here Jesus says you will be saved and he moves salvation into the future because he wants the disciples to realize he's talking about their glorification. If you endure until the end, then you'll be glorified. You'll receive the final elements of your salvation. So one of the things we have to recognize is that while Jesus is teaching us salvation is only going to be received by those who endure, that does not necessarily mean, it actually doesn't mean, that a true believer can fall away and lose his salvation. That's why in 1 John 2.19, John says, they went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. They went out from us so that it might be made manifest that they were not of us. Notice how John describes those that fall away. Notice how he describes those that don't endure in the language of Matthew 24. They were never really of us. Oh, they were here. They looked like us. But the fact that they didn't endure does not mean they lost their salvation. It actually points to another reality, namely that they look like they were a part of us, but they were never really truly God's people. And so Jesus isn't teaching us we can lose our salvation, but he is teaching us that one of the evidences of a true believer, as opposed to someone who's a false convert, who will commit apostasy, one of the evidences of a true believer is that they will continue. They'll continue to end their love for Christ. They'll continue in believing the truths of the gospel. They'll continue in growing in holiness. They'll continue to wage warfare against the evil culture in which they live in. Jesus said the same thing in Matthew 10, 22. Go be hated by all for my name's sake. but he who endures to the end will be saved. Turn over to see this in another place in Mark chapter four, verses one through nine. Turn over there with me. Mark chapter four, and I'll read verses one through nine. And again, he began to teach by the sea. And a great multitude gathered together with him so that he got into a boat and he sat on the sea and the whole multitude was on the land facing the sea. Then he taught them many things by parables and said to them in his teaching, listen, behold, a sower went out to sow. And it happened as he sowed that some seed fell on the wayside and the birds of the air came and devoured it. Some fell on stony ground where it did not have much earth, and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up, it was scorched. Because it had no root, it withered away. Some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop. Other seed fell on good ground and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased, and produced, some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred. He said to them, do you have ears to hear? Let him hear. And he said to them, do you understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. And these are the ones who are by the wayside when the word is sown. When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts. They likewise are the ones sown on stony grounds, who when they hear the word, immediately it's received with gladness, and they have no root in themselves, and so they endure and then notice what Jesus says, but only for a time. Afterwards, when tribulations and persecutions arise for the word's sake, immediately they stumble. Now these are the ones sown among thorns. They're the ones who hear the word and the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, the desire for other things, entering in, chokes out the word and it becomes unfruitful. But these are the ones sown on good ground. They're the ones that hear the word, accept it, bear fruit, some 30 fold, some 60 fold, and some 100. So in Mark 4, Jesus gives us the parable of the soils, and he tells us the same gospel goes out and it gets scattered on all sorts of different hearts. But all of those heart conditions have one thing in common, except for the last soil, except for the good soil. All of them have the same shared experience in that whatever they initially do with the seed, it doesn't continue. The birds come and they take it away. The cares of the world come and people get distracted and they abandon their profession of faith. Some of them, it seems to do something at first, but then persecution comes and it chokes it out. It's only the good soil, it's only the true believer who receives the word of God and continues bearing fruit until his death or until the return of Christ. And so over and over and over again, we see in Scripture, one of the marks of a true Christian is not necessarily how they initially respond to the proclaiming of the gospel. One of the marks of a true Christian is that, yes, they respond to the gospel initially, but they continue responding to the gospel. They continue in belief, they continue in faith, and they continue in the Lord. But one of the marks of a false convert, one of the marks of an apostate, is that although they may initially for a time look just like the rest of the people of God, the fact that they at some point lose their love for the Lord and lose their love for the people of God is evidence to the fact that they were never truly Christians. And so as you continue to ask yourself, am I a true believer? This is one of the tests God's word gives us. Are you continuing? Are you enduring? Are you believing today and tomorrow and the next day the gospel? Are you continuing with the people of God? Are you continuing to repent of sins? Are you continuing to hold fast to sound doctrine? Are you abiding in Christ? Jesus is telling us one of the marks of a true believer is not that they, this is what we do. We usually say, I know I'm a Christian because on the front inside page of my Bible, where I've got the family records and I've got all the dates and stuff, I wrote March 17th, 1987 is the day I was saved, and I can remember that day. Or we say, I know I'm a Christian because some victory in my life. And in Matthew 24, what Jesus is saying is you don't know you're a Christian because you have marched whatever date I said written in your Bible. You know you're a Christian because tomorrow you wake up and you continue believing the gospel. You know you're a Christian because the love that you professed to have for the Lord back then is still here today and by God's grace it will be there tomorrow. And you know you're a Christian because you continue to endure. That doesn't mean a true Christian won't fall into sin. That doesn't mean a true Christian won't have lapses in their faith, seasons of sin. That doesn't mean a true Christian will always have perfect theology and just amazing sound doctrine. We know from the life of Peter, Peter's like the classic screw-up, right? We know from the life of Peter, God's people fall into serious sin. Peter even denies knowing Christ. We also know from Peter in Galatians 2, a true believer can distort and pervert the gospel for a time. So we have to ask, if that's true, if I have to endure, if I'm going to be saved, and if there's the real possibility that I'm going to fall into sin, I'm going to fall into bad doctrine, my love might grow cold for a season, what hope do I have of enduring? Up until this point, it could seem like endurance is something that's all about me. I've got to do this. And you do, but you have to understand that that's not the whole story. Our endurance is not something dependent on us. Our endurance is actually something God promises and does for us. That brings us to our final point, the grace we have been promised. Well, this isn't actually in Matthew 24. I'm gonna read a number of passages that show us that our endurance is ultimately the work of God. Philippians 1.6, being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 5, 23 and 24. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. And may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you as faithful, he will do it. 1 Peter 5.20, after you've suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, conform, or confirm, strengthen, and establish you. Romans 8.29 and 30, whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he predestined, these he also called. Whom he called, these he also justified. Whom he justified, these he also glorified. 2 Corinthians 1, 20 through 22. All of the promises of God in him are yes and in him amen to the glory of God through us. Now he who establishes us with you in Christ has anointed us in God, who also has sealed us and given the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. Jesus is teaching us in Matthew 24 that we must endure to the end if we're going to be saved. He's clearly teaching that if we don't endure to the end, we will not in the future be saved. But we have to understand that the other side of that coin is the rest of Scripture that says if God begins a work in your heart, He's not going to stop. If God starts a work in the hearts of His people, He's going to complete it. The same God who predestined your salvation has also called you. The same God who called you has also justified you. The same God who justified you will certainly glorify you. And so there's no real danger for the true people of God about falling away because at the end of the day, the same God who promises our salvation at the moment that we are justified also secures our salvation the moment we will be glorified. That should be comforting to you if you're one of God's people. Because it's a reminder that, yeah, I have some fumblings and bumblings in my spiritual life. I have sin I still wrestle with. I have sin that I have wrestled with in areas of life for 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. I know my doctrine's not perfect. What hope do I have that I will endure? And Scripture comes and says your hope isn't in you. Your hope is in Him. Because the salvation package that he has doesn't just start the process. It carries the process through and it guarantees the process will result in your future salvation. So this should be comforting to all of God's true people, that as you see yourself enduring, you can look at it and you can say, this is the evidence of God's work. God's actually doing something in me, I see it. There's no way I should still be a Christian. There's so much against me, but greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world, and that's why I endure. And so no one who's truly saved will ever fall away. They will never fail to endure because the same God who secures our justification also promises our glorification. And so do we persevere? Yes. Are we called to actively labor in maintaining our faith, resisting temptation, watching over our doctrine? Of course we are. But at the end of the day, it's God who is at work in us, who is guaranteeing all that he commands. In his book, Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan illustrates how all of this works in the life of a believer. If you're not familiar with the book, Pilgrim's Progress, A guy named John Bunyan wrote it while he was in prison and he wrote it to help his church understand this is what the Christian life looks like. And so it's an allegory explaining this is what you should see in your Christian life. And at one point he wrote this. Then I saw in my dream that the interpreter took Christian by the hand and led him to a place where there was a fire burning against a wall. And one standing by it was always casting much water on it to quench it. Yet the fire burned hotter and hotter. Then said Christian, what does this mean? Interpreter said, the fire is the work of grace that is wrought in the heart. He that casts water on it to extinguish it and put it out, he is the devil. But in that you see a fire notwithstanding burning higher and hotter, you will also see the reason for it. So he had him around the backside of the wall. where he saw a man with a vessel of oil in his hand, of which he did continually cast, although secretly, into the fire. Then said Christian, what does this mean? The interpreter said, this is Christ, who continually, with the oil of his grace, maintains the work already begun in the heart, by the means of which, notwithstanding what the devil can do, the soul of his people prove gracious still. And in that you saw the man stood against the wall to maintain the fire, this is to teach you that it is hard for the tempted to see how the work of grace is manifest in their souls. So here's what's going on in that paragraph. There's this guy named Christian and he goes to the house of the interpreter. And the interpreter wants to teach him what the Christian life is gonna look like. And there's this fire burning on the wall and there's this guy just like trying to put it out, trying to put it out. That's the devil trying to destroy the faith of God's people. And then the interpreter takes him to the back of the wall and what does he see? He sees Christ there throwing oil into the same fire, keeping it burning, keeping it alive. And that's what we have. We don't have a God who's abandoned us to endure on our own. We have a God who endures with us. We have a God who continues to throw the oil of grace into our heart so we will endure. I want to close by giving us a couple points of application. One of the points of application is that as we look at our professions of faith and we say, I'm a Christian, the evidence that that is true is that you will endure. And should there ever be a time when you fail to endure, when you turn your back on the Lord and you utterly forsake Him, That profession of faith is no good to you unless if you endure. Matthew 24 teaches us the one that endures to the end will be saved. And so if you fall away without repentance, without coming back, without the Spirit actually continuing to pour the oil of grace in your heart, it's evidence that you were never truly one of God's people. But if you look at your life and you continue from today on and on and on until you die or until Christ returns, if you continue to see God is giving me endurance, God is giving me His grace, God is sustaining my faith, I am by His grace persevering, that should also be the evidence to you that in the past you have been justified, you have been called, you've been predestined, and you will also be glorified. Let's pray. Father, we pray that you will keep pouring the oil on your people, cause the flame of our faith to burn, to burn brighter, to burn hotter, to burn taller. Lord, we've been reminded in your word that the world in which we are called to endure is not a friend of grace. The world in which we live is filled with sin, temptations, which we confess, Lord, they're attractive at times. Filled with enemies who desire to lead us astray, to pervert our doctrine and lead us ultimately to rejecting you. We live in a world where there is so much against us. But Lord, having you with us and for us, you are greater than it all. So we pray that you will cause your people to endure. We pray that if there's anyone here who's self-deceived and they think they're your people but they're not, make that plain to them, Lord. Before there's apostasy, before there's utter and final rejection, make that plain to them and by your grace, draw them to yourself to be saved. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. We hope you've been edified by the message you heard from Sovereign Grace Bible Church in Warland, Wyoming. For more information about Sovereign Grace Bible Church, or to support the ministry, contact them at sgbcwi.org, sgbcwi.org.